Heat, Heat, Heat...

So the cold season is upon us once again, and I am still grateful for Rudy on the installation of the furnaces.  It's amazing how much of a difference a warm house can make.  One thing I may upgrade soon is the thermostat.  We currently have a programmable thermostat from Honeywell, but I often put it on, "Hold," to turn it on and forget to turn it off when we leave the house.  Depending on what this next PG&E bill looks like, I may be replacing it with a smart thermostat, like the NEST,  VERY soon. 

Door Knob Lifesaver!

I managed to remove the handle to the exterior door in the laundry room today.  I was going to replace it this morning, but I ran into a hiccup - the plate on the door wouldn't come off!  There is a little thing that moved, but I pushed it in and nothing happened.  Given my propensity to exert too much force on things (and break them), I decided to just hold off for a bit to Google this situation.

I came across a blog that had a perfect description of what I needed!  I'm a bit anxious to go home and try it.  Maybe at lunch...

How to Remove a Door knob that has no screws.

I'm trying to just put something in that's newer... and works.  I think I picked up something like this:

Staining the Shelf Dowels

I let the Liquid Nails dry for a few days, since it's been pretty moist around here.  The fog's been taking over everything like the blob.  I smacked the dowels in different directions just to make sure it was in there (if it was loose, I might as well knock it out now, right?)  Nothing moved, so I moved on to staining.  

I picked this up from Home Depot yesterday.  It was actually MORE expensive than it is on Amazon.  The directions say to make sure the wood's clean and free of oils, dirt, etc.  I sanded the dowels lightly with some 200 grit sand paper.  Rough, I know.  I then used a utility knife to scrape off the extra Liquid Nails on the bottom shelf.  Very little came off, so I figured the next two should be fine.  

I tore an old wife beater in half and rolled it up.  I dipped it into the stain, then started on the top dowel.  Wiping with the grain, I went all the way around the dowel, top to bottom, then moved down a shelf.  It took about 5 minutes to register that this stuff REALLY smells.  I reached over and opened the backyard door.  

With the stain, here's how the dowel looked after two applications.

And here's the shelf with all three!

The color ending up matching really well.  I think to seal it, I have to get the clear minwax varnish and apply to seal the wood.  It's nus that this tiny can is twice the price of the stain.  

Comcast!

Or rather, XFINITY!  Bright and early this morning, the cable guy showed up.  Before 8 AM, I had cable and internet working!

Living Room Shelves

Went to Uncle Bill's house today to cut the shelves!  I was pretty excited.  It took about 15 minutes, and the shelves looked great.  We notched the edges in the front so the front would be flush with the shelf face.

When we finally got back into the house, I put the shelves up, and they fit perfectly!  Sweeeet!

One question, though... Should I add a third shelf?

Madre de Dios...

I guess nothing really can just work at this place, can it?  Friday night, I returned home, and my key turned in the lock, but it wouldn't open the door.  WTF??  Yesenia and Sandra were upstairs watching movies, so Yesenia came down and opened the door.  With the door opened, I was able to turn the lock.  Cool.  Must've been a fluke, right?  WRONG.

This morning, Sandra and I stepped out to go run errands. She forgot something inside, so we turned around (from the front steps) and put the key in the hole.  Turn... then stuck.  What?!  Again... Turn, then stuck!  GREAT!  The freakin lock's busted!  And to boot, there's NO other way inside!  I called Crownlock to come and open the door.  The guy said he was pretty busy and it' be a while.  That's cool.  I figured we'd go to Uncle Bill's and cut the shelving then meet him back at the house, right?  It all worked out, we met him up around 4:30 PM.  He came in and spent a good 25 - 30 minutes trying to open the door.  It took a LONG time, but he eventually got it.  With the door open, the key turned the lock to open and close it.  Great.  Now we can't even trouble shoot it!

He removed the lock completely and began to look at the insides.  I looked over and it was all rusted!  The thing wasn't moving internally because it was getting stuck on some rusted parts!  Nice.  Now to get a permanent fix, I have to buy a new front door lock...

Leveling out the Shelves

The lower shelves that we got for the kitchen stove area were sagging, so I decided to get some 1 inch dowels to support and level off the ends.  I picked up a miter box and saw from Discount Builders to cut the dowels since my current hand saw was getting really dull.  .


I measured the height of each shelf from the edge where they connected to the vertical piece of wood.  I think they were all 9 3/8 inches or so.  This saw was a bit different than the previous miter saw.  It only cut in one direction.  The two directional one makes a HUGE difference, if anyone else is looking to buy.

Anywho, I but each one, then used painters tape to mask around the base of the dowels.  I applied the Liquid Nails to the ends of the dowels, then lifted the above shelf to place the dowel down.  I wiped the excess glue from the top and bottom, but figured I'd clean the rest of it later.  With a level, I checked to make sure all dowels were square to the shelf and the shelves were all level.  I had some wiggle room time, so I wanted to make sure everything looked good.

All in all, this took less than an hour.  I guess I'm getting better at this kind of stuff!

Nice Cans!

Garbage cans that is!  And by garbage, I mean compost, recycling, and garbage cans!  The order I put in with Sunset Scavenger finally arrived.  I got some brand new, no holes garbage, compost, and recycling bins!  I asked for the larger recycling and composting bins, since there's a lot of yard waste to get rid of.  Pics to follow!

FIRE!!!!!

The time has finally arrived!  After two weeks of waiting, PG&E came in and turned on the gas!  Well, I was out of town last week, so it was really only like one week.

There were some issues that needed to be cleared up, though.  The meters looked like work had been done to it.  Luckily, according to Ben (the PG&E guy), the work done to mine was done by PG&E.  He explained that they use green pipe dope, and the pipe thread on mine had green.  The other meter, though, had white pipe dope and some putty looking stuff on it.  Oh well, not my problem!

Ben came upstairs to look at the dryer and stove connections.  Apparently, the valves I got to replace the old ones had, "appliance tips," meaning the connection from the valve can go right into the gas supply line!  Sweet!  He helped me take out the extra part, reconnect it, and all was well.

He turned on the gas to the building after making sure both units' gas mains were off.  He marked the meter where the gas was currently, then turned the gas main on to my unit!  We waited a few minutes to make sure there were no leaks (the meter would move).  Nada.  Suweeeet!  Both the stove and dryer have electric ignitions, so there was no need to light the pilots.  He turned on the burners to "Light" and waited.  As the air cleared the line, I could slowly start to smell the gas.  Then, the burners lit!  It was pretty exciting.  I'll admit to being a lot more excited about seeing this than I should be, but shit - this means everything's good to go!

Ben turned on the dryer, waited a bit, then opened it.  Warm.  NICE.

We went down to the garage.  He had to loosen the pipes to the heater and hot water heater to get the air out of them, then he lit the pilot to the heater.  He then got the hot water heater set, lit, and running.  DONE.

He advised me to wait about an hour, then fill the bathtub up about half way to clear out the hot water from the tank.  The tank will refill, heating the water as it came in, saving the gas it'd take to heat the whole thing.

I waited about 15 minutes, then checked to see if I had hot water.  I had warm water, but I was still ecstatic.  I really can't tell you, nor do I want to admit to it, how many times I went over to the stove and lit the burners.  Yes, I was really that excited.

Next up: the big move.

The STOVE!

Well, Kinda.

The stove has a bracket that needs to be drilled into the floor boards.  It's called an anti-tip bracket.  My guess is that it keeps the damn thing from tipping over if someone happens to pull on it.  Either way, that little bracket took a whole 15 minutes to put down!  The stove came with instructions and a template about how to put the bracket down.  I skipped it.  These templates have been worthless!  I pushed the stove to where it needs to be.  I lined it up with the microwave, then using super sophisticated 2010 technology, I took out my #2 pencil and traced the foot of the stove.  While looking at it, I thought to myself, "Well shit, ROB, why not just put the bracket on now, and trace that?!"  And so it was done.  I pre-drilled two 1/8 inch holes, secured the bracket using the bolts that accompanied the stove, and voila!

If only I had gas...

Almost there!

We're so close to being down with work on the house, I can pretty much just sleep there already!  And if I do, that's pretty much all I could do.  Due to the fact that my sister had PG&E shut off the gas to the whole building, and not just her unit due to a gas leak completely contained within her unit, I can't turn on my gas.

I called PG&E today, and the first person I spoke with told me that because the person who shut down the gas told them it was for construction, I needed to pay for a gas inspection report to show them before they'd turn the gas back on!  What?!

I called again to speak to someone else. This time, I preempted the conversation with, "work was done to my sister's gas lines in the other unit, but none to mine."  Sweet.  I have to make an appointment now.  I'm out of town for a week starting Friday, and go figure that's their soonest appointment.  I scheduled it for August 23rd after 5 PM.  It'll be a done deal that day!  I'll have gas, two tv's, and an XBox set up.  What else do I need, right?

We spent the afternoon cleaning up around the house.  All the extra drywall pieces still laying around got moved down to the storage room under my kitchen.  The back room got vacuumed, and all the paper covering the floors has been removed.  The regular masking tape sticks to the floor like crazy, and it's a pain in the ass to remove all the adhesive.  Hopefully the steamer will get it off.

Front Bedroom Coming Together

Today, we brought over the box spring and mattress for the bed!  We loaded them into the house with a few other items, then brought the van back home.  We returned to begin cleaning and stuff.  

While I sorted out the items in the garage to separate the two halves (mines vs. my sister's), Sandra steam cleaned the bed frame, box spring, and mattress.  I stopped by and thought it looked really cool when she was steaming the mattress.  The steam came out the other side!

I washed the sheets that we picked up for the bed the night before, so they were ready to put on.

The $1.99 curtain rod from Ikea is now up as well.  The blanket covering the window still looks a bit funky.  we must revisit that soon.  

We picked this steam cleaner up.  If you've ever seen the infomercial, don't believe it.  This is a steam cleaner.  Not a vacuum, not a mop, just a steam cleaner.  It will super heat water to create steam and that steam will kill anything you put it to.  It will also cook your hand or face if you point it there, so be CAREFUL!  It's well worth the $50 to avoid using chemicals on everything!

Another Sunday Fun Day!

Another Sunday Fun Day!

Geez, how I long for my lazy Sundays!  Not.  Sandra does miss them though.  We spent the day at the house today staring at the cabinets in the wall and trying to figure out how to place the microwave on there.  I was impressed by the fact that the cabinets were still up.  Now, they're supposed to hold this microwave?!  Acks.

Just to be completely sure these cabinets were secure, I did a few pullups on them.  :-)  They're good.

I added the 3/4 inch plywood underneath the cabinet to reinforce the opening.  Since I had drilled the holes in yesterday, all I had to do to line up the holes was match the opening for the electrical cord, clamp it down, then drill through the cabinet bottom.

As you can see, the clamp wasn't really holding the wood too well.

Here's the center line of the cabinets.  The instructions keep referring to the center line.  I wish they'd have marked the damned center line on the back or top of the microwave!

Here's the plywood on top of the microwave.  I figured that if I used the plywood to line up the holes, I could also use it as a template for the bottom of the microwave.  It didn't turn out to be that simple.  Although the holes in the cabinet were really, really close to where they needed to be, I still had to use a drill to expand them so the bolts could fit straight down to the microwave.

All in all, we lifted the microwave about 10 times.  The was a bracket that mounted to the wall that had to be installed first.  (Looks like I didn't take any pictures of it.)  It had to be a certain distance away from the bottom of the cabinet, but with the bracket there, the microwave was too far from the cabinet (roughly 1/2 inch).  So, we lifted the bracket to get the vent to line up to the existing vent, and have the top of the microwave flush with the bottom of the cabinet.  Because the microwave hooked into the bracket then rotated back to the wall, this 1/2 inch vertical movement closed the amount of room for the rotation.  A little encouragement got the microwave past this, and Sandra quickly bolted the microwave in while I held it.

If you look at the time stamps, it's easy to think that this took us about 5 hours.  I'd say it took us about 3 weeks.  I kept staring at it all, very afraid to install any of it.  It's up now.  Let's hope it stays that way!

Painting the Heater Vents

The base boards and walls were pretty much painted in the living room, dining room, and front bedroom.  One thing that always kind of bothered me was how ugly the heater vents were.  We couldn't find any place that sold newer replacements for these vents, so Sandra removed the existing ones, and I cleaned them off in the backyard a few days ago.  Keep in mind that by cleaned them off, I mean I hosed them down.  That was a much needed hose down, too.  All of them had grayish water streaming from them.  I also sprayed them down with TSP to further reduce the gunk.  We left them sitting inside to dry.

Today, I painted them with the semi-gloss.

Bathroom Pipes

So the whole PVC piping in the bathroom finally got to me, and I caved.  I bought a pipe cutter from Home Depot and the extra chrome pipe pieces that I wasn't able to salvage from Sully's truck at U-Save Plumbing on Lawton Street.  I basically needed a right sided swing arm waste line.  Odd thing is that they had them there!

The key to cutting pipes (or anything, for that matter) is to cut a little bit at a time.

Here's how it all came out:

Pipe Dreams...

For some reason, most people think of drugs when someone mentions pipes.  Why?  Remember how the bathroom sink backs up?

 (http://bornnraised415.blogspot.com/2010/06/installing-bathroom-sink.html)  It's been annoying me forever.  I finally was able to schedule some time with Sully to show him what was going on.  He came in on Monday to look at the stuff.  He said it wouldn't be too hard (he actually said it'd be easy).

Today, he called me up and said he got the parts and could come in to replace the pipes underneath the house!  We used Chuy's Sawzall (I LOVE that thing!) to cut out the old pipes.  It literally cut through them like a bread knife through a bagel.

That pipe was just nasty.

Here's a side by side comparison of a new cast iron pipe and the pipe we just cut out:

Sully used the snake going up through the drain to clean out anything on the vertical side, then used a shopvac to clean out anything on the side connecting to the main waste line.  He put the bands on, connected the new pipes, and within an hour, the water was draining from the bathroom sink like the house was brand new!  Sweeeeet!

Here's where Sully messed up, though.  He asked if there was anything else I needed done!  Well, there was always the kitchen sink drain that needed to be lowered!  (http://bornnraised415.blogspot.com/2010/06/garbage-disposal-installation.html)

We went upstairs to take a look at it.  He priced it out, and it was cool.  Same as the bathroom.  Me and his buddy Juan started to cut a hole into the drywall underneath the sink to expose the drain pipe.  Crap.  Issue #1 - this drain vents off to another pipe behind the cabinet on the left side.

If you're wondering why the cut extends out to the right, it's because I wanted to expose the old galvanized water supply lines.  They are no longer used since there's copper now, and they were just dead pipes sitting in the walls.  We exposed them so I could cut them out.

The odd thing about this was that to replace the copper pipes, it looks like they cut open a panel from the exterior, then replaced it.  There was newer cast iron piping in the wall banded to the older pipes, with a copper pipe connected the waste line to the vent line.

We cut open the wall in the back of that cabinet to the left, too:

GREAT!  The pipe that leads to the vent pipe goes through a stud.  Not bad, though, we just have to raise that pipe and cut a new hole.  At least it's not a support beam.

We cut through the pipes underneath the sink and put a band on to connect the new pipe.

Before we cut the pipe behind the left cabinet, Sully wanted to make sure it wouldn't fall on us.  He said he'd seen it happen a few times before, where they cut the pipe, and 30 feet of pipe above it just dropped straight through the floors.  Here's a picture of Michelle's kitchen walls exposed to see what was going on up there:

From this picture, we can see that there's a T-Joint leading off to the right side which will keep the pipe from falling on us.  Cool.  We proceeded to cut.  Even though the pipes were banded together, because a panel was cut from the exterior before, we couldn't reach the screw in the band to loosen it.  We had to cut it off.

We installed all the new cast iron pipe joints and bands, connected everything, then ran the water.  Guess what?  IT WAS BACKING UP!

The new chrome pipes under the sink were allowing the water to flow faster than the clogged pipes, and somewhere down the line, something was causing it to back up.  I thought, and Sully thought it might be as well, that the down grade from the waste line to the vent line wasn't steep enough, so Juan disconnected everything and with a grinder started to slowly cut away at the base of the vent line.  He removed about 1/8 inches, and we reconnected everything.  Crap.  Still backing up.

We disconnected everything and did it all over again, this time, grinding it down another 1/8 inches.

Check out the sparks flying.  This was serious.  We'd been working on this for a few hours now, and it was turning into a nightmare.  We kept cutting more and more of the pipe to increase the grade, and it was still backing up.  We used the shopvac to clean out anything inside the pipes, then tried flushing it down.  No go.

Here's all the crap that was in there:

We were getting close to the bottom, and it was getting harder and harder to replace the bands.

The kitchen was looking more and more like a disaster area.

Sully asked what was under us, and I said a storage room.  He asked what the pipes looked like from down there, and I had no idea.  I ran downstairs to look, and I could actually see the pipes!  Oddly enough, they were copper!  We decided to see if I could push the bottom up the pipe upwards to allow Juan access to cut more of the pipe and more room to connect the bands.  As I pushed the pipe up, I heard Sully say, "Muther fucker!  AY, ROB!  Come look at this shit!"  I let go and ran up.  Juan was holding on to the pipe piece.  It was about 3 inches of galvanized pipe banded to the copper piece downstairs.  That piece of galvanized pipe was just gummed up.  It looked like someone put a hockey puck in the pipe!

We used the shopvac and cleaned up what we could, then just removed that piece of galvanized pipe!  We connected some new cast iron pipe with a band to the copper, then reconnected everything.

Instead of connecting the chrome, we shoved the hose into the waste line to test it again.  It flowed!!!!  Sully was literally here for 8 hours!  But, geez, was I thankful!  That mess would've been a pain in the ass to get done from someone else!

Bathroom Cabinets

Sandra wanted to get new cabinet pulls to go with all the brushed nickel in the bathroom.  We found some handles from Ikea that were less than $5 for a pair - SOLD!  I decided to try to put them in today, and it turned out they were wider than the existing ones.  I had to fill one of the holes, then drill a new hole for the new cabinet pull.

The Kitchen Back Wall

The back wall in the kitchen is pretty ugly.  By ugly, I mean it's blank.  To have the stove sitting there, effectively floating is extremely undesirable.  I've got the cabinets from Elpidio, but I still have to figure out how it's all going to go down.  Here's another one of my drawings/measurements:

Closing up the Kitchen Ceiling

I was getting tired of staring at the gaping holes in the ceiling in the kitchen, so today, I decided they were closing.

I used some of the left over steel bands to brace the gas line in the upstairs unit to the floor joists.  This will keep the gas pipe from resting on my ceiling.  I thought I had already cut dry wall sized for the holes, but I couldn't find them.  I guess this is the beauty of constantly cleaning up after myself - I probably threw them away.  Anywho, as I've been cutting a lot of drywall lately, it was really simple to do this time.

I marked an arrow to show which side was to go against the wall.

The issue here was finding something to secure the drywall to once it was placed in the holes.  I had some left over pieces of hardibacker that fit the holes nicely.  I secured them into the studs along the ceiling, then placed the drywall pieces up and secured them in with 1 inch drywall screws.

It was such a tight fit for the drywall, that it pretty much held on by itself!

But, we won't leave it like that!

Sandra measured and cut the drywall tape while I mixed the joint compound.

Paint!

All the cans of paint were all over the house.  I moved them all to one place, out of the way.