Month: July 2011

Slow, Varied Progress

July 7, 2011 / / 6 Comments

Leveling the Toilet

I’ve been trying to finish a project so that I can write about it, but so far things have been going slowly and with several projects in flight at once, we’re not getting any one thing completely finished. Another challenge is that we’ve wound up having to do a lot of things that weren’t in the original plan. I knew the toilet wasn’t attached in the upstairs bathroom, but hooking it up has turned into an extensive bathroom project. Once it’s done I’ll cover it in a post, but for now enjoy the picture of the level toilet and the not-level floor.

During the toilet escapade I wound up having to re-mount the bathroom pedestal sink to the wall and redo the drain. That’s finally complete, but it took much longer than anticipated because I didn’t have the right parts or tools and as always it took multiple trips to the store to resolve it. The good news is that’s at least finished. We have a working and not leaking sink upstairs, which helps quite a bit.

Bathroom in progress

We’ve been re-tiling the floor in the upstairs kitchen, which Sarah will be posting about once it’s done. We’ve been fumigating and baiting the roaches with limited success (they are incredibly resilient, as you know), but are probably going to bring in an exterminator. The drop ceiling and track lighting in the back bedroom upstairs is down, another round of garbage bins have been emptied and re-filled in a day, though the backlog is starting to diminish.

Removing the lighting in the bedroom was interesting. They’d added a light switch in the wall, but it was just wired into the receptacle, which is also where several outlets were wired in. After we used the tester to get the circuit turned off I disconnected and re-wired it. The results as usual aren’t pretty but they’re a substantial improvement over what was there.

Ceiling receptacle

We now need to strip the cracked paint, clean the walls, bevel the top of the drywall that they put over the plaster with joint compound so that it blends in somewhat, tape everything off, and eventually paint. Then we can install carpeting and a ceiling fan and the room will be ready. Since this is just one room, and one of the simpler ones at that, I’m not feeling optimistic about moving in by the end of the month.

Sealing the Deal

July 1, 2011 / / 0 Comments

We needed to close some of the gaps in the outside walls to prevent critters from coming and going. This meant boarding up a few basement windows, adding a threshold to the main back door, and adding some wire mesh to a few other spots. We have our work cut out for us in the attic, but we haven’t gotten to that yet. For now we’re focusing on the ground level perimeter.

Basement window before

This fusion of plexiglass and incompetence was the laundry room window. I ripped all of it out, but left the original window intact, though it was missing a couple of panes. After tucking the wires into the siding to get them out of the way, I screwed a 2×2 cedar board into the bottom so I had a flat surface on all four sides. Cutting the plywood to fit was a trick because the brick foundation is parged in a stucco-like cement. After a few trims I got it in and screwed it in place. Then I painted it, filled the gaps with spray foam, and when that had set I sealed the edges with an exterior caulk.

Basement window after

The back door had a large gap under it, due in part to the porch sloping to one side and in part to the door being a standard size and the doorway being not. I cut out a clean space using the reciprocating saw and used a two by four, along with some shimming blocks to get it level-ish under the door. This wasn’t meant to be quality work, just create a nice snug fit for the door. We filled underneath with spray foam and painted the whole thing to keep the water out.

Back door threshold

The result wasn’t half-bad. I’m sure it could be better, but ultimately we’ll be tearing the whole enclosed porch down, so I wasn’t about to make it especially pretty. It’s now keeping the elements and the rats outside and making us feel a tad more secure.

And Then There Was Mother Nature

July 1, 2011 / / 2 Comments

As if the rats, roaches, ants, and flies weren’t enough…  Our dear Mother Nature decided today to put in her two cents.  As we were working on grouting the bathroom tiles at the new house, we started hearing a popping noise.  Matt thought that it was fireworks at first, but the sound was very close.  Like our front yard close.  I went to investigate and found that the popping noise was actually hail the size of golf balls hitting our porch awning.  It was literally raining ice balls within a minute and car alarms were going off up and down the streets around us.  One of the porch windows did not survive the hail, but it was a crappy window so we don’t mind too much.

Thank goodness our car was in the awful garage that came with the house.  I am ever so thankful for that POS garage right now after seeing the cars on our block.  We are not thankful for the gaping holes in said garage that allowed wind to knock siding onto our car tonight and dent the hood.  Poor car. 🙁

Getting Started: Locks, Bugs, and Base Camp

July 1, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Front door

Right after closing we headed to the house and started work. After taking a bunch of “before” pictures to feature in our various projects, the first order of business was changing the locks. Even though the tenants were gone, we wanted to make sure they stayed gone and with the house empty and us not yet living there, it was important for it to be secure from vandals, squatters, and kids.

I’m a technophile, so I’m planning to eventually have some home automation tech for the lights, security, and HVAC. We bought some Kwikset locks because they sell a line of remote-controllable, combination dead bolt locks that are compatible with Z-Wave. We’d order those right away except they’re pretty expensive. I found one on eBay, but I’m holding off on getting any more for now. They also have a neat “SmartKey” technology that lets you re-key your own locks without having to go to a locksmith. I got those installed on the garage, front and back doors. For now we’ve left the interior front and back doors as-is, and we barricaded the lower back door with a board. If we’d gotten full lock sets for all of the doors it would have been a ton of money, and since we’re not going to have two units anyway, most of it would be a waste once we convert things.

With the disgusting state of the house and the roach infestation we decided to set up base camp in the relatively clean garage. In order to prevent any contamination of our condo, we’re changing clothes there and not bringing anything back with us. We brought, bought, and ordered tools, cleaning supplies, clothes, snacks and got our operations center up and running. We even brought our toaster oven and this weekend our grill so that we can cook food. Sarah’s able to work on the house during the day most days, but I’m at work until the evening. Since our condo is twenty-five minutes away, not having to go back and forth is pretty important.

Our first orders of business were “pre-cleaning” and extermination. Sarah started by getting some of the remaining garbage thrown out and I boarded up the basement windows that were letting rats in and out. In order to get rid of them you have to first isolate them: divide and conquer. Then, anything that the roaches were hiding in and feeding on had to be thrown out. That meant tearing out the carpeting, both kitchens, and taking down some of the trim. Then we removed the tile in the second floor kitchen and part of the first floor. This was much more demo than we’d planned on doing right away.

First floor kitchen demo

There are four “toter” style garbage cans for the house and we’d filled all of them within a day and a half. Once they were emptied we filled them up with a bunch more stuff. Because we’re in a bit of a hurry, we’re taking a multi-pronged attack on the bugs. We’ve used pyrethrin spray cans, boric acid, foggers, and sprayers. We’re killing them in droves, but we won’t be happy until they’re completely gone, and that will take a bit. We set a bunch of baited traps for the rats, but thus far haven’t caught a one.  We’re pretty sure they’re there, but until we’ve got all of the holes sealed they may just be feeding outside. Once they’re stuck and it’s the only thing to eat, they’ll probably go for it.