explosive possibilties

Hey guys!

Last weekend we started the process of replacing the pipe to the sewer. It was the original cast iron pipe, and in pretty bad shape. Parts of it broke really easily (the plumber barely leaned up against it and it fell apart) and it was REALLY clogged up. We were going to have to fix the sidewalk because it was in bad shape, and collapsing in one spot. So my Dad suggested while the sidewalk was up we might as well fix the pipe now, rather than in the future with our nice new sidewalk. Why didn't I think of that?

It is a lot more complicated process than I thought. A LOT. My Dad called the city to figure out how deep the pipe to the sewer was buried. Many times it is buried quite a few feet under the ground, but the city said we were only six feet under the ground because we are near a connection. Having a pipe six feet under ground apparently that means we are "lucky"... pipes can be buried twice that deep, depending on how deep the main line is (it is all about gravity and slope).

Anyway, a friend at my Dad's work is doing the work on the garage (post on that to come soon when it is finished!), said that he could handle digging 6 feet with the excavator he was renting for the work on the garage. That saved us a lot of money, because if he didn't do it, the plumbers would have to do it. So on Saturday, he peeled back the sidewalk. He really did make it seem that easy--he's good!

He also had to cut part of the concrete out of the basement so that they could remove the pipe.

The pipe is up against the wall, with the string coming out. The plumbers came to put a camera inside to see if the pipe went straight in or went diagonal. I wasn't there for that, but my Dad was. He said they couldn't get the camera in the pipe because it was so full of, ahem, 'stuff'.

Anyway, the two plumbers were "old-school", as my Dad called them, and just started cleaning it out. The first guy couldn't get his hand in it far enough because it was too big. Yes, you read right. Hand. And no I didn't use the word glove because there wasn't one. So he asked the second plumber if he could get into it. The second plumber went right in elbow deep to clean it out. Again, no mention of a glove. Now I understand the "old-school" label. 

Then on Sunday he started digging. Note: You always want to call BUD (Before You Dig...cute no?) at 811. Then they call OMU, RWRA (sewer people), Time Warner, and ATMOS and request that they mark where all of the lines are so that you don't hit things and cause lots of problems. But that only works if they know where their silly lines are...which they don't always. Or maybe a newbie marked our yard. Another problem is that we didn't know exactly where the sewer pipe was, just the general area. We knew the water line was close and didn't want to hit that. So we watched as he dug the dirt up with the excavator and tried to keep an eye on things. We found the nice copper water line. Check.  So he moved over a little. We were having trouble finding it. We found a ton of tree roots though, thats for sure. And each one sounded awful.

Matt had been digging for at least an hour. He hit something and me, my Dad, and Leo inspected for a second and we told him to keep on digging because it is just another root. He kind of looked at us and said, "That didn't feel like a root." He jumped off and started hand digging a little bit just to make sure. All of a sudden I see something yellow and I get all excited and say "There's something yellow!"

Apparently that's not a good thing. I didn't know that. Insert expletive here.

Yellow can only mean one thing when digging near pipes, and that is a gas line. Gas. Do you get my title now?? I couldn't pass up the cheesiness :)

ATMOS did mark the gas line. They marked the gas line in the wrong place. Not just a little. They messed up SIX feet. How does that even happen? There is a wire on top of the pipe that sends out an electric signal just so its impossible to mess up. Well almost impossible, obviously.

If we had broken into that pipe, the whole block could have exploded. It wasn't just the small pipe to the house, it was the big main one that runs throughout the neighborhood. I am so glad that Matt had enough experience to know he didn't hit a root, and that he didn't listen to me and my Dad that it was just another root.

It took hours to find the sewer pipe and dig it out completely. Here is the result:

Leo hand digging to find a pipe.

Yellow marker to mark the gas pipe we found so he doesn't hit it.

Hole where the pipe came out. 

From the inside.

Monday morning the plumbers came by first thing to install the new pipe and cover it back up with the dirt. This is now what our side yard looks like...

I know we are fixing everything and it is going to be better in the end, but I would like to start seeing the improvement. Everything right now just looks destroyed. Hopefully we will have a sidewalk again soon :)

-katie

bathroom gut

Over the long 4th of July weekend, we gutted the upstairs bathroom! A lot of people were surprised to hear that we were gutting it. Really, it looked pretty good! The tile was updated and none of it was broken like in the kitchen. However, it's not really the look I'm going for and most importantly, the tub was no longer in the best of shape and to get a big old cast iron tub out, you pretty much have to tear up the tile around it. Plus we suspected the plumbing may not be in the greatest shape. Turns out we were right. I felt a little silly before, but now I'm definitely glad we gutted everything. I hate to think that we would have been living with everything in the condition that it was in under all the nice tile.

Here are some before shots.

There are some cute little built ins and the tiny, tiny little vanity. I will probably replace that with a pedestal sink because there is plenty of storage in the built-ins. I also think it will look more "period".

So I love the built ins and I love the bead board! That stayed for sure. And the toilet has its own little private room! 

 Here is the after!

The tile was really hard to get off of the wall. But it did reveal some water damage to the far left beam. It gets a little gross from here, so if you don't want to read, then you've been warned :)

Here is the toilet right before we took the tile out. Then it gets gross. We took the tile out and then the toilet.

That is the water damaged floor. If you click on it, it will make it larger. If you want to actually see that much detail. The white wad is a towel, to clog it because of the lovely smell of 90 years of "human DNA" as my dad loves to call it. The wood is rotted, which looks like it isn't the first time, because that lighter wood is new that someone probably used to replace another series of rotted planks. We are taking out that old stack out and replacing it so that we are sure it won't leak anymore. And of course replacing the wood.

I would also like to note that I, along with my Dad, carried out that lovely toilet, with a trash bag wrapped around the bottom of it. I believe carrying a toilet that has been connected to a 90 year old stack down a flight out stairs and through the house to the backyard makes me an official home renovator.

And I even had a photo taken for evidence that I took the toilet out. I mean I, of all people, carried a nasty toilet out of my house. I wanted evidence that I actually did it. And didn't drop it.

But that evidence is now in the dump, buried under thousands of pounds of junk. Why?? Because my Dad went to the dump a couple of days later, went to Menards, and tried to call me when he realized he had no phone. The iPhone 5S phone I finally bought him this past Christmas after he had kept his iPhone 3S for four years was no where to be seen.

It had fallen off at the dump and into the trash. He went back and the great people there helped him search for 40 minutes, 30 minutes past closing. They called it and even heard it ringing, but they were never able to find it. Add that to the casualties of this home renovation. So now my poor Dad is back to his old, archaic iPhone.

Now we have started on the downstairs bedroom and its transformation. So much is happening, much quicker than I thought it would! It's exhausting but I'm so grateful that at this point that we are ahead of schedule! Let's hope it stays that way. I already need to write another post :)

-katie

kitchen gut

Hey guys!

So last week we gutted the kitchen. And I'm not exaggerating when I say gutted. It's gone. Which makes me extremely excited but also nervous. There's no going back now!

First, I would like to state that I took these pictures with my nice. And I was also having a "Hey, maybe I can actually work this thing" moment, because these pictures look prettyyyyyy good. By that I mean that it makes the kitchen look like its in better shape than it is. When Leo first saw these pictures he was like, "You can't post these, people are going to think we are crazy!" But here they are anyway (I've also included a couple of the bathroom, which was also torn out):

And then there's the ceiling...we aren't exactly sure what happened there :)

So, it really doesn't look bad. I wish I had taken more detail shots of the damaged parts, but it's too late now! But I will enlighten you. First, several of the floor tiles were broken and cracked. Second, if you look to the top left hand of the ceiling, there is a whole. We weren't sure what was going on there, but assumed some kind of water damage. Fourth, another clue about water damage to the ceiling is the fact that the cabinets directly under that had water damage stains. Fifth, it was hard to open many of the doors and drawers, and often they would slam shut. Sixth, leaning against them caused your shirt to literally get stuck....a.k.a tons of yummy grease build up. 

Lastly, we really wanted a bigger kitchen. Not huge...just bigger. More open concept. Or semi-open concept. The kitchen will be open to the dining room and semi-open to the front of the house, but it won't be the first thing you see when you walk in the house. Which I am grateful for, because I can guarantee you that my kitchen will not be a dirty dish free zone at all times. But I also don't want that to be the first thing someone sees when they walk in my house :)

This is some of the first steps, taking out the cabinets.

The floor was AWFUL. The tile itself came up very easily. Probably more so than it should have been. Getting up the plywood/particle board subfloors was the awful part. It took hours. It had to be done though, to figure out what was going on under it all. Also, depending where you were standing in the kitchen/dining area, there was anywhere from 1-4 layers of different vinyl floors. In the concrete area, it was a little wet, which is never good. We even found a layer of burlap :)

These next pictures are slightly more drastic. The whole thing is gone. Floor, drywall, everything.

Tada! If only it were that simple in real life...actually (for me) it kind of was this time--we were out of town for the weekend and my Dad hired a couple of people to help him gut it. So when we came home, tada! I won't take credit for this part of it ;)

The only thing left is to build two temporary walls, remove those studs (they are supporting part of the house) and add the beam to provide the support after we remove the studs and the two temporary walls on either side. We bought the beam today at Menard's! Then it will be truly open! We are adding the bathroom back in another part of the house. We are being careful and saving all of the trim and doors that we take off and recycling them back into the house once we put the new walls and doors up.

I hope this all makes sense! We have spent the past two days gutting the upstairs bathroom (though not down to the studs), and patching part of the downstairs bedroom. I am soooo sore! I was so excited to gut, and while I'm glad we finally can, I'm a little over it now. I'm pretty sure it had something to do with disconnecting a moldy toilet from a 90 year old stack and then carrying down a flight of stairs to the back yard. That is something I could live without ever doing again. Ever, ever, ever. More on that next time :)

Thanks for reading!

-katie