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

uncovering floors

So the past couple of weeks have been pretty hectic, despite being on summer break. I still had a couple of graduate classes, but those are both finally over! I'm working DC's Migrant Camp, which I love. Also, the loan is officially permanent, despite a couple of slightly large and ridiculous roadblocks that popped up...As a 90s child, I would compare it to kind of like being on Rainbow Road in Mario Kart, slipping on those infuriating bananas, then barely escaping a turtle shell one of your friends threw at you, only to get eaten by one of the evil chomping bombs. Anyway.

 The loan finally did go through. It is done!

So our first project was nothing too drastic. We started uncovering all of the hardwood floors, which includes the side door entryway leading to the stairs, the hallway, and the upstairs bedroom that used to be the second kitchen when it was an apartment several years ago. We have also started on the kitchen floor, but I'm going to wait and include that in the post about the kitchen :)

So we started downstairs in that side entryway. I must preface with the fact that no one--Leo, my Dad, the hardwood floor refinisher, nor the interior designer we invited over for an hour---believed the floors would be worth saving at all. I would also like to point out that, for the most part, they were wrong. Which doesn't happen often!

This is the before of the side entryway. The tile really wasn't that bad, it was just broken. Plus I am quite partial to hardwood and as you can see there is some peeking out. Under the broken tile. And plywood subfloor. Oh, and it is blue. Gotta love the 50s (I'm sure someone will be saying the same thing one day..."geeze, what were those people from the 10s thinking??)

I convinced my Dad to take up the tile AND the sub flooring (instead of automatically laying down new tile) and he agreed since it is such a small space. Here is the after:

Again, it is blue. I get that. But that can also be sanded out :) The important part is that it is in pretty good shape. Besides a few nail holes. But that is all part of the character! And I'm all for character, as I'm sure Leo is tired of hearing...but hey, it will also save a lot if we can reuse it! He likes hearing that part. I'm learning.

All went pretty well. Then I decided to go to the house by myself to clean up and get one of the boards back down. We are trying to save on the utilities, so we haven't been turning on the air conditioning, instead electing to open windows. In this case, I opened the door. Like my Dad does ALL the time when he is there. Without anything happening. But of course, that's not possible with my luck.

So I'm working away, once again feeling quite proud of myself (I'm seeing a pattern here), and then I hear a loud banging noise. I really wasn't alarmed at first. Then I looked up and saw it. A bird. Banging itself against the window and flying around the entryway wildly. The same 3X3 space that I am in. Terrified and trying to escape. In turn, he terrified me and a running I went. Thankfully no neighbors were out to see my ridiculousness. 

Within seconds I'm out of the door, around the porch and on the front yard. Safe but wondering why the one time I open the door, a bird has to fly in. Hopefully my Dad isn't busy at work :)

Then I realize I have left my phone in the entryway. I stand there. And stand there. And then work up the courage to run, quite recklessly and waving my arms like an idiot, into the house grab my phone and run back out. I call my Dad, and he doesn't answer. My next idea is to text my friend Rachael who lives around the block and see if her fiancé is home (sometimes he works nights, so he is there during the days). He wasn't. She offered to call her mom to help, and its then that I realize I'm being ridiculous. I am (kind of) a grown woman! I can handle a little bird. I grab the broom and go inside. No bird in sight. I start hoping that he flew out as I was running out. 

I slowly walk up the stairs to check the second floor, and my Dad calls me back. Birds of course do not like the Lollipop song blaring loudly right next to them and it was quite clear within two seconds of my phone ringing that the bird had not exited earlier behind me like I hoped. Thanks, Dad.

I ran back out of the house. Like a chicken. 

I eventually went back in and found it cowering at the end of the hallway, behind a window screen that my Dad had taken out. I slowly laid down the broom. I went to open the window so that it could fly out and not stay in my house, pooping all over everything. And honestly, after it stopped hitting itself against the window and saw it cowering behind a screen, I felt sorry for it.

I still didn't trust it though. I didn't like opening the window because it meant that I had to turn my back on the bird. But I got it, and the screen open (actually, it fell out...turns out I'm not the most skilled at opening window screens--Dad not happy) and turned around victorious...and the bird just sat there. And sat there. And we just stared at each other. I went down the stairs to give it some space. Still nothing. 

This is ridiculous. Over 30 minutes has passed over this silly bird ordeal. I don't have time for this. Time is precious to me and taking it up for ridiculous things is one way to either anger me, or apparently get me to put my big girl panties on and fix the situation. I walked up the stairs and just started running down the hallway at the bird. Within two seconds it was coming at me. I ducked into the bedroom and it flew straight out of the window. 

Another "crisis" over. I closed the door and the window (which doesn't currently have a screen) and just worked miserably, sweating like a stubborn pig. But no more birds were getting into my house. Nope.

I went upstairs to work on the floor in the upstairs bedroom. We need to get this up, even though it isn't staying, because we need some extra wood to use in the master where the wood needs to be repaired. And they don't make this kind of flooring anymore.

I'm trying to get a head start for when my Dad and Leo got off work. There was one window that I could open up there. But it didn't help much. And my 100 pound frame didn't get much done. Except I'm now on my way to pro status in using a nail puller. Whooo hoooo. 

The real work of course happened when they got there. Here is the before and after:

It is in really could shape! I would even say better than the other bedrooms because it was preserved under all of that! Of course there is a lot of dust and dirt in this picture and I don't have an up close. I do have some up close pictures of some old newspaper we found! Most of it wouldn't come up in one piece. I thought these were cute, especially the "bellies" article! Maybe thats just my dorky love of linguistics coming out, but I wish they still wrote cute articles like this in the newspaper. I also didn't realize that it was okay to talk about menstrual cycles and cramps in public in 1963...maybe I placed an unfair stereotype of the early sixties in the Bible belt.

That's it for this super long blog! A big thanks if you made it this far and read the entire thing...but even if you just glanced, I still appreciate it! I hope you all have a great Monday! The kitchen is almost done being gutted, so I will be posting on that. It's already unrecognizable...which makes me nervous but definitely excited for the months ahead!

-katie

patio & trees

Hey guys! We finally finished the patio this past week! Finally! And no more hair loss :)

My Dad and Leo dug new footers for the extension. It is now a 10' X 14' deck, with inset stairs. My Dad had to dig a footer for the stairs and make the stair stringer from scratch because the pre-made ones at Lowe's didn't work with the height and the size of the stair inset of our deck.

He was pretty proud that he cut the stairs right the first time :)

Then we started on the railing! They also had pre-made railing. But of course I didn't like it, so I wanted to make ours from scratch. Naturally.

This part was very tedious, more than I thought it would be. The railings had to be evenly spaced throughout the rail and then also perfectly matched up in the middle. Then we attached everything with the nail gun and attached it to the deck. That first section of railing took over almost two hours. I was so proud. Finally we had a section of railing up!

I then I looked down. And I noticed the nails sticking out of the sides of the railings...this was me:

Seriously, I see the shows and see the frustration of home owners. I knew what to expect, but it's always different when you're there and everything is taking forever and nothing is going right. But we survived and moved on.

We unscrewed the railing and started over. It was a little disheartening but we started using screws instead of the nail gun, because it was hard to keep the nail at a perfectly straight angle so that it wouldn't stick out. It went pretty fast from there!

Finally, we put up lattice to cover the bottom and give it a more finished look. I went with "straight" lattice rather than the traditional diagonal lattice. I think it looks more modern, plus it is much studier than regular lattice.

We still have to add the caps and stain it. Which is a point of disagreement between my Dad and I. Who is surprised? Leo actually agrees with me, though. I like this look with the dark stain floor and white accents:

 

While he prefers the natural color (so we would apply a clear sealant)...

Honestly, I don't dislike the second. But the darker stain just grabs my attention! We have 30-60 days to decide, while the treated lumber seasons out.

On a side note, all of the trees in the backyard, besides the two huge ones to the side, are now gone. I didn't expect to be quite as sad as I was to see the redbud come down. It was rotting from the inside out, so it had to come down. But the yard looks so blank without it now! Bigger, but blank. Here is a before and after...

Another point of disagreement, this time with Leo, is to whether or not to plant a tree there to replace it. I want to plant a tree to provide shade to the yard and some interest. 'Cause right now it's looking pretty bare. And of course my Dad agrees with me on this one (will we ever all agree??). All Leo can think of is more leaves for us to pick up in the fall. 

He asked me to wait to plant another tree until next year so we can go through a fall and see how bad our current leaf situation is. And I have to help with the leaves. I guess he thinks that will deter me. I have never minded raking leaves. But maybe that's because I secretly want to be able to create huge piles of leaves so that our dog can do this...

No, we don't currently have a dog. But as any of my close friends will tell you, I'm definitely a planner. So it's never too early to plan an entire tree around a dog we don't currently have being able to play in the leaves, right?? :) 

-Katie