BMEWS
 

A minor interruption

 
 


Posted by Drew458    United States   on 09/09/2010 at 12:34 PM   
 
  1. I was going to just start at the hall wall and work inwards, but smarter heads than I prevailed upon me to do the job from the middle outwards. That means cutting more tiles to fit, but it makes sense because it’s really doubtful that the room is square.

    That, and if any of the tiles are out of square, or worse, a repeating pattern of such… or if you’re green at laying tile and tend to “twist” to the left or right as you lay, causing what you think is a straight line to be a gentle curve… any of that kind of error, lining up with a wall just makes it stand out more.

    In short, squaring off the walls is trusting a whole bunch of people, and you don’t know most of em.

    Posted by GrumpyOldFart    United States   09/09/2010  at  02:25 PM  

  2. Drew, ok. Hang on.  I need ta be clued in on something.
    I’ve been trying to follow this newest adventure of yours and you know it’s slow going for me.
    Do I understand correctly that you covered over that part that had the wood, which was the drain for the toilet?  If you cemented over that, where’s the drain gonna go. Nah, you couldn’t have done that because then you’d have had to move pipes as well. Right?

    This is getting xciting ... if confusing.

    Oh, re the water heater. Don’t forget our house is ancient and the pipes for the most part are 1920s, 30’s and I believe maybe 1960 somewhere when some had to be re-routed. Too long a story. Anyway, we’re subject to airlocks in the hot water pipes so have to be careful how we tread. We are lucky to a plumber to work on the system as most want nothing to do with it. We can’t even get licensed electricians to sign off on the place as the wiring is below the standards (well below) acceptable. If they work on anything here, they write up this document stating that and have us sign it. Covers their butt in case of. 

    We can’t put property on the market just yet.
    I would very much like to find a Traveler family to sell to.  That’d fix the bastard neighbors with the annoying dog next door. Ha!

    Posted by peiper    United Kingdom   09/09/2010  at  02:26 PM  

  3. Yes, I removed the plank of wood that was beneath the toilet. The plank was cut into the concrete slab floor. To my amazement, there is a sheet of plywood subflooring beneath that. My guess now is that the concrete slabs were just laid in place as a fire barrier between the upstairs and downstairs units, even though their rafters are my floor joists. I left the plywood subflooring in place, but did my best to sanitize it, as it was covered in mold and slime. Water leakage of some sort, or just damp that never went away. Bad either way.

    Filling up the hole where the wood plank was used up quite a bit of concrete. Repairing the toilet flange at the top of the waste pipe (ie the stack) required me to chip a little bit of it away so that I could finagle a stainless steel bolt up through a hole in the old flange to bolt down the new stainless steel flange that fits on top of it.

    Finding that the floor was still not perfectly level even after 3 bags of self-leveling concrete, a mixed up a 4th bag with an extra pint of water. This mix came out really soupy, and poured everywhere ... like it was supposed to. NOW I have a level floor. I’m going to give everything extra time to dry nice and hard, then do a layout and start gluing tiles down.

    We might be without a toilet all the way through the weekend. But we’re finding that breakfast at the diner around the corner isn’t so bad, the grocery store down the street keeps their restrooms pretty clean, and McD’s keeps theirs spotless, plus they’re open until at least 11pm every night.

    And now we can take hot showers again, and even do the dishes, so the place is looking less like a tornado hit it every hour.

    I want it all done yesterday, and done perfectly. But perfect takes time, so that’s what we’re going to do. In a year it will be funny. “Hey, remember when we didn’t have a toilet for a whole week? Boy, wasn’t that fun!”

    Posted by Drew458    United States   09/09/2010  at  07:45 PM  

  4. Unlike the hassles that Peiper went through getting his replaced, we emailed the landlord and helped him figure out an appropriate model. He ordered it, it was there the next day,…

    Well, we can’t have that! You didn’t ask for the Gov’t’s permission to replace the water heater, nor did you use the appropriate, Gov’t-approved ‘green’ model. You, sir, will be purged as soon as the Democrats win the next election. How DARE YOU act on your own without Gov’t consultation and approval? Just who do you think you are? Are you qualified? What union are you a member of? Are your dues up-to-date? Have you contributed more than the ‘suggested’ amount to the union PAC?

    Yes, that’s supposed to be ‘satirical’. I fear that it will be a reality if this thuggish regime keeps power much longer.

    Oh, re the water heater. Don’t forget our house is ancient and the pipes for the most part are 1920s, 30’s and I believe maybe 1960

    peiper, my house was built in 1933. Had all the original plumbing in it when I purchased it in 1990. I don’t really call that ‘ancient’. Obsolete, perhaps. My question is: how old is your house itself? Was all the plumbing retro-fitted into some ancient Victorian or Georgian structure? Or older?

    We had old galvanized supply lines, which leaked all over the place. We’ve repiped the entire house since then. All new copper supply lines (at the proper size, I might add. Amazing how the water pressure improved once we had 1/2” copper supply lines vs. the 1/4” galvanized that came with the house.) All new plastic drains. The only joker left is the stack. I don’t even want to contemplate ever replacing that.

    I’ve also rewired most of the house. When we moved in the basement, the living room, the bathroom, and two of the bedrooms were all on the same circuit! Needless to say, if the wife turned her hair dryer on, we popped a breaker. (at least we had breakers! No fuse panel.) I had to trace out what went where, split the circuits, and even installed a couple more breakers.

    Had to do much the same with the phone lines. We had the original phone lines. The kind that the old monopolistic Ma Bell used when phones were hardwired in. The kitchen had been upgraded for modern plug-in phones, but the rest was a mess. I had to run new wires to the upstairs, replaced some of the old, original cloth-insulated wiring in the basement that was causing static, etc. I’ve yet to ever bother with the living room line––just have a wireless phone slaved from the kitchen.

    So much for my homeowner history.

    New stuff. I just had a new roof put on, and the painters finished yesterday (and wasted no time cashing my check, which cleared today!) Everybody seems to have done a good job.

    The painters were my worry: I’d never hired the painting done before. Always did it myself. But I’d watched them paint a house in the historic district on my mail route. I thought they did a good job, the homeowner is happy, and things look good for now. I should also say that the wife liked them personally. She knows far more about painting houses than I do. She says they did good.

    I paid with a smile.

    I’ll post some new pics of the house for you peiper. I’ll have to search for old pics for comparison. I know I sent you some pics once.

    Posted by Christopher    United States   09/11/2010  at  09:36 PM  

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