Hot Water and Pressure

Yes we are still alive. I thought that rather than trying to catch every one up, I'll just pick up with another post again.

Yesterday I decided to tackle the low pressure problem we were having with the hot water in the shower. I figured it was a problem with the washer in the hot stem and sure enough, the head of the washer had twisted right off and was lodged in the stem. I didn't notice this at the time though and re-assembled everything and tried it again and now there was no hot water flow at all. Oh no!

I went downstairs and checked out the water heater and noticed something irritating. Even though we have 1/2" galvanized piping in our house (and some copper too) the supply lines to and from the water heater were 3/8" copper lines, the kind used for a kitchen or bathroom sink. Well I couldn't let that stand so I replaced them after many trips to Home Depot, Lowe's, and True Value (well I couldn't be seen in the same store that many times in the same day).

Here are my trips to the store.
1) Washers for the tub stems.
2) Flexible water-heater supply lines 3/4 inch diameter.
3) Galvanized pipe fittings (reducers, nipples, elbows, etc...)
4) The right galvanized pipe fittings this time.
5) Bigger pipe wrench
6) Shorter 3/4" nipples

Well I got that all done and noticed the water pressure still sucked on the hot side. So I finally got smart and looked in the tub stem with a flashlight and noticed the blockage from the remains of the old washer. A pair of tweezers took care of that. Ah, well... it needed to be done and helped the hot pressure immensely.

Finally finished up about 6:00 pm so it was about 7 hours altogether, but only about 2 hours of actual work.

Canis Familiaris, etc...

Our family is growing. Calm down Mom and Dad, we just got a puppy. Rachel waited 10 years to get a puppy, and since a dog friendly house was high on our home buying criteria, we decided there was no reason to wait any longer. His name is Huxley and he is an 11 week old bundle of energy. We adopted him from the Humane Society by getting our application in early and showing up exactly at noon at Petsmart. Good thing we did because there was alot of other people interested in taking him home.

His mother was a chocolate lab and we think the father might have been a collie of some kind, maybe a border collie. He is black with a white patch on his chest and the tips of 3 feet and his tail have just the tiniest bit of white on them.

So far he's been very good, except we are still fighting to house train him. He's only been on 3 walks with us and he's very good at staying with us. I think he must have gotten some leash training at his foster owners home.


HOUSE UPDATE:
Cabinets are on the walls and drawers and shelves are in. Did I mention that already, well that's really the last thing that happened and that was before we really moved in. For the longest time we were waiting on replacement heat shield before placing the last base cabinet and end panel to cover the dishwasher. We picked those up on Monday night so I'm not sure what our excuse now is.

We received our new upright deep freezer and just in time to pick-up a split side of beef at my parent's on memorial day. Of course there will always be room for ice cream. There's a warm happy feeling of nostalgia that I get from opening the freezer door and seeing a 5 quart pail of Blue Bunny in there.

What else... oh, the cops stopped by to talk to our neighbors. The ones with the yippy dog and the back yard that looks like Mexico (dirt, dead leaves, weeds, junk, and a boat).

The ageless lawnmower we inherited starts on the first pull! At least it does now. Took some tinkering to get it started the first time this season. (Alright, I took it apart and put it back together and now it starts). Now if only we had some grass to cut, instead of weeds.

I'm allergic to something in or near our house. Whenever I go into the kitchen I start sneezing, but I don't think that explanation will stand long under scrutiny. More than likely it's something in our back yard. I think I've ruled out mold in our house. We bought a do it yourself mold dish (a plastic petri dish and solution), but so far none has sprouted.

And we will have our second house guest since we've moved in. Rachels mother stayed with us last weekend and this weekend my mother will be here. It really makes it feel like a home when you can host your family and friends.

The Move and a Top 10 list

We moved into the house over the weekend. I know what you are thinking, "I didn't know they were done?". Well we're not yet, but the lease was up and we were ready to be there, even if the house wasn't ready for us. The cabinets are mounted on the walls, but still to be done is installing shelves, drawers, and doors. Countertops are not in yet, and the floor hasn't been tiled either. Other than that it's livable.

On Friday I cleaned up as much dust as I could from the house and unpacked as much as I could. Alot of stuff is still in boxes, just because we don't have shelves or drawers for it yet or aren't sure where it should go.

On Saturday we got up early and packed up the rest of the things at the apartment. We had taken over most of our stuff little by little, but there was enough left for two small trips. Rachel's father and sister came by about noon and we loaded up the furniture and took it over in two trips each with the pickups. All in all we were done by about 2:30 and I have to say, it was the easiest move I can ever remember. We don't plan on doing it again any time soon though!

On Sunday Rachel and I went back to the apartment to clean. That was hard after spending our first night in the house. I never wanted to go back to the apartment again! The room upstairs is so bright with east facing windows in the morning. We slept in and felt like we were being so lazy, and it was only 8:30 when we finally got up! Well we did get up and head over to the apartment to clean and turn in our keys. We had that finished up by about 2:00 in the afternoon, dropped our keys in the box and walked down the stairs and drove out of the Falls parking lot for the last time. It was a terrible, tiny apartment, but I always get nostalgic when things are ending. We had some good times there.
We headed out to Nebraska Furniture Mart to pick out the upright freezer that my parents gave us for a wedding present and to look for a couple of patio chairs. We didn't find any chairs, but we decided to get the freezer that matches with our refrigerator. After that it was off to Target where we grabbed a couple of folding chairs and a little side table for the deck, until we can afford a real patio set.
We came home and went to the Laundromat since we don't have a Washer and Dryer yet. That is going to get old fast.
When we came home we went for a nice long walk over to a neighborhood park. It was wonderful.
Then we grilled up some good Lone Rock Ranch ribeyes with some asparagus and potatoes and ate at our long neglected dining room table. Afterwards we lit a small fire in the firepit and sat out on our deck and had a couple of beers. I think Rachel agrees with me that it was the 2nd best day of our lives.

Now for the List. Top 10 best things (un-ordered) about owning our own home.

• Having our grill back. Everything tastes better grilled.
• Having a dining room to put our table in.
• The only electronics in the bedroom is the alarm clock, no more blinking lights or loud hum of the computer.
• Parking in our driveway, not in a parking lot between two jerks who are two close to the lines.
• Not walking 200 yards to throw away our garbage.
• Flowers in our flower beds.
• Our shady and cool front porch.
• Our bright oversized deck.
• The bathroom vanity is in the bathroom... not the bedroom.
• My office... err OUR office...
  

Can it really have been so long since we last posted? Sorry to everyone who keeps coming back and finding nothing new. We have made some progress since then. The plumbing is done. We had a new gas line put in for the new oven position, and new supply lines and a drain line for the new sink position. That required replacing the existing stack so while we were at it we moved the toilet in the bathroom about 10 inches further away from the wall. It had been basically right up next to the wall.
The sub-floor is completely secured which means that we are ready to start hanging cabinets! The cabinets themselves are all assembled and almost completely primed. After trying to paint them as is, we decided we needed to prime them first and then put them in place in the kitchen and then use the sprayer to paint them. So this weekend we will be doing that. That's about all the news. Not too much detail, but we are plugging along.

The Plan

It just occurred to me that we haven't really talked to much about what we are trying to accomplish with all this destruction and construction. As you can see in the before diagram below, our new house came with a very tiny kitchen, a good sized dining room, and in between a room that had a bit of an identity crisis. It was billed as a breakfast room, but the refrigerator also resided there since there wasn't room for it in the kitchen.

Our idea is to turn this room into the new kitchen and use the old kitchen as a pantry / laundry room. Among the many challenges are that the new kitchen space has 4 doorways and 1 window. To make it all fit we are moving one door and removing a partition wall into the pantry/laundry all together.

Before



After

Time is not on our side

So I know what many of you are thinking, "They haven't posted anything in a while, they must not be making much progress," and you're right. Unfortunately we have run into a few snags that have slowed things down.

First, there is the wall from hell. This is the issue Seth mentioned shortly in his previous post. I must admit that it was my fault. I got a little over zelous with some plaster filler on the seem between the plaster and the drywall. It took us about five days of sanding with an orbital sander to get it level. I guess you can say I learned my lesson. But even with the drywall mud the walls are taking forever to finess into level and hole-free beauties. If we could do it all over again, I think that we would have ripped down all of the plaster walls and replace them with drywall, but we don't have that kind of time now.

Next, is the cabinets. We had to order a few (which Seth mentioned) but most of them we were able to pick up that day. What's the hold up then? Well, becuase we went for less expensive cabinets, we are choosing to paint them. Therefore we had to first sand them, the wipe them all down and then paint them. Painting them; however, proved to be a much more difficult feat. We purchased one of those powered paint sprayers (you know the hand-held version you just plug in, not the huge air-compressor kind). I tested it out on one of the cabinet bottoms. The paint (eggshell black) went on in big drops and the cabinet looked like the side of a refridgerator. We want a nice smooth finish. So back to Home Depot to find out what to do. Here is what we learned...

* Spend the extra money and go for the higher PSI version. The higher pressure shoots out smaller drops of paint and produces a smoother finish.
* Thin the paint with 2 parts paint, 1 part water
* Start with one thin coat first, this will keep the thinned paint from running.
* Let dry with painted side level.

This process takes much longer, but produces a much nicer finish. We are currently about half done with the cabnites we have and we are going to the Depot to pick up the rest on Saturday. Since this is my project, I will have plenty to do for a while.

Third, we have discovered that plumbers are more than happy to run over to your place to give you an estimate, but they seem to be really busy when you are ready for the work to be done. Sounds backwards if you ask me. We finally found an estimate we were happy with and then were given an installation date of May 1st. So needless to say, we are trying to find a plumber that can get out here ASAP.

We plan to make a good deal of progress this weekend though. I should be able to finish painting the cabinets I have already started on and put together the new ones. Seth is going to finish sanding the walls and put in the last two electrical outlets. Then we will clean up (there is a sheet of dust EVERYWHERE) and put down the subflooring in the kitchen. Somewhere in there we will try to put some "Weed-n-Feed" on our yard which will most likely kill 90% of our yard (which is weeds) and green up the grass that I am told we don't want in our yard; so that'll be fun.

We also plan to move some of our stuff in this weekend, so if any of you want something to do... well, you know.

Quick catch up

We've been very busy. so here is just a quick catch up.

We've rented a big dumpster and tomorrow we'll fill it up with all the debris from the demolition and the tree-limbs.


We've purchased our cabinets. We went with Mills Pride cabinets which requires you to assemble them. According to Consumer Reports
they rank higher than some pre-constructed cabinets and they were alot less expensive. By the way I highly recommend a membership with Consumer Reports, it's $5 a month and you can cancel at any time. It's a non-profit organization, and there is some good information there. Rachel spent a good bit of time today assembling the units we were able to pick up at the Depot. The rest have been ordered and should be ready in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime we've also been working on patching and sanding the walls. Here's a tip: Skip the plaster mix and just use drywall mud. The plaster mix dries up super hard and is tough to sand. So far the drywall mud seems to be bonding to the existing plaster just fine.

Also discovered today I'm not quite done with the electrical. We need 3 more outlets, one for the oven (to run the timer, etc...), one for the microwave / vent hood above the oven, and one for the refrigerator and freezer.

I also manager to patch the hole in the floor where the fridge is going to go. Rachel didn't think I could do it, but it worked out pretty well and it's sturdy enough to stand on. After removing the coffee can lining (that's right, old coffee cans), I cut through the subflooring on two sides and placed a 3/4" piece of plywood in the hole and secured it into the floor beams.