Gravel dump

 We needed some gravel for projects around the house, and got nine tons (!) dropped off yesterday. More rock to come, for some erosion control and runoff management work we have planned.

A Passel o' Projects

Earlier this fall, I got home from a bike ride, walked into the back yard, and found this:

Hmmm....it hadn't rained in MONTHS...this shouldn't be wet.  On closer examination, it was clear that water was burbling up out of the box that contained all of the partially-buried sprinkler valve.

Chad had previously rebuilt a couple of those valves, and we already knew the stuff that remained was on its last legs.  Clearly the right thing to do was to stop putting off the chore of digging out all the old valves and replacing them with new ones and just do it.  Thus the saga of fall house projects was begun.

Whoever put the old valves in buried them a little further down than perhaps they ought to.  As a result, we had to pull out quite a number of the surrounding pavers and dig a huge hole to access the valves to get them out.  Giant pain in the butt, giant mess. 

Once maximal dirt was scattered about that corner of the yard, Chad was able to get the old valves out. He carefully drew up a plan for how to put the system back together better, and we set off to the hardware store to get parts.

Of course, the desired parts that are supposedly in stock are never all actually extant at the store, necessitating some rethinking of the plans while shopping -- i.e. "What can we find here on the shelf that will actually fit together and do the job without being ridiculously impractical?"  Date night at Home Depot is so much fun.

As is usual for these things, after we got home and started on the rebuild, Chad found we needed one more part.  Fortunately, Lowes is right next to the climbing gym, so it was easy for me to pick up the critical bit of flexible hose later in the week, and Chad got the valve box all put back together, as well as fixing another leak elsewhere in the system.  And, as an added bonus, while checking all the electrical connections to the controller, he figured out how to connect the sprinkler zone in the front courtyard, which has never worked.  We had been told that zone was broken and hopeless when we first moved in over a decade ago and have been alternately running it manually or not using it at all ever since, not knowing all it needed was for a solid electrical connection to be made.  Kudos to Chad for figuring that out and fixing it!

One would think that one leak-related project was enough for the season.  However, a couple of days later, I noticed that the kitchen sink faucet, which had been starting to feel like it was full of rocks when you rotated it, now had water slowly constantly seeping from the bottom of the fixture.

I have hated this sink ever since we moved in.  It's ugly and stained, and worst of all, having the stupid divider right under the too-low faucet means you can't actually rinse out a large pot without getting water everywhere.  Why on earth would anyone design a sink in which you can't get water to pour directly into the large basin??  The sprayer doesn't pull out far enough to be useful either.

In theory, we could have just replaced the faucet.   However, after examining things from below, Chad pointed out that there was so much corrosion that the faucet was sort of welded on to the sink and that it would be awfully hard to get off.  Maybe he just said that because he knew I hated the sink so much, but it was certainly a good excuse to get rid of the whole thing.

I had assumed that we might need to call someone to take care of the installation, but we determined that the hole in the counter was a standard size and Chad was confident that it wouldn't actually be that bad of a job.  Time for another date night at the hardware store, this time to pet the sinks and faucets.  I really need to look at this sort of thing physically, to get a visceral feel for whether something looks and feels solid and up to the task.  Thunk the sinks to assess rigidity and sound insulation (important for large single-basin stainless sinks, which is what I wanted), make sure the faucet moves easily, feels solid and good in the hand, and that the sprayer pulls out smoothly and sufficiently far.

There were enough choices at the store to decide what we wanted, but what we wanted of course was not in stock.  At this point I *could* have just ordered everything off of Amazon and had it the next day, but I wanted to get it locally -- especially in case there was a problem -- so I made an order online with Home Depot to pick up the following week, and spent the week watching the old faucet slowly seeping, all the while hoping it wouldn't progress to fountaining.  

The week went by and everything arrived as expected.  I picked up the parts, had fun trying to shove the large, heavily protected sink box into the truck (it almost didn't fit), and waited for Chad to get back from his work trip.  On his first free day, he jumped right in.

It wasn't too hard to get the old sink out, shave out the corners of the hole in the counter slightly so the new, slightly-more-square sink would fit, and deal with the inevitable "it doesn't quite line up" plumbing connections underneath.

Thing were looking pretty good at this point.  We might get it all done in one day!  This is looking like a proper sink.

It's never that simple, though.  Chad told me to turn the water on while he watched underneath, and -- AAAAAAIEEEEE!  Water everywhere up top.

After drying everything off, Chad took the new faucet apart and examined it, only to find that one of the connections inside the stem was mis-manufactured.  There was no easy way for us to correct it.

For the record, this was Not Our Fault.  Chad had done everything right to complete the impressive feat of replacing the kitchen sink on the first shot.  We just didn't count on getting a defective part.

Surprisingly, we were able to get Home Depot customer service on the phone on a Saturday evening. We could get a different (sort of ugly) faucet at the store the next day, or wait three days for another iteration of the one we actually wanted to be ordered.  We opted to wait, and went out for pizza.  I declared lack of kitchen sink to be reason enough not to cook.  Pizza yields lots of leftovers that we could eat for days.

I counted those days.  By Monday night, I hadn't seen any sort of email that anything had been shipped, which seemed sort of suspicious.  Chad picked up on my worry and called Home Depot again, only to find that they hadn't actually sent out the replacement, for reasons that weren't making any sense given that the person on Saturday said that it was all taken care of.  I will studiously avoid ranting about Home Depot's internal processes; suffice it to say we gave up on them and ordered the replacement on Amazon because it could show up the next day instead of requiring four more days with uncertainty of whether we were being good schedule information or not. I will say that Home Depot was at least good about accepting the return when I took the defective one back.

The Amazon box showed up the next day, Chad installed the faucet after work, and all is well.  We finally have a real sink.  Yay.  We should have done this years ago.

What, pray tell, was the kid doing through all of this?  Ordering a Nintendo Switch with money from the summer camp counselor job.  Happy kid plays games.

Happy Kid also plans art projects requiring a large piece of wood, buys said wood, and sweet-talks Dad into helping cut it down to the desired size.

Happy Kid goes on bike rides, helping me discover a local dirt road climb that I've vaguely known about for a while, but hadn't previously managed to locate.

I did take a weekend to abandon Happy Kid and Chad, to go visit my parents.  It was a good visit, and of course involved more projects, the biggest of which was helping my dad install a new garage door opener.  It was a highly amusing process, a hint of which you can see below.

Back home, I finally got around to taking out the rest of the ever-dying loquat tree in our back yard.  As you may remember I pruned this tree back heavily two years ago to give it one more chance.  It failed that test, and continued to ail, so I dragged the chainsaw out and started hacking pieces off.  

The wood on this tree is fairly dense, so I didn't want to drop it all at once lest I accidentally take out the shiny new fence the neighbors had put in.  Plus the tree detritus all had to be cut into pieces small enough to go out with the yard waste anyway.  The neighbors' fence conveniently has a nice top platform on which to stand.

The sound of the chainsaw brought Chad outside to investigate, and naturally he chose to get in on the fun :)  He took out the largest part of the trunk once I got the top stuff shaved off.  So -- one more project knocked off!

Speaking of knocking things off, we all collectively got sick of accidentally knocking the kitchen scissors off of the inadequate magnet hook on the fridge, so Chad designed and printed me a new one with sufficiently strong magnets on the back such that I can't possibly knock it off even when madly flinging the refrigerator door open.  Sometimes the simplest things are the best!  I declare victory on all fall projects.

Heap reduction

In an effort to set things up so that everything has a home in the bedroom, we recently headed to IKEA before dinner one night a week or so ago.  We came out with a truckload of parts for a storage unit to replace Chad's old bureau.  He rapidly went to work putting it together with his cute little impact screwdriver.

One always has to consult the IKEA directions a few times during the process and interpret the pictographs.

The cat, as you might expect, was somewhat perturbed.

Well, make that VERY perturbed.

And worried.  Eventually she found the pile of packing paper and adopted it as a nest from which to keep an eye on us.

Meanwhile, Chad made good progress,

until we got to the last drawer.  See the little circle showing the contents inside this box?  Black.  Supposed to be white.  Argh...

After going back to the store (annoyingly on the weekend, which made Chad realize why I had done the original trip on a weeknight), we got the correct piece and he finished the masterpiece, which might just be big enough to contain everything we would like to put away.

I can use the shower tomorrow: Bathroom part 3

Yes, it's been a long time.  First, there was a long wait for the countertop people to come out and measure and then fabricate the countertop.  Then, there was an even longer wait for the shower glass people to do the same.  That was finally installed yesterday; I am just waiting for the caulk to cure before I use it.

So when we last left, the room was at this stage;

 Then we got paint,

drawer handles and countertop material,

and plumbing.

Ooh, a toilet!  Note that the tank is in the wall to save some space.

Better view of the shower plumbing after they cleaned up:

Eventually we got the electrical and LED light fixture installed,

and yesterday they came and put in the shower glass (ugly red tape comes off tomorrow)

and a great big mirror :)

Putting the big mirror in and knocking out that wall really made the room feel a whole lot bigger.  Plus, the wall is no longer rotting out behind the shower!  I'm really looking forward to using it tomorrow.

Bathroom part 2

Oh, this is slow going.  Things were held up because the counter guy didn't have an opening to come measure for a while.  Then there was another week while they were actually cutting all the pieces.

In the meantime, the tiling was finished,

the pocket door was installed (note that there is still a protective layer of paper over the full-length mirror so you can't see it),

and the bathroom and closet were painted.  This is huge, as it meant I could put my clothes away over the weekend -- hooray!  I hate living out of heaps.

Today, the countertop material, sink basin, and drawer pulls were installed.  It's really starting to look like a bathroom again.

They've also been working on the fan vent things on the roof this week, and put the special UV-resistant goop on over the foam patches.

Now, we *might* get the plumbing and toilet finished in the next day or two and maybe the remaining electrical, but then have to wait for the shower glass people -- they don't have an opening to come make the measurements until next week, and then will need some amount of time to cut the glass before they can install it.   Patience is a virtue, right...

Bathroom remodel part 1

We've been in the middle of a bathroom remodel for what feels like far too long, with the contents of our closet and bathroom scattered throughout all corners of the house.  Every morning, I have to think about things like "Where did I put my shirts?"  You'd think this would be straightforward, but more and more things have moved out of the way and out of the bedroom as the project has progressed, sometimes hurriedly, or not even when we are home.  I can't find *anything*.

The background:

The bathroom before felt cramped, with an extra door in the middle,

a serviceable but sort of ugly vanity that had a mirror that is mounted so low that Chad had to stoop to see the top of his head,

and a shower stall that not only had a low door that meant Chad had to duck every morning to get in, but was also dark, and starting to pop away from the wall.

More disturbing, and the true impetus for the project, was the black stuff growing behind the shower stall and our knowledge that during windy rainstorms, the vent fan leaked, as it was not built tall enough to have good clearance above the foam roof that was applied well after the house was originally built.  So, water pools on the roof, wind blows it in, and the corner of the house behind the shower walls has been slowly rotting away over decades.  Ick.  After hemming and hawing about it for several years, we finally got around to hiring someone to do something about it.

Back at the beginning of July, the contractors installed a porta-potty in the front yard, 

and commenced demolition.

On taking things apart, we found that there were plenty of rotten ceiling boards up by the fan and top of the shower

a live switch box we didn't know about buried in the wall next to the vanity, and various bits of nasty corroded stuff.  It took a bit to fix this leak, and as the water to the kitchen oddly goes through our bathroom on the way to the kitchen, we were without cold water in the kitchen for about a week.  Fortunately that was mostly while we were gone camping and back East so it wasn't too much of a bother (though I did have to leave a big jug of water on the counter for the petsitter to use when she came to take care of the cats.)

At first, things seemed pretty contained when work finished for the day

but the chaos rapidly expanded so they could frame in the pocket door and install the in-wall toilet tank.

Why the in-wall toilet tank?  It turns out that we didn't have enough clearance to fit in a modern toilet and be up to current code without either rotating the toilet or scooting it back a bit.  You wouldn't think this would be that hard, but keep in mind we live in an Eichler built on a concrete slab, further complicated by my desire to not screw up the still-functional, very nice, original radiant floor heat.  I turned on the heat one morning early on so that Matt (the project foreman) could plug his very cool infrared camera into his phone and draw the path of the radiant heat pipes on the concrete.  It became clear very quickly that that plumbing had been installed very close to the original toilet, probably so you could have nice warm feet in the morning, and while nice, this meant we couldn't just rotate the toilet without disturbing it.  So fancy German wall toilet it is.

There was still quite a bit of careful concrete slab chipping to do so we could move the plumbing back several inches,

which had to expand a bit into the bedroom under the carpet due to the location of a plumbing junction that couldn't be reached otherwise, leading to a nice big hole.

The cat has been somewhat perturbed througout, though I think that keeping an eye on all the activity helped her not be bored when we travelled back East at the end of July.  Also notice the line drawn on the floor where the floor heat pipes go, and appreciate the painstaking chipping that had to be done to open this up without breaking it.

Slab chipping revealed more corrosion -- when the house was built, some misguided soul wired a copper pipe to a piece of steel rebar, eventually leading to corrosion and a slow leak in the slab that we didn't even know about.  I'm trying hard not to think about what's hiding under the rest of the house...

Gradually, things have become more put-together, as the demolition debris was cleaned up,

the shower plumbing was moved so we could open up a wall, a recirculating hot water loop was added,

and the rotten ceiling boards were replaced.  I was gone for that part, but am quite glad it went well, as it involved cutting into the foam roof and then putting it carefully back together again without causing damage that would require the $5000 foam truck to come out.  There's also a new taller fan box projecting up through the roof to fix the root cause of the leak.   Incidentally, I found myself texting the contractor about fans while on the fourth floor of the New York MOMA on vacation, which was somewhat amusingly odd.

Oooh -- insulation!  What a concept.

Wall boards -- wow.  It's starting to look like a room again.

No more hole in the concrete!

A gorgeous bamboo cabinet!  (It still needs handles for the drawers, and the counter+sink).  You can also see but maybe not appreciate the very flat walls that the taper spent many hours making perfect.  I had no idea how much work went into that seemingly minor step.

Waterproof stuff for the shower just seems like a good idea.

Our front courtyard became a tile cutting station last week

so we could have floor tile

 
and shower tile.

It has not been a super-fast project, due to some of the complications of the slab and foam roof, but those were not unexpected.  There has been a bit of waiting here and there for city inspections as well (who knew that a bathroom window that has a 4'11" high bottom edge near the shower needs tempered glass lest you put your head through it doing some incredibly unlikely acrobatic move???), but I suppose that is also par for the course.  I am quite looking forward for the final installment of the story.  Maybe another week?  Two?  Hard to predict...