More house rehab

(posted from home)
(This post covers 15 – 22 October, 2010)

-------------------------------------

Friday, 22 October-

Today I had a few little errands to run. I picked up the tub/shower enclosure and adhesive and ALMOST bought the attic stairway. I say 'almost' because I rejected the two at the East York Lowe's because the boxes were open and I couldn't tell if anything was missing. I drove over to the West York Lowe's and the only one there was hardly even in a box at all-- just a ripped-up piece of cardboard covered it. Thanks, but no thanks, Lowe's. I saw one in the Chambersburg store so hopefully I can get that one next week.
Late in the day we removed our two window air-conditioners for the season. Labashi's always afraid they'll be full of bugs when we move them and we did indeed have an unsetting number of stink-bugs hiding in the crevices around the window seal (about a dozen of them) but it took only a minute to deal with them.
That evening we watched the rest of 'Entourage' S2D3.

-------------------------------------

Thursday, 21 October-

We're home for two days. I caught up on web-patrol this morning, then, despite my better judgement, went into town to shop for stuff for the re-hab (this is supposed to be my weekend!). I thought it was going to be a simple matter of making some routine returns but I ended up spending a few hours checking and re-checking stuff for the rehab. I shopped for a folding attic stairway and took another look at the tub/shower enclosure we had tentatively chosen earlier. I confirmed measurements and reviewed installation instructions.
Labashi spent another day burning.
That evening we watched five (!) episodes of 'Entourage' -Season Two. We like it much better than '30 Rock' but I do wonder about the message of the story regarding women's role in society. According to 'Entourage' their role is to be arm-candy for successful males and their hangers-on. Well, yeah, there's some of that in the world but so far that's the ONLY thing we've seen. Give me a break.

------------------------------------

Wednesday, 20 October-

This morning I finalized the floor-leveling of the bathroom and swept and mopped up. Yesterday morning I had broken the material by standing on an upturned 5-gallon bucket which dug into the material. I had patched it at the end of the day yesterday so today's sanding only took a few minutes.
I also re-installed the electric connections for the bathroom sink light and outlet. The three-way connection had been made without a box, probably because there wasn't anywhere to attach one and the wires were very short. I installed a 2 x 4 between the studs in just the right place to mount the box using the existing cable lengths and re-connected and tested.
Late in the day I worked on the exterior of the living-room picture window. This is the one window we will retain when we install the replacement vinyl windows. I removed all the old caulking and sanded the frame. The underlying frame is in good condition and should look fine once I get the new paint on.
We wrapped up at 1700 and headed for home. We had a drive-through supper at the Dillsburg Wendy's in order to get home before dark.
At home we watched three episodes of '30 Rock'-- Season Four. I'm disappointed. The stories seem strained this year. The writers are throwing in off-the-wall references and non-sensical comments just for shock value. That's a bad sign.

------------------------------------

Tuesday, 19 October-

Ah, yes. This morning I had a mess sanding the floor-leveling material. The good news is it sands fairly easily. The bad is it creates a fine dust that gets into EVERYthing and tracks through the rest of the house. I really need a vacuum cleaner (and should wear a mask) when working with this stuff.
I painted the first coat of the bathroom walls and then did some electrical work. I had painted the fixture for the carport ceiling this morning (before starting the bathroom walls) and installed it late in the day.
I turned my attention to the GFCI circuit breaker and almost got myself in trouble. My first read of the instructions led me to start installing a short piece of neutral cable to the panel bus. But then I realized that didn't make sense--- the main white lead is supposed to go to load-neutral not panel-neutral. Since it was close to the end of the day I waited for Maypo to come home from work to confirm my revised interpretation and we installed and tested it successfully after supper. We now have GFCI-protected outlets above the kitchen counter.
I also did a final coat on the leveling material in the bathroom.
That evening Labashi and I watched 'The Hitmen Diaries- Charlie Valentine'. Wow. The Blockbuster box said it had won awards at 21 film festivals. That's hard to believe. It's a Tarantino-pretender and it was just awful.

----------------------------------

Monday, 18 October-

We're at the Chambersburg house today. Labashi's still painting the kitchen cabinets with tinted-pigmented shellac undercoat. 'Painting' means all the prep work has to be done too and the cabinets need quite a lot of wood filler and multiple iterations of sanding and of course multiple coats of paint.
I went back to final readying of the bathroom walls above the tub so we can later install a multi-piece tub and shower surround. I've been chipping away at the old globs of construction adhesive and repairing broken plaster.
Late in the morning we drove over to Lowe's for supplies. It was almost lunch time so we decided to try the new Sonic Drive In for lunch. I liked my sandwich (jalopeno burger) but I'm guessing the nutrition breakdown has WAY too many carbs and calories.
We gassed up, iced up, and rented a movie from the new Blockbuster DVD vending machine in front of the Sheetz store (beside Sonic).
Our shopping took awhile so we didn't get back to work until 1400. I then took what seemed an eternity to fit two pieces of lauan underlayment for the bathroom floor. I mixed up some texture paint for the too-smooth places on the wall (where I had patched and sanded) and took care of that, then put down another layer of floor-leveling so the lauan will lay completely flat. Someone in the past had fixed the floor about half-way across with a thicker piece of plywood so I needed to level things out so the underlayment for the linoleum doesn't flex. The instructions for the levelling material warn against trowelling too much and I think I know why now-- I trowelled too much.
After supper I blogged a bit while Labashi went into the house to fix some uh-oh's in her painting project. We then watched 'Ghost Writer', a Roman Polanski film with Ewan MacGregor and Pierce Brosnan. It was okay but a bit too predictable. I was disappointed to see Ewan's character bed the wife of the prime minister. He seemed to have some common sense but then did such remarkably stupid thing that it's clear the point was merely to titillate us.

----------------------------------

Sunday, 17 October-

Today was another work day at Cburg. We were at it by 0830 and worked until 1700, then back at it from 1800 – 2030. With all that time you'd think it would have been a productive day, yes? Labashi had a productive day painting cabinets but I seemed to have to battle every project.
I made a bit of progress patching up the plaster walls and re-caulking the sink cabinet in the bathroom but when I turned to electrical work I had all kinds of odd things going on. I mounted a new front porch light and that took me a good two hours for a half-hour job. The screws for the mounting plate were bad-- the starting threads were crushed--- so I had to find new ones. The screws to mount the light fixture to the mounting plate were too long so the acorn-style cap nuts could not tighten down. I had to drill holes in the siding to allow the screws to go further in so the cap nuts would go on properly. I even had trouble with the light bulb. When I tried to remove it, the entire socket rotated and I had to take the fixture apart just to remove the light bulb. And after I finally got it all together we saw the warning label (60W maximum) was WAY too prominent. I had to take it apart AGAIN and move the label and then reassemble everything and remount the light.
After all that I thought I'd mount the new 2-foot fluorescent fixture above the sink (in a recess). That actually went fairly well and the light came on when I flipped the circuit breaker on. But wait, there's a problem. The light switch under the kitchen cabinets doesn't control this light after all (we couldn't tell because the old fixture hadn't been working at all). In fact there's no switch anywhere in the kitchen to control it. I found the old fixture on the trash pile and sure enough there's a pull-chain on it. We'll need a different fixture, apparently.
I then spent the greater part of an hour trying to figure out what the switch beside the sink DOES control. So far I've found it is in the same circuit as the kitchen counter outlets but it doesn't control them-- or anything else so far as I can tell. And while doing that I found another problem-- several dead outlets in one corner of the basement. All the circuit breakers are on so why are there non-functioning outlets?
I then tried to replace the first-in-the-chain kitchen outlet with a GFCI outlet. But when I opened the box I found six wires instead of the expected four. Something else is connected here (and there's no way to trace the wires visually). The wiring instructions for the GFCI outlet clearly state that this outlet cannot be used if there are more than four wires. Looks like I'll have to put a GFCI circuit breaker in the panel and return this GFCI outlet, turning a $15 expenditure into a $50 one.
After supper things went a little better. I did manage to put down floor leveler to fix a large bad spot in the plywood subfloor (and will have to put another layer on tomorrow as well as do another large spot.) I also managed to cut-in (with paint) the wall-ceiling corner in preparation for painting the walls (the ceiling is already done). But first I have a lot of texturing over the many patches I've been making.
Time for bed.

----------------------------------

Saturday, 16 October-

After our two rest days it was time to get back to work. We drove to Chambersburg this morning and worked from 0900 until 1300, when we broke to attend a birthday party for our three-year-old grand-niece. We had sandwiches and cupcakes and enjoyed the little rascal's party for a couple of hours, then headed back to work.
I finished up the repair to the bathroom subfloor (joist-hangers and doubled 5/8” ply) and installed a ground-fault safety outlet and re-wired the light over the sink.
We worked until 1800, then tried the Japanese steak house across town ('Aki'). We enjoyed the change of pace but both of us ate WAY too many carbs (the white rice accompanying the meal) and both of us were feeling the effects of too much food afterwards.
We then spent an hour or so at Lowe's, doing some shopping for the house-rehab project. We returned to the work site (our camp site) for the night and I blogged while Labashi read.

----------------------------------

Friday, 15 October-

This morning I continued reading everything I could find on vandwellers.org but the weather outside was just getting too good to stay indoors. I thought I'd run a few errands on the F650GS and started out riding up to Cycle Tech to talk to Skip about repairing the Concours exhaust system sometime this Fall. I've had the GS to ride all summer but with colder weather coming on, I want to get the Concours ship-shape again. Once the daytime highs start dropping below the Fifties, I'll put the GS in the barn and depend on the Conk's full fairing for comfortable riding.
I had intended only to ask Skip (at Cycle Tech) if I could come by on the old war-horse for a look-see sometime next week but the shop didn't seem busy so I asked if I could bring it up yet today. When he agreed, I zipped home and rode the Concours back. And when Skip said he'd fix it sometime next week and I could leave it now if I wanted, I called Labashi to pick me up.
I then rode the GS into town, both to get some miles in on a nice day and also to get a cappuccino.
Back home I got back on the Web to get our Netflix queue squared away with some new picks. Our queue had gotten down to some 'also-rans' so I needed to get on the ball and find some better movies.
That evening we finished the first season of 'Entourage'. OK, we're intrigued enough to order up Season Two. We also finished the first disk of “It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia” but I think we'll pass on additional disks.

-----------------------------------

Thursday, 14 October--

Today I recovered from my over-taxing three-day work week. I ran a few errands-- checking with our bank about a transaction that took longer than I thought it should and grocery shopping for a few harder-to-find items. But all in all I spent a good portion of the day on the web.
My new discovery today is vandwellers.org. It's a web site dedicated to living for extended stretches in cars, vans, campers, etc. I'm not about to sell my house and move into Mocha Joe but I do love reading about the ways people have adapted vehicles for living and adapted their lifestyles, whether by choice or necessity.
That evening we watched three episodes of 'Entourage'- Season One. We're still not sure on this one.


************** END OF POST ******************