Bathroom update (last update until 100%)?

So when we left off:

Whats left until we have the coolest bathroom on the planet:

• Sink faucet arrives and is installed. -- Completed.

• Ceiling green board installed. --Completed
• Toilet mounted on floor with "WC" mounted on wall. -- Completed.
• Tiling on west wall finished --Completed.
• Grout finished.-- Completed.

• Electrical connected and lighting installed. --Completed

• False rafters installed with mushroom plugs pre-drilled (will be a post about this) -- Todo
•  Window fixed and re-installed. --Completed
• Slate slab cut and door jam installed (this will keep water from flowing into the bedroom should it splash by the door. --Todo

Some updates. Flapper valves do not work with WC style toilets! The siphon power in the down tube will pull the valve closed despite a good amount of force holding the chain open. To fix this I went back to the upside down U pipe model and glued a modified flapper valve to the bottom of it. The seal is still not perfect and after flushing the toilet can run, so I am going to add some guide rails to make sure it lands perfectly centered. I switched materials from gross rusty iron to pvc, so it has lost some weight, adding weights may also make for a better seal.

We added a heater duct. This was a complete pain in the ass. This comes down to planning and scope creep. If we had planned for a heater duct it would have been substantially easier as I ended up having to cut the back wall out from a closet. Add heating ducts prior to closing up the walls!!!

Re-installed a six degree of freedom mirror that was previously in the bathroom. Belle fixed it up quite well, I am really happy with the way the bathroom looks. Tons more pics in our public album.

golf balls and garden hoses

A note on the backyard contraption I mistook for a clothesline-- a low slung knob and tube relay to the garage whose wiring is  only partially ensconced in electrical tape.  "Code" these days is to bury a Romex line in a weather-proof conduit.  Threading 100' of burred conduit with 100' of pliable Romex is a non-trivial task.  After consulting the Oracle of Internets, we settled on this approach.

1.  Tie slightly more than 100' of kite string to slightly more than 100' of heavier duty nylon string.  On the other end of the kite string, tie a piece of paper towel.

2.  Use vacuum cleaner hose attachment to suck the lightweight kite string through and pull the heavier duty string with it (so long as some of it sticks out both ends of the conduit).

3.  Tie an end of the nylon string to the Romex line (taking care to make the knot as skinny and aerodynamic as possible).  

4.  At this juncture, we naively began pulling the Romex through and got about 10 feet before things got Tough...  fortunately, PaGyver stopped by with some helpful hints...

4a.  Lube the Romex with Vaseline (we had lots on hand from a failed fiberglass shower curtain prototype)

4b.  Position your conduit so that it is as straight as possible-- particularly the several feet in front of the nylon string + romex knot

4c.  Use leverage, where possible, i.e. when he has enough bite, the puller can loop the nylon over a treebranch, etc. to assume more comfortable/powerful pulling position

Mini project madness

Yesterday felt highly productive despite no large project being worked on by either Belle or myself. Friday night saw the completion of both the wiring work in the front room, and the painting in the office. This meant that we could move the computer/projector into its more permanent home in the front room and allow the projector to return to its cabinet instead of sitting on the floor. The morning was spent moving furniture around and setting up the picture location on the wall.

Afterward we moved to the pond. The water tube had been floating in the middle of the pond for a while and with the empty corner baskets really kept it from looking finished. Last week I had built a new bamboo spigot so that got installed while Belle planted some new vines on the corner baskets. The pond looks better than it ever has, woot!
We then took a trip to the homebrew store and home depot for a couple more projects the main one being a kegorator for my homebrews. The setup uses a converted wine chiller with enough space for two corny kegs and the 5lb CO2 tank. We have a bruery orchard white clone in there now that used lavender from the garden. One of my goals for the garden is to grow 100% of the ingredients needed to make a good homebrew.


Finally I really wanted to install the lantern over the castle gate to give it a finished look. That became the third mini project of the day and it got popped in as well as the flood lights over the back door getting replaced. The lantern is on a motion sensor but I cant get the sensor to detect anything so I just switched it to test mode which is always on. The whole thing is on a timer switch in the back porch.

Electrical

As a birthday treat I got to rewire the front massive living room. This was not very fun mainly because the previous owner had a lot of dogs and would apparently let said dogs run around and poop in the crawlspace. There was also quite a lot of rat shit as well. Crawling in this stuff is not entertaining.

Since this job was more than just a direct upgrade/adding a single new outlet I needed to do a pull all the way back to the breaker. Naturally getting the correct parts meant the customary multiple trips to home depot. Installing the breaker and the conduit was fun with the power going off and on about 30 times as I did some wiring then cut some conduit. After the first plan on where to run the conduit would have had me entering the basement directly on a floor joist we had to scrap that plan and come out the side of the breaker box instead of the bottom.

With the conduit installed and the romex in the basement then came the fun task of pulling the wire and tacking it in place. I pulled to the first outlet in the line split off a junction box and stopped for the night, completely filthy. The next night was Halloween and the neighborhood really got into the spirit of things. I quickly got some more wire pulled as Belle distributed goodies. Then as I was out of the basement getting more staples and wire nuts Belle called my phone from the front of the house to send me on an emergency candy run. I suppose my costume was homeless bum who sleeps in the dirt. $30 worth of candy procured and just in the nick of time as Belle had 3 lollipops left in the candy bucket. I was very happy to see lots of trick or treaters come by. Our neighbors mentioned that the the last owner kept the gates locked for the previous 20 or so Halloweens. Gave a random tour (number 6?) to a very nice lady from down the street and gave up getting any more done on the electrical. Spent the rest of the evening chatting with neighbors and kids. Chi got to make an appearance and spooked some kids but most were very excited to see her.

Tuesday I went back down for dungeon crawl #3, and we now have 4/6 outlets done in the living room and wire pulled for the other two. One more crawl and I can tear out all the knob and tube down there.


Other things we have done:
Moved the koi pond to the front porch
Carved pumpkins
Stained and installed crown moldings/footers in the office. Thanks cousin T!
Started wallpaper removal from the bedroom ceiling.
Built a new koi pond spigot out of larger bamboo.
Mandatory 3 trash bins filled to the brims.
MaGyver continued to work on the rose garden.

Phone back, big update

My phone got fixed and returned this week. The work order said they "Replaced Component" thanks Samsung... Pretty sure they were supposed to send me a shipping label too but never did so it cost me 60 bucks to ship it. All in all very crappy experience. Plus side is Google had all my contacts etc backed up, once I signed back in it was smooth sailing.

Well in the last couple weeks we have gotten a ton of stuff done, and had some mishaps as well. My focus has been on the office which is quickly becoming the most finished room in the house in terms of how we want things to look when finalized. Nearly all of the old white paint has been removed from the door frames and last weekend I redid the electrical and also moved the internet wire to run into the basement then inside an interior wall instead of being stapled around the door frame. Patched up all of the walls and its almost ready for paint.

I also modded some outlet frames which came out very cool bronze looking. Simply sanded the paint off with some 220 grit sand paper to make it look like reflected water. Definitely looks better than the flat black you can compare here. The white outlets still look kind of silly so I might get some black ones or paint the faces. They are not high traffic plugs so paint might not get too scratched up.

Belle has been hard at work stripping the wallpaper in the bedroom. Also last weekend the last 2 gaping holes in the bedroom got patched, which leaves us only with 3 rooms left from the repipe, the upstairs bath which is half done and waiting for a shower, under the sink in the kitchen, and the bathroom by the pond.

Speaking of the pond, one of our Koi fish got sick and died, and worse in the flurry of trying to save/quarantine it the pond pump line got bumped and the water started being pumped out of the pond. We didn't notice and promptly left for work only to come back to all of our fish in about 2" of water as the entire 30ish gallons had pumped out over the course of the day. Luckily it drained through an old shower vent hole and most of the water ended up in the dirt. I guess having a sloping floor helps in some situations. Outside of the one Koi, none of the other fish were harmed in the debacle as the giant albino catfish dredged a trench in the sand and led them all to safety.

We are once again insured! I took to the roof to nail down the flashing the insurance company complained about. Since our roof is very high up (30' maybe) and our biggest ladder is 6' the only way was to come down from the top. I tied off to the chimney and slid down to the edge. Quickly nailed the flashing and cleaned out the gutters. Was not too worried but it is a long way down, big thanks to whoever did the brickwork on the chimney 100 years ago.

The plants are doing fantastic, even the pepper plant that the tree trimmers landed a pecan branch on top of is rallying.

I added an outlet to the basement when I was doing the wiring for the office.
I replaced a broken outlet next to the microwave, and we no longer need to use an extension cord.
Brother and I knocked out/dug up the old dead palm tree stump and most of it fit into the green trash bin. Going to get the rest in this week's load.
Mom came by and cleaned up the rose garden.
After the rain (roof was fine btw insurance ppl) the yard looked really good, cool green clovers are popping up all over by the orange trees.

Some bad days

Yesterday sucked to the point of failure. My goal for the night was to split off the romex wire in the middle room run about a foot patch wire and install a new grounded outlet in the kitchen for the big fridge.

Well things started to go wrong. It started off right away with the hole I exposed in the kitchen being right over a stud, apparently the kitchen wall is floating 1/2" off all the studs. Cool, make a slightly larger hole just to the right.

I didnt really have wire cutters or strippers so I was using scissors and a razorblade to cut and strip. Also the existing wire was installed so shitty that there were bare wires due to friction. I didnt have time to rerun the wire so I chopped a little extra off the existing wire and stripped past the bare point. This caused the existing outlet to be very tight when I was putting it back in it's conduit box. Which meant the mounting flanges needed to get dremeled down some.

The backplate of the outlet needed one of its port holes punched out. In doing so I managed to cut my thumb with a screwdriver. When drilling the receiving hole in the wall I once again hit a stud (awesome). No problem I drilled slightly to the side of the stud and the wire was good to go.

Well the 1 hr ended up being 3 and I yelled at Belle because the perishables were sitting on the floor. Somehow despite the power being off in the house and us not having a working fridge at all I got it in my head that this was her fault. Stupid thought which I have spent the rest of the night and this morning apologizing profusely for. At some point I realized that I should have cooked dinner but it was too late to turn back so we went hungry for the night.

To cap the fail off I ended the night by using the fancy new electric flyswatter to obliterate the light fixture above the bed sending shards of glass all over the bed, the floor and Belle.

I suppose on the plus side the outlet works and the fridge is cooling. All of the contents of the mini fridge have been moved. Still just a shitty night after such a productive Monday. Sorry Belle! <3