Loneliness and chemical burns

So Belle is touring Europe for work and I am left holding down the fort. Its easy to forget how much other people make your day to day life easier and more fufilling than rolling through life alone. I made belle a promise that when she gets back from Europe I will have the rest of the paint stripped from the bedroom wood trim, and maybe have the walls primered. I have been stripping (lead?) paint every night until my hands can no longer take the chemical burns and am on pace to have the project done.

I am awed by the strength and motivation my father had while when he would stay up to the early hours of the morning working on projects. Recently I have found myself putting in extra hours both on the job and at home. I falter where my father succeeded in his extended work days. After pulling a 30ish hour 'shift' writing 'critical' code a couple weeks ago I returned home around noon with belle. Unline PaGyver my temper was short and I was overly affected by my exhaustion, I snapped at belle while trying unsuccessfully to get some fast food. I don't know how my father did it, but he worked tirelessly on countless projects and never once in my mind can I recall him being in the weakened state I was in. He would work to 2-4 in the morning and then get up at 6 to cook me my standard pancake breakfast. I think I am starting to understand how this was possible. I find myself much more motivated to not necessarily appease belle but to surprise and delight her. I think that love is a strangely strong driving force. I feel that I could continue to strip paint off walls for far longer than I could write code, because the end goal is satisfying someone I care for rather than a slightly larger than normal paycheck. 

Belle will be back in June and I know the wood will be stripped by her return. The same way PaGyver knew he would finish the antique baptist church stained glass windows on time. Each chemical burn is a step forward, we are up to the mid room window and she is not yet 1/4 through her trip. The race is on and I will win.

Drain plumbing 201

While Belle and my mother were busy cleaning the orange tree side of the yard, PaGyver and I took on the task of plumbing the upstairs into a fully working bathroom. We were 90% successful, we have a toilet, sink and bathtub all functioning. The shower however will need to wait one more weekend until I can solder the copper together and attach the valves.

This was one hell of a project. We have old galvanized pipe throughout and basically any part of the drainage that was even slightly horizontal is shot. It has had water sitting in it rusting it apart for at least 75 years. The drainpipes lead into massive 6" pipes that when removed are rusted to about a clear .5" center diameter. Its pretty crazy.

We started out planning to just remove the visibly cracked horizontals, and a section of each vertical to attach sanitary T connectors. We would no hub connect to the existing vertical pipe but glue in all the horizontal connections. Everything was going pretty well until I emptied the old toilet into the newly connected bathtub drain only to have it drain out the backside of a completely corroded trap. It was rather humorous as the side we could see looked fine, but the backside was simply not there. It was like someone had sliced the back off it.

The hits kept coming as the sink vertical disintegrated in our hands while trying to disconnect the existing sink to replace it's leaky trap. Shit. Back to home depot, now we need to do the vertical for the sink and no hub to the ventpipe above the waterline (praying that is in good shape).

After that the sink's drainpipe was completely rusted to the trap so we said screw it and got a new sink. Luck was on our side as the one we wanted was marked down 40% because someone hole sawed a 2" hole in the left side... good luck spotting it in our install! I think all in all we removed about 1500 lbs of pipe and plumbing fixtures. Anyone want an old 1930's toilet or a sink from the 50s? The toilet still worked when it came out, but no guarantees!