New House Blog: Episode X - Review, View, And Preview

What's this?  Two updates in two days?  Is this for real?  Yes, dear friend (or family member), this is for real.  We are really posting the second Episode in as many days.

Welcome to Episode X - Review, View, And Preview  We thought that the momentous tenth Episode would be a good time to show you, in addition to reviewing recent work, some interior pictures of our house, and to give you a sneak preview of a project that we have just recently begun.  As such this Episode will be divided into three distinct sections.  Can you guess the titles of the sections?

Review


In this section we will go over some of our recently-completed work.  Firstly, we'll look at some holey repairs, starting with the doorknob hole that was seen in the previous episode.  In this post you get to see both the before and after pictures.

The doorknob hole, with a previous owner's attempt at comouflage

With the camouflage removed the hole truth is revealed.

Now we show you the after pictures.

The hole with the patch in place

Ain't no holes here.

To repair this hole we first had to make it bigger and make it roughly rectangular.  Then we installed some drywall clips, screwed everything in place, stuck on a little drywall tape, and covered it all with some joint compound.  The next day, after everything had cured nicely, we went back, sanded it all down a little and added a second, final coating of joint compound.

The next hole we repaired was in the garage.  We think that the hole used to be used for a water pipe of some sort, but since it's the perfect size for rodent admittal we decided to block it up.  Below you will see the usual before/after pictures.

The hole, with sunlight streaming through

Hole?  What hole?

This repair was pretty simple and straightforward - just a couple of pieces of two-by-four and some nails.


































View

Now we show you pictures of the interior of the house.  We're not showing quite everything at this time, but it should give you a good idea of what the house is like inside.  Without further ado, the house.

The view upon entering through the front door

This is the front room of the house.  I call it the Fireplace Room (see the next picture) because I'm not sure if it's the family room or the living room (Becky knows which is which).  This is also why I call the next room on the tour the Big Room.

The Fireplace Room

The Big Room

Are those paint cans?  Hmmm....

A view into the kitchen

Mark's Office

Becky's Office 

Looking down at the front door

The left half of the master bedroom

The right half of the master bedroom

The master bedroom suite occupies the entire upstairs area of the house. As such, it is pretty spacious.  And yes, that is a dais for the bed.





Preview

This is the sneak preview you were promised earlier.  You remember the paint cans from some of the pictures above?  Here, right now, for the first time, and only on this blog, you get to see the ceremonial (and actual) opening of the first can of paint (insert fanfare music here).

The anticipation builds....

Tadaaa!  Can you guess the name of the color?

And that's it for this Episode.  Thanks for joining us and stay tuned for more great action and adventure.

Every color of the
  bIsh

New House Blog: Episode VIIII - Electrification

Welcome to Episode VIIII - Electrification.  Once again you will notice my use of the less-common-but-still-valid Roman Numeral notation.  And that's all I'm going to say about that.  Also, once again, you will notice that it has been several days since the last Episode.  This is because of the increase in actual house-work time that has left less time for blogging about housework.  Keep checking back, because our update schedule is not set and updates could appear at any time.

This Episode deals mainly with electricity and electrical components.  Our house, being over 40 years old, had some old-fashioned two-prong outlets, and it only had one GFCI outlet in one bathroom.  Modern-day houses and apartments have no two-prong outlets, and they usually have at least one GFCI outlet in each bathroom.  Being the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) types, we decided to modernize and upgrade these outlets ourselves.  That being said, we did all/most of the electrical outlet changing after consulting with one of our electrician brothers, Mike.  His advice was, and is continuing to be, most valuable to us.  We do have a few things to cover before getting to the outlets, though.  

Spigots

We replaced a leaky hose-spigot in our back yard with a shiny new non-leaky hose-spigot.  Note the use of plumber's tape.

Doorstops

Our house was mostly lacking in doorstops.  This was a problem, because doorknobs had hit walls, and holes and dents had been made.  Here you can see the worst of the damage - the door to what will be Mark's office had at some point made a complete hole in the wall.  Evidence at the scene suggests that it may have been patched in the past and this may be a second hole.  We will discuss the patching of holes in a later Episode.

A plastic plate does not a proper patch make

The full extent of the damage behind the plastic plate

This is what the damage looked like initially.  Note the attempt at hiding the hole.

Here is that same hole with the camouflage removed.

To prevent more doorknob-related holes in our walls we installed doorstops on all of the doors that did not have them and were is a position to potentially cause holes and/or dents.  Here is a picture of one of the doorstops.  Note that it is a generic spring-type doorstop, the kind that cats like to play with.  We're only showing you one doorstop because they all look alike.

This is the front door's doorstop.

Electrification

Now we charge on to the main event.  Before we go any further, we must advise and admonish you that before you do any electrical work be sure that the appropriate breakers/fuses are turned off.  All of our  electrical work has been done only after turning off the appropriate breakers.  That said, on to the work we did.  

In our master bedroom we swapped out all four (yes there are only four electrical outlets, with two plugs each) outlets with brand-new tamper-resistant 3-prong grounded outlets.  In our bathrooms we swapped out all of the outlets with brand new GFCI outlets.  In the garage and kitchen we swapped out a few outlets with recessed outlets.  This was done mainly because the old outlets were poorly mounted.  

Tamper-resistant, in this case, means that the plugs each have a plastic piece inside that blocks the holes until something is plugged in.  The idea is that this will make it harder for young children to accidentally stick things into electrical outlets.  We don't have any kids, but it still seemed like a good idea.  

GFCI stands for Ground Fault Circuit Interruptor.  It is an electrical outlet with a built-in breaker.  Typically they are used in bathrooms, or other places where water and electricity are in close proximity.  The ones in our apartment have red and black buttons.  The ones in our house have white buttons.  Here is a link to an article that describes them in more depth.

Behold, a cavalcade of outlets.

A brand-new grounded outlet being installed

A typical outlet after installation

If you look closely you should be able to see the plastic inside the prong-holes.

















Notice the beautiful texture of the wall behind this outlet.

A typical GFCI outlet

A relocated recessed outlet

A recessed outlet in the garage

This outlet was relocated on the advice of brother Mike.  Can you spot where it used to be?

As you might have guessed, this outlet is located in a section of wall that was repaired at some point in the past.  That is not genuine drywall tape, however.  We may add proper drywall tape and joint compound at some future date.

The Burning Question

We thought we'd conclude this electrifying Episode with something truly shocking, and yet another surprise from this old house.  What you see below is what you do not want to find when you open up your electrical outlet.  

The box and romex

The outlet

You see all of the black inside the box?  That is the result of burning and charring sometime in the past.   The wire-cutting was done by us.  The romex* in the wall outside of the box was undamaged, and we were able to successfully relocate this outlet (it is not, however, the relocated outlet pictured above).  There was no damage visible on the wall around the outlet, but it's possible that any discoloration of the wall was simply painted over.










This is the actual outlet that we pulled from the burned box above.  Again, black = burnt.

The backside of the outlet

The backside of the outlet.

Where there's smoke there's

  bIsh

*Romex, as used here, refers to the 3-wire, plastic-sheathed electrical cable.  Romex is a brand name, but it is also used generically, much like Kleenex or Coke.

New House Blog: Episode VIII - Tenting For Termites

First off, we would like to apologize for the large time gap between Episodes VII and VIII.  It turns out that spending more time actually working on the house leaves less time for writing about working on the house.  That being said, let's move on to the latest (as far as you know) updates.  From this Episode's title you might have surmised that we would be talking about a tent, or tents, of some kind.  And from the previous Episode's closing comments you might have been expecting some sort of dissertation on broom buying in 2012, but you will be disappointed (overjoyed) to learn that said dissertation, due mainly to time constraints, has been whittled down to this: there are a whole lot of brooms to choose from when shopping for a broom.

Also whittled down in this episode are the updates.  In this Episode we will be giving short updates about several projects instead of going on and on about a few projects.  To the updates!

New Teammates

Before we get into actual project updates let's meet the latest additions to our tool teams.  Joining us are Sweepy Junior, a smaller outdoor and garage broom; Gulp, a garage and outdoor dust pan; Pipey, a bright red-orange pipe wrench; Moony, a crescent wrench; Snips, a plant clipper; and Fang, a general-use wood saw.

L to R - Gulp and Sweepy Junior

T to B, L to R - Sweepy Junior, Pipey, Moony, Snips, Fang

Pipey, in particular, was quite useful in the plumbing updates discussed in this Episode.






































Tenting

Are you aware that the Silicon Valley is rich in termites?  Our house was tented for termites recently.  That is to say, our house was covered in a big stripey tent and filled with a poison gas for the purpose of killing the termites already living in the house.  The poison gas used is called Vicane.  We don't know if that's a brand name or a generic name (perhaps someone can look it up for us and let us know via the comments).  It kills all kinds of other things in addition to killing termites (the paperwork we had to sign specifically mentions household cats), but at the concentration used for termite-killing it will not kill spiders (including black widows).  Spider-killing would require a higher concentration of Vicane.  Here is our house under the tent.

Tent view #1

Tent view #2

There is no picture of the house after the tent was removed because it looks pretty much the same as before, and you have already seen the house without the tent.

The house is now safe to enter

Water Heater Repairs

For the record, it's not a hot water heater - it's a water heater.  Ours is fairly new, but two of the pipes were connected poorly and were leaking, and the flue was connected poorly and needed correcting.

The flue - before

 Notice the unneccessary angles and the unstrappedness of the flue.

The flue - after

Now notice the straightness and strappedness of the flue.

One of the old pipe segments

The same pipe segment seen head-on

New piping, sealed and non-drippy

More new piping, also sealed and non-drippy

The white stuff you see on the threads is called plumber's tape, or thread tape, and it is wonderful stuff.

The tools involved in the water heater plumbing repair

Breaker Box

Our breaker box is in the garage, and it is labelled.  The labels aren't very descriptive or complete, but they are mostly there and they are slightly helpful.

Hose Caddie

And finally we finish this Episode with a picture of our new back yard hose caddie.

And that's it for Episode VIII.  Join us again soon for an electrifying discussion about grounded outlets and upgrading to GFCI.

One more thing before we let you go.  Does anyone know where we can get a good, new wood-handled ax?  The Home Depots and OSH's around here only seem to have the plastic/fiberblass-handled axes, and we prefer wood handles on our axes.

Okay, two more things before we let you go.  Thank you, Mike, for your sage advice and suggestions regarding the flue realignment.

Sic semper termites!
    bIsh

New House Blog: Episode VII - Dish And Diswhasher

Welcome to Episode VII.  In this Episode we will be taking a look at some rooftop items (this is where the dish was), seeing what the space behind the dishwasher looks like, and learning about yet another surprise.  A roof can be an interesting place.  It's up high, it's slanty, it gets really hot to the touch, it gives good views, and sometimes you can find things that have been lost by other people.  Our roof is an asphalt shingle roof with an estimated remaining life of about 30 years.  It is one part of the house that doesn't need any work at all at this point.  We assume it doesn't leak, but we won't know for sure until it rains again in 6 months.  The first parts of this episode deal with repairs that took place on the roof, but not to the roof itself.

Before we get into the actual events we would like to take a moment to note that although the events are presented in generally chronological order (we can't very well post about things that haven't yet happened) some events may not be in specific chronological order - sometimes they are grouped by type or alliteration.

Dish

Despite being over 40 years old our house came with a dish on the roof.  No, it was not an actual DISH brand dish, nor can we be sure it was even a satellite dish, but it was a dish of some sort, and it needed to come down before the termite tenting could commence (remember how we said that termites are very popular in the Silicon Valley?).  Our friend, Dave (mentioned previously in this post) was at the house helping us with some of the work, and he assisted in the removal of the dish.* (that asterisk means you should check for further explanation at the end of the post)  He didn't actually get up on the roof, but he did act as a spotter, and he did hand up tools and things and take them back down.

Below is a picture of the dish as it was when we took possession of the house.

The dish, before removal

With Dave acting as spotter and ladder stabilizer we climbed onto the roof and trudged up the semi-steep incline to the chimney, for this is what the dish was fastened to.  After some serious wrenching with an 11mm box wrench, the mangled metal mess was free of its harness and the entire assembly, including cables, was handed down to Dave.  The straps that were wrapped around the chimney were hurled unceremoniously to the ground.  Here is the chimney after the dish removal.  Note the unpainted stripes where the straps used to be.

Yup, it's a chimney

Caulking

Also done while we were on the roof was a bit of chimney flashing caulking. What is chimney flashing?  Basically, it's metal plating at the base of the chimney that helps to....well.....we're not really sure what it does, but we think it has to do with sealing the roof and keeping rain and other stuff from entering into the house.  Perhaps someone with more chimney knowledge can leave a comment with a better explanation.  Our chimney flashing needed a very minor repair - some of the caulking had cracked, which left a nice opening for rain and other stuff to enter the house.  We used some roof-flashing-specific caulking and sealed up the crack.  Since this caulking is on the roof and no one will see it, we didn't feel the need to make it look pretty.  As long as it keeps things sealed we're happy with it.  See it below.

It ain't pretty, but it should keep stuff out

Dishwasher

Another item Dave helped us with was the removal of the old, non-functioning dishwasher.  Actually, he did the majority of the work on that while we were outside clearing out excess vegetation.  We're not completely clear on everything Dave had to do to prep the dishwasher for removal, but once he did whatever he did it seemed to come out without too much hassle.  We had to disconnect 1 rubber hose and 1 copper tube, and we had to cut the power cord (yes it was unplugged first).  A lot of interesting things were discovered behind the dishwasher, and by, "interesting," I mean filthy, nasty things.  Fortunately, the house will be cleaned in a couple of days, so we're not too concerned about said "interesting" things.  We put the dishwasher out in the driveway area and a company picked it up and hauled it away for a small fee.  Here's a picture of the hole where the dishwasher was.

Note the copper tube

How many different things can you identify in the picture?


















Surprise Again

This house keeps surprising us.  Well, not so much the house as some of the things the previous owners did or didn't do.  As we were clearing out excess vegetation (and Dave was wrestling with the dishwasher inside) we discovered some wood planks buried in the dirt right by the front door (did I mention yet that there are termites around here).  This was not the surprise, although we do wonder what the wood-buriers were thinking.  Also buried by the front door was a kitchen knife of some sort.  How it ended up there, and why, we don't necessarily want to know.  Sadly, it was too beat-up and unsharp to be of any use to us.

Rusty and dull

Despite the impressive-looking pose, the knife really was not sharp.












New Team Members

And now for a special bonus before we end this Episode.  Today we introduce two new team members - Sweepy and Scoop.  Here is a picture.  Can you tell which is which?  Both of them availed themselves nicely on their first day of use.

Left to Right, Scoop and Sweepy

That wraps it up for this Episode.  Be sure to join us next time as we discuss termites, tenting, and some other stuff (you might even read a short dissertation on broom-choosing in 2012).

It has walls and a roof.  What more could you
   bIsh

* Side Note: In case you're wondering, although he has been mentioned in two episodes, Dave has only been to our house once, so the events in which he appears all took place on the same day.

New House Blog: Episode VI - The Battle Of The Stump

Welcome to a particularly action-packed Episode, where you will hear the thrilling tale of The Battle Of The Stump.  Along the way you will be introduced to the heroes of the battle and hear the thrilling tale of action and intrigue (action, anyway - not sure about the intrigue).  But before we get to the glorious battle we will share the story of our trip to the Sanitary Landfill (formerly known as the dump).

The Sanitary Landfill

It started out as most days, with the rising of the sun.  We did not get up with the rising of the sun, but the day started anyway.  We eventually got up and, driving a truck borrowed from my awesome brother, Mike, went to our house to haul away the pile of debris (as seen in this post) for good.  The pile was a mixture of mostly wood, with some PVC, some galvanized pipe (I got to use an electric pipe cutter), some concrete, some barbed wire, a muffler, a rusty barbecue grill, and some other miscellaneous stuff.  We loaded the truck and set off for the Zanker Road Sanitary Landfill (it is the closest landfill to the house).  Here is a picture of the loaded truck just inside the entrance to the landfill, in the de-tarping area.

After de-tarping we drove up to the weigh/inspection station and waited for the attendant to grant us access.  It was a tense few seconds as he disinterestedly scrutinized our load, but in the end he let us pass unhindered.  We drove up a short hill, picked an empty spot, and started tossing our junk.  And I do mean tossing.  The rusty barbecue grill did not seem to want to leave us, however.  After being tossed onto the pile it rolled back down to the truck, as if to say, "Don't leave me!"  We ignored its pitiful plea and tossed it even further.  It accepted its fate and made no more attempts to return to us.  

Because of the time, and a full schedule, we did not stay at the landfill to browse for any second-hand items.

The Battle Of The Stump

Before we get to the battle let us introduce you to the three.  Here they are, in picture form.

The three, left to. right: Longspade, Shorty, Spike

You've heard of Longspade ere now in the post about black widows, but the other two are new to this blog.

It started with the debris pile we found on the side of the house.  Of all of the items in the pile the tree stump intrigued me the most.  Second-most intriguing to me was the used muffler.  Back in the corner of two fences stood the tree stump, and we could not tell if it was simply a stump that had been leaned up against the fence or if it was actually a rooted remnant of a tree that used to grow in that spot.  After clearing away the rubble pile we discovered the awful truth - it was the latter, the remnants of a tree that had grown there and had died and been mostly cut down but which still retained its roots.  We knew that a battle was coming, and we gathered the troops - Longspade, Shorty, and Spike.  

The battle began.

The first to be sent in was Longspade, and it fought valliantly in the dirt, probing and exposing some of the roots of the tree.  Next to join the battle was Shorty.  It probed deeper and got into places where Longspade could not fit.  Before continuing the tale I have to ask: am I the only one whose garden tools have names?  Longspade and Shorty continued to probe the stump for additional roots and weaknesses, but ere long they had reached the end of what they could do without further assistance.  We discovered that there were four main roots, much as a compass has four points.  These roots did not line up with the compass points, but they did radiate away from the tree at approximately ninety-degree intevals, as do the four main points on a compass.  Two of the roots were relatively easily accessible, but roots three and four were going to be a challenge.  Into battle charged Spike, and after a brief skirmish we had severed root number one.  The second root put up a stronger fight, but it, too, succumbed to the relentless attack from Spike.  Spike tried to attack root number three, but there was just not enough room between the tree and the fence for Spike to be effective.  The fourth root extended under the other fence and into the front yard.  A new recruit would have to be brought in to the battle. This is how things stood at the end of the first day of battle.  Below is the stump after the first day of battle.

After a day of battle

Sadly, we had to wait an extra day to rejoin the battle, and thusly the second day of battle was actually the third day since the battle had begun.  We borrowed an ax from Mike and returned to the house and the site of battle.  Instead of jumping right in with a direct attack we did some reconnaissance on the front-yard side of the fence and we discovered the location and relative strength of root number three.  Longspade and Shorty were instrumental in said reconnaissance (there's got to be a better way to spell that word).  After some initial probing and weakening from Spike, the ax went into action (it is unnamed because it is borrowed).  The root made a strong defense, but it could not resist the continued blows from the ax.  We now had three of four roots severed and we knew it was just a matter of time before we had conquered all four roots.  Back into the main battlefield in the back yard we went, and the ax's thinner head was able to fit into the narrow space and make short work of root number four.  After that it took but a little twisting and pulling and the stump came free.  Sweet victory!

Below you can see the defeated stump and the borrowed ax that was instrumental in bringing it down. Also to be seen is the fence corner where the stump used to be.

The defeated stump and the victorious ax

The former home of the stump

Our thanks to my awesome brother, Mike, for the use of the truck, the electric pipe cutter, the wheel barrow, and the ax.

Join us again soon for our next exciting adventure.

Anyone got an ax to grind?

   bIsh