Not As Much As We'd Hoped... But More Than We Planned

Well, the title tells you how much we got done today.  Hubs laid cinder blocks 2 nights ago for another 1/3 of the back wall, then today we filled them with concrete.  Boring stuff, not really worth of pictures.  But I'll show ya one anyway.

All those cinder blocks that are stacked - those are now laid from the left, through the back of my dryer (but not quite to the drain stack - we still haven't fixed that yet.

Something that IS picture-worthy, however, is the fact that Hubs had a partially-used bag of mortar sitting inside a cardboard box inside The Termite Room.

Know what makes that hole pattern?  I'll give you a hint: It's not called The Termite Room because it's filled with rainbows and unicorns.

See those bricks in the wall?  The box was sitting next to that.  Nowhere near wood.

Major bummer.  But we're still fairly confident that they won't eat our newly built, pressure-treated, water&ice dammed, cinder-blocked wall.

After killing our backs putting 4 bags of concrete into the newly-laid cinder blocks, we got to fun stuff - continuing to TRY to drain the pool.  This girl spent HOURS this morning trying to get the hose to restart its siphon effect, but the Laws of Physics (don't you DARE ask me which ones) won over the Will of Krista.  I gave up, life went on.

Later, Hubs jumped in and got destructive.  We're not sure it really did any good, but we had fun anyway.

Liner, foam insulation, and then the walls say "Galvanized Copper Steel".  ....Um, what?

Trucking right along, Hubs quickly got the entire shallow end pulled off the rigid walls.

Then we threw the liner back a little, and wound up with A MESS.

Meh, live and learn.  Right?

What it looks like now.  Sand and still 6 ft of water....

We really don't know what we're doing when it comes to getting this pool OUT of our backyard.... We'll figure it out.  We're not in a hurry....

 Changing the subject again, I went to the scrapyard last week to cash in on all that aluminum siding that we pulled off The Gaping Hole.  And acquired a 1" long, 3/8" thick, square-headed bolt.  In the tire.  So Hubs put the spare on our truck today.  And by the time he pressed up the air compressor, he decided it would be a good time to check ALL the tires - my car, his daily driver, the others on the truck, the hand truck/furniture dolly, the snow blower.  And then, because he touched the snowblower, he remembered that he hadn't "summer-ized" it.  So then he added Sta-Bil, cleaned the spark plug, yada yada yada.

And in the middle of it all, we had a good friend come out and take a tour!  I love showing off our crazy mess of a house.  Explaining to other people what we plan to do keeps The Vision forefront in my mind, and allows me to overlook the crazy mess that's actually here.  It also keeps me from hyperventilating while thinking about shuffling all my stuff around the house 17 times and cleaning all the drywall dust off everything.  Or worse, NOT cleaning dust off anything and watching nearly-new stuff go bad from being coated in Construction Film. Blech.  So yeah...

Tomorrow we're headed to Maine with some friends, and Hubs works all day Monday.  Maybe we'll get something done tomorrow evening.  We'll see.  Hubs has vacation starting on Tuesday, so expect daily posts starting Wednesday!  See y'all soon!

End of Back Wall Tearout

Welcome back... I'm glad you stopped by!  Sorry I haven't posted much - we haven't DONE very  much before today.  Work comes in spurts around here...

Question: Have you ever wondered what $600 worth of PVC piping looks like?  Yeah, me neither.  But here it is anyway.

Ignore Hubs' orange level (and the housewrap roll, and the sump pump plumbing), but all those connectors, all those tubes, all 3 gray bags...

We spent 3 hours in Lowe's on Thursday night.  I haven't written much here lately because Hubs was busy drawing up plumbing plans to show the inspector BEFORE we went and bought/installed all this stuff.  So Thursday evening, Hubs came home from work, we took the plans to the inspectors, then we came home and dropped off the car and took the truck to Lowe's.  (That's a 30-minute drive, by the way.)  When we got there, Hubs realized he'd left all his plans in the backseat of my car.  FAIL.

We went in anyway, and Hubs was able to buy every bit of what you see in that photo from memory.  After all, he DID just spend a week designing everything, right!?  Well, I'm impressed anyway!  ....The cashier wasn't too impressed when we showed up in her line 15 minutes before closing, but she finished in about 10 minutes, so she doesn't have anything to complain about, right?

Today, Hubs built me another spiffy hanger for putting up a second run of temporary support wall, so we can tear out the rest of the back.

See it down there at the end?  It helps soooooooooooo much!

Where the two temporary supports meet.

And then Hubs proceeded with the last bit of basement tearout.

"Before" ....ish, as always.

The bottom plate.  Totally rotted. :(

This is the underside of the previous picture.  And my shoe.  Our house was resting on ROT!

Now it's ALL out!

"But Krista," you ask, "where did you PUT all that wall material, since you don't have a dumpster anymore!???"  Oh, that's not what you're saying?  You didn't know I got rid of the third dumpster?  My bad.  Maybe that's because by the time they took it away for the THIRD TIME, I figured it wasn't a note-worthy event.  Anyway, this is what I did with the debris:

As organized as trash gets around here.  It gives me something to do when we DO get the next dumpster.....in a while.... We're not ready yet!!!

Lastly, an update on the pool.

Hubs put about double the recommended dose of chlorine into it - after 1/3 of the water had drained.  So in two days, it's cleared up quite a bit, don't you think?  All our friendly forest animals have stopped dying in our pond pool, since they can't really REACH it anymore.  No more furry drownings, no more toads, and - thanks to Hubs' shock treatment - I'm pretty sure no more mosquitoes.  And it's still draining... there are about 3" left to go in the shallow end.  I hope to post a picture before the weekend is out of a dry-bottomed shallow end!  Then... another three weeks before the deep end empties???  Good thing we aren't in a hurry!

Tomorrow I'm mowing the jungle and baking some bread while Hubs works on a Sunday.  Also, these next two weeks might be slow postings, since he is expecting to be working extremely late on some intense project at work.  We'll see how much we get done...he's not hopeful. :(

Plans, The Pool, The Cat, and The Dog

Well, I'll tell you about the cat and the dog first.  Hubs pulled a dead rodent out of the pool a few days ago and left it poolside.  Big mistake with our dog who likes to roll on dead things.  The poor dog has been banished to the backyard for two days now - until our groomer opens up after the holiday weekend!

Then, Hubs and I were sitting in the living room at 1pm on Saturday afternoon of a long weekend, working on plumbing plans, and we heard a cat fight RIGHT outside our front window.  We DO allow our cat to go outside, so Hubs pretty much tackled me to get outside and make sure our cat was okay.  Turns out, she was bleeding small drips from the bum area, and she wouldn't let him get a good enough look to see how serious it was.  I scrambled to get the cat carrier, while Hubs corralled her and TRIED to look at her wound, then gave up and comforted her.  After she (and her bleeding bum) were contained, I called my vet.  No answer - it was after-hours already.  Of COURSE!  So I scribbled down the emergency vet's number, called them up for directions and to let them know I was coming (and that it wasn't life-threatening), jumped in the car and drove off.  Then I got to the end of my street and realized I'd forgotten my cell phone.  So I had to go back for it.  Fast forward 3 hours, antibiotics, a shaved and washed bum, and $200 later, and you'll find the cat sleeping on the drive home, acting like nothing's wrong. When I got home, we settled her into the bathroom, where she'll be making her home for the next 10 days... yay for us.  :/

So, other than all THAT adventure, we haven't really DONE much the last couple days, due to the need to plan the plumbing in the ENTIRE HOUSE before proceeding on a single wall.  But I'm pleased to show our progress!  (And Hubs' awesome grid-paper magic!)

Plan for the entire basement layout!

The top is the front of the house - the front half is pretty much open, unplanned space at this point.  The only main features of that space will be the fireplace and the electrical panel on the left, and the stairway to the main level on the right.

Moving on to the bottom half - the leftmost feature is a walk-in food storage closet for me - plenty of shelves and space for my upright freezer!  Also, where Hubs has written "Backfiller" along this closet's wall - that's going to be a open-and-close-able  pass-through wall for proper food storage rotation!

The next space over will be open, with the door to the backyard just outside my food-storage closet.  Right along the midline, you can see that Hubs has sketched in some cabinetry.  The precise usage will be determined later - entertainment, or daycare, or ... yeah.  We don't know.  (Yes Mom, I hear you.  "Dehydrator space!  Bread machine! Sewing station!"  I'm also thinking this will make excellent storage for my less-frequently-used appliances.)

The next space will be a utility room - my washer and dryer will be on the other side of the wall behind the cabinetry.  Um, actually... *looks HARD at this drawing* Please ignore the layout of THIS bathroom design.  It's wrong.  It's not what we're doing.  But that's the bathroom area.  The NEXT picture will show you the final layout of that space.

Lastly, the space all the way on the right is the space under our den, and will be used as a mechanical room.  We are likely going to install a geothermal system, forced hot air, and an instant water heater in there.

Under the stairs to the main level we will have the well accumulator tank, the whole-house filter, and the water softener.

THIS is the bathroom layout!

The top of this picture is the mechanical room.  The right side is the external wall to the backyard.  The left side goes out right next to the empty space at the front of the basement, and the bottom backs up to the counter space.

My washer and dryer will have a built-in countertop running over the top of them!  The sink will be a utility/laundry sink.  Just to the left of the sink, we see the space under the stairs - where the water softener and filter will share the drain with the utility sink.

That big pipe-looking line that runs through the middle is just that - Hubs' plan for the drain lines.

Layout for the upstairs bathroom reno - turning 1 bath into 2!

Along the left side of this drawing is our upstairs hallway.  The topmost wall shown here borders the attic area above the den.  The right wall is exterior, and the bottom will open into our bedroom (there will likely be a door, even though there isn't one shown here).

The top bathroom will be Lil C's - simple, cheaper materials that get the job done and are easy to clean.

The other bathroom will be part of our new master suite.  The toilet will be under a window, the shower will be nearly 5 feet wide by 3 feet deep, and we will have nearly 6 feet of counter space to house our double sinks!  Our closet will run the 8-foot length between what is currently the first window in our bedroom, and the current bathroom window.  We'll use elegant tiles, pretty glass, a more expensive toilet, up-scale fixtures, and Hubs plans to put some homemade built-ins in the closets.  (As I type this, he has run off copies of these pages and is still working on the exact drain lines of all of these fixtures.....)



Lastly, I went outside a couple hours ago to snap a progress update picture on the pool draining, and.... well... our devil horns came out.....

At my urging, Hubs threw the dog into the pool - at the deep end!

He made a bee-line for the stairs, although he seemed to be enjoying himself.

So much so that he turned around, swam a circle, and THEN headed for the stairs.

Have you noticed the water quality or the level of the pool water at ALL yet???  Or are you too busy reading captions?

Then, for good measure, Hubs threw him in again.  This time, the poor dog just went straight for the stairs.  Apparently, once is fun, twice is mean?

Pool ...Or Is It A Pond?

I'm not sure there's much of a difference these days between my mom's pond and my pool.

Look VEEEERRRYYYY carefully at the white skimmer box by the diving board.  See him?

NOW can you see him?  

Boy, did he STINK!!!  Hubs opened up the skimmer top and nearly keeled over into the pool.  Toads have always attempted to inhabit our pool, and the big fat ones know that we have LOTS of trouble getting at them when they sit in the skimmer between the suction part and the pool face, so they like to hang out there fearlessly.  Hubs DID manage to get this one out by putting the net in front of the skimmer box and poking the toad out from behind.  Then he tossed him over the fence and hopefully he hopped AWAY from our yard.  AHAHAHAHA!  RIGHT!  I think we ALL know that's not the case.  But I'll keep telling myself that.

We find all kinds of amazing small animals in our pool.  Lots of toads, mosquitoes, and water bugs, of course, but we also find dead rats, moles, and chipmunks.  But yesterday, I saw a first.

Mom: LOOK AWAY.  Do I have to tell you twice????

A cute little water snake!!  Actually, there were two.

Hubs got two of these little snakes out yesterday, too!


Blah.

Blah.

Blah.

I'm trying to take up space.

So my mom can scroll down.

And get the icky icky snake off her screen.

Cuz I love you, Mom!

But I couldn't resist putting the little guy's pic up!

We now resume our regularly scheduled blog programming.

We are also emptying our pool, as the mosquitoes have simply become unbearable.  I have tried dunks for a little over a month now, but I'm almost out of them already and they just aren't helping.  So out with the water!!!!