Concrete and Cookies

We have amazing neighbors. They're the kind of neighbors that I didn't think existed anymore; when we moved in, they had us over for a cookout. That evening was full of good food and great company and before the evening was over, we felt like we were home. ***warm fuzzy***


That evening, we also learned 2 very exciting things about the husband:

1. He loves my butterscotch cookies and
2. He's a general contractor.

Not just any general contractor, mind you, but the general contractor who has done more work in our house than we have and who knows the history of our house pretty darned well.

Like that super-high kitchen floor, for example...it may be super-high but the tiles are straight because of him. He couldn't talk the previous owner out of laying the tile right over the existing floor, but at least he talked him into laying the tile straight. Yay, neighbor!

Being a general contractor, he immediately came to mind when we needed a concrete guy. When we asked if he had a good concrete guy, he said, "Yeah, actually, and it's the guy who did your sidewalk."

Our sidewalk? You mean the one stretch of concrete on our property that isn't buckled or cracked? Heck yeah!

So we hired the concrete guy to put in our new driveway. As part of that process, we needed to put in area walls to protect the basement windows. You know what area walls are...you just might not know what they're called. Here's a photo...with labels (how helpful am I?).

As it turns out, of all the tools we do have, the one needed to attach the area walls to the house is not among them. But our AwesomeNeighbor does have the right tool...and kindly offered to attach the area walls for us.

The weekend after the area walls were attached and the driveway was poured, I took a fresh batch of butterscotch cookies to AwesomeNeighbors' house to say thank you. Then I smiled and said another thank you, this time to the Universe.

There's a list for that.

As I've mentioned before, I like lists. Scratch that, I love lists. They help me think things through, remember stuff, and stay on task. So in the earliest days of my relationship with our house, I made a lot of lists.

There were lists for projects, project supplies, small tasks, "someday" wish lists, things for which we needed professional assistance...I even considered making a list of lists so I wouldn't forget any of the lists.

When you come to the point where you're making lists of lists, you either spiral into a recursive hell or you step back and try to find a better way. I stepped back, took a few (thousand) deep breaths, and came up with a better system.

Behold!

This is my "better system." Each one of those index cards represents a room in our house.  The list on the left side of the card is stuff that needs a-doin' and the list on the right side is stuff that needs a-buyin'.

Over time, we've added to the lists, crossed stuff off when it's done or bought, and once or twice, we've scratched parts of lists out when our plans changed.

Take the workroom, for instance...I know, it's the example for almost everything...but it really has been a microcosm of the house as a whole.

So, please, take the workroom (formerly called "Utility Room"). The list used to be 3 items. Then the plan changed. We decided to gut the room, and redo it. So we added a fourth item:

That scratched-out word is "Gut." I made the mistake of writing "Gut & Re-do" as a list item. Looking back, I probably should have just written "redo," not just because it shouldn't have been hyphenated, but apparently DBF stopped reading at the first word.

So one Saturday in January, I'm sitting in the dining room, figuring out what projects to tackle today, and I hear very loud noises coming from the basement. When I went downstairs, this is what I found (DBF has been grayed out to protect his "innocence").

Does that hammer look familiar?

That's the ceiling on the floor, by the way. Fun!

Yes, I know the demo needed to be done, but I hadn't thought the whole project through. Which meant I hadn't made a list for it. And I had hoped...well...I had hoped to make a list for it.

One of the best things about DBF is that sometimes he saves me from myself. 

Happy birthday to me.

What I really want for my birthday is for Mike Holmes and crew to come take care of some stuff around my house.

The mystery pipe.

This is the shutoff valve for a hose bib. On the bottom left, you can see that there are 2 90° branches. One of those branches goes to the hose bib. The other one? We're not sure. There's no extra water flowing anywhere (we've checked and rechecked), so we're hoping it's capped off. But again, we're not entirely sure.

The sagging ceiling.
There's nothing quite like a powder room with a ceiling that screams "cave-in imminent!"

The exposed power cable.
During the workroom demo, DBF discovered that the built-in shelves were hiding the power cable feeding the laundry room electrical outlets. Awesome, no?

No, not really.

The wall of shame.

Not my shame, but the same of whoever decided to put a carpeted bedroom along the wall with the main water shutoff, the front hose bib shutoff, and the master drain for the house. As I've mentioned before, being able to access your pipes is a really, really good thing. 

During the home inspection, Inspector Bill had to break out an angled mirror and a flashlight to find the front hose bib shutoff. The main water shutoff had an access panel, but the hose bib did not. So I had to install one. The wall now has 2 access panels so we can get to the shutoff valves, but the master drain is still behind drywall.



Moment of bragging (it is my birthday, after all), that's my very first drywall patch. You can see a pencil mark (we've not yet painted that room), but no seams. Go me.



The super-high kitchen floor.
Our kitchen floor is noticeably higher than it should be...we question what they actually put down before laying the tile. Our back door is in the kitchen, so that door had to get trimmed in order to clear the super-high floor.

Hey, is that daylight under that door? Yep, sure is.


Since I don't think the Canadian crew is going to make it down to the US to grant my birthday wish, I'll make do with a subscription to Mike's magazine and the company of DBF as we relax in our very own project-filled home.

Strippers in aisle six.

What better way to celebrate Independence Day than by tackling the oiliest, most annoying, and painfully tedious jobs around the house?

Okay, I can think of a few, but that's not the route we went.

Friday
...starts out with me oversleeping and DBF sending me off to work with the question, "You know you're leaking oil, right?"

Why no, in fact, I did not know that for the past six days my car was dripping oil onto our 3-week old, several thousand dollar concrete driveway. But I'm so glad I know now.

Fortunately for the car and my wallet the oil drip was a result of a messy mechanic. Unfortunately for the porous concrete, the oil sat for a few days before someone decided to share the news.

So Friday ends with Jill scrubbing her brand new concrete driveway. Know how to get oil out of concrete? Dish soap and a nylon scrub brush. If you act quickly (preferably in fewer than six days), the soap should be enough to emulsify the oil and a few rounds of scrubbing should get rid of the spots.

Sadly my concrete isn't quite as good as new, but it's certainly better than it was. I'm pretty sure that the day of the leak can be deciphered by how dark the spot still is. So, please, if you drip or spill or leak oil, clean it up ASAP. And if you notice that your significant other is dripping or spilling or leaking oil, please speak up immediately.

Saturday
...DBF is off at work and that means I can paint without him telling me I'm doing it wrong.

Has this ever happened to you? You get done painting your door frame but when you remove the tape, you find (dun dun duuunnn...) PAINT BLEED!

(I'm living out a FrogTape^® commercial here, bear with me a sec...)

That's what my painting looks like with generic blue painter's tape (see why I do this when DBF is away?). Last time I was at the MegaHardware Store, I threw caution to the wind and spent way more than I thought reasonable on 2 rolls of FrogTape^®. Supposedly it has this patented stuff that coats the thing and magically stops the messy schmutz from ruining your life...or paint job...depends on how seriously you take your paint.

Guess what? It works.

That's a pretty, clean paint line that does not need touch-up. Ribbit.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

...DBF titles this entry.

Sunday we started on the workroom floor. The whole workroom is an entry in and of itself, but the floor was the Sunday project. Or it was supposed to be. We have old vinyl tile...it may or may not contain asbestos...so the tile stays. But we need to seal and paint it, which requires scuffing the surface.

I know, I know...sanding VAT is a heinously bad idea...airborne particles...can't do it. My idea was to wet scuff the floor to prevent airborne particles. Unfortunately the floor has about as much paint on it as the walls in the room.

Enter the strippers.

DBF went to the MegaHardware Store (I refuse to go on weekend afternoons), walked up to an associate, and said "I'm looking to strip a floor."

"Strippers in aisle six."

Happy Independence Day, ya'll!

Everything was fine 'til the grill caught fire.

It's been a rough week here at the ol' homestead. A few days ago, DBF was grilling up some Italian sausages to add to his homemade spaghetti sauce (did I mention he cooks?!?) and he came into the house, moving quickly, and said, "We need baking soda."

"Are we on fire?"

"Yes, we're on fire."

So DBF set the grill on fire. It wasn't one of those small flare-ups that'll go out if you leave it alone—the grill was on fire.  Baking soda extinguished the fire and DBF somehow managed to save the sausages from both the flames and the baking soda—they actually added a nice, smokey flavor to the sauce.

Fortunately the grill is still fully-functional. Yay. I spent quite a bit of time yesterday cleaning up the mess  and when I was done, my hands and arms were covered in black greasy ick. As I washed up in the kitchen, I used the last of the soap from the in-counter soap dispenser, so I went to refill it.

As is the case with so many things in our house, the existing soap dispenser was old and less than fully operational. I couldn't refill it from above the counter (design flaw or years of abuse, it's hard to say), so I had to unscrew the reservoir whenever it needed refilling.

Notice the past tense?

The soap dispenser was in the very back of the tiny space under my sink—behind the garbage disposal, the pipes, and the sink basin. It also wasn't very well-secured, so I needed to hold the top part steady while I unscrewed the reservoir. That required an additional few inches on my reach—a very good job for channel locks. This had worked in the past...really.

Unfortunately, yesterday, I forgot something very important. Righty tighty, lefty loosey, right? Well, it depends.

If you're unscrewing a lid from a jar, you turn the lid to the left. If you're holding that jar the same way but unscrewing the jar from the lid...you turn the jar to the right. That's the part I forgot.

Here's the damage I inflicted and my chosen tools of destruction. (The vise grips actually came out later when I recruited DBF to help take apart the remains of the dispenser.)

Below is a closeup of the part I turned the wrong way until I killed it. Go me.



Like I said...it's been a rough week. But not to worry, I ran out to the local MegaHardware Store first thing this morning and procured a replacement...this time with the ever-so-handy "fill from above" feature.

And I installed it properly.

And I'm done for the day.

Get friendly with caulk.

And find a good caulk remover tool. This is a bad caulk remover tool. You see the metal part on the right side? It's attached to the handle with a glued-on piece of plastic. That glue has less strength than the caulk, I pretty much guarantee it. So unless you're ripping out soft, still-pliable caulk—and why would you be doing that—this tool will break.

See?

Fortunately...albeit rather embarrassingly...I'm a sucker for infomercials. So while DBF picked out the *ahem* soon-to-break tool, I was drawn to the DAP Pro Caulk tool kit which looks remarkably like something I once saw on an infomercial...so I had to have it.

It only cost about $5, so it wasn't a big deal. DBF rolled his eyes a bit, but I said a little prayer for Billy Mays, tossed it into the cart, and we moved on.

About two inches into the caulk removal, the more expensive tool broke. I let fly a ridiculously long string of curses (there's little I find more annoying than gearing up for a project and being thwarted almost immediately), regained my composure, and then pulled out the cheaper tool and a razor blade. Voilà! Caulk be gone.

That flat black thing in the background is the better caulk removal tool. I say "better" and not "good" because it, too, has its drawbacks. It's really, really thin, so if you're digging out caulk that you believe to be older than you, it will dig into your hands a bit. But it will also get the job done.

Compared to removal, application is the easy part...especially when DBF takes over. So in one long, dirty afternoon, we had a freshly-caulked, sealed, virtually ick-free tub.

After the tub, I felt rather empowered to conquer the world of caulk. So the next day I decided to tackle the gap between the kitchen counter and backsplash. I say gap, but in some places it was practically a crevasse. But hey, caulk'll fix it!

And it did...but I learned yet another valuable lesson.

Be absolutely, positively sure that you've thoroughly cleaned the area you're caulking...especially if you're using clear caulk.

Let my caulked sesame seed be your reminder: Clean before you caulk.

The mostly-true story of how quarter round almost ended our relationship.

The Players:
PERCOCET JILL (PJ): Having lifted a 5-gallon bucket of primer out of her car and wrenched her back, this Jill is on heavy painkillers.
IBUPROFEN JILL (IJ): Well into her recovery, this Jill is taking only ibuprofen but is still in pain and is highly irritable.
DBF: Incredibly patient and level-headed love of Jill's life.
VOICE OF REASON (VoR): Jill's magnificent mother.

Scene 1: In which Percocet Jill starts trouble.
DBF: We need to paint the baseboards. We should pull up the shoe molding.
PJ: Can we reuse it? It'll cost a lot to replace it all, won't it?

Baseboard and quarter-round.

DBF: It's really not that expensive to replace.
PJ (in "my word is final" voice): We need to reuse it.

***  2 weeks pass, DBF has painstakingly removed and labeled 7/8 of the existing quarter round. ***

Scene 2: In which Ibuprofen Jill has no memory of Percocet Jill's decision.
[sound of wood splintering]
IJ: What was that?
DBF (seething): I broke it.
IJ (soothingly): It's okay, it's not like we're reusing this.
[DBF turns to look at IJ, daggers shooting from his eyes.]
DBF: What?
IJ (hesitantly): We're not reusing this. We're replacing it, aren't we?
[DBF exits house.]

*** 1 week passes, DBF has begun the new quarter round installation. ***

Scene 3: In which a hammer is not the right tool for the job and the miter box is under utilized.

Miter box

DBF: Where's the Dremel?
IJ: Why do you need the Dremel?
[DBF points to the half dozen bent nails in the brand new quarter round.]
IJ: Oh. [looks around] Did you miter the ends?
DBF: [points to corner, rolls eyes] Yes.
IJ: No, I mean where they overlap. Look, right here. [points to where bookcase will reside and no one will ever see the molding] Why didn't you miter the overlap? It hides the seam better and this, well, it doesn't look very good. Didn't you know to miter the overlap?
DBF: I do now.
IJ (quietly): Should we redo it?
DBF: No. Now where's the Dremel?

*** 2 weeks pass. IJ's criticism combined with DBF's frustration of bent nails and dented quarter round has brought the project to a screeching halt. ***

Scene 4: In which Ibuprofen Jill vents to Voice of Reason.

Mitered overlap

[phone conversation]
IJ: I don't understand why it's taking so long, it's just a little bit of quarter round blah blah complain blah blah...
VoR (trying to interject): Jill...
IJ: blah blah complain blah complain complain blah...
VoR (yelling): JILL!
IJ: Yeah?
VoR: This has gone on long enough. I'm sending you your father this weekend.

A few days later, Jill's dad shows up, nail gun in hand. Somewhat miraculously, and with a little refereeing from Jill's dad, in one afternoon DBF and Jill complete the project that had lingered for weeks. Their relationship manages to survive and they have learned the following:

1. Do not reuse floor molding.
2. Miter, miter, miter.
3. A nail gun, not a hammer, is the right tool for the job.
4. It's really not worth fighting about.

Why you need the little door.

Remember the little door?

This is why you need the little door.

If the designers of the office building in which I work had read my blog (granted, the building preceded the blog), they'd know that being able to access your pipes is very important.

If they knew that being able to access your pipes is very important, they would have made sure to have a little door in this wall that would have prevented this drywall casualty.

Alas, the blog came too late and there was no little door.

So the plumbing job has just turned into plumbing + drywall job.

A tragedy that could have been prevented.

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= UPDATE=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

It looks like someone's been reading my blog!

Newly-installed little door. Yay.

There's more to life than just power tools.

For weeks before and after settlement, I scoured the Internet for a list of tools every homeowner must have. I couldn't find it, and I'm pretty good at finding things on the 'net. Without that list, I felt unprepared.

I don't like being unprepared. This is something for which I both blame and credit my father—a real-life version of Hank Hill, who, to quote Wikipedia "will always advocate doing the right thing in the right way."

So, without list in hand, I went to my local MegaHardware Store and bought a bunch of tools that I a) was convinced I needed and b) thought were pretty bad-ass.

Behold! The DeWalt 18 volt cordless XRP Li-Ion 4-tool combo kit with the following:

1. Reciprocating saw
2. Circular saw
3. Hammerdrill

(The 4th piece is a floodlight, which, while nice to have, wasn't a motivating factor in the purchase.)

Admittedly, I have a serious weakness for power tools. That weakness, combined with spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on something I'll spend the next three decades paying for, made the thought of spending a few hundred dollars on a set of power tools seem completely and totally reasonable.

It wasn't.

Anxious to share the joy that was my newly-acquired power tools, I called Dear Ol' Dad. After spewing the specs and eagerly awaiting the tool envy that I naïvely thought would be directed my way, Dad's steady voice asked, "Did you get any hand tools?"

Hand tools? Really? Do I need hand tools if I have a bitchin' set of power tools?

Yep. Sure do.

Fortunately my birthday was coming up, so for my birthday that year, I received some of the most useful hand tools I could have wished into existence.

   

1. Hand saw
2. Hacksaw
3. Level
4. Square
5. Vise grips
6. Channel lock pliers

As it turns out, I didn't actually need to scour the 'net for that list of tools...I just needed to ask Dad.

And now, after a year in the house, I've compiled my own list.

Water, water, every where...oh crap, where's the shutoff valve?

Lesson #2: If something is wet and you don't know why, find out immediately.

Sounds obvious, I know, but you might be surprised.

Cabinets under bathroom sinks hold lots of things--TP, reading material, cleaning supplies, and most importantly, pipes.

These are our pipes ("our" referring to myself and Dear BoyFriend who has entered into this adventure with me). These pipes, despite being the path for much water, should be dry. The area around these pipes should also be dry. So if something near these pipes, say the plastic TP packaging or the reading material, isn't dry, you need to find out why.

Don't assume it's because something got splashed or it's humid or your cat who likes to play in the water you leave for her in the sink got a little rambunctious one morning. Find out for sure.

We didn't. We waited, both of us assuming it was something small. Until one day, too long after noticing the first moisture, I noticed a puddle.

When inside, puddles are bad. You need to avoid them if you can, and I'm not talking about getting DBF to lay his coat over it so you can step down off the curb without sullying your stilettos. I'm talking about paying attention to water and finding out where it's coming from...pronto.

So let's take a look at those pipes again, this time with visual aids. That big red arrow is pointing to something you should be familiar with...the shutoff valve.

This, my friends (humor me, I like to think more than 1 person reads this), is your friend. If water is dripping, leaking, or gushing, turn this off. Righty tighty, lefty loosey.

Once the water is off and the dripping, leaking, or gushing has ceased, cleaning the mess and assessing the problem are the next steps...but we'll get to those later.

First things first, the many shutoff valves and where you may find them.

You've seen the one under the sink for the faucet. Remember, there are 2 of these...one for the hot and one for the cold. The sinks are all pretty similar, 2 water pipes, 2 shutoff valves.

Let's take a quick tour of the rest our house and its shutoff valves.

We have 2 hose bibs and their shutoff
valves both look like this:

Our shutoff for the whole house and 

both pipes for the washer look like this, too, 

though the washer pipes run vertically.

The water heater's is the red knob on the right-hand pipe

which is the pipe that brings the water into the heater.

Last stop on our tour is actually a minor detour. This isn't a shutoff valve, but it is a very important thing to be aware of...the little door. The little door is on the opposite side of the wall from our shower. Behind that little door are the shower pipes, and that's a good thing to know.


(Ours aren't actually that crooked, that was me, leaning over to get the picture.)


One last note on shutoff valves, they don't like halfway. They should be all the way open or all the way closed. They'll be happier and longer lived for it...and you, by extension, will be happier, too.

Things will go wrong.

"We can assure you:
    1. You will experience problems and headaches."

That stopped me in my tracks. For three weeks prior to that moment, I had been filling out countless forms, signing everything from loan applications to booklets warning me about the presence of lead paint to checks for more than I paid for my first two cars combined. Yet this was the first time any of it gave me pause.

I was buying a house, but did I really know what I was doing?

The "Expectation Clarification" form provided by the Home Inspector includes 21 items in the "We can assure you" list, none of them positive. It's a very detailed list that can be summed up in one very clear point: Things will go wrong.

But can't I, Jill Factotum, a Jill-of-all-trades, handle those things? Granted, the house is 50 years old and the previous owner rented it to someone who didn't take very good care of it, but she's got a solid foundation and a lot of potential. That should be enough, right?

[...crickets chirping...in the basement...]

I bought the house, complete with crickets in the basement. And now, a year later, I've decided to share the lessons, trials, and triumphs of that first year. You may think it would have been more appropriate to blog these things as they happened (I think so, too), but even the best laid plans are subject to Lesson #1: Things will go wrong.