The Duper Dwelling

Week of calamity

2012-01-09T20:23:00.001-05:00

Oh what a week the Dupers had last week! We're starting 2012 off the right way. This is going to be a long post, so sit back and enjoy our misadventures.

On Tuesday, I was doing dishes and reached under the kitchen sink for a new sponge. Bad idea. Under the kitchen sink was very wet and in some places had a nice layer of fuzzy mold growing. Yay! Leaks and mold!

While I finished cooking dinner using the bathroom sink, Mike found that the problem was pretty simple. The twisty thing on the right side of the drain trap was loose. He cleaned it up, tightened it all, and we were set.

We proceeded to congratulate ourselves on being the kind of homeowners who can handle problems. Pride goeth...

I then walked into the first floor bathroom and found a puddle on the floor. Thankfully it was a clean puddle. But the puddle was on the uphill side of our downward sloping bathroom. Wondering if water runs uphill in the Duper Dwelling, I showed it to Mike.

It was almost bed time, and we were pretty worn out. We agreed to play it safe by turning off the valve that supplies water to the toilet. Valve off, we turned in for the night.

Wednesday after work, we had to run Bessie over to the Chevy dealer since her speedometer has stopped working (another story for another day). Because the Chevy dealer is across town, we had agreed to play the valve game until Thursday.

We got home from the dealership Wednesday night, and Mike went to turn the valve to turn the toilet water on. Well, it was on alright. On as in leaking all over the bathroom floor. And it was late enough that our local hardware store was closed.

McGyver Mike kicked in to action. From downstairs I heard a lot of clomping around and bangs and crashes. McGyver Mike reappeared downstairs 10 minutes later with a valve from the scraps from the upstairs bathroom, a tub of plumber's putty, and a couple of wrenches.

He cleaned it up, tightened it all, and we were set.

Again, we proceeded to congratulate ourselves on being the kind of homeowners who can handle problems. Pride goeth before...

Thursday morning the water company was scheduled to come between the convenient hours of nine and noon to install a new water meter. I ate half a day of precious vacation time to sit around and wait.

Now let's talk about our water setup in the basement. Like my MS Paint diagram? Good. I have Photoshop but since I used it all day at work today, I just didn't feel like it. And I've just been informed it's not 100% accurate, but it'll do.

The main water line comes into our basement wall. Then it hits the main shutoff valve (red circle). A small pipe goes from the main valve to the water meter (gray box). Then it hits the internal shutoff valve (green circle), turns vertical and hits two more valves. Why the extra valves, you ask? Heck if we know.

The green circle valve has had a slow leak for a long time. And the two blue ones are worthless and offer only opportunities for more leaks. So it's been on the list for a long time to rework this whole shebang.

So on Thursday the water people came and gave us a new meter. In doing so, they shook the whole assembly around a bunch, leading green valve to leak even more. Because of that, Mike decided Thursday night would be "fix stupid valves" night.

I was at my mom's for dinner when my phone rang.

Mike: "Hi babe."

Amy: "Hi honey."

M: "We have a problem."

A: "Oh yeah?"

M: "The water company will be here within a half hour to do an emergency shutoff at the curb."

A: "..."

M: "..."

A: "HAHAHA! How much will that cost?"
M: "$30"

A: "Wow, that's cheap."

When Mike had gone to fix the green valve, he turned the red valve to turn off the water. And well, the red valve snapped off in his hand. So there was no way to turn off the water from the house.

By the time I made it home, the water company had determined that the outside valve was broken, too. So they were going to bring in a backhoe to dig it up. They and the other utility companies spray painted a bunch of lines all over our sidewalk and street. I went and bought a few gallons of water. Then I took a prescription sleep aid and went to bed. Sometime when I was hanging out with the floaty green butterfly, they did indeed get the valve to turn without digging.

Mike and my dad spent much of Friday tracking down a new main valve (not for sale to homeowners - only to professional plumbers) for the low price of $70.

They installed it, the water company finally made it back to turn the water on, and at 6:30 on Friday we had full water pressure with not a single leak. Yay!

Yet again, we proceeded to congratulate ourselves on being the kind of homeowners who can handle problems. Pride goeth before a great embarrassment.

We hadn't had enough fun, so on Saturday we worked upstairs. I was on the stilts stripping paint out of this doorway. Mike was in the stairwell to the left using a plunge cutter to trim out some drywall details.

Suddenly my dad heard a noise. "Is that an alarm?" Yep. See the red thing? Under there is the sensor for our hardwired smoke alarm. But we didn't have the red thing up at the time, and the combination of dust and heat and paint fumes triggered it.

Mike bolted downstairs to call off the alarm company. By the time he made it back upstairs, I could hear the Crafton VFD alarm going off. We hoped it wasn't for us.

I glanced out of the window from my extra tall vantage point, and whooee here came the fire truck. Though it was a false alarm, the VFD makes a point of checking things out just in case things really aren't under control. Thankfully everything was fine, and they left us to wrap up work for the day.

Sunday, Mike and I sat on the couch and watched football and played video games. Sometimes you have to quit when you're slightly ahead.

Second floor drywall is done!

2011-12-30T13:47:00.000-05:00

Done done done!

Check out the finished stairwell:

I like the math magic shown in the last picture. You can tell Mike has a minor in mathematics, right?

So we close out 2011 with all walls up, and with mudding and sanding next on the list. It's a pretty good feeling. This year, we've rebraced the attic stairs, insulated all second floor walls, hung ceilings and walls, added a new garage door and opener, replaced our fence, grown and harvested a lovely little garden, stripped paint, cleaned plaster off of brick, and done our best to maintain social and professional lives.

The pictures below are a good indicator of our progress.

Drywall pile when it was delivered:

Drywall pile today:

See ya, 2011 - bring on the mudding and sanding in 2012!

Drywall-a-palooza: Part 2

2011-11-20T08:02:00.001-05:00

Found the camera. It was on the third floor, on Mike's desk. Of course!

Before I show off the finished bedroom walls, I want to share some of the work that has to happen before drywall goes up.

Modern construction follows a set of strict rules and measurements to ensure that the building process is ultra-efficient, from both a time and materials standpoint. For example, modern studs are generally spaced 16 or 24 inches apart, to ensure that sheets of drywall that measure 4 x 8 feet will fit evenly.

In 1890, the whole house was made of plaster and lath, so it didn't matter if the studs were irregularly spaced. But since we're using modern 4 x 9' sheets of drywall, we have extra work. See the extra piece of pine that's screwed to the stud on the right side of this picture?

And the pieces on the third and sixth (from the left) studs? Yep - those are extra pieces we need to add to make sure there's something that will hold the drywall.

For our next lesson in old ass house construction, take a look at the next image. That's new insulation hung on an interior wall. Wondering why we'd ever do that?

Here's the deal. Plaster and lath construction is incredibly heavy, durable, and thick. It's very soundproof. That's one of the main reasons that old houses feel "solid" while modern McMansions feel hollow and echo-y. Most home restorers try to keep the plaster around and have it repaired.

That wasn't possible for us given the thirty or so fist-sized holes in each ceiling, and the scary wiring, and the lack of exterior wall insulation. So we're using insulation around the master bedroom to bump up the soundproofing.

Once all of that extra work is done, the actual walls can be added. Look! Our bedroom!

Last topic for the day: paint stripping. I may have mentioned earlier that all of the woodwork in the entire house has been painted. While Mike and my dad hang walls, I've been stripping paint. Here's the bedroom doorway so far. The next picture represents about 5 hours of work with the heat gun and putty knife.

And sometimes the painted woodwork is hard to reach. So I get to use the stilts!

Next up, hallway walls and more paint stripping.

Drywall-a-palooza: Part 1

2011-11-20T06:28:00.001-05:00

For the record, the radio silence on the Duper Dwelling blog does not translate into lack of work on the house. It's a pretty busy time for both of us at our actual jobs (the ones that pay money that we spend on supplies for working on the house). At home, we've stepped up the pace on the drywall work and paint stripping. That translates into less time for blogging. But I'm awake before dawn on a Sunday morning, so here we go.

First, one sheet of drywall went up in the front room:

That sheet became a wall:

And the wall became a room:

It's pretty weird to not be able to see through the walls anymore. Particularly because we tore out the walls in 2009. Sheesh.

The pictures above are from the room we call the "front room." It's actually a bedroom, but our plan is to make it the living room while we live upstairs, and the office when we're in the whole house. That way we can keep the third floor set up as a guest area, which provides a little more privacy for visitors.

Next up: Drywall-a-palooza: Part 2. Coming later this morning when Mike wakes up and I can ask him where he put the camera. Finding things in this ~~workzone~~ house is a never ending challenge. Particularly since we sleep in the dining room and our dining room set is in the garage. Confused about the floor plan yet?

New fence!

2011-09-17T15:48:00.000-04:00

New fence! New fence! New fence!

It's pretty exciting. Today we did clean-up - cleaned up the yard mess, and cleaned up the 2nd floor to prepare to drywall the actual walls. But first, the new fence.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

I don't have a "before" picture for the next one, but this area behind our garage has traditionally been a place to dump extra dirt and rocks, and for the dogs to poop. We've made it the compost area, and it's fenced off from the dogs until the new grass comes in.

The dogs approve of the new fence.

Most of our drywall work has been put on hold because of the state of the second floor. Since we can't throw away building materials in Crafton, we were saving them all for another dumpster week.

Turns out a 15 cubic foot dumpster is a little big for what we needed this time, but at least things are cleaned up now.

Wonder what the phone number is for the dumpster company?

Mike's wrong trousers

2011-09-07T20:46:00.001-04:00

Mike got stilts!

They remind me of this:

He says they're going to help with the drywall mudding and sanding. But he seems to be having a lot of fun with them in our kitchen and living room.

Coming soon: new fence! Here's a preview.

Before:

During:

Two days into the fence process, the old one is down, and our yard looks like hell. Looking forward to the new one going up to hide the mess.

Blog guilt: I haz it

2011-08-29T19:09:00.010-04:00

"Amy..."
"..."
"Aaaamyyyy..."
"...what?"
"AAAAMYYYY!"
"What, who, who are you?"
"I'm the ghost of Blogmas past."

Yup. That's my not-so-witty way of saying I keep thinking of updating the blog. Generally I think of it in the middle of the night, when I'm not sleeping anyway. But since using a lit screen at night isn't recommended for insomniacs, and I'm not my sharpest at 3:00 in the morning, I never seem to make it to post about our house progress. Excuses. I haz those too.

I've been up and around off of crutches for awhile now. I've been able to tend the garden that Mike planted for me this spring. Isn't it gorgeous?

We've had lots of cucumbers and tomatoes, and I've been canning the extra.

With the help, hard work, advice, and company of Mike's dad and my dad, we've finished hanging the drywall for all of the 2nd floor and hallway.

I could take lots of pictures of my beautiful ceilings, but this one showcases the challenges of drywalling an old house:

Other summer projects have included planting lots of flowers and resealing our front porch. It was hard enough to get that thing built - we don't intend to let it rot back off.

So what's next? Walls and a new fence. That's right - new fence!

Spring sprang sprung

2011-05-14T14:54:00.008-04:00

And then 6 weeks went by without a post.

We've been kind of busy. First, Mike and my dad hung half of our bedroom ceiling.

Then there were some small structural fixes to make:

Then, we went on our "last hike":

Last hike? I wanted to get out in the woods before I ended up with this bad boy on my foot:

Work on the house stalled, as Mike's been spending most of his time taking care of me and the regular house stuff (laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning). We're both still working full-time (thankfully in this economy), so that takes up some time too. Just a couple of weeks ago, we came home from work to see this beside the house:

This conversation followed.

Mike: Do we have water?
Guy in hole: Yeah you have water.
M: Oh good. What's wrong?
GiH: Is this your house?
M: Yeah, we live here.
GiH: Do you ever smell sewage inside?
M: Not really.
GiH: You were tied in wrong. You were tied in to a broken pipe, so your liquids were getting through but your solids were backed up.
M: ...

Exciting! More that I ever wanted to know about our sewage!

Our bedroom and 2nd floor hallway now have full ceilings hung. As I write this, Mike and my dad are upstairs pounding on things and banging things around. That sound translates to prep work on the front room's joists.

I'm not much help lately, but now that I traded in Big Foot for Das Boot, I can help with normal household chores, like hanging out with Chester the guinea pig while Mike cleans his cage.

I'm still not really up for carrying drywall, though. We're still accepting volunteers!

Now we can start a garage band

2011-03-27T15:35:00.011-04:00

Remember our garage door? Since I last wrote about it, we broke a window (and patched it with plywood) and had problems with it. Sometimes it would get stuck up. Sometimes it would get stuck down. Both are bad.

A couple of months ago, the automatic opener finally sh** the bed.
Good riddance! That thing was probably the original garage door opener ever in the entire world. See?

So it was time to order a new one. The door was getting increasingly bad - the bottom was rotting out, and it weighed ten million pounds (my estimate). So we went for it - new opener and new door.

The new door is awesome. The picture here doesn't do it justice because I didn't feel like moving the cars. But you get the idea.

Even better? We got a keypad for the opener.

That means when I'm out in the garden, and I need a shovel, I don't have to track down the single garage door opener that we formerly owned. I can use the keypad, or the car's opener, or the truck's opener, or the keychain opener we keep in the house. Options!

Here's the new opener for anyone who wants to house geek out with me:

And well, it's a damn good thing we got the garage all spiffy and ready to go. Because two days after the door was installed, the drywall for the second floor was delivered.

If I remember correctly, you're looking at 55 sheets of 4 x 9', 1/2" wall board, and 25 sheets of 4 x 8', 5/8" sheets for the ceilings. Plus some sound insulation and a box of contractor bags.

Who wants to help carry it? Anyone?

Found: 3 pieces of tan car

2011-02-22T20:38:00.012-05:00

We live on a corner. Not just a corner property but also in the apex of a bend in the road.

Our house has the "A" over it:

Now, see the white car on the map that's heading for our house? If that car is going too fast, or if the roads are slick, or if drivers are not paying attention to what they are doing, well, this shows what could happen.

See how the arrow points RIGHT at our house?

We've heard countless cars blow out tires and rip off pieces of fender on our curb and the curb by our next-door neighbor's house. Two summers ago, a couple of underage drunk girls did this:

They came up the street, hit the curb, somehow ended up airborne, sliced a telephone pole in half, landed on the street upside down, and slid over 50 feet on the roof of the car. Everyone was unhurt except the pole.

Today, some jackass went too fast in the snow around our bend and drove into our yard. Now I know it was slick, but keep in mind that dozens of other cars managed this maneuver without crashing.

Yep. That's a tire track leading directly to the rock wall. Thankfully somebody was thinking ahead a hundred years ago and built a rock wall in front of our house. We've talked about replacing it with a real retaining wall, but I'm starting to think the rocks are a little more car-proof. Think the rocks were put there to be buggy-proof back in 1890?

I get upset about this kind of thing because [begin rant] I just don't understand what is so hard to figure out about 1) a 25 m.p.h. speed limit 2) a sign that says TURN and 3) what is so #*%&# important in your life that you are willing to risk your life and that of others to go faster to the traffic light that is almost always red. What if one of the neighborhood kids had been on our sidewalk? Or if one of us had been shoveling snow? [end rant]

We know for a fact that at least one car took out the front porch in the past. Hey Crafton drivers, let's try to avoid doing that again - please? Oh, and random driver who ended up in our yard: we have some pieces of your car. I'll trade them for an apology.

Brace yo'self fool!

2011-01-30T13:50:00.007-05:00

Over the last couple of weeks, Mike and my dad and I worked to rebrace the attic stairs. Remember that project? Well today, after adding new stringers to the stairs, we removed the floor jacks. Slowly...sloooowly...and the house creaked for a moment and sat still. Success!

Here's a small sampling of the new support system for the stairs.

New stringers:

Notice that the stairs still aren't level - we'll level out the drywall to make it look square. But this is a huge improvement:

Big bolts and one of the 8 or so 2x4 pieces bracing the stairs from the side:

Proof that the attic door closes completely now:

Next up: finishing the insulation and behind the wall odds and ends. Then we get a whole bunch of drywall. Does anyone deliver?

Merry Christmas from the Dupers

2010-12-22T07:14:00.003-05:00

Frustration is a primary emotion felt by home rehabbers. We read all about it before we bought the Duper Dwelling. We've felt it through some rough patches - the dishonest porch contractor, the frozen and exploding pipes, the nonworking furnace. A couple of weeks ago, we had a disagreement with our electrician that sparked my creativity. I present to you a Christmas poem about our house:

Twas the night before Christmas
and through the money pit
not a creature was stirring
in our big pile of s**t.

The Dupers shivered under blankets in bed
while thoughts of insulation danced in their heads.
The fuse box sat, sprouting odd wires
while they carefully watched for signs of electric fires

When out on the lawn there arose such a pow
I sprang from the bed to see what was happening now.

The streetlight shining right in my eyes
lit up our big Christmas surprise
when, what to my wondering eyes should appear
a code violation for the end of the year.

The well-paid electrician, one of my gripes
did not move the fusebox away from the pipes.

Now plumbing, now electric, now HVAC and gas!
On fixtures, and drywall, and busting your ass!
To the end of the yard and down the rock wall
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!

* * *

Now the good news here is that we came to a good agreement with the electrician on how to best handle the situation. So for now the frustration is gone and I'm having that feel-good feeling about our accomplishments. 2010 has been a big year for the house - the landscaping work, new HVAC, insulation, wiring, roof work, and front walkway come to mind. Here's to 2011 bringing us walls and potentially a move upstairs.

Merry Christmas and happy 2011!

Jacked up

2010-12-12T11:19:00.004-05:00

Our house is crooked. I think that's pretty normal for a structure built 120 years ago. But since we are taking out the walls, we have the opportunity to try to straighten things out a little.

Remember what the attic stairs looked like back when we had walls? No? OK, here. See how the angles aren't really 90 degrees in that doorway? That's because the attic stairs are sagging over the front hallway. They're so crooked that the attic door does not close.

So we got out the floor jacks.

This one holds the first floor hallway up and braces the whole contraption from the ground (basement) up.

Then this one sits on top of that. This is the jack that does the lifting.

The next image shows exactly what we are lifting - the attic stairs.

And this last one shows how crooked they were on Day 1, when we set up the jacks.

The above pic also shows some of the dozens of rolls of insulation we've added to the house's exterior walls. It's my hope that we can turn the furnace up past "frigid" to "tepid" once we have the house insulated.

So every couple of days, we've added an inch or so to the first floor's jack. We're now to the point where we can close the attic door - it won't latch, but I don't think it ever will. But there's a definite improvement.

Next up? Bracing the stairs so that they stay in their new upright position.

Metamorphosis

2010-09-06T10:33:00.008-04:00

...and the ugly brick pile was transformed into a beautiful new brick walkway.

The End.

If it were only that easy. Put it this way: I never want to see a shovel again as long as I live. Too bad we live in Pittsburgh and winter is only a few months away.

Remember the brick pile? After we built the stairs, our front walkway looked like this.

I thought pouring the concrete and building the stairs was difficult. Ha.

The first step to installing a brick walkway is to dig down 8 inches from where the top of your bricks will eventually rest. Too bad our soil is all heavy, packed clay. It also hasn't rained very much here, so this part of the job required a mattock and shovel. When that was finished, the walkway looked like this:

The caption of that picture should be "Amy's Sore Back." After digging everything out, Bessie got to go on her bi-weekly visit to Lowes for a cubic yard of gravel.

And then after that, she went for a cubic yard of sand. And then back again for another cubic yard of sand. [We pause here to give a shout-out to our next door neighbors, who kindly let us pull Bessie up on their driveway and then into our front yard so that we didn't have to wheelbarrow hundreds of pounds of sand and gravel. Thanks again!]

The walkway now looked like this:

We didn't get any action shots of us laying the brick, but I'll paint a picture with words. Mike cut up pieces with the angle grinder and laid the brick. I used a mason's hammer to break off all of the old mortar.

Every time I picked up a brick I shrieked. Over the last two years, the most horrifying assortment of spiders (tarantula-sized, I swear), millipedes, and *shudder* centipedes took up residence in the brick pile. Horrible. Horrible. Nightmare-inducing bugs. Every time I screamed, Mike said, "You have a hammer in your hand. Just kill it!"

In the end, it all came together:

Best of all, we could move our "temporary" mailbox - a.k.a. the "ghetto box" - so that our mailman will now use the real mailbox on the front porch.

And they all lived happily ever after.

I just couldn't take it any more

2010-08-22T12:57:00.010-04:00

Our kitchen floor was dissolving.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Exhibit C

Exhibit D

Exhibit E

It wasn't really worth it for us to truly fix the floor, as the kitchen is going to be gutted down to the studs once we move upstairs. But it was driving me crazy.

Every time I walked into the kitchen barefoot (and not pregnant), pieces of crappy peel and stick tile would stick to my feet. Our large area rug was constantly being shoved up against the wall by dog derbies. Mopping the floor was a joke as the dirt would collect in the dents and holes, and mop water only served to detach more of the tile.

So we priced out the cheapest outdoor carpet we could find: $0.44 per square foot. It looked like this:

While my putting could use some improvement, I wasn't interested in practicing in the kitchen.

The next step up was gray, so we went for it. Since this was to be a temporary solution, our plan was to staple it down in the corners and glue the middle with carpet glue.

Partway through:

Finished:

I never thought I'd carpet a kitchen, but it does the job for now. My feet are much happier.

Central A.C. Heck yeah.

2010-06-30T10:42:00.003-04:00

So I wrote forever ago about how hard it was to decide how to go about getting our HVAC overhauled. We finally made a decision and scheduled a date to get our new system installed.

Tah dah!

OK, I know that doesn't look exciting. But this is what we had done:
- One furnace from 1973 removed.
- One small, lower end furnace from 2003 removed.
- Piles of old ductwork removed.
- Lots of new ductwork added throughout the house.
- One brand new 95% efficient furnace added.
- One brand new central A.C. system added (we were using window units before).
- One brand new full-house humidifier added.
- One brand new full-house air cleaner added.
- One super high tech zoning system added, allowing us to independently program and set the temperatures of the first floor and combined 2nd/3rd floors.
- One large dent in checkbook.

But it was totally worth it for the air alone. We are all much more comfortable. I'm also hoping for some improved comfort this winter since the furnace is so much more efficient. Maybe the thermostat can be set to "frugally chilly" instead of "cheapskate frigid".

Dear Crafton residents interested in our brick pile...

2010-06-30T10:20:00.004-04:00

I know it's been tempting. It's been sitting right THERE for 14 months.

But the brick pile is mine. All MINE. And you can't have it. See, we built a pretty darn nice set of stairs built from it.

Next comes the actual walkway to the house. So hands off my brick pile!

The great flood of oh-ten

2010-06-03T19:23:00.008-04:00

Last night, I got home from work and said to Mike, "I think I'll finally update our blog tonight after dinner." We've started moving ahead on the HVAC, and we've rebuilt our front walkway's stairs. There's lots of progress to show.

I started dinner (burritos with my new favorite veggie - fresh jalapenos) and Mike sat down with our laptop at the kitchen table. In between updating his Facebook page and laughing at Awkward Family Photos, he checked the weather.

"Tornado warning!" he exclaimed.
"Watch?" I asked.
"No, warning," he replied.

(End fiction-style dialogue.)

Basically the storm from hell was headed right for us. So I turned off the stove and we got ready to head for the basement. Ten minutes before it reached us, the National Weather Service let the tornado warning expire, but we were still in for it.

Round 1 of the storm hit hard. Sheets of rain, some hail, constant lightning - it was really something. When it settled down, so I started dinner again. As the taco meat cooked, I decided to check the basement. Sometimes in heavy rains, water seeps up from between the cracks in the cement floor.

Mike must have been unhappy to hear me shouting from the basement: "Oh sh--! We have a huge problem!"

Oh yes. A river runs through it.

The parts of the foundation that are outside of the basement were pouring water into the space behind this door. If you click to zoom in, you can see the water flow - this shot was taken after the main flood:

Interestingly, the water wasn't coming from the doors themselves. It was actually coming through the foundation. You can kind of see the situation in this image:

That also meant that the water was coming from under that door and a river was running through the basement to the drain in the floor. Just then, round 2 of the storm hit.

KDKA, our local news station, says we got 2" of rain in an hour. I believe it.

I guess the pictures don't do it justice, but during round 2, it sounded like someone was filling a bathtub behind the door. When we finally did open the door, it looked like a garden hose was being sprayed through three places in the stone wall.

We set up a channel system with towels and 2x4s to direct the water to the drain and hoped that the drain would keep draining. If it had stopped, we would have lost everything in the basement. The water flow was unbelievable.

Luckily, in the end, this is all we lost (and most of it was due to go to the Salvation Army anyway):

We did much better than the people half a mile west, who had 4-6 feet of water in their basements. We're very lucky.

New project with high priority: sealing the foundation by those doors and rearranging our stuff to be on shelves above the basement flood plain.

HVAC stands for

2010-05-06T18:46:00.004-04:00

Holy variable annoying choices!

We decided that it's time to get rid of the Temp-O-Matic and the furnace that sometimes doesn't work and get an all new furnace instead of two crappy ones. We are going to install central air at the same time. Sounds easy, but expensive, right?

If only. Multiple bids, multiple ideas for rerunning the ductwork, and multiple days of the two of us staring at each other and saying, "We really need to make a decision."

In the meantime, we now have two steps for our new walkway, about a thousand nails pulled from the second floor studs, and other odds and ends wrapped up.

I discovered this amazing program - Room Arranger - that allows you to draw in walls and arrange your house. Yeah, that's taken up pretty much all of my free time in the last two weeks. Once I finish a floor plan, I'll share it with y'all. I'm working on before and after plans for the whole house. Sad discovery - we only have room for a pool table on the front porch or in the garage. Happy discovery - we have room for a hot tub in the back yard.

Just sayin'. A girl can dream.

Photographic proof of dumpster week

2010-04-03T16:11:00.010-04:00

I normally loathe putting pictures of myself on the web, but y'all just need to see this. THIS is how dirty it was doing demo work in our house:

We actually had friends drive by, and when I walked out onto the front porch to wave, they didn't recognize me. The insides of our walls are so dirty. I just don't get it. Did the original owners heat the house with coal and not vent the fireplace at all? Ugh.

So let's go on a tour of the demolition area. This picture shows the former location of one of the two walls that separated our house into two apartments.

It used to be the wall that held the door shown on the left of this picture:

(How 'bout that weatherproofing, eh?)

Now that hallway looks like this:

Our stairwell looks like this:

When we were done with the walls, and the crappy tile that covered the original wood floors in the front bedroom and downstairs hallway, there was still room left in the dumpster. Well, we are not people who will send a dumpster away half empty. So Mike sledgehammered our cracked concrete front walkway.

Here's a nice view of his handiwork, and the caution tape we posted until we get a new brick walkway put in. To the right, you'll see the pile of bricks that will be the walkway. Front center, you'll see that we moved our awesome mailbox closer to the road so that our mailman escapes major injury (make sure you click on the picture for the full-size view):

(Digression about the brick pile: as of today, three different people who are total strangers to us have driven by and asked if we are planning to use the brick. I am embarrassed by this as, yes, the brick pile has been out front for a year. But we were busy! We got married! And we work full time jobs! So for all of you locals...yes, we plan to use the brick pile. Soon. Thanks for asking.)

We hadn't had enough fun yet, so we then pulled down the shrub monster. My dad came over with his chainsaw, we cut them down, and then we used Bessie to pull out the roots. Mike was in his glory - using Bessie to rip things out of the ground.

Finally, last Monday, we sent the dumpster away. This pic was taken before we loaded the shrub monster's remains on top.

Best thing about the shrub monster's demise? I get to put my garden in its place:

Demolition weekend

2010-03-21T20:29:00.004-04:00

I'll start this post by apologizing for the lack of pictures. I'm too tired to pick up the camera to plug it into the computer.

We spent Friday night, all day Saturday, and all day Sunday doing demolition work and filling our 20 cubic yard dumpster.

As of now (Sunday night), we have removed all walls, ceilings, carpet, and wood trim from the second floor hallway. We have also removed all walls and all of the trim (except baseboards) from the 1st to 2nd floor stairwell. Mike also used a variety of implements of destruction to remove our front walkway, which was made of crumbling concrete.

Dumpster status: 65% full.

When we bought the house, we had a bunch of people say, "You never know what you'll find in those walls." Imagine how excited I was when I found a large roll of yellowed paper in the wall on the first floor. It looked like it could have been a treasure map or the original plans to the house. As I excitedly chipped away at the plaster and lath, gently so that I wouldn't damage the paper, I had dreams of gold or floor plans running though my head. I pulled off my work gloves, brought it out onto the front porch, gingerly unrolled it, and then Mike said, "It's a window blind." Yep. At some point, someone either purposely or accidentally sealed a window blind in the wall. No treasure. No floor plans. Just a really, really old blind.

So that I don't continue to ramble in my fatigued state, I'll wrap this post up with a list.

Good things from this weekend:
- Discovered original wood floors in good condition on second floor
- Ripped out loads of old nasty dusty plaster and lath
- Ate pizza and Chinese food all weekend - no cooking!

Bad things from this weekend:
- Found the scariest wiring setup yet in the ceiling
- No treasure map, bag of gold, box of money, or floor plans in walls
- Tired and sore

Things left to do:
- Remove remaining trim and carpet
- Destroy the shrub monster
- Carry more crap to the dumpster
- Go to sleep at 9:00 p.m. on a Sunday.

Goodnight, all.

Month of calamity

2010-03-15T21:11:00.008-04:00

Don't let the lack of posting action fool you into thinking things have been quiet around here. Though the mountains of snow prevented us from beginning any new work on the Duper Dwelling, there have been plenty of things to deal with in the last few weeks.

First, the Icicle of Doom became The Fence Killer:

Then, while we were out one evening, the dogs decided to destroy our houseplants:

We know it wasn't the beagle - he was in his crate. Despite that, I still checked for signs that he escaped and then locked himself back in his crate.

A few days after that, in a fit of sudden superhuman strength, I ripped the paper towel holder out of the wall. Twice.

And then, best of all, the water main outside of our house broke. Three times in about a week. See the picture below?

During this third and worst incident, the water main broke around 9:00 a.m.
At 3:00 p.m., the water company hit our gas line while digging.
At 6:00 p.m., Mike took pictures and asked when they'd be finished. They said 5-6 hours.
At 11:30 p.m., we decided to turn off the light and try to sleep, despite the bulldozering and jackhammering fifty feet from our heads. (BANG BANG BANG...RRRRRRRRRRRR...BEEEEEP BEEEEEP BEEEEEP.)
At 4:00 a.m., they turned the water back on (yay) and started backfilling the hole (boo). It sounded something like this: BANG BANG BANG SCRAAAAAPE BANG BANG BANG SCRAAAAAPE BANG BANG BANG, only with each BANG, our house, windows, and dishes rattled.

Our alarm went off at 6:00 a.m. The water company left at 7:00 a.m. after having guys on the job for 22 hours. I hope they're being paid well.

Did I mention it was a Wednesday night?

Anywho, spring is here and we're past all of that. I have bulbs coming up and a dumpster being delivered on Friday. We're taking out the rest of the walls on the second floor and removing the nasty old tile from the front room on the second floor. Hopefully we'll make some real progress in the next month or two.

Snowpocalypse and the Icicle of Doom

2010-02-15T20:39:00.007-05:00

So it snowed last weekend, as you may have heard. Here's what it looked like after Mike spent three hours shoveling:

Thanks to below-freezing temperatures and daily snow showers, the snow is still here. It's quite unusual for over two feet of snow to stick around in Pittsburgh - usually we'll get rain or a warm snap within a couple of days. We have had some cold and sunny days, though, which have created...

THE ICICLE OF DOOM:

To give you a real sense of the size of this thing, look for the stockade fence at the bottom of the frame in the picture above. See the tips? That fence measures 6 feet tall. The Icicle of Doom has been making me lose sleep for approximately four days now.

I'm afraid that it will fall and A) knock over the fence, B) rip off our gutters, C) rip off the side of our house, D) kill somebody, or E) all of the above.

With both of us off of work for the holiday today, it was time to take action:

While Mike went after the IoD with a hand saw, I cleaned snow off of the garage roof. A few local buildings have had their roofs collapse, and with 4-8 inches of snow forecasted for tonight, it was time to lighten the load.

Other than that, there is not much to report. We are stalled on gutting the rest of the second floor as there is nowhere to park a dumpster on the snow-covered streets. I'm also delaying on more wood trim paint stripping work until it's warm enough to open windows. I think it's time to start planning my garden.

Our insanity grows - introducing the dream stove

2010-02-01T21:18:00.008-05:00

In the last two years, we have moved to Pittsburgh from two different locations, started new jobs (two for me, one for Mike), bought the Money Pit, gutted the second floor, replaced the porch, replaced all windows, replaced the front door, remodeled the second floor bathroom, adopted a third dog and a guinea pig, planned a wedding, got married, and done some other things.

But it's never enough. So now we're going to refinish an antique stove for our kitchen. Meet...the dream stove!

We scored this A-series Chambers range from Craigslist. It likely dates between the late 1930s and mid 1940s. The people we bought it from helped us load it on Bessie, the truck. When we got home, my dad and I promptly dropped it out of the truck on Mike's leg. He's OK now, I think.

It's mostly cast iron (just like the dream tub!) and easily weighs 300-350 pounds. Chambers are absolutely killer stoves, and there is a small but passionate online community devoted to their restoration and use.

We're also lucky that one of the people who is recommended for restoration work and parts is located in Pittsburgh, right across the Ohio river from us.

Up close, it doesn't exactly look dreamy. But with some cleanup and TLC, we're convinced that it'll look fab in our future kitchen.

I think she needs a name. Suggestions, anyone?

New year, new bathroom

2010-01-09T16:29:00.008-05:00

We've been busy since my last post. The bathroom is nearing completion (yay!).

We finished the crown molding (except for one more coat of paint):

Installed our sink:

Got the bathtub upstairs and installed it and the toilet:

Now, all we have to do is to hang the wall and door trim (which is stripped and ready for paint), put another coat of paint on the crown molding, install the shower riser and shower curtain over the tub, and install our towel racks and shelves.

Oh. And find the door. When we demoed the 2nd floor, we removed and labeled each piece of trim oh so carefully. We then took all of the doors off of their hinges and stacked them in the upstairs kitchen...without labeling. So we might have a plastic doorway to start.

Here's a fun peek at the before/after post I'll be writing in a couple of weeks:

Before:

After:

Quite a difference, isn't it?

It's here! It's here!

2009-12-09T20:05:00.006-05:00

OK, OK, I know - two posts in one night is kind of crazy for me but holy moly spicoli it's here!

TDB arrived Tuesday after nine weeks of waiting and a battle royale with the shipping company. It came in a giant wooden crate that reminded me of this one. (Fra-jee-leh. It must be Italian.)

I already sat in the tub! Don't worry - I closed the garage door. I didn't want the kids in the park across the street to talk about me. That's just what I need next, to be known as the crazy lady across the street with the giant down-filled coat who sits in a bathtub on a pallet in 35 degree weather.

But here it is!

Now we just need to get it up to the second floor. Volunteers, anybody?

Sounds of the Seasons - Duper Style

2009-12-09T19:53:00.009-05:00

Mike: Honey?

Me: Yes?

Mike: Do we have something flat that we can put the Christmas tree on?

Me: Why?

Mike: Well...

Me: Because our floors are uneven and the tree might fall over?

Mike: Exactly.

Me: Don't we have some plywood or something around upstairs?

Mike: Hmmm... (walks away)

(From the second floor)
BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZ SAW SAW SAW SAW SAW BANG CRASH BOOM BUZZZZZZZZZZZ

Mike: (Holding a piece of plywood) Here! Perfect.

Wishing you and your loved ones a very merry Christmas and happy new year!

The best tool in the world

2009-12-05T22:41:00.004-05:00

If any of you are using a tool that looks like this:

I highly suggest that you open a window, remove the screen, and throw the staple gun away. Drop the $30 it takes to get this:

For jobs like hanging plastic to cover the holes in your house or installing insulation, it is the best tool in the world. I swear, once you use an electric staple gun, you will never use the old, squeeze handle version again.

(Dear Stanley tool company executives: you're welcome.)

The Griswold Dwelling

2009-11-29T19:38:00.006-05:00

I should have known, when Mike became a fan of Clark Griswold on Facebook, that this year's decorations were really going to be something.

Thanks to my dad, we had approximately one zillion Christmas lights in the basement. We couldn't use them last year, because we were out of town and, well, we didn't have a front porch. So we decided to go all out this year.

Here's ~~Clark~~ Mike, using some mountaineering skills:

Here, we're almost finished:

The finished product, with camera flash:

and without:

Crown molding

2009-11-22T13:56:00.000-05:00

is a giant pain in the rear. Especially when you discover that your walls do not meet at 90 degree angles--after you have cut up about $100 worth of wood.

That is all.

My best impression of a car

2009-11-10T19:21:00.005-05:00

When Mike and I bought the ~~money pit~~ Duper Dwelling last September, we went to the local Busy Beaver hardware store. Lo and behold, they had motion lights on sale. Since our garage is at the back of our property and it faces a community park full of bored teenagers, we decided to get one for above the garage door.

In March, when cleaning out the basement, we found our motion light. It was still in its bag, covered in dust. Then we forgot about it again.

When fall came around, we found it again. I started hinting to Mike that it sure would be nice to have that motion light installed since the days were starting to get shorter.

While our garage has power, it did not have any switches. So motion light installation would include switch and box installation, as well as cutting a hole in the garage. For a job like this, we called my dad in as reinforcement. He and Mike installed it last Saturday and my dream of a year came true. But they did not adjust it. Every time a car drove by, our shiny new floodlight turned on.

So tonight we calibrated it. Mike stood on a stepstool while I walked back and forth in the street, on the sidewalk, waving my arms and pretending to be a car. I'm sure it was quite a sight for the neighbors.

I have no pictures as it was dark outside. But trust me, the light looks great and I looked like an idiot.

Happy Halloweenie from the Dupers

2009-11-04T20:10:00.008-05:00

We took a break from construction last week to enjoy Halloween preparations.

The victims:

I love the picture of the before-carving pumpkins because it gives you a good idea of daily life in the Duper Dwelling. The kitchen table is 2 feet deep in paper piles, and one electrical outlet has about 70 things plugged into it. Oh, we can't wait for the day when we will have updated and ample electricity in this house.

Note to self and others: while a Dremel tool looks like a terrific pumpkin carving tool, it actually will just fling pumpkin goo directly into your face and eyes. So stick to the pumpkin knife.

Mike's pumpkin:

My pumpkin:

And the end result on our fabulous front porch, highlighted by the light coming from our beautiful front door:

Fall - the season for grouting

2009-10-24T18:10:00.011-04:00

Today, Mike grouted the bathroom tile. Isn't it beautiful?

Speaking of beautiful things, I was thinking today that we're fortunate to live near lots of pretty trees but not actually have any on our property. We only have to rake the leaves that make it over our fence, but we get to look outside and see these two beauties.

We can also look outside and see the lynching out back.

Let me zoom in on this one for you so that you can get the full effect.

Apparently our neighbors are really into Halloween. Or hangings. It takes all types, right? Right?

I can only imagine how they plan to celebrate Christmas.

And the tiling continues

2009-10-18T15:07:00.009-04:00

We spent yesterday finishing up the edges of the hex tiling - so we basically cut about a million hex tiles into little pieces and placed them along the walls. Then today, we placed the bullnose tile around the walls to act as a baseboard - and finished before 1:00 kickoff. Here's the progress:

We also got the chance to start doing some finishing work in the bathroom and hung the rest of the lighting:

And...our sink faucet was delivered via UPS. Here it is:

This is what it will look like once it's installed. Only the sink will be cleaner, and not in a box, and not sitting on top of a debris pile. You can use your imagination:

Next up, grout time!

Hex tile-a-rama

2009-10-11T07:01:00.009-04:00

So yesterday my dad came over, and while I ran errands and cleaned, he and Mike set our bathroom floor tile.

Lessons learned:

Rubber mallets come in white
Spacers are waste of time when placing individual hex tiles
Tiling is hard on the knees and...
Can lead to plumber butt.

And the pre-grout, finished view:

Oooooooh - isn't it pretty? I think it looks amazing.

Introducing...TDT!

2009-10-07T21:25:00.002-04:00

Ordered and hopefully on the way*:

*Booooooo. Backordered until end of October/early November.

On toilets and tile

2009-10-07T21:02:00.011-04:00

Did you know that modern toilet footprints are bigger than older toilet footprints? Mike and I went upstairs on Sunday to do a final measurement before ordering The Dream Tub (henceforth known as TDT). We placed the toilet on the flange and discovered that d'oh - the water supply line came up from the floor directly underneath the ceramic of the toilet.

So last night, Mike and my dad moved the water line by ripping apart our kitchen ceiling. Here's their finished work (applause please):

I know it looks a little unexciting, but this was a huge deal for us. And so now the toilet is resting comfortably in the hallway.

And...we got our floor tile! Isn't it purty?

We are going to do a hex tile design with flowers - kind of like this:

Tile placement starts on Saturday. Woo hoo!

I cleaned!

2009-10-07T20:57:00.006-04:00

Can't you tell?

After one full year of working on the second floor (!) it was time to do some organization. I also hung plastic in anticipation of winter. Really, if you were here, you would notice a huge difference. Seriously.

Boy, that sure is...green.

2009-10-07T20:39:00.011-04:00

After sanding, and sanding, and sanding, at last, it was time to paint our bathroom. We picked out a green color called "Corn Husk Green." Doesn't that evoke a nice, sunshiny, bright green?

Well, it sure ended up being green:

In between adding paint to the walls, I worked on removing it from the trim. Our whole house is full of beautiful, intricately carved trim. And 99% of it has been painted with 15 layers of white paint. I've discovered that gallons of paint stripper combined with a scraper, rotary tool, steel wool, and dental picks just bring that stuff off in a jiffy! Or not.

It's been a big month here

2009-08-16T17:58:00.008-04:00

Whoo-eee. It's been a big month at the Duper Dwelling.

We got a new Weber (thanks Mom & Dad D!):

We finished sealing the front porch:

We bought and assembled two Adirondack rocking chairs:

We finished mudding and sanding the drywall in the second floor bathroom:

And now we're keeping ourselves busy arguing over paint for the bathroom:

Next on the agenda is paint, tile floor, and then hallelujah we get to install our toilet, sink, and yet-to-be-ordered bathtub.

Four walls and a ceiling

2009-07-25T14:36:00.006-04:00

Can you believe it? We have a room again where the bathroom used to be. Bring on the drywall mud!

Spindles 'R' Us

2009-07-05T17:45:00.005-04:00

I've always admired Queen Ann Victorian houses, with the gingerbread trim and giant front porches, everything painted in contrasting colors.

After spending most of our weekend staining/sealing our new front porch, I now know the truth. People who own houses like that a) hire someone else to do the painting or b) are masochists.

It's been two full days of applying tinted sealer, and we haven't even touched the decking. It will look fabulous when we are finished, but until then, I've decided that I truly hate spindles.

In this pic, you can see the contrast between the finished posts (and spindles!) and the unfinished decking:

Likewise, note the contrast below. Heck, we might leave it like that - it would be educational, right? Please? Someone give me an excuse to be done with this job?

Best part? We get to do it again in 3 years.

I'm not sure why we call it a garage

2009-06-07T14:50:00.009-04:00

since it doesn't have room for cars. But it's nice to have a giant storage shed. Too bad the door is hideous:

The previous owners did (big surprise!) a bad job when they painted it, oh, probably 40 years ago. Then, in an effort to keep people from peeking inside, they spray painted the windows from the inside. By the time we bought the house, everything had started to peel.

So with scrapers and paint in hand, we did our best today to make it look a little bit better. Eventually we'd like to get a new ~~garage~~ storage shed door, but until then, it will be painted to match the front door. Here's the result at the end of today - one coat down, one or more to go:

Hopefully we can knock out the second coat this week after work.

Well, now that THAT is over with...

2009-06-06T14:22:00.005-04:00

We were kind of busy doing this:

But now that we're hitched, work on the house has started again. The upstairs bathroom is now fully insulated. We need to make one repair to the drain pipe and then it's time for walls (yay).

Our roses are blooming, and our horrid privet hedges are trying to take over the neighborhood. Spring/summer has brought a lot of yard work with it. You all have seen how neglected the inside of the house was. Now just imagine the outside.

Today I planted flowers while Mike battled the privet beast.

Tomorrow I'm planning to scrape paint off of the garage door and hopefully start painting it. We just need to squeeze that in between some family time and trips downtown to see bands playing at the Three Rivers Arts Festival (Black Keys last night; Medeski, Martin, and Wood tonight). Back to work!

Spring Has Sprung

2009-04-18T16:30:00.017-04:00

And just like that...winter is finally gone. Well, not completely, but we're mostly there. Two months blew by since my last post, and we've managed to do the following (along with plan the upcoming wedding and attend to general life things).

We got a new front door.

It will soon be painted green to match the lattice on the bottom of our front porch. Here's a shot of the pattern in the glass from the inside:

Mike finished the basement doors. Check the previous post for the "before" pictures.

We installed three of the four glass block windows. Window number four (seen at far left in this image) is going to be tricky. After installing three windows, we've decided to pay someone else to do the last one.

We hung up our flag and porch numbers, on the porch that is 99% completed:

And though you can't see them, we planted rosebushes in front of the lattice. We hope to someday have plants that don't look like dead sticks.

We had our upstairs bathroom rewired, and we installed drywall (XP board) and a fan/light on the ceiling. I'm really excited to have a ceiling again. We may even have walls again soon.

And we finally carried the foosball table from the garage into the attic/office. Next we will plug in the beer fridge that was conveniently left up there by a former tenant.

Stay tuned for bathroom walls and maybe even a toilet! We can all dream, can't we?

Basement door makeover

2009-02-22T16:20:00.006-05:00

Basement doors before:

Basement doors during makeover:

Mike is making them out of composite deck material. It's heavy as hell, but it will be more durable in that damp part of our yard.

I'd post the "after" pictures, but shortly after Mike finished building the doors, it started snowing. So stay tuned until our next nice day...three months from now.

Bathroom work continues

2009-02-22T16:14:00.006-05:00

Mike and my Dad have been working on running all new copper water lines and rebracing the floor in our 2nd floor bathroom. Here's some of their handiwork:

At one point, they pulled some nails out of one of the floor joists (which had been cut and was just resting on top of the kitchen's drop ceiling. Turns out those nails were in turn holding up the drop ceiling. Some emergency bracing was in order:

Once they had the ceiling propped up, they tied the drop ceiling framing to the studs upstairs. This is a temporary fix for us. If we were the previous owners of the house, we'd probably call it a job well done.

Meet Bessie

2009-02-22T16:04:00.005-05:00

After a number of trips to the hardware store that ended with copper pipe and lumber sticking out of the back of our Pontiac Vibe and Toyota Matrix, we decided to get Bessie. Here she is!

Bessie is a 2004 Chevy Silverado with an extended cab, full-size bed, and towing package. She gets a whopping 17 miles to the gallon, but since neither of us use cars for our work commute, that's not a huge deal. We kept the Matrix, which you can kind of see behind Bessie in the photo above.

Look - Bessie mostly fits in our driveway!

On her first trip to Lowes, she brought home 4 12-foot planks of composite board, 3 full-size sheets of plywood, a glass block window, a shopping cart full of plumbing supplies, and a bag of mortar with loads of room to spare.

You know you're rehabbing a house

2009-02-19T21:27:00.003-05:00

when you're on first-name basis with the employees at Lowes.

Glass block windows: a how-to guide by Amy

2009-02-09T21:22:00.009-05:00

This is how you install a glass block window.

Step 1: remove the old window and part of the frame. This could be a real pain. You may need to bend a recip blade, wrench on it with a pry bar, pound on it with a chisel and hammer, and swear a lot. When you're done, it'll look like this:

Step two: do the math to figure out how much water to mix with the powdered mortar. Use the bathroom scale to weigh the mortar. Look confused and dumb for the camera in the hopes that the photographer will do the math for you.

Step three: mix the mortar. This is easier with the stirrer that attaches to the drill. Otherwise, it sucks.

Step four: put the window in and schmear the mortar everywhere.

Step five: attempt to repeat.

Step six: discover that Lowes sold you two windows of one size and one window of another size, despite the fact that they were custom made.

Try to force the window in the frame, despite it being an inch too big. Try to demolish the frame. Get pissed off and carry the window upstairs where you can swear at it all evening long.

Wait until the following day. Take the window back to Lowes with the best fightin' attitude you have and be surprised to learn that they have a really flexible return policy. Get your money back and order a new window. Wait two weeks.

Hopefully, start with step 1 again, once you get your new window.

Ahhh, you learn well Grasshopper

2009-01-20T22:11:00.002-05:00

We discovered a small leak in one of our newly fixed pipes tonight. So after a quick trip to Lowes where we picked up some dangerous new toys, Mike re-soldered the pipe and it no longer leaks.

My dad taught him well.

YAY MIKE!

The joys of frozen pipes

2009-01-18T15:52:00.011-05:00

This past week, Pittsburgh has been experiencing Momma Nature at her bitchiest. For four days, highs were in the single digits and lows were around -10 or so. What does that mean for us? Frozen pipes.

The brilliant DIYers who put our first floor bathroom on the house basically walled in a porch, added plumbing, ignored the finer points of insulation, and called it a job well done. That means that the pipes that feed our first floor shower (also our only shower until we get walls upstairs) are shielded from the elements by a sheet of plywood.

For three days, our pipes froze solid at night, and then we thawed them with a hair dryer during the day. On the third day, after an hour of the hair dryer, they remained frozen. On day 4, we invested in a heat gun. That was yesterday.

Last night, Mike went at the pipes in the basement with the heat gun while I fired away with my trusty hair dryer in the bathroom. We were excited when water started flowing. Less so when water flowed in the basement.

We discovered that one of our pipes was leaking - it had burst, but the hole seemed small. Since we're going to take out the walls in the kitchen, we went on an exploratory mission.

Here's Mike, after we discovered that the kitchen wall over these pipes is actually a drop ceiling tile that was taped and painted to the rest of the wall. He looks happy right?

I was on the phone with directory assistance to find out what time our local hardware store closed, when I heard dripping...then trickling...then a giant WHOOSH. Apparently the pipe hadn't fully thawed until we opened up the wall. A geyser of water shot out of the wall about 3 feet, spraying the entire kitchen. Forgive me for the lack of photographic evidence. I was busy screaming "SHUT IT OFF!" over and over again as Mike raced to the basement to shut of the main water valve.

After killing the water to the house, here's what we discovered. 1 burst pipe. 1 leaky pipe. 1 shower drain that isn't really connected to a drain and so it dumps on the ground when we shower. Aren't they pretty?
In this blurry picture, you can see where the pipe split, to the left of the 90 degree bend.

We turned on the water in the utility tubs downstairs and shut off the rest of the house's water. We now flush our toilet by pouring buckets of water down. We shower at my sister's house.

There was a heck of a draft coming in the wall, so we found an old framed poster and used that as a temporary patch. Classy!

Today, my dad came to the rescue. He and Mike have replaced the drain pipe and are working on the water pipes as I write. There have been three trips to the hardware store.

We would appreciate if you could close your eyes and wish for a non-leaking repair job, no injuries, and warmer weather. We need all three.

P.S. GO STEELERS!

***UPDATE***
Thanks to Dad the hero, and his trusty assistant Mike, the pipes are fully repaired. Dad's also going to help us reroute the pipes in the upstairs bathroom so that we can start rebuilding it.

Thanks to the best defense in the NFL, the Steelers clinched the AFC Championship and are on their way to the Super Bowl.

It's been a good 24 hours.

Porch progress pictures

2008-12-31T15:07:00.005-05:00

We are very excited for the new porch. Check it out:

We filled that dumpster!

2008-12-31T14:59:00.013-05:00

Here's the aftermath. This is the master bedroom, looking through the studs into the office/front room.

Front room/office...

Now we just need to get new wiring, lots and lots of insulation (note that there is not a shred of it currently in the house - and our gas bill reflects that), and start putting it all back together.

While we were at it

2008-12-08T22:02:00.007-05:00

Since we have a 30-cubic yard dumpster for the porch, we decided to do our best to fill it by knocking out the ceiling and walls of the future master bedroom.

Finished demolition. Now for the cleanup and reconstruction.

Can you believe it? We're still smiling.

Porch (or lack thereof) photos

2008-12-08T21:58:00.005-05:00

Whoo - that first step is a doosey!

The mailbox solution.

Another view. Purty, isn't it?

Porch work is underway!

2008-12-05T09:31:00.004-05:00

We have a contract. We have plans. We've paid the deposit. And porch work is beginning today! Woo hoo!

Our front porch is the neighborhood eyesore. This is so exciting for us. As of 11 am today, there will be a dumpster outside to haul away the debris from pulling it down. Hooray!

New windows

2008-11-18T21:23:00.008-05:00

Woooo, look at the new windows!

Ahh, the joys of homeownership!

2008-11-17T21:47:00.004-05:00

Look at that - it's been a month since the last update. We've moved in and mostly unpacked. As it is, we're currently living on the first and third floors, and storing all of our belongings in the basement.

We have new windows - pictures will come hopefully tomorrow. They are fabulous and beautiful.

We have some bids for a new front porch.

We have a broken furnace. Or rather, a bass-ackward ventilation system that causes one of our two furnaces (of course the one for the first floor, where we eat, sleep, and shower) to only work when it's warm. When it gets cold, it stops working. Tonight it is cold. Tonight, Mike is downstairs and there's an ominous banging sound coming through the vents. I fear that it is his head.

We are having a side wall vent installed tomorrow or Wednesday, depending on part availability. That should correct the problem and give us heat on cold nights. We're crossing our fingers. And those fingers are probably wearing gloves to bed tonight just in case.

Debris pile...redux

2008-10-14T21:06:00.005-04:00

Here's the latest pile of debris from just the bathroom ceiling and floor.

The view from the kitchen

2008-10-14T20:44:00.002-04:00

You may have noticed in previous posts that there is a view from the bathroom into the kitchen. Here's what happened...

About a week ago, we went over to the house to feed the fish and take some pictures. We opened the kitchen door, and the first thing I heard was Mike say, "What is that puddle on the floor?"

It seems that when we turned off the water to the upstairs bathroom, we didn't quite crank down on the valves as hard as we could have. So after having the water off for a day or two, it started dripping. With no bathtub to catch the water, it came down right into the kitchen.

Here's the new view from the kitchen:

The master bedroom

2008-10-14T20:24:00.006-04:00

While Mike was ripping up the floors in the bathroom, I entertained myself by removing the carpet from the room that will become our master bedroom. Here are the results...

For some reason, the POs (previous owners) chose to sand, finish, and varnish only the outside edge. The lighter-colored chunk is unfinished oak. We stopped asking the "why" question about a week ago.

Oh, and this is what we found behind this room's drop ceiling. Check out the wiring that runs across the top of the wall, and the extremely unsafe-looking ceiling fan.

Bathroom demo is done

2008-10-14T20:16:00.011-04:00

So this is our...bathroom.

The view looking down into the kitchen:

The view looking up at the attic floor. Note the scary and ancient knob & tube wiring. Yeah, that's going to come out.

The view looking down at the space for the toilet. The area in the top left is actually the metal cabinets in the upstairs kitchen as seen through the bathroom wall--or lack thereof.

Captain Demolition, surveying his hard work:

Mike's stairs

2008-10-14T20:09:00.006-04:00

Our basement stairs were rotting out because the basement doors are wooden and, well, rotten. Last Saturday, Mike got out the brand spankin' new circular saw and did some construction work. Isn't he amazing, folks?

Bathroom destruction pictures

2008-09-29T20:32:00.014-04:00

See, it all started out really simply. "Let's take down this ugly tile," we said. Little did we know that beneath the tile we'd find...

Rotten plaster and icky mold. So that plaster came out.

And behind the plaster and lath, we found...newspaper from 1951 and 1979.

So then we decided to take out the rest of the walls and the lath.

We found scary old wiring and a gas line.

Coming up next: the bathroom ceiling is coming down, and the floor is coming up.

The debris

2008-09-27T07:11:00.004-04:00

Before we can move into our "new" home, there is some work that needs to be done. We'd like to have the upstairs bathroom finished so as to not have to use the downstairs shower, which is leaking onto the floor joists in the basement.

That means that the past week has been demolition time. The pictures are on Mike's camera, which may be buried in the rubble.

We started by popping the ceramic tile off of the shower enclosure. Our first discovery: the plaster behind the tile was damp and rotten in places, with some mold sprinkled throughout. So we decided to take out the plaster.

Being new to this whole thing, we then discovered lath. So we started taking that out. Lo and behold, someone in 1951 thought newspaper would make a terrific insulator. So they stuffed the bathroom wall full of it. So that came out.

We then made the decision to take the whole room down to the studs and start over with water-resistant sheetrock. So the walls are coming out.

Not including the tub, we're probably just over halfway done with the demo work. The toilet is currently hanging out in the upstairs kitchen. The sink is in what will be our office.

We need to order a dumpster for our debris before we can remove the tub. I'll try to post pictures of the debris and demolition results soon--as soon as I find the camera. It's a little messy upstairs right now.

Hallway to the upstairs

2008-09-17T21:33:00.044-04:00

Upstairs kitchen

2008-09-17T21:33:00.043-04:00

This room will eventually become a second-floor laundry room and perhaps accommodate an expanded bedroom or walk-in closet.

Second floor back bedroom

2008-09-17T21:33:00.042-04:00

Second floor bathroom

2008-09-17T21:33:00.041-04:00

This room is slated to be our #1 interior project. You can probably see why...

Upstairs front bedroom

2008-09-17T21:33:00.040-04:00

Attic/third floor bedrooms

2008-09-17T21:33:00.039-04:00

I saved the best for last - basement before cleanup

2008-09-17T21:33:00.038-04:00

First floor bathroom

2008-09-16T21:58:00.006-04:00

Agnus is like, "This is the smallest bathtub I've ever seen--and the nastiest!" We will probably make this a shower stall rather than trying to find a replacement mini-tub.

First floor bedroom/future dining room

2008-09-16T21:57:00.005-04:00

Living room - first floor

2008-09-16T21:55:00.004-04:00

Kitchen - first floor

2008-09-16T21:53:00.005-04:00

This will eventually be our finished kitchen. It's serviceable for the time being, minus the nasty drop ceilings.

Outside

2008-09-16T21:49:00.007-04:00

And then there was stuff...

2008-09-16T21:33:00.004-04:00

Monday, September 15 was our closing. At the closing, we were less than thrilled to learn that the tenant who had been living downstairs had yet to move "some" of her belongings. We signed a bunch of papers, got the keys, and headed to the new house.

The tenant was inside, crying. "Boo hoo hoo. I didn't know that the closing was today. Please don't sue me. Boo hoo hoo." I had other obligations, so Mike and I decided that he would stick around and help her move the rest of her stuff into our garage. She would need to get the garage-bound items off of our property by Sunday the 21st.

The entire basement was full of stuff. Lots of stuff. Tenant claimed that about 2/3 of the stuff had been there when she moved into the apartment four years ago.

Tonight, the 16th, Mike and I headed over with a box of contractor-grade garbage bags and a camera. As we cleaned it out tonight (9 contractor bags, four boxes, and a giant pile for Goodwill), we discovered that ALL of it belonged to the tenant. Journals, photos, books, clothes, boxes of toiletry items that had leaked everywhere, a fish tank, two televisions, a table, dolls, 85 stuffed Tiggers, necklaces, shoes, candles, decorations, stuff, stuff, stuff. See the next posts for full photo documentation.

Oh, the kids

2008-09-08T21:07:00.004-04:00

As my #1 fans have noted, I forgot to mention the kids.

Sassafras: 7 years old, German Shepherd, neurotic to the max, fond of eating various types of vegetation and dirt. A.K.A. the house's alarm system.

Agnus: 6 years old, German Shorthaired Pointer, afraid of measuring tapes and things that make a "psssssht" noise, fond of all small creatures that move. A.K.A. the wiggly one.
They're both looking forward to having a fenced-in backyard for excavation purposes.

Good luck...

2008-09-07T16:55:00.006-04:00

So we're buying our first house, and it's a fixer upper. Before we get there, though, let's start with the basics.

Me: 28 years old, female, work in the field of PR/media. I like to think I'm fairly handy and can wield a hammer without smashing a finger at least 80% of the time. I can follow directions when assembling Ikea furniture and change a tire and the oil in my car. I'm the motivated sort who wakes up early to go grocery shopping before everybody else even has their first cup of coffee.

Partner in crime, Mike: 28 years old, male, works from home in IT. Mike is very handy and can stop a dripping faucet, problem-solve like a champ, and he's not afraid of electricity or power tools. He can be a bit of a procrastinator at times, but he's thorough and detail-oriented. He's excited to knock out walls.

The house: 118 years old, frame house (Victorian?) in Pittsburgh, PA. It was once a single family home, but it was split into two apartments at least ten years ago. We're looking to open it back up. It's across a 1-way street from a local park, and it has tons of potential. It also needs lots of work. Here it is on the day of our home inspection.

My dad is a very handy guy. We asked him to take a look at it with us. When I told him that we decided to buy it, he just said, "Oh yeah? Good luck..."

Closing is on September 15. Loads of "before" pictures to come.