I took a few days off from work and tore into the old plaster ceiling in the living room.  In and of itself, replacing a ceiling isn’t terribly complex work.  It goes something like this:  remove the old ceiling material, attach the new ceiling material, prime, paint, done!  And it looks something like this:

Every bathroom sink setup that I’ve ever seen is plumbed such that the supply and waste lines come out of the wall, into the back of the vanity.  Kind of like this:

Proper Supply and Waste Location

So, you can imagine my surprise to open up our sink and find this disaster. Note how the supply and waste lines all come through holes in the bottom of the vanity that appear to have been cut for a very precise fit. Then, you’ll also note that the shutoff valves for the supply lines were soldered onto the pipes *after* the vanity was put in place. Making it completely impossible to remove the vanity without completely hacking apart the base of the vanity. How convenient!  I thank you, Mr. Previous Plumber! (Did I mention that I’m doing this project at 10pm. Sorry, neighbors!)

So, using the completely wrong method of removing a vanity, I pick up the oscillating cutter and start hacking away at the base of the old vanity, so that I can slide it out.

Then, I pick up my hole saw and start (carefully) hacking apart the new vanity. I use the previous vanity’s base (that I just hacked up) as a template to cut holes in the base of the new vanity, and then very carefully slide the new vanity over the top of the supply and waste line connections. Using a large hole saw left clearance for the supply line shut-offs to slide right on through.

Then to install the sink and faucet. I start by attaching the faucet to the sink itself. This is where the skills I learned as a child begin to shine through. Start by making a play-doh worm and applying it to the gizmo that goes under the faucet.

Then use the wingnuts to firmly attach the faucet and putty to the sink itself. This will squeeze out a lot of plumbers putty that my ham fingers can’t get out from between the faucet the backsplash.

Then, to attach the sink to the vanity we run an ample bead of liquid nails along the top of the vanity. We will then set the sink firmly into this bead of goop.

Not bad looking! (Don’t look at that outlet, I have yet to deal with that.)

Umm, you’re not a very good listener. I said not to look at that outlet yet… I wil deal with it later!

Attach the supply lines…

… and the drain lines…

And we have a working sink!!!

Below are a few snapshots of what the house looked like before we got started this morning. (BTW, shoutout…Dad, thanks for all of the help today!!) The driveway side of the house was covered by a large collection of red-gooey-berry-bushes. The front was dominated by a overgrown elm tree that shot skyward, conveniently placed directly between the house’s power feed and cable/phone service; several woody bushes-of-nast (this is, I believe, their latin name); and more hydrangea than any one person should ever own.

Before –

So, we got to work : cutting, dragging, stacking. Cutting, dragging, stacking. Four hours (and a much larger brush pile) later, we have a far more attractive looking house.

After –

So, today I’m batting .500.  The started out with just one project from DW…fix the (very) slowly draining kitchen sink.  ”No biggie,” I think.  ”Just get some Drano and we’ll be back in business.”  So, I begin with our new routine pilgrimage to MeccaLowes and pick up some Drano (and some other stuff, for another post later).  When we get home, I pour in half of a bottle and let it sit.  Then, per the directions, I pour in some hot water.  And the sink promptly backs right up.  Fiddlesticks!

Okay, back to Lowes for a plumbers snake.  I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one of these contraptions, but its basically a flexible metal gizmo that you feed into your pipes and then spin around to power through tough clogs.  Really, if I weren’t working on a sink drain here, that would be monstrously disgusting.  But, this is just a sink… How bad can it be?

Back home with my new purchase and I get to work.  Disconnect the trap under the sink and start feeding this gizmo in.  One foot in.  Two feet in.  Three feet in.  Clunk.  Clunk. Clunk.  Nuts, it can’t make the 90 degree turn down below the floor.  So, I trek down to the basement and discover that there is a rubber bushing connecting the old copper drain pipe to the newer PVC drain line.  ”Okay,” I think to myself, “we can probably just disconnect this bushing and feed the snake into the drain line from this end.

So, I get the rubber bushing disconnected and this ugly bugger jumps out at me!  I’ve seen quite a few clogged drains before, but this one really takes the cake.  It looks like someone rinsed an entire jar of nast down the pipe and it got stuck right here.  So, I set my bucket under the newly exposed gunk factory and let the water slowly drain into it.  Then I jammed some needle-nose pliers into that and started puling.  This released a veritable logjam of hot water and Drano.  Stand back!

When this was all done, I ran the snake up in there and dislodged a few more chunks of something.  Get everything reattached and now water flows smoothly again!  Woohoo.

So, you may ask, why are you only batting .500 today?  That’s because while I was in the basement executing the sink drain repair, I discovered an old cast iron drain pipe from the upstairs half-bath that had rotted through and was leaking onto the basement floor.  I tried fixing that too…and that was an utter failure.  Time for some more Googling and maybe a trip to Potsdam Plumbing on Monday.  We shall see.  In the meantime, everyone stay away from the upstairs half-bath!

I immagine that most of the work that needs to be done on this house will be handled by yours truly.  I fancy myself a fairly handy guy… I mean, I don’t fancy a handy guy, but I think I can get stuff done from time to time.  You get the idea.  Anyway, there are a few things that I’ll hire out, either because its too big a project for me or because I lack some specialized skill needed to complete the project properly.  Like the roof.  As I understand it, there isn’t much rocket science to roofing a house.  But, our roof is two stories tall and that is a very long way to fall!  And right now, it leaks.  A lot.  So it needs to be replaced and quickly.  And properly.  So that it doesn’t leak again for a very long time.  And today, I learned a lesson about hiring a job out to a contractor.

Today, while we were closing on the house, a pair of friendly folks from Lowe’s brought our new refrigerator.  (Thanks to our good friend Ron, who was able to come and sit a the house to let them in while we were occupied at the bank!)  Apparently I had done a poor job of measuring the doorways leading into the kitchen, because in order to get the new refrigerator to fit its doors had to come off.  And so did some of the doors on the house.  Luckily for me, the guys from Lowe’s were true delivery professionals.  They didn’t batt an eye, but got straight to work taking doors out and stripping the refrigerator down to its skeleton.  Once it was situated, they put it all back together.  Or so it would seem.  (cue ominous music)

Shortly after the delivery guys left, the fridge started to ding.  ”That’s odd,” DW said.  ”Hmmm,” I said, while stuffing my face with dinner.  ”Must be some sort of temperature alarm, since it’s so warm inside.”  Two hours later.  ”That’s still dinging,” says DW, “And the light doesn’t come on.  Do you think it could be broken?”  ”Hmmm,” I said, eager to get the new vanity mounted in the bathroom.  ”Could be, but its cold inside.  Let’s see what happens if we leave it.”  Fast-forward to bedtime.  Fridge is still dinging.  Don’t worry, I’ll get back around to that lesson about hiring out a job to a contractor.  Just stick with me.

Google to the rescue.  Why would a brand-new refrigerator ding incessantly and not let the light turn on.  What could’ve possibly happened between the factory and… Oh!  They took it apart.  I wonder if they hooked all of the sensors back up when they were… Nope.  The door sensors were disconnected.  Which made the computer think that the doors had been left open.  So, it dinged until I closed the doors…by plugging the sensor back in.

So, the lesson I learned about hiring a job out?  Check the work.  Double-check the work.  Don’t feel silly asking questions of the contractor…after all, you’re the boss of the job.

We closed on the house this afternoon.  Of course, that meant that about two minutes after we got home I was firing up the chainsaw.  After I spent a few minutes doing some slicing and dicing, things start to open up and… voila!  There is a home in there behind all of that crud!  We can’t wait to see some more of it!

- Before closing -

- Slightly After Closing -

It has been quite some time since our last post… Such is the way of things when purchasing from an estate I suppose.  The waiting has been a killer, but we’re finally in the new house!!!!  We had an army comprised of friends and family helping us move furniture and boxes (and the swingset, “Holy Heavy, Batman!”).  We had so many hands, in fact, that the bulk of our stuff was moved in just four hours on Saturday morning!  Many thanks to all who lent a hand.  We will have to find a more tangible way to express our gratitude to you.

We’ve been told that the closing on the sale of our old house is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, with the closing on our purchase to occur the next afternoon.  So, technically, we will be homeless for 24 hours…that’s a scary proposition, especially with a wife and two kids!  Here’s hoping that it all goes as smoothly as the moving process did!

Stay posted for some projects this weekend.  The repressed construction worker in me is raring to get started on a project!