No housework today.

I did yardwork instead. Before I get into that, though, here's a rundown of what happened yesterday.

Tom finished the electrical for the dryer. We had already pulled most of it, but he still needed to secure the wire to the basement joists and make the connection in the breaker box. No pictures of that, but it's been checked off the list.

I repaired the water hookup for the washer. Paul had forgotten to tighten down the female CPVC connector to the connection in the washer box before he glued everything together. It may have been alright for a while, but it almost certainly would have eventually started to leak. So I took a reciprocating saw to the supply lines, added the correct adapters, and used stainless steel braided flex connectors to finish it off.

Still needs insulation.

Then I tackled the dryer vent. Had Lowe's stocked the 5' lengths of rigid ductwork like their display indicated, this process would have been much less tedious. Instead of maybe 3 or 4 joints, I had to use aluminum tape and a worm-screw ring for every 2' section of duct for 8 joints in all. It still needs one more piece at the top to vent it out of the roof, but the portion that affects the closet is complete.

I have since added insulation around it to prevent condensation.

I also made a valiant attempt at fixing the water heater issue. It's a brand-new, never-used water heater, but whoever did the work at the house didn't think about future replacement when they installed it. The problem with this is that the rigidity of the connection will make it impossible to replace the water heater later without cutting out the entire section of plumbing. And since they placed the valves so low, you'd have to turn off the water to the entire house at the main supply and drain all the plumbing in the house to prevent a flood in the basement. You couldn't just turn off the water to the heater and work with that. Anyway, I have the appropriate replacement valves and steel-braided hoses to make it work better.

I cut the supply lines with the reciprocating saw (my new BFF) and drained the water in the cold water line. In theory, all I had to do is remove the old valve, glue in the replacement valve and connector. Unfortunately, that plumbing is stuck. The greenish stuff at the joints appears to be pipe dope, which would prevent water from working its way back up the threads, but shouldn't act as a glue. But I'll be darned if I can budge those valves a nanometer. I was moving the entire water heater instead. I guess I'll need manstrength to help with that task.

This post is too long, even without the yard update, so I'll post about that later.

Back to work

Now that the hectic holidays are over, we're back to working on the house. Yesterday we finally got the master bathroom plumbing vented. We had to connect these two existing pipes:

You might not recognize the pipe on the right without the dead chicken beside it.

to each other and also to another vent for the sinks, and then run that all the way up through a hole in the roof. By the end of the day, the pipes looked like this:

The shower bone's connected to the...

Toilet bone. The toilet bone's connected to the...

Sink bone. The sink bone's connected to the...

Uh, I dunno. Roof bone?

It wouldn't have taken the whole day if we hadn't forgotten to get a couple of things from Lowe's the last time we were out there. While Tom was getting those few items, Paul and I prepared for the 4' knee wall we are going to build. Since nothing in the house is square or dimensional, every 2x4 had to be measured and cut individually.

I wanted the height of the wall to be slightly more than 4', so that a single piece of drywall could fit horizontally without cutting it. This accounts for the depth of the drywall on the sloping part of the wall as well as a small gap at the base. We tediously leveled, marked, labeled, and cut all the studs. With all the prep we did for it yesterday, I was able to pretty much finish it by myself after I got off work this afternoon. Here it is:

No top plate. We're connecting the studs right to the joists.

I still have to put a few more metal plates on the sides of the studs to connect them to the joists (you can see some installed on the right hand side of the previous picture), only because all our drill bits are just about worn out. I'll be hanging insulation on the sloping part of the wall in the next few days, since I can do that more or less by myself in the afternoons. It is kind of a pain to do alone, but it can certainly be done. I think that next weekend, when I have strong man-help, we'll be doing something about:


We're replacing the old cross-pieces with new 2x8s higher up. They'll be stronger, and the new placement will give a full 8' of headroom. Once we have those in, I'll be able to put insulation all the way up the slope to the peak. And that will be the end of my $500+/month utility bills.