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.

Point/Counterpoint

When we first bought the house, I spent some time drawing up floor plans to correct some oddities that the previous owners were apparently going to construct. My biggest concern was the placement of the washer and dryer. I liked the fact that it was upstairs near where most of the household laundry is, but it created a strange alcove in the hallway that couldn't be enclosed. Plus, it made the secondary bathroom a true jack-and-jill. I don't mind it opening into the bedrooms, but I would like it to open into the hallway, as well. And I hated the gap between the tub and the bedroom wall (it looks like enough for a shelf for towels, but there's really only about a foot - there was some extra framing I didn't bother drawing). Here's the original plan:

So I finagled and finessed the plan. Here's what I came up with:

Another benefit of moving the washer and dryer was reclaiming the back staircase. I'll probably regret this when kids start sneaking out of the house, but for a while it will be a nice feature for a study. The bathroom layout seems more efficient, and I eliminated the awkward protrusion of the closet in bedroom #2. Of course the washer and dryer had to go somewhere, so I relocated them to the master closet and rearranged the bathroom.


I showed the plan to our weekly helpers, who pretty much dismissed the entire thing. They came up with a list of reasons it didn't work. (And of course I didn't have the wherewithal to defend my designs, just like in college. I would present the project that I had spent countless hours taking every possibility into consideration and designing in excruciating detail. The reviewer would throw in a suggestion that I'd doubtlessly had already thought of and eliminated, for various reasons and I'd just stand there and agree with him.)

So here's a list of their concerns, with my arguments as well. This is really just a way for me to vent my frustrations and pretty inconsequential to the blog as a whole.

1. It's already plumbed at the other end of the hallway, and moving it would be more work.

Yes, more work, but I really hate it by the back 2 bedrooms. It's in an awkward niche in the middle of the hallway. It's really pretty impossible to enclose due to the location of the door to the back bedroom. An additional day's work and $100 in plumbing materials is really a small price to pay for having it someplace where it works better.

2. You don't want (why are you telling me what I want, anyway? I drew plans of what I want, remember?) the noise of the washer and dryer by the bedroom where you're trying to sleep.

Well, if I did laundry in the middle of the night, this might start to be of concern to me. I'd be more concerned of the noise waking up our eventual kids during naps and such.

3. Having to walk through your closet to get to your bathroom is kind of weird. A separate hallway takes up just as much room as having to keep that area of your closet cleared.

Sure, it's probably not standard design, but I think it works. The center island in the closet would have a countertop for folding laundry straight from the dryer and storage (shoes?) underneath (that's a bench at the end for pulling on shoes and such in the morning - I know it's hard to tell that sort of thing from just plan drawings). Besides, it's not like I spend my whole day in the bedroom and would have to go through there every time I have to use the facilities. In the morning, I'd need to go to the closet to get clothes for the day before showering, and at night I'd need to get pajamas before brushing teeth. So where is the inconvenience in that?

4. Having the sinks on opposite walls like that is inconvenient. You don't want to be backing into each other if you're each at your sink.

First of all, there's over 5 feet between the vanities. Second of all, the sinks are offset from each other to prevent that. And I like the fact that the toilet is out of the way and concealed a bit. I love Tom, but I don't think there will ever be a time when I'm comfortable using the toilet when he's in the room. Call me crazy, but I don't really want to see him on the toilet, either. And this preference of not having the toilet out in the open has caused them to make fun of me, saying that I want all toilets to have their own room (which is often done, but I don't particularly care for).

5. I've never seen the toilet and tub doored off from the sink before.

Really? Because the house that I grew up in has two bathrooms with that exact setup. Just because you haven't seen it doesn't make it any less valid. And that setup is very convenient when you have more than one person using that bathroom, as constantly happened in my house growing up. As I mentioned before, we're planning to have kids.

So there they are. All points rebutted. But since my plan was rejected (by two people who won't be living there), it wasn't done as I had drawn it. Instead, Paul came up with this:

I don't mind the niche in the wall so much, but it really doesn't serve much of a purpose as far as I can tell. It took two feet from the closet and added it to the already-huge bedroom. We've already framed this change and put recessed lighting in the niche. What brings up this entire entry is that I recently mentioned that I would rather have the washer and dryer down in the basement than in that stupid spot in the hallway. That led to Paul telling me that I'd be much happier with it upstairs, since "most modern construction is moving toward putting it near the bedrooms" and suggested I put it in the master closet. Uh, excuse me? Isn't that exactly what I said to begin with? What happened to point numbers one and two of your original argument? And now, instead of having a nice spacious closet to put it in, we have a much smaller area to work with. Thanks, guys. I think the grinding of my teeth was audible when he suggested this, as this was the only thing I could do to keep myself from either screaming or crying.

I'm sorry this entry is so long (even though I'm pretty sure nobody reads my blog anyway), but I needed to get all that off my chest. I've never been very good at verbal articulation.