Everything (and the kitchen sink)

Life with a newborn means little time for house projects, and even less time for blogging about them. My apologies. Since I last checked in, we have fixed the overflow issue from the attic furnace. We still have a couple of minor adjustments left to do for better efficiency, but at least it's not dripping onto the floor anymore. We also had a security system installed. Besides the standard door-and-window alarms, we also had the air conditioners hooked up to the system. We managed to get the kitchen sink installed as well, a process not without problems. The drain hole is smaller than the standard, but we were able to use a strainer intended for a bar sink. Due to the sizing issue, we were not - and probably never will be - able to install the garbage disposal with this sink. I do love the sink, but I have to empty the strainer every 2 dishes that I wash. Maybe I'll luck out and find another sink I love for a bargain price. Here's the classy setup we've got until we do the kitchen renovation for real.

I should submit this to Rate My Space.

Giant - 26"x19"x11" - epoxy resin sink. Love its size and depth. This sucker holds a lot of dirty dishes.

Tiny bar sink strainer that clogs if you breathe on it. Mound of silicone to fill the 3" diameter rabbet surrounding the 2" drain hole.

Keeping it classy with plywood countertop.

We used a spare piece of plywood for the countertop. I attempted to spray paint it, but it just looked, well, like a piece of spray-painted plywood. So I had some cheap paint mixed at Wal*Mart, slapped on a couple of coats, and sealed it with polycrylic. The clear coat makes it glossier, easier to wipe down, and harder to damage with water splashing from the sink (and windows when I forget to close them when it rains).

To give this plywood counter truly professional look, I routed the edges with a roundover bit.

Gotta protect the finish. Wouldn't want to ruin such an expensive custom counter.

Since the counter extends so far past the base cabinet (3 feet or so on each side), we attached furniture-quality legs to the corners to provide some support.

I thought of adding horizontal pieces between the legs for extra stability, but I don't want to harm the finish of such a valuable piece of woodwork.

The nicest part (and I genuinely mean that and am not being facetious) is our faucet. It's a Pegasus bridge faucet in a satin nickel finish. It's beautiful and looks completely out of place with the rest of our ghetto-fabulous kitchen setup.

Purty.

It's not much, but it's a vast improvement over hauling hot water in a bucket from the bathtub upstairs to wash dishes every night.

If it's not one thing...

it's definitely another. We were beyond thrilled when we had an estimate for our A/C replacement that was $400 less than our initial estimate and could be done the same day. As soon as it was installed, the weather took a turn for the better and we didn't have to use it for a few days. We're scheduled to have it tied into the security system on Thursday. In the meantime, poor Tom has been sleeping downstairs. The idea is that he'd wake up to any unusual noises happening in the yard, but I still check on the condensers from an upstairs window several times a night.

After the brief respite from the unbearable heat and humidity, it came back in full force all at once. We enjoyed a full day of lovely climate-controlled bliss. Until...Tom noticed a puddle of water downstairs. The furnace overflow pan was, well, overflowing and dripped from the attic to the second floor. It in turn soaked through the floor upstairs and dripped into a puddle in the kitchen. Tom investigated and found a whole slew of problems with the air handler setup. The two biggies:

1. The overflow pan wasn't draining at all. Since the plastic pan underneath is actually the secondary overflow, that meant the primary overflow wasn't draining, either.

2. There was no filter in the furnace. The drywall guys had the system running while they were sanding, so the coils are probably clogged with a superfine particulate. A homeowner should be able to vacuum the outside of the coils with a brush attachment, but something as fine as drywall dust will clog the inside of the coils, requiring professional assistance (to remove the coils, the refrigerant has to be drained, and it's easy to damage the thin aluminum fins inside the coil).

The secondary pan wasn't draining because the PVC pipe that carries the water outside was not sloped properly. That's easily fixed with a couple of dollars worth of supplies from Lowe's.

The part that really boggles the mind is why the primary pan wasn't draining. There are several sets of inlets where you are supposed to be able to connect the drain pipes. They look like this:

Sorry for the bad pic. It's a tight space to take a photo.

Each socket has a knockout behind it. They have been removed in the above photo. The set of sockets that the pipes were connected to didn't have the knockouts removed, so the water couldn't get into the pipes to drain out. I'm not sure how we can access the knockouts without dismantling the entire drain system. Fortunately PVC is cheap, but it would have been really great if it had been done correctly in the first place. Now we're stuck fixing mistakes at our cost (of time and money). We might take forever getting projects completed, but at least we make sure to do it right the first time and avoid this sort of nonsense. I think I've sworn off hired labor for a long time.

My self-esteem coach always said I was a winner...

Can I even begin to explain how happy I was to have won the Black and Decker trimmer giveaway at This D*mn House? I haven't received it in the mail yet, but you can be sure I'll have lots of lawn-related posts coming up soon. Thanks again, NV!

Trimmer giveaway at This D*mn House

In honor of her (adorable) pup's 13th birthday, NV over at This D*mn House is giving away a Black and Decker lawn trimmer. She wrote a great - and honest! - review about it on her blog and is now offering one up to one of her readers. I've been a follower of her blog for close to a year and always look forward to her house projects. I don't hate yardwork nearly as much as she does, but any product that makes it go faster is alright in my book. To enter, just leave a comment on the giveaway post. But if you heard about it here and end up winning, at least let me borrow it sometimes, k?

Ode to my mom

Clara has been sick the past few days (nothing serious, but enough to make her want to be held and comforted more than usual), so I've neglected the blog a bit. I wanted to mention all the AWESOME help my mom provided while she was visiting her newest grandbaby. I had spent my last week of pregnancy ripping out more of the subfloor in the kitchen area, and she and Tom were able to lay down several sheets of OSB to cover the holes. There's still more to be done, but it's much safer now to walk around downstairs.

Basement skylight = greatly reduced.

We also picked up a sink base cabinet and have a temporary countertop set up for food prep. We still haven't installed the sink, but that should be happening pretty soon (I wanted to wait until I got the garbage disposal and under-sink water filter in-hand for installation all at once. We're washing dishes in a bucket right now, camp-style).

One lonely cabinet.

We hauled up the kitchen table and chairs out of the basement, gave them a good scrub-down, and now we have someplace to eat breakfast and dinner. At least in theory; it's mostly covered in mail and paperwork right now.

Okay, so I was ashamed of the mess and cleared it off for the picture.

Mom also bought some ferns to hang on the front porch to make our home look occupied. Happily, I haven't killed them yet. Yes, Mom, I'm watering and rotating them as promised. She spent hours and hours pulling weeds in the yard and edging the front sidewalk while I lounged lazily in bed with the baby.

The flowers on the steps were a gift from the neighbors.

She also helped me get started on hanging blinds downstairs. I got the cheapest blinds available (less than $5 each at Lowe's) because these are not permanent. Our insurance company wanted us to cover the windows downstairs until the house is completed; and though mini-blinds aren't really my style, it was the most cost-effective solution. They're not quite long enough for our 6'6" windows, but we didn't want to spend the extra $15 per blind for the longer length. That may have been reasonable for 1 or 2 blinds, but we had 11 to hang. It is much darker downstairs now, which is a good thing with the heat we've been having.

Not quite full length.

She also did lots of general clean-up and organization around the house, including putting together a mostly functional kitchen. Perhaps the most important thing she did was to help me learn how to care for a new baby. I've been babysitting since I was 12 and thought I was familiar with babies, but I've never been responsible for anyone under 3 months old. My mom had six kids of her own and now six grandkids, so she's an expert at all things baby. Those first few nights at home were a little rough, and she helped me decipher all the baby cries and fussiness. And after feedings during the night, she'd stay up and burp Clara so that I could get some sleep.

Thanks, Mom.

A/C update

The guy that originally installed our HVAC last year says he'll be able to replace just the coils for the outside units rather than replacing the entire thing. Fortunately, the compressors and electrical components - which make up a considerable amount of the cost of the unit - are still in good shape and were probably not harmed by the thieves. He was supposed to price out the parts today and give us an estimate tomorrow. I'm sure it will be considerably less than the $3850 that the other contractor quoted. Having to pay anything at all is not ideal, but our insurance doesn't cover it. (Since our house is incomplete, traditional insurance companies will not insure us. We have a government-underwritten plan called the Ohio FAIR plan, but it doesn't cover theft.)

To prevent this from happening again, we've talked about different security measures we can implement. Our former insurance agent, who now owns his own security-system company, dropped by the house yesterday and said that it would be easy enough to hook up the air conditioner to the house system. We also talked about setting up cameras for the side yard and alley. We might still do one of those, but neither would necessarily prevent another theft, only make it easier to catch the thieves. Tom found this product that seems to be a pretty economical solution.


Provided that it does what it claims, a couple of hundred bucks is a small price to protect our investment.

%#$@&*

We finally got appointments set up for today for our roof and air conditioning to be repaired (we noticed last week that the condensing units outside weren't coming on; 41 weeks pregnant and 90-degree heat don't go together very well). Apparently whoever replaced the roof on the house in 2004 reused the old flashing around the chimneys, and it must have gotten blown off or damaged by a windstorm recently. The repair will cost just under $600. We're OK with that.

The air conditioner is another story. When we were investigating for ourselves why the condensers weren't kicking on, we noticed that the refrigerant line was pinched like someone had tried to cut it. We were thankful that it otherwise was intact - just solder on a small piece of copper tubing to replace the damaged part and call it a day. When the air conditioning guy showed up this morning, however, this is what we found:


Both of the condensing units were completely stripped. We filed a police report but they didn't seem optimistic about ever finding out who did it. The officer said that if they catch a person in the act, they'll often confess to all the thefts they've committed as part of a plea. Even if our address is mentioned, we have little hope of ever getting any money out of them. I guess this happens around here all the time. In fact, there's a law office behind our house whose air conditioner is surrounded by a tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire because of a previous theft. And Tom's brother has a rental property that was stripped of all its copper over the weekend, too.

After we filed the police report, I went to the local scrapyard to see if they could help. Unfortunately, they get dozens of these things in on a daily basis. We filled out a standard form, but they seemed unable or unwilling to really do anything about it. It seems like 2 brand-new, identical coil assemblies being brought in as scrap would be cause for alarm, but they'll buy them anyway. Cost of replacement for the condensers (there's no way to possibly repair them): $3500. Purchase price of condensers as scrap: $30.

I don't know whether I should cry or register for concealed-carry training.