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  • Hell Week 2 @ Hell House…

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      23rd Sep 09
      M. R. Sellars

    The continuing saga of inherited rental property which sucks the very life from you…

    For more background on the story, see Week 1 entry HERE.

    And so, since I am exhausted, AND I’m already into the week 3 at Hell House, here are some pics with short explanations…

    01 Steve Pinning FoundationMonday – We started week 2 with knocking out a section of foundation where a crack had formed. Fortunately, it was for the most part superficial. On the left is a picture of Scuba Steve, my contractor buddy, hammer drilling so we can set rebar to pin the repair concrete to the foundation proper.

    After planting the rebar into the holes, Scuba went to the “Happy Van” as we like to call it, pulled out some plywood, and anchored it to the foundation to build a form.

    Then we mixed up a bunch of concrete, as if we hadn’t been mixing enough of that already for the stairs and such.

    02 Foundation RepairHere on the right is a picture of the concrete poured in place with plywood forms anchored in place.

    We literally created a chute from a piece of cardboard so that we could pour the wet concrete directly in behind the form.

    Once the soupier mix had started to set up, we took a slightly drier version of it and troweled in along the top edge of the form.

    When we pulled the plywood off the foundation the next day, other than a slight color variation, you’d almost never even know there had been a crack there.

    04 Basement BeforeMonday – Tuesday – Wednesday: In addition to the front sump and back sump, the basement had a low spot issue. This meant it was necessary for us to jackhammer a trench into the floor in order to install a secondary floor drain. The trench was a bit over 25 feet long and terminated at the original floor drain so we could tie in.

    You can see the standing water around the old water heater and the base of the furnace. When the basement flooded it completely destroyed the water heater, however the workings of the furnace were up and out of harm’s way, fortunately for us.

    5 Steve JackhammerScuba with the jackhammer. He ended up with several bruises AND a huge blister on his hand after two weeks of driving this thing.

    The blue thing around his head is one of the coolest inventions of all time. When we were doing all of this it was fairly hot and we were sweating like the proverbial stuck pigs. The blue thing is a sponge on a rubberband. It works even better than your average headband at keeping the sweat out of your eyes. Scuba happened to have an entire bag of them and he gave me a few. I now swear by them when it comes to any work where I’ll be doing some sweating.

    6 TrenchAnd, here we have the Grand Canyon…

    After jackhammering and sledghammering, we had to dig the trench down to the proper depth for the pipes and the trap on the floor drain, which is why you see piles of dirt everywhere. Scuba is doing the Scuba Steve dance in the background…

    I took this picture shortly after we finished the digging and had laid out all of the PVC pipes and fittings along the side of the trench for a dry fit. Fortunately, the dry fit was a success and we were able to glue it and start back filling very quickly.

    9 Trench New Floor DrainThe new secondary floor drain…

    Ain’t it purdy?

    We positioned this in the low spot near the furnace and hot water heater. Prior to this it had been necessary to run the condensation drain hose from the Air Conditioner across the floor to the center of the basement so that it could empty into the main floor drain.

    Now, instead of having something to trip over, the drain hose is only a few feet long and resides in the back storage area of the basement.

    Sometimes it’s the little things…

    8 Trench Tie InThe tie in to the main…

    When we originally tore out the floor, we had intended to tie in to the drain for the bar sink, however when we arrived at that point we discovered a bit of a problem, that being a footing for one of the structural piers. Therefore we had to continue several more feet to the main line.

    The second line is from the aforementioned sink that used to be in the kitchenette prior to the basement flood requiring a total gut.

    We left it intact complete with vent pipe, but capped it off. That way if the basement is ever redone, the plumbing is already installed.

    10 Trench with Concrete PouredThe trench 14 bags of concrete later…

    As with the pad, stairs, and foundation, we mixed and poured all of the concrete by hand using a wheelbarrow. You can’t really see it in this picture, but there is also a form with a square pad poured where the old water heater used to reside (it is moved in this pic.) The pad is where the new water heater has a perch now.

    All told, between the stairs, pads, foundation, and the trench, Scuba and I (and Duane) poured something on the order of 32 bags of concrete, all mixed by hand.

    11 New Hot Water HeaterThursday – Friday: These two days saw the installation of the new hot water heater, which included an enormous amount of plumbing since the old copper was too small to meet code and specs. I didn’t photograph any of the pipe cutting, joint sweating, etc. However, it took two days to redo the plumbing, gas pipes, and venting for the water heater and furnace. Just so we have something to look at, here is the new hot water heater sitting pretty on the nice, raised pad I mentioned earlier.

    All of the venting is shiny and new. When we were carrying it in, Scuba had slipped several of the fittings onto my arms. Before we ever reached the back door we had both broken into a chorus of, “Oz never did give nothin’ to the Tin Man…” Yeah, I know. We aren’t right in the head. But, we know that so it’s all good.

    And, of course, each day at 5:00 PM, it was “Beer Thirty”, whereupon we would take a break for a can or two of the brew…

    12 Steve

    Scuba Steve

    13 Murv

    Swervin’ Murvin’

    And finally, when Saturday rolled around, it was time to paint. All of our friends showed up to slop antique white on the upstairs walls that were ready for paint. As promised, here is a picture of The Evil Redhead on stilts, doing the cut in work in one of the back bedrooms.

    15 Giantess EK on Stilts

    The Giantess Evil Kat

    This brings us to Week 3 at Hell House, and hopefully the last hell week since the tenants should be moving in this coming weekend. For a taste of just one of the things I had to tackle, courtesy of the former tenant…

    14 Hole In Wall

    More to come…

    Murv

      Friends and Family, Life
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  • When Good Sayings Go Bad Ver. 1.0…

      0 comments
      2nd Sep 09
      M. R. Sellars

    I’m calling this Version 1.0 because I have a sneaking suspicion that as my brainpan continues to leak, I am going to remember something else that fits this title and will need to use it again.

    You know how it is… The leakage simply can’t be rushed any more than it can be contained. Believe me, I’ve tried. All the earplugs and cotton balls in the world won’t stop it. I’ve avoided having the little Dutch boy stick his fingers in my ears for the obvious reason – that being I don’t want any paint in my ear canal, of course… And, yeah, E K offered to plug my ears for me, but something told me I might not survive whatever she had in mind, so I declined. The point here being, the leak trickles on and what drips from the old brainpan doesn’t always happen in chronological order.

    So, on with this little ditty…

    Now, I want to point out that no matter what you read here, I am not in any way purporting, nor am I denying, the existence of “God”. Be it, ummm, he… uhhh… She?… I think we’ll stick with it… Be it the “one true God” as some would have you believe, or one out of an entire pantheon. My particular religious beliefs are my own, and yours are yours. In the interest of avoiding overt ridiculousity we should keep it that way.

    God speaks

    However, there are  sayings that many of us use in our everyday lives that invoke this “God”, whoever he, she, or it may be. (BTW, if you ask Evil Kat she will tell you that God is in not only a she, but that She is She… However, she prefers to be addressed as “Oh High Exalted Queen Bitch of the Entire F*cking Universe”… Except in informal situations when you can just call her Mistress. She says “God” as a moniker is simply too passe.)

    So, anyway, there are all these various sayings that invoke God, one of which is a bit of an exclamation I heard people use when I was growing up in the Southern U.S. –

    “You don’t have the sense that God gave a goose!”

    Fortunately, I don’t recall anyone saying this directly to me, but I definitely remember hearing it spouted at other folks who, in all honesty, didn’t have the common sense of a rock, so it wasn’t exactly a slanderous statement by any stretch of the imagination.

    GOOSE But, be that as it may, this very saying is what spawned the IBGG Local 747.

    At this point I suspect you are wondering just what the hell the IBGG Local 747 is. Well, obviously it is a union. To my knowledge there have only been 3 members in the past 25 years – moi being one of them. None of us have ever paid union dues, but by the same token the union has never done anything for us either, so I guess we’re even.

    BUT MURV! WHAT THE HELL IS THE IBGG?

    Chill out. You don’t have to yell at me. Sheesh…

    You see, to make a long story even more complex…

    Well, no… I won’t do that. Let me see if I can simplify it instead… You see, I had this acquaintance who had a tendency to get tongue tied with every single sentence he spoke. Unless he was yelling at someone, but that’s a different story. Anyway, whenever he got frustrated and was trying to NOT yell, his tongue became so entwined in his eye teeth that he would go blind and you never knew what was going to come out of his mouth. One day such an instance occurred when he was trying to explain something extremely simply to someone, and said someone just wasn’t getting it. All of a sudden, we’ll call him Gary because that’s his name, shook his head, looked at this person with disgust and spouted –

    “Dammit. You don’t have the sense to give God a goose, do ya?”

    I dunno. It was pretty damn funny at the time. Maybe you just had to be there. At any rate, the IBGG – International Brotherhood of Goose Givers – was born. Our motto was, of course, “Go give God a goose.”

    You are perfectly welcome to take that however you want.

    VODKA Since I have God’s ear on a regular basis these days, I asked E K recently if she would like a goose. She slapped me, of course. Hard enough to rattle my brainpan and incite more leakage in fact. After she was through being a vengeful Goddess, she told me she could go for a Grey Goose and Tonic. I wasn’t surprised by this as she usually enjoys a drink or two after handing out a severe beating.

    So… That’s all for now. I have to limp into the kitchen and mix a drink so I can go give God… Umm, I mean “Oh High Exalted Queen Bitch of the Entire F*cking Universe” a goose.

    And as we know I’m all thumbs…

    I wonder if this would be a good time to pay my union dues and look into their insurance options?

    More to come…

    Murv

      Humor, Life, Nostalgia, Silliness
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