BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

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…

Monday – 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.

Here 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.

Monday – 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.

Scuba 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.

And, 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.

The 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…

The 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.

The 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.

Thursday – 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…

Scuba Steve

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.

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…

More to come…

Murv

Well, it seems I screwed up.  Nothing so bad as to warrant a beating from E K… Well, scratch that, actually. E K never really seems to need a reason to hand out beatings… But, be that as it may, I think I escaped the wrath of the Evil Redhead for this particular infraction.

Maybe…

You see, I entered the wrong date into the post scheduler for my most recent blog (Mindy, Hold The Mork…) and therefore it deployed a day early. Now, normally folks would think of this as a Christmas in August sort of thing. You know, early present and all, but that just isn’t how my luck runs. Nope. Not in the least. It seems Anastasia, (yes, that Anastasia) who is apparently taking EVIL lessons from E K, informed me that if this premature post-aculation meant she was going to have to wait an extra day in between blog entries that I had better write a “bonus blog” or she would complain to E K and then help her do bad things to me. Of course, we all know where that will lead, and my insurance carrier is ready to drop me as it is…

So, as an act of self-preservation, after spending much of the day cowering in the corner with Satan, who still can’t seem to shake this morning’s Redhead Rampage, I figured I’d better make something… errr… ummm… write something up. So, since I already had notes on hand for the continuing adventures of Karen and Mindy, I figured what the hell…

It was a Thursday. A Thursday like any other Thursday, except that Mindy had dressed down for the day and Karen was in a mood. Now, granted, Karen was always in a bit of a mood, what with wanting to shoot everyone, but she was actually a bit more surly than usual. She might have even been carrying explosives in her purse, but I wasn’t about to ask.

The conversation had been raging on about blog entries and humorless folks for several minutes, and was now starting to wind down. I had no more finished jotting a few notes about the West county water issues than Mindy pointed at me and exclaimed, “Murv! You aren’t going to blog about that are you?”

I shrugged. “Why not? It’s funny.”

“You want funny?” Big K asked.

“Sure, but I think we’ve pretty much worn out the whole gun thing,” I told her.

She huffed then cocked her head to the side and said, “Oh yeah, well what about underwear?”

Now I was intrigued, but by the same token I was unable to hold back my compulsion to pun.

“Depends,”  I quipped.

“Yeah, real funny, Murv. Don’t make me shoot you.”

“Yeah, okay, so what about underwear? I’m wearing tighty whities.”

“Murv!” Mindy yelped.

“Hey, I actually used to get that question and booksigning Q&A’s.” I shrugged. “Now I just get it out of the way from the start.”

“People really asked you that?”

I nodded. “Yep.”

“Shoulda shot ’em,” Karen added on cue, just as I’d expected she would.

Mindy spoke up again, directing herself to Karen. “So, is this about that guy? You know, the one you yelled at?”

“I yell at everyone,” Karen replied.

“I know, I know,” Mindy agreed. “But isn’t this the story about that guy with the pink pants?”

“Yeah,” Karen answered with a nod. “Pink pants and bright green little boy underwear.”

I was no longer intrigued. Now I was just mildly disturbed, however I simply couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out of my mouth. “I know I’m going to regret asking this, but how did you know what color his underwear was?”

Karen’s voice was as deadpan matter-of-fact as I had ever heard. “Because he had his damn pink pants pulled down below his cheeks.”

“Ass cheeks?”

“Well yeah…” she answered, sarcasm heavy in her voice. “They’d look pretty damn weird up around his face cheeks, don’tcha think?”

I held up my hands in surrender. “I was just asking.”

Karen shook her head. “And you write books for a living? Sheesh. You been drinking West county water too?”

I ignored the jibe and asked, “Okay, so I have to know… How did you see this? Did you follow him into the men’s room or something?”

“No. This was in the meat department.”

Now, there’s something I forgot to mention folks – Karen works in the meat department at a local market.

“Rump roast then,” I said.

“Wasn’t on sale that day.”

“I was joking. Who’s been drinking the water now?”

“My gun is in my purse you know.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Tell Murv what you did,” Mindy interjected, trying to avoid bloodshed. She seemed far more excited about the story than Karen. But then, Mindy was definitely the excitable one. Karen just approached everything with calm detachment before pulling out a gun and killing it.

“I went and got my knife,” she said.

“No gun?” I asked.

“I was at work. Can’t bring guns into work, dammit.”

“Oh, I see.”

“So, I got my big knife. Not the little one. The really big one. Then I went over and told him he needed to pull up his pants because the rest of the customers didn’t want his butt germs on their dinner.”

“So did he?”

“Nope.” She shook her head. “He gave a bunch of attitude. Told me his butt didn’t have germs, which is a crock because everybody’s butt has butt germs. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that.”

“And you put up with him giving you attitude?”

“Hell no. I showed him my knife.”

“Ahhh, so then he pulled up his pants?”

“No. Then we had a wet cleanup in that aisle.”

I raised an eyebrow and began considering my options for escaping the table if I started feeling any more alarmed than I already was. I tried to keep my voice calm as I asked, “You killed him?”

“Oh hell no. Didn’t have to. He peed all over himself.”

“Ahhhhh… Okay.”

Karen shrugged. “Yeah, it was kinda funny. Anyway, then I went and put out some more chickens.”

“You mean like whole roasters and fryers?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

I took the opportunity to divert the topic toward recipes. “Since you brought up butts, have you ever made beer butt chicken?”

“You mean where you stick the can up the chicken’s butt? Oh yeah, love it.”

“I just don’t know how you do that,” Mindy announced.

“What?” Karen said, incredulity in her voice. “You just stick the can up its butt and put it on the grill. It ain’t hard. You do have beer out in West county, right?”

“Ewww,” Mindy replied, scrunching up her face then shuddering. “I couldn’t do that. I’ve never even bought a chicken.”

“You haven’t? Are you a vegetarian?” I asked.

“No,” Mindy replied. “I eat chicken, I’ve just never bought one.”

“Well what the hell do you do?” Karen asked, coming upright in her seat. “Steal ’em?”

“No,…” Mindy began, trying desperately to explain.

“I shoulda known,” Karen continued, talking right over the top of her. “Damn West county people. I bet you wear green underwear too…”

More to come…

Murv