BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

If you’ve been around Facebook lately, you’ve probably seen my “Note” about being busier than a one-legged cat in a paper kicking contest… wait… that’s… hmmm… Dammit. Someone must have spilled my metaphors and just tossed ’em all back into the box all willy-nilly and they’re mixed up…

(SIGH)

Well, no use spilling my tail over chasing a cry.

So, anyway… I’m full boated. Just way too much going on in one place, at one time. Therefore, today’s blog is more or less one of those CBS Sunday Morning, “We’ll leave you with…” sort of interludes. If you don’t watch CBS Sunday Morning, basically their sign-off for the show is that tag line, followed by some video of something, usually serene.

In my case, however, I’m going to leave you with some pictures of my Friday, a few captions, and an advertisement at the end. (Hey, THEY always go directly into a commercial, why can’t I?)

Jack-hammering out the section of walkway alongside Hell House. The sewer pipe for the West end of the house comes out right around the middle of the window, about 5 feet below ground.

Concrete pad gone. Pictured here is one of the two holes in the ground that were revealed beneath it. Because of the pressure on the pipe and the fact that it washed out, it literally sluiced away earth and clay, creating these two chasms that went all the way down to the broken pipe. We dubbed them The Grand Canyon and The Mariana Trench.

Don’t let appearances deceive you. That clay pipe only looks intact. The sweep (turn) is broken at both ends, the 2 foot section near the bottom of the picture is shattered underneath, and where Scuba Steve is standing there’s another two foot section of pipe. However, it is another 8 to 10 inches down because The Grand Canyon had washed out beneath it, so it had broken off at each end and simply dropped to the floor of said canyon. This, of course, resulted in the poo, etc, pouring out of the cast iron pipe to fill the void. It was, to say the least, a might stinky. Good thing it was cold (38 and windy) that day. If it had been July, August, or even September we probably would have needed respirators.

We had a piece of the high grade PVC on hand from installing the drainage system at Hell House a little over a year ago. A trip to the commercial plumbing supplier garnered us a “boot” to go from Cast Iron to PVC, and then another “boot” designed to connect PVC to Clay pipe. Here we have Scuba Steve inspecting his handiwork in search of leaks while we were doing a pressure test. Once it passed, we back filled with pea gravel and all of the dirt. A replacement concrete pad will have to wait until spring or summer next year.

There you have my Friday. The joys of maintaining inherited rental property. All I can say is, DON’T DO IT! Have rental property, that is. The headaches aren’t worth it, in my opinion.

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That’s it from Merp Central for now. I have a ton of stuff yet to do, not the least of which is finish a writing project that is due soon! :-O

More to come…

Murv

Since the Hell House saga has not yet come to an end, and I keep tossing status comments out there referencing such, I thought it might be a good idea to give y’all an update. Obviously, if you are a first time visitor here you probably have no clue what I am talking about, so to get caught up you will need to tweak the dials on the wayback machine and read the previous entries, Hell House Week 1 and Hell House Week 2…

And now, on with the update…

Holey Walls, Batman!

When last we left our intrepid laborers, Scuba and Swervin’, many things had been done, but many were still left for the doing. Among them was a gargantuan hole in the wall as seen at the end of Hell House Week 2.

After cutting back the drywall to square things up, and installing nailers, I hung a partial sheet of rock to patch the hole, then taped, mudded, and skim coated the wall. Once I finished sanding, the results were perfectly lovely.

The incoming tenants slapped a couple of coats of paint onto the wall and everything was just like new again. I’m sure a pro drywall guy would have accomplished what I did in less than half the time, but hey, it looks good and it’s done.

Then the rains came…

As with any other autumn in the midwest, the fall rainy season was upon us. Truth is, Scuba and I had been looking forward to this because we wanted to see our handiwork in operation – that being the basement stairs and drainage system, including the 20 gallon sump well and piping.

Much to our delight, it worked flawlessly. We couldn’t have planned it better even if we knew what we were doing (LOL). Unfortunately, I was unable to get a picture of it in operation, but suffice it to say, the pump move quite a bit of water and the basement is staying dry for a change. We’ve recently discovered a small leak along the West side of the house, but that is due to a separation between the walk and the foundation. We’ve already purchased the materials to repair it and are just waiting for it to be dry enough to affect said repair.

The picture above, while obviously NOT the pump in operation, is of Scuba making some repairs to the gutters. We discovered during the rain that one of the longer runs had separated from the fascia and was sagging, causing the water to pool and overspill. Once Scuba Steve had a talk with it, it straightened up and started draining properly. While on the roof, he also replaced the flashing around the vent pipes since it was shot.

I thought we were done with the concrete?

It seems that where concrete work is concerned, Hell House is the gift that keeps on giving.

Part of the evidence of the gutter problem was the fact that during heavy rains the water would overshoot the sagging gutter as it ran down the valley between the main section of the house and the addition. Over time it had eroded the corner from the back stairs leading from the kitchen to the patio. Other than that the stairs were in great shape, so instead of taking them out entirely, Scuba and I drilled, pinned, formed, and concreted the corner. It’s now pretty as a picture and solid as a rock.

Building the “Great Wall”…

One of the projects we wanted to accomplish was putting in some walls in the basement. Nothing fancy, just yet… Primarily, we wanted to create a lockable storage area where I could house some of the tools and materials we were using on the repairs. We also wanted to enclose the Furnace and Water Heater in a “Mechanical Room” so that they weren’t sticking out like a sore thumb if we eventually decide to re-finish the basement. As it happens, Scuba had a slew of metal studs in his personal warehouse – what we like to call “The Happy Shed” – so we were in business. All we needed was the track and something to attach to the studs once they were in place. A quick trip to the hardware store and we were ready to roll.

The Great Wall takes shape…

Since the this really qualifies as not quite finished where basements are concerned, we elected to go with a wall covering that would be sturdy and accomplish what we had set out to do, but not necessarily be “pretty” – kind of like drywall that hasn’t been painted or wallpapered just yet. So, we used ply. This allowed us to put up walls and provides us with a base should we eventually want to finish with paneling or tongue and groove stock of some sort.

From this angle you can see the doorway to the storage area along with the door already in place.

Here we have a different angle, taken from the far end of the basement. On the left is the doorway to the storage area.

On the right you can see the doorway to the mechanical room. We are going to put some storage shelves in there and hang a door as well. In order to keep costs down we have been using recycled materials from the house itself, as well as many gems donated by Scuba from the “Happy Shed”…

Gotta love the Happy Shed… I’m just sayin’…

In the foreground you can seem my pool table. There is a rich history behind this 3 piece slate table – in short, I purchased it for the paltry sum of $500 back when I was 19 years old. A former High School teacher had retired and was moving to Hawaii. He had purchased the table new and had played all of 10 games on it. Not wanting to pay the price to move it overseas, he decided to sell it and I stumbled upon the deal. My father and I moved it, set it up, and played many a game on it. Unfortunately, when I moved out I had no place to put it, so I left it there for the time being. That’s been way more than 20 years now, of course. Long story short, much damage was done to the table over the years, so Scuba and I, along with some help from the new tenants, moved it, repaired it, and recovered the deck and rails with new felt.

Not only is it pretty again, it plays great…

A closeup shot of the mechanical room. Out of sight, but with plenty of room to affect repairs and even store some things…

And finally, not wanting to waste space, Scuba and I took advantage of the area behind the Mechanical Room and installed a small closet on the left – door and shelves forthcoming – as well as a small platform on the right where we flush mounted a bar fridge my father had stored at the house. The perfect place to keep a few cold ones for “Beer Thirty”… Especially since my knees are having trouble with stairs these days…

Okay, that’s it for now. More updates on Hell House when we create more havoc over there… As I said, it’s the gift that keeps on giving, and there will be plenty more work, that’s a given…

More to come…

Murv