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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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  • Heellllpp Meeee…

      0 comments
      9th Aug 09
      M. R. Sellars

    Part 1 of 2…

    Her Majesty Queen Eebil Kat threw me for a loop again…

    Now before I get into the crux of the story I need to clear up a little something about E K. The truth of the matter is this: while she is without a doubt 113% pure evil, she has a soft spot. And, that soft spot is none other than Nature.


    Yeah, nature… As in, the environment and all creatures big and small. I’m not just talking about kittens and puppies, mind you. E K apologizes to spiders if she disturbs their webs, scoops up the errant wasp or hornet that finds its way into the house and returns it to the wild unharmed, and I’ve even seen her move the lawn sprinkler to avoid drowning out an ant colony. The Evil Redhead is so wildlife conscious we sometimes call her Kippy the Environmental Terrorist, because if she catches you damaging the environment she will… well, let’s just say you don’t want her to catch you and we’ll leave it at that. (By the way, we call her Kippy behind her back because if you call her Kippy in front of her back, well… See notice above about damaging the environment. Pretty much the same thing applies.)

    But, this isn’t what threw me for the loop. We’ll get to that in a minute…


    So, in the interest of full disclosure I also have to point out that as environmentally conscious as E K is, she does in fact have a “hit list” where so called disgusting creatures are concerned – although, as you would expect, it is very short. Topping it, of course, is the male of the species homo sapiens. But, we already knew that so it is kind of a given. Also on the list, as you have recently discovered, is the Japanese Beetle because it simply doesn’t belong here, making it an invasive species that threatens the ecosystem. That really and truly seems to be the “proverbial litmus test” for her. If it’s invasive and threatens the natural order of things, she’ll terminate it with extreme prejudice.

    Come to think of it, that whole threatening the ecosystem thing is probably why men in general top her hit list…

    But, back to the story… You see, apparently there are a couple of other entries on the “most wanted wall” I hadn’t realized were there. They don’t actually fall under the “invasive, ecosystem destroying threat” clause. They are, for all intents and purposes, covered by the well-known and often invoked, “Don’t Annoy The E K” statute.

    Yeah… This is where the loop throwing comes in…

    You see, I heard a ruckus in the kitchen the other day. I knew I should simply ignore it, but there’s this personality quirk we writer types all seem to have. We’re overly curious. And, unfortunately that little flaw sometimes gets us into trouble. Living with E K I know this all too well because giving in to curiosity gets me into hot water more often than not, therefore you’d think I would have learned better by now.

    But, like I said, it’s a flaw…

    So, yeah, you guessed it. I couldn’t leave well enough alone and I went to investigate the ruckus.

    I poked my head around the corner and peered into the kitchen. “What’s going…”

    The rest of the sentence caught in my throat and remained unspoken, because what met my eyes was to say the least just a bit unexpected.


    The Evil Redhead was standing at the sink, all dolled up in Pleather dominatrix gear. Now, as intriguing – and dare I say titillating – a sight as this happened to be, what really got me was the empty Popsicle
    stick with which she appeared to carrying on a conversation.

    “I’ve got all the time in the world,” she instructed the flat piece of wood as I listened from the doorway “Trust me, you will talk…”

    Throwing caution to the wind I silently crept farther into the room, what with that whole curiosity thing working on me, and all that jazz. Once I came closer to The Evil One I could see that the Popsicle stick, while definitely not containing a frozen confection as one would think, was also not actually as empty as I had originally imagined it to be.

    And that was when my irresistible curiosity led me down a dark and scary path…

    More to come…

    Murv

    To be continued in: Mistress Of The Flies…

      Humor, Life, Romance and Relationships, Silliness
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