Bathroom update

It's been a long summer, mostly the threat of court looming large on my horizon. The deadbeat contractor did not show up to the first meeting, nor did he show up to the second. I was granted the ability to have him arrested and dragged to court, but the local sheriff doesn't have the manpower to make that happen.

In the meantime, I'm tired. Tired of this bathroom, tired of the looming threat it hangs over me, tired of the stress of it all, tired of debris blowing down through the wall and ceiling into the bathtub, tired of living with a curtain for a door.

This is how it's been the last two years or so.

 A tension rod and a heavy curtain was fine when I thought this little action was going to be 6 months. Recently I decided that I'm a proper adult, and even if I can't have a proper bathroom yet, I can at least have a sorta-door. I bought a vinyl accordion doors on Amazon and threw it up. It's not great, but it's very accommodating to the wonky size of the opening. 

Hey look! a (sorta) door!

 

These last few weeks, I've set about calling and trying to get contractors to come out and quote this mess again.
#1 - came out and looked at it, never contacted me back, despite my contacting him.
#2 - came out, looked around a little, asked my budget, said "oh yea, we can do that", gave me a quote for about 4K over my budget, never addressed a bunch of issues.
#3 - came out, looked around hard, made a lot of dismayed noises, did not ask budget, did not offer a quote, needs to come back with his partner so they can agree on how to approach it, if they even want to touch it. Have a follow up with them this Wednesday.
#4 - Came out, made similar dismayed noises, are going home to think about it, and will be in touch.
#5 - Has not called me back, but it a pseudo-holiday today.

I've found out a few things:
• The toilet is pitched wrong, likely because the floor is pitched as if it's still a porch, not a bathroom.
• Ripping the porch/bathroom off the house isn't really feasible, because if I do that, it will trigger my need to replace the septic system.
• The cost to replace a 4 bedroom septic is around $25k.
• The shallow roof over the porch should have rolled roofing or metal, not architectural shingle.
• The better respected the concern, the higher the likelihood of them telling me I've got a very, very challenging problem on my hands and being super cagey about how to solve it and navigate my local building inspector in the process.

#4 came right out and said my best bet might be to go to the building inspector and plead my case (that my house predates a lot of codes, and so naturally will fail), and have them come out and tell me, in writing, exactly what I would need to do to make this suck less, and what maybe I don't have to touch. I don't know if I'm quite there yet, but I'm close.
I know I can not afford to take out a second mortgage to deal with this, and it's going to be another winter of space heaters.

Joy.
But at least I have a roof.

I did get a decent amount of potatoes from the garden though, so that's nice.

A little bit of this and that

 

Went hiking with my friends Andrea and Rachael st Chesterfield Gorge, MA. Cool place.

My friend Karl's daughter's box broke.

So I fixed it.

I finished the most recent EK auction device.

I'm not wildly thrilled about how it came out, but they can't all be masterpieces.
Odd color scheme to work with.

I fixed Ian's Mom's Fish.

Broke out the old broken pane

Cut and shaped a replacement piece, cut the edge lead to work it in.

Added re-enforcing lead in the tail and cemented it.

The original glass was a slightly darker shade of yellow, but the yellow I had had a much better texture that blended well with the design. It's all fixed now and on it's way home.

I pulled out a bunch of my armor, cleaned and polished it, and considered a lot about my History Nerd Club and what it means to me.
Even if I'm not active in that aspect, armor shouldn't be allowed to tarnish.

I found a really cool owl feather on a morning walk in the woods.

Historic Nerdiness and some post resetting.

I have been busy, although my blog's silence would indicate otherwise.
While the great acidic water fiasco of 2023 was going on, I was working on a project to present to my history nerd friends. I have a great big project arc that I'm trying to carry out over the next year+. I needed a clear goal to kick it off though, and my friend Kathy, referred to as Countess Meggie in our game, ("Countess" indicating she's been Queen once) was happy to add me to a team of champions she was putting together for a specific tournament.
Within the SCA, there are dozens of different activities to participate in, and sometimes we get together to compete. I was an "Arts and Sciences" participant. By volunteering to be one of Her Excellency's Champions, it gave me a clear, hard deadline to make good on the first leg of my project.

I'm trying to figure out how to upload the PDF documentation. (Does this link work?) It's about 25 pages long, complete with full color images, and then a 10 page appendix containing a lead safety data sheet (which I have not uploaded.)

I brought my 6' table, but I really could have used 8. This was a little cramped; the different elements couldn't breathe.

After that event which took up the whole day on 5/13, I swapped out all the gear in my car the morning on 5/14 and drove out to Cooper's Lake in Slippery Rock, PA. A number of years ago I had volunteered to be on a special team to make new road signs for an event that happens every year out there called Pennsic War. We got half done last August, and are on track to get the second half done this year. It was a beautiful week to camp, with only one frigid night and one rainy day. I've built a platform for the back of my CRV though, so when I heard it was going to rain, I packed out early and happily slept in my car.

So many signs! Rusti taught me how to use a paint sprayer. After priming, these all got treated with special reflective highway paint/micro glass reflectors in the letters, applied by hand. They will be top rolled with blue paint for contrast in August.

Home for a week. This is a 12' Sunforger Canvas Panther "Regent" Pavilion. I'm borrowing it from a friend for the summer to see if I want to buy it. I have a 14' Sunforger Canvas Panther Single Bell Wedge, but for being similar square feet, there's FAR less usable room in my wedge than in this Regent. I can put up the Regent alone if I need to. The wedge usually requires 2 people.
However, I've been able to tour some of my peer's "tiny homes" (little historically flavored seasonal homes built on trailer beds) and I think I'm going to start saving my pennies in that direction.

After doing a lot of other things with dear friends and sitting through a staff meeting, (yes, I go on vacation to go to meetings,) I motored home on 5/20, and have been trying to get on top of the lawn (a disaster until yesterday) and the laundry (finally conquered.)

On Memorial Day, I did accomplish a task I've been putting off since I bought the house. I pulled up and straightened out the granite post near the driveway that keeps people from hitting the house.

We had a bit of a lean.

It's not actually that tall. I had been hoping for another 6"-1' for a more solid situation.

Dug down the hole some. There were big rocks I didn't want to disturb, being as they are right next to the driveway.

Interesting to see how the dirt has slid down over the years to pile up against the cement apron/house.

I soaked the post in water and D2 and gave it a good scrub.

Put in some pea gravel I had from another project, and then backfilled with dirt.

Much straighter! I planted some marigolds around the base; we'll see if they come up.

After all of that, I sat down for a well deserved beer (Jack's Abby Blood Orange Wheat. Great Summer beer.)

The flowers are blooming, and more projects are in the works! Watch this space for more windows, more art, and more house.

Water, water everywhere...

... but luckily, not filling my basement.

Back a number of months ago, I noticed a pinhole leak had started in one of my copper water pipes. It was in the basement. I put a bucket under it until I could deal with it. Dripping only once every ten minutes or so, it was so infrequent that I sort of forgot about it.

Then a couple of months back, I noticed that one of the joints in the new piping over to the radon tank had developed a little leak. I thought that they hadn't caught quite the PEX right with their crimping tool, so I gave them a call.
"Nope," John the Radon Guy said when he came out. "You have acidic water. It's eating the metal." Then he showed me all the other places that were corroding. The light bulb went on. He confirmed that was likely the culprit of the pinhole leak and gave me the name of a water guy, Dave. Then he fixed the active leak in his line.

The little pinhole started dripping with more intensity in the last few weeks, so I went to Home Depot and got one of the epoxy putty/plaster "cast" fix kits. I wasn't feeling adventurous enough to cut up my pipes for a sSarkbite fitting.

I thought I did a nice job. It stopped the leak anyway.

I had put aside calling the Water Guy, because I was dealing with some work stuff the past couple of months. ("stuff" = layoffs.) Yesterday I finally summoned up the energy to do a lot of adult-style activities:
a) dealing with getting ready to renew my RealID Driver's license before my birthday,
b) finding a new GYN, and
c) calling Dave the Water Guy. (Who, come to find out, put the well pump in 17+ years ago. That's his really old white sticker on the control panel. Looking back in my records, he also did the water test for the former owners when I bought the place.)

The diver's license is dealt with until 5/9, when I go to AAA and they take care of the rest.
The new GYN search is a debacle; I need to call the practice back and reschedule.
Water Guy Dave called me right back and came right out that afternoon.

The 32 gallon well tank and control panel.

 

Dave was quite jovial, took one look at the tank and connecting pipes and got quite serious. "Sarah," he said, "there's a tremendous amount of pressure behind this pipe," gesturing at the pipe sticking out of the bottom of the big blue tank. "And there's nothing to tell the pump to stop running if it goes. See this gauge? There shouldn't be water *in* the gauge."

Huh. Look at that.

"If this lets go while you're at work, you're going to come home to an indoor swimming pool."
Huh.

I have a lot of stuff in my basement, including but not limited to my furnace, hot water heater, and a LOT of tools, stained glass and otherwise. But what he was talking about didn't sound inexpensive either. New pressure tank, a neutralizer tank, a bunch of shutoffs, PEX and stainless steel pipe, and the media to neutralize the water.
"We can put you on tomorrow." Dave said. "I really don't like how this looks."

In the days of contractor wait-lists of weeks to months, the fact that he sat at my table and moved things around to do it told me everything I needed to know about the basement. "We can do all the parts for $3800," he said. "Parts, labor and removal."

Taking a deep breath and letting out a sigh, I kissed my tax return goodbye and told him to do it. Leaks the basement are one thing, but leaks in walls are different.

Dave and Darren came back today, and in only about 5 hours, I have a shiny new tank that's 3 gallons bigger (35 gallons!) and a neutralizer tank that conditions the water before it goes anywhere else in the house. The only drawback is that this system has to flush once a week, and that water has to go somewhere. In new construction, they blow a hole in the house and send it outside, or into a sump pump, etc. There were no good options for me, (including an old water pipe we determined went nowhere.) We wound up tapping it into the kitchen waste water pipe that drains to the cess pool. Not a great solution (45 gallons at a clip into the cesspool isn't great) but it was the only decent option. I'm moderately concerned about potential blockages where the pipes meet up, but we'll burn that bridge when we get there. Someday when plumbers show up to deal with the bathroom, I'll have it readdressed.

Shiny new system. Well pump (out in the ground) and the little control panel box up to the left are still the same, but everything else is replaced.

Stainless steel fittings and a gravel filled hole under where the old tank had been.

So that's taken care of. Now the water will stop eating my pipes, and I should never have to replace these parts again due to corrosion. Hopefully my water-bearing structures and appliances will last longer. (The reason my electric kettles die so quickly makes sense now.)
Water Guy Dave will come back in a year to see how the media in the neutralizer is holding up to determine how often it needs to be serviced.

Never a dull moment.
Never a lazy, bored dollar.

Pheasant's Eyes are blooming!

Vacuum Day

 

About 15 years ago I dropped (at the time) what felt like outrageous $ on a refurbished Dyson vacuum. (A Dyson DC14.)
Every few years I tear it down, wash the majority of the parts really well, replace filters or parts that can't be washed, and put it back together. It looks and runs like new.
(I did try washing the extendible hose part... that was not a good decision. The hose -  while still functional - would never fully dry. It kept retracting and trapping the water in the hose. Rather than start growing my very own mold farm, I got a replacement.)
This is not a fast project - it usually takes me all afternoon to break it down and scrub each part. (And they are *filthy*.) Then it all really needs to sit apart at least overnight to thoroughly dry.
It's very satisfying to put it back together.
 

The only downside is that all the parts are plastic, and there are some areas where I can tell the plastic is getting brittle and cracking. Someday I will have to replace it, but for now we just keep on trucking.

Plans for the year

Last year I said:
"Plans for this year:
• Get the windows in and the dang living room done. (Minus the floors. Those will have to wait.)
• Get the bathroom done. Please, please let the bathroom be done.
• Pony up and just get the front step done.
• Rebuild the platform over the well.
• Finish the house sills."

That list can now look like:
• Get the bathroom done. Please, please let the bathroom be done. For real this time. Or at least have a *solid* plan for the space.
• Rebuild the platform over the well. The make-do roof I slapped on it is working ok, but already shedding shingles from where the base material wasn't very sound to begin with. But I knew that was temporary.
• Finish the house sills. This means getting on Ian's schedule of work.

To that I wish to add:
• Move all the bathroom crap out to the shed so I don't have to look at the visual reminder of this drama every day. I have some friends coming over this Saturday to help me with this very thing.
• Replace vertical supports in the basement. They feel like they were added haphazardly in the past, and the metal pipes are rusting out on the bottom. I'd like to replace them with some nice solid 4x4's is more logical locations. That might tighten up the shifty floor above, especially in the dining room. I'm hoping to make that an add-on when Ian comes to do the sills.
• Replace the dining room and perhaps kitchen window? We shall see.
• Perhaps repaint and reorient the dining room.
• Try my hand at refinishing the floors? Heck, I've refinished what feels like miles of trim. At least the floor can't shimmy around on me. I'm pretty sure it's only a few sad coats of varnish on the wood, which I can probably blow through pretty quickly with the orbital sander and an industrial box of sandpaper. I'm good at emptying rooms at this point, and my knee pads are already warmed up from the repointing work. The living room and office have doors I can close. The hallway and dining room would be impossible to keep the cat out of, so I might have to skip those spaces for now.
• Finish repointing the basement. I'm guessing it's going to take at least 20 +/- more bags of mortar, which means 1, (if not 2), more trips to PA. (So, $600 + travel.) There's an SCA event in the spring that might take me down that way again, I just would need to work on logistics.
• Go room by room and tick off any lingering little annoying projects.

Things I should start thinking about:
• The roof. When I bought the place, I was told there was 3-5 more years left in a very tired roof. We are rolling up on the latter part of that time frame. Unfortunately, that is a project I can only throw $$ at.

Dressed up for the holidays.
Too bad we've only had about 5" of snow this year, and it melts as fast as it falls. :(

Other things to do!:
• Continue on my leaded glass project. I have the 2 half-sized panels done. Now I have to figure out the wood frame part. The wood will determine the size of the two lower panels.

Panel #2, which matches Panel #1 from the class.

Part of this project is also involves making one full sized panel, which I can do independently from the rest of the window. That will use normal sized lead and glass, so hopefully it will be a smidge easier? We'll find out!
• Write and defend the paper that will accompany the leaded window project. That's actually more daunting than the physical work.
• Figure out where to take a stained glass painting glass around here. I have some leads from last year, I just need to follow up on them.
• Maybe take a couple more panel commissions. I have to talk to the tax man to see if it's worth it. There's a fine balance of freelance/gig work and when it's worth it or not.
• Keep hiking and walking whenever I can.
• Try to travel a little, tiny bit? This one is hard, because of $ and time. Most of my income is turned around into day-to-day support for myself and the cat or paying for/working on the house. I can keep costs down by hitting SCA camping events, which tend to be more affordable than dropping big $ on hotels, but I'm having a hard time with my relationship to/within the SCA organization right now.

That's it in a nutshell. 

Keep on keeping on, friends.

Sunrise from the top of Potter Hill Road.

And the Beat Goes On

 "...Don't stop for nobody
This time I'll keep my feet on solid ground
Now I understand myself when I'm down
Like the sweet sound of hip music
There'll always be something new
To keep the tables turning..."
 - "And the Beat Goes On" by The Whispers

"There'll always be something new to keep the tables turning," should be my theme song, really. 

Last year -the second repeat of 2020- was a bit of a ride. I got all the garden beds made and had only fair success with my crops, after being plagued by pests and drought. My dad came down and took care of some ice damaged trees for me, and I exchanged some design services for some other tree work from a friend, but in the long run, my garden is not as full-sun as I thought.

I survived more layoffs, a break-up, a stunningly *awful* "vacation", and the bathroom contractor stealing my deposit. I spent $$ on getting: the step in the front of my house fixed, the driveway sealed, the radon system cleaned and fixed, the lawnmower fixed, fancy mortar mixed up and installed, and eight magical windows replaced in the house. 

I hiked many more miles around New England, and tried to get out some.

The view from one of my typical morning routes.

I was able to swing 2 weeks of vacation off around the holidays, and had a plan to finish the dang living room if it killed me. The new windows were in thanks to Window World of Boston, so there was nothing stopping me now except lethargy and ambivolance.

New windows, but no trim.

Threw the old curtains over everything to protect it.

View of the Van Cortland Blue wall.
Even a year later, though pretty enough, it bugged me that I thought it would be darker.

With that in mind, when I started priming the walls I just sort of... kept priming the walls.

With trim! And Primed!

New blue! "Newburyport Blue" (matte). Much closer to what I was thinking. The mirror my grandma gave me for my 16th birthday just looks so... sophistocated... on this dark blue. The walls are Stonington Grey (matte), the trim Super White (gloss).

While I was at it, I painted the hallway Stonington Grey to match. I did not repaint eh door or sidelights because they are metal and super cold to the touch right now. I might repaint them in the spring. Or not at all. The grey is a shade darker than what was there.

Part of dealing with the living room meant dealing with the ant-eaten baseboard trim that had been long-since removed. I had two planks which I was able to take to work and get planed down to 7/8", and then brough home to try to work out how to get them back up.

They aren't perfect. Just don't look very closely and it's fine.

I don't have a miter box, so instead I was just very very careful. Again, not perfect, but only off by about 1/8" when I went to overlap the boards.

Being a very smart bear, I put in a lovely hole for a box for this low voltage coax cable to pass through.
Forgetting where the wind braces in the wall are. You can't see it, but the upper half of the hole on the diagonal is completely blocked by the wind brace behind the paper. This lead to a merry chase of figuring out how the heck I was now going to cover the stupid hole in the wall.

After dry fitting, I primed them in the basement while contemplating my coverage options.

After a number of false starts, this is where I wound up. This is the type of plate usually found in places like office cubes, and the back has been heavily modified, but again, it's clean, and it's done. They came in a two-pack, so I modified the hole in the floor on the other side of the living room to the same style (where the internet comes up from the basement).
Is it "right"? No, but neither does it look like a drunk beaver attacked my floor any more.

It's me, hi, I'm the drunk beaver.

This did allow me to find out that the undersides of my floorboards are printed with the word "Everlasting". So that's fun.

The room does look really, really nice now. The floors are in rough shape, but I think there's really only one stressed out layer of varnish in most areas. At this rate, I've refinished miles of trim, how hard can a floor be? But that's for warmer months.

 In between waiting for coats of paint to dry, I've been continuing to repoint the basement with my precious, accurate mortar.

15 sacks of mortar from Pennsylvania

Rocks from my neighbor's yard. Our local BuyNothing group is fantastic for weird requests like "Can I come take rocks out of your yard?"

In a fit of thoroughness I rinsed off the rocks.

And then I piled them up roughly by size near the bulkhead so I could grab them when necessary. It's crazy to me to think that now this pile is mostly gone already.

I started at the edge of the bulkhead door. This is 2 sacks (80lbs) worth of progress.

Two more sacks.

At this point we had a huge rain event that came up from the south, blowing the rain into the south side of the house where (you guessed it) my fresh mortar was curing in the basement. In thign picture, water was actively seaping in and dripping down the rocks. It seems to have set up regardless, so we'll see.

4 more sacks got me around behind the radon tank.

At this point I've sort of lost track of how many sacks of mortar are on the wall. All I know is that I've got it down where it's about an hour per sack, and I can only do 2 a night.
My chiroprator this this is a *great* hobby, and everyone should do it. And then go visit him.

At this point I noticed the radon tank was acting up - it's supposed to shut off after a predetermined amount of time, and this was just running forever. I manually shut it off and called the installer. They came out and cleaned it ($225) and discovered I had a bad timer ($75). It's all fixed now and taking the radon out of my house correctly again. I'm hopeful the bleach taste works it's way out of the system quickly.

I made it over to the furnace! Bigger rock faces means it goes faster because there's fewer seams to fill.

This is how the magic happens. A pan, a hoe, about 3/4 of a gallon of water, and a 40 lb sack or mortar. Mix until it holds it form and is workable, for at least 5 minutes.) (I wind up working the water in for at least 15 usually.) You don't want it too thin or it just oozes out of the wall. You don't want it too dry or it doesn't stay put in the cracks.

Around the corner and past the hole into the crawlspace under the bathroom!
At this point, I have 4 more sacks left. I'm pretty sure that will get me up to and past the water pipes you see there that feed the bathroom/outside.

After I run out of mortar, I'm going to have to figure out the next time I can get down to Telford, PA to get the last of it. I'm hoping only maybe 20 more bags? I'm going to have to remeasure and do some noodling about that.

Other things I've been up to is some painting for SCA projects:

Auction device front

Auction device back. I got to do the device for one of the precious few female knights in the SCA. It was like painting for a unicorn.

Had the paints out so I did up this little ornament for Ian as a xmass gift, and as a little challenge for myself. It incorporates all three symbols of his peerages: Laurel leaves for his Laurel (Arts and Sciences High Achievement), a pelican in her piety for his Pelican (Service High Achievement), and the white belt for his Knighthood (Armored Combat High Achievement.)
The little gold shield with the black spear are his personal arms.

 

And a whole bunch of hiking:

Behind my house in the Williams Preserve

Mt Pisgah up in Northborough

Lower part of Mt Greylock in Adams back around Thanksgiving.

DCR land over in Westborough

Hodges Village West loop out in Oxford.

My sister convinced me to try her trekking poles a little while back, and after some hesitation, I discovered that for anything over 2 miles I really, Really like them. Keeps you from getting "fat fingers", and I feel like it keeps my upper body more engaged. Plus the added stability allows you to be able to pay more attention to your surroundings, not just on your footing.

Uxbridge State Forest - Dean Pond

So what's the next year going to bring? That will be the next post. :)

 

It better bring more catnip, is all I'm sayin'.