This is why sometimes you just hire professionals

They showed up at 8:30 am, exactly when they said they would. 

They have been nice and polite, and have tried to keep the mess to a minimum. 

By noon, half the crew had to leave because all the heavy stuff was done, and it's down to noddley demolition. 

By 1 pm, when the last two went to take their lunch, this is where we were at.

Tub is on the lawn!
No, it will not become a water feature.

The view from the door. Vanity used to be to the right (being re-used), tub to the left.

This is the wall between the bathroom and the laundry

The view in from the window into the corner where the tub used to be. True 2x4's!

The rafters, which are sort of just toenailed into the house with hopes and dreams.

The wall out toward the dining room from the window.

The tub corner again. There's a bunch of posts here, and I'm hoping to get a better look at it once they are done for the day.  I suspect some of these are just emotional support posts for hanging the plaster/lathe on. If you zoom in and look super close, there's a wooden peg through a mortise/tennon at the top of the corner.

Here we go again

 Well, friends, it's been a minute.
The bathroom is finally progressing again.
The old contractor has skipped out with the deposit, and the courts, having ruled in my favor, can't actually enforce anything. So that was a lot of time and hassle for nothing.
Karma will catch up to him someday.

I found a new contractor, ironed out a bunch of details, and now finally we're getting started. 

First, let's remember where we left off.

I'd removed the molding and the door to be refinished, and cut open the "mystery box" to the let of the door.

I'd had to replace the vanity, because the one that came with the house was literally crumbling.

I'd jerryrigged a shower situation with the help of my former partner so I could at least shower.

I'd started to demo the walls and ceiling to figure out what was going on inside of them.

I'd pulled the old, badly warped medicine cabinet off the wall, but installed a new light and mirror over the vanity.

I had explored the weird box at the head of the tub, only to find out it really only houses the plumbing.

I'd pulled all the green tile off the wall I could reach - it ends about halfway up where the chair rail used to be.

I cut lots of holes in the ceiling.

More holes in the ceiling.

Just this weel I removed all the temporary insulation so that Tad and crew didn't have to mess with it.
I'm going to pull down the fixtures I want to reuse too.

The shower/tub stripped of all it's protections.

It started getting real again earlier last week when my very own Porta Potty showed up. I wind up using these a lot in the summer, because it's the easiest thing to get to service campgrounds with several hundred temporary residents. I'm well acquainted with them.

The fact that it sort of matches amuses the heck out of me. :)

 Then Tuesday the dumpster showed up. I swear we could just rip the whole bathroom structure off and fit it in the dumpster. That had been an idea for a minute, but I couldn't afford that level of construction.

To no one's surprise, they couldn't make the turn, and instead parked the dumpster partially in the hillside. There will be landscaping to do when this is done.

The game is afoot, as Sherlock would say. Permits pulled, plans drawn, and ram board laid in the traffic areas. They will be back Monday or Tuesday (depending on weather) to start in earnest. I'm replacing the whole dang roof at the same time, so that will be nice not to have to worry about.

This has been a long time coming. I'm a little scared, a lot apprehensive, and at this point just want it over with. 

Someone is displeased with the upheaval of routine.

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!