And the rains fell, and the dryer broke, and so did my wife...

So, between a trip to the hospital for emergency surgery (she's fine now) last week for my wife, the dryer breaking down and general Memorial Day madness, I was only able to construct the third veggie bed, though I need to get another bag of garden soil to really complete it.

This is a bummer, because I wanted to plant the tomatoes I started indoors. They're ready to be transplanted, but because of the rain showers, they're still inside. I had to economize my time outside in between downpours, so the picture-taking got sidelined.

It was also sidelined by us having to buy a new dryer (and then deciding to get a new washer too, since we "have to" have a matching set -- so if anyone wants to buy an older, but working well, wash machine for a cheap price, let me know!). I had to disconnect the washer and dryer, which is simple enough, except when the gate valves are seized up from years of immobility. I broke one and couldn't budge the other. Fortunately, I had two perfect gate valves laying around from a previous plumbing event, and was able to change them out without any trouble, amazingly enough. Also, I was nervous about the gas line to the dryer, but after shutting off the valve, it held (no leaks) and there was no problem there either (for a change)! I had to connect the new dryer, though, because the delivery guys did not have a vent pipe, and I wanted to replace the fire-hazard plastic pipe that the PO had put on there. Again, amazingly, no problems going to get a vent chute (UL listed flexible aluminum), installing the vent chute or reconnecting the gas line. I was thrilled.

The good news for the backyard is, the first two veggie beds are sprouting nicely.

In Bed No. 1, the garlic is growing great and was the first to sprout. Then, the asparagus started coming up. They aren't kidding about it being spindly the first year -- the spears are no wider than a typical spaghetti noodle. But they're neat to watch. Once they break the surface of the soil, they sure shoot up in height pretty fast. I was impressed! Finally, in Bed No. 1, the broccoli I started from seed began to sprout. It seems to be lagging a bit, but the plants appear healthy and in good shape, so I'll just need to be patient.

In Bed No. 2, I planted beans, carrots and beets, all from seed. The beets started sprouting earlier this week, and today I went out to find nice rows of seedlings peeking through the dirt. Yesterday, the beans began to push their way through the surface, and today, they've broken through nicely. Also, a surprise, the carrots are sprouting like mad today...I'll have to cull those rows heavily, as I simply scattered the seed in rows. So that will start soon. All in all, Bed 2 is in good shape, it appears.

Bed No. 3, like I mentioned above, is a few inches low on soil, so I have to go get more before moving on to construction of Bed No. 4. When that will happen, I'm not sure...but it has to be soon! Even though they're predicting storminess on and off for the next few days...might be sketchy.

Complicating matters is that my birthday is coming up this weekend, and my brothers were nice enough to get me Lego Indiana Jones for the PS3, and a Best Buy gift card, both of which have and will, respectively, distract me from doing "yardwork" around here! Ah well, I'll get back to it soon enough, I'm sure!

So there's the update...I leave you with this: It's a picture of my son attempting to eat a marigold when I told him to sniff the marigold in the planters out in front of the house. I did plant those up, and the flowers are doing well.

The tropics, without the warmth...

Just when I think I have the damned floodwaters figured out, something else happens. (NOTE: This is long, but I got a lot to say...a lot happened)

Friday night, I went to two Home Depots and one Lowe's to get those stupid 60-lb. tubes of sand that people put in the backs of their pickup trucks in the winter to weigh them down in icy weather. Got five of them, knowing that I'd be gone most of the day Saturday, and I could sandbag the basement stairs in the event that water flooded the backyard and got close enough. So I set them up Friday night.

Saturday morning, I double-check them, and we were gone for the day. In the evening, I come back to find no floodwaters in the yard. Nice. But rain on the way overnight. Rained all night Sat/Sun. I woke up purposefully at 2:30 (3:30 after the spring ahead) a.m. to go outside and downstairs to check the situation. Happily discover no floodwaters in the yard or the basement.

Get up Sunday morning around 9 a.m. Electrician comes at 10, done by 11:30. Still no danger, although I notice there is some standing water in my catch basin in the backyard. Odd, but not bad. I decide to keep an eye on it.

Then, the niagara falls apparently opens above my house. Suddenly, the backyard is flooded badly, but I suspect that the sandbags will hold up fine. My plan will be tested, but appears OK to work. Then, while I'm checking the sandbags, I look down the stairs into the basement to notice that, what the hell? Water is rising up from the drain, and that kinda fast. It's going right into the laundry room, which is fine, except that drain feeds the same pipes.

I scramble (I'm on my own at this stage) to grab all five 60-lb. sandbags and try to manipulate them between the drain and the door to the basement. But I'm too late. Water is not going down in the laundry room, and I look off in the distance to my newly remodeled family room and notice that there is water now coming up through THAT drain as well...much more and much faster than in the laundry room.

I get the sandbags positioned as best as I can and at that stage resign myself to simply hoping and praying that the water coming up stays pooled "around" the drain and doesn't hit any of the new drywall or framework. Thankfully, it does. The drain is depressed in the floor, which is good, because about an 8-foot diameter portion of the floor has been soaked, and there's still about 3 inches of water over the drain at this juncture. This after two downpours.

Now, I'm pissed and confused as well. Also, the yard floodwater is now coming down the stairs slightly, only adding to the backed up drain problem. I get the pump and set it up in the stairwell drain and run the house out to the front of the house. I'm confused because there is no standing water at all on the street, and nobody else is out running around trying to bail out water except me. I surmise that I must be the only one getting water in the basement, or the only one who cares.

After talking to my dad, we realize that my main must be clogged/blocked. That means, I need a plumber/water department guy to come out with a power rodder to clear the main. Fortunately, Gina's cousin knows a guy, and this guy agrees to come out and help me out. He suspects the roots of the bushes (the evergreen-types you see in front of everyone's bungalow, practically) in front of the house have grown through the main and blocked it. I tell him that I was going to pull those out. He says good idea, because they are the absolute worst -- worse than trees. I say, good, one more reason to destroy them.

After two hours of power-rodding the main and pulling out a couple sizeable handfuls of root mass, and nearly $300 to get that done, the drain is opened again and working, and the catch basin is empty.

Supposedly, Tuesday, we're gonna have another similar freaking storm. That will test whether or not this was the real issue today. I hope it doesn't come back as a problem again, because I have enough of a problem with the backyard floodwaters. I don't need sewer backups, especially now that the family room is on its way to being done.

I'm tired as shit -- my back and legs hurt and I'm just so out of it. The basement is a total mess again, and I really don't even feel like cleaning any of it. It's such a freakin' pain in the ass. Sometimes, as much as I absolutely love it, homeownership completely and totally sucks.

Danged previous owners' corner-cutting...

worst plumbing ever 1
Originally uploaded by southsideandy

As I told the electrician, even if I TRIED to do a half-assed job on things, I couldn't have done this stuff and more stupidly than these people.

Our main-floor bathtub drain sprung a leak the other day -- fortunately, we were working on the basement, in the utility room, when it happened. Otherwise, it might have gone unnoticed for a time.

This is what I was greeted with. You can read all about the stupidity in the photo's caption on the page. It doesn't surprise me one bit...and although it's an "easy" fix, it's not something I need to do right now, given all the other work in the family room downstairs.

BIG day at the ol' bungalow...

Wow. I look back on today and I'm pretty impressed with how we've turned some bad things around today. We didn't do "a lot" of work, but a host of things have improved.

1. The plumber came today and installed the new supply line from the city shut-off to the tee to the rest of the house. Has it made a difference? Hard to tell...but, I'll tell you, that 85-year-old galvanized pipe was nice and crusted up inside. So, if anything, at least we're not drinking THAT water anymore! Sorry that I forgot to take a pic of that, and of course, the alley scavengers took that pipe in about an hour's time. There's one piece left to swap out, and that's the valve. We need to get the city out to locate the outside shutoff so the plumber can swap out the old valve. Then, we're good to go.

2. Bungalow Avenue (see previous post) delivered my two new stone planters for the front of the house. I'm FLOORED at how PERFECT they are and how beautiful they look. I'm so glad that, for once, I saw something early enough that I was able to take advantage and do something nice. I will take pics tomorrow, I promise...wait till you see them. They couldn't be more perfect.

3. I put my Chevy Equinox to the test today as well...after crunching the numbers every which way possible and then taking a good hard look at the current fence, I decided to go with the idea suggested by my dad as well as Jennifer from Tiny Old House, which was to keep the rails and pickets and just buy new posts. So I did that. I bought 20 4x4 8-foot posts and 10 bags of instant post installation mix. I figured I'd try that stuff, although my dad is bound to scold me for not doing it the old-fashioned way. Hey, I've mixed up enough concrete in my life to earn a pass this time. Anyway, we loaded all this ridiculously heavy stuff into the Equinox and set off, gingerly, from Morton Grove on back down to Portage Park. Thankfully, there weren't a lot of big bumps on the way, so we survived. But it was a harrowing feeling, worrying about somehow damaging the car...oh, and having blind spots all over the place. The boards barely fit from the dash all the way to the back door, stacked from floor to ceiling. Not the safest, but what could I do?

So we're about ready to do the fence, whenever we actually get the time to do it. For now, the stuff will all have to sit in the garage, waiting for the right weekend. :)

4. I figured out that the upstairs shower problem was the shower head. Since I didn't like it anyway, and it was, in effect, broken, we bought a new shower head. Waterpik makes an "el cheapo" rain head (which just means it's chrome-plated plastic rather than metal) that was, like, $20 or so at Menard's. I figured what the heck, why not try it? Now, the key thing here is, I know I've learned some things because, for once, a project that the box claims "Installs in minutes!" actually took only minutes to install. So that was a nice feeling. And the shower works well, so far. Of course, I pulled the restrictor out, because I'm just not an environmentalist (just kidding...don't they say, "Know your audience?" ;) ). Nah, I pulled it because I wasn't sure if the water pressure would still be too low up there. Turns out, it's pretty good. So I'll leave it and see how it goes for a while.

Tomorrow, I think I'm going to plant and plant and plant. And probably cut down the Hicks Yews I have in front. Anybody in the Chicago area who might want them, you're welcome to come and save them. There are two chest-high ones (I might transplant one, rather than chop it to bits) and one vertical, about 8- to 10-foot tall one that are definitely getting either moved or chopped down. Let me know ASAP, of course, and we can try to work something out. I don't expect anyone will want them, but I thought I'd ask.

So we shall see. For sure, I'll have pics though!

Oh yeah, and last but not least at all, head on over to One Project Closer to read about all of Fred's great stuff and to see my Houseblogger Interview from Friday's edition. It's good reading, if I say so myself. :)

When will it end?...

Yes, folks, it's currently snowing here in Chi-town. This after rain. With more rain tomorrow. Granted, it's light rain, but still, it's preventing me from doing anything outside.

This worries me, because the great grape plants I bought, which are supposed to be dormant, are actually growing in my basement. Even though I have them in a dry, pretty much dark room. This is not good, since I have no actual place for them right now.

I was hoping to get out there and build the arbor I purchased from Menard's for these very plants today, but with the chilly weather, I didn't feel like sitting in the garage working on this all day. Plus, my White Sox were on and playing well (nearly a no-hitter), so I was distracted by that.

Tomorrow, maybe, hopefully, I'll get out there to build the thing, and then maybe in the next couple of evenings, I can get the plants in the ground. Even though, again, I don't really have a dedicated spot ready for them yet.

Today, I instead swung by Menard's to look at fence material. I think that we're going to redo our entire fence on both sides (even though only one side is technically our responsibility). We need the privacy fence on both sides, and since M's has their BIG card no interest for 6 mos. deal going, we figure now's as good a time to at least buy the materials as any. So, it's likely that I'll be at M's this week buying about 200 feet worth of planks, posts, rails, concrete and gravel.

But we probably won't build the fence for a few weekends, if not until after Memorial Day weekend, even. Lots to do before then. But we'll see how it goes, I guess.

In the meantime, the plumber is coming out next Saturday to replace the water pipe from the city shutoff to our utility room, in the hopes that the added volume and new pipe (currently, it's pretty much the 85-year-old galvanized pipe, which is probably corroded to no flow inside) will give a boost to the water pressure in the house. We shall see. Crossing our fingers though!

Part of me is even feeling a bit overwhelmed with everything going on. I'm going to have to step back and really just kind of take a breath and figure out what we really can/should do and what doesn't make sense for this year. That's not an easy task, as many of you know!

The waiting game...

Still no baby...but it's not like we're late. Wednesday is the supposed due date. So we're OK. It's really just a waiting game there.

Also, no real developments in "Other People's Business" (the bungalow up on Nagle in the previous posts). I'm avoiding going and taking pictures as an excuse to use my fancy camera, because this blog is supposed to be about MY bungalow, not someone else's. :) Even though I know I'd have a relatively interested audience. Maybe I'll snap some pics, we'll see...it's not THAT convenient for me, but maybe I'll make the effort.

Meanwhile, amidst waiting for the baby, we're trying to figure out when we can get the plumber out to fix the water pressure. So that's fun. More and more waiting! :)

The only real new development is that Gina and I went to H.D. today to buy some tools and look around. Bought a new hammer, a combo square, a mop, a corn straw broom, and a stiff wire brush. And some nightlights for the stairs.

I've been partially motivated to get back down to the basement, particularly since I've been slowly but surely figuring out Google SketchUp (motivated by Tiny Old House author Jennifer's post of a week ago). I've had SketchUp for a while now, and for whatever reason have had a devil of a time figuring it out (which is weird, because my brain works EXTREMELY spatially, so I should be able to have used it earlier).

Anyway, I decided it was probably time to start futzing around with ideas for the basement, given that we're going to be moving along more quickly, probably, than I'm lazily believing. So here's what I came up with...it's pretty rough, and many of the details are lacking. Also, the sofa and loveseat are ENORMOUSLY too large, while the flat-panel TV is WAY too small. But it's just an idea...the bar is also not drawn in...that will go in front of the fish tank in the photo.

Ah...painting, finished...

I really HATE painting. I like most home improvement tasks, but painting is not one of them. I pretty much always love the outcome, as I like having color in my house; but I hate the process and work to get to that process.

My brother came by this evening again to help me finish, finally, the baby's room. We needed to paint the slanted ceiling and the alcove ceiling a lighter shade of green than the walls are. For the walls, again, we used Benjamin Moore Key Lime, and we painted the slanted part of the ceiling and the alcove ceiling only with B.M. Lime Froth, basically two shades lighter than Key Lime. You can, honestly, barely see the Lime Froth vs. white ceiling, which it borders -- but that's OK. Gina's more of a conservative person when it comes to paint choices, particularly accents wall types of things. I'd personally have gone one or two shades DARKER, instead of lighter, but, again, this is OK. It's her room to decorate, I told her.

So that's done, finally. I don't have any pictures right now though. After it's cleaned up and lookin' good, I'll post more. It isn't much different than the last set.

After getting our $300 gas bill today, which is probably nothing compared to some people, and then reading about heating at The Bungalow Chronicles, I've decided to add a new task to the projects bar on the left -- installing programmable thermostats both upstairs and downstairs. At some point, of course. First, I have to figure out if I need to buy a new toilet for the first floor, as it appears to be broken. Although I could install the old upstairs toilet down here and see if that one works. Probably worth a shot, honestly. But I don't know when I'll get around to either of those tasks, as picking up and assembling the baby furniture is next on the list.

Meanwhile, Gina needs to find new window coverings for the baby room's windows, since the blinds up there are beige/tan and don't match anything now. Of course, then I'll probably have to install whatever it is...unless it's curtains. Maybe she can do those...we'll see.

Nice when you know what you're doing...

...of course, that doesn't mean I didn't have to make TWO trips to Home Depot. But that's better than four. :) Reference this post from my personal blog, from when I remodeled the half-bath of our condo myself...thankfully, I did, as it says, 90 percent of the work, so I had "practice."

Thus, when I decided that I'd had enough of these pressure-assisted toilets--specifically the one upstairs--I was only partly worried that all hell would break loose. That was based on only the "curse" of projects and how they go haywire in this family. :) I knew that I knew how to replace a toilet, and that I could do it pretty easily.

As such, ladies and gentlemen, our new toilet upstairs:

It's a Pegasus Westminster(?), I believe, from Home Depot. It's not a pressure-assist toilet, which means that, although it takes a little while to fill the tank because of the low water pressure to the second floor, it will actually still fill, whereas the pressure-assist tank would not. Think of how you blow up a balloon--you're the water supply line and the balloon is the pressure-assist tank. You have to exert more pressure to get air into the balloon than the balloon is exerting to get air out of it. This is what was happening with my toilet up there--too much pressure in the tank was overpowering the weak supply flow.

Now, I still have to fix the low water pressure in the house, but at least this will buy us more time to figure this whole thing out--maybe even a LOT more time. We'll see. At any rate, it took me longer to go to Home Depot, pick and buy the toilet and come home than it did to actually take the old toilet out and put the new one in. So I'm feeling good about that. :)

Finally, of course, Happy belated Thanksgiving...we hosted both families yesterday, as we're now the ones with the most room. And it was great. Hope yours was a good one as well!

Know a good plumber?

Well, I need to collect a list of plumbers who can come out and replace our supply pipe from the city to increase our water pressure overall. Anybody from the Northwest Side of Chicago out there who can recommend a good one? I'm not looking for cheapest--I'm looking for honest, licensed and high-quality worksmanship. In terms of honesty, I want someone who's going to do as minimal work as needed to improve our water pressure (in other words, if we don't need a booster pump, I don't WANT a booster pump--my pipefitter friend says I probably don't need a booster pump, and I tend to trust him--but he's no plumber, as he reminds me).

Please let me know if you do. You can post it in the comments box--heck, that'll give them some deserved publicity for anyone else reading this blog.

Thanks!

Where has HE been???

Good thing I had two posts for the price of one last time, since I've been so bad about posting lately. In a sense, it's a good thing, in that I've been busy. In another sense, it's a bad thing in that I've been busy with stuff NOT directly involved with the bungalow. Some of the things I've been up to include:

1. Registering for the new baby. We're expecting the baby's entire room of furniture in the next week or two. That's great. And terrible at the same time. But we got through most of the registering, so that's good.

2. Debating stepping up in the furniture world, in a sense. We needed a rocker and ottoman for the baby's room, for feeding and rocking to sleep. Gina's grandma was going to contribute some money to that, and she still is going to do so, posthumously. And until we went to the Bungalow Expo and saw Plain and Simple Furniture there, we probably would have bought them at Babies R Us or a department/big box furniture store type of place with whatever she gave us. But, after visiting the booth, we decided, for once, to splurge some of our own money too and buy something that (a) will last FOREVER (the baby will be rocked to sleep on it, and then probably will inherit it when WE die) and (b) will serve a second purpose once we don't need it in the baby's room any longer. That is, if we bought a plain ol' cheapy plush rocker/glider, it would have ended up in the family room downstairs, buried. This piece will be a centerpiece in our mission-style, bungalow living room for decades. At least that's the plan. These pictures are close to what we're getting...we're getting a glider though, not a rocker--but pretty much identical otherwise:










3. Getting the cars shuttled all over to get minor tune-ups and fixes.

4. Figuring out, last night on a whim, how to fix both toilets. The stupid handle kept sticking in the open position on the first-floor toilet, rattling every other time you flushed it, noisily and annoyingly. The upstairs toilet has been inoperable due to the assumption that either it was broken or the water pressure wasn't good enough to stop it from running constantly. Well, I figured out there's one adjustment knob on the pressurized tanks that I putzed around with and got both problems fixed...at least permanently downstairs and temporarily upstairs. We'll see how it goes.

5. I've also been really, really busy working on my latest pet project, which is a small business that me and a colleague are starting up. I've had to design a ton of stuff in advance of our "launch," as it were, but what I've designed has met with good response so far. We'll see how it goes, as there are many, many questions about biz startups that need to be addressed. And, yes, it does have a connection with this blog, believe it or not. I'll be SURE to sell all of you on the idea--I'm betting you'll love it. ;) But we're a little bit of a ways away from that.

So what's next on the docket? Cleaning and painting, in neither particular order. Since the baby furniture's ordered and "on its way," that means dilly-dallying on getting the upstairs primed and painted is no longer an option. Not that I was avoiding it before, but I was just so busy with other stuff that it languished. It happens, as I'm sure you all know and can attest to. But the entire first floor needs to be sorted through, cleaned and organized. We're hosting Thanksgiving, and that means we need room and organization around here! :)

So, my apologies in advance if there's a little more silence around here. I hate to do it, and I'll do my best to avoid it, but just be prepared! Don't forget about me! :)

Pure infuriation...

I HATE water supply lines. I HATE THEM.

Went and purchased a new kitchen faucet yesterday...thought, "Oh, this shouldn't be too bad to replace it." Having replaced three faucets in the past two years, I figured it would take a few hours and I'd be done. Silly, silly, stupid me.

First, I found out the idiot PO didn't have shutoff valves put under the sink. So I had to shut off the supply to the entire back of the house. Only one bathroom was working, the kitchen was out, the laundry room, the outside spigot. All shut off.

After fighting the old faucet to get it out, which took at least 30 minutes and practically breaking it apart to get it out, I discovered that the new faucet's supply lines didn't go down far enough to accommodate the hoses. They fell about a 1/2-inch short. Fury building at this stage.

I had somewhere to go in the evening, so I said, "All right, screw this, I'll go buy shutoff valves tomorrow morning, and that will make up the 1/2-inch difference easy enough.

Today, I go to get the valves, and I can't find any that bridge the gap between the copper pipe fitting and the supply hose. Again, the 40,000 different measurements possible on these f-ing things baffled me and confused me. So, I think I have it right after deciding to just buy new hoses to match the shutoff I believe is right, making sure the top of the hose matches the faucet male connection. So, after about 20 minutes of checking, I get home and find out that I got the wrong size input--there's a fitting on the end of the pipe. Fury exploding at this stage. I decide to pull the fitting off and take it BACK to Home Depot and find a NEW FITTING...I figure out that I bought a 1/2-inch shutoff valve--so, I need a fitting that's 1/2-inch on both sides (pipe and shutoff side). I hunt for the brass fittings, which aren't in the same aisle as ANYTHING else similar, buy them and leave. Finally, the faucet is on and working (so far)...here's a pic. Note, we got the black faucet...it's just not on the Web site. It's simpler and easier to use, and the water flow out of it is much better than it was before. Also, I bought the new hardware for the china cabinet and installed it...even that was not without it's problems. I bought a Mission-style bar pull and a backing plate (to cover the fact that there were two holes from the previous hardware). They're pretty, and there's pictures below. Anyway, this was basic stuff...no length on the screw included, and I kind of assumed they'd give you enough length to go through the door AND the backing plate (they were sold separately, but still)...but they didn't. So, thankfully I discovered this before going back to Home Depot, so I could buy some longer machine screws in that trip as well. They look sharp...