The reason I haven't been as active lately.

[tay666]

Thanks. Fixed it.

I'd love to get to work on more stuff here, but too busy trying to get the old house ready to list.
Sooner it's on the market, sooner we can sell it (hopefully)

[Heavy Metal Spike]

. . . I'd love to get to work on more stuff here, but too busy trying to get the old house ready to list.
Sooner it's on the market, sooner we can sell it (hopefully)

I'm just thankful I can tell friends that I have another friend that owns 2 houses . . . . . very elite don'tcha know

• • (* apparently the shoe box I keep my action figures in doesn't count *)

.

[Scooke123]

Should be a big relief once you sell the old house - give you some breathing room!

[tay666]

You got that right Steve.
Right now things are very tight, money wise. The remodel took all the extra we borrowed when we bought the house, and then some. The 6 weeks I was off work didn't help at all. And having bills for both houses for the past 8 months takes a good chunk of my pay check. Normally we would be so busy at work we would be on mandatory overtime right now. Which I normally dread, but the money would be nice. But things are so slow right now it's hard to keep myself busy for 8 hours a day, let alone working OT.
I know I will be able to keep juggling everything to keep up on bills. It's just annoying not having the extra cash to do stuff I want. Like the upright freezer we want to get is on sale right now, but I can't pull the trigger as we have no money for it.
So, the sooner the house sells the better. Then I can finish this house, and relax for a while.
(who am I kidding
Even after the living areas are done, I still have all my areas to work on. Set up workbench in basement, after I install a sump pump. Then I can get started on the walls in what is to be my display room. Build the shelves to put everything on. Unpack all the built kits. etc.
I might be done about this time next year )

[Scooke123]

Good luck finding time to relax!! I've been in my house 30 years and there always seems to be something that needs to be done!! At least with winter coming up outdoor yard work etc will be done and you can concentrate on stuff inside.

[tay666]

Well. Just listed the old house with a realtor tonight. (same guy we used when we bought this one)
He made a few suggestions of things to address to help the sale.
Nothing too major, just a lot of little stuff that we had basically become blind to after living there forever.
So, this weekend will be spent dealing with that. A little paint here, a little repair there, etc.

Fun, fun, fun.

[Scooke123]

Good luck Trevor - I hope it sells fast for you!

[tay666]

OF course, half the projects at the old house have become way more complicated than they need to be.
Ripping the carpet off the stairs was a major pain in the back. Literally. Apparently I wrenched something because my upper back was killing me today. Then removing all the staples left behind from the carpet and padding has become extremely tedious.
I thought it was bad on the living room and dining room floors. Anywhere from 15-20 staples for each step. Most of which are right in the corner where the tread and riser meet, so they are especially annoying to try and get a hold of.

A few thing that were getting spray painted are still waiting. Because so far I have had 4 cans of spray paint crap out on me. Those clogless nozzles that Rustoleum has, aren't.

Almost burned my hands getting down off the roof after painting the trim on one of the upstairs windows. Didn't realize it was that hot when I climbed up. But climbing back down took longer as I was trying to find my footing on the ladder while holding onto the roof.

Then patching the popcorn ceiling in the one bedroom took a turn to complete aggravation.
It was only going to be a small job. Like 6" x 6". But the moisture in the patching material caused more of the old stuff to delaminate and sag. It was going so well too. The cheap, brush on stuff I got at Lowes worked so much better than the expensive spray stuff I got back in the spring to do a bathroom ceiling here. I was dabbing it on, and it was looking good. Almost done with the patch, and suddenly stuff started moving. Then drooping. Then sagging.

Once I find it, I've got a can of spray adhesive somewhere around here. Going to try using that to stick the loose stuff at the edges, and as a sort of primer for the rest of the patch. Then tackle it again.

That was the plan for today, but plans changed.
I was knocking out some of the small projects. Hanging a shelf, putting up some trim, working on the dining room walls, and replacing a shower valve cartridge.
That last one is what lead to discovering the issue that changed my plans.
Went down the basement to turn off the upstairs water. When I got down there I discovered a pool of water where the floor drain is. Turns out my main stack sprung a leak
Well, not actually a leak, but a 3 inch hole
Apparently all those years just sitting there allowed the cast iron to rust from the inside out.
Good news is I only have about a foot and a half of cast iron (the rest is PVC and either brass or copper) Bad news is the cast iron comes out of the floor. So, in order to fix it properly, I am going to have to tear up some concrete.
Of course I don't have the funds or the tools for a project like that right at the moment.
So for a temporary fix I had to run back over to the old house. Grab some stuff I hadn't moved yet. Like a piece of 4" PVC and some big hose clamps. Then I cut a 13" piece of the PVC in half. Coated it with RTV silicone and clamped it over the hole. Seems to be holding fine.
After the water drains down the floor drain, I will have to clean up the area, hose it down, and scrub it before I borrow a friends diamond tipped blade and try to cut the basement floor.

That took up a couple hours of my day. Because after discovering the problem I sat down and mentally ran through my options. Trying to remember what I still had laying around that could be of use, and just coming to terms with what I was dealing with. Better to calmly assess the situation than to just run with the first idea that popped into my head. Wasn't sure if I still had any 4" PVC laying around or if I had used it all on my last project. But thankfully I still had 2 pieces in the big shed at the house. For a fallback, I knew I had a roll of aluminum sheet that could have been used a very temporary fix. I knew I had sealant as I discovered 2 cases of squeeze tubes stashed in the basement while I've been cleaning down there. And I knew I had the hose clamps, as I've been finding them everywhere and throwing them in a coffee can for the move. It was still at the old house in case I ran into more while cleaning things out.

So, tomorrow it is back to the old house, to hopefully wrap up the punch list for sprucing things up.

[Mark M]

Man Trev... That's definitely a pain the behind!

Moving into a new place is always an adventure... Hang in there bud, hope things start to go a bit better for with this project

[tay666]

Nah, it's not that big a deal really.
I went into this with eyes wide open. I knew the potential cans of worms I would be dealing with.
So far I have actually gotten off pretty lucky (except the illness thing that slowed progress to a crawl)

I've done enough carpentry, remodeling, rebuilding, repairing, etc to know the best laid plans are just challenging the universe to throw a wrench in the works.
It's why I despise working on cars. A 20 minute job turns into a half a day project because things are rusted, stuck, you can't find the tool you need, and a blizzard starts while the car is in pieces.
At least with a house, I'm working inside, and you can persuade thing with a hammer much easier than you can on a car.

I just hope I can wrap up the old house, and some of the more important projects here by the end of the month. That way I can relax and enjoy October. Maybe tinker around in my eventual display room.
If I can get my kits unpacked and on the shelves by the end of the year, I'll be a happy camper.

First step is the old house though. I still have a couple car loads of Halloween decorations to move.
Sweeping out the basement. And dealing with the 2 sheds.
Goal is to have that all done by the end of Sunday.

Which wasn't going to be too bad, until I found out my daughter is coming to kidnap me Saturday morning. She is making me go to the Pittsburgh ren faire. I tried to say no. That I had too much work to do. But she isn't hearing any of that. Says I need to have a little fun.

[Mark M]

Which wasn't going to be too bad, until I found out my daughter is coming to kidnap me Saturday morning. She is making me go to the Pittsburgh ren faire. I tried to say no. That I had too much work to do. But she isn't hearing any of that. Says I need to have a little fun.

Yeah you should go... After the last several months you've been thru, you deserve a break

[tay666]

Well. I didn't hit my goal of getting the old house completely empty by the end of the week
But that is because I decided to work on another big project here. (besides it was cold and wet and I didn't feel like working out in the yard emptying sheds)
Had enough extra money after paying bills to buy a couple sections of wainscoting for the dining room. Been wanting to get to this room. We have a large hutch that is going in there, but not until we get it done. That means the 8 boxes of things that go into that hutch are still sitting on the front porch taking up space.
It's been on the back burner because it is such a big project. The walls were in really bad shape, and the plaster was textured. I thought I was going to have to skim coat 2 of the walls just to patch them and make the patches blend. The wife decided a couple weeks ago, she wanted wainscoting in there. That cut my work on the walls almost in half. So last weekend I started patching the really worst spots because they were going to need multiple layers anyway.
Then I decided to try and match the texture on the patches and save even more work.
(I really had nothing to lose by trying it, except a little time)
So, Saturday morning I patched the remaining bad spots.
That left the walls looking like this.





As you can see, the walls were in pretty bad shape. Some of those spots I had to sand down with my belt sander to get them flush with the rest of the wall.
After that we ran to Home Depot and got the stuff, then hit the grocery store for some stuff.
By the time we got home, it was dinner time, so we ran down to a local festival going on to eat.
So, I didn't get back to work in there until 9-9:30 Saturday night.
With Lake Placid and Tremor: Cold Day In Hell on the tv schedule, I got to work.
Clearing a bunch of stuff out of the room (it has sort of been central base of operations for all the other projects that have been happening)
Then I textured the patches.
Taped off the trim and shelves.
I scraped the remaining plaster off a wooden chase that runs up the wall next to the built in shelves. (plaster really doesn't still to plywood very well, came off in giant pieces) So, I had to prime that if I planned on painting today. While I was at it, I primed the back of one end of one of the wainscot pieces, as I planned on using the back for some blank pieces I needed in the corner.
So, I wrapped up around 3 AM.

Didn't get started today until around 1 as I slept in, then we had more grocery shopping to do at another couple stores. Then eat lunch before starting.
I cut the wainscot where I needed to, as well as a bunch of trim that I had marked the night before (figured if I was going to fire up the air compressor for the nail gun, I might as well do a bunch of stuff at the same time)
Then we painted the walls. Me working on cutting in around the ceiling and such while the wife rolled. Ended up having 'just' enough paint for the job. Was really wondering when we started.
Figured out where the studs were, liquid nailed the wall, and put up the wainscot as well as trim in the bathroom, bathroom door, and the toe kicks on the cabinets.
Here is what it looks like now.




Just about done. Still have to spackle, caulk, and paint.
My texturing was close, but not quite the same. If I need to do it again, I should be able to do an even better job on it.
Though I will probably use plaster instead. The drywall mud is so soft, you really can't do anything with it after the fact.

Now I just need to get some extra cash to get more wainscoting for the other walls.
But at least the corner for the hutch is done.

[tay666]

Which wasn't going to be too bad, until I found out my daughter is coming to kidnap me Saturday morning. She is making me go to the Pittsburgh ren faire. I tried to say no. That I had too much work to do. But she isn't hearing any of that. Says I need to have a little fun.

Yeah you should go... After the last several months you've been thru, you deserve a break

That actually got postponed earlier this week. With the amount of rain in the forecast my daughter thought it would be better to go next weekend.
I guess PA got hit pretty hard. They announced the Pitt ren faire would be closed today, last night.
Then this morning they announced the PA ren faire was also closed.
I has to be really bad to close an outdoor venue that is open rain-or-shine.

[Scooke123]

They cancelled quite a few events in the St. Louis area as well because of all the rain. At least today the weather was really nice.

[tay666]

Well, it's been a couple weeks since my last update.
Not much progress in those 2 weeks, but it has been eventful.

We had a sewer back-up in the basement
Got the guy in to snake out the line. Man did they pull a ton of tree roots out of there.
Guess it's to be expected with the place sitting so long. But just when things were starting to settle in, having to deal with that.
Thankfully, what little I did have in the basement was up on boards.blocks since I hadn't gotten a sump pump yet. Well, actually I did. I just got it in and plumbed a day or two before this happened. Good thing too, as the 'water' might have been much deeper if I hadn't.

After they snaked it, I hosed it all out and scrubbed it down with bleach water.
Let it dry, hauled everything out of there. Swept it all out. Then scrubbed it down with more bleach water and let it dry again.
That's where I am right now. Letting it completely dry before I bring anything back in.
It's mostly dry, but there are still a couple of damp spots where there were puddles.
I want it bone dry to see if the sump pump is going to do the trick and keep it dry, or if I may have to look into other options down the road.

[Heavy Metal Spike]

Geez Trev - you've been going through some crap this year that's for sure!

• • • • 

.

[tay666]

Pun fully intended ?

[Heavy Metal Spike]

Pun fully intended ? . . .

Hey - it's me - what do you think


.

[Scooke123]

[tay666]

That's what I thought.

Some actual progress last night. Getting my workbench set up and some stuff sorted.
No, not my modeling workbench (unfortunately), but my actual workbench.
I need to get my tools out of the dining room and organized so I can actually work on projects and eventually build my modeling workbench.

It all started with my old computer desk. This thing is massive. 5' long, 3' wide with 2 big drawers 2 small drawers, and large area with a door.



Originally, it wasn't coming to the new house. It was too big to use for the computer, and I didn't want it anymore. Habitat for Humanity was supposed to pick it up along with a bunch of other stuff. Well, they left it behind. Not sure if they ran out of room, or didn't want it or what.
I was writing up a listing for one of the FB sale groups to give it away free, when it hit me.
That would work great to store my power tools. The drawers are big enough.
So we hauled it over here, and down the basement, and I set it up last night.
It now holds my circular saw, angle grinder, belt sander, palm sander, jig saw. drill, hammer drill, reciprocating saw, miter saw, and my portable table saw.

That cleared out a lot of space.
At one time every one of these shelves was filled with either tools or supplies. (as well as the cabinets below)



Now, the top 3 rows are completely empty of my stuff, and I am working on the rest.
I just put up some pegboard that I plan on painting tonight. And I have a shelf to put under that to hold even more stuff.

It will be nice to actually be able to find stuff again. Instead of just having a general idea of where to hunt for it. Or what box to look in.