My New Toy

This post is long overdue. I actually started writing it in January. Guess I have been busy. Anyway, I am so tired of getting ripped off by plumbers. Right before Christmas our sewer line started backing up. I don't have time anymore to run out and rent a drain snake, dismantle it in order to fit it in my car, drive home, assemble it and haul it into the basement. Then spend an hour snaking the drain, cleaning up the mess, haul out to the car, dismantle, drive back to the rental place, reassemble and return. Then hope the job was done properly. So the wife called a plumber that she knows to come in and snake the drain. He shows up and does the job and charges us $120.00. Only thing is, later that day and three days later it was backed up again. He would be willing to come back out but since it is tree roots he won't guarantee the work but will only charge us $95.00 for a redo. He ran 75 feet of cable which upon measuring, takes the snake to the top of our steps and some 20 feet short of the main sewer. Hey, I am no plumber but this was fairly obvious to me. Needless to say, I never asked him to come back.
Tired of being taken advantage of by plumbers, I bought a new toy. It arrived after Christmas



I used it soon after it's arrival. It sits right by the main stack clean out and I can use it when ever I want to. I even bought and installed 100 feet of cable. So if my own snaking ability fails I can just come back the next day and try again and it won't cost me any more money!

Floor Boxes for Old Houses

When you own a brick house built in the 1840s you can be pretty certain that electricity was not even a consideration in the floor plans. Limited electric wiring was installed in our house in the late 1880s when the burglar alarm system was utilized to deter the neighbors from entering the property in search of stocks and cash that were supposed to be hidden somewhere in the house. Knob and tube wiring was eventually installed before 1916 because we have photos of some of the rooms from around this year and there are electric lights in the photographs. Since the bulk of the walls inside the house are brick and drilling holes up through the walls was almost impossible using a hand operated drill, the easiest place to install plug outlets was in the floor. Floor boxes were common in old houses but they were also dangerous because things could get in them that could cause an electrical short. Things like water, bobby pins, needles or wire. In this house there was once a fire in one of the apartment kitchens because a refrigerator was located on top of a floor box and it leaked. So I was told ....
To follow proper codes, proper floor boxes have to be installed. Modern floor boxes are designed not to allow things to fall into the box where the wires are and they come in several styles. Some of which you are about to see. All are moderately expensive compared to installing the equivalent in a wall. They average about $33.00 each and I needed fourteen in all. That is how many holes I had in my floor!
Years ago they were not readily available from big box retailers. Since they are not necessarily in huge demand, they were generally something one would order online. Every so often I would see some at Home Depot and started buying them a few at a time until I could install a rooms worth. Starting with two in the parlor and getting these a while ago when single socket was the only style in stock

Two of these were needed to rest in some holes that remained after removing the whole house vacuuming system left over from the 1960s. One in the hall at the top of the stairs and the other in the main living room area behind a door. It was easier and more practical to install these than attempt to cut a piece of wood and plug the holes.

Then I found three of these but only used two in one of the bedrooms so I currently have a spare.

I only have a spare because now you can buy these at Home Depot and they look nicer.

Eight of these grace the two main living rooms, four in each room. It is so nice to have outlets available in all these rooms and all around these rooms instead of little rectangular holes in the floor or metal boxes that fill up with dust, cat hair and kids toys! It has only been two and a half years since we moved in. On to another project .....

Pictures from the White House

One of the great advantages of being a Mayor of a mid sized mid-western city is that every year I get to attend the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington DC. Every year I have been invited to the White House to hear the President of the United States speak. This year I took an iPad with me and took a few photos to share on this blog. I have always been impressed with the curtains. So I took a lot of photos of those. Having recently acquired curtains for the "Crackhouse" you should understand why ......










Could never figure out why Bill doesn't have a cigar in his hand ....
















So there you have it. Doubt you would ever see this on any other House Blog!

We Have Curtains!

I have wanted curtains in the front room for a long time. I got tired of looking at the pile of boxes that were stacked up in that room since we moved in over 2 years ago and relocated those to another room that we don't use yet! One day I can go through them and throw everything out or sell it because we haven't used it for over two years. Now, I could make curtains myself, after all I do actually know how to use a sewing machine but would like something really regal looking in that room. That would involve some thinking and some math skills. I did the next best thing instead. I went to www.jcpenny.com and browsed the window treatments where I saw the perfect arrangement listed as "Chris Madden Hilton" and if you click on the photo below, it will take you to the exact page.



Now, there is a catch. The photo shows an arrangement that is actually five layers. There is a balloon shade, a pair of striped sheers, a pair of gold curtains, a pair of burgundy curtains and then a valence made up of five individual pieces. Once I figured that out and the fact that everything is sold as single panels and not pairs I placed an order. Three windows worth in all. They were not exactly cheap but hey, I am worth it! It was certainly considerably less than having them custom made and I didn't have to go shopping for fabric or looking through boxes to find the sewing machine. When I showed my daughter the picture of the curtain arrangement and told her that we would have curtains that will look like this her eyes lit up and she said that "Those are the kind of curtains you would see in a mansion!"
Now I still have this window to finish restoring because it was boarded up for 40 years



but the other two currently look like this. The balloon shades are on back order and should arrive in February but the shipping was free so I can't complain. The room is starting to look quite grande.

Helping Mother - A Comedy of Errors (part three)

I know, I know, why has it taken so long to post this? I've been busy and have actually been getting some work done on the Old Crack House itself!

When I last wrote, I mentioned more issues with plumbing. I couldn't figure out why the "speedfit" adapters were leaking where they were attached to the original copper pipe. When I turned on the hot water supply, the shut off valve was also leaking at the joint where it was attached to the old copper pipe. My mother made a comment that prompted me to have one of those moments when you realize what the problem is but you don't know right away how to fix it. She said rather calmly, "You don't suppose it's imperial pipe?"

In England, household supply lines are generally 15mm or 22mm pipe. Imperial measurements would be exactly as we use in the U.S. either half inch or 3/4 inch. Luckily 1/2 inch equals 15mm but 22mm is about 1mm larger than 3/4 inch thus explaining the cause of the leaks. They make a fitting for this but I was running out of time, patience and the part that I needed would have to come from a plumbing supply store and those close early in the UK. I wasn't planning on replacing the old copper hot water supply line but now it would actually be easier and faster to do so. Since I couldn't readily acquire an imperial to metric fitting so I bought some 3/4 inch brass olives for a compression fitting and used one at the shut off that I had installed, removing all the copper after that point and replacing it with the plastic pipe and "speedfit" fittings. This worked! Once the plumbing was functioning properly I was able to finish grouting tile and installing fixtures knowing that any additional leaks would be from the fixtures. My older brother who lives an hour away could fix those if he could get his hands on an adjustable wrench. So, with the plumbing done, what else could go wrong? Easy, the new drain fittings were metric and the old pvc waste lines were imperial which meant that I had to replace the drain traps and some pvc pipe. Fortunately these pipes just had to go through the wall to feed an outside drain. The sink trap had to have an adjustable neck though because the new sink drain pipe would not line up with the old one .... Then there was the tile that I broke installing some baseboard molding and the fact that I couldn't install the towel rail because there was problem with one of the parts .... need I go on?

The comedy of errors ended with the bathroom looking like this.




I estimated that I saved my mother $2000. In the process she learned a little bit about plumbing and how the time taken to do anything related to plumbing is inversely proportional to the complexity of the job! I still hate plumbing!

Helping Mother - A Comedy of Errors (part two)

OK, in England the plumbing is weird. You can buy copper pipe for plumbing. It comes in 22 mm and 15 mm sizes and you can buy plastic pipe, similar to PEX but more rigid which is joined with what we would call "gator grips" in the US. Of course in the US you can also use PVC or CPVC pipe for plumbing.
So, I have to re-route the plumbing in order to shut off the downstairs bathroom from the rest of the house. This I am able to do using the plastic Speedfit system however I run into a problem. The copper pipe feeding he bathroom is in a very awkward place behind the bath tub. In fact it was so awkward that at one point a hole was knocked into the wall to access the pipes due to previous leaks. Here is a picture showing a boarded up hole in a concrete block wall behind where the bath tub was located.



I was able to re-route the cold water line quite easily. It was all 15 mm pipe and the Speedfit fittings worked great. I had problems though with the 22 mm fittings over the copper pipe. They tended to leak. Here is a picture of the new plumbing in the water closet. Some of those copper pipes feed the radiator system. Don't get me started on that ...



Now while I was trying to figure out the plumbing I went ahead and tiled the walls. I ran into a slight problem though. The tile cutter that we had borrowed would cut tiles up to 12" across. My mother had chosen 16" tiles. Of course this was realized late at night. This meant that we had to rent a long tile cutter. Since the stores in England tend to close by 6 PM, this was another delay.

The next day I rented the tile cutter but after cutting 8 tiles the device that split the tiles broke. This meant a quick return to the rental facility before it closed so that I could get a tile splitter that would handle the 16" tiles. Murphy's law was certainly at play!



I also needed a hole cutter for the sink waste pipe and a carbide saw blade for a jig saw. Let me just say that things are quite expensive in England. By this point it is Wednesday and I was hoping that I would have been finished by now. No such luck though!

Next I will tell you why the 22mm Speedfit fittings were leaking. By this point I was frustrated with plumbing, however, I am used to it by now .....

Just so you can relate to everyone involved, here is a picture of my mother doing what she likes most .... shopping!

Helping Mother - A Comedy of Errors (Part one)

A couple of months back I got an email from my mother. She was going to get her bathroom remodeled and she was quoted $6000 for a room that was no more than 10' X 8'.
So, being the good boy that I am, I volunteered for the job in order to save her several thousand $$$. The job involved putting tile on the walls and installing new bath tub, toilet and sink.

Well last week I went to mother's house and spent 7 of the 12 days working on the bathroom project. Just like at The Old Crack House I managed to under estimate the time it would take to finish the job. When people ask about how I am doing with our house, I generally reply with "I am ten years into my three year project!" If all went well with my mothers bathroom it could be done in 3 days, possibly 5 days. Needless to say, nothing went well. My brother stopped by soon after my arrival and proceeded to tell me that where my mother lives the only water supplied by a main pressure line was the kitchen faucet. The water would then feed into a cistern in the roof that feeds all the other parts of the house by what is referred to as a low pressure system. I put my nephew to work right away pulling up carpet tiles and then linoleum tiles from the floor while I set about looking at the plumbing.

The first thing I had to do was isolate the downstairs bathroom from the rest of the house so that I could remove all the fixtures and still have water supply to the kitchen and upstairs bathroom. After turning off the water to the house I installed two shut off valves. One to the hot water line that came from the water heater and a cold water line that went to the cistern. I disconnected and removed the toilet from the room and turned on the main water supply that was located under the kitchen sink. Well, water started spewing everywhere! Upon close examination I could see that the water line from the kitchen went under the floor and came up behind the bath tub where it branched off to feed the sink, toilet and bath before going up to the cistern. The water line would not be accessible unless the tub was removed and it would appear that a hole had been put into the concrete block wall behind the tub in the past for this very reason.

I learned three things that day. One, my brother knows nothing about plumbing. Two, the water was going to have to remain shut off for at least a day since, three, it was going to take longer than expected simply because where mother lives the shops close at 6 PM and it takes 15 minutes to go 3 miles in a car.

Here are pictures of the bathroom before I got started. My mother and her friend had already removed much of the wall tile before my arrival. You can see all the lovely avocado green fixtures that were popular in the 1970s. However, this bathroom was done around October 1983 if the newspaper stuffed as a filler in some of the wall spaces has anything to tell us. The pages were dated September 23, 1983.







Now before I continue with part two of this saga, I do need to mention that mother lives in England .......