Plumbing Tips for the Day, Learned the Hard Way

Two plumbing tips:

1. When the directions say "finger-tight" or "finger-tight plus 1/4 turn" or something very specific like that, they probably say it for a reason.

2. If you're going through all the trouble of replacing a toilet (or sink for that matter) and supply line(s), replace the old shut-off valve at the same time. It's $3.49 for a new 1/4-turn shut-off valve people, spend the freakin' money.

I bring these items up because I didn't bother listening to my own advice, resulting in a toilet replacement which took twice as long as it should have. I decided to replace the last remaining original toilet in the house because I'm sick of wasting water with the old one. I had the new one sitting here waiting for the past three months, but the bathroom remodel is still a month or two away. Might as well get rid of the old crapper while I have the dumpster! I decided to "save time" and re-use the original shut-off valve, even though it sprays water unless it's fully open or fully closed. Well, with the new toilet in it drips water through the packing. Ten minutes later, the water is off, the new valve is on, and the water is back on. That problem is solved. Now it's dripping water at the braided-stainless supply hose where it connects to the valve. Damn, I just tightened it down with a crescent wrench, well beyond the 1/4 turn recommendation. Off it comes so I can check the rubber washer. It looks OK, so I re-install and tighten the recommended way and it's finally done.

For now.

It'll have to come out soon so I can gut that bathroom for the renovation. At this time, I'm planning on moving the toilet location to help open up some room in there, since it's kind of a small bathroom in it's current configuration. We'll see how that goes.....

I Love the Smell of Sawdust in the Afternoon. It Smells Like. . . . Victory.

After a week of hauling the old shingles, I'm finally done with that project. The roof still needs a little attention at the gutters and I still need to install the light tube, but the heavy work is done (finally). It still surprises me how much room the old shingles took up in the 20 yard dumpster. It's almost half-filled already! The trailer in the dumpster is what I used to move the shingles from the yard to the dumpster. Every effort was made to keep the debris as far forward and stacked as high as possible so I wouldn't be walking over nails. I also wanted to make sure I didn't waste room since I don't want to rent another dumpster any time soon. With the shingles done, it was time to destroy that crappy old shed.




Nate, these pictures are for you! The wood siding was in decent shape, but there was a lot of rot because the builder of this masterpiece didn't use pressure-treated wood. I started with the sledge hammer and knocked the siding off of two sides. The area with missing framing was heavily rotted and took almost no effort to remove. I was going to cut the shed into pieces, but found it was easier to just dismantle it with the sledge.




Here's why you should use pressure treated wood for the sill plates. The entire corner was rotted away and filled with bugs. It didn't help that the roof leaked heavily. I was surprised with how well the shed was built, but that they went stupid and used a flat roof and a swing-in door. The more I look at it, the more I think this wasn't really a shed, but more of a garden shed for potting plants. Size-wise, this shed would have been useless for lawnmowers or other lawn-care tools.




Did I mention the roof leaked? Black isn't a good color for roof supports. This beam was rotted, as were the ends of the roof decking which were above it.




Here, most of the roof has been taken apart except for the last bit which was above the shed door. The roof was covered with 4' x 4' shingles. Well, they weren't really shingles, but were made from the same material. There were plenty of nails holding the "shingles" in place, but none of them were caulked or covered in tar. The seams (and there were a LOT of seams on this roof) were also not caulked or tarred. Gee, I wonder why it leaked? Bad choice of roof design, no slope to the roof, and poor execution. This might have worked if they had used a one-piece rubber membrane of some type or at least slopped the whole roof with tar.

You Will be the First Against the Wall When the Revolution Comes

Days later, and I'm still schleping shingles from the yard into the dumpster. Who'd have known there were so many shingles on one roof?! The front, back, and one side are 100% done, leaving one small side to do tomorrow. The 20 yard dumpster is closing in on being 1/2 full - it's pretty much one solid mass of shingles now. If the old shingles weigh as much as the new ones, I'll probably end up with around 10,000 pounds of shingles in there (based on the weight of the 71 bundles which were just installed, coming in at around 5,400 pounds). The more time I spend in the backyard removing shingles (and lots and lots and lots of nails) the more I can't wait to get rid of the old shed which came with the house. It's got a swing-in door, meaning that about 1/3 of the room inside is wasted since you need to leave room for the door to open. It's also got a flat roof, which is pretty much the polar-opposite of a good idea here in Wisconsin. The 2 x 4 roof framing is rotting from years of leaks, and the thing is painted a wonderful shade of red which matches absolutely nothing else on our property. Well, that burning bush in front of it matches the shed for a few weeks a year, but that's not a good enough reason to keep it. After the shingles are all loaded up and we take a last sweep for nails, I'm going to break out Mr. Reciprocating Saw and cut that fvcker up. We'll be stuck with the old concrete pad from it until we get money to replace the patio, but at least we won't have an ugly shed 15' from the back door. Oh yeah, it was built 15' from the house instead of way back in the corner of the yard like normal people would do. When I look out one of our bedroom windows, the side of the shed is about 75% of my view. Nice....

Soft hands. And a manicure. Never done a hard day's work in your life, have you?

From Trading Places, by the way.

I am one with the pitchfork. Unfortunately, I'll be one with it for the next few weeks. Couldn't somebody design a lightweight 25 year asphalt and gravel shingle which will hold up against snow, ice, and summer sun? Is that too much to ask? I think I'm getting blisters on my blisters. At least today was overcast, which kept the temps around 80. Pretty humid, thanks to yesterday's rain, but since we need rain so much right now I won't complain more than I already do.

That rolling magnet has so far been worth every penny I paid. My son has been "playing" with it and has found hundreds and hundreds of nails so far. My shoe found two, but luckily they were short nails and my delicate foot is safe. I'm probably about 1/3 done with the clean-up and expect to bleed before this is over. The 20 yard dumpster is about 1/4 full - I'm just hoping I have enough room left to throw out the crappy old shed, the old cement laundry sink, and all the human heads I've been collecting for years. I think I've finally outgrown that obsession.

WTF Moment of the Day

Alright, so the roof is done (except for cleanup, which will probably go on for a couple of weeks - yay...). Just in time, as we're getting some of the only rain we've seen in over a month. Not hard rain, but enough to wet things down a bit. I figure it's a good time to check things out in the attic, although a real hard-rain would be the best trial-by-fire for it. Below is typical of the 45 year old decking - nice and solid. I didn't mention it before, but there was absolutely no rot or noticeable water damage found during the roofing.




The previous owners, who had lived here at least 30 years, installed some wood decking which goes from the opening into the attic all the way to the garage where there is an access hatch as well. You can barely see it on the wall to the left. This is the first time I got a look into the attic and it was "interesting". I had wondered about the venting and where the stove and bathroom vents exited the house, which I now know. That's not what was "interesting", though. The "insulation" is what I'm referring to.




I don't know if it's "Yankee Ingenuity", just plain cheap, or the first signs of Alzheimer's, but the previous owners used old carpet and padding as insulation. Seriously, WTF?!? Over the living room is this egg-crate style padding surrounded by REAL pink insulation. Yeah, that'll work well.




Even higher on the Lame-o-Meter is this old carpet and pad which matches the carpet in the hallway and the bedroom we tore carpet out of. What I really like is how it has compressed the real insulation, thus ruining what little R-value it originally had. Most of the attic has at most 6-8" of insulation, nowhere near enough for Wisconsin. I had planned to blow in some insulation this fall, but didn't know I was going to have to remove carpeting from my freaking attic before I did so.



Before anybody asks, my home inspector did mention carpeting in the attic, but I thought me meant that they rolled some up and stored it in the attic, not that they actually tried to use it for insulation. I did look briefly while he was up there checking out the decking, but I didn't want to climb up there as I was still in my work clothes. I'm really interested in seeing how much easier the house is to heat & cool once this is done correctly. I'll have to check out the venting around the soffits when I do this to help the airflow. That should be loads of fun, so I'll wait until cool weather before I do it.