Merry Christmas 2

So another holiday season is upon us, soon to come and go. Another year hung with garlands of 15 amp extension cord, ornaments of carbide tipped saws-all blades, and the flickering lights of an ever failing electrical service. Best wishes as we confidently turn our back on 2007, stride cautiously through 'year 2' and toss ever more coins of vexation into the wishing-well of broken promises that is 809 D street.

Can you take me high enough

Damn Yankees aside... innovative tools can be yours at your local Home Depot Renta-centa - like this gem that does the work of ten men. For the price of a dozen big Mac's Alli could single- handedly raise and fasten 10' drywall to the first floor ceiling. Quite possibly the smartest thing ever made...


General notes on progress are as follows

-shower and lavatory valves installed, removed, reinstalled correctly per mfg instruction, plumbed, tested.
-all shower, bathroom waterproofing installed.

a vision, in cross-linked Polyethylene

The supply plumbing is PEX - a flexible, plastic conduit in designer colors and dimensional sizes. It's like working with a spool of hula-hoops but it's stronger, more flexible, and ultimately much more user friendly than Copper, or CPVC. I got turned onto PEX by the curmudgeon plumbers in Cape Cod on a job a few years ago. It's originally a German product which means it was developed like this



by guys like this



to work like this




it fishes like wire though a retro-fit situation and the 100' lengths make it possible to use very few fittings. The meat-fisted way i've been working means that fewer fittings makes for fewer possible leaks. And this stuff's made with Lasers* - f'ing lasers, so i'm not sweating it.





*PEX-C is produced by the electron irradiation method, in a "cold" cross-linking process (below the crystal melting temperature). It provides less uniform, lower-degree cross-linking than the Engel method, especially at tube diameters over one inch (2.5 cm), and when the process is not controlled properly, the outer layer of the tubes may become brittle. However, it is the cleanest, most environmentally friendly method of the three, since it does not involve other chemicals and uses only high-energy electrons to split the carbon-hydrogen bonds and facilitate cross-linking.

of Chickens Little

the dining room has a dropped ceiling to hide the plumbing chase above. The combination of steel studs and wood framing proved both lighter when working overhead and straighter making it possible to build the whole thing perfectly not-level and not-plumb.