Well, we've slipped past the anniversary. Year one has come and gone, and being that, at this moment, two men are ripping into our sewer line in the hole we've made in our dining room, the house does not lend itself to a warm and fuzzy before/ after retrospective. In lieu of the candy-coated "look-what-we've-finished" i thought i'd recap some momuments by the numbers.
Dead rats # 18 and still counting.
Yes, we had rats, lots of rats. some dead, some we killed, all of them coming from the church on the corner. Socio-economic reasons aside, the block's relationship with the corner church and it's transient congregation have been on a downward slide since before our time - resulting in the Church's refusal to exterminate its rats nest in its backyard playground. on the upside tihs common enemy has brought the neighborhood together. at least the dogs are on the job.
Holes in the living room floor: 4
See previous post. Propper planning might have had us cutting one big hole - but we've chosen the death by a thousand cuts method instead.
Holes in the Roof: 2
What goes down, must go up. in order to plug into the sewer line the drain lines must be vented - so out comes the hole-saw.
new dogs: 1
The timing was bad, but then again so was our judment to start this project anyway. At least he can't wreck anything more than we have already. Fender is growing up to look alot like Turkish and it's a common reaction from passersby that "oh my gosh they're brothers". With the development of Doggie DNA testing I thought these two might be an interesting candidate for comparison but
This seems a more likely outcome.
Experience is teaching me that it's smarter to start with THE most critical/ difficult part of the job first.... because you'll get it wrong at least once, and there's alot less to take off when you admit defeat. Which is how we have begun tiling in reverse.
*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.
As rough plumbing lessons go, this has been a good one to learn: If you can't turn the pipe, someone tougher than you will just turn it harder. The mystery and subtle science of screwing, and unscrewing threaded galvanized radiator pipe comes down to one known entity, applying more ass.
100 years of paint and heat cycles had the pipes pretty well fuzed together. The replacement pipe required new custom lengths cut and threaded - it was during this process that the hardware store plumber advised "if you can't turn it any further, you just have try harder". Note the guest appearance by Jeff Chown in the lower left of the image. Jeff was indispensable help putting this mess back together.
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