Remodel Mondays - Interior framing

Things keep moving right along, and we have been really happy with the progress on our new house!


All the interior framing is done, so it’s easier for us to visualize the new floor plan, rather than just looking at the drawing.

The floor from the sunken office was raised, and the new window on the front of the house was framed out (covered in plywood towards the right of the photo). The old door was closed, and the new door was opened (and you can see outside now).

Remodel Mondays – Framing the addition

Right before Thanksgiving the walls for the new basement were poured and sealed. The floor didn’t get poured until right before Christmas. We were starting to wonder if the new basement was just going to have a dirt floor. Not to worry, it has a beautiful, sealed and shiny concrete floor!

Shortly after Christmas the real excitement began. The back wall of the basement was framed out, complete with big window and sliding glass door to the future patio.

Remodel Monday – Skylights and other windows

Last week I mentioned that the chimney and fireplace were coming out. They came out.

Remodel Mondays – No more office

The part of our house that was my office used to be an attached garage. Long before Hubby Doc bought the house, it was converted into an “inside” space, but it was just sitting on the concrete slab, and is about 3 feet lower than the rest of the house.

I had that room pretty full…

Getting it emptied was no small task…

Remodel Mondays – I always hated this kitchen

This is the part I have been looking forward to the most. To be honest, this whole project started as a kitchen remodel, and exploded from there.

This was our kitchen to start with. A true galley kitchen. The dishwasher is the black appliance in the front of the picture, stove next to that, tiny counter space before the sink under the window, a little more counter space around the corner, and refrigerator wedged between the cabinets and the wall. We had so little counter and cabinet space that we added a free standing cabinet and microwave cart on the wall opposite the sink.

Remodel Mondays – A new basement

The home remodel project is moving so quickly now, I can barely keep up! The first part of the extravaganza was to do some demolition on the outside of the house, so the basement under the new addition could get dug.

This is the east side of our house. This will soon just be the middle of the house. Our dogs love to sleep under the spruce tree on the left of the photo. That was one of the first things to go… They are going to have to find another place to sleep next summer!

Ready, set, remodel!

About a month ago, we started on our home renovation. This is a serious renovation. The entire house is getting taken down to the studs, walls rearranged, electricity and plumbing re-run, and an addition. We’re not kidding around. When we do things here in Southern Indiana, we do them big.

I’ve been taking tons of pictures, and am going to be sharing these during Remodel Mondays!
We have been talking about this project and working on the plans for the house since May. All of a sudden, in the first week of November, everyone (except us) was ready to get started!

We had a week to get the house completely emptied.

Home improvement

We have been planning for a seriously major home remodel since May. Things were going very slowly until yesterday. Now, all of a sudden, everyone is ready to kick it into high gear.
Hubby Doc and I spent a day cleaning out our garage so we have a place to store things during the construction. We are also working on finishing out a space that will be our temporary apartment for the next 3-4 months. And we need to move out of our house ASAP, so we can start pulling the stone off the exterior walls. Apparently the guys will be ready to break ground for the new addition sooner rather than later.
If I'm a bit absent over the next few weeks, this is why. I promise there will be lots of pictures to share, but it's going to take some time to get moves out and settled back into the new temporary digs. The existing house is going to get some major plastic surgery, and we are also putting on an addition, so the before-and-after photos should be pretty dramatic!
Stay tuned, but please cut me a little slack if things get a bit sporadic around here!

Uh oh…

Martin stole my chair ages ago.
There was no sitting on this chair until I cleaned it off.
Today, I decided to reclaim my chair.  So I busted out the vacuum and went to work.

While I was vacuuming, I noticed this.

Oh yeah, there’s a “water” stain on the cushions.
Anyone who has a cat in the house, specifically a male cat in the house, specifically four cats in the house, knows what I thought this stain was at first.

Looking carefully, there are at least 3 different overlapping stains.  Even a worse omen for the furry boys.

But, it didn’t smell like male cat pee. Or old cat pee. Or cat pee in general.

So I looked up.

Damn.  Oh yes. A wet spot on the ceiling.
Not cat pee. Roof pee.
Water, leaking through our roof.

It’s an area about 7 feet by 2 feet. And yes, it’s still damp.

Good thing it’s snowing instead of raining today! Honey, please come home soon!

The basement is finished!

Well, sort of.

Last we knew, the basement had been flooded,



all the stuff had been taken to the garage,



and the basement had dried out.



We were working on cleaning and scraping the walls of the basement so we could repaint.



I am happy to report that we have finished!

We washed and scraped and washed and scraped and washed again.  Somewhere in there we sprayed everything down with bleach.  We also washed and painted the floor.  And here is what we finally got!

The walls and floor are clean and beautiful.



We built lots of shelves so all the stuff from the garage could be nicely stored in the basement.



Well, it's getting there...

The most important thing is that all the stuff got taken out of the garage, including the two tractors that were hiding in the back!



And now, that garage fits not just one...



Not just two...



But three vehicles!  Including my husband's long bed, extended cab pick up!



Now we're talking!

If only the basement would sort and organize itself...

Success!

Last we saw, we were left with a broken one of these

and the guys had gone off on a search of a new one.

So here's the story.

This contraption is called a two pipe deep well jet kit.

The shiny silver part screws off and then it all looks like this

And this is what is inside that shiny silver thing:

Looks boring, yes?  Turns out that disc-thing in the middle is very important.  I'm not sure exactly what happens, but I'm assured that this disc-thing forms a tight seal to keep water in the pipes.  When the well pump turns on in the house, it generates negative pressure inside the pipes, which pulls the disc-thing up, breaks the seal, and more water is sucked into the pipes.  

When we took our shiny silver thing all the way apart (which you are not supposed to be able to do), it looked like this:

Okay, so first it comes apart, which it is not supposed to do, and then the pieces inside are broken!  The two smaller pieces are supposed to be stuck together, something like this:

But because ours was broken, it sat inside the shiny silver part like this:

Hmm.  No seal, so the water doesn't stay inside the pipes.  No water in the pipes means nothing to pull against, and the pump can't generate that negative pressure it needs to pull more water in.  So no water for me.  All because of a stinkin' brass shiny thing!

The guys put the new two pipe deep well jet pump back on our pipes, and repeated yesterday's action to put the pipes back in the well (lower the first set, put a new join between the deepest section and the next, hold in the air to dry for 10 minutes, lower the longer pipes into the well, put on a new join...  you get the picture).  This got finished around 8:30pm on Tuesday night.  Then we had to wait for two hours before we could start trying to prime the pump.  Something about drying glue...

So at 10:30pm Tuesday we headed to the basement armed with a few 5-gallon buckets of water.  We had 90 feet of pipe in the well and about 30 feet of pipe between the well and the well pump.  Did I mention this is a two pipe well?  So really there was twice that amount of pipe.  All full of air.  Sort of feels like we are back at the start, yes?

We opened the prime valve and off we went...  dumped a bunch of water in the pipes, got splashed as air came bubbling out, turned on the pump and crossed our fingers!  Almost immediately, we were greeted with this on the pressure gauge:

Okay, so 15 psi is way better than 0 psi, but it's not as good as 60 psi!  We stayed down here for an hour, priming and filling and waiting and filling and priming.  We played with valves, we dumped water all over the floor.

And finally...

At 11:30 pm Tuesday night...

Hooray!  We have water!  And water pressure!

I ran upstairs, bounced down the hall, and flushed the toilet.  Just because I could.  I never thought a flushing toilet would be my favorite sound.  But it is.

Oh, is it ever.

Part 1:  The well, teaser
Part 2:  Finding the well, witching water
Part 3:  Finding the well, for real this time
Part 4:  Down in the well...  90 feet down, to be exact
Part 5:  Whee!  Water again!  Success!

90 feet of pipe

We got very little accomplished on the well project on Monday.  The friends who have the equipment for well pipe extraction are farmers, and are behind in their farming.  John took most of Monday off work to help them get caught up on their farming projects, so they could come help us on Tuesday.

Hello?  Remember me?  I'm your well!  I've been torturing you for days with no water!  Ha ha!

But, never fear!  Roy to the rescue!  Roy brought his big backhoe over on Tuesday morning, and then the fun really started...

Roy also brought Cecil, who cracks me up.  It was entertaining, if nothing else.

The guys are hatching a plan...  This makes me nervous...

They maneuvered the backhoe into position over our well, and lifted this giant steel A-frame high up into the air.  They attached two pulleys to the tip of the A-frame, and this is what they will use to pull the pipes out of the well.

John jumped down in the hole, and tied the ropes from the first pulley to the pipes.

Then he cut the line that goes into the house...

...and made a big mess.

Cecil is helping make sure everything is set up right...

...and off we go!

And up...

And up...

So here's the trick.  We only have about 20 feet of clearance between the top of the well and the top of the A-frame.  Twenty feet into the pipe-lifting extravaganza, there was no end in sight.  So John tied the second pulley (good thing it was there!) to the pipe just above the well, and cut the pipe just above the knots (so the pipes didn't fall down into the well, never to be seen again).  Roy took the first 20 feet of pipe over to the lawn, and I pulled up the second set.  Repeat as needed.

Here are 80 of the 90 feet of pipe that was in the well.  Now it is on the lawn.

(By the way, the car in the picture is for sale.  Her name is Janice.  Anyone interested?  We'll cut you a good deal!)

Ninety feet down in the well, we found this.  This is the broken part.  I don't know what it is called, other than "that damn broken thing!"  I'm not even exactly sure what this piece is supposed to do, but I do know that it wasn't doing its job.  At all.  And it made me grumpy.

Then Cecil went home, and Roy and John went on an adventure to try to find another one of these thingies.  It took hours.

Just look at this 97-foot deep well.  It looks so innocent.  You can even see the water glinting up from its depths.  It is taunting me.

Part 1:  The well, teaser
Part 2:  Finding the well, witching water
Part 3:  Finding the well, for real this time
Part 4:  Down in the well...  90 feet down, to be exact
Part 5:  Whee!  Water again!  Success!