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1958 Ranch Home, Full of Character - First Home, First Major Project

169K views 519 replies 24 participants last post by  Arlo 
#1 · (Edited)
Charming Central California Ranch Home

I've been lurking the site for quite a while. Recently registered to ask a few electrical code questions, and to try to answer a few myself (with mixed success). I've been enthralled reading Coco's story in BC - now up to page 40 - and decided I might like to start showcasing my own project.

I'm a California native, though not to the small Central Valley community where I now own. I was born in the San Francisco Bay Area, I've lived on a 36' Kris Kraft on the coast, moved around the Wine Country, survived in Reno, came back to the Sierra Nevada foothills, and then moved off to college in the Bay Area about 10 years ago. I had come full circle.

In 2009, I got married to my girlfriend of 5 years for all the wrong reasons and moved to Oregon to be closer to my wife's family. Much too close. I found myself shortly in North Carolina, staying with a friend. I must say that I'm not very fond of the weather in the Southeast, or the food of the South. Go figure.

I enlisted, was rushed off to Texas, then Mississippi, and by chance was stationed back in the Central Valley of California. It feels good to be home, less than 2 hours from every place I mentioned living when I grew up... though all in different directions.

While I was in North Carolina, I fell in love. I've since dragged her all the way back across the country. We both joke that we've driven the 3,000 mile moving trip for each other. It's been a couple of years now for both of us, and we're ready to give marriage another shot. Wish us luck!

One last thing before we start on the house: when I was growing up, always moving between apartments, rental homes, boats, RVs, campers, etc I set the goal of owning my first home by 25. I'm glad to say that I made it, but just barely, by about seven weeks. :cool:
 
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#82 · (Edited)
Tuesday morning was spent testing and then working the night shift. In between, I managed to get many tile questions answered by the awesome guys over at the flooring section. Thanks guys, especially Bud!

I had measured the laundry room in a bunch of places, checked it almost perfectly square and without any waviness in the walls. I loaded up AutoCAD and was able to get 12.5" tile to fit perfectly with only 6 cuts. I was going to get my local Lowe's to cut those tiles, and sneak 1/4" under the drywall on each side. But Bud had to rain on my parade with that plan, and I'm glad he did!

I bit the bullet last night and picked up a super-cheapo tile saw last night. I was going to use a cheapo tile cutter, but was strongly discouraged from doing so by the only knowledgeable Lowe's employee I've ever met. Mad props to "Bob" at the Rocklin CA store, since I didn't catch your name. (Your Willie Nelson pony tail is truly epic).



I ended up with the Skil 3540. It's only a 7", with a pathetic fence that I don't plan to use, but it should get me through at least one small project. I hope. If it cuts like crap, I'll probably take it back, though I may have to eat the cost of the blade.

If I do end up taking it back, I'll probably pick up the even-cheaper 4" saw at Harbor Freight has some surprisingly high reviews. Again, the fence is garbage on that model, but it scores much higher in reviews that their 7" model. At about half the price of this Skil model, I wouldn't be surprised if it was just as good.

 
#83 · (Edited)
I'd done a ton of research on buying tile, and especially what the difference was with HD/Lowes. It all seemed to boil down to the big boxes buying "seconds" to get a lower per-piece price, while the better tile stores would only buy firsts. I shopped with this in mind, very cautiously. And I bought just under twice what I needed for this project. I even checked a few already-opened cases for size, square and thickness variation, and found very few. Note that this was pretty decent $2/sqft (at 12x12) porcelain, and I did see lots more variation in the cheaper (and much thinner) ceramic stuff.

I plan to repack any obviously unacceptable seconds and take them back as defects. "Bob" reassured me that this was fine and happened often, though I get the odd feeling that it may require a fight with customer service.

Here's what I ended up going with.



Eight boxes of Del Conca Rialto in 12x12.



Three boxes of Del Conca Noce (on website as 'Tan') in 6x6. You can see the texture of the style a lot better at this magnification. Just what I wanted. :)

I had wanted to go with a border, but between the cost and the style of the one in this set, I decided to go with a course of the slightly darker 6" instead. Take a look for yourself...



$10 per 3.5x12 listello section, and I'm not a fan of the metal-finish accents. They show up extremely poorly in all of the online images.



$7 per 4x12 section, but with far too much variation for my taste. Note that it's a "natural stone" material and not porcelain.

(EDIT: Removed tons of whitespace on the borders. Sorry for that!)

The plan is to have the 12" on diagonal in the center of the room, followed by the 6" border perpendicular to the walls, and then a small border of the 12" perpendicular on the outside edge. I haven't calculated the approximate size the outside edge will need to be, but will use whatever distance I have left to keep the center section on whole 12" pieces as much as possible. (Hope that makes sense!)

(EDIT2: Here's a quick mockup I threw together in AutoCAD. 1/8" grout joints, assumed 11¾" and 5¾" nominal tile sizes. Works out to about 8-19/32" on each side. Going to try another layout so I'm not wasting so much tile.)



(EDIT3: Added another 12" in the center and that pushes everything else just about 4¼" out to either side. The new size for the 12" border comes out to 4-11/32", which allows me to get two pieces out of each tile. I like the look a bit more as well.)

 
#84 ·
I also grabbed 2 50# bags of "Pro" modified white thinset, 10 lbs of sanded grout in mushroom, the liquid mix for it, a 1/4"x3/8" trowel, some sponges, etc. Forgot the sealant though. Ugh!

The first thing I had to do was to get the room cleared. The wife moved out the wire racks and laundry accessories before I got home. I stopped the water into the hot water heater, cleared the washer lines and disconnected, and we moved both just out the door onto the back patio. The water heater is another story entirely. A few things have complicated its removal.

As you can see here, it's messily strapped down. Ok, no problem, I'll just undo the straps for now. The second problem was that the drain wouldn't drain, even with a hot tap open in the kitchen. Once it came open, it refused to go through my hose for God-only-knows-what reason, so all the water was removed just over a gallon at a time. Zzzzzz. Most was put into the bath tub for the wife to get washed before work today.



The first problem you may be able to see in the lower left: the gas line threads didn't swivel on either end. I tried to unthread it without damaging it, but it was just too old and kinked far too easily. I ended up cutting it in half and removing the water heater half. I'll have to replace the line, I suppose.



The second problem is much of the same. The pressure relief valve is missing its handle, and has the same problem with its threads: there's no collar to spin, it's just soldered on there. Ugh. I don't have a torch, flux or solder, so I ended up taking drastic measures. A jeweler's saw frame and a half dozen 2/0 Laser Gold blades did the trick of slicing the valve in half. But it took forever. Another thing to replace. :mad:




I gave up for the night, as it was nearly 1am. Today's problems include removing the water lines without destroying the horribly-corroded modification somebody made to the water heater, and disconnecting the vent pipe without damaging the ceiling.


 
#85 · (Edited)
Before I go tackle the disconnect, I've readied some "before" pictures. This is obviously sheet vinyl, just over 5'3" in width. It's peeling at the corners, has holes in places, and is blotted with stains across most of its surface. Dirt stains have settled into the texture and make it look exceptionally dingy. It's glued directly on the concrete slab, and has been fairly easy to remove so far.






 
#86 · (Edited)
Some problem spots include the exterior wall next to the water heater, where the drywall ends 6" short of the floor (see previous images), the exposed-but-painted side of the house's footing, a horribly torn out cut for the stand pipe, an intruding 12.5" L x 4.5" W x 6" H piece of the footing, and missing drywall section for the sprinkler wire. Not sure what I'll do about these yet!




And with that, I'm off to get in over my head! ;)
 
#87 · (Edited)
Sure enough, I got in well over my head!

The water heater only took 20 minutes to disconnect the water lines and move outside. I was very lucky that the threads didn't seize, break or strip.



Of course, the wall was never painted behind it... :laughing:



I had taken the advice of a few members here and got myself a multi-tool. I had walked into Harbor Freight to get the cheapest model with my flyer for $19.99, but decided to compare it with the more-expensive corded model at $49.99. The major differences are that the more expensive model includes 3 attachments (vs 1 attachent), a carry case (vs a cardboard box), it's a blue color (vs red) and is variable-speed 10-20k rpm (vs 20k rpm all the time). I knew I was going to need all 3 attachments in the set, so I priced the cheap one plus the other two attachments, coming up with about $4 difference. Well, heck, why not. My 20% off kicked it and actually made it cheaper. Swweeeeeet! A manual scraper alone could have run over $30 for a nice handle with a few good blades, which I would have completely destroyed on the concrete.

The sheet removal started very well. In a matter of 15 minutes, I had chopped and peeled the entire sheet in managably-sized sections. And that's about all that went well. I started promptly at 7:05am and was scraping backing and glue until about 3:00pm. Yeah, 8 hours straight on my hands and knees running a mutli tool at about 17k rpm. In my haste unhooking the water heater, I had failed to bleed the hot line. Without fail, half way through the job, the hot on the kitchen sink was turned on, air rushed up the spout, and the pipe in the laundry room pissed all over the floor. I let the backing soak it up for a good hour before trying to scrape that section, and contrary to suggestions I've read here, the water did not help loosen it at all. The paper portion came up easier, but the glue became plastic again and turned into a big stretchy sheet of goo.

This was after 2 hours in the morning. I was pretty confident that I'd developed a method of removal with the tool that would get it done quickly. Obviously not so.



I noticed during my 15 minute lunch break that the bevel of the scraper wasn't quite right. I thought I just goofed and been using the blade up-side-down like an idiot for the previous 5 hours. Not so. I had entirely removed the bevel from the scraper attachment and ground another in the opposite direction. Flipping the blade gave amazing removal ability for a good minute or two, then died back down again. It turns out that I needed to flip the blade every 5 minutes or so to keep a good bevel on the correct side. Needless to say, the scraper attachment is a fair bit shorter now.

Scraping on the diagonal, parallel or perpendicular to the long wall, in arcs or circles or star patterns had absolutely no effect in almost all areas. Some areas had flaky glue, some had goopy glue, some had crusty glue, some had extremely hard glue, some had wavy glue, some had very little glue and yet others had mounds of glue. Every 5 square feet was different. I had hoped for a perimeter glue and a glop in the middle, but this was definitely a roll-on installation. I severly underestimated the removal time required.




Re-energized by finishing the impossibly long removal process, I immediately mixed up a 25 lb batch of thinset. While I waited, I staged some tile, and prepared to cut some in half on the diagonal. This is when the carpenter decided he'd had enough of installing gutters and decided to come meddle in my project. We discussed squareness of rooms, of tile, of mud buildup in drywall corners, and many other things. After arguing on how to find the center of the room for 20 minutes (I was dividing to find the midpoint of each wall, then drawing a cross shape - he snapped a line lengthwise, found the center of it, and used a square - both ended up with the same two lines within 1/8"), I was ready to start cutting. Only 9 cuts, no biggie, right?

The first cut went smooth and ended superbly. The second cut chipped badly before I learned to ease all pressure to finish the cut. The eighth chipped out as well. A total of ten cuts was all it took. And by then I had a 25 lb bucket of rocks. I tried to save it by adding some water, but it just didn't work. Instead of a nice sandy cake frosting texture, I got a rocky white paste texture. After doing a terrible job troweling this gunk around and cutting the lines in, and laying two full tiles on the center line of the room in this crud, I gave up. I let the thinset claim the bucket, salvaged by mixer, and called it a night as the sun went down. Did some cleanup and scrubbed some of my own blood off the tile. Locked the valuable tools inside, and left the door removed from the hinges.

Depressing. Wanted a hot bath, but no hot water. Straight to bed then, where I hogged the covers all night, to the chagrin on of the wife, who woke me up repeatedly to try to steal some back. End of day 1.
 
#88 · (Edited)
Before we go on, let me tell you about this tile saw. It's a real entry-level DIY saw. And I mean really entry level.

First, it's supposed to look rugged, but it really just looks pathetic to anybody that has ever seen quality tools. Why do manufacturers think cheap neon orange plastic makes products look professional? What they really tell the world is, "I have absolutely not idea how to choose a good tool, so I picked this one that's dressed up like the guys on that construction site I commute past." Anyhow, moving on...

Second, the blade is a real El Cheapo. I expected this, like getting half-filled ink cartridges with a new printer or low-quality sheets in a bedding set. The real disappointment was that it cut like a hot knife through butter for the first 20 cuts, but then wore down to be as effective as a wet noodle against a brick wall. In all honesty, I wish it had just started at wet noodle strength so I hadn't gotten my hopes up.

But both of those things could be forgiven for the price. My biggest pet peeve, by far, is the water supply for this saw. It had a small tank that holds maybe 12 ounces of water on the right-hand side of the saw, under the table. My makeshift table extension, of course, is on the same side. When you turn the saw on, it literally throws 4-6 ounces of water starting the blade up, and only has enough water to cut a single 12" tile before it runs out of water enough to require a refill before the next cut (at least on these 5/16" thick PEI 5 porcelain tiles - I'm sure thinner and softer tile would push through faster and thus take less water). I'm real tired of filling the thing between EVERY cut, especially because of the way sediment builds up in the holder, and because it's inaccessible with any reasonable pitcher, especially with my makeshift table extension. I found it faster to just try to pour and try to hit the side of the blade, allowing it to fill through the slot, while watching on the side. A one-gallon pitcher last me about 5-6 cuts, then it's back inside to refill.

When it's all said and done, I can live with the saw. I've probably pushed over 100 cuts through it already, and can deal with it's quirks. If I were doing a larger area or a pattern with more cuts, this thing would go straight back to the store. I'll keep it for now, and probably sell it after the other small areas are done being tiled.
 
#89 · (Edited)
Pissed about being woken up repeatedly during the night, when 6am rolled around, I was up and already at it. A few cups of joe went down while I prepped for my day. I dry set the 12" tiles again. I set up the tile saw again, restacked my makeshift 4x4/2x4 table extension, and poured the thinset - only half a bucket this time! 7:05am came, and I started mixing.



I got a beautiful, creamy, velvety but sandy texture. Perfect. It went on smooth and thick, notched back well, and was very pliable. I had probably 30 sq ft of the center whole/half tiles up in just over 2 hrs. I'm sure a pro could smoke me when it comes to speed, but I wanted to be very precise with the grout joints and keep it all square! I also learned from the previous day's mistake of trying to mud up 1-2 sq ft at a time and went for 3-10 sq ft at a time, cutting down my the time it took in half.



I had to mix another small ~3-5 lb bucket to finish the last few tiles, but all was done fairly quickly. The biggest obstacle at this point was only have a 10½" inch swath around the perimeter to work in without being able to step on the center. I measured distance to the wall at both ends and the center and found that I had about a 3/16" crookedness over the 10 foot span (if I trust the long walls to be parallel). Not to terrible, I suppose, for only having the center lines snapped. Perhaps I should have snapped perimeter lines.

I got pretty good at jumping over what I'd set, even while carrying objects, and walking sideways along walls. I got all of the 12" border tiles cut to width while stealing spacers here and there, and building mockup borders with the 6" tile, then tearing them back out after I got the measurements so I could walk through again.

I cut the door trim somewhere between 3/8" and 1/2" shorter, measured by lining up a 6" tile snugly against it, rolling the half moon wood blade of the multi tool against the trim, then cutting 1/8" to 1/4" parallel above it.



I also managed to get the threshold pulled up at both doors. The outside door threshold had apparently been screwed upwards through the plate into the door frame, with the screw heads sitting on the slab. I can only deduce that the door framing must have been assembled outside, the plate screwed up into it, and the whole thing then move into the door rough-in and secured. The interior threshold came up, but with a gigantic glop of glue with it, and I broke off a piece of the underside. Oh wells, time for a nickel upgrade! The outdoor door threshold, expectedly, had a ton of filth underneath.

 
#90 · (Edited)
I got most of the edge pieces cut to width, including both doorways. There's a 1/4" expansion gap on all sides, except where I stayed 5/8" from the edge of the slab because of concrete chunks missing there. None of the door pieces were notched, and I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do in the corner where the footing is exposed. If I was careful at this point, I could put a little weight on the occasional tile so I didn't fall on my face, as they had over 6 hours cure time on them.

It was already at the end of day two... and time for work yet again. After 12 hours of tile work at home, I wasn't much looking forward to a 12-hour shift.


 
#91 ·
I got home after work this morning and was so incredibly tired. After 26 hours, I felt like I was on autopilot. As much as I wanted to keep working on the tile, I knew I didn't have it in me. I went into our darkened bedroom to take off my top and almost fell asleep standing up. Within a minute, I was in bed, and within another 20 seconds I was fast asleep.

I woke up around 3pm to the sound of sawing. As it turns out, the house two doors north sold to an older gentleman with some construction experience. I had noted while it was listed for sale that the roof looked like it wouldn't make it through another winter or two, and hoped the next owner would notice before they made the offer. Sure enough, he was up on the roof today, beating and sawing away. I don't think he's living in it and that he's planning to flip it, because we haven't seen any moving trucks, cargo trailers, furniture, or window treatments.

All the same, I took 5 minutes to wake up on the back patio, then got ready to start working again. I got the door cuts notched in (having to cut two of them again because I laid out the notches in the wrong corners) on both sides of the room. D'oh!




I started on the corners and found that I had just enough tile left to cover the exposed footing. I got the rest of the corner pieces cut. I decided to go with butting the 12" pieces on the short walls of the room, as you can see here with the small pieces. I'm not sure if I'm crazy about having one of those on each corner when I could cut one piece twice as large for the center of those two walls or remove them, add another 12" piece to the middle of each wall and take some off the ends of each piece that was in the corner. We'll see what I have left without opening another box of tile... I'd rather keep the last 3 boxes closed up for now if possible. I may just keep it as it is, as I'm planning on having a stubby piece of 6" tile in the center of each wall as well. We'll see how it lays out once I lay out a full wall of 6" tile. It's been rather hard to visualize, as I only bought one bag of spacers and lost 1/4th of them to the thinset on the initial tile laying, so I have to steal them from other areas to lay out the next small area.




 
#92 ·
At this point, I'd come to the end of day 3. I only got 3 hours to work on the tile, so I'm a bit upset about that. Twice more today I goofed up and made the pipes barf water all over the floor. :censored: So annoying. I think what I'm doing is opening the hot and allowing the cold to backflow down the line to towards the water heater.

I tried to remove the excess thinset from between the tiles just before I left for work. With over 24 hours cure, they were pretty difficult. I wish I'd stopped and removed much of it yesterday before it got so hard. It looks like I'll need to pick up a grout saw because I already turned one small flat headed screwdriver into an ice pick trying to get it out.

I also need more spacers, plain and simple. There's no way to lay out a ton of 6" tile with the amount spacers I have now. I also have several receipts to be price adjusted because I forgot my ID for 10% off and probably a few small returns. Hopefully I get a decent cashier at the returns desk because I don't want to start a fight when the cashiers that checked me out previously told me to just come back with my ID for the adjustment.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a picture of what I have left in my scrap pile. The two piles in the top left are cuts from the corner notch outs and corner cuts. The four stacks in the top right at the excess from cutting down the edge pieces to width. There's also some extra (chipped) triangles left over from the first day, the two door pieces that I otched on the wrong corner, an some seriously chipped/broken corners as they came out of the box. Honestly, I'm pretty happy with the quality.

 
#93 ·
Man that tiling looks to be a bit more in depth than I would have ever guessed. I grouted tile once when I was maybe 12 or so and even that sucked to me (recommendation: wear gloves that block sand... Maybe thick rubber gloves). Your layout looks great though. Added value for sure. Congrats and get some rest buddy. That's where we differ. I have to get a lot of sleep on the weekends to make up for my lack of it during the week!

And Home Depot and Lowes are both pretty good about customer service stuff. I just wish I got 10% off... Probably would've saved $1000 by now!

Good luck with the rest of the tiling.
 
#95 · (Edited)
Wow! I haven 't posted in nearly a week. It's been a pretty crazy time.

Unfortunately, only hours after my last post, I contracted the flu. I managed to pull through the last couple hours of my shift bundled up and shivering before I got to come home. The wife literally had to peel me out of my uniform to get it off.

From the morning of the 18th onward, I was held up in bed. High fever, extremely little appetite, tons of sweating... the works. I awoke on the morning of the 19th feeling halfway decent and saw the wife off to work. I'm the type that will try to work off a head cold, but after only two hours of laying the perimeter tiles, I was back to shivering and sweating, huddled up under blankets.

Some time on the 21st, the carpenter offered to lay the last half of the edge for me. I was feeling very good, even though I resigned myself to peeking on his efforts every so often. He did as well a job as could be expected for a first timer. I'd like to think I have the slightest edge on him having done the rest of the room, but I could easily be mistaken. All the same, I was thankful that it was down.

Having felt so much better and my 103.2 fever having broken to a measly 99.1, I returned to work that night and felt great for the first half of the night. My energy plummeted in the wee hours of the morning and I ended up a zombie. I forgot to take the fever reducer and was back up to 100.5 when I got back in the front door. Lesson learned.

The carpenter grouted it all yesterday, with nothing more to go off of than the instructions on the Lactricrete box and what he could pull up on his iPhone. I'd like to think I could do better, but I've never grouted, and frankly I wouldn't have had the energy.

At work last night, my energy lasted less than the first third of the night. The fever seems to have gone, and is still gone as I write this. My stomach absolutely torn up from the constant medicines over the past week with little more than 7-Up and Top Ramen to back them up. I'm trying to nurse it back to wellness while keeping good nutrition. This weekend will be little more than rest for me.
 
#96 ·
I couldn't just post the progress without pictures. Since the grout has cured over 24 hours, we're able to walk on it now. The sealer we have states to give the grout 72 hours to cure and then 24 hours to dry after application. In the meantime, we've put down a painter's dropcloth, some soft door mats, and put the water heater back in. We're aware that it will need to come back out, but it was starting to get stinky around here without a running shower. Heating a bucket of water on the stove just wasn't cutting it, especially with the wife starting to get sick. Anyway, here's what we have!




Note the painter's tape. I would never have thought of that as a way to keep grout off the wall.

There are a few spots where the depth is slightly uneven, but only noticeable if you're actively looking for it. There's also one spot near the footing where the grout went on a bit too thick, and I'll probably just remove that slowly tomorrow.

The only thing he did that was a little weird was that either he tried to grout up to the drywall at the edges, or just pushed the excess there. We'll be removing it and putting in creme-colored silicone caulking that I have set aside. The baseboards would hide either.

I'm pretty happy with the transformation.
 
#98 ·
#100 ·
This was pointed out to me the day before yesterday. In all the excitement of posting the tile pictures, I plum forgot to mention it.



It could only have come from one specific direction at a fairly short distance. Suffice to say, only one house fits the bills - the renters two doors to the South, the ones with the noisy teenagers and constantly loud music. We went over immediately, and they prentended ignorance, but it was obvious they knew it was one of them that put it there. Thankfully, it was still half-fresh and came off with a few sprays of Linseed-based remover.

I've noticed the progression deeper and deeper into Autumn every evening. It used to be that when I went to work it would still be the bright end of a beautiful (hot) day, but as the months have passed, it's become darker and darker. This is what my commute now looks like, for the next week or two at least.



Please excuse all the bugs. I'd just driven past a rice paddy and was out of bug goo.
 
#101 ·
Yesterday was a little different than most for me. I awoke to a set of missed calls (@%*& not good!), spent the early morning with a cup of coffee and a bowl a cereal reading news, and then saw the wife off to work. Afterwards, I was off to do what everybody does on their Saturday morning...



I volunteered to go cleaned up our Adopt-a-Highway miles. There was probably nearly 30 of us, but by the time I decided to snag a picture, we were spread out over two miles of highway shoulders and medians.



The guy who drove by with his head out his window screaming, "haha, suckers!" made my morning. I suppose we must have looked like we were serving court-ordered community service or something. :laughing:
 
#102 ·
I've been trying to lean up the bills a bit. A few cell phone features here, a few cable package features there, etc. One method was to order a cable modem from Amazon with gift cards so I could stop renting one from Comcast for $7/mo on my bill.



Inside, I found the usual stuff: manual that nobody reads, wrapping that nobody pays attention to the stickers on, a CD of "drivers" that aren't required and nobody installs, a power adapter, and the device.



You can see the old one on top. It never came with the right power adapter, so I'm hoping Comcast doesn't give me crap for that. You can tell the Surfboard is quite a bit wider and deeper, as well as nearly twice as thick if you don't count the Ubee's puny legs. However, this is a DOCSYS 3.0 modem, so it should last be no less than 5 years.



The surfboard's lights also came on a bit brighter once I got Comcast to understand the serial number I was trying to give on the phone. Since it sits near the living room TV, that's not necessarily a good thing. I may have to dim them back down with some tinted tape if they're too harsh at night.
 
#103 ·
The pomegranate tree in the back yard is coming along real nicely. For not having directly watered it all since last July, and God only knows it probably got nothing before we bought the house, it produced fairly well this year. I still need to figure out how to determine a ripe pom so I can harvest some of them. I have no idea what we'll do with them yet!


(sorry for the camera washout)

It's been looking like it wants to rain today, and thus has stayed fairly cool for the area. We got a few seconds of wanting to drizzle, but it stopped just as soon as it started.



I feel bad because the neighbor two houses North (the one that's flipping the property, we think) has the roofing material torn off and the new stuff sitting up there.



We hope this doesn't end badly for him, even though we're really looking forward to the first rain of the season.
 
#104 ·
Wow, what a project. Looks very good.
If I were you Id get that water heater in a drip pan and run the drain to the exterior of the house.
It's If you get a leak its when.
All water heater tanks give up sooner or later, and I hate to see all that work get buggered up .

PS: Thanks for serving your/our country.:thumbup:
 
#105 ·
Thanks, Albacore! That really means a lot to me... and the rest of us too. :) As for the drip pan, well, we're kind of in a gamble with that right now. I'm hoping to have enough saved up for a tankless replacement by spring, complete with in-wall plumbing for the washer and maybe some new drywall on that wall.

When the house was purchased, only the back patio had gutters on it. They were of course full of gunk and had several spots where water would just sit. Concurrently with my tile project, the carpenter was working on installing some new gutters. He offered to purchase the lengths of gutter and downspout, which seemed most generous, until we realized that the bulk of the project cost is in the hangars, fasteners, corner pieces, splices, etc. I still appreciated the offer!

Well, they're definitely on. It took quite a bit of planning, a lot of riveting corners together, and a ton of water-proof goop at the joints. The new run on the front runs from the high North corner to discharge at the driveway and thus into the street. One side discharges at the same spot, and one side discharges in the rear.


Front/East. (runs from right to left)


Side/North. (runs from background to foreground)


Side/South. (runs from background to foreground)


A water flow mockup. Note while the SW and SE sides share a common spout (yellow), they split the area about 60/40.

With that, I think we're now ready for winter!
 
#106 ·
The wife and I went from a $140/month cable + internet bill, to a $40/month internet bill. When I deployed, I taught her how to use Hulu and how to watch her shows for free with other means. So, why not just cancel your cable? Get like an AppleTV, jailbreak it and stream movies/tv shows/etc from your computer to AppleTV through your network?
 
#107 ·
That's certainly an option we've explored. I have a buddy who's a CSM at Comcast, so he hooked us up on this amazing 6 mos intro rate. It blew away anything that they offered on the website or when I called in.

I'm testing right now to see what our data usage looks like. We've got two smart TVs and a web-connected Blu-ray player, and I've been keeping an eye out on Roku's. I may end up with a Boxee, we'll see. We do take advantage of my Amazon Prime membership and, until this last week, we were considering going with Netflix streaming.

Once this promo period is over (end of December), we'll probably be keeping the connection and dropping the TV, doing much the same as what you suggested. We may have to switch over to a business-class connection to bypass the 250gb/mo cap, but so far the constant stream of free Blockbuster Express rental codes are keeping us rather well stocked with free movies (and thus keeping the bandwidth low).
 
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