I’m at a point where I can do some more work on the house, but first I must do some planning. I want to expand the “sort-of-one bedroom” apartment 3 so that it really is a one bedroom apartment. I put together some more SketchUp magic…
Again… comments welcome!
I’m trying to layout the kitchen. The way it is now looks like someone cheaped out, cuz, well, they did. It was just an apartment and it was the 1950’s, so the owners didn’t care. I’m trying to find a good layout, and this is what I’ve come up with so far:
301 University #1 – The Kitchen
Let me know what you think…
When you rent out your house, minor maintenance issues normally go unnoticed until they are huge problems. Apparently, in My Other Houseâ„¢ there was a small leak from the tub spigot that was allowing a small amount of water to go through the wetboard down to the first floor bathroom ceiling. Again, a minor issue really only requiring a little tightening of the spigot and some caulk. However, when ignored for long periods, this problem explodes into something much, much bigger. In this, it didn’t explode, but it certainly fell on my head:
Why are all the shower faucets available at Lowes and Homie Depot of the type that don’t let you control the water temperature and pressure?!?
Thank for all the comments! Anyone want to rent Apt 2? ;-)
I didn’t redo the floors in Apt 2, but the stairs could use a light sanding and then poly… Someone at some point put down a light coat of lacquer or something. Of course they didn’t both to clean before hand so much of it is chipping up. Someday I’ll redo all the floors in the entire house.
So what next, you ask… Now it is on to my part of the house. Of course, first I need to unpack from the move oh-so-many months ago. I’ve already started putting insulation up in the laundry room just in time for this cold snap. I need to do some other insulating, and then buy/install a new furnace! That should be very exciting!
At any rate, stay tuned for more home improvement action!
So this past weekend, I made an emergency trip to DC to become a professional-hobby plumber. Apparently in the time my house had spent empty made the tree roots in the main sewer line grow huge and clog the line in their endless search for water. After some fighting with “pro” plumbers about snaking the drain and their efforts failing, I bought a plane ticket out there. It was cheaper the fly out myself and do the work than to hire another “pro”.
So, Jay and I first tried to snake the drain. We successfully put the entire snake down there… then, when pulling it back out, it became stuck! I pulled and pushed… but it wouldn’t budge. Jay and I took turns listening around the house to determine where it was stuck. Jay placed a brick where we thought it was just as I was giving the snake one last final tug. The snake snapped… and slowly came out minus the cutting end! I’ll leave out the colorful language, but trust me, I wasn’t happy. We returned that snake, and after demonstrating my great debating skills to the store manager, he canceled the rental contract and sent us on our way with his condolences.
We had a lot of work in front of us… so we bought a shovel and borrowed a small pick axe. We dug huge hole through hard clay: 3ft wide by 4ft long by 3.5ft deep! We found the place where a previous owner had connect a new main-sewer line to the old clay pipe. Right next to that was a junction point in the old clay pipe. It was there, in the junction, that roots galore flowed into the pipe. We had found the problem! And only after one day of back-breaking digging!
So the next day, we bought a Saws-All and nice set of metal blades. Jay started cutting… and cutting… and then I cut… and cut… and nothing! We hardly scratch the pipe! Apparently what we thought to be cast iron was actually hardened steel! Back to Home Depot to buy a better blade: a “grit cutter” blade. This thing was incredible. It still took ~2 hours to cut the pipe out, but we got it out.
We were hoping to be able to pull out some of the tree roots from the hole, but we couldn’t really get to any of them. So… we rented another snake. We successfully pulled out ~5lbs of tree roots! To test the drain, I put in a rubber “y” while Jay returned the snake. Sure enough… you guessed it… it STILL DIDN’T DRAIN!!! It was late, so we called it a day and went to sulk in our beer.
Day 3… Jay had hurt himself, so I was working by myself. I rented another snake and start pushing it in and out. I should certainly mention the working conditions here. Once we cut the pipe, raw sewage came flooding out into our pristine hole. The hard clay absorbed the black nastiness and smell never really went away. So… back to the snaking. Every time I pulled the snake out, a small gush of sweet smelling black tree roots accompanied it. This was obviously the problem. I very slowly started pushing the snake back in for one final cut. I waited every 2-3in until there was no “cutting” action felt with each turn of the snake before pushing it in further. Then, the snake became stuck! It wouldn’t go forward, nor backward; in fact, it wouldn’t even turn. It was completely bound up! Again… colorful language spewed from my mouth like sewage from a cut sewer pipe. I tried to put a little more tension on the snake to pull it out. Then… SNAP. The outside “sping” section of the snake had broke, leaving only the safety steel inner cable. 
I stopped using the spinning function of the snake and just started tugging on the snake to get it out. While doing this, the entire clay-junction was moving all around. I deduced there was a huge chunk-o-tree-root pulling at the junction. The junction had to come out.
This is what came out of the drain with the broken snake! Another +10lbs of tree roots! Now… on to patching the junction in the clay pipe. Luckily, on one of my many trips to Home Depot, I found this amazing epoxy putty. This stuff hardens to rock in only 3-4 minutes, even under water. I bought all they had and started filling in the huge gap in the junction and large holes left by the now missing tree roots. I put our “y” back in and installed our clean out, then tested away. And the water flowed!!! THESE PIPES ARE CLEAN! I dumped a bunch of copper sulfate around our work to prevent further root infestation, and called it a day. I left the hole there for Jay to fill later incase another problem came up.
I then went to meet up with my DC friends. I had only ~12hrs left in DC. So what did I do with my friends? I painted their apartment! I can’t get away from this home improvement thing! This is Sara, Meg, and John painting Sara’s apartment. Thanks everyone for showing me a great time.
That great little podcast thing from the last post… well, IU has never done anything like that before. The IUSOM Window servers just weren’t up for the task of serving out ~200MB to some 200 people. They crashed HARD! So, a quick edit of the XML, and now the files are being hosted from the audio departments brand new Apple XServer. We’ll probably move them to library’s XServer sometime tomorrow.
So… not much progress has been made in about week. I’ve been very busy since the Dean of the School of Music heard about these new-fangled “podcasts”. Now, thanks to a lot of encoding by Konrad and I, the IU Jacobs School of Music now has a podcast with hi-res video. They even built the horrible looking IU Music Live website for it. Go laugh at it, or just download the podcast directly.
Enjoy!
After a quick visit to DC, we’re back! We ran to DC to take care of the house there… someone (cough… fucking realtors… cough) left a window open during a rain storm and damaged a wall upstairs. On top of that, sump pump had burned itself out. I guess these things happen when you get 12″ of rain in 2 days…
While in DC, a realtor came over to show the house… so we disappeared for a few hours. When we came back to the house, all of the lights inside were on, the porch lights were off, and the BACK DOOR WAS WIDE OPEN!!! Did I mention I hate realtors!??!??!
Anyways… back to IN and “The Fabulous Fire Hazard”… We get to move in today!!! That’s right, today I perform a move-out inspection for Crystal in Apt #4. I have no point of reference for the damage to apartment, so I just have walk through, nod, look disappointed, and write her a check for her full deposit. This is the first of five. Hopefully I’ll get the hang of it and not cry too much.
After I check her out of the place, I hope to grab our wonderful air mattress and start squatting in my own house! A little explanation…
The house has 5 apartments. Apt 1 on the ground floor is the largest: a 1 bedroom with a huge living room, full bath, and nice kitchen. Apt 2, also on the ground floor, is an large efficiency: one large bedroom with a small kitchenette from the 50’s and full bath. Apt 3 on the 2nd floor is a medium efficiency with the same 50’s kitchenette and a really nice full bath. Apt 4 is next 3 on the 2nd floor: a 1 bedroom with a nice living room, hallway, full bath, and mediumish kitchen. Apt 5 is back on the ground: a small studio with a small (but full-sized) kitchen and full bath.
So where do we live in all of this craziness? Good question. The current plan is… Combine apt 1 and apt 2 into my own living space. There is a doorway between the two apartments that has been drywalled over. So once I have access to those apartments, I’ll open it up and make the 2 into 1. For those counting, that a 2 bed, 2 bath (the kitchenette will go away). The two upstairs apartments (3 and 4) will be easily combined to make another very large 2 bed, 2 bath apartment. Apt 5 is pretty well separated, so it’ll just stay that way. That a total of three separate living spaces, all with separate entrances! Hopefully it will all come together….
I finally closed on my house here in B-town! It was strange to walk into closing with no plan to write any checks. I was able to buy the house completely on the equity of my house in MD. Very cool… and not its ALL MINE!
But not really.
Yeah… ya see… there’s a few squatters in the place. The previous owners wanted to close ASAP. But the renters they have in the house are still here! And they have leases through August 15! Painful… you buy a house, but you can’t even go inside of it. Soon though….
