Mission Creep (or ADD?)

I'm thinking of replacing the carpet in the bedrooms upstairs. I really like FLOR's Power Nap carpet tile in Truffle. It seems fated. I love naps and truffles (fungi and confections).

Maybe I'll do it in late-summer.

But if I do that, I should do the hardwood in the hallway first. And the stairs. You know: because of the dust.

And one of the bedrooms hasn't yet been repainted. Gotta do that before I get new carpet.

Paint should come first.

So I buy a can of paint. Behr's Wheat Bread, again. Why change now? There's a real appeal to having the entire house painted the same color. You never have to wonder what color went where. Plus, I think it helps rooms flow together in a small house.

I've got my painting clothes on and I'm listening to Justice with Michael Sandel and I'm painting. My eyes follow the 12 inch strip of taupey-grey, which follows the roller, up the wall, and stop at the ceiling.

There's a little brown smudge up there.

And some spackle around the HVAC vent.

I have to paint the ceiling.

It's a popcorn ceiling and this requires research. I learn that painting a popcorn ceiling is both tricky and messy. Tricky because as soon as you wet that popcorn it wants to come off. Messy, because it's a ceiling and you need to use a very thick, segmented roller.

Anticipating splatter, I abandon the walls until the ceiling is finished. I'll tape sheets of plastic to the already painted walls to protect them.

I'll also have to take down the ceiling fan for this. Might as well replace it then.

It's late Sunday now, and I don't have ceiling paint and Home Depot is closed. But I can change some outlets. Only on the walls that have already been painted of course. The two outlets I can work on have way too many wires coming in. I need to pigtail them, and I have enough spare wire to do only one outlet. Oh well. Monday.

Temperature Control

The Trane Weathertron thermostat that I inherited with the house was original to the structure (i.e. 24 years old) and, let's face it, ugly. It was also a chronic liar, always trying to tell me that the inside temperature was 15-20 degrees warmer than it was. (This might have been due to the number of times I accidentally knocked it off the wall -- like how a kid you drop on its head is never quite the right afterward.) And finally, it wasn't programmable. I had been told that heat-pump systems did not work efficiently with programmable thermostats. However, there are several new digital programmable thermostats that claim to work with just such heating and cooling systems. We'll see. [Incidentally, I appear to have NO CONTROL over the font here... Blogger is screwing with me.)

U-G-L-Y. You ain't got no alibi. You ugly.

So, on Holy Saturday, Mom, Dad and I took a trip to Home Depot. (Hey, we all worship in different ways...) While mom wandered off to the gardening section (later blog post on that project), Dad and I bee-lined for plumbing and a new thermostat. The salesperson advised us that while some Honeywell thermostats deal with heat-pump systems, they have found the RiteTemp thermostats to be very good for my kind of system. He also mentioned that RiteTemp's customer support was very good.

I picked the RiteTemp 6036 flushmount 7-day programmable thermostat because it was everything that the Weathertron was not: pretty, impossible to knock off the wall, and programmable. Oh, and it was only $39.00.

I feel pretty.... oh so pretty...

The next day, Easter Sunday, we decided to set about installing this fancy, space-age thermostat.

Step 1: Remove Weathertron and cut hole for larger, but thinner, RiteTemp.

Step 2: Stuff cavity with insulation to prevent temperature mis-readings due to draft.

Step 3: Draw wires through case.

So far so good.

But (there's always a but, isn't there?) the terminals on my old thermostat did not correspond with all of the terminals on the new 'stat. The instruction manual was no help either. The wiring instructions reminded me of an LSAT logic puzzle.

(An amusement park roller coaster includes five cars, numbered 1 through 5 from front to back. Each car accommodates up to two riders, seated side by side. Six people - Tom, Gwen, Laurie, Mark, Paul and Jack - are riding the coaster at the same time. Laurie is sharing a car. Mark is not sharing a car and is seated immediately behind an empty car. Tom is not sharing a car with either Gwen or Paul. Gwen is riding in either the third of fourth car. Which of the following groups of riders could occupy the second car? (A) Laurie only; (B) Tom and Gwen; (C) Laurie and Mark; (D) Jack and Tom; (E) Jack, Gwen, and Paul. -- Answer below.)

For real. Weathertron had an R, an X2, a T wire. But RiteTemp had none of those connections.

Anyhow, it being Easter, I had to wait until Monday to test the helpfulness of the RiteTemp customer support line.

When I did connect with the RiteTemp support person the following day, he said, "Listen. The Weathertron to RiteTemp conversion is the most complicated we deal with. I get at least a hundred calls a week about this. Get a pen and paper. First, kill the power supply to your HVAC unit, because if you touch the B to the R you'll blow out your system. Now take the T wire and the X2 and tape them off. Connect O to O, G to G, and Y to Y. R is going to RH; W (the auxiliary heat) is going to W2; B will go to C. Got it?"

Just a dab of paint and...

... perfect.

Answer to puzzle: (D) Jack and Tom

The Can

Probably the slowest of the projects to be completed, the bathrooms were before and are still nearly identical to each other in style. Except now the style is better.

The smaller of the two bathrooms was especially odd. The toilet and bathtub were in an enclosed room...

(note: lovely, stained linoleum)

(geriatric-friendly bathtub)

...but the sink was a part of the bedroom.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I went to work one day and came home to discover that dad and I had taken away something completely different from the previous evening's conversation.

Conversation: "BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH."

Anne's interpretation: "Let's wait until the Fall to renovate the bathroom."

Dad's interpretation: "I'd better find the crowbar & get a new blade for the Sawzall tomorrow."

If you've ever undertaken a home renovation project, you know that 10% of the effort is expended in destroying old. The other 90% is building it back again. And, at least for me, 20% of that 90% is deciding WHAT to buy: what tiles, what sink, what faucet fixture, what towel bar, what color paint... (Then again, I wasn't the one actually doing the work. Dad may see it differently.)

I knew I wanted white subway tiles on the walls and smaller mosaic tiles on the floor. I first went to a fancy tile place and wound up going home with over $1,000 in tiles for just one bathroom. I was vaguely disturbed. Dad was appalled. Cousin Catherine dragged me to Home Depot to compare prices. Home Depot had the white subway tile at 1/3 of the price of the fancy tile store.

I was also in the market for a new sink and vanity cabinet. Home Depot & Lowe's had plenty reasonably priced traditional looking options, and a few pricier modern options. But IKEA had what I was looking for at the right price. Unfortunately it wasn't in the right location. Charlotte was sold out. Virginia was sold out. New Jersey was sold out. In fact, every place was sold out EXCEPT the store in New Haven, CT. Good thing I knew someone in New Haven. I called Edmund and he agreed to pick up my sink, which I would collect from him some weeks later.

Some weeks later came to pass, and I drove up to NY to pick up the sink. But the boxes didn't look like they contained the cabinet I had specified. And no box looked like it concealed a ceramic sink of any kind. But Edmund did have a receipt proving purchase of 1 Lillangen cabinet, 1 ceramic sink, 1 package of Swedish Fish, and 1 chocolate bar. As far as I could tell, however, only the Swedish Fish and the chocolate actually left Ikea.

Dad, Edmund and I piled into the car with the mystery Ikea boxes to figure out our mistake. Of course, the kind folks at Ikea weren't about to take our word that we just didn't get our proper packages. They would have to consult the security video and get back to us in about 48 hours. But I was leaving to return to Raleigh in 8 hours. 48 hours wouldn't do. I think the customer support rep took pity on me, and after some investigation she discovered that my package was still sitting in the warehouse, marked "LEFT BEHIND BY CUSTOMER." That's right folks. Edmund managed to abandon his purchases and thieve someone else's in the same action.

Well, that's all water under the bridge now. I got the correct items home and assembled them with the help of Ikea's very clear, step by step directions:

Anyway, after all the time and trouble, I believe the end result was worth it:

Paint

After the clearning, grinding, washing, and acid bath, the concrete floor was ready for paint. I decided to use Behr garage floor paint, which is applied in a two part epoxy process. The primer is the first part of the epoxy and the colored paint is the second part. This is supposed to make the finish more durable.

The primer went down pretty easily, though it was a very sticky process, and the colored paint also applied pretty evenly, albeit with a good bit of slopping on the white baseboard.



The color while the paint was still wet looked a little more yellow than gray. I nearly bought another gallon of a different color, but decided to wait until it dried. Fortunately, the yellowishness faded when it did.

You are supposed the let the primer, the first part of the epoxy solution, dry completely for at least 8 hours before you apply the top coat. And I did that. However, I had let the paint roller rest on the floor overnight and when I set about applying the top coat, I discovered that it had left a wet mark of primer where it sat. I figured it would be no big deal if I just went ahead and painted over that small wet spot. WRONG.


Lesson learned: let the first part of the epoxy mixture DRY before applying the second part. Else you will wind up with a crinkly patch that looks remarkably like a paint roller.

Anyhow, other than that little patch, it all seems to have turned out just fine and ahead of the Thanksgiving deadline!!





I'm soliciting volunteers to help move some furniture back into the room and assemble a lovely West Elm futon!!

Skillz

This post is really for Dad, who will be tickled to hear that I zapped myself twice last night trying to wrangle the wires onto the GFI outlet. In my defense, they were thick, maybe 10 gauge.

The green light means it's working :)

I am perfectly capable of swapping out an outlet or a light switch provided nothing unusual is going on in the box. But when I yanked this bad boy out of the box and discovered there were 3 black wires, 3 white wires, and a ground I might as well have found an octopus behind the wall:

Another phone call to Dad, who provided the following solution:




1 foot of 14 gauge wire and 2 wire nuts were apparently all I needed. I learned from the "master electrician" at Home Depot that this process is called pigtailing... I think he was trying to intimidate me with fancy terminology so I'd give up and just hire him to do my job.

Final Product! My fresh, clean, white outlet!

Floor Prep

No way, no how am I going to go through this again, ever. Or at least, I refuse to rip up another basement's worth of soggy carpet and padding. (Incidentally, I need to give a shout-out to Faiz who, even with a tetanus-y foot, loaded his truck with my mountain of carpet trash and took it away.)

Obviously, re-carpeting the basement was out of the question. Hardwood floors were nixed too. The concrete sub-floor looked a little too uneven for a smooth tiling job. Painting the thing seemed like the easy and most practical route.

apartment therapy and the diy network both gave me some good tips on how to get it done. All I would have to do is clean the floor, degrease it, etch it with an acid, prime, and paint!

Just a couple of problems:

First, the floor was still very dirty. Patches of carpet padding pockmarked the concrete, which was also decorated with rivulets of glue where I had already managed to pull up the padding.

Padding & Glue Rivulets

Second, there were two raised lumps of concrete, where a previous owner had apparently patched the floor.

my lovely concrete lump

Getting the padding and glue up was simply a matter of elbow grease, but the concrete patches were another matter. That was going to require a hand held grinder with a diamond cup wheel.

I considered waiting until Dad came down for Thanksgiving and letting him do it, but I wasn't sure he could carry that kind of equipment on the airplane and I really need the basement ready so Edmund can sleep down there over the holiday.

Hertz equipment rental actually wanted $170 to rent me the grinder and wheel for a day. Home Depot in Fuquay Varina let me have the grinder for 4 hours for $25 and sold me the wheel for $50. Hertz equipment rental can go hang out with Rainbow International.

Bad-Ass Grinder

The grinder cut into the concrete like it was butter. I had anticipated flying chips of cement, so I had picked up safety goggles ($5.98), but I hadn't accounted for the clouds of dust:

This is actually after it cleared a bit.

I was concerned about working in this dust, as I was running a half-marathon the following morning and was pretty sure that inhaling concrete particles wouldn't help me run faster. Without a dust mask, I had to improvise:

Declaring jihad on concrete lumps.

(Insert Awful Half-Marathon in the Driving Rain, requiring 3 days recovery, both physical & emotional.)

Last step before painting: Cleaning & Etching & Re-Cleaning.

Careful to add the acid to the water, and not the other way around, I washed the entire floor with the solution, so the primer would better adhere to the concrete surface.



I hosed all this down (yes, I RE-FLOODED the basement on purpose), vacuumed it all up with the wet-vac, and let it dry for several days before applying the primer.


Next post: Paint.

Plumbers

American Home Shield warranty assured me on Saturday that they'd have a plumber to me by Monday. MONDAY!!!!! I could live without heat or air conditioning for two days, but how was I supposed to go without water?

Fortunately, the dispatcher at Carolina Plumbing & Water Systems had AHS reclassify my situation as an emergency and I had a pair of plumbers on the job Sunday morning. And what a pair they were. Dressed head to toe in cammo (seriously, hats to shoes), they were awfully concerned that I was unmarried. I feigned indignance (never mind the previous day's fit about being a single girl dealing with a basement flood), but they assured me that they were confident that my situation would be rectified: I would definitely get married and have many, many babies someday. (I wondered if I would be charged extra for their clairvoyance).

My cammo-loving, future-telling plumbers assessed my hot water heater, confirmed that it was the source of my flood, and drew up an estimate. After a $60 service charge, AHS would cover the cost of the replacement water heater, labor charges, and haul off of the old unit. They do not, however, fully cover "code upgrades." My house and presumably my deceased hot water heater are/were 20 years old, and Raleigh has made a few changes to its plumbing codes since then. It now requires an expansion tank ($150), 2 dielectric unions ($100), a disconnect box within 3 feet of the hot water heater ($125), and something called "T&P Mod" ($65). AHS covered only $250 of the upgrades, which left me paying $250. Coulda' been worse.

Expansion Tank

Dielectric Unions

Disconnect Box

If anybody can spot the "T&P Mod," I'll buy them a beer.