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.

The funny thing about disasters

The funny thing about disasters is... well, nothing. In fact, you're so overwhelmed by shock, anxiety and self-pity that you fail to foresee the blog post potential in the event. And that explains why I do not have any photographs to illustrate the mayhem of the day I discovered that my hot water heater had ruptured and flooded the basement.

Some background: I had been very busy. I was out of town. I had friends in town. I battled a flea-infestation of Biblical proportions. And, consequently, I had ignored the giant mess that had grown in the basement over the past parental visit in August. But, on a rare weekend that I did not have to work or travel or host, I decided that it was time to clean the basement. So it was that on Saturday, October 24, with a garbage bag in one hand and rubber gloves in the other, I stepped into the basement and was greeted by a splash.

The splash brought to mind the funny, but muffled, hissing/running water sound that I had noticed perhaps a day earlier, but attributed to a neighbor's shower. Yet, a small part of my subconscious registered the noise as sinister. I should have listened to that voice, but I didn't. I figure the hot water heater had about a 24 to 36 hour lead on me. There was 1/4 to 1/2 an inch of water ALL over the basement, which according to my amateur calculations amounts to betwen 150 and 200 gallons over a 600 sq ft area.

Did I mention that the basement was carpeted?

June 2009

When disaster strikes, some people remain calm, some people break down, some people run. I call Dad.

Dad's first instruction was to turn off the water to the house. Why hadn't I thought of that? After the water was off, I headed to Lowe's to get a wet-vac ($89.97), while I called American Home Shield to see if my home warranty covered hot water heater explosions and texted half the people in my phonebook to relate my woes of being a single girl with a flooded basement.

The plumbing company I spoke to put me in touch with Rainbow International, which deals with water, fire and also "trauma scene" cleanup. The nice gentleman from Rainbow assured me that I was dealing with a very serious situation which would require special equipment and expertise and would likely cost $2,500. Now, if I had a flood of bloodborne pathogens in my basement, I might consider forking over $2,500 for professional help, but water???

Back home, vacuuming water off the floor and cursing my luck, I heard the dog barking. Upstairs, there was an angel standing at my door. Cousin Catherine was there with a pair of galoshes in one hand and a box fan in the other. Over the course of the next few hours we got the water off the kitchen tiles and determined that the carpet was beyond saving. We cut the carpet and the padding (read: 350 sq ft of very absorbent sponge) into little bits, bagged it all, and threw the debris out the door. (I am sorry I don't have a picture of the giant pile of trash, because it was so large that it prompted the neighbors to wonder and gossip about WHAT project Anne could possibly have going on NOW...)

Because no day in the life of a Burke is complete without at least two trips to a home improvement warehouse, we returned to Lowe's to get a dehumidifier ($239) and a hose ($7) to drain it into the shower so I wouldn't have to empty the bucket every 20 minutes.

Wet-Vac

Dehumidifier

ShopVac ($89.97) + Dehumidifier&Hose ($246) < $2,500
Rainbow International can take a hike.

Tomorrow's installment: plumbing & grinding.

In Search of Just Right

I picked up two clocks at Target yesterday -- one large, the other smallish -- to hang over my newly painted fireplace.

As mom and I held one up (too big) and then the other (too small), I felt like Goldilocks looking for just the right fit.

Anyway, I'm soliciting opinions. Big? Small? Neither? Suggestions?