Kuz I said so » Basement

of dogs and renos

Mike — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:32:08 +0000

We’re taking a trip out to the west coast in a few weeks and unfortunately Maggie is not carry on. So we’ve been looking for a good place to board her. A couple of the neighbours have offered to look after her, and it’s very much appreciated. (Awesome neighbours here) but Maggie’s a spoiled brat and requires a lot of attention. And since she’s a big dog, she’s quite a handful.

Our two options remaining for the dog is a dog sitter, or take her to a kennel. Dog sitters are expensive… $45/day for 3 x 1/2 hour visits… not enough time for the dog I think. And I don’t want her in a kennel where she’s in a box all day long. She still sleeps in her kennel at night here and likes it just fine, but I’d rather her be able to roam during the day.

We found the perfect spot for Maggie… Harry and Rupert’s Hotel for Dogs We went out there sunday for a visit, and Maggie got to play with a dozen or so dogs, running around a large fenced in area. The dog run is over an acre for sure, and the sleeping quarters is a converted barn. Maggie will get an old horse stall all to herself. Rather a converted horse stall, it’s got a floor, bed, and her own food/water bowls. And it’s cheaper than expected… $40/day. That and there’s someone around 24 hours/day makes it a done deal.

It’s been a while since Maggie got to run around with a bunch of dogs off leash, and she did great! She was scared quite a bit at first, but soon managed to relax enough to play with another pup a bit. She was still quite excited/nervous as she was slobbery! Foot long string of drool pretty much the whole time there, and refused water even though it was really hot out. Never seen her do that before… I’m sure the anxiety will drop within a few hours of her being there and it would have been nice to spend a bit more time there to see, but it’s a busy place and our visit time was up.

So, dog’s taken care of for our trip, so that turns my attention back to the house and our soon to be arriving visitors…

I decided that I should put a quick fix on the downstairs bathroom… it’s needs an overhaul, and might as well get it done before company arrives. I would have liked to redo the shower, but there’s a line that you have to draw somewhere with these old houses as we are not doing a full gut on it.

I’ve got the drywall up, now it’s mud/tape time. Once I’ve got the primer on the walls, I’ll get on the flooring…

Here’s a few shots of the bathroom in progress, and a few shots of nap time.

No boot device…

Mike — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 23:42:21 +0000

Opened up the laptop this evening and that’s what I was greeted with. No boot device… nice. A reboot, and all appears well, but that’s not what I want with a new lappy. Hope it was an isolated incident and will not be happening again.

Being that it’s the end of June, it’s time for me to start thinking about Christmas. I know, I know… it’s nuts… but I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me. This weekend started out with me building up the boards I got last winter. I have 7 SSR (Solid State Relay) boards, and enough parts to build up 6 of them… My supplier sent me an extra one because a shipment got lost in the mail and I had to wait for a while.

I started a little assembly line, one group of components at a time for all boards… I hooked up a fan in some silver flex duct line (think it’s for a dryer) to keep the noxious flux fumes out of my face… it worked pretty good and I was done in no time.

Here’s the days work… still missing a few parts so not all are done, but I’ve got a lot of components on the way, so I should be back at it for the weekend.

I’m still waiting for another 9 SSR boards and all the components to fill ‘em up… I’ve also ordered the parts to add dimming capabilities to the display. Currently I can only turn the lights off and on, so it will be nice to be able to dim rather than shut off abruptly. So, 10 more boards, and 300 components to solder in… that’s why I’m starting in June

And that doesn’t even count the display parts… I’m running all LED lights, so I’m not too worried about power requirements, but giving the history of wiring I’ve fixed in this house, I’m not taking any chances… I wired up 2 20amp, GFCI protected circuits, dedicated for the lights. That should be more than enough for my ‘year one’ display.

I picked up another 26 tomato cages from the Despot today… 6 4′ cages to round out the 4 mid-trees I already have. I wanted 10 total so I can do a pyramid setup of the mid-trees. Pretty standard stuff as far as displays go, so it’s an easy one to start with.

The other 20 cages will be mini-trees. They’re 3′ but I’m cutting the bottom ring off, and they will end up being 2′ tall. I’ll prolly ring the flower bed or run them down the drive. Not 100% sure yet.

So, I’ve got 10 mid-trees (4 already built) and 20 mini-trees, and the house lights. Gonna add icicle lights this year to have some lighting options and variety. I’ve got the capability for 64 channels, and I think I’m going to have about 40 channels this year, if everything goes as planned… and if I can get enough strings of lights. If all goes well, I’ll be adding a mega-tree next year… I’ve got another 24 channels before I need to buy/build more controller gear so that’s almost enough for a mega-tree… or perhaps I’ll do a ‘star of David’… we’ll see

Oh, and I have to program the sequences to make the lights dance… That’s prolly going to take more time than building the trees. I’m not planning any musical display (no FM transmitter), and I think that’s going to be a bit of a reach for the amount of work I need to get done in the time I have… between renos

Speaking of renos, here’s some ‘done for now’ shots of the bar.

… and no, the taps are not hooked up.

More renos

Mike — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 18:52:42 +0000

I got fired up about doing some more work on the basement, so I thought I would start on the bar area. We are trying to save a bit of cash, so we’re going to reuse the existing bar, and paint out the bead-board, or wainscoting, or whatever it’s called.

I really don’t want to be spending a lot of time on this right now; It’s summer and I’ve got plenty of work to do outside, but I need to do something to get that space usable. We’ve decided just to get it working with plumbing, electrical, drywall done.

So I got all the rough ins done

(Yes, I know the sink is not properly vented, but I have to leave a surprise or two for the next owner don’t I? …mind you, I can fix that really easily with an AAV (Air Admittance Vent) or ‘cheater vent’)

and I got all the drywall up

But not before finding another present from the previous remodeller…

Seems it was too hard to run the power in the wall, so they just ran it along the baseboards. Awesome. I fixed as much as I can, but I am not ripping out the rest of that wall. I did remove another 2 feet of drywall, but there’s another 15 feet or so of wall I’m not touching. I wired it properly to a new plug that I placed in a better spot, and I’ll be building a bulkhead to cover in the HVAC and some more of the wire… from that point, I may be able to run the power through the sub-basement and fish it up to the rest of the outlets and fix it right. But for now, it’s staying as is. Oh, and they also walled in a clean-out for the plumbing stack. Nice.

We poured some floor leveller. $45 a bag… stuff is not cheap. I was surprised by how fast it went from really, really runny to not flowing at all… way sooner than I was expecting, and subsequently, I’m not totally happy with the results. Next time I’m adding more than the recommended amount of water. Sure, it will weaken the final product, but not sure by how much… I’ll let you know. Mind you, I was pouring a very thin layer, so perhaps that’s why it didn’t flow right. Any tips for next time would be appreciated!

Once I had the rough counter top in, I hooked up all the plumbing… was just planning to cut in the sink, but figured I better check if my poorly vented sink actually drained (it’s about 7′ away from the vented stack) … and it works pretty good… no backup/slowness at all.

I was going to get oak plywood, to match the rest of the oaky-ness of the bar, but at $80 a sheet, I thought it would be cheaper to go with rough 3/4 then get some veneer…. but adding up that cost (after the fact) it would actually be more expensive. lol nice. Soooo we are just going to sand down the rough plywood and stain/finish that… or put on tiles or something else… Apparently I’ll spend a dime to save a nickel… or however that saying goes.

Wifey got tired of hearing my bitch about not having a table saw, so she bought me one for my b-day! It’s awesome. The stand that it came with folds up into a wheeled cart, so it’s a breeze to set up, tear down, and move that saw around. All of the accessories (rip fence, blade guard, etc) have a spot to clip into and stow securely during transport. It’s got a port for dust collection, so I plugged the shop vac hose in the back of it, and there was almost no dust from the cuts. Awesome awesome.

So ‘part one’ of the bar is wrapping up… we’re just going to put a finish on the counter top, add some flooring, and move in the fridge. It’s a bit ‘out of sequence’ but I really don’t want to start mudding and taping now… especially since I don’t have the ceiling done, nor do I have the bulkheads done… and that is far more work than I’m willing to do now. We’ll use it as is, then once I can’t work outdoors anymore, I’ll get back into the drywalling and finish up the basement.

Well, there’s your problem!

Mike — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:05:40 +0000

This is why you don’t bury junction boxes in walls and ceilings…

…and also why you should follow the recommended procedure for hooking up more than one baseboard heater to a single thermostat. Hint: this is the wrong way.

We’re doing major renos… we’ve added a furnace/AC and now I’m pulling all the electric heat out. I’m also ripping out the old wiring. You sure can tell where the homeowner (or a crappy, unlicensed contractor) tied into the original. I’ve found hidden junction boxes all over the place. This one was in the ceiling of the basement, right under one of the bedrooms. As we’ve got a gas insert fireplace down stairs, we’ve never really used the electric heat there… good thing too… looks like it wasn’t far from starting a fire in the joist space.

So many WTF moments in this place… the electrical is the worst. No; Actually all the spiral nails is the worst. I’ve never seen drywall attached with spiral nails before… and nailed every 3-4 inches. Brutal, but the electrical is a very close second place. There were 34 lights/plugs on one 15A breaker… the entire finished basement… (12 is the max by code.)

good times

Sump pump install.

Mike — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:22:48 +0000

I somehow got started uploading crap to youtube…

…ok, I can’t get embed to work right… I’ll try to figure it out one day.
Edit: Just needed to disable the WYSIWYG editor… should be good now.

Inspections

Mike — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 20:07:28 +0000

Took the day off work yesterday for the inspectors. I took out building and electrical permits on the basement… Why? No permit: no insurance… If there’s ever a fire/etc they can’t say it was caused by uninspected/faulty electrical work. Better safe than sorry I say. That piece of mind did cost me about $150, but that’s pretty cheap compared to the cost of the reno.

So I take the day off to meet the inspectors. And it’s snowing… a lot… dunno if they are going to make it at all. I finally get a call about 10Am from one guy who says he’ll be in at noon. No call yet from the other inspector, so I can’t leave the house in case he comes by.

Noon. Electrical inspector shows up as promissed… walks into the basement and checkes a few plugs with the Plug Testing Tool … writes final on the inspection sticker on the panel box and we’re done! His visit lasted about 2 minutes.

Around 2:30 the building inspector arrived. Boots off, down stairs, looks around, signs final inspection sticker. We chat for a while, so this visit is a little longer… perhaps 4 minutes.

Just seems like a waste. Whole day off for 6 minutes of inspections. Did I get anything for the inspections? Would they have seen anything wrong in that short of time? Did they do a thorough job? I hope so. I’m hoping that these guys are so good, they can spot code violations in a quick scan of the room. Not that I was expecting any violations, infact I’m sure that I did a better than average job… (not a braggart, just a perfectionist)
Anyhoo, inspections passed, permits closed. Basement is no where near done yet, but the major work is out of the way. We’re going to get the trim on the doors/windows/baseboards and then leave it for the summer.

Basement update

Mike — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 05:00:22 +0000

Major work done on the basement… we painted the walls (again)… the color didn’t quite match up to what it was supposed to be the first round . Away with the baby blue, and now we have a brown/gray/purple thing going on. Paint looks good against the white ceiling. And I get to show off the bulkhead corners we did.
It’s oooooooo-k.

Yes, the screen is silver there… we are doing 5 kajillion coats of different color paint to get it looking like a movie screen. Finishing off with white I hope
Big new thing is the carpet! We put in a cream berber The installers did a great job, and it really warms the place up. Still have lots of finish trim (door/window casings, baseboards, built-ins) but that’s later…

Fireplace

Mike — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 04:16:51 +0000

Well, I’ve finished the brick surround of the fireplace and the projector screen.

The stone we used isn’t actually stone but it’s a cultured stone product (pumice and cement) made to look like real rock. http://www.coronado.com/

It wasn’t too hard to install, but getting the mortar mix to the correct consistancy sure helped keep the bricks from falling.