The Beginning of the End

It's been a long time coming, and it'll be a long time till it's done, but I'm in the final stretch.

A quick look back

While sitting here, 4 pints in at the brewery nearest to my work, I realized I could have replaced one door on my house back in 2013 and avoided this whole fucking mess. Maybe it was Jesus' recent revival, maybe it's the beer, I'll never know. But I just realized this whole mess started with my hot water heater's pilot light going out. The pilot light went out because I removed some of the old peal n' stick tile to see if I could put something more attractive down. The removal of the tile left a sticky layer that the old door's seal got caught on, quickly ripping it off. The lack of seal let the wind in and blew the pilot light out...time after time after time. 

I fucking wish my issues were waking up to no hot water. Man, I was(read: I am) a fucking idiot. Instead of putting in a $200 door, I decided to put in a tankless hot water heater. Then I found a tankless heater on Craigslist that goes on the outside of my house. Then...it just snowballed into where I am now. I regret it. I could have lived my life nicely without these hard lessons. So many people just call a plumber or an electrician. But nooooo. I gotta be the idiot. 

Shew. Anyway. I have a blog to write.

The Last of the Bullshit

About the last dreadful part of my house remodel is the plumbing. The previous owners used soft copper and compression fittings to tie into existing galvanized water lines and some old cast iron drainage. I don't really blame them, but I still despise the fact that not even one part of this house has been a break in the perpetual shit list of things to do. 

As seen in the previous post, I moved the washer box and added plumbing for a vanity in the mud room. I hadn't done anything beyond running the new stuff down past the subfloor. So...crawl space.

Fuck Cats, man.

I had to wake up at some absurd hour, like 8am or some shit. My list of things to get done was a mile long and I didn't have time for this mess. But I got a text from my neighbor. I wasn't home and wouldn't be for 8 more hours. 

Eight hours and a dozen beers later, another neighbor, BJ, was helping me unload tile and he stopped mid sentence and said "was that a meow?". It was. This cat was so stuck. I was mildly Sunday drunk and this was not gonna be my problem. Might be my foundation, but that ain't my fucking cat. So I called animal control, turned on some 90's country, and drank beers with BJ and foundation cat until Brenda(or whatever her name was) showed up. 

She tried putting soap on it and twisting and pushing for a while, but ultimately we ended up chiseling out a bit of block until it was free. Now this little orange bitch is in my crawl space. 

Sorry for the screenshots. 

Whatever. I still get mad about this part. I'll spare you the pictures, but it left a pile of kittens in my crawl space. Dead, tiny kittens. Those pictures do my crawl space too much justice. It's like 20" tall down there. I had to lay on my stomach and move these smelly dead things before I could get to the plumbing part. 

Just kidding. Here's some dead cats.

Pipes and Shit

Literally. I'm cussing a lot in this post. Maybe I should slow that down. But here's a bit more of what you're used to from me. 

The usual:

-Rip out the old

-Put in the new

-Take some pictures

-Make a blog

Cut out the old.

Cut out more old.

Soft copper. 

No copper. Gas lines I installed a few years back.

Put in the drains. 

Get some 3/4" copper goin on. 

This is all mud. Like 3" of mud I laid in for 12 hours.

Progression

Each blog post represents the trough of my ambition's waveform. The progress being the crest, and the endless tiring work between the two is likely just self deprecation and drinking heavily. Generally at a predictable 3 month interval I make a couple leaps in life then wallow for a while. 

I woke up on a Tuesday and decided I would quit smoking and being a grown up. I DID GREAT. No more cigarettes meant less Casey's stops. I limited my food spending and took every leftover meal my neighbors had to offer. Two months in I had paint on my walls, doors where there should be doors, and even a few extra dollars laying around. Scrubbed my garage until it shinned. Gave the dog a bath. You know, all those normal things I generally avoid. 

Here is what all that looks like:

TV wall and hallway.

For reference, this house had a 4" step down into the hallway when I bought it. The floors were actually collapsed in the opposite way. They managed to layer on the bullshit 6" thick.

He doesn't always look this dumb, we both have troubles expressing happiness. 

Put on some trim. 

YAY!

The pile of things in the middle is the tile for the mudroom and kitchen. 

Resume normal George

I tried out the happy and productive life. Wasn't for me. Luckily for all six of you that read this pile of garbage, it takes a bit of loathing and anguish to get one of these done. Let me give you a little insight.

As soon as all this progress was made, a whole list of shit broke. The only two lines I hadn't replaced in the crawl space sprung a massive leak. My truck's axle, hub, drum, and tire slid out the side of my truck while I was driving down the road, I found a fucking bird in my dryer duct.

Nope.

Kitchens are for families

So I'm gonna buy a new 4wheeler instead. It could be a while before you see pictures of cabinets on here.