A Window Week

I’m a little slow when it comes to the waste drain plumbing part of a house. You would think that it is a simple task, get the slope right and it looks after itself – after all, poop does not flow up hill! But there are lots of do’s but mostly don’ts that you have to be careful about when putting in the drains. We have a cast 4” sewer pipe coming through the cement foundation that we have to connect to. For  an experienced plumber, it probably is not a difficult job but for non-confident DIYer like me, this is a challenge. Our nephew-in-law has tried his best to educate me but I still had problems when it came to connecting to the sewer line. So, because of my insecurity of waste drains, I didn’t do any plumbing work on Sunday even though the waste tanks in the rig are bulging! So, instead of plumbing, we continued working on the windows and walls in the centre portion of the house.

After more phone calls and discussions with a local plumber on Monday – actually, his business is just around the corner and we will be hiring him to do our HVAC, I learn that I have to cut the collar (in plumbing terms, it is the hub) off the cast fitting. There is not a lot of room but using a grinder and a reciprocal saw, I cut the hubs off and started connecting the main house drain and retrofitting the trailer hook up into it that will be used as a clean out after this job is done. When I returned the grinder to our plumber/HVAC guy, he came over to consult on the furnace location etc – we can’t lay any plumbing or the subfloor until the HVAC ducts are in. He gave us some tips on the waste drains and venting as well as the furnace location. We have screwed ourselves by applying for a reno permit – since we didn’t have a central heating system in the house before, we have to provide the town with engineered drawings of a new HVAC system and ‘our guy’ can not start the job until we get the drawings and submit them to the town and then be ‘permitted’ to continue!

Now that we have the crawl space access door in place and the trailer re-connected, Tuesday sees us finishing the floor joists in the bedroom – they had been left out while we completed the sewer connections. We had to modify the floor joists in the bathroom to accommodate the HVAC ducts. We also installed joists between the old floor in the centre and the new joists in the back of the house. We ran out of supplies so we called it a day anyway.

 

 

We’re getting better at rebuilding window openings now and so we continue that task on Wednesday. Taking out the window is easier as we know what and where to look for. Cleaning the edges of caulking and foam insulation off the vinyl window frames was not easy or fun and was probably the most difficult part of this job. But after that, everything went smoothly and by the end of the day, we had the window in a new jam and the stud work of the wall completed. We both agree this house will be stronger than before. We ended early so we could take everything out of the house so the spray foam insulation guys had free space to move around to get their job done easily.

 

After the spray foaming was done, we needed supplies for the other wall and window. While we were out, Jim Flake came by and started on the dirt pile removal. Wow, was this a wonderful surprise. Needless to say, I had to watch – you know, boys and big machinery, anyway, I got on the shovel to help him clean up around the trees so not much was accomplished inside the house. This gave Barb an opportunity to do some sewing of her pillow from her Wool Gatherers Group. We finished 5:30ish and just in time as the clouds opened and we got a down pour!

Now that we have more supplies, on Friday we tackled the other wall, new studs, a larger window and had to McGyver the stud wall where we had to replace a corner a few weeks earlier. This was going to be easier since we were starting sort of from scratch – we took out a window but replaced it with 2 larger windows and built the RSO compete without having to fit it around existing stud work. Once the RSO was in place, we simply cut out the inside of the RSO and there, we had an opening for the ‘new’ re-purposed windows! Levelled and squared them, squirted them with foam and done. Now the joining of the old and new wall was a little more interesting but after some discussion – Barb is great with puzzles as well as ideas on how to do these sorts of things….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday and we’re in the house again, this time finishing up the floor joists between the old and new structures. Not a big job but it still has to be done. We finished a little earlier than normal to watch some of the US Open golf.

 

 

 

That’s it for now, come back again soon and we hope all is good where you are….