Sunday, January 11, 2015

Behind the Scenes: The Week Between Christmas & New Year's 2014

Remember that week between Christmas and New Year's Eve of 2014?  You know, that week we chipped off the plaster from one of The Bungalow's basement walls to expose the brick, built two Carol-crushing, massive shelving units for the basement, and then tore out the paneling of the laundry room to make way for the new plumbing installation?  Yup, that would be the one...

Not so loose plaster.
















Mostly done.  Love that brick.
















Beds for the bunker Shelves for the basement.




















Organizing will have to wait.
Yep, that's beadboard on the ceiling.  We're keeping that.





Saturday, January 10, 2015

One Thing Leads to Another: A State of the Bungalow Address, 10 January 2015

After the wedding in November, Eric and I finally had the time to get some much needed plumbing work done on The Bungalow to improve our water volume.  With the help of Keith Hathcock, owner of K. D. & J. Plumbing of Gadsden, we made a game plan that would start with the least expensive improvement and work our way up to the more costly improvements.  So, we began with paying the City of Gadsden's Water Department to replace our water tap from the main street line to our meter.  Our water volume was only improved by about ten percent with this replacement, so we set up an appointment with Keith to have his guys come out to replace the main line from the meter to The Bungalow (using 1" PEX just in case we ever decided to put in an irrigation system in our landscape).  I almost cried at how improved the water volume was after that installation (we could finally flush the toilet while running the bathroom faucet AND have good water volume in the shower...something we have not ever experienced in our four and a half years at The Bungalow).  But, our home projects couldn't stop there...

Right before we replaced that main line from the meter to the house, our washer went out.  So, knowing that we really wanted stackable HE front-loading units in our laundry room, we went price comparing and shopping...and ended up with an amazing price on some high falutin' Matag machines.  But, when they were delivered, we discovered that the electrical outlet was not high enough in the wall and that the plumbing was unsightly and on the wrong side of the space.  So, after a phone call to (and some advice from) our favorite electrician, Eric moved the electrical outlet so that we could use our new machines.  A week or so later, after Christmas and New Year's had passed (and many other home projects that Eric and I did to prepare for the forthcoming projects...that is another blog), we set up yet another appointment with K. D. & J. to bring our washer lines up to code and add a washer/dryer box in the wall.  Two days before the K. D. & J. guys came out for that installation, a storm moved through the area, knocking out the power on our end of the street, and, unbeknownst to us until the temperatures began to drop considerably the next night, fried the transformer on our heating unit. So, on the same day that we had plumbers out to work on the plumbing, we had NAPCO (who fixed the A/C for me the first summer in The Bungalow while Eric was in Africa) out to fix our heat.

Last night, Eric and I spent a romantic Friday evening picking up sheetrock, mud, insulation and various other items at Lowe's.  We may have had a glass of adult beverage when we got home...

K. D. & J. digging new water line trench.





1" PEX




New cutoff outside the front door.


Temporary laundry room.  Not for long...




















Pre-demo.

Bad Transformer=No Heat!



Reese (sp?) from NAPCO.


















New washer/dryer box and new plumbing!