Our New Old House

Brandon and I finished putting up the fascia this weekend so the gutter guys could come put up the gutters this morning.

I primed the boards before we put them up.

Then we nailed them onto the ends of the rafters.

Brandon was a wiz at measuring and cutting the boards to fit. We ended up with just the right amount of wood and just a little bit of waste. But we’ll keep the extra pieces for some other project in the future.

Gutter guys are working to put up the gutters now. More pictures when they’re done!

[tags]gutters, fascia, photos[/tags]

We had central air installed at the end of last month and a couple weeks ago we had a duct run up to the attic so we can use that room comfortably year round. 

Now I need to look into options for improving the insulation of the attic.

[tags]attic, ceiling, insulation, air conditioning, photos[/tags]

Here’s the back gate in my back yard.  It’s in the middle of an incomplete fence which is not going to keep anyone out of anything.  But it is heavily fortified against anyone who’d try to wrestle it open through the trees that have grown up through it.  I guess the previous owners thought a heavy chain and padlock were necessary for the protection of the weeds in the back yard.

We’re going to tear this gate and fence out at some point anyway, so I wasn’t worried that I couldn’t find the key to that lock. But one day I was going down the basement stairs and the light was just right and something caught my eye:

It’s a Master brand key. I haven’t taken it down to see if it fits the lock yet, but it’s nice to know it’s there.

[tags]yardwork, previous owners, photos[/tags]

Our new bathroom floor is in!  But before I show you pictures of that, let me tell you about the drain on our clawfoot tub.

We suspect the plumbing on it was original.  Whether it was or not, it was old enough to be nothing but a pain in the drain. 

First of all, when Brandon went to take the drain apart so he could remove the tub, it came apart in all the wrong places and some of the pipe broke.  He resigned himself to having to replace the whole drain.  Not too big a deal, right?

Everything was peachy except the pieces in the drain hole itself would not come apart.  Brandon spent most of the weekend in this position, trying to get the drain to loosen:

Here’s what he had to work with:

When he tried to use a drain plug wrench, which looked like this:

The pieces inside the drain disintigrated to look like this:

Having nothing left to hold onto to turn the drain pieces, he resorted to cutting the whole thing off and hoping the threads would come apart in the process:

With a few taps of a screwdriver…

out it came!

Brandon said all that gross caked on yellow stuff is bits of hundreds of people’s skin who have bathed in this tub. I said, “Ew gross!!!” and told him it was more likely the old rubber seal that had hardened over time. Boys are so gross.

To see the finished drain he put in, you’ll have to come back next time because I forgot to take photos of it in time for this blog post.

 [tags]clawfoot tub, flooring, photos, bathroom, ceramic tile, plumbing [/tags]

Our kitchen floor is finished! Doesn’t it look great?

The contractor didn’t bring enough tile to completely finish the bathroom, but he did the areas under the tub and toilet. The rest will go in on Monday.

Things are finally coming back together.

[tags]clawfoot tub, contractors, photos, flooring, bathroom, kitchen[/tags]