Spent 5 hours on the fence today.  It’s almost done.  I had one area that needed a new fence post, so I’ve set it.  Now I just have to wait for it to cure then I can finish up the fence.  Also, I’d like to spend the day outside when I first let the dog loose.  I’m not sure if he may find some hole that I don’t know of. So the next day with good weather this week I’ll work from home and see how it goes.

One foundation guy showed up.  Another never showed and one rescheduled.  I don’t have an official quote from the guy that did show up but he did let me know that it will be under 6k.  It will have to be a lot less than 6k or I’ll have to wait a few months for the work.  He mentioned that the work does need to be done soon as it’s affecting the walls on the end of the house.  The end of the house walls could cost 3-5k more if the work isn’t done.  He also mentioned that the main beam of the house foundation is okay.  It’s not great, but it could be better.  That said, he doesn’t think it needs reinforcement or replacement.

I got home from Boston on Sunday.  I was tired from travel and a ton of touristy stuff.  Unfortunately I came home to a rain storm and a leaking roof.  To be fair, I’m pretty sure the leak was already there as the wall had been stained but was usually dry to the touch.  It was a small leak of about 2 cups worth or so.

My first instinct was to call a roof person on Monday morning but then I remembered I can’t replace the roof until I fix the foundation.  So I called three foundation guys and they will be here Thursday through Saturday to give me their opinions and estimates.

Unfortunately, class on Tuesday night and general catching up has been preventing any progress on anything else this week.  I’m hoping to finish the fence Saturday morning but they’re predicting thunderstorms, so we’ll just have to play it by ear.

I will probably attempt to locate the source of the leaks during the next storm.  It appears to be leaks due to flashing around the chimney but I want to verify before I just go caulking the hell out of things.  If the foundation fix is reasonable I’ll have it done with the next paycheck or two.  If it’s more than that much I will probably defer the fix to a later date.  It’s still the highest priority fix, but it’s not actually a pressing problem per se.

The install didn’t go very well from the perspective of completion. But I’ve learned a ton and think I can finish it off with another 8 hours of hard work. Basically it comes down to the fact that you can’t stretch 150′ of fence in one shot. It’s just too complex trying to distribute the tension. And next thing you know you’re bending fence posts.

Later on I figured out that I could tension about 40′ of fence at a time if the posts were well cemented. Most of my posts were, but I got tired of guessing and instead just backed the car up and used the towing ball as an anchor for the come-a-long.

I’ll be in Boston until Sunday and will pick Silniy up from boarding on Monday. I may shoot for Wednesday as a good second attempt on this project but will wait to see what weather looks like.

As a slight aside, the advertising I keep trying to put up is bombing out.  As a geek this puzzles me, but I’m working with a new web page editor and I’m working from a foreign network(which may try to block ads), so I may be screwing something up.

Ok, so today I punched a hole in the ceiling for attic access.  I wanted to verify that the wall I wanted to take out was not a load bearing wall.  So I chopped a hole and was more pleasantly surprised than I was in the crawl space. I started the hole with a hand drywall saw, but shortly thereafter resorted to a reciprocating saw as I knew there weren’t any complete electrical circuits, plumbing or gas above that area.

There doesn’t appear to be any glaring problems with the attic other than it’s lack of insulation.  It has 2″ of insulation and mouse turds, but that’s not much.  I pretty much expected that, so it’s not a surprise.

So, having confirmed that the wall was not load bearing, I ripped that bugger out.

Everything went fine until the last step when an improperly installed kitchen ceiling fell out.  The guy who did it, didn’t screw the drywall into the proper boards and instead just rested it on the wall.  I couldn’t have predicted that and therefore, don’t feel particularly bad about it.

Nevertheless, I didn’t want to air condition the outdoors while I wait for a guy to come and re-drywall my ceiling(I hate doing drywall and drywall guys are cheap).  So I headed to Lowe’s, picked up some 4 Mil plastic and firring strips.  I also grabbed a tiny roll of insulation and some contractor cleanup bags. There were a ton of nails and stuff in the way, so I cleaned those up when I got back and then set out to seal up the holes I’d made and stuffed insulation into the areas that didn’t seal very well.

Here are some pics showing how the room has opened up.  It also shows where the stove will probably go at.  I set down some paper to show where the hearth will go.  I may attempt to set the hearth level with the existing floor so there’s not a trip hazard.  That may not be easy, so I’ll just have to run it by a chimney guy or something.

Anyhow, it was a busy ass day.  I’m sore, tired and clean now.  The crock pot has spit out something edible, if gray and institutional looking.  So I’ll eat some of that, watch some TV and crash.  Perhaps fence tomorrow, perhaps not.  Then Tuesday I’m headed to Boston.

As always, if you want to look at the unedited, full size pictures, they can be found on flickr.com

Spent 6 hours today working on the fence.  Ran 300′ of top-rail.  Set 3 line posts.  Some of the line posts me and Chilli set were too tall, so had to trim them off with a new reciprocating saw.  Here is a good portion of it:

There are two trouble spots, that I’m not sure how to handle.  They both are trees.  So I may end up notching one and running some small wood fence around the other area.  Here are pics of the problems:

Chilli will probably help me run the fence fabric tomorrow.  Kick ass!

And here’s a beer I enjoyed halfway through the day:

I still have some miscellaneous junk laying around the yard.  After mowing yesterday, I hooked up the mower and dragged the steel items to the curb.  Local junkers will stop by and take them to be recycled.

I also started digging up some posts that the old owner of the house had set out for some strange reason.  I was doing fine until I ran into around 150# of concrete with my shovel and broke it.  I’ve had it for around 5 years now and it was the cheapest one Home Depot sold.  I’d say I’ve gotten my use out of it.  I’ll probably buy a slighter nicer one this time around.

This weekend looks to be a good one for getting things done.  I’ve got most of my fencing hardware lined up and plan to tackle it hardcore this weekend.

I also talked with Wendell from Brown Restoration today.  They’re the guys who did a nice job replacing my roof on the house in Belton, MO.  He’s 99.9% that I don’t have a load bearing wall around the chimney.  In order to finish out that final 0.1% he told me how to get up in the attic and determine 100% that I can take that wall out.  In essence, removing the wall will turn the kitchen and living room into a great room with the stove helping separate and divide the area up.

So I will probably tackle both of these tasks this weekend.  Chilli may be able to help with fencing Sunday afternoon or Monday morning, but we’ll have to see.  Regardless, I’m getting some work done this weekend.

Really nothing else to say about something so small.  The toilet flushes easily again.

So, it took a few visits from Shane of Shane’s Drains, but now I am up and running with a functioning kitchen sink again.  Shane, and his employee(I didn’t catch his name), hopped down in the crawlspace and figured out that the original work had been done with a pipe that was an inch too short.  Possibly when the house settled in the middle it pulled the joint apart or it may have never been joined strongly.

Shane tried cementing it once and I let it cure about 16 hours.  Then I filled the sink half full with hot water, let it drain and rushed over to poke my head in the crawlspace only to find the link still there.  Today he returned and installed a flex coupling that doesn’t need to cure and is not leaking.

I did have to snake the kitchen drain in order to get it running again, but it’s now draining nicely.

I also had him look around and check the rest of my setup.  He doesn’t see anything that was done poorly and apparently there is a drain from my laundry room that is heading into the septic tank(something I was concerned about).

The general plan remains the same.  Let it dry out down there and then next spring I’ll start pulling the dirt out and begin levelling.  I do still have to seal the basement back up.  I’ll pick up some netting, plastic and firring strips this week.  That should keep the creepy crawlies slightly at bay.

So after talking with Darrell about where my chimney cleanout should be I decided to confirm his suspicions. So I took my first exploration into the crawlspace. First of all I stopped by Claude’s house and told him I’m going into the crawlspace and to check on me if he didn’t hear from me in a while. I entered through a vent that had been covered up with plastic, netting and some firring strips. It was a tight fit because I’ve got a bit of a belly on me, but I managed to get in.

The first thing I noticed was that there was a ton of galvanized pipe laying all over the crawlspace. So it appears that they old owner replaced the galvanized septic lines with PVC, but didn’t clean out the old iron pipes. That’s not a big deal and I can pull them out, set them on the curb and the local junkers will stop by and take them to the recyclers.

The next thing I noticed was that I didn’t have a vapor barrier laying on the dirt and no insulation in the joists. I had suspect the lack of insulation on the joists at the floors get pretty cold in the winter. But there was no sign of mold and I was happy about that.

The third thing I determined was that the crawlspace had never been dug out correctly. There was way too much dirt down there, leaving only 4″ of clearance between the dirt and the joists in some areas. So I’ll have to excavate all that and level it out. Dirty, laborious work, but I’ll be happier when the crawlspace is a place where I can go without crawling on my belly.

Now for the REAL surprises. There was a puddle of water leaking from a septic line that lead from my sink to the toilet. Most of the puddle is dirty dish water, but it’s still pretty nasty. Then I noticed a large snake hole in the area under my front door step. Finally I noticed that there was an easier way to get near the chimney that was under my pantry in the kitchen.

At this point I’d had enough fun, so I headed back out of the crawlspace and went and got cleaned up.

The next day I decided to go back into the crawlspace and finish what I’d set out to do the first day, inspect the chimney for a cleanout. I entered through the tight fit in the pantry and stepped right into the septic puddle. Wonderful.

Then I inspected the chimney, only to find that a) there was another snake hole right next to the chimney and b) I have no cleanout in the chimney. I’m not scared of snakes, but I don’t like playing with them when I can’t get away quickly. So I headed back up and decided this was a job I was willing to pay a guy to do for me.

So, I’m not ecstatic with what I found in the crawlspace, but things could have been worse. It’s Monday morning now and a guy from Shane’s Drains is coming over in an hour or so to play with the snakes and fix the septic line. I’m also going to have him eyeball the general setup and see if he doesn’t like any of the other things he sees down there.

My general plan at this point is to get the leak fixed which will remove the water source the snakes are probably enjoying. I won’t put in a cleanout for the chimney this year as with 8′ of chimney to fill up, there is no way it will fill up in one year. Next spring I’ll start removing dirt from the crawlspace and level it out. Then I’ll set down the vapor barrier and insulate the joists with vapor retardant insulation. Also, I’ll install a cleanout for the chimney next summer.  I might put it in the crawlspace or I might put in in the kitchen.  Finally, I’ll probably install a small storm cellar to keep me from being taken to the land of Oz by a tornado.

I got 30 or so free bricks from someone off of craigslist.