Tis the season to be ducting

Kind of a shame to waste a "tis the season to be..." title on such a teeny little post, but there you go. It's early, and the coffee hasn't quite kicked in yet.

After spending FAR too much time running around in search of the right components, we finally managed to finish all of the ductwork downstairs, with the exception of the hole in the cold air return which I'm not going to cut until just before we put up the drywall.

And yes, I even have an update on my finger. Don't worry, though - I'll hide the picture this time.


There were conflicting reports (according to the War Department) about how to best connect a bathroom fan. We knew we wanted aluminum ducting, as galvanized would rust from the moisture, but we thought we had to have 5" and couldn't find any 5" aluminum anywhere. We also thought that flexible pipe was a no-no, both because of the reduced diameter, and - according to certain Internet sources - was noisier.

So I looked at the instructions that came with the fan.

And here's the result:



We have a flexible piece of aluminum duct (4") running directly off the fan and connecting to a long, straight line of 4" aluminum duct that gears up to a 5" vent to the outside:





It's pretty much the only way we could make it work. Hopefully the people that wrote the fan instructions weren't just making it up as they went along. Not that I know anything about writing instructions with limited knowledge, oh no.

Anyway, short post today because the War Department wants blueberry pancakes for breakfast and guess who has to make them?

The Injury Report

That's right, the guy with THIS.


Mmmmm. Tasty.
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Let the healing begin

First and foremost, I uploaded the pictures for the last post all over again, so everyone should be able to see the progress and the gore equally well.

Other commitments (and a sense of sheer laziness) kept us from accomplishing as much as we wanted on the basement this weekend (meaning that no, the sub-floor is not finished).

On the plus side, we did get to enjoy a hot tub, a couple of nice bottles of red wine (not all at once), and the company of kitties other than our own. Oh, and a Wii, too. That was cool.

But we did do a little bit of honest work, and I took a new picture of my finger, so this isn't necessarily a post you can just skip over.

You know, if you actually cared about any of the crap I write here.

The War Department got to experience the sheer joy beauty awesomeness crappitude of Steve's hammer drill (oh, and Steve, thanks again for lending it to us ... um, still) as it was a little too awkward for me to manage with my injured finger. I'm happy to report that Amy likes Tapcons - oh, about as much as I do, really.

Which is to say, not at all.

But the floor is sure starting to look good, eh?



Yes, as evidenced by the picture above, we haven't quite got all the Tapcons in place just yet, nor have we started on the bathroom, but we did pick up the aluminum ducting we needed for the bathroom fan and enough foam insulation to finish the floor.

What? We can only make so many trips to Rona in one day, you know...

Moving on, it's time for an update on

The Injury Report

My finger is healing nicely, thank you. But seeing as how everyone showed such an interest in my deformity, I thought the least I could do would be to offer you an update on its progress.

Without further ado...



Not so gangrenous now, eh Mikey?

You're still all a bunch of ghouls.
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Electrical update

The electricians came back yesterday to finish up and get ready for the rough-in inspection which, I'm happy to say, went off without a hitch.

According to the War Department, who was working from home to keep the kitties company while strange people tromped around our house, the only comment the inspector made was that we should be keeping our building permit in a plastic bag. Which is funny because she took the papers OUT of the plastic bag to give to the electrician to give to the inspector.

But we've learned not to question the wisdom of the inspectors, and our electrician managed to restrain from bursting out laughing, so we have officially passed the first electrical inspection! Yay! (We celebrated by putting down some more sub-floor. Oh yeah. Fun never stops.)

Full warning: this post is picture heavy.

I have to admit that it's kind of hard to capture the awesomeness that is our revamped electrical system in the basement. I think the best I can do is to just post some pictures of various parts and components and hope that the whole becomes more than the sum. Or something like that. I was never very good at math.

First up, here's the electrical panel, after they moved it to the right about four or five inches, and cleaned up a lot of the surrounding wire:



Sadly, I don't really have an establishing shot of what it looked like before but trust me: that's a vast improvement.

Here are some of the newly installed bathroom bits, in no particular order.

Our new fan:





Our new wall heater:



The wall switches (lights, fan, and thermostat):



It's all so neat and tidy, and secure, and really well done. (I have every confidence that the War Department could have done 90% of that herself, but it would have taken her a whole lot longer!)

And lest you think that we've been hiring out ALL the work, here's the current status of the subfloor:



As you can see, we've got the foam down into the corner, and just - heh, like there's anything "just" about it - have to lay the plywood down over top. Weekend work!

Well, that's about it... what's that? You want to see a picture of my finger? Well, all right...

But I'm not posting it out here in the open. You have to WANT to see it. Like, really WANT to see it.

If you REALLY WANT to experience the gruesomeness, all up close and personal like, in LARGE, living colour, click this link.

That was taken when I took the band-aids off last night, after five days. Yes, it hurt. A lot.


Ghouls. All a ya.
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Ouch. Holy f-ing ouch.

Rather than bring you all up to date on the progress we've made this weekend, I thought instead that I'd offer an extra, full length edition of everybody's favorite feature...

The Injury Report

The reason I'm doing this, of course is because we didn't MAKE any progress on the basement yesterday, but spent most of the day dealing with an injury. We'd only just gotten started when it happened, so yesterday wasn't terrifically productive. I think we'd managed to clean up all the sawdust and bits of wire the electricians had left, and had just started laying down foam for the sub-floor.

Warning: if you're really squeamish, you may not want to read the next paragraph. Just skip to the funny bits later. (Don't worry - I didn't take any pictures.)


I was cutting down a piece of rigid foam insulation to put on the floor of the closet, in preparation for covering it all up with a piece of plywood. I was using a metal square, holding it down against the foam with my left hand, and running a utility knife along the edge of the square to make a nice clean cut. Well, I guess I wasn't really paying enough attention, because my finger was overlapping the edge of the square by just a bit, and the knife pretty much sheared off a piece of my left index finger - right through the fingernail and everything.

Right away, it was pretty clear that I'd be needing medical attention for this one, and possibly some stitches. Of course, we knew that the emergency rooms at local hospitals would be insane on Saturdays and wouldn't have much time for a relatively minor wound like mine, so we figured the clinic was a safer bet. I couldn't do much, what with holding a piece of gory gauze tight around my finger, so the War Department got the truck all set and we headed up to the medical clinic at Cook and Quadra.

Well, they're closed on Saturdays (of course - why wouldn't they be?) so we headed up to the medical clinic at Broadmead instead. According to the sign on the door, they were closing at 1:00 today (it was about 1:20 at this point) due to "unforeseen circumstances" (read, "staffing problems"), but they had helpfully listed two nearby places one could seek medical attention. Victoria General was one of them, however, and we were determined that the ER would be a last resort. So we headed back across the highway to the clinic at Royal Oak Shopping Centre.

Keep in mind of course, that every time we got in or out of the truck, Amy had to fasten or unfasten my seatbelt and open and close my door for me. Not to mention that every bump in the road sent spikes of pain shooting through my hand. This was not an enjoyable weekend drive, by any means.

But we made it to the clinic at Royal Oak, and they also had a helpful sign on the door, this one indicating that they close at 1:00 on Saturdays. Not just this Saturday, though. All of them.

This was about the point that I invented new and exciting ways to use the word "fuck". I think I may have startled a couple of nearby blue-hairs with several of those new uses, though they may have been more shocked by the fact that Amy was also engaging in my etymological pursuits.

We were desperately aware that the emergency room was becoming our only option, so we stopped at a pay phone and Amy called a doctor friend of ours to ask for suggestions. He was actually willing to treat the injury himself, but didn't have the right supplies. He suggested that we go to the clinic in Esquimalt instead - assuring us that it was open until 4:00 - and confirmed that if we headed to the ER, we'd be in for close to a five hour wait.

So we trundled all the way across town to the Esquimalt clinic and pulled in to the completely empty parking lot with a deep sense of trepidation. To our surprise, the lot was empty because there were no patients waiting, and within three minutes of walking in the door, I was in the doctor's office.

Now, I can assure you that cutting off a sizable chunk of my finger was very, very painful. You can take my word for it. But I can also assure you that cutting off a piece of my finger was a minor annoyance compared to getting treatment for it.

He started by unwinding the blood-soaked gauze that I'd been clenching around my finger for the past hour or so.

That hurt quite a bit, but not as much as it hurt when he started dabbing gently at the wound to clear up some of the blood.

And of course, that didn't hurt nearly as much as when he squirted some local anesthetic over it.

While he was waiting for the anesthetic to kick in (it didn't), he told me about my options. Because a sizable chunk of flesh was missing, it was going to be difficult to give me any stitches, even if he went through the fingernail (a treatment he described as "rather painful").

Instead, he opted to use a pressure bandage of sorts to keep my finger tight up against my nail until the skin could start to regrow. First, however, he had to stop the bleeding. This meant dumping some freezing agent over my finger.

I thought the anesthetic was painful, but when he put the freezing stuff on, I think I saw Jesus for a second.

Then he cauterized the blood vessels with some silver nitrate, and I thought I WAS Jesus.

Then he loosened the tourniquet, and I knew that he was the devil and I was in hell.

Man, that hurt. Holy shit, that hurt like a son of a bitch. I can't believe how much that hurt. And this was after he'd numbed it.

So then he wrapped it up tight in a couple of butterfly band-aids, gave me some free samples of synthetic codeine (woo hoo!), and sent me on my way. I spent the rest of the afternoon lying on the couch holding my finger at an uncomfortable angle, and feeling sorry for myself. Amy cleaned up the basement and at one point brought me a little piece of finger with its bit of fingernail still attached. It was pretty weird, but we elected not to take a picture (you're welcome).

Anyway, it's taken me almost an hour to type this. Ironically, the part of my body I injured requires the one letter on the keyboard I have the most trouble with right now.

FFFFFFFinger.

Ouch.
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What long weekend?

Was there a weekend just now?

I think we might have missed it. Oh, no, wait. I remember now! It was those three days we spent downstairs in the basement instead of going to work!

Apparently, we had quite a windstorm, too. Though of course, I wouldn't know. I was in the basement. Working...

So, with the framing inspection behind us, I was at something of a loss as to where to turn my attention next. Fortunately, the War Department stepped in and reminded me that we needed to have the subfloor installed before the electricians came.

Oh, joy! More Tapcons! Gee golly, swell!

Oh, speaking of electricians, we had our friend Danny come by to give us an estimate (a little higher than we were expecting, but then it turned out he was including all of the materials like pot lights, bathroom ventilation fans, and heaters, which was something of a relief) and then he surprised us by informing us that they'd be starting Wednesday. Yes, tomorrow.

And us without a floor!

So, we spent the weekend buying rigid foam insulation, plywood, Tapcons (damn it), and all the other things we needed to get started on the floor. And... well, that's about all we did. Get started.



It's turning out to be a right stubborn bitch of a job, this subfloor thing. I mean, I knew I was in for a real treat when I bought a BIG box of Tapcons, but getting the somewhat-warped pieces of plywood to fit on a bumpy floor is a real trick. We did a little more tonight (than what's shown in the picture above), but we're still not even halfway done, and we just don't have the energy or time to do any more. So the electricians are just going to have to be careful not to destroy our foam as they stomp around installing stuff tomorrow.

On the bright side, Amy did a whole shwack of electrical work over the weekend (saving us a fair chunk of change by not having to pay the electricians to do it), and I learned new and interesting ways to swear at ductwork.

I started by installing the heating duct down the wall beside the closet:



Here's a close up of the top of the run:



But it was when I went to install the cold air return that things got really interesting:



Cutting the hole in the side of the existing cold air return was the easy part (and not only because the jigsaw blade wasn't going to fall into any fans if it broke off again - which it did). The real fun began when I started trying to put the new duct line together and realized that I had NO IDEA WHAT I WAS DOING.

Amazingly enough, the Intartubez were remarkably unhelpful in terms of providing any idea of how to go about attaching one piece of ductwork to another. Fortunately, I has a brain - despite what some people may claim - and I eventually managed to figure it out, and even turned in a fairly passable joint. (Even if it was AFTER I completely munged one piece of duct and came pretty close to messing up another one.)



Here's the back side, where the new cold air return goes into the existing one:



Of the three new joints visible in that picture, please ignore two of them. Thank you.

Anyway, I'm going to bed. The War Department will be working from home tomorrow to supervise the electricians and keep the cats from getting TOO freaked out, but I have to go in to the office and live vicariously through the frequent email updates.

Murky buckets and bonnie sewer, as my dad always says.
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We passed!

Woohoo! We passed the framing inspection!

As a matter of fact, he even complimented us, saying that it was something of a pleasure to do an inspection on some good, solid work - for a change.(He also complimented us on keeping such a clean and tidy work area, so we have that, too.)

He even had some helpful suggestions for the ducting and bathroom fan configuration. All in all, it was a quick, constructive little visit.

We are highly relieved.


It's a trick. There's no more post to read. Ha ha!
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Welcome to the bulkhead bonanza

It's been all about the bulkheads around here for the past few days. Well, and probably a few days before that, too.

Okay, so I've been working on bulkheads for, like, a week. Fine, I admit it.

But it's done! The framing, except for one stud that I haven't put it because I'm still squeezing through that particular gap to get to the workbench, is finished! Woo!

Which means, of course, that I have to book an appointment with the inspector now. Gulp. While I wrestle with that particular nicety, to which I am most assuredly not looking forward, let us peruse the accomplishments of the past few days.

First up, the final bit of non-bulkhead-related framing: the doorway into the workshop:



That was a little more complicated than the other doorways I've framed in, largely because we're re-using an old door, and not one that comes pre-hung inside a jamb. In other words, there was lots of math involved, and I haven't found out which part of it I did wrong yet. Probably all of it.

Oh, and speaking of my last post, one of the pictures I posted was not the right one. I've since uploaded the correct picture of the detailed framing in the closet. Also, here's our nice new duct, running right off the main trunk of the furnace:



On to the framing!

The first bulkhead I finished (besides the one that will be hidden inside the closet) was the one by the electrical panel. Fortunately, I had only put up the first couple of pieces when the electrician showed up to give us his quote, and he had a few very handy tips. The final result is a little higher, and a little shallower, but I'm a lot less worried about whether all those wires will fit:



As you can see, the whole closet wall is now framed in and ready for the next step:



The next bulkhead I worked on was the long one that runs the length of the support beam. This wasn't very exciting, really; just a lot of short pieces of two-by-two and lots of cursing and swearing - it's damn hard to hold those little pieces in place driving screws through and into the joists:



Not that we needed another reason to take that old crappy duct line out, but the bulkhead works much better without it:




And finally, my favorite bulkhead of all, the little one that covers the vent stack where it emerges from the bathroom wall and immediately turns up into the floor joists. Here's the installation site all prepped and ready:



Here's the bulkhead on top of the jig I used to put it together:



And finally, here it is in place, with a few extra pieces to help fasten the drywall around it:



Phew. That was a lot of pictures. Me go drink beer.

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Framing update

I know I've been saying this for a while now, but I think I might be telling the truth this time...

I should finish the framing this weekend.

Yep. All of it. Bulkheads, doorways, strange little closets - the whole shebang.

What's more, we have our electrician coming by this morning to scope out the project and work up an estimate for us. I'm hoping he won't look at the framing I've already done and tell us it's all wrong. (Still, better it coming from him than the inspector...) Speaking of which, I've been pretty busy this week and, once more, I have the pictures to prove it. Some of them were even taken with my new camera!

Looking back over the past few posts, I must admit that I've been somewhat remiss in keeping you all up-to-date on the framing progress. The last time I posted pictures of the framing, I hadn't even started to frame in the closet, save for its back wall. As you can see from the following series, I've come quite a ways since then.

First up, here's an establishing shot of the whole closet area:



The areas of interest are really the whole left side where the closet is going to go, and the duct on the top right, where we'll be building a bulkhead to hold all those wires. Jutting out from the wall is the outline of where the right-hand wall of the closet will be. Here's another look at that:



Heh, up close it kinda looks like an optical illusion or an Escher print. Or maybe I'm looking too hard. The reason it's so wide is that we want to run a duct line down from the top so we can put in a register at the bottom of the pillar.

Anyway, here's what I did on Thursday while the War Department was at the ballet:



I think even Amy had to admit that was a good night's work! Here's another shot of the inside of the closet so you can admire the tricky bits of the framing (all of it, really):



I also found time to wrap the duct in some insulating wrap so we could run the wires through the same space without any fear of them melting or overheating:



I taped up the joints with foil tape last night (wasn't THAT a fun little task - not!), and did some more bracing and some of the little finicky stuff that needs to be done before I can start on the bulkhead in front of the duct. None of that makes very good pictures, though.

And of course, speaking of pictures, here's one of the supervisor kitty in his natural habitat:



(Every five minutes for the past three days, Amy's been telling me to stop taking so many pictures of the cats. But she won't let me take any pictures of her, so this is what I'm reduced to. Besides, look at that picture! My old camera could never have taken that shot, not in a million years.

Fine, I'll stop with the pictures of my cat. Sheesh.)

Anyway, I have to go wake Amy up so that she's not showing the electrician around in her pajamas. Good times.

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With great power...

...comes great responsibility:



It's awesome, but it's also just a little scary. And yes - that really is the very best picture of it I could take with the old camera. Seriously. I took twelve shots of it...

Anyway, I'm not really up to making a full accounting of all the changes over the past few days, but I did want to tell a little story about ducts, and furnaces, and the way renovations get done at Don and Amy's house.

We decided on Sunday that it was time to move the duct that ran from the main trunk of the furnace, across the ceiling of the bathroom, down and then along the laundry -room-side of the support beam, and back up into the floor joists, where it then split into two lines: one heading into the kitchen (which was working okay) and one heading to two (count 'em, TWO) dead ends.

Having spent most of the day Saturday (and a goodly portion of Thursday night, to be honest) chasing down the tools and materials we needed to do the job, we got cracking on Sunday. The first step was to remove the old ducting, and this proved to be remarkably easy, once we realized that there was very little securing the damn things in place anyways.

Once all the ductwork was out of the way (and had been stamped flat by the War Department so it would lie properly on the rest of the recycling pile), we attached a couple of lengths of duct to the existing kitchen run so that it would lead right back to the furnace. This was also pretty straightforward.

Once we had the duct close enough to the furnace, it was time to cut into the trunk and attach the take-off. This... well, this is where things started to get a little squirrelly. See, we'd been all over town looking for a proper sheet metal cutting tool, with absolutely no success. The only thing we had to cut the duct with were a couple of pairs of aviation snips. Now, the aviation snips are perfectly capable of doing the job, but they don't do quite as nice of a cut as these. Still, you go to work with the tools you have, right?

So we carefully drew up a template that matched the size of the take-off, marked it out all nice and proper on the furnace, and drilled pilot holes in each of the corners. I then got up on the little step ladder with the aviation snips and.. couldn't get the tip of the snips into the hole without munging the metal of the trunk.

Well, not to be thwarted by some dumb tin can, we hauled out Amy's jigsaw (which had been put away with the blade sticking out and trapped between the two halves of the case - BAD DON!) and got it fired up and ready to go. I put the blade in the hole, lined up the little laser guide, pulled the trigger, and started cutting.

About three-quarters of an inch into my cut, just as I was thinking "Jeez, this is pretty smooth... it might actually work-"

Ping!

"Huh."

"What? What was that noise?"

"Hmmm..."

"Was that the blade?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Did it fall into the furnace?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Shit."

"Oh yeah."

Well, we couldn't really see into the furnace very well, so we soldiered on. The good part was that the jigsaw cut had expanded the hole enough for the aviation snips to fit in, so I managed to make a reasonable facsimile of the required hole. The take-off fit snugly (but not too tight), and after a few hours of sweating, cursing, yelling, and crying, we got the angles and ducts all cut, screwed together, and taped up.

But... (oh, you knew this was coming, don't tell me you didn't) it was about this time that Amy brought up the missing jigsaw blade. She reckoned that it might be possible that the blade had fallen into the furnace fan. If we turned the furnace on, with the jigsaw blade trapped in the fan blades, it might just destroy our furnace.

This, as they say, would not be good.

Well, we had already taped up and finished the hole we had already cut in the side, so we took off the furnace "access" panels to have a look. We saw a lot of wires and gas pipes and other stuff we knew better than to mess with, but there seemed to be no access into the "fire box". Then we noticed an old patch on the side of the fire box, covered up with duct tape. Now, as any handyman knows, you never, ever, ever use duct tape when sealing ducts (no, I'm really not kidding), so we were going to have to replace that tape anyway.

With the aid of my hand mirror (I use it to see the back of my head, shut up), we managed to get a look inside the firebox and sure enough, there was the jigsaw blade, sitting on a small ledge immediately beside the exposed blades of the fan. It was pretty evident that if we turned on the furnace, the fan might very well dislodge the jigsaw blade and lead to a very messed up furnace.

This next part is a little hard to describe, so bear with me...

The fan is the lowest part of the furnace, sitting pretty much right at the bottom. Immediately above the fan are the heating "coils". They're not really shaped like coils, but more like upside down T's. There are three of them.. oh, screw it. Here:



(Tremble in awe at my mad MS Paint skillz! Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!)

Ahem.

Anyway, you can see how the shape of the furnace coils and the location of the jigsaw blade would make for a difficult extraction, particularly when you also consider that it's dark inside the fire box, the distance between the hole in the side and the bottom of the coils is a good four feet, and the opening in the side is only about six or eight inches square... yeah. Not easy.

We started with the simplest of tools: a kitchen magnet suspended on a string from a piece of wooden dowel. In case you were wondering what the heating coils are made from, I can assure you that it's ferrous metal. In terms of a magnet on a string, that's not good.

The next approach was to tape the kitchen magnet to a yard stick. This worked about as well as can be expected, which is to say, not at all. Our friend Rick dropped by about this point with a magnet on the end of a telescoping rod, but this ran into the same problems as the magnet-on-a-string and magnet-on-a-stick: we simply couldn't get the magnet down between the heating coils and past the tight spot between the "T's" at the bottom. Not only that, but we risked damaging the heating coils with repeated bashings of the magnet(s). It was time to try another tack.

Salvation came in the form of a squat, black, rotund piece of equipment that we had almost begun to take for granted. The shop vac! (You can see it lurking ominously in the background in previous blog posts, namely here and here, and quite conspicuously in the foreground here.)

So, I pulled the beast over and fed the nozzle carefully into the hole in the side of the firebox. It was a little long and rigid to fit around the corner, so I detached it from the hose, slid it in gently, and then reattached the hose. (See FOOTNOTE.) After several attempts, I managed to get the nozzle positioned where I wanted it, but Amy had to hold the shop vac up off the ground so there would be enough play in the hose. We turned on the shop vac, and almost immediately there was a tinkling sound as the jigsaw blade was sucked up into the nozzle.

Of course, now we had another problem. You see, I had to take the nozzle apart to get it through the hole in the side of the firebox. But the shop vac didn't have enough power, or the blade was too light, to suck the damn thing all the way into the bag: it was twirling around inside the nozzle. If I took the nozzle apart or turned off the shop vac, the blade was going to fall right back into the furnace - possibly into the fan itself.

So here's the situation: Amy's holding up a 40-pound, fully operating shop vac while I have one arm inside the firebox up to the shoulder while I try and finagle the nozzle of the shop vac up high enough so I can put my hand over the end. I felt like an outcast from a James Herriot novel - you know, if he ever wrote about enormous metal cows or cyborgs. (Those would have been good books, actually. I would have read them.)

Anyway, to make a long story not quite as painfully long, I managed to get my fingers over the end of the nozzle, and when Amy turned the shop vac off, the blade fell out into my hand. We extracted the shop vac, inspected the coils as best we could to make sure we hadn't damaged anything, and patched up the hole in the side of the furnace with a new piece of sheet metal and proper foil tape.

And to commemorate this momentous occasion, I present the first ever picture on Don & Amy's Basement Reno taken with my new camera:



And yes, I drew on it! The black arrow is the new line we put in to heat the kitchen, the red arrow is the new patch on the side of the fire box through which I was trying to extract the jigsaw blade, the yellow lines are a really crappy attempt at showing the position of the heating coils, and the green arrow is a very rough approximation of where the jigsaw blade landed inside the furnace.

Phew!

Anyway, we picked up some more two-by-fours, so I should be doing some more framing on Hallowe'en while Amy tends to the candy-sucking trolls at the door. Depending on how all of that goes, I may or may not have some decent pictures to post tonight.

Happy Hallowe'en, all!




FOOTNOTE: Quite possibly the most boring sentence ever written that contains the words "long and rigid" and "slid it in gently", but this is a family blog.
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Yet more framing... with ducts!

I actually started this post, like, two days ago, but then I did some more framing, and now everything I was thinking of writing on Tuesday is wildly inaccurate, and I have to start again. Yeah, I probably could have posted earlier in the week, but the post would have been something like:

"Ugh.
(picture)
Bleargh?
(picture)
Nice jaeorb?
(pictures)..."

Aren’t you glad I waited?

By the way, if you’re a fan of the crappy-ass pictures I take with my crappy-ass camera, well, I have Good News and Bad News: the Good News is that this post contains a buttload of the aforementioned crappy-ass pictures; the Bad News is that this might be the last post I’ll be able to complain about my crappy-ass camera. Because, really, if I can’t complain about my crappy-ass camera, I think we all lose a little something, if you know what I mean.

And if you don’t, well, never mind. Just click the link thingy and we’ll get started.

I’ve been in something of a hurry to finish the framing so we can get the electricians in and get an estimate from the guy who was supposed to be doing the ductwork (more on him in a minute). After three consecutive nights of framing, framing, and more framing, I’m happy to report that I’m almost done.

Before we get into the pictures of the new stuff, however, I thought I’d take a quick trip down memory lane and revisit what the place used to look like, back in the rose-coloured days of May:



Ah… so spacious, so “open-plan”. And we just couldn’t wait to wall it all off.

Here’s a shot from roughly the same spot (okay, fine, it's about four feet to the right and from a different angle) now:



It’s a veritable forest! It might be just a bunch of crappy spruce (honestly, I can’t believe how bad this latest batch of two-by-fours is – they’re all warped or full of knots or even cracked right down the middle), but they’re vertical and sturdy enough. Besides, they’ll all be covered up by drywall eventually anyway, so … well … so it’s kind of a wasted effort making them look nice, isn’t it? (And yes, there are a couple of braces missing from that wall - it was 20 past 10 when the battery in the drill ran out and I realized I'd forgotten to plug in the charger, so I called it a night. Heh, one of those braces only has one screw in it, actually, and it's not even driven in all the way yet...)

Let’s do some more!

Here are a couple of shots from the Dread Wall of Pink:





You’ll notice that I’ve even finished the bracing for that wall, and down into the corner. This is so that we aren’t wasting time when the electricians want to install electrical outlets in that wall.

Furthermore, I’ve started constructing the bulkhead along the support beam where the majority of the electrical wires will go:



(That block underneath is just for support while I get everything cut and screwed into place. I’ll take it off before the drywall goes on.) You can see how the bulkhead extends on the other side of the office and into the laundry room:



And of course, all this cutting and trimming and banging around has changed the scope and shape of my carefully sorted piles of wood, too. I now have only two piles; useful bits:



And firewood:



On to the ducts!

So, as I mentioned, we had a guy lined up (informally) to come in and rework the furnace ducts to supply heat to the office, and take out some of the more questionable bits like, say, this one:





That line comes off the main trunk of the furnace, comes down on the other side of the support beam, goes up again into the joists, and then splits off. One branch goes toward the register in the kitchen (which works), and the other goes into two dead ends. It also has arguably the worst taping job I’ve ever seen.

At any rate, none of the work we need done is all that complicated, as all we want to do is extend the cold air return to vent the office, lengthen two runs so that they supply heat to the office, and redo that appalling line to the kitchen so that it a) doesn’t have more kinks than a leather fetishist in Vegas, and b) supplies heat to the laundry room and kitchen instead of the kitchen and a pair of dead ends. The problem is that we’re not totally sure that what we want to do is to Code, or how big the cold air return has to be, or whether what we want to do is even advisable. (I’d be happy to just go ahead and do it, and bully for the inspector if he even notices, but the War Department is concerned about “efficiency” and “circulation” and “carbon monoxide poisoning”. Pft.)

Not that any of our concerns seem to matter, because we can’t get anyone to even come out and give us an estimate! The guy we were going to hire can’t even show up to look at the job until December, and the guy he recommended to us hasn’t called back. The people who installed our furnace won’t speak to us until at least JANUARY, and the people I called at random in the phone book haven’t bothered to call back to set up an appointment – they apparently don’t need the work anymore than anyone else.

So, ironically enough, the person we might have to consult is: the inspector. I think we’ll be writing up an email and including some of the pictures to explain the situation, and ask him if what we plan to do is acceptable. Of course, as Amy has already pointed out, the inspector won’t care very much if we’re getting enough to heat to certain areas (they’re not all that concerned with your comfort, just your adherence to the Code), but he will be able to tell us if our plan isn’t likely to pass his inspection.

Anyway, this post is long enough, I think, and I’m sure I’ve posted enough crappy-ass pictures for one day. If all goes well, the next picture I post will be the last one I’m forced to take with my crappy-ass camera. The subject matter of said picture?

The new camera, of course.
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It's almost a real room!

With my back feeling better (or close enough), it was time to return to what is fast becoming the theme of October: framing! I'm already thinking that my costume for Hallowe'en will most likely consist of a couple of two-by-fours lashed to my arms and a Chippendale calender hanging from a tack in my forehead. If anyone asks, I'm a studded wall. Har har.

Anyway, tonight was actually somewhat productive, and I have the pictures to prove it!

When last we visited the corner of the basement by the electrical panel, I had just finished laying down the footers for the wall that will eventually form the back of the closet, and separate the workshop from the office. Tonight I started to install the studs for that wall; here's my progress so far, from a couple of angles:





It's kind of tricky to build that wall, largely because there's nothing there to attach the top plate to. That large clump of wires will be running through a bulkhead at the top of the wall, and the angle of the ductwork there (that's the main trunk line for the furnace) means I have to leave some room at the top - not that there are any floor joists in the vicinity anyway. Most of the structural strength for that wall is going to come from the studs that form the side wall and front of the closet - which I haven't quite got to yet. We still need to figure out where the bulkhead for the vent stack (visible on the side of the bathroom wall in the second shot above) is going to go, and where we have to install the cold air return - which might have to go into the bulkhead anyway.

I'm not planning on doing the bracing in that wall any time soon, either - it's the shortest distance between the saw and the work bench, and I'm really not looking forward to having to go the long way around every time I put something down and can't find it again.

Oh, but I did manage to get rid of some old wires that were just hanging there in the way:



That little chore wasn't without its cost however...

The Injury Report

(This is quickly becoming a far TOO regular feature on this blog...)

• When I was removing that green wire, the very end of it caught on a nail in the wood, and when I gave it a good tug, popped free and stabbed me right in the lower lip. It didn't draw blood, and I don't think it left a mark, but lemme tell ya - that hurt. A lot.


• The wood of our joists and support beams is very old and very, very dense. In the course of trying to remove a particularly obstinate staple, a very brave screwdriver gave its life for the cause:
  
  
  
  The worst part? That was the War Department's screwdriver and now I have to buy a new one. Sigh.

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Me and my aching back

So, something of a mixed bag of results this weekend. On one hand, the framing continues, and the outside is coming together nicely, but on the other, well, that's why I have a feature called the Injury Report, isn't it?

First up, the War Department managed to find a project that not only makes for a good picture (well, the best picture my crappy-ass camera can manage), but makes for a better picture than MY project! I hope this doesn't start a trend. After all, if I'm going to be writing all the posts, I want all the glory. (True story: when I sat down to post this, I asked Amy, "How come I have to write all the posts?" Her response, "Because you like that shit." So there you have it.)

While I toiled in the basement putting up studs and using the hammer drill and hurting myself, Amy decided to take advantage of some mild, sunny October weather to put the fence back together. She had saved most of the uprights when we took the fence down, so it was just a matter of cutting a couple of two-by-fours to the right length (which I, having ready access to the chop saw, did for her), and reattaching the boards.



Looks pretty good, doesn't it? Of course, what you can't tell from that angle is that the replaced section is all nice and straight, and the other half of the fence is all crazy tilted and askew, making for a rather odd view when looked at from the side. But that's a job for another day...

As mentioned, I was down in the basement doing some building of my own. The first few studs - the last ones on the Dread Wall of Pink - went up pretty quickly, with only a little fiddling around the electrical panel:



After some consulting and brainstorming with the War Department, I laid down the footers that will form the back wall of the closet:



Amazingly enough, the tapcons went in for all seven of those holes as smooth as you please. The only problem was when I went to stand up afterward...

The Injury Report

• The muscles in my lower back have siezed up right proper like. It hurts like a son-of-a-bitch when I try and lift anything (like a cat or a piece of two-by-four), and has improved only slightly since yesterday afternoon when it first happened. As you can well imagine, this has somewhat limited my usefulness today. Okay, it's completely limited my usefulness today.

That's it for me. I'm going to go lie down again. Gingerly.
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