Just in case you thought we were sitting around doing nothing

c/o City of Victoria
Public Works Dept.
Victoria,

October 21, 2009

Dear Mr. Guy In Charge

I am writing to request a refund for expenses incurred when a blocked sanitary sewer line on City property caused a backflow of sewage into my basement on three separate occasions.

On the first occasion, September 8, 2009, we noticed what appeared to be relatively clean water coming up from the drainage hole in the pan for our hot water heater. The water receded fairly quickly and, after cleaning up what remained, we called Roto-Rooter to come and clean out the sewer lines between our house and the City’s section. The visit cost $141.75, but thanks to a mostly empty concrete basement storage room, nothing was damaged.

One month later, on October 6, 2009, the sewage backed up again, this time coming up not only from under the hot water tank in the storage area, but also from beneath the toilet in our basement bathroom. There was a great deal more water on this occasion, and it was dirty, foul-smelling, and clearly sewage given the amount and nature of the particulates within it. We called Roto-Rooter again, and they came back on an after-hours emergency call. Once again, they cleaned the drains between our house and the street. Although their guarantee from the previous cleaning was in effect, we still had to pay the cost of the after-hours visit, which resulted in another bill for $141.75.

Early the next morning, the sewer backed up again, resulting in yet another flood of foul liquid throughout our basement storage area and the downstairs bathroom. Roto-Rooter came back immediately and cleaned all of the pipes and drains beneath the house, but found no blockages or obstructions that could account for the repeated backups. They returned for a fourth time that afternoon with a camera and scoped the entire length of our sewer line, eventually finding the cause of the problem.

Evidently, our sanitary sewer line connects with our neighbour’s sanitary sewer before joining the main city line. The Roto-Rooter camera found a collapsed portion of the City’s sewer line, which greatly reduced the flow of sewage into the main line, and effectively sent our neighbour’s sewage back up our pipes and into our basement.

Fortunately, we had removed most of our possessions from the basement storage room after the first incident, and thus none of our belongings (at least, nothing of any value) were damaged. Unfortunately, the sewage did permeate and completely ruin the floor of our bathroom, which we had just finished renovating less than a year ago. We have had to rip up the damaged planking, as well as the rotten subfloor, and reinstall the entire floor. We repaired the damage ourselves, so we are not seeking contractor’s labour costs, but we are seeking compensation for multiple Roto-Rooter visits, and the cost of the materials required to restore the bathroom floor.

We are therefore requesting reimbursement for the following expenses:
Roto-Rooter: $141.75
Roto-Rooter again: 141.75
Roto-Rooter again, of course: 325.50
RONA (plywood): 65.39
Finishing Store: 419.35

TOTAL: $1093.74


Sincerely,

Don and Amy


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What's this? An update? It can't be!

And yet, here you are. Reading this. Huzzah!

Okay, I really have no excuse as to why I haven't made a proper post since... oh my jebus. October?! Really? Wow. I really suck at this whole blogging thing.

Still, there's no time like the present, so how about I fill you in on all the things we HAVE been doing, and pay a little less attention to ... um ... the stuff I haven't? I mean, in my defence, we've been really busy with things like work, and family visits, and - yes - working on the basement. We've also cleaned the gutters, raked the leaves, moved a metric shit-ton of stuff in from the garage, and even found time to argue about whether we should get another cat or not. (No. No, we should not.)

But you didn't come here to read about the standard trials and tribulations of owning a house - you came here to read about how much it sucks to do your own basement reno! And in that regard, my friends, I can definitely help you out.

So... where were we? Ah, right... we had painted the floor in the workshop, got the carpets installed, and we passed final occupancy. (Have I really not posted since the CARPETS went in? Good lord....) Well, once the inspector had gone, it was time to install the floor in the laundry room. To be honest, I wasn't exactly planning on doing this until the new year, but the Top Brass are coming for Christmas, and we kinda wanted to be able to show off a "finished" (or, as we decided, "damn close to finished") when they arrive.

So we started by moving all the enormous, heavy machines out of the laundry room and washing down the floor. As a quick reminder of what our laundry room floor looked like at that stage, voila:



I believe the term for that is "fugly". At any rate, we certainly wanted to cover that abomination up as quickly as we could. Of course, like EVERYTHING in the damn basement, covering it up was a lot harder than I had expected. Oh, and it involved Tapcons, too! Joy!

I suppose that, given the alternative, it went a lot more smoothly and with less ouches than tongue and groove plywood would have, but it was still a largely unpleasant task. Most of the pieces were too large to cut on the little table saw and, as winter's here, the rains precluded setting up the big table saw in the driveway. So the jig was pressed into overtime service to cut all the panels and get them laid out.

A little note here for anyone thinking of doing DriCore (or, as in our case, Sub-Flor) in their basement as I don't think I'll do a whole "Is It Worth It Post" on that alone: make sure your floor is as level as possible. I'm not kidding. This stuff really wasn't made to go over a wavy-ass floor like ours and the levelling kits don't really work for shit. But we weren't about to spend the time, money, and effort to rent a concrete scraper and take up the top layer of concrete so we could lay down a layer of Portland Cement to level the floor. I know, I know, Mike Holmes would not approve, but then Mike Holmes probably wouldn't use this crap anyway.

Anyway, here's what it looked like after about four hours of laying SubFlor:



Yeah. I got a little faster as I went along, but not much. All told, given a couple of breaks, a few sick days, and the occasional more pressing concern, it took us a good three weeks or so to get all the panels down. Oh, and we also completely rebuilt, restructured, and redesigned the cupboard under the stairs. My material estimates were pretty good though - I was only short by two panels. Here's a couple more shots of in progress and the final product and new closet:









Looks pretty damn spiffy, eh? No? Well, we agree. Looked like crap, and had an unpleasantly splintery texture (especially in socks). So it was back off to the Home Despot/Rona to see what would could use to cover over it. The War Department had seen these neat vinyl planks that looked like hardwood in a restaurant, and she thought they would look good in our place. Well, like everything else in this project, we couldn't find them anywhere... oops. Sorry - I meant to say we actually found exactly the ones we had in mind, and they were very reasonably priced. (Yeah, it scared me a little too. I mean, that's just weird.)

Fortunately, the vinyl planks only took three days, but, seriously, what a TOUGH three days they were. My knees, back, hands, and neck were absolutely killing me by the time I finished.

Totally, totally, TOTALLY worth it. Damn, that is a fine looking floor... sad that I'm not going to post any pictures of it. No, really - it's all taped up for painting, and has cables and lights, and cardboard strewn across it. I'll wait until it's cleaned up a bit. Well, fine, one of the floor in progress, just so you can see what the vinyl planks look like and how much cleaner they look than the Sub-Flor tiles:



Anyway, I know I promised some shots of the finished bathroom, and maybe even some of my office with the furniture in place, but I'm missing the final episode of Canada's Worst Driver. So, nyaah.

More later.




For reals this time.




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I love the sound of TapCons in the evening

It was back to work in earnest tonight, and that meant my absolute most favorite job of all - TapCons!

Golly! Gee! Barf! Wurp!

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before we could start hammer drilling, we had to find a solution for the bathroom floor. I don't think I've explained the problem here (though god knows I've bitched about it to enough people in person), so maybe I'll start with that and then segue into the pictures, mmkay?

So before our hiatus we were working merrily away on the subfloor, what with the foam (and finger) cutting and the plywood sawing and the tapcon swearing... er, drilling, when we started wondering about the toilet flange. (Or, as they call it at plumbing supply stores, the "closet flange". Sounds a little bit snooty, if you ask me, but then I suppose calling it the "shitter thingie" wouldn't quite cut it either.) When we poured the concrete for it, the concrete came up to the edges of the flange. This was as our plumber intended because somehow, someway, he either forgot or was never told that we intended to put a subfloor in the bathroom, the finished height of which (including cork tiles) would be about two inches. Fortunately, they DO make extensions for "closet flanges", but unfortunately (and of course) the extensions have a maximum height of an inch and a half - after which the toilet gets wobbly or something, I don't know.

Which meant that we kinda needed to reconsider our options. Our plumber recommended that we just tile the floor instead, which would take only about an inch, inch and a quarter of height. The problem with tiles is that a) the War Department doesn't want tiles; and b) (like there needs to be a 'b'), to put tiles down we'd have to remove the paint from the concrete floor (or the bed of thinset wouldn't adhere). Removing the paint would require renting a serious piece of machinery, and probably involve a weekend's worth of hard labour. Boo to that.

The other option was to jackhammer the concrete around the toilet flange and have Leonard come back and redo it. Ha ha ha ha ha!

Shyeah, right.

So we needed to find another way of insulating the concrete from the subfloor and still have enough room for plywood and tiles. It was when we were poking around at Rona when we found some big-ass rolls of this stuff. Essentially, it's the same material used to insulate ducting, but made to go under concrete, or between concrete and carpet. Well, we figured, if it works between concrete and carpet, it will work between concrete and plywood. The Building Code only requires vapour barrier (a stupid idea when you're just going to put holes in it anyway), and this stuff is air-tight anyway. Best of all, it's only about a quarter of an inch thick and still has a respectable R-value for insulating the floor from the cold of the concrete.

So we spent Saturday and Sunday picking up materials and cutting out the pieces for the bathroom. After dry fitting them on Monday night to make sure they'd work, we put them down and started putting in the TapCons!

Here's the bathroom floor all clean and ready to go:



And here it is with its shiny new jacket of rFoil:



And here it is with the plywood on top and about half of the TapCons in place:



Just so you can appreciate the sheer joy of TapCons, I took a quick picture of the tools necessary to actually put in each one:



Visible in that picture are:

• Steve's green hammer drill, used to make the hole into which the Tapcon goes.


• Amy's yellow drill, used to make a little countersink to make sure the head of the TapCon is flush with the subfloor.


• My grey drill, used to drive the TapCon into place


• The shop vac, used to suck all the crap out of the hole before driving the TapCon into it (so that the dust doesn't compact into the bottom of the hole, thus preventing the TapCon from going all the way in - that's a good time right there, that is).


• A spare packet of TapCons because I always underestimate how many I'm going to destroy trying to get them to go in straight


• A small pile of used masonry bits, munged TapCons, and snapped driver bits


• A hammer, used for flinging across the room at something when you snap your last drill bit five minutes after Canadian Tire closes.

Good times, good times.

Tomorrow night, we hope to finish the TapCons in the bathroom, which means, come Saturday, it's time to insulate! Wooo!




If anyone needs me, I'll be downstairs, patching up the hammer-shaped hole in the wall.
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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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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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