Finally A New Post

Yea, I know.... poor neglected blog! Well I honestly have been working on the place and progress to report on which I will have to take a few posts to catch up on.

I officially have completed the first floor AC installation. My dad came out and overkilled making up the copper lines with 56% silver solder! Only need 5%, but won't have to worry about leaks at the joints. Then my friend Liz's husband came out and charged it up which went smooth. Then fired it up, balanced out the system with the dampers and nice and cold. I used a thermometer at the dining room register and had 59 degrees coming out. There's no insulation on the supplies at this point, so I could make it even colder probably.

I put down a brick pad for the condensor unit to sit on which came out OK. There has been a little settling (I kinda did a quickie job on it), so I will need to go back in one area and get a little more sand underneath.




Of course now that I have some central AC going.... I haven't needed it!? It's been a cool wet summer - but I'm not gonna complain too much. Though the garden could use a little more sun than rain now. More later....

Happy 4th!!

I Can Almost Feel The Cool Breeze

I spent my week off after Atlanta kicking butt on the Central AC installation. For the first floor system I'm installing a Goodman which I got a good deal on in January. After running my house through the duct sizing program, I laid out a plan and put together from stock pieces supplied by a dealer in NJ. I caught a free delivery deal with that too, so I've been doing good. With the help of my buddy John, we hung the unit from the ceiling using all-thread and brackets and started to install the duct work. I initially planned on coming out the side for the return, till I found the return was on the bottom - hence why I had to suspend the unit. The supply trunk runs down and catches three supplies takeoffs - one to the kitchen stair riser, and three floor units in the foyer, parlor, and dining room. I used insulated flex to connect the takeoffs to the register boots. The return runs parallel to the supply and catches three of the returns I installed in the walls 2 years ago when I gutted the first floor. The 4th in the kitchen I ended up not having to use since I had enough with just the three.





Two days and the duct and wiring was done and passed the blower test. I sealed most of the seams on the supply header, but still have a few to get too. Wednesday I helped John do a 200 amp service for one of his customers, then Thursday was back to the AC - running the line set and wiring the outside condenser.



At this point I was really getting frustrated with my working facilities - or lack there of! Tools are everywhere, the basement is jammed up, the garage is jammed up, and I will loose the kitchen soon as a work area.... so this week I stopped the other projects and started to build a shop in the basement. So the past few nights has been spent dividing the basement in half. One side will be my radio collection room. The other half will be a nice shop, and one corner will be a storage area for seasonal stuff and camping gear, plus the freezer.





I won't get this 100% now, but will be done enough to get a shop going and get all my tools downstairs, especially my larger wood working tools. These epecially have not been weathering to well in the garage and i have to keep removing surface rust on the bare metal, and coating with oil only works to a point. It won't be no Norm shop, but it will be 100 times better than what I've been dealing with. In the meantime, I had to start downsizing my radio collection a bit - at least of projects I doubt I'll get to, and other vintage items that I don't have room for in the house.





Tomorrow my dad will braze the refrigerant lines for me and then this weekend I hope to get the condensate pump installed and vacuum test the refrigerant lines, then open up the condenser to the system and top off with a little more R22. Then I'll be finally living the cooool life!

Back From the Work Abyss

So the three month outage at work is over (I think) and I just came back from my two weeks of training down in Atlanta.... now I can finally get back to the laudry list of projects that await.

Here are a few pics of the current state of the back yard. I bought a nice cedar arbor that went together pretty quick. I had a design in mind to custom build, but the time just ain't there. Maybe next go around. The garden is planted and doing OK. The weather has been a little too wet this spring I think for my spring crop.





Also started building a field stone wall to level out the slope one the side of the property. Here I will fill in and make a brick patio to sit the AC units on. Speaking of which that is my next big project. I have the AC unit and the duct work. Using a sizing program I put together a duct layout that should be sized just right. I should get a jump on that this week since I have vacation - no more HOT summers! Stay tuned....



And yes, more cedar shakes to do....

Some Blog Filler

Working 70 hrs a week right now, I've had little time to work on the house and won't get to do much till May. So for the locals here is some turn of the century scenery of Ridley Park from my postcard collection....

More Garden Work

This weekend I finally finished the major sanding of the kitchen. Next will be a touch up coat, a final sand, and then I can finally move on to some trim work and paint in the kitchen - I can almost taste it.... nevermind, that's just from sanding dust in my mouth.

Sunday turned out nice outside so I worked on the garden beds. I wanted to add an irrigation system which is much more efficient and better for the plants. But, I didn't want to pay the hefty investment of one. Then I found a plan online to make your own using standard PVC piping.

I built the main header on one end feeding all four beds. At each end is a shutoff valve and quick disconnect to attach a garden hose. I can run domestic water from the house, or from the other end I can run saved water from rain barrels when I get that system set up next year. They will be behind the garage. Each side of the bed gets a feed from the header with another valve to regulate the drip rate. Then branches feed off of these to the plants. The main header is glued, but the bed piping is dry fitted so is can be disassembled for the winter.



A 1/16 inch bit is used to make the holes. Recommended is every 6 inches, or for bush plants, 2 to 3 holes spaced 5 inches apart. Looks pretty good and price was at least half of a normal bought system. A layer of mulch will cover everything up. and help retain moisture. Next step is building some structures for cucumbers and tomato cages. The seedlings are doing good, especially for my first try!

A Reason To Post Again

A little motivation and some warm weather got me workin on the house again finally. The kitchen is half sanded and looks like it will be a while before I sand the rest.

In the meantime last weekend I decided to rent a jackhammer and bust up the section of driveway that will become yard again. A large section of yard was made into parking when the place was apartments. But now it's much more than I will ever need and prefer to have some more yard back. I did decide to leave one lane around the side of the garage to park the truck when that retires from everday use to just a weekend hauler. A little intimidating at first, I managed to bust everything up in alittle over 3 hours. Then was the fun job of removing the concrete into a pile, which I've yet to work out the details of where it will go next. I was lucky to get a little help with this chore.





After raking the stones up a bit, I started construction on the raised beds for the new and improved veggie garden. I'm building four beds out of cedar - three will be 12ft x 4ft and one 10ft x 4ft. After plenty of research, raised beds are the way to go. After the initial setup, this style yields better results and is easier to maintain. I filled them with a bottom layer of leaves and compost, then the rest with topsoil. I'll add a few more goodies and mulch the top after planting.



I also started plants from seed indoors for the first time. This is far cheaper and can get an earlier jump on things than store bought plants. Plus you can get a better variety than the limited selection at the garden center. Just a plaine shelf with flourescent lights and using peat pots. We'll see how this works out.



So I had 7 yards deilivered of topsoil. About half went into the beds and half will go on the yard after I get a delivery from my dad. He had to replace his main sewer line so I got about a yard from that. He is also getting sidewalks redone, so I'll be getting a few more yards that I'll use to fill where the concrete came out before I add the topsoil.



Once I get the spring yard work done it'll be back in the kitchen.

Winter Standstill

Not much to report lately. Caught a nasty bug. I have enough energy to go to work and keep the fire going and that's about it. Before things came to a complete hault I was slowly adding coat of mud to the kitchen. I have just about two complete coats done. Also trying to get the rest of the paint stripping done.









I also went through all my door hardware and put together enough solid brass sets for the 1st floor doors. Then I polished everything up on the buffer and installed everything. That's about it lately......

It Works! But then......

The powder room project has been one big roller coaster ride. You've already heard about the painting fiasco which finally came to a happy ending. Next was getting the high tank toilet in service.

Two more orders and I finally had everything I needed to put the tank in operation. I ordered new flush and fill assemblies from DEA Bath. They weren't cheap, but the quality was impressive - all copper and brass construction. So I enlarged the hole for the flush and installed everything in the tank. I left the back off so I could do a leak test and see most of the joints in the copper tank.



Well 24 hrs with no leaks I was comfortable to hang it on the wall. I finish up the assembly, hang on the wall.... and guess what?? Yep a slow drip. Take it down, clear RTV the solder joints on the inside of the tank, reinstall - and still a leak. Back down, dissassemble everything, and notice the leak appeared to come from the flush assembly donut through the tank. So I RTV the outside solder joints just in case, then reassemble using some putty along with the donut gaskets. Passed the first leak test without back and final assembly test. Back on the wall this time all was good.



Then it took three tries to get the spud on bowl end leak free. Finished the fill line install and it was ready for business. I must say these units have one heck of a flush! I guess the 7 feet of head pressure helps. So all was right with the powder room and finally could concentrate all my energy to the kitchen........ until

The cold came - I mean the REALLY COLD came. Since the plumbing was redone in the bath/kitchen, I've only had one trouble spot with freezing - right where a cold line 90's up and was against a cinderblock skirting the back section of house. I had a fix in mind for this, but didn't get to it yet. Last year I removed the exposed cinderblock and rebuilt the original style beadboard skirt where the deck didn't cover it. Needless to say it's not airtight, but last winter I had no problems, so figured the pipe insualtion was enough.

Then came temps under 10 degrees and the pipes froze.... all of them! So saturday I spend building a sealed/insulated inner wall around the skirt, and was going to heat trace the pipes until I heard some bad things about that. Ended up just adding another layer if insulation. I got as far as freeing up all but the tub lines and thought I was in the clear. Then I hear the noise and it wasn't the tub starting to flow like I thought.



Go under and see the hole in the pipe. No biggie, I'll cut and solder a coupling at the break. Well no coupling in stock, go to HD and back, couple the pipe and take a look around. Hmmmm, how di water spray over here??? Oh hell, another break thawing out. Then another.... five in all. Its about 8pm at this point, and it ain;t getting fixed today. So I cut out the bad stuff and figure I'll leave the powder room out of commision till I feel like going down in the crawl space again. That was till this morning when Rach tried to do laundry. The cold line tees off this run - back in the hole! So brain storm, I go to HD and pick up a pair of valves with the compression fittings to pop on the lines to the tub. 10 minute job, valve them out, and laundry, toilet and bath sink are back in service. At this point the tub can wait till spring.
The last fix was to open up the crawl space to the basement again as recommended by a friend. Since the space is pretty tight from the outside, it should acclimate to the basement temp and keep the pipes even happier. I built a filler piece when I first moved in to seal this off, and didn't want to completely open this up in case of any critters getting in the crawl space, so I ended up cutting in a vent, which will let the air through and the keep any critters out.

Ah, what an adventure this powder room has been.

The Obama Express

Guess who made an appearance past the Hall House??!

Making Pre-Hung Doors Continued....

So here's a little more on how I built pre-hung doors assemblies using salvaged doors. There may be better ways, this was just the method I came up with. I lay the door on horses opening direction down. After ripping some 1x pine to the jamb thickness I lay them on each side of the door. I use paint sticks as a gap shim between the jamb sides and door, then pipe clamp together to keep stable. Now I can measure for the header piece. I cut the top piece to length and then I router the thickness of the side jamb pieces into each end of the top (half the thickness of the top piece) This leaves a slot on each end for the side pieces to fit into making a nice tight joint. I reassemble the pieces around the door this time using paint sticks for the top gap as well. Now I can mark my cuts for the bottom of the door, which I also had to allow for the thickness that the kitchen floor will be built up. Once these are cut it's time for final assembly. I nail and glue the top joints and shim between the door and jamb assembly again - using pipe clamps as before to hold things together.




I do some quick checks for squareness and then it's time to brace the assembly so it can be moved around for installation. Using the top measurement, I cut three identical length stick (I used scrap from ripping down the jambs). Marking at measured points down each side I then fasten each support to the jamb having the ends flush with the edge of the jamb. This should guarantee that the width stays true from top to bottom of your built jamb. I also add corner bracing at the top. At this point you should have a pretty sturdy assembly and can now mark and mortise your hinges as I showed earlier.



Finally install as you would any pre-hung door. After the unit is installed, just remove the bracing. You may have to do some minor adjusting during the install depending on the condition of the door (it was surely shaved to fit another opening that wasn't square!), but so far I've had pretty good luck with this method and can do one start to finish in a few hours now.

New Appreciation For Pre-Hung Doors

I'm in door mode right now in the kitchen and powder room. The powder room jamb I built and installed a while back, but never fully installed the door in the jamb. This created some problems during the install and not having the door in which left me with a little planing to do.



I picked up a neat tool - a Porter Cable hinge mortising kit for routering doors/jambs. It's fully adjustable to accept any size hinge and any thickness door and door height. So here is a shot setting it up on the jamb. There are little pins you hammer down to hold the jig in place. Then using a router with a guide, you router out the hinge mortise for each. Then remove the jig and square the corners, since I'm using orignal style hinges.



Next you take the jig and place on the door. There are adjustable ends with markings so you can account for the top and bottom clearances when placing the jig on the door. Then repeat the router sequence. The true test was mounting each half of the hinge to the door and jamb - and then pinning the door in place. Wouldn't you know it went right together! Is was a little pricy a tool even second hand - but when I have 15 or so doors to do from scratch, using salvage doors to boot, it was worth every penny.





So for the next door , the dishwasher closet, I built the jamb on saw horses around the door. But this time I mortised the door and jamb, making a complete unit. Then adding some cross bracing to keep things squared up I installed the complete unit into the opening with no problems. A few shims, nail in place, remove the bracing and call it done. Only things to add was the stop trim and mortise the strike plate for the lock.



The next door (basement) I'll go into a little more detail of how I made the jamb since my camera was dead when I did that part....