It’s raining MEN!
So I drove up yesterday to work on the bathroom and when I was about halfway up the road, the contractor phoned. His week off must’ve had an energizing effect, because he had mobilized all the trades: the plumbers, some carpenters, and a different electrician (evidently Sparky didn’t work out).
Anyway, when I got there, there were 4 different trucks in the yard and MEN were all over the place, pounding and sawing and cussing, with musical accompaniment by a radio that featured the entire range of country & western music from A to B (i.e. Okie from Muskogee, Harper Valley PTA, etc). Gradually they wrapped up their stuff and took their trucks home. Or at least, away—maybe to a cowboy bar where they’d listen to the same songs and drink brewskies until supper time.
“Sooo—” you ask, “what’d they get done?”
FENESTRATION!
In the basement, more windows to bring in more light. These mimic the original windows from the house’s earlier days, but this time around, will bring some passive solar effect to the little house, as this faces south.
In the living room, a high & wide ‘piano window’ where the brick fireplace used to be. Facing east, it’ll bring in morning light. They got the location marked yesterday, and will return today to finish that.
WARMTH! As mentioned previously, I also splurged on in-floor radiant heat for the basement. That bouquet of red tubes sticking out of the slab has been hooked up to a fancy-pants system that oughta keep a comfortable baseline all winter whether I’m there or not (sorry, I neglected to get a photo of the manifold!) — and it’ll also provide on-demand hot water for kitchen & bath.
A brief aside: Sandra & I love many aspects of our current Saint Paul house, which was designed by an architect for his own family. The main thing we don’t love: he put the hot water heater right under the bathroom, but the pipe run to get up to the kitchen is about six and a half miles long. So needless to say, I’m not going to repeat that error: all the plumbing is in a stack for the River House - basement bathroom and laundry are roughed-in under the kitchen and upstairs bathroom, and the boiler for the on-demand water is right there too. The contractor questioned whether I wouldn’t prefer to put the boiler over in the corner by the sump pump “cuz that’s the mechanical room” but I held firm.
—-anyhoo, yesterday was in the mid-30’s outside, and a balmy 57 downstairs.
That contraption above right is the partially-installed furnace and heat pump. Plumbers are going to finish installing all that today.
Panoramic view of the now-sunny basement:
Notice there’s still no stairway? Understandably, the contractor didn’t want to install the stringers until treads were ready, since there was so much activity up and down all day. So now I need to get the treads ready (and/or some temporary 2x6s screwed onto the stringers).
Which brings me to another great discovery in this project: a co-op style workshop called Twin Cities Maker — for a monthly membership I get 24/7 access to a huge, well-appointed wood shop that would’ve made my dad salivate (and he had a really nice home workshop). I’m talking SawStop, 18” planer and 24” drum sander, a jointer, multiple band saws, radial arm saw, half a dozen heavy layout tables, dust collection system and oodles of hand tools. That’s how I’m wreaking stair treads out of the 1.5” oak planks (see “Good Weather!” for the story of the oaks).
Gotta go make some sawdust, now.
cheers!
