Monster post- from no water to hot water, and a heckuva view.

It's been ages since I've posted- sorry about that! To make up for it, this is a huge post- which is a good thing, since Sam and I are leaving tomorrow to go to a wedding in Chicago, so it'll be almost another week before any more work gets done- on the house, or on the blog!

When I got home last Wednesday, the HVAC unit had been removed from beside the house, opening up the wall behind it so that the last wall of the garage could be put in place:





More of the cantilevered joists for the master bathroom had been put up...



More fancy gas connections had been made...



... but for the time being they led to nowhere.



Meanwhile, Sam insulated and sheathed the last part of the existing house (that had been behind the HVAC)...



... built the wall that needed to go up there...



And the three of us got it leaned up against where it needed to go...



... and then lifted it into place.



Sam was pretty happy that his fancy cuts on the bottom plate and the studs perfectly fit around the cement... and of course he made sure that the wall was level!







The water had been off all day, and when we turned it back on, besides being cold, it was spittin' mad!



It calmed down after a while, though.

The next day when I got home, Dale was working on connecting the gas back up again...



...and soon, a joy to behold, gas was running to the hot water heater! (not to the stove, though- we had to choose!)







Sam fired it up. It worked. We were both very happy.





Shortly thereafter, we were clean, too!

Sam is spending a lot of time on the second floor (or should I say making the second floor) these days. That's where I found him when I got home from work the other day...



He had cut a bunch of joists to the right length, ensuring that the pre-cut holes aligned perfectly. Here you can see the 'extra' bits...




... and he had finished putting the joists up- above the wall we had just put in place.



When I joined him on the second floor, he was carrying a piece of plywood to place for more flooring. You can see the pile of blocking (pieces of wood that get nailed in between the joists) that he had made and carried up there.



He had to cut through a bit more of the roof- he commented that it was an odd feeling to be sawing away at the very thing that you're standing on!



He spread a special kind of flooring glue along the joists and the blocking...



... and then fit the tongue of the piece of plywood into the groove of the next one. I helped with nailing it down! :)



I admired the final gas connections, which run through the joists - we'll never be without hot water or cooking gas again! And we have soft water now!



Sam put a lot of blocking in... by the end of the day he was almost done!



On Saturday, Sam's first lift arrived! (Eventually, he's going to have two.)





The lift is heavy. It was quite a production to get it off the trailer, and set in a place where it wouldn't be in the way for the forseeable future.

First, they built a ramp so that the lift guy could back the trailer up into the garage.





Sam was very happy to have his cherry picker (Thank you, Harbor Freight!). They tied a strap around the first piece, and cranked it up...







... swung it out...



and put it down. The next piece they lifted by hand, and placed atop the first.



Then they got the next piece hitched up...





and the next. It took about an hour, but everything was in the perfect place, thanks to Sam's advance planning! (He really is very good at taking his time to figure out how things are going to work first, so that nothing needs to be moved twice.)





Later that day, Sam and Dale got the last of the huge parallel strand lumber beams up:



And Sam was working on finishing the blocking for that:



At the end of the day, he was almost done with the second floor! We enjoyed the sunset. We discovered that in addition to the ocean, we can see Mt. Soledad from the second floor!



O.k. We're off to a wedding. More when we return!

Water Music

Hello folks. Sorry for the blogging hiatus- the blogging website was experiencing some problems yesterday which made it impossible to upload pictures... and what would my blogging be without pictures?



Yesterday, Sam took a (much deserved) day off, went surfing, relaxed. Prior to that (and more today) he's been dealing with water. Which means, among other things, that we've been without hot water for a couple of days, which hasn't been a problem at all. Especially when we compare it to the 12 hours a few days ago in which we didn't have any water at all. Funny how you really notice things like, say, running water, when you don't have it! The water has to be dealt with because the water heater (and the HVAC unit) have to be moved in order to build up the last wall of the garage (which will go directly behind where the water heater and HVAC unit used to be). The part of the 'dealing with water' that I experienced was Monday evening when I got home. I knew we didn't have hot water again when I saw this:



The water heater being completely disconnected from everything is never a good sign! Then I heard a disembodied voice coming from underneath the house: Dale was under there finishing up the plumbing...



...which will lead to the compressor room, which is where the hot water heater will be.



Sam was in the compressor room, putting the finishing touches on the drywall in there:



Gary, the nicest plumber in the whole wide world, was there dealing with some complicated stuff that had to be done in order to remove the HVAC unit. (For those of you who care, he had to evacuate the freon back into the compressor so that we could disconnect the cooling coil from the air conditioner before we could move the HVAC unit. I'm not sure I know what all that means, but Sam does. And Gary really was a super nice guy, even giving Dan a can of adhesive to fix his car roof with!)
ANYway... this is Gary.



And this is what the back of the house looks like, these days.



Then I drove Dan to the airport. Which is sad for many reasons, but in particular because I think he would have enjoyed experiencing everything that happened once I got home...

Not that I've really minded living without (hot) water, but to soften the blow Sam occasionally reminds me that, once this is all done, we will have softened water, better water pressure, and all kinds of good things. He hooked up the water softener...



... and filled the reservoir...



... and he and Dale hefted the water heater into its new position in the compressor room.



After all the connections were, well, connected, we turned on the water main and held our breath... and then Dale noticed a leak in some of the plumbing he'd done.



So we turned of the water, emptied the pipes, dried off the pipes, and soldered them better...



Then we turned on the water again, held our breath again... and before the water even got to the last of the pipes, the air pressure caused one of them to disconnect completely! Oooops, we'd forgotted to solder that one. We turned off the water, emptied the pipes, dried everything off, Dale soldered the pipes... (did I mention that all this was happening in the dark, at 8 pm, by flashlight?)... and we turned on the water again. Held our breath. Everything seemed copacetic!

Except that in the house there was no water at all coming out if you turned on the hot water.

Sam and Dale crawled under the house, examined the pipes, moved things around (I wasn't going to get under there with them, so I don't know exactly what they did, but it took them a long time!), and then we did the whole rigamarole again...

... this time we had water! Even out of the hot water side of things!
Before we went to bed that night, Sam turned off the water main, just to be on the safe side. But the following day everything still seemed to be working perfectly! Whew!

Unfortunately, because he was working so hard, Sam didn't get to climb up to the second floor with me to watch the sunset...





... luckily, there will be other sunsets! And probably tonight we'll have hot water!