Deconstruction

Why would I want to take a second-floor bathroom that looks like this...


...and allow my boys in with hammers and wrecking bars...


...to make it look like this...


...then like this...


...then like this?


Because I can?

No.

Because I want to?

No. Y'all know I hate plumbing and bathrooms are usually full of plumbing.

It's because it desperately needed it, for the following reasons:

The claw-foot bathtub had to go. Some prior owner framed it in by building a wall around it, making it look like some sort of bath-nook. His framing job was bad and his tile job was even worse. The grout was falling out and what was left was mildewed. The tub was also propped up on one end so it would drain properly. The house has settled significantly over the past 130 years or so, and the bathroom has a decided lean to it.

The floor was spongy. The prior owner covered up a problem by putting laminate floor over it. That just made the laminate floor look like it had a problem also.

The house and the plumbing have settled at different rates. The result is that the main waste stack is now at least three inches higher than it used to be relative to the rest of the house. This made the toilet lean forward at a rather precarious angle. The floor around the throne was built up slightly in an attempt to compensate for the plumbing. While that hid the pipes from showing through, it didn't do anything for the slope of the floor, or the obvious lean of the toilet.

This is one of those jobs that works like an onion. On the surface it doesn't look too bad. Peeling away one layer makes you cry and reveals another layer. Peeling away that layer makes you cry again and reveals another layer. And so on, ad infinitum.

So, let the extreme makeover begin.

It has to get worse before it gets better. Here are the steps to making it worse.

1. Remove the toilet and the sink.
2. Remove all the tile and the false wall around the claw-foot tub. This creates an enormous amount of dust and debris. The entire tub is now full of broken tile, dirt, plaster chunks, nails, and cement backer board.
3. Remove the laminate floor.
4. Observe all the moisture problems under the laminate floor.
5. Remove the rotten hardwood floor. I'm sure it was beautiful at one time. It's not beautiful now.
6. Remove portions of the subfloor to expose the plumbing. Actually, most of it was already exposed, having pushed itself through the subfloor.
7. Clean the tub out and remove the tub. I had the boys wrestle it down the stairs. They are younger and stronger than I am and need these colorful experiences. The tub was extremely heavy and the stairs extremely narrow. They are now much better for having experienced this.
8. Look at the plumbing and scratch my head. I'm either going to have to lower the plumbing or raise the floor. I vote for lowering the plumbing. Unfortunately this has other implications and eventually led to removing the entire waste stack, from the basement all the way through the roof. This affects the first floor bathroom also (not to mention every other plumbing fixture in the house). Now the first floor bathroom has large holes in the wall.
9. Rebuild the waste stack using PVC plastic pipe. It looks a lot better now. And it doesn't leak. Several of the sections of old iron pipe were split and leaking, and one broke completely in half as I was attempting to remove it. I think I made the right decision.
10. Observe how the prior owner fixed plumbing problems by joining pipe without glue. In one instance, he accounted for the difference in size between two fittings by stuffing the gaps with a plastic shopping bag. I'm sure Meijer would be interested that their bag was recycled in this manner.
11. Remove all the lath and plaster. It was in rough shape anyway. We'll start fresh with drywall.

I think I'm nearly at the point where I can start making it better. It can't get much worse than this. There's practically nothing left.

Now I just have to compensate for the slant of the house, install a new subfloor, install new plumbing for the bathtub and shower, insulate the outer wall, fix the window, modify the heating ducts, install new drywall, install new fixtures, including new tub and surround, install new finish flooring, and finally finish it off with paint.

Once this is all done, I get to do most of this over again in the bathroom downstairs.

Wanna help?

Six Months

Six months ago, we stepped off the plane as a family of five. Our newest family member, 9-year-old Abigail, joined us in Xi'an, China and then accompanied us for the next two weeks as we traveled across China to complete the adoption paperwork.

The immersion began the next day.

We communicated using some basic words of English that Abigail had learned from us in China, a few words of Chinese, and lots of pantomime. I'm sure that someone who didn't know the situation would think we were some sort of nutty family, speaking unintelligibly and gestulating wildly to each other. A few times while trying to communicate something, Abigail motioned for a piece of paper, and then wrote out what she was trying to say. She then pointed at the neatly written Chinese characters and looked at me expectantly. Had it not been so frustrating, I probably would have burst out laughing. I don't read Chinese any more than I speak it.

It's small wonder that she clocked in over 12 hours of sleep per night and ate more than my teenage boys. Learning a new language, culture, family, friends and strange foods takes a tremendous amount of energy.

Over the last six months she has lived a lifetime of changes and new experiences. It took a while to get her used to the novel idea of home schooling, and we are still working on how that all works, but she is making good progress in several subjects. She tends to soak up all available time and it's good that we have other children who can work rather independently.

I have noticed a big decline on available leftovers for my lunch, as Abigail will usually eat them for breakfast. As long as it's hot, she wants it. So she will have anything from pizza to lasagna to soup to pasta salad to start the day. When there isn't any "left stuff", as she calls leftovers, then she will have instant noodles. For a family that has cold cereal and muffins for breakfast, this took a little getting used to.

Abigail is fitting herself into our family and blossoming in many ways. She has acquired quite a bit of language now, and likes nothing better than to talk with people. When we put her to bed, she stalls as long as possible by asking questions and talking about nearly anything. She also is establishing herself as the family sheep dog. "Scoot!", she told Deb when it was time to leave for church. She will round up the boys when it is time to go home with a singsong "Time to go!"

She loves music, and loves to have someone read to her, especially from her Bible story book. She is the first to remind us at the end of the day if we haven't read her a Bible story yet.

We are seeing more personality come to light with each passing day. Abigail is a curious, happy and energetic little girl who loves to be around people. Our Friend family reunion in May was one of the highlights of the last several weeks for her as she was able to meet the rest of her cousins.

Our family life has actually settled into some form of chaotic routine, and we are grateful to God for bringing us this far. We may not know what the future holds, but He does, and we are content to live life the way we have been living it for the last six months: One day at a time.

Rust In Peace

The Thunderbird is now gone.

David's donor car, which he spent three hot days torching into small pieces, took its last journey on a trailer behind the van to Black River Recycling, a local scrap yard. I can't say that I miss it. After the city delivered its edict to remove the car, it was moved into the garage until we could secure a trailer.

It's surprising just how much metal scrap can come from a single car. Our garage is supposed to hold two cars, but the pile of scrap from this car was surprisingly large, and with another project currently in progress in the garage, both the cars were parked outside.

On Friday, we piled the whole mess on a trailer. What wouldn't fit on the trailer went in the van after we pulled all the seats out. I hauled the whole business to the scrap yard on my way to work in the morning.

After all that work, the total take for selling 1560 pounds of scrap was $38.30.

Entropy

This used to be a 1989 Ford Thunderbird Supercoupe.

After removing the engine and transmission and several other parts from it, David parked it in the side yard because Deb wanted the garage back. The goal was to harvest any usable sheet metal from it, then take the rest to a scrap yard to be recycled.

I told David it had to be removed by May 8. Last week, we got a letter from the city telling us that it had to be removed by April 20 or we would be guilty of a civil infraction. We got the letter on the 15th, giving us five days to remove the car. I was in California from the 15th until the 18th, so David was pretty much on his own for removing the car.

He spent quite a bit of work cutting it up in pieces and was nearly done when he ran out of acetylene gas. The last two big pieces are in the garage, waiting to be trailered to the scrap yard, along with all the other smaller pieces. Deb can't park her car in the garage, but at least the city is happy again.

David framed the letter from the city and hung it in his bedroom.

Tales from the Front Pew, Chapter 10

It's been many years since Chapter 9 of this series was written. I think as children age they become better behaved in church and so provide less fodder for interesting stories. Either that or they just save their behavior for some other time. It's probably too embarassing for a teenager to act out when sitting in the front row of a crowded church. A 9-year-old has no such inhibitions.

We have had several comments from members of our choir on how Abigail seems to enjoy singing so much. People have remarked that she is so good in church, that she loves her daddy, and that she is radiantly trying to sing with the congregation, even though she may not know the words. Since we sit in the front row, we are readily visible from the choir risers.

The choir usually sits down after the first set of songs, however, so any observations beyond that get missed. Perhaps they would have a far different picture if they kept their positions during the entire service.

This past Sunday morning was fairly typical for us. Abigail sat well for the first 15 minutes of the sermon and then wanted to sit on my lap for the last half. She usually loses interest in following along in her Bible, turning to the children's bulletin. She can't read well enough to decode what's going on in the chilren's bulletin, so she pesters me for a while, asking how to do the puzzles and word games, until she finally figures out that I would really like to listen to the pastor. She will spend some time copying some text onto her writing pad. Sometimes it's from her Bible, other times it's the advertising text on her pen. Then she will start to fidget and yawn, sometimes going into a full body stretch that raises her hands high in the air.

When all this is happening on your lap, it can be a little distracting. Taking notes has been out of the question for the past few months.

Yesterday, just before the end of the sermon, she did her squirming and stretching and then blurted out in a loud whisper, "He talks TOO MUCH!"

This is the kind of stuff the choir never sees.

Radio Silence

It has been a long time since this blog has had any posts. The reason is that our family has been essentially consumed by the adoption of Abigail which took place in November. You can read this entire adventure on our adoption blog at abigailcomeshome.blogspot.com

Travel Approval

I just KNEW it would have to happen today. I could feel it in my bones. And it did happen today, just as I predicted.

We just received our Travel Approval from China, meaning things now shift into high gear. This is the last document necessary for a trip to China to bring our daughter home. We will be tentatively leaving on November 7 for China, and returning to the USA on November 19. We will probably meet our 9-year-old daughter for the first time on November 9. Once we get a visa appointment in place in China, then these dates will firm up and we can make actual travel plans. This should happen in a couple days.

You can follow our adventures in China on our travel journal here.

The trouble is, I just KNEW it had to happen yesterday, and I could feel in my bones that it would happen last Friday. I've been having these feelings for the last three weeks.

Hopefully I make a better dad than a prophet.

Letter of Confirmation

A long awaited milestone in our adoption process has arrived.

We just received our Letter of Confirmation (LOC) from the CCAA in China, which is basically a letter that we sign indicating that we still wish to go through with this adoption process. This gets sent back to China, and after they sit on it for a week or three, they will issue a Travel Authorization (TA), at which point we can begin to make travel plans.

Receiving this letter means all the long wait times are over. Up till now, the wait times have been measured in months, now we're down to mere weeks while we wait for our Travel Authorization. We will most likely travel just a few weeks after the TA arrives (perhaps in October). Stay Tuned...

A Day at the Friend Home

Life around the Friend home is pretty dull. To give you an idea of just how dull it is, I thought I would describe to you a typical dull day...

Tuesday, July 21, 2008

Deb canned five quarts of beans today. This normally would not be noteworthy except she has no kitchen right now. The only burner available is the side burner on the barbeque grill, so the beans are boiled and then canned in the garage. I guess the one small advantage of this is that it keeps the heat out of the house. Which is good because we have been having unusually cool weather for the month of July.

In addition to not having access to a stove, Deb also does not have a sink. So there is a table in the garage with two large tubs where she washes the dishes. We fill the water glasses and the ice cube trays in the bathroom.

The reason for all this is I have been putting new countertops in the kitchen. Granite countertops. Somehow, everything I do is a new learning experience, and working with granite is no exception. I figured out how to cut it reasonably well so I have my table saw set up in the garage with a jig I made to help cut straight lines through stone. I do the actual cutting with an angle grinder and a diamond blade. Hand cutting stone is a rather slow process and creates enormous amounts of dust. So I set up a big fan in the garage to blow all the dust outside. So far this makeshift workshop works reasonably well. Except when Deb is washing the dishes. It makes for rather dusty plates.

With most of the granite mounted and grouted in the kitchen, I spent some time sealing the granite to prevent stains. While I was doing this, I had David replacing some hoses on a project we have going: a 1979 MG Midget Convertible. I had just obtained a license plate from the Secretary of State's office, so if we could get some of the last problems fixed up, we could maybe take it out for a ride this evening.

We bought the MG in May as a project car as it needed a fair amount of work. I got it for a bargain, mostly because it suffered a rather unfortunate fire in the engine compartment. The fire was started by a wiring fault and burned up many of the plastic and rubber parts in one area under the hood, and scorched the paint on the hood and the passenger side fender. Since then, David and I have been working on it off and on, rewiring the car, replacing parts under the hood, etc. We actually got it running this past Saturday. So we were both itching to take it for a ride.

With the granite sealer taken care of, I helped David put the front bumper on the car, finish some wiring, test the lights, and get it ready to go. We then squeezed in and took off to our first stop: the gas station. Three gallons of gas was enough to make the needle point to 3/4 tank, plenty for some running around. We took off down Baldwin street, intending to stop at a friend of David's, who shares his interest in cars.

We both decided that riding in a convertible is a lot of fun. Especially during a pleasant sunny evening. David commented that you really don't want your hand to hang too far over the side of the car. This car is small enough and low enough that your hand may actually drag on the roadway.

Two miles later, the engine suddenly lost power. We had enough forward momentum to coast into a side street before coming to a stop. It now refused to start. One minute it was running great, now, not at all. Hmmm. What to do? We didn't have the presence of mind to bring any tools along, but I did drop a cell phone in my pocket just before we left.

I called Deb. Deb, for all her many talents, is somewhat tool-challenged. But she came through after my descriptions of what I wanted and came out in the van with the requested tools. David and I tinkered and poked for a little while and then the engine inexplicably roared to life and stayed running. Must be some sort of fuel problem. I had Deb follow us home. We lost power once more and I managed to coast into the parking lot of a local pizza joint. This time, it started right back up again. We got some strange looks, driving this tiny car with no hood and a burned fender, and coasting into the parking lot entrance marked "Out", but, as they say, "any port in a storm."

All the while, Deb was shaking her head and calling up visions of a 1978 Winnebago Motor home, which died one of its many deaths in that very neighborhood about ten years ago (it also was a fuel problem; we ran it out of gas on one of our joyrides).

Once we got home, we pulled into the family gathering place (you guessed it: the garage). Now it seemed to be running just fine. Maybe we'll stick a little closer to home for a while.

Josh had just got home from work at the bike shop when we arrived home, and I think he really wanted to take the car for a ride, but it was getting late, and he still had a lawn to mow, so his drive would have to wait.

The phone rang shortly after that. It was someone interested in looking at the pickup. With four vehicles crowding the driveway, it was time to get rid of one, so we had the truck for sale. The only car that actually fits in the garage right now is the MG, and that just barely, because of all the other activity going on there.

The guy came about a half hour later. It was dark by this time so I had a flashlight to help him look the vehicle over. He was gone for while, test driving it. I think I heard the sound of squealing tires down the street. He then came back and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. With the condition that the truck was in, it would have been hard to refuse ANY offer. We filled out the necessary blanks on the title on the hood of the pickup, by flashlight, slapping at mosquitoes the whole time. Then I watched the pickup disappear down the street and it was gone, the last echoes from the hole in the muffler fading shortly after. After 15 years of ownership, it was time to sell it. Just to fill the tank with gas was pushing eighty dollars.

Later on that night, Deb awoke to the sound of someone walking around in the back yard. The motion sensor light on the barn had come on, and she heard footsteps and other noises. She had visions of whole armies of theives stealing all our stuff, but after she woke me up, the night was quiet, and the light eventually turned itself off. I solved this mystery the next morning. Two voles had fallen into Joshua's window well and were scrabbling about, keeping him awake. He could still hear them with the window closed, so he got up and went to the barn in search of something to aid in dispatching the varmints. That would explain the footsteps and the light being on.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

I took David out for breakfast this morning and let him drive. He is just learning to drive a stick shift. At the first light, he killed the engine three times and we had to wait for the next cycle. So he was a little flustered by the time it turned green again. Adding to that was the fact that there now was a large SUV waiting behind us. He killed the engine twice more and was becoming quite agitated. I told him that he was not giving it enough gas. So the third time, as the light was turning yellow, he gunned the engine and we shot forward, engine screaming, gravel flying, and tires squealing. I think we would have done reasonably well on a quarter mile race track. The SUV didn't make it through the light and voiced his frustration by honking his horn.

Yesterday, I managed to replace the stove and sink in the kichen. The sink took me nearly all evening, but now Deb has her kitchen back. She managed six quarts of beans today and said it was infinitely easier than canning in the garage on the barbeque grill.

I had a few ideas on the fuel problem after doing a little Internet sleuthing. I began to suspect some scale or rust in the fuel tank which suddenly blocked the fuel line to the engine. I had David begin to take the fuel tank off while I glued a few more tiles down in the kitchen.

With the fuel tank off, we could see some large particles sloshing around with the gas. It looks like we found our culprit. We drained the tank and stuck a fan in the opening to dry out the inside. While it was drying I finished the evening's tile work in the kitchen. The tank couldn't dry fast enough for David. He was really itching to get in the car and drive it.

David and I vaccuumed out the particles in the now-dry tank and mounted the tank back on the car. With David at the wheel, we took off towards the church parking lot down the street.

This was a good opportunity to do a little more practice driving also. We drove circles around the parking lot for a while, and this car seems a little more forgiving than our other car. This one will actually lurch and buck and snort a few times and then start going when David lets out the clutch too fast. The Mazda just dies. We stopped and started and shifted until I noticed that the temperature gauge was hugging "hot". I had David drive it back home. Looks like there is some additional work to do before taking it on any expeditions.

So now here we are at the end of another day. With all the boredom in our day perhaps I should do something a little more exciting. Perhaps I'll take up watching TV.

A Long Distance Birthday

Abigail turned 9 a few days ago. We threw a party for her and gave her some gifts. She is wearing her new outfit in this picture, one of her gifts. I only wish we could have been there. We could only observe using the pictures that were sent to us from twelve time zones away.

We were grateful for the pictures, though. Being separated by half of a world, different languages, and different cultures, the amount of information we are able to receive is quite small, so this was a welcome glimpse into her life and a few of the others at the orphanage.