All good things..

I will very probably not be updating this blog again for quite a long time, if ever.

I am checking out of the social media and will not be sharing my life with the world anymore. It is nothing but trouble that I just don't need.

Hope you have enjoyed the ride and maybe someday I will find the need to start doing it again, but for now, Have Fun!

I'm out!

Just when things are starting to roll...

The bus comes to a grinding screeching halt.

I thought this was going too well. I go to several stores and research online on replacement possibilities for the tub/shower fixtures. Don't know why I thought it would a simple thing to replace. It's only ~30 years old, corroded a little, leaks a little (more on that), and has put up one hell of a fight.

After finding that the big box stores don't sell that type of tub faucet any longer and probably never did, I jump onto the computer. After several searches I finally find it! It's a Delta model 635 or 636. I found the installation manuals, technical specs, etc. Unfortunately it was discontinued years ago with no direct replacement.

But, let's back up a little and at least get the happy stuff in there!

The drywall is going along pretty well and I Love the way those lights look! Yep, that's the exhaust fan and A/C vent cutouts.

This is the Durock that I was working on when the faucet issue put everything in full stop mode.

So here's the beast that's causing me all the heartburn. Pretty little cuss ain't it? I was REALLY hoping to NOT have to tear into this copper pipe puzzle, but such won't be the case.

It's a real mess and to really put the icing on this cake it leaks! Hence the rag tied around the one pipe. It's a very slow leak and it looks like it has been there for a very long time. I couldn't find any water damage below it which is good, but it must be fixed. Here's another view.

So always trying to find the bright side to all of this, I can now rip all of this out and install whatever I want! Except for cost, I can do anything I wish for a replacement. So it's off to HD to see what they have!

Oh yeah, one other bit of bad news. My favorite pair of slaps (flip-flops) that I have had for years finally died. They were ugly as sin but they were really comfortable. I thought the paint over-spray kind of added some class to their look. Really hated to see them go....

More Progress

Today was a total battle.

It started off that I was just going to make a quick trip to Home Depot and pick up the new exhaust fan and 5 sheets of green board (drywall). Then I was going to get home, get the fan installed and get as many pieces of green board installed in the bathroom ceiling as I could.

Yep, that was the plan. That totally was the plan.

Somehow this house just finds new and interesting ways to really goof things up. Let's see, in order of goofed up-ness:

- The new exhaust fan rails won't span the distance between the joists. For whatever reason the fan company decided that 19" was plenty. Well, for those of us who have rafters on 24" centers it's not.

- Halfway through installing the new box in for the fan I realize that I put a board on the wrong side of a line. Ugh.... Get out the reciprocating saw and tear it all out and start over again.

- Then when I go to wire it, I find out the length of the existing wiring is too short. Now I could splice in a piece but that would be ugly and probably not up to code. So its open up a wall, tear out the insulation, and run a new piece of Romex. Only electrocuted myself twice!

-Finally get it ALL done and realize I bought the wrong fan. It's the capacity size smaller than the one in the master, although it physically looks identical. It's a lot quieter, but it also moves less air. Oh well, I damn sure ain't changing it now.

I finally get it all installed and it works like a charm! So now it's move on to green board. Remember that there's no ceiling in this room right now so all that attic heat is flooding into this room turning it into a sauna. That's why I am in such a hurry to get the ceiling in place. I'd wager I have lost 5 pounds of weight from sweating so much in the last few days and it's only going to get worse.

So get the first sheet of green board out and carefully measure out the dimensions and holes for the light fixtures. I even pre-started screws in the board so they are already in place and just need to be finish screwed once the board is in the air. I've only got two hands, so one is to hold the sheet in place and the other is running the screw gun. No spare hand to get screws out of the box or place them.

Anyway, I get the piece ready to go, lift it up into place and for some reason it's not fitting right. Crap! I forgot to take out the lights before I put the piece in place. So put the piece back down, take out the lights, put the piece back up again, and screw it into place. Then reconnect the lights. Now I'm really beat. It's 4 o'clock, close enough I'm calling it a day.

Here's what it looks like so far.

Tomorrow is more ceiling, which is top priority! Then I can start working on the tub surround.

Making good progress

Just a quick update on the bathroom thrash.

So far I've gotten almost all of the insulation in. Yes, I know these are interior walls and will do absolutely nothing for heating or cooling. However it will go a long way in sound deadening. Hollow walls may as well not even be there when it comes to noises. We'll just leave it at that.

And for the sharp eyed folks, yes, I have the lights roughed in. Here's a better view.

These are 7.4 watt dim-able LEDs that output 450 lumens (about 45 watts) of light at about a 90 degree angle. They are predicted to last about 32 years. Are they cheap? No, but the cost of operation and non-replacement will eventually pay for itself. Of course it will be long after I'm gone.

These are the exact same ones I have in master bathroom and I love them. These will be on a dimmer just like the other bathroom which is great because I can set the dimmer all the way down for the middle of the night if needed and not blind myself. Plus, they give of no heat. You can put your had right on the lens and it is barely warm to the touch.

I know the room still looks quite dark, but remember the walls are dark brown and the ceiling isn't there at all. Once the room gets finished and painted something bright, it will lighten up quite a bit.

Next up is to finish insulation and start putting up green board and Durock. One thing I'm really on the fence about is whether or not to replace the medicine cabinet. That's the white frame 'box' in the picture below. I am sorely tempted to just drywall it over and just not have one.

I replaced the one in my bathroom and I'm thinking it was a mistake. It's a pain in the posterior and looks very out of place.

Yeah, yeah, I know, storage for 'things' and all that. But I figure that the vanity will have storage below and nobody needs that much 'stuff' anyway.

At the bottom of the picture above is the light I use when the room is powered down and nothing works. That is a very powerful halogen flood light that will blind you but good and will also burn the crap out of anything that touches it while it's on, including skin. The other big problem is that it puts out an unbelievable amount of heat. It will turn a room like this bathroom into a sauna in minutes. I love it, but I hate it.

Anyway, I'll post again when I get about half of the drywall and Durock up. The fun continues!

Can I make a mess or what??

A couple of days overdue on the hall bathroom demo as I pulled a muscle in my back really bad. I wanted to get it feeling better as fast as possible, so I took a couple of days easy to let it rest. It's amazing how bad a person sleeps when every time they roll over they wake up in agony.

But after copious amounts of pain and popping aspirin like M&Ms, here it is.

This is the before.

Yep, pretty boring. Lot's of beige (gag) and outdated fixtures. Easily recognizable as being right out of the mid-80s.

So, we begin with operation 'Un-Beige & Update'!

First step, demo. Now it may seem that it was a complete destroy mission, when in fact it wasn't supposed to be. I was going to leave anything that was salvageable. Unfortunately, there wasn't much. In fact, almost nothing. As predicted, the only thing left original in the room is the tub.

As you can see, it was a total gut-out as I thought.

That's ok, this is the very bottom of the project. From here on out it's all moving forward. Tomorrow is all new insulation for the walls and blocking for the ceiling. If there's time, I'll start the rough-in for the recessed lighting and the exhaust fan. I'll be moving the A/C vent as it was right next to the bathroom door. Not very efficient for cooling down the room as the cooler air would go right back out the door to return and the rest of the room stayed warm. Just more fine craftsmanship from the builders.

I'm hoping that I can start installing the Dur-Rock around the tub on Monday/Tuesday and possibly start installing the ceiling green board on Wednesday. With luck, I can actually start installing drywall by the end of the week.

I still have a TON of floor scraping yet to do and a lot of cleaning around the outside edges of the tub. I also need to find someone who can come in and re-glaze the tub itself.

The part that has got me worried is picking out tub surround tile/flooring, and wall colors. Back to that slight problem of my not having ANY artistic ability.

So as you can see, no shortage of work to be done here.

On a totally different topic, I had a window company come out and go over the house for window efficiency and meeting current code. As I expected, it was a bust on both fronts. The guy tried his very best to be nice and I'll give him props for that, but it was almost laughable.

I'm supposed to get the formal quote on Monday or Tuesday and I fully expect it to be shocking to say the least. That very well may slow down progress on the interior as the current windows are just not even close to what is needed. The hits just keep on comin'.  I swear, this house is going to sink me.

Because of all the extra cost in the bathroom and the upcoming windows, I've scrapped my plans for a trip up north to tour the RV factory. I really wanted to do it and wonder if this is a good decision, but the house renovation costs are just getting too high. There's a very good chance that this bathroom fit-out may have to get put on hold for a couple of months until some other financial obligations unfold.

I may even have to push my full timing jump-off & retirement plans back a full year just to keep the financial cushion that I want/need. I didn't realize just how behind the times this house had gotten. I will say that there had better be one helluva payback when this house sells. I'm not doing all this work and spending this amount of money for the fun of it. I damn sure had better see something come of it.

I will get better at this I swear....

It appears that I did it again. I managed to go a month with no updates. However, I have something of an excuse this time. I’ve been really busy at work and at home so spare time has been at a real premium.

That will be changing as of this next week. My boss has been harping at me about carrying too much vacation time so I half-jokingly said, Ok, I’ll take the month of May off. He not jokingly said ok. Well, work issues had me stay at work the first week of May but I will be taking the rest of May off. First vacation in three years I think. Gonna be weird for sure!

House (the renovation)

It’s still moving along and finishing up the last of the work in the bedrooms. I’ve now got all three bedrooms essentially completed.

The only work left to do in the bedrooms is the flooring edges and baseboards in the closets. I just can’t bring myself to cut up perfectly good (and expensive) pieces of wood flooring just so I can get a small edge piece. That’s a huge waste of not cheap wood. So I’ve been keeping scrap pieces and using them up as I can. The upside is that I have very little scrap. The downside is the spots that need the little edge pieces (like closets) get done last.

To do the bedrooms I bought a whole pallet of flooring which is 480 square feet. Out of all the flooring, I came up about 5 square feet short. That’s about a 1% error in my calculations. Wow, how could I be so completely off in my numbers?? I should be beaten with a slide rule for getting it so wrong.

Next up is the hall bathroom. This one is going to be ugly. It will be a complete and total gut-out. When I get done demoing, the only thing left original will be the tub. Not even the drywall will survive this one. Except for the kitchen, this will be the most aggressive demo of the whole house. I’ll be sure to take pictures of this one. It should be interesting.

House (un-stuffing)

Really have it cut down pretty good now. I finally got through Jess’s room and about 98% of it has been gone through. Good thing, her old room got more of a gut-out than I had planned. It turned out the paint on her walls hadn’t stuck either so I had to peal those walls just like the master bathroom. Ugh….

So all I have left is the kitchen, family room, and garage. The kitchen and garage have been gone through once but only lightly. I'll do a second sweep shortly at a much deeper level. I’ve already given the family room a couple of deep sweeps and most of everything is gone. Couch, lazy boy chair and TV is about what's left. I really pity the poor idiot that breaks into this house. They won’t get much of anything as it’s already gone.

RV Search

A lot of behind the scenes stuff in the last month or two. Researching truck towing capacities, RV construction methods, plusses and minuses of each, and doing a ton of reading and believe it or not YouTube videos. Who knew YouTube would have so much stuff on RV construction, walkthrough reviews, and tips on things to look for during an inspection.

Still waiting on Lazy Days to get in the 293RK. Evidently it’s a real hot seller and even used ones aren’t lasting on the market very long. This is a very good sign as most people that buy RVs don’t impulse buy and do at least minimal research on the units they want. So if 293RK is popular, there’s a reason.

I’m extremely tempted to make a vacation trip up north where these are built and take the factory tour at least once, possibly several times. With three weeks of vacation to burn, a trip up north to really scrutinize their plant and assembly line might be prudent.

You must remember, this isn’t like buying a new car, boat, or weekend warrior RV. This will be my home for the foreseeable future and I could conceivably be living in this rig for a bunch of years. So it really needs to either be ready to roll right out of the factory, or have a good percentage of the basic building blocks in place that I can customize without completely overhauling the rig.

I’ve read many blogs where a person or a couple buys a rig and then proceeds to tear it apart and basically rebuild it (on the road) to fit what they want. It seems to me that a good bit of forethought and research would have negated the need to very drastically overhaul a brand new unit while trying to live in it.

Don’t get me wrong, even this unit will need significant changes to fit my full-timing lifestyle. I’ll be adding additional batteries, solar panels, a generator, double pane windows, a very involved charging system, tank cleanouts, rear backing up camera, washer/dryer, possibly even replace the axles to get additional weight margin and disc brakes. I’ll probably even replace the bed mattress and shower head (yep, even researched that) to get exactly what I want/need. I’ve got a long list of things that will need addressing right after I buy it.

So you can start to see that this isn’t a knee-jerk decision. I don’t think I’ve researched anything to this level of detail. I really feel that this is what is needed to make sure that if I decide to dry-camp for 2 or 3 weeks at a time (and I will be doing that often), my rig can support that and I know every system in that rig from stem to stern. I need to know that if I’m out somewhere, something breaks down, and the nearest RV shop is several hundred miles away, I can deal with it on the spot. That doesn’t happen by chance, at least not with me.

So that’s where I’m at right now. I’ll post pictures of the bathroom demo as it happens. It should be great fun to the casual observer. I on the other hand will be cussing the whole way. Just to prove that I intend to do a better job of keeping up, I'm already working on the next blog installment (bathroom demo) and should have it up in the next day or two. Stay tuned!