biggerboat's building boondoggle blog
I started this in H&F but this seems a better place for it. These are my H&F posts. A bit long-winded but hopefully entertaining. I'm sure more hilarity will ensue.
I've been debating about doing this, and I sort of thought it might qualify as health and/or fitness so I'm gonna do it.
A little background. I have a very old house that I started to remodel about 10 years ago, then ran out of money and WIM to finish it. I gutted it completely and moved walls and did a lot of interior work. But I never did anything with the exterior.
It is sort of falling apart now. The roof leaks and a lot of the wood siding is so rotten I can stick my finger through it. It needs to be completely replaced.
I just paid the house off so I can sort of afford to completely re-side and re-roof it..............if I do it myself. Another factor is I just got out of a serious relationship and now I have way too much time on my hands. I'm going a little stir crazy.
Now to the health tie-in. The last few years I just haven't been able to do things like this. I used to be able to work sunrise to sundown. But lately I'd be good for about 2 or 3 hours and my back would just tell me to stop. However, due to this forum, my back is really feeling strong again. I think I'm up for the challenge. The other health aspect is mental. I don't feel good unless I have some sort of challenge like this. It gives me something to look forward to. I'm really needing something like this about now.
So, I think I'll sort of log this activity as well as lifting. I'll have to cut back on lifting/running some. Mostly due to time considerations. I'll be working on the house on Saturday/Sunday so no lifting/running on those days.
I haven't committed to this quite yet, but I think I'm close.
On the house front. I went to the city website to see what permits I'll need. It was so confusing that I called, got an answering machine, and never got a call back. So, I went down to city hall to ask some very basic questions. Apparently the appropriate question answerers are only there MWF but a substitute question answerer was available. So, after waiting 1/2 hour the substitute question answerer informed me that he couldn't really answer my question so he told me to come back when the real question answerer was there.
I suspect this will not be healthy in any way.
I tweaked my back Wednesday doing deadlifts.
The back pain has nothing on the pain the city is inflicting on me, though.
Went back to talk to someone again. I at least got the right day. The girl was really friendly and helpful. However, she seemed to not really know what all I was supposed to do. Which, as you will see, nobody could.
The first thing she did was pull up my address.
Apparently, there were 3 expired permits associated with my house. About 10 (or more) years ago, I did a big remodel. I did it mostly myself. The first permit was for an interior remodel. I had to get electrical, plumbing, framing and probably more permits. I remember having each one signed off on. However, apparently there was a final inspection that I never got. This is just conjecture based on what she said and my hazy memory. The second was for a garage. I hired a contractor to pour the slab and I framed and finished it. Apparently the slab inspection failed but the framing inspection passed. I'm not sure how this happens. I really don't recall any of this. The third one was for a bedroom addition. I never did this. I do not recall even applying for this. But, it is there. More on this later.
So I asked a lot of questions and the girl was very polite when she had to repeatedly excuse herself to ask someone else that knew the answers. From what I gathered I can do most of the work on something they call an express permit. However, if I want add a small porch roof I will need site drawings, impervious cover documents, elevation drawings, detailed framing plans and flood plain people approval. At minimum.
Back to the old permits. The girl indicated that I could fill out a form to remove the permit for the addition since I never did it. She then sent me to someone named Tony on another floor to figure out what to do with the other ones. Tony, it seems, did not have his coffee this morning. Either that or he was just an *******. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. He told me they couldn't do anything about any of them since he had no idea if I even did any work or not. Which is problematic since I can't get any new permits with these on their computer. After much discussion he agreed to go back downstairs and talk to the friendly girl. Tony then came up and informed me that I needed a Life Safety for Expired Permit permit. He informed me that I needed to go back where I started (the line that I waited over an hour in) to start this process.
So, I go back to the window and explain to them what Tony said. They seemed a bit confused on exactly what a Life Safety for Expired Permit permit was. So, they suggested that what I really need to do is re-submit all three permits and get inspections on the work I did over 10 years ago. Even if I didn't do the work. They then put my name in the computer to talk to someone. However, the number of people waiting had swelled considerably and I had already been there 2 1/2 hours so I think I'll tackle this another day.
GL w/ the paperwork and bureaucracy on both fronts. I guess now you know to go take pictures of vehicles' dashboards next time there's a storm coming.
I just couldn't live with that rat's nest of aluminum and copper wiring.
So......
One of the wires coming out of the mess went to a plug on an adjacent wall. It was already exposed when we tore the sheetrock out. I just replaced the aluminum with new romex. Easy peasy.
Another one of the aluminum wires went to a plug on the other side of some windows. I just pulled the sheetrock above the header and replaced that one with copper as well.
The other two wires exiting the box were both copper.
So now I have only one aluminum wire - the hot wire coming in. I'll just put those alumiconn connectors on that one and tie the rest together. I think it will work.
Got my wife a honda accord hybrid. Much cheaper than my truck. Plus the insurance from her old car covered about 2/3 of it so not horrible.
Sheetrock people are coming today to patch things up.
The plumbers finished but I'm not entirely happy with them. They were here until almost 10:00 the other night because they wanted to cram 3 days of work into 2. They were really sloppy too. We have holes in the wall and ceiling where they miscalculated where the pipe would go. They did some sort of weird convergence of pipes under the kitchen sink that won't allow me to install the new cabinets without either cutting a massive hole in the back of the cabinet, or cutting off water and cutting pipes. They didn't clean up their mess at all. I have the supervisor coming tomorrow to look at everything. I don't really want to hate on the guy that did the work too much, though. He was a nice guy and worked really hard. But he was just sloppy and did a rush job.
if you didnt pay in advance you hold the hammer.
The plumber's boss is coming today to look at everything. We'll see.
I got that electrical rat's nest fixed. Those wires are really crammed in there but everything is working.
We got thrown yet another curve ball. Every day we have to deal with something unexpected. We had the sheetrock guys scheduled for next week. We've been planning a vacation for almost a year and we've already paid for the flights and hotel so we are determined to go, hell or high water (been through both). Anyway the sheetrock guys knocked on the door and asked if they could start now. That's good that it gets done sooner but we had to scramble to move and cover stuff. Plus we have to deal with people working while we are in the house.
Then my wife and I got into a huge fight. This is just so unbelievably stressful.
Another question for Mark.
I have an oven receptacle that needs to be replaced. They wired the aluminum wires directly to it. Do they make aluminum compatible 220 receptacles or do I need to use alumiconn connectors? The wire is pretty thick and I don't think the connectors i used for the 12 gauge wire will work.
The first one I looked at on home depot's website is AL/CU rated, so good for either copper or aluminum to wire directly to it. Just make sure the one you buy has AL stamped on it. If you want to use an abundance of caution you can buy some nolox and squirt a little on the wires when you connect them to the receptacle, but it shouldn't be necessary if the receptacle is rated for AL.
Hope your time away helps, boat. Going somewhere interesting?
The first one I looked at on home depot's website is AL/CU rated, so good for either copper or aluminum to wire directly to it. Just make sure the one you buy has AL stamped on it. If you want to use an abundance of caution you can buy some nolox and squirt a little on the wires when you connect them to the receptacle, but it shouldn't be necessary if the receptacle is rated for AL.
Thanks. I read the fine print on the one I already bought and it says its ok for aluminum, plus there was already some sort of glop on the wires so all good. Thanks!
My favorite thing we did in NYC was taking a pedicab tour of Central Park. Have done the tour twice with this guy. He's pretty entertaining and knowledgable:
My favorite thing we did in NYC was taking a pedicab tour of Central Park. Have done the tour twice with this guy. He's pretty entertaining and knowledgable:
Cool. We'll probably check that out. Our hotel is right next to Central Park.
Sheetrock guys are done putting up sheetrick and taping and floating. Another guy will do the texturing monday.
The crew was 2 girls and a guy. Boss man wasn't around. They were a well oiled machine. Did fantastic work and were really fast. I rarely do this but I was so impressed with the job they did that I gave them some side money.
House is starting to look like a house again.
Got the boat lift working and started the motors. All good. I still need to replace the breaker but it works for now.
For no good reason, the following occurred to me yesterday. In a storm, how do you keep the boat from filling with water?
I know the cabin part is waterproof. It seems to me when there's a huge rain, the open part would fill. Seems like that would be really heavy. Ever enough to sink a boat simply by filling with rain?
It has an automatic bilge pump. It kicks on when the water in the boat gets a few inches high.
also has self bailing decks
Hehe
Random d1 ny thoughts.
Laguardia is much nicer than I remember it. They must have given it a total makeover since I was here.
The streets are not nearly as busy with foot traffic as i remember it. Maybe everyone works from home now?
Our hotel sucks. Its in a prime location and not cheap, but the air conditioning is almost nonexistent and it is warm here. Our room was hot and when I said something about it the guy said they turned it off for the winter. I pressed him on it and they sent an "engineer " who said our "line" was struggling so they moved us to another room. Somewhat better but not great. They gave us a fan.
$10.00 cup of coffee... .
New York sucks. Think Archie Bunker, not the Algonquin Round Table.
Just finished walking through Central Park to the metropolitan museum of art.
We couldn't have asked for better weather. The trees are in fall foliage and beginning to drop leaves. The park is wonderful.
The museum was awesome.
We're resting now. Lots of walking so far.
Headed to a show tonight.
Oh yeah, we saw a cab driver intentionally hit a pedicab. They don't like each other.
The elevators in this hotel are somewhat challenging. You have to put your key card in a reader that is pretty iffy at best and there is a reader on just one side of the elevator so when it is full, and it is always full, you have to squeeze through people to do it. Then you have to find your floor button which is almost impossible because they aren't lighted and the elevator is really dark. Every person we've met struggles with it and complains about it. This morning we waited 15 minutes to get on one that wasn't packed with people.
We saw the Harry Potter play last night. Good but a bit too long.
