On Sunday, Julie and Bob were at our place to help work on the house. It was an all-plants weekend for Julie, as she shifted from running her annual plant sale just yesterday, to helping us tame the out-of-control front yard.
On Saturday, Liz and I were in Frankfort to help out with Julie’s annual plant sale. We arrived the night before, and were all up early to help out (Julie had gotten up around 5:30AM, looking to water her plants before the visitors arrived).
Today, Bob stopped by after work to discuss the next plans/phase of the kitchen work. Liz is primarily running the show here, but a lot of conversation was had trying to figure out where things will end up going, outlets, that sort of thing.
You can’t see it in this picture, but Bob, Liz, and I are all smiling like crazy watching the dogs on Jake’s bike. We heard some great stories about how other people (pedestrians, other bicyclists, and even cars) reacted when seeing these guys go down the street.
I’ve lost track of how many layers this kitchen has. Liz tore through a layer or so of plywood already, and we had another layer of tile to get through. Today, we were going to be removing everything – going all the way down to the joists.
Our goal for the day: build some additional plant stands, and relocate flowers from the basement to the outside.
Julie was kind enough to bring over some home made food for us, which we re-heated in our microwave for dinner. She’d been working on prepping food for us the past day or so, and it was absolutely delicious.
My family came into town on Saturday, and we hung out downtown with them on Saturday night. On Sunday, we all met up in Chinatown for Dim Sum, along with Liz’s parents. We met up at Phoenix, and this was Julie and Bob’s first experience with Dim Sum (my mom spent a lot of the meal introducing various dishes to them, and making sure their plates were never empty).
Bob picked up a new AC coil today – though it’s still pretty chilly out, the AC components also end up getting installed as part of the process. Air conditioning isn’t something we’re really thinking about at the tail end of winter, but this will be nice to have once the weather gets warmer. If it ever gets warmer.
One of the floor joists was cut by the prior owner, and it was kind of just hanging there – not really providing much support at all, and leaving the other nearby joist to take on a majority of the weight. As a result, the floor was bowing a little bit.
Originally, we were going to resize the bedrooms and make them a bit smaller (but equal). With some additional discussion today, we decided to make the master bedroom a little larger… and to make the adjacent bedroom (the guest bedroom) a little smaller.
Despite the heavy snowfall, Bob trekked over to Hyde Park early in the morning… and we set about relocating the furnace… once and for all. In addition to simply moving the unit, Bob also had to direct the vent to the opposite side of the machine, replace the switch, patch the existing return, cut out a new return, adjust the vent, and re-pipe the gas line.
The bit of bad news: we were unable to track down the source of the leak. Though we saw it initially, the additional exploration ended up revealing very little. To top things off, the water in the tub stopped working completely (when it had been working fine, previously). Not a good sign, especially since we couldn’t identify where the leak originated from in the first place.
With the old program, I was imagining the length of time that transpired between when it was lost in the house and when we discovered it. With the coin… I was awed at both the time and distance it must have traveled, before we encountered it.
Bob arrived at the house early today, and had all the concrete for the water heater pretty much poured in place by the time I arrived. As we were waiting around for the concrete to dry a bit more, we decided to tackle an area/opening for some future ductwork. Here he is, using a sawzall to clear out some additional room.