If It Looks Like a Duct...

Are you ready to reach a new, deeper level in your friendship with our church home?  Take a deep breath and join me in the basement.

Yes, so far I've been very selective in the views you've been getting of the place.  I wanted to spare you the shock and discomfort at seeing how we really live.  =)

I'm still being selective.

Do you remember when Paul's parents were staying here and helping us get the bathroom ready for us to move in last winter?  The basement hasn't changed much since then, except to fill up with our stuff when we moved in.

We're not in a position to make any changes just yet, but it's nice to have a plan.  I looooove to plan, but up till recently, I kept running into problems with the infrastructure of the downstairs space.  The most prominent feature down here is the ductwork, and second to that are the beam supports.

I just didn't know how to work around them.  Oh, if only they didn't need to be there!

Well, do you remember how I said I'd we could replace our furnaces with something better?  That something better is radiant floor heating.  Beautiful, comfortable heat right where we need it.  And even better: no forced air, no ductwork!

How liberating!

Freshly freed from the metal monster, I set down this week to explore the limits of a space which still needed to:

• have at least one window for each bedroom.
• maximize the amount of natural light from the windows.
• allow for the beam supports.
• provide a place for using both of our vintage stoves, one gas from the 40's and one electric from the 50's.

Little did I realize that I really could get a master bathroom out of it!  A friend of mine had suggested as much, and now we can make it work!

Oh, but there was one detail that really made Paul uncomfortable as he peered over my shoulder at my developing plans: how were we going to get the waste water to the septic tank?

"Easy," I said, without really knowing what I was talking about.  "Upflush toilets!"

And so we researched them a little and found that, while the system is not going to be cheap, it will be a solid choice for both the bathroom and the kitchen.  And so worth it.

For those who are prone to study the floor layout, here are a couple of points not to be missed:

Paul thinks the below-grade wall on the right which separates the basement from a dirt-filled crawlspace can be pushed back a foot or two, giving us more room.  If we can accomplish this, then the bathroom and pantry will also shift over, giving us more room to access the dishwasher in the kitchen.  One could say that I'm rather counting on that being the case.

This layout doesn't show the entire floor plan of the basement; on the other side of the wall on the left is the bathroom and the water heater.  Our freezer and table saw currently occupy the future laundry area, but you'll see that we've made room for the freezer in the pantry.  Until we have a storage shed built, we'll have to let the table saw stay where it is.

The light gray features in the drawings indicate features that currently exist but will be removed to make way for the new features.

We will open up the stairway to unite the upstairs and downstairs living spaces.  The area below the stairs will still be for storage, and the new electric panel is already located there, waiting to be hooked up to a new electric service.

Having an open stairway will be a happy change for the cats: being downstairs is like obtaining the holy grail to them and their little questing spirits.

The Social Ladder

It's that time of year again. Only this time we have have curious cats to deal with.  Most of the climbers managed to find their way down without falling.

But oh, they're so naughty!

(Paul was not amused.  He was less amused than I was when we came home from church to discover the full length of the nave floor covered in a complex web of yarn one Sunday afternoon.)

Answered Prayer...in Progress

Remember this post?

God provided the shredder!  Okay, it's not exactly what we had in mind:  it's pretty old; it's only a shredder and not a chipper, so we can only shred branches up to 1/2  inch in diameter; it doesn't work.  Yet.

Here's what we've learned from this: when a person offers to sell you an item whose functionality is unknown for a certain price, offer half that amount until it is known if the item is in working condition.  If it works, pay the full balance.  If it doesn't work, fix it, then negotiate a lower price and pay the balance of that reduced amount.

We thought of this after we discovered that the shredder doesn't work.  Paul's still working to fix it.

But we don't regret the $20 we spent on it.  With the trimming we'll continue to do on the fruit trees, we'll have plenty of opportunity to use it.  And wood chips are far more useful to us than a column of smoke and a pile of ashes. 

Yeah, it's pretty old.  Pray with us that replacing the coil will be easy and cheap.  =)

Stink Hole

Under that board lurks a hole.  In that hole skulks a tank.  A septic tank.

It sounds sinister, but it's actually good news:  given the age and the purpose of this building, we weren't completely sure we had one.  The previous owner absolutely refused to allow a septic inspection before we purchased the place, so we went ahead on the assumption that it would absolutely need a new septic system installed, and we settled for a percolation test to see how suitable the land would be.

Talking to the neighbors in the old parsonage one day, it became crystal clear why the previous owner refused that inspection: he thought the church and the parsonage were on the same system.  This seemed to be common knowledge with the renters and the landlord of the property next door, but it seems not to be so.

Talking with the owner one day, he indicated that his tank was on the opposite side of the parsonage yard.  However, we could see very plainly from the hole that Paul had already dug that we also have a tank on the opposite corner of our building.  This was very welcome news to us.

The question now is whether or not we can have the tank pumped.  On one hand, it is an old steel tank and if it is not sound, it could collapse.  On the other hand, if the rest of the dirt is dug out, there won't be any significant weight to strain the integrity of the structure, and pumping it could be safely and easily done.  Then, after a few showers and the tank has been filled, the hole can be refilled.

While the septic system really does need to be brought up to legal standards, we no longer feel like we're living on borrowed time.  It would just be really nice to be able to deal with this before winter arrives, so we're praying over this project, too.

Thanks for joining us.

Keeping Warm

I didn't want to at first, but Paul thought we really should stretch plastic across the windows. There are storms on the outside, but the various cracks and holes in the stained glass pieces weren't doing us any favors. So on Wednesday, while Paul was working to put insulation back up in the bathroom ceiling, I climbed up the extension ladder countless times with the rolls of double sided tape and sheets of shrinkable plastic and managed to seal off four of the six windows.

I'm pretty satisfied with how they look. Time will tell whether or not this will help us keep our 40-year-old furnace heating costs down.