House Farts

I bet I got your attention on this title. :o)

HW reinforced the concrete board in the bathroom so I could start tile work. It involves screwing down hardiboard screws to the subfloor, and each screw needs to be really in there, almost counter-sunk. As a result almost every single screw gets massive torque applied and once it stops spinning, the drill that you're using as a screwdriver spins out of the head of the screw with a loud "zippp" sound. Sometimes high and whiny, sometimes low and gutteral.

From outside, the house sounds like it has really, really bad gas. More "character". It's an old fart house anyway.

And speaking of smelly stuff, we're hoping that having an HVAC company come in and seal all the ductwork will get the "old smell" out of the house. Especially after a good rain, some rooms in the house smell like "old house" smell . . . a classic 1960s brick ranch smell that is incredibly common around here. To my embarrassment, one of my nephews pointed out to me after hugging me that I smell like my house, which ain't a good thing, in my opinion. Hopefully, the sealing will allow the wonderful smells of out-gassing paint, polyurethane, and sheetrock mud (new house smell) to finally start winning out. Yay toxic chemicals!

The sealing of the ductwork was interesting. First, they find the biggest air return in the house, tape up every last vent opening/register/grill in the house (including the other air return) and run a blow test on it and measure the volume. Before the sealing of the ducts, we were losing around 10 cubic feet per minute (CFMs) through all the cracks in the ductwork.

Then they go under the house and seal all the cracks in any connection in the ductwork, and make sure that all the duct vents going into the house are connected/attached to the subfloor with this white mastic stuff. (Oddly, it doesn't smell much, the way most glues do. I wonder why they don't make more things out of this un-smelly stuff??) After the sealing, they cut CFMs in half, to around 5 CFMs, which incidentally is better than what they require for new construction. They also measured it in a different way, measuring vacuum units of pressure, and we went from -16 pascals to -25 pascals (ask a mechanical engineering major if you need to know more details than that--I'm just a parrot). We didn't know this, but by improving our leaking ducts, we also qualify for a utility company rebate, which ain't bad.

And we were told the back room ductwork looked like a hack did it. Surprise, surprise. We know Larry didn't like paying for high quality anything . . . I wonder what the trade-off was for higher electric bills versus the couple hundred he saved for paying a hack to "install" ductwork? First off, the line coming from the main trunk line was only half on there. And then the rest of the ductwork was leaking like crazy. I bet that back room will be WAY cozier now this winter. And the next time it's 106 outside, we might actually be able to stand being back there.

I still can't believe he paid for hardwoods and smooth ceilings and tons of windows, but didn't want to pay for working gutters, real sheetrock walls, or proper HVAC. I'll never understand cheap people and their logic . . .

Did I forget to mention they went ahead and installed our poo room fan as well? It's SO lovely to pay someone else and poof! it's done. Sigh.

While HW worked on taming the yard before it gets too cool, I spent yesterday working on the tile border for the master bath floor. While it looks simple, it's deceptive. The border tile has to be cut from sheets into 4-tile-wide strips and then layed laid lurd placed on the floor and have the corners connect in a cohesive way that looks like they were meant to be that way, but in fact, took 5 hours to organize, arrange and place. Intentional nonchalantness. And the funny part is, this is the part I absolutely LOVE. No kidding. I hate sheetrock and mud, but I could tile like this all day.

Before caulking and painting, here are the niches above the vanity area. The two big niches will have recessed mirrors in them on hinges to be able to access the shelving behind. The middle niche even has adjustable shelving so we can put glass shelves or wood shelves in there for decorative stuff.

The lower window of the bathroom. This way, it's more private, but we don't need those gosh-awful blinds in there that hold moisture and draw dust to them like magnets forming an indestructible paste. Maybe we'll do a washable curtain or something later, maybe not. All I used was Gallery Glass paint and fake leading to create the pattern, and used the same paint, but with four different brush techniques, to make it look like different kinds of glass. The coolest thing is that once it dries, if you don't like it, you peel it off and do something else.

 

It's raining today, so I don't know how much I'll get done on the tile work (since I need to be outside, cutting tile, ironically, on a wet saw. I guess you'll find out soon enough!