Kiddie Closet

The small space under the stairs will be the kids toy closet & hidey-hole.
Tom & Mandy cut a door down to size & stained it to match the rest of our doors.
Leftover carpet from another house was cut & installed by Mandy (the carpet layer) & a light fixture is in. We moved the boxes of toys down from the attic, ready to unpack. Now if Uncle Tom & Mandy would quit playing in there; Elise, Griffin & Eva might be able to use it!

Water, Water Everywhere !!!

It's Friday & Mandy's off so we get to leisurely read the paper & drink our coffee...WRONG!
You know how I said in the last post we were moving forward???? Maybe, but we're also taking two steps back!
What a rude awakening.....there's a puddle on the hall floor & as our eyes travel up there's a large bubble in the paint on the wall! There is a water ring around the ceiling light (and no I didn't turn the light switch on, you don't have to tell me twice)no biggie-Tom was just going to go watch his financial news & drink his coffee. HELLO!!! I got a dishpan, a towel & a razor, slit the bubble to let it drain. What the Heck!?! Well-follow the water right? Tom checks upstairs (yep-his coffee's getting cold) & the leak is in the furnace room, there's water on the floor & it's spraying out of these 2 valve things. Now, obviously it's not supposed to be doing that...so we need to determine the problem here. This is where I go watch the news & drink my coffee, hey, we all have our specialties-mine is clean-up, not furnace troubleshooting! Tom puts his thinking cap on & I take off for a bit....you know...things to do, places to go, people to see...etc.

I get home & there is a raised dry wall seam on the wall out side the office. Tom??? What's this from? Neither one of remember seeing it before. I look down to the floor & damned if there isn't another puddle of water! Where the heck is this leak coming from? We're inside looking, we're outside looking & can't find a thing.

You can see where the ceiling in the hall is wet, so Tom cuts out part of the ceiling & here comes the water...and keeps coming ...I had to put a trash can under it to catch it! Well we may have found the water, but determining the actual source of the leak is not going to be easy. Underneath the radiant heat pipe is a layer of insulation that looks & feels like aluminum foil. Tom's thinking they somehow must have pierced a heat pipe with a staple when they were laying the sub floor in the loft. Can't figure out how, he calculated the thickness of the plywood & the luann & even gave himself a 1/2" of wiggle room just to be on the safe side. The leak could be anywhere and running along the insulation until it finds a low spot. So where do you start looking? If it's in the kitchen, it's a smooth ceiling & we'd have to redo the whole thing, at least in the hall the ceiling is textured. Well, long story short (OOPS-too late for that) there was a rogue strip of 1" staples that got inserted into the staple gun.Tom gets up to the hole he cut, feeling around & looking with a flash light...what's are the odds that the section of ceiling he cut out is the area the tubing was pierced??? Excellent!!! You could actually see the water spurting out of the pipe & the staple that came thru the floor.Talk about a silver lining (no pun intended), only one puncture despite all the staples that were used & in an area where the ceiling could easily be repaired! I got the job of "the little dutch boy with his finger in the dyke", Tom got the parts to patch the hole & Mandy (when she comes back) will get to patch the ceiling. Leak repaired with minimal damage!

Oh...and the leak in the furnace room... well that was from 2 air purge caps that were missing their valve covers. The constant water leak in the radiant heat pipe caused the system to keep trying to build the pressure back up. The pressure couldn't build back up because 2 of the 5 caps were missing (just forgot to get put back on by the guy who worked on the system & it wasn't my guy!). The water just kept spewing out & soaking the floor of the furnace room. Once the leak was repaired & new caps put on we were fine! Just Fine!

Now it's Saturday & remember my job is clean up? Well I'm still cleaning up water & wet drywall (hmmn-wet drywall??? sounds like an oxymoron), mopping the floor in the foyer, I go to move the rug by the front door & find it's soaking wet underneath! The sealer on the tile floor has turned a milky white color! Will this never end??? Don't know if it's from the furnace leak & followed the baseboard 'til it reached the carpet, or from last winter's ice damming (which hasn't been repaired yet) & happened again. Tom & I have a difference of opinion on that....we'll probably never know. Even though that sealer did look pretty bad at first it did dry up clear!

The Loft

I got my blue wall!!! Mandy has painted one wall in the loft this beautiful blue. A choice Tom wasn't quite comfortable with at first (as he wasn't with most of the color choices), but it has grown on him.
Now it's time to start work on the loft floor.
Tom & Mandy are once again using that smelly self-leveler to correct some fluctuation's in the plywood floor. It's Thursday-my Eva day- so we're taking off & letting them stink up the house!
They'll install the luann over the plywood-glue, then staple it down. This will provide a firm base to install the hardwood on. We are moving forward!!!!

Mouse Holes????

So what's with the mouse holes you ask? We had a leak on the 2nd floor near the upper patio last fall. Tom & Mandy thought they had the leak fixed, we have since determined it's not. What was our 1st clue?? Maybe the water on the dining room floor? Tom had to cut a hole to determine the amount of moisture inside the wall. The "mouse hole" was cut low enough so that once the leak is fixed, the baseboard will cover the hole. Testing the amount of moisture in the wall required the purchase of a new tool (read "toy") known as a Moisture Test Meter. I'm not really sure who wanted to play, I mean work, with it more. There is definitely moisture in the wall as our meter tells us so!The kicker here is, there is a leak in the exact same place in the Family room & a "mouse hole" has now been cut into that wall too! Unfortunately there is water damage to the paint in that room. More ripples-more repair work! We'll have to wait for Spring to determine the source of the leaks & repair them; and as we all know...Spring in NY is nothing you can plan on! Therefore the floors in both the dining room & the family room can't be installed until the leaks are fixed. And yes...we continue to curse that contractor!

The Dining Room Progress Continues......

Our dining room had chalk marks all over the lower half of the walls..Tom actually let Mandy draw on on our walls - says "I needed a visual". The trim work on the lower half was drawn out in chalk so I could "see" what it would look like. They really want me to be happy with it before they start cutting all the wood. They also know once they start cutting, there had better be a damn good reason for all the sawdust in the winter.
The Crown molding is installed & stained! I love the antique finish, it brings out the detail!!

OK-so we have trim for walls, trim for the ceiling and .....
I'm So Excited...the ceiling light is hung!
Tom & Mandy repaired the old antique table runners so it opens easier..
we can now easily have dinner for 12!
Well, when the dining room is finished that is....

The recessed lighting has been installed behind the crown molding!

And all those chalk marks on the walls.....
and all the sawdust....
I'd say it was worth it!
It came out Beautiful!

And that little mouse hole in the corner.....
well that's a whole other story!