Rub A Dub Dub...

Here's a quick update. Miles came over this weekend and we finally got the tub laid into the frame. We put down a thick layer of concrete as a footer to support and secure the tub from shifting. It probably still will shift a bit after a few fill-ups, but hopefully not too much. Pressing the tub down into the concrete was similar to closing the lid on a waffle iron.



I got the drain pipe in too. Joining CVP pipe is way easier than soldering copper pipe.

Post post

The toughest part about doing all of the remodeling ourselves, is not knowing the order of how things should be done. Trial and error, and problem solving have become my biggest hobbies (that and playing "bite-my-hands" with Chevy [see below for the lowdown on the cat from Anne]). The tub has been the main project for me the last few weeks, and I feel like it could have gone much faster, but most of the time I spent working around decisions and setbacks. I knew I had to build the frame for the tub. How much of a ledge should I put around the rim? How much wood do I need? more than I thought. It was nice that the instructions with the tub gave me the exact measurements for the frame. The tough part for me was how much longer I had to cut the wood to make the ledge. Oops, those eight pieces I just just cut are too short.
Here's me working:



Anyway, I got the frame built finally. At this point we realized that the tub is pretty darn heavy, and when a tub that size is full of water, it is going to be super heavy. Add myself into the mix and we're talking heavy-heavy. All that on the floor of a house that is already pretty old adds up to an achy house.

To ease our minds and to alleviate future worries, I put in a Lally Column to support the joists below the tub. This thing has 16,000 lbs of support.



After that all I had to do was nail in the frame, cut an outlet box, install the outlet for the tub power and cut the rough-in for the tub drain through two inches of real hardwood and sub floor. Can you see why this has taken me forever?

Well here's the progress as of tonight:



The rough-in.



At last, the next step is to drop the tub into the frame. Then there's only about twenty more things left to do before we can bathe!

I Shot A Weed in Denver Just to Watch it Die

Rewind to our laborious Labor Day weekend. We pretty much killed our lawn. Not only is it all weeds, it's all weeds that have had the run of the place for some time. The same pestilence reigns next door and across the street, as if the weeds existed before the street was paved. Witness exhibit A, a modest example of the offending breed:



The root is like a carrot! Anyway, we have the ugliest lawn on the block now, and that's an accomplishment. I hate it, but we really can't address the outside until we have a few more basic comforts in place. It's cooling off, and still no tub. Bren's working on it (more on that later), but it can't be done soon enough. Last night, I took a nice hot bath...I set the washing machine to the hot setting. Enough said.

The living room walls completely resurfaced, the ceiling has been giving me fits. The cove is finally sanded, after we attempted to devise all manner of curved sanding mechanisms, including attaching a halved length of sandpaper-covered 4" PVC pipe to the electric sander, to no avail. Finally, it ended up being good, old-fashioned elbow grease that did the trick. We are going to put moulding just below the curve, and around those cool ceiling tiles I mentioned before. We'll paint the area between the moulding white. And the tiles.



All this sanding creates a lot of dust. Just ask Chevy, who, as it turns out, is actually a boy.



He looks like a skunk. Chevy, by the way, is an estimated 9 weeks old now. He's gained a pound since we found him, which means he's a whopping...two pounds. An active fellow, he's inspired some unexpected construction around the house:



We took some rope we used to secure our belongings in the moving van and wrapped it around the banister in the bonus room, creating the ultimate scratching/climbing post. You can't really see him, but he's having a blast.

Am I one of those...



NOOOOOOOOOO!