What home improvement work did you do today?

I was going to say sand and recoat. They obviously make those fillers. Looks like sanding wouldn't be your best bet if there are lots of those long gaps. Unless you were planning on a complete sand and finish. Look for some sawdust?

 

I wouldn't try to fill those. It may be my area but that's what a lot of floors here end up looking like when it's dry like @Squatting Pigeon mentioned.

If you try to fill them make sure it isn't something that dries hard as it may end up popping out during normal floor movement.

 

I saw something years ago on This Old House that said you can wood stain pieces of twine and stick it in the gaps. I've been meaning to do that here and haven't gotten around to it. That way you don't have to worry about expansion or shrinking.

 

Well, this sucks. It's pretty out but it sucks. Temps got down to 12 last night. Fortunately we haven't been part of the rolling blackouts yet. We have a Moen Touchsense Kitchen faucet that I installed in 2016. Didn't know until about midnight that you can't let it run. It just turns off after a certain point. If you unplug the power to it, it doesn't work at all. The newer ones sense a freeze and they drip. Anyways, I would try to walk up every few hours to turn it back on but noticed full blast was turning into a trickle at about 4 am.

Woke up this morning and my wife said we didn't have any hot water. Kitchen sink was drizzling. I bundled up, went outside to the tankless and it had an error saying there was an exhaust obstruction. Checked it and it was fine. The condensate has a long tube that is only about 4 inches off of the ground and it had filled with ice. I spent about an hour with a hairdryer and I was able to melt the ice. I cut a couple of inches off of the tube and triple wrapped it. So we have hot water again.

The kitchen sink had no cold and the refrigerator line was no longer working. I bundled up again and crawled under the house. The fridge line was wrapped but I found two cracks on it. I wrapped the cracks in Flex tape and crawled over to the sink lines. There was a point where the hot water line and cold water line cross and touched (they are both copper) - the cold water line cracked at that point. I wrapped it in flex tape. So it looks like I have at least two lines to replace at this point. Tomorrow morning is looking like 4 degrees.

No plumbers anticipate being able to get out until the end of the week or early next week. Hopefully the Flextape will hold if things thaw before we can get things fixed/replaced.

 

Dang sorry to hear man. This cold is causing some issues for people!

 

We've got it better than a lot of people so I'm thankful for that. The State's energy management told Austin Energy to temporarily shut their power off to places that didn't have essential infrastructure. They turned the power off at 1:30am and they State won't give Austin Energy permission to turn it back on again. They said it could be off through tomorrow night. My stepdaughter is one of the ones affected. At this point I'd rather have to replace some pipes than to go days without power. (knocking on wood).

Stay safe over there - weather like this usually kicks Texas in the crotch and then heads your way to wreak even more havoc.

 

Picked up some Chemical Guys Hydroslick from a local automotive detailing store. I appiled it Sunday afternoon to the shower glass doors and will report back how well it does and lasts.

 

Today was expensive. It went down to 6 last night, warmed up into the mid-20's. I had a feeling that I needed to go get some shut-off valves so I went to the local hardware store. When I got back, I took a walk around the house to inspect the hose bibs and heard water rushing. Turned off the water at the street and crawled under the house. I cut the two pipes that were leaking and put shut-off valves on them. I turned the water back on and the plumbers called. They were only doing "temporary repairs" but since I had laid in the mud and cut the pipes, they had to do a permanent fix

Turns out our stupid Moen Touchsense kitchen faucet that was too smart to drip or allow you to run water for more than an hour or so was also restricting the water pressure. We always thought it was something to do with the hot water line. While the plumbers were working on replacing the copper pipe I cut with pex, I went to Lowes to buy a new "Dumb" faucet that I could drip and picked up a Delta. I pulled out the Moen and put in the Delta and our water pressure coming out of it is AMAZING. The plumber didn't fix the hot line and it was only trickling out so we all thought there was blockage in the line. So the blockage was the damn Moen.

Anyways, expensive day but completely worth it. Now if we can just get to the weekend - we have two more winter storms heading our way then it's 60 degrees and a shitload of broken pipes all over Texas. I half expect plumbers to descend on Texas like roofers do after a big wind storm. It's gonna be bad.

 

Texas just isn't built for that shit. Same thing here in Tucson, we do shit like re-plum our houses over the roof when it's needed to avoid cutting all the walls, water pipes come out of the ground and into the house on the outside, shit like that because, well, why not.
A few years ago we had temps in the teens for hours overnight and it seemed like 1/2 the water pipes in the entire city burst.

 

When we had a hailstorm back in 2010 which is unusual for Phoenix we had all kinds of roofers coming in from out of state along with the PDR guys. We ended up getting a new roof among many other things replaced as we got hit real bad. My roofer said he was getting calls from other roofers out of state wanting to do work out here under his name and give him a kick back....he even played a couple voicemails he had received and said there's no way he'd ever let someone do that under his company's name.

Glad you got it all squared away.

 

I'm seeing a lot of that on the news - people with no power having their water pipes burst in their ceilings. Especially those in apartments.
The town we used to live in told people to stop dripping their faucets because the city is running out of water... It's crazy.

 

I turned the water supply off to our master bedroom suite.

*applause*

Ok, a bit more in-depth explanation:

We used to have a carport right off the side of our kitchen; it was 25' x 28', with a fully trussed roof built on a construction grade slab (it's like 24" thick, with metal fabric, rebar, the whole shebang). So when we bought it we said "If we ever get the money, that's going to be our master suite."

So we did, in 2016. However, since the master suite was built on the side of our house, we had two choices - either tear off all of the siding and crap before we build, or just build a new wall on the side of that. We chose the latter - it saved us like $5k.

However, we did have to punch through the bottom (just above the slab) with the water supply lines and such. The issue with this (not a huge one) is that since it's not technically one big wall (there's a very very small crack where the new siding marries up with the old siding), there's a VERY small crack where air can get in. When it gets super cold (as in, around 0F overnight), it can freeze the water lines.

My dumb @$$, however, forgot for 4 years that to combat this, they put a water shutoff valve on the cold/hot water supply line to the extension....so I've dealt with very occasionally freezing water lines right up until today when my wife said "Why didn't the builders just put a valve on the supply lines?"

Anyways...so yeah. We're blessed - subzero temps, but our electrical here is VERY stable, the foreman for the electric company lives right next door (in fact, he built our house), and all of the lines are inside the house (other than that one). We've also got a central wood furnace if the power did go out.

 

Well, demo started today in the master bathroom. There was a wall and doorway that divided the vanity from the toilet/shower area which came down. The toilet will be turned and the plumbing and vent will be relocated. The shower plumbing will be moved to the opposite side as well in preparation of the glass enclosure. Plan to install wall showerhead on the exterior wall and also run a rainfall showerhead above. Soffit is coming out and a new ceiling register will be installed with flex duct. More to come, but glad we are making some progress.

 

Does that door lead outside?

 

Is this your first winter with this floor? Real wood contracts in the winter due to the cold. Wait till it warms up and the cracks will get smaller...

 

Yes, the door with the curtain leads to the backyard.

 

Very...interesting...layout.

I can see doing that to a utility room in more northern climates where rain/mud/dirt are more of an issue. As a kid, my grandparents owned a dairy farm. You came into the back porch and went down the basement steps to a laundry/utility room that had a shower and toilet. No one came into the house from the barn without going down there to take off their boots (or a full shower and change of clothes depending on what you were doing in the barn).

 

Outside of the door there are some pavers that lead to the patio and pool. I guess the thought was that you can go straight from the pool into the bathroom without dripping water throughout the house.

 

That makes sense & is pretty convenient for fun times

 

Yep - that makes total sense then. Sort of an "attached pool house" - keep the kiddos from using the pool as their bath tub and toilet.

 

Outside view.

 

Does that thing run super hot in there? We have a ps4 and it sounds like a jet engine if the door is closed while it is on.

 

It does get warm.... we open the doors when in use.

 

Little more demo completed in the bathroom today. Saturday will get the shower pan removed. Jackhammering and plumbing will start next week.

 

Gotcha, that does make sense.

 

More backyard work. Laid down a little more sod around the firepit so that the neighborhood skunk doesn't do more damage on his next visit. Also replaced a sprinkler head that had been stuck and wasn't rotating like it should be. I then tested the sprinklers and they worked fine. Filled the dirt back in and tested them again. It seemed like there was a drop in water pressure. WTF? I had noticed that the sprinkler actuator/regulators had been leaking soI decided to check on them. When I did there was a huge amount of water puddling up. That isn't right. there was water bubbling up from one of the lines. I grab it to see if it was loose and well, it was. UGH. Grabbed a shovel and dug up the sprinkler line. Turns out the pvc elbow had come off from the line. The only thing holding it in place was all the dirt. Originally the elbow was only glued on a 1/4 of an inch. So I glued in back on and made damn sure it was seated on there correctly.


Lesson learned here, when you buy an older house have the inspector or realtor make sure every damn thing works. lol

 

Put up some paneling to cover up some iffy looking work done work by the previous owner.

 

Tore out overgrown arborvitae
Replacing with fence. Less maintenance