Focus....

I can sit here and say, “Yes! Since my time off from work, I have been a diligent worker and have been working on the apartment upstairs” and/or also say “everything is going to according to plan”…. But that wouldn’t be the truth…With the snow and extreme cold over the last couple of days, my patients with this house has been running thin. But more on that later…I have been living here for over 5 months and I feel drained from all of the work. I have to admit, with all of the set backs, I wonder will I ever get the upstairs completed. As you can probably notice, I’m starting to lose focus…I wonder in the New Year if this place will eventually bring me happiness… I have to admit, every time I take a step forward, I feel like I’m taking two steps back…My plans have been adjusted several times due to the set backs. But that’s life... Nothing goes according to plan… Murphy’s Law 101….

Anyway, as a yearly tradition, many of us make New Year’s resolution, a decree and/or a mission statement. I wish all of your resolutions come true...I however, normally don’t make a New Year’s resolutions per say… But this year, I do have two, plus the standard ones…. You know get in shape, stop eating chocolate and so on… Well, I will reveal only one of my wishes… Sorry, the other one is kind of personnel, plus this journal is about the house…. “My wish is to get the upstairs ready for an occupant before 2010” Yes that was way too easy…. But let’s move on…

I had initially planned on working upstairs over the holidays. But I had a personal reason that caused the delay… I honestly have to admit though, it was worth the postponement…But, I also can not forget the set backs that didn’t help... The set back was the furnace. Part of the problem is that the water storage within the furnace. The water within the furnace is used to create steam to heat the house. The water is evaporating way too quickly, in-turn causing me to refill the furnace twice a day. When the furnace kicks on, the apartment would sound like a steam locomotive racing across the tracks trying to get Marty McFly back to 1985…

Additionally, because of the one inlet and outlet pipe to heat the house, a banging noise can be heard. The banging noise is caused when the hot steam air is blocked by trapped water. The banging noise can be heard as if someone is hitting the pipes with a sledge hammer. The noise is deafening at 4 in the morning… I believe I may have found the source of the disrupting noise, but I need to investigate further to resolve this issue...

But to stop the time travel of McFly, I was able to finally fix the pressure valve issue. The problem was with a pressure valve in my appartment. I had previously mentioned this valve. It turns out that it was a subassembly that was threaded into an adapter. Here are the photos showing the assembly.

Note the damage walls and floor caused by the dispersed water vapors. I had to cut back the carpet to remove the metal cover.

Here is a photo showing the old valve. The adapter portion was originally flush against the radiator and was difficult to differentiate, thus causing me to remove the wrong portion of the valve.
Here is a photo of the disassembled valve.

Here is the replacement valve...

Within the bathroom, the light fixture was finally installed. The wall was repaired and painted.
The big project that was accomplished over the holidays was the dining room floor. You may remember the results from the cracked radiator. I removed all of the water damaged wood and investigated the joist further. Luckily the joists were not damaged. Here are the photo sequences of the repaired process.

Photo showing the removed damaged wood and flooring.

Photo showing all of the water damaged wood removed and gaining visual access to the floor joist

Here I installed a new piece of 2X4 to help with installing a new floor section.

Plywood was cut to fit the access hole.

Because the existing subfloor is so thick, about 3 inches, I installed two pieces of 2X4 to help make the floor level.

After securing the two 2X4's, a larger piece of plywood was secured on top of the 2X4…

To complete this task, a piece of Luan Plywood will be used over the new piece of plywood. Then I will install replacement peal and stick tiles to finish the job… The only thing left is to get a replacement radiator… Ok until next time..