The end of the week

It was our goal to get this end of the house done by Friday and we almost made it, but not quite. We're in the home stretch.

Over the weekend I'll be catching up with painting the siding we've just put up.

Sunday Edition

Paul is connecting the vent portion of the line here. Note how the pipe makes a 90 turn and goes straight up. On the left you see where the drain goes down. There will be a sink and tub located here

This is where the washing machine will be, with a toilet on the other side of the wall. I had to open the windows to help vent the fumes from the PVC pipe cleaner and cement

Today my uncle Paul came over and we went at the plumbing. We made good progress and I'm in good shape to continue where we left off. What's obvious to me now that wasn't as clear before is how drains go hand in hand and are nearly mirrored by vents. If water is going down, there is a pipe going up to allow the water to drain without creating suction at what ever fixture is being used. Makes sense--I've just never really thought about it much.

I feel really grateful to Paul coming over and giving up part of his weekends to help me get this done.

Weekend homework

Today I decided to build a set of stairs that will lead down the hatch to the basement at the rear of the house. I've built stairs before with others having done the calculations, but never built stairs from start to finish myself. I though tackling a low profile set would be a good place to start.

I spent a little time this afternoon doing the calculations for the rise and run and then checked the numbers on a story stick at the location in the stairwell and it came within an 1/8", so I was pretty pleased. Math can be very cool.

I then laid out the cuts with a framing square with square gauges attached at points of rise and run I'd calculated. The framing square is then laid against the edge of the 2x12 and each step is marked.

Having cut the first stringer I tried it out and, to my satisfaction, it fit. I cut the other two and called it quits for the afternoon, since cutting the stringers was the aspect I was most concerned about. I'll finish the assembly tomorrow morning and we'll have our first set of stairs in the house.