New post! New State! New house! New renovation!

 

A lot has changed!

Speed round! I installed a pool for my daughter this past summer!

Sofia feels she is too old to have a "kiddie" room and asked me to get rid of the carpet, paint and furnish it to be more mature. I moved the electricity for the TV so that I could get rid of a cord hanging down. (I don't like that!)

Well I have a post of me refinishing the basement after a flood and guess what?! Well... my pump jammed and I had to put new floors again. I like this color better anyway.

In the past, I rebuild a cement step but it was time for a new cement patio and railings! I did NOT do this work ha. 

 

We decided to get a pool but didn't have electric accessible for the pump. This was the last project that took 3 days! long days! over 2 days of digging the trench to 20" deep and another day to put the conduit and pull the electric.

My helper making sure we are deep enough to be up to code.

This isn't the latest image because I did put down grass seed but it's close. Finally finished though!

Long time no post!

So I've been busy at work and the jobs I've been doing at home have been too small to post. Here are a couple of the smaller things around the house. I broke up the bottom platform since it was split in half and crumbling. I really took this one old school and smashed it apart with a sledgehammer and mixed all 880lbs of concrete by hand!! It was a crazy hot day but I got it done. It turned out fine, I have my issues but it looks a lot better now. I did use rebar to reinforce the step (I know it was overkill but I wanted to make sure it didn't split again) Something that was important is that since the old slab was split, it no longer pitched away from the house and water was probably pouring close to the foundation. Fortunately, no issues but while building this new slab, I made sure to duplicate the previous size and pitch it away from the house. Unfortunately, I wanted to use patio paint to unify everything but because of the new concrete, I have to wait at least a month. I'll test the moisture of the slab in a couple weeks to see how it's looking.

This is a super small job that took about an hour. This was a last-minute fix to the windowsill in the basement. It was extremely brittle and I wanted it to look nicer so I bought some pine and laminated it over the existing base. The thing that was interesting was that I didn't want to carry a large board on my car so I had to buy two 12" boards and an 8" to sandwich together. If this was our forever home, I would've made it a single sheet. Anyway, I didn't want to take all of those measurements so I took pieces of paper, placed it all around the base, used tape and made a template. I then transferred it onto my boards (that I sandwiched together with clamps) I cut them out and it fit like a glove! I know, I know, I wasted paper but I wanted to see if it would work. I added a quarter round to the front and it will do. Let the next owners change it. I still have to prime and paint this but figured I would share.

Prevention pump

The main reason I had to redo the basement was that the sump pump turned off because we had lost power. I wanted to ensure that this doesn't happen again so I installed a water powered backup system. Tested and works great! Overall quick installation minus the crappy copper union that failed and I replaced it with a sharkbite coupling. Sharkbite fittings are great! Simple to use but expensive.

Water check valve to prevent contamination to our main water supply.

Insulated

Shut off installed if I ever have to service the pump.

                                          New Pump. 

Molding is done!

I still have to put a second coat on the walls, paint the molding and change doors but it's starting to feel like a room again.

These pics are old and don't have paint on the molding yet.

(waterlogged books that I couldn't part with on the upper shelf)

I still have to change all the doors since they are too short now.

This is the tool room weird molding angles. Thank goodness for angle readers!

Decided not to paint the tool room since it's just my workroom. It's primed and I can always paint it in the future.

Nothing to write home about but the water main access panel is installed.