With what shall I mend it, dear Liza, dear Liza?

Sorry about how late in the day this post is coming, it has been a bit of a hectic week.

With the removal of the boiler system and radiators, we were left with some serious wall to patch. Unlike bucket holes, a straw just wouldn't do (I've never understood the whole straw as a patching system in that song if someone wants to explain that to me).

Philip enjoying the last moments before patching the unplastered area of our wall.

We're new to the idea of plaster walls and so we weren't exactly sure what material we should use to patch them. Our window installer  (clearly the leading expert in plaster repair) recommended quick-drying drywall compound, the kind that dries in approximately twenty minutes. His reasoning is that longer-drying mud is more likely to bubble and takes longer to be sandable, so you can do more coats faster with the quick-drying stuff. So off we went to The Home Depot (are there any other Home Depots that those orange big boxes should need the preceding "The")  and purchased it for $7 a box. We ended up using about two and a half boxes so far, and will probably buy more of it for doing the living room and guest room when we get to them. 

Sheetrock 20 "The name the pros trust" - by pros they clearly meant us.

The only food Philip makes in our kitchen is waffles, so this was right up his alley.

Before getting to the real patching, we practiced with this snow woman, our snow wasn't perfect and kept falling apart so we had some serious hole patchage to get to. (Yes, I made up that word. No, it won't be the last time.) Here's the finished result. You can also see our updates on Instagram if you follow myself or Philip.

Cassy and Concetta, in order to give a better idea of how our snow woman is posed.

Concetta - named after the person who I've made friends with at the Bomber stadium. We don't know her real name, but this word is on her sweater.

The first patching assignment we began to tackle was the baseboard radiator's previous residence, below the window in both the office and master bedroom. We mixed up the drywall compound, which I would compare to mixing pancake batter. Basically you just add more or less water depending on the consistency you're going for. We mostly followed the instructions on the box (but I've been known to be a little free with the measuring cup - we've talked about my lack of measuring skills in the past and that happens to continue in the kitchen where I prefer to "eyeball it" when baking or cooking). The final consistency ends up being crepe-like (really thin pancakes) and can definitely be a little drippy at first when it comes to troweling it on, but is best in order to get a thin and smooth coat. 

Yes I am wearing klompen slippers. Heritage heritage.

Me patching away, as you can see we have some floor to patch after this from where the radiator pipes came up from the basement.

The basic idea was a bunch of thin coats, so we spent the past few days patching, followed by sanding, followed by patching again. It's not easy work, and it was complicated by... well, I'll let Philip explain it in his own words:

"Some mistakes are worse than others. On a scale of "minor miscalculation" to "Steve Smith in the '86 Stanley Cup Final," this one might not even rank.

You see, we've been patching over the spaces where our baseboard radiators used to be, and if you've patched an area that large and with more than one section you know there's an intense amount of sanding required. And being so close to the floor, it's tough to get a good angle with decent leverage.

Now, put yourself in my shoes. You're halfway through the sanding you have to do. Your arm and shoulder are hurting. And you look over and see a power palm sander.

I made what I thought was the logical choice. I even remembered to close the heat vents in the room and wear a dust-filtering mask. But I didn't remember a few other also-critical details. Which leads me to my list of 5 Things I Should Have Thought Of (But Didn't):

5. How much dust will this create?
4. Where will that dust go?
3. Should I put the door to this room back up first so the dust stays contained in this room?
2. Should I attach the dust filter to the palm sander?
1. (Halfway through) Is it getting cloudy in here?

Long story short, when I finally looked up from what I was doing, the room looked like how I imagine a London morning, except replace Big Ben with Dumb Philip. And when I walked out into the hallway, it wasn't much better. It appears I had inadvertently discovered the Best Way to Make Your Whole House Dusty in Half an Hour Or Less! (Patent pending.)

As you might have guessed (since she probably would have talked me out of it), my wife was not home at the time, and so I fired off the following texts.

I love her objection at the end. You're about 20 minutes too late with that one, honey.

On the plus side, the dust did make my hair look salt-and-peppery. I'm not going to be so forward as to say I looked devastatingly handsome; I'll just say, if I go gray instead of bald, my wife is a lucky lady."

Thanks Philip. By way of update, the walls did get pretty smooth, thanks to another layer or two of the crepe batter and my mom coming to help me out.

And, yes, the dust is still everywhere, partly because we've been advised it's not smart to vacuum it up (it can really clog a vacuum's filter), so we've mainly been avoiding wearing black socks and eagerly awaiting the day we'll be done with the patching so we can Swiffer the house to death.

But that won't happen until we're all done. And we can't show you the final results until we tell you the tale of how we patched the holes left by the A/C vents. Which were in the ceiling. As in above our heads. Despite making those sentences real short, they don't convey the epic nature of this challenge. But believe me. You. Will. Be. Stunned. (There, that's better.)

By the way, anyone willing to leave a comment with your biggest, bone-headiest mistake you've ever made while renovating? It would really make Philip feel like less of a doorknob (or at least less alone in his door-knobbedness).

Putting the "Fun" back in "Furnace Install"

Today we get our second guest post by my husband, Philip. If you missed last week's introduction and his entertaining perspective on the gutting of our basement, check it out. He was so excited to guest post, his Friday posts may become a regular occurrence. Anyone have a good name for what we should call it? He came up with "TGIP" and "Regular Phil" ("You know, what you say to the gas jockey?" "Yeah, but what does it have to do with a blog?" "Ummm..."). Needless to say, we're open to suggestions, so fire away in the comments!

Putting the "Fun" back in "Furnace Install"

Last week, I told you about how gutting the basement became a top priority when we decided to replace our old hot-water heating system with a forced air system. Now, going in, I thought that replacing our old boiler, old air conditioner, and old hot water tank with a new high-efficiency furnace and A/C  and a bigger electric HWT would be a massive undertaking that I was woefully unprepared to tackle. I was right on every count. And yet, I'm able to laugh about it now. (Ha. Ha. Okay, maybe laughing about it is a stretch still.)

Actually, it wasn't all that bad, but only because of the gracious assistance provided by a few people. Let me walk you through the process by introducing you to a few of the people that made it special.

My friend Chris

Do you ever come to the end of a major renovation and think, "if only I knew when I started what I know now... if only I could McFly back in time and tell me the things I needed to know to make this go smoothly... and maybe provide me some winning Powerball numbers." I actually have found a way to make it work (except for the lottery part); I've replaced the plutonium-powered Delorean with one of my best friends since Kindergarten, Chris.

Because of Chris, I must classify a flux capacitor and 1.21 jigawatts as a "want" rather than a "need."

Chris and his wife Nicole are coming to the end of their own massive house reno, meaning they, by a stroke of great fortune, have tackled every house project we expect to over the next few years (plus a few others). So when we started talking about pulling out the pipes and radiators, he was full of dos and don'ts that really served us well. Top on his list? "Don't cut into a pipe full of disgusting black sludge-water and have it spray into your father-in-law's mouth." (Noted!)

Then, when it came time to actually start cutting, Chris took a couple evenings out of his busy schedule creating custom kitchens for people across the prairies and northern U.S. over at Hawthorne Kitchens to stop by and do what I typically do on a Friday night... except in this version, instead of watching movies and eating popcorn, he taught me how to use a reciprocating saw, where to make cuts, and how to drain most of the water out of our heating system. But other than that, a really typical Friday night.

My Wife

Cassy, the Bonnie to my Clyde, the Cris to my Cross, the Thelma to my Loui-- wait, that doesn't work... anyway, having mastered the power of the sawzall, Cass and I decided we could handle pulling the old radiator and pipes out. We'd already cut most of the pipes out that led to the radiators; pulling the radiators out themselves shouldn't be too much of a problem, right?

You know where this is going. Each radiator presented a new problem. Thank goodness for the optimism and cheerful nature of my wife, because when difficulties arise that complicate what I expected to be a relatively simple task, you'd think I was stuck at a Fran Drescher's Laugh Appreciation Convention (translation: I'm beyond annoyed). One rad was stuck partly behind a perpendicular wall. Another one was half-buried in the wall. A third was wedged behind a toilet. As many rads there were, that was how many issues we ran into.

Having worked on it most of the day, we were tackling the final radiator. It was a baseboard radiator in the basement, and since the pipes ran in the basement ceiling, you'll understand that physics would dictate that the water would not have been able to effectively drain from this point. However, we should have taken the physics more seriously. As in: Water under pressure F given a small opening to escape through X will emerge at a velocity V that is illustrated by the following equation:

V=FX/(gravitational constant multiplied by Avocado's number)*

*Please note: this formula has not been accepted by any peer-reviewed journals despite having been submitted to American Physics, Hydrodynamics Today, or Chicken Soup for the Physicists Soul.

If you don't understand the equation, don't worry, we can't all be real scientists. Let it suffice to say that I cut into the pipe, the saw got jammed quickly, I pulled the saw out creating a small gap for all the water to squeeze out through like it does when your thumb covers the garden hose nozzle. Right at Cass. Black, disgusting water. Having stayed relatively clean, Cass was showered by what she referred to as an "arterial spray" (somebody watched too much CSI) of gross slime. And she barely screamed!

The Guy Who Took Our Boiler

Not knowing exactly how to get our big old boiler out of the basement--and certainly not wanting to pay someone to do it--I took a few photos of the unit and put it on Kijiji for free, basically advertising "you haul it out, you can have it". I subsequently learned something I thought I knew, but didn't fully appreciate until I experienced it first-hand:

Winnipeggers LOVE "free".

The ad had been online less than ten minutes, and I had my first call. "What are the chances?" I thought. "This gambit might actually work."

Two days later, I took the ad down because I was so sick of getting phone calls. I was wishing at that point I'd put a bit of a price on it; a lot of people were just coming to get it for scrap, and my B+ in Economics 101 was telling me that this overwhelming demand meant I hadn't priced it properly. All in all, I got about 15 phone calls about the boiler, and having asked some basic questions to the first few, narrowed it down to the person who I thought would be able to get the job done most ably, quickly, and professionally.

The beast of a boiler we needed removed. At 48 inches tall and about 30 inches in diameter, it consisted of almost 500 lbs of 50-year old metal (when drained!). And it went to a good home, where it will continue to heat water and people (indirectly) for years to come.

The day came to take the hunk o' metal out--we'd disconnected it, drained it, etc. etc.--and the guy (a plumber) shows up. Except he doesn't have a dolly for hauling it out on. And he doesn't have help. So much for "ably, quickly, and professionally."

The guy was nice though; he apologized sincerely, explaining that he'd been swamped at work lately and on a Friday after work, apparently it had begun to take its toll on his memory. So we waited... and waited... and got hungry for a supper that was waiting for us at my parents... and waited for about an hour for the guy's dad to show up with a dolly.

Finally the guy's dad shows up, and they begin moving this boiler. Boy, was my dad glad he'd braced our suspectly-creaking basement stairs. The boiler, it turns out, probably weighed close to 500 lbs. The plumber picking it up probably weighed in the range of 300 lbs. (To illustrate: if he was a guest on Kelly & Michael, Ripa would call him a "big teddy bear." And Kelly Ripa would have to hope that he took it well, because he has probably eaten steaks bigger than her.) And the plumber's dad probably weighed a solid 190. Add in the dolly (let's call it 10 lbs, to make it even), and there was half an American ton slowly inching its way up our stairs. And I mean inching. It took this 300 lb plumber, leaning back hard on the dolly, with his fit late-60s dad pushing from below, to get the thing to move, one stair at a time. That's a job that would wear out Magnus ver Magnusson, never mind a little ol' insurance marketer like yours truly.

Magnus ver Magnusson himself would've needed all his fire-engine-pulling and absurdly-large-boulder-lifting strength to get our boiler out of our basement.

Moral of the story? I'll give up an opportunity for a little profit if it means I don't have to bulk up by pulling airplanes with my teeth to get the job done.

The Furnace Installer (I'll call him TFI for short)

We were recommended TFI by Chris (whom you met above). I believe his exact words were "he's a bit rough around the edges, but he's really good and by far the cheapest we found." I hope Chris didn't trademark that phrase, because I'm going to have to use it every time I recommend TFI to others. It's completely accurate.

TFI came by for the first time to analyze our situation and give us a quote. Now, I've never worked in the trades, but I did go to a public high school and I have watched a fair amount of The Wire, so I'd say I'm pretty used to salty language.

Apparently I'm not as used to it showing up at my door!

It's been famously said that an F-sharp is the only word that can be used as a noun, a verb, an adjective, and even an adverb, conceivably even in the same sentence. (Kids, don't try this at home.) TFI may not have quite gone that far, but I also never heard him get upset. That's probably for the best, because even happy TFI sounded like a George Carlin's impression of a sailor stubbing his toe.

But if you get caught up in the language, you might miss out on the fact that TFI is genuinely a nice guy who cares to help out his customers and provide them with honest service and high-quality products at approximately two-thirds of the price that others might charge (which meant I was more than happy to finance whatever swear jar "donations" he might incur).

The Sheet Metal Guy (SMG)

SMG is TFI's right-hand man. That, or TFI is SMG's right-hand man. Either way, these two guys have been working together for years, and it shows. But how best to describe SMG? Let's run it down:

• Drives up in his Chevy Silverado with the back window covered in a big Pittsburgh Steelers decal
• Has five days-worth of facial hair permanently and refers to his moustache as a "snot-rag" (don't remember seeing that as one of the Movember ideas) 
• Is missing a tooth while being 39 years older than the age when it's normal to be missing an incisor Talks in a southern drawl with a dose of a rural mumble 
• Moved to Winnipeg from Virginia because of "Internet Love" (that predated all the E-harmony style dating sites; they met via an online game's chat)
• May have dropped a self-referential n-word in a phone conversation while at our house (he's white)

And despite all of these outward appearances and mannerisms that even Rush Limbaugh might balk at, the guy knew his trade and really helped us out. (Quick story? At one point, they had wrapped up work for the day, but Cass and I were out and I didn't feel my phone ring. Instead of heading out and leaving the door unlocked, they patiently waited around for an hour and a half just so our house wouldn't be left unattended. They didn't act mad. They just did it, even though they didn't really have to. That impressed me.)

TFI and SMG hard at work. I was a little uncertain about taking their pictures, because I didn't know if they'd "get" the whole blog thing. Then I found out about SMG's Internet Love Story!

Ultimately, SMG and TFI (working with who I'm guessing was SMG's son-in-law) got the job done and the heat on in a single weekend. It all works great, and along with our new windows, we feel ready to tell a Winnipeg winter to "bring it on." (But, for the record, we won't do that. Because that would be tempting fate in a way that could leave us with snow drifts higher than our back door and temperatures cold enough to make Hoth look like Honolulu.)

The furnace mid-install, next to the empty tray that now holds the hot-water tank.

My Dad

Hey dad, couldn't have done it without you. Your ability to pull out electrical wiring that I'm scared to touch, your willingness to swing by on a moment's notice, and your persistence in making sure the job is done right more than makes up for the way you stress me out by mentioning all the things that have to be done and rattling off all the contingencies you can think of to see if I've thought of them. And I'm going to need your help in the future, so before I get myself in trouble, I'll offer my deepest gratitude and thanks.

Whoo! You made it to the end! Anyone else ever deal with any interesting characters in the process of renovating your home? (And yes, characters you may or may not be legally married to DO count.) Share your story with us in the comments!