December 13, 2005
It's not a cistern, it's a trash can!
Need a place to dispose of unwanted material that you're not entirely sure what to do with? Why not use your conveniently located cistern, no longer used to hold water, as a handy trash receptacle? It's much more convenient than the weekly garbage pickup, which takes anything that you can cram into your town-provided, wheeled garbage can. And, it's way less work than loading it into your vehicle and driving the mile and a half to the free dump.
Unidentified cistern contents, circa December 2005
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Plumber's special
Noun. Colloquial.
Definition: Floor joists (or other structural members of buildings), which no longer can be construed to be of structural value, that have been savaged via sharp implements such that plumbing (most typical) or other pipe, conduit, or wire can be routed with the least amount of difficulty (on the part of the installer) from one point to another.
For a case in point, see Figure 1, which depicts a true 2" x 12" floor joist, underneath a bathtub, which is mysteriously missing an entire 16" long section. The remnants of plumbing discovered in the cistern (to be documented in a later post), indicate that this was done in the course of plumbing the drain for the main floor bathroom. The result, after an unknown length of time, is that there is a 2-1/2" difference in height between the two ends (not to mention the rather alarming slope to and spring of the floor of the bathroom in question).
Figure 1
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November 22, 2005
Too close for comfort
Yesterday I spent most of the day carefully removing water-damaged plaster from the bottom 34 inches of the laundry room's walls. Once that was done, I tackled the (seemingly) much easier job of removing an equally water-damaged piece of drywall. Unfortunately, in so doing, I discovered that the breaker box was much closer to the drywall than I'd originally thought--it was attached to the 1/2" drywall and its backing 3/8" plywood with a couple of screws, and nothing more. What possessed the previous owner to do this? And with the breaker box, of all things?
This necessitated the removal of all of the remaining hardboard from the mudroom, which backs on to the laundry room. Then, the 3/4" plywood to which the hardboard was nailed had to be removed, all without damaging the prehung door that's sitting in the hallway, waiting for next weekend's installation.
It's a good thing that I was more than a bit frustrated when I attempted to remove the plywood, as I'm not certain that I would have otherwise been able to remove the 2 full sheets of it by myself. I've come to the conclusion that I can carefully remove the drywall, albeit in much smaller pieces than I'd like, then reinforce the existing plywood backing so that the breaker box has a solid foundation.
The offending piece of drywall
The uncovered breaker box
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