We uncovered the other side of the archway that leads to the kitchen, and it’s patched just about as well as the kitchen side of it (with the backside of a piece of wood paneling). On this side an attempt was made to smooth out the joints with a little bit of joint compound and wall patch strips when it was closed up, so this should help when I cover the whole thing with a layer joint compound to smooth it out.

Sorry we don’t have any pictures, but it’s pretty uninteresting.

Another update for which I do not have pictures was a full replacement of our toilet’s guts. For a while now, we’ve been having strange noises occurring in our floor and basement shortly after flushing the toilet. We first noticed this out in the garage, when the water pipes were vibrating for some unknown reason. The noise started out as a low pitched hum and built up to almost a grinding noise by the time I got to fix it. After a little bit of internet research, I discovered that it’s a relatively minor problem with the toilet.

Apparently when the valve starts to go bad, the seal that stops the valve from letting water out when the tank is filling fails just enough to create a strange vibration in the pipe that runs water into the tank, and this vibration can carry through an entire plumbing system. In my searching I even read the story of a landlord of a multi-unit apartment building that had crazy noises throughout the entire building because of one faulty toilet. The noise in our bathroom could also be triggered by running water in the bathroom sink, which would take some pressure away from the valve and cause it to leak a little bit. I guess that’s also a common problem.

I verified the problem was with the toilet by lifting the lid off of the tank and pressing down on the top of the valve while the noise was happening. It stopped when I applied pressure, so I figured that was it. The toilet’s hardware looked like it had seen better days, so I opted just to replace everything in there with a valve and flapper from Lowe’s.

It was relatively inexpensive (I think around $11), so I bought the kit to replace everything, and after dealing with a noisy toilet for so long, I chose the Quiet Fill (supposedly tested to be the quietest toilet valve available). Installation was simple. For some reason the shut off valve on the pipe that runs into the tank was NOT shutting the water off to the toilet, so I had to turn the water off in the whole house.

I then flushed the toilet and kept the flapper open so the water in the tank drained into the toilet. I had to sponge out what was left (not all of it fully drained) so that I could open the inlet from the water pipe.

After this, I unscrewed the old valve at the bottom of the tank and removed it, unhooked the chain from the lever and removed the flapper. Putting the new one in was easy, I just repeated the steps in reverse and adjusted the height of the valve to the fill line on the tank, and turned the water back on.

After a few costly emergency visits from our plumber, burst water pipes, and snaking septic lines, I can say I’m finally getting comfortable enough with the plumbing system to feel like I can do small things myself. My next trick might be to replace the kitchen faucet with one that is a little bit taller. Washing bigger pots in that sink is impossible. We’ve also been doing a lot of research and reading looking for inspiration, and it’s finally struck, so look for more updates in the future as we pick out colors and begin painting the downstairs. And now that spring is finally here, my grandfather plans on helping us make a lot of things in his wood shop, including new kitchen cabinets.

What We Like

Gretchen is currently obsessed with this kitchen:

And looking on ebay for antique door knobs:

I’m currently obsessed with anything made out of bent wood:

We also plan on making a trip out to the Morris, NJ Habitat for Humanity store to see if they have any nice restored furniture or stuff for around the house.

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Saturday morning I got home from Darreck’s house (where I stayed after DJing Friday night) and Gretchen was stressed about the basement. Apparently all water that goes down any drain had been shooting out of an open pipe that is down there that the washing machine drains into. The washing machine would do the same thing, and that’s quite a bit of water. We stopped using water for a bit and thought it had been resolved, but by Saturday night it was back to flooding the basement. I called my dad and he made plans to come over Sunday morning first thing and see what was going on.

The way the plumbing is set up is that because there isn’t any water upstairs, all water runs into one pipe that is pitched to run out to the septic tank. On Sunday morning we realized there was probably a clog in the pipe leading out to the septic, so we went to Home Depot and rented a snake and borrowed a pressure washer from my grandfather to try to flush the pipes out. The snake was only 25 feet long, and not long enough to make it all the way so we ended up, after a lot of time and dirty work, calling a plumber anyway. He had a 50 foot snake and pushed the clog out and everything is back to working properly! Ugh, what a mess. The plumber was nice and came out for an emergency visit about half an hour after we called on a Sunday afternoon during an Eagles championship game. I highly recommend ASAP Plumbing in Quakertown for emergency work (if you need it).

I also started walking around talking to the neighbors about the public sewer line and figuring out how to connect to that in the best way in the not-to-distant future, so we don’t have to worry about this at all anymore. The only problem is that we’d have to run pipelines through my neighbors yard to the street. He seems okay with it, but we probably have a lot of political nonsense to sort out with the township before we can do any of that. It’ll be expensive, but I think in the long run it’ll improve the value of the house and definitely save us some headaches in the future.

Besides that, the living room has been sort of on hold. I’ve been patching up rough spots and sanding when I can. I’ve started cleaning the wallpaper gunk off of the molding so that we can prime the walls and then move everything in from the other room so we can finish there. There’s just not enough time in the day for everything, and Gretchen’s been a little sick and now that she’s feeling better I think I’m getting it. Hopefully it passes. We need to do some painting. On that note, I forgot to mention we found Zero VOC primer at home depot. Olympic makes it. That will definitely be our next purchase for the walls. I painted the walls in the kitchen with Zero VOC paint and there was barely any terrible paint smell at all. It’s not good for you to breath that nonsense in forever.

So after spending the entire weekend on plumbing problems, I’m happy that we’ve temporarily resolved them and can resume the living room. It’s also been snowing pretty regularly here and it’s great. Philadelphia would only ever get rain, though this morning there was some snow there!

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