New lights & a new leak

Mike's dad had to fix the pipes on the wall that the bar had been attached to, move an electrical outlet and dry wall over it yesterday. Note the bucket catching the leak before they were properly capped. Our painter taped and mudded it yesterday and was due to paint it today. Until Mike showed up this morning and found a puddle. So down came the new drywall to find the problem.

Apparently there are two kinds of copper pipe used in plumbing: a coiled kind that is flexible and good for winding around or over obstacles and a more rigid kind that requires angled joiners to make corners. The problem with the former is that the walls are thinner (so it is more malleable) and it can easily kink or deform which can create an even thinner spot. Along one of these thinner spots, we think, a pinhole leak formed at some point but calcified over. When it was disturbed the calcification "plug," if you will, came off and the leak sprung. About 20' of copper pipe is due to be replaced tomorrow by Mike's dad.

While he was busy with that Mike removed the ugly 70s style lights from around the first floor. They were in the kitchen (left), dining room (right), and entryway below. The hallway lights upstairs are also pretty bad but a little more manageable. The kitchen light always seemed like you could poke your eye on it.

Mike was able to pull all of them down. The kitchen light is really long but we just looped the chain for convenience. We'll make the chain and wiring shorter later. I showed up in the evening after the Teacher Institute at the Exploratorium. Mike continued working on the entryway light while I tackled cleaning. There were small bits of drywall and wallpaper everywhere as well as just dust and debris from the painters. There was also a surprising amount of nails and screws. The nails came from the old small wooden baseboards which are nailed in every 6" or so. There were many still in the walls that I had to get out with a hammer. But the screws are still a mystery. Some we could identify as the small short phillips that are used to hold outlet covers on but there were many of different sizes, colors and shapes. We don't know where they came from. They don't appear to have come from vent covers or from the stair railings since those have been replaced. They might have been from all the drapery rods that were on every window since every window had not only lined drapes but also a transparent set. All the draperies in the house (and there were many) were handmade by the former owner. She was a seamstress by trade and was very proud of them. She actually left them all for us; we plan to put them up on freecycle.

While vacuuming the drywall dust I found two cigarette butts tucked in the small space between the carpet and where the baseboard would have been. It was a house built in the 70s but still, gross. Mike was almost done with the entryway light when he encountered a flaw in the design. Screws that are meant to hold the light into the ceiling bracket sit in a slit so that they can move a little and be adjusted properly. They are to be threaded through the light and a cap spun onto them on the other side. Well a screw that is not fastened into anything with threads will never get tightened completely. It was also a difficult design since the caps were actually small (1/8" diameter) spheres. After a few attempts, we decided the design had to be modified so we will try that again tomorrow. I see nuts and lock tight in the lamp's future. 

We had good and bad news today about the next few steps in the process:
BAD: Carpet is backordered and is due to be in July 20th (two weeks out)
GOOD: Nevermind, carpet distributor has been sweet-talked by our Floor Store rep and the carpet will be in July 10th-12th.
GOOD: Hardwood should be to their store by Monday.
BAD: That means all next week we have to paint baseboards at night after work.
BAD: Our irrigation system is mixing galvanized steel and copper which is apparently a "no no." And the water meter never stops spinning even when the water is shut "off." Someday we'll have to fix that ....
BAD: One of the garage door openers has decided to stop working. Of course its the door for the space that actually has room to walk through to get to the house. And we found that it wasn't actually attached to the wall on one side. Apparently putting it near a support was supposed to be enough.
BAD: Even with carpet coming in sooner than expected, we can't move in until we fix the hot water heater. Oh yeah, that leaks, too. We will have to empty the garage to get to the water heater, which we already drained so that a home warranty inspector can come check it out.
GOOD: My parents are awesome and are letting us live at their house.