What Wall?

Alright, so this 1928 bungalow had a dividing wall making it into a duplex. After talking to a few friends who restore old homes, I decided to knock this wall down. At first my wife wanted to keep it and just make a window, but we both agreed later that just to remove it. There is more light throughout the space now and it makes the front room more grand. The wall itself was made out of gypsum board so it was quite easy to pull apart. Most people would have used drywall but in this case they went the cheap route. With the good help of my trusty sledgehammer, I knocked down the majority of the wall. The hardest thing about removing the wall has been relocating the electrical outlet to the other wall, which will be done with a junction box and some extra wire that you can pick up at your local hardware store.

When tearing down walls sometimes you find great treasures of gold, silver, or money that most people forgot they hid. In my case, I was lucky enough to recover 2 great baseball cards:

Although I don't care much for the Phillies, my favorite childhood baseball team was the Mets.

I like to support our local Hardware store, but many times when I go to buy something (like the junction box) they don't have it in stock. Now if the Mets didn't have any baseballs in stock, what would happen? They'd lose their jobs.

The other day we got a "free" piano. Well it wasn't exactly free after we paid some people to help us move it into our house. But here it is:

The following night, we met a neighbor (we'll call him "Bond") who moves pianos for a living. Bond tells me that everyone is busy buying the newest electric pianos on the market and he's stuck throwing away grand pianos that only need a little 'lovin. Just like this piano here. Six keys are broken but we have all the parts to fix them.

We have a ways to go on this sloping band house, but until next time, I doubt this information helped at all, but maybe someday I'll put something really educational here.

Sleepin' In

Ya-hoo! Some days you just need to kick back and read a good book by Mark Twain (Roughing It). And I sure am roughing it. Yesterday we scraped the tiles in the small bathroom and took out all the rotting grout and prepped the walls for painting. We're about to walk down to the Scrap Exchange in Durham to pick up some paint. I like it there because they use all recycled products and it's a great source for making art without using new materials. Check them out.

Get your Water on

Ok. After the $130 lesson on how to cut a pipe and put a new pipe in, I feel kind of stupid. But hey, we all can't be the top of the class. We have water now. I inserted my backwards P-trap (see pic) then went to Hugh's to get a part. The man at Hugh's was very impressed with my digital camera (I brought a pic of my work to show the size of the slipcover I needed) but not so impressed with my backwards installation.

Now it's fixed but the hot water valve is leaking (insert crazy laughter here). Yesterday I did rebuild the other toilet successfully. There I feel better. Now we can wash our hands and use the toilet feature in the same room. Until next time, your host Neutral Lippy signing off this Sloping House.

Plumbing

I don't want to talk about this. But my wife wants me to have a blog so I can leave comments on her blogspace. If you don't think she knows that I'm writing this, you're wrong. She's typing it right now.

I was attempting to mount our bathroom sink onto the wall, and dropped it onto the pipe, busting the pipe open. No water for 1.5 days now. Yea-hoo! So we called the plumber for tomorrow. It's tough to admit you cannot do everything. Puts you in a raw mood sometimes but James Bond movies are always comforting.

Anyways, I'd rather be playing guitar. Which I will do once we fix our upstairs rooms. Stay tuned for more updates from the Sloping House.