I suppose that when you end your most recent post with “we will see what surprises are in store for me over the next few days,” you’re almost asking the universe to surprise you with something special.  While I‘m going to try to not read too far into this, the universe has decided to surprise me with a foot and a half long crack in our home’s sewage line.  

After opening up the walls in the In Law unit a couple of weeks ago, we found some pretty major water damage, along with clear signs of an ongoing leak.

My rough guess is that the leak has been happening for around 20 years.  I mean, it takes awhile to disintegrate over a foot of wood.  Needless to say, it was finally time to find the culprit.

After putting on my sleuth hat, I took the day off of work and met the plumber so we could investigate the source of the leak.  Naively, the lack of foul odor led me to believe the leak was coming from a water line.  Well, I’m not sure what’s wrong with my sense of smell, but as it turns out we found not one…not two…but three cracks in our sewage pipes.  

There was, of course, the afore-mentioned foot and a half long crack.  

Then there was a hole on the toilet flashing (which connects the toilet to the sewage line) that had been DIY-fixed with some sort of putty.  

And finally, there was another hole on the opposite side of the flashing that had not been DIY-fixed.

Now I’m not trying to ‘diss’ DIY home repair.  I mean, I’m a DIY’er and I have the magic of the inter-web at my fingertips.  Imagine in the days of yore, when indoor plumbing was a new-fangled luxury and plumbers were just former stable-hands that were trying to get in on the crazy pooping indoors fad.  It must have been a lot harder to become a properly educated DIY’er.  With that said, purely from a chemistry standpoint, some materials are more porous than others.  I’m no chemist, but my guess is that drywall putty is on the more porous spectrum, therefore, not being the best choice when trying to fix a leak.

With all that aside, there are some positive, and some negative, things that have come out of this experience.

On the negative side of things, our poop-pipe was leaking (for 20 years), resulting in some significant dry-rot in the In Law unit.    This realization meant we had to remove the pipe.  Removing a pipe of this nature is not only difficult, but also a bit gross.

The positive side to this whole thing, however, is two-fold.

First, we have a brand new poop pipe that stretches the entire length of the house.

It’s almost a shame to cover it back up with drywall, but I don’t think that visitors will get as much joy as I do looking at this leak-free pipe.

Second, I was able to spend a lot of the day working on the floor in the In Law unit while the plumber worked his magic in the house.  I made some significant progress, however, it’s not quite done.  For this reason I’m going to wait to share it when there is a finished product.  After all, I want it to be a surprise.  Just to be clear, the GOOD kind of surprise.

Today has been a very fruitful demolition day!  You might think that demolition usually results in things going away…well, today demolition both removed things from my life and added things to my life.

From a removal standpoint, with a little help from my trusty new reciprocating saw, I was able to rip down that old deck/ceiling.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

As you can see, quite a bit was removed from the ceiling.  What you can’t see, is everything that was added to my life during the demolition.

First, you might be wondering why the picture above says the ceiling was covered for 40 years.  I mean, the ceiling doesn’t actually speak to me, so how did I come up with that arbitrary length of time?  Well, it’s not just my house-whispering ways…it’s in the news!

These useful and informative newspaper clippings were inside the ceiling when it came crashing down.  You might be thinking “wow!  what a lucrative find!”  Yes it was, but that’s not all I found.

You see, much like other large cities, San Francisco has its share of wildlife.  We have the bison in Golden Gate Park, the hawks soaring the sky, and the critters scampering playfully in the streets.  Well, sometimes those critters scamper playfully in the house.  I’ve been lucky in my time here that I’ve only found one mouse and that was after my cat joined it for a little roughhousing.  Apparently, the previous owners of our home had a bit of a larger critter problem.

I’m happy to introduce you to Ricky, Mickey’s cousin from Nor Cal.

Ricky Rat was nice enough to propel his mummified remains into the air, at an unusually high rate of speed given his current limited mobility, soaring proudly at me in quite a lifelike manner, as the ceiling came down during demolition.  Let’s just say that his zombie acrobatics have earned him a special place as a part of this project.  Therefore, he is officially the project mascot!

Welcome Ricky Rat to the “My First Renovation” extravaganza!

There comes a time in every DIY’ers life where they have to decide how far to pursue their curiosity.    I walked into this project intensely curious of a number of things.  Like, why does the corner of the house slope downward?  And, what is underneath that strange raised platform in the middle of the room?

While some of these questions have been answered (under that platform was concrete…exciting!), the pursuit of finding those answers have exposed all new questions.  Most of those questions begin with “Why.”  Such as…Why did they put a structural support on top of a cut 2″x6, and then sandwich a thin layer of concrete between that 2″x6″ and another 2″x6″?

The answer to that question may be lost to the ages.

There are an endless number of these “Why” questions, but this weekend I’ve uncovered a whole new breed of question…the “What” question.  While chipping away at the thin layer of concrete (using a sledge-hammer because it makes me feel tough) that was poured on top of the foundation, I got to a point where I thought…”I should probably stop unless I would like to rip up the entire floor.”  When I sat back to appreciate my handiwork, I found, to my surprise, that there was something imbedded in the concrete I had yet to remove.  In between the foundation and the remaining concrete is a cast iron lid.

Now, you can understand that I am intensely curious as to what is under this lid.  Dreams of gold-rush treasure keep coming to mind.  I mean, I’m not a greedy person.  I’d be happy with one moderately sized golden nugget.  At the same time, this iron lid could be massive, and could require me to completely rip up the floor to find out what it is hiding.

Realistically, what are the odds that there is buried treasure under that lid?  I’m guessing that the odds are higher that there is something I don’t want to find under there.  Probably nothing as dramatic as a human body, but also nothing as awesome as a buried treasure.  I’m thinking something more like   a lot of dirt where the foundation wasn’t poured, or a nest of attack spiders.

EIther way, I’ll probably leave it where it is and let the curiosity fill me with dreams of riches.  Of course I say this now…but tomorrow I might take a sledge-hammer to it.

What was it that curiosity did to that cat again?

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day and he was suspecting that my current In-Law unit was once a deck that was enclosed.  This would explain the strange mixture of new and old wood that I’ve found underneath the drywall.

Well, today the asbestos guys came out and nearly completed the demolition of the room for me!  (Yay for asbestos guys!)  All that’s left is that subfloor and a little insulation.

If you ask me, now it resembles more of a rustic barn then either a deck or an In Law unit.  On the positive side, there is a secret part of me that always wanted to live in a barn.  I’m pretty sure that I can thank my childhood love of horses and the film ‘National Velvet’ for that.

This weekend I began the demolition.  The two biggest questions I have are, 1) what is under that raised platform where the bar was installed, and 2) what is under the wooden floor?

Here’s the room after the demolition:

After opening up the walls and part of the floor I’ve made a few discoveries.  First, let’s talk about that wooden floor:  

What I found was that half of the floor is covered in a sub-floor, under which is a concrete pad.  This is good news.  I’ll take out the old sub-floor, which has redwood directly on top of concrete, and put in a new sub-floor with pressure treated wood & a vapor barrier.  This should also help me make one level floor, verses the multi-level floor that I currently have.  

What I also found was that the second half of the room does not have a sub-floor.  Instead, the person who built this space glued asbestos tiles to, what I believe, is the same concrete pad that on the other side of the room is covered with sub-floor.  I’m not totally sure about this yet because I need to have a professional take out the asbestos tiles.  That will be happening this week so i can reassess the situation.

On a side note, what I’ve learned about asbestos during this process has been quite interesting.  Apparently, asbestos tile is one of the less harmful forms that asbestos comes in.  The asbestos is actually encapsulated in the tile, so the only way it would become air born (and thus dangerous) is if the tile is broken.  Also, asbestos was used quite freely back in the days of yore, mostly because it simply doesn’t burn.  It is a great insulator and fire retardant.  With that said, for my own comfort, I have decided to have it removed by a professional.

Finally, as you can also see in the picture above, there is a strange concrete pad in the middle of the room that was poured over the other concrete pad.  I have no idea why this was done, but it will have to be removed.  That is, after I have my structural engineer take a look.

As for the rest of the room, there has been no limit to the surprises I’ve uncovered.  Just so this stays within the boundaries of “blogging” and not “novel writing,” I’ll limit my breakdown of some of these treasures.

In the picture below you can see that the drywall had been installed directly over the siding from where the house use to end.  They even covered up an old window with all of the working parts still in place..

In this picture, you can see where the old kitchenette use to be (along with some of those asbestos tiles).  You can also see where some mold has grown behind where the sink use to be.  Luckily the mold is just on the surface of the wall, and not growing through the drywall.

The best surprise was discovered after I opened up the wall behind the kitchenette.  From the looks of things, there is no structural support holding up this corner of the house.  Installing a new beam will definitely be something I’ll have to bring in a professional to do.  Much of this wood is rotted, so it may end up being more of a wall rebuild then I had anticipated.  We will see what the structural engineer has to say once he checks it out.

That’s it for now.  I’ll let you know what happens next in this adventure!