backhoe day 6: a new hope

Sunday morning starts out with me pulling out the chop saw and getting all the 4x8 sheets into the hole. Oliver is over at 8:30 or so, and I jump into the hole (I think Julianne made him promise not to get into it until we shored it up) and start measuring. Oliver cuts the 2x4's and I use a 5 pound hammer to wedge them against the house and the 4x8's across the trench. To be anal I also put 3 or 4 screws into the particle board side. With Olivers help we get to the previous days cave in. At this point I show Oliver how to use the machine, but he feels he would be to slow with it (I have gotten pretty fast with the shovel, after bashing the house a couple of times). Oliver gets down in the ditch, stays behinf one of the new walls, and I start the machine shoveling.

Within an hour we are at the same point we were yesterday. And I am sitting in the chair of that machine thinking, why in hell didnt I listen to these folks earlier, I could have been done by now. We work until siesta. After we do some more shoring up and dig like madmen. We find an old patch that has a hole in it, big hole. Oliver remebers the family doing a couple of fixes over the years on this part of the sewer. We will find another patch tommorrow (this one is more recent and is an entire section replace with ABS).

This patch, however, looks like it was done with plaster? which is really so weird that I dont ask, and just give it a good WTF. Oliver drops a rag in it and covers it with plastic, and an old peice of terra cotta sewer, and a rock for good measure. I would drop the Statue of Liberty on it, but then we would get tourists, and the house isnt ready for tourists.

And as this is Seattle, and its pretty much the rainiest season the city has ever had, there are literally storm clouds on the Horizon. We get a small sprinkle today, but both Oliver and I are constantly checking our news sources to find out how wet we are going to be tommorrow.

Sunday night we have dinner at the Mathews house, and I am telling the story about my day. Someone mentions Olivers age. I have never really thought about how old Oliver is (as I get older I tend to think about age a lot less). Everyone who would know agrees that he is in his 70's, and I have a hard time eating the rest of my food, in awe.

trench.day = "Sunday";

trench.length += 10;

backhoe day 5: house tries to kill Matt

Saturday, I'm feeling good.

really good. Jack Burton in the elevator good.

I spend some time uncovering pipe in the ditch, and get to the edge of the house. I jump out of the ditch and get back into the machine and start digging again. and with a snap of the fingers.

cave in.

It happened very fast, no warning. I was in the machine digging away, and the wall drops. I had been planning on re-inforcing the walls but things were moving pretty quickly so I kept putting it off. I slowly get out of the machine and walk to the back of the house. My mind going 100 miles an hour. I think it would have easily crushed me. Heather volunteers to go to Home Depot with me to buy 1/2 inch 4 foot x 8foot ply wood and a bunch of 2x4's while Diana plays with Audrey. I dont work the rest of the day. Oliver comes by while I'm unloading stuff and insists on helping the next day. If only to watch and make sure someone is there to dig my crushed ass out of the dirt. I totally agree to this, still pretty freaked out about the cave in.

Trench length? Less than friday due to the cave in.

backhoe day 4: Maginot line

Friday is great.

Im digging like a mad man. The trench is growing at an astounding rate.

I find a "french" drain. Its a "french" drain the sense that the Maginot line was a strong defense against the Germans. basically the drain on the south of the house wasn't tied into the sewers, it was just pouring into the "french" drain. which of course ran right up to the house. and has basically been eroding the foundation for at least 40 years. this will get fixed with some metal plates bolted on the cracks to make sure they dont get larger, and a bunch of new concrete for the HOLE! that goes straight into the basement. But the main leak in the basment has been found, and now will be fixed.

Oliver swings by and metions that I should really get some help. At least someone to watch me while I work, maybe even a couple of day laborers to do some of the digging. It sounds like a good idea, but I'm hauling ass, and frankly every time I drive past the throngs of day laborers outside of the Lander Home Depot I get a little scared, they all look like they would take one look at the house and die of laughter.

and then their zombies would refuse to work on it.

Friday trench length 25 feet. close to the front corner of the house.

backhoe day 3: no soccer

On Thursday things are flying along. I am doing it by myself, but like anything when you do something enough you get a rhythm going. Dig for 15 minutes in the backhoe, jump down into the hole to make sure you are following the pipe. Also, executive decision, no soccer.

Trench length? about 15 feet.

our little architect

In a way that strikes me as vaguely familiar, Audrey has been getting into this whole renovation scene. "I think it would be great, great, if we put yellow paint on the ceilings, and paint the fireplace blue. And make the fireplace smaller. And make the bathroom by the kitchen into a little doghouse for Olive, for her to pee in. And move the kitchen into the living room. Then move all the furniture into where the kitchen was." She sounds completely confident, surprisingly professional. She makes sweeping gestures with her little palms. She talks about moving walls for aesthetic reasons, moving whole rooms upstairs or down, moving the front of the house to the back and the back to the front.

Then, the other day, I asked her what color she'd like to paint her own room, and she said generously, "whatever color you like, mama." What a dear, sweet heart.

backhoe day 2: three feet of progress

I started digging on Wednesday, I found the pipe outside the back of the house, and thats about all. Length of trench Wednesday night? about 3 feet, but I found the Pipe. Also I play soccer for 2 hours at lunch, starting to feel a bit guilty about soccer. If backhoe costs 160 bucks a day, and I have about 8 good hours of light to use it, thats 20 bucks an hour.

Soccer is costing me 43 bucks a day to play.

backhoe rental day 1

So i rented the machine to arrive on the day after Xmas, Tuesday. It got here in the morning. I wasn't ready for it.

At all.

So instead of digging I do a bunch of prep work including; cut down 2 bushes, tried to secure drainage lines, cut out our side of the fence, try to soak in as much advice as I can from uncle Oliver and the gentlmens contractors. Play soccer for 2 hours at lunch.

Tuesday (and 160 bucks for the backhoe) was a wash.

gentlemen contractors

Kwaku, Jason, Jason and Kevin have framed an elegant little apartment in our basement: Private entry, one huge bedroom with big closet and egress window, living area with south- and west-facing corner windows that look out on the street, a simple little kitchen, bathroom, coat closet and closet for washer/dryer. Doesn't this sound nice? It is!

(And here I have to say that these guys are great to work with. Since I'm home during the day, I get to watch their progress, and since I'm me, I've been changing my mind, adding whimsically onto various projects, and coming up with entirely new projects. Each time, these guys have been totally accommodating, not to mention seemingly capable of doing any building-related thing a person might think up.

One egregious example: We wanted the washer/dryer moved from the back porch up into a closet in an upstairs bedroom. Convenient, right? Then, weeks later, I decided it would be better for resale value if we moved them to a little laundry room in the basement—after the guys had already run wires and vents up to the upstairs bedroom location. Oh, and also, please build a little laundry room in the basement, to put the washer/dryer in. I think many contractors would be ... irritated. However, K/J/J/K were willing to roll with it. Either they are just entirely nice guys, or they deeply do not care. Or maybe both.)

On the 26th we will get a tiny backhoe to excavate the side yard all the way down to the sewer line, then seal the foundation from the outside, tie the downspouts back into the sewer line as they originally were, and install a french drain—all to ensure our new apartment stays bone-dry. But to be on the safe side, the framing is done with metal studs and will have styrofoam instead of regular insulation; sheetrock walls will float 3/4 inch above the floors and the gap will be covered with a plastic baseboard. Just in case.

It seems like most finished basements go to great lengths to disguise their basementness—despite low ceilings and high windows that look out at ground level. We've decided not to deny the obvious. Matt is sanding down the big beams that support the house in preparation for staining and varnishing (instead of encasing them in sheetrock). There's also the brick-and-mortar base of a fireplace that will remain visible just inside the door. Because we're sharing a furnace and the upper part of the house is so drafty, the apartment should stay very warm. It's amazing, watching it come together. I think it will make a lovely home for someone.

Trench warfare

Im gonna do this in installments.

1. Our sewer is bad.

2. It costs a lot to get a sewer dug up.

3. We just spent a lot to get the street dug up.

4. I have a bunch of vacation and 2 holidays coming up.

5. "Hey, why not rent a backhoe from Handy Andy's and dig the sewer line myself"?

Backhoe is set to arrive on Boxing day.

who's walking who?

About ten or so years ago Matt and I had a great dane named Elliott. We quickly learned that there is a script involved in owning great danes. Everywhere we went, people would look at Elliott and cry either "Marmaduke!" or "Scooby Doo!" or they would riff on "you ought to put a saddle on him and ride him," or if he were on a leash, the inevitable "Who's walking who?"

We've learned that there is briefer script for owning a neglected old house. People say conspiratorially, "have you seen The Money Pit?" It is a rhetorical question, but I have. I think I was 15. Most of it was lost on me. And I certainly don't want to see it now. No. Living it. Thanks very much.

The in-the-street part of the side sewer, from property line to city main, is finished. In the street in front of our house an abandoned backhoe parked next to a 12-foot-deep hole covered by a metal plate topped with traffic cones. But having received Jim Dandy's bill (gasp), we consider it finished. Next up: the part of the sewer that runs from the back corner of the house to the street.

let there be light

Came home tonight to a wonderful thing: Lights! Just bulbs hanging from wire at the moment, but it's new wire, not string or shoelaces or whatever the last person to wire this house used. And guess what: Switches on the walls! In every room in which there is a light! And the bulbs turn on all bright and shining, just like in the movies. It's really a sight to behold.

aphorisms

After witnessing our discouraged selves the other day, our friend Amely suggested that we try coming up with some positive statements or "aphorisms" that we could make about the house. It took some explaining on her part—we were like, positive? This house? Huh? But the way she explained it made sense: however untrue those statements may be now, we want them to be true, and by saying them out loud we may just commit ourselves a little more fully to making them true.

So to come up with a few we've been thinking in terms of balance: A positive statement to balance a negative actuality. Like:
Our home is a peaceful sanctuary.
When we come home in the evening, we can't wait to jump out of the car and run inside.
Our home's plumbing system is state of the art.

Perhaps they could be financial as well: Our home is an excellent investment.

For good measure I'll add a couple about new dog, too:
Olive has excellent bladder control.

Amely also said sarcasm was permitted. Though not exactly the point. But an okay place to start.

dandy

Local sewer company Jim Dandy began work today. With a backhoe they dug up the parking strip in front of the house to expose the sewer there; then they must have packed the sewer line with dynamite, because a bit later we got a call saying that they were able to make a tiny, tiny hole—an inch or so in diameter—through the roots, which means water can now drain. Three cheers!

I asked Bruce, the company's estimator, whether we could just leave it like this and call it a day. (We're somewhere between $3 and $4K now.) He said that technically, yes, you could leave it like this for a while, but you'd have to have someone out to clear the line every month or so because the roots will continue growing. I guess what we think of as "sewage," trees think of as "nutrition." So on Monday they will continue as planned, opening up the street to replace the "curb-to-stub" section of sewer pipe.