Wednesday, October 24, 2007

2nd Floor Addition


Above is an as-is floorplan of our home.

We just hired an architect, Robert Ridgley, to basically triple the size of our house. We'll be going from a 750 sq ft, 1 bed, 1 bath shack to a 2000+ sq ft mansion with 3 beds and 3 baths. The entire first floor will become living space, and the second floor will be for sleeping. We'll also push out into the backyard a bit to add a family room behind the kitchen, and knock down the wall between the kitchen and existing bedroom to convert the bedroom into a dining area. Below is the proposed floorplan.


Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Custom P-Trap

The kitchen sink was clogged and the plunger didn't help at all, so I decided to investigate. Where to start? Check P-trap of course. I got out my pipe wrenches, set them up on the nuts holding the trap, and barely torqued them before the entire trap just broke apart and fell off. We did the dishes in the backyard that night, with the garden hose.
Well the trap, although broken, was not clogged - which means the clog was still somewhere down the drain. After trying the snake with no luck, I cut open the wall to see what was down there. What did I find? Nothing. The snake goes about 6 inches into the concrete slab before sticking, and I couldn't get it to budge from there. I tried to dig up the drain pipe from outside the house, but hit more concrete; maybe the footer. At that point I was lost. Then I decided if I rebuild the trap and plug up the roof vent, I may still be able to plunge my way out of this.

This time I hit Lowe's instead of Home Depot to compare prices. Judging by their prices on copper pipe, there's not much difference. I picked up some ABS pipe and fittings and got to work. Looks like a mighty fine custom trap if you ask me. But I still have that clog...