Lose Something?

PC's been dismantling the sinks in the old dentist office and this is what he found in one of the drain traps:

They're jammed in there good and tight, too.


Now that we're on the subject of weird things in sink drains....

The kitchen sink trap upstairs had a mouse in it. The only reason we know this is because the p-trap was rusted through. When we turned on the water to that sink for the first time, there were no leaks in the water lines, but when I looked underneath the sink, the trap was leaking, but I couldn't tell from where until I started poking things with my finger. When I poked the bottom of the sink trap, my finger went right through. Fortunately, I did not realized that the furry scum was a dead mouse; PC told me later when he took it apart to fix it.

Sunflower & Curb Box

I asked if I could borrow it, but they didn't think that was a good idea:

This is the gas company digging for the 'curb box.' A Curb Box is not a box at all, but a small round access to a shut-off valve. It's an added security to prevent gas leaks. Of course, the gas is turned off to the building because there is no meter; there's a cap on the line. The curb box allows the gas company to shut off the gas going from the main line to where the meter should be. Because we have to replace the line from the meter hook-up to the curb box, the gas company had to actually find the curb box. Theoretically, the metal detector should have found the round cover of the curb box, but after unearthing a spark plug and other miscellaneous items buried just a few inches down, it was time to try something else. So, after several attempts with different tools (that I didn't really understand, but they were designed to trace the pipes running underground) -over the course of several days- it couldn't be located. That's why the backhoe is here today. They actually had to dig up a pretty wide area (as you can see from the picture) to find it. I think they had to extend the pipe by a foot or two also -to get it up to ground level- but I missed that part; I just got here as they were finishing up today.


Even if I could use the backhoe to dig the trench for the new line, it would have only been useful for about half of it. The rest of the line, as the hillside drops down toward the building, gets pretty steep and at the rear of the building it wouldn't have fit at all; there's a rock wall -apparently it used to be a part of an oven (I'll get into this more later as I start filling in the history of the 123)- that creates a tier in half of the backyard.


Here's the northeast corner where the gas meter used to sit (actually two gas meters: one for the first floor dentist office and one for the second floor insurance agency, but we only need one):

You can see the jungle greenery already starting again. The lighter color brick at the upper right corner of the picture is -or was- a window. It was bricked in probably about the same time as the first floor was redone for the dentist office - about 1969.


As for digging in the new gas line: if we use machinery at all, it'll have to be a very small trench digger. Or perhaps just shovels and elbow grease. And sweat. Fortunately, if what the backhoe was digging up is any indication, the ground is not too hard and the dirt is very pretty from all the years of jungle-growth.


And, speaking of the pretty soil... (Click here to read about the jungle, including mulberry trees.)
Here is a picture of a new leaf that is growing out of the mulberry-tree stump:

All the leaves are not shaped like this, but it's the most interesting shape of them all. I googled images for mulberry trees and I am pretty sure that's what this is, though I didn't spend enough time to figure out which species.


While I was outside taking pictures of the gas company dig, I saw this:

This is a volunteer sunflower at the northwest corner. It's up on the hillside on top of the first rock wall. The pipe to the left of it is the gutter drain. You can see the old screen door that I left open when I came out the back, although I am actually down in the parking lot to snap this picture.


I was tempted to leave out this next picture, a wider angle, just because this one shows some duct work in the parking lot:

But, I suppose duct work as a temporary parking lot accessory is not such a bad thing; we're not finished gutting the first floor yet, either, so there will probably be even weirder things in the parking lot before we're through.


And one more:

The fellows from the gas company are on the upper street just finishing up. I'm still standing in the parking lot. You can barely see the little yellow head of the sunflower between the drain pipe and the duct pipes, but this picture starts to give you an idea of the hillside/rock wall tiers of the back lot.


Enough for now....

Gas Line Replacement

The gas line has to be replaced. From the back of the building where the meter would be -if there was a meter- all the way up to the street has to be ripped up and updated.

I thought we were doing pretty well by getting the gas meter put back in so we could test everything and get the heat going in plenty of time so there aren't any freezing water pipes, but it's not that simple. Unfortunately.

Once the gas has been turned off to a building for more than a year, the gas company comes and reclaims the meter. That explains why it's missing. And why the pipes froze.

Because the meter was reclaimed, the entire system has to be updated and certifiably inspected before they'll give us a meter. While this gas company protocol seems a bit extreme, I have to keep in mind that it is designed to prevent explosions. So that's probably a good thing.

The lines, right now, are steel. I always thought steel pipes were fine. Apparently I am very out of date and now plastic is required.

It looks as if we have some digging to do.

Water

“Turn it off! Turn it off!”

This was me yelling from the stairway while water rained down on my head from the ceiling. Crap.

We were just testing the system to make sure there were no leaks.
Ha.

When PC first turned on the main valve, putting pressure to the old system that hadn’t seen water in a while (At least a winter of freezing weather. Or two. Yikes.), the usual hissing-charging sound echoed through the first floor; even with all the dentist office divider walls still up, the sound reverberated through the ceiling tile.

First, I ran around the first floor to all the sinks -every little room had one- and turned off faucets. If the faucets kept running, I reached under and turned off the valves. Whoever did the plumbing 40 years ago for the dentist office had the foresight to take the time to put a shut off valve on every hot water line and every cold water line underneath every sink (thank you, who ever you are). There were several leaky (okay, really: uncontrolled pour-y) faucets, and though I was scared to trust the shut-off valves, there was only one that did not do its job. Not too bad for 40 years worth of sitting there and waiting to be called into duty. With PC's help, this only took a couple of minutes, but with that hissing (potentially leaking or pouring) sound coming from over our heads, it felt much longer.

Everything was off downstairs, but the overhead sound didn't slow. If anything, it was louder. I headed out to the used-to-be-the-reception-area and through the first doorway, intent on making the next turn and running up the steps (22 of them, remember?) to see what I could turn off up there. It was that momentum that kept me going, not even noticing the little waterfall that had started down the bottom few steps until I was right in the garden-hose-with-good-pressure-sized stream pouring on my head. Crap.

I had to back down out of the stairwell and yell down the hallway before I heard the pipe-clunking that I knew meant it was off. I went back to the stairs and squished myself against the wall to avoid the slackening downpour. I had a passing thought about the usefulness of the blue rubber ridged anti-slip stairtreads that were tacked to each riser, and how, hopefully, some day when most things work, I'd be able to remove them and refinish the old wood.....

It was the toilet. It had been dry for so long that the gasket between the tank and bowl rotted (How does a toilet get this black with no water in it? I tried not to think about it.); water was still seeping from beneath the tank and tracing the porcelain in a thin line to the carpet.

***Allow me to pause here to opine the carpet*** (Wait a second - am I even using that word right? Opine? It just popped into my head....going to look it up..... Alright, it's a verb, but it doesn't give an example of how to use it. It means to harangue, preach, orate, or lecture. Which is fine, but I don't want to direct this lecture to the carpet; I want to harangue (criticize, tirade)about the carpet. I'll leave it like it is, but I'm open to grammatical correction.)
Back to opining: You'd think it would've just been the same as the rest of the blue commercial-grade carpet (minus the padding), but no, it's in a category all its own. I vaguely remember stuff like this from childhood, but I'm not sure if it was ever popular. Maybe, but if so, it was popular for just a few people (ha.). Or maybe for just a very short time. Like, until the people who liked it regained their senses.
It's blue and green and shaggy. Need I say more?

Enough about the carpet. All the stuff on the second floor stays just like it is (minus the leaks. and the refrigerator.) until after the first floor is up and running as the 123 Coffee House and the third floor has been redone so I can move my office up there without plaster falling on my head.

Water. Yes. Water. Bottom line: the toilet leaked. Badly. I tore it apart and got the repair parts and put some of it back togehter, but I will have to say (and Thank You) that PC, though much bigger than myself, crammed himself into that little bathroom to reset the tank and bolt everything down. After the carpet dried out (Shag carpet doesn't take as long as I thought to dry out. Synthetic fibers, probably.), of course.
Once the water worked, the black came off (and out), but I'll spare you the details.

It took three (?) more turn-on-the-water attempts before I didn't have to yell "Turn it off!" any more. Now, the bathroom works just fine. As long as you don't want hot water. The tiny kitchen sink is still on the to-do list (Tiny kitchen. Not tiny sink. Though it only has one bowl, the bowl is large. And it was black. But now it's white. Oh, right...sparing the details...).

It’s been almost two months since we first turned on the water, but I thought it deserved mention. I suppose I can't complain too much; if I were 117 years old, I'd probably have a few leaks, too.

All the utulities will get their post (we've touched on the electric, and now water). Or two. Or three. Right now we're dealing with the gas lines. It may get more than three posts. Or four. I'll be sure to take pictures. Crap.

A New Door and Amazing Bricklaying Historical Engineering

Right now, the Grafton 123 Coffee House is just a concept. We are in the process of gutting the first floor. Because the first floor was most recently a dentist's office, the floor plan does not fit our needs. Neither does the entry. The street face of the building is narrow and because we have the wide-open parking lot side exposure, we've decided to put our main entryway on the west side. Plus, the improved access will make renovation easier:

You can barely see the door outline in the picture above, but you can see where it'll be located in the wall.

This one shows a closer view. You can see the steel header that they have cut and bolted into the brick wall and the vertical outline cuts:

The small hole in the center of the door was a test cut. The brick wall is actually three bricks thick. Because it was built 117 years ago, the brick was laid in the old style, as its own support rather than a facade. Most of the rows of brick are laid horizontally with the long side out, but every 7 rows are laid with the short side out so that they can cross two rows below them. By staggering the turned-brick row from both sides of the wall, everything gets tied in pretty tight. Pretty amazing really. Look at this picture:

While you can see the turned rows, you can also see that the mortar joints on the outside of the wall are messy. This is because it was originally built up against an existing building (I'm not sure how long it's been gone) and the mason couldn't 'strike' them.

According to John, our friend the mason who helped with the door layout, it's called 'striking:' where the excess mortar is scraped down to a thin, clean line. In cold weather, apparently, it can keep it from freezing before the concrete sets, but mainly, I think, it just looks nice. And professional.

This is view from the inside:

You can see the mess and the existing reception desk still leftover from the dentist office. Opening up this new door will make it easier to haul stuff outside. You can see the brick down low on the wall under the hole, but up higher it's an old wallboard that was under the dentist office paneling.


Here's a view out the peek-hole. My husband, PC, is on the left and John, the Mason, is on the right (even though you can barely see them because of the bright sunlight outside):

I'll try to remember to take more pictures of the destruction mess...

The View

This is the view looking out across Main Street. I'm standing on the upper street, but even down a little lower, where the outside deck will be, the view is amazing. Eventually, the roof deck will be even better.

The 123 - More Pictures & Progress

Looking from the back of the building, that huge rounded clump is the probably-mulberry tree. If you look close, you can just barely see PC's while t-shirt there by the corner of the building.

We had to climb through it (PC threaded the really long extension ladder up through it and using a combination of ladder rungs and limbs, we were able to get on top) to inspect the roof. Let me take a minute to say that the view is SPECTACULAR! (Someday in the next few years there is going to be a deck up there….before I get too off topic, I’ll stop, but I’ll write more about the plans for the third floor and roof later).

Here's a picture of the roof, too:

Look at all that stuff growing up there! The poor old 123 was being attacked from below AND above! I have not been back up there since PC cut it all away from the building (I’m not sure the ladder goes all the way up!) so I don’t have pictures from that high up. You can get a pretty good idea from the backgrounds of the other pictures.

Sadly, just about everything is gone, but it had to be done to prevent further damage to the 123. With building health as the number one priority, however, it will get landscaped again when we start building decks back there. Yet another project to write about….

For those of you who have been reading past posts: The electric had to be remounted onto the back of the 123. The vines and growth –ironically not our jungle, but the neighbor’s overgrowth- had pulled the weatherhead out of the brick and that had to be fixed before they’d turn the electric back on here at the 2nd floor. So, yep, I have electric up here (as you could tell from the scary-no-more refrigerator pic).

More on the 123 later…..

123 West Main Street - Pictures & Progress

This is a picture of the front (south) of 123 W. Main Street in June. It was our first visit with the realtor. Though I'd been looking at the outside for several months (with a very tiny, vague thought of ownership), this was the first time we went inside.

Check out the trees right up against the rear of the building! The roofline is a jungle.

After the sale closed (July 24), the most pressing need was to yank all the greedy green vine feet off the side of the building.

That's my husband, PC, in the white shirt, and our oldest son, PR, is taking a break on the tailgate.

Some of the worst foundation shoving plants, though, were not the vines (though the vines were certainly in the competition), but the trees: two kinds in particular.

The first has a very odd name: Tree of Heaven. While I am certain there must be trees in Heaven (what paradise could be without trees?), this one doesn’t have enough redeeming qualities to make it into any type of nirvana. It looks somewhat like a sumac tree, but its leaflets have a little ‘thumb’ on the bottom (I’ll remind myself to go take a picture), whereas a sumac’s leaflets are finely serrated.

Its immensely rapid growth rate may –perhaps- redeem it in some way, some where, next to the foundation of a 117 year old building is not such a good place. For that matter, next to any foundation is a bad idea.

After speaking to the previous owner (two owners before ourselves), I believe that all this growth was kept off the building before –about- 1995. So 12 years of growth. These trees were every bit of 40 feet tall! 40 feet in 12 years! It speaks well for shade. However, the roots found a firm hold in the small strips of soil right up next to the brick walls and just kept digging –through the dirt and the rocks and the cut-stone foundation and the brick. Bad for the foundation.

The wood of the Trees of Heaven (Hell) is spongy, soft, and pliable. I don’t know of any use for it. It also made it a bit tricky for PC to cut them safely. And (as if they needed another strike against them) they stink. Subtly stinky for most of the year, but when they go to flowering, they STINK. Like garbage. How appropriate.

So I didn’t feel too bad about helping to hack those out of there, but there was another tree back there that I was hesitant to axe. I wasn’t quite sure of its identity, mostly because it was too gargantuan, but I’m almost positive it was (note the past tense) a mulberry tree. !. See what I mean? Mulberries are supposed to grow on bushes, right? Well, yes, but these had far surpassed the bush stage and had been residing in the tree category for a very long time.

(Okay – I’ll dig out a picture of the leaves, if I can, mostly because I’m still not 100% sure of the identification. I’d appreciate any input here: botanist or backyard mulberry tree grower. Thanks.)

This is the west side view before beginning to clean-up. Those small trees (closest to the street) are new Trees of Hell, er...uh, Heaven. They are only 10-12 feet tall.

More in a bit...