Live from the Scene

If you're a fan of A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh series, you may recall the chapter "In Which Rabbit Has a Busy Day, and We Learn What Christopher Robin Does in the Mornings." It begins:

"It was going to be one of Rabbit's busy days. As soon as he woke up, he felt important, as if everything depended upon him. It was just the day for Organizing Something, or for Writing a Notice Signed Rabbit, or for Seeing What Everybody Else Thought About It. It was a perfect morning for hurrying round to Pooh and saying, 'Very well, then, I'll tell Piglet,' and then going to Piglet and saying, 'Pooh thinks – but perhaps I'd better see Owl first.' It was a Captainish sort of day, when everybody said, 'Yes, Rabbit,' and 'No, Rabbit,' and waited until he had told them."

It's no secret I'm a Rabbit, and I am definitely having a Busy Day here at 615.

The plumber is doing the rough-in for the first-floor bathroom (although he will pause to go watch the MSU women's basketball game soon). The electricians are here working on finishing the kitchen writing, rewiring the garage, and then, if they have time, wiring the new bathroom. Because there are three electricians here (squee!), they may also hang the new ceiling fan/lights in the living room and sunroom and install the wires for the new sconces in the living room.

Today is the kind of day where the plumber asks me, "Does the tiler want me to put in the shower drain now, or wait?" and I call the tiler, who says wait, and then the electrician asks where the plumbing is going and I ask the plumber and explain to the electricians where the fan should go based on that, and then the plumber asks how high up he should put the toilet flange off the floor, so I call the framer who says call the tiler. When the electricians see I'm free, they ask me questions about where I want switches and what I want to do about an old plug that's hanging out of the wall...

Honestly, everyone who isn't here is answering the phone, everyone who is here is waiting patiently for their turn, everyone is being cheery, and I have three electricians, so I feel like maybe I should go buy a Powerball ticket. I mean, this is one of those days when it snowed just enough that, it being a Friday and there being an important basketball game, everybody might have just stayed home with some excuse.

But so far, they're here and working. The only person MIA is the HVAC guy who I need to talk with about the plan for the heated chamber.

Update: The plumber just installed the new toilet flange for the first-floor bathroom! Here it is, with the hole for the old one shown to the left:

And now he's gone to watch the game. (In case you think I'm disappointed, I'm not. I like working with people who know how to balance work and the rest of life.)

I forgot to mention in my last post that the plan for the garage's new heated chamber (instead of storage room) solves not just the problem of how to keep the pipes warm for the first-floor bathroom. It also means that, since we're busting HVAC vents from the basement into the garage somehow, we might as well run fresh HVAC lines to the new bathroom and the back room.

I had been planning to outfit those two back rooms (the office/bedroom and the bathroom) with baseboard heating. But that was a less-than-elegant solution, because it meant the back space would have no vents for the new AC. Now the plan is to have proper HVAC back there.

There are two existing "vents" in the floor of the back bedroom/office, but they appear to both be dead. We've saved some floor boards that were cut away for the new shower and will use them to patch the floor where those "vents" now are, if that's not the place where the new floor vents go.

Yesterday, the framer built a beefy frame for the soffit in the kitchen where the drain pipes for the second-floor bathroom protrude below the ceiling:

The plumber and I assume that the reason it is so beefy a frame is because the framer doesn't want someone slicing into the soffit someday and hitting the pipe with a saw.

That framing for the soffit means that, once the electricians are done in the kitchen and we get the electrical inspection on the kitchen, we can get the kitchen drywalled! Of course, before that can happen, the drywaller wants some more demo on the plaster that is still there.... The good news is that the electricians appear to be doing some of that demo for me right now, ha ha.

Once the back bedroom/office is wired and inspected for electrical, the drywaller can also get to work on that. That space has a good floor, so it won't need anything else other than having the new ceiling fan/light installed. At least I hope the floor in there is still good. We've tried like heck to protect it. But there has been a lot of demo back there.

Oops, I forgot: the back bedroom/office will also require one window rebuild, which Aron is going to do. The window needs to be restrung, and something has to happen to fix the broken storm. He knows how to restring windows, and he charges me very little.

Ironically, here's a newspaper I found in that very space:

Here's the front page, below the fold, of the same paper:

Apparently, before 1989, women never simultaneously managed jobs and families, so this was front-page news.

As for the first-floor bathroom, we're waiting for rough in plumbing (the plumber will finish it later today, tomorrow, or Monday), electrical (they just started on that room!), and HVAC (here's hoping they show up soon).

My understanding is that when all that is done, we'll get the framing (general) inspection for the first-floor bathroom, and then the tiler will get to work on the heated tile floor and the shower. After that, it will get drywalled and then will come installation of the toilet, vanity, etc.

Despite having to have put the second-floor bathroom on pause until after April 2, we are sailing right along today.

Rabbit is very pleased.