A Death and a Birth

Rest assured that the death and the birth mentioned in the title above have nothing to do with any of our relatives.  All is well in the family.

The death occurred this morning.  Rick had put two thin coats of plaster on the garage wall behind where the water softener will be installed.  He started today by sanding the rough plaster smooth so we could paint it.  With the orbital sander hooked up to the shop vacuum, he started to sand the wall.  "Ouch!" he said as he received a shock from the sander.  He continued with his efforts.  After two more shocks, he stopped and donned a pair of leather gloves.  That seemed to help a little, but from where I was standing, I could see an occasional spark through a grate on the side of the sander.  Then Rick started to get shocks through the leather gloves.  "That does it," he said as he shut down the sander.

"Yeah, I think it is dead," I agreed.  Now bear in mind that the poor orbital sander has been with us a very, very long time, so its demise today was not unexpected. It has served us well.  I just wish it could have held on until Rick finished sanding the upper part of the wall!  The good news is that he was able to sand and to paint the middle and bottom portions of the wall, so he will be able to install the water softener.  The very upper part of the wall can be completed at a later date after we find the time and the money to purchase a new orbital sander.

The birth took a little longer.  Rick wanted to accomplish putting in the piping for the water softener drain.  If this were a typical basement in Wisconsin, that chore would have been a fairly easy task. However, this is Florida, and since this is a house sans basement, we had to look upward.  The only place we could drain the water softener is in the laundry room drain.  That meant that we had to thread a hose up over the finished laundry room, over or through the rafters in the attic, and down the washing machine drain in the finished wall.  OooooK.  Not an easy task.

The one blessing we had today was that the temperatures were fairly cool in the 60s. (On hot days in the summertime, the attic can easily reach 120 degrees.)   Even so, today turned out to be a three sweat-band day.  Rick started by climbing into the attic and laying on his belly across a rafter to see if he could reach the inner laundry room wall. The angle of the roof was so low at that point that he barely fit, and he had HVAC ducts and electrical wires to contend with also. He tried to drill down through the intersection of a rafter and a ceiling joist numerous times, but he was not able to get through.

He then came down into the laundry room and, using two extensions on the drill bit, tried to drill up through the double header in the laundry room wall.  After much effort and strained muscles, the $#%@ drill bit still would not break through into the attic.

I suggested that he go back into the attic and try to drill down again, hopefully connecting with the hole that he had started from below.  After two more trips up to the attic, he finally broke through into the laundry room wall.

At that point, the birth of the drain line began.  I handed up the drain hose to Rick who threaded it down the wall.  Thankfully, the hose appeared in the clean-out drain trap opening in the wall, and he was able to thread it down the wall the rest of the way into the washing machine drain pipe.  Then he came out of the attic for the last time, and with a couple of more holes to thread the hose through the garage rafters, we are now ready to make the final connections down to the water softener itself.  A drain is born!  I won't tell you what Rick called it, but it definitely was not a nice name!

A day-long effort resulted in a 3/4 inch drain hose coming down
from the ledge leading into the attic. Tomorrow we'll attach
it to the water softener unit.

The final hook up will not happen until tomorrow, probably after we actually do the plumbing to attach the water softener to our water supply lines.  That connection will take some time and patience, but the job will all be on ground level and for that reason will be easier to complete.

Each day we move closer to our goals.  The shower is on hold until Monday, and that is now completely in the hands of the tile setters.  Our efforts are finished with that.  I fully expect that we will finish the water softener tomorrow.  Then we move on to our last project of this season: the fence.  We hope to be finished with everything by early spring. Maybe then, for the first time since we purchased Gladys three years ago, we actually can  relax and start enjoying the fruits of our labor.