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I bought this live-in fixer-upper a couple of years ago with the partial consent of my wife. When I say live-in fixer-upper I mean it was right on the fence of livable for my wife’s taste. She was envisioning a new house with new house smell, [Read More] 

A couple of months back, we bought a new corner unit and sink from Ikea. That's what initiated the whole kitchen remodel insanity that is still ongoing.
We used to have a double-bowl stainles [Read More] 

I was in the Home Depot last week looking for a repair kit for this
faucet. I was in the orange store as the client remembered getting it
there. It is a Delta Cierco Around 170 bucks.
Here in Arizona the water is bad, not being toxic
or smelly, but [Read More] 

I was in the Home Depot last week looking for a repair kit for this
faucet. I was in the orange store as the client remembered getting it
there. It is a Delta Cierco Around 170 bucks. Here in Arizona the water is bad, not being toxic
or smelly, but i [Read More] 

82 years is how old the pipe was, and 4 stores was how many places I went to get the parts. They're replacing our water main, and one of the city crew told us he wasn't sure how our vintage galvanized supply pipe was going to fare. Here's the valve a [Read More] 

One of this year's projects was to run two more irrigation lines out to the chicken shed (one to offer a spigot of water for filling the watering can or rinsing hands, and another to help water the compost, and yes I know how bad that sounds). So m [Read More] 

With Barack Obama’s inauguration today comes the intersection of 1928 and 2008 at Foxcroft. I have mentioned Obama here several times as he came into the sphere of our daily living, notably the first time I heard him speak. That was before he offic [Read More] 

a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cbustapeck/3130314770/" title="Shower ceiling - gone! by Christopher Busta-Peck, on Flickr"img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3197/3130314770_118d6f0e99_m.jpg" width="240" height="161" alt="Shower ceiling - g [Read More] 

We were told by the previous owner that the icemaker in the fridge didn't work because there wasn't any plumbing running to it. When the refrigerator was replaced, we found that there was, in fact, a copper line running to the icemaker, but it was cr [Read More] 

a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cbustapeck/3068249296/" title="Siwelclo, by Trenton Potteries by Christopher Busta-Peck, on Flickr"img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3034/3068249296_0d61d5ea89.jpg" width="334" height="500" alt="Siwelclo, by [Read More] 

The Power of Ice
Very good news here yesterday! The plumber we hired turned out to be a gem! He disconnected the small 2.5 gallon water heater, connected the 40 gallon tank, made sure the heat tape around the pipes is functional, checked out a [Read More] 

View of Carriage House
There has been little talk of the 1879 carriage house, though I may have mentioned it early on in this blog. It has been used as office space for various businesses since the 1980’s, most notably by a lawyer and fina [Read More] 

Under the sink plumbing.
So I am jumping the gun a bit, I haven’t even posted about the 4 closing we had and were botched, or that we finally, eventually, almost didn’t, but in the end did close.
I didn’t write about swapping lender [Read More] 

I dashed home from work to meet Levi the plumber and we installed the toilet and tub upstairs. This is very exciting because a) it means I can finish demo downstairs; b) it means I have a clean bathroom; c) it means my tub actually works and kicks a [Read More] 

Here are some photos of what we — actually, Brandon – did to prep the bathroom to have tile put down:
First Brandon turned off the main water line and unhooked the faucet from the tub.
Then he put the faucet back together on the pipes s [Read More] 

First of all, I’d like to thank the members of the Des Moines Rehabbers Club who kindly offered me advice this morning. I sent a rather panicked email to the mailing list this morning and got some really excellent responses. It helps so mu [Read More] 

The gas man arrived about 8:45 this morning and started hooking our gas line (which had already been run from the house to the end of our driveway and then down the semi-private road for a couple of hundred yards) to the main gas line. He stopped bac [Read More] 

I started off with no stink pipe and plumbing upstairs, so progress is being made. I wish Mark, the plumbing inspector felt the same way!
[Read More] 

I’m not a big fan of the term “DIY.” I’m not entirely sure why—somehow it evokes visions of crocheted doilies and poorly-applied paint. Glue guns, duct tape, and leaky plumbing. It’s not that I don’t think people should do things for t [Read More] 

The electrician and a couple of carpenters were at the house today putting in lights and doorknobs. The cleaning crew was also there making everything look nice. It certainly makes a huge difference to get all the plaster dust off of everything, espe [Read More] 