Good Enough for Mario

We know when we are outmatched and need to call in a professional to do some work for us. After all the demo in the bathroom, we thought that replacing the tub would be a piece of cake for Joe the Plummer. Until he told us we had cask iron pipes which were wayyyyyyyyy outdated and needed to be replaced for the modernization of our home. And then he said he would need to return with another plummer to get the job done. That's when I realized Joe wasn't a Joe at all, but they were actually a Mario and Luigi team.

Two men to fix all our pipe work and install our tub! Horray! No more complaining of tub grossness like here. They both showed up and (from what Max told me since I was at work) worked from 8am-5pm straight to get everything done.

Here were our before photos of the tub and the giant cask iron pipe in the basement.

Here are the glorious after shots.

This is our new Peerless tub and surround. They also mixed (putting the hot and cold lines on one handle) our water and put our new faucet hardware on for us. Everything is now also on copper piping behind the wall.

Here are the new pipes for the sink and toilets for both our main bathroom and half bathroom since they share that wall.

This is the new hole for the toilet. We are waiting to install both the sink and toilet until we have the flooring and walls finished to make things easier for installation.

Here in the basement are the new PVC pipes they installed. The two lines going up go to the two toilets. The skinny one coming off the left and going farther down is the tub to allow proper drainage of the water.

Our two man plummer team did good!

Although we haven't gotten the bill yet, we are certain with these unplanned updates we went over our $3000 budget for the bathroom. On the plus side, our home is now modernized which ups the resale value, our tub will properly drain now (it was having severe issues before), both bathrooms will be included in the bill and we shouldn't have any problems in the future.

What sort of unexpected expenses did you have in your renovations?! Old pipes like us? Nasty stud walls? Support beams you didn't know about? Just had no idea where to start? Let us know!

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Note: Mario and Luigi photo from here.

Joe the Plummer Come Back!

Okay so Joe is not his name, but we did have a plummer come out to our house for the bathroom.

Friday morning the plummer came to install our tub and to "mix" our water since we are still operating on a two handle system.We figure sometimes we aren't pros and when doing a bathroom update, you want to do it right.

The plummer shows up and we give him the run down of what we were looking to do. Then he asks to see the basement...

He finds out we have cask iron pipes which have not been updated since the house was built and currently are not to code which is now PVC piping. Also the way the house is currently piped, it is not draining properly. Definitely knew that one but thought it was just hair, ha! It's not always the woman clogging the drains! Another thing was the cask iron has cracked and resealed itself over the years making it corrode. Remember this photo?

Well all that brown on the pipe is rust from the corrosion. 

The plummer gave us the option to keep the cask iron and he could reroute the water but it wouldn't solve our drainage problem or come back with a second guy and redo the whole thing at a later time. At that point we decided it would definitely be better in the long run to redo the pluming and make the house up to code. So much for staying within budget here! We went from a bathroom update to a full bathroom remodel. We knew that there would be some updates, but eesh! Good thing we got the house for such a good deal.

That being said, the plummer said he would have to come back Thursday for the two man job. So we get another week with a partial shower. Great!

Issues Issues Issues

This past week, Milwaukee has had rain for four days straight. So much rain, that already by Wednesday we were getting flood warnings for the entire county since the ground was so saturated. Part of me was happy. I could get out of watering my new garden for a few days.

We were always a little leery about what would happen on a week like this one. When we bought the house we noticed the rain gutters were positioned directly into the ground with no apparent exit for drainage. This could lead to problems such as sink holes and basement flooding. We had planned on putting in a rain barrel to collect for my plants and redirect the other spouts out with a rain garden of deeply rooted wild flowers.

We apparently did not to our project fast enough. Now we have water leaking into the basement. It didn't flood (thank God), but there was definite seepage coming through here. Like that water stain? Not so much...

The second issue of the week was discovered at the same time. Max was checking out the sump pump's action and discovering the basement leak when he noticed something else. He called me to the basement and told me there was a pipe leaking and that water was shooting out of it. He thought it had to do with the torrential downpour from outside. I told him I had just used the bathroom and flushed the toilet. So he just witnessed pee water flowing over and we have a leaky toilet. Ish... We plan on replacing the entire bathroom anyways so this will get fixed hopefully within the next month.

We have resorted to only using the fish bathroom to use the restroom. Which is equally bad and there is no back to the toilet. Yes!

The last problem came up unexpectedly. I made Max a deal that I would stop complaining about his mowing techniques if I couldn't do a better job at it. I hadn't mowed the lawn up to this point so he was more than happy to have a win-win situation for him. On one had he doesn't have to mow, the second if I do worse, he doesn't get complaining anymore.

So I decided to weed the flower beds in front of the house first so I could just run over them with the mower. Someone please remind me next year how much weeding sucks and I need to lay down weed sheets before I landscape. Thanks!

My Hosta that I split here, I'm pretty sure are mutants. Even after the splitting, they still look like this. And this is after I cut a ton of growth from the bottom to give my flowers some more sunlight since they were getting choked out. To give a little perspective, look at how tiny they make the flower basket look on the right. Anyone else have mutants? Remember I was thinking of buying addition plants! Oof dah! 

So after my tutorial on how to use our relatively simple mower, I felt confident enough to take on this jungle. I start it up fine and begin to try and circle the edges of the house first. I get about a third of the way around the house (yeah, not far) and the mower just stops. I knew I wasn't out of gas since I filled it before I started but I thought maybe I had filled it too full and now the engine was flooded. I waited a bit and tried to restart. No such luck. After a few more tries (and a few colorful words), I called Max for reinforcement.

He also couldn't get it to start. Our neighbor Mike, who is a mechanic, came over to check it out. They checked out the spark plugs for flooding. It wasn't that.

I called my Dad since he knows some things about engines. He was lost.

So we had to make the unbearable call back to Sears, again. The mower had already broken once here and we were really starting to get frustrated with it. It was brand new! We had just got it on Mother's Day as a housewarming gift! The last fix was an engine component had broke and was replaced. Max talked to three different locations. One told us we could exchange the mower at the location we bought it. That location told us they couldn't do that and that we had to take it back to the repair location. The repair location was just fed up. So Max told them that our homeowner's association had already complained about our crappy looking lawn (we don't have a homeowner's association) and we at least had to have some sort of mower while they repair this one, again.

Talk about frustration.

What sorts of issues are you having with your homes?

The Parkland House

So I'm sure you are all wondering, "so where's this house?!" Our place is located in Brown Deer, a northern suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It is located on Parkland Ave. hence the name The Parkland Project. These are all before photos. We are very excited to get our hands dirty. I will try to break each room down with an inspiration board and our plans later. 

Front of the house 

Other side with two-car garage

Living room

Living room - other side

Kitchen with eat-in area

Kitchen - Alternate view

Upstairs laundry

Dining Room

Dining Room - Alternate view

Bathroom

Bathroom

Master Bedroom

Master Bedroom - Built in bookcase

Master Bedroom - Closet

Guest Bedroom

Guest Bedroom - Closet

Half Bath

Basement Crawl Space

Basement

Basement Laundry

Garage

Backyard

Garage workspace