First of all, welcome a new member, and then...Oh no!

APRIL FOOLS! The joke is on Dan's face :) The mustache was enjoyed on this ONE DAY, and ONE DAY only, Dan!!! Alas, no cat was stuck in the wall, it was just a way to get a good picture with Dan's 'stache. Interestingly enough, all cats received votes. So, basically, all of our cats are ill behaved.

First of all, welcome Elaine! The newest member of the wickerparkhouse gang! Please enjoy the ridiculous antics of Dan and Jenn.

Now, a big update: We drywalled a cat into the basement!!! Oh No!!!! Dan tried his best to lure out the poor kitty with food, toys, and his silly face. Which cat do you think ended up in this perilous situation? Ninja-like Ben, Slinky-like Diego, Old Blue Eyes Torpedo, or Miss Noah? Vote with your comments!!!

My Name is Mud

Well, Dan's name is mud. It's difficult to capture photographically the progress that has been made, but I'll try. Since the last post, Dan has fixed a water heater, taped the entire basement, and put up two coats of mud. So here is my best attempt to illustrate what's been happening at Bell:

Ken custom-made a lock plate for our garage! Take that, criminals!


I love this picture. These are the stilts that Dan borrowed from our friend Tommy to do mud work. They're kind of scary, but very practical:


Please note, the following pictures are not representative of the amount of work done. Dan did every single seam in the basement, connecting each wall together. I did one. One. He saved one for me because I wanted to try it. He's good like that:
Here's dan's picture of doing a seam. 1 picture per 1000 seams:


Now, here is my picture. 1 picture per 1 seam:


Shwew! Can you believe it! Dan will be working on the final mud work, and will start priming this week. This is HUGE. Other focus right now is having some roof repairs completed, now that the weather is nicer. Stay tuned.

Garage door and...of course...water

I'm hesitant to post, because I bore myself talking about water/rain/sump pumps, but I thought I'd write out a list to make us feel accomplished:

This past week:
1. Finished drywall in the basement! Hooray! Jim came by and helped- I've got a picture or two to include later (Here they are!)

2. Dan's hanging corner bead in the basement!
3. Garage door opener that works- Again, thanks Jim and Elaine

4. Back door that locks! Before, we used only a board, wedged in the frame. It's nice to have a locking door, don't you think?
5. Water fighters: we tarred the side of the house where water is coming in our basement, and we also have confirmation that the drain we installed has officially fixed our front basement water problem. Now, just two problem areas left...

This isn't helping any: more rain

Time Machine

Did you ever want to know what you’ll look like when you get older? Well, come to Dan and Jenn’s ‘Time Machine’ (aka sanding mudwork in the basement) and you can find out! Look! Old Man Dan!

R.I.P.

Dan’s work pants. He’s had these far too long, and it shows. They have too much ‘air conditioning’ in all the wrong places, I think he may have offended several at the Home Depot, and the guy that was digging the hole, looked up from deep within the hole, straight into Dan’s boxers. Time to go, old pants! R.I.P. Yea, and I can’t take a picture without ‘help’ from the cats.

The Big Dig

We started on Saturday by having the space below the stairwell dug at least three feet, hoping, praying to find a drain. No dice.

So, Monday, a plumbing crew visits. They first used a camera, running it’s flexible lens down our cleanout pipe, to find ‘the end of the drain!!’


Flexy camera tube going down outtake pipe.


Guess what. There is no piping that extends from the Sewer pipe, to the stair well. Go figure. We can only speculate why someone would spend an arm and a leg to rehab a basement, and then not protect their investment by properly installing drainage. So, the drainage and piping was never finished. We are going to finish the job. Well, not ‘we’ as in Dan and I digging out tile and concrete, but we have a nice crew that is working on it as we speak.



Hallelujah! Here is freshly installed pipe, poking out of the dirt. That is prettier than tulips!


Another drain miracle! Here is the finished drain, complete with concrete. This whole project took less than two days. These guys are amazing.

There you have it. ‘The Big Dig’ Hopefully, unlike the Big Dig in Boston, this one will not take years, only days. We must wait a few weeks for the concrete to cure, and we are going on a hunt to find the tile to replace. Here’s what it looks like.

Out, out damn water!

We have taken a few measures to (fingers crossed) eliminate, or at least severely minimize future water problems:
• New Sump Pump. Ken single handedly installed a new sump pump- isn’t this a thing of beauty?

• Extend and repair exterior drains (this is a drain that was crimped).


• The ‘big dig’ more on that later.

Ken and Dan here successfully installed the really tricky pieces by the stairs. Dan’s sleeping easier at night now, he was fretting about how to install these pieces!

Reprieve for the Basement Water of ’09 saga:

A finished laundry room! Would you look at that!

Check out Dan’s drywall work, smooth as glass! He really did a good job on this detail of the window; it’s a deep window that will be great to put the soap and stuff on.

With some leftover scrap wood, Dan also made me a little handy shelf behind the machines! This will hopefully protect the wall, too, since the laundry soap left from the previous tenant seemed to eat into the paint.

I am also really thankful to have the slop sink hooked up. No more paint pans soaking in the kitchen sink.

Just one picture of the water...

I won’t bore you with the details, but here is a picture of some of the water. Looks pretty innocent, huh? Well, don’t be fooled, the water is nothing but innocent. Hard to photograph, but by my pink boot you can see how the water reflects the light, to give you an idea of the depth.