Family time, bathroom, and canoes

Warning. Long post ahead.

This is a longer post.  Lots happened this week.   In the last post, my parents had arrived to Lake Byrd after driving down from Pittsburgh.  They ended up coming with me back to our Loxahatchee house where I fixed the broken A/C unit and replaced the broken well pump.  Both of which are still running great.  While we were at home, we did a little surf fishing but didn’t have any luck.  We were going to go out fishing Wednesday morning again but the weather turned bad so we decided to head back up to Lake Byrd.

New drywall

Back in the new bathroom at Lake Byrd, we got the drywall hung and two coated on Wednesday.  Thursday, we got the final coat and then a skim coat of mud on.  In the meantime, we started demolishing the back bedroom.  As we’re going to have A/C in the house now, we’re going to insulate the walls.  After checking, we found that there is no insulation in the exterior walls so we took off all of the drywall so that we could insulate. 

Interesting finds

During the drywall removal of the back bedroom, we found a bunch of interesting stuff.  At one point, a car has backed into the east facing wall (which is right by the driveway).  A few of the studs are pushed out of place and the wood siding is cracked.  We found a Reddy Kilowatt pencil.  It’s a real old pencil.  There’s a spot by some old wiring that looks to be charred – like it had burnt at one point.  And there were some random uncapped wires in the wall.  Fortunately they weren’t live.  Also, we uncovered more old termite damage.

Canoe launching

Friday morning we launched the canoe.  This was pretty exciting for me.  My dad took it out for a lap early in the morning while I started sanding the drywall in the bathroom.  I looked outside and I saw Walter’s car parked at the top of the dock with Joyce in it and Walter is down on the dock wearing what he refers to as his “lounge pants”.  They look a lot like pajamas to me but I admittedly know very little about clothing and styles.  Evidently Walter got real excited at seeing my dad in the canoe so he had to come over and see what it was all about.  That was real neat for me. 

About the canoe

If you’d like more information on the canoe build, I did a blog post about it located here.  The short of it is I designed and built the canoe from scratch.  It is a cypress strip plank canoe with fiberglass fabric inside and out and mahogany accents.  It weighs in at 50lbs.  It features a straw marquetry sharks mouth reminiscent of the old fighter planes.  Best of all, it has a pedal drive assembly so that you don’t have to paddle – you use your legs.  I’m pretty proud of the canoe.  And to see Walter get so excited about it, that was real neat.  And Walter – I still have the forms for making the hull, should someone want another similar one. 

Sanding drywall

Back to sanding drywall.  I got the drywall sanded out in the bathroom and touched up a few areas.  When the touch ups dried, I got two coats of primer on the walls and ceiling.  Switching gears – last week we installed the mini-split A/C unit that will heat and cool both bedrooms.  I’m waiting to fire up the unit until I can pull a vacuum on it.  To do that, I’m waiting for a part to arrive from Amazon.  The part arrived on Friday.  It’s an adapter to use my A/C gauge hoses to connect the vacuum pump to the A/C unit. 

An adapter for the adapter

Well, the adapter needs an adapter for me to be able to use it.  Fast forwarding, I have an automotive A/C hose setup – not hoses for house air conditioners.  Evidently they’re slightly different and the adapter I bought would work properly with the other style hoses.  So what do you do when you need to join two parts together with different threading?  Simple, you make your own adapter.  I had a chunk of round steel on hand and decided that would work just fine.  I drilled out and tapped the inside for the threads on the adapter.  I then cut off the piece about 2” long and tapped that side for the threads on the hose.  Add some Teflon tape, and I’m back in business. 

Vacuum the lines

I hooked the vacuum pump to the lineset on the front bedroom unit and pulled vacuum.  The vacuum removes any moisture, oxygen, or general junk from the lines/units so that the compressor won’t get boogered up and break.  After confirming that the lineset held the vacuum which means that there are no leaks, I opened the valve to let the refrigerant into the lines.  Great.  I repeated this for the lineset to the back bedroom.

Cold air! Eventually

Time to test the units.  We fire them up and wait.  Hmm, these aren’t getting cold.  And then an error code.  Uh oh.  After some troubleshooting and head scratching, it dawned on me that I only opened the refrigerant valve on the low side, but there’s another valve for the high side.  Whoops!  I opened the high side valve on both units and then we tested them again.  Nice and chilly!  And so quiet.  Both the indoor unit and outdoor units are super quiet. 

Painting and fishing

Saturday started with a coat of paint to the bathroom walls and ceiling.  After the coat of paint, I took the canoe out for some fishing.  I caught a smallish smallmouth bass.  Very fun.  I arrived back and put on another coat of paint.  While waiting for the paint to dry, I laid out the electrical in the back bedroom with my dad.  It will be similar to the front bedroom with a ceiling fan, wall sconces, and outlets throughout the room. 

Shower plywood

After the paint was dry enough, I installed the plywood walls in the shower of the new bathroom.  The shower is going to be white Corian.  Behind the Corian, I’m going to create a waterproof substrate that will hold water without leaking.  To do that, I’m using exterior plywood covered with fiberglass.  Also, I CNC cut the shower floor so that it slopes properly toward the drain.  After the walls were installed, I leveled out the floor so that the shower pre-sloped floor would work properly. 

DIY fiberglass shower

The bathroom floor was only ½” out of level.  Only.  Haha.  I made varying thickness strips and glued and screwed them in place.  This leveled out the floor so I could proceed.  I then glued and screwed the shower pre-sloped floor in place.  Lastly, I glued and screwed the shower curb in place.  With the plywood in place, I taped all of the seams with 6 ounce fiberglass cloth and epoxy and did a layer of cloth and epoxy over the entire shower floor and up the side walls and over the curb.  This is more of a yacht way of building showers that you’ll likely not see in homes, but it’s what I’m comfortable with.  I finished up just in time to head over to Bud and Diana’s for some drinks, appetizers, and good conversation. 

A day off?! Kind of

Sunday was more of a leisure day.  It was the last full day I’d be with my parents so I took some time to hang out a bit.  We did a material run in the morning and picked up supplies for building out the back bedroom.  My dad worked on the electrical in the back bedroom while my mom, Oceana, and I played Boggle.  Even though it was a leisure day, I still managed to get 2 coats of epoxy onto the shower walls and floor in the new bathroom. 

Mystery bike rider

Monday morning was real foggy out.  It was neat watching the fog roll off of the roof.  My dad took the canoe out for a spin around 6:30 and when he got in the canoe, he set the fishing poles on the dock as his 3 day fishing license had expired yesterday.  It was still dark out.  I stepped inside for a minute and when I came back Oceana said “I just saw the strangest thing”.  She saw someone ride their bike coming from the north (past Bill’s house), stop at the top of our dock, walk hurriedly down our dock, look around, and then leave on the bike in the direction they came.  It was still dark and they didn’t have any lights on. 

Thieves

Not long after my Dad comes up and asks if I put one of the fishing poles away already.  I didn’t.  Strange.  One pole is missing.  We checked the water just in case but didn’t see anything.  That means someone had been scoping out our dock and determined that they were going to steal from us.  And they did just that.  So neighbors, please be advised there is a thief working the area.  Also, be on the lookout for someone who could be scouting out the area so we can stop this from happening again. 

Odds and ends

Tom helped us rip out a small palm tree right at the base of the dock.  It was growing over the walkway to the dock.  We got our first starfruit from our newly planted starfruit tree.  We’ve got new impact glass windows ordered for the front bedroom, the back bedroom, and the dining room.  Impact glass does wonders for reducing noise, blocking much more noise than a regular low-e insulated glass window.  This will help lessen the road noise from 27.  As we go through each room, before hanging drywall, we’re treating all of the wood parts with a borate chemical treatment which is used as a termite pre-treatment.  This house has had many bouts with termites.  My goal is to treat any and all wood as it becomes exposed through construction throughout the house to make it inhospitable to termites in the future.  This week my dad squared away wiring throughout the shop. He replaced a broken fixture and put all of the lights on one switch at the door instead of 5 switches located in different parts of the shop. That’s real nice.

Sorry if I got longwinded.  Lots happening which is good.  As always, thanks for following along.