Weekend work, urr, non-work

[Updated version to correct text over-writing images. At least, I hope so. I also made a few textual edits to clarify some details.]

Saturday ended up being a day off, although we didn't plan it that way. HomoDommi invited me to his book club (which was quite pleasant) and then the household joined old friends for the evening, just to kibbutz.

On Sunday, we geared up for work and almost instantly were at a standstill.  This is what much of Sunday felt like.

That is, staring at a hole in the floor, scratching our heads, in more than a little exasperation.

The cause: the hole we made when we removed the chimney.  It's a nice, clean hole down into the basement, about 18" square. When it was filled with chimney, it was surrounded by drywall (in fact, we only removed the last remnant of the drywall last month during the deconstruction). When it was a chimney surrounded by drywall, contractors would use the small gaps to run wires and plumbing through.

Here is a photo, taken when we began this project 3 years ago.  It shows the chimney still in place in the kitchen (although the front wall of covering has been removed).

Next, the same view after getting rid of the bricks (and the ceiling except for the 2x4s).  You can see all those wires running through the gap behind the chimney, and, less obviously, a couple rigid, pale yellow pipes running up the near corner -- between the chimney and the (still-standing, in the photo) drywall. (I've talked about them before, in my list of infrastructure opportunities.)

I blogged about a ten days ago about the productive day HomoDommi and I had, moving the pipes that run up to the second floor -- some of that involved moving them from the front corner of the space shown back into the true wall, between the joists. And the electricians came in and wired the area for a light switch, and also ran wires through for the ceiling lights in the new kitchen.

In all this, we didn't realize that one wire -- one very fat, large wire -- hasn't been neatly tucked back into that between-joists frame.  You can see it in the two close-up photos.

This wire, which is taut, goes all the way up to the attic and provides most (if not all) of the lighting on the second floor. We need it to not be crossing out into the airspace in front of that hole.




Another issue is, how do you fill a hole?  I mean, solidly, so that a refrigerator can rest upon it (that's what the masking tape shows, the front of the fridge), and so that people might someday walk across it.  That is, without reflooring a massive area around the hole, and while adding a laundry chute to the area.

Still the day was not totally given over to frustration.  The Texan and I installed the second of the two concrete boards backing the sink.  And we picked out a window to install over the sink in that wall (as shown).