Another week or so is down and we're making progress.
The biggest news of the week is that we are now an approved kitchen!! We have a food permit to sell to the public and to others for resale. We will hopefully be using that within a of couple weeks.
I knew this was one of my first goals, so I've been concentrating on the kitchen to begin with. Since it was an approved kitchen before, there wasn't a whole lot that had to be done, but it needed to be cleaned up and a few things taken care of.
The countertop was pulling away from the wall just enough that there was a hole in the silicone, so I resealed that with new silicone.
The vinyl on the floor right up against the cabinets was frayed and broken. I didn't want to replace the vinyl, especially since this is only a temporary kitchen until we remodel upstairs to make our nice kitchen. I thought about using silicone, but thought that although it may seal it, it would be messy and not look good. I finally came up with the idea of getting some quarter round from Home Lumber (couldn't find a page to link) and staining it. It worked perfectly, covering up and sealing the bad vinyl.
The lighting at the counters wasn't bad. I think by code, it probably would have been fine, but I wanted a little more. I ordered just basic, rechargeable led lights to stick under each cabinet.
Of course, everything needed wiped down and cleaned since it hadn't been used in a while.
And finally, I noticed the faucet on the sink leaked out of the top and the seal between the sink and faucet was bad, so it leaked underneath a bit. There inlays a story of the amateur plumber. :)
If you've been reading the blog so far, you know that I had the plumber hat on last week as well. It took a while, but I successfully figured out how to get an air gap in the drain for the sink.
I figured this little faucet leak was an easy fix. So I went to True Value again and got a new faucet. I got under the sink, turned the water off and took out the old faucet, easy. I put the new faucet on, siliconed it in and connected it, easy. I knew it wouldn't be a hard replacement.
But then, I turned the water back on. I guess these shut offs hadn't been turned off in a while. They leaked like crazy before I ever even had the chance to test the faucet. (Don't leave yet, it gets better.)
So now, I need to figure out how to turn the water off before the shut offs. I go behind the wall (yes, it's so nice to have a 4' walkway behind the wall) and start tracing the pipes. The nearest shut off I can find for the hot water is at the hot water heater, which isn't too far away, but also shuts off the hot water for the hand wash sink and the two bathrooms. The cold water, on the other hand, has a shut off about half way to the hot water heater, but it's knob is missing. I keep tracing and figure out that to shut the cold water off, I'm going to have to shut the water off where it comes in to the building.
I open the lines to drain the pipes as much as possible. The hot water, only runs for a few seconds, but the cold water seems to keep running longer than I think it should, and then more yet. It can't be coming from the main, I shut it off before the water meter. Then the water starts getting warmer?! That's when I think about one of the pipes I passed getting to the main shut off - an off shoot that came down, had a shut off and then went up through the ceiling. I realized this must be the water supply for the apartment all the way upstairs, and it has it's own hot water heater - I'm draining that hot water heater through the cold water faucet in the basement. I went and turned it off, and the water finally stopped.
I start trying to get the shut offs under the sink off with the tools that I have so I can take them with me to True Value to get new ones. In trying to do all of this, I have ended up taking the drain pipes (yes, my beautiful air gap drain pipes) back out so that I can get to the water lines easier. I had managed to install the faucet with only knocking one fitting loose. These shut offs aren't going to let me get them off that easily. I finally give up and wait until the next day to get new shut offs and a pipe wrench to do the job correctly.
It's a couple days later before I get a chance to work on it again, but I got the pipe wrench and the new shut offs. I go back to work on it and as I'm getting the first shut off loose, I know I'm getting somewhere because it starts dripping, letting the water behind it out. I grab a bucket, put underneath and continue. Until I get it off and water is SPRAYING out.
I forgot that I had turned the water back on after the failed attempt a couple days ago. Luckily, I was working on the hot water, which the shut off is much closer and easier to get to, but it's still 30 feet away, through two doorways and in a hallway that doesn't have much light unless you go 10 feet away from the water heater to a pull chain light. Needless to say, for the next half hour, I was cleaning up water from under the sink and all over the floor. My bucket didn't catch hardly any! :) Plus, come to find out, I had purchased the wrong shut offs - I had ones with the threads on the outside of the 3/8" side - I needed the threads on the inside. But, of course, True Value, only two blocks away, makes an easy exchange, so that was only an annoyance, not a problem.
The rest went fine and I now have a working kitchen sink again.
The other thing we accomplished Sunday, when I had my family to help and plenty of time, was cleaning the front windows. And when I say clean, I don't mean just running some soapy water and a squeegee over them. No. After about 4 hours of my mom, my sister and myself scraping and peeling, we got all the old vinyl wording and logos off the windows.
We now have beautiful, clean & clear windows ready for whatever we decide to do. I know the furthest two windows to the south, I plan to put a photo op on - using the dotted window coverings. It will serve a quadruple purpose.
- Let passersby know what the business is about, at least in some way.
- A photo op that will hopefully be cute enough we'll have a lot of people using it and posting on social media - YAY, free advertising.
- Shade the kid's room from the harsh morning sun since we will not be able to get an awning ($15,000 for the kind we want) to begin with and since there are no buildings on the east side of the street to block the sun in the mornings.
- Provide privacy from the outside for the kid's room. If you put your face right up against the window, you can kind of see in, but otherwise, it's really hard to see through that stuff from the outside. From the inside, you can see out nearly unobstructed.
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