Cleaning...

The garage was a complete mess, and I couldn't even fit my car in it, so I decided to take some time to clean it up.  I didn't take any before pictures for some reason.  I didn't have space for all the tools floating around my garage, and pegboard was cheaper than toolboxes so I decided to get some of that and put a bunch of them up.

 

 

Finishing up the chimney

I only took down the chimney below the roof line before, so now I had to get it down below the floor.  The first part that was above the ceiling was by far the most time consuming since I had to constantly go up and down the ladder for buckets and weave between the ceiling joists to get at it.  At least there was somewhere nice to put the bucket while I was up there.

Once I got the chimney down more I noticed I could rock it back and forth, so that's interesting...

And finally down to the floor

Since I saw how many buckets it took to hold just the part over the chimney, I decided it's easier to just have a pile in the back yard that I can gradually put into my garbage cart.  The grass is already mostly gone from the trenching anyway.

Getting it ready for patching

I was surprised how much the changed the feel upstairs.  It almost makes it feel bigger and smaller than before at the same time.  Also this is what the roof patch looks like from underneath.

Finishing plumbing rough-in

I had to tie in the drain line from the tub and sink into the main stack in the basement temporarily, so I decided to use the old spot from the tub and sink before.

Since feeding the PEX has a relatively permanent natural bend to it from being in the spool, I grabbed this dryer vent cleaner thing that I bought a while ago for fishing wires and used it as gauge to shove the pipe over.  It actually worked pretty well.

I tied the cold supply in right where it used to be, so that was convenient since it was already 3/4", but the hot is 1/2" from the new water heater so I had to get an adapter for it.  As a side note, it's actually really nice how the pipes are colored.

Instead of using elbows for all the turns, I used these support things, since less joints is better (and cheaper).  Getting them over the 3/4" PEX was almost impossible though.  Maybe I was doing it wrong or there was a tool or something for it.

This is how I laid it out, for everything up stairs.  I'll be putting a cabinet in behind the tub in the hallway, so the ball valves will still be accessible after everything is done.

And the sink and tub stub out

When I put in the floor joists, I didn't really think about the fact that putting them closer together than 16" centers meant tools wouldn't fit... So I had to order some short spade bits to be able to run the water to the toilet.  At least I was able to leak test everything before then since I had to wait for the bits to come in.  Even with the short spade bits, it barely fit, even with my impact driver.  The plumbing inspector came by and I passed the rough in, so that's cool.

Trench time

At the same time as taking the chimney out, we also worked on digging a new trench between the house and garage for new wiring.  I rented a mini excavator which was fun, and since it was a holiday weekend I got to pick it up Friday at 3pm and return it on Monday morning and still just pay for 1 day.  Even with running it for probably around 10 hours, it only burned about 3 gallons of diesel, so that was cool.

Here it is after most of the trench was done.  We couldn't get under the porch all the way, so we ended up digging that out by hand later.  It's about 4' deep.

I put 3, 2" conduits in it, so I can use one for the new feeder (hopefully 100A), one for the lighting and other random power stuff, and one for data/maybe gas.  We put in the first section of pipe and backfilled it so we could run the excavator close to the deck for getting the hand-dug dirt out easier

Here was starting to backfill the rest of it

And all graded (although not well)

I'm not sure when I'll actually run the conduits into the buildings, but at least this part is done now.

Chimney be gone

I decided to borrow my neighbor's scaffolding since it's safer and also more fun.  I forgot to take a picture of it after the guard rails were up though.

I took down the satellite dishes first, and it was surprising how easily they bent when I threw them to the ground.  And of course there were wasps living in one of them.

I also took out the 2 plumbing roof vents that I didn't need anymore since I was up there.  The ladder going from the scaffolding to the roof really helped the scaffolding's stability (not that it was bad before that).

We had to move the scaffold, and my neighbor and I only saw three options.  Take the whole thing down and set it up again, extend it to get over to where we needed it, or push it with my truck, so obviously we pushed it.

And now on to the chimney... The cap was cement, and I'm guessing it's as old as the master bedroom addition from what I guess is the 40's, so there was a ton of erosion around the rocks in the concrete which was cool.

And this was the setup on the scaffold on the chimney

My friend came up from Chicago to film taking the chimney down, but it ended up being super uneventful since the bricks just came apart with almost no effort, so who knows if that's going to be able to be turned into a video at all.  It was pretty amazing how nearly impossible it was to stand on without just sliding down with all the sand from the mortar on the roof, so I ended up using my new air compressor to blow all of it down.  Here it is with the hole in the roof filled

And then the shingles

What the roof looks like now

I took the shingles from the back porch roof since it'll be coming down anyway