the gee sisters, mae, nancy and stef, generously spent super-bowl sunday helping us with the house.
it was a warm day, perfect for stripping paint in the backyard. (left) mathew, stef and nancy setting up their work stations. (right) stef getting started stripping paint and adhesive from wall panels that we will re-use as wainscotting in the downstairs bathroom.
(left) nancy using mae’s new heat gun. these volunteers bring tools! (right) in the garage, mae and i sanding doors. mae became obsessed with sanding this entire door today. mathew thinks he may have found someone even more meticulous than him…
(left) mae’s delicious lunch of spinach and bean soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, we are completely spoiled, our helpers even bring lunch! we had a nice picnic outside. (right) later in the day stef and i cleaned tile, this process looked a lot like shucking oysters. mae took a break from her sanding to see what we were doing.
(left) nancy decided to trim the very overgrown garden ground cover. (right) mathew’s plumbing work station. soon after there was major plumbing drama in the garage.
before our friends left, we had a late afternoon/evening dessert of berry shortcakes that nancy made. they were extremely photogenic but so yummy i forgot to take photos!
plumbing and sanding went late into the night. actually, it is almost 11pm and we haven’t had dinner yet and mathew is still downstairs working as i write this post…
plumbing drama: when I turned off the water at the front of the house, I drained the pipes. (I’m moving the pipes that go to the downstairs kitchen because they are currently 1. hanging below the ceiling 2. in the way of the heating duct.) I cut the pipes out and they drained, but the cold continued dribbling. After a bucket had completely filled, it dawned on me that the shut off valve was leaking. Stef and I both tried closing the valve tighter, but it still leaked. I had to get the pipe closed up, or no shower, toilet, bathroom, etc for us…
The difficult part with soldering copper pipe is that there must be no water in the line, or you can’t heat the pipe enough to melt the solder. So to solder in the new branch pipe, I had to try to plug the pipe with white bread, and hope it lasted long enough to solder on a new valve and the new pipe. It blew out three times with a shower of soggy bread and a pipe full of water before I finally managed it.