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We have started to put up the paint now.

The ceiling has been painted. There is one coat of paint in the pantry and there is one coat of paint on the new walls. We have run out of the yellow paint that goes on the walls so the wife will have to pick up more tomorrow. There wasn’t much left from when we originally painted the kitchen.

We have second coats to go, putty up the nail holes in the door frame and paint the other side of the wall which is in the living room. We also have to get the trim installed and painted then we can rehang the door. We will need to find shelves we want in the pantry and mount them and find a new light for over the kitchen sink. We also need to put the cabinet back in and reinstall the little corner cabinet as well as the corner counter top.

That should end it for this part of the project. The wife has plans for the island in the kitchen that we still need to do but that will be its own separate project.

Got the second coat of primer on the walls tonight so now we are ready to throw some color on the walls. This is the worst part of any renovation project. Drying time.

Realized tonight that I might not have enough trim left to trim in this project. I buy a ton of it and just keep in the basement and as we finish off a room I use what is available down there. But I haven’t bought any in a while and the stash has dwindled a bit. While it is not a huge space, trimming up and over a door on both sides, takes a lot of trim and you need a lot of long continuous pieces.

The wife got free tickets and pit passes to the ARCA Remax race at Berlin Raceway in Marne Michigan last night. ARCA is basically a driver development league for people trying to make their way up the ranks of the stock car racing world. The cars they are driving are the old race cars that NASCAR Cup and Nationwide series used to run and one of they guys I was talking to said his car was built by Joe Gibbs Racing. The track at Berlin is a 7/16 mile paved oval with 16 degrees of banking.

When we arrived they were just finishing up qualifying for the ARCA race and the wife and I realized we had forgotten to bring any earplugs. Those engines are really loud. We hadn’t had dinner yet so we grabbed a couple of hot dogs and a ginormous pop. The dogs were good and the pricing for food is extremely reasonable. We had 4 hotdogs and a 32 ounce pop for $10.50 so not bad at all. We ate our track dinner and watched the rest of the quals. The fastest ARCA cars were averaging around 103 MPH around the track which is pretty good. We later learned from one of the old timers at the track that some other series, late models I think he said, would do between 120 and 128 mile per hour on this track. The track has none of the modern safety items like soft walls so it is just concrete and metal guardrails.

Once qualify was over they had a couple of heat races for the Pro Stocks that were running before the big feature race. They ran their two heats for position and then there was a few minutes before they raced so the wife and I crossed the track and went into the in field and pits with our free pit passes. It was an odd feeling to be walking around as all these teams were working to put the final fixes in place before the start of the race. We kept feeling like we should be there and at any minute someone would shoo us out, but we had our super powered gold wrist bands on that allowed us to go anywhere we wanted. Since we hadn’t ever seen a race from the infield we talked to one of the track workers if it was any good. He basically told us we would want to watch from the regular stands if we really wanted to see the race. But we figured the Pro Stock race would be a good one to try the infield from and then watch the feature from the grand stands. We were at the exit of turn 4 and it was cool to see the cars come through the corner and there was a ton of passing in that corner. It was a sense of danger being on the in field as there was only a few large tractor tires and a couple of poles between us and cars running on the track. But the track worker was correct, you don’t really get to see much of the race other than you one corner because of all the buildings and trucks in the infield blocking the view.

Once that race was over they lined up all the ARCA cars down the infield road and let people come across for an autograph session with the drivers. Drivers were signing large publicity cards and kids had them signing shirts. We talked to a few drivers about what it is like driving these cars, this track, how long they have been running race cars and where they see their careers going. One of the cars was sponsored by Mike’s Hard Lemonade and I started talking to a guy with this team and found out he was Mike’s Hard Lemonade marketing guy. So I talked to him for about 15 minutes on how they define a successful marketing campaign by sponsoring a race car. I enjoy motor sports but that is one aspect I have never seen how you can justify the cost of sponsorship leading to increased sales of your product. It was an interesting conversation and what I came away with it is that if you simply scab your name on the side of the car you won’t get any real benefit from it. There seemed to be quite a bit of activation that went on in conjunction with the car to get a complete marketing campaign. Getting your name on the side of a car is just the start of the marketing not the complete campaign.

Then we went back to the grandstands to settle in and watch the ARCA cars race. I understand this is a development series for stock car, but what I can’t understand is how these guys drove a much cleaner race than the guys in Cup. The ARCA guys show well timed passes and could watch them set the other car up for a couple of laps before taking the position away. It was some real skillful driving and there were two single car incidents and I think only two times that two cars smacked each other. Seems odd that drivers being developed can keep their cars together on a short oval, but the supposed big boys will have cars without hoods and fenders when Cup races on a short oval. Some of the big boys races look more like an expensive demolition derby than an actual race.

See the rest of the pictures.

A while back when we had the water in the basement one of the problems I saw was that the AC was trying to drain the condensation into a hole cut in the basement floor with some pea gravel in it. Once the ground was saturated the water would come out and spill onto the floor. Add in that Maisy from time to time thinks that she would love to crap in a 3″ diameter hole of gravel instead of one of the three litter boxes we have set out, and I figured it was time to close down the hole in the basement floor.

So I bought a condensation pump. I had a temporary setup where I snaked a 30 foot 1/2″ hose across the basement floor to the drain that goes to the septic tanks, and the PVC just angled into the pump. It worked to get us through until I got time to get it in properly. That was today.

I put together a list of materials I would need and set off for the hardware store. I got my two 90 PVC elbows, a joiner, electric box wire clamp, 4 foot of 18 gauge wire and 50 foot of hose. First thing was to shut off the power to the furnace so I wouldn’t shock myself getting the pump wired in. Then I took the 18 gauge wire and connected it to a safety switch on the pump in line from the thermostat and the blower control panel. What this does is if the water in the pump basin goes 1/2″ above the float, the safety switch interrupts the thermostat to make it turn off the AC/furnace so no more condensation can be produced until I get the pump fixed or replaced. This should prevent any overflows and water in the future.

Next I popped a plug out of the single gang electrical box and put the wire clamp in place. I cut the two prong plug off the end of the pump cord and fed the wire into the box. The hot was already split to I simply took the hot lead from the pump and added it to the wire nut. The neutral on the furnace was an unbroken strand so I had to cut this wire and then tie my pump lead into that. Turned the breaker back on and a quick test to make sure the blower and thermostat still worked as I expected and then I was ready for the PVC.

This wasn’t too difficult. I just had to get the path I wanted from the back of the AC unit over to where the drain basin to the pump. Got it all glued in place and made sure I have a slight down grade on the run so the water flows slowly out of the PVC and doesn’t spill over the drain basin. I left one down junction unglued. In the past I have found this useful when the inevitable plug happens and I get to suck stagnate condensation water out of the drain pans. Worst taste ever.

Next I had to get my hose run from the pump over to the floor drain. This means a 7 foot straight up run to the bottom of the floor joist then over and back down to the floor drain. Just above the floor drain is an old laundry tub. At some point in the life of this house someone had the idea that they needed a water lead from a pipe that went to the laundry tub and used one of those stupid water taps that punctures the copper pipe and has a twist open valve that feeds the small supply line that comes out of it. I really don’t like these things as I have always seen putting a hole in the side of a pipe as a stupid thing to do. Today is the reason why it is stupid to use these tap valves. I hit it with my little 1/2″ rubber hose and it sprung a leak. Great!

So since this house is old and they apparently never thought a shut off valve to anything was a good idea, I had to shut off the pump and start draining every drop of water from the system, hot and cold water. As it was draining I drove down to the hardware store to buy two 1/2″ copper caps. We have been saying that when we remodel the basement, this laundry tub goes away. So instead of fixing the pipe, I am just going to cap it and be done with water to this tub, I will remove the tub when we get to the remodel of the basement level. Got the pipes capped, while they don’t look great, it works. Turn the pump back on and get the system pressurized again and refill the hot water tank. I am re-plumbing this house once we get everything torn out of the walkout level. It is all going to be pex and a shut off valve for every run.

Finally I get the hose mounted in place and do a test run of the pump. It works great! This project took me about 5 hours start to finish which is way longer than I it was going to take and don’t know what took all the time. Even though I had to do some plumbing I wasn’t planning on, it really didn’t seem like that long of a detour. Oh well it is done, looks good, functions better and now we shouldn’t have to worry about condensation ever dumping on the floor again.

It has been a little while since I posted anything about the on going panty project.

The dry wall is up and ready for prime it but before we can prime it we have to get the polyurethane on the exposed floor boards. Tonight I sanded down the first coat of polyurethane and applied the second coat while the wife put the second coat of paint on the door. The door has been removed from the hinges and taken to the garage where it was got the final sanding on it to take down any roughness before the finish coat is to be applied.

We are in the long process now. It is apply a coat of paint/polyurethane/stain/primer and wait for it to dry, repeat. We normally do three coats of polyurethane sanding between each layer or on the walls two coats of primer and at least two coats of paint. It is a lot of waiting for things to dry, but at the end it looks good.

We are hoping to have the door done, one coat of primer on the walls and the floors done by the end of this weekend. Hoping that by next weekend the walls and ceiling are completely painted and I can mount the cabinets, put up trim and if I am lucky, get the shelves in the pantry put in. Basically we have 14 day to get everything done and cleaned up because we have people coming to the house for the weekend.

We just got home from the Tiger game and it is 1:30AM. We have to wake up for work in about 5 hours. I think we will sleep well Wednesday night.

We are sitting at the Tigers game right now. Its a great night for baseball, hopefully they play better in this game than they did in this afternoon’s game.

Stopped off at the polling place today and voted in the primaries. We have a lot of people running for Governor of this state and after today there will only be two for November so that is pretty major. The other major thing for us is the primaries for the US House of Representatives, the Michigan House and a ballot proposal. And since there isn’t another party in West Michigan other than Republican, who every wins the primary today for those house seats will most likely win in November also. So in all reality, today is the day you pick your representation. That is huge and they are only expecting 20%-24% of all registered voters in the state will show up today. It is so disappointing that so many people are so lazy as to not vote. It took me 15 minutes total to vote today. People act like their life is so important that they can’t be bothered to vote. They had some moron on TV this morning saying she wasn’t going to vote because she had too much to do. The polls are open from 7am to 8pm and this twit can’t find 15 minutes to vote. From the looks of her, she will have some spare time in that 13 hour span to get in and vote. Lazy jerk.

So here is my plan. Next time someone is complaining about government I am just going to punch the complainer straight in the face. Odds are they didn’t vote and they have no right to voice any opinion on something they willingly avoided.