The basement is fitted out now and
ready to move in! Now it's time
for bookshelves (I found a web site that sells used library shelving),
furniture (including a couple of nice recliner chairs), and computers
(like the one that's feeding you this blog).
I recruited a couple of friends and we went down to the observatory to
frame the interior walls of the basement, preparatory to fitting it out
as a living area. Basically, there are two rooms -- a darkroom that
ultimately became a bedroom, and a bath/laundry. The kitchen is on
the outside wall of the bath, so most of the plumbing is inside a single
wall.
After that, the builder came back one last time, to help install the
shower. It required a concrete-block base with cement board on top
with pads of grout for the shower-stall to sit on (the shower had to
be raised because there was no plumbing inside the floor slab), and
his proven expertise with block and concrete made him the right person
for the job.
After almost two years of near-constant concern about the observatory, with
a list of things to do seemingly every day, I confess that I let my
concentration lapse when it came to the basement plumbing and electrical.
I failed to do my usual job of thinking about every detail and anticipating
every need. I can only plead burnout ...
As a result, I would up with a cheap, low-quality valve for the toilet --
the kind with the oval handle that requires an adjustable pliers to turn
as they age, instead of a nice 1/4-turn valve. And I got 1-million-turn
gate valves on the water inlet piping instead of high-quality 1/4-turn
ball valves. The same kind of valves got put on the clothes washer inlets
instead of the really spiffy single-lever dual valve I would have liked.
Basically, instead of good stuff, I got whatever was on his truck.
And the plumber turned out to be more of a copper-tubing solderer than an
actual plumber. He failed to put in a drain line for the water heater TP
valve (this is the valve that pops if your water heater goes overpressure;
it's a code requirement that the plumber seemed clueless about),
and didn't install a drain line for the pan beneath the water heater.
We had to correct these things later on; the result is pretty ugly, but
it's serviceable.
Fortunately, at the last minute, I thought about putting an anti-hammer
device on the water inlet line -- the plumber didn't even know what that
was, so had it been up to him, there wouldn't be one. If you've ever been
in a house where the cold-water line bangs when you shut off a tap, you'll
know why an anti-hammer device is a good idea.
After that fiasco, somebody else did the finish plumbing. He helped me
correct the problems caused by the rough-in plumber, and did a great job
in finishing the plumbing professionally.
The electricians that worked on the building were a lot more professional;
they did both what I asked and what needed to be done for code. The failure
there was entirely my own; I needed to do a much more meticulous job figuring
out where I wanted lighting, outlets, and switches. There's been a lot of
retrofitting as I get things set up the way I should have done it in the
first place.
One place this really affected things was in the circuit breaker panels.
Since I started out with such a minimalistic idea of what I wanted, the
installed panel is a lot smaller than it should have been. Ultimately,
we had to install a second panel at the far end of the basement to
accommodate the circuitry I wanted.
So, of course, I insisted on a larger panel upstairs at the observing
floor -- and naturally, it's less than half full!
Anyway, despite my ineptitude, and entirely due to the efforts of a
highly-skilled local home repairman, the basement walls were finished,
textured, and painted. At last, the observatory is ready for extended
stays. Now if only I had some mounts and some telescopes ...