Don't know my own strength.

It's funny how we get used to imperfect things when they decay slowly enough. Unit it finally breaks and you replace it.
I had to replace the wheels on my shower door today. I hadn't noticed how much harder they were to open and close, until I took a shower with the new wheels. Almost pushed the door into the next room.

Fait Accompli

The faucet is fixed.  I started around 9:00 am yesterday and finished sometime around 2:30 in the afternoon.

My fear that getting it apart would be the hardest, most complicated part was unfounded.  It took me only 25 minutes to get the old one out.

The bulk of the time was spent on three trips to Home Depot, one trip to England Plumbing and trying to get pipes to perfectly match up through the small holes in the wall so they would screw into their respective spots.  I ended up having to make the holes a little bit bigger to get things to go together.

But alas, it’s done and I got to take a well needed shower.  Two days of no shower or tub and and all that fighting plumbing in a small space, I was just a little bit rank.  Good thing home repair places kind of expect that sometimes from their customers.

That’ll teach me.

Ever had one of those home projects where fixing makes it worse than it was before?  That was me today.

One of the cheapo faucet handles in the shower broke the other day.  It was working fine with a pair of fliers, but I decided to actually replace it. 

The screw that held it on was rusted, and the valve it was screwed into was a little cracked, I thought it would be best to replace the whole thing now and save me time later when it finally gave in.  $5 in parts was all it should have taken.

Thanks to piss poor design, I’m going to end up replacing the whole faucet.  A little spring in a little hole that press a little rubber gasket onto the back of the valve was gone.  The rubber was shredded.

I went through 3 sets of rubber gaskets and springs, trying to get them into a small hole, inside the pipe, 3” inside the wall through a 1” hole.  All 3 springs sproinged out and fell down the wall into oblivion.

By 3:00 I gave up, stuck a rubber grommet in behind the valve and turned the water back on.  Oh yeah, I have a shower, as long as you want to shower in straight hot water.

First thing tomorrow morning the water is going off and I’m going to start taking things apart.  I have no doubt that I’m going to be swearing a lot, since the faucet has been there at least 20 years, and who knows how long before I moved in.

Wish me luck.

Exterior complete!

I originally built my back porch in stages, so it was a hodgepodge of construction.  The walls, which started out simply as a railing, were right at ground level, so I had water coming under it.  They weren’t insulated and because they did help buffer my bedroom from the cold I decided to rebuild them this summer.

I put a footer down  to keep the water out, and built it with normal 2x4 construction so I can insulate the walls.  I also put in 3 actual windows, before they were just screens that I would cover with plastic to help keep out the cold.

I just finished the exterior today, put the shingles on the roof of the little end piece I just closed in.  Here are some before & after pictures.

It may look very similar, but that’s because I reused all the cedar I could salvage from the destruction phase.  Next summer I’m going to re do the roof, put a real one on it, and then I’ll also cover up that really nice linoleum that is showing.

The good part is that the rest of the work I need to do is inside the porch which, with a swamp cooler, stays nice and cool.

End of Stage 1

I’ve decided to get a roommate.  There’s nobody in particular yet, but I figured I’d get things ready and put the idea out into the cosmos and see what happens.

Stage 1: Move the office out into the living room.

My house really has only one bedroom, but I have two front rooms, each with it’s own outside door.

This makes one of them real convenient as a rentable second bedroom.  One that I have rented out three times before.  And although it was real nice having a separate room for all my computer stuff, I really want to pay off some debts so I decided to at least get prepared for a roommate.

The living room hasn’t had any electrical outlets for about six years.  I was putting in a new chandelier in the dining room and was working up in the attic when I noticed about ¾ of my wiring in the house was the old knob and tube stuff, dating back to before the 1930’s.  AND, there were a couple of live wires just dangling in the insulation up there.  I immediately disconnected it all from the breaker box and lived with floor lamps and extension cords for a few months while I completely rewired everything in the attic.  The outlets in the living room, on the other hand, had to be accessed from under the house, through a crawl space.  Which is why, until today, everything in the living room was powered from one of the remaining extension cords.  VERY attractive stretched across the floor between the living room and dining room.

It wasn’t too bad hooking up the outlet close to the center of the house. Under the kitchen and breezeway the basement was dug out for the furnace, water heater and water softener.  The outlet at the outside wall will have to wait, I’ll have to actually crawl up under there to feed the wires.  Something I’ve avoided for 6 years now, and probably will for a while longer.

So I moved the TV to the inside wall and moved the computers out there right next to it.  Intrudes into the living and entertaining area, but on the bright side I’ll have to keep it clean instead of just closing the door so nobody can see.

Stage 2 is going to be to clean out the office, find a place for all the crap I’ve crammed in there for storage.  Oh well, I need to get rid of a few things I never use anyhoo….

Another Cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof day

.... Getting close.  I just put the planks back on the roof over the back porch.  Well, the ones I had.  A couple were beyond reusing and because I put them right up against each other instead of leaving a 1/4" gap, I ended up five or six short.  Another run to Home Depot!  I'm hot, I'm tired, my knees are killing me, and I'm done for the day. 

,,,, But at least tomorrow I get to go golfing, the first time ever.  If you don't count miniature golf or whacking golf balls around the clearings up at our property.  Personally, I've always thought the idea of hitting a tiny little white ball with a long stick and trying to get it in a little hole a bazillion yards away, with sand traps, water traps and trees in the way, well, kinda silly.  But my older brother put it in perspective.  One time I asked him why he liked to golf and his response was "It's the only place they let you drink and drive."  Two hours hanging out with the brothers, it'll be fun.  Even if I do have to hit a little white ball with a long stick once in a while.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Or: "Me on a Black tar-papered Roof in 90 degree weather". Fun stuff.

.... I'm still working on de-leaking the porch roof. Today it was putting on the galvanized steel drip metal. I'm up there, kneeling on a towel and nailing long sheets of metal down. (Yes, I really should just buy some knee pads, but I keep forgetting every time I go to Home Depot.) Then to keep the water from getting under the metal, and under the tar paper, I had to seal the seems with roofing tar. (Gearheads - thanks for the offer, but it was only $10 a gallon and it was right there.) The stuff is kind of cool, it comes out of the can looking exactly like chocolate pudding, same color, same texture. You goop it on, spread it smooth and then it dries black and looks & feels exactly like dry tar. Oh, but it doesn't clean up exactly like chocolate pudding - I had to scrub it off my leg (yes, I did use gloves, so my hands were clean.)

.... Anyway, black tar roof, 90 degrees and in direct sunlight. It was hot. I'd work for about 15 minutes, go down and spend 10 minutes under the swamp cooler vent drinking water, head back up and do it all over again.

.... All I know is that if the thing leaks so much as one drop next time it rains I'm gonna end up in a rubber room with a wrap-around jacket.

Working on the back porch again.

.... I've actually got a bit of work done on the back porch this weekend.  When I first built it I had no intention of closing it in, so the roof wasn't build waterproof.  Then I screened it in and retro-fitted some roofing to keep out the water.  Didn't work so wonderful, leaks here and there making sitting out in the rain not as much fun.  So, I tore off all the decking on the roof and I'm going to plywood, tar paper and re-deck it so it won't leak anymore.  Got it all torn apart, now just have to put it back together.

.... I also added a little art work to the inside of the porch.  It's called a Tapa Cloth.  Made from the bark of the Mulberry Tree.  At the end of last week I got together with the other 2/3 of the Triumphant Trio of the IDET program (the two I went through Master's program with).  I met them up in Layton (pronounced "Lay-n"), where Leilani lives, and we went out to dinner at this great little Italian dive called Paisano's.  Seriously, we thought about leaving as soon as we walked in (only one elderly customer there at 5:00, tacky Pizza-Hut-turned-Italian decor, sticky tables and a waitress that looked 12 and a half).  Ok, maybe 14.  Anyway, we decided to stay and were glad we did.  The food was great.  I won't go into details, just try it if you're ever in Layton. 

.... So we get back to Leilani's apartment and she had this huge painted cloth hanging on the wall, and I commented on how cool I thought it was.  Turns out she made it herself, smashed the cloth out of Mulberry tree bark into this huge piece of cloth and then hand painted it.  I think the piece she had on the wall was used in her wedding ceremony in Tonga.  So she asked me if I wanted a piece, and I said sure, figuring on a one foot square.  She pulls out this huge roll of the stuff and hacks me off a 5.5 foot by 2.5 foot piece.  Way cool.

.... I thought and thought about where to put it, realized it was just about the right size for one of the pieces of glass I harvested from the old storm doors I replaced a few years ago, and that I had a bunch of clear plastic contact paper laying around the house.  So I cleaned up the glass, taped the cloth to it, put enough contact paper on the back to keep it protected from what little weather it will get and hung it up inside the back porch.  Looks good, if I do say so myself.

P.S. Leilani, thanks again for the Tapa Cloth!

What did I do today?

Other than lay around and watch SG1?

First I finished putting in the bedroom windows.  The two windows I did today took about 3 hours to complete, about the same time as the first one took.  I learned a lot from that first one.

I still have to do the trim on the inside, but I want to let the caulking cure for a few days before I do that.  I also have to figure out how to do the trim since the windows don't fit quite the same as the old ones.

Then I started to refinish my school desk.  If you missed me mentioning it before, or maybe I didn't, one of the nice things about leaving a school that is closing down is that you get to take a bunch of stuff with you that normally would stay at the school.  Like my desk.  It's a really nice old wooden desk, built back when they were built to last.  6 drawers all together, and they even lock, all but one.  The finish is a little worn down by some 50+ years of classroom exposure, so I decided to re do it.  I got about 3/4 of the way through the sanding when I realized it's 10:00pm on a weeknight and the noise was probably annoying neighbors who have to get up for work in the morning.

One down, two to go..

3 years ago I had new windows put in the house.  All except for three in the bedroom and one in the laundry room.  I had already bought a window for the laundry room, and they wanted $600 extra for the three 2' x 2' windows on the east side of the bedroom.  So, I decided to do it myself.  Up until yesterday when I started the project, they were old 1940's single pane windows that I had covered with a couple levels of plexiglass to help insulate them.  Which meant that although they kept the heat in pretty well, they not only didn't allow me to open my windows in the summer, but they looked like hell too.  I bought three 2' x 2' double paned vinyl windows sometime this winter, and just had to wait for school to get out so I could install them. 

The first one went quite well.  The hardest part was getting the old window out, since I had sealed the plexiglass with silicone caulking it wasn't too eager to come out.  I ended up breaking the glass and demolishing the window frame.  I don't care about the frame, I'd be tossing it whether it was intact or not, but the glass is certainly a pain to clean up.  But that's ok, it went in really easy, and looks pretty good for an amateur, if I do say so myself.

Big honkin' bugs...

I'm not a big fan of bugs. Especially when they get into my house, or in this case, stuck in the screen porch.

This is the first summer since I built the entry way out the back door, and it seems to be a bug trap. Big, noisy, bumble bees. You know, the ones that could feed a family of 4. They get in there, and then into the screen porch, and then can't figure out how to escape. There's already been a couple times that I had to avoid the porch and wait out the bee until it found it's way out. Another especially stupid one met the vacuum. Well, today it was me that got caught in the porch.

The porch is screened in, and has only one way out - through the entry way. I was sitting out there when mega-bee comes out of nowhere and starts bonking itself on the storm door (from entry to outside) trying to get out. I swear I thought it was going to break the glass. Not wanting a really pissed off bee to make it's way into the screen porch, I closed the screen door between the porch and the entry. Good, it can't get me. But, unless I want to share a 4' x 4' room with a maniac bee zipping around the space, I have no way out. And, I can't even open the storm door to let it out. I guess I could just sleep out there and wait until the thing gets exhausted and dies. But, being captive in my own home kicks in the claustrophobia.

So I think: Ok, I can either face the frantic stinging bug, or cut the screen and climb out. Spend an hour tomorrow fixing the screen or spend a few seconds with the bee. Guess which one I chose?

At least I have some spare screen in the garage.

Old Video of the Day.