20200815 – Home maintenance

Kinda feeling like a home maintenance diva right now. We’ve had a couple of things go wrong lately. Got an outside faucet with a major leak. And the air conditioning broke down. During a major heat wave.

For the plumber I remembered a guy who had worked on our water heater a long time ago who I’d been impressed with. He knew what he was doing. Thanks to the wonderful spouse we had the number of the company he worked for and he still works for him. And even though they’re only supposed to do water heaters, he’s coming on Monday. I don’t know anything about plumbing, but at my age, I’m starting to know what competence looks like.

Then the AC broke down. The spouse had tried a few places, but all of them just had message machines. I tried a few myself and got the same result. I broke down and used one of the on-line services. I hate giving people my phone number, but the prospect of no AC, temperatures in 100’s and high humidity sounded awful. Entered my info and got a call back in minutes. The guy showed in minutes and fixed it in half an hour. At a price I considered reasonable.

I totally feel like a winner right now. Hope things go as well with the plumber.

Fixed

The internet can be a wonderful thing. Since people at work have found out that I make jewelry I’ve been asked to repair a lot of stuff. Mostly it’s been restringing jobs, with occasional re-gluing. Recently someone gave me a chain with a broken link and asked me to fix it. I told her I wasn’t sure, but I’d give it a shot. At least I couldn’t break it any broker.

I put off fixing it for a couple of weeks because I was working on other orders, and I was really apprehensive about trying to fix it. I went to YouTube and watched videos on how to repair chain. It seemed pretty straightforward, but I was still afraid I would melt the links rather than solder them. I finally got out my torch and tools and went to work. Got it on the first try! Still kind of surprised at that. It was nice to be able to give back the repaired necklace.

Validated

I’m feeling very validated today. We are having the long predicted buckets of rain have finally started and our building at work leaks like a sieve. We had some damage in a earthquake several years ago and they’re telling us that they can’t fix it until the rain stops. Right now all of our fixes consist mostly of plastic trash cans under the leaks. We had one bright bulb take a look at one of the more severe leaks and decide on a slightly different fix. He left the buckets, but he also put a roll of absorptive material in the area of the leak. He stopped to tell us what he had done on the way out. The minute he was out the door I looked at my coworker and said “So basically he put a sponge in our suspended acoustic ceiling. It’s going to soak up all the water and then break through the acoustic tiles.” Acoustic tiles being made basically of cardboard dust.

It didn’t even take twenty-four hours. We came in this morning to find the ceiling tiles broken, the water collecting buckets knocked over and the roll of paper snaking soggily across the floor. I probably should have said something, but I haven’t had the best of luck when telling people how to do their jobs, so I didn’t. I feel satisfied that my projection of events was correct, and sorry for the people on the floor below us who got all of the water from the buckets at once.

Parsimonious

Since I am now out of work I’ve been trying to cut spending. First I decided that I would turn in our aluminum cans in. Then I thought, better yet, stop drinking soda. Soda serves no purpose at all. It doesn’t nourish us. It’s often actively bad for us. It uses a lot of environmental resources to no good purpose at all. The best thing it does is taste good. On that point I haven’t been able to give it up entirely. I’ved cut back some. Sometimes. It’s a work in progress. Maybe I could try having one every other day, then every third day? I’m starting to think they put something in it to make it addictive. In my case it’s probably the caffeine.

Saving is good, but not always easy. Car repairs and dental bills and other unavoidable expenses. Then this Sunday our washing machine broke. It’s broken before, but the Wonderful Spouse was able to get it going again. This time it was just no go. We talked about getting new ones, but the thought of spending the money to get them just made me cringe. Maybe we could get it fixed?

So I went to the manufacturer’s web site. Entered the model and serial numbers and the problem we were having and scheduled a service call. The guy showed up on time and in less than hour it was fixed. At a cost I could deal with.

I’m starting to understand how people can get compulsive about saving money. It’s very satisfying. Especially if you have something you’re saving for, in this case, “The Farm.”

It would have been a whole other storey had it been the refrigerator. I would have had a new one delivered by now. Ours leaks onto the floor from someplace and the door below the icemaker is rusting through from the inside.

The backwards plane

Saw the backwards plane at about 2:00 pm this Sunday. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it. It may not be exactly this one, but it sure looks like it. This one has the propellor in the back. That’s something I couldn’t see from the ground. I always get a thrill seeing it fly over.

20100823 – This weekend

Had the August birthdays party this weekend. Three cakes. It’s challenging to decide what to with leftovers from three cakes. Spouse and I ended up taking home almost a whole cakes worth of 3 different cakes.

At least caketastrophe wasn’t mine this time. Youngest sister made my cake, white with lemon icing. The cake was fine, but the icing tried to escape. And, like my caketastrophe last year, it still tasted fine.

I picked up the food (Chinese). We’d done it a few years ago, but that time I actually ordered catering trays. I asked them how much I would need. Never take that advice. The quantity I ended up with would have fed three times as many people. We ended up trashing more of it than we ate. This time I ordered a few entres, a couple of sides and some egg rolls. We still had leftovers, but it wasn’t more than we could eat.

I learned this weekend why I don’t paint ceilings. I always gave being short as an excuse. The real reason is it’s hard! Sore arms today and the ceiling in our bath isn’t very big.

Bathroom Day

Today is spackle an sand day. Had to work some into a rather large hole the builders left. Looks like they ordered the backsplash for the vanity a half inch too long because it was shoved a half-inch into the wall.

It really feels good to work on a project like this. I’m taking my time on this. I work until I’m tired. Stop and do something else for a bit and then go back to sanding. Got me a big ass sander an I can’t say how much easier it makes things. You can really put som oomph into it with that. Trying to sand with just sandpaper seems just silly now. My sander:

Got the shower curtain and rod out. The one that was there was just used tension to hold it to the wall and it wasn’t possible to get it out without breaking. Have to look into something that isn’t like that for a replacement.

Got a large item pick-up for all the stuff from the demolition. That was almost as hard as getting the shower curtain out. Took longer for sure. Spent about 10 minutes on hold, but I was spackling at the time so it wasn’t bad. Once I got someone on the phone it all went smoothly. They ask you what kind of trash you have. I’m gonna guess they they recycle a lot of the stuff. I can see grinding up the counters and casting them again, but what do you do with a used toilet? Ew as a reaction, but hooray to them if they do.

Of course the cats have to be everywhere. They’ve taken to sitting on the boxes for the vanity in the living room. It’s at a convenient cat petting height. Kitt goes into raptures if you stop and pet him. He doesn’t often win top spot against Monkey. He’s getting older and it’s challenging to get him to get up and move. He’s the only cat we can leave on the patio by himself. He has trouble getting up into a chair at this point; there’s no way he’s getting over the fence.

Never open the medicine cabinet. Suddenly repainting it became a priority. This project grows tasks like a hydra grows heads. Every time I think I’ve covered everything something else pops up. I was planning to repaint the medicine cabinet at the end of the job, but now seems like a much better time. While I can still sand off any overspray. It would also piss me off to open the scrungy medicine cabinet with the rest of the bath looking nice.

Had to paint the medicine cabinet in stages. The fumes got to be too much for me and you can’t put too much paint on at one time or it runs. It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you read the directions. The Spouse put in fan and I turned the ceiling fan on. Big difference in the dry time of the spackling with the fan going. Wish I’d thought of that sooner.

Next up, more sanding. Every time I start to sand I find more places that need spackling. Thank goodness for a two bathroom home. I don’t have to rush.