More Music

Just a tiny update to say that I finally got a chance to sit down and record another Wenzel von Radolt lute canon, available at SoundCloud, as usual. Weighing in at a slender 1 minute and 8 seconds, it's surely something you can sacrifice a minute of your life for! And if you feel like more you can always check out the whole playlist, or indeed, everything I have posted to my SoundCloud account. Or my other SoundCloud account... And imagine — I'm already running out of space!

Still busy

Don't think, gentle reader, that just because major combat operations have ended that I haven't been busy. Since the "Comparisons" post, I have done quite a bit, although one much-needed, but major and time-consuming, task won't get done this summer: refinishing the upstairs floors (and repainting all the upstairs rooms — sigh). I kept thinking that it would only take 3-5 days to do that, but after this summer where everything kept taking so much more time than I thought it would, I remembered that I have a handy resource that tells me how long it takes to do things: this very blog. Back in 2013 I refinished all the floors and repainted, and it took me over two weeks. And I was also complaining the whole time about how long everything was taking and how much more I thought I would get done. So that's on me.

Anyway, I decided to make my future job of refinishing the upstairs flooring much harder by adding lots of furniture. A mostly satisfying (there was one uncontrolled fit of fury against a piece of furniture but we both worked through it) and 2-3 day long project was "fixing" Sasha's room, which now sports impressive new bookcases, a different furniture arrangement, a cleaned up desk and a completely revamped closet space. Sadly, I don't have before and afters for these, just afters, but you'll get the idea.

New bookshelves — which barely hold all of Sasha's books

Note the dresser now at the foot of the bed

A clean desk — a never before seen miracle!

The old bookshelves, which fit very neatly in the hall to the bathroom

The bookshelves were all of one day and a little bit of the second; the rest of that second day was spent, however, tearing out the ugly and old plastic and rubber storage "system" that has been in that closet, with Lilya hating it intensely, the whole time we've lived here. It had a clothes rod only on the lefthand side, limiting Sasha to a very small number of shirts and suits packed together in a way that made it hard to get things in and out, or even see what's there. Well, no more:

After removal of the "system" (I patched most of those holes btw)

After installation of a proper clothes rod, Target organizing cubby and top shelf

I also took care of one of my two remaining issues with the bathroom, namely caulking and sealing everything (tile edges, tops of tiles, floor and corner seams, and toilet base. 

Note: caulked tile edges, corners

This may seriously be the most seamless caulking job ever

Out of focus, but a pretty decently smooth corner

Edge sealing with light switch

Edges and corners 

Tile edge, toilet base

Today I also decided to take care of three small things that have been on my list for several years:

1) patching cracks around the side door that might be letting in water with hydraulic cement. No photos, 'cause that's not visually very interesting (or appealing)

2) Repainting the inside of the front door. A few years ago (the paint can informs me it was Fall of 2015), I was installing a new lock and handle in the front door when there was a spectacular accident with a drill that got stuck in the on position. It chewed its way through a significant chunk of the front door and caused some pretty heavy damage (like holes all the through the door, chunks missing, etc.) before I could get it unplugged. I repaired the door with Bondo (and got a new drill), the same filler they used to use to fill in dents in your car, but because it is a bright white, it contrasted rather poorly with the dark brown door, so it was painted. 

The "modern" look

After sanding and painting

I thought a second coat might be necessary and, over time as the Bondo absorbed the paint, it was — you could see a little but of pale white through the paint (you can see it a bit here, and it's from right after the repair). So I've given it a second coat. It's the same paint (from the same container), and I'll have to wait until it's dry, but it's not looking like a perfect match right now, which will mean repainting the whole thing at some point...

3) This house has never had a working doorbell while we've owned it, but the worst was when it appeared to have one. People would press it and eventually leave, thinking no one was home, but it reality, it just didn't work. So, at some point it was removed, but the small hole by the door has bugged me increasingly over time, so I filled that in today as well. Again, not so exciting, so no pics. 

Comparisons

An almost all-photo post today, in which I revisit my "Day 0" photos of the bathroom and compare those pictures to where we're at now. First the big elements, the overall picture, as it were. 

Overhead comparison

Sink, old and new

Floor level, old vs. new

Toilet, old and new

Now on to some of the details, like the old painted door handle vs. the cleaned up handle (the whole door needs to get re-done, but I have to catch up on other things first... also, the door jambs need repainting... sigh)

Medicine cabinet, old vs. new

Inside medicine cabinet, old vs. new

No door lock, then and now

Old HVAC register vs new

Light switch, old vs. new 

Tile, old vs. new -- two examples

OK, folks, that's it for the weekend, which I'm going to spend on something other than bathroom renovation.

Stick a fork in it!

Whew. It was a bit of a slog, I have to say.

So, at the end of last time's blog, we had toilet and sink in place, but nothing was quite working yet. The toilet was the major concern -- the feed was leaking just above the shutoff valve, from a rather dubious-looking piece of complicated hardware. The plan was to crank off the whole shutoff valve and add a new one. I hadn't done that before because when I tugged at it with a wrench, it didn't move at all. I really went at it this morning, though -- to no avail. I believe it may be welded on. Huh. Next move -- see what I could remove, and very happily (although with some force required), the whole piece came loose. When I examined it further, it's really perplexing. The old shutoff valve has a standard ⅜ opening; the complicated doohickey (which really is made of about 5 parts) essentially appears to designed to go from ⅜ to ¼ to ⅜ and then to ⅜ about two more times. In short, when this jury-rigged (and jerry-rigged) doo-dad came off, I was able to just straight up attach the line from the toilet to the feed. No trip to the hardware store needed. First flush, 8:56 AM, no leaks!

Doohickey

I was on track to be done by 10 AM, since the sink would be even easier. Ha, ha, ha! Just kidding. The whole story that follows is a classic lesson in home improvement.

When I left off yesterday, the sink was assembled and in place but I hadn't quite figured out how to connect the outflow pipes in a satisfying way, so that they would allow the cabinet to be correctly placed. I went to the hardware store, explained the problem, and got what is essentially a giant Flexi-straw for one of the parts -- that would in fact allow me to get everything in place once I trimmed the Flexi-straw to the right length (on the non flex portion, obvs). PVC plastic is easy to cut with a hacksaw, which was out in the garage. But before I could get into the garage, I needed to fix something, because the garage door opener wasn't working -- the breaker had been tripped the day before. I'd re-flipped the breaker and closed it yesterday, but when I tried to open it, it was dead again. Odd. The breaker was tripped again, so I turned it back on — and it flipped back instantly. I tried a few more times, but something was obviously really wrong with the circuit. So I switched it off, and opened the garage door manually. I got the hacksaw and then started looking for what might be wrong. Connections looked okay -- and then I remembered that I'd moved a board that's been leaning up against one wall for years yesterday and heard an odd sound when I did so. A somewhat electrical sounding click. I moved the board completely out of the way, and lo and behold:

An electrical socket with a bare live wire hanging out. No insulation. No covering. And now it is touching the metal box it is enclosed in, and hence instantly shorting out every time the circuit breaker is tripped. Or not quite instantly, because if you look carefully, the wire has welded itself to the box. 

This is obviously BS

Alarming as that is, the system worked just like it's supposed to -- it detected a fault and shut down right away. I pulled the hot wire out farther, and taped a note to it saying "lick me!". Or rather, I covered all exposed wire parts in electrical tape, shoved it into an electrical cap, and tomorrow I'll hook the whole thing up to a proper GFCI outlet so this won't ever happen again. There are still some major electrical issues out there, including some other spots with exposed wire, so more work will have to be done. But back to the sink (all this, you'll recall, was to get the hacksaw)!

The pipe was cut and eventually I figured out how to arrange everything in the right fashion so that it all fits nicely. 

I connected all the outflow stuff, got it semi tightened and then looked -- and realized that neither of the included IKEA feed lines would reach the shutoff valves. Sigh. Back to the hardware store for two connecters and two 12" lines (I needed about 2" on one side and 5" on the other, but that's as short as they go. 

Long story short, after several episodes of slight leaking and testing and re-testing, I got things working just past noon, and I was able to go to lunch, where I enjoyed a burger, fries, and champagne to celebrate. And why not?

I also had the pleasure of going through all the stuff from the old bathroom that I'd saved, and was delighted to discover a razor that I bought in graduate school. Seriously, I've owned this razor since at least 1998. I don't think I need a 21 year-old razor any more (especially since I shave with an electric razor now). The end of a big project is also a great time to let things go. And it's amazing what we save without thinking about it.

Still reasonably sharp

Lots more to do, of course, like the rest of the caulking, and Amie will have to get in there and break everything I put in to put in the window, but you get the idea. I'm going to assemble some before and after pics as a capstone, but right now I've got friends coming over for wine and cheese in about 20 minutes, so that'll have to be tomorrow. 

Grinding toward a finish

Well, everything is in as of today -- but nothing is working yet.

Let's get started with the happy events of the day. I started the day with some things that are fast, but feel like the room is getting settled. So I added the (properly colored) faceplate to the socket, swapped out our old light switch for something with a more modern feel, mounted the mirror, and put a swanky new flange over the water feed for the toilet, about which you'll hear much more shortly.

Yes, it's slightly crooked; I tried dozens of times

modern light switch!

it glows in the dark!

The mounted mirror that I have photoshopped myself out of

And that highly polished new flange

Then onto the main work at hand for today -- the toilet. Getting in was not easy, but I did manage to do it -- twice. The first time was a breeze, and I got it onto the posts on the second try. Then I realized that it wouldn't work. The wax ring that seals everything and keeps it from leaking wasn't touching anything, because the flange was too far below the floor. Two hardware stores later, I had installed a flange extension, and then it took about a dozen tries and a lot of resting before I could get the toilet on the posts again. But it eventually happened.

Then, of course, the hassle of getting everything hooked up, bolts tightened, etc. -- all of this in a space where tools basically don't fit (especially off on that left hand side), and then we were ready to turn on the water supply. And that's when things didn't go as planned. The water feed was leaking -- leaking, at least I think, from the feed itself. The shutoff valve seems fine -- when it's off, there's no water leaking. So tomorrow I will see what's what and get this thing working, so I can at least test the toilet properly.  Here's that feed in close up:

The chunky, long octagon of grey at the bottom is the shutoff valve -- but if you look carefully you'll see something odd -- above that are a but, a long but very thin pipe, another nut and what appears to be the actual ⅜ valve. There's a lot of stuff there, when there should just be a shut off valve and a ⅜ opening. Hopefully things will come apart correctly once I have the water shut off, and I can get this thing to work. Right now I can't even test it.

Let's turn to the sink, which also took some fussing around with, and also isn't quite done. I won't go into details there except to say that I need a slightly wider u-trap so that I can back the cabinet properly up against the wall. When that happens -- assuming all the connections work properly -- it should look like this:

The view -- that window will get addressed, too, but not by me

sink in situ

The classic overhead shot

The register should be arriving tonight, by the way, and then I can let the cat wander in, something he has been trying to do every waking moment since the project started. The problem is that he will dash in and try to quickly eat whatever poisonous material he can find (tape, chips of tile adhesive, grout). Or climb into the air ducts, which is all very well for spy films, but will end quite badly for this cat, I'm sure.