I can’t say he didn’t warn me…
DIY
The Door Problem
We never changed our locks after moving into the house five years ago. I did think about it, after all, it’s a very good idea, but it was never a high priority. Finally, sometime this summer I managed to lose my keys, including our only house key. We just didn’t lock the doors for quite a while, included at least two weekends away… Obviously this is a problem and a couple weekends ago I decided it was time I did something about it.
Appliance Ages
Our stove recently quite working and we were forced to get a new one. Actually, that story is pretty straight forward and successful. We bought a very good stove at a very cheap price (last years model bought on Amazon) and I installed it with no difficulties at all. As such, I won’t be telling that story.
Instead I wanted to tell everyone about a technique for checking the age of used appliances. This new stove is actually the 3rd stove we’ve had in the four years we’ve been living in our house. The first came with the house and the second we bought used. And that is where the problem comes in.
The New Water Heater
Our house is a little weird. It’s not any bigger than your average house but for some reason they built it to be serviced by two different water heaters. The kitchen and master bathroom have one and the hall and guest bathroom have another (yes, despite having three bathrooms the house really isn’t all that big). The second water heater hasn’t worked for a very, very long time. This meant that guests had to wash their hands with cold water but otherwise it didn’t really affect anything so we didn’t worry about it. Now recently we had some family spending a few nights at the house. That left us with two options. Let them use the master bath (which still has a hole in the wall from an earlier project) or get a new water heater. We decided on the new water heater. Continue reading
Stretching The Fence
Last year we bought some mesh wire fencing in an attempt to keep the dog and Firecracker in the yard. Setting up the fence was simple enough but we found that the mesh sagged. No matter how much you pull on the material you just can’t get it taut. This summer I was suppose to put up another section or two of fence but I never got around to it for a few reasons. Lack of money, lack of time, and lack of knowledge. Recently I did some digging online and was able to fix at least one of those problems.
The Lawn Mower Problem
Since the very beginning of the mowing season my mower has been giving me troubles. It had been running under powered to the point that I couldn’t go at full speed. In fact, if I was running the blades and tried going up hill it would nearly stall out. Our lawn isn’t small to begin with and with the machine running so slowly it was taking me around 3 hours to cut the whole thing.
After talking to Dad and a few other folks and checking the internet, I think the general consensus was that using bad fuel had clogged the carburetor up and it needed cleaning. Although another possibility was that the fuel line was partially clogged. I intended to take the machine down the a repair person who lives in town but just never got around to it. Between work, family time, business research time, and mowing the lawn very, very, very, slowly there isn’t much time left over.
The Culprit
And there we have it:
How do you suppose that got there? For those who might not be familiar with these things, that’s a freeze pop handle. You put cool-aid in a freezer tray and put that thing on top so you can eat it. Firecracker really, really, loves these things.
On the plus side, I feel better knowing that there was no way anyone was getting that thing out of the toilet.
I Fixed My Toilet
The following weekend after removing the old toilet I got a chance to try installing the new one. In theory it seemed simple. Put the wax ring on the bottom of the toilet, place it on the floor, bolt it to the floor, then attach the tank. Well, it ended up taking a total of another 4 hours of work over 2 days.
I Broke My Toilet
The other day (maybe a couple weeks ago…) the toilet overflowed. None of our toilets had given us any troubles before so I suspect that Firecracker dropped something in there and it was flushed without being noticed. In the past, my Uncle from Arizona, who is a plumber, has always helped me get going with anything plumbing related but I thought this might be a job I could handle. After nearly a day of plunging without success I went and bought an auger (basically a snake) and promptly got it stuck in there. Seriously stuck. I tugged and pulled and it was just not moving.
Hard Learning 