checking in: home improvements, gardening
Sep. 29th, 2008 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tagrynMostly a weekend devoted to projects around the house. On Saturday I installed a P-trap on our laundry room sink. The house inspection we got last year noted that this was something we should do as a safety measure, and for only $6 in parts and some labor (mostly cutting the PVC pipe to fit the existing length) I was able to get it done. I have to say, for once the help at Home Depot was very good, and the fellow who assisted me was able to find the extra pipe part I needed without much trouble.
I also worked on our shower, since the hot-water shutoff value doesn't work anymore and I wanted to also see how complicated it would be to replace the stems that the shower handles screw into, since they tend to get loose a couple of months after a tightening. As it turns out, quite complicated: the mountings for the stems are behind the tiling in the shower, so removing them would involve taking out the tiling first. No thanks; I settled for tightening the screws again and left it at that. I also couldn't get the nuts holding the hot water value loose, so that project was nixed also; I didn't want to get to a point where I couldn't put it back together and would have to emergency call a plumber, since the shower is working fine right now and we can turn off the water at the main value outside if necessary.
On Sunday we took delivery of a new clothes dryer. The one that came along with the house had started developing a loud grating screech that made it hard to endure, and since its in the hall next to our living room, that made it difficult to put up with. I found a website that has a lot of info on fixing old dryers and was able to diagnose the problem, but after taking it apart I saw that there was a lot of rust on the inside of the machine already, so fixing it just didn't seem like a good expenditure. The one we got was a Consumer Reports "Best Buy" and I'm pretty pleased with it after doing a load of towels and also de-wrinkling a shirt as well. I did have to reverse the direction of the door on it, which in the end meant bringing out my Black and Decker power drill after the manual and electric Phillips screwdrivers didn't have enough juice to screw the door back in.
Then I stayed up too late last night, only to watch the Eagles lose at the end when they couldn't get a TD at the goal line. Bleah.
The garden is pretty much on cruise-control right now, we've been having regular rain so I haven't had to water much at all, even though the rain barrels are all full again. The peppers continue producing at a brisk clip, I'm going to start chopping them up and eating them raw at work for lunch. Tasty! But the tomatoes have pretty much stopped producing anything at all, I think the cooler temperatures and overcast days have slowed them down a lot. The trees haven't really changed much, yet, but they're starting to get that not-quite-full-green colour on them that heralds the coming change.
I also worked on our shower, since the hot-water shutoff value doesn't work anymore and I wanted to also see how complicated it would be to replace the stems that the shower handles screw into, since they tend to get loose a couple of months after a tightening. As it turns out, quite complicated: the mountings for the stems are behind the tiling in the shower, so removing them would involve taking out the tiling first. No thanks; I settled for tightening the screws again and left it at that. I also couldn't get the nuts holding the hot water value loose, so that project was nixed also; I didn't want to get to a point where I couldn't put it back together and would have to emergency call a plumber, since the shower is working fine right now and we can turn off the water at the main value outside if necessary.
On Sunday we took delivery of a new clothes dryer. The one that came along with the house had started developing a loud grating screech that made it hard to endure, and since its in the hall next to our living room, that made it difficult to put up with. I found a website that has a lot of info on fixing old dryers and was able to diagnose the problem, but after taking it apart I saw that there was a lot of rust on the inside of the machine already, so fixing it just didn't seem like a good expenditure. The one we got was a Consumer Reports "Best Buy" and I'm pretty pleased with it after doing a load of towels and also de-wrinkling a shirt as well. I did have to reverse the direction of the door on it, which in the end meant bringing out my Black and Decker power drill after the manual and electric Phillips screwdrivers didn't have enough juice to screw the door back in.
Then I stayed up too late last night, only to watch the Eagles lose at the end when they couldn't get a TD at the goal line. Bleah.
The garden is pretty much on cruise-control right now, we've been having regular rain so I haven't had to water much at all, even though the rain barrels are all full again. The peppers continue producing at a brisk clip, I'm going to start chopping them up and eating them raw at work for lunch. Tasty! But the tomatoes have pretty much stopped producing anything at all, I think the cooler temperatures and overcast days have slowed them down a lot. The trees haven't really changed much, yet, but they're starting to get that not-quite-full-green colour on them that heralds the coming change.
