Shower & Shed

Last weekend Mike and I finally got an outdoor shed. We had found the one we wanted on sale at OSH over the summer but had to take a rain check. Weeks and weeks later after calling them we finally caught someone who said "We have one, come quick." When Mike got there he ended up getting an additional discount since they didn't call him which was nice. We had had the same brand before so we were able to get it up fairly quickly. Its a smaller one than before since we have such a big garage. It only has to fit the lawn and gardening supplies, not the camping supplies, irrigation fixing supplies, camping gear, spare tire for offroading, etc. It looks pretty good and means our lawn mower can finally leave the patio. Of course the baby thought it was a playhouse so we'll have to get a lock.

After that Mike worked on the media closet door. You'll remember we tried to paint the initial door to save money. It ended up not coming out well and when Mike looked up the price of replacement doors he decided it wasn't worth trying. So he ordered a replacement bi-folding, pre-painted door that arrived pretty quick. The door molding though, needed an updated from the 70s wood trim. With a new miter box (our old one is missing pieces, presumed to be in a box somewhere) Mike hand cut and pieced all the door trim for the media closet so it matched all the other doors in the house. He has to paint them still but at least their up. We still have the door off though because the boys are still working on the media set-up.

With the start of the school year and a bunch of overtime we haven't been able to do as much to the house as we would like. But, it still requires our attention from time to time. The shower in our bathroom for instance, made a protest on the morning of Back To School night. I tried to turn the water off, and it decided to stay on. I tried to crank the handle over farther, which diminished it a little bit, but it decided to stay on. And when I say "on" I don't mean a trickle. It was flowing about half strength which was not something you could leave going all day. So I called Mike and he said, "Yeah it does that now," and suggested really trying to crank it over like I was going to break it. I could push the handle a little bit farther but it would never fully shut off and when I released the handle it went back to half flow. So at 6am I had to go outside, towel on my head and in a robe, to turn off the water to the house. Fun times. Mike's dad came by during the day and fixed it. Apparently a screw and washer had come loose.

We're hoping to take another crack at the media stuff this weekend....

Rear Speakers & Holes

Last week we got the TV, front speakers and center channel in. Last night Steve and Tim came back to put in the rear speakers, run wires for outside speakers and add an outlet and media box behind the TV. Which means more holes.

At one point, Mike Steve and Tim were all working on different holes in our walls and ceiling. Tim had to drill holes from the media closet under the stairs into the beams in the ceiling of the family room. Mike had to keep an eye on him since they didn't want to turn the electricity off and there were live wires along the beam. Steve ran cable from the media closet through the holes in the beam into the ceiling of the family room. He had to cut a hole in the ceiling in order to drill small holes in more beams so that he can get the wires between the beams that would hold the two rear speakers.

While Steve was cutting and placing the rear speakers Mike and Tim were working on the outlet behind the TV. There was a plug right below the TV and a cable that ran across the carpet for cable for the last week. The plan was to drop the wires hanging from the whole in our ceiling above our TV into a media plate behind the TV. Mike wanted a real clean look with no wires or devices near the TV.

After it was all hooked up and Steve was checking connections they encountered some problem. He tried a couple of different things and I think it was decided that one cable was 1.5 feet longer than the other. He has a nifty device that plugs in to a wire and tells you how long it is. Apparently with HDMI, a slightly different length can cause big problems. Our current plan is to trade in our DVR for an HD one and buy a different plug-in plate for behind the TV. Mike said he got the right one and its not broken it just doesn't work. I don't quite know how that happens. Until then, we add to our "to be patched, mudded and painted" list for our painter.

And we have a TV

Its been a long process but we have officially come into modern times with a flat screen TV. We had a hand-me-down 32" tube TV (thanks Keith) from college on a nearly decade old hand-me-down Ikea entertainment center (thanks Kristen and George). Its been a long standing agreement in our house that if the Sharks made it to the Stanley Cup, we would buy a flat screen. Well, we bought a bigger house before that happened so it was time to upgrade.

Tim and Steve had worked on rewiring the house for phone, internet and cable over the summer. The wiring was done after the house was built and not done well. We have a hole in every closet from cable lines that has to get patched; especially now that the baby has figured out her fingers fit in them. We have been staring at a 4"x12" hole in our wall above the TV for weeks waiting for the speakers, wall plates, TV, etc. to come in. There were several hold ups to the process, like Mike actually deciding what he wanted to order, adding an electrical outlet to the media closet, etc. The TV was delivered last week and then the speakers came. The TV box was huge so it was a good thing one of the garage bays was empty.

We had to clear out the living room of toys which made the baby's room look really full. Maybe she has too many ..... never! The boys were really good about asking us where we wanted the TV centered, the height, etc. But I was surprised when they started tracing out the templates for the front speakers because they were huge! I actually thought it was the template for the sub woofer when I first saw it. Each front speaker is mounted in the ceiling and is 16" square. The speakers are angled down even though it has a speaker cover that is flush with the ceiling.

 They had quite the set up in our living room. Steve brought his own blanket to control dust from the drywall cutting and they were able to use their ladder as scaffolding. Although several times he seemed very precariously perched while holding a saws-all. There is a stud right down the middle of the wall that the TV is now mounted to. But the center channel, needing to go in the center, created a problem. Steve had to notch out part of that stud to fit the center channel in. Mike had purposely bought a very thin center channel and assures me that its still structurally sound.

When the boys had rewired the house they had to get a bundle of wires to come down through the attic into the green room's closet, along the floor under the carpet, under the door channel and into a hole they made in the floor a few inches into the room. That was out of necessity to get around beams, floor joists and what not. It ended up being perfect placement though for wiring the ceiling speakers. You know its going to be a good install when you here, "Right on the money! Oh my gosh this is going to be so easy. This is great, no time at all, " etc. Which is good since they had to spend so long on the rewiring.

At  some point they decided they still need to observe the opening day of football season and plugged our old TV into the wall in the bar area. And there was a short delay when Tim got hit by the ricocheting saw, I'm still not sure how that happened. Mike had to go get a mount and ended up getting one from his parents because they had a spare. Of course the baby fell asleep on him while he was out and the three of us back home decided we were hungry so we also asked him to pick us up pizza. Pretty quick though, the TV was going up and getting plugged in.

So now we have two ceiling mounted front speakers, one center channel and a 60" plasma. All day they were asking me what I thought and I kept saying, "Its huge!" I thought it was too big and that Mike overbought. But once it was all up and we sat on the couch, I had to admit it was a good size for the space. The couches are 15" away from the wall so it does have to be big.

There is still a hole above the TV because we were waiting on a wall plate to be delivered. The wall plate is a two-gang that has power on one side and HDMI on the other. All of those wires that are hanging will be fed down into the wall and attach to that wall plate. We also still have a cable, actually two, running across our family room floor because the wall plate isn't in. Once the wall is set-up, everything will be connected to the other side of the wires in the media closet. Then I won't have to worry about tripping over wires in the dark.

Once it was all up we sat around to watch football and check out the TV. Of course, our TV has an app. All three of the boys downloaded it and were taking turns changing the volume, menu, channel, etc. When we put the two rear speakers in (which are thankfully smaller) we will probably also put two speakers in the back patio. We'll already have holes in the ceiling so why not? Once we do that we will be able to control inside speakers and TV (Zone 1) separate from outside speakers (Zone 2). Apparently we'll also be able to plug in an iPod and browse the whole music collection from the phone (or whatever) that has the app for running the system. And Mike thought the thermostat app was cool....

The boys plan to come back on Friday since we got the rest of the parts this week. Its been a long process and its still not done, but at least now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel in super crisp HD.

Trailer Trash no more!

The north side fence is wrought iron and very open. You can see the whole side yard and part of the back yard from the street. Which was helpful when we were stalking the house before we bought it but a little disconcerting with the baby back there. We finally sent in our HOA approval so that we can get the A-okay on the fence design. It'll probably take another few weeks.

Until then, we've been worried about the amount of trash on the side of the house. We look like trailer trash with the previous owners old fridge just hanging out and piles of junk. There's been a lot out there since we moved it although its slowly being depleted. When our fence guy came back to take the rest of his materials away he offered to take the remaining junk on the side of the house. It was really sweet of him to offer, he was going to the dumps anyways. He took away the old zip drive, stair step, and luggage rack we'd found in the garage and the rest of the baseboards, the last newell and the cork paneling we couldn't fit into the garbage. While we still have the hazmat stuff, the old back door shutters, gardening stuff waiting for a shed and vintage suitcases, the side yard is looking a lot better. The fence guy also let me take the blocks of scrap redwood from our job for our classroom. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet but I'm excited!

Mike finally had a chance to post some stuff we wanted to get rid of on Craigslist. There were a few people interested in the fridge they had had in the garage. It was a nice one, had an ice-maker and water in the door, it was just older. Someone was supposed to come by between 4-5pm last night but didn't show up until 8pm. English was not his first language and I felt bad because he came by all by himself. He had tried to pick up a worker outside of Home Depot but no one was there by the time he went. He was very anxious to get out of my way but there was no way he could lift it by himself. He tried to tip it into his truck bed and I knew it wouldn't work because the fridge's center of mass was below the tail gate. (That's Physics for you) But I didn't think I'd be able to communicate that to him; he was going to try another approach anyway. He got a ladder out of his truck and laid it down like a ramp than used some pieces of our wood over it. Luckily he realized that wasn't going to work before I had to tell him. We ended up just tipping it onto the truck bed then lifting it from the ground and sliding it in. He insisted on getting it upright again in his truck and had to lift it up by himself. I tried to tell him that he had to let it sit up, vertically, for 24 hours once he got home before he plugged it in because he had moved it. "So I plug it in right away?" "No, you have to wait a day and let it sit up." [repeat multiple times] By the time he left I think he got it....I hope so. It feels good to have it gone. Now we just have to get rid of hazmat waste and the giant shutters. There's more to sell but at least the rest of it fits in the garage.

In the last few days Mike has had off, he's been busy working on electrical and plumbing, the two eternal projects it seems in this house. He replaced the last of the old switches in the kid bathroom and laundry room hallway. He patched the hole from the old thermostat and old phone in the bar area. He moved the cute Noah's ark light switch from the downstairs guest bath to the green bedroom upstairs. We still have to replace the downstairs bathroom and kitchen outlets with GFI outlets. If you don't have GFI outlets in bathrooms or your kitchen you usually have a GFI breaker at the electrical panel. We do have a GFI breaker, marked "W P" which is not hooked up to the kitchen or any bathroom. Mystery #382 for this house.

Mike also worked on the sink in our room and the kids' bathroom. The kids' bathroom was an easy fix, the "cold" handle was 90 degrees off of normal.That means while the "hot" handle was off when parallel to the mirror behind it, the "cold" handle was actually parallel to the sink when off.

Our sink on the other hand was not easy. Our bathroom sink leaks, as does our shower, and then there was the mystery half of a threaded piece of PVC that just appeared under our sink. We both looked and couldn't tell what it was a part of.

So Mike took apart the plumbing to try and fix it. A pic at right gives you an idea how many small parts there are to a sink and accompanying handle. As far as he could tell, the very small rubber O rings that fit several pieces along the handle mechanism must no longer be tight. When I say small, we're talking about less than a half an inch in diameter. Once he got it all apart, and we were sink-less for awhile, we headed to the store to replace them. But it is difficult to take off rings smaller than a half an inch that are tight on a valve and a few inches long. We tried what we had with us which was my work keys and a paper clip but couldn't get them off. We even asked an employee to try a box cutter and he couldn't get it off. The baby fell asleep while we were trying to get them off. So we were holding up the rings, still on the valve, to the packages trying to best guess if it was a 3/4", 1/2", 11/16", etc diameter O ring. Mike tried it again the next day and I got a phone call that we were just replacing the whole thing. Now it works but he had to replace the vertical part of the valve. And it still leaks.

Our shower is better after he replaced the entire valve assembly. In order to get hot water in our shower, you have to crank the hot handle all the way over with no cold water and even then its tepid most days. In addition to a leaking shower head, the hot handle pours out water when cranked all the way over. Mike ended up having to replace the entire handle assembly to fix it. The valve was stuck in the wall apparently and he has to go get special tools to get it out. But its fixed and doesn't leak anymore, still not hot though.

The dog got out twice this week. Once when Mike was in the backyard Beau saw our neighbors' cat through the fence, jumped the retaining wall and had a clear shot to the front yard. Apparently he ran across the street chasing the cat into our neighbor's yard. When she rang the doorbell Mike had no idea he had gotten out so he was surprised to see him at the front door. Another time Mike and his dad were working so hard on the house they didn't realize the front door was open. After awhile they realized that they hadn't seen the dog in awhile. They went looking for him, got worried he'd gone far and then found him sitting in the driver's seat of Bob's van. He apparently wanted to go play with his cousins.

We finally have some pictures up! Not many because we're still finding out where pieces really fit. We got the family wedding photo and our wedding photo with the guest signatures on the mat, our big railroad picture from the Yukon and some of our flower pictures up. The dining room table is still cluttered with more frames, there's a least a dozen in the office waiting to go up. But its starting to look like real people live here.