November 9, 2008
Do It Yourself
This week we had a couple small, DIY-scale projects, one electrical, on plumbing. Of course the small designation is usually slapped down by the actual execution.
The electrical flavor was our new-ish GE Advantium microwave oven. It was beeping and displaying the F3 error code. Fortunately, it was on a circuit all its own, so a trip to the basement to trip the breaker solved the bleeping beeping problem. Google led us to some pages that explained we would need to replace the front panel.
There was DIY advice on the web explaining how to pull the unit from the wall (its a built-in) and access stuff from on top. My back had been bothering me so wrangling the unit was daunting. I decided to leave this repair to some pros. Two guys showed up on Thursday with the new part, but they had little clue how about this model. They poked and prodded a while. Once I supplied a printout of the web page instructions, they were able to get it in gear and make the repair.
The plumbing project was motivated by a leaking ledgeback facet in our bathroom sink. A plumber had previously told us that he could not get replacement parts (washers) for this old model. Maybe that was bull because we do have a good local resource in Watertown. But I went online again to Locke Plumbing and found a suitable replacement.
The challenge here turned out to be getting the old facet apart. There were some hard to access cotter pins holding the pop-up assembly together. I ended up disconnecting the water supply and drain pipes and removing the sink from the wall. The one-hour estimate from web DIY advice turned into maybe two-plus hours. I drew blood twice, once a nick on my forehead from dropping a tool on my face as I lay on my back looking up at the work site. Once again a typical knuckle scrape. It's not a real project unless you bleed a little.
The job did give me an excuse to buy one new tool: a basin wrench. If you need one, nothing else will do. This really helped on the reassembly. I also got to use an old tool I picked up a long time ago on speculation: a little double-ended right-angle screwdriver.
Everything seems to be in order, except the handle above the facet to the pop-up doesn't quite fit in the hole provided in the porcelain sink. It is quite hard, but not impossible to pop the pop-up up and down.
Posted by MikeMulligan at 6:08 PM | Comments (0)
September 7, 2008
End of the tunnel
The last bit of renovation work was electrical. We had the door bells reconnected and a few other wires put in place. The town was called (and called) in and signed off. The renovation is complete. Yea!
Of course, one ceiling light fixture that was fixed is now dark again. But now we have a ladder sufficient to reach. Now if I could only find the bulb that goes there.
Posted by MikeMulligan at 6:49 PM | Comments (0)
June 29, 2008
Busy June
June is often a busy month for us. There is a birthday, Father's Day, and my sister, brother-in-law, and nieces come for a visit. For Father's Day, we went out to a nearby driving range. This was a new one for me. A bucket of balls went screaming off, most with a serious slice. A few of us were kink-ified the next day.
Renovation is ongoing during all of these other activities. We had some wet concrete and someone thought it would be the thing to do to immortalize our hand prints. We didn't jump in right away, the concrete was somewhat far along, too far along to get more than a faint impression of Josie's toesies.
We played tourist with the Graybills. We played some mini-golf up on Route 1 and visited the ocean at Halibut Point and Good Harbor Beach. We walked a bit of the Freedom Trail and sampled some micro-breweries. A whirlwind visit and a lot of fun.
I tossed together a peach pie, too. Mea culpa, with a Pillsbury crust. You cannot cut corners with a pie (it has no corners).
Posted by MikeMulligan at 10:04 PM | Comments (0)
June 15, 2008
Renovation update
Here is a pictorial update on some happenings around the house. Our general contractor just stopped showing up sometime late last fall. There was no explicit "sign off", he just wouldn't return our calls or mail. So we have gotten some other workmen in to finish up: plasterers, a mason, a carpenter and painter, an electrician, and landscapers.
The entries here in the blog lag real time. Coming soon, notes on adventures in babysitting and a pleasant Father's Day.
Posted by MikeMulligan at 9:44 PM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2007
Philadelphia Cream
It has been six or seven weeks since the last "Home renovation" post. Things have been moving at a lackadaisical pace. We were waiting for the painters who finally came a couple weeks ago to prime and paint. We are pleased with Karen's color selection. The front door is going to be replaced and painted red, that should be a nice combination.
Waiting behind the painters was the landscapers' hydro-seeding. It got too late in the season. For now, they just threw down some seed and will make the real attempt in the spring. I guess I could have Photoshop'd in some greenery, not that that gives the neighbors and passers-by any benefit.
Posted by MikeMulligan at 8:36 PM | Comments (0)
October 3, 2007
House shaping up
Back in February, we lost our living room as the kitchen was torn out and relocated. The new kitchen came together in May and June, and we then lost our bedrooms, swapping the living room into our nightly sleeping quarters. Then in July, it morphed into the post-knee-replacement rehab center.
This weekend past, we started getting the master bedroom back into shape. Today, a closet system was installed in the new added on space. Maybe this will all come to an end after all.
Posted by MikeMulligan at 10:26 PM | Comments (0)
September 5, 2007
The Preparator
A new month has rolled around, and the calendar navigator on the piebee home page brutally and honestly highlights my lack of postings. That insult and a request from the blog's readership for a new posting (sorry, no pie this time) forces my hand. Although I might add there has been a new posting of sorts as a followup comment to this.
Our recently denuded backyard is being ravaged by The Preparator, is that Pre-par-a-tor? or Prep-a-rat-or? Either way, if you are wearing sandals, stand back.
Posted by MikeMulligan at 7:53 AM | Comments (0)
April 21, 2007
Studious
The blue board and plaster skim coat went up this week. Now it is starting to look like a real room. Actually, with the bare plaster walls, it looks like an art gallery. Much thought will go into choosing the wall paint colors.
The formerly unheated room behind the garage will become Karen's artist studio. Here is the view across the room. Through the door you can see through the dining area of the new space.
Posted by MikeMulligan at 10:28 PM
March 21, 2007
Different look
The site is due for an update on the home renovation. I fat-thumbed a series of pictures from a couple weeks ago, mis-setting the speed dial to 1600. Noisy pictures are the result and they all went into the virtual wastebasket.
Then we got a good five inches of snow last Friday. Part of the improved look is the new black roof. There isn't much to see with a light gray house with a snow covered roof. Some of the snow has melted now, and daylight savings time allows me a little light after I get home from work.
The dramatic difference is the bump out of the small bedroom I use as my office. We took a small bay window that had been in back, hanging off the dining room, and moved it up front. Eventually both the new cedar shingle siding and the old gray siding will be painted a new color. Suggestions?
Side note: whenever I take one of these shots from across the street, I never have long to wait if I want to snap a passing cyclist.
Posted by MikeMulligan at 10:38 PM | Comments (0)
February 18, 2007
Framed!
This image is composed of a bunch of smaller photos, providing an 180° view of the new space. (The piebee home page will clip this on the right hand side. Drill down to see the full image.) All the old kitchen walls are down, we can see all of the bones of the room. Well, almost all. To the right will be some additional framing for the laundry closet.
The G7 was used in panorama assist mode to fix the exposure, but I didn't use the accompanying software to stitch the images together. I have found such software to be annoying. It occassionally does a good job, but when it only comes close, I prefer the Hockneyesque panorama approach. Edgy instead of warped.
Posted by MikeMulligan at 8:35 PM | Comments (0)
February 9, 2007
World upside down
Things are coming at me from two sides: I watch at work(*) while they tear down the familiar, if unloved, cubicle partitions. And at home, the contractor has begun to gut the old kitchen.
For the next six or so weeks, we will be coping with an efficiency-style arrangement. The sink, stove, and refrigerator have been relocated into the living room. It isn't so bad, but there is still work to do to shuffle all the essentials each into their own workable niche.
Living this way should not be too onerous. At this point we have shoved the shovable into the basement. There isn't much space remaining to do more. Some compactification will be needed as other parts of the project impinge on our routine. But there will be rewards at the end of the tunnel. Yeah, "end of the tunnel", those are reassuring words.
* Intrusic shuttered its doors mid-January. I am putting in some contract hours there to prepare company assets for a potential sale.
Posted by MikeMulligan at 7:54 PM | Comments (5)
February 4, 2007
Addition by addition
January finally saw some seasonably cold weather. The contractor missed a few days that were too cold to work outside, but the addition is now framed out. It still needs siding and roofing, not to mention windows and doors, but for now the focus turns indoors.
The plan for this week calls for us to set up a temporary kitchen in the living room. Then the old kitchen gets demo'd and the former exterior now interior wall between the new space and the old comes down. This allows us to see the kitchen/family room space in whole, in turn allowing the measurment and ordering of the kitchen cabinets.
One asterisk for this photo: the near window along the back wall is to be swapped from four foot wide to six foot.
Posted by MikeMulligan at 4:49 PM | Comments (0)
January 10, 2007
Dig it
A lot has happened in the backyard since the week before Christmas. This entry is not quite up to date as the hole around the foundation walls have just been backfilled today. There is a set of concrete steps and a Bilco door on this new bulkhead.
There was the nasty surprise of "the hardest rock I've ever seen" ledge right where the basement is supposed to go. There were two escalations in the equipment, from a one-man jack-hammer, to a bigger jack-hammer mounted on a small crawler, to a Big Dig jack-hammer mounted on a large crawler that shook the neighborhood. Never the less, things are moving along on schedule. The unseasonably mild weather has been much appreciated.
Posted by MikeMulligan at 9:28 PM | Comments (0)
December 16, 2006
Yellow John Deere?
This backhoe appeared in our backyard. It was not unexpected, as we have been planning to renovate our kitchen into a new addition since early last spring. But we had no specific heads up from our contractor. We guess he is starting on Monday.
I guess yellow is a good color to alert bystanders that some heavy equipment is in the neighborhood. A sticker says this is a John Deere. And when I think Deere, I think green. But the 310SG shows up yellow on the Deere site. Live and learn.
Oh, cool, they have an instruction manual online. Hmm ...
Posted by MikeMulligan at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)