Homeowner Thread

Another round of handyman work on Friday - two more kitchen light fixtures (then they will all match!) and one in the master bathroom, plus a new exhaust fan. And if the guy has time, fix our sliding glass door (it's jammed in the frame) and see what it would take to fix our guest room closet door (a part went missing, the little doohickey that slides it along the track at the top).

Your first mistake was not calling Rothschild's Sewage And Septic Sucking Services

So now that cold weather has arrived it's become apparent that the guys fixing my leakage forgot to insulate an area. To their credit the restoration company looked at some photos provided by the contractor and saw what they'd fucked up and immediately agreed to come out and fix it but I only got a week or two of thinking everything was done and now they'll have to rip the kitchen ceiling open again.

The septic engineer we're working with solicited quotes from three excavator/installer contractors a couple of weeks ago.  One of them got a quote to me within a few days.  The second reached out to me a day after that asking if it was okay to look at the yard, and then didn't send a quote.  The third never responded at all.  Yesterday the engineer gave the two who hadn't sent quotes yet a little prod, and the guy who came out to look at the yard sent one.  I'm assuming that third contractor has no interest in the job.

The first quote was for an astronomical amount that is within the range of what we were expecting (at the high end, of course, but still).  Most importantly, it came with assurances that the equipment can be brought into our yard via the driveway and around the side of our garage.  Which means no extra trees need to be taken down for this.  (We are losing one scraggly pine tree that is sort of invisible to me now, but I'm sure I'll find its absence glaring.)

The second quote was for almost exactly the same astronomical amount, plus the additional cost of taking out every tree in the side yard, so the equipment can be brought in that way instead of around the garage.

This is proving to be a much less difficult choice than I expected!

(Now I'm really hoping they'll be like, "We're booked through February, so it's going to be a while."  I'd rather not have this all happening during my long Christmas vacation.)

Get yourself a voltmeter if you don't have one, pull the breakers first and make sure the circuit is deactivated, do a wire-by-wire replacement, and you should be fine.  As long as there is some slack in the wires, it shouldn't be complicated.  Bob Dobbs was right, we all need Slack!

Big movement on the "Stately Dick N Hisses as enormous money pit" front!  I've apparently formally accepted a quote from the excavation/installer people for the septic, so now I just wait to hear when that's going to happen.  It's been a few days since I sent the signed proposal back to them and haven't heard anything, so I'm at least hoping we're all set.  And that they won't get to it until after the holiday.  The way this year has gone, I can totally see this being a thing that ruins my Christmas vacation.

And the other major item: the range!  Has arrived at the appliance store's warehouse!  It's paid for in full now!  Now I just need to get the potentially flaky contractor to not be a flake.  And, one hopes, either get this done in the next two weeks or wait until the new year, because, again, I don't want anything disrupting my vacation, dammit.

Soon enough all my headaches will either be over, or seem quaint in the face of much bigger headaches that came out of all this!

I need to replace the vent over the stove sooner than later. Either 2 or 3 years ago, we replaced the over-the-range microwave. The previous one didn't have a vent and only recirculated the air, but I'm assuming the filter was so clogged it wasn't doing anything. With the replacement, the recirculated air has been causing a circle of grease on the ceiling. At the beginning of the year we got an air purifier and we keep it in the dining room. That thing kicks on high every time I cook. The cabinets over the range are constantly coated in grease.
I want to replace this with one that will vent outside, but there's no easy path for this, since the wall behind the stove is an inner wall of the kitchen. I'm trying to figure out what it will cost to add duct along the wall (over a doorway into the dining room, over the fridge, and out the side wall). There are two existing cabinets that are mostly unused, but they may need to extend up to the ceiling to obscure the duct. And we'll need to figure out something over the doorway, since there's no cabinets there now. My wife keeps pressing us to move on this asap, but then walks that back when I explain that we really need a full kitchen remodel. I think that is 5 years away, but I want to take care of the venting now. Hopefully this will only be in the $2k - $3k range, but who really knows nowadays. She doesn't want to spend this amount now, just to redo the entire kitchen in a few years.

Regarding the kitchen, both the oven and the refrigerator have been inconsistent in the past. A few times over the summer (and last summer), the oven wouldn't go up to temp. And three times now the refrigerator will still be on, but just won't cool anymore. Unplugging and plugging back on has resolved that, but once we had everything in the freezer thaw. So, three new appliances will be needed soon (dishwasher works, but is starting to fall apart), a floor we both hate, walls that are uneven (wavy, so the counter doesn't go flush against it), a counter that angles away from the sink so water pools behind the faucet, and one cabinet that looks like it's pulled off the wall an inch or two (and may have always been like that, or may have pulled off in the past 2 or 3 years).

I have no idea if it would be a problem or not, but you might want to check with someone (fire department maybe?) to see if having a grease vent that long might cause any fire hazard due to grease buildup, or if it might need some kind of periodic professional cleaning before you commit to it.  I know they recommend regular cleaning of clothes dryer vents due to flammable lint buildup. (Dryer lint is great for starting fires in the wood stove.)

I decided I want to replace/upgrade the shelving in our laundry room. It’s currently one wire shelf that’s a bit too high, I can’t reach it well. It is not a big room but there is enough space for the washer and dryer to sit side by side and some depth there too. anyway, the question is where do I start? Would a hardware store be able to tell me what I need? We have a handyman service I can have install it but I feel like I should be able to figure out how it will look.

The weight of several jugs of detergent and miscellaneous items at least. I don’t really like the look of the wire shelves, but I’d consider it. I’d like to add some on the sides as well, I meant to mention that, there is space on the side walls. 

Having been through catastrophic failure... yeah, get that done. They're not stupidly expensive, at least. But yeesh.

Our last one went right at 7 years (which is the expected life). Also, my wife was walking out the door to work when she heard the water leak sensor going off. If it had gone off 10 seconds later, it would have leaked all day, and we would have had some major headaches to deal with in the basement. 

After like two years of agonizing, my mom found a guy who redid the flooring in the mudroom, replaced the toilet in the adjoining bathroom, made an external vent for the clothesdryer (seriously, after 36 years in that house; no wonder the floor was rotting out from that wall), and painted the mudroom walls. Maybe all I will have to do when I visit next month is painting other rooms.

Damn fine watering, Floyd. Damn fine.