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If you read the Fall/Winter portion of this story,
there was
a major cliffhanger over how the saga of the front door would end. The new door was ordered in December and
wound up arriving mid-March. By the way,
if you ever wondered what a nice fiberglass front door with one of
those fancy
oval glass inserts costs, it was about $700.
That Sunday morning when I actually picked up the
door—with
the help of Walt and his van, of course—was a joyous occasion after all
the
effort it took to get it ordered.
After I got the door home, I did everything I
could to get
it ready for when I could cajole Walt into coming to the house and help
me
install it. First, I sanded and painted
it. Then, since the mortises (the
notches where the hinges go) the door came with did not match the ones
in the
current door frame, I carefully measured where the new mortises were
and
chiseled out the spots in the current door frame so the new door could
just
slide right in without any problems.
I was mistaken.
Turns out, I didn’t measure as carefully as I
thought—apparently, I took my measurements when the door was upside
down or
backwards or something. One of the
mortises in the frame had to be redone on the fly, but that didn’t set
us back
too much. With that done, the rest would
be easy, I thought.
I was mistaken.
The old door presented a few problems removing it,
largely
because of rusted screws or screws with stripped heads in the hinges,
but Walt
got it off without that much difficulty.
Certainly, I thought, the brand new door would fit right in the
old door
frame.
I was mistaken.
The new door did not fit well at all but, after more chiseling and finagling by Walt, we got it in. What I figured would be about a one-hour job turned out to be four or more. With the door now in place, Walt was discharged from duty, leaving me to finish up. I had a little more chiseling to do to finish the slots where the lock and plunger go and to get the door to close without hitting the frame. I also put in lots of wood filler to try to get the frame to not look like crap. When I was done, the door closed pretty well but I can’t say you would mistake my wood filling job for actual wood. But, after applying some paint, the entire job was way “good enough for government work.” To make the door even more attractive, I bought a brand new door stop and those little wooden plugs to cover the screw holes in the wood part of the threshold.
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The Old Door Finally Removed |
The New Door From The Outside
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The New Door From The Inside |
New Door Stop And Fixed-Up
Threshold
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There is one more little post script to the door
saga. I figured the disposal of the old
door would
be simple. I would just call the good
people at Waste Management to let them know I had a “bonus item” for
them to
pick up and they would come and get it.
I was mistaken yet another time.
The WM person to whom I talked informed me that a door is considered “construction debris” and they would not pick it up. I tried leaving it in the driveway anyway, hoping a sympathetic or ill-informed garbage truck driver would haul it away by mistake. Or maybe an enterprising scavenger would see some hidden potential and take the door away. After a week, with the door still propped up at the end of the driveway, I came to the realization that getting rid of the door would be up to me. I wondered what tools I might need to chop a metal door up into pieces small enough to hide amidst our regular trash. Eventually, my wife’s friend Jayne agreed to haul the door away in her truck. I don’t know whether she brought it to the dump or planned to use it in an art project but, no matter what, I was happy it was no longer in our yard.
Another item high on Pat’s list was improving the
look of
our bathrooms. While we weren’t going
for a full remodel, she had gotten started by hiring her friend Jayne
to paint
the main bathroom’s cabinets and replace the drawer pulls.
She also had gotten a new mirror and lights
and had Jayne install them.
After I retired, I helped out by replacing the
old,
tarnished cabinet hinges. I found the
correct hinges on Amazon and got a bag of them.
Although their quality wasn’t great and a few I tried were
crooked
(guess what Asian country they came from), there were enough good ones
to get
the job done.
What was left after that was to replace the
“vanity top”
that rests on top of the cabinets and includes the sink.
Our old one was a cheap brown one that had
been installed with the house and was pretty unsightly.
Replacing the vanity top was another job I thought
would be
easy but, of course, was not. Most
places only sell the entire vanity as a unit—not just the top—and the
ones that
do sell them had a limited selection of sizes.
Then, I was excited to find one on the Lowe’s website that
looked good
and would fit our bathroom, so I ordered it.
From what I had read, it looked like, with a little help, it
would be
pretty easy to install it. You just put
some special glue on the top the cabinets and set the vanity on top of
it. Also, the holes for the faucets and
knobs
would be pre-drilled so I was sure the plumbing would be simple. Best of all, I placed the order mid-December
and the expected delivery date was the first week in January. I was confident we’d have the bathroom
completed by mid-January.
I was badly mistaken, yet again.
When January came and I checked the order status
on Lowe’s
website, it said the order had been delayed for 2 weeks.
Ok, not great, but not a big problem. Two
weeks later, when I checked
again—surprise—another delay. This time
I called Lowe’s and, when I finally got to talk to someone, all they
could do
was verify that the order was delayed.
They suggested checking back in a couple weeks.
This continued until March when I finally
just cancelled the order. Now, we were
back at square one in the quest for a vanity top.
At some point in my research, I found that places
that do
custom bathroom and kitchen installations often have left over hunks of
granite, marble, or whatever else they make countertops out of. And they will sell those remnant pieces, cut
them to size and install them.
There were a couple nearby places to check out. All I needed to do was find a place that had
a slab big enough for our cabinets that we liked the look of (and, when
I say
“we,” I mean Pat). I was really excited
to find a place that had a marble slab the right size and was white
with grey
and gold veining like Pat wanted.
Unfortunately, when she saw it, she wasn’t thrilled with the
coloring
but—likely when she saw how exasperated I had become with this whole
endeavor--ultimately agreed it would be good enough (she wouldn’t say
this, but
I would add “for government work” to that expression).
Possibly best of all, the cost of everything,
including measuring, cutting the slab and holes for the fixtures,
removing the
old top and installing the new one would be about $400 less than we
would have
paid Lowe’s just for their vanity top and delivery.
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Everything started
out great as we placed our order and they came out and took
measurements. The day of the installation
they took away
the old top and installed the new one. The
first thing that went wrong was when I realized that their price did
not
include doing the plumbing work. I
figured this wasn’t a big deal as I figured all that needed to be done
was to
screw in a few things.
I was very much mistaken about this.
After the installers had left and I took a closer
look, I
realized the workmanship was pretty poor.
There were visible gaps where the top of the sink attached to
the
underside of the vanity and even bigger gaps between the bottom of the
vanity
and the top of the cabinets—you could actually slide a piece of paper
through
the opening.
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To their credit, the company promptly sent out a
team that
inspired much more confidence and they fixed everything.
Now, it was up to me to connect the
plumbing.
I had figured that, since they had measured
everything, that
they would cut the hole for the sink such that the drain would line up
existing
pipes so that connecting them would be trivial.
Apparently, that’s not really how it works.
They position the sink in a standard place,
like the middle of the slab, and it’s up to the plumber to “figure out”
how to
connect everything. Of course, an actual
plumber wouldn’t need to “figure it out” since they would know what
they’re
doing. Since I was determined to complete
this job myself, the “plumber”, in this case, would need to “figure it
out.”
The first problem I noticed, as I foreshadowed
above, was
that the pipe coming from the drain did not line up with the existing
pipe and
trap that was under the sink. The other
problem was that the drain pipe was too long, extending past the top of
the
pipe under the sink. What followed was
kind of a blur. I don’t know how many
things I tried, how many trips I made to Home Depot and Lowes or how
long the
sink was effectively unusable. My
ultimate solution involved cutting out the existing pipes with a
hacksaw,
shortening the pipe from the drain (using the same tool) and employing
a
flexible plastic P-trap (I think that’s what you call it) that I got
form
Amazon. It took a couple tries to get
one that would fit but, when I tried to return the wrong one, Amazon
surprisingly said they’d refund the 8 dollars (or whatever it was) but
I could
just keep the old one—it’s still in a drawer waiting for some future,
unknown
use.
With a plan in place, I now just needed to
assemble
everything in such a way that it didn’t leak.
I somehow came up with the idea of using a compression sleeve to
connect
the pipe coming out of the wall (where I had hacked off the old pipe)
to one
end of the P-trap. While my friend Jim,
who IS very much “handy” (especially with plumbing), laughed at this,
it, quite
surprisingly, hasn’t leaked.
My final problem was that, somewhere during my
previous
efforts, I had apparently damaged the “top hat” washer that is used to
prevent
the connection from the drain to the P-trap from leaking—a job it was
now
failing to do. My attempts to find a
replacement for this part, which likely costs a dollar or so, took me
on an
amazing full afternoon journey through various plumbing supply and
hardware
stores all around the south end of the county.
Each clerk I talked to seemed surprised that they didn’t have
one that
matched the size I needed. In one place
a plumber who was there even went to his truck to look for the
apparently
mythical part I needed (spoiler alert, he didn’t have one). It seems that cheap Chinese fixture that Pat
had bought from Wayfair had an odd-sized pipe.
My conspiracy theory is that China unloads their unusable and
crappiest
items to Wayfair, who then marks them up by 1000% and markets them as
high-end
items.
But I digress.
Determined to finish the job, despite the failed
quest for
the illusive “top hat” washer, I came up with a solution:
use the damaged washer and wrap the
connection in lots of plumber’s putty!
So, with this jury-rigging in place, I not-so-confidently turned
the
water back on and tried running the water in the sink (with a big
Tupperware
container underneath everything).
Surprisingly, no water was flowing into the plastic container. I deemed the sink now functional, but still
left the Tupperware in place. Only
several months later, when I felt confident enough to remove the
Tupperware,
could I declare this effort “good enough for government work” (but not
likely
good enough to pass a plumbing inspection, if one is ever done).
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Not recommended
plumbing (but it hasn't leaked yet)
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Generous use of Plumber's Putty (also not recommended) |
Surprisingly, many months later, we actually DID have to have the plumbing inspected in order to get homeowners insurance (that’s yet another story). Luckily, the inspector was apparently just looking for massive leaks, rust or maybe pipes made of toxic materials—like lead or uranium or something. My “workmanship” passed easily (and we got the insurance).
The pictures below are actually of our other,
still-to-be-refurbished bathroom because, once again, I forgot to take
"before" pictures but, since the bathrooms were identical, you get the
idea.
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Old sink and vanity |
Old cabinets |
Old mirror and lights |
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New sink and vanity |
Refurbished cabinets with new top
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New mirror and lights |
There’s one more twist to this story and it
occurred several
months later. I noticed the fixtures
seemed to be getting little dark spots that wouldn’t clean off. Then, a little later, the spots started
turning green. I was able to use a metal
cleaner to get the spots off, but they came back, likely when water got
on the
fixtures (which kind of happens a lot around sinks).
So now I have to clean the fixtures about
every week or they start turning green.
Seems to fit my theory about that cheap Chinese Wayfair crap. Enough time has passed that the emotional
trauma from the earlier plumbing experience has diminished to the point
where I
might attempt replacing the fixtures—but not with ones from Wayfair
(and
hopefully not from China, if I can find any not made there). Look for another sink project in future
reports.
I’ve mentioned that being retired meant having time to do
simple things I didn’t have time for when working. For example, when I worked, I never really
had time to read the newspaper. With
time enough at last, I took to reading the digital version of Florida Today
every day on my phone or computer. Now,
of course, I don’t always read the paper not because I don’t have time, but
because the news pretty much always sucks.
I love watching sports.
One of my favorite events is the NCAA college basketball playoffs,
better known as March Madness. While
working, I would always miss most of the first rounds that run all day on a
Thursday and Friday and usually include some great finishes and big upsets
(and, admittedly, some bad blowouts).
Now, with time and a 6-track DVR, I could record all the
games, then watch them (skipping commercials, timeouts and useless commentary). Essentially, I could see all the games,
quickly abandoning and deleting the ones that are not competitive.
So, on the Thursday start of March Madness, I told Pat I’d be in the bedroom watching basketball all day (for two days). I’m sure she was happy to not have me bothering her all day and I thoroughly enjoyed all the action. In fact, I repeated the process during college football bowl season.
Since I had begun maintaining the pool myself, I
started
doing the recommended backflushing every month (something my Vero Pool
maintainers likely never did). I started
noticing that, every time I went to backflush, there was water in
discharge
hose. Some Google research told me that
the likely cause was a deteriorated spider gasket.
Once I found out what a spider gasket was,
where it was located and what I’d need to take apart to get to it, I
found that
mine was, indeed, pretty old and crumbling.
After a false start where my local pool store sold me the wrong
gasket
(after special ordering it), I found what I needed where everything is
found—on
Amazon.
As it turned out, the hardest part of this repair was removing the old gasket from the bottom of the multiport valve. I had read that some installers glue the gasket in even though they’re not supposed to and I was lucky enough to get one of those glued-in ones. After what seemed like hours of prying and chiseling with screwdrivers and various other implements, I was finally able to extract the old gasket. After installing the new one (without gluing it) and reattaching the multiport valve, to my surprise, nothing exploded or violently leaked when I started the filter. Even more surprising was that the repair appeared to have fixed the leak problem. Maybe I’m “handy” after all.
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Old, leaky spider gasket |
Beneath the multiport valve that the gasket is supposed to keep from leaking |
Top of the (ultimately ill-fated) multiport valve |
Ironically—spoiler alert—all my hard work on the
gasket
became superfluous when the entire multiport valve snapped off a few
months
later. Whether my technique in removing
and reattaching the multiport led to its ultimate demise is a mystery
that will
never be solved. Maybe I’m not so
“handy” after all.
In any case, emboldened by my success, I plunged
onward with
other pool repairs. I was able to
replace a broken pressure gauge with ease.
A while back, I had heard a kind of hissing noise
coming
from a little hole on the side of one of the pipes.
Initially, I made a “standard” repair of
slapping a few layers of duct tape over the hole and this seemed to be
doing
the job—again, no big leaks and no more hissing noise.
More research told me that there was supposed
to be something called a “grease cap” where that little hole (now
covered in
tape) was. I was eventually able to
locate the broken grease cap in the grass nearby, after which, getting
a
replacement and screwing it in was easy as pie (not that I’ve ever made
pie).
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Old, broken pressure gauge
(easily fixed)
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Hole where the grease cap is supposed to be |
The stray grease cap (eventually
found)
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