And the Kitchen Sink

Valentine's presents for Diana: card, roses, salted caramel chocolate, dinner, and the kitchen sink. Literally. Kohler K-5832-5U-0 to go with the impending new countertop.

Year in review, 2016 edition

• Diana recovered from knee replacement.
• Birthday party for Eunhye
• Dominion removed the power line across the river behind our house. 
• Went to Australia to see all the inlaws and outlaws, with an unexpected side trip to Hawaii.
• Visited Kelson before he moved to Boston.
• Hosted Michael Kelen for a couple of days.
• Betina from Zambia stayed here for a couple of weeks.
• Semi-adopted Razvan and George, students here from Romania for the summer. 
• Visited Jonathan and Stacey at their "so new we haven't even found all the boxes, much less unpacked them yet" house in Columbia.
• I attended LibertyCon while Diana and Rachael toured Chattanooga.
• Rachael stayed with us for ten days of beach and surfing.
• Josh got his Australian green card.
• Drove to Long Island for a funeral and, on the trip back, uttered the utterly improbable phrase "Thank God we made it to New Jersey."
• Finished our "New World, New Sun" D&D campaign with Darci, Kris, Jesse, Jana, and Tom Paul.
• Started waltz lessons, which transmuted into lessons on foxtrot, bachata, milonga, and I know not what.
• Went to Vienna, Cesky Krumlow and Prague. Came back from Prague, reluctantly.
• Celebrated Gwen & Josh's first anniversary.
• One of the more...interesting...presidential elections.
• Visited mom and dad before they went back to Zambia, and played golf with dad.
• Diana went to Toronto and Montreal for pre-Christmas visit.
• Hosted a Christmas party for the D&D group and another for the neighbors.

Frozen Pipe

In January 2014, we had a night or two at 16°F and had a pipe pull away from a fitting, but not actually freeze. This year we had a night or two around 10° . The weather started warming this morning and behold, in early afternoon there was the sound of  running water. The copper water line near the back porch faucet had suffered a small split, but the ice that had caused it also plugged it, until the ice melted.
I figured the plumbing profession would already have its hands full with people who needed them more urgently, so I slithered under the house and found the break was about where I expected. I went to the hardware store, got silicone tape and a pipe clamp and an insulation tube, crawled back under, and wrapped and wrapped and wrapped the leak, and then put more tape on. The first fews yards of tape didn't entirely seal it but got it down to a slow drip, and it's possible the rest of the tape may have staunched that as well. I'll need to have it "really fixed" at some point but in the meantime, we could turn our water back on with less than $10 materials and about an hour's worth of work.

Kitchen Sink

I have wrestled with the Forces of Darkness (it's dark under the kitchen sink) and emerged (some hours later) triumphant, having installed a new faucet. Tools used: flat screwdriver, phillips screwdriver, box cutter, carpet knife, allen wrench, WD40, bread knife, drill, socket wrench.

The one indispensable tool for installing a faucet (which you, Gentle Reader, doubtless already know is a Basin Wrench), was of no help at all; the existing Kohler needed a socket wrench to remove, and the new Delta specified "hand tight, Hand Tight, I SAID HAND TIGHT STOP STOP STOP!" according to page 4 (loosely translated).

Heat Pump

Well, we'd had a problem with it last year, and the tech had told us then that we'd need to get a new one sooner or later. Fortunately this is the slow season for HVAC and I got a hefty discount, which made it merely "painfully expensive". So now we have a new heat pump, air handler, and thermostat. Hurrah.

Glass Door

One of the panels of the upstairs glass door had fogged up, either because the guys who did the residing project weren't careful enough or just because it was twenty years old. I looked at replacing the whole door and frame, but the estimates were in the $1300-1800 "and probably more" range. So we dropped back to the idea of just replacing the glass in that door.
I called Binswanger and set up a time on Friday for a guy to come measure. They rescheduled to Monday. They rescheduled to Wednesday. They never showed up Wednesday--"he'll call you right back" didn't happen.
So I called Atlantic Glass. They called me to confirm the appointment (instead of me calling them), and the estimator showed up right on time. It was a custom size, so the estimator didn't work out the price right then and there, but the office called within an hour--and when I said "go ahead", they called back within 30 minutes to confirm that the factory had the order and promised to deliver it by the date I wanted it. A couple of days ago, they called to say "It came in early, we can install it Friday if you're ready." And today, the team called me, showed up on time, and got it done in about 20 minutes instead of the hour they had anticipated. I particularly liked that they took the effort after the install to get the glass spotless; there were some gummy bits at the top, and it would have been easy for them to just leave them and say "We're done", but they got out a razor and scraped it clear. Well done.

Hummingbird

A hummingbird breezed onto our back deck for a quick visit to the hibiscus. She sampled all the blossoms and darted off before I could fetch the camera.

Nawab

Today was another "fix yet more stuff around the house" day, with cleaning the oven, changing a light switchplate, painting the stairwell, and a few other tasks. Particularly difficult except getting the touchup paint to be the same amount of matte as the original. Apparently there are half a dozen levels, something like high-gloss, gloss, satin, eggshell, matte, and flat. Possibly not in that order. And I don't know what the painter used six years ago, so it was trial and error to match it. But it's done and there are no oddly-shiny patches on the stairwell walls now.

Took a break to have lunch at the Nawab, our local Indian restaurant. Beef with fenugreek, dal makhani lentil curry, basmati rice, and kheer rice pudding for desert, all quite good.

Carpet

And the new carpet is finished. "Finished" meaning we still need to adjust the furniture placement, put all the books back on the shelves, paint the strip of baseboard which was concealed by the old carpet but now shows a 3/8" wide strip of paprika-brown between the white part of the baseboard and the cream of the carpet. So the house is not "in order" yet, but it's getting there. Now it's time for a break before the next pro...wait, break's over already. Hang a picture, install a door, uproot a plant killed by frost, install pegboard in a closet...

Carpet

Last week we ordered new carpet. What we have was here when we bought the house, and we'd been talking about replacing it since last August, but didn't want to deal with new carpet while Zoe was sick. But the time has come, and the carpet is being delivered tomorrow.
Which means that all that furniture from Montreal, that we've just gotten arranged? We're moving that. Well, the carpet guys are moving it, but we have to get all the stuff out of and off of it. Empty the closets. Move all the books. We have an amazing number of books. More than five bookcases worth. Oh wait, that's just in one room. That doesn't count the bookcase downstairs, the two bookcases in our bedroom, the closet full of books, or the boxes in the attic.

Endings and Beginnings

Today was the closing for our selling Mum's house in Montreal. It was a bit sad, not because I particularly liked the house myself, but because I know Diana and Josh had fond memories of it and will miss it. You can say "It's just a house", but a place that you've known for 25 years or more has a personality of its own, to you.

In good news, today Josh got a job offer, and specifically a job doing economics rather than lifting boxes. He and Gwen went to an Econ Department ski trip, met a professor who needed someone for a project, and behold, a week later, he's employed. Huzzah!

Frozen Pipes

An arctic air mass has slid across the US which has made it bitterly cold--meaning 14° here Monday night, and much colder in the Midwest. This morning I woke up at 5:30 to the chirping of my Uninterruptable Power Supply, because our electricity had gone out. So I came downstairs, saw the temperature inside the house was 57°, and got the UPS to stop making noise...whereupon I heard water running under the house. Marvelous. First time I've ever had pipes break. Fortunately there's a main cutoff valve inside the house, so I cranked it to OFF and crawled back under the covers. Electricity came back on at 6am.
Called the plumber at 8am, they promised he'd be there before noon. We had a couple of gallon jugs of water, so we could heat up a cupful for tea and a bowlful for a sponge bath, Not exactly sufficient but better than nothing.
Noon came and went. The plumber did not.
Several more calls. "We'll put you on the schedule", they said. Silly me, I'd thought we already were on the schedule, but I guess just calling and getting a "he'll be there before noon" doesn't count.
More calls. I'm wondering which day he'll show up.
Finally the van arrives at 8pm. Plumber is a nice guy and has obviously had a long day. He crawls under the house and resurfaces with good news: the pipe did not actually break. What happened was, the cold caused the copper to contract enough that it pulled out of the coupling to the back deck faucet. He puts an end-stop on the pipe so we can turn the water back on; he'll have to come back to reconnect the deck faucet but it's not like we're watering plants in January anyway. Disaster averted.

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

"It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas", which means the decoration bins are in the livingroom, strings of lights are snarled on the table, a dozen or so Christmas mugs are on the floor in Josh's room, and there are a few unwrapped presents on the stairs. We took Zoe with us to pick out a tree at Taylor's Hardware; she wasn't enthused about getting out of the car, but once she was out, she trotted around sniffing at things and letting people admire her.

We got the tree into the stand, although not lit and wrapped and decorated and hung.

A couple of days ago it was 76° but this weekend was a lot cooler. Gwen sent pictures of snow and ice in Blacksburg; it didn't get that cold here, but it was certainly wet and chilly. Muttling was shivering at one point; we took her upstairs, put her on the bed, and put the warming blanket over her. When she had to go out, Diana put a green turtleneck on her, which looked properly Christmasy; unfortunately the sleeves wouldn't stay rolled up and kept falling down to cover her paws. I have a couple of vests which should work, though, and it's not like she's going out much anyway. Unfortunately. She's still quite strong--when I want to pull her one way and she's made up her mind not to go, she plants her little 35 pound body and it takes quite a bit of effort to haul her along--but she's just not interested in going out. She's beginning to loose her balance, though; I saw her trying to stand on the hardwood floor, and she sort of stumbled backward until she sat on her rump. Usually she stays curled up on one couch or another; but she can trot right upstairs when she's minded to.

She does like eggnog quite a bit, and I've given her three bowls of it. I've had to dip a finger in and put it to her mouth to get her attention, but once she's got the idea, she laps it all up. She's also eating chicken, usually from our hands.

Other things about the house: I've caulked Josh's shower, and installed a new printer. Our printer scanner no longer scans, since Lexmark never got around to updating the drivers to work with Win7. Since we're sending documents back and forth to Montreal now, we decided to go ahead and get a new printer scanner--this one is an Epson XP 610. XP is always good, right? 1 It prints a lot faster than the Lexmark did, and I've got it set up to print from both computers instead of just Diana's.


1 This is a gamer joke: XP is Experience Points. Ask your local gamer for an explanation.

A few more days

Muttsy has been pretty perky since Sunday. Bright eyed, prancing as usual on her walks, and sitting next to the table in her usual "I'm not begging, mind you, just conveniently available" pose. She has also jumped onto the couch without trouble, although we still have the mattress on the floor so she can sleep on the bed with us without having to exert herself.

Meanwhile, I've gotten the new computer up and mostly running--Win7 is changing the screen resolution when the computer wakes up, which is a nuisance but not unbearable, and that's been the only real issue thus far.

Reading Spider Woman's Daughter, which is a continuation of Tony Hillerman's books by his daughter.

The Philippines are getting hit, right now, by a supertyphoon, known as Haiyan or Yolanda. The "tropical storm" level diameter is 300 miles, the overall storm is over 1100 miles across, and it has sustained winds of 195mph, gusts of 235mph.

Door Hanging

Diana decided she wanted new door on the second bathroom, but the new one turned out to be 1/8" wider than the old one. So today I planed it, mortised the hinges, hung the door, installed the lock set, mortised the strike plate and installed that. Not as neat aj ob as I'd have liked, but passable and the everything works.

Mortise door

We're repainting Josh's bathroom (now that it's no longer Josh's) and somehow that has led to replacing the door. Which has led to getting a hammer and chisel and chipping away at the door in the space for hinges. Makes you wonder who came up with that idea, and makes you appreciate the men who could do it smoothly, by hand.

Grout

We put grout on the backsplash tonight. The "grouting" stage is where you find that half the tile wasn't really straight, and the other half wasn't really attached to the wall.

Tiling the Backsplash

Over the past few days I've been chipping the eggshell and brown tiles off the kitchen walls. We've received three boxes of aquamarine-and-bronze glass mosaic tile, and we've gotten mastic and a special order of grout and a trowel with 3/16" vee notches. Diana painted the wall white, so the brown and grey drywall doesn't show through anywhere, and then I sanded it to rough it up a little so the mastic would grab better.

So, all preparations being complete, tonight I started putting up the sheets of tiles. Drag the stove out of the way. Lift off the counter tops. Get out a level and draw vertical lines and horizontal lines for guides. Spread white goo over the wall, making neat lines with the trowel because the tiles are transparent and I don't know if you'll be able see the ridges and furrows in the mastic after I squish the tiles on. The first three sheets go on reasonably well, and I can slide them across the mastic well enough to get them lined up evenly with each other. Number four is a problem, as I have to cut out some tiles to fit over an electrical socket, and when I try to slide the sheet to adjust the position, individual tiles start coming off. It's intensely frustraing, but I eventually get the sheet more or less into place. Then to finish off that size I need a third of a sheet; fortunately these sheets are fifteen tiles across, so it's easy to cut. I stick that on the wall, press everything down, put the stove and countertop  back into place, and call it "done" for the night. It only took about two hours although it was more laborious than I expected.

Christmas Tree

This year's Christmas Tree has been acquired.

Last of the Dinosaurs

Until today, we had a Sony Trinitron CRT television. For those of you who don't speak Latin, a CRT is a cathode ray tube--what we had back in the dark ages of television, before flat screens. This beast was 20.7" deep for a 24" diagonal screen, and weighed in about 700 pounds--or possibly only 40, but that 40 wasn't exactly well balanced or easy for one guy to manhandle.

We spent this afternoon rearranging the office, and realized that since Diana watches movies on the laptop, and I almost never watch movies at all, then why not get rid of this thing and clear up a lot of space? So I wrestled it out the door and into the van; Diana will see if there's a thrift store or museum willing to take it.