7.13.2008

A multitude of small projects...

One of the main things I've been up to this summer is a slew of small household projects. I haven't yet gotten up the nerve to tackle anything that involves wanton destruction of pieces of our house, but I've been steadily expanding my horizons. Some of these projects were things Sarah and I wanted to improve, but others were put high on the priority list because they involved things like massive amounts of water in places where water shouldn't be.

1) Kitchen Sink Pipe Break
I had the privilege of being introduced to plumbing when I discovered the aforementioned several inches of water under my kitchen sink. Sarah asked if it was a leak; as you can see from the picture, it is incorrect to call something a leak when all the water from our garbage disposal ended up on the floor. The plastic tube that connects the disposal to the waste water line just completely broke. Unfortunately the part that broke was the standard part size, and not wanting to repeat the same mistake twice I tried a couple of creative solutions. Unfortunately, neither of my first two attempts really worked (although they were very creative involving plastic pieces and rubber connectors). Thankfully, the Lowe's near where we play volleyball had a slightly larger plastic piece that fit much better.



2) Kitchen Makeover
On top of having water under our sink, we had more unwanted water entering our kitchen via a bay window leak during one of the recent violent rain storms. After all that, we decided to repaint the kitchen. We never quite understood the previous owner's "checkerboard" pattern for two colors above and beneath the chair rail, and the water damage on the window sealed the deal to begin the repainting. As the family art major, I left Sarah in charge of both choosing paint colors and getting slightly obsessive on painting straight lines in places where no-one will ever see. We survived the painting and I was pleased with the results, I think the before and after speak for themselves.

BEFORE (notice the tan is on the top and bottom on the two walls):



AFTER:




3) Programmable Thermostat
Not hard, but our heat pump with auxiliary heat has lots of wires to connect. Couple that with the fact that our old thermostat had some letter markings that were hard to decipher, it took some time to put the new version in. However, we are very happy with the results and we have learned that we can not turn up the A/C during the night as energy star suggests.

4) Clogged Master Sink
Now that I own the pipes in the place I live, I'm finally listening to the advice not to just pour chemicals down them to unclog obstructions. The master bathroom sink had pretty much been clogged since we moved in and finally, 10 months later, I got around to unclogging it. Did I mention that seeing what gets stuck in your pipes is pretty friggin gross? Anyway, our sink does much better now, and I will never get those two hours back.

UPDATE: And just when I thought I might be done with random house maintenance, I just discovered yet another leak in our house :(
The master bath tub/shower drain is leaking....