Happy New Year

To shamelessly steal a really good line from someone on Facebook, "Operation: Fat & Happy" was a resounding success. We are relaxed and contented after an exceptionally enjoyable holiday and we certainly enjoyed the hell out of all that seasonal food and drink. My waistline, on the other hand, well, let's just thank the great Christmas spirit for making stretchy pants and gym memberships, I suppose.

I hope everyone else had an equally enjoyable holiday - or at least not an inconceivably horrendous one - and is now, like us, ready to get back on the horse and get some shit DONE!

Last time, I mentioned that we were on a renocation again, or at least taking a hiatus from the renos. Well, it turns out that I had forgotten about that part of renovating that comes AFTER the renovations are finished: decorating!

We spent much of the holidays hanging paintings, buying furniture, installing fireplaces, and - what? Oh, yeah.

Remember this?



Turns out that the War Department wasn't impressed with the cardboard so much, and we shelled out a pretty penny to get one that actually, you know, gave off heat:



We actually had that done a week or two before Christmas, but Amy wanted to surprise the the Top Brass with it when they came out, so our loyal reader(s) had to wait for the big unveiling. In case you were wondering, yes, it kicks ass. And the cats sure seem to like it:



Also kicking ass: the Top Brass, whose ridiculously generous Christmas gift allowed us to continue kitting out our dining room AND living room.









The couches are on loan from my mom, and while they probably wouldn't have been our first choice in style or colour, they'll certainly do the trick for now. Besides, it's not like we'll be able to afford new ones any time soon.

We definitely still need some proper lighting, however, and although we have the perfect painting picked out for above the mantel, getting it requires a trip to the desolate northern wilds of the province, and visiting my parental units.

We also got a nice gift from one of the Chiefs of Staff, also known as the War Department's aunt... what? It's the best I could do. Shut up. So... yeah, anyway, we were wondering what we could put on the wall immediately across from the front door. It's sort of the first thing you see when you come into the house, so we knew we wanted something special. Luckily, she's a hell of a photographer:



Anyway, I apologize for the delay in posting, but it's been kind of hard to haul my fat ass all the way up the stairs. Oh, and in case you were wondering, one more weekend of tidying up the loose ends, and we're right back into the renos. Look out upstairs bedrooms! Here we come!

Renocation?

Ah, glorious hiatus. So very relaxing…

In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in the middle of something resembling a brief break from the renovations. After finishing the bathroom, we reached a logical place to pause for a while. Logical in that there wasn’t anything we felt we needed to get finished before Christmas, and nothing that was so offensive as to upset any potential house guests (i.e., the Top Brass and my mom over the holidays and – just last week – le Grand Pere).

Once the holidays are over, of course, we’ll be tackling the upstairs bedrooms, but for now we’re enjoying the efforts of our labour so far, and dealing with some minor things around the house.

Like, for instance, this bloody thing:





I think I’ve posted about that tree before, but to recap, it’s a rather annoying palm tree that a) scratches across the stucco and windows whenever it gets the slightest bit windy, b) is growing up into the roof (seriously – who the hell would plant a damn palm tree RIGHT under the eaves? Where do you think it’s going to grow? Down, maybe?), and c) is probably disturbingly expensive to buy as a sapling in the first place, let alone to replace as a mature tree. Worse yet, the tree had a resident little green frog that the War Department thought was just too cute for words. She insisted we figure out a way to deal with the tree that wouldn’t disturb the little frog.

We had a couple of suggestions of what to do with it, most notably to get it out of there somehow and sell it to someone (with no taste, presumably – Frank?), but that would probably have necessitated getting some kind of bobcat or other machinery into the back yard. The War Department also wasn’t so fired up about digging that close to the house, either.

So we just cut the damn thing down.

ACTION SHOT!


If the wanton destruction of vegetable matter disturbs you, by the way, this may not be the blog for you. Hee hee!

Anyway, we no longer have to worry about the palm tree pushing up our brand-new shingles, but now we’re faced with a new problem: how do we get rid of the carcass? We left it lying there for a week or two so the frog could get the hint and make its way to a new home, but now it’s just sort of this massive heap of damp crap with some fronds sticking out the end. Oh, and the stump is still there as well – haven’t tried to get the roots out yet.

So really, we’re only about halfway done on this project. I probably shouldn’t have even mentioned it.

Carry on, nothing to see here.

Yet another toilet saga

I dunno what it is about toilets in this house - maybe it's because we have three of them, and they're all in cahoots about how best to annoy the shit out of me. Or maybe it's just the Toilet from Hell, spreading its influence through sheer malevolence...

Anyway, when last we checked in on the downstairs powder room, I had just grouted the floor. (Man, is it really that long since I posted? Yeeesh. No wonder I've been getting flak from the regular readers. Sorry about that.) Since then, we installed the vanity and sink, painted and rehung the door, and, well, installed the toilet.

Three times.

Sigh. Yes, there's a story behind that; get comfortable, and I'll spin you our tale of woe...

I must admit, right up front, that a large part of our issues with the toilet, at least at the beginning, are my fault. You see, it was my first real tiling job, that slate floor in the bathroom, and let's just say that maybe doing slate wasn't the best idea for a rank amateur such as me. The tiles weren't anything even approaching uniform in size, they were not cut square, and they varied widely in width - even across a single tile. Couple that with a lack of experience on my part, and you have a recipe for an uneven floor. It didn't look too bad:



But as we've seen, looks can be deceiving. That being said, I did put quite a bit of effort into the tiles under where the toilet would sit, and thought I'd done a fair job at that, at least. So I was pretty confident that we would be able to seat the toilet on the flange fairly easily.

Hahahahahahahaha! I'm so stupid!

Anyway, this particular project started with a trip to Rona to buy a toilet flange extender kit, a wax ring, and some rubber wedges to help level the bowl on the slate (you know, just in case). We got the parts home, and set to installing the toilet.

You know, I don't even remember exactly the steps we tried to follow the first time. Maybe I've blocked it out, maybe I just don't really want to remember, but let's just say it's a good thing wax rings are cheap. We tried installing with the extender and a wax ring, and it didn't work so hot. So we took the wax ring off, and set the toilet in place without it, and tried to level it using the rubber wedges. That didn't work so hot either, and neither of us was at all confident that we'd be able to do it all.

It was time to call in the professionals. Well, A professional, anyway.

Sadly, Leonard the miracle worker had given up the plumbing business in favor of sailing around the Southern Hemisphere on a tall ship or something, so we needed a new plumber. I called the guy who installed our floor, and he recommended a company that he had used a fair bit. Well, those guys were too busy to come and install a lone toilet, but they recommended a guy they had used for some other small jobs, and as luck would have it (and after I name-dropped the company that recommended him), he was available to drop by and install the toilet for us.

So, a couple of Fridays ago (a day later than he had originally planned, but at least he called and let us know, right?), he showed up, and promptly installed the toilet - in about thirty minutes, start to finish. Hell, he finished so quickly, he even had time to take a quick look at the drain under the vanity - which, of course, leaked after I installed it the first time. I thanked him profusely, saw him out, and headed off to work.

When I got home after work, I noticed some drops of water beside the toilet, underneath the tank bolt on the left side. Huh, I thought. Maybe he didn't tighten it enough for fear of cracking the tank.

So I grabbed a wrench and gave the nut a couple of extra turns. No dice. After checking it over a few times and fiddling with a couple of seals, and realizing that it still leaked, I talked it over with the War Department. I figured I could probably fix it myself if I took the tank off, but we agreed that we didn't really want to pay a professional to do a job and then have to fix it ourselves anyway. So I called the plumber back, and set up a return visit. (The vanity still leaked after he was done, by the way, but I figured that out and fixed it myself.)

So the following Thursday, he came back, removed the tank, doped up the gasket (which is what I had planned on doing), and reinstalled the tank. He tightened everything up, I saw him out, and headed off to work.

The next day, I got an email at work from the War Department, who had double-checked the toilet on her way out in the morning, and noticed that it was still leaking. I sent her an email back that had a lot of swearing in it.

So that afternoon, I got home from work and checked the toilet again. Sure enough, it was leaking at the gasket between the tank and the bowl. I called the plumber again, and he said that it might be because either the tank or the bowl had a casting flaw that was causing the gasket to not seal properly. He said he could come back and install the other toilet (the one we had bought to replace the Toilet from Hell, ironically), but that it would cost us for another trip as the defect wasn't his fault.

Well, this, now, this was starting to piss me off. So I had a closer look at the toilet, and noticed that the tank really wasn't secured all that tightly. As a matter of fact, I figured that if I just straightened it out and tightened the bolts, it would work just fine. So I emptied out the water, doped up the rubber seals, and reseated the tank - nice and tight this time.

No dice. Still leaked from the gasket between the tank and bowl. Much swearing ensued.

So once again, the War Department and I talked it over: I reckoned, now that I knew how to install the bowl over the flange, I could install the damn thing myself. She agreed, and the next day I dragged out the other toilet and unpacked it, and then started removing the other toilet.

Well, right away, I noticed some weirdness. For starters, the plumber hadn't used the right plastic and brass washers on the floor bolts - he had used the metal ones meant to connect the tank and bowl, and therefore had nothing to snap the little plastic bolt covers to. He got around this problem by filling the bolt covers with plumbers putty and squishing them down over the bolts. Not quite how I would have done it, but I figured maybe it was a plumbers' trick to make it easier.

Then I noticed that he hadn't actually used the right washers to connect the tank bolts. The ones he used were too small, and had actually cut right through the rubber washers underneath when I had tightened them up in my efforts to stop the leak the night before. I wondered about this, too, but the plumber had bought a new gasket and tank bolt set when he came back to "fix" the original problem.

Anyway, I got the first toilet out, and started installing the new one. It took me about an hour, start to finish. It doesn't leak.



It does make me wonder, however, whether the "old" toilet has a casting flaw at all, or whether the plumber was just rushed because it was such a little job, and he had other things he needed to get to. I do know that he didn't follow the instructions that came with the toilet, which called for TWO sets of washers and nuts on the tank bolts (which makes a lot of sense to me, actually), and for plastic clips and brass washers on the floor bolts...

Anyway, the bathroom is officially done. I don't have any pictures right now, because I installed the flooring transition piece this morning and the door is still block with boxes...

I'm just kidding. Here:





Maybe one more shelf or something, just above the toilet there? No hurry to get that, though - I'm still saying it's done.

That's not all we've done this weekend, however. We had bought a couple of new lights to replace the ugly-ass pieces of shit that hang on the front of the house, on either side of the garage door. These things:



Yeah, there are actually three of them, but we only got two lights - another lurks outside the front door, but its days are also numbered. Anyway, the War Department actually started this project herself, but it quickly became a joint effort - and a whole day affair, at that.

The trouble started when she took the first light off the wall and found this:



In case you were wondering, that is not up to code. Technically, it's not really AGAINST code either, if only because the people who came up with the electrical code never in their wildest dreams imagined someone would be so goddamned stupid as to install a light on an OUTSIDE wall like that.

Let's review, shall we?

- piece of 3/8ths plywood carefully cut to form a precise (and flammable!) mounting bracket? Check.

- bracket from another light fixture fastened haphazardly to the plywood mount? Check.

- duct tape AND electrical tape? Check.

- no sign whatsoever of any caulking or weatherproofing? Check.

- two different sized marrettes? Check.

- a flat-head, a Philips, and two different-sized Robertson screws all used in the same application? Check - and a big-ass nail, to boot.



Yeah, this couldn't have been more messed up if he tried. Oh, wait - it totally was. No, I'm not kidding. It gets worse.

The light closest to the electrical panel. was mounted in a proper "pancake" box - not ideal, but probably up to code at the time the house was built. It seems, however, that someone wanted to add the second carriage light on the other side of the door sometime after the house was built. To do this, they made a hole in the drywall and fed in their electrical wire (what does it say about us that we were actually quite happy to see that it wasn't speaker wire?), and then poked it through the junction box. So far so good, but then they ran it across the wall at the front of the garage, and fed it THROUGH a couple of holes in the brackets for the garage door. Yes, METAL brackets. That, as we say in the trade, is double-plus ungood.

Anyway, it took us another trip to Home Depot, and a full afternoon of cutting, swearing, wiring, and caulking, but we now have two very nice coach lights on either side of the garage door; here's one of them:



The story, of course, does not end there. But to tell it properly, we need to turn this over to

This Week In Mayonnaise

I mentioned above that the person or persons who installed the light had cut a little hole in the drywall to access the back of the first light so they could tie in the electrical wire. Well, this is what it looked like after they had patched it (I propped the piece I cut out back in the hole so you could see - it's not staying there):



That's not the best part, though. Oh no, the best part is what they stuffed the hole with so they'd have something to backfill the mayonnaise against:



Mmm.... flammable!

Anyway, it's getting late, even with the time change, and I've got some wine to finish. Before I go, though, I'd like to leave you with a little bonus.

Remember way back when, I spent an entire post waxing on and on about how you really start to learn about the previous owner of a house, even when you don't want to know?

Well, something arrived in the mail the other day, addressed to Frank, that explains SO MUCH. It's a magazine - more of a catalog, really. It's called Bits and Pieces and... well, how about you just take a look at the cover, and see what they're selling:



Oh yeah. Me - ow, baby.

Stay-cation: The Last Days

I should have known better than to be excited about a day with nothing planned. Turns out the War Department was just full to the brim with ideas for Friday, and none of them involved anything even remotely fun.

And of course, it was the worst of her ideas that we wound up working on all day.

Wanna know what it was? I'll give you a hint. It's the common theme within all these pictures:









No, it's not that it's all overgrown. Well, it is that, but it's not SO much that it's all overgrown as it is what it's all overgrown WITH. (Ending a sentence with a preposition is fun!)

Blackberry canes!

Dear jebus, the blackberries. We've been putting off this particular chore for a while now, and we paid for that procrastination dearly. You can kind of get an idea of what we were dealing with from those pictures up there, especially the second one. That big cane on the left side of the picture is actually coming down from where it grew up into and through the dogwood tree.

Of course, municipality bylaws indicate that you're not allowed to HAVE blackberry canes on residential properties, so we grabbed our thickest (not-quite-thick-enough) gloves, a couple of shovels and the pick and headed out into the yard to take them on.

Four of the scratchiest, sweatiest, annoyingiest hours later, we had this:







Wait a sec. Let's take a closer look at that gate, shall we?



So, to sum up: the gate (which is not actually a gate, but a "repurposed" section of one of the two wrought iron trellis thingies) is held up by two broken broom sticks, a couple of spare bits of rebar, two different kinds of speaker wire, electrical tape, and baling twine. Well, at least it's not crooked or anything.

I should also hasten to point out that the reason we didn't tackle the largest area of blackberries, the one behind the brush pile/grass clippings, is because the War Department seems to think that that's where the little bunny in our yard lives. And she didn't want to disturb it. So we'll be finishing this particular chore next spring. Provided, of course, we can convince the bunny to move out and get a damn job, that deadbeat freeloading hippie.

Anyway, that was our Friday. On Saturday, we took the day off, aside from a couple of short errands and some light housework, and even went down to the park and tossed the baseball around for a while. (Heh, 19 degrees in the middle of October: love it!)

On Sunday, I put two coats of sealer on the bathroom tiles and we got the bathroom door ready for painting while the War Department worked on a bunch of other projects. Oh, and we finally got our mattress delivered, which means I can finally take some pictures of the finished bedroom! Well, as soon as we get some more of the artwork up on the wall, anyway.

So that was our stay-cation. We didn't exactly get ALL of the things done that we wanted to, but we got the bathroom pretty much ready to put together, we got to spend some time in the backyard enjoying the sun and the copious amounts of wildlife, and we ate like freakin' KINGS for pretty much the entire week. (Seriously - the pepperberry chicken was only the start of the good eats.) All in all, I'd have to call it a success.

And of course, for a whole week, we didn't have to go into the office either, so that was pretty sweet.