Category Archives: Home

Plumbing Problems

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Plumbing Problems

Yesterday, I broke the toilet. I flushed it and its handle broke off in my hand. It had been phantom flushing, and my jiggling of the handle might have precipitated this problem, but with my help, things eventually only got worse. After the three obligatory trips to the hardware store, I think that I licked the phantom flushing situation once and for all. Now, you can press down for #1 or pull up for #2.

About the hardware store, I must be getting old, because I got cutoff by a lady in a wheelchair there. I was walking to the next available checkout line, when she came screaming past me in her motorized wheelchair, cut me off and got in line ahead of me. I never saw her coming.

Unfortunately, with all of my mucking about, I caused a leak to form in the water supply line. This problem is caused by the local shutoff valve, which after thirty years does not work too well anymore. I tried to replace this valve but gave up and called a plumber. I wrangled an appointment with our go to plumber across the street, but two missed calls have put that appointment into jeopardy. I am not sweating it though. The leak is slow, and I have a bucket beneath the leak. Our hard water may eventually plug the leak altogether. 

The Robot Revolution Arrives

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Roomba Rumble

Our Roomba arrived. We quickly unboxed it and then unboxed it again and then unboxed it once again. I kid you not, the Roomba came wrapped in not one, but three nested cardboard boxes: the Amazon shipping carton, the iRobot shipping carton, and the actual Roomba box, the one that you might see in a store. We were not done though, not by half. Inside these boxes was a maze of smaller boxes. One held just the power cord. Quite a few held nothing at all. Unwrapping everything, there really was not that much. There was the Roomba, its docking station, power cord and an attachment. I have never seen so much packaging. God help us if the machine breaks down and we have to return it.

Setup was not too painful. Plugged it in, got the app, connected to Wi-Fi and looked good to go. We took it for a short test run, watched it move around following its own random pattern, and then docked it. Its maiden flight was a success. Then we set it loose again. Anne was fascinated with watching its perambulations. The Roomba seemed to take an almost unhealthy interest in the areas beneath the couches. After about thirty minutes, it decided to declare victory and head home. It was full. Back at base the Roomba emptied itself into the base station, but then threw up an error message. The base station was clogged. The app played a YouTube video that explained how to take the base apart, something, something about five screws, and then clean out the clog. Fortunately, the problem had already solved itself. I ran it briefly one more time to ensure that the problem had gone away and then decided that that was enough fun for the first day. Yea! We did not kill the robot on day one.

Home Show Hawker

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Home Show Hawker

Yesterday, we went to the Fenton home show. Our expressed purpose for this journey was that we want to resurrect the new upstairs bathroom project. This is a project that we initially undertook a couple of years ago. I think that its genesis came from our daily walks through the rich neighborhoods of Clayton. We call this walk our neighborhood walk. Even though most of the walk does not occur in our neighborhood. Our neighborhood is best described as the slums of Clayton. During the pandemic this was our go to walk. During these walks through Clayton, it seemed that everyone and their brother was renovating. On an otherwise quite weekday, this neighborhood was bustling with contractors. Eventually, we decided to jump on the bandwagon, but by then it was too late. The news was already full of shortages and our personal experience only confirmed this. It began well, with our neighborhood plumber proposing a novel and cheap less expensive approach for running the pipes from the basement to the upstairs. It went downhill fast from there. Only one contractor responded to our calls and his bid was way more expensive than we expected. So, we tabled the project.

Anne is not a woman who is easily denied though. This week she announced that she was going to this home show. I tagged along. It was held in a sports arena, with all the booths setup on the astroturf. They were hawking all manner of things. There was a cadre of solar vendors, but we mainly use gas, and our electric bills are not high enough to support solar. Most of the bath vendors were only interested in rehabbing, not new construction. We did come away with a few business-card-leads that we will pursue. It is going to be expensive, but hopefully, there are contractors out there that are hungrier than before. 

Backyard Cleanout

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A Dozen Leaf Bags

Pictured are the bagged remains of the jungle that used to be our back yard. Arnaldo, our yard man collected and bagged all this vegetation this week. I only had to haul them to the curb. The bags were heavy though. He did a lot of work, and I am grateful for his service. Anne and I earned an appreciation for the work required, when we took our own first swipe at the backyard. We generated about as many bags, but our bags were nowhere near as full as these. Us getting poison ivy too did not help either. The backyard looks wide open now and much bigger too. It seems unbelievable that our tiny city lot could host this much plant life. Today is trash day, in addition to being the longest day of the year. Our poor overworked and underpaid garbagemen should be able haul these away for us. When they finally showed up in the late afternoon the two men struggled to lift the bags into the dump truck. It has begun to dry out for the summer, so it is unlikely that the jungle will return anytime soon. Hopefully, not until next year.