Saturday, 03 March 2012
Last week, when I was buying sheets of plywood for my garage, I had a few minutes to wait. One of the employees was cutting the wood into manageable sizes for me, so I wandered around the store. I found a bathroom faucet for sale, on clearance from $60 down to $28. It looked nice; a vast improvement over what currently exists in the downstairs bathroom. So I bought it.
The ugliest bathroom faucet I’ve ever owned.
Today, I finally got around to installing it. Owen and Isla accompanied me to the local hardware store so I could pick up a few items I needed to do the job, and then I set to work. The connectors I bought were too long, so I had to go back and swap them, otherwise everything went smoothly.
Owen gave the faucet its inaugural run. He seemed pleased with the results. So was I.
But I didn’t stop there. No sir-ee. I also finally removed the keychain-slash-bill holder shelf that came with our house and centered it on the wall. Yeah, not sure what the bonehead previous owner was thinking, but there’s a narrow wall separating the back door from the mudroom, and he hung the shelf there…off-center by about an inch. It wouldn’t be noticeable on a large wall, but when the wall is only 10 inches wide, it’s obvious. It took me all of about four minutes to locate the exact center, mark it, unscrew the shelf, and rehang it at the exact center.
Sunday, 04 March 2012
In the continuing saga of home improvement, today I put these little caps on the bolts that come up from the floor and hold the toilet in place. I actually bought some caps yesterday but, seeing they didn’t fit, I returned them at the same time I swapped out those connectors. Boy, that was dumb of me. Turns out, you can saw the bolts down.
I wasn’t sure if this would work, since they are rather sizable bolts. But with a bit of olecranon tallow, I was able to hacksaw my way through both bolts. The new caps fit well, and they make the whole thing look better. Well, it’s still a place to take a crap, but you get my meaning.
Also, in an effort to gain more room in the garage (since I no longer have the workshop for my own use), I brought in several pieces of baby furniture (you know, like a swing, a jumper, and a car seat) and some cardboard boxes. I’ve never liked that these things have been in our garage, but we didn’t really have a choice when we lived in the apartment: there was just no room in our home. For a while, we kept them at my mom’s place, but when she hooked up with Keith, my kind, loving, considerate, friendly stepfather, he asked us to take our junk elsewhere. Or, rather, he had my mom ask us, since, you know, he can’t talk to us without suffering grave repercussions.
This is what happened to the last JW who foolishly tried to talk to us.
So…yeah…anyway…our stuff’s been out in a dirty garage for two years.
When we moved into our home almost six months ago, I didn’t even think about it. All that stuff had been in the garage already, so I just absent-mindedly put it in the new garage.
But today, with Owen’s help, I carried the items into the house and put them in our attic. They’ll stay cleaner and safer in there and, should we need any of it again (or wish to get rid of it), it will be a lot easier venturing into the attic during a cold winter’s day than out to the garage.