Miscellaneous...Chapter 1

I first called this edition "Miscellaneous Part 1" but didn't want to repeat the theme of my Helen St post, and also because it occurs to me that there could be several subsequent editions of this theme. (By the way, Helen St. Part 2, The Final Chapter, will be out soon)

Yes, it's been cold. That's -21 on the car thermometer.

The cold weather and busy work schedule has limited the amount of work we've been able to get done at the house. The fireplace has something to do with this as well as we really love to just come home from work, have dinner and relax. Still, I've started several projects, completed a few. Unless we have a major failure somewhere in the house, no new projects will be started until we tie a few of these off.

Onward!

Kitchen TV:  As has been written before, our kitchen is rather small so space is at a premium. We do enjoy the small TV we had in Helen St, where it sat on the refrigerator. I offered to purchase a wall mount and hang the TV in the kitchen and found a quality mount in Lowes.  But, the $60 price put me off a bit, so a search on Amazon found this same mount for considerably less (about $35). An easy job, right? Heh heh. Good one Dave. It occurred to me shortly after I began, that I would be mounting the TV to an exterior wall, which in our house is solid masonry construction. Well, no big deal, you can drill in block and concrete, right? Heh heh. Actually you can, that is until you hit some kind of steel plate or reinforcement in the wall. I still don't know what I hit when drilling, but I couldn't penetrate it (had a momentary panic attack when I thought I may have hit the cast iron drain from the bathroom above, but it wasn't, I don't think). I had measured carefully and was limited in the room I had to move the mounting plate, and decided to somehow adapt the mount to fit where I had drilled. Of the two mounts, the lower hole was fine, it was the upper drill hole that hit the obstruction. In any event, the silly dry wall screws and molly plugs that came with the mount wouldn't work so I ran to my local friendly hardware store and found what's called bolt shield anchors or masonry anchors. The lower one went in fine, the the obstruction limited the top one and it went in about 75% of the way. I decided to make this a feature rather than a problem and it actually allows the TV to lean forward a bit more than it otherwise would have, making it easier to see from the sink or stove. Heh heh. It's a FEATURE dear, not sloppy mounting.

Home theater: Hard to say how much of this is completed because I'm not sure how much difficulty I'll have completing it. First a little background. Several years ago my lovely wife decided to purchase me a new sound system, and was very generous about it. The money she gave me allowed me to buy an entry level audiophile or what's called a "beer budget" system. This gets you above the mass market systems you'll find in big box retailer and gets your foot in the door of another world of quality, and, unfortunately, complexity. I settled on a Sherwood-Newcastle receiver/amplifier and psb speakers. Now, this is by no means a plug and play system, especially when you consider I had the Time Warner box, Blue Ray player, CD player, Yamaha cassette deck, turntable and VCR all routed through the receiver and then into the TV. THEN, there's a complicated method of tuning the surround sound such that it is balanced and correct for proper listening. Anyway, so far I've assembled and placed the speakers and speaker stands and routed most of the wiring. A tricky part lies ahead though. The rear speakers need to be wired to the receiver and of course you don't want then running along the floor or baseboard, so you either have to go above or below and I've chosen below. There is an old electrical box in the floor (see earlier blog) and I plan to go down into the basement through that box with my speaker wire, and back up to the entertainment center through the heating vent on the other side. I've also decided to simplify my life by hooking up only the Blue Ray player and Time Warner to the receiver. I rarely used the turntable or cassette deck, and the CD player is on it's last legs. Too bad,

Plumbing: Leaks continue to be a problem around the tub and I've been caulking like a maniac trying to keep water from dripping from the kitchen ceiling. Eventually I'll have to remove all the caulk, and start again. However I'm concerned that we have some serious structural/rot problems with the floor near the tub as it is sagging a bit near the front of the tub.

Randy does the right thing. Bonus: No plumber's crack!
He doesn't just sell houses, he fixes them. 

During the very cold night, the pipe under the half bath froze. I was smart enough to shut the water off to the bathroom before I left for work that night (I've been worried about this since we knew it had frozen before). When I went to turn it on the next day, water squirted out of the push on plumbing connections. I called a plumber, since I know far more about quantum mechanics than plumbing,  left a message, and never heard back. First Brother-in-Law Randy to the rescue! After a struggle getting the broken fittings off due to their inconvenient location, the new push on's went on easily and with no leaks!

Fireplace: Already burned through our first face cord and had to head back up to the Robinson Hill Nursery for more wood. They didn't have much left but another face cord is all I needed (I hope!) and I'm back to keeping the wife warm and happy.

Foyer/Vestibule: I have put the floor protection down and am ready to move ahead in there. I have removed the wallpaper accents and will soon remove the awful molding from the ceiling. Will not go with the complex crown molding in there, which would be too much for the small room, but instead go with a simpler and easier to install design. The ceiling needs repair, walls need patching, and then a nice paint job will be done. We also need to shop for a new light fixture.

Desk/Den: Cindy has really led the way here sorting and replacing the stuff that was quickly thrown in boxes before the move. Together we lifted the massive walnut desk we have and put  felt floor protecting cups under the feet. We need to get a mat for the chair too. I purchased new hanging files and need to file the piles of sorted mail and documents on the desk before Cindy loses her mind.

There's so much more but I think this is a record blog length for me so I'm going to stop here. Any of you that are still reading will just have to wait for Chapter 2 for more ongoing tasks.