Home Ownership

#583

Ah! You have fallen into my trap!

The problem with our hanging sink (which we’ve been delaying installing in our mostly finished bathroom for about 5 years now) is that if they have to work with a tiled wall, they have to support it from the structure behind the wall. That means tearing out the wall in the next room, putting it all in place, then closing up that wall. So, 2 rooms need to be done.

Yes. Our bathroom has been without a sink for a very long time. It becomes a new way of life.

Cabinet sinks are ugly and take up too much room in a tiny bathroom. I’ve cut out sections between the studs to install cabinets behind the door. No need for a stupid cabinet. Gives the tiny room a much bigger feel. The in-wall cabinetry backs onto a closet, so no noise transmission.

#584

Yup. Having the structure in the wall to support it is a must. Sink makers aren’t going to do something crazy and make the sinks match a standard stud spacing. That’s just weird. I was lucky. When we removed the mirror we found the hole that was cut for the a in place medicine cabinet. I was able to run a camera down the wall and confirm we had structure behind the wall.

My problem with my pedestal sink is the pedestal. I installed it but getting the drain to line up was a pain since I had to remove the pedestal to adjust the drain pipes. I had to do this twice so far, once on the install and this weekend, I took it all apart and replaced some of the PVC due to leaks. If it leaks again, I’m calling a professional.

I will say that the new sink and bathroom in general looks a lot better. It feels roomier despite it being a frankly, too small bathroom.

#585

A real PITA

In our previous house the kitchen and bathroom was next to each other. Drain for both was next to the bathroom. The drain from the kitchen went into the wall to the bathroom, turned 90 degrees to the right (inside the wall) and went onwards for about a meter or so, then turned 90 degrees to the left (still in the wall), on for a little bit (a-yup, still in the wall), then 90 degrees right and into the drain. o_O

It was to be a mission to replace that pipe as it got blocked. Brick and mortar wall. I said “sod that”, got a masonry hole drill and drilled two new holes (one to the outside to the drain) and one with a wooden saw in the cupboard’s side for the pipe to pass through, lined up a PVC pipe and the kitchen’s blocked drain was sorted out.

#586

The power in the garage had gone out over the winter, so I just shut it off at the box. I’ve checked it a couple of times, but it’s boned.

That’s where I prefer to do a lot of my woodworking, and have had to move most of my semi-stationary tools to the basement to get things done. I actually ran an extension cord from the basement into the garage so that I could run my bandsaw for a while.

The current line goes out of the basement, directly underground (under a flagstone walkway under my back door) in an armoured cable and through another cinder block wall into the garage. The assumption is that something has settled poorly and cut the line.

I had my electrician come by today to take a look and he gave me some pretty good news. While my current panel is old and out of date with ancient breakers that cost 10x what new ones do to replace, nothing needs to be done to the actual service box. There is a second line at the bottom (currently switched off) that used to feed an electric furnace. We can use that, run a line out the basement wall above ground level, run it through an 18" deep trench I have to dig, then up and through the cinder block wall into the garage. A pony panel can be set up there and I can put in as many circuits as I want. 240 lines will actually be cheaper to install. Because the house is within 10 feet of the garage, any 120 lines need to be arc fault interrupted individually which is an additional charge. They can’t just do the whole box, of course. For some reason they don’t have to do that with the more powerful lines. I don’t have any tools that use 240, though.

Anyway, to get this done right will cost me about $1500. I’m okay with that. I’ve been putting money aside for home repairs for a while now and there is enough in there to cover it.

Now I need a trench shovel and some sand and I can get this done on my vacation in a couple of weeks. It should only take them a couple of hours once I have everything prepared.

#587

Should our 'leccy issues be sorted out, I plan to play around (with ookson) with infrared beams, relays and other fun stuff to create a couple of noisy booby traps all over the place.

Things like a tower of empty tins that get toppled over or a an empty metal drum with metal pieces inside, which will make a lot of noise and sound almost like if somebody pushed something over by accident.

And, of course, lights and motion-activated water sprinklers. Should be a big hit, especially in the cold of winter.

Speaking of water sprinklers, need to find if there’s a DIY project thingy on tracking a person and aiming a gun/hosepipe at said person…

#588

I think I’ll scratch Ookland off my list of places to visit. :fearful:

#589

Don’t blame you. It is not nice, criminals are running the show :frowning:

#590

Bring a bladed boomerang if you do. And wear a colander and a dog collar.

#591

In the spare room where I do most of my computer restorations, half of one of the socket faceplates has gone mysteriously dead. Since they’re wired in pairs (one cable into the back, two sockets) I don’t get how this can be unless the switch itself has locked open - which it blatantly hasn’t since you can hear the ‘kadoink’ of it making contact, and a failed switch will just go ‘klick’.

In this case, I’m honestly calling gremlins. How can just one half of a power socket fail!?

#592

Seen this a few times, water damage at least twice, bad plug once, gremlins the other couple.

edit: Seconds after posting this my house guest comes up and says half the 6 plug adapter on one of our outlets isn’t working… but only not with her laptop cord, her blow dryer worked fine.

Hypothesis 1) She blew the internal breaker with the dryer.
Hypothesis 2) The ground is bad since hair dryer is two prong and laptop is three.

Either way solution is move to a different room for now.

#593

Solution 2 : nuke it from orbit :stuck_out_tongue:

#594

It’s the only way to be sure.

#595

Power is fed via a small bus on the side of the receptacle. One could have failed, or corroded away (see @Woodman s post).

Not a good sign, in any case. I’d personally make the replacement a top priority.

#596

I have to agree with @DocDubious.

As I recall, the small bus on the side is usually either easily breakable, or a saddle link over the screw terminals. I remember when looking at apartments, being frustrated when they had a light switch that only went to one special plug in the room… no light on the ceiling, no, you had to plug a lamp into all the plugs in the room and find the enchanted outlet.

#597

The house I just left that I built 10 years ago had those, but it was two switches per room. One to the overhead and one to the outlet that was installed upside down.

#598

I like the upside down idea. And that there was an overhead light option, too.

#599

Going to get a bag of cement after payday, then fix some holes in the cement in our house’s flooring.

FWIW the guys who did the floor did a very poor job. Told $wife I’ll want to try patching it by cleaning the holes out properly, pour cement in, and embed pieces of tiles into the cement on the top, so it’ll be nice and smooth with a patchwork effect.

If it works out, then we’ll redo the whole of the interior patch by patch until we have replaced all the poor cement with proper cement. Of course it’ll be patchwork all over, I don’t mind as long as it is properly done and will last a long time.

They used too much sand with too little cement. ;/

#600

One thing I don’t regret doing when we moved in is buying contractor packs of name-brand outlets and replacing them pretty much any time we had a reason to do so. Still have a few to do, but I feel safer since a few were pretty elderly.

#601

It was not my department, but from product knowledge training at Home Depot years ago, I remember hearing that when patching concrete, you should use a bonding agent on the old, cured base material. Back then, it was a liquid that could be sprayed or brushed on, depending on how much area needed to be covered. I did a quick search on homedepot.com and it looks like the patching concrete products have the bonding agent mixed in. Progress!

#602

Cement?

Concrete.