Its Turkey Day! Im fatter than I was yesterday, the Lions lost and I asked the inlaws for over $700 worth of xmas wrapped goods. Everything is right with the world.
For dinner we had the usual. The baby eater cooked up some mean turkey that was accompanied by mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, rolls, broccoli with cheese sauce and stuffing.
Oops. Its Monday now and I just remembered that I never finished this post. Im not motivated to so this is all you get.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Train Kept A Rollin
Id like to welcome Shedus wife, Crazy Mom, to our little blogging community. I look forward to many pictures of strangly named children and storys about parenting, running and sex with Shedubeard. Oh yeah, "Mom Train," genious!BTW, DO NOT Google image search "mom train".
Monday, November 21, 2005
I Dont Like Food Anymore
This afternoon I finally bagged up the leaves that were in my front yard. In order to do this I had to buy some bags so I thought Id try out those Hefty Ultra Flex bags. You know the ones that are supposed to be more tear resistant and the lady in the commercial is like, "Look at me stick my samurai sword in this trash bag" and the bag doesnt even think about tearing. Those are the ones I got. Let me tell you, THEY SUCK. So Im bagging up leaves and some small sticks right. My frickin Costco Kirkland brand bags didnt tear. These new shit bags were tearing left and right. And then when I would tie them up with the draw strings the strings would snap. Boo. Boo I say. Boo to you Hefty Ultra Flex. Boo.
I Dont Like Food Anymore
This afternoon I finally bagged up the leaves that were in my front yard. In order to do this I had to buy some bags so I thought Id try out those Hefty Ultra Flex bags. You know the ones that are supposed to be more tear resistant and the lady in the commercial is like, "Look at me stick my samurai sword in this trash bag" and the bag doesnt even think about tearing. Those are the ones I got. Let me tell you, THEY SUCK. So Im bagging up leaves and some small sticks right. My frickin Costco Kirkland brand bags didnt tear. These new shit bags were tearing left and right. And then when I would tie them up with the draw strings the strings would snap. Boo. Boo I say. Boo to you Hefty Ultra Flex. Boo.
As I Try To Make My Way To The Ordinary World
Before reading this post be sure to read the first part here.
After gathering the materials necessary I return home to reconstruct my bathroom sink. I stick the cold water stem into the opening and tighten it up. I then turn the cold water back on. No leaks. Next I open up the cold water faucet. No leaks. Just to be sure I turn the hot water on and then open the faucet. I attempt to open it that is. The porcelain handle breaks. Great! Looks like Ive got a lot of gluing to do.
O ke doke. Might as well take this whole side apart too and put that new part I got on. This side however was not steady. It was loose in the hole. After several different vice grip configurations I finally get to the rubber part that is to be replaced. Unfortunately like the cold water side this one also needs to be loosened to accommodate the new larger part. First I try just a couple pliers, no chance. Perhaps vice grips will work. NO. OK, out to the garage where the big vice is. Put it in there and use the big vice grips on the other side. Still nothing. Frickin awesome. I have to leave for work in 10 min and if the wife comes home to this shes going to freak out. I get the PB Blaster out and spray the shit out of this thing. It sits for a minute and I try to loosen it again. No dice. OK I should beat her home with about an hour to work on this. I spray the shit out of the fixture again and let it sit.
9:00 and Im home again. I have exactly an hour to get this thing fixed. The first thing I do is try to loosen the fixture that has been marinating for 5 hours. Much to my surprise it comes loose on the first try. I havent even officially gotten home and Ive already loosened the fixture. NICE. Next is to go in the house and change out of my work cloths.
Now properly clothed, I put the new part on the hot water faucet stem. Theres still 2 problems though. 1: Both handles are smashed and need to be glued back together. 2: The hot water side is loose. Some times when you turn the handle (when there was a handle) the entire fixture would spin rather than just loosening up. After examining the thing for a while I determined that there werent enough threads for the pretty thing to grab onto on the hot water side. Therefore there was nothing holding it in place and it could move freely.
At this point I realized that you can never have too many big tools. I had every pliers but the big one out and in order to loosen the thing on the bottom to allow more threads to go up I needed one at least that big. Threads now exposed I put the hot water side back together. Everything functions and there are no leaks. Were down to one problem. No handles!
When I asked the good man at Godwin Hardware if he thought super glue would hold these stupid porcelain handles together he kinda smirked. Then he said "we do have some killer adhesives that would work." We go over to the adhesive isle and he grabs the Devcon High Strength 2 Ton Epoxy (All Purpose). This stuff aint your little sisters Krazy Glue. Its stored in a 2 nozzle syringe. One side has the resin and the other has the hardener. Once you squirt them out you have 30 minutes to mix it and get it on. After the 30 minutes is up, its hard. Then after 8 hours its water/fire proof can handle temperatures between -60F and 200F and has a PSI strength of 2500 pounds. NICE. Needles to say I was a little intimidated working with it.
For the most part the epoxy application went uneventful. I still have some stuck to my fingers but most of the skin underneath where the glue was died and fell off with it.
Long ago I vowed to never again do plumbing work. I hate plumbing. Things that would normally be very easy always turn into many houred projects. Ive decided to take up my vow of no plumbing again.
After gathering the materials necessary I return home to reconstruct my bathroom sink. I stick the cold water stem into the opening and tighten it up. I then turn the cold water back on. No leaks. Next I open up the cold water faucet. No leaks. Just to be sure I turn the hot water on and then open the faucet. I attempt to open it that is. The porcelain handle breaks. Great! Looks like Ive got a lot of gluing to do.
O ke doke. Might as well take this whole side apart too and put that new part I got on. This side however was not steady. It was loose in the hole. After several different vice grip configurations I finally get to the rubber part that is to be replaced. Unfortunately like the cold water side this one also needs to be loosened to accommodate the new larger part. First I try just a couple pliers, no chance. Perhaps vice grips will work. NO. OK, out to the garage where the big vice is. Put it in there and use the big vice grips on the other side. Still nothing. Frickin awesome. I have to leave for work in 10 min and if the wife comes home to this shes going to freak out. I get the PB Blaster out and spray the shit out of this thing. It sits for a minute and I try to loosen it again. No dice. OK I should beat her home with about an hour to work on this. I spray the shit out of the fixture again and let it sit.
9:00 and Im home again. I have exactly an hour to get this thing fixed. The first thing I do is try to loosen the fixture that has been marinating for 5 hours. Much to my surprise it comes loose on the first try. I havent even officially gotten home and Ive already loosened the fixture. NICE. Next is to go in the house and change out of my work cloths.
Now properly clothed, I put the new part on the hot water faucet stem. Theres still 2 problems though. 1: Both handles are smashed and need to be glued back together. 2: The hot water side is loose. Some times when you turn the handle (when there was a handle) the entire fixture would spin rather than just loosening up. After examining the thing for a while I determined that there werent enough threads for the pretty thing to grab onto on the hot water side. Therefore there was nothing holding it in place and it could move freely. At this point I realized that you can never have too many big tools. I had every pliers but the big one out and in order to loosen the thing on the bottom to allow more threads to go up I needed one at least that big. Threads now exposed I put the hot water side back together. Everything functions and there are no leaks. Were down to one problem. No handles!
When I asked the good man at Godwin Hardware if he thought super glue would hold these stupid porcelain handles together he kinda smirked. Then he said "we do have some killer adhesives that would work." We go over to the adhesive isle and he grabs the Devcon High Strength 2 Ton Epoxy (All Purpose). This stuff aint your little sisters Krazy Glue. Its stored in a 2 nozzle syringe. One side has the resin and the other has the hardener. Once you squirt them out you have 30 minutes to mix it and get it on. After the 30 minutes is up, its hard. Then after 8 hours its water/fire proof can handle temperatures between -60F and 200F and has a PSI strength of 2500 pounds. NICE. Needles to say I was a little intimidated working with it.
For the most part the epoxy application went uneventful. I still have some stuck to my fingers but most of the skin underneath where the glue was died and fell off with it.
Long ago I vowed to never again do plumbing work. I hate plumbing. Things that would normally be very easy always turn into many houred projects. Ive decided to take up my vow of no plumbing again.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Friday Night I Crashed Your Party
Last night our house was the location of a baby shower. All of my wifes friends came over and played strange games, ate food and opened presents. This blog is not about that night.Friday, in preparation for the big baby shower, I decided I should probably fix the leaking bathroom sink. After turning off the water, I pop the top off and unscrew the screw that holds the unit together. Unfortunately, like most old sinks, it didnt want to come apart. So I try to loosen it and snap the shit out of the porcelain handle. Great! Well, at least I can get a vice grip on this thing to break it free. I do that and as I suspected the leak was due to a bad seal. A $0.99 part will fix this. Well, it would have before I snapped the handle.
My next objective is to find a replacement handle for this faucet. Not a very obtainable goal. At Ace Hardware the man was very friendly and helpful but could only tell me that it was going to cost, at the very least, $57 for a whole new set of fixtures. Not an investment Im willing to make at this point in the day. On to Godwin Hardware.
I receive an almost identical look from the guy at Godwin as I got at Ace when I asked about a replacement part for this one fixture. He did however hook me up with some killer adhesive. Ill get back to the adhesive in the conclusion. After we find the proper adhesive I address the original problem, my faucet leaks. He gets me my $0.99 rubber part and offers to put it on. Never to proud to let someone else do something for me, I let him. It wasnt as simple as just popping one off and popping the new one on. Because the faucet was in such bad shape it had to be loosened to accommodate for the new part. Now it must be said that the guys at Godwin Pluming are awesome. He spent the next 15 minutes hammering, vicing and PB Blasting this stupid decrepit old fixture just so he could put a $0.99 part on for me. Eventually he got it put together and I was on my way. I decided to pick up 2 of these parts because the hot water side was probably going to start leaking soon anyway. $6.80 later Im on my way home.
To Be Continued...
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