Monkey House

Small update, on two related points–

As you guys (anybody reading this blog) already know, we have opted to have a home birth. Part of our plan is to use a birthing tub (AquaDoula is the brand name) for comfort, muscle relief, and if Alie feels like it, the delivery itself.

Tubs need water.

Water source is ensuite faucet.

Ensuite faucet to tub requires hose.

Hose to tub requires adapter on faucet.

Now, most (all?) faucets have a screw-on aerator attachment. You know the thing I’m talking about. Little mesh baskety-dealy that prevents the water from coming out in one forceful gush… in kitchens, people unscrew these for attaching Brita filters. Yeah. We broke that. I broke that. In all fairness, it was seized onto the faucet with about 20 years of corrosion and mineral build-up. Same thing happened to a colleague of mine not too many months ago, so I know I can’t be the only one.

But either way, off to Home Depot. And if you’re off to Home Depot, might as well do it right. That meant getting a new faucet, shut off valves (had to go back a second time as I got straight when I needed angled), and braided supply lines. Add to this a “new” sink we already had! Since we hated the beige one that was in there (and happened to have a white one that we got for free not too long ago), changeroo time.

For possibly the first time ever, I can say that although breaking the faucet sucked, the actual renovation was a complete success. No drips, nothing broken, no problems!

Some parting statistics:

- Filling the AquaDoula takes 55 minutes with our faucet. That’s a long time to be running water. Felt guilty.
- Heating the AquaDoula to 95 or so degrees Farenheit takes 18 mother-effing hours. Needless to say, we didn’t get to enjoy the fruits of our labour that night.

I’m a pretty big champion of good customer service. To me, that’s more important than whether a company is considered “the man” or not. If Home Depot gives good customer service, they deserve to be at the top of the heap.

Today’s experience made me wonder:

a) should I only go to Home Depot on weeknights?
b) is it a matter of departments? (ie. some departments are more properly staffed than others)

Last night we bought a chandelier. Got it home and realized that it must have been a returned purchase… the electric wires had already been cut short. This was not going to do for us, so I went back to return it. After completing the return, I proceeded to look for two things– a length of chain for making a flap stop, and a replacement chandelier.

Could I find an associate? Not a chance. I must have stood around and/or wandered looking for someone for 45 minutes. Aggravating to say the least. At least once, I almost put aside self-consciousness and yelled aloud “AAARRRGGGHHH! SOMEBODY ASSIST ME!!!!” But I refrained.

Decided on my own replacement chandelier (they had no more stock of the exact one I had returned), gave up on the length of chain, and went to the checkout. As they usually do, checkout guy asks, “Did you find everything you were looking for today?” “No,” I replied, “I could find neither the chandelier I was looking for, nor a piece of hardware I needed, nor even an associate. I found almost nothing I was looking for today.” Surprised, he asks, “would you like me to find someone if you’re not in a rush?” “Sure,” I reply. After getting on the phone he indicates to me, “apparently there are associates in hardware as we speak, or we can wait for them to call back to the cash here.”

I elected to just go find these alleged associates. Nobody. Not a soul. Stood around for another 10 minutes with nobody around. Wandered. No luck. Went over to lighting and finally found someone there, which resulted in me deciding against the replacement chandelier I had chosen.

Walked out with nothing. 1.25 hours of basically picking my nose waiting for someone.

Which brings me back to my original point…

a) I think weekends are probably bad for Home Depot… too many people, too few associates. At least on weeknights you can usually find someone, or at least it seems. I don’t know for sure, but that’s what it seems like to me.

b) Whenever I’ve had excellent service there (and I have), it has been in a more specialized area like plumbing or flooring. You can’t just be any shmoe and speak intelligently about plumbing, so they probably put knowledgable people in there. Ditto for flooring to a certain extent. But lighting? Most people can pick up the basics of lighting in moments. And hardware? Maybe the staff just doesn’t care about that section.. who wants to spend the evening helping a customer find nails and mundane crap like that?

Bwah. I remain frustrated. At least the lighting associate found an identical unit at another location, where I’ll go to pick it up later.

In other news, the powder room is done. Pictures to follow when the final touches are totally complete (dusting and a good cleanin’).

You would think a powder room would be easy. Small. Only 3 fixtures (lights, sink and toilet).

But no.

It’s always something.

So we finally got the vanity cabinet and top all sorted out to sit in the non-90-degree corner, finally patched over our bumpy spots in the wall to (at last) produce a smooth surface, etc.

Then it was time to install the vanity top and plumbing once and for all.

Now, we’re not dumb… or at least not completely. We had mocked everything up, and felt that we did not need to redo the drain pipe. It was a tight fit, but a fit. However, after caulking up the vanity cabinet (using caulking as adhesive is not only the manufacturer’s instructions but also smart if you ever plan on taking the top off) and putting it in place we realized it wasn’t staying in the corner properly.

Only real possibility… our “tight” fit was a bit too much of a cheat after all. That 2mm we needed to “force” the pipes into alignment was 2mm too much. The only thing to do?

Off to HOME DEPOT AGAIN! (of course)

For the umpteenth time there, I was once again very lucky to find someone knowledgable. Y’know, I don’t care what anyone says about the “big box store” that is Home Depot… almost every time I go there I get excellent advice. Within minutes the guy had loaded me up with the parts I would need (PVC plumbing is cheap, so I decided to get all new stuff) and gave me the only lesson you really need.

The finished job (note that the P-trap (#3″ is symmetrical in reality… but the pipe coming out of the wall and the drainpipe coming from the sink are not at the same front-to-back depth):

All done

1. threaded er.. thingy… Coupler? for securing the chrome sink drain into the drain pipe
2. length of PVC pipe (1.5″ diameter? Whatever the standard is…) for this part and also #5
3. new P-Trap
4. elbow with nifty swivelly ball-in-cup thing for a wee bit of wiggle if needed… I don’t think I needed this fancy one; the measuring and installing is so easy you could use a regular elbow; but it was my choice
5. just for the purposes of the illustration, another length cut from the length listed in #2
6. coupler
7. PVC plumbing glue

So, I didn’t take a “before” picture, but look at the above and imagine: there was no #6, just a straight length of piping leading to an elbow like #4. So, the idea is to hack off to the left of the old elbow, going far enough to make room for both the #6 coupler and a length of PVC piping like #5. That’s the important bit… all other parts are more or less out of your control or arbitrary… the key is the length of piping at #5. Here’s how to get it right.

First, brief instructions on how to glue pieces of plumbing together:

1. Use some sandpaper to scuff the inside of the “female” parts to help with adhesion. (what I mean is the inside part of, for example, part #1… the pipe (#2) slips inside #1 and is held there with glue.)
2. scuff 0.75″ or so (it doesn’t really matter if you go more) around the outside of the piece being inserted.
3. Put a generous amount of glue around the inside of the female part and the outside of the scuffed end of the pipe being fitted
4. Push the pipe into the part you wish to bond to, and give it a quarter-turn or so (while still pushing in) to ensure positive contact and 360 degrees of glue

You’ve got about 10 seconds before it’s bonded!!! Luckily, it’s not rocket surgery, so it’s hard to mess up. If you do mess up, PVC is cheap, just get more.

Here’s the steps I took in measuring and gluing, remembering that the key is the length in diagram part #5:

1. Cut piping part #2 to length. The length is arbitrary. Just make it so that a decent length of the chrome drainpipe goes down into it and you have lots of up/down movement for positioning the assembly
2. Fit parts #1, 2, 3, and 4 together with NO GLUE. I will call this whole chunk the “P-trap assembly”
3. Put part #6 in place
4. by sliding the P-trap assembly up and down while pivoting the elbow (#4), eyeball the correct alignment of #4 with #6– the idea is to visualize where #5 will go once you cut it
5. tighten everything up so that it doesn’t move, but don’t go silly tight
6. measure from the edge of #6 to the edge of #4, which will be the EXPOSED length of #5
7. take the “exposed length” of #5 and add 1.5″. This makes up the “inside” length, since each fitting will only allow 0.75″ of entry. So if the “exposed” #5 is 3″, you need to cut a length of piping at 4.5″
8. cut the PVC piping to length
9. put this new length into the “mockup” and make sure it aligns the way you eyeballed it. Loosen everything up a bit, shuffle it all into place, and tighten. You should not have to “force” a single part of it. If #5 is the wrong length, re-cut

Now to get’er done for real:

10. Glue #1, 2, 3 in any order.
11. Glue #4, 5, 6 to each other in any order (but NOT to the original piping yet!)
12. Do a quick mini-mockup again with the 2 now-glued assemblies. It’s too late to salvage glued parts, but new ones are cheap if you’ve goofed up.
13. With the mockup still in place and all perfect, draw a horizontal line with white grease pencil or a silver marker or even a pencil (graphite is shiny) through the original pipe and also #6. When it’s time to glue, you will re-align the parts using this line!
14. Glue the #6,5,4 assembly to the piping, using the line you just made to recreate the proper alignment
15. Slide the #1,2,3 assembly up onto the chrome pipe, until you make positive connection between #3 and #4. Tighten the connection between #3 and #4.
16. tighten #1 onto the chrome pipe

Done!

Too much detail for a simple job? Maybe! Problem-solver types who enjoy puzzles could probably recreate the above steps quite easily and it wouldn’t seem like nearly as many line items. But some people learn with linear written instructions; hopefully this helps them!

Greg

So,

Bathroom all painted up, except, well, there’s a bit of a bump leftover from one of the patch jobs we did. Just when we thought all was good and over, there’s this bump that we just can’t ignore.

Tip: if you try “covering it up” with a toilet paper holder, better pick a big one. We did not.

Since we did not, there was nothing to do except mud it again. 3rd or 4th time now. Mudded, sanded, primed, repainted. Success? Yes! But also did a quick touch-up on the other wall. Success? NO!!!! Sucker got all shiny after repainting, so we ended up repainting the entire wall. BUT, the walls are now… DONE!

–

Time to put in the plumbing. Praying it would be easy. Sink drain did not line up with the P-trap, but we’re going to “cheat” it a little. But then, leaks from the water supply lines. Off with the vanity top, shortened a pipe connected to the supply line, back on. Now, the other side is leaking! Tighten up a bit, careful not to over-do it since this one is a gasket seal and I don’t want to rupture the gasket. Success!

Too bad I have to take the vanity top off again so that we can put adhesive on it and put it properly in place.

–

Toilet! Finally there’s a toilet in place!!

Except, the guts of the tank keep hissing and leaking a bit of water out. Not much, and not on the floor, it’s just a continuous water-wasting cycle inside the tank unless you give the floaty-thingy a little lift. I don’t want to lift it after every flush, so it’s off to HOME DEPOT again tomorrow!

We’ll get there…

–

In other news, I felt the baby’s bum for the first time today (through the belly). It had twisted itself into some sort of weird position, and Mama Monkey puts my hand over the pokey-outie-spot on the belly. “Feel that?” She says. “I think so,” I reply. “I’m pretty sure that’s its bum,” she giggles. So cute! I held my hand there for a few moments, hoping against all physiological hope that it would fart. I don’t know why I wanted it to fart, and it makes no sense for a baby to fart in the womb; but nonetheless I had an illogical little wish that I would feel a fart.

–

Greg

The Monkey House is undergoing renovation. It has been in one way or another since we bought this townhouse last August. The previous owners did not take great care of it and certainly never updated any of it. Luckily, despite negligence the bones are strong and we have the makings of a great home here.

Not sure if I’ll ever take the chance to describe each update (though the dishwasher story is a legend in my own mind) but here’s a short rundown of what we’ve done so far. Let’s call it a checklist for future memories of work done:

1. Painting (of course):
   • Main bedroom in dark brown and a medium (complementary) gray
   • Mama Monkey’s office (banana yellow; coincidence only)
   • Baby Monkey’s nursery (lime green)
   • Hallway including that god-awful tall space in the stairwell
   • upstairs doors
   • trim throughout
   • Ceilings…for each of those rooms…. oh how I hate ceilings
2. Baseboards in 2 rooms… 3rd on the way
3. Replacing switches and outlets throughout
4. Changed light fixtures in the kitchen, which included patching and repainting the ceiling
5. Installed new toilet in ensuite
6. New hallway light fixtures
7. Installed new Dishwasher
8. Changed out kitchen faucet and installed shutoff valves
9. Repaired garage door
10. Added Transition strips to all kinds of rooms that really needed them
11. Fixed (as best we could) bizarre choices made by previous owners
12. Pulled out reams and reams of caulking… folks, caulking is NOT the cure-all for every gap you see

This brings me to the real point of today: The Home Depot money-sponge.

You walk in there, and you can practically feel your pennies being drained out of their bank account one by one.

A few weeks ago, went in for… who knows what? I think it was some plywood and hardboard. Walked out with all that stuff, plus a hand tool (drywall saw), plus a power tool (DeWalt jigsaw). You could argue that I “needed” those things, but as I worked away on my project (using the jigsaw), I realized that I didn’t REAAaaallly need… the jigsaw. My lovely Stanley multi-purpose hand saw would have also worked.

Tonight, I walked in to get… a small amount of tiles (a $15 sheet) and some grout ($6 I was thinking). Walked out with a v-notch trowel (could have made do makeshifting something… I only need it for like, one stroke through the adhesive), adhesive (gotta have that PLUS the grout), grout, and a grout super-sponge (something other than a sponge would have worked). $45 for what in my head was going to be a $20 event. Now, I won’t claim this is the most expensive trip I’ve ever taken there, but it really drove home the point…

I have NEVER gone there and spent what we set out to spend.

But on the other hand, we also got great advice from a knowledgeable employee. I know we’ve all had the sales associate who didn’t know their stuff, but this is the third… fourth?… time that we’ve had expert help. Yeah, it was the expert that got me into the v-notched trowel (only another $3.50… she tried to find the smallest and cheapest one possible), but it’s also that expert who had me leaving the store feeling confident that we’d be able to pull off our first attempt at tiling.

So far? Home Depot is a bane to our bank account, but a boon to our renovation efforts. And not just for the merchandise.

OOoo Ooo!