This stuff ain't for wimps

I know you all are ever so impressed with my happy Harriet homeimprovementmanship. However, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to tell you this story:

So I bought these big tubs and pots for the deck a few weeks ago. I got a couple of kinds. One doesn't drain very well, I discovered, so I figured I would just drill some extra 'drainage'. I get out the drill and it's cordless so I charge it for a few hours on Saturday while I'm doing something else. Then Saturday afternoon I slip a drill bit in and tighten it up real good using something called, I kid you not, a "chuck key." Mind you, the tub is full of dirt and a few plants at this point so I have to be very careful about tipping the pot in order to get at the bottom. Well, I do this and find a way to prop it while I drill and it's all good, except I'm finding that the bit is only barely marking the plastic tub (did I mention it was plastic? Made to look like wood, but not). So I figure probably there isn't enough power and decide to recharge overnight and try again on Sunday.

Sunday I recreate the tipping of the pot and put the bit back in, use the chuck key to tighten it up, and give it a few experimental whirls.

I try again to drill a hole in this plastic tub and again all I accomplish is to scrape a few curls of plastic off. I'm impressed with how well made this thing is. Maybe I'm using the wrong kind of bit? There are bits for drilling different materials, I know; I don't know how to tell them apart. So I go and look and select one that is, at least, different from the one I'm currently using. Replace the old bit -I'm getting good with the chuck key - and try again. Still nada. And I'm thinking, is this thing made of plastic-coated titanium? My frustration level is rising. I try a different place on the pot, same thing. Maybe I need more pressure? I brace the pot and try putting a little muscle into it. Still no results.

I've been sitting there on the deck trying to put a *&^%$ hole in the *&^*%* pot for 20 minutes and at this point I'm considering using the &^%$& drill as a blunt instrument and hammering a &^%$& hole in the thing. Then, as I'm looking at the drill bit and giving it a few more experimental whirls, fuming over what should have been a really easy 5 minute project, I notice that the threads on the drill bit appear to be going in the wrong direction, spiraling up into the drill, instead of down into the still nonexistent hole. Huh.

Turns out, the drill has TWO DIRECTIONS. One for drilling in to a surface, and one for extricating the bit from the resulting hole. And if you have it going the wrong way, there ain't no way you're going to make a hole in anything thicker than paper.

I timed it. I put 10 holes in the bottom of that pot in 4 minutes. It only took me two days.

One Thing At A Time

If you've been paying attention, you know that I have clutter issues. Not dirt, or actual messes, but just plain clutter. As in "too much stuff." Over the last few years I've tried various methods to get a handle on the problem including the "put it down once" school of thought. But what do you do when you encounter something else that needs picking up? What about when you have something in hand and suddenly something on the stove is burning? I mean, come on, life happens. It happens frequently to me, and I have to figure it happens occasionally to other people.

A few years ago I heard about this person who calls herself "Flylady" (I don't know why; it's not a very flattering moniker) and runs a website and email service designed to get people organized. I checked out the website and she did have some good ideas. For example, breaking down tasks into small, manageable portions. Maybe you don't have time to clean a room, but you can clear off one surface - that kind of thing. She also suggested limiting yourself to 15 minutes per chore and then moving on before it turned into an all day deal. You're even supposed to set a timer. This makes sense to me. I think the sense of being overwhelmed is the main reason people don't get a lot of things done. And I'm sure there's a corollary to Murphy's law about things that get put off growing exponentially. If not, there should be because we all know it happens.

Anyway, "Flylady" had some good stuff, but some of it was a bit silly. For instance, if you subscribe to the service you would get pinged with emails throughout the day, telling you what room you were going to work on this week, and what other chores to accomplish through the day. But it seemed to me that I'd be getting pinged to, I don't know, scrub the tea kettle or some such thing, when I'd be at work and couldn't do anything about it. And, focusing on one room per week, it could be a month or more before I got around to the room that needed the most work. Remember the corollary? Also, she has an unhealthy obsession with having a clean kitchen sink. I thought it was bad enough that she instructed people to shine their sink every day .... EVERY DAY?!?! But she lost my respect completely when she suggested hiding unwashed pots and pans under the sink just to keep the sink looking good. Am I the only one who sees this as a problem waiting to happen?

I figure some of these tips will work for some of the people some of the time, but I don't see any of them being practicable for all of the people all of the time. Certainly not for me. However, there was some good stuff in there and I didn't see any reason why I couldn't make use of the parts that would work for me, like breaking chores down into small parts.

Take those black holes otherwise known as closets. Things accumulate in there. Possibly they even breed. Tackling the closet is a daunting task and, for that reason, a perfect place to try out the "small parts" system. In this case, I placed 2 trash bags, one white and one black, just inside the closet, and every time I looked in there I had to put something in one of the bags. When the white bag was full, it went to a charity. When the black bag was full, it went out with the rest of the trash. This worked fairly well for the bedroom closet because I access it at least twice daily. But other places don't get visited that often, and/or were too easy for me to ignore. Which is what gets me into trouble in the first place.

At the beginning of November I decided to try a twist on the traditional New Year's resolutions by making an old year resolution. That way, I reasoned, I'm getting rid of the old with the old, and there's the potential for starting the new year with a clean slate, which I like. I kept the rules very simple; in fact there's only one. Each day I must either put away or throw away at least one thing. One thing. I can do one thing.

We're now approaching the middle of December and I think it's going well. Keeping it simple is the essence of any successful plan, to my mind. Make anything too big or too complicate, set the bar too high, and you are setting yourself up for a fall; and once that happens, the negativity sets in and you stop bothering. Me, I only have to do one thing.

So far my "one thing" rule has encompassed getting rid of forgotten and decades old spices from the back of a cupboard, ditching stuff from under the bathroom sink, and relegating old, unused bathroom towels to rag status, either under the kitchen sink (I can do that because I don't store dirty pans there) or in a bag in the laundry room. I only have to do one thing, once a day. I often end up ditching two or three at the same time, but I'm not going to raise the bar because then it will become a time issue and get put off and not get done. But one thing, one day at a time, I can do that forever. And I'm seeing results. Slowly, but it's happening.

Harriet Homeowner Rides Again

Guess what I did today? I replaced a flush valve! Yeah, I'm pretty psyched, too.

You're making fun of me, aren't you? Yes you are; I can hear you laughing from way over here on the other side of the Internet. Fine. But don't come crying to me when your toilet won't stop running and you need a new flush valve assembly.

We have a finished basement which is quite nice when it's not cluttered up with all the stuff we dump there in order to have the rest of the house looking nice, you know, the parts that company actually sees. I did do some cleaning up last week and it's not looking too bad now if I do say so myself. Still some stuff to dump and I've got bags and bags of books that need to go to either the library or a used book store. In the meantime, however, we haven't been able to use the downstairs toilet for months. Mind you, we don't need to all that often. The problem was that it wouldn't stop running so water was being serously wasted. It wasn't a leaky flapper; I checked that first and there was no leak there. Now, you might think of toilets as being complicated affairs, but they really aren't. It's basically just the flush apparatus and the flapper, that's it. And - I found this interesting, maybe you will as well - the basic modern flush toilet mechanism has not changed much since the first patent was issued to Alexander Cummings in 1775. Ha. You thought it was Thomas Crapper, didn't you?

No, I am not a plumber, nor do I play one on tv. But I learned a lot from my dad about how to fix stuff around the house. It's amazing how much the average person can do for themselves, and cheaply! Seriously, I paid about $10 for the assembly and it didn't even require special tools to install. Ten bucks! You couldn't even get a plumber to drive past your house for that! And all the instructions where right there inside the box, easy peasy. I admit I was nervous about doing it and had put it a ways down on my to do list. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet and a couple of different DIY websites, I became more confident about my ability to handle it. And it really was pretty easy. Didn't even need a wrench. In fact, the instructions clearly state NOT to use a wrench but to do any tightening required by hand.

Now it's done and I'm feeling pretty darned proud of myself.

It's Beginning To Look ...

I put up my Christmas lights the other weekend. Just lights on the shrubs and an animated snowman figure but that took me long enough. Had a heck of a time figuring out the power cords, getting the right tab a into the proper slot b, so to speak. At one point the snowman was animating away, but not lighting up. You would think the animation would have been the hard part, but no.

In case you've never done this before, let me explain how it works. A string of lights comes with a female end and a male end. They do, well, what you'd expect. Except not with each other. It's not a moral issue, dear reader. The male does the manly job of connecting to the household current, while the female end has the all important maternal job of keeping the current running for the rest of the family and giving all the baby cords something to feel connected with.

The trick is to make sure you have all the strings running in the right directions or you end up with boys next to boys and girls next to girls. Electrical cords work much the way biology does: you need one of each in order to make a ba - uh, in order to make a complete circuit. So I had the string of lights plugged into the extension cord and the extension cord running into the outlet, with the intention of hooking the business end of the snowman (it's a snowman people, get your minds out of the gutter) up to the lights. There's a whole 'nother set of lights on shrubs to the right side of the door, but that part was fairly simple.

My problem was, there are 3 variations the average householder will encounter in North America:

1. Two prongs

(a) Both prongs of equal size,
(b) One prong wider than the other; and

2. Three prongs.*

And wouldn't you just know it, Frosty had a 1(b) connector while the lights had a 1(a) receptacle and they don't fit together, no way, no how. You can't even cheat on that one if you wanted to. To make matters more complicated, I discovered that Frosty came with a plethora (okay, 3) of plugs/receptacles and the instructions were, um, vague. *sigh*

One of the new found connectors did fit into the light string and I was quite excited for a whole 10 seconds when Frosty started tipping his hat at me. Then I realized that while he had range and motion, he wasn't exactly glowing. Finally got it all squared away and the figure anchored down which I must have done a pretty fair job of because we had some big winds the next day and it held just fine. What do you think?

In other years there have been those pretty icicle lights hanging from the gutters, but that involves much time on a ladder and even then, for me, it's a reach. And you know, the snowman took long enough.

*If you find yourself with a 3 prong connector but only a 2 prong receptacle on an extension cord, you might be tempted to cheat and jam it in there anyway. DON'T. Just don't. I won't bore you with the technical reasons for the variations, but I will say that they are practical and even safety related. Do it right.

Burrowing In

After spending a good part of the last year running to and fro and having a darned good time in the process, I've finally worked it out of my system, I think. One might even say that I achieved Inner Peach. I had a grand time and am looking forward to more grand times yet to come. But I am, by nature, a homebody, a nester.

That seems to be the phase I'm in just now. I'm burrowing in at home, cleaning house and getting more organized. We're not talking about a whirl wind of activity here. Whirl winding is not my natural state, although I can do it for a while when necessary. My natural state is a lot more thoughtful and cautious. My natural state likes being tidy, but also enjoys curling up quietly with a book. My natural state doesn't like to rush. I asked it, and it said, quite clearly, "No hurry, whenever." In fact, my natural state embraces quiet time. I am Getting Things Done, however.

Take, for instance, the closet cleaning the other weekend. I also finally got the ugly, broken old shade on the front window replaced with new blinds. And I've started on the cupboard under the stairs. That's going to be a longer project because it's more about better organizing the space than just clearing out. That's okay, all in good time. And one of these days I'm going to actually get the hallway repainted. I even got some paint chips a while back. Probably it's going to be green. Yes, definitely green. Which particular shade of green requires a little more thought. I don't like to rush into these things.

And the plumbing in the basement toilet needs replacing. A new flapper isn't going to do it this time. Since it is the basement toilet and doesn't get used much, there is no urgency. But it's on my list.

Also, I need a new deck. The old one has suffered the elephants for more than 20 years and it shows. Boards are badly splitered and/or warped. It's not a hazard at the moment but it will be if I don't do something about it. I think that will have to be my priority project for next year. And no, it will not be a DIY project. I don't mind weilding a hammer, but I draw the line at hauling lumber. And, because of the landscaping behind my back fence, probably the lumber will have to be brought in through the house. Oh, that will be fun.

This fall I'm going to prune back the shrubs in front of the house. Those shrubs have not looked good for a long time and, in truth, probably need pulled out and replaced. But (a) replacing will cost money, and (b) I have no idea what to replace them with. If it's taking me forever to choose paint for the hallway, you surely don't think I'm going to rush on landscaping, do you? In the meantime, they need cut back so that some sun can get to the ground in front of the bushes. Then I'll put down more seed and possibly get grass growing there again.

And while I'm at it, I might take care of the tree limbs that are reaching for the gutters. The trimming I did a few months ago focused on the lower branches on the sidewalk side of the yard. For the other branches I'll need to break out the ladder. And probably have someone handy to spot me because reaching overhead with a long pole whilst balanced on a ladder is not something that should be done without assistance. I'll get to it. Eventually. It's on the list.

At least I have a list. It's a good start.

How I Spent My Long Weekend

We haven't had many good weekends this spring. In fact, it's been a pretty soggy mess for the last few months. I'm one of the lucky ones that didn't suffer any flooding, and for that I'm thankful. But there was a ton of stuff that needed doing around the yard and not enough good days to get it done. I did a few things on the occasional nice evening, but most of what needed doing took more time. For instance, pruning the tree in the front yard. It's a beautiful flowering cherry, but it needs upkeep or the branches grow out of control. When we got a lot of rain, as we have, the branches would get heavy over the outer sidewalk. So that was one thing that needed attention on what turned out to be a perfect spring weekend.

Meet my friend the pole trimmer thingie. I highly advise anyone with a tree to get one of these. Makes pruning back branches a snap. Literally. That rope you see dangling attaches to a sharp set of pinchers and one good tug on the rope snaps off small branches as easy as you please. If even I could do it, you know it must be easy. I had to pass on the highest of branches as I wasn't brave enough to get up on a ladder while doing this. I also didn't use the saw blade on bigger branches. But even so, the tree looks much nicer now.

Other things I did included putting in pepper and zucchini plants. Which the rabbits found very quickly. *sigh*. They also found the new flowers I put in. So I picked up this spray stuff that I call the bunny blaster. In theory, Peter, Thumper and the gang don't like this stuff (it does stink) and will avoid the flowers. Not that I don't believe in their advertising, but I also made an attempt to block their more obvious exits and entrances. In this I had to get creative. A few large stones wedged between fence slats, a long metal thing (I have no idea what it was doing behind the shed) wedged into the fence behind the shed, and (I got creative, here) a metal grill from an old bar-b-que grill in front of the more ominous looking gap. Looks tacky and probably won't work. But at least I'm being proactive.

My butterfly bush bit the dust this year. They are supposed to be virtually maintenance free; not mine. Mine needed special attention every single year and last year it was just pitiful. This year, there was an initial attempt at new growth before it just gave up and died. Well, I did have a few good years out of it. I replaced it with a Persian lilac. You might get to see pictures if I don't kill it off. I also got the grass in the back yard cut (hint: lawn mowers start much easier when they have enough gas in them) and even weedwhacked the edges. It looks pretty good now. Except where Bambi's buddy went after the flowers. FYI, they are fond of scabiosa and osteospermum (which is not a seed with a bad back). Who knew? Okay, I'm moving on now.

I also got out the leaf blower and tried to clean up the old patio a bit. Oak leaves had piled up along the foundation and between the house and the shed. Curiously there are no oak trees on this side of the house. At all. It's all flowering cherry and pine. So where did all the oak leaves come from? I have no idea. It was pretty bad, though, and we've been having problems with ants so I figured getting the dead leaves away from the foundation was a good start. Following which I went along the wall and patio with my trusty bug blaster. We'll see.

The Conquering Heroine

thank you, Theresa!

You've waited and you've wondered.


Would she? Could she? WILL she?


The waiting is over. (cue Rocky Theme Song "Gonna Fly Now")

Behold ...

*

*

*

*

THE NON-DRIPPING FAUCETT

And the crowd goes wild!

Happy Harriet Homeowner Rides Again

The thing with owning a home is that there always seems to be some little thing that needs doing/fixing/updating/tweaking ... you get the point. Just lately there are two items at the top of my list. When we run the dishwasher, water flows out of what I now know is the air trap. FYI, that's the metal thing on the corner of the sink. Water is not supposed to come out of there, but I think it will be easy enough to fix. From the Internet searches I've done (don't you just love the Web?) it looks like the hose just needs cleaning out. I think I have a snake (of the plumbing variety) thingie which they apparently call an auger. See I thought an auger was something you used to drill holes. Anyway, I think there's an auger snake (snake auger?) among the stuff under the stairs and I should be able to insert the snake through the top of the trap after removing the metal covering. If that doesn't work it might involve disconnecting the hose. I'm crossing my fingers but I might be able to handle this myself. In the meantime, we just line the edge of the sink with sponges to collect whatever overflow misses the sink.

The other item is a dripping bathroom faucet. I knew enough, thanks to listening to my Dad, to be fairly sure it was a worn washer or something of that nature. But I don't know much about the inner workings of a faucet so I checked my favorite homeowner's helper website, DIY, to find out what I didn't know. And one of the things I didn't know is that there are many different types of faucets but they fall into two basic categories: those with washers and those without washers. The kind with washers are also known as compression faucets. That's what I have.

The innards of compression faucets come in different shapes and sizes but have two things in common: the aforementioned washers and the "stem" on which they are fitted. Ideally you just replace the washers when they get worn; and being just little circles or discs of rubber, they wear out easily. But that is also a fairly easy fix compared to some of the other faucet designs so I guess it's a trade off.

The first thing every plumbing instruction tells you is to turn the water off. That seems pretty obvious, but you know there are all kinds of people out there and I'm sure many people don't think of it. After clearing a lot of junk out of the way I turned off the cold water, no problem. The hot water, however, was a problem. I could not get that knob to turn no matter what. Part of the problem might be that it is an awkward reach. The cold water knob was straight in, but the hot water is behind a pipe and it's a tricky angle to work from. After ripping up my hand trying I decided to save that one for later and just tackle the cold water. With luck, that was where the problem would be.

So with the cold water turned off under the sink I disassemble the decorative knob and use my wrench to remove the packing nut and take a look. According to the instructions I should be able, with a little twisting, to pull out the plasic stem that sits down inside. I tried. Bob knows I tried. I could get it to turn a bit, but no amount of twisting and tugging would get it out. There wasn't that much of the stem to hold onto anyway; two fingers was all I could use and I couldn't get a tight grip that way. So I found a pair of needle nose pliers and used those. I was able to get a better grip but it still took a lot of twisting and tugging to pull the stem out. Lo and behold it was damaged, more than just a worn washer. There was a crack in the stem and one of the two parts just fell out and wouldn't stay back in securely. This might or might not have been the source of the drip; but even if it wasn't, that stem clearly needed replacing.

I took the damaged pieces with me to the hardware store so I could compare and make sure I was getting the same thing. That's the other thing that all the instructions tell you: take the washer or other part to the store with you. You might think you'll know which one it is but, trust me, you'll get confused when confronted with the sheer variety of parts available.

I didn't used to like hardware stores much. They are huge buildings with rows and rows of towering shelves that intimidate me. I am getting better about it, though. I went right to the plumbing section and found that portion of the aisle devoted to little bitty replacement parts. Wow, what a selection. Fortunately I had brought the damaged stem with me and could compare. Also, fortunately, they had one. And just one. See, I had thought that as long as I was doing this I would replace both. But I got the one they did have and trotted (well, okay, actually I drove) back home. The new stem slid into the appropriate place with satisfying ease. Unfortunately there is still a slight drip.

I did check on the hot water tap after shutting off the water at the main water shut off valve. Thank you, GP and Louis, for assuring me that this would work. The hot tap came apart with much more ease than the cold, and I'm not sure whether or not that is a good thing. This stem was not damaged that I could tell. The washers looked okay, but since it was just a little drip, it might involve just a little wear. In any event I'm not giving up until I get the stem replaced in the hot water as well as the cold. And if that doesn't work I'll call for a plumber. I know my limitations; I may someday be up to the task of replacing the whole faucet contraption but not just yet. Also, by that time we might have decided to replace the sinks anyway because the bathroom sinks all have nasty cracks in them and will need replacing at some point.

This is much longer than I had intended, but before going I did want to let you know that I did tackle snaking (auging?) out the air trap in the kitchen. It didn't entirely fix the problem but I do think it's much better now than it was. My plan is to keep cleaning in out periodically and hopefully it will continue to improve. For now, while we still place the sponges around the edge of the sink, there doesn't seem to be as much water for them to absorb. So that's good, right?

Happy Harriet Homeowner - Part Two

I've been keeping busy with various projects lately. I'm not normally someone who needs to keep busy; in truth I love lazy days with a good book and there's not much that I don't think can be put off while I read. I'm still doing some reading, and in fact I've promised myself a week or two down time to catch up with my TBR pile. But I've had stuff that had to get done, or maybe I just felt like I needed to be doing. Things like installing a new shower head. The old one was ancient and getting a bit grungy. New one is really sleak. I'm pleased.

I also put up a new thingie over the back of the basement door to hang the ironing board on. Used to keep it in the basement washroom, but it was way to easy to let it pile up and tell myself I'll catch up on it later. Plus this way it's convenient and easy for mom to use as well. Along with that, I hung another thingie (are these technical terms too much?) to hold our brooms and dustmops just inside the basement door. I even used a level and everything.

It hasn't been all dirty chores though. Or I guess I should say that a few things other than chores did involve actual dirt:


Finally got around to sticking a few more things in the ground. It was a little late in the season and we haven't had much rain but they're doing okay, I think.





And this is my CherryBomb plant that Dee and RSS delivered. Isn't it gorgeous? The tag doesn't actually call it that; according to the tag, it's a hibiscus. But I know the truth. And along with it I received a lovely dinner out that included margaritas and much laughter. I've got really good people in my life.



But you know how it goes with gardens. Sometimes a few things turn up that you don't remember planting.





And some things start turning up as a side effect of planting.


And along the way I finished two afghans that I had deadlines for. One for a wedding that was only a little bit late (the gift, not the wedding. As far as I know that went off as scheduled). And one for a really new neighbor. But I showed you those already in a previous post. I'm well pleased with both of them. I made the mistake of browsing through some other patterns, though, and now my fingers are just itching to hold a crochet hook again. But I've promised myself I would get to that TBR pile, so I'm going to hold off just a little bit longer. Harry and the gang have waited for me long enough.