New Shut-Off Valve & TV Wall Mount

A while back I discovered that the hot water shut-off valve under the kitchen sink wouldn't shut off all the way. It was a multi-turn valve which just wore out as they tend to do. It is a dual outlet valve which feeds both the sink and the dishwasher and since the lines coming into it from both are a not-very-flexible metal that I'm sure would have broken if I tried to bend them into a different position I needed the dual-outlets to be positioned at a 90 degree angle to each other just like the original valve. Additionally, I wanted the replacement to be a quarter-turn valve so it would last. I couldn't find what I needed at the local hardware stores but of course Amazon had it. Not only that, but they had one which can shut off the water to the dual outputs independently, so I can just shut off the dishwasher or just the sink if I so desired. I spent a couple hours getting that installed yesterday. It really shouldn't have taken so long but there is just so little room to maneuver under there with the garbage disposal and all the pipes in the way.

The day before that we installed a wall mount for our flat screen TV in the living room. That went surprisingly smooth. We already had the studs marked from when we tried to do it several years ago only to find the wall mount we had bought didn't fit our 24" studs. Stud finders can be such a pain so it was nice not to have to do that again. I didn't install an electrical outlet or low-voltage wire pass-through to hide the wires. That'll have to come later. For right now we just put a plant in front of the wires along with a few action figures.

Mr. Fix-it

Last Sunday when I was over at my grandparents' house to wash their windows my grandma told me that their kitchen faucet was leaking under the counter whenever they turned on the water. I checked it out expecting to find a loose connection or a worn washer but found that the hose in the pull-down faucet had split open. Home Depot didn't have a replacement so I ordered one on Amazon.

The next day my grandpa called saying that his toilet was broken, so I walked over to check it out. Sure enough, both the fill valve and flush valve assemblies were broken. Old plastic that just wore out over time. On top of that, the metal shutoff valve was also broken as it was an old multi-turn valve that wouldn't shut off all the way. I headed to Home Depot and got a quarter turn valve but they didn't have the other parts so I ordered those on Amazon. I installed the shutoff valve that day which didn't take long. I've replaced a couple of these compression fittings at my house so I knew what to do.

The other replacement parts arrived yesterday so I went over and installed them. I had completely replaced both of our toilets not too long ago so I knew how to install these parts. Still, it all went surprisingly smooth. Usually something ends up going wrong. The biggest problem I had was that the chain that attaches from the flush assembly to the flush handle lever was too short. There was an extra link included on the chain to make it longer, the problem was disconnecting the hook from the handle lever. The hook is so small and you have to keep that one part pressed in while trying to maneuver it out of the hole with very little light and very little space to work in. I think it took me like 10 minutes to get that sucker off so I could re-adjust it. At any rate, they were happy to have everything working again and to not have shelled out a fortune for a plumber.

When I came over I had also brought with me a hearing aid that I recently got to give to grandma because even though she knows her hearing has gotten bad she always refused to go to the doctor to get one. This wasn't one of the tiny bluetooth ones my mom has, this was a larger one that fits over the ear which I think would be easier for her to use. She tried it out and said it definitely helped, so we'll see if she'll continue to use it.

Visiting the grandparents

This afternoon walked over my grandparents house for a visit. Grandpa and I watched a movie that was playing on TV called A Face in the Crowd from 1957 starring Andy Griffith. It was quite good and I was surprised by how relevant it still is even today. There is a scene near the end which is very reminiscent of a scene near the end of UHF, which I'm sure was done on purpose seeing as how UHF parodied a ton of different movies. While I was there grandpa gave me a wrist watch of his that he has had for a long, long time, since he was in the service. It's a wind-up watch with no battery that still works. It means a lot to him and therefore it means a lot to me, so I need to find something nice that I can store it in, preferably something that I can hang on my wall as a display. Do they make picture frames for wrist watches?

Freddy vs Jason

We went to a Halloween party yesterday dressed as Freddy Kruger and Jason Vorhees. There were a lot of other great costumes there. My favorite was the Black Widow and Fat Thor couples costume. We all hung out in the back yard snacking and talking until the power went out and the wind got furious, forcing us to move inside the house.

CleanTalk Anti-Spam

I've been using the paid edition of CleanTalk Anti-Spam on the Absolute Anime Community Forums for three weeks now and am still very impressed. Spam posts have been completely eliminated and spam registrations have been reduced to almost nil. There used to be several spam registrations a day which I would have to spend time cleaning up every couple weeks, but now I've only see two that have occurred in the past three weeks. Such a time saver! The three year subscription I got was only $19.44 so totally worth it. I would recommend it to any forum that is besieged by spam.

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Double Feature

Thursday night Treese and I went to see the premiere of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot which was a Fathom Events double feature along with the first movie, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. It was a lot of fun. There was an intro by Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes, an intermission between the two movies, some interviews and behind the scenes stuff afterwards, and finally an outtro by Kevin and Jason. We thoroughly enjoyed both movies and it was helpful to see the original before seeing the new one. I think I actually liked Reboot better as it had more emotional stakes than the original. As expected there were a ton of cameos and it was fun spotting the usual players found in many Kevin Smith movies. These films definitely aren't for everyone but they were right up our alley and I'm glad we went.

Ceiling Fan & Roof Work

On Monday I installed a ceiling fan in Treese's home office, one of two ceiling fans we scored for free over the weekend thanks to Craigslist. One was white, the other brown, and both were in very good condition. I installed the white one and disassembled the brown one to box up for storage. I figure I'll use it to replace the ceiling fan in the gazebo at some point since the weather has not been kind to that one. It's the first time I've been in the attic since we had the new air conditioner and heater installed, and it was quite a mess up there. They left an empty cardboard box, cut zip ties, old metal bands, a bunch of tape scraps, PVC pipe scraps, and more. They also broke the light bulb and the face plate for the light socket/light switch combo. I understand being exhausted after a hard days work in the attic but they did come back a second time to finish the job, and a third and forth time to run tests so seems like they could have cleaned some of it up. And also let me know that they broke the face plate and light bulb so I could have replaced them.

Yesterday I had a handi-man neighbor, Dave, come by to help me with my roof valleys and gutters. He brought a friend with him who did the gutters while he did one of the valleys and put some tar-like stuff around the seals of the various pipes that come out of the roof. I watched how Dave did the valleys by using a crowbar to push the tiles along the valley back in place before using his air blower to clean them out. It was similar to how I cleaned the valleys except I didn't know about pushing the tiles back up. That only gets the very center of the valley clean, though, so at some point we'll need to have a professional remove the valley tiles to really clean the metal area below.

I also trimmed the branches of the tree that was spanning over the roof, the one that squirrels like to use to jump on the roof. I was able to get most of them thanks to my long branch saw. Then I worked on fixing the storm door. It was slightly slanted and so would scrape against the the edge when closed. Dave helped me re-align it, using the same screw holes in the metal frame but angling them away to create new screw holes in the wood. It worked great but then I noticed the storm door frame was pulling away from the wall at the bottom because the bottom of the metal frame was being pushed out by that lip of the regular door frame on the ground. I either needed to take the whole storm door off and shift it up a smidgen or cut off the little bit of metal pushing against the lip. I chose the latter as it seemed easier and thankfully it worked. The storm door is now flush against the wall and closing properly.