tims_world » 1916 Shantytown

Ice Ice Baby

admin — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 06:01:40 +0000

Last Thursday morning I took a shower and noticed that the water wasn’t very hot. I figured other people must have taken a shower that morning since we usually run out of hot water after 2 showers. I quickly showered while the water was still bearable. When I got home from work, I found out that we didn’t have any hot water still and not since the afternoon. Something was wrong.

After Maundy Thursday service we checked it out. Taft’s acute sense of smell detected gas downstairs. He proposed that the pilot light went out. We started fiddling around with it, not quite knowing what to do. I figured we should look it up lest we blow something up like these guys.

We looked up some directions online and it’s rather simple. We removed the snap-in guard and unscrewed the faceplate under the water heater. We then set the two dials to pilot. We turned on the gas and used a gas lighter to light the pilot light. We turned on the gas and it roared to life. We had to turn it back to pilot to reattach the faceplate less we burn ourselves in the process. We installed the faceplate and turned up the dial and our fire came back to life. Warm water! Crisis averted!

(This was written after the incident but delayed publication due to Passion Week.)

A Leaky Sink

admin — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 01:39:08 +0000

When we first moved in, we found a leak in our kitchen sink. We got the previous owners to pay for a plumber to come and fix it. I watched him as he took the drain off the sink, lined it w/ plumber’s putty and reattached the drain. Problem solved or so I thought.

Last night I opened the cabinet under the sink to get some dish washer detergent to find a nice puddle on the floor. I quickly wiped up the water and began to inspect where the leak was coming from. I ran water in the sink and found my leak.

The leaky drain. You can see water running down the side and off the bottom.

The plumber's putty came apart over the months. The plumber only did a quick fix.

“If you want something done right, do it yourself.”

Tools of the Trade. Two sized tongue and groove pliers, rubber sink gasket, silicon caulking, teflon tape (not used), plumber's putty (not used)

After must labor and maneuvering I unscrewed the drain from the plumbing first, then the sink fixture. I tried to do it w/o opening the new pliers but current set of tools proved insufficient. My tool collection grows bigger.

Removed the drain from both the plumbing and the sink fixture.

Silicon caulking applied to the drain

The sink fixture and plumbing without a drain.

Reattached drain with a black rubber gasket sealing the leak.

I ran some water through the sink and there didn’t appear to be any leakage. Another home improvement/repair under my belt. The most problems we’ve had have been plumbing related. Interesting …

Lumberjack Tim

admin — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:47:49 +0000

I was at Lowes today picking up some yard waste bags. I brought a list of items to buy but there was one missing item and I couldn’t remember what it was. As I was walking down the aisles trying to find the waste bags when I saw what I was looking for. There hanging in the racks was a single hand hatchet. Back in December some large branches fell on our yard before the holidays and lay in our yard. Yesterday Qbert and I were able to cut and bag most of it. However, there were some large branches that were too big for our branch cutter. Enter the hatchet!

This afternoon I spent an hour or so hacking the branches into smaller more manageable sizes. At first the chopping was going slow. All that chopping was reminding me of my Teen Missions International days. A couple cuts to the right, a couple to the left and large chunks are cut out. Soon I had all the branches reduced to logs. I built a makeshift teepee outside with all the cut logs. Now I need a firepit to burn them

Adding Ethernet Part 1 of ?

admin — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 07:01:41 +0000

When I moved into this house, one of my planned projects was to run ethernet throughout the house. Wireless just wouldn’t cut it in my home. Additionally some of the guys downstairs have some wireless issues b/c it is pretty far from the router. The plan was to run ethernet to all 5 of the bed rooms, 1 to the family room, and 2 to the theater room during winter break.

I follow the model of measure twice, cut once. However I usually go a step further and measure four times and cut twice b/c the the first cut is usually too conservative. I don’t like messing up. Usually this makes me procrastinate my projects but not this time (well at least I stopped putting it off and now I’ve begun!)

The first step was to plan all the routes. I needed to know exactly where I wanted everything before I started drilling holes all over the place. My house has two floors which makes things a little tricky. There’s attic space above the three upstairs bedrooms. I’ll use this to drop the wires down into the walls to be wired to a jack. Personally I like to make as few holes as possible so I’ll try leveraging pre-existing holes used for electrical runs. However, it appears there are studs on both sides of the outlets I plan on running it with. I guess I’ll have to drill new holes that hopefully don’t come out into the ceiling.

The downstairs has a drop ceiling for a portion but not in the bedrooms. We have a storage room downstairs where I plan on terminating all the wires into a switch. I’ll also host any servers and printers in this room as well. I found a cable run into one bedroom which I’ll follow and change the plate into a two or maybe 4 port plate. The other room presents another challenge. I found some molding at the hardware store today that I can use to run the wire outside in the room but tuck it away in a corner.

The real challenge is going to be getting the runs from downstairs to upstairs. I found a preexisting hole that went through the floorboards into the walls upstairs. I hoped this would work. However, after trying a ‘electrical cord finder’ it proved inconclusive. I then ran fish tape wire up the hole and started banging around to try and hear it. The hole wasn’t where I wanted it to go and didn’t look like it went into the attic.

However we do have a closet in the hallway. I figured I could drill a hole in the corner of the closet which will lead downstairs. Then run the cables up the back corner through another hole into the attic.

Closet floor where I plan on drilling a hole

I planned on running the cable through the back corner. First I would have to remove the baseboard.

Using the prybar to remove the baseboard.

There were a couple of nails which held the baseboard to the wall. I got one corner out easily. However the lower center nail proved a worthy opponent to my prybar.

The stubborn nail who didn't want to come out.

Lots of sites suggested using a piece of wood or something strong so the prybar wouldn’t push directly against the drywall. It could damage the wall from the force. I seemed to work out ok without anything.

The force exerted on the wall from the prybar left an indentation.

At least this is at the bottom on the side with the door hinge. Hopefully it won’t be visible when I put everything back together. I planned on running the cables in the back corner. However, I figured I would first see where the front corner goes downstairs. I put a nail through the front corner through the floor. I had my roommate tap the nail while I looked through the drop ceiling to find the nail.

The nail poking through the floor.

I actually drove the nail much deeper but started removing it before I took the picture.

The spot is actually not that easy to get to.

It turns out that this front corner of the closet is not directly over my drop ceiling. It’s up and to the right. This means drilling a hole in the back corner would put the hole out of sight; at least I could see this hole. I practice dropping a cable through which worked. I could also insert my fish tape wire from where I could reach through the hole. This would allow me to pull the line from top to bottom so this hole could work. I need to run three cable through this. There’s enough space in the corner to run the cables and put the baseboard back in place. Looks like I’ll be running the cable through the front corner, then along the edge, then up the back corner into some pvc piping and up through the top back corner into the attic.

I drilled two holes to run the cables.

Unfortunately the space wasn’t big enough for one large hole to fit all three cables through. I drilled two 5/16′s holes side by side which should give me enough space to fit three cables through side by side.

The final damage to the closet.

There are the drill marks on the left side. The prybar damage in the center. I also scraped up the corner of the back baseboard while removing this portion. Hopefully once all this will disappear once I put the baseboard back in place.

That’s all the work I did today. Tomorrow I plan on running the three lines from the storage room to their final destinations.

I’m a Handy Man

admin — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 12:00:00 +0000

One of my roommates parents came over this weekend as they were clean his bathroom, they discovered a leak in our faucet. His dad showed me the leak and explained what I needed to do. It was a little hard to understand his broken english through a heavy Korean accent so I looked up faucet schematics online to see what could be the problem. Once I identified the source of the leak – ‘it was coming from that center hole area’, I procured the necessary tools. Today I took apart the sink to get to the trouble area. I turned off the water valves and disconnected the underside fasteners. Then I pried the faucet from the counter removing the silicon gel. Then I realized the leak was coming from inside the faucet fixture. I wiped out my trusty leather and got 2/4 screws undone. I cleaned off one rusty screw and got it out with my broken screwdriver (Nathan and Linn Minn aren’t borrowing my tools anymore) but the last screw was corroded over. I couldn’t get it out.

I decided it was probably better to just drive to Lowes and get a new faucet. I picked up a silver faucet at Lowes which matches the bathroom more than the gold/brass look of the old one. (Now I just need to replace the toilet paper dispenser and the cabinet knobs to match.) I easily installed the new faucet. I skipped installing the new drain as the old seemed firmly attached plus the drain pipes are metal and firmly screwed into one another. I didn’t have the necessary pipes for any adjustments in sizes or lengths. I did install the new drain plugger (?). It fits the old drain but it needs a gentle push to go all the way in. I reattached the water valves and tightened every thing. Water ran fine and no drips (yet). Chalk up another home repair that I can do.

My roommates dad suggested calling a plumber when he first described the problem. I’m glad I didn’t. I wouldn’t have learned how to change a faucet but also, he probably would have done everything I did. He would have taken off the faucet and realized the problem was inside. He wouldn’t have been able to get inside the faucet and would tell me I needed to buy another. He would have charged me for his time plus I would have to buy a faucet and still learn how to put it back on (or call him back). He might have also taken apart the drain which would have been much more work (and more $$ for him).

I think after New Years I’ll wire my house with Ethernet. That’ll be an adventure.

Home Theater

admin — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:00:00 +0000

Today was the grand opening of my home theater. We watched my second favorite movie, Gladiator, and it was a good pick for grand opening. Maybe just because it’s my second favorite movie but I also think the soundtrack was a great showcase the technical aspects of my speakers. You have the opening battle with a great soundtrack. The orchestra challenges the speakers ability to reproduce clear crisp natural sounds. There’s plenty of places for the bass to shine with bone crushing blows and the war drums. All in all, I’m happy with it. Last think I would like to do is replace the hanging blinds with thick drapes to block out more light.

Here are some pictures from my theater construction. You can check out my facebook album for all the pictures.

First some shots of what the room used to look like.

Check out that ugly wallpaper. The blue carpet was nasty and the linoleum flooring uninviting.

The back of their room, the front of ours. More floral trim wallpaper. What’s up with all the antiquated flowers?

More flower trim, more flower wallpaper. About the only thing I liked about the room was the size, the drop ceiling (you’ll see why later), and that bar in the back corner. It’s a great place to store drinks and food, and an ice cream birthday cake

Gunny helping me remove that ugly wallpaper. Good riddance!

Back of the room with no flowers and repainted. We left the furnace. Now I’m thinking we should rip it out and put in a new nice looking gas fireplace.

After we stripped the wall, we painted the walls a light peach to go with new light coffee colored carpeting.

Bar area repainted. We also ripped down all that flower trim. No more flowers!

Front of the room repainted.

Audio pier housing my Onkyo TX-SR606, upconvert dvd player, and my RSW-10d Klipsch subwoofer.

I wall mounted my rear surround speakers, Klipsch RS-42′s. I ran the audio cables through the ceiling which was made possible by the drop ceiling.

Front right corner. Pier completed with a Wii standing nice and pretty next to my Klipsch RF-82′s which are just about the same height.

The front setup minus a screen and a center channel.

Ceiling mounted my projector. I ran my power, vga, and hdmi cables through the ceiling. Thanks to DeepSurplus.com and Monoprice.com for offering good cabling at cheap prices. You’d be insane to purchase 40+ feet of Monster HDMI Cabling. Best Buy offers it for $250 for 35′ when I got 48′ for $62 at DeepSurplus.com

The front of my completed home theater. The screen is wall mounted with my Klipsch RC-62 completing an all Klipsch audio setup.

View of the rear of the theater from the front. The ceiling mounted projector keeps it out of the way of people and people more out of the way of the projection (unlike my apartment). The two rear surround speakers hang nicely from the wall create a nice surround experience. I plan on building a riser to elevate one couch to create some stadium seating action.

Taft took some pictures of my theater in action so if they come out well.

Here’s a list of my theater components if anyone’s interested.

Optoma HD70 – 720p HD projector
Panoview 92″ Screen
Onkyo TX-SR606 Black AV Receiver
Toshiba SD-K860 Upconvert DVD Player
Nintendo Wii
Klipsch RF-82 Front speakers
Klipsch RC-62 Center speaker
Klipsch RSW-10d subwoofer
Klipsch RS-42 Surround speakers
Sauder Miranda Audio Pier