Home Repairs: Bathroom Tile

While my parents were in town, I put them to work. Dad installed a cable jack upstairs for our modem, changed out a dimmer switch that I hated, and read for hours and hours with Little while he convalesced from his slide accident. 

I swear some days the renovations to this house are held together merely with chewing gum -- a sort of booby trap that the previous owners rigged to get them through inspections, but would spring as soon as we used the appliances/plumbing/electricity in any meaningful way.

Anyway, whoever reworked the bathroom upstairs installed the shower liner (which is not my favorite, but hey, it works) without putting some sort of water proof material surrounding it -- no hardback board, no caulk, no tile, just drywall up against the shower head and top of shower liner. Brilliant. Since the liner is just 6 feet tall, we found out just a day or two after living in the house that the fine sprays and splashes would do some major damage to the surrounding drywall. After the first use, the outer layer of the drywall was starting to peel. 

I consulted with my tiling expert (mom) who assured me it would be a simple weekend project. We set out to get the supplies, and as planned, put her right to work. We found the tiles at a local place called the Rebuilding Center, which ended up costing $10 for the whole stack (about 200 tiles). If you're not familiar with the cost of ceramic tile, that was a fantastic deal (practically free). I failed to take "before" photos of our ugly shower, so you'll just have to trust me on this one. My mom got right to work putting up the tiles while I ran around trying to keep up with Little and actually get some work done. It took her about a day to put the tile up on the wall (there were quite a few little cuts to fit into the sloped ceiling). We ran out of time, so she left the grouting up to me (although with a guilty conscience, since I'd never done it before). 

After watching her do the basic motions, and reading the back of the grouting tub, I got to work. It took a couple of hours, I think, and the grout was complete. Not a terribly complex task, but draining nonetheless. I can't imagine doing a much larger space, but I guess if the work didn't involve reaching over my head for hours at a time, it wouldn't be nearly as bad. The shower actually looks pretty respectable now and we can rest assured that we won't be doing any further damage to the walls. The next step will be to find a more suitable shower head (one that actually enables you to adjust the settings) and we'll be set. 

A more spendy project down the road would be to actually replace the shower doors with more attractive frameless glass, but there are so many more projects around the house that take priority, like insulating the attic, adding soffit vents, extending the gas line to the kitchen so we can get rid of our sucky electric range, and oh yeah, paying the mortgage. 

I'm not complaining though, the house is fantastic in spite of its former owners, and I'm looking forward to a summer full of projects, both inside and out.  

Cost: About $100 with tile, grout, the menagerie of tools needed to apply adhesive, grout, and cut the tiles.
Time: About 2 1/2 days of working hours to place tile, grout, and caulk the seams. And another week of curing. Pretty simple and cheap compared to hiring a professional.

Home Repairs: Refrigerator Edition

We closed on the house two weeks ago to the day. It hardly seems possible, but we did. Moving with a toddler proved to be more hectic than I could have ever imagined. Thankfully, the weather was nice and we had a group of great friends to help us last weekend. 

It became clear that while our house was in great condition, there were a lot of little things that needed to be taken care of right away. One of the first repairs on the list was the refrigerator. While it functions well enough (although not my choice of style), the freezer was having some major problems that we learned about upon moving in. The freezer door is equipped with an ice and water dispenser that was somehow broken and causing the freezer to fill up with frost. When I looked into it further, I realized that the little flap that is supposed to stay closed until you press the lever for ice was not closing properly, thus letting warm air creep into the door and frost over. Not only was it frosting up the freezer, whenever we would hit the lever for the ice, it would just back up in the door and create a melty ice dam at the opening. It was a mess.

The only solution, I thought, was to take apart the door from the inside (with about a billion bolts). However, I decided to Google the problem and found awesome YouTube videos on how to repair GE refrigerators. I soon learned that it is easy to fix the gizmos on the ice dispensers by simply prying off the front digital panel and unhooking some wires (after you unplug the refrigerator of course). 

Thanks to the videos online, I quickly learned that it was not the flap that needed replacing, but the solenoid (whatever that is). I'm still not entirely sure how this little device makes the door flap open, but I guess that doesn't matter as long as it fixed our frost problem. After pulling out the panel, taking out a few tiny rusty screws, I had reached the problem -- the dastardly solenoid that had given up all hope of opening our ice dispenser flap. Now looking at this photo, it has become clear to me that my next project as a home owner should be to get a damn haircut. Geez.

For reference, this is a solenoid. The one on the left is the replacement and the one on the right is the sad sad pile of rusted-out metal that stood between me and my crushed ice water. I'm not exactly sure the kind of neglect it takes for a part that's buried behind two layers of plastic and barely encounters fresh air to completely corrode, but there you have it. I hooked up the new wires, screwed the panel shut, and the freezer and ice dispenser seem to be back in working order. 

Cost: $41 for the new solenoid

Time: About 15 minutes of my time. Home ownership feels good this week.

Homeowners

We signed a ream of papers last night and basically the transaction is complete on our end. As soon as the paperwork goes through and the sale is recorded we get the keys (which probably won't happen until tomorrow). I have to say, the process was very anticlimactic. Even though we handed over a giant check and signed our lives away until 2042, it was hard to drive back to our apartment and celebrate. 

That is, until we all sat down after dinner to watch Doc Martin, one of our go-to TV shows at the moment, and had to pause the show to listen to the band playing down the street at full volume. On a Tuesday. We rolled our eyes and laughed, vowing that Friday will be our last night in this apartment.

We will have our house tomorrow and there's still so much to do!

Delays

It seems as though our lender got bogged down with work at the end of last week and failed to send our loan documents to escrow today. As a result, we did not sign and there's a pretty good chance that we won't close on Wednesday. Funny, when I get bogged down with work, I stay late at the office -- and my work never has hundreds of thousands of dollars hanging in the balance. 

I know, one day is not a big deal, but that doesn't mean that I'm not pissed and bummed and pissed again. 

Thanks, Monday. You sucked big time.

One More Move

Hopefully this will be the last one for a while. Our last move in Portland was just a few blocks down the road and we didn't have a ton of stuff. Now we have an entire basement storage unit full of baby stuff, twice as much furniture, and oh yeah, a 19-month-old who squeals with delight at the sight of boxes. 

Packing for this move should be interesting. We can't just start piling things up to the ceiling, because Mr. Little is a climber. It's going to be a careful game of rearranging, staging, and storing our stuff until we close on April 11th. Eek! That's just three and a half weeks away. Finding space to put boxes has been tricky, which is why we put Little to work disassembling a few bookcases. He's been very "helpful" as we start the packing process. It's pretty amazing to see him learn to use a screwdriver, but it takes about three times as long to get the job done.

I ordered our first round of boxes and will pick them up today. This weekend we are going to start packing up our books. They'll get boxed and stacked in the new empty space we've created. Prioritizing the things we'll need in the next three weeks will be key. And I assume there will be one last frenzied push as the end date nears to get things organized and move-ready. We will also have to make a little extra time to do some of our favorite things in the neighborhood before we leave. Of course, we're only moving across town, so it's not like we will never venture into NW again. But I imagine we will find new favorite spots in the new neighborhood and will see a lot less of the place that we have called home for the last four years.


Exciting (and hectic) times ahead!