Home Repairs - Nothing Is Easy When You Have My Luck

So I finally got the spare bedroom painted. Took about 4 weekends of my spare time. That is okay - no hurry here. It looks pretty good. I also took up the old carpet today, and when I saw the old floor underneath, I figured I'll have to sand it, then refinish it. That will not be the easiest thing to do, but not too hard.

Of course, with a house it is one thing after another. About a week or so ago, I tried to change the handle on the upstairs throne. As my luck and ineptness would have it, I broke the side of the toilet tank doing so. Luckily for me above the water line; but it is ruined. It needs replacing, but it is so old I cannot find a match. So after a week or week and a half of it being usable but broken, I took off the tank and tried to line up a new one. No go. So that left me with needing to replace the whole toilet and tank. Okay, I took off the old toilet too. Then there it was a major problem, at least for me who am no plumber. The brass flange to which the base of the throne attaches is cracked. It seems the knuckleheads who put in my new bathroom 14 years ago placed the tile floor atop the old tile floor. When they left the hole for the toilet, they made it too wide. Instead of the flange having floor under it to support it, they attached the flange to the drain pipe and left the edges of it in thin air. Well the toilet and floor must have settled causing the brass flange to crack. I imagine I could just put everything back atop it, but all the books I've read and advice I have been given is to have a new flange installed. While I am sure this would be a major job for me, I am hopeful it will be easy for the plumber I am calling on Monday. My guess though is it will be a major job for him just to remove the old one without cracking the drain pipe. I can only hope they get it done easily and inexpensively. Then I can put in the new toilet myself, or maybe may as well have them do it since that job will take all of a half hour more at most.

I have to say, it really sucks because all was going well, in fact better than I had expected, until I saw the crack. I had thought it would be tougher to do under normal circumstances, but replacing the loo would actually have been an easy job if there were no surprise problems like the cracked flange. Oh well, a house is, I suppose, a pit into which to throw money. I just wish I had the money. If it was not for my own personal black cloud following me around, maybe it would be less expensive. As it is though, I really am getting better at doing things around the homestead despite this most recent screwup.

I had other things to keep me busy today too, like moving the paving stones from under my oak tree. The tree is coming down next Wednesday. I was supposed to have it down weeks ago but the tree service guy never showed up. I got a new guy, at almost double the price, and he still is less than all the others I have called except for the bum guy who did not show. Then I did some spraying for ants/termites. Hopefully I don't have any in the house, but I sprayed all around it for a protective barrier. Those carpenter ants and termites can be nasty even in a brick house to what wood there is, especially the beams.

Now I am going to go out and do some gardening. The broccoli is coming in nicely, the lettuce has been unused and thus wasted by the wife, the cabbage looks good, and the tomato plants have been better in previous years. If I am lucky I'll find some ripe strawberries. Only had a few last year, but this year they are coming in strong. As for the pepper plants Mimi, the latest mutt in the house, dug em all up. I am learning, sprayed some hot pepper sauce in the garden and the digging sure has subsided. Next time though only on the soil as it really ruined some of the leaves on some of the plants.

Later for you.

All the best,
GB

Political Correctness Is Crazy...

...and I am not even talking about the 8th grader who was suspended for hugging another kid - this is closer to home. Today I stopped in Home Depot to buy a razor knife/window scraper. One of the flat ones where when you push it out, the whole blade of a straight edged razor blade is exposed. I needed it to remove the inspection and registration stickers in my car, and they come in handy around the house. I had to ask a HD clerk to open a locker for me to remove this item. Before she would even open the lock, she looked at me straight faced, and said I had to show her photo identification. You don't need to show identification in order to vote because that could be racist, but you need to show it to buy a piece of junk like this!

I asked why I had to show ID, and she said, still straight faced, that she needed to see that I was 18 or older. I asked if she was kidding, she said no, and told me she could not give me the item if I did not comply. I showed her my driver's license with my finger over my personal info. She got to see my picture, then gave me the item. I guess to her all that mattered is that I showed her something that looked like ID.

As for having to show ID in the first place, I am no youngster so I was flabbergasted. Was it she could not tell that I was older than 18 because she thought I was that good looking, or she was that desperate? I don't think so, and when I suggested that to her she just smirked. Was it that the gray in my beard, and the crows feet around my eyes, were not dead giveaways that I was a tad older than 18. Or was it just that the ultra insane uber leftist control freak laws are out and out ridiculous; or maybe it is just Home Depot management acting like a horse's arse and requiring this policy of customers. Hell, I have not even been to a bar where they have carded me in many a year, not a liquor store either, that I can remember, so this was some surprise.

Oh well life goes on, but I can only hope that stuff like this does not spread and instead lessens to the point where it disappears; and that is one of the reasons I voted as I did today. As for the razor knife/window scraper, I was also amazed, it was marked "Made in the USA". At least someone is still doing something right in this country.

All the best,
Glenn B