Home Repairs

Due to the snow between home and Raleigh the bands trip to Raleigh has been postponed. That being the case I have been able to stay home and work on the house. I have been looking forward to doing this for the last few weeks. I just want to get the place feeling like home rather than a project.

I have been talking about fixing the cartridge in the shower for a little while now. It has taken a long time mainly because I have not been able to work on it for more than a few minutes at a time. Friday night I really started to work on it. I started to remove the cartridge and only managed to remove the stem. Leaving the shell stuck in the pipe. I tried using the cartridge remover but this only made things worse as it was breaking off pieces of the shell. Finally I got to a point where I just did not think I would be able to get the thing out, and I was afraid that the diverter in the wall would have to come out. So we called a plumber. Several actually, and most of them were not able to come out over the weekend. Since this issue was forcing us to keep the water in the house off, we wanted someone to work on it ASAP.

Saturday a plumber came out and wanted around $400 to try to remove the shell. If it did not work he wanted even more to replace the diverter, which would mean more holes in the wall. We just could not do this so we sent the plumber on his way.

We headed over to Home Depot and we were told to try a new tool, and if that did not work to drill out the pipe. We got home, worked with the tool and it broke while trying to remove the shell. It was still usable, and Amy was able to break the shell free and get it to spin in the pipe. After that I was able to pull it out. Putting in the new cartridge was easy and only took a few minutes to get the shower up and running. Now it just needs a good cleaning before we can use it.

The tool that ended up making it possible to remove everything was the BrassCraft Stem And Cartridge Wrench. It did break in the process, but was the right tool for the job.



I hung curtains in the living room while Amy painted the trim in the living room. We only have a little but more work to do before things really start to come together and look and work the way we want them to.

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Posted in home rpair, house

Weekend of recording

I’m sitting in the control room at the studio right now listening to Keith record vocals. It’s been a long weekend, but we have been very successful. Friday after we all arrived we got all the scratch tracks finished and the drums recorded. Saturday we started with Bass, then finished Guitar, Cello, and Percussion. Today we did some Percussion, and Cello layering. We are working on vocals now, and then we have backing vocals to do.

As always we have been very silly all weekend. Doing things like pairing wine with beef jerky, which actually turned out fantastic! The Wishing Tree 2005 Cabernet Merlot Blend goes perfectly with Jack Links Teriyaki Beef Jerky. Seriously…. Fantastic!

Also you have to see things like dipping sour cream and onion chips into sour cream and onion dip, followed by dipping a sugar cookie into sour cream and onion dip. Honestly the drummers may be retarded.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to getting home and relaxing a bit. Possibly meeting up with my brother and getting some HDMI cables for the TV, Blue Ray, and computer.

I want to try to buy new fixtures for the bathroom, just so I don’t have to wait until after next weekend to work on that. I don’t really think that I’ll get to it tonight, since I will be getting home a little late to do anything about it.

Anyway, we are excited about the recording. We are happy with what we have done so far, and we are looking forward to getting things finished up so we can get them mixed, and ready to be released.

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Posted in house, The Dreamscapes Project, Wine

Working on the house

I'm excited to be getting some work done in the house this week. Last night we got the hot water working in the shower. Turns out there was a limited in the handle keeping us from turning the knob far enough to engage the hot water. Once we got that in the right position the hot water came right on. Once that was fixed we put the new shower head on. This shower being ready makes the wife very happy.

Also yesterday I got the bathtub in another bathroom caulked. There was still a leak from the knob that needed to be looked at. I took it apart tonight, and I'm pretty sure that the cartridge needs to be replaced. At the same time the tub fixtures are in pretty bad shape so we want to replace them. It should not be very expensive, and it's another thing we can do ourselves pretty easily.

Although I have the basic handy man knowledge, since I have not had a home, I have not cared much about working on home repair etc. Now that I have a home to take care of, I actually really enjoy working in the house. I'm looking forward to getting things all cleaned up.

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Posted in house