“Can We Build It?” “YES WE CAN--If It’s the Thursday Three!”

In yet another bid to outlive its usefulness, the Axis of Weevil Thursday Three once again crawls out of the construction dumpster with another set of probing, thought-provoking questions, brought to you courtesy of noted home improvement specialist, Jim Smith, who has taken especial interest in exactly when I intend to finish the floor of our downstairs bathroom. Along with my wife and children.

I’M WORKING ON IT!

Anyway, the questions are these:

1. What household chore are you best at/don’t mind doing?

2. Which household chore are you worst at/dislike/ and/or are dangerous at attempting?

3. What project has been waiting the longest for a real solution?

Please feel free to leave your comments below, or leave a link to your blog, and let us come marvel at your handiness!

Now then, as for my answers--

1. I mind them all. Unless you count sleeping as a chore, in which case that’s what I’m best at. Of them all, I suppose I dislike mowing the grass the least, because I can meditate on important things such as the Norah O’Donnell robot I’m building.

2. Vacuuming. I’ve mentioned it before, but vacuuming really sucks. I’m not sure if it’s the noise, or the repetitive motion, or the notion that all that dirt and ick and filth actually exists down in the carpet and I’m having to clean it up, or that my mean old mother made me vacuum every Saturday and took to saying that the vacuum cleaner was my vacuum cleaner. It doesn’t really matter, I don’t suppose, but I do hate vacuuming.

3. Well, despite the procrastination associated with the downstairs powder room floor, there is actually a project that has an ever longer lifespan. In the garage, we noticed that the ceiling looked like it had some water damage. The tub in the master bath is right over the area, and it has a bunch of whirlpool lines and jets, and I figured one of them must be leaking. I took one Saturday and removed the front access panel (caulked in place) and filled the tub and unfilled it and ran the pump and never really could find any place the thing was leaking. It was obvious it had been though, and I suspected the overflow might be leaking after it had passed through the subfloor into the space between the joists. So, I had Miss Reba upstairs filling the tub, with the instruction to turn the water off when it got to the overflow. If it was leaking, I didn’t want a lot of water running all over the place.

SO, the water ran, I went to the garage and waited. Sure enough, water started collecting on the drywall and I started screaming for Reba to turn the water off. No luck. Water’s pretty loud, you know. I ran upstairs and turned it off and opened the drain, and she asked why, because the water still wasn’t up to the overflow.

Huh!?

I looked over and the level was right at the little control knob on the side of the tub--the one that adjusts the amount of air in the whirlpool jets. Seems of all the various holes through the side of the tub, THIS one was the only one not sealed up to prevent leaking. ::sigh::

Needless to say, even the small amount of water that came through made a big mess downstairs in the garage. Not as much as I did, however, because I thought it best to knock down some of the wet drywall so the joists and plywood subfloor could dry out and not rot and allow the tub to fall into the garage. (It could have damaged our valuable collection of junk, you know.)

Anyway, I got a broom handle and started jabbing at the drywall, which fell down in big wet sloppy chunks, if you can imagine that! I had every intention of repairing the ceiling, but still haven’t gotten around to it. As for the tub, I put the access panel back over the side of the tub and ran an ugly big bead of caulk around it. Not, however, as ugly as the two places on either side of the panel where I scraped the paint off the walls trying to remove it. Instead of painting this again, my bright idea was to get some white shoe molding and caulk it in place, mainly so that it would be quick and easy, and easy to get back under the tub if I needed to. Five years later, the length of molding purchased for this purpose is still leaning in the corner by the toilet, and the angry gouged paint is still gouged. And angry.

One day, it will be fixed. I will not hazard a guess as to when, or fixed by whom.

So there you go.
posted by Terry at 8:18:00 AM