What do you mean, no flange?

So, on Saturday morning the toilet came up. We were sure we'd find something pretty questionable down there, based on our general experiences in this house and the puddle of water that formed on the basement floor. We weren't (were?) disappointed; the last person to install the toilet did so without using a toilet flange. They just stuck a wax ring onto the top of the drain pipe and dropped the toilet on top. Then they screwed the toilet to the subfloor.

Needless to say, non-standard toilet installation is not a good idea. In the decade that toilet was sitting there, bit by bit the floor rotted due to water not quite getting into the drain. So Nick & Dad spent the better part of Saturday morning digging out what was rotten and getting a flange put in place.

By the time I got home it was time to actually install the toilet. That wasn't as easy as we'd hoped, and we had to make a second trip to the hardware store to get an extension for the socket wrench. Somehow I got the job of reaching around the toilet to try to attach the tank to the bowl. I'm obviously just a weekend warrior - I had to rethink which direction an upside down "righty-tighty" was several times. Still, it's finally in. Here's the new (and incredibly tall) toilet in the bathroom, and the old (shall we make it a rabbit-proof planter?) toilet in the yard.
Now I just have to paint the sections of wall that were unreachable when we had the old toilet. That is, of course, if I'm not spending all my time working elsewhere. I have another Saturday shift at work, and every moment I have free seems to be spent working at mom's. Saturday afternoon was painting the exterior of her house (while Nick helped dad with the deck), and Sunday was painting the interior. Thank goodness I took Monday to work for myself, or I'd still be microwaving in the dining room, wearing dirty clothes, and crawling over piles of tools everywhere!

I even took enough time to play with Moxie and her tent. After sitting on the floor for three years with almost no activity, this tent is now Moxie's favorite toy. It's already been through one repair, and needs a second stint with my sewing box very soon.





So, what's next? I've still got to go through everything we took out of the basement and get that space set up. I've put in my order for a new laundry shelf, which I'm hoping Nick will get done over the weekend while I'm at work. I've also got to get our last boxes out of the storage locker and all the junk sorted and moved out of the spare bedroom. We have to move all the furniture at mom & dad's over the weekend and there's supposed to unload a bed that'll be going into that spare bedroom! Right now I can barely get through that room to water the plants . . . I guess I know what I'll be doing when I'm not watching LOST this week. That, and figuring out how to stuff an old toilet in a Chevy Malibu.

Three Down, How Many More To Go?

First the drain tile in the basement (no water yet . . . it works!). Then the plumbing extravaganza (pipes, chimney lining, shut-off valves, and water heater). Finally, the new kitchen counter and sink. I thought that all would go smoothly with the tile at least. How difficult can it be?

We have learned it can, in fact, be quite difficult. First came the electrician to install some under cabinet lights. We (fools that we are) thought that would be a simple job lasting a couple hours. No such luck. The curse of the handyman special came back with a vengeance. Our kitchen electrical was so confused and not up to code that it took the electrician a day and a half to get it all sorted out. So, as you can imagine, that one ended up costing about four times what we'd hoped. Instead of actually counting up the real job, you can just estimate our electrician costs by the number of outlets we end up with in the end; it's about $300-$400 per outlet. Of course, our first call to an electrician was far less than that (only about $50 per outlet), but that electrician came to fix up our bad wiring job. Apparently we are only slightly bad electricians, whereas the previous handyman electrician was a real loser.

Of course, the budget busting electrical work came before the actual counter tops. The tile went in pretty well, with no major hangups until the finish work. Then came my beautiful, Kohler cast-iron, special order sink. It didn't fit in the hole. It wasn't that the hole was cut too small or too big. It was the actual cabinet that was too small. The deranged gnome who built my lower cabinets 2 inches too shallow also built the sink cabinet about two inches too narrow on each side. You can't fit a fabulous cast-iron sink into a space with cabinet walls infringing on it. The bowls don't fit inside. You also can't fit a snazzy stainless steel sink, since there's no way to clamp it in place. Goodbye beautiful sink (and $35 in restocking fees). Hello cheesy acrylic.
And since no home improvement stores provide handy specs for their goods, there's no way to figure out which awful sink will actually fit unless you either look at every possibility on the sink manufacturers websites, or open up the sink, flip it over, and measure it yourself. We did a combination of both. At least the acrylic sink fits.

Then we had to install the faucet and drain pipes. Nick failed to look at the big red letters on the side of the plumbers putty - the ones that say DO NOT USE ON PLASTIC - so we installed the drains and faucet using the wrong stuff. Finally Nick was sent out to get some silicone caulk and we had to go through the process of uninstalling and reinstalling . . . at 10:30 on a Sunday night!

And then, finally, we had our new counters, sink, and lights. It's really lovely, and now all I have to do is try to keep it from being ruined!But wait . . . There's more! As soon as we were done with the kitchen, I went into the bathroom to get ready for bed. Before I could even switch on the light, my foot landed in a puddle. I have never wished I had stepped in cat pee so much in my life. Unfortunately the cats have all been relatively well-behaved. The puddle was actually water that seeped from the base of the toilet. It looks as though our wax ring has failed. And to top it off, the mechanics in the tank seem to be off: there's a constant sound of refilling unless you manually lift the float at the end of a flush.

Now, pulling up the toilet to replace the wax ring wouldn't be so tough, but remember, Satan's handyman worked on this house. The shutoff valve won't budge, and instead of being bolted in place, the toilet was just screwed to the subfloor. And those screws are completely rusted. Nick is going to attempt to replace the valve, and he's already memorized what Menard's carries in their plumbing section. Once that toilet is up, we don't know what horrors we'll find. And that damn thing is the ONLY TOILET WE'VE GOT!

Wagon Train!!!

Kelly & I went to check out the Minnesota Sesquicentennial Wagon Train as it went through Saint Paul. Here are some pics:Tomorrow they start tearing out the kitchen counter tops. No more ugly multi-colored tile. We're almost done with the major jobs for this year (I hope). And, finally, here's a bored kitty with an African Violet.

Basement is Halfway There!

The drain tile is now in, and I'm halfway through scrubbing walls and repainting (not to mention hauling everything back down the stairs. So, in the meantime, here are my pictures of the work in progress:


And now with the cement in and the paint up (at least in half the basement).

Next week plumbers! And then I'll finally be working on projects that you can actually see, like new kitchen counter tops. And molding. And windows. Any the garden (it it that time again?).

How did I get so busy?

Back when I was in grad school, I would fantasize about how wonderful it would be to be done. There'd be nothing but time on my hands to read, be crafty, clean . . . but somehow I seem as busy--if not more so--as I was back in those dark days of evening classes and literature searches. (Oh, wait, I still search for literature.)

Image from Flickr

The last few weeks I've barely been home in the evenings, even when you exclude my work trip to Virginia. With Nick gone the last few days I've not only not been home, but it seems like the whole house has entered a time-warp where everything stays exactly the same. I'm not there to clean, but I'm not there to mess either.

In fact, when I discovered that the phone wasn't working last night, I had no idea how long it's been down. That, plus the whole woman-at-home-alone /horror-filmesque-plot-point, made it a rather surreal experience. Luckily Moxie is my cat in the coal mine - if she doesn't act frightened, then there can't possibly be an intruder lurking behind my shower curtain. This was especially important the night I went out without locking the door. So, Nick not only cooks, but he locks up behind me as well.

I did shovel the snow, though. Nick doesn't manage that one very well ;)

The funny thing about having no phone service is that you're really stuck. I couldn't call the phone company about it (obviously) and I couldn't look them up online either. When I did call them this morning they gave the whole "we'll charge you up to whazoo if it's an internal wiring problem" spiel, so here I am, no phone, and stuck trying to figure out the source of the problem before I call them to fix it. Good thing Nick'll be back with the cell phone soon. Being incommunicado while home alone makes one really want to reach out and touch someone. Lucky for Nick he can sleep through most conversations - and does so nightly in front of the t.v.

Speaking of t.v., I love my digital converter box (with the one exception of it making it tougher to Retro TeVo my favorite shows). Seven channels of PBS is fabulous. And the three episodes of Eastenders per week starts up soon - I'm in television heaven. Thank you wasteful, pandering demagogues of Congress!

Why don't I care when memoirs are faked?

It seems that the last few years have seen several high-profile cases of faked memoirs. And each time I find myself interested in the details, but also puzzled by all of the hoopla. Now, I get my undies in a bunch every time I hear about plagiarism, but that seems different to me. Of course taking someone else's written work and pawning it off as your own is wrong. Insert "television" for "written work" and you can see how it directly resembles theft in the cops-and-robbers sense.

But making up a memoir? No one is out any money because they've had their own endeavors stolen by another. If not being the writer of the life portrayed were wrong because the person who actually lived it isn't benefiting, then biographers are consistently and permanently in the wrong. But many times the fake memoirist isn't even stealing someone else's life, they're merely playing pretend and neglecting to put the word "fiction" above the ISBN on the back cover.

Printing a false "truth" is hardly new. In fact it seems to have been a preferred literary model in the 18th century. Dangerous Liaisons, Moll Flanders, the Castle of Otranto: these are all faked works that falsely purported to be real, and while they fooled some, they were not shredded for it. In fact, many of my favorite works of fiction are memoirs.

So why are we so angered by this long-standing genre? Are we so wedded to a world of anecdote that we can't understand the problem of drug addiction without a Million Little Pieces to make it real? Is the only thing keeping us from being Holocaust deniers the ability to peek into the diary of a young girl? That would be far more worrisome than a fictional life story.

Or is there just too much shame in being labeled a fool? Are we collectively terrified of being Blair Witched? We place such an emphasis on the individual in America that maybe being tricked by a memoir is just an unforgivable sign of weakness in ourselves.

Personally, I kind of like being tricked this way. The faked memoir shows a slyness that is appealing -- it doesn't hurt me to believe in a life not lived. I certainly don't rule my own life by example of a memoir any more than by a novel. Both can illuminate how I see the world and how others experience it. Isn't that the point of fiction as much as biography? If there must be mendacity in the world I would rather it be between the pages of a memoir than in the content of a scientific research paper, or in the mail that comes to my grandmother.

So, perhaps I should content myself with Thackeray's Barry Lyndon, a lie on so many levels. A fake editor brings us the fake memoir of a man who never lived, but who nonetheless feels the need to lie about the true events of his life in order to protect his own, completely fictional, ego. Thank goodness for his Million Little Duels . . . I can't imagine a better joke in reality.

Kirk wishes he had pursued a different career . . .

as a librarian. Why would he want to be a Starfleet captain when he could know how to find everything in the universe?

I suspect Picard actually was a librarian at heart.