So instead today, I'll be tidying up the garage. A few bits have been getting tossed in there hurriedly, so the space just inside the door is a maze. We're still debating how much of the lawn we want to "kill", so I think we'll end up throwing all the wardrobe boxes in the sheet goods bin in there in case we need sun block cover later. Speaking of that bin, there's no actual sheet goods in it. Someone took what little was in there out, and leaned them against the unfinished concrete walls. (Yes, they all took in water, because of course they did! ) What they did put in there was "clean" garbage--like the broken basketball thing. Which of course is a tangled mess that has to be untangled so the trash parts can go in the trash, and the metal bits in the recycling. I'm wondering if any of the piping will be ok to use for a light project--but I haven't really had a chance to look at it yet, so we'll see.
Although I've been making some little progress here and there in spurts, the list of "oh, that needs a tweak or more" list grows. I joked with my Floor Manager recently that I was really glad his health care plan is decent, as I'm still waiting for when an "oops--OWW" might happen unintentionally. So far I've been pretty lucky. I only sliced my one finger a bit when I was dealing with the piled up flooring planks in a rush to make room when he brought home boxes, and I stupidly didn't grab my work gloves. It's all healed up now, though. Wasn't quite deep enough for stitches, just in a bad spot I had to baby.
I'm also getting to the point where I'm thinking of just trying to set a schedule per week. Otherwise, we may never finish unpacking because it's so easy to "just take a look at..." things. I am finding myself doing exactly what happened with the kitchen yesterday. I go to do one thing, and that leads me to something close by then I them get fixated on, and...then it's an hour or more later. So far, nothing has been a crisis, and for that I'm very glad.
The hot water drip in the tub is nosing its way to my "soon" list. We're fairly certain it's one of the reasons why the boiler's still kicking in even now that the temperature is better. If it was the cold dripping, it wouldn't even be a consideration. I did take a look through the access panel in the kitchen today, and sadly when they added the center control unit, they got rid of the old duals instead of capping them. I realize they may have been beyond saving--it's just not what I was hoping to see. Both of us want the side by side controls, so that'll be a bit more work than I had hoped. I also can't find a cut off for the tub water. It may be right in front of my nose, or it may be in the cellar. I'll take another look at that later. I did notice that whatever wall was on that side before, they did not replace all of it around the fixture when they added the surround.
Plumbing is not something I hate, but it is what it is--wet and often more than you bargained for initially. So I'm trying to decide what I can do before we'd really need to call in a pro. So much tube and pvc has been patched in that I really don't know how I want to approach things.
One bit of not so great news is Kira is apparently ill. At first, we thought she was just acting out because we've been so busy, but apparently she simply wasn't making it to the litter box. A few times she started crying, then would trot out of the room, then soon after, we'd find the puddle in the way to the stairs. We brought the litter box downstairs for now, even though she seems to have been dropping solids fine in there. Overall, she seems ok, but yesterday she started hiding and crying which is something she hasn't done since I first rescued her. So earlier today I was combing through local vet info, and if she doesn't suddenly get better by tomorrow (which, after a few days of this now, we don't think will happen), I'll be calling one of them and trying to get her in so they can run the usual older kitty tests. I'm hoping it's just an infection.
I'm sure there are ways to make it work without boxes. Here, though, we have codes and stuff when one updates--but I know from past experience that doesn't always happen as it should. (Ask me about the lovely historic trap variaties we have with recentish PVC work done.) The one I was mentioning also had been chewed by field mice at some point (one fried one found when we pulled the baseboard to jack the floor up--ack.)Texas_Ranger wrote:Apparently the Australians never use boxes and the country hasn't burned down yet. From a European perspective it feels just as crazy as from an American one though.
Our kitchen light switch didn't have a box either. Originally it was surface-mounted and when they tiled the wall with an inch of concrete instead of the original very thin plaster they simply left a hole for a flush-mounted switch. The whole thing looked a bit crazy as the tile was flush with the door casings! Oh and although there was proper conduit in the wall they didn't use that when they added a socket next to the switch but instead ran a piece of zip cord(!) behind the tiles.
I have seen zip work like that before. My favorite, I think, was when we found someone had used a modern extension cord in a wall to "rewire". That's one way to not have to deal with the breaker box. It was plugged into an outlet in the basement as the power source. So many fun drunken weasel bits at that place, I tell ya. If I had a digital camera back then, I probably wouldn't have hesitated to take lots of pictures so we could look at them later and laugh.