I’m off this week, sort of by surprise.
When I’m off, with no other plans, I try and do two projects a day. One in the morning and one in the afternoon. Nothing got done yesterday but doctors appointments and running around.
I had a gut doc followup from an upper GI scope a few weeks ago. The actual doc emailed me a link to the results, which were similar to what he told me when I was there. This was a follow up with his PA, or one of them I’d never met her before.
She started with the one thing that will make my lose my mind. “So, what are we here for today?”
Excuse me. You don’t know?
Utterly wasted an hour of my morning.
On the schedule today was fixing the sink in the hallway bath and to drain and clean the spa. I reasoned that I’d knock out the bathroom easily, set the pool to drain while I had a bike ride, then wrap up by dinner.
Didn’t happen.
I realized, first thing in the morning, that we’d run out of dog food. Should’ve been easy to pick up, but I changed the food they eat and nowhere I went had that type (Iams Lamb and Rice) in large dog size. So I wound up at Pet Supplies and picked up the closest thing I could find. But that blew out most of my morning.
So I got to the sink later than I wanted. And worse yet, had it all apart before realizing I could have done a post on it. I had to swap out the drain. The one that was on it was a crappy plastic thing, the only metal piece being the rod that opens and closes the drain. This rod rusted out leaving the drain plug down and useless.
I bought the piece to fix it, but the rest of it was so worn and crusty that the drain barely opened. So I’d need a better drain. Home Depot had a good metal one for $40. Ace didn’t have metal, so I had to order it from Amazon.
It’s an easy job to replace these things. These days they have gaskets, rather than having to use the old school plumbers putty. They literally bolt in place. And the only tool you really need is a decent pair of channellocks. I ended up using a screwdriver to scrape the ick out of the sink, and a wrench to get the drain rod apart, since half of it was plastic and it twarted me using pliers.
I connected everything back up and chucked the old parts in the bucket.
That water smells like it looked. I had to clean some disgusting crap from the j-trap.
That’s just wrong.
BTW, that’s the second one of these I’ve had to do. Well, like the other, the new one is stainless steel. The house was rebuilt before we bought it. So maybe we’ll get more than five years out of the new ones.
By the time I finished, it was way too late to consider draining the spa. Drain-clean-fill is like four hours work, and when I looked at the thermometer it was 105. Yeah. Manana for that.
BTW this is what the ground looks like if you don’t water it around here:
That’s at a house we pass every day while walking. Notice the drip line. Also at this spot was a small garden with a brace of “Don’t let your dog piss the shrubs here” signs.
They moved out and apparently turned off the water, the outside drying up, browning, and blowing away – like that garden. There was a sign leaning up on the porch “Coming Soon”. I guess it’ll be for sale.
Sad. Front door appeal evaporating by the week.
You can overcome yellow, dormant grass. You can’t do anything when it’s brown and the ground is full of crevaces. Meh…the house was rebuilt when they bought it and moved in. I’m sure it’ll be flattened by a grabbler developer to be knocked down and replaced by a McMansion.
What can you do. It’s what it is.
Tomorrow, the garage door hinges and the spa.
Inspected By Pat 