Drips begone

Our sink has gotten to be an increasingly wet place. The guy who replaced our disposal noticed that our faucet was a bit leaky. Apparently water was dripping down our hose, from where the nozzle attached to the hose. This probably has been happening for sometime. The bottom of our sink cabinet is very bumpy.

I tried replacing the washer that connects the hose to the nozzle, but the drip still was going. Home Depot did not have a suitable replacement hose and I did not want to order one online only to discover that actually something else was the problem. So I bought a new faucet, the Kohler Barossa. It is a Home Depot exclusive, which makes me a bit nervous, but again, I needed a faucet NOW.

First, I cleared everything from under the sink (again...).

Second, I took a picture of our old faucet before I ripped it out.

Then, the old one could come out. First, I had to disconnect the hoses and unspin the brass ring that holds the faucet in place (pictured below, with the two screws at 5:30 and 9 pm). Which wasn't too hard, but it was a VERY tight squeeze to get the ring past all of the hoses. I got so desperate I pulled out the dremel to cut it off, but it was too tight to fit the cut off disc behind the sink, so I resorted to lots of swearing to get it apart.

Yay!

With this off, it was fairly quick to attach the new faucet. Just drop it through the hole, attach the hoses, and snap some stuff together. 

Of course, a few days later, I discovered a new drip, where the dishwasher water supply hose attaches to the hot water faucet. Tightening the connection did not help. I imagine the best fix would be to replace the hose, but that would require getting access to the back of the dishwasher. Which is bolted into the surrounding cabinets. So I just slapped on some waterproof sealing tape and well, a week later it is still dry in there, so I am declaring "Mission Accomplished". 

Some decorating challenges

We wanted to put some pretty new curtains in the office since the blinds (that were there when we bought the house) didn't fit with our new windows. We thought it would be easy. We wanted cafe curtains - the kind that go only about halfway up. So we needed the curtains and the rod. Well first after looking at lace in all price ranges, we decided to splurge for ones that seemed well-made and actual lace (and not plastic) so we bought these macrame ones from Country Curtains. We bought one panels per window because it said in the description that they panel should be spread wide. Well two problems with that. First, no way - it looked empty and we knew right away we needed two panels per window.

Second, the two 36'' curtains was actually about 35'' and 37''. So we couldn't pair them without it looking weird. Fortunately Country Curtains has good customer service and also fortunately, we planned to visit family that happened to live near a brick and mortar store, so they were able to set aside a few for us and let me open and compare them. They said the handmade nature of the lace makes that a fairly common problem and noted that perhaps they should at least start selling them in pairs.

Problem two - the rod. We wanted something a little more interesting than the usual cafe curtain rods with a boring metal finial at the end. We found them, of all places, online at Walmart. The screws included with the installation kit, however, were unnecessarily long (left). The ones we already had at home were jarringly shiny (right). So it was off to the hardware store to find something in the middle.

I'm glad we found a metal screw that matched better (the one on the left). The right one, in zinc, really stood out when the bracket was on the wall.

Installation almost complete:

After what seemed like a lot of hassle just to hang curtains, we're really pleased with our results:

They provide exactly the kind of coverage we want in the office - it gives us privacy without blocking any light. And we can see them from the hallway so they are a nice sight when headed to the basement or bathroom.

A few more challenges we're facing now in the decorating department. As we continue to baby proof, we realized this corner is an accident waiting to happen - flimsy furniture, glass lamp and vase, access to curtains and wires.

Add to that the fact that we still don't quite had enough seating in the living room for when we have a bunch of guests, and D decided that a large chair and floor lamp might be the solution. If the chair is big enough, it will mostly block access to the corner completely.

Do you know what this means? I get to shop for furniture again! We're not sure exactly what kind of chair we want. We both love chaise lounges but I can't think of a way something like that would fit. We'd like a bolder color since our other seating in the living room is brown and gray. So given the room colors that leaves teal or rust red (or something that would compliment those). Maybe another wing chair? I think a higher back would look better there to help it show up from in the corner. Send me suggestions!

And finally, another challenge that maybe I can stop from becoming a bigger problem. The teal rug that moved from our main seating area to our entry way is showing signs of wear in the corner. This was the beginning of the end for our red rug, because it was so hard to avoid when vacuuming and the suction pulled at the loose ends and tore everything up. Is there something I can do now to prevent the undone section from getting worse? I'm a knitter so I'm not afraid to get creative with yarn.

Lots of calls for help and suggestions in this post, so leave a comment if you had ideas!

The other plumbing project

I've been complaining about the faucet in our main bathroom sink for a while now (one of those links goes back to 2012...). The handles pointed in the wrong direction, the stopper didn't hold water in the sink, and then a few months ago, the faucet started dripping and our elegant solution was to put a plastic tub in the sink to collect the water for plants.  I was really ready to say goodbye to the fixture.

We'd heard it was easier to replace the faucet structure within the same brand. For a while, we couldn't even figure out what it was, until my mom was visiting and managed to see a tiny "GROHE" on the very back next to the plunger. Bad branding, if we can't figure out what it is when we were trying to!

So after trying to decide between Kohler and Moen, we decided to go with Grohe. Grohe Parkfield, to be specific - it was relatively cheap and relatively stylish. We stuck with chrome to go with the other finishes in the bathroom.

And it remained in this state for a few weeks as we tried to build up enough courage and find the time to take apart the pedestal sink. Until...

Until our garbage disposal broke. It pushed us over the edge to deciding to hire a handyman. And in retrospect, I think it was a sign. We definitely made the right decision by getting someone else to take care of this.

The garbage disposal repair took about 75 minutes. This one, however, took a professional about 3 hours to complete, including multiple trips out for a special tool to remove the bolts. Plus we bought a faucet kit that came in lots of tiny little parts instead of others that come partially preassembled. He actually had to charge us a little extra because of all the time it took to put together.

Yeah, I don't really think we would have had the time and know-how to have done this ourselves...

Apparently the sink wasn't bolted in to tension before and must have just hand-tightened it. The sink always felt a little wobbly. Now though, it's definitely attached.

Look how pretty! The handles point in the right direction! The stopper holds in the water! There's no drip! And the flow is so much better!

It is fabulous. I'm sad we didn't do it sooner. And I think it was worth every penny to have someone else do it for us.

Our new handyman spent almost a whole day here with these two projects. And it was a busy day. We didn't take pictures but we also had a furnace guy here to clean out the furnace. It had been over two years since we had it cleaned out last and wanted to make sure it was in good condition for this winter. The good news is that apparently it was still pretty clean and we could have gone one extra year before getting it cleaned out. Though there was a lot of cat hair inside that we should vacuum out. Good to know!

A Disposal that Purrs

While we were debating about whether or not to hire a professional to install our new bathroom sink fixture, this guy decided he'd had enough and stopped working:

D did all the standard troubleshooting - reset it, manually pushed the blades with a stick to make sure nothing was stuck, etc. It growled to life occasionally but really was at the end. We quickly looked at how to install a new one and decided it would be difficult to get the dishwasher hookup, the plumbing, and the wiring (while keeping a baby busy) and decided we should hire a handyman.

First though, we had to pick out the new disposal. We decided to stay with insinkerator because we thought sticking with the same brand might make the install easier. Plus that immediately narrowed down our choices to make the final pick easier. It looked like we had two choices - badger, which seems to be used a lot in rental properties and was noisy, and evolution, which was what homeowners seemed to choose, and was quieter. Then it was just a matter of looking up our old unit to get the dimensions to figure out that the compact was a closer match. And thanks to the magic of Amazon prime, two days later we were in business:

We got a local handyman for early the next week and managed with a food trap and with manually pushing the blades to get the water to drain. Occasionally, as mentioned above, we got it to run, leading me to wonder if we were giving up prematurely.

But the big day rolled around and D cleared out the cabinet:

Ick....You'd think this might be a good opportunity to replace that mat, but no, we didn't think about that. In fact, it's only just occurring to me now, several days later as I look at the photo.

Here's the new disposal, mid-hook-up (I'm sure there's a great inappropriate comment to insert here, but I'll leave that to your imagination):

 And from the top, complete with dirty dish just to, you know, keep it real:

I wasn't actually home for this install but D said it took about an hour an a half. And given that this guy knew what he was doing, I think it was a good thing we hired someone. He wasn't cheap, but I'm not sure when we would have found time to spend a few hours on this project.

It's so quiet I needed to add a video. I turn it on after about 2 seconds. Do you hear that? Yeah, me neither...

And a random public service announcement. The booklet on our disposal specifically instructs us to only use it only with COLD water. No idea why, but there you go.

While doing this repair, we discovered that the faucet fixture might be leaky (or, more accurately - there is a slow leak and it *may* be due to the faucet). The handyman thinks we can just replace one of the rubber washers, so fingers crossed!