Half power

If I'd written about this yesterday, y'all would've thought I was kidding around, and I wish I were. But yesterday half the electrical wiring in our house decided to die. The fourth bedroom, Ike's room, and almost all of the living room is without power. I think it had something to do with the power outage + power surge that happened really early Sunday morning. Then I was plugging my computer setup back in later Sunday and heard some crackling. Then nothing in that room (the fourth bedroom) would turn on. And none of the circuit breakers were tripped either, which seems odd to me, since they're supposed to protect from surges, right? So anyway, we've got to get an electrician in here sometime. We've wanted to rewire this place pretty much since we first decided to buy it, but it's one of those things you want to choose to do, not need to do because half your wiring kicks the bucket.

Tasty greenery

How do you make a nature-loving, mostly vegetarian girl happy? Grow her a salad. This was actually a joint project but Ike did most of the work. Spinach and all kinds of lettuce! Nom!

We have heat!

I think I'll leave it to Ike if he'd like to recount all of the mishaps, delays, and headaches that went along with this task because I got to experience most of them first-hand and I'm tired of talking about them. Yelp will hear about it, though!

Today was the last step of the heating installation process: pressure testing. A dude came by today and taped up all of the registers and ran some tests to see how the system was working. It passed! He laughed somewhat nervously while telling me all of the results; I think he either thought I was cute or felt bad for being done right at the climax of V for Vendetta. Either way, teehee.

So that's done. We have heat. We've got to put the register vents back in there (not sure why they didn't replace them, but whatever) and we'll be set. It's wonderful having an ambient temperature of >60°F. Just wonderful.

A lot is going on in the attic

As you may have heard, there are a couple of rats in the attic, and we need heat ducting installed in the attic. The house needs to be rewired, and I'd like to drop down ethernet cables. Not too long ago we had our old asbestos-y insulated ducting removed from the attic. We have all kinds of reasons for needing access to our attic as of late. There are a couple of ways in to the attic. I think you could climb up there if you could make your way around the false ceiling in the garage. (I'm going to tear that bullshit down someday.) There's a tiny attic entrance in the closet of the 4th bedroom (the add-on room). This thing is probably 12" x 12". You couldn't really get in through there. I don't know what's up with that thing. Finally there is a door in the siding of the house outside of the 4th bedroom.

See the outline in the upper portion of the siding above the window? That's the attic door. Real handy, huh? Observant readers will have noticed that the roof wasn't installed properly on the add-on. There isn't any overhang or gutter. Water seems to have found its way into the attic door. It's not too bad, but there is enough water damage that the hinges are useless. There is at least a small amount of water damage to the door frame, but it mostly seems to be to the door itself. The siding seems to be okay mostly. The attic door frame is made of 2" x 4" pieces, and it's decently damaged.


So, to recap, the hinges are useless. To get in to the attic, you need to climb a ladder, pull the door out of the wall like it's a plug, and either hand it to a nice person standing by on the ground, or walk yourself back down the ladder with it. This is a dangerous and difficult situation. So, before we have ducting work under way, I'm going to rebuild this door. This is a very simple project, but I'm excited because it's my first woodworking project. So, the door is simply a 2x4 rectangular frame with a diagonal crosspiece. The hinges are mounted on the frame. The siding is nailed to the front face, and there's a latch attached to one side of the siding. I purchased a circular saw to cut my wood. I have a large heavy desk in the garage that I used as a workbench. It worked so well that I'll probably keep it out there for that purpose. Here's my new door frame:

My grandfather used to build furniture as a hobby. He would make us little wooden toys for Christmas. He made such beautiful pieces. A part of me has always wanted to be like him and be able to make woodwork. So here's my first small step. I'm mostly finished with my door. I just need to install the hinges and nail on the siding and the latch (I'm reusing the siding from the old frame). My next woodworking project will be to build raised redwood garden beds. After that, I'm going for something a little more ambitious. Marth and I want to get chickens, so I'm going to build a chicken coop for them. Now that will be quite a project! I intend to post many pictures as I progress through that endeavor. I'll be sure to post some before and after pictures of the planter boxes. I don't think there are any garden pictures up yet.

Rats

We've all heard the rats. I've seen one. It was dead. I found it when I was investigating our attic. I need to retrieve it at some point.

We hear them in the walls. It's time for them to go.

I think we're going to get some traps for them instead of poison. I read some message boards about getting rid of rats, and traps seem better than poison since they die at the trap instead of wherever they choose, so disposing of the bodies is easier.

I'm not looking forward to checking on the traps, but we don't want our new insulation being disturbed, and we don't need any more rat droppings in our attic. Ew.

Talking with heating service companies

I call a nearby heating supply/service company to ask if they sell heating system parts. I explain that I need a supply plenum for my gas furnace and he says they make them there. Then he's all:

"And are you going to install this yourself?"

The emphasis on the yourself was priceless. I could almost feel his eyebrows raising through the phone.

I love being talked to like I'm clueless. And (this was later) it's always professional to call someone "lady" over the phone when you're in a business conversation. /sarcasm

Luckily the guy wasn't all bad, and explained that plenums are manufactured and that he needed dimensions for it. And now it makes sense why we couldn't find them at Lowe's. Whoops. And the guy referred me to another heating parts maker/retailer that was closer to me, which was nice of him.

Unfortunately, when I called the place he referred me to, I was told that they don't sell parts; they only do installations and repairs. I asked if I could send them an email but I didn't get to finish my sentence because the woman interrupts me with, "WE DON'T SELL PARTS, MA'AM."

*blink*

What I was going to say was, hey, can I send you an email explaining the situation and ask how much it'd be for you to install the parts we need? But, you know, no need to let me finish. I couldn't have been asking about how to use your services. You wouldn't want my money, right?

After that awkward moment, she tells me how much it'd cost for them to send someone to our house to look at our setup and give us a quote. I told her to have a nice day and I sincerely meant it since anyone with a stick up their butt needs a nice day once in a while.

So now I'm off to read more about heat ducting design. Wheeee...

Wired connection: Complete!

Ahhhh...my own private sanctuary in the fourth bedroom. Today I finished the ethernet wiring project. My sides hurt (from working with zip ties above my head), and I'm sure they'll hurt more tomorrow, but for now, I am a happy panda. I ended up with less CAT 6 left over than I prefer, but I figure I can slap on an extension if it really gets out of hand. For now, my desk is where I want it to be, and everything is working swimmingly.

We bought a masonry bit so I could drill through the stucco, but the bit turned out to be too big for my drill. So I resorted to chipping away at the stucco to widen the hole so both the CAT 6 and coaxial cable could fit through. Who knew a crow bar could fill in for a chisel? I guess it's not that far of a stretch, but it was my first time using a crow bar for that application. After I'd fixed the hole, I found my drill bit set. As it turns out, I already had some masonry bits in my set. *facepalm* Well, at least I know for next time. Ike's been wanting to install a hose holder on the side of the house, so now there's nothing holding him back.

In the middle of all the wrongs

When we moved into this house a couple months ago, I put my desk and computer in the living room. The modem and router were stationed there because that's where the cable line comes in and all the Xfinity magic happens. So I set up camp and figured I'd move my station to the fourth bedroom in a week or so once we got the network cables sorted out.

Well, October passed and November came and went, and I was still in the living room. I'm still in the living room, right now, actually. But that's about to change.

For the past few days, I've been thinking about how I could move my desk and computer into the fourth bedroom and still keep my wired internet connection. As lovely as a wireless network can be, I've become spoiled on my wired connection. I have a desktop station, so the portability advantage of wireless isn't appealing. The fourth bedroom is the furthest room from the living room, if you walk it inside. There's a shorter path to it outside, though, and I wanted to capitalize on it. While I have a 50-ft ethernet cable, I'd still rather have some slack on both ends when I'm connected.

Today I decided to see what I could do to make that connection happen. I started looking around the fourth bedroom walls and floors for outlets or other outdoor access ports. I found one outlet in the room that had a mirrored outlet on the outside of the house. I thought I'd see if I could somehow run the ethernet cable in that space without obstructing the electrical outlet.

I don't know much about electrical outlets, but from what I learned today, they're pretty simple. There's a faceplate, which comes off easily. The actual outlets themselves are connected by metal and are housed in a metal casing. Those pieces all come loose when the screws are removed, but they can't just be pulled out of the wall because there are electrical cords running out the back of them. I know that totally makes sense, but I expected way more give from the casings and was sorely disappointed. I'd gotten into the meat of both outlets with a bit of hope, but had to replace everything and start over.

As I was reassembling the parts on the outdoor outlet, I noticed a cable that was running along the ground right up against the house. I brushed some leaves to the side and saw that there were two cables parallel, sort of stuck to each other. Nails pierced through the center and held the cables on the ground. I'm not sure what the cable used to do because it didn't seem to go anywhere. One end was cut and laying in the brush nearby. I pulled that end up and tried to see where the other end led.

I pulled and followed the cord around the corner of the house. After just a few inches it went into the house! At this point, there was a good bit of searching and measuring, which would all be pretty boring to describe. I guess the most fun part was that a shrub was in the way and I had to do some pruning and sawing to get it out, which was a nice stress reliever.

At the end of my searching, I'd discovered a hole in the fourth bedroom wall behind the baseboard that led to the hole outside. After that happy verification, I yanked the cables out and started planning how I'd run the cable along the house.

I haven't set up the ethernet cable yet because I'm working on another hole where the cable will go back into the living room from the outside. But that's not the point here.

I didn't have a realistic idea about how to accomplish this task until I got up and started working on it. I wasn't even headed down the right path, but that wrong path let me see one of the paths that would let me solve the problem. Sitting and contemplating is useful for planning, but getting out there and trying things was so much more helpful. Sometimes the right thing is in the middle of all the wrongs, and I have to fail before I can be successful.