Bill Roper's Journal

The new chime came today. Happily, it is just about the same size as the old chime and *barely* fits in the space the old chime was in. (This wouldn't be so much of a problem, but the chime for the alarm system was installed just above the old chime.) It took maybe 15 minutes to get it wired up. When Julie threw the breaker in the basement to restore power, I went to the doorbell, pressed the button, and got a very enthusiastic "Ding Dong!" from the new chime.

I may yet decide to replace the doorbell, but I think I have had enough projects for the week. :)

In other news, I bought K a monitor with a stand that will clamp onto the edge of her desk in the dorm. That is, *if* her desk *has* an edge in the dorm. But if not, it looks like there are slats on the bedframe that it can be clamped onto, so it should be possible to make it work.

Now, I just need to get her a laptop...

Nuts! Wire nuts to be specific.

The guys who did the wiring on our home occasionally did some very interesting things, as I discovered when I tried to wire in the new doorbell transformer. In this case, four very large wires were crammed into one wire nut with the tiny wire from the transformer. It turns out that wiring this back together with the wire nut they used is very, very difficult. And I failed.

I have some other larger wire nuts. Somewhere. A search has thus far yielded zip.

I went to check the Home Depot website and discovered that it said that the Randhurst store was closing at 10 PM. It lied, as I found out after driving 15 minutes to get there. The store closes at 8 PM on Sunday. Thanks loads.

So tomorrow, I will go and get some larger wire nuts, put things back together, and see if the new transformer is working. Eventually, because I *do* have to work at my day job.

But progress was made on some things today. The library was finally mostly put back together after the visit two weeks ago and the sheets have made their way to the dryer.

And I managed to do some more of the finicky editing work on the cover for "Crosstime Bus" since I didn't have anything that urgently needed to be touched in the studio today. And you can see that cover below:

It looks like a raccoon has broken into our attic. We have called the appropriate pest control specialists who are setting a trap so the raccoon can be taken far away. I am hoping that there is only one, he can be removed, and the necessary repairs made.

*sigh*

The mailbox has been bodged back into position temporarily, but can't stay that way for long, so replacement is in order. Fortunately, it is supposed to be warm(er) and dry this weekend, which improves the chances of success.

I'll see how this goes.

My roll of double-sided mirror mounting tape that I ordered from Amazon appears to have vanished into the maw of shipping, as it has not arrived today and they are saying if it doesn't show up by Saturday, I can request a refund. None of that is as satisfactory as actually having the tape, of course.

The reason that I am trying to buy this *particular* type of tape that does not appear to be available at any of my local big-box hardware stores is that it is humidity resistant. Since what I'm trying to use it for is to repair a medicine cabinet, being humidity resistant is a good thing. There are other tapes that advertise water-resistant, which is a very different thing.

I've already used this tape to rebuild my medicine cabinet in our bathroom. Gretchen's medicine cabinet is desperately in need of a similar rebuild. And the medicine cabinet in the downstairs bath is in similarly bad shape and tried to drop the side-panel mirror off a few years ago. I detached that mirror and put it in a safe place, on the TV stand in the family room. That space is now occupied by the new sound bar, so I moved it to the less-safe top of the cedar chest / coffee table in the library.

I would now like to use that flat surface for wrapping Christmas presents which means either finding another "safe" place to put that piece of mirror or actually attaching it back to the medicine cabinet while I stall further on fixing the cabinet door. But that requires tape...

I suppose I can try some of the other tapes that are available. I just prefer to use the one that has, so far, worked.

When I ordered emergency fence repair stakes from Amazon, I ordered a box of four just in case I needed more than the one I expected to need. It turned out to have been one of my better choices lately.

I had been told that we had lost one post that took out two panels. That understated the situation, because when I got out into the back yard, I discovered that the two posts on one side of the gate had blown out as well, leaving the gate hanging open and that panel falling over into the shrubbery as well. Oh. The panel was in fine shape, because it had been attached with the new brackets instead of toe-nailing, which suggests that those new brackets are definitely the right solution.

Well, I had more stakes. So after the kids helped me put the first stake in and K bungeed the two panels to the standing posts, I went back in and assembled additional stakes. Then we dug out broken concrete around the posts as required so that I could hammer in the stakes, attach them to the posts, and get things more or less back together.

There is a whole lot of fence repair coming in the near future, because otherwise there won't be any fence.

"Things That Are Dry" sounds like a clue from the $100,000 Pyramid, but it is a category here in the Roper household today. In this case, it includes Gretchen's clothes that had been in the washer.

There was one more thing to try with the dryer before giving up and calling a repair tech. The problem is that it was something that was really inconvenient for someone who doesn't like getting down on the floor and who has large hands and arms. It was, however, a *great* task for someone who doesn't like getting down on the floor and has small (but longish) hands and arms.

Yes, this was a job for K, who really doesn't like getting down on the floor -- apparently, I timed today's festivities for *after* she had showered -- but who was able to reach through the hole in the back of the dryer where I had removed the internal vent pipe and press the reset switch on the thermal cutoff fuse. Given the amount of lint that is no longer in the pipes, this cure had some reasonable chance of succeeding. (Mind you, I ended up cleaning *more* lint out of that internal vent pipe that had been left behind by the tech who had cleaned out the dryer last week. But I digress...)

Anyway, the switch was reset, the dryer reassembled and put back in position, and the wet load of clothes was removed from the washer to the dryer. Nigh miraculously, the clothes were warm and dry an hour later.

There is some danger that the thermal cutoff fuse will continue to misbehave. This is, however, a ten dollar part. It even looks like you can install this through the two holes in the back of the dryer if your arms are long and thin enough.

I can think of someone in the household who would qualify as a dryer service tech for this.

I am fairly convinced that they will not be happy about this if they are needed to do it.

But bribery! I am not above bribery! :)

(And I still have to do something about getting the dryer vent rerouted to avoid this entertainment in the future. But moving the dryer out of the "urgent" category is a plus...)

The grout went into the additional tile for the backsplash behind the stove today and looks good. Once it has a chance to dry, we'll do any remaining cleanup and spray it with the sealer and the project will be done.

Now, I just need to fix the light fixture on the ceiling fan in our bedroom. *That*, I am doing myself. :)

Several years ago (I forget exactly how many now), I bought K a new bed for her room. It was a marvel of a bed, with a trundle bed beneath and drawers for storage and not too large so that there was more space in the room with the twin bed than with the queen bed it had replaced.

About a year ago (maybe a bit more), K managed to break the bed. This appears to have been the result of jumping on the bed rather harder than was intended. The support that held the slats up on one side of the bed broke, causing the mattress to sway in an alarming trench shape.

This would have been easier to deal with had I been informed of the problem with the bed on a timely basis. I wasn't. As a result, the mattress collapsed more and more until it was pretty much a complete loss. And I contemplated fixing the support, but I couldn't find the time to do it.

Recently, I decided that Something Had To Be Done About The Bed. I called Sam and asked if he could help me put this mess back together. He said "Sure!" and he and Bonnie came by today to help reconstruct the bed frame so that I could then purchase and put an intact mattress on top of it.

The state of the bed frame appeared to be substantially worse than it had been the last time I looked at it. We decided that rather than trying to glue and screw the old support back into place, the best thing to do would be to get a couple of pieces of wood at Home Depot and just completely replace the old supports. So off to Home Depot Sam and I went, returning with wood and screws.

We removed the sadly decayed mattress. And then we took out the slats, many of which were not where they were supposed to be, because the support didn't. I looked at the dust that had accumulated on the trundle bed and got out the vacuum cleaner and then stripped the sheets off of both mattresses and handed them to K to be washed. I also swept out the mess behind the bed and called K up to sort it out, because it was impressive and not my problem.

We took the screws out of the failed support and discovered that it was not only screwed, but also glued to the side panel. The glue in the center section of the support had just not been up to the task. At all.

Sam suggested that the only way to deal with this would be to remove the side panel to make it easier to get at the support. I reluctantly agreed, so the side panel was removed and taken to my bedroom where there was more room to work. Sam and I tried several different approaches to get the rest of the support off, none of which were working.

And it was about this time that the realization set in. Salvaging this bed was a fool's errand, because we were going to spend a stupid amount of time trying to fix it and it would then find another failure mode, because trying to fix it was just going to cause it to be further damaged.

I went on Amazon. After consultations with K, I have now ordered a new metal bed platform that at least *appears* sturdy from Amazon, along with a mattress in a box that looks decent. Both of these are going to be delivered to my door this week for a total price of a bit more than $200, which beats anything that I was able to find locally, none of which could have been obtained today anyway. (I used to be able to go over to Sam's Club and buy a twin-sized mattress and box spring, but those days are gone.)

K will spend the next week sleeping on the trundle bed. Next Thursday, I will decide what pieces of the current pile are firewood and which are garbage.

And then next week, when the new bed is (I hope!) in place and working, I can decide how best to dispose of the trundle bed.

The good news side effect of all this is that K's room is now much cleaner than it was.

The bad news is that there is a dead mattress where the Christmas tree is supposed to go...

It was a beautiful day, so far too much time was spent driving around in it. At one point, when Gretchen had taken Julie out for a drive and Goose Patrol, I decided it was time to start working on one of my many long-delayed household projects.

My medicine cabinet (as well as the one in the downstairs bathroom) has doors that are starting to come apart due to slippage against the double-sided tape that holds them together. I fixed two of the doors on my cabinet some years ago, but never got around to the third. Months and months ago, I decided it was in danger of catastrophic failure, so I took it down and set it on the only flat surface I could find, a trunk in Julie's room.

Today, I excavated it from where I had placed it, took it down to a space that I cleared on the kitchen table, placed it carefully on a couple of towels (to protect the table), and pulled out the extendable box cutter that I had bought for this purpose to cut the remaining tape that was holding it together. This took a while, but the parts of the door are now detached from each other.

There is a lot of dead tape that still needs to be peeled off and/or dissolved in acetone (a can of which is sitting in the basement from the last time I did this work). Once that's done, it should be fairly simple to use the double-sized tape that I bought for the purpose to reassemble this door.

And then I can think about fixing the medicine cabinet in the downstairs bathroom...

I have *way* too many home repair projects queued up, I think.