Spiteful Spouts

Before/During

The tub spout in our guest bathroom was showing its age. In the photo above you can see how the metal was eroding from the outlet.

Boobies Please

When I was younger I wasn't exposed to people breastfeeding, I don't think I ever saw anyone breastfeed in person. I knew women did it but my lack of first hand exposure set me up for a big shock when I finally educated myself on the subject while pregnant with little miss.
I took the breastfeeding class offered by Kaiser (3hrs of nothing!), I read the literature, and I even checked out websites so I could get some idea of what I was in for. Unfortunately, NONE of that prepared me even a little bit. All I heard a billion times was how good for my baby it was, which clearly I knew, I was in the freaking class trying to learn HOW not WHY.  They droned on and on saying "breastfeeding shouldn't hurt" and "latch" but without any in-person demonstration the pictures and talks didn't help me understand. I should have hit up YouTube, I'm sure they have helpful tutorials, I just didn't think of it at the time. They also failed to mention anything remotely useful:
1. Tips
2. Problem Solving
3. Funny anecdotes about what it is really like
4. Time commitment (I asked questions about this repeatedly and was only given vague answers)

Sheetrock Scar

When our new electrical panel was installed, a small amount of damage was done to the drywall behind our TV.

Water Heater Hysterics

A while back we discovered we didn't have any hot water. A quick check of the water heater revealed the pilot light was out.

Pekema Projects on the Road: Fence Felling

I didn't just help make a coffee table on my last visit with my parents, I also got to do some demolition.

Only We Can Prevent Head Injuries

During a recent wind storm, the spark arrestor we installed blew off the top of the chimney.  Luckily we have an appropriate ladder now, so no crazy antics were required to reinstall it.

Terrible Toaster

Our old toaster oven was a giant piece of junk.  It was supposed to be a quality unit, but it sucked.  The biggest problem was it literally took 10 minutes to make toast.  It also made a metallic "clang" every time it warmed up.  It had a rotisserie function, but wasn't big enough to cook a normal chicken, despite being a huge on the outside.  The last straw was when it stopped "dinging" and would stay on, in an attempt to burn our house down.  I had to kill this thing before it killed me.

We replaced this with the cheapest toaster oven we could find on Amazon, and we are much happier.

Master Bath; Major Burst (A Master Class in Drywall Repair)

Editor's Note:  This incident actually happened about a year ago, but I've been waiting until we redo the entire bathroom to post it, but that could be a while, so it's going up now.

While I was on a business trip, I had just gone to bed when I got a frantic phone call from Chrissy.  She said she heard rushing water coming from the wall of our master bathroom.  She quickly deduced a pipe had sprung a leak, which is something that happens for no particular reason in our house.  With a little verbal help from me she was able to turn off the water to the house.  She called a plumber the next day who fixed the leak and left us with the hole you can see above.  In my opinion, he overcharged Chrissy, but I try not to think about that.

I just had to fix the big hole in the wall.  The first step was letting everything dry sufficiently then installing new insulation.  We replaced everything below the leak and used a broom handle to cram it all the way to the bottom of the wall.  I also needed to expose half of the stud on each side so I could screw new drywall in.  You can see where I marked the left side.

Here's the hole after enlargement.

I cut the new drywall to a precise "press fit."

With a few screws, everything was secure.

Next, I shaved down the existing drywall around the hole so when I taped the seams it wouldn't be above the level of the wall.

After applying tape and mud, it was looking good.

Next came the texture.  This application was infinitely more successful than my miserable texture fail in our closet.  I just used the canned spray texture from Home Depot.

After a coat of primer, it is hard to spot where the hole was.

Judge for yourself:

Before

After

Cooktop & Cutting Countertops

Before

The new refrigerator set the snowball in motion.  Now it's really picking up speed.  When ordering the fridge, I foolishly looked at cooktops too and added one to the order.  As you can see, ours was probably overdue for replacement.

The old one lifted right out, only to reveal years of grime beneath the lip.

This would have been a simple swap, except the new cooktop is a 36" unit while the old one was a 30".  That meant I got to buy a diamond blade for my angle grinder.

Unfortunately, the outlet for the unit (which enables the sparking function) was going to interfere with the new one, so it had to be lowered.

Before

In Progress

After (with new cooktop in place)

I carefully measured and marked where to cut.  This was mostly determined by the exhaust hood above.

I actually used appropriate safety gear, because breathing ceramic dust or getting shards in the eye is no joke.  You can also see the towels I hung up to contain debris.

Here's the finished cut.  I used the Shop-Vac the entire time to try to capture as much dust and debris as possible.  It did a pretty good job, but there was still dust everywhere.

The next step was chipping out the unnecessary tile.  Chrissy helped with this part, and made a huge mess.

Once the masonry was out of the way, I just had to cut out the plywood.

The cooktop slid right into place, almost as if I knew what I was doing.

Here's the finished product, fully accessorized.

After

If you're curious, this is the model we got.  We paid a bit extra to get the nicer model with metal knobs.  Apparently the plastic knobs on the cheaper unit have been known to melt in certain situations.

Glamorous Garage

Before

As you may recall, we had a bit of a plumbing incident above the front bathroom back in 2013, which resulted in the loss of the drywall in the garage.  It is finally repaired.

After a lot of procrastination, the first step was putting in new insulation and drywall.  Thankfully I got expert help from my brother back in January.

This photo shows how close David got when eyeballing one inch.  Not bad!  We had to do this because the stupid Harbor Freight drywall square was far from square.

The metal corner piece stuck out a bit, so we stapled some cardboard behind the drywall to bring it out a touch.

Drywalling complete.

After a little more procrastination we added tape and mud in March.

I finally got around to painting just recently.

The bathtub vent was a little rusty, so I gave it a quick coat of Rust-Oleum.

Before 

After.  Yes; only two screws.

And finally, here's the finished product (including a lot of odd shadowing), with an outlet plate and everything.  The cord you can see charges the Plug-In Prius. I got a do-dad that prevents the cord from sticking straight out into the walkway.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find one at Home Depot with an outlet pointing upward.

After

Here's the before shot one more time.

Before

Canvas Crunch

One of our priceless works of art took a tumble off the wall when the nail holding it gave out.  The result was some battered particle board in two corners.

I started by yanking out the old fasteners visible here.  They prevented the boards from fitting back together.

With a couple brackets, it was (almost) as good as new.  Ideally I would have put L-brackets inside the frame, but it would have been a lot more of a hassle.  With these brackets, I was easily able to hold it flat while attaching them.