Handyman Skills?

One of the annoyances about our apartment is that part of the light in our bathroom was detached and dangling. A very slow, drawn-out process involved me trying to fix it (no dice), our landlord's handy friend trying to fix it (no), and then us getting the go-ahead from the landlord to call a handyman to fix it. Of course, this involves finding someone and calling to set up an appointment, which was taking forever to get around to do. So, I tried again. It turned out the part in question was stripped and pretty much hopeless for screwing back in, so I settled for some electrical tape. I think it looks pretty much OK though.

Also, I made rigged this awesome litter wall to keep Jess from making such a mess. She loves to dig litter out of her box and put it in piles on the floor. Hopefully this will improve the situation.

Fixing Erin's Headlamp

One of the LEDs in Erin's headlamp had stopped working. I diagnosed that it was the LED itself that was at fault, and replaced both white LEDs with brighter ones that I took from my pile of keychain lights (leftover swag from the CSCW conference last November). Erin was very pleased.

Project 100, #70, #71.

Manly Things: Fixing the Toaster

Today, I disassembled the toaster. The door wasn't staying closed all the way, so it wouldn't turn on. Erin had jerry-rigged it with a magnet, which was rather ingenious, but a bit fiddly.

The problem was this spring, which had come out of alignment and was preventing the other spring from closing the door properly.

So, I removed it.

The door now closes right, but it turns out this spring is what holds the door open when it's opened (so you can put toast and things in and out). So, we'll see how that goes. My toaster is downstairs in a box (this one is Erin's), but Erin thinks it's horrible.

Project 100, #20, #21.

Reid's Plumbing Skills: Fail

Today's project was to fix the drippy faucet in the tub.

Here's the open access hatch in the hall closet. Notice anything missing?

Yes, there's no shutoff valves! So I have to shut off the water to the whole house in order to do anything.

Step 1 is to disassemble the faucet and stretch out the springs a little, reasoning that they're a bit worn out (when I did the bathroom sink, the hardware dudes told me that it's often the springs that wear out, not the rubber gaskets). I had put everything back together again before I remembered that I wanted to take a picture. Doh!

However, it leaked way worse than before, so that problem was out of the way. Here's the disassembled faucet with the old gaskets and springs:

Trip #1 to the hardware store yielded new gaskets and springs. These installed easily and now the faucet didn't drip any more. Yay!

However, now the faucet itself leaked when the water was on (I'm not sure if it did this before). So, trip #2 to the hardware store yielded another, different new washer (no photo, sorry). However, this fit rather tightly, and maybe I overtightened it, but the faucet action was now extremely tight, and in messing with it, I destroyed the new gaskets. Sigh.

I didn't have the heart to go back to the hardware store AGAIN. Maybe on Monday.

Long story short, after a lot more futzing, the faucet was put back together with all old parts except the springs, and it's more or less the way it was before I started (unless the leaking while turned on was new, in which case it's worse), though the dripping does seems to be a lot less (just not eliminated).

Project 100, #18, #19.

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Oh, program note: I'm going to stop tagging the Project 100 posts "project100" and "photography", since that's pretty much all I post lately and those tags don't add much value.