Category → Home Improvement
The New Dishwasher
This past Sunday I picked up and installed our new Kenmore dishwasher. I took the power leading to the old dishwasher and wired it to an outlet, then ran a direct power line from the back of the outlet to the dishwasher. I wired the outlet in the middle there so that I could plug the garbage disposal into an X10 appliance module. This allows us to turn it on and off using a wireless switch.
Unfortunately, the disposal wasn’t working consistently – I think its because the X10 wireless receiver is plugged into a circuit that’s not on the same leg as the X10 appliance module. When the A/C is on, which uses 220v (and thus bridges the legs), the disposal works (look at this page for an explanation of the problem). For some reason, Trish doesn’t like the idea of having to turn on the A/C to run the disposal. One more thing to fix…
We also continued our battle against a mildewy basement by buying two dehumidifiers – after 48 hours of operation, the humidity in the basement is down from 70% to 46%. It feels warmer and dry, but there is still a faint “basement-ish” smell.
More Sunday stuff
Nothing really major this Sunday.
To try and combat the mildew smell that comes up form the basement through the A/C ducts, I put up a sheet of plastic to isolate the well area in the basement from the rest of the basement. The well is in a small cubby which is actually not under the house (unlike the rest of the basement, which is immediately under the house). Since there’s no house to keep the basement’s ceiling dry there, water seems to seep between the concrete slabs which make up the roof for the well cubby. My humidifier was reading 70% when it was down in the basement. If this doesn’t solve the problem, I’ll try using a dehumidifier.
I did many, many loads of laundry, and we did a bit of weeding and shrub trimming. The former owner of our house, a landscaper, said that the shrubs leading up to our house are Taxus sp., a type of Yew tree. He said they can’t be trimmed past the needle line (leaving just the branches) as it would take years for the shrub to regenerate. The folks at OSU seem to disagree – clearly more research is needed.
So many tasks, so little time!
Well, I managed to get two major “Sundayish” things done – one was putting together a three piece furniture set I had purchased at Home Depot:
They were being closed out at $80 – not too shabby!
After that, I set out to install a new faucet in our kitchen sink – the old faucet was not compatible with our portable dishwasher. I ended up having to pull the sink out just to get the old faucet off:
Trish said “Well, as long as you had to take the sink out, you might as well install the garbage disposal”. Its this sort of logic that has folks go in for an oil change and come home with a new transmission. Despite that, I acquiesced, and the two of us spent a good bit of time getting the thing installed. Its pretty amazing how nasty the stuff in and around old plumbing can be. Blech! Mechel also got in on the project:
Finally, we got the new faucet and disposal installed. I still have to hook up the water lines to the faucet (I need longer connectors). I also need to pull out the dishwasher to hook up the power for the disposal. Rather than install a new wall switch, I’ll probably use an inline X10 module to turn the disposal on and off.
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Of course, the minute I pull out the dishwasher, I’ll hear “As long as you’ve got it out, you might as well install the new dishwasher”.
…Which is what I’ll do.
Oil, that is…. black gold…. Texas tea.
Before we bought our house, our inspector found a overflow pipe in the yard, indicating the presence of an underground oil tank (for heating oil). The then owners of the house, who had lived here since 1980ish, had always had natural gas heat, and didn’t even know the house used to be heated with oil. I knew someone in Oregon who, upon removing his oil tank, discovered that it had leaked (about 3% of underground oil tanks fail), and was forced by the government to clean it up by removing the contaminated earth. It ended up costing him about $80,000.
So, before we bought the house, we had the ground around the tank tested. The tests came back negative, indicating that the tank had not leaked. We had the tank pulled out today. I aimed my videocamera at the work site and hooked it up to my computer, which was running webcam software, so I could watch the work proceed throughout the day. Here are some highlights:
Here’s the site on the south side of the house – I pained an “X” on the ground so they would know where to dig. Note the date and time at the top of the image.
The bulldozer goes to work
The top of the tank is cut open with what appears to be a circular saw
The tank’s contents are sucked out
Thar she blows! A hump like a snow hill! Well, OK, more like a 550 gallon oil tank, 5 feet long and 4 feet across. It’s huge!!
The hole is (mostly) filled in. Tomorrow they will be filling in the hole the rest of the way and reconnecting the electrical connection between the garage and the house that was (oops) severed during the digging.
Of Tables and Telephones
Sunday is usually fix-up-the-house-we-just-moved-into day around here. I finally got around to spraying the mildew in the basement with bleach solution; we’ll see if that does the trick.
My parents we’re kind enough to buy us a dining room set for our new house. I was perfectly happy using our 8 foot long Office Depot folding table, but Tricia doesn’t really appreciate my “steel ‘n’ chipboard” sensibilities. We chose the Bassett “Options” line, in the “light oak” finish to match our dining room – we got the table with 6 chairs, and a china hutch.
Unfortunately, the table only sits 6 with the 18″ leaf installed, and we really wanted a table that seats eight. So, I ordered new table slides from a table slide manufacturer and an extra leaf from Bassett. Today, I installed the new slides – my custom 2 leaf, 8 foot version of the table worked out very well:
I also got around to installing a deadbolt in the dining room door, in addition to the those I installed in the other two doors a couple weeks ago.
A new house is being built in the lot in front of ours, and on Friday the construction team managed to cut of phone cable. The contractor sent his phone guy to fix it today, and they rigged up a temporary solution – we have a phone cable going from tree to tree until it reaches our house. I guess the plan is to properly re-install the phone cable as the construction nears completion.