What home repairs are you working on?

Rliyen wrote: The quick charger was FUSED to the outlet, like melted the outlet cover and everything.

Sounds like your breaker failed to trip. How old are they?

Sagrilarus wrote:

Rliyen wrote: The quick charger was FUSED to the outlet, like melted the outlet cover and everything.

Sounds like your breaker failed to trip. How old are they?

About as old as the house, which was built in 1984. I may look into finding a replacement next.

As for the outlet problem, I went and bought 10 heavy duty and several lighter duty outlets for the ones that had additional wiring. I spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday replacing outlets in the den, the dining area, the master bedroom, and the hall to my office and son's room. I also bought a new sensor switch for the hall since that one was failing as well.

That one was a story unto itself. When I removed the unit from the wall, I saw that whomever did the wiring was a drunk raccoon on crank. Instead of one or two lines, this one had three daisy-chained together. The new unit had more wiring to attach than the old one, so I wired it up, turned on the power to check if the lines were good, and then did what I thought was the final installation.

Well, when I was coming back to the house, I heard a click and the dining lights came on. It was when I started to program the unit I realized my error in wiring. You see, the way I wired it not only the dining lights were attached to the sensor, the kitchen overhead light was attached as well. I kept muttering no while pushing the on/off switch. But there was no denying it.

I spent the next half hour getting initially shocked for science to determine the power wiring and then by process of elimination, figuring out which wires to hook together to make sure everything was wired together as before. Once I finally completed it, I had an extremely good laugh at my expense. It was just so damned silly to me.

I spent the next half hour getting initially shocked for science to determine the power wiring

I wanted to thank you for this sentence.

We have a wall oven that is probably from 1969 when the house was built. The temperature is a little uneven at times an only have the broiler works. Also, it is something like 21-inches wide, some weird size. For reasons I don't understand with my English professor brain, wall-insert ovens can't cost less than $1,500. So my wife saw a used oven that looks like it will fit at Habitat for Humanity that we purchased for $35. It might be only ten years old. I am going to try to install it soon.

My wife refuses to allow us to fix or upgrade anything in the kitchen until we replace the entire thing for $15k, which probably won't happen for five years, as we are going to put money into the basement so we can rent it out in the future and supplement our retirement income.

My 24-year-old son is living there now, and going to school, and got in an argument with my wife this morning. They both have very incompatible communication styles. He is adhd/high functioning autistic, and blames her for all of his trauma, and she is very depressed right now and is not really capable of understanding her own tone or the anxieties of others. It's like a porcupine trying to interact with a balloon. She wants to kick him out if he doesn't go to therapy.

Narrator: she also needs therapy.

Edit (January 6, 2024) I t took four trips to the hardware store and about five lazy hours but I got the used oven installed today. There is a quarter inch gap between the trim and the enclosure, but it works. It's hard to find an affordable 21" wall oven.

Cranberries wrote:

I spent the next half hour getting initially shocked for science to determine the power wiring

My 24-year-old son is living there now, and going to school, and got in an argument with my wife this morning. They both have very incompatible communication styles. He is adhd/high functioning autistic, and blames her for all of his trauma, and she is very depressed right now and is not really capable of understanding her own tone or the anxieties of others. It's like a porcupine trying to interact with a balloon. She wants to kick him out if he doesn't go to therapy.

Narrator: she also needs therapy.

It is a year later. My son got stressed, couldn't sleep, and failed all of his college courses. He then withdrew, except to cook himself food and argue with my wife, and to an extent me. We sent him to live with my mom and attend an intensive outpatient therapy program, but he said it wasn't helping and quit after a few weeks. He is still at my mom's, and helping her with daily tasks but not working.

I went through his room looking for a Steam gift card that he misplaced, and it was unbearably sad to see all of the old Heroscape, containers of dice, multiple decks of cards, Pathfinder books and other desiderata of his life as a gamer, as well as remnants of attempts to design games. I saw a card from his first year of college when he lived in an apartment from one of his DnD group members. He doesn't interact with anyone in his old group any longer. I think he's autistic and has other issues to the point that he really can't live unsupervised, but he's too emotionally dumb to get along with my wife, who doesn't really understand mental health.

My mom is teaching him to cook for her, so at least he is getting some variety in his diet.

Thank you for coming to group therapy.

Cranberries, I'm so sorry to hear about that. I feel your heartbreak. I myself will need to talk to The Boy about his room and how he is schluffing off his chores around the house. I'm going to have to do a MC Code 59(d) to his room tomorrow when he goes to work. Last night I went into his room to drop off his mail and saw it, yet again, was a complete disaster area.

My talk will have to be tough. If he continues to do this, I will have no choice than to charge him cleaning fees, which will get progressively worse the more times I have to do his job/clean his room. I'm also going to have to instill with him the question: "If you want to have a friend over, do you want them to see the inside of your room? Will you be proud of that?"

I'm not looking forward to this weekend.

November has always been a bad month for my family, and this one was rough for me. Hit a deer with my car on election night. Broke a tooth on a pebble in my trail mix. Cat got sick for a week, but made a full recovery just before his scheduled trip to the vet, so I took him anyway. Paid a plumber to replace my kitchen sink, but the sink was fine and it was nearly everything connected to the sink that needed replacing. All of this stuff cost me a total of $3,400, but the new crown for my tooth was the worst, at $1,500.

A few days ago, I noticed that one of my toilets is flushing itself a couple of times every hour, due to a slowly leaking flush valve seal. Although I usually pay for a plumber, this particular repair is one that I have done before. But that was decades ago, so I expect that something will go wrong and I will make at least two trips to the hardware before I am done, with a 20% chance that I give up and call a plumber. The previous owners of my house were semi-competent DIYers who sometimes made unconventional choices. For example, they used outdoor plumbing parts (think the water spigot on the side of your house that you connect to a garden hose) to connect the basement bathroom sink, and outdoor parts are incompatible with indoor parts due to a significant difference in threading. So when I had to replace a leaking pipe under that sink, I was defeated by the threading issue. The plumber just lopped off the offending threaded sections and welded in replacement piping with proper threading.

Anyway, this particular repair is theoretically easy. I just need to drain the toilet tank, remove the float assembly, pull off the old flush valve seal, measure it, replace it, reinstall the float assembly, and refill the tank.

That sounds like a terrible month. It hurt to read about your tooth.

We have a carport. A portion of it was converted into a 10 x 15-ish mudroom. It is slowly being converted into a tv room. It adjoins our dining room. At some point we will take the wall out. Right now we are tearing out the old drywall, which is damaged and super thin, and replacing it and the paneling with regular drywall. I didn't realize our local hardware store had 10-foot pieces. I thought I only saw 8-foot and 12-foot, so I did one wall with 8-foot pieces and am filling in the two foot gap at the bottom. Superfly is providing tips via Facebook messenger. The goal is to get the room looking sort of normal in time for the family Christmas eve party.

I didn't replace the flush valve seal last weekend. In theory, it is a simple repair that I am capable of doing in 15 minutes. But the reality is things could go wrong, and I have been under tremendous stress recently, so I decided to put it off for one week. I don't usually succumb to procrastination anymore, as I have learned that procrastination is an invitation for your problems to team up on you. But I have a busy week at work this week and can't take time off to deal with a plumber if that becomes necessary. Next week will be better timing.

So what could go wrong? The cutoff valve might be stuck, so I can't turn off water flow to the toilet. Or it might become stuck, though that is unlikely. The replacement valve seal that I bought might be the wrong size, which is a trivial issue unless it is an unusual size. I might damage the valve assembly while getting the old seal off. I might break a pipe and cause a minor flood before I shut off water to the whole house. I worry about these possibilities because a couple of them happened the last time that I attempted this exact repair.

Yeah, this is the burden of getting older--knowing what can go wrong.
Home repairs are a journey through somebody else's poor decisions, which are then exacerbated by your bad decisions, more often than not.

A lot of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance probably applies to home repairs. We spend more time in our homes than we do in our cars or on a motorcycle.

Stewart Brand, in How Buildings Learn, discussed how wooden ships are beautiful, but require constant, exhausting maintenance, arguing instead for a fiberglass hulled board.

When I look at the very expensive two story houses recently build near me, it's clear that they are just 2 x 4s, that fake composite wood, and siding. They also use the cheapest possible windows.

I'm wondering what a low maintenance house would look like. Most homes are like the Ship of Theseus--the plumbing gets slowly replaced, as does the water heater, air conditioning, furnace, roof and other components. We've replaced one shower and need to replace two more, but it is so expensive and I don't have Superfly level tiling skills.

Sorry, it's the methylphenidate kicking in.

My updates to my 1984 house to date:

Replaced original ceiling fans in master bedroom, The Boy's bedroom, and my office.

Replaced god awful Chi-Chi's-esque original chandelier with a more modern one.

Replaced all original outlets in dining area, living room, master bedroom with heavy duty ones, and was flabbergasted on how bad the wiring was.

Replaced original sensor light in hallway and got shocked for SCIENCE!

Replaced dishwasher x2.

Replaced original garbage disposal.

Replaced original oven.

Replaced original hot water heater.

Replaced original faucet in main bathroom with a stylish one.

Replaced both original toilet fill valves with modern ones.

Replaced original front door light with a modern one.

Replaced original door bell ringer with a modern one.

Replaced all cheap ass original windows with energy saving versions.


I still have a LOT of other things to do, mainly get replacement flooring, get rid of the 40 year old carpet, replace the original fan in the living room, and paint all the interior rooms.

Next year is going to be busy on that front.

A couple of years after I bought my house, I realized that a typical homeowner will eventually pay for their house three times if they live there long enough. Once for principal on the loan, once for interest on the loan, and once for maintenance and repair costs. I plan to pay my 30 year mortgage off in just 17 years, so at least I will save on some of the interest cost.

Shellhead wrote: A couple of years after I bought my house, I realized that a typical homeowner will eventually pay for their house three times if they live there long enough. Once for principal on the loan, once for interest on the loan, and once for maintenance and repair costs. I plan to pay my 30 year mortgage off in just 17 years, so at least I will save on some of the interest cost.

I'm well on my way towards the repair cost payment. 18K for new A/C units. 3k for water heater replacement. 35K for new windows. 6k for repainting/repairing the main stairway. 4k for new cabinets in the front room.

Had an upstairs toilet start leaking around the bottom and onto the ceiling below (in our kitchen, right above the table...awesome!). Got a plumber to pull the toilet, turns out the previous owner decided that centering the toilet to the water closet took priority over centering the toilet over the drain pipe, so it was offset 4 inches over, resulting in a very narrow opening for the toilet to drain, which undoubtedly contributed to the ease in which my wife could clog it with tissue, which led to me aggressively plunging it, and then failure of the wax ring and the leak......sigh.

It freaks me out how expensive windows are now. I was just talking about it with my plumber last week, because he had to pay someone to replace his windows.

I paid about $16K for new windows inc installation in 2016 or so - 3BR, 1800 sq foot house. I don't wanna even guess what it would cost today .

Shellhead wrote: So what could go wrong? The cutoff valve might be stuck, so I can't turn off water flow to the toilet. Or it might become stuck, though that is unlikely. The replacement valve seal that I bought might be the wrong size, which is a trivial issue unless it is an unusual size. I might damage the valve assembly while getting the old seal off. I might break a pipe and cause a minor flood before I shut off water to the whole house. I worry about these possibilities because a couple of them happened the last time that I attempted this exact repair.

Life has been hitting me hard from every side lately. The worst was when my elderly cat died this week. But I am rallying and decided to do the flush valve replacement this weekend. But I have been watching videos lately and realized that I should replace the entire flush valve mechanism and also the fill valve mechanism at the same time, as they are both overdue for replacement and likely to fail in the next year or so. The kits are pretty reasonably priced, and it's easier to replace the whole mechanism than to get a good fit for individual parts. I have everything I need on hand now.

In preparation for doing the repair today, I closed off the cutoff valve and flushed the toilet a couple of days ago. Because the identical-looking cutoff valve in my other bathroom failed last year and had to be replaced, I wanted to see if the toilet stayed nearly empty after that last flush. It did not. There was a slight but constant trickle of water that kept replenishing the small amount of water between the lip of the leaking flush valve and the base of the tank. Last night, I confirmed it by siphoning out all of the water in the tank, only to see it slowly replenish itself somewhat, despite the shutoff valve being shut off tight.

In theory, I could still do the repair today by shutting off the main water line to the house and then empyting out the tank again. However, if anything goes wrong with reconnecting the cutoff valve line to the fill valve mechanism, I will need to leave the main water line shut off until I get a plumber into address the cutoff valve line.

Since buying my house 13 years ago, I have learned that most local plumbers are too busy or too unreliable, and nearly all of them are terrible at baseline communication methods like phone calls, emails, and/or texting. I finally found one reliable local plumbing operation and have given them all of my business in recent years, but they are generally booked out about one week into the future. The next eleven days include 4 major holidays, and I am hosting my big Firefly game on New Years Day, so I have decided to postpone this repair until January.

I'm not doing the cutoff valve, so I will schedule that in advance and then attempt the toilet repair the day before the appointment. If anything goes wrong during the repair, I will have a plumber there to deal with it the next day. Until then, I am opening up that cutoff valve so my friends can use the toilet during the next Call of Cthulhu session and also on Firefly day. This is the toilet adjacent to my gaming room.