More Curbside Treasures

I had another curbside find recently. Driving home one drizzly night, in the headlights I spied what turned out to be a small TV/VCR and a black toolbox. When I got them home, I saw that the toolbox was made of black painted plywood, peeling badly, oily, dirty and VERY STINKY!! It was moldy and moist, and the blue velvet inside the drawers was filthy and dry rotted.

The black paint was so loose that it lifted off with a putty knife, no solvent required. I pulled out the velvet and threw it out as fast as I could. The box still smelled just AWFUL. I tried scrubbing it down with paint thinner, to try to rinse away some of the embedded oil and grease. It worked pretty well, but it took days to evaporate.

The grain of the plywood looked so pretty that I decided to shellac it instead of painting it black again. To even things out, I hit it with a varnish remover, then over-stained it with a light color. I sealed everything inside and out with two coats of amber shellac. STINKY ALL GONE! Big yay!

This toolbox is really poorly made, out of whatever materials they could find. It's nailed and glued, and nailed more, and glued some more. This drawer bottom is made of what looks like slats from packing crates. The drawers don't work well. The box isn't square. But it has charm! I'll use it for my paintbrushes and paints.

The TV works!! I haven't tried the VCR part, but they break so often, that it's probably dead. It needs a remote control, but the buttons on the front of it work fine.

In other news, the ants are back, in the bathroom, out of an electrical outlet. What can they be looking for in the bathroom? I put out some "ant buffet" (Combat Ant Killing Gel), and they went for it. At least they will die well fed.

Steak or Toilets?

I was supposed to be treated to a birthday dinner at an excellent steakhouse. The house decided to bust the water main instead. So I thought, steak or water? Steak or bathing? Steak or flushing toilets? I like steak, but apparently I love flushing toilets more.

In the first photo, the "work area" (my kitchen counter top) shows the original water supply pipe fitting, made by Dad years ago from various materials, along with the new, bright, gluey replacement fittings.

You should have seen the look on the face of the guy at Home Depot when I showed it to him. It's gray-black pipe from outside, then a flange of gray plastic that gets pipe-clamped on, then galvanized pipe, then brass (solid corroded rust), then a brass shutoff valve, then CPVC that supplied the hot and cold water to the whole house. The valve corroded, and the handle part BLEW OFF. We found it a couple of feet away.

Here is where the ugly old thing used to fit in. See the gap between the dangling CPVC and the greyish pipe on the dirt? The view is down the trapdoor to the crawl space, which is dirt floored. When I found I had no water pressure, I thought the fuse to the pump had blown. After checking the breaker box, I stood in the back hallway and noticed the sound of a rapidly flowing brook. A burbling stream. A rushing rapids. When I opened the trap door, the whole of my water supply was being blasted out and up against the underside of the kitchen subfloor and the foundation. It had already eroded much of the dirt "landing", and the water was cascading down to the deeper part where the hot water heater lives.

At Home Depot #1, we spent about 45 minutes on the floor in front of the pipe fittings, trying to put together something that would work. Why do they run out of basic fittings like elbows??? We chose some things that MIGHT work, and left.

We drove to Home Depot #2, only a mile away (long story) and lucked out! The guy in the plumbing aisle asked if we needed help right away, and went and got guy #2, who was a plumber! Shock! And he put together the set of fittings that we eventually used. He apologized for not having the ideal set of fittings, because they were out of something, but he was able to use some PVC in the middle to make up for what ever was lacking. He gave me really good instructions about what to glue up to what, in which order, and even got me a scrap of PVC pipe that was needed to mate up the two PVC fittings, NO CHARGE. (I had no PVC on hand at home, just CPVC.) He also picked out the right glue, asked if I had teflon tape (for the compression fittings).

Wait a minute... we had two guys help us in less that a minute at store #2, and how many people offered to help us at Home Depot #1??......NONE in 45 minutes of sitting on the floor, looking desperate!

Anyway, here is the finished assembled mess. It isn't pretty (our gluing technique leaves room for improvement), but the bugger DOES NOT LEAK!! The best part? I didn't have to go down into the crawl space myself. My dear boyfriend gallantly donned Wellington boots, and took the muddy plunge. I really hate the crawlspace!

In non house related stuff, I made a fake ham for a play, and went to the state fair. I lead such an exciting life!

The fake ham is for a drama where dinner is served at one point. The director said "I want them to be served a baked ham". That is such an easy thing to say, but a fake ham, with slices is hard to find.

The ham itself is made of blue foam insulation. Carved with my trusty old steak knife (used only for carving). The "ham slices" were more difficult to deal with. I ended up gluing three layers of "fun foam" from the craft store together to get a thinnish slice of ham. I base painted everything with Zinsser's 123, and the next day I painted them with Liquitex acrylics. The main ham is sealed with a gloss medium, to make it look glazed. I glued on real cloves. The ham is bee-yooteeful. I hope it makes it through the run of the play without getting too damaged.

Also, last weekend I got to go to the state fair. I had a great time. Boyfriend and I don't go for the scary rides. We are too old. But they are fun to watch. And there is so much awful and good food to eat at the fair!

They have horse racing on the weekends. I've never been to the racetrack, though I watch on TV. We are not the gambling type, so we just watched so I could look at horseys. I loves watchin horseys. They seem to like me back - this one tossed his head for the picture. He didn't win. But he was the cutest!

Best day of the summer.

The Smallest of Home Repairs

The flooring in our family room is AWFUL. It's 30+ year old cheap vinyl self stick tile. It's supposed to look like parquet, but is just pretty much brownish. And it is now really brittle with age, and in areas of high traffic, it has cracked, broken, and left small holes.

Under my computer chair, it has left a BIG hole. Lovely, bare, pebbly concrete.

My router up and died recently, and when I realized the Verizon guy would have to sit in my computer chair, I decided to fix the hole in the floor. (The hole has been there for at least 5 years!) Luckily, my Mother put aside scrap pieces when we installed the tile in 1973.

So, in case anyone ever has to patch lousy vinyl tile, here is my step by step method:

Step one: When you install any tile, carpet, wallpaper, paint, linoleum, or vinyl flooring, whatever, SAVE SOME SCRAPS. (Thanks, Mom)

Step two: Clean the area. That's the photo above. That's as clean as I could get it. I hate this floor.

Step three: I took tape and sort of marked the extent of the hole, making it a squared off area. I should have taken a photo. Bad me.

I laid the scrap on top of the hole, and drew cut lines on it that would cover the whole area to be patched, nice and square-ish. Then I cut the patches with a utility knife. (My space was over two tiles, plus two thin strips on adjacent tiles.)

You place the finished patches in their places, on top of the damaged floor, and TRACE THE OUTLINE onto the damaged flooring. Move the patches, and cut out the squared out hole. (That is the second photo.) Now the patches will fit.

Step whatever: So this last photo is the stunningly wonderful result. It looks much better, even though the patch is newer looking. Why did I wait five years to fix this?? I guess it's because the floor is still UGLY. It's only technically an improvement.

On a different topic altogether, I've done a makeover on the frog garden ornament that I use for my avatar here. I've always hated the paint on it, so I sanded it, and ground off the worst of the cast concrete seams. Then I puttied the worst of the holes and mis-cast areas with epoxy putty. I primed it with Zinsser's 123, and painted it with enamel paint to look like AN ACTUAL FROG. It looks much happier now. Here are the before and after photos:



Before. After. What was with the red lips??? Here's my new avatar. Much nicer