Wobble Wobble...

One of the items from the inspection report was that a toilet upstairs wobbled. The inspector said it needed a new wax ring, the sellers had some home warranty policy and would get it repaired through that. All seemed well with the world.

Until closing when I was still in Seattle and nobody checked the toilet during the final walkthrough and when I got there the thing was still loose. Moral of the story - twice now sellers haven't followed up with fixing what they said they'd do. Try not to let it happen a third time...

Anyway one short year later I get around to fixing this toilet. Hey, what can I say... I never use that bathroom and it wasn't leaking. I pull the toilet off and scrape off the remains of the wax seal and take a look.



Awesome, the builder cut the hole for the closet flange just a little too big so it couldn't be attached correctly. And the screws they did use were rusted out. The toilet was attached only by the drain which thankfully hasn't leaked yet and one lonely screw that'd somehow survived. The repair is really simple - something that anybody can do for about $20 in parts (or a couple hundred for a plumber... take your pick).

Once you get done wondering why somebody would want to use metal parts around a toilet where they'll rust out, you'll only need to buy a couple of things. Get a repair flange from Lowes, Ace, McCoys (wherever), mount it and drill a few holes through the floor where the screws holding it to the floor will go. Screw it in, and now drill through the holes where the existing flange used to attach to the floor. Once you install the new screws it's all held together, stronger than it was when it was new.



Now use a new wax ring and install the toilet back where it was and use rubber shims as needed. In my case the floor is depressed a bit behind the toilet, maybe from the weight of the water tank after all these years. The floor was dry with no signs of water damage... maybe a really heavy person sat there. Who knows. Anway, good as new. When I get around to redoing the floor in that bathroom I'll cut out a section of the subfloor and reinforce as needed, along with putting a new PVC flange in with stainless steel screws. That'll take care of everything.

Got a couple of people to have a look at the roof. The first quote is amazing, especially considering all the flashing and whatnot he's including. The owner of that company lives behind my house and over one and I really hope he comes out as the best deal. The first thing both people said when they saw the roof was something about all the hail damage. There was a hailstorm in February (the 10th?) but I didn't think it was that bad. I've already emailed my agent... maybe I can get a discount here. That'd be great.

I've had to rethink some of the plans about the flooring and everything in the living room. Since I'll probably be going back to the PNW for a long while this fall it would be a really terrible time to start a major project. Even if I wound up contracting out the floor I'd still have to get the fireplace work, mantle and surround done before then or else I'll have a gap later. There's just not enough time for that. So in the meantime I'll just take care of refinishing the door and getting a new window put in before I go. With the new roof it's also the perfect opportunity to add an exhaust fan to the shower in the jack and jill bathrooms upstairs. Right now there's only a fan in each room with the sink and toilet. Dunno why there wasn't one since day one...

April 2009

Two projects this month. One is just more of the same... the never-ending radiant barrier install. But this month I found a much better deal on the stuff than I'd been getting in the past. I ordered 1,000 square feet of the stuff from Radiant Guard. It comes out to about half the cost of buying at Home Depot, and you get a warm fuzzy because it's made in the US rather than somewhere in China. In any case, I managed to finish the southern exposure in the highest attic and move on to the difficult one and cover the space above the main bedroom. I had to put a sprinkler on the roof to cool things down, and I still had to get out of there around 2:30 because the heat was getting to me.

The other project wasn't exactly something I was planning on doing... it's just one of those things that isn't done right that you get tired of looking at. The door to my closet leading from the master bathroom isn't hung right, the casing is missing entirely from the closet side, and there's tons of caulking in the corners. The gap with the door was so bad you could stand in the closet, close the door and watch the dog walking around from the gap. I got tired of looking at it every day and in about 20 minutes had the door frame taken down. That was the easy part.

Look at all that caulking jammed in the corners!



It became pretty obvious once I got it all out that the door used to open into the closet, but that really didn't make much sense so somebody flipped the door around into a slightly less awkward position. I'm not sure if it was an owner or whoever did the wallpaper and other work in the bathroom, but if somebody actually paid for this to be done they should've gotten their money back. Rather than shim anything and install it like they should, they just nailed the door frame parts to the framing and caulked over the gaps left behind. They were also kind enough to cut the little bits that stick up at the top of the frame that keep everything nice and square. This is going to be a little more difficult than I thought...



Rather than just reinstall everything, the paint on there was looking a little thick so why not have a go at removing it and starting fresh? I want to put a pocket door in there someday because it really makes no sense for the door to open either in or out in that location anyway, so this made a good enough piece to practice on.

To keep things short, I learned a lot about what not to do. Don't expect the paint stripper to do very much work. Maybe I got something that wasn't strong enough... all I know is that it did a decent job on the top layer or two of latex paint but didn't bother to do anything on the stuff down below. Second, don't scrape paint from anything you'll be looking at or standing next to with a paint scraper. It leaves a lot of dents. Especially on the trim pieces. Seriously, don't do it! The last little problem - the tool I have (don't know its name) that lets you cut wood at an angle isn't so great. It gets almost a 45 degree angle, but when you line up the pieces of wood it's not a perfect fit. But it's all back together the right way now and looks so much better than it did beforehand! This is what somebody was trying do do, but now it's done right. Nice and square, with fresh new casing on the bathroom side.