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Jun. 18th, 2018 04:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psipsyWhat I've had to do with the house so far:
-Replacing the garage door springs. One broke and wouldn't let the door open properly. A bit distressing when I'm about to leave for work, and had to think fast to get the door working just enough again until I could get new springs. They were surprisingly cheap to replace, and the only tricky part was pulling on the spring just enough to get it to hook.
The springs are there to assist the drive motor in both opening and closing the door. When closing, gravity does most of the work to pull the door down, and stretches the springs. This stores energy for opening the door, as well as making the descent safer and more controlled. When opening, the springs do most of the lifting, so there's less strain on the drive mechanism. The springs have different weight ratings, depending on the weight of the door. If the springs are too light for the door, there may be problems when opening and the springs can fail prematurely. If the springs are too heavy, it might prevent the door from closing all the way. Either imbalance can also over-work and damage the motor. These springs also have safety cables going through them, so that when the springs finally do break, they don't fly off and hit something (or someone).
-Reinforce some of the joists above the garage. This might not have been necessary, so it's more of a peace-of-mind thing. I'm not worried about it affecting the main part of the house, as the garage and the room above were added on in the late 80s, while the house itself dates back to the 20s.
-Replaced some of the light bulbs with LED bulbs. The obvious reason is that they're much more efficient than filament bulbs (1/6th the power!). As the older bulbs burn out, LED bulbs go in. I also put a small LED strip light in the garage over the tool box. This is mostly to help me when I need to find tools, and it puts out enough light that I can see my way around the garage with no other light. I plan on putting in a bunch of strip lights in both the garage and basement, the two areas that would benefit the most from more lumens. Yeah I know there are people who prefer the warmth and aesthetics of incandescent bulbs, and I'm not saying they're wrong, but I'm the one paying the electric bill here, so that's how it's going to be.
-Hired someone to mow my grass. I don't know what it is about this area, either fertilizer runoff from farms or individuals over-zealous in their quest for the perfect lawns, but the grass is so overfed it's morbidly obese. It went from "it's almost time to mow this" to "it's almost to my knees" in a breathtakingly short time. My gas-powered push mower was more than enough for the grass when I was living in the trailer, even if I let it go for 5-6 weeks. Here? It stalled out every 50 feet, and then I had to unclog the mower. Having a pro mow my grass costs $45 each time. I'm buying back an hour each week to use for something else, so it's a fair trade.
-Installed new blinds. Some of the windows didn't have any. Other windows had them but they needed replaced. I also got some more of those light-blocking curtains for my bedroom.
-Had the phone company fix the landline phone after a week-long outage. While the line was inoperative, I had no dial tone, and anyone who tried calling would just get a busy signal. That's nothing remarkable by itself, not having anything to do with the house directly, and didn't cost me anything because the issue was on their end. What I find interesting, and the reason I bring this up, is that after my phone worked again, the spam calls had dropped off drastically. Not all the way to zero, but definitely a fraction of what it was. From 2 or 3 (or more) per day, to maybe 1 or 2 per week. That said, I'm not mad about the outage. I feel like I came out ahead on this. It probably won't last for long, so I'll enjoy it while I can.
On the horizon:
Most of the appliances are new enough, except for the clothes washer and dryer that are from the 90s. I mean, they work, so they're not about to get replaced yet. If this place had an electric dryer, I would have been tempted to swap mine out from the trailer. Then again those weren't much newer, from 2003, which compared to now is almost from the 90s as well. And I did have to fix those once or twice while at the trailer.
There is a deck, but it's too small to be used for any kind of recreation. It's more like a fire escape for the purpose of bringing the addition to building code. It's also somewhat worn out. My idea is to replace it with something larger, and would be large enough to actually accomodate things like chairs and a small table.
Lately I've become much more familiar with the innards and layouts of local home improvement and hardware stores. Cuz sometimes things break and need fixed ASAP, and overnight shipping isn't fast enough to save us. Or the things we know we'll need are too heavy and bulky to make shipping worthwhile. And so on.
That's all I got for now.
-Replacing the garage door springs. One broke and wouldn't let the door open properly. A bit distressing when I'm about to leave for work, and had to think fast to get the door working just enough again until I could get new springs. They were surprisingly cheap to replace, and the only tricky part was pulling on the spring just enough to get it to hook.
The springs are there to assist the drive motor in both opening and closing the door. When closing, gravity does most of the work to pull the door down, and stretches the springs. This stores energy for opening the door, as well as making the descent safer and more controlled. When opening, the springs do most of the lifting, so there's less strain on the drive mechanism. The springs have different weight ratings, depending on the weight of the door. If the springs are too light for the door, there may be problems when opening and the springs can fail prematurely. If the springs are too heavy, it might prevent the door from closing all the way. Either imbalance can also over-work and damage the motor. These springs also have safety cables going through them, so that when the springs finally do break, they don't fly off and hit something (or someone).
-Reinforce some of the joists above the garage. This might not have been necessary, so it's more of a peace-of-mind thing. I'm not worried about it affecting the main part of the house, as the garage and the room above were added on in the late 80s, while the house itself dates back to the 20s.
-Replaced some of the light bulbs with LED bulbs. The obvious reason is that they're much more efficient than filament bulbs (1/6th the power!). As the older bulbs burn out, LED bulbs go in. I also put a small LED strip light in the garage over the tool box. This is mostly to help me when I need to find tools, and it puts out enough light that I can see my way around the garage with no other light. I plan on putting in a bunch of strip lights in both the garage and basement, the two areas that would benefit the most from more lumens. Yeah I know there are people who prefer the warmth and aesthetics of incandescent bulbs, and I'm not saying they're wrong, but I'm the one paying the electric bill here, so that's how it's going to be.
-Hired someone to mow my grass. I don't know what it is about this area, either fertilizer runoff from farms or individuals over-zealous in their quest for the perfect lawns, but the grass is so overfed it's morbidly obese. It went from "it's almost time to mow this" to "it's almost to my knees" in a breathtakingly short time. My gas-powered push mower was more than enough for the grass when I was living in the trailer, even if I let it go for 5-6 weeks. Here? It stalled out every 50 feet, and then I had to unclog the mower. Having a pro mow my grass costs $45 each time. I'm buying back an hour each week to use for something else, so it's a fair trade.
-Installed new blinds. Some of the windows didn't have any. Other windows had them but they needed replaced. I also got some more of those light-blocking curtains for my bedroom.
-Had the phone company fix the landline phone after a week-long outage. While the line was inoperative, I had no dial tone, and anyone who tried calling would just get a busy signal. That's nothing remarkable by itself, not having anything to do with the house directly, and didn't cost me anything because the issue was on their end. What I find interesting, and the reason I bring this up, is that after my phone worked again, the spam calls had dropped off drastically. Not all the way to zero, but definitely a fraction of what it was. From 2 or 3 (or more) per day, to maybe 1 or 2 per week. That said, I'm not mad about the outage. I feel like I came out ahead on this. It probably won't last for long, so I'll enjoy it while I can.
On the horizon:
Most of the appliances are new enough, except for the clothes washer and dryer that are from the 90s. I mean, they work, so they're not about to get replaced yet. If this place had an electric dryer, I would have been tempted to swap mine out from the trailer. Then again those weren't much newer, from 2003, which compared to now is almost from the 90s as well. And I did have to fix those once or twice while at the trailer.
There is a deck, but it's too small to be used for any kind of recreation. It's more like a fire escape for the purpose of bringing the addition to building code. It's also somewhat worn out. My idea is to replace it with something larger, and would be large enough to actually accomodate things like chairs and a small table.
Lately I've become much more familiar with the innards and layouts of local home improvement and hardware stores. Cuz sometimes things break and need fixed ASAP, and overnight shipping isn't fast enough to save us. Or the things we know we'll need are too heavy and bulky to make shipping worthwhile. And so on.
That's all I got for now.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-20 11:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-21 08:52 am (UTC)