Mr. Fixit

My dad designed and built his own house, so he knows a thing or two about home maintenance and repair.  Every time he visits, we hit him up for a project or two, so of course, with our huge task list here at the new house we figured he could help with a few things.  I think he ended up cutting a year off of that 10-year-plan.  Here is what he did in the 12 days he was here:

• Replaced the flappers on two toilets, and the valve mechanism on a third.  We now have four properly working toilets instead of just one!


• Adjusted two bifold closet doors so they close properly.


• Diagnosed a big problem we have with our upstairs windows, giving us a solution that we can do ourselves instead of replacing the windows completely.  (Do you know about weep holes?  Make sure you have some.)


• Manufactured two supports for my desk shelf out of PVC pipe and rubber feet.  It was a really cool, creative solution.


• Fixed two kitchen drawers that were out of alignment and not operating smoothly, and taught me how to fix them in the future.


• Adjusted a few of our drain stoppers in the sinks, which were not working at all.


• Reversed the postion of the light and fan switches in our master bath. (Don't you hate it when somebody puts the fan switch closest to the door when everybody knows that the light switch goes there?)


• Reversed the direction of a dimmer switch in a bedroom which had been installed upside-down, so that you had to push it down to turn on the light. (What kind of idiot makes a mistake like that and then just leaves it that way?)


• Fixed a recessed light fixture in the basement.  It was just loose, but we probably would have hired an electrician.


• Installed a screen over one of our gutters, not to keep out the leaves, but to stop the rain from dripping from the roof directly onto the metal in one particular spot right outside of our bedroom, which had woken me up countless times.  We're supposed to get some rain soon so I can find out if that solved the problem.  This was another really creative solution to a small but annoying problem.


• Gave us a guess as to what might be wrong with our water heater, which doesn't seem to work well.  (He says it might be calcium deposits and we could try to drain it.)


• Re-installed the damper in our ductwork that allows us to close off the flow to the top floor.  The handle had broken off of it and he had to open up the ductwork and manufacture a handle and another part to fix it.


• Fixed a leak in our basement laundry sink.

I think there might have been a couple of other things that came up along the way, but that was what I noted on my list.  He also bought all the parts for us as our housewarming gift.  Awesome!

Adam and I didn't do too badly these last two weeks either.  I installed a paper towel holder, completed the grout-cleaning project, and fixed the garbage disposal when some kind of metal got wedged in it.  Adam installed the new chandelier in our "dining room" which is really the eat-in kitchen.  The old ceiling fan was literally falling apart.  One light was hanging by the wires, and one of the glass shades just fell off onto the table one day.  Besides, it was ugly as hell.  We bought the new fixture to match the kitchen we plan to create, not the one we have now, so it's a bit out of place.  (We're going for the Art Deco look.)  We also gave up the ceiling fan for the sake of style.  Still, it's quite an improvement.  Here are the before and after photos:

[caption id="attachment_1211" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Dining Room Light Before"][/caption]

 

[caption id="attachment_1212" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Dining Room Light After"][/caption]