Posts filed under 'Repairs and Maintenance'
My house is over a hundred years old. A hundred and nine, to be exact (although I suppose I don’t know exactly what month the construction was complete). So, for an old house, a person’s willing to forgive several things. The woodwork isn’t perfectly pristine anymore, how could it be after 109 years? The rooms aren’t as large as they would be in a brand-new house, but the house makes up for it in charm. Well, one thing that I’ve been forgiving since buying the house is the almost complete lack of level floors.
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When I first bought my duplex, I was aware that gutter cleaning was one of those things that responsible homeowners did every fall — to prevent ice dams on the roof, and as a measure of general maintenance. My boss, who also lived in a two-story home, told me that it was really easy, and there was no reason that I couldn’t do it myself. So, I got a friend with a van to take me to Menards to buy a 30-foot extension ladder, and talked myself out of my fear of heights. If my boss could do it, so could I.
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My duplex is a little over a hundred years old, and has those old wooden cellar doors in back, leading to the basement. Of course, there is an actual deadbolted normal exterior door in the basement, as well, for better security. I’ve been watching the wooden doors deteriorate over the past couple of years; the wood seems to have started rotting, even though I repainted them just a few years ago. I do wonder a bit if painting them a dark red may have caused more snow to melt on them? Not sure. Either way, they haven’t been looking good, and I had been thinking that I should do something about them this spring.
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It’s that time of year again. The time when the air conditioners get taken out of the windows, and the plastic film finally goes on. And I appreciate the biggest expenditure I’ve made on the duplex thus far — new storms and vinyl windows. When I first bought my duplex, the storm windows were in sorry shape. There were holes in many of the screens, and several broken glass panes too, which I got fixed immediately after I moved in. My floor had some rickety old two-track storm windows, and the upstairs had the very unruly three-track variety.
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My next door neighbor, who happens to be building a garage just opposite the fenceline from the old tree that fell, noticed that you could actually see through the trunk of what’s still standing of the tree…. which, naturally makes him a bit nervous for his brand new garage. I told him that I had a volunteer crew coming out to cut up what was still on the ground, and he’s been thinking of how we could get the rest of it down there.
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This last year has been very tree-centric. Last fall, I had a big chainsaw party, at which three of my closest guy friends showed up and cut down most of the “weed-trees” that had been allowed to grow along my fence line — in exchange for beer and a big pan of homemade lasagna. It opened up the yard a lot, and let a lot more light in — paving the way an actual lawn that grew actual grass (as opposed to creeping charlie). The one tree that they couldn’t handle, though, was the enormous 100-year old box elder with a definite lean to it. The tree that’s had me a bit worried since I bought the duplex. I always hoped that it would fall down slowly, in small chunks, or at least just fall directly to the ground in the direction that it was leaning…
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My house is over a hundred years old, 108 to be exact. It’s settled a bit over the years, and seems to be still settling, ever-so-slightly. I’m a bit concerned about it, but most of my house-savvy friends tell me not to worry about it, the house is 100 years old and it’s only settled this far already… Because of all this settling, though, my front door has always been a bit sticky. In the past year or so, it’s apparently settled just enough to cross over from sticky to the top of the door not closing all the way.
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There are many electrical shortcomings in my duplex. Lucky for me, I have a friend who is an electrical engineer, and likes to work on houses. Of course, I don’t want to wear out my favors with him, but he’s started helping me with a few wiring projects here and there. I’m a bit sheepish when it comes to electricity (beyond installing new light fixtures, etc.), so it works out well for me.
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About a year ago, I was sprucing up my rental unit so that it would look more attractive to prospective renters (either it worked, or I really didn’t have to, because I found renters within a week).
One of the improvements I made was replacing the old outdated square pull-chain light fixtures.
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Last year, I spent $35 on what looked to be the best invention ever: the wall-mounted hose reel. It winds up the ridiculously long hose with a hand crank. genius. This frustration-saving device would prevent countless swearing fits throughout the summer. (And it did. It’s sooooooo much easier to use than winding up a hose by hand.)
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Turns out there’s more to the story about the duplex next door — A few days after I saw the older gentlemen curiously trimming the tree branches of their daughter’s purportedly “trashed” duplex, I came home from work to see the the front yard meticulously mowed, and sporting a new addition — a for sale sign.
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…Said the very wise plumber who visited my house last week. He said that the washer water coming up the sink drains was wholly unrelated to the catastrophic dripping (gushing) out of the bathtub hot water faucet, but that these things usually tend to go in threes. “Three? Hmm, this has only been two…” I replied, and then he quickly revised his opinion to “bad things happen in twos.”
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Ever since the plumbing catastrophe that happened last week, my bathtub hot water faucet has mysteriously developed a drip. Could be coincidence, but I think that it has something to do with the pressure of things being clogged, plunged, etc. I’ve been choosing to ignore the drip, as the fixtures on the bathtub are fairly old and difficult to work with.
Apparently the bathtub faucet wasn’t content with that, because this morning, the situation changed such that I COULDN’T ignore it — the faucet WOULDN’T SHUT OFF! (at all! hot water gushing full-stream out of the faucet, even when it was turned all the way off!)
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So, to recap the last post, I was minding my own business last night, when all of a sudden, I’ve got sudsy washer water coming up through both my kitchen and bathroom drains. It overflowed in the bathroom, and then refused to go down in either sink. I plunged away at them, but only managed to change the sudsy, clean-ish water into black gook. I panicked, I worried, I envisioned people having to install a whole new plumbing system in my house, and/or dig up my front yard… I called my only male friend in the neighborhood like 40 times (no answer, of course). I called the drain guy I’ve hired in the past, bracing myself for the worst…
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So, it’s Sunday night and I’m minding my own business, doing some laundry, potting a couple of plants, tidying up the house, getting ready for the week. When all of a sudden….
Water — sudsy water — from the washing machine starts coming up in my bathroom AND kitchen sinks! my bathroom sink actually overflowed before the water started going back down!
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If you’re like me, you’d rather not trouble your contractors with endless questions about how much things will cost. Granted, I’m sure that they hear plenty of “so, just ballpark-wise, how much would it cost to…” But I know that it’s difficult to give an accurate estimate without knowing a lot of the specifics of the job, and they don’t want to throw out a number that they’ll then feel held to. I’ve found a good online tool, however,that I use for a lot of theoretical “I wonder how much it would cost to…” ideas.
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As I began embarking upon my insulation project, it quickly became apparent why there was it hadn’t been modernized with insulation — a good share of the upstairs was still utilizing the old (original to the house, built in 1900) knob-and-tube wiring — which doesn’t necessarily mix well with insulation.
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When I bought my duplex in 2003, at had a brand new roof on it — the previous owner had put it on just before selling the duplex. I can guess why the roof was previously in disrepair — there was ZERO insulation in the attic. None, zip, zilch, zero. In the year 2003!!!!! Now, while this may not be a big deal in some parts of the country, where I live the temperature frequently dips below zero in the winter, and insulation is a pretty important thing — for keeping heating bills low, as well as keeping the roof in good shape. What did the lack of insulation have to do with the condition of the roof, you might ask? ICE DAMS…
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In my very humble opinion, self-stick vinyl tile is a very, very bad idea. Yes, it’s cheap, easy to install yourself (well, relatively easy, anyway) and comes in some decent-looking designs. But for a duplex, it just doesn’t hold up.
The previous owner of my duplex installed some of the self-stick stuff in my rental unit, in the kitchen and bathroom, right before selling the house. It made the house look nicer for the sale, and he, of course, wasn’t concerned about the longevity of his improvement.
However, exactly 12 months after the installation, I got a note from my tenants, saying that some of the tile had started to “flip up.”
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Perhaps my decision to purchase a coin-operated washer is coming back to bite me. I was out of town all weekend, and came back to a note on my door, saying that the coin slot on the washing machine was jammed, and wouldn’t turn on the washing machine, or pull out. The tenants said that they put in the correct amount of money (they had just gotten a new roll of quarters from the bank, even), and weren’t trying to pull anything (i.e. putting the quarters in pantyhose to pull them back out, or a similar trick like that).
The answer, curiously, had something to do with the exchange rate…
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