Water and electricity do not mix. (No, I was not killed)

So, after some subtle hints from H, I realized I haven't posted in a while. Here's the main scoop as to what my father and I have been working on.

Off and on I've been working outside to fix some problems around the house. First, we had so many box elder bugs around that house that it was slightly ridiculous. So, Sunday evening I took a large vat of insecticide--with spray nozzle and all--and created a moat around the house. After several sprays, multitudes of box elder bugs sprung up from the siding and ground. They started to move very slowly, until finally, I didn't see any bugs around. That problem was solved.

The next large thing Hilary and I did, along with her brothers and help from Sean, was to remove large quantities of leaves that had piled up from last fall. There were a lot to rake up. So much so, we have 12 leave bags, packed full, sitting in our future tiki bar (also known as the art building, for now). That was a haul, especially since we worked from about 8PM to about 9:30PM to pack up the leaves before any potential rain.

The main thing my father and I have been working on is the upstairs bathroom. After finishing the main level's bathroom, we decided to continue the streak and move upstairs. Well, we knew the toilet upstairs was loose, and the drains were clogged, but we had no idea how much of a pain we were getting into.

First, we needed to shut off the water to the toilet, so we could operate on it. There was a problem. We could not find the shut off valve. It's a simple little lever near the back of the toilet, how hard could it be to find it? Turns out, during the "construction" of the upstairs bathroom, the shut off valve had been placed in the wall.

Not a problem, my father and I thought. There is wood paneling that encompasses the bottom of the wall. There should be a removable wood piece near the toilet and bath called an access panel. Well, someone with a nail gun had a one-man stand against such logical notions, because we had to remove six or seven nails before the access panel was free to move.

We shut off the water. We started to drain the toilet (bailing it out with a Great-Stuff cap and an empty paint can...) and figured out the previous tenants had solved their running toilet with shoe string to stop the rubber plunger inside... Let's just say those strings were not their original color.

With the toilet removed, we figured out why the toilet was loose. The closet flange was broken, purposefully, because the marble had not been properly cut to fit the entire flange in. SO! The placement bolts that hold the toilet firmly to the ground were not properly secured, because the installers expected a hunk of marble and some concrete to hold the mounting bolt in place. It probably did for a while, but the other side of the flange could not hold out for any longer, broke, and dislodged the entire toilet.

We ripped the old flange off, but now we have to cut out the remain plastic from the inside of the pipe in order to glue another flange down. So, that's were we are with that.

However, we did snake out the clog in the bathtub/sink. Those appliances work quite well now. These are all minor things compared to what we had initailly expected. Since we had low water pressure, we figured we would need new plumbing upstairs. Thankfully, that was not the case.

As of today, the toilet is still off of the pipes and there is a towel clogging any sewer gas that may want to travel up the pipe into the upstairs bathroom.

In order to do something more minor, my father, Hilary, and I decided to work on electricity, while my mother diligently vacuumed the upstairs. Hilary's mission was to pick out outlet covers, and me and my father's mission was to replace the old outlets with new ones. For the record, electricity and water do not mix, so we decided to work on them on two separate days.

Also for the record, if you need new outlets because your old ones are broken/painted over/hideous, do everyone a favor and BUY NEW ONES. Menard's has a 10 pack for $3.39. That's about 34 cents an outlet. In white, off-white, or black. How rocking is that?

Anyway, I figured out which circuit breakers went to which outlets. It's a tangled web of madness, so I won't elaborate any further on that. However, I will say that installing outlets is fairly simple. Unscrew the plate, unscrew the outlet, unscrew the screws that hold the wires to the outlet, and then redo those three steps in reverse order, and screwing instead of unscrewing. Hilary came back with outlet covers, which I'm sure she'll post pictures of. They are very nice, and made our living room one step closer to being complete!