Thumb and Hammer Blog

Today was the third day of the heating upgrade and the plumber re-configured the boiler and mounted the zone pumps. At this point, he expects the job to take another 2 and a half days to complete. He has another commitment tomorrow, so that means he will likely finish on Tuesday. There [...]

It’s finally happening.  The plumber has been working on our gas hot water heating system for two days now and things are progressing nicely.  This was not a DIY job.  In fact, the previous owner had messed with the system which is why it was so messed up to begin with.  [...]

The plumber is coming Monday to begin work on our heating system. The house is not quite as far along as I had hoped it would be at this point, but hopefully he will still be able to do his work without too much difficulty. I’m going to be running around, trying to [...]

Having time off work is a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, it gives me more time to get stuff done.  On the other hand, not having to be anywhere at a specific time gives me the false sense that my time is limitless.  Wednesday, I planned to finish all the painting [...]

I finally got tired of looking at the visual flaws in the drywall in the upstairs guest room.  The contractor that we hired to finish the drywall was not so good at taping. The flaws were not evident at first when I primed, but showed up when I painted the eggshell top coat.  [...]

Our bamboo flooring order came in on Thursday and we loaded all 24 cases in the back of our minivan. Every case will have to be moved upstairs and opened up to acclimate at least three days before installation. As much as I would like to do the job myself, I will probably [...]

The second floor has been insulated for over a year now, but there was one major problem which I finally solved this weekend. The access door to the side attic was never finished, so we had a major 2 foot by 4 foot hole in the building envelope. The air handler is located [...]

Back in March, I posted about an electrical situation I had just discovered– a junction box that was in an awkward place with a confusing mess of wires and connections that were not even close to conforming with the electrical code. Well, I finally dealt with the mess and it’s a good thing [...]

The deposit has been paid to the plumbing contractor, so as soon as his materials come he will upgrade our hot water heat. He expects the job to take close to a week.
We have ordered the flooring for upstairs. Hopefully that will arrive in time for my summer vacation so I can get [...]