Tile: the finishing touch

Tiles have been used for thousands of years in walls and floors and ceilings and roofs.  Elaborate tilework has long been a fixture of Islamic buildings, and the Moors brought it with them to Spain in the Middle Ages, after which it spread across Europe.  For many years, tiles were used in palaces, churches, and the homes of the wealthy.

Advances in manufacturing during the Industrial Revolution (in ceramics, glazing, and in industrial procedures) made tiles cheap and readily available through mass production, and with middle class people seeking to emulate their wealthier counterparts, tile became a widespread in houses.  In Victorian days, they were commonly used as a decorative fixture in hallways and foyers and on fireplaces.  Tile also became a standard feature of Arts & Crafts style houses, despite the Arts & Crafts movement's attempt to counter the Victorian style's overly-decorated look.  True Arts & Crafts tiles would have been hand-made and hand-decorated rather than mass-produced, but no doubt middle class builders of Arts & Crafts houses would have cheated a little.

But tile wasn't purely a decorative item. The Victorian era also gave rise to an increased focus on sanitation.  Tile was used in kitchens and bathrooms (after those were invented), and eventually in other public spaces, like subway stations, because it is durable and easy to maintain and very easy to keep clean. The glaze prevents water and goo from soaking in, and you can just spray or wipe it down without damaging it.

I have no idea what my kitchen originally looked like (it was completely redone sometime around 2000), but it could very well have looked like one of the kitchens in this interesting Flikr album featuring kitchens with tiled walls and counters.  One of my neighbors has a blue and yellow tiled counter top like the ones pictured here, and the bathroom in my old 1930s-vintage apartment just around the corner from my house had rather startling red and yellow tiling that took me a while to get used to.

At any rate, when my kitchen was redone, wall tile was included above the counters and behind the stove.  It's mostly plain white square tile, but a few special tiles were thrown in showing printed "vintage" Redlands citrus grower logos and advertisements.  It looks like you can order them from Zazzle, and perhaps they're available from local tile sellers, too.

Unfinished border along the top of the tile section behind the stove

When I bought my house, there was a built-in combination microwave/stove vent fan in the kitchen over the stove.  Since it neither microwaved nor vented effectively, I replaced it with a real vent fan.  When the old microwave was there, you couldn't see the top of the tiled area behind the stove because it was covered up by the microwave.  However, the stove vent fan doesn't come down as low, so you could see the place where the tile stopped.  Although I cleaned up the wall area nicely before installing the fan and gave it a fresh coat of paint, the tile was never neatly trimmed.  So, I decided to finish up the edge with some nice-looking quarter-round tile that matches the quarter-round in other parts of the kitchen.

New quarter-round tiles finish off the border

This project actually went very smoothly and quickly.  I didn't even have to cut the tile or align it because it fit perfectly.  Also, I lucked out at Home Depot and found a little bucket of combination adhesive/grout that was really easy to apply and easy to clean up.  I stuck the tiles to the wall, waited a day until it was set, and then filled in the cracks with the same stuff.  Easy-peasy, no problem.  Then I had to paint the edge of the wall to finish it off.  It looks nice.  It looks like it's always been that way.

However, I learned that I don't enjoy working with tiles.  I kind of hate grouting.  Aside from filling a little hole in the corner of the bathroom floor with grout (which doesn't count), I don't think I've grouted anything since an art class I went to when I was about 11 years old in which we decorated flower pots with pottery shards and lots of grout.  Incidentally, that wasn't an art class I enjoyed very much.  Remind me not to ever tile an entire wall in a kitchen or bathroom by myself.  Blech!  Also, remind me not to ever become a mosaic artist.

Everything but the kitchen sink

Old Dumb faucet with a very short reach

Actually, this post is about the kitchen faucet.

I replaced my kitchen faucet, and I learned some useful things in the process.

My kitchen was redone very nicely sometime around 2000.  Unfortunately, the faucet was problematic for two main reasons.  First, it was leaking.  It wasn't dripping when it was turned off, but when it was on, water would dribble out around the swivel joint that allowed you to turn the faucet from side to side.  I could presumably have fixed this leak with a replacement part, but the second problem made me disinclined to bother.  My kitchen sink is quite large, and the faucet was too small for it.  I always had to lean way over the sink to wash my hands or do the dishes, which is ergonomically terrible.  Also, the water inevitably splashed all over the counter behind the sink and made mess.  So, I decided that I really wanted to replace the faucet entirely.

Faucets can be made with a few different types of internal mechanisms for controlling the flow of water, including compression washer, ball, cartridge, and disc.  If you are interested in the details of these and how they work, this overview from about.com explains it nicely.  Based on the information I found there and elsewhere, I decided I wanted a disc faucet because they last forever with little maintenance.  It turns out that most of the "good" faucets being sold these days are this type anyway (Faucet.com's catalog has over 2000 ceramic disc faucets and less than 400 of all other types combined).

Spout "reach" is the technical term in faucet-speak describing how far the faucet extends horizontally from the base out over the sink.  My old faucet's reach was no more than 6 inches, and after measuring my sink, I decided I wanted one with a reach of 11 or 12 inches for maximum practicality and comfort.  Faucet.com very conveniently lets you filter their large catalog by spout reach.  That narrowed the field considerably, as there aren't too many on the market with such a long reach.

I was astounded at the prices for faucets.  These seemingly simple mechanical items cost $400-$1400!  Whew!  After looking at the prices, I procrastinated for months, until one day I sat down and figured out the secret.  Kitchen faucets designed for the "home" market are horrendously expensive, but "commercial" faucets, which are basically the same thing, are drastically cheaper.  The "home" faucets are made to look pretty or fancy or frou-frou, and you pay a huge premium for aesthetic design that doesn't contribute to the functioning of the faucet.  I wasn't particularly enamored with the aesthetics of any of the "home" faucets I saw anyway; I wanted something simple that would fit the Craftsman style of my house and without any of the bells and whistles that would be likely to break or leak.

The Moen 8717 with a 12-inch reach was exactly what I wanted, and at 1/3 the price of the typical "home" faucets of seemingly similar quality, it was a no-brainer.  It's simple, elegant, and high quality.  I also purchased the optional spray hose to make sink cleaning easier, a feature my old faucet did not have.

Then came the next step in the learning process: installation.  I watched a couple of YouTube videos (a seriously useful tool for all sorts of home projects) and determined that I could easily do this myself.  Well...now that I've done it once, I can confidently say it will be easy if I ever do it again.  It really wasn't difficult, but I had a few hiccups.

Taking the old faucet out was easy.  Nothing was rusted shut, thankfully, and once I figured out how to use a hand mirror and a lamp so I could see the bolts behind the sink basin, it came right out.

Hard water scum

Then came trying to clean up all the mineral scum on the counter top.  We have pretty hard water here, and because of the dribbling old faucet and all the splashing, the area around the faucet stem was full of scum.  I bought some granite cleaner and resealer, but that did absolutely nothing.  I resorted to scraping it off with a razor blade.  This brute-force approach was much more effective.  I finished it off with the granite resealer just in case it actually did do something.

New Moen "commercial" faucet with 12-inch reach and a spray hose

Then came the installation of the new faucet.  The new faucet didn't come with any kind of seal for where it joins the counter, to keep water from leaching under it and dribbling down the hole into the cabinet below.  Some internet research informed me that plumber's putty was used for this purpose, so I went off to Home Depot to get some.  I arrived at home depot at 9:10pm, only to discover that Home Depot closes at 9pm in the winter.  Seriously!?  Oops.  Note: Don't start a house project on a weeknight.  I took the next morning off work, got my plumber's putty, and put in the faucet.  It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that the mysterious long plastic tube thingy that came in the faucet package was actually a socket wrench of the correct size for tightening the bolts.  It's very difficult to lie on your back in a kitchen cabinet and tighten a bolt a quarter inch at a time with an adjustable wrench...  The new spray hose was the only thing that went in easily.  My counter top used to have a built-in soap dispenser, but it was broken, so I took it out and used the hole for the spray hose.

But once I got it in, it worked perfectly!  I've been very happy with it so far, and my arms and back will no doubt thank me in the long run for not having to lean way over to wash dishes.

Weather-sealing weird old-fashioned casement windows

I'm a tree hugger of the practical, utilitarian variety.  I like to conserve energy, and by far the biggest energy sucker in my house is the windows.  I've finally done something about it.  This post is all about how to weather-seal weird old-fashioned casement windows.

A view out my living room window

There are a lot of different kinds of windows!  Double-hung sash windows (with a top and bottom part which can be slid up and down within the frame) are common in the US.  My kitchen and bathroom have double-hung sash windows which I'll write about another time.  The two ad-ons on the back of my house have newer (rather shoddy) sideways sliding horizontal sash windows, and the kitchen has two newer tall fixed windows that go into the laundry room (kind of odd).  However, the vast majority of my house's windows, however, are inward-swinging casement windows.  They're quite elegant and reasonably easy to open and shut.  The main disadvantage is that if you plan to open them often (which I do), you can't place any furniture within a few feet of the windows, which makes furniture placement rather awkward.

Elegant craftsman-style casement windows on the front of the house. Copyright 2013 by Andrew Morang

Gaps along the sides of my windows

Because they're nearly 100 years old, my windows have had plenty of time to settle and be rejiggered during earthquakes.  They've also been painted at least 8 times.  Consequently, the gaps around the windows are uneven, very tight in some places, and very large in others.  This makes weather sealing difficult.

Some weather stripping and sealing products are designed to fit inside the gap and cracks.  This class of products wouldn't work well on my windows because of the unevenness of the gaps.  Someone in the past tried to put stick-on foam weather stripping on one of the living room windows, but by the time I bought the house, it was a sticky, oozy, squishy mess that actually prevented the window from shutting and latching all the way.  Additionally, most of the stick-on foam or vinyl products I found tend to be short-term solutions that have to be replaced often.  Finally, because the windows swing inward, they rub the frames sideways, and if you put weather stripping on the sides of the frame, the window will rub it sideways and tear it off rather than gently compressing it the way it's supposed to.

Compressible bulb weather seal.
Diagram from the McMaster-Carr catalog

In short, I had to start thinking about my windows like doors.  Enter the compressible bulb seal!  The diagram below from the McMaster-Carr catalog illustrates how it works.  When the window shuts, it hits the rubber bulb and gently compresses it, forming a nice seal outside the crack, even when the window surface is a bit uneven.  The bulb seals the crack from the outside, without having to fit in between the frame and the window.

I looked into a few different options for compressible bulb seal weather stripping.  I first tried some cheap stuff from Home Depot that had to be nailed, stapled, or glued on.  Nails didn't work at all because the stuff bunched up and left gaps.  I tried glue, but it was too hard to get it to set in the right place for a good seal.  Plus, glue means it sticks to the paint and not the actual window frame, and it comes off as soon as the paint starts chipping.

Finally, I decided to go with the product pictured above from industrial parts supplier McMaster-Carr (Frame-Mount Weatherstripping, Black Silicone Compressible-Bulb Seal, product number 1114A3, in case you want to buy some).  At $2/foot, it was a lot more expensive than most of the weather sealing products out there, but I decided it was worth it.  You get what you pay for.  The seal comes in a nice aluminum flange that you can screw into the window frames.  The flange compresses the edge of the bulb seal to the frame of the window, so air can't get around the fixed side of the bulb.  Also, because they're screw-mounted, they're easy to take off and put back on if you want to refinish your windows (something I know I'll have to do in a few years, which will be an ordeal because they have lead paint on them).  The catalog claims the silicone bulb is heat and UV resistant, which is important in this harsh climate.  And, if it starts to go bad, McMaster-Carr sells replacement seals.

Unfortunately, because it's designed mainly for doors, the stuff is sold in lengths that weren't optimal for my windows, so I had to buy extra and cut it down, which further added to the cost. Also, while I really like McMaster-Carr's catalog and customer service, their shipping is exorbitant.  I called to get a shipping estimate, and they said $15, so I decided it wasn't worth the hour drive to pick it up at the warehouse in LA.  However, they shipped it to me in three packages, each of which was $15.  Sheesh!  Note to self: always pick up McMaster-Carr orders at the warehouse in person.

I cut the aluminum flanges to the correct lengths using my handy little jigsaw, a tiring procedure which used up three saw blades and made my hand and arm very tired.  After that, I installed it in the window frames.  It took me about 45 minutes per window.  As of this writing, I've done 7 windows and the front door, and I have 6 more windows to go.  I'm just waiting for cooler weather.  I have discovered that I'm very bad at using a drill with my left hand.  I sheered off one of my drill bits while trying to drill a pilot hole.  It will probably remain stuck in the window frame forever, fodder for some future house archaeologist's blog posts.

Old sticky oozy squishy gluey painted-over weather stripping

Speaking of house archaeology and sticky, oozy, squishy messes, I have one window that's pretty well stuck shut.  To get it open, you have to yank a little from the inside and then bang on it from the outside.  Upon examining it more closely, I realized that it is actually already weather-sealed with and compressible bulb seal that was subsequently painted over very thoroughly.  In fact, this is why the windows ticks.  When the previous owner painted, she first painted over the weather stripping.  Then, when she painted the window itself, she didn't wait long enough for the paint to dry before closing it, and the rubbery weather sealing bulb and the latex paint all got glued together.  I can't wait to try to get that off.  I'm saving that window for last.

Public service announcement: Don't paint over your weather seal.  Or your window hardware.  Or your outlet covers, doorknobs, or anything else.  Screwdrivers and painter's tape are your friends.

In case you're attempting a project like this yourself, here's the technique I came up with for actually installing the weather stripping:

1. With the windows closed, approach the window from the outside and place the top piece where you want it, mark the center hole, and trace the edge.  You don't need to compress the bulb too tightly, but it should be snug against the surface of the window.
2. Line up the side pieces and trace the edges, but don’t mark any holes yet
3. Go back inside.  Drill the center pilot hole for the top piece using the mark you made and then place the weather strip and screw it in loosely.
4. Now that the top piece is in place, you can line it up just right and drill the pilot holes for the other holes in the flange, and screw it in.  Sometimes you have to hang onto it pretty tight to avoid slippage when the screw heads hit the flange.
5. With the top in place, line up each side piece and mark the location of the top-most hole.  Take them down and drill the pilot holes for the top holes, and then screw them in using the top hole only, leaving them a bit loose.
6. Now that the side strips are hanging loosely in the frames, drill the rest of the pilot holes, and then add the screws, making sure the strip remains aligned where you marked it.
7. Try opening and shutting the window.  Make sure it’s not too tight to shut, and go outside and look to make sure you haven’t left a large gap anywhere.  It’s quite adjustable, and you will probably have to adjust it. You can loosen one or two screws at a time and rejigger it as necessary.
8. If you're doing a piece along the bottom, do that now.  I couldn't do the bottoms of my windows because the geometry is different.  That's a project for another day.

Stridulatorio: A non-staged operatic work performed by crickets

A cool breeze floats through my open windows, and the last remnants of the day's sunlight are just visible as I sit down in my living room to enjoy some peaceful reading.  Chirping crickets outside make a gentle drone.  Then, suddenly, a violent, ear-piercing stridulation disrupts my peaceful evening.  Crickets are LOUD when they're in your house.  Yes, in the house.  I seem to have a cricket problem.

"Stridulation" is the technical term for cricket chirping.  The term describes a sound produced by rubbing body parts together.  In the case of crickets, it's by rubbing their wings together.  Male crickets stridulate in order to attract females and scare away other males.  They stridulate during mating, and after mating.  Basically, they stridulate all the time.

An oratorio is a piece of music featuring operatic singing and a chorus but, unlike an opera, performed without staging.  You're probably familiar with Handel's Messiah, which is an oratorio.  It's about two-and-a-half hours long and alternates between the orchestra, the chorus, and recitatives by the soloists.  Oratorios were often performed during Lent when normal theatrical productions were prohibited, and they tend to be religious in subject matter rather than about mythology or romance like operas.

Watch a few minutes of Handel's Messiah, and then imagine the choir as a bunch of stridulating crickets.  Now imagine that they're singing about their girlfriends instead of Jesus.  Imagine that they do this every night, all night.  What do you get?  A stridulatorio!

My house was full of crickets last fall and winter.  I think they liked it because it was warm inside.  They always seemed to be in the laundry room, hanging out under the hot water heater.  They would be stridulating with gusto, but as soon as I approached, they would all go silent.  As a friend of mine remarked, "It's like when you're singing in the shower and you hear your roommate come into the house, so you stop."   I can just picture the guilty-faced little buggers pretending like nothing had happened.  "Singing?  What singing?  I have no idea what you're talking about.  I wasn't singing. <smirk, smirk, I was stridulating The Messiah, except it was about my girlfriend>".

Although the choir of this cricket stridulatorio sings in the yard, often one of the soloists would venture out into the kitchen.  Whenever I saw one, I would scoop it up in a can I kept on the countertop for this purpose and throw it outside.  I felt bad smooshing them because they're harmless.  But I can't say I'm too sympathetic.  One evening, while I was talking to my aunt and uncle on the phone, I watched a spider snare a cricket in its web in the corner of the kitchen and proceed to disembowel it.  It was actually pretty cool.  Another time, I came home from work to find that a cricket had been disemboweled on my bed.  There were legs everywhere and a spot of cricket gut juice on the sheet.

I've been sealing up cracks and holes in the house ever since I moved in, both in the interest of energy efficiency and also in an attempt to keep the crickets out.  After I noticed crickets lurking around the fireplace in my living room, I discovered a large gap between the river rock facade and the bottom side of the mantle piece.  I filled that up with my dad's favorite expanding foam and touched up the remaining holes with caulk.  It expanded a little out of control, so I had to cut it back down with a utility knife.  It still looks a bit odd, but you can't see it unless you're sitting down or you're really short.  Nevertheless, despite sealing up all the cracks, there are still crickets in my house, stridulating their little hearts out...

Ding-Dong, the Tree of Heaven is dead!

Did you know that you can treat mental illness with a mixture made from the roots of a Tree of Heaven, douchi (fermented and salted soybean), and young boy's urine?  At least, that's what somebody thought in 723 AD in China.  I wonder how they came up with that recipe.

Tree of heaven with big sapling clump in front of it

Until recently, my backyard suffered the misfortune of being home to a Tree of Heaven.  The Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima) is an aggressively invasive fast-growing weed tree native to China.  They're widespread across the world these days because, unfortunately, European and American gardeners planted them in order to invoke a sense of Asian-ness whenever Chinese culture was vogue.

Trees of Heaven grow extremely quickly, generally taking over recently-disturbed areas by choking out native plants.  The roots give off chemicals in the soil that prevent other plants from growing. It can grow in a range of climatic conditions, in all types of soil (including concrete rubble), and in the presence of all sorts of noxious pollutants.  In Southern California, grows very happily in full sunlight with no water.  If you cut it or disturb it, it responds by growing back even stronger.  Female Trees of Heaven reproduce copiously by seed in addition to suckers spawned from the mother tree's roots.  Male trees produce root suckers as well, and also give off a foul odor.  Female trees don't stink, but they do smell kind of peanuty.  If you've read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the featured tree is a Tree of Heaven.

My backyard was being completely taken over by Tree of Heaven.  Saplings were sprouting up everywhere, and I couldn't keep them under control.  I'm still hoping to landscape my yard into a wonderland of droubt-tolerant shrubbery one day, but I could see that there was no point in even trying while the Tree of Heaven was there.  So, as much as I hate to cut down a healthy tree, I decided I had to try to eradicate it.

Free of the Tree of Heaven - for now...

How does one get rid of a Tree of Heaven, since it's so indestructible?  The US Forest Service provides a management field guide, which gave me some ideas, but I really wanted to find a local tree-cutting service that knew about Trees of Heaven specifically.  I talked to several tree services, and I was generally unimpressed by their knowledge of tree species.  I got quotes from three different services.  I ended up going with the one that was most expensive but with the proprietor who seemed to actually know something about the biology of Trees of Heaven.  In hindsight, I probably could have gone with the cheapest one, since they were all offering to do basically the same things.  However, the more expensive guy also struck me as much less sleazy than the cheap guy, who probably used unlicensed and uninsured laborers.  He also seemed like he would be really thorough, and he was.

The tree guy and his crew came out one morning, and within a few hours, the Tree of Heaven was gone completely.  They ground up the stump and all the saplings and left the yard very neat.  They did grind through one of the sprinkler pipes, but they were nice enough to tell me about it.  There are several old sprinkler systems in the backyard, none of which work, so it didn't matter.

The yard looks soooooo much better with the tree gone.  It's much cleaner and neater, and I know I made the right decision to have it removed.

Growing inside the garage

The tree guy warned me that the tree would no doubt come back, so I will have to keep on top of them and eradicate them before they get well established.  Consequently, all future saplings are on a strict Roundup diet until there are no more.  Unfortunately, there are incursions of this annoying plant in both of my nextdoor neighbors' yards, so unless those are kept under control, too, we'll continue having this problem.  In the weeks since the tree was cut, I've found a few scattered incursions, but Roundup kills them in a matter of hours.  I sort of hate to use the stuff, but in this case, I think it's warranted.  Yesterday, I found a sapling growing inside my garage out of a crack in the wall.

Maybe it's a good thing that nature can furnish such an indestructible plant species.  After we've screwed up the world due to climate change or nuclear holocaust or something, there will still be something nice and green and leafy to put things back into balance.  Won't that be a paradise!  The roaches and the Trees of Heaven, partying on after the apocalypse!

Vanity Wars

I have just [nearly] concluded a war with my bathroom vanity.

Wait a sec, what is a "vanity" anyway?  A sink built into a counter and cabinet unit in a bathroom is apparently called a vanity these days.  My family never called it this when I was growing up, but, then again, our bathroom sinks were freestanding, so maybe we never had occasion to refer to a vanity.  I generally referred to this item as the "bathroom sink countertop/cabinet thingie" until I picked up the word vanity from various home improvement store employees.

The "vanity"

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest uses of the word vanity to describe a dressing table were in the 1930s.  This use of the word no doubt derived from more conventional use of the word (placing importance on matters of one's own personal appearance and beautification).  Prior to this (and perhaps concurrently), a dressing table containing drawers and used for the application of makeup and accessories was called a "lowboy".  This went along with a "highboy", which was a taller set of drawers for storing clothes, like a dresser or bureau or chest of drawers, which are all terms describing essentially the same thing.  Just to confuse matters, the word lowboy is also a name for a semi truck trailer that is low to the ground between the two axles so you can carry taller loads.  A semi truck is also called an 18-wheeler or a big rig.  I don't know when the word vanity was first used to specifically describe the bathroom dressing table with a built-in sink.  It would not surprise me at all if this use of the word was popularized by home improvement stores' marketing departments.

As I said, though, I have just [nearly] concluded a war with my bathroom vanity.  My bathroom was completely refinished sometime fairly recently.  The shower and floor are beautifully tiled, and all the fixtures are modern.  The walls look kind of rough, as if lots of holes have been patched with varying amounts of care over the years.  But, overall, it's a very nice bathroom for such an old house.  Except for the stupid vanity.

Hole in the wall under the vanity

Whoever installed the vanity, I think, intended for the side of it to be flush with the wall.  They cut the baseboard off the wall, or else it was already gone from some previous vanity, leaving a long hole in the wall where the baseboard used to be.  Unfortunately, the installer neglected to account for the fact that the stone counter on top of the vanity hung over the edge by an inch or two, which means that the side of the cabinet can't be flush with the wall.  The installer just left the large hole in the wall instead of patching it and installed the vanity right next to it.  When the weather started getting cold last winter, I would stand there brushing my teeth and feel sudden cold drafts of air on my toes.  All the cold air was rushing up from under the house and blowing through the hole into the bathroom.  Brrr!

I wasn't sure what I wanted to do about the hole, so I just taped a bunch of plastic over it for the remainder of the winter.  My vanity and I entered a stalemate while I planned the best course of action.  The way to really fix it would have been to remove the entire vanity and patch the wall correctly, but that would have been a huge job that probably wasn't worth the time and energy it would take.  My dad is a big proponent of expanding foam, so when he visited in April, he just broke out a can and squirted it all into the hole and the big crack between the edge of the vanity and the wall.  Right next to the hole, the floor tile didn't reach all the way to the wall, as if it had been cut specifically to accommodate the leg of some previous vanity unit (which is weird because I would have thought that this vanity and the floor tile were put in at the same time).  I got some floor grout and just filled up this empty spot with grout.

Patched hole

The foam and grout helped a lot, but the visible part of the wall hole wasn't completely sealed, and it was still bothering me.  After neglecting this battle for a while longer, I finally mixed up some more of my favorite wall plaster and plastered over the hole.  This was followed by priming and painting the hole to match the wall color.  The hole still looks a little weird, but at least it's sealed now, and it doesn't really show unless you're crawling around on the floor.

Part of my frustration with this project is that crawling around on the floor in the bathroom is really hard.  It's a small bathroom, and it's hard to reach back into that corner.  The front of the toilet is very close to the vanity.  I waged a violent battle with the vanity drawer trying to take it out so I could reach the corner.  The drawer is meant to come all the way out, but it runs into the toilet before it really comes out far enough.  You have to get a little creative and engage in advanced geometric maneuvers before you can finally remove it completely.  Getting it back in requires a similar battle.

The toilet is very close to the vanity

Speaking of toilets, whoever installed the toilet put it in with a 5-6in gap between the tank and the wall, which seems kind of dumb given the general lack of space in the bathroom.  Actually, they probably did it this way so that they didn't have to move the piping in the floor.  They just connected the new toilet where the old one had been connected.  As to why they chose such a long toilet, I have no idea.  They could have at least gotten a shorter-bowled toilet so that tall toilet-sitters wouldn't bump their knees into the vanity or have to sit sideways.

Speaking again of toilets, the word toilet was also used at some point to describe a dressing table, but it was also used to describe the act of grooming or dressing. If you read Victorian literature, you'll see references to someone performing his or her toilet.  Today, it's sometimes used to refer to the whole room containing a toilet, which is also referred to as a restroom, bathroom, lavatory, lav, water closet, powder room, head, john, loo, necessary, and probably many other things.  The word toilet derives from the french toile, which means cloth, which originally described either the cloth on the dressing table or the cloth worn to cover the shoulders while the wearer's hair was being dressed.

A lady wearing a commode. From www.fashion-era.com

When I was growing up in Mississippi, sometimes older Southern ladies would refer to a toilet as the "commode".  "Do you need to use the commode?"  "Don't forget to flush the commode."  Like vanity, this was another word we didn't use at home, but I learned in preschool or kindergarten that it meant toilet.  The Oxford English Dictionary says that commode used to refer to an elaborate chest of drawers, and also a small piece of furniture in which the chamber pot was kept, which must be how the word transferred from the furniture to the actual thing you do your business in.  In case you weren't confused enough already, the OED also gives the meaning of the word commode as "A tall head-dress fashionable with women in the last third of the 17th and first third of the 18th centuries, consisting of a wire frame-work variously covered with silk or lace; sometimes with streaming lappets which hung over the shoulders."  In case you didn't know (I didn't), a lappet is a cloth flap that hangs off a headdress over the shoulders (which perhaps you could call a toile if you wanted to).  In the UK, commode is apparently used to describe a wheeled chamber pot used in hospitals by patients with limited mobility.  Interestingly, the OED does not list a common flush toilet as among the meanings of the word commode.  Clearly the OED writers need to pay a visit to Mississippi sometime soon.  The Wikipedia writers, on the other hand, have got it right and actually do mention this colloquial use.

Returning to the discussion of my vanity, I fought another geometric battle and got the lower drawer back in.  Above the lower drawer is what should be an upper drawer.  However, it's actually just another stupid false drawer front panel.  You can't put a real drawer here because the sink drain pipe goes into the wall right where you would have to anchor the drawer runner.  I took out the false drawer front panel when my dad did the expanding foam, but I couldn't put it back using the same hardware because I couldn't reach the screws properly.  So, I ordered some more of those plastic clips I used on the one in the kitchen.  I measured wrong the first time, and it came out lopsided, so I had to take it out and redo it.  I really hate those things.

I thought I was finished with my vanity war after patching the hole and replacing the drawer and panel, but last week, when I was sitting on the commode, I heard a suspicious drip, drip, drip...  I opened the vanity cabinet, and some water I had splashed onto the counter top was oozing under the sink and dripping into the cabinet.  Yay!  Luckily, this is an easy problem to deal with.  I just needed to re-caulk the sink.

Old, yucky caulk that needed redoing

I scraped out the old icky caulk with a razor blade.  I cleaned out some gross goo that was growing in the gap using vinegar and a toothbrush, and then I wiped it all down with rubbing alcohol to make sure the surface was perfectly clean.  I squirted fresh caulk into the crack between the sink and the counter and cleaned it up with my finger and a rag following the method shown in this video.  It came out very neat and was not difficult at all.  I also re-caulked the crack along the back of the counter top where it joins the backsplash.

Broken handle and new handle with the wrong-sized fitting

Right before I bought my house, the previous owner dropped something onto the porcelain faucet handle and broke off one of the four spokes.  She felt really bad about it, since she was about to close on the sale of the house, so she very kindly purchased a replacement handle on ebay, but she didn't have time to install it.  She left it in the house for me.  I had never gotten around to installing the new one (the old one still functioned), but since I was working on the sink, I decided I would finally do it.  I disassembled the handle, but unfortunately, although the new one looked identical, the hardware attaching it to the faucet wasn't the same size, so it didn't work after all.  Luckily, though, I found a little tag inside the faucet with the manufacturer's name and the part number.  I will call them next week and find out if they can send me a replacement part.  The tag also had a date of manufacture on it saying October 2005, which gives me some idea of when the bathroom was redone.

So as you can see, my vanity war isn't completely won, but I've almost prevailed.  We're under a ceasefire until I can consult with the faucet manufacturer.  Unfortunately, I've recently received intelligence that my bathtub has joined forces with the vanity and is demanding a re-caulking of its own.  Ah well, a project for another day.

Update, 12 July 2014:
I called Pfister Faucet, and they were super nice and helpful regarding the broken faucet handle.  The lady looked up the model number and found all the parts for it.  The porcelain handles are still manufactured.  Although the faucet’s warranty is good only for the original owner of the faucet (not me), she said they could make an exception and send me a new handle anyway at no charge.  In fact, she said she would send me two.  It’s a good thing she did because although the fittings are the correct size, the handles themselves aren't actually the same size as the old one.  You wouldn’t be able to tell unless you had them side by side (which, of course, on a faucet, they would be), but the new one is a bit larger and bulkier.  I actually like the smaller, more delicate older ones, but oh well.  So, I ended up replacing both handles.  I'll keep the old ones just in case.  Anyway, Pfister Faucet gets an A+ for excellent customer service.

Another one of THOSE projects...

Before: Ineffective microwave

My kitchen had an old built-in over-the-stove microwave/vent fan unit that turned out to be rather ineffective at both of these things.  It neither cooked things efficiently nor vented heat and smells from the stove very well.  After multiple days of heroic effort, my dad and I managed to get rid of the old microwave and install a new Broan APE 130 range hood vent fan in its place.

Broan has long been a top manufacturer of range hoods.  My parents have had the same one in their house for nearly 30 years.  I researched several of their models and ultimately picked this one because it got good reviews from customers, had manual controls instead of digital, and had an Energy STAR rating.  I was originally considering one of their QS or QP models, but they got pretty bad reviews from customers, who complained about shoddy construction and endless trouble with the digital controls.  Apparently the controls go bad and the clocks don't keep time well (which doesn't surprise me, as my little countertop microwave loses about 3 minutes every month).  Really, though, the last thing I need in my kitchen is another overly-bright digital display, and who needs digital fan controls anyway?  The model I got wasn't one of their quietest ones, but it seemed like the number of sones shown on the product specs was only for the lowest speed setting of the fan, and the lowest setting for this fan is higher than the quieter fans, so it's sort of misleading.  The fan isn't super quiet, but it's not too bad, and it's certainly much quieter than my parents' 30-year-old fan.  I think I might be able to quiet it down further by putting some kind of sound-dampening material on the ducting that connects it to the chimney.  A lot of the noise is actually the air hitting the ducting and not the fan motor itself.

Grease, holes, and mustard yelllow

This project went the way of most other home improvement projects, in that it took about 5 times as long as we expected and produced a multitude of intermediate steps that had to be completed before we could actually install the thing.  Yep, one of THOSE projects...  First, it took us a while to figure out how to remove the microwave.  Apparently there was a release catch we didn't notice that was supposed to unhook it from the wall-mounting bracket.  Instead, after a lot of yanking, it just sort of bent the bracket until it released by brute force.  Then, a bunch of wall plaster rained down on us.  For some reason, the cabinet above the microwave wasn't installed flush with the wall.  When the electricians rewired the house, they cut a hole in the wall, and the plaster fell into the gap and was sitting on top of the microwave.  Next, we removed the microwave mounting bracket.  It had been rather crudely screwed into the wall and took a lot of work to unscrew.

After cleaning, spackling, priming, and two coats of yellow

Then, of course, there were a bunch of holes in the wall, just like there are every time I do anything in my house.  After cleaning years of grease off the wall (the top half was mustard yellow and the bottom half white), I spackled the holes.  I primed the surface (the shellac-based primer is great for preventing grease from soaking into the wall and covering up old grease) and then painted it the same yellow as the rest of the kitchen.  The tile backsplash looks a little funny because it stops partway up the wall (the wall used to be covered my the microwave), but it will look better after I add some edging tiles to finish it off.

After: New Broan fan installed

Then we set about installing the new fan.  The fan hooks up to some ducting which vents it into the chimney, and the ducting runs through the cabinet above the stove.  Unfortunately, the hole in the bottom of the cabinet wasn't quite large enough, so I had to expand the hole with my jigsaw a couple of times until we had it right.  More mess everywhere.  After a bit more jiggering, we bolted the fan in place and got it hooked up.

Finally, we had to attach the ducting to the chimney.  When I first moved in, the ducting connecting the microwave's vent to the chimney was a sorry piece of dryer vent piping that someone had halfheartedly mashed in there.  Most of the air from the vent was venting into the cabinet itself instead of the chimney.  On a previous visit, my dad had spent several hours meticulously cutting some real ducting to size to connect it properly to the chimney.  Unfortunately, the new vent fan was a slightly different size and position, so he had to repeat this exercise.  Home Depot of course didn't have the size he needed, but he was able to get some from Burgeson's Heating and Air Conditioning, a local HVAC company with a very helpful staff.

The fact that my house has a chimney in that position tells me that there must have always been a stove or perhaps a water heater in this corner.  A capped off section goes through the wall to the back into what is now my bedroom.  Maybe there was a gas wall heater there.  The shaft also goes all the way down through the floor, as if it were meant to vent something under the house.  Perhaps this is the vent for the old floor furnace in the living room, which isn't too far away.  I need to go spelunking in the crawl space sometime; maybe that will give me some more clues.  Wikipedia seems to have a dearth of information on chimney and water heater history, but it does say that Europeans didn't start using chimneys until the 12th century.  Before that, peoples' houses were just full of smoke all the time.