Scattered Thoughts . . .

W e've had a number of Leviton smart switches in our home for quite a long time and, until the past year, they worked flawlessly.  However, one by one, they started failing or burning out about a year ago.  This wouldn't be so bad if we were still able to use them manually but that wasn't the case for us.   The switches failed completely. Having smart switches has always been a major first-world convenience for us especially when we travel.  No matter where we are located, we can still control our lights.  Actually, our thermostat and cameras are also able to be controlled no matter where we might be visiting.  This is a tremendous plus as far as we're concerned and especially when we travel in the winter when we must be sure our furnace is keeping the house above freezing. So, a significant number of our Leviton smart switches were broken and this morning I decided to replace four of these smart switches.  It should have been a very simple little project but it turned

Although I am not ready to start building my little railroad in our newly designated "train room", I am working on a plan whenever I feel up to it and I am envisioning it in my imagination. I also buy products as I find them on sale or, if previously used, at a great price. At this point, I have quite a collection of trains so much of my focus has turned to designing a layout plan for this small room. There are a few issues to overcome because the room is so small and, subsequently, some track would need to be lift out or portable but last night I found an unexpected problem with some of the track I plan to use for this model railroad layout. Some of the track will be handlaid simply because no commercial manufacturer makes what I need for my dual-gauge mainline track. So, I'll be gluing down wood ties... then actually spiking rail to the ties just like in the real world. For the remainder of the track which will run through villages and down by the docks, I will use

Today, I installed a new dimmer that has a remote which we can access while in bed... plus, this dimmer turns on the lighting smoothly and slowly... and smoothly and slowly when turning off. Today we backstepped to an old, unfinished project... our new bedroom. Health problems and inclement weather had caused a lot of delays. Health problems are simply a fact and seem to be more of a problem in recent months but I'm still getting little things accomplished whenever a good hour or two presents itself. Trying to get the weather to cooperate with my health is a crap-shoot though and this causes significant delays. Today's task in moving forward with this bedroom project, however, was to jockey things around the house in order to make a clean spot in this room. I had finished quite a bit of work already but the room was filled with tools and leftover construction materials. We needed to find a place(s) to put all this stuff. I had already demolished the old closet and bu

New beadboard ceiling... Yesterday's exceptionally bad luck was left behind and today ended up being a productive day! I decided to install the ceiling in the new half bath. I had already pre-finished the boards for this project because it is easier to stain and poly when the boards are on sawhorses rather than on the ceiling. Gravity works against you when staining anything above you so I was thinking ahead and pre-finished the ceiling. Today, I installed this ceiling and it is looking great! The hallway and laundry room adjacent to this bathroom both have wood ceilings. We really like the warmth of the wood ceilings and plan to continue installing wood ceilings as we renovate each part of the house.  I also added a bit more drywall today. I managed to salvage just one small piece of drywall from yesterday's catastrophe. This one piece allowed me to continue on with another project too... I had to install an electrical switch box that is deeper than this thinner-th

All the electrical works! Dimmer switch at left, fan delay timer at center, and GFCI outlet at right. I managed to get a little bit more accomplished on the half bath yesterday. That wore me out and I had some health issues later that night so I took another day off today for rest and recovery. Actually, I slept the entire day! I installed the subfloor as well as the underlayment. That was a fairly easy job. We now have another clean and level spot in the old house! Oh, and a solid spot!  Once I get a primer for the self-adhesive tiles, I can finish the flooring. I have a couple of extra boxes of the tile flooring that we had installed in the hallway that we plan to continue on into this new half bath.  A week or so ago, I had written that I installed all the wiring and tested all the fixtures and everything was fine... While everything worked fine (meaning I had wired everything correctly), I had a problem fitting these bulky electronic switches/timers/outlets into the parti

Plumbing for the washing machine and pedestal sink... Overall, things have been very quiet in the house for the past month as my health recovers from a painful dip which, at this point, has sapped most of my energy. I'm getting a bit bored and antsy laying around doing nothing but my energy level is still so low that it is impossible to accomplish a thing. On top of that, I spent a good portion of last night in the bathroom, sick, rather than sleeping... those are always fun times! (sarcasm) There have, however, been a few mornings during the past month when I felt that I had enough energy for an hour or so of work. On these few days I did manage to get a little bit accomplished on our bathroom project.   I needed to get a bit creative with all the plumbing to make it fit in this small space. In this first photo, at right, you can see some odd 45 degree angles to help make things fit. There was absolutely no room for sweeping elbows!  The waste line running up on the ri