Thursday, November 2, 2017

Home Depot is Starting to Know Me by Name.....

Been pretty busy at the new place the last couple of days. HALF the light bulbs in the house were either dead or missing, and the other half had the wrong (too low) wattage installed, making them more of an "electric DARK" than a useful source of illumination.

SO, approx $400 later, every single bulb in the house, exterior lights included, is now an LED type of the appropriate wattage. A couple of the old ones were compact fluorescent (CFL) types, and they generated enough radio noise to pick up on the FM band of my wife's clock radio.

I shudder to think how much noise they put out on the HF (3~30MHz) radio band.

Add another ~$300 for all new, keyed alike locksets/doorknobs/dead bolts, and another couple of hundred for "misc items", like cleaning supplies, faucet washers, cabinet hinges, braided hoses for the new washer, and other items, and it adds up pretty quickly!

But we have all new light sources, some of which were sorely needed, new doorknobs/locks, and non-leaking faucets!

And I have to troubleshoot the in-sink-erator as it's dead as a door nail, even though the Home Inspection guy checked it, and said it was "functional". So I either haven't found the right switch, the breaker on the bottom tripped, or it gave up the ghost. I *did* get the trash compactor running again, simply by turning it "ON" with the switch inside of it. I don't know if you can even buy the special bags for it anymore, so it might wind up just being a relic of the late 1970's.

U-Haul is dropping off the "pods" containing the bulk of our stuff tomorrow (YAY! I'll have my TOOLS!), and the fence guy is coming to get started on the fence. Haven't heard back from the tree guy yet, The tree guy is coming Saturday, so the fence guy and I will guarantee he has a 12' wide opening to get his truck in there, and the roofing people are dropping off the materials on the 10th.

The tree guy can't get his truck in through the existing gate, so our fence guy is going to rebuild the single gate (it's rotted out and falling apart, so it needs replacing anyway) into a double gate big enough to get a 12' wide truck through. Seeing as the only thing *I'd* ever use the gate for would "Big Stuff" like tree trimming and tower/antenna work, the consequences (to me, anyway....) of a big, heavy, double gate are minor.

Posting may be light, as we'll be pretty busy through the weekend!

17 comments:

  1. Happy for you that it is coming together.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Glad to hear you are on your way to making it your home.
    FYI: I have an older trash compactor and the compactor bags from Costco fit and are cheaper than ordering from the compactor maker.
    Really going to miss the Insinkerator hot water dispenser when I leave here.

    ReplyDelete
  3. What WSF said. You all have a blessed weekend. Hope all goes well.

    ReplyDelete
  4. That's a lot of light bulbs man.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I know whereof you speak. You guys are moving forward quickly. The local lumber yard in Bandera, Texas knows me by name, really. While CFLs have been known to be problematic with respect to RFI, I have seen some reports that LED bulbs can be just about as bad.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Would that be Havenor? Out on 16?
      Jim, your skill set is very admirable. I doubt if there is anything you cannot do. Good luck!
      X

      Delete
  6. Let's see... $400 in LEDs, $300 in miscellaneous supplies. $700 sounds like a good start.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And I still haven't relamped the hallway lights yet!

      Delete
  7. This sounds very familiar ... we visited Lowe's every weekend, sometimes twice a weekend, for the first couple of months. Seems like it cost $500 every time we walked in their door. Good luck!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I used to have a joke with a guy I worked with at Hughes.

      Everything you did to your house started at $1000 and went up from there!

      Delete
  8. What are you doing in your spare time?

    ReplyDelete
  9. I expect you will be toiling for some time, getting everything up to speed, and your own way. But you sure do seem happier now that you are out of the PDRK. You are one of the few who actually made your escape!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, probably take six months to get things squared away.

      Met our next door neighbor, and he's a Ham, who's interested in satellites!

      Delete
    2. What a great surprise and a small world. :)
      Hubby used to install the old ten or twelve foot satellite dishes; but his interest in satellites stopped there.

      Delete

Keep it civil, please....

Gloomy, Gritty, Grey Day

 At 1700 local it's as described in the headline; 30*F, 88% RH, completely overcast, snowing like crazy (small flakes, but lots of them)...