Nope. That was at the motocross track about 38 miles from the house. We were taking the youngin to ride before going to lowes. It's only the third time I've done a bearing repair in a field somewhere because I didn't do a good pretrip inspection. I get lazy every 5 years or so and stop doing them, then it bites me in the ass. Fixed it with nothing but a flathead screwdriver and borrowed channel locks. Trailer is light enough I didn't even need a jack.
Last time that happened to me I was towing a race car in a 30’ covered trailer and lost the wheel/hub on one of the dual axles in the trailer. Luckily for me all I had to do was drop the back gate and fire up the generator, and I had full race jacks and pneumatics. And a full on spare hub assembly. The only thing that was sketchy was that it was on the driver’s side so we had to contend with traffic that was way too close for comfort, even after we pulled off as far as we could.
I dropped the trailer at the track gate and went bought a whole hub assembly. I didn't feel like banging out the bearing races out of the old hub with no other tools. Just slid the new, pre-greased, assembly on, tapped it till the inside bearing hit the edge of the spindle, install the outer bearing and tighten down and pin it. Those prepackaged assemblies are the shit. I bought just a bearing and seal set for the other side because I'm cheap and don't mind banging out races in my garage.
I kinda got lazy with the documenting towards the end, mostly skipping over the stuff that is in the installation manual, but here goes... Everything I mention in this post, as far as parts go, you will have to buy. Only thing the dishwasher comes with is a drain hose and brackets to attach it to the cabinet. If you need a dishwasher, look around your kitchen for a wider cabinet with seams on both sides of the door. That is a dishwasher space. If you don't have that space, you've got a larger job ahead of you than I just went through. Open it up and look inside, it is likely just a few screws to remove the filler cabinet. Remove all the crap so that you end up with a space like this. I was lucky enough to have my breaker panel just on the opposite side of the adjacent wall. I chose to put the dishwasher on its own breaker. Running the wire consisted of just cutting a small hole in the sheetrock, knocking out a plug in the breaker box and fishing the wire through. Then I strapped the wire to fiddles that the countertop was attached to and ran it over to under the sink. You may notice I used 10/3 wire instead of 12/2, or even 10/2. That is because it was the only wire available, Lowe's wire selection was shit that day. I cut the red wire way back in the shrouding so it shouldn't be mistaken for anything that should be used to make the line 240v. I used a snap-in plastic bit for chafe protection in the breaker box and typical clamping wire pass-throughs on the outlet box and dishwasher junction box. Wire the breaker, outlet and plug. I won't type how to wire anything as I don't want my words misunderstood and a reader put themselves in a dangerous situation. Learn how to add a breaker and how to connect it all from somewhere else, plenty of places will tell you how to do it.
I put the plug in a nice, easily accessible corner. Not real sure why I brought towards the front of the cabinet, probably something to do with getting older and not wanting reach way in the back for a the plug, if needed. This is where I get lazier in my picture taking. Hot water hook up, I used a Sharkbite. Drain, bought the kit, which I didn't photograph. The rest is really just in the installation manual. What I've posted are the things not in the manual, decisions you'll have to make, like where to get power from, how to tee into a water supply. The finished project, kinda. Nowhere had a dishwasher leak pan in stock, local hardware stores acted like the never heard of such things. So I went ahead with the install and ordered one from Amazon. I will just pull the unit out and put it in the leak pan and reinstall. That's how my brain works, I'd rather install a dishwasher for three days, then do it again when I get the pan, than hand wash dishes for three more days.
I took a half day this week to go load up on some more hardwood from my local specialty supplier. Maple, mahogany (sapele), purple heart, black walnut, hickory. Hundreds of board feet. I now have a hell of a wood supply in half of my garage, which should keep me busy for at least the next year for what I'm looking to do. With the way the prices of lumber are going through the roof, I figured I might as well load up now while I can. At least this hardwood is not being adversely affected by COVID, so far... so the prices are damn close to what I paid almost 2 years ago. Part of that is due to the increased local supply. Black walnut, for example, is supplied by local arborists and they are crazy busy and therefore harvesting much more than normal as people are doing more home renos and landscaping. A number of the arborists are even spinning up their own mills and high-end drying kilns (vacuum and microwave). Anyone else having any issues with cost or supply of materials?
I FINALLY have all of my plumbing done. "But I thought you finished it last week, Bandit!" you're probably saying. Yes, I finished the main line to the house that keeps a veritable water hose from spraying under the foundation whenever it has pressure (and allows us to have running water inside the house), but the cold water line to the kitchen and laundry room was tied into the old, broken line, NOT the main line to the house. Why? I DON'T KNOW. Probably the same reason why the electrical wiring in this house makes no sense (if you flip the breaker that says "cocina" [kitchen], everything in the kitchen stays on - except the microwave. Really.). Oh, and did I mention that Jungle Julia's "smart" Samsung washing machine will not work without cold water? Because it won't. I swear to fucking Christ, every "smart" appliance I've ever seen is stupid as fuck. So I had to run ANOTHER copper line outside of the house. It wasn't as hard this time; I basically copied all of the old work I've done, as you can see here (the wires holding things up are temporary!) : Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler This T-fitting (circled section) is where the cold water for that corner of the house goes. I had it capped off when I did the main water line, so I had to heat it up, remove it, clean it, and solder in the new piece. Spoiler Want to know an unfair fact of life? If you're soldering a complex section of pipe, and one of the joints doesn't take the solder well for whatever reason, and you have to reheat it to remove and clean it, THE BAD JOINT WILL STICK AS THOUGH IT IS HELD BY THE HAND OF GOD, AND ALL THE GOOD ONES WILL FALL APART (or tilt slightly, messing up all of your measured angles). This is an example of what I'm talking about (after I finished it): Spoiler But hey, NO LEAKS ANYWHERE! I'm really looking forward to doing some laundry in JJ's shitty washing machine tonight.
Thanks for the kind words, Nett. I know that your Canadian sensibilities balk at external pipes, but I had a recommended, certified plumber come over months ago (back when it was ONLY a hot water leak!) assess the situation, and his plan was to run pipes on the outside. (That, or break up the foundation; it's a different climate, that's all I can say.) And he wanted almost $1k to do it in copper pipe. In the immortal words of my dad: "Shit, I can do that." I don't even want to think about how much it would have cost for a pro to put in those ground pipes.
We are doing a total house renovation and the price of materials is just killing the budget. It's not completely out of control yet, but basic 3/8ths plywood is going for almost $60 a sheet now. That's like 3x what it was a few years ago. Thankfully most of the construction type projects are completed, but we've now been having trouble finding reliable people to do some of the other work we are needing. People are booked solid until May already. We've been doing as much as we can ourselves, but there's some things it's just cheaper and quicker hiring someone else.
There have been some builders being sued as they are refusing to honor new house contracts that they signed a couple of houses ago. The cost and availability of materials now have them building those houses at a loss so they're not even starting. It has a number of builders now changing how they do contracts to include material cost changes, much like the huge projects have always done.
Shampooing the carpet in the kid's playroom turned into Honey-lets-rip-this-up-and-put-down-hardwood. Three hours later, I have flooring ordered and done the ripping up part. Hope she knows how to lay flooring, cause my engine parts will be here today, and that was on the list first.
I was, perhaps, a little naive and certainly premature with that post, because that is one room we haven't even touched since we bought the place. The project has turned into flooring, fixing every sheetrock joint, paint, new trim and baseboards. Plenty to do in the seven days til the flooring gets here.
I have a similar project, maybe a bit more overly ambitious (mill all the stuff myself!), that is now approaching a year. I think I can move back into my home office this weekend, albeit with it in a reasonably unfinished state.
snowpocalypse burst a pipe and flooded our master bedroom, closet, and bathroom. About a fifth of the square footage of the house basically. Had to rip up the carpets, insurance covered it and ended up replacing it with hardwood because we wanted to do it at some point anyway and with insurance covering the labor and us getting a good deal on the wood it was a silver lining in an otherwise complete hell. well we had some wood flooring left over. It’s just beautiful oak, and enough leftover to where keeping it would have been annoying to store. So my wife was like “hey, let’s tear up the office flooring and replace it with that!!” Except my energy is nowhere the level I’d need to lay floor, and likely won’t be for a while. Thanks covid. So the we called the guys who did the work for our insurance-covered flood. I guess they took pitty on us because I don’t know how they were able to get as low as they did on the bid for 700 sq/ft inc bathroom. fuck doing it myself right now. I did 30 minutes of yard work last weekend and it took me about 2 days to recover.
Finally have all the hardwood flooring done, the painting done, and 99% of the baseboards installed. Need to trim 1/8” off of 2 pieces and realized I don’t have a portable miter box, and no way I’m lugging this shit back out to the shop to cut it. So Amazon delivers it tomorrow. But overall it’s coming together, and I get to start moving shit back in and setting up desks, mounting tv’s, etc. After that comes the custom ceiling light box and wall panels. The light box is fun as I just got a nice Big Ass Fan with killer wood blades that I’ll be incorporating into it. Also really happy with the colouring so far.
My wife and I enjoy watching repeats of Mike Holmes’ shows and I can’t help but wonder at how many con artists are out there posing as contractors. And I wonder if he’d swing down our way to help with a few things around here. Seriously though, my wife said we need to spend that stimulus money or it’s gonna goof things up for our son’s financial aid for college. So we’re having some stuff done, the biggest project being central air conditioning. While they’re here I’m gonna also maybe have another sump pump put in the basement since when that’s exiting of house was built they didn’t put in a floor drain or grade the floor towards the floor drain in the other room. I had the guy who did the initial project look at it last Fall and he said he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to dig for a sump pump because it’s only been 5 years and he’s worried about ground stability under the house. The guy who was here for the AC said as long as we stay away from the footers it’ll be fine. Which is what I was thinking in the first place. So I’m getting an estimate on that since there’s no way my shoulder will tolerate that kind of thing.