renovationism

Lufthansa flight 419 from Washington Dulles to Frankfurt, Germany on April 23, 2009.

Many parts of the basement renovation project have induced angst. Only the stairs, however, had the power to produce such constant long-term fretting. As I begin to document that part of the journey, the stair work is done, and I’m reasonably happy with the result. Reaching that result, though, was…

First, a look at the original stairs in their natural habitat.

A view from February, 2002

My plan was to keep the original strings and refinish them with new treads and risers.

The stringers exposed

However, during demolition in 2006, it became clear that the original stringers weren’t desirable. A previous owner had notched the stringers to create the framing for an under-stair storage space, thus severely compromising their structural integrity. They had shored up the downhill side of the stringer with 2×4s but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t pass framing inspection if and when I got to that point.

It doesn't take a structural engineer to see...

So, I bought a couple of 16′ pieces of 2×12 and laid out my own stringers. I ran into two issues. First, the stairs are steep and, therefore, the ratio of rise to run wasn’t within the limits of county code. Second, with the low ceiling in the basement, the headroom above the bottom step was too low for code. If I had maintained the original stringers, the deviances would have been grandfathered in. However, by replacing them, I had to either meet code, or get a waiver. A couple of visits to the permit office, a few forms filled out, and one visit by the inspector later, and I had my letter of variance.

It took a little head scratching to figure out the layout

A little circular saw magic, and then the dry-fit

The stringers are strengthened by 2×4s on nailed to either side, and attached at the top with galvanized corner brackets.

Whew. The fit.

Some scrap MDF makes great temporary treads

Next, on “stairs” – the twisted nature of dimensional lumber.

1:40 PM: While working on my MacBook, in MS Word for Mac, the screen freezes, but the mouse pointer is still alive. This is the first time this behavior has occurred.

1:41 PM: Control is restored. I immediately click to save my Word file. The MacBook freezes again. I notice an uncharacteristic repetitive clicking sound from hard drive.The sound is indicative of failure/retry attempts by the drive.

1:50 PM: After several minutes of no response, I power down and re-start the MacBook. I get the welcome chord and white screen but no Apple logo, and the fan starts and spins up to high speed. I power down.

2:05 PM: I dig out my AppleCare paperwork. I unplug my Time Machine backup drive.

2:17 PM: I call Apple tech support. I have experience troubleshooting and repairing PC issues, but relatively little in the Apple world. Because of this, I feel blind and helpless. In behavior uncharacteristic of other tech support calls I’ve made, I control my frustration, relax, and submit to the skill of the rep. She walks me through a reset, which involves removing the battery and holding down some keys. After this proves fruitless, she walks me through booting from the original OS X disk to access the disk utility, which doesn’t even show the hard drive. Declaring the drive dead, she opens a ticket and schedules a visit that afternoon at the Tyson’s Corner Apple store Genius Bar.

4:00 PM: I drop off the MacBook at the Tyson’s Apple store. I’m told they have the drive in stock, and to expect about a day turn-around. I return home.

6:34 PM: I receive call that the MacBook is ready.

7:30 PM: I pick up MacBook from Apple store. There is a slight delay, and I have to wait a few minutes in the store (torture, I know) while they, as I am told, “clean and polish the unit” before returning it to me.

8:10 PM: Back home, I turn on the MacBook and enjoy the welcome video with the cool flight through space and trippy “doo doo doo” music.

8:12 PM: I reach the screen asking if I want to transfer data from another computer, or restore from Time Machine backup. I select the restore from Time Machine and plug in my Time Machine drive.

8:43 PM: Restore complete, I finish a few registration screens and log in. The MacBook is exactly the same as it was earlier that day. There’s even a restored version of the Word document I was working on. About 20 minutes worth of work was lost.

Elapsed Time: 7 hours, 3 minutes.

So far, the only setting I’ve found that wasn’t restored is the “Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver” setting in Security. And I had to do a couple of rounds of updates. And, interestingly, Time Machine was turned off. I turned it on.

Spending a week with my writing group in Baja, in a little town called Los Barriles.

Construction here is… solid.

But it can end up looking pretty nice.

Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.

- Otto von Bismarck

If that were true, then why is that show on the Discovery Channel, the one where they show, amongst other things, sausages being made, so popular¹? Because it’s fun to watch things being made. On that premise, I offer, for your amusement, a window into the creation of a website. Last year, I developed www.thecocoagallery.com, an online presence for ACKC Cocoa Bar, my friends Eric and Rob’s stores in Washington, DC and Alexandria, VA.

Now, I am working on a site for Eric’s other venture, Artfully Paper, located in Alexandria, VA. The domain, artfullypaper.com, still points to their old site. The new site is accessible via IP at http://161.58.102.185/. First, some expectation management:

• It’s a work in progress, so you never know what you might see when you drop in.
• I am using several pieces of JavaScript that I can only test on the server. So it’s not just a draft gallery, it’s an actual test tube.
• I’m testing on IE, Firefox, and Safari. While I’m working out bugs, some things might work in one browser, and not in another.

For anyone interested:

• The drop-down menus are via HV Menu.
• The Apple-esque cover flow is via Finn Rudolph’s ImageFlow picture gallery.
• The image pup-up functionality within ImageFlow is via Torstein Honsi’s HIghslide JS JavaScript thumbnail viewer.

Oh, and what of poor Otto? Ok, so he did unify Germany in the second half of the 19th century. But most of us know only of the WWII Battleship that bore his name, the largest warship of her time and one of the most famous ever. The warship that, after the Battle of the Denmark Straight, where she sank the HMS Hood, the pride of the British navy, was hunted and sunk by the same at the famous direction of Winston Churchill: “Sink the Bismarck.”

¹Full disclosure: I don’t actually know of a show on the Discovery Channel that shows sausages being made. But I wouldn’t be surprised if How It’s Made or How Do They Do It? showed that. And, it turns out, they’re both on the Science Channel, not Discovery. And, I don’t really know if they’re all that popular. But I like them.

The sink comes with a hole in the back right corner for the faucet, but the hole for a soap dispenser is optional, and must be punched out by the installer. That’s you. The sink cost a few hundred dollars, and now you have to smack it with a hammer. The underside is scored for the punch-out, and they’ve placed a nice little label on top to aim at. But, still. A few hundred dollars. It’s enough to make you think about just buying a little softsoap dispenser to keep on the counter top.

One.... two....

There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?

Whew

A little work with a file and the soap dispenser base goes right in.

Yeah, it was worth it

It’s much easier to install the faucet before setting the sink in place. The sink also comes with clips that are supposed to grip the underside of the counter top and hold it in place, but the plywood underlayment and backer board together were too thick for the clips. Also, the sink’s right side was so close to the edge of the counter top that there wasn’t room for the clips. Guess I should have read the sink’s installation guide in advance. So I skipped the clips, betting on the sink’s weight and a bead of caulk to hold it in place.

Caulk. Ugh. For some reason, I had a tube of pure silicone sealant laying around, so I ran a bead of it around the rim of the sink and set it in place. What a #*$&% mess. I had to pull the sink out and spend about 30 minutes with turpentine cleaning off the counter tiles and the underside of the sink. Then I got smart and found a tube of kitchen & bath adhesive caulk. It cleans up with soap and water.

After the sink was in place, I ran a thin bead of caulk where the sink met the counter top to seal it off.

Just Say No to silicone

The waste pipe in the wall was a little low, so I had to use an extension to get from the sink drain down to the j-trap. The hot and cold water supply pipes come attached to the faucet, so all I had to do was use a bit of Teflon tape and attach them to the supply valves.

The faucet has a pull-out wand, so there’s an extension hose that hangs down underneath with a doughnut-shaped weight on it to pull it back in when you return the want to the faucet base. One end of the hose connects to the wand, and the other connects to a water supply hose that extends down from the faucet. It’s a push-on connection, which seemed a little… weak to me.

Which, of course, it was. A few seconds after I turned on the water, the pressure blew the hoses apart, and I had a cabinet full of water. As I sopped up the mess, and seethed, I wondered how I was going to get this defective faucet out and return it. It’s almost impossible to access in the back corner of the cabinet. So, I pushed the connection together and turned on the water again. And guess what happened? It held!

A little water never hurt anything

Ok, now back to reality. Seriously, did you think it would hold? If so, your denial mechanism is stronger than mine, because, even as I turned on the water again, I knew it would blow.

This time, as I cleaned up the mess, I suppressed my anger and tried to think rationally. I had to have missed something. But, how could I figure it out? If only there were some sort of… document. Something that describes the pertinent details. I scoured the packaging materials and came across an obscure document called the Installation Guide. Hm. An interesting read. And, it included a reference to a little plastic clip that holds the tubes together. After rooting around through the box, I found that little piece of plastic I had dismissed earlier.

It's alive

The big picture

A notched trowel spreads the tile mastic. A bullet level and a 2-foot level help to make sure everything is… um… level.

Hm, this is easy. I should be done in no time.

I wanted tight grout joints. 1/16″ spacers do the job.

Hanging the edge tiles

I didn’t want to edge tiles pulling the top tiles out of whack, so I let the top tiles dry for a day before I hung the edges.

Dry time

Caulk is all you need to affix the backsplash to the wall.

A little dab'll do ya

Despite the best intentions of the level brothers, Bullet and TwoFoot, I somehow ended up with some uneven joints.

Damnit

So, I yanked out a few tiles, used a scraper to remove the dried mastic, and re-set them.

Why do anything just once?

Ah, grouting. What have we learned about grouting? That time of day is a factor to consider.

Don't grout angry. Don't grout angry.

a tray of water
beneath cools your spinning blade
yet i plug you in

nippers are so coarse
yet you beget a perfect
cut with toothless blade

WorkForce THD550 7 inch Wet Tile Saw

click here

While doing some work at a client site the other day, she told me that one of her computers was experiencing blackouts several times a day. I felt the case and could tell it had a serious fever. It can be difficult to hear breath sounds on newer PCs with variable speed fans, but after opening the case, it was clear the fan was breathing its last breaths. The patient was overheating, and its thermostat was shutting it down.

I instructed her to leave the case open and point a fan towards the innards. That stopped the blackouts and confirmed the diagnosis. Surgery was needed to replace the power supply. One call to Dell and $97.63 later, and the new organ was on its way.

The patient: Dell Dimension 5150C

In the olden days, PCs were held together with thousands of tiny screws: tedious, but easy to identify. These days, many makers use finger-operated latches to give easy access. Few tools, if any, are required. The downside is that sometimes the latches can be difficult to identify. In this case, the side cover is loosed via the latch on the top rear of the case.

The initial incision - don't be afraid to cut

Inside, it’s pretty standard. In the body cavity below, the object in the upper left quadrant is the CD/DVD drive. Below it and out of sight is the 5.25″ floppy drive. The lower left quadrant is the braincase: buried in there is the Intel CPU, which runs pretty hot, so it’s got a heat sink and fan attached to it and is encased in a plastic duct that directs air past it for cooling. The lower right quadrant is the hard drive. And in the upper right quadrant is the power supply we need to replace.

Rib spreaders all the way wide. Can you identify the major organs?

Below is the new power supply (PS). I had looked at the model number on the old PS and tried to find it on the Dell website, but no luck. So I called support and gave them the PC’s serial number to place the order. The new part looks right, but, to make sure, I checked the new part number against the original one. They weren’t exactly the same, which isn’t a surprise, but they were close, and the input and output power numbers on the sticker matched, so I felt comfortable we had the right part.

Fresh from the cooler: the new heart

Below is one of the two blue latches holding the hard drive in place. Just press and remove. Anything this color inside the cavity is a latch that releases something.

The blue clips make removal easy

Since the PS extends under the CD/DVD drive, I started by loosing it…

The CD/DVD drive loose, but still connected

…and then lifting it out of the cavity. The gold Ribbon cable carries data from and to (in the case of a writeable device) the CD/DVD drive. I was hoping I could just leave the gold cable in place.

CD/DVD drive pulled out, but still connected

Next, I unlatched and pulled the hard drive out. It has two cables attached to it. The blue one carries the data to and from the drive. The red/yellow/black bundle that runs to the power supply is – you guessed it – the hard drive’s power cable. With gentle pressure, it’s easily disconnected from the hard drive.

Hard drive and CD/DVD drive pulled

The following picture shows a big colorful cable bundle running from the power supply to a white connector that’s plugged into the mother board. However, the gold CD/DVD cable is in the way. Guess I’ll need to disconnect the CD/DVD drive anyway.

The CD/DVD cable blocking the mother board power cable

With the gold CD/DVD cable disconnected, the big power connector is accessible. There’s a little plastic latch on the side of the connector that releases it.

After disconnecting the CD/DVD drive, the mother board power cable is accessible

Three screws through the rear of the case hold the power supply in place.

The only tool required is a Phillips head screwdriver to remove the 3 screws holding the power supply

Removing the 3 screws liberates the power supply

Below, the power supply is out, but not completely disconnected. We’ve disconnected one power cable that ran to the hard drive and one that ran to the mother board, but you can see another one, a yellow and black bundle, running from the PS to the mother board. You can also see that I’ve pulled the floppy drive (laying to the left of the carcass, but still connected), in order to get my fingers on all those cables. With all the major organs pulled, the mother board is almost completely exposed.

The heart outside the chest cavity.

Once the third and final power cable is disconnected, the old PS is free and can be recycled via your friendly neighborhood electronics recycling program. Don’t throw it in a landfill!

To close, just reverse the steps:

1. Place the new PS in the cavity and fasted it with the three screws
2. Connect the two power cables to the mother board, and the third to the hard drive
3. Put the floppy drive back in place
4. Re-connect CD/DVD drive’s gold cable to the mother board and put the drive back in place
5. Put the hard drive in place
6. Put the side cover on