Conservation of the To-Do List

So, within 36 hours of replacing the microwave and 24 hours of finishing the floor, our TV and food processor both broke, neatly adding two replacement items onto the to-do list.  Didn't quite cancel out previous efforts but it was pretty frustrating.  Fixing the food processor was a drop-in part fix and no big deal but TV's are a more complicated and potentially dangerous* repair.  Given that the TV is only about 18 months old I wasn't just going to replace it without a fight, even after determining that even having someone else look at the TV was going to run me close to half the replacement cost.

Through the magic of the internet I determined the most likely failed component (the power supply board), then opened up the TV to look at it.  I didn't detect any blown capacitors or obviously fried circuits, but when I found someone in Arkansas selling used replacement boards on Ebay for $18 I figured it was a solid gamble to just replace it and see what happened.

My trusty home repair assistants.  They took care of the packing peanuts and bubble wrap while I handed the TV.

For once, a fix was almost as easy as possible.  One bolt holding the back panel of the TV on was sticky and I wasn't able to remove it without significant cam-out of the Phillips head (they should have used Torx, Phillips was actually designed to encourage cam-out to discourage over-torquing before the advent of accurate torque wrenches - fun bolt fact of the day) so I tossed that one, but there are about 20 screws holding the back on so losing one is not a huge deal.  There were only three connections to undo and redo and all of them had solid, clicky connectors instead of being obnoxious glued on ribbon cables or anything.  Made the connections, didn't ground any capacitors through myself, fired up the TV and it worked, so I replaced the back panel and we were back in business.  I seem to have lost my settings (probably the reserve battery was on the board I yanked so the volatile memory of the TV blanked) but they weren't a big deal to put back in.

For $20.50 with rush shipping and only a couple hours of my time total, counting research, I feel pretty good about that repair.  Apparently unless the panel itself goes, repair of modern plasma and LCD TV's can be pretty approachable, especially considering I only saw estimates in the $200-300 for an initial diagnosis of a TV problem, plus at least $100 for someone else to make this fix for me.  I could replace every board in that thing several times (at used part prices) before meeting the cost of having someone look at it.  Good to know, especially since there is a 5-10% chance that the board I just put in has the same flaw as the original and will die in the next year or so.  If it goes I'll just buy another one and slap it in.

Victory was tempered, however, by a further example of conservation of the to-do list.  After replacing that food processor component but before fixing the TV, I had the furnace guys in for an annual service.  Apparently since the spring when the AC guys looked at the AC coil the coil had developed a leak, which either overflowed or otherwise escaped from the AC drip pan and drain...and dripped down onto the furnace heat exchanger.  It rusted and is beginning to crack.  Carbon monoxide levels are a long way from dangerous but are above legal limits coming out of the vents and approaching the levels where noticeable symptoms of exposure begin to manifest.  The furnace is only 8 years old  and I was not anticipating problems with it (and only had a five year warranty so no joy there, I checked).  The repair is 80% of the cost of a new furnace and doesn't make any sense to undertake.  This was detected less than 18 hours after fixing the food processor.  So it was with some trepidation that I pronounced the TV fixed.  It has been about 15 hours since then and I am just positive that something else is about to break today.

I think I need to find at least five or six things that I don't care about that are not currently broken, break them, and see if other problems resolve themselves automatically. Or perhaps I can set up some sort of altar in the utilities room and sacrifice power tools to the dark gods of homeownership.  The one-thing-fixed-another-one-breaks vibe going on here is getting creepy.

Well, can't complain too much.  Our costs to own so far have been far, far less than the cost of renting an equivalent house by my calculation so even tossing in a new furnace isn't exactly going to make the math ugly, just less pretty, especially since that was not a cost we were expecting.  We'll recoup some money on heating savings and a new furnace sure won't make the house sell any more slowly when the time comes.  I am honestly more irritated at having to take out the time to solicit bids and meet with contractors than the cost.  Also the paranoia about something else breaking is getting pretty strong.  I keep expecting the water heater to detonate or the fridge to puke its guts out on the floor.  Since we're dealing with paranoia and evil spirits, not rational engineering and probability, I will accept any magical or spiritual help my readers care to donate.  In the meantime, I guess I'll just keep working.

*CRT TV's have 30,000+ volt potentials around the tube with more than adequate charge to kill you like a bug zapper.  I would never open a CRT.  This plasma TV, when unplugged and properly discharged, tops out around 400V with smaller capacitances.  Field reports indicate a serious error would leave your arm numb for a couple of hours but generally not kill a healthy adult.  I felt no need to be electrocuted and exercised due caution not to ground any of the caps through myself, completing the swap without incident.

Front Room Flooring Campaign

This entry is pretty close to a cut-and-paste from our house changelog file.  I named this a "campaign" because "project" doesn't seem to cut it at this point.

The front room had a nasty pink/gray carpet stained by years of smoking.  We pulled it up and discovered about 80% of a hardwood floor.  Frankly, we'd been hoping for all of one.  It was very apparent that there had been termite damage to several dispersed parts of the floor, some of which had been crudely patched.  We weren’t keeping the carpet anyway so we pulled that and the tack strips keeping it down.

Original pink / gray carpet

Termite damage to boards adjacent to fireplace

This astonishingly crude patch seemed to have been made from a section of fencing – the taper for the top of the fence was still visible at the ends of the boards. 

Bottom of some termite-damaged boards – some of these crunched and gave when you walked on them – presumably the infestation was discovered when someone crushed the patched area.

Substantial sections of the boards were raised and fresh felt paper was laid under as it had been chewed through by the termites previously.  The subfloor seemed entirely fine to me / free of termite damage, from both sides, so it was left alone.  Guess it wasn't very tasty.  Fresh red oak flooring (same material as old flooring) was purchased to replace the damaged boards.  Undamaged boards were retained (at least the ones I bought up off the subfloor without shattering them) and we mixed new and old boards when installing the patches to make the sections blend better.  I bought unfinished because the whole thing will need sanding and finishing at the end anyway and they're cheaper that way.

A damaged section of flooring also ran near one of the baseboard vents, which made it make sense to replace the vent there with a floor vent in the double-width gap already cut in the floor before we got there (see top left of picture above).  The ducting in the crawlspace was re-routed and re-hung to this location next to an existing vent, also re-insulated without the use of twine (HVAC tape people, how hard is it?)  New register boxes were installed as well, with a patch to the subfloor around them to support the whole deal.

Flush-mount wooden register grates were installed – looks pretty slick to us.  I used splines around and between the register grates so the tongue-in-grove runs all the way around them.  The baseboard vent grating would have been where the rightmost strip of new boards touches the wall.

Lots of hammering later it all looked pretty good but there was one problem.

There was a gap where the patch met original flooring of about 1/4" or so – very visible and not good enough for me. The entire tongue of the boards in this gap could be seen and the whole run had to be face-nailed in place until I figured out how to do a better job.  Apparently between the new boards and the good job placing the patch the same number of boards didn’t cover the same space.  This gap was eventually addressed by purchasing 3/4” thick face-planed red oak boards of width wider than needed, cutting them to the correct width, and making custom floorboards with them for that run using a router and jig setup.  Between this and some hardwood splines tongue-in-groove was put in place for the entire run and the gap is now eliminated. 

Making those custom boards took a long time (about 75% of it on setup and test, manufacture was actually pretty quick) but man they went in nicely.  I’m proud of those suckers.

Tongue-in-groove was also added for that entire run – note negligible gap.  You can’t tell which ones I made from the others without a ruler or really staring at which run is slightly bigger.  The boards were driven in from one side rather than dropped in and did not require face-nailing (except the last one which had to be drop-in short of taking out a wall) to be absolutely solid.

That takes this floor to "ready for sanding and staining" along with most of the rest of the house.  I may put those flush-mounted registers in in some other places and the floor is slightly missing around one grating in my office (you can see into the basement), but overall those efforts are single-afternoon affairs.  This - this was big.  Seems likely to be 100+ man hours all told.  I am so glad to have finished, every time I walk by the room I am happy to see it (and all the tools, etc) not there waiting for me any more.

I also installed a new microwave over the range (old one died, been using the one from Japan in the meantime) and replaced the tacky neon blue / clear plastic fan in the kitchen with a light fixture, amongst other things I shall probably not blog.  First few months of term absolutely nuts, didn't work on the house from the end of July until mid-October.  Finally beginning to make up for it now.