Mike’s Family Blog

Friday night, The Wiggles were in town. If you’re not familiar with them, they are children’s entertainers from Australia. (Website here.) Jonathan absolutely loves The Wiggles. They are very entertaining for kids and a welcome relief from some of the more, uh, annoying kids entertainment. (See Barney.)

So we coughed up for floor seats to the 2nd show and Jonathan had a blast. For the first half hour, he was so awed by the fact that he was seeing them live, he could only stare. After a while, he warmed up and started dancing.

Below are two videos, the first is of Jonathan enjoying one of the songs. The second is a video of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. They asked the audience to open up their cell phones, PDAs or whatever so that they lit up as ’stars’.

Video 1
Video 2

You know what they say… when you’re going through Hell, don’t stop. Well, I’ve got a new one. When you’re going through renovations and have to shut off the water to the house to accomplish them, don’t stop!

So there we were, a leaky kitchen faucet that needed replacing. This ’should’ have been a fairly quick and painless replacement.
Problem number 1, no shut off valves. (There were only two in the house. The main one and the one for the hot water tank.) Still, this shouldn’t be a huge deal. We picked up some compression type valves. Cut the copper, clean it up, pop on the compression valves, screw everything together and you’re done.

Problem number 2, the wood below the formica under the old taps had completely disintigrated. This was a compound problem. The wood was so crumbly, that it loosened the fittings. The looser fittings were more prone to leakage. So the wood was almost always damp. So, in order to fix the leaky faucet properly, we’d have to replace the whole counter.

Okay, so let’s price this out and find the least costly solution.

1) Rona: 2 sections of counter (long and short) + materials, a little over $200. I cut everything and install it. Our old, 22″ deep. The new option, 25″ deep. We’d have a bit of an overhang. (Problem with this was the corner cut. Could I make it straight?

2) Rona: A custom order with the proper cuts and depth. I’d still install, but no cutting, thus lower risk of screwups. $350.00

3) Home Depot: The same as #2 exept in price. $550 !!! Same supplier, just WAY more esxpensive!

So I went for the complete DIY package.

Well, for the most part, we successfully pulled it off. The biggest problem turned out to be what I feared in the first place, the corner. However, it wasn’t the angle that did me in, it was that the long piece had a slight ‘U’ shape to it. This meant that when tying the two corners together, we ended up with a lip in the corner of a couple of millimeters.

SOOOOO close!

So we got it all back together and finally turned the water back on about 15 hours after we began. The great thing was, no leaks on the first shot! Boy was I ever sore today after getting up. Very tired too. So if you noticed anything amiss in my message, I attribute it to exhaustion. I’m typing this while fighting to keep my eyelids from shutting.

Ah well, before and after pictures are in the gallery.