Fixing Things Around The House

In my last story, I had finished up a spray painting job (or so it seemed) and mentioned having to fix the toilet next. It had a broken lever, the one attached to the handle, and the valve that is turned off when the water is full was spraying inside the tank after a use. I kind of anticipated it would be a hassle to replace the innards of the old ceramic fixture. Turn off the supply line, empty the water, remove the old and put in the replacements… not a hard job but it cold lead to a messy floor. That’s what brought it up after the spray painting experiment.

Well, the toilet fix was a non-event. I put on a new handle. It was three bucks, unscrew the old one and put on the new one. It did cause me a moment of confusion before I found the nut that screwed on from the back was threaded left-hand, meaning off and on were backwards, but that was really minor.) The thing about spraying inside the tank during the fill-up was nothing too — I didn’t have to replace anything. I tweaked a screw near where the leak was, and the leak stopped. I had decided, though, that even if it kept leaking it wasn’t worth fixing. The water was squirting downward, not up or out, which is where the water needs to go anyway when the reservoir is filling up.

The big job I had dreaded turned out to be nothing at all. No problem. Now, remember the spray paint job I was so glad to get finished? That was the skinny vertical posts in my porch railing, and they looked fine after being spray painted. My next job, after the plumbing triumph, was to paint the big wood railing that lies across the top. Should be easy. First, I had to do a little sanding. I got out my small sander and it does a great job. So, I sanded on top of the railing, then started on the painting. The railing is a different color that the balusters that I had already painted, otherwise I’d have just spray painted the entire thing at one time. Stirred up the paint and started. I’ve done this a zillion times. Paint a little bit, sand a little, dust with a rag, paint a little more.

In order to get a good visual of what came next, consider how a sander operates. The device moves very fast in tiny circles. When a vibration is introduced in a structure, such as my railing, and said railing has something like a paint bucket on it, it might be expected that the bucket will walk to and over the edge of the surface. The paint contained in the bucket will learn the meaning of freedom and cover as much of the porch as it can.