I walk into the club just to pipe it up

There comes a time when something falls down your sink that you don't want to. Whether it be a ring, too much grease, $700 worth of premium Columbian white lightning, etc...When this happens your best route is to remove some of the pipes underneath the sink to get whatever you need out.

The first time I had to do this was cooking and in the process peeling carrots and potatoes, with the peels landing in the sink. The garbage disposal ground them up, but they gathered up in the pipes and clogged it up. Another time I had a friend pour some grease from something that he was cooking down the sink in liquid form. When the grease hits the water, the grease congeals and clogs up the pipe. No bueno.

The one thing most every sink (I haven't seen one without it) have in common is a p-trap. It is a pipe shaped like a U that dips below the level of the horizontal pipe going towards the wall. The p-trap serves two main purposes. The first is that gravity keeps water down in the "U" shaped part of the pipe making a seal that keeps odors and gases from coming back out of the pipes and up from your sink. Nobody wants to smell what ever gross stuff you washed down there yesterday. The second is to catch debris and valuables that may fall down into the sink.

Now before you get to overzealous and start pulling stuff apart like a mad person- get a bucket. I remember this first hand because I didn't have one, and I suffered the consequences. If there is a clog you will most likely have a bunch of water in the sink. A bunch of nasty water. A bunch of nasty gross smelly water. If you take apart a pipe between that water and the clog, you will receive all that water. And it will get everywhere. When you pull apart the pipe, take the bucket it and place it underneath, and aim whatever pipe towards it when you pull it apart. Water is already probably going to get everywhere when you are working down there anyways, might as well try to minimize while you can. So get a bucket and keep it close. Or don't. I don't care.

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Now depending on how your sink is set up, there are a variety of ways it can look underneath. If it is a single basin sink it will probably just be a straight pipe going down into the p-trap and into the out pipe. If a two basin sink is more of your style there will
be a more "T" set up underneath. One/two "L" joints going to the "T" and then a straight pipe going down into the p-trap. But there are other configurations as well.

The "T" set up tends to be slightly more difficult since there are more places that the clog or what ever you are looking for could be. That was the case when Chef Boy-R-Jake was at the helm and I had to spend my entire afternoon figuring it out. Turns out all of that nastiness got caught coming out of the garbage disposal, and not actually in the p-trap. Whould've thunk it.

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The way that the nuts and washers work to connect the pipes is by a threaded sleeve over one pipe with a washer that shaped like a wedge going underneath the lip, then the nut tightening down over top sealing the washer. You don't want to tighten the nut to tight or it will slip over top of the washer and not seal right. It's best just to hand tighten, not use a pipe wrench.

If for some reason the clog is beyond the p-trap, and you cant get to it, you can try a couple different things. you can get a drain snake. You can try your hand using drain cleaning compounds and just keep putting them down there, because as we all know harsh chemicals fix everything. Or.....call a plumber.

So good luck. This is probably my least favorite thing to do around the house, since thing can get really gross, really fast. The main thing to remember is to not put a bunch of stupid stuff in your sink to where you have to take the thing apart to get it out. But that would just make life boring, wouldn't it?

Of Mice and Men (and Snakes)

The last couple of nights have been very interesting for my roommate, Adam, and me.

We like to pride ourselves on keeping the house clean. Me being an eligible bachelor and him being whatever it is that he is, we keep our space clean to make sure we put off a good vibe to visitors of all varieties. So when we found out we had mice we were pretty shocked to say the least.

It started last Thursday when we were hanging around watching TV. I noticed my dog Sassy acting strange and I then noticed a mouse on the floor in front of her. She has a history of eating mice and a much more graphic history (in my head) of throwing them up. So we caught it and tossed it outside. No big deal, problem solved.

A couple of days later my Adam noticed another mouse running under the same couch I was on.

Great.

We got up our courage to deal with a tiny mouse and when we pulled the couch away from the wall, it was a sight. Apparently the mice had been going into my dogs food bowl and taking it under the couch, starting their own little gypsy camp.

So we cleaned it all up, went to the store and got a plethora of traps and mouse deterrents and waged our war on the vermin. The Great Mouse War of '16.

We only saw two and that is what we have caught up until yesterday,  with no additional sightings of the mice. Mission accomplished.

But last night I got quite the shock as I got up to use he bathroom around 1:30. As I turned the corner, THERE WAS NO SHIT A SNAKE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE HALLWAY.

Now I'm pretty outdoor savvy, hunting and fishing and what not, so I have ran across snakes before in the wild, sticking to the mindset "Don't screw with it and it won't screw with you". But when it is in my house, it's an entirely different story altogether. So I did what any reasonably confident person would do and ran back to my room, jumped on my bed and called Adam to come downstairs.

Now two fun facts about my roommate. He goes to bed pretty early and sleeps really hard, and he is deathly terrified of snakes. I was fairly certain he was not going to enjoy this phone call.

We got together and after him talking me into an alternative solution than shooting it (blowing holes in the floors and the walls in the process) we set our new plan into action, he would watch while I stepped on it.

It was quick and painless for all parties involved, and after figuring out what to do with the snake  afterwards, it was over. Needless to say, however, it wasn't easy going back to sleep, much less walking around without shoes on.

Now looking back the snake was harmless, but me not being a herpetologist and constantly being in a state of sleep deprivation, I was certain that snake was going to bite me and I was going to die.

I have come to the conclusion that the snake was probably hunting mice, the same ones that had come invaded my house in the previous couple of days.

If this is the case I would try to avoid getting mice in the house, especially as the colder months come along

• Don't leaving any food out (and dog food)
• Seal any gaps in walls and floor boards ( this comes in handy)
• Use preventative traps in areas like the garage where mice would get into first

This was definitely an experience for me. After killing a scorpion in the house a couple weeks ago. and now this, I'm hoping my luck will change and cool animals will start appearing, like a chinchilla or maybe a dolphin. Dare to dream.

Where will you be when mold strikes?

Let me preface with this. I'm going to be saying caulk quite a bit, take it how you want, but I will be laughing my ass off writing this with some of the phrases I have (or want) to use.

The worst thing about bathrooms is keeping them clean. With all the moisture from steam, it becomes a playground for mold and other nasty things. This is why caulk was invented. The caulking around the tub is meant to keep moisture out of the hard to clean places in-between the tub and the wall or the tub and the floor. Over time the caulking starts to breakdown and gets really nasty. So you should probably redo it.

Here is a list of the things you'll need

• A caulk gun
• Bathroom caulk (Make sure it is the color you want. Caulk usually comes in clear and white, and sometimes other colors)
• A utility knife
• A razor blade scraper

Now this is one of the messier household projects that I've taken on. Some people have a gift for it and can get it done with relative cleanliness.

What you'll do first is remove all the existing caulking. Take the utility knife and run it first vertical along the caulk all the way around the tub, and then horizontally along the bottom. This should leave you with a long strip of old caulk that will pull off easily.

Then take the razor blade scraper and take off any remaining caulk that is stuck to either the wall or to the tub. Doing this will ensure when you put on the fresh caulk, there won't be any bad caulk underneath that prevents it from getting a good seal.

Then you take the tube of caulk and put it in the caulk gun. This link has pictures on how to do it.

Once you start to get to caulking, put a thin bead along anywhere the tub meets another surface.

Then take your finger and with barely any pressure run your finger along it to press it into the seam and to make a smooth line of caulk.

This takes a little bit of practice as you learn how much caulk to lay and how much pressure to put on the caulk to make it smooth.

And in that process, you will probably get caulk all over the place. A good practice is to lay down some plastic or something so that it doesn't get where you don't want it to. It should go without saying but wear something you don't mind getting messed up. If you do need to get it off your clothes, remove it as quickly as possible and use WD-40 to remove the remaining residue.

But once you get all the caulking smooth just let it sit and don't mess with it. The caulk will need about a day to dry to be safe. If you get any water on it, the water will get underneath the caulk and mold, causing you to have to replace the caulk quicker than you wanted to.

I hope this post was as fun for you to read as it was for me to write. And if not, you don't have to tell me I have the mind of a child, I already know.

Adventures of a woodworker

So this post isn't about a project, but it was something pretty interesting that I did this past weekend.

A good friend of mine,Mike, runs a YouTube channel building modern style furniture. Appropriately named, "Modern Builds".

He does this for a living and has acquired several sponsors while doing his builds. One company that has sponsored him is a woodworking store called Rockler. So for the grand opening of one of the Dallas area of stores, Mike went down to do a meet and greet and I got to tag along to see what it was all about.

It was a great time. This store isn't like your Lowe's or Home Depot. It was s a store especially for woodworking, and it had tools for any kind of woodworking project you could imagine.

It was really neat being there and seeing all the people that were fans of Mike's channel, a very diverse group of people and also the types of projects they worked on. It was especially interesting to see how they interacted. Mike, a goofball who I have known for several years now,well-respected member of the YouTube woodworking community, with people asking his advice and guidance on projects of their own

It was also just a really friendly atmosphere. Mike explained to me that the people who follow him and people who do a lot of woodwork in general are a big community that has a free flow of ideas and tips to help everybody.

If you want to check out some of Mike's work, and I suggest you do, you can go to his website or visit his YouTube channel.

Keep your drain sharp

Sometimes weird things happen in showers and stuff breaks.

One of the most common things to get broken is the little piece in the drain that stops the water from going down.

When this happens the best course of action is to replace the entire drain. It's fairly simple, just a little bit of time.

To accomplish this you'll need a couple of very specific things:

• A drain wrench. There are several options: this, this or this

• The fist two are self explanatory, the wrench goes around the metal cross pieces inside the drain
• The third one expands when turn to tighten on the inside the drain on the walls and uses the pressure to turn it.   

• Plumber's putty
• Thread sealant 
• A tub or shower drain

First you will want to remove the old drain, if it's a tub drain all of those types of drain wrenches will work. If it's a shower drain, it likely won't have something in the bottom for them to grab onto, so you have to use the third type of wrench.

To use that one, you'll have to initially put some pressure on the top most rungs when you first put it in the drain so that the piece in side will start to expand, and once it grips, keep pressure on it, and turn until the drain is removed.

Then you take your plumbers putty, and make a small ball the size of a nickel out of it. From that ball roll a long snake-like piece out of it. It basically has the consistency of fresh Play-Doh so just imagine you're 5 years old again. Once you have that, set it to the side.

Before you continue, if there is a rubber washer around the drain that you bought, take it off. The plumbers putty replaces the stopper and works better.

Next for the drain and your thread sealant. There is a small brush on the inside of the cap, take that and rub it around the threads of the drain. The brush resembles a small cotton ball and absorbs quite a bit, so make sure its not dripping when you pull it out of the can or you'll get it everywhere.

Now take the drain with the sealant on it and screw it about three-quarters of the way in. Once you do this, take the piece of plumbers putty and set it underneath where the lip of the drain is going to meet the tub. Then continue screwing the drain in. Normally once you tighten it down the putty will squish out from the sides. This is fine, just cut off the excess.

When you tighten it down, tighten it down solid, but don't over tighten.

Now that you have your drain in one of the most parts is here. DON'T RUN ANY WATER THROUGH IT. For overnight or about a day. Something like that so everything has a chance to set.

From there the drain is set. If it is a pop up drain, screw in the screw without the stopper, and then the stopper goes on top. Most of the time the stopper screws on the opposite way, so take not of that.

ALSO- While your drain is removed, take drain cleaner or some sort of drain snake, and use it to clean out the pipes, it'll be more convenient when the drain is out.

This is your drain, and this is your drain on drugs

The way my house is set up the drive way is long and sloping down into the garage. Now this is great when the winter storms hit and I need a good excuse to get out of work, because during those, there is no way I'm driving out of there.

But turns out it’s not very good for torrential rain.

Right in front of the garage and at the bottom of the hill there is a drain that runs out to a ditch, which is supposed to keep water from coming into the garage. It works great...when it is clean and free of debris.

This I did not know.

Around June there was a crazy storm that blew through the city, I was up watching TV and my roommate had gone to sleep, but woke up to all the thunder. When he walked in we went down through the garage to look, and it was not good. The water was about to the door and ready to start coming in the basement.

We take off as quick as we can and I run to the shed to grab a broom and he runs in the house to get shoes and flashlights for us, and for the next 2 hours in the middle of the night, there we were shoveling water out of the garage like a couple jackasses.

Not wanting to experience that again, we were on a mission a couple weeks later to clear out that drain.

If you find yourself in this situation and want to follow what I did, what you'll need is a high pressure nozzle for your water hose, some zip ties and something long and sturdy but flexible. I had a spool of box banding cable with some sort of end piece riveted on the end, like this. 

What you do is take your hose and zip tie it to the end of the banding cable, giving it enough rigidity to go through the drain without getting caught on anything.

Once you have that, turn on the water and jam that bad boy down in there. What will mostly likely happen is if there is something blocking it up, nasty water will shoot back into your face, so beware. But after a while of running water and the hose down that hole, it will start to clear up.

You may have to get extra lengths of hose depending on how long the drain is, how far down the blockage is and how far away your spigot is from the drain.

I had the benefit of knowing where the drain ran off to, which is not always the case with these types of drains. If you do, look out the end and see when water starts running out clear, and if not, just use your best judgement. If you can pull the hose in and out with ease you should be clear of most blockages.

Several weeks after that we had another rain storm, so as I was getting myself mentally prepared to shovel some more water, I went out to the garage and sure enough that drain was slurping down water like a champ.

Hang up your towel, not your hat

This post comes about as a question that a classmate of mine had for me. At her residence a towel rack had gotten pulled out of the wall. This is a fairly common problem that has happened to me more than a time or two. It really happens fairly easily, especially depending on when it was put up and what condition the wall material is in.

There are several ways that I have gone about putting these up and back on the wall, one more frustrating than the other, and also dependent on how the wall is when it was torn out.

The first way is good if, since the towel rack is already down, you want to go ahead and move it all together. What you'll need is some sort of straight edge that is longer than the towel rack itself, a level (there are apps out the now for smartphones that will use the phone as a level), a screwdriver, a tape measure and these. I prefer to use the screw-in anchors due to their simplicity. However if you have to take them out, they leave a fairly noticeable hole. You can you use smaller anchors, but to get those in you will need a drill with a bit about half the size of the anchor and a hammer to tap it in, so just a couple extra steps.

So bear with me, this part gets pretty detail oriented.

Find where you want to put the rack. Look at what you have, on the back of the part that hold the rod, there should be a little plate

that holds the screws that go into the wall. It comes off by loosening a screw around the outside ring, either with an allen wrench or small screwdriver.

You'll want to measure the distance between the center of the plate to the center of the other.

Once you have that number take your straight edge and level, and keeping a straight line horizontally make a line longer than you think the distance is, preferably by a lot. Along the line mark the correct distance between the two centers of the brackets. At those marks, again take the straight edge and level and make a vertical line. From there you can hold up the plates to the lines, and center them on each line and mark where the screw holes are. And BAM! The hard work is over. If you went with the smaller anchors take the drill bit and drill into the marks, hammer the anchors in and then screw on the plate, put up the bar and make sure the little screw that hols the plate on is tight.

NOTE- Look at how the plates go back into the holders, if they are vertical then make the plates vertical, and if it is horizontal, put the plate  on the wall horizontal. I feel like that was self explanatory but, has to be said.

If you have the screw in anchors, do the same thing but with less steps.

And also don't forget to fill in the holes where the rack use to be with some spackle and matching paint.

The second way is by far the easiest. You simply take where the towel rack once was and put it back there.

Start by taking the plates of the back of the holders for the bar. Where the holes in the wall are you most likely want to use the screw-in anchors since the holes where the screws got pulled out are probably larger.

And once you screw those anchors in the wall you should be good to go. Just put the plate back up and then remount it.

A good practice is to do this on both ends of the towel rack. Even though it may not be out of the wall, it still may just be barely holding on. That way you don't have to repeat this process in a couple months