Deep Cleansing Breath...

 "In through nose, out through mouth".

When things get accomplished that I have been bitching about for so long, what else can one say? Ahhh.

This past Monday was a flurry of tools and dust once again at IHOD as a few more of the nagging issues on the punch list were crossed off. They always seem to require more work to fix don't they?

In the Master Bathroom we had a broken floor tile! Joyous fun!

This tiny little half moon piece of tile came out of the middle of one of the full size pieces of tile. Tiny little thing isn't it? The repair looks like this!

It's a good thing that the two young men we found to help us with these repairs really know their shit. Steven removed the tile without even scratching one near the one to be replaced and he removed that piece of baseboard without breaking or even damaging the paint! Wow.

 Like it never even happened...

Meanwhile his colleague Robert was busy putting right the number one item on our punch list, the front door. Infinity left us with a front door that you had to really put your weight behind in order to open it. Granted it is a door, but one likes to be able to use the doors in one's home.

Robert found that the door was not installed correctly and after some manipulating, drilling, bashing and screwing our recalcitrant door now open and closes with but one finger, smooth as glass. His comment was something to the tune of "It's much easier to just put these things in right the first time than to come back and fix them." My sentiments exactly. He then went on to fix the other mis-alligned doors in the house and then we cam to the hall bathroom door.

This wonderful construction was so badly installed that it would not close without being forced. Infinity claimed that it was just "sticky", but if you were outside the room and closed the door you could see the entire door frame twist as the door closed. Robert pondered this dilemma for a bit and came up with an ingenious plan.

 Do you see it?

How about now?

What he did was to locate a few key spots in the door frame, drill some pilot holes and then run really long screws into the door frame and into the wall. What that did was sort of twist the door frame out away from the door. (Ah, Physics!) Now the door closes completely with the touch of a single finger and open nice and quietly. Of course he covered the screws and repainted the door frame as well and now you cannot tell the work was done.

Each door he fixed required a different solution, there were six doors that were not functioning correctly. In the space of two to three hours he had all of them functioning the way that they should despite the various blunders of the people that installed them.

There were other broken tiles of course, these two were in the kitchen. One in fact has been broken before. In the post from 10 November 2021 titled "One Step Forward..." I recount the lovely tale of having to replace that which was already complete. Sometime in January the tiles that were repaired this week all broke and we called our contractor to have them replaced. He blamed the problem on the "cheap tile" we tile we had purchased and was not convinced that it had anything to do with his installation. Well when we pull the tiles up we discovered this:

This is the broken piece of tile from the tile that they had repaired after it had been broken. You might see the problem or not. There is NO thin-set on this piece of tile at all. What that means is that it was installed and had a void underneath it and the moment the right weight was put on it it snapped. This most assuredly is the fault of the installer.

However, this week Steven very carefully removed these broken tiles and made everything right again.

 

 Robert also took the time to rehang our entry light. It is tough to see what he did here but he added a 24 inch long section to the shaft the lamp hangs from. It was something infinity missed because they said they could not find the part. Hmm. Well it's fixed now. Thank you Robert.

 

And finally Robert took care of something that we kept meaning to do but just hadn't gotten to.

 

He hung the Doofus Angel!

A gift from Sandra that in the condo hung in a spot where you really couldn't see it and now is in a place of prominence. In fact his presence there above the door causes the door to be renamed, "The Doofus Door"! Everyone should have a Doofus Door!

There is still more to do of course, the electrical project, finishing the garage and cleaning up a few more things from the Infinity List, but repairing the tiles and fixing the doors goes a long way to making me a much happier camper.

And So It Begins, Again...

 I have made no secret of how incredibly disappointed I am in the contractor (Infinity Builders) that did the vast majority of the work on our renovation. They were unprofessional, unhelpful, are unresponsive to customer service requests and on two occasions the workers "accidentally" took our tools away with them requiring us to chase them down and provide photographic proof that they were ours in the first place.

Shortly after moving into our home I noticed that the toilet in the master bathroom rocked back and forth as I would stand up. I pointed this out to Yossi, the boss at Infinity, and his response was, (are you ready?) "All toilets to that to one degree or another, you should see how much the toilet at my own house moves." (Do any of your toilets do this?) After I finished choking I said "Well I don't want mine to do that, please fix it." To which he suggested slipping a wooden window shim under the back, you know like your local restaurant does to fix a rocking table instead of adjusting the feet.

Well this little headache has been item number two on my punch list that I have been wanting to have him address. But since it became obvious that he was not going to return our phone calls or live up to his agreement to make right anything on the punch list we decided to have someone else do it. Today the first of many punch list items were addressed, the toilet was repaired. And the moment the guy pulled open the side he knew what the issue had been.

Yeah I know, you don't really see it yet either do you? Well let me spell it out, they never put NUTS on the bolts that hold the toilet down! Most likely because the area they have to work in is very, very tight and they were very, very lazy. (You could also read that as unprofessional.)

So because of that they decided to glue the toilet to the floor using silicone caulking. Which means that the only thing holding the toilet a fat, broken old man was using to the floor was the wax ring and a thin bead of caulk! Oh, and that green arrow in the picture? That is pointing out the missing wax ring. You see, because it was never tightened to the floor with it's bolts the wax ring never compressed correctly and had pulled away, sticking to the bottom of the bowl. The plumber told us that you almost always find the old wax ring on the floor still in place when you remove a toilet.

This young man had us put back together correctly, bolts and all, in about 20 minutes, even with having to pause to allow me to take photos. As a "safety measure" he checked both toilet seats to be sure they were installed correctly. Any guesses as to what he found? You bet! Both seats were only barely attached and it was only a matter of time before they had worked loose. He snugged them both up for free.

I love what our house looks like, but these details drive me buggy and since they were not done correctly the first time, we are having to go back and do it again. But hey, my toilet is fixed!

Thought We Were Done Didn't Ya?

 Ever see this before? You should, you've got one.

This ridiculous looking device is a Circuit Breaker box, officially known as a Distribution Board. This is where all of the electric power coming into your home is divided out and sent to the various places that it is going to be used. Before 1965 you would have had a Fuse Box, but here in America everything built since 1965 has one of these lovelies.

This particular box lives on the side of our house and has been there since 1983. However, (you knew there was something coming didn't you?) UDC, the company that built our home was renowned for using the least expensive (read as cheapest please) components it could lay it's hands on in order to increase their profit margin on each sale. (Aren't they lovely folks?) Turns out that the Distribution Boards they chose to use were so cheap that they are universally recognized as some of the worst, most dangerous pieces of garbage to come down the road ever.

How did we discover this you ask? Simple, while you are sitting in our lovely home certain lights will dim when there is ANY draw on the power. Like say, the laser printer warming up, the refrigerator cycling or the A/C cutting on. We called an electrician to look at this problem back in April who told us that the reason for the problem was the "Neutral" line from the transformer and that we should call SRP in to investigate. So we did..

SRP determined that yes indeed there was a problem with the Neutral and that they would have to make a simple repair. The SRP technician was then joined by five of his fellow SRP technicians, (all of whom drove their very own SRP truck) and they began to investigate.

 

 

And investigate...

And investigate...

Finally they made a repair to the Neutral line and declared the problem resolved. Fortunately for us our electrician remained for this entire process (off the clock surprisingly enough) and tested SRP's repair.

Nope problem still there. Diagnosis? The Distribution Board! "We're too busy to do the work now, let's try in August".

August, yes indeed, height of the Arizona summer, one whole day without power. Estimate price; $5,500.00. Oh dear gods!

Now comes that however we've been waiting for...

However, in the intervening months SRP, has decided that they hate this sort of Distribution Board so much that if you are unfortunate enough to possess one they are going to make the regulations for replacing it very, very, VERY complicated.

Take it off the wall and replace it? Oh my no. Dig up the ground in front of it, remove the sidewalk next to it, replace the down tubes, meter box, whole schebang. Cannot be recessed into the wall as our is, oh my no. Requires new wider pipes, you bet. SRP fix the sidewalk? No chance in hell. Estimated price; $9,600.00! PLUS the cement contractor to replace the sidewalk. I'm sorry, what?!?!

The option: do nothing. However, risk of failure is high. Result? A smoldering pile of ruin that was once our lovely home.

Solution? We're going to do it...