car stereo [3].

A few months ago, K and I realized we had two of the same vehicles. She had a Yaris, I had a Corolla. Well, basically the same. And when it came time to take our family on an adventure, and bring along the pup, we were out of luck. About the same time, we were driving back and forth to our ski hill, where we witnessed everything from a semi-trailer jack-knifed, splayed across the highway, to a little Prius that got stuck just trying to leave (and I spent a good five minutes trying to help the poor people push it to no avail), to some old Mercedes fish-tailing all over the highway as it crawled up to the pass.

Yeah... all wheel drive might be nice...

Being a Toyota family, we had been looking into a RAV4. The new ones sure look stylish and... whoa, wait - they're something like $30 thousand dollars. Okay, no. Oh, and they only come in automatic transmissions. No bueno. So after doing some research, we learned that Toyota only offered the RAV4 with a manual transmission up until 2005, after which they ceased producing (or exporting) vehicles with that option. Bleh. But no worries, really, because an early-2000 was much more affordable.

After very little time spent on Craigslist, we found what seemed to be the perfect specimen! A 2001, manual (duh), AWD, 1-1/4" tow package, roof racks, sunroof, tinted windows, only 135k miles, and so on. After test driving, we could tell it needed an alignment and an oxygen sensor, but after talking the dude down almost a grand, we drove home with it that night.

Welcome... Luna!

At Stevens Pass this past winter...

And at our campsite in Glacier National Park, BC (yep, not the Glacier in Montana)...

K came up with the name, clearly named after the rugged peak in the North Cascades...

And well, she needed a new stereo, too (the car, not the mountain... ok, ok).

This install was somewhere in between Spencer and Stuart. Meaning, I had to modify the tweeters a little creatively, but everything else was pretty easy-peasy. Particularly (as usual), the receiver -

Boom...

Boom...

Boom... Done.

That is another reason why I really like older cars... their stereos are so much easier to replace! (And older cars are generally just easier to work on and fix ourselves)

Then it was time for the speakers. I didn't spend a fortune on this (yet), but rather just started with a new (Bluetooth) receiver and four new speakers to replace the stock ones. The only tricky part on the door speakers was having to drill a new hole for the new speaker bracket (well, really not tricky - just an extra step that took about five seconds) -

And installed!

Well - maybe worth pointing out is the window insulation I had lying around that I used to create a tight seal for the bracket, and avoid it rattling when the speaker was cranking -

The component tweeters were a little trickier, like I mentioned, only because I ended up having to file them down a bit to get them to fit behind the little sail panels...

Step 1: remove factory tweeters...

Step 2: splice new tweeters to existing wiring/harness...

Step 3: file edges of tweeter with coping saw/metal (or wood) file...

Step 4: reinstall using factory mounting bracket...

Step 5: reinstall sail panel...

And done -

The rear door speakers were more or less the same, minus the separate tweeters. I shoved the factory stuff into a bin in our crawl space, in case there ever comes a time we sell her (highly unlikely) and want to remove all the fancy(-ish) stuff...

The next question is whether or not to add an amp and/or a sub under the seats... But for now, we can pair both of our phones, take calls (yikes!), and play our various iPods with decent sound.

drywall.

My favourite job: mudding sheetrock joints.

Actually, it's not that bad. Plumbing is worse. Way worse. And mudding is part step-by-step, but also, part art. Seriously. People who can mud well are artists, in a building-stuff-sort-of-way.

But anyway... time to get at it. I still use the step-by-step instructions I found online many, many years ago that I more or less wrote up here. Then I was off to the races, whereby I mean this job was won by how long I could drag it out...

(My trusty and accept-no-substitue Marshalltown taping knives!)

Step 1: put tape over all the joints, and scrape basically all of the mud from the walls.

I saved myself time and the hassle of doing the ceiling joints because after we paint, I'm going to hang all of the trim - of which will consist a crown molding along the ceiling edges.

Then fill in the screws. Let dry. Put on the first 'real' coat of mud, about 4" wide. Let dry. A second, about 6" wide. Let dry. A third, about 8" wide. Let dry.

I taped off the thermostat for the heated floor...

Lastly, pull out a box of old-but-still-perfectly-good light joint compound (I swear by a top coat of the light stuff!) and get it nice and gloopy...

Then put on a 10"-wide swath of that stuff. Let dry. Fill in any gaps or raised edges with yet more of the light compound. Let dry. Inspect. If all looks good and there are no more flaws... Sand (yay!). And prepare for dust. Lots of dust.

Then do a final inspection and cross fingers (whilst running your hand all over the wall to determine if you can feel any of the seams)...

That corner by the door and the built-in cabinet was fun... But in the end, turned out looking great! And most of it, in fact, will be hidden by trim.

Next... we get to prime all the walls and ceiling, then paint! I think I'll bring the gallon of paint to the hardware store and have them mix it up because it's been sitting since I bought it something like eight or nine years ago... (if I lose points for dragging out a job, I get a few back for thinking ahead haha!)

ugh. plumbing. [again]

I looked it up. It's been five years, five months, and five days since I fixed our kitchen drain plumbing for the first time. Apparently, at that time I should have been doing the walls of our bedroom, rather than cutting out a large section of our drain and redoing it.

Fast-forward. Five years, five months, and five days. I should have been doing the walls of our bathroom, rather than cutting out an even larger section of our drain and redoing it. But I'm stupid. And I guess I don't learn. Bother.

So Saturday, as I was preparing to start mudding and taping the bathroom walls... our kitchen sink drain stopped working. Again, just as it did... (yep) five years, five months, okay okay... Mother trucker.

Let me just say, that all the tips the plumbing books and the websites and the forums say to clear a stopped drain (using a plunger, followed by a snake) don't work for sh*t. They're all a load of crap.

Okay okay again. Thankfully I wasn't dealing with sewage. Just the ground up food stuff from... (yep) five years, okay bloody h*ll already...

This weekend sucked, if that wasn't obvious. But I can only blame myself, in thinking all those years ago when I remodeled the kitchen of how cool and classy it would be to install my very own garbage disposal. Heck, in that case, I can blame my parents... for having grown up in a house with one, and thinking how I was an adult and learning how to remodel my home and so, by gosh darnit, I'm gonna figure out how to install a disposal.

Except, as I've pointed out... I'm stupid.

Which is really just saying I didn't take into account simple physics. Namely, a few important nuances, including...

1. How long the run of pipe was until it dumped into the main sewer line
2. The slope angle of the pipe
3. The diameter of the pipe

The run goes halfway across the house (12'), then from near the back of the house to under the crawl space (12') before dropping into the sewer drain, and it was done with 1-1/2" ABS (vs. 2", which would be less-prone to clogging for obvious reasons). That, and the plumber or whoever did the job lost nearly 6" in two 90º bends, not leaving enough for the first 12' run from the outside wall to the middle of the house to drop the (minimum) 1/4" per foot of pipe. I ended up, back five years ago, hacking some of the wall out in order to allow for that necessary slope.

And that's the minimum.

So yeah... the pipes were destined to clog. This time, for real. As in... for real for real. When I cut out the second 12' section after the second 90º bend, then cut it in pieces to get it out of the cavity in which it was built, the cross-section revealed a pipe utterly, completely, totally... clogged. With crap. While, again, thankfully... not literally. But just a step up from literal crap.

There's quite honestly nothing more fun than spending a Saturday cutting into a drain line -

Followed by clumps of years-old waste and backed up water sloshing onto your head and all over the floor. Ahh yes, certainly good times indeed. Good times, indeed.

A trip to the store to get the necessary plumbing parts, wearing the clothes covered in that stuff, was followed by first dry-fitting - then glueing - everything together. Here's the new 90º bend, where the pipe drops 4" in about, yep, 6" of length. Brilliant.

And the splice -

Right before where the drain from the bathroom we're currently remodeling (and of which I should have been mudding the walls so I can tile) joins and heads to the front of the house to connect with the sewer line -

Yeah. Phwew. And double phwew, because when I inspected the last section of pipe I had cut out right up to that junction... it was clear. Meaning, the sludge had stopped just a couple of feet before that, so I didn't have to redo any of that plumbing.

So yeah. As I cursed (K wasn't home), I also realized how foolish that was, how foolish I was. As I pulled out of the parking lot of the hardware store Sunday afternoon with my $40 in plumbing pieces, I passed a woman hobbling down the sidewalk across the street. I can walk, run even, heck... ski. I can cut up our plumbing and figure out how to fix it myself, for $40 and a weekend. Who was I to be upset? I needed to be thankful, to count all of the blessings I have.

I was frustrated, sure. We're all allowed to get frustrated from time to time. That's inevitable, and we're human. But in the end, when K turned the water on in the sink after the glue had set on all the new pipes and fittings, and I heard the sweet, sweet sound of water trickling through the plumbing above my head, all the way through the house, I smiled. It felt good.

But I'm not forgetting. Not this time. So I'll be disconnecting the garbage disposal. We bought a couple of sink strainers and will never, ever, ever, ever, ever... ever rinse another food scrap down the drain.

Ever.

No, seriously. Ever.

I mean it.

---

ps - thank you, Evon Brow, for that wonderful comment you had left all those years ago...  I really appreciated re-reading it. Now, for real, hopefully I can permanently cross this off my list of worries!

we have walls.

Back last August, after a weekend of demolition and framing, our bathroom looked like this -

Today we finally finished hanging the sheetrock, and it looks like this -

It's coming along... Next I have to mud all of the sheetrock before we can tile, which will be exciting.

We also cut a new hole for the forced air vent, and a hole for the new fan (which I'll need to vent through the roof before we can use it - no doubt a fun project... ) -

And months ago I put together the built-in cabinet, which I'll mention at some point...

So yeah.... next up, mudding (yay!). Although Scott shared a tip that he's never sanded mud. Instead, he uses a wet sponge which he says smooths the mud amazingly, and with no mess. I was intrigued, and may have him show me his technique (I get pretty particular with mudding sheetrock, and don't tend to let others help or touch the walls heh... ).