Category: Projects (Page 1 of 51)

When I had my water heater replaced, they took the old one away, and it left an empty spot outside my back door. The wall there was an old color. Yesterday I decided to paint it to match the rest of the house. I already knew what color paint I needed because of the patch job I did last summer.

Here’s the before and after:

The water pipes in my house are old and could develop a surprise leak any time now. My neighbor told me a horror story of soaked and warping hardwood floors. I did NOT want that, so I’m re-piping my house.

The plumbers did the work yesterday. They cut lots of holes in the walls:

While they were re-piping, they also installed a filter, and a tankless water heater. They take up storage space in my garage, but they will improve my water quality at home, and my eventual resale value as well. Here’s a before and after – the water heater is the thing hanging on the wall:

The old water heater was outside my back door. I’m not sure, but I think it’s not unusual for water heaters to be outside of your house in LA. Now that that tank is gone, I have a space next to my back door. I think I’ll take the metal cabinet down, but then I’ll have this whole space to do something with:

I decided I was going to rearrange my backyard pots yesterday morning, but when I got out there, I got whatever the gardening equivalent of writer’s block is. While I was looking around out there, I noticed the spot on my back wall was still unpainted. That been unpainted for… checking Bradaptation…. TWO AND A HALF YEARS? Good grief!

My challenge was to find the matching color for the stucco on my house. How do people even do that? The internet said to bring in a sample of the paint. I scouted around for broken pieces of stucco, and wasn’t having any luck, until I saw this:

The front of that electrical box actually came off! I could take it in to have the color matched. Awesome! I took it to Home Depot. The line for the paint counter was long, so I looked at the color cards and found one that almost matched, but I wanted to have the guy use the color-match machine.

The color match was too light, so I asked the guy to mix the color from the card I found. When the paint was mixed, the guy put a dab of it on the fusebox cover. It was a perfect match!

It worked! The color is indistinguishable! The texture of the patch is a little different, so you can see it the spot, but the paint color is the same! Amazing!

For the record, the stucco color on my house is Behr “Historical Gray”.

My kitchen sink faucet has always had a low water flow. Lately, it’s gotten worse. I would have switched the faucet, but it was fused to the sink, and hard to get at because of the narrow space behind the sink. I decided it would be better to just replace the sink. The finish was cracked on it anyway, and I was constantly fighting grossness.

I hired someone to do it. I might have been able to do it myself, but I was afraid of tearing up the counter top. And I don’t have a lot of spare time these days. Or energy, for that matter.

He did the replacement yesterday. It’s AMAZING! I love the change!

Here’s the before and after:

It’s so, so beautiful.

I got a table for the patio area in my back yard. It has little plastic nubs on the bottom that act as feet.

I got it home before I realized it was missing one.

I really didn’t want to lug it all the way back to the store, so I went looking for a possible replacement. I found a hex bolt that seemed like it might work.

It did! It screwed into the hole, and is just the right thickness to act as the missing foot. Good job, Brad!