Tidbits

Sleepover at Ikea - Maybe this is the only way to get to the $1 early enough…
A ramen bath - Japanese spa with special baths resembling instant noodles. I wanna play!
Old age homes for dogs - 1) Old dogs don’t like to be abandoned at strange places. 2) Playing with young puppies will probably cause the older dogs to die faster due to exhaustion.
A remote-controlled pigeon - Oh the poor thing…
An article on a brilliant method of teaching grade schoolers about bats and rabies. I smell a lawsuit.
Will trade beer for Crumpler bags. Tempted by the beanbag and messenger bags…

Home Improvement Failures

August 14, 2006, 3:47 am

On a visit to Ikea last weekend, I bought a coat rack/shelf thing to install by the door of the townhouse, since we are often too lazy to use the hallway closet (using a coat hanger is A LOT of work). Assembling it was easy enough, and then we hit a snag. The package didn’t come with any wall mounting, and the fine print on the manual said that due to different wall types, we should be consulting our local hardware store to learn what to use to mount the unit on the wall. Useless Ikea! They sure took the easy way out. So off to Home Depot we go, and decided on this butterfly-toggle thing.

Mistake #1

Length of screws were way too short and thin, there was no way it was going to fit through the wood, drywall, and still have enough length to let the toggle open. So back to Home Depot to get longer ones. We also had a lot of problems finding a spot on the wall to mount the thing. The first section of wall we picked was uneven, and so the rack could not sit tight against the wall. At another location, the basement door got in the way.

Mistake #2

Eventually, we did find a good spot, with one side having stud support. And got the right length of screws. So Mike was excited, and so was too overzealous with the drill. He made a sizeable hole in the wall and then sawdust. Oops, forgot about the stud, and now the hole is too big to screw anything into the wood.

Mistake #3

I examined the holes he made on the other side. Huh, is that the gleam of metal I see? Oh crap, we’ve drilled holes in a bloody AIR DUCT. I have no idea if that’s bad or not, or if we have to patch it. It’s not a major duct, we think it’s just the small round ones that feed AC and heating to rooms… Oh, and so there’s no way to stick the toggle in there, as it will open up in the pipe.

Conclusion

So a couple of evening’s effort later, we ended up with four gaping holes in our wall, a punctured air duct, and a nicely assembled rack to return to Ikea. We learned that we really should be more careful when drilling holes in the wall, and to make a small hole and poke around before committing fully to the drill. All chalked up as lessons learned for House 2.0.

That’ll teach me never to do any spontaneous purchases from Ikea, and to avoid all wall-mounted furniture if possible.

We were also recently thinking of wiring our house ourselves for networking, and even [Mike] even bought all the stuff we need. But then after sketching out the layout of the house, reading lots of materials online, and mostly after the disaster that was the coat rack installation, I think we will look into getting professionals to do it.

In Other News...

We also formally acquired, in writing, a new tenant. Another one of Mike’s friend found a job in Kitchener, and need to start in two weeks. So he is moving into Nelson’s room for four months, and Nelson will move his stuff temporarily into the basement until he finds another place. Basically Nelson’s been interested in moving out, perhaps buying his own place, or finding someplace closer to work, but like most of us these days, too lazy to actually do anything about it. We’ve talked it over, and Nelson seemed to want this as the motivation for him to get off his butt and look for housing, so it’s not like we are evicting him or anything. Unless, of course, it was his plan all along to get into the basement…

KD teased me once about how Mike was a lot like Lairon in some ways, which can be considered disturbing on many levels. Here is an example from today. We went shopping with Mike’s parents at Fairview Mall, so he can get a blazer/sports jacket to wear at his cousin’s wedding at the end of August. When we finally picked out a good jacket, the lady helping us said that perhaps the sleeves need adjusting, but on later examination, concluded that we can just leave them, as he’ll “grow into them”. I think the only growing Mike will do will be along the horizontal!