Square Peg in a Round Hole

One of those things about owning an old house: Things break. I'm on my third water heater, but that's a fairly straightforward replacement. Most recently, it was the bathroom vent fan.

I really like the style of the vent, it's an art deco design, with two lights on either side of a center strip of louvers, probably from the 50's. It's Homart brand, which has a lot of different fixtures from that era, and was one of the brands that Sears sold back then. It started out chrome metal and frosted lights, but back when I black and white painted the bathroom, I painted the main body of the fixture gloss black. The outside was in pretty good condition, but the louvers had all the chrome rusted off. I left the center nut chrome.

The light was still working, but the vent fan just stopped. I had a few theories on what might have happened. Since the rewiring of the house was done by a bunch of incompetent shysters, my first thought was that something had come undone. Second, I'd replaced the wall switch with a knob timer a few years ago, since most everyone in the house would leave it running. The switch box was very crowded, and I thought it may have come undone in there. Third, the motor may have finally given up the ghost. It's been quite noisy for a long time, like the bushings might be failing.

I was dreading having to climb up in the attic to check the wiring. The first thing I did was to pull off the cover to check it out. I've had it apart several times, usually to replace a light bulb, and usually I'll give it a little cleaning while I've got it apart. Other times I'll pull the cover off because the louvers will start getting covered with lint fuzz. I'd never looked that close at how it's wired before, but turns out it has a very clever set up!!! It's got the lights and fan motor attached to a bar held in with two screws, and each has a standard plug and socket. I plugged in a different fan (with a long cord) and verified that there was no issue with the wiring.

Indeed, when I got it all cleaned off a little better, it didn't even seem like the motor bushings were that bad. Tried plugging the motor into a different socket, and unsurprisingly it still didn't work. Did a bit of looking around, and no one has that model of motor in stock. It's got a fairly long shaft, and apparently runs at a lower RPM than most modern motors. I found a place fairly nearby that rewinds and repairs motors, and took it there. The guy there verified what I already figured out, it's bad, you can't find replacements. Said they could rewind it... for $120. Also what I figured.

I checked to see what I could find as a replacement, or could adapt to my rig. I was thinking I might just construct a box or ducting above the vent in the attic, but I found a couple of replacement fans at Home Depot for only about $25. The one that I would have liked to use was supposed to move 70 CFM. I headed over, and found a box that had been opened to measure the fan. Too big, by about 3/8”. I checked the next size down, which doesn't list the CFM, and the size looks like it will fit nicely.

Of course, it's on a big sheet metal square, far too large to fit. I took a pair of tin snips to the perimeter, and rounded the corners. Looks like it's going to fit... but when I try and get it to go in, it doesn't sit flush, because of the radius around the fan area. Bent it 90°, then around a half inch farther bent it 90° the other direction, and it worked!!! The screws into the housing were 10-24's, and I happened to have a few 10-24 stainless truss head screws.

The mounting for the lights had been integral to the old motor mount, so I was going to need to either hack up the old one to make it fit, or come up with something new. Also was going to need to come up with a way to have the stud to hold the cover on. The new fan motor has 4 threaded holes, and I figured I could mount a bar to them, and mount the original stud bracket to it, and the light sockets to the outside. The light sockets needed to be offset, so I made a couple of aluminum bars to mount them to, which would in turn mount to the cross bar. I had bought a pair of new light bulb sockets, too.

The original had a couple of angles for either light bulb, probably as something of a heat shield, and to duct the air from the louvers. I bought a 10-foot length of flashing to fashion into these. I'd previously hauled 8-foot lengths in Kutcher and thought I could go a bit longer, but I brought along the tin snips since I didn't think it'd be able to haul a full 10-foot length. It wasn't able, but it was very close!!! I had to trim off about 6”, and it fit fine. Another edition of will it fit!!!

I'd run the cross bar long, with the thought that I'd have to bend it to put the sockets into the correct position (also the reason I used steel for the cross bar). When I started measuring the fit, it came out that where I needed to put the sockets was pretty close to where the fan base sheet metal was!!! Instead of bending the steel cross bar, I just took the aluminum socket mounts, and bolted them to the fan base sheet metal, with the flashing angles sandwiched between. I made a new cross bar, just big enough to mount the original stud bracket, and mounted it with a couple of spacers to put it where it needed to be.

The replacement fan had come with a plug already installed, and I found an old plug and wire in the basement to wire the lights. It all came together nicely.

The new fan doesn't seem to move as much air as the old one, but it's much quieter!!!

Spooky Season

It's that time of year again!!!

To start off with, photos auto modified this picture of what I considered to be the best costume at the Halloween party, and it came out even better!!!

Younger bought a vest of the Flowery character from Deltarune. He had a bag of the orange slice candies, and he'd whip 'em out and say, “Ja-Orange!!!” Yea, I don't get it, either. Our friend pictured with him, everyone always calls him Frozone, and he showed up as him!!!

I wasn't going to stay, but then I did. We watched “Killer Clowns from Outer Space”, which I've heard of forever, but had never actually seen. It was about what I'd expected. Did the karaoke of “This is Halloween” with everyone singing along, then started watching “The Nightmare Before Christmas”, but stopped it when Jack arrived in Christmas Town, then watched the most recent installment of “Insidious”. Ended up being there later than we'd planned!!!

We'd bought a pumpkin to carve, but I didn't have anything in mind. Younger said to do the Deltarune symbol, and it looked easy enough, and a cool looking design, so that's what I did!!! Came out nice, and Sidney side slinking in the background made the picture poetry!!!

I was at the Dollar Tree, and they had a 3 pack of LED candles. Seems like every year we're digging for candles to use in the Jack-O-Lanterns, so it was worth it!!! 2 of the 3 actually worked. I might swap the batteries to see if that's the issue, but at the price it's almost not worth my time!!!

And of course, the November tradition!!! I should have tracked the lid as it rolled down, it went another 15 to 20 feet!!!

Autumn Random

A lot of things happen, here's some from my recent photos. I've got more.

When we were at the park most recently, after the remnants of a storm had blown through, there was a rainbow!!! It appeared a little subdued, like the one I'd seen in Catalina.

A couple of months ago, surrogate got a car of his own!!! Honda Accord V6, older, but not a lot of miles. It's got a sunroof, which he's usually got open. Also, it has a wire coming out to a little square adhered to the roof. The guy he bought it from didn't know what it was, and none of us could figure it out, either, but it looks legit so it's staying there!!!

Hadn't realized it's been 5 years since I made up the easy to recover claw post!!! It had been getting pretty ragged, and I'd been thinking of re covering it, but had lost track of where I'd put the remaining sisal rope!!! Finally located it, and recovered it. Seems like every time it's recovered, it needs to be investigated before it can be used!!! Shortly after this picture, Sid clawed at it, then climbed up and sat on top of it, as he does!!!

Saw a Von Dutch bag at a store a while ago. I'd seen them have the winged eyeball logo before, but this one had a flaming eyeball!!! I think a copyright infringement lawsuit is in order!!!

I'd made mention that I was thinking of doing a redesign on the phone holder in Kutcher to move it a bit further back, and I did. Just a new threaded hole is all it took!!!

Got advance warning today that they're calling a red flag day tomorrow, so I was able to move the cars around before it started. Once again, I don't think conditions will meet their definition, but no one cares. The deep cycle battery in the Falcon was completely dead, which made for a pain getting it moved. Swapped in the one I'd pulled from Kutcher that I've had on a trickle charger. The one in Zonker had gone dead a while ago (I'd forgotten to unplug the charger, and it has a blue LED light that I'm pretty sure killed it), but I'd gotten it going and hadn't had an issue since then. Put a booster on it (which had done nothing for the Falcon, it was dead dead... also, the terminals were both loose, which I don't remember being the case, so strange) and it first set off the stupid horn alarm, then fired right up.

Had to smog Kutcher again. Took it to the place that did Zonker last time, and as far as I could tell there was nothing that would cause it to not pass, and there were no codes in the computer. After a bit, the guy comes in and tells me it failed. It didn't actually fail, but they spotted the O2 sensor spacer I'd put on last time, and apparently using one of those to get it to read correctly isn't legal, so they'd failed it on visual inspection. They didn't charge me, or even enter the information into they system, so once again, they've got my enduring business!!! Took it home and removed the spacer, took it back and it passed without issue. Afterwards, the check engine light started coming back on. Sigh. I think I'll make a catalytic converter anti theft shield so that spacer can't be seen before I take it in again!!!

On the other side of the canyon, there's been a vacant lot between a couple of houses that's been that way since we've been living here. Back in the early 70's, there had been a mudslide over that way that destroyed several houses, I'm not sure if this lot had one or not, but it did look like there had once been a house there. Several months ago, they brought in a backhoe, and were moving dirt around the lot for quite a while. A month and a half or so ago, they poured a foundation, and have been building a new place on it, and it's gone up quick!!! I've seen several places around here being built, and it seems like a lot of them drag on for more than a year.

Younger finally got his learner's permit, and has been doing some driving, I think he's pretty much got it down. Anyway, He was driving and I was passenger, and I got a look, they're actually building two houses, the one pictured here, and another facing the next street over. The one pictured looks like there's a detached garage with either an upstairs deck, or an auxiliary dwelling unit included.

Since I'd recently mentioned Colby Jack (renamed Simba), I thought I'd post a pic of him!!! He's got some quirks. Like every cat.

We were having lunch recently, and someone dressed as The Grinch with a head on a stick scepter rode by on a bike!!! Deliciously random!!!

For my birthday and my sister's birthday, we got together with my mom, and all went to the John's Incredible Pizza that's near where she lives. Here's younger (in his Counting Crows shirt, I think I was wearing my Gaslight Anthem one that day) on the spinny ride. I didn't want to go on it, because I'd eaten a lot of pizza!!!

We were at the Goodwill a bit ago, and they were already getting ready for Halloween. They had a lot of costume ideas set up on the end caps, Pee Wee Herman and the Brawny guy are the two I remember. They had costumes on one rack, and younger put on a hot dog costume and witches' hat, grabbed a machete', and was going around saying, “I'm the Wicked Weenie!!!” It was pretty funny, but there was another hot dog costume and witches' hat there as well...

Sid usually doesn't get out into the front room, but occasionally he'll get out there, and we usually let him hang out for a while. He was out there, and saw that one of the shelves on the newly painted bookcase was still vacant, and decided that we'd left it that way for him!!!

There was a partial lunar eclipse at the end of August, and I headed out to go on a walk and check it out while it was going on. I tried taking some pictures with my phone's camera, but on most of the preset settings it was totally blown out. Messing with the advanced settings, I could get pictures that showed the actual shadow, but none of them were that great. I was over by the canyon, and there were more people there than I've ever seen!!! I went around Sea View, and as I was coming out, a bit of cloud cover was developing, and it allowed me to get a fairly decent picture.

A week or so ago I was searching for an EP that Brian Fallon had released a while ago, and found out he'd just come out with another disc as Brian Fallon and the Painkillers. In another venn diagram moment, one of the songs on it features Brandon Flowers, from another of my favorites, The Killers!!! Of course, I picked it up, and I've got a few favorites off it already.

This is one of the houses across the bay from Horny Corner. I like the turret.

Sand and Sea

Back near the beginning of summer I'd posted about this year's return to the beach, for movies on the beach. It was a good time, but it was night and didn't feature the sun and swimming of a proper beach trip.

Went through most of summer without making a return trip, either for conventional beaching, or for a movie. Before it ended, however, I managed to get two trips in!!!

Both trips were to Horny Corner. The first time surrogate was arranging for several people to go... then his car broke!!! On the day he'd been planning, I asked if he wanted me to come by and pick him up, and he said he wasn't going, and everyone else flaked out, too. I had been looking forward to it, and younger came with me.

It wasn't crowded at all, and it was a very high tide!!!

There's usually seagulls perched on some of the swim area buoys, but this time there was a pelican on one of them!!! We usually will swim out to the buoy line, and when there's a gull, we'll see how close we can get. Often, I'll get within around 6 feet and they'll be getting a little sketchy, then I'll go under and swim under to around the same distance on the other side, and they'll fly away while I'm under. Got this picture of a pelican on the wing after we were out of the water.

We mostly got there, got in the water, and swam most of the time!!! Out to the buoy line, then down to the bridge. Last year one time when surrogate and I had gone with just us, we'd done the same swim, but this was the first time for younger. Swam back, dried off, then went for burgers at Grill 'Em All!!! I got the same as last time, the Witte, and younger got the Long Beach Dirtbag, a chili burger with bacon, chipotle ketchup, and garlic aoili. And, of course, the primate fries. Once again, I was craving a premium burger, and once again was not disappointed!!!

Two weeks after, we went again!!! This time, surrogate came as well. Got there, and went straight into the water and out to the buoy line!!! Scared off a seagull by swimming under it, swam down to another, and we got really close to the buoy and gull!!! This guy (actually I think it was a girl from the coloring) was pretty bold!!! While we were there swimming around and talking to her, another gull flew up and tried to chase her off, but she stood her ground!!!

The first time we were there, they had the inflatables up, but they were gone the next time. We swam over to the float that they stage from, and climbed up and jumped off it a few times. It's got an unusual construction, with two floats joined together with a wide area of grating between them. I swam under the grating area, and it's a bit strange and claustrophobic under there. Younger swam in after, and I went back under, and surrogate finally came under again. After that, I went back to shore, dried off, and re positioned a chair in the sunlight. As the summer comes to it's end, the light fades faster!!! The sunlight was right to the edge of the water, and I turned the chair towards the sun for a selfie. Oh yeah, it was a fairly high tide again!!!

The guys were still soaking, and I was mostly dried off, so I went and changed. On the way back, I spotted a snowy egret hunting along the water's edge. I went to take a picture, and he was heading off. I followed, parallel to him, and finally caught up for a decent picture.

I really like the burgers at Grill 'Em All, but it's a little expensive!!! After we finished up this time, we headed over to the local In-N-Out for some also great burgers, at a considerably lower price!!! One of my favorite summertime activities (besides hitting the beach!!!), I've realized, is dining outdoors when the sun is down, but the temperature is still up!!!

... So I Drove Her to Boyle Heights!!!

There's this park that a lot of family friends and us end up going to on a fairly regular basis. It's actually the park where Colby Jack (since renamed the rather generic Simba) came from. Back in June we were heading there for a picnic while the Lineage Logistics warehouse was on fire for a while, in yet another show of the incompetence of our city under the current mayor.

I had been hearing about, smelling, and seeing the plume from the fire for most of the week. They were saying it was in Boyle Heights, but that's one of those localities that I'm kind of unclear of the boundaries of, and I didn't bother to look it up to see exactly where it was.

While we were heading there, I got a much better look at the plume and saw more or less nearly exactly where it was!!! Not far at all from that park, and the plume was turning the sun red!!! The way the wind was blowing, it wasn't that smoky at the park.

We went there again not long after that for the 4th of July. By this time, the fire was out, but now all the food that had been stored in the warehouse was rotting!!! Once again, for the most part the breeze would be blowing in a way that you usually don't smell it from there, but every once in a while it would shift to where you get a whiff. It's not far from the freeway, and there's a pedestrian bridge over it, which is where this picture was taken.

Went there again for a birthday a little later. Someone had a Frisbee, and it got thrown up on the roof over some tables and the restrooms, so they had boosted up a girl, then while she was up there had her throwing down candy for the kids!!!

The most recent trip there was on Labor Day, and once again headed over to the pedestrian bridge. Also on that day there was a Giratina raid close by that had a bunch of people who'd signed up with the recently introduced RSVP system, so a few of us joined in and did it.

Just before that weekend a storm had blown through and left a lot of cloud cover, which made for some dramatic sunset!!!

Another recent time we were there for a gender reveal, so there's some more smoke!!! First one I've ever been to. The smoke seemed a little inconclusive, but it's a girl!!!

By the way, the title refers to a joke I'll use for a stinky area. I usually use it for Norco (You know how to get to Norco??? Go east until you smell it, then go south until you step in it!!!)

She told me to kiss her where it stinks... So I drove her to Boyle Heights!!!

The Wall

I'd made mention in a previous post of the project I'd been working on painting the window frames.

I had finished off the frames some time ago, and here's the results!!! The picture also has the motion detector light activated.

In the same post, I'd also mentioned that I was thinking of doing an accent wall, and now that's been done, too!!! The splotchy repaint I'd mentioned, you can kind of see in the next two pictures, but it's white on white, so it doesn't show up great.

In addition to the repaint, it also needed a little bit of body work to fill in some pits and gouges. I had the cover to the heater off to do the work, and it had a portion right by the air intake that looked burned. While I had it off, I cleaned it off (using the battery powered power washer I'd picked up, it's OK but not great. Kind of a glorified super soaker), sanded it down, and sprayed it with some high temperature spray paint.

My wife got a picture of me applying the first stripe...

The transitions didn't come out as clean as I was picturing, but it works.

I am pleased with the final results, though!!! My wife said it looks a little like a sunset, and said I could add some In-N-Out Burger style palm trees!!!

The bookcase and the stereo rack had been in the opposite positions before the project, and the bookcase was slightly into the walkway from the door, so this arrangement is better. I also painted the bare wood sides and top of the bookcase white before making some holes in the back to run the wires through.

I also realized that the TV mount had just a bit of height adjustment that I could use, so I've re positioned it around 3” up from where it was. I made a couple of gouges through the color layer while I was putting the heater cover back on that I need to go back and touch up, too.

The whole project took a while, but I'm pleased with the results!!!