Ravings of a Textual Deviant

The good news is that I have a new faucet in the kitchen sink. A faucet that only sprays water when and where I want it.

Which makes it entirely unlike my old kitchen fountain faucet.

The Good

I knew things were going too well when Spouse was able to install the faucet in very little time and with no difficulties.

Under the sink, however, was a completely different matter.

The Bad

The floor of the under-sink cabinet has spent the past eight years or so undergoing a transformation from the mild warping it had when I bought the house to the non-Euclidian surface you can see above.

Spouse thought it would be a fairly simple matter to remove the floor of the cabinet and replace it.

But of course, my house was built by brain-damaged and probably non-union marmosets.

The Yucky

Because I’d like to think that a union brain-damaged marmoset would know that you’re supposed to run a line of ductwork from the vent to the grate. Especially when, you know, there might be water in the immediate area.

Fortunately, Spouse was in Builder Mode already (still trying to construct a new bookcase for the cookbooks before the old one collapses and an avalanche of world culinary literature gives me a concussion—a task from which I keep distracting him to do things like replace the kitchen faucet) and was able to rip out all the warped-and-soaked pressboard, manufacture a custom duct, re-frame the base of the cabinet, and drop a new floor in, and clean up from the repair, all in about 6 hours worth of work (over 2 days).

Because I thought that taking out the entire cabinet the weekend before we expect out-of-town guests was a bad idea.

Several thousand dollars later, I have a new drain line from my kitchen to the main drain line under the house, an intact pipe from the kitchen sink into said drain line, a functional septic system, and a clean crawlspace.

I can flush, shower, launder, cook, and do dishes. And not a moment too soon. Normally, when I’m stressed, I’ll bake. Not so much the option the past few days. Instead, I had a lot of trouble sleeping, and an overwhemling urge to rearrange furniture.

One of the reasons I ended up buying my current house (in September of 2000) is because I wanted a fireplace. However, the inspection report noted that there was a problem with the reflective mortar, so I’d never used it.

On Wednesday, I finally got around to having the chimney inspected and cleaned. It turns out that the reflective mortar was probably painted on by a previous homeowner, and a few cracks in it were nothing to be worried about. A metal reflector would provide improved aesthetics as well as put more heat back into the room, but the fireplace was perfectly usable. (the company that did the work was awesome; I’ll happily provide ) Spouse very obligingly brought in an armload of wood that same night and built a very lovely fire indeed.

That’s the good.

The bad is that I thought I had a minor plumbing problem (clogged drain) and found out I have a major plumbing problem (need new pipe run from kitchen sink to main drain line for house). That’s going to be an all-day plumbing job for two guys, bright and early Monday morning. It will involve them cutting through one of the (broken) kitchen cabinets to get through the pipe, but as the house has the original 1976 cabinets still in it, and Spouse can almost certainly engineer a fix that will be much better than what we have now, I am finding it very difficult to muster any level of distress on the subject.

The ugly is that while the plumber was under the house, he discovered that there’s a problem with the septic system, in that it seems to be full after having been emptied only 6 months ago. The exact nature of the problem is yet to be diagnosed, but anything dealing with septic systems is bound to be a messy job.

Then, there’s the cleanup in the crawlspace. I don’t even know what that’s going to entail. There’s no point in even planning for it until after everything else is done anyway.

Work on the bathroom remodel is on temporary hiatus, as Spouse has injured himself moving a sheet of plywood. Fortunately, he’s taking good care of himself and improving—muscle injury rather than connective tissue, thank goodness. Still, we’ll be “rebaslining the schedule,” as I would say if I were at work.

Which, thank goodness, I’m not.

On the plus side, the floor joists look sound, so that headache is avoided.

It’s a good thing we were planning to redo the half bath over the holidays. Below is a picture of what we found after Spouse took up the nasty old carpet.

Every time Spouse embarks on a home improvement project, he usually ends up wishing fates worse than death upon our builder. Take, for example, the use of fiberboard as a subfloor in a carpeted bathroom.

DOUBLE FAIL!

Fortunately, my dad, a bona fide mad scientist with his very own lab, is going to give us some superabsorbent polymers to help suck some of the moisture out of the moldy sponge that the floor has become.

For those of you who are not fortunate enough to have a mad scientist in the family, I am told that diapers contain the same substance.

Stay tuned for another exciting holiday room remodel.

ETA: My dad was not only able to provide us with superabsorbent polymer, he also had a “better than bleach” fungicide for us…which is good, given that Spouse’s worst allergy is to molds, mildews, and fungi.

I have a research challenge that has exhausted my paltry research skills.

I am looking for information about the Charak Furniture Company of Boston, MA. I have one of their pieces, a revolving bookcase, that was sent to me by my grandmother. I’d like to get an idea of its value in order to find out if I need a special insurance rider for it. However, there’s not a lot of information out there on the company itself, and although its pieces pop up pretty regularly in auction catalogs, I can’t find any mention that they ever made revolving bookcases, despite the label on mine.

So far, I have discovered that Charak was based in Boston, and considered a very fine furniture- and cabinetmaker. They appear to have been in business from the late 1920s until the 50s or 60s. They were originally known for traditional styles and colonial reproductions, but ultimately ended up making a midcentury modern line of furniture. Many pieces are numbered, and all of them appear to have been handmade with very nice woods, like mahogany and maple. The postwar pieces are allegedly hard to come by; the item I have is dated 1949. They were competitors with Kaplan Furniture of Cambridge, MA (“Beacon Hill Collection”) and the Old Colony Furniture Co. of Boston, MA and, later Nashua, NH. One of their prominent designers was Tommi Parzinger.

This item looks quite similar to mine, but the inlay pattern is different, and mine has a leather top.