Side step progress

Dad came by on my day off and we finished putting the decking on. I need about 18' of Evergrain to finish it off. Looks like I need to call Trendel Lumber again.

Framing is done?

We'll see. I didn't write down any of my "calculations". I'll order the Evergrain Redwood decking tomorrow. I still have some facia left from the deck.

New side door steps

I didn't get the before pictures, but the old steps needed to go. They had been chewed up by the dog and were put up half assed by the contractor.

I'll replace the whole thing and use Evergrain decking to match our new deck.

Slow draining bathroom sink

I have a problem sink. Our master bathroom sink is always causing me fits. Usually it is a foul smell that just shows up randomly. I've been told that it is either a dried up P trap, or something foul in the overflow tube in the sink. Either way, that is not the issue right now.

Every so often it drains slow. Usually because I trimmed my sideburns or over my ears after clipping my hair, and some of it goes in the drain. Sometimes it is just a buildup of my wife's hair from making herself beautiful every morning. One time I took the P trap off to find a half moon sliver of soap/toothpaste/scum/calcium had been growing in the bottom.

Well a couple weeks ago after I had washed some hair clippings (not a lot either, I'm not a total idiot) down the drain, it started draining really slow. I mean not like minutes to drain, but slow enough that you couldn't leave the water running for very long. When you were brushing your teeth your toothpaste spit would just float around, pretty nasty.

So I took the trap off, and it was surprisingly clean. I pulled the drain plug out and UGGGHHH. Super nasty! I cleaned if off and using a hanger scraped the top portion of the drain itself clean. After that it was flowing perfectly. Until a couple days ago.

Slow draining once again and no real idea why. Any suggestions would be appreciated, and when I figure out what is causing this (probably later tonight) I'll post it. But I need to know how to really prevent this altogether! Garbage disposal in the bathroom??? They need to make a toilet with one of those, then we wouldn't need plungers.

Honesty during March Madness

This was sent to me from a coworker. This is from another person here (I removed the last names to protect the innocent). It is nice that some people are afraid to be honest about why they are unable to work well during March Madness. Click the picture to see it full size.

Sink update

I got this back from Thermocast support.  I emailed them yesterday evening.  Very prompt!

"Thank you for your e-mail. To restore the luster to your sink we recommend using just plain bleach and water or Clorox cleanup. Then follow up with a liquid based auto polish such as turtle wax, Maguire's cleaner wax or an actual auto "rubbing/buffing" compound. Do not use soft scrub, comet, ajax etc.. it will ruin the finish, if the above remedies do not suffice please contact us back."

I'll try it today.

Thermocast sink

We bought our house new about 4.5 years ago. All the appliances are black, but the kitchen sink was the shallow contractor grade steel one. So we bought a nice Thermocast black sink from Home Depot. Within a few weeks the glossy shine was gone on the interior portion of the sink. The upper surfaces are still pretty but the inside is dull, and looks like the polish has rubbed off. Anybody know what I can do to remedy this?