The Good and the Bad

The Good:

So this past week was the bathroom faucet replacement. Fixed up the shelf back faucet from FW Webb and got some tips from the guy at the counter. First thing, take the sink off the wall or you'll kill yourself trying to operate in that tiny space. Best advice ever. I could barely fit two fingers in there to thread tape the new fitting. I could not imagine trying to do the rest of the work.

The install was a piece of cake. The removal of the old one . . . not so much. Removing the old drain flange (the circle that surrounds the pop up part) took hours of my energy and brain power. Nothing would get that thing to budge. Finally I resorted to sawing it into strips and chiseling it out in pieces. Crude but effective.

I was amazed by how easy the sink came off the wall. There is NOTHING holding that guy down. The pic below shows the metal strip that has a lip on it that the sink hangs on. That is it.



here is the pic of the nice and shiny finished product. Should have taken about 1-2 hours, ended up taking 6-8 hours (includes multiple hardware store runs). behold the good!





The Bad:

So back to the dining room. I thought I had a good diagnosis as to the section of plaster that was severely cracking. My original plan was to slap up strapping right over the plaster. I was sticking my head up in the hole in the ceiling and noticed a sizeable crack in the joist above. Pretty sure its the floor joist to the second floor but who knows. All I know is that is the reason the ceiling was F'd up. In reading how to repair the joist, it seems that I will have to tear out much more plaster than anticipated. Here is a pic of the joist where is meets the wall thingie (yeah that's right, I know my lingo)



Since the ceiling is already opened, might as well fix it now. The only thing that worries me is the living room as a very similar crack in the plaster. I have my fingers crossed.