You might remember my spring post on AT&T’s U-Verse service, which we ordered for Internet access and TV service. After some debate and foot-dragging, we finally disconnected the TV service this week to save some cash. Receiving all those channels in HD was a blast, the DVR worked well, and the digital music channels offered a nice mix of styles. But as much as we liked the service, it just wasn’t worth the money we were paying. So we pulled the plug. I dropped off the DVR at the local UPS store as instructed, which I thought was a cool way to handle equipment returns.

In the past we’ve made futile attempts to watch TV using a rabbit-ears antenna. I don’t know whether it was the antenna, our distance from the broadcast towers, the construction materials for our houses and apartments, or some combination, but they NEVER worked well for us. But after hearing about a friend’s success with an HD antenna, we gave it a try. Naturally, I ordered ours from Amazon: the Clearstream4 by Antennas Direct. Although it’s designed for outdoor use, I currently have it set up inside behind the TV, and it actually works! The picture is nice and sharp, the sound clear. I’m still experimenting with the placement and might break down and mount it outside to pick up more channels. We already get some of the locals in HD plus a couple of nice weather channels. Our TV already had a built-in digital tuner (just like pretty much any TV made after 2007), so we don’t need a converter box. So if you don’t want to pay for cable/satellite but want HD (Lisa, this means you!), an HD antenna might be your answer.

When we first moved into our new house, we discovered something weird in the electrical system. Most of the time, everything worked great. But in the few times we got prolonged periods of rain, the garage door opener quit working. Since we use our garage to store a car rather than filling it with junk, this was a major problem.

Through some experimentation we discovered two things: 1) the garage door opener was on the same circuit as the part of the master bathroom, and 2) the GFCI outlet in the master bath was tripping upline of the garage door opener. Resetting the GFCI outlet, sometimes only after multiple attempts, restored power to the garage door opener, at least for a time. Until a couple days passed with no rain, the GFCI kept tripping. Once everything dried out, the problem went away, so we ignored it over the summer. This kind of problem, whatever it was, lay well beyond my expertise or willingness to learn, lest I receive a painful and possibly deadly lesson. The past weekend’s rains made the problem worse than I’ver ever seen, so I finally contacted an electrician.

The one I contacted was Milestone Electric. Overall I was impressed. Overnight I submitted my request online, of course, and an employee called me the minute the office opened on Tuesday and scheduled an appointment for lunchtime the same day. Two more phone calls kept me informed regarding the electrician’s arrival time, and he arrived within the specified two-hour window and got to work. He suspected bad and possibly conflicting GFCI outlets and possibly a leak on an exterior outlet, so he replaced all three. So far everything seems to work great. The price was higher than expected, but at least it’s done, and I didn’t burn off my eyebrows trying unsuccessfully to fix it myself.

Here are pics of the faucet project. First, the old master bath faucets:

Now, the new faucets:

Our latest project, moved up due to leaks and other problems in the old ones, is replacing the master bathroom faucets. After reading online about how it works, I decided to buy them and install them myself. Sounds like famous last words, right? Well, it actually wasn’t terrible and would have been fairly easy if not for a couple of problems. I finished up Wednesday night with a sense of satisfaction, great relief, and a new appreciation for the plumbing profession. I learned a few things in the process:

1. Most sinks have shut-off valves between the water pipe in the wall and the supply line that leads to the faucet. They allow you to turn off the water just for that part of the faucet instead of shutting it off to the whole house. The old style has an oval-shaped handle and are often hard to turn. I learned that old style faucets, since they often doesn’t get used for decades at a time (ours probably hadn’t been touched since 1983), tend to develop internal problems. Once you close and open them for the first time in 25 years (to replace the faucet, for example), they often develop leaks on top of being very hard to turn. I needed a big wrench and lots of grunting.
2. Supply lines have two different types of connections. If you buy a line with the wrong kind of connection, like I unknowingly did, it won’t fit. Spending 30 minutes at 2:00am trying to screw the wrong connector onto your supply nipple doesn’t work. Neither does using a metal file in a futile attempt to file down the nipple to make them fit together. Asking the guy at Lowe’s instead can save you hours of frustration.
3. There’s a reason plumbers are expensive. Plumbers combine two different disciplines: uncomfortable physical labor and intelligent problem solving. Car and aircraft mechanics share this combination. I can’t tell you how many times I crawled under the sinks, squirmed my way out to check something, and wiggled back underneath. Or how many times I banged my head on the cabinets or sinks. Or how many times I had to turn wrenches at awkward angles. Or what was in the mysterious gray gunk I pulled out of the drains. I also can’t tell you how long I spent on Google reading DIY articles and looking at pictures to figure how what was wrong. Or what kind of shutoff valve I have, which is one of the main reasons I am hiring a professional to replace them instead of trying the job myself.

I am forever grateful that there are people out there who know more and can do the job better than I can. But I must say it feels good to look at those pretty brushed-nickel faucets and realize that with some help, I got this particular job done.