Quick Class: Float Ball

A short post today, nothing fancy. We’ve been working on some videos over at Click and Improve and while writing a few of them, one thing that came up was common things that people see but don’t know the use for. One thing that came up, as I was talking to a NYC plumber at a recent meeting, was how the mechanisms in the back of the toilet tank work together and how a kink in their process is what tends to be the cause of a runny toilet. This led me to the floater ball, which I remember used to be completely alien to me; that black ball in the toiet tank that looks like an inflatable croquet ball. Not to get too gross, but the winter months can be some battle-test weeks for your toilet and this was something that seemed to be an easy DIY repair job to go through.

The float ball sits on the water and when the toilet flushes, it drops, causing the float arm to raise the valve plunger and bring fresh water into the tank until the floatball is floating again. The most common effect of a defective float ball is a running toilet, and there are a few things that can cause this. The float ball can be cut or leaky, which can cause it to not float properly. There’s also a possibility that the float ball is rubbing up against the side of the tank, which can cause a tear or make it so the lever doesn’t lift properly.

The most common solution is replacement, as float balls are relatively cheap. Regardless, you should replace it immediately, as it links directly with the mechanism that ensures that you can flush your toilet properly. To replace it, you’ll have to turn the water shutoff valve to the toilet and flush the toilet to empty the tank. Use a pair of pliers to take off the rod arm and float ball. Turn the rod arm counterclockwise to remove the defective float ball before threading the new float ball on the rod arm and tighten it. Turn the water back on to the toilet and reattach the rod arm, bending it to reach a desirable level to meet the water level.

Okay. So, admittedly, some of that stuff takes a bit more effort than I led on, but plumbing in general tends to be a craft that even the most experienced of practitioners are consistently refining and honing. But this is a good thing to have in your back pocket when the sound of swirling water is keeping you up to hours that would make Santa cock an eyebrow. 

Blogger Secret Santa: Who are you???!!

This year I'm in a Secret Santa exchange with some blogger friends -arranged by Stefanie of Brooklyn Limestone- and I have NO IDEA who my {AWESOME} Secret Santa is!!!

Here is the list of possible culprits:

My Santa seems to know me so well!!  (Or maybe I'm really obvious to figure out????  hahaha)  But, really, when my first package arrived I was thrilled.  She's the best.  It was an itunes gift card (yipeeeeeeee-  I love to dance in the kitchen - or anywhere- to new music) and the most adorable little box of GREEN notecards.:

They'll stay in my kitchen where I'm always scrounging around for a piece of paper for grocery lists or notes.   (It's so funny but I can't believe how having this little box of pretty note paper has made life easier for me...  I know it should be common sense to keep paper in the kitchen but I never wanted to because I never had any that was pretty enough to keep out.  All the rest always felt like clutter.  So no more running around through the house looking for scrap paper to make lists for me!!)

Anyway, I was all happy thinking that was it.  But THEN, another package arrived.  ( !!! ) I tore open the package like a six year-old....  (getting gifts in the mail is awesome.) It was a beautiful Stella & Dot box...

{I'm using stella & dot as a clue...  I know some of those Santa culprits above are stella & dot ladies so I'm narrowing down my guessing pool.}

And this is what was inside:

{Seriously Santa???  You are amazing!!!  I LOVE YOU!!}

How did she know??!!  It's perfect and with green being my favorite color, I am going to wear this baby all the time.  (It is more green in person than in the pic if that didn't make sense ;)  It's so beautiful and (maybe it's the pregnancy hormones) but it made me a teensy bit teary.  Santa, thank you for being so generous & thoughtful. 

So...  now that you have seen the list of Secret Santas,  any guesses as to who sent me my package?  Also, I sent a little Santa package myself over to one of those Santas...  You can click these posts below to see the other gifts & make guesses.  If you follow the link to Brooklyn Limestone, you can also enter a contest with your guesses.  Have fun & I would really love some help as to who you think sent me mine so be sure to enter a guess in the comments section!! :)

4 men 1 lady *** brooklyn limestone *** bryn alexandra *** emilyaclark  *** house of smiths ***

the inspired room *** isabella and max rooms *** la dolce vita  *** making it lovely *** you stir me *** thrifty decor chick ***  tenjune *** lovely little details ***  young house love

Thank you again to my Secret Santa.





If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

Scam Outs

As the hours tick away towards the holiday weekend, I find myself taking a look more and more at reports of contracting scams, which is upsetting to say the least. There is, I suppose, a certain glee in knowing that I take pride in my work and customer service, as do a great deal of the NYC plumbers I work with, in contrast but that’s mostly pride and doesn’t really help the hundreds of reports from victims of contractor malfeasance that come in daily. During the holidays, when you’ve just spent a large portion of your paycheck on Batman: Arkham City and that Justin Bieber concert movie (on blu-ray, no less), it’s doubly disappointing.

An article published yesterday in the Washington Post spurred my interest in these matters. A technology officer out of Great Falls, along with some other swindlers, decided to bilk the Army Corps. of Engineers out of nearly $20 million while working for Nova Datacom. The scam involves kickbacks (never thought I’d get to use that word), conspiracy and a web of bribes reaching back to 2007. It’s a quagmire, to put it politely, but the truth is that I react far more strongly to local, smaller-scale scams, seeing as it tarnishes the name of all service providers, including and maybe especially NYC handymen.

One of the more perplexing reports I read was from a customer in Buffalo, complaining about a home improvement contractor who was working without permits and boasted a Better Business Bueau accreditation that they did not earn. A fake BBB accreditation shows a disturbing lack of confidence in how one works, since the accreditation itself doesn’t really guarantee that they have been evaluated or endorsed by the BBB. The lack of permits, however, is a charge that should garner genuine legal action and can be seen as real old-fashioned criminal behavior.

Lack of a proper permit may seem like a small thing but to be frank, its one of the most potentially expensive problems you can find yourself in. Not having the right permit can legally cause an inspector or neighbor to file a suit and cause you to pull down any work you’ve done and start again from scratch, causing thousands of dollars potentially. My own mother fell prey to this when she built her front porch. And, to be honest, getting an inspector to come by and tell you what you can do is not really what you would call a hassle. Most inspectors want to help customers understand their project better and far from the bureaucratic task masters that more seedy contractors make them out to be.

In a perfect world, every contractor would have this stuff down but as that customer in Buffalo would tell you, this is not the case. Ask your contractors and service providers about these things, make sure they have it covered before you start in on any project. Otherwise, you might find yourself in the middle of tearing down that new rec room the day after Christmas, as your kids enjoy their presents out of your sight. 

The Holiday Whirlwind

I guess it probably seems like this every year, but this year seems extremely whirlwindish in terms of the holidays coming up quickly. 
At work, our past month (or 2) has been jam-packed with client installations & presentations and it has floooown: 

{mid-installation day in a living room}

{a dining room}

{sneakity peek of the adjoining living room}

{a master bedrom}

{a sliver of a family room}

{the neighboring breafast room with kids' art gallery}

{an almost-finished master bedroom...  will be sure to post a new pic with artwork, styling & new bedding}

...And there are a few more that I just can't post quite yet... but it's been ca-razy.  (And thank God for my assistant, Meghan.)

At home though, we've tried to take it easy and we've been leaving our weekends fairly open so we have time with each other.  I've been coming out of the first-trimester pregnancy coma and am almost halfway there till baby arrives.  (NOT that I'm wishing this time away...  I know this is the probably the easiest my life is going to be for a loooooong time ;)  But we've been slowly adding Christmas around our house.  One of my favorite simple ways to make the house feel festive is to put hack cut white poinsettias & place them in containers around the house:

{I mentioned last year that I'd seen it in an old Better Homes & Gardens article & it really is sooo fast & pretty.  It's the perfect 1-minute centerpiece.}

We also strung up COLORED LIGHTS outside our house.  I know, I know.  But the kids love them...  And I sort of do too.  (shhhhhhhh ;)

I'm extremely behind on Christmas shopping, as always.

..And...  we celebrated Justin's 2nd birthday last night with my parents & grandparents.   

 I can't believe how big my baby got!! 

{This is a picture of him just after triumphantly annoucing to the table "I'm two!"}

Above, that's his Pop Pop/ my step dad Tom  is making sure he doesn't dive off :)

We celebrated with a caramel cake sent to us by our friends at John Rosselli in Georgetown.  My mom topped it with rice krispy treat snowmen- oh my:

{As you can see, it's tough to have to blow out two whole candles.}

My little sister, "Auntie Morgan," is on the left holding Christian.

 

Anyway, I hope you're enjoying your own whirlwind.  I've realized that life never really does seem to slow down so you have to make your own moments to savor.  We've been trying ourselves & I hope you've gotten some in at your house too!!

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

Twig Christmas Tree Art

I love rustic Christmas decorations and certainly loved the project that Kindra  At Home With K's blog did to make her twig Christmas tree. Here's my version of it. 

I started with this frame from Michael's.  I spray painted it white with Rustoleum 2x Flat White Paint.

 I was disappointed that there was only a piece of cardboard on the back of the frame.  This definitely made it harder to get a good stretching of the burlap.  I put a thin piece of batting under the burlap and hot glued the edges of the burlap to the back of the cardboard.

I used Tacky Glue to attach the twigs to the burlap.  I spread the glue on the twigs pretty heavily.

This is before the glue dried completely.

 I used a heavy pan to hold the twigs in place to dry.

 I added a starfish to the top and was done.  (You can still see a little of the tacky glue.  It was still wet here, but did dry clear)

Thanks for your visit!  And Happy Holidays!

Pam

I am linking to the following parties:

And Here We Go...

Our introductory video is up and it's a humdinger! Check out this video and the other two we made. More to come soon!

The House in My Head

I always have a dream house or "future" house in my head.  I keep a file with floorplans that I've drawn of it and exterior & interior inspiration pics.  I always find myself thinking about what would make a house perfect for me & my family.  I think about it more frequently sometimes than others.  When I lived in my parents' basement with my husband & our first baby a couple of years ago (to recover financially from buying a townhome at the height of the market & selling almost at the low) I used to think about it so much my heart would literally ache.  (Honestly I thought about ANY house at that time, but my dream house got me excited.)  This was a bit what it looked like:  (from Cottage Living)

But after we moved into our 70s bilevel fixer-upper, my idea of our dream house started to change.  (Don't get me wrong, I'm in looooove with the house above, but it's not where the house in my head is at anymore.)  I started to appreciate & crave a more modern feeling for my dream house yet I still wanted the charm of an older house.  I love the walls of windows in our house now, and wish they were even bigger.  I know that I now want glass walls leading straight outdoors all over my future house.  Even though my 70s house is architecturally uninteresting, I started to appreciate its "plain box" qualities & have reimagined how I might have something similar in a new home one day:  

{Our "box" before we moved in.... It feels like we're almost outside or in a tree house.}

I also love the easy living of its floorplan.  All of our main rooms are on one level and our addittional spaces like family room, office & guest room are all on the lower level.  I love this one-floor living and definitely want to keep this easy way of living in our new place.  (In our townhouse I used to leave piles of things at the top and bottom of all the stairs to go up & down...  I used to feel like keeping the house neat was a series of moving things up and down the stairs.)  My husband, who used to be super-traditional is now craving something simple & modern.  (more than me!)  He loves the Cullens' house from Twilight.  (I made him watch it ;)

Every once in a while my husband & I will read a book that makes us think about architecture & we talk about what we want in a house & how we can make our own house better.  When we read Bobby McAlpine's The Home Within Us I really started to think of architecture a bit differently.  I started realizing that it didn't have to be something we'd seen before & that we could one day make something that was really "us."  The thatched roof idea is one I can't shake.

I recently read Ayn Rand's Fountainhead and it really got me excited about our "dream house" again so I decided to hit the drawing board with all of the ideas that had been floating around in my head, unformed, for the past year or so.  I haven't quite finished working out the floorplan but the main living areas are all on the first floor and the back of the house U-shaped and almost all steel floor-to-celing glass windows & doors opening to the yard.   I want the front of the house to have a crazily-pitched roof that swings low onto the front door & windows & I want more privacy in the front than in the back.   And I want the look of a thatched roof:

{We did a little research on thatched roofs & probably will never be able to have one.  They're hard to insure (due to perceived risk of fire) and expensive if you live in an area where they're not done.}  But I'm open to other materials that I can get a similar look from.  I want that old, natural & quaint feeling but mixed with a modern & seamless edge. 

{Bobby McAlpine's first home built by his firm...  I can't get over it or its roof.  I think maybe it's slate & even though it's not thatched, it has the feeling I'm after.  I wonder if you can encourage moss to grow on your slate roof without it hurting anything??  ****  UPDATE:  Greg Tankersley of McAlpine Tankersley Architecture let me know that the roof is actually handsplit cedar shingle, and yes, moss does grow on it!!  Thanks so much Greg!! }

Like I mentioned before, I want the back of my house to be almost completely open so it will definitely be a challenge to mix these two styles without making a total mess.

{love this feeling - oh my goodness!!!!}

I want it to feel as if you're almost outside when you're inside.

I know these two styles are totally different but I think "where there's a will there's a way" and I have a LOT of time to figure it out before we can actually have a dream home anyway. ;)

... The windows in most of these modern homes are mostly glass without the interruption of the steel...

But I'm thinking I like the charm of the paned windows and I'd like a sort of modern conservatory-feeling...

{crazy over the steel windows & doors in Jill Brinson Sharp's home}

It's one detail (of many) I'm still thinking on...  I don't know if we'd feel caged with an entire back wall in them or if it could work for what I want.  I came across this house when searching for inspiration images:

I'd never seen anything like it & am definitely intrigued.  It's not what I'm looking to do but I think it's really interesting in how it combined what reminds me of a barn with a glass contemporary house. 

I was floored when I came across this thatched-roof house:

{image via klikk.com}

...It is so close to what I want in style.  The back is all open just like I'd envisioned and it even has a thatched roof!!  The feeling I'm after is a different though.  (This is so pretty & fresh & white & modern-feeling whereas I want a more textured, natural, aged feeling.  If you look to the right where you see a more private space with smaller windows... I like that a lot.  I definitely want some "cozy" & private spaces towards the front of the house.)

And finally, I came across this old house which combines my windows with the thatched crazy-sloped roof & this embodies a bit more of the feeling I'm after:

{I would probably want it a little more seamless -without the diagonal bars  btwen the roof & windows- but I think it shows how the glass walls can actually work beautifully with a low roofline.}

Anyway, by the time we're actually able to build this house, I'm sure it will have changed considerably, but for now, I'm really excited about getting this house in my head all figured out.  (Or as figured out as it would need to be before getting an architect involved ;)   I'm always happiest when I have a dream.

What about you:  Do you have a house in your head or a dream house that you think of?  (And if you've written a post on yours, be sure to link to it in the comments section!! :)

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

ps- I found all of these images on pinterest & listed original sources where I had them.

AND... I wrote this entire post yesterday (which took hours) & when I hit "Publish" on blogger, the WHOLE THING DELETED....  ahhhhh!!!!! :)