Tag Archives: home improvement

From polished to honed…

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I have a marble-topped coffee table. It came to me a year or so ago with water-rings etched into its polished surface. I did the DIY thing, and ordered the stuff to polish the marble. It wasn’t easy but it mostly worked and I was happy. Then, over the holidays, I spilled a whiskey-honey-lemon juice concoction* on it. Deep sigh. It left a big, white mark.

I’ve come to realize that we are too hard on polished marble so why not just embrace the un-polished/honed look. Since water appears to cause most rings, I decided to soak the marble top with water. I applied very wet towels let them sit for several hours.

Water did not make the polished finish go away. I thought that perhaps it was the whiskey that had taken off the polish so I decided to try vodka (my husband’s whiskey is too expensive to pour on the table).

After a few hours it was obvious that vodka wasn’t working either so I decided to consult google. It turns out that acidic liquids are the main culprit when it comes to ‘etching’ the polish off of marble. Vinegar was mentioned and I have a gallon of it. Yay! I soaked paper towels with vinegar and left it to sit.

Later I took off the paper towels and just poured on more vinegar. Yes, vinegar will take most of the polish off of a marble surface!

The surface is a little blotchy which only shows in some light, from the side. I sanded the top with fine grain sandpaper. It knocked back some of the shinier areas and I like the feel of it but I decided to once again consult google. I found out that you can, indeed, use fine wet/dry sandpaper and an orbital sander to get an even better honed surface.

I have an orbital sander but don’t want to use it in the house—too much dust. When Steve comes home he can help me take the marble to the garage and I’m going to sand it like crazy and then seal it. If any of you have scarred marble that’s bothering you, I offer this as one possible solution.

*The whiskey-honey-lemon juice concoction is what we refer to as ‘granny’s elixir’ and it is my favorite cold remedy. It doesn’t make the cold go away faster, but it does help you to feel better.

And now for Mom’s fence…

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Steve and I both thought that water sealing my mom’s fence would be fast. She has a small yard. How long could it take!? 

Well, there’s a mile of fence around my mom’s small yard. Not really, but it seemed that way. We started at 8:30 AM, and finished at 2:45, with a tiny break for lunch. 

You can see that it really needed this and it does look much better now. And the fence will last longer, too. 

  
On the up-side: it didn’t rain. On the down-side: it was clear and sunny and hot. We are both beat, but happy to mark this chore off the list. Yay!

On home ownership, part 2…

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Do you remember that we have a problem with our irrigation system? I think the problems developed when we were in Hawaii but it could have been farther back. We had a wet spring which masked a lot of problems. But we now have a lot of very dry plants:

   
   
It took two days for the first repairman to have time to over. He started digging and found this:

  
That is a flexible black pipe that should be bigger, rigid PVC pipe. The guy who put in our irrigation system obviously did not work to code. Sigh. 

A tree root has pinched and broken this main line and if it has happened here it’s going to happen in other spots. It doesn’t make sense to just repair it. Everything underground is going to have to be replaced. Deeper sigh. 

So now I’m waiting on Bruce, who installs irrigation systems. He’s coming over Sunday afternoon. For now I’m watering the old fashioned way:

  

On home ownership, part 1…

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I love our house. That said, I don’t love it when things that are not fun have to fixed. Take, for example, the front spigot. Saturday I turned it too far to the left and that was it. Something inside came un-done and there was no way to ‘turn’ the water off. If I pushed the knob all the way in, then the water turned off. But it wouldn’t stay there on its own.

It being Saturday, we didn’t want to call a plumber. Steve did not want to try to fix it himself because sometimes pipes break in the wall. I wasn’t keen on that either so I wired it shut. Steve was working on other things and was happy not to get involved in this. He really does not like plumbing jobs.


The plumbers came today and were impressed with my fix. They also said, after taking the knob and guts out of the spigot, that this was not something they’d seen before. We had a unique plumbing issue! The spigot would have to be replaced. I was not surprised.


As it turned out, the old spigot unscrewed easily. We could have done it ourselves, but you can’t tell by looking. The plumbers had fixed one yesterday where the pipe broke in the wall.

The replacement is actually better. It is mostly copper, and it fits against the wall better. I still need to shoot some insulation foam into the gap, but it’s fixed! And it was less that $175! Which is good because part 2 starts soon. The sprinkler system has developed breaks. More on that tomorrow…

Busy Sunday…

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About our busy Sunday… Last night Steve and I were sitting by the pool, looking at the fence and we decided that we should water seal it. I remembered doing this job with a sprayer and that it wasn’t so bad so we decided that we would get up and do it today. And we thought we could do Mom’s fence too. Silly us. 

I didn’t take a before photo but the wood was gray, like our neighbor’s fence:


At 7:45 AM Steve went to Lowe’s for a big can of Thompsons water seal (TWS). He had checked our pump sprayer and it worked, but sadly as it turned out, not with the TWS. Ours sprayed a jet, not a mist. Back to Lowe’s once, and then again.


We tried both of these to no avail. Deep sighs all round. We couldn’t use a roller on the outside of our fence because it’s not flat. Instead I used a wide brush.

As I worked, memories started coming back to me. The last time we did this the same thing happened! How could I have forgotten? Note to self: forget the sprayer.


It got hot. I put on sunscreen and a hat and powered on. Even behind the bushes.


Steve worked on the inside of the fence with a roller and brush. I joined him and we were making good progress. Clouds rolled in, it got cooler! Yay!

And then it started to look like rain. At any other time we would have cheered. More sighs. We ran out of TWS and Steve went Back to Lowe’s.

It started to sprinkle, then rain but we were so close to finishing and the rain wasn’t hitting the fence so we finished what we could and tidied up.

Steve cleaned out the sprayers and brushes.  (I love that man.)


The sun came out and after a couple of hours it was dry enough for Steve to finish the very top of the fence.

We used clear TWS but it still changes the color of the wood. It’s brown again!


If we’re lucky, we won’t have to do this again for 2-3 years. It’s worth the effort because it lengthens the life of the fence, but it is not a fun job.

Moms fence awaits. It is flat on one side and can be rolled so it’s faster but we’re going to wait until it’s cooler.

PS: We celebrated with ice cream at Braum’s!