Saturday, March 31, 2007

MikeM's Home Page

Well, I now own a house! Today was spent sketching and measuring all of the rooms and hallways - not quite done yet, actually. I also replaced the engraved door knocker with a more generic one, replaced the bolt lock with a MUCH better one. Kwikset isn't very secure in any event, and the previous owner had 2 roommates, so who knows who might still have keys. I upgraded to one of the toughest deadbolt locks available.

I also drilled a 1" hole in the door and installed a wide-view peephole. Very nice, clear view of the entire stoop area! While drilling I got a bit too close to the edge of one door member, and a piece came off - I found the paint chip to cover the missing area, but no wood. So I got some wood putty and hand-formed a replacement, then put the chip on top of it and put the peephole in to hold it all in place. Once it dries and I touch up the cracks around it, it will be good as new. It was only a 1/8 x 1/4 divot, but I felt it looked bad and needed fixing.

Next, I'll finish measuring the house, then I'll test all the phone jacks - hopefully there is at least a dial tone. I also traced the cable. The homeowner installed cable to every room in the house, poorly. There are literally cables strewn over the backyard and every room in the house. Many splitters and a LOT of cut cables. I removed some of the cut stuff, but there is much more. I think they stole cable and comcast came by and slashed the connection cable at least once. There are cuts near the far fence, right at the house, and at the fence about halfway in. There were three cables run from the edge of the yard and a splitter there too. These guys were extremely, shall we say, persistent and had no cabling experience.

I'll be re-cabling the entire place, pulling cables out of rooms I don't need it in, maybe I'll put real cable jacks in the walls just in case. Might also run Cat-6 network cable for the computer while I'm at it. Could be fun.

I've spent over 14 hrs today in the new house, coming home to walk Maggie every 4-5. No need for her to suffer just 'cause I have a new toy.

More time there tomorrow! I can actually start moving stuff now that I have a decent lock in place. :) I do think I need to have an electrician check things out, some of the light switches are in rather unintuitive places, and sometimes the one that you would expect to turn a light on controls a different room. Weird.

I'll also likely end up having Verizon come by, as it looks like some of the telephone wiring was done with the same incompetence as the cable wiring.

Then Comcast will need to check the repaired and re-routed cables - bless it and hopefully move my service over to the new place without any lenghty problems. I'll probably end up buying a spool of high-grade coax just to re-wire the comcast cable. I'll need a crimper and a small box of ends, and I know just the place to get it! Capital Cable - over near the Airpark. Nice place, with lots of toys for them what run cables.

Anyway, it's bedtime, and I'm so tired I can hardly see.