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lots of missing screws
Tuesday, March 19 2019
At noon I drove to the Williams Lumber just north of Rhinebeck just to get some extra-long screws for attaching duplex outlets to the outlet boxes in the kitchen backsplash. The tiles had thickened the wall enough that the conventional screws no longer reached. While there, I went around the store looking for possible impulse purchases. The collection of splitting mauls was my favorite display, with a much greater variety than I'd seen in Lowes or Home Depot. The best weighed 12 pounds and had a partially-metal handle welded directly to the head, all of which had been painted fire-engine red. It had been manufactured somewhere in the former Eastern Bloc. But it cost nearly $50, so it was outside my impulse-purchase window. A replacement cup brush for my drill was only $6, so I got that instead, as well as a set of some new kind of wire nut where you connect the wires by pushing a lever. I could see that being handy in a box where you lack space to rotate a normal wire nut.
Meanwhile this afternoon, Gretchen loaded up the Subaru with recycling and trash and attempted to make a run to the Hurley transfer station, but of course the Subaru failed to start. It was acting as if the battery had died. Gretchen reached me via Facebook Messenger, and I suggested she try starting it from a 12 volt car battery that had been charging in the shop. I also gave a few safety instructions that Gretchen would completely ignore. It turns out that Gretchen is familiar with jumper cables and knows how to start a car with them, but for whatever reason the 12 volt battery did not start the Subaru. So Gretchen had to unload the trash out of it, since I would need to use the Subaru tomorrow and the transfer station would be closing too soon for me to fix the car even if I were to leave work immediately.
When I got home a little after 5:00pm, I was immediately able to jump the Subaru using the Prius. The battery in the Subaru is less than a year and a half old, so I assumed a dome light or something had been left on, but I couldn't see evidence of that.
I turned my attention to the kitchen backsplash, which only required a little cleaning and the installation of outlet plates. But then it turned out that somehow the little tan screws needed to attach the plates had gotten separated from the plates themselves (new ones made of wood). This made it unlikely they would ever be found, so I used some white ones I keep in a little drawer in the shop. They looked great.
Next Gretchen wanted me to install a magnetic knife holder and a paper towel dispenser that had been part of the old kitchen. She thought she'd put these aside for the end of the renovation, but we couldn't find them anywhere. It seemed pretty clear that they must've ended up in one of the many boxes of things Gretchen had gotten rid of in various ways, though Gretchen insisted this was impossible.
Next I made a firewood salvaging foray to that same forested knoll east of the Farm Road I'd visited yesterday and put together a nice load of dry wood weighting 106 pounds.
It was nice not to have any big chores to do this evening. So I took a celebratory bath instead.
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