Saw this amazing shelf design by Sebastian Errazuriz whilst browsing this morning.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/09/sebastian-errazuriz-at-cristina-grajales-is-the-daily-pic-by-blake-gopnik.html

I have an idea to modify the design to be a tunable sound diffuser.

Postscript on gurgling kitchen drain

Yep. I tore the kitchen wall out and there were multiple rusted-through joints in the vent pipes. Seems like galvanized drain pipe likes to rust through at the threaded points going into elbows and T's. Replaced it all with PVC.

Wall is closed again now; still need to build new cabinets.

Gurgling Kitchen drain

Happy Thanksgiving, World.

My kitchen drain goes glub glub. Been doing that for a couple months now. Not just when it's done draining, but when the laundry tub drains the washing machine. The kitchen drain flows into the same drain line as the laundry tub . Both are on a 1.5" galvanized vent stack that goes up inside the exterior kitchen wall on the way to the roof.

I've seen and heard this glub glub drain issue before. Galvanized pipe rusts from the inside out when it's used as a vent pipe, due to the humidity inside the pipe all the time. The rust flakes off the inside wall of the pipe and can jam the pipe shut. I've sawzalled though sections of vent stack before that look whole on the outside and are so rusted on the inside you can't see light through the end of a 2' length of them. Once the vent stack is obstructed, the drain don't pull right, hence the glub glub of water in the kitchen drain P trap as negative pressure occurs in the drain system.

This is trouble. I tried to snake it out but no dice. I suspect I'm going to have to dig it all out of the wall and replace the whole system with PVC. Wee. Drain still basically works for now, though, so it's easy to procrastinate.

Fixit tickets

The City of Minneapolis sends out inspectors to notice homes in need of maintenance and issue the owners orders to clean up their property. this activity heats up in the Spring.

I have never gotten one of these fixit tickets, but the practice has become quite prevalent from what I hear in poorer parts of town.

The rationale that the city spokespersons gives reporters is that they're cracking down on absentee slumlord types who neglect property they rent to people.

Sometimes though they tag a senior citizen who is struggling to keep up with their bottom line on a Social Security check and they can't afford to pay someone like me $hundreds to paint trim they can't get on a ladder theselves to paint any more.

Folks like these have paid property taxes since before I was born and don't need to be harassed by the city if you ask me. Someone else can paint the trim after they've moved on. Or the city should be referring them to some do-gooder instead of citing them. Hell, any Mpls city inspectors out there, if you're about to cite some old lady in North Minny for peeling trim, first one of you responds to this post, I'll take care of it. Free of Charge.

WTF is up with the cost of Shingles?

For the first post of my new blog I'm jumping right in mid-stream with issue du Jour for Aaron's Home Repair.

I am in the process of bidding a roof job and I went to a friendly neighborhood roofing supply store to get prices on materials.

Sticker shock is an appropriate description for what I experienced. It corroborated the seemingly unlikely high prices that I saw for shingles at Home Depot the day before.

So what the flyin' freakin' flip-flappin' fudge is up with the price of shingles right now?

I'm looking at $90 a square for good 30-year shingles here in Minneapolis. That's double what it was four years ago. Well ahead of the rate of inflation.

Sure, it's a petroleum-based building material, but the price of oil is down from last year and demand for building materials is WAY down from last year due to fall-off in home construction. I did a roof last year and the price of shingles was probably 30% less then than it is now. Meanwhile the economy is contracting. But shingles are magically more expensive. WTF?

The story I got from the sales guy at the roofing supply store was that asphalt shingles are made from the sludge that's left over from the oil refinement process. True enough so far. Allegedly, the oil refineries have uh, refined their processes in response to high gas prices and have gotten slicker (no pun intended) at extracting every last bit of crude that can be made into gasoline, jet fuel, etc. Therefore, according to the sales guy, the very raw materials available for shingle-making have become scarcer and thus more expensive. Maybe. Or maybe the shingle makers have entered into a handshake deal (collusion, that is) to all raise their prices at the same time. Gotta wonder.