Two More Completed

Rick commented today that we had not done very much.  I disagreed with that statement and started to name what we had finished today.  Sometimes we just go about our business and do not realize all that we accomplish in a day.

Today started very overcast and windy after severe storms yesterday.  At least twice today, we did end up getting an good rainstorm.  That's fine; my trees and flowers really need the moisture. Since the tops of the lemon/lime plants that I have been trying to get to root blew right out of the pot of water that held them, I decided to plant them in the corner of the yard.  If they root and grow, great.  If not, they are just an experiment that can end up in the garbage with no cost to me.

This muddy corner by the Florida room needs a little
greenery, so we will see if these lemon/ lime plants take root.

The weather, however, did not prevent us from getting things finished.  We knew that Spectrum was going to send out a technician today to move our cable box from the back of the garage/ patio area to the north side of the house.  We needed the box moved so that we would not have any cables or wires over the patio if we decide to add a roof someday.  Moving the box also will give us a clear wall in the patio area if we screen that into a lanai someday.

The chipped paint outline on the wall shows
where the cable used to enter the house.

When the workers had originally installed cable six years ago, the technician put a cable into the north wall in the Florida room.  It has hung there, in a coil, ever since.  Outside the cable snaked up from the box, over the doorways, and down the wall.  Since we have not had a TV in the Florida room ever, nor do we ever anticipate putting one there, we decided to remove that cable.

Rick unscrews the holder that kept the cable
attached to the soffit.

We started by pushing the cable back though the wall to the patio.  Then Rick got up on the ladder and took the cable off the wall and the soffits.  We have a few holes to caulk shut and a bit of touch-up paint to apply, but we'll tackle that job on a day that is not so wet.  Inside, Rick just put a blank faceplate where the cable once came through the wall.  The walls look much better both inside and outside.  He finished the job by cutting the cable off back at the box.

The old cable box waits to be removed from the
patio wall.  Once it is gone, we can patch and paint
the entire wall.

The "after" picture shows where the box once hung.
Apparently, the house was white (with turquoise trim)
when technicians first installed the box.

The cable technician showed up on time with completely different work orders than what we wanted done.  After some heated discussions, he ended up doing what we wanted done and actually doing a little more than we expected.

The new box hangs next to the new electrical panel on the north
side of the house, out of view from the Florida room.

We wanted to know why we were not getting the upload and download speeds on our computers that we were paying for.  We also wanted to know why our cable box on the TV seemed to be having audio reception problems.  And finally, we wanted to get the box moved to the north side of the house.

The technician asked to see where the line came into the house and where it traveled once it was in the house.  He ended up going into our attic and removing the entire cable line that stretched from one end of the house to the other.  In the process, he traversed our entire attic, upsetting our blown-in insulation in the process.  While we were not too happy about that, we are happy that he removed the entire line and replaced it with a single, solid cable.

We discovered that our old line had been spliced in two places, and that the splices were all rusted from moisture in the attic.  Those splices could have had a lot to do with the lost signals that we experienced.

After he replaced all of the cable, he braved the windy, wet weather outside by not only removing the old cable box, but also by stringing all new wire from the pole to our house.  He did an excellent job of installing the new box and placing it where we wanted it to hang.  In the end, we are delighted to check off another job on our "to do" list.

Finally, today, Rick also completed our bathroom remodel. (Fireworks and fanfare, please!)  The final part arrived in the mail from Kohler, and Rick was able to install the whole valve mechanism.  We once again have two completely working bathrooms!  Now we are ready for Stephanie to visit at the end of February, and next year we can have future guests as well.

The valve is in place, so we now have a fully
functional shower in our main bathroom.

So we completed two jobs: we took the cable out of the Florida room and had the cable box moved (getting the wiring redone inside the house in the process), and we completed the bathroom.  For not accomplishing much today, I would say that the day turned out all right in the end.