philly

Bissell Clearview II Bagless

After five months of living in this bi-level apartment of ours, we got ourselves a vacuum, pictured at right. It's a Bissell Clearview II bagless upright and it has a HEPA filter.

It's bitchin.

I had asked for a little hand vac I think two Christmases ago and it had done me well in my tiny studio, but not so handy in a larger apartment witch much more stuff to clean.

We picked up this badboy on Sunday morning and quickly put it to use. Lady put it all together [a few attachments to stick onto the upright and such] and fired it up. Worked like a charm. She took it downstairs to take it through the kitchen which has terra cotta tile flooring. No problemo. I used the hose attachment thingie and took it over to the carpeted stairway. A quick swipe along the corners revealed a whole different shade of carpet underneath a layer of, well, scuzz. Hair, dirt, crumbs, junk, gunk, blech.

Going from a zippy hand vac which gives out after about fifteen minutes to this larger plug in 12 amp badboy is quite a change.

It's got one of those funny vacuum headlights too, so you can see the larger pieces of crap on the ground in the path of the wide mouth. I've always thought they were funny looking, I still do. A headlight on a vacuum!

Watching the clear chamber fill up is quite freaky. Seeing all that crap just whirl around and then settle when you hit the off button. We have a Sharper Image Ionic Breeze in our bedroom which is pretty good at catching the airborne gunk and it's alarming to wipe that thing clean every few weeks, but to see all the crap in the clear chamber of a vacuum, that's another story.

Lady took it into the little hallway of our building and cleaned the entrance area in front of our door. She did this while I was out for a few hours. When I came back, I was astonished at how clean it was. She stopped at our doorway and the difference from right at our door to the rest of the stairs leading upstairs is/was amazing. So much crud!

This thing was only $65 after a 20% off coupon and it has a HEPA filter! The hose thingie has a few attachments that are handy. A crevice [hehe] tool which is a two-headed triangle-shaped attachment; one head with bristles, one without. And there's the 'Turbo Brush' which is more like a mini-vacuum head that you can use to cean things like couches - sorta like what a hand vac would be used for, but with a vacuum brush thingie inside the cleaning head.

Anyone in need of a good, cheap, HEPA enabled vacuum? Get this thing.

Laser Level

One of the little projects of this weekend was to go and get a laser level and use it. I picked up the above laser level from Rittenhouse Hardware [20th/Pine Sts]. Unfortunately, the mastiff, Brody, wasn't in the store. I like going to local hardware stores so much more than a big box. Big box bad! But I was also looking for one of those magnetic vent covers and they didn't have any. I gotta call around to see if any local place has one.

I got home and used the new cool laser level to beam a line in our bathroom down the wall and across onto the perpendicular wall to hang up a series of five photos around the corner. It's this set of photos of a skateboarder in LOVE Park during Wild in the Streets. It very much totally rocks.

Ceiling Fixed

I forgot to mention that last night, I came home from work to a rather foul stink of paint fumes. Never was I so happy to smell such fumes. I rushed inside to see how the bedroom ceiling looked. It was fixed! Painted a new coat of white. The bathroom ceiling was patched [with some sort of mesh gauze type thing] and painted as well.

I cranked up the Ionic Breeze to high and the smell was basically gone later in the evening. That or my sense of smell has been burned off by the sweet sweet toxic paint fumes. Either way, our ceiling no longer looks like it has diarrhea.

And while we did not get any money off of our rent [even though it did take 2.5 weeks for it to be fixed] we did get $50 off of the rent for a ruined rug. Now, we gotta get our asses to a rug store.

The Leak

It finally stopped sometime this evening.

The landlord alleges that the water that has leaked is not enough to cause an alarm for possible mold. He plans to simply repaing the ceiling/wall.

I'm gonna ask the guys at work [I work at a major construction general contractor] of their opinion.

Leak and Rent

And another thing about the leak, we should definitely be getting a break on the rent for this shit. Right?

How much should we ask for back? Like 15% of the rent? If it takes awhile to fix it all and we're out one bedroom of a two bedroom apartment, probably more than that. Ugh.

Leak

I was having a wonderful time at the Philly Blogger Meetup, but I got a call from Lady reporting a leak in our bedroom ceiling. I rushed home to find a nasty scene. The above image is a shot the initial damage.

The two shots above are details of the initial damage. Nice, eh?

And this shot is of a quarter of the ceiling of the bedroom.

I called the landlord over at around 6.30p. He came over right away and we headed upstairs to see what was going on. I had already knocked on our upstair neighbor's door to see if she was home and the tub was overflowing or something, no dice. He knocked when he got there and no dice. We went in. We both immediately heard the water heater running very loudly. Into the close we went and he shut off the gas and the water coming into the heater. He then relieved the pressure inside the heater into a drip pan. He said that he'd come by tomorrow late morning to replace the now busted water heater. He said that it should stop the leaking for now.

After he left, we had a quick dinner and were watching some TV in the living room. And then we hear a big splash. The seam closest to the ceiling burst and let out the water that had been building up. And the leak had spread to almost the middle of the ceiling and blistered a couple inches and started to leak as in the above picture. I called the landlord again.

He said that it was the water heater draining all the water out of it. Right into our bedroom, wonderful. He said that he'd be over again with a hose to drain it out all right then. He did. As I went outside to go over to a friend's house to watch Mr. Smith Goest to Washington which is another post to come - it was great, he was outside on the upstairs neighbor's balcony. He asked if it had stopped dripping. I said that it had actually gotten worse and had spread across the ceiling and had bilstered in the middle of the ceiling. Wonderful.

I reaturn to find this at about 11.30p. The leak had only gotten worse. Lady told me that the center bubbled paint had burst [pictured above] and let in a few inches worth of yucky brown water into the basket I had strategically placed right there under the blistering paint just in case.

This shot is from the center to the back of the bedroom where the leak started off.

And here's another shot of the quarter of our ceiling.

It's still dripping now as I type this. Eight hours after we discovered it. Who knows how long it was leaking before Lady got home at 6p or so.

So the landlord is gonna call me in the late morning so that I can help bring in a new water heater into the neighbor's apartment.

Hope everyone else's weekend is going better than ours.

More House Guests!

NYE weekend it was my friends AK and KT and then Lady's sister stayed over and this weekend, my sister and brother in law are coming to town. That IKEA futon I bought for my old apartment is getting quite a workout so far in 2006.

And so far, with each visitor, more stuff has gone pu on our walls. I put up the six panel whooping crane painting thingie before AK and KT came to town. The next day, I got a bunch of photos back from the lab and we hung up a bunch of 11x14s, 8x10s and 4x6s all over the house. And at the end of last week, I got one more 11x14 and a frame and it now hangs above the futon.

They should be in town around brunchtime. Hopefully we can snag a table for four during the tail end of brunch at one of the Banbridge St brunch hotspots. Then, I'm thinking a little digesting time on the walk back and then a driving tour of Philly, be all touristy. A trip to the PMA? And then they have dinner reservations at Morimoto and we are oh so jealous. We will be relegated to a vicarious dining experience. One day... Probably grab some drinks somewhere afterwards.

Sunday brunch and then back on the road for them up to Queens.

My first family member visiting me since moving to Philly!

Printing Photos

I've been printing photos like a madman these last few weeks. For my sister's wedding album. For family presents for Christmas. For my mom. For decorating the apartment. Lady and I have been decorating the place for months now and it really looks like a nice place now. Fewer bare walls, more stuff to make it ours. The six-panel wood screen thingie is now up, mounted on the wall above the stairs. It looks awesome! Lady had her doubts, but once it was up, she's now loving it. The coolest thing about it is that with the horizontal blinds right next to them, light comes in and hits the right-most panel by the window sending elongating beams across the piece. It looks like the whooping cranes are flying into the sunset/sunrise and it's pretty cool. Really cool at night when the light outside the window is still on.

I've printed many other photos as well to hang up everywhere. The Clothespin and City Hall shot was blown up to 11"x14" and now hangs in the living room behind/above the television next to the front door. A 4"x6" of the church on Broad & Spruce Sts hangs in the upstairs bathroom. This dog sits in a 4"x6" frame on the windowsill in the bedroom. A 5"x7" of the pond in Rittenhouse Square hangs above Lady's dresser. An 8"x10" of a puddle with reflected building sits atop our bookcase in the living room. A 4"x6" Buddah is in our downstairs bamboo themed bathroom. An 8"x10" of three statues over at Pine St around 9th St the Presbyterian Historical Society at 5th and Lombard Streets [thanks Andrea] hangs above/behind the table in the kitchen underneath the staircase. An 11"x14" of this cracked earth shot will be put in a frame [hopefully today if I get a chance to go out and get one] and will hang above the couch futon in the living room across from the Clothespin and City Hall photo. And that's it for now.

Still want to print some more, but I gotta slow down for a sec, that's a lot of green.

Cool Coatrack

This weekend we headed over to one of our favorite stores in Philadephia, Foster's Urban Hardware [3rd/Arch Sts] to get some shower curtain rings and look for a coatrack for the back of our front door. We have a couple of bulky winter jackets that take up too much room in our closet and there's no room for a free standing coatrack, so Lady thought a set of hooks on the back of the door would suit us best. She was right and we got the one pictured above.

I'm also semi-obsessed with shower curtain rings. How odd is that? When I lived at home with my parents, I replaced the dinky plastic ones with rings that had bearings in them. They stayed put better. We already had a set of these in our downstairs bathroom, so we picked up another set for the upstairs one - which now needs a new showerhead. Now where to get a new showerhead.

We both like the stuff Umbra makes. And most of the stuff at Foster's will appeal to one of us. Everything in there is either brightly colored [Lady] or silver/black with aluminium or chrome accents [me].

Also in the store while we were there on Saturday afternoon was a gigantic doggie. It looked like a cross between a Weimaraner and a Bull Mastiff. It had the Weirmaraner silky grey short hair coat and the floppity ears, but it was huuuuge and with a gigantic Bull head, not as pointy as a Weimaraner's, but without the droopy cheeks of a Bull. It was taller than my hips and probably 175lbs or so, as thick as a Great Dane I'd say. Never seen anything like it before. Before I could ask the owner what kind of a dog it was, he left the store. I have no idea how that gigantic dog turned around in the store to get out of there.

Two more shots of the installed hooks, unopened:

And opened without anything on them:

It attaches to the door with three four screws. You measure the screw positioning and then slide the entire coatrack thingie onto them. Pat and I miraculously measured and screwed the screws perfectly on the first try. We were both quite surprised and happy. Great to have a friend with a lot of cool powertools!