Tuesday, August 26, 2025
Breakfast at home: I prepared for myself two eggs over easy with celery, carrot, and green onions; one hash brown from frozen; one sausage patty from frozen; hot water. Home improvement: resolved a problem in the primary bathroom in which the bathroom door handle made an annoying popping noise when releasing the handle after opening or closing. The noise was caused by latch rubbing against the strike plate and getting momentarily caught somewhere before releasing with the popping noise which was particularly noticeable at night since Patrick and I have different sleep schedules. Upon inspection there appeared to be matte black gunk stuck to the latch bolt in parts, so I first used an old toothbrush and dish soap cleaning solution and removed the gunk, but the problem remained. I then used a rotary tool to shave some metal from the latch bolt, but the problem remained. I removed the strike plate with a screwdriver and confirmed that the problem disappeared. I then used the rotary tool to shave metal from the edges of the hole in the strike plate. The problem was that there was no easy way I could determine where the latch bolt was sticking to the strike plate. After trying many different areas of removing metal from the strike plate, I finally succeeded in making the problem go away. It took longer than I had thought it would. I reattached the strike plate, confirmed the problem was completely gone, and cleaned the area. After that I hand-sanded marble countertop epoxy repairs in the primary bathroom. In some of the shallowest repairs sanding simply removed the entire repair. I also noticed that the color from the sandpaper was being left behind in some repair spots, making the repairs ugly and worse. I stopped, since this work was good enough for now even if not yet perfect. I plan to eventually get a random rotary sander to do these repairs more effectively. Next in the secondary bathroom I tinted tile grout and repaired holes in the grout in the right corner of the slate tile floor when facing the tub. While doing this, some nearby tile grout on the wall was so old and cracked that I noticed I could easily pull it out with a tiny flathead screwdriver. I'll have to repair that another day. Today Patrick took a day trip with Sam to Napa. I walked to three different places for kitchen faucet shopping. I didn't find anything I immediately liked, but I did get a good feel for what I wanted. Walked home. Snack: mexican vanilla soda, chicken-flavored mini crackers. Rested. Dinner at home with Patrick: split pea and smoked ham soup from the Fatted Calf deli at Oxbow. Afterwards we watched my playlist of John Mulaney SNL mini-musicals on YouTube. Patrick went to bed. I watched a few more various YouTube videos before going to bed.