Follow-up on drain cleaning

This lovely hairball strand is from a bathroom sink that has a strainer basket.  Stuff still slips through so snaking the drain occasionally is definitely a good thing.

Sunday Randomness #284 : Simple cheapo plastic snake shower drain cleaning

 Take cover off drain by taking out the screw(s).

 Remove hair that is trapped at the top.

 Get out cheapo plastic drain snake thing.

Use snake by twisting to catch hair and debris and slowly and carefully pull out.  Be prepared to plug nose.  Carefully disentangle gross wad of matted hair gunk and throw in the garbage. (It's easier if you have gloves or a cleaning wipe [baby wipes or cleaning wipes both work well] and pull the gunk up past the teeth of the snake and then just pull it away.)  Clean snake thoroughly.  Put drain cover back on and screw into place.  Run some water to make sure the drain is clear.    We usually have to follow this procedure about every three to four months but it's cheap and effective so I'm willing to keep doing it.  I also scrubbed some of the floor with cleaner and a toothbrush but I really need to clean it more thoroughly and recaulk some areas.

Sunday Randomness #28: Four way bathroom flooring swap in less than four months

This it the first flooring for the downstairs bathroom-a thick ivory shag carpet with pink accent rugs.  All three bathrooms had carpet but propitiously, none of the carpet in the bathrooms was glued down and there was no pad to deal with in any of the bathrooms. We were able to just lift out the carpet pieces and throw them away.

Here's what we found under the carpet downstairs:

Tiger striped linoleum.  Really. I should have gotten pictures/video of everyone's faces and the shocked laughter when they first saw this flooring.  Including contractors.  All of whom took a picture themselves.  None of the three flooring contractors had ever seen anything like it before.
Finally, when we had some different work done, a workman said he had seen flooring of the same era once in a millionaire home up in Park City. He said that individual had animal prints for flooring and large taxidermy stuffed animals all over the home.  When we asked the previous owners of our house about this floor they laughed and said we should have seen it when they moved in.  Supposedly the owners before them had animal print flooring and animal print pictures in nearly every room.  If only we had pictures....

 Initially we went with a remnant vinyl flooring but there were problems such as under the bathroom sink as shown below.  Plus the flooring didn't get rolled out right so we had bubbles on the edges where this new flooring started to come up.

 So here we go with the final floor that's currently in the bathroom downstairs.  Just a simple stone design but it goes so much better with the new laminate wood flooring that we have in the other room.  Plus we were able to do some repair work that was missed the first time around such as new baseboard under the sink and touch up painting.

Yes, the tile work on the shower is interesting isn't it?  Wait 'til you see the inside.  But that's going to have to wait for a future post.  Meanwhile you can get a small glimpse of the hallway and downstairs living room flooring that was an early 1960's flat carpet in the second picture down and a brief glimpse of the laminate flooring that replaced it in the fourth picture down.     Despite all the work we love the new house and slowly we'll get things upgraded and updated.  This bathroom just gives a small glimpse of what we've been doing.