Mobile home repairs part 2

The second project at my 'new' home was to rebuild the master bathroom. The bathtub had a crack in it and the toilet rocked. The tubs problem turned out to be a water leak that had rotted out the floor under it and led to the crack in the tub – there was nothing left under it to properly support it! Before long I had removed almost the entire bathroom floor. The new floor was tricky to get in, I had to remove the door, but the tub was even trickier! The new tub was 5 foot long and the room was 5 feet wide. There was no way to get it into the room without busting a hole in the wall! The toilet rocked because the building had sank (it was not on a slab but just pads) and the toilet was above the sewage connection. The connection was all made with solid PVC, they did not put in a rubber or slip fitting so the toilet had been pushed an inch up into the air!

To fix the master bathroom I removed the tub, then removed the floor.  That left a large hole going down into the 5th dimension somewhere...

Next was to put in some solid insulation to keep the neighborhood cats and other varmits out  Then the studs needed to be 'sistered' so the new floor could be fastened down all the way around.  The seam between the 4 by 8 sheet of plywood and the additional one foot needed would have been in mid air, so I covered that stud with a strip of plywood that would be used to bind the two sheets of plywood together in the next layer.

The next problem was that the new floor was not level enough so I used a bag of floor leveler to make the area under the tub completely level.  Then the tub could not be put into place without knocking a hole in the wall because the room is exactly 5 feet wide.  Then there was the next puzzle to solve.  The drain from the old tub was above the floor but the new one is below the floor.  The drain also doubled as a sewage vent so the plumbing got very trick at this point.  I kept putting all of the pieces together untill I had it right then glued it all in.

The final problem is still not fixed...the hot and cold are backwards!  I went by the length of the pipes and never checked it until it was all done.

Here is what the bathroom looked like before the tub and the floor were replaced;

Here is what it looks like after being renovated;

Mobile Home Repairs

Recently I purchased a 'mobile home'. I have not owned one in over 25 years but I fell in love with this one. It was 20 years old, had a beautiful new kitchen, nice new second bath, and new windows. It needed a new front door, master bath, and roof. There was a missing support post in the car port as well. In fact the one end of the car port had been bolted onto the house and all of the lag bolts had pulled out! I put in the support post first thing to keep if from falling down under the weight of the snow.

Then things started to get strange. Homeowners insurance for a mobile home is hard to get, especially if it is over 20 years old! Imagine if they treated houses like that? The front door is 2 inches shorter than a standard door! STRANGE! Why would they do that?

So I checked into buying a ‘proper’ front door, its $450 for another junky door plus another $400 for installation! So I went to Bargain Outlet and picked up a normal sized steel door with an arching window in it for $150 instead. I figured I could just cut 2 inches off it. After measuring several times I concluded that I should cut 2.5 inches off it and that was correct. The first problem was that my jig saw blade was not long enough to cut through the door. I had to mark it and cut it on both sides. Then the frame had to be cut off too. The frame would not go back together until I also cut the door jam like the piece I cut off so it fit together properly. Then the screen door had the same problem! So I found a solid core screen door and cut 2.5 inches off it as well.

Here is what the old door looked like.  It was coming apart because the glue that held it together was no longer working, the bottom of it fell out alltogether.

Here is what the new door looks like.  To the right are the 2 1/2 inch pieces that were cut off the bottom of the new door and the screen door.

Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 is causing computers to hang!

Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 is causing computers to hang, sometimes for ½ an hour, and sometimes FOREVER! The symptoms are that the icons in the lower right corner of the task bar never come up and when your mouse crosses the taskbar it turns into an hourglass. The three finger salute (Alternate Control Delete) does not work. You have to hold your power button in for 10 seconds or unplug the computer! I can’t get any help from Kaspersky except for a program that you can download to remove Kaspersky, but of course if the computer is hung you cannot run the program. Duh?

The solution is to start the computer is safe mode via pressing F8 during boot up. Then you cannot remove Kaspersky because the removal tool does not work in safe mode! Go to ‘Start’, ‘Run’, and type ‘MSConfig’. In the 'startup' tab uncheck ‘AVP’ (That’s Kaspersky). In the 'services' tab uncheck ‘Kaspersky’. While you are in there you might want to uncheck other programs that you installed years ago but never use….

Restart you computer and go to ‘control panel’ and ‘add/remove programs'. Select 'Kaspersky' and remove all of it except for the license registration (top check box). Then download the latest version of Kaspersky 2010 and reinstall it. So far this has worked almost every time. If it does not work, reinstall windows, you likely have a virus that is preventing Kaspersky from working properly.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for a fix or an apology from Kaspersky……

I just checked the Microsoft and Kaspersky blogs this morning and they are reporting problems with Kaspersky 2010 on new computers with a fresh install of Windows.  That eliminates the possibility of the the problems coming from an undetected virus.  So far I have had 3 computers that after uninstalling Kaspersky 2009 and then installing 2010, as much as a month later, the system either stops working with the symptoms listed above, or even worse the mouse stops working claiming that there is a registry problem.  I have tabbed my way there and tried a different mouse driver to no avail. 

The solution remains to reinstall Windows.  Then fight with Microsoft over licensing issues for Windows and Office.  Then we have to call ACT and get additional licenses to get that to work too....  What a pain.....