Fifties House » Utilities

Fifties Paint

mrbill — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 19:54:17 +0000

The great site Populuxe Books has posted scans of original 1950s DuPont and Sherwin-Williams paint color swatches to their blog.

While DuPont and Sherwin-Williams make great paint to color your home or business with, Security Camera & CCTV Camera Equipment make great camera systems to secure your home/business with. When considering any home security, be sure to research it first. In this case, you would look at the security industry.

I’m not cut out to be a plumber, after all

mrbill — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 03:50:57 +0000

Apparently the P-trap that I bought, the nuts and compression fittings that came with it, and the old “waste pipe” and nut on it were all crap. When I assembled everything, there were leaks where the nuts and compression fittings held things together. We gave up and called someone who does this for a living.

The plumber cut most of the waste pipe off, and replaced everything between the bottom of the sink tailpipe and the stub of waste pipe with a new PVC P-trap, pipe, and compression fittings/nuts.

Without the “late night emergency” charge, it would have only cost us $138. Not a bad price, really – we’ll give them a call (during normal hours) next time we need something done.

If you need good 24-hour plumbing service in Houston, give 911 Plumbing a call.

At least the plumber said I did an excellent job on the sink tailpipe.

Adventures in Plumbing

mrbill — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 01:06:22 +0000

I went to go remove the P-trap under the “blue bathroom” sink, to clear
out a clog and fix a slow drain. In the process of unscrewing the nut
(which appeared to be original ’57), it disintegrated.

“Oh well, I’ll just need to go pick up another P-trap and parts.”

The sink tailpiece virtually dropped into my hands, and about 10 more
minutes of work got the nut loose that held the other end of the
P-trap into the pipe that goes into the drain system.

When that final nut came loose, the trap fell into the sawed-off Home
Depot bucket I had sitting under the sink, giving me a splashed face
full of nasty sink water. Ick.

Turns out the clog was a little past the P-trap in the drain pipe.

We went to Lowes, 30 minutes before closing, where we picked up:

- Shop Vac (amy’s idea: “suck it out”)
- Accessories for the shop vac
- P-trap and new nuts
- Short metal drain snake
- Strap wrenches (the $15 adjustable pipe wrench I had was shit)
- Hair strainer trap thing for the sink drain

her: “Do you think we need another long piece that goes to the sink?”
me: “Nah, I think its just fricton fit, it fell out when I undid the
trap” <— BRILLIANT WORDS HERE

Got home. We’d gotten the right trap (we took the old one with us to
compare), but as it turns out.. The sink tailpiece is (well, was)
threaded. What had happened was the threads on the pipe were so
corroded and rusted, they just disintegrated. The only thing that had
been holding the sink tailpipe in was friction and force from the
P-trap.

By the time we discovered this, it’s 7:30pm. No Home Depot or Lowes
stores within 30 minutes drive time close later than 8pm.

There are no other open hardware stores in the area that I know of. All
I need is an 1.25″x8″ threaded sink tailpiece pipe. This is annoying.

By the way, her Shop Vac idea for getting out the monster pipe clog worked.

ring ring

mrbill — Sat, 20 May 2006 10:38:27 +0000

I’ve put up more telephone pictures at Flickr. The red one is my favorite so far.

More Living Better Electrically

mrbill — Thu, 18 May 2006 23:18:11 +0000

I found another Live Better Electrically medallion on eBay, this one looks a little newer than the one I found in the garage. I took pictures.

I’m also starting to take pictures of the vintage Touch-Tone telephones that I’m buying off eBay to replace the “modern” junk they sell nowdays.

I’m a firm believer in the fact that things worked better under a single monopolistic Bell System.

Live Better Electrically

mrbill — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 02:59:19 +0000

I found this on the garage wall, painted over and dark with 48 years of tarnish. Twenty minutes of scrubbing later (click for bigger/other pictures), we have:

After some Internet searching, I found details here:

To keep demand high, the electrical industry launched the Live Better Electrically, or LBE, campaign in March 1956. It was supported nationwide by 300 electric utilities and 180 electrical manufacturers.

The campaign got then-actor Ronald Reagan, the popular host of “General Electric Theater,” to take his television audience on a series of tours of his and wife Nancy’s all-electric Pacific Palisades home.

An in-house GE sales pitch declared that “by Thanksgiving, there should not be a man, woman or child in America who doesn’t know that you can ‘Live Better Electrically’ with General Electric appliances and television.”

In October 1957, LBE launched the “Medallion Homes” campaign, which sought to sell 20,000 all-electric homes nationwide by 1958, 100,000 by 1960 and 970,000 by 1970.

To earn a gold medallion–a decal affixed to a home’s entryway and considered the apex of modern, all-electric living–a home had to have an electric clothes washer and dryer, waste disposal, refrigerator and all-electric heating.

The Medallion Homes campaign was a huge success. By some estimates, the nationwide goal of about 1 million all-electric homes was achieved, according to the Edison Electric Institute, although data on the actual number built is unavailable.

Now that it’s cleaned up, I’ll put it back on the wall where it belongs. Obviously, this house was all-electric when it was built in 1957, but in the intervening years it was switched to gas for water and environmental heat. We went with an electric dryer.