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Hey, sorry, I would have stopped in earlier to say, “hi,” but I’ve been stuck at the sink washing dishes all night. The dishwasher broke.
Ken, The Appliance Technician, says that I put too much soap in there. And, in addition to that, the pump is leaking. He will bring back a new pump tomorrow and I will go on a low-lather diet.
On a side note, remember when someone typed in ALL CAPS and you were all, “Wow! That’s annoying. It feels like he’s yelling at me.” Now they are typing things like this: “people r gonna b all over this song bcuz of guitar hero 3″ and don’t you wonder how it could possibly get worse?
You may have noticed some new pictures over there on the sidebar. Here’s the story to go with them:
When we came back from our holiday visiting, we found a squishy floor in the powder room. We pulled up the Pergo floors and found wet concrete. What we didn’t find was an apparent source of the squishiness. So we called a professional and Curtis the Plumber became our new favorite.
Curtis wasn’t able to actually find or fix the leak on that first visit in early January, but he did tell us we had pipes that were prone to splitting and would likely need to be replaced soon. Apparently, once they start breaking and splitting they keep on breaking and splitting.
Less than two weeks later, Curtis’ predictions came to fruition. While I was out treating myself to a Birthday Haircutting, Jason was home with the Water Company and the Fire Department putting a stop to the Fountain of Willow Creek in our front yard. This leak was easy to find as it was pushing enough water out into our front yard to create little rivers up and down the street in both directions. The break was on our side of the water main and so we called Curtis back out to save us. In about 15 minutes he had the break fixed and water back on.
At this point, we were taking Curtis really seriously and planning on getting the pipes redone. My parents had planned a trip down for the Super Bowl and we were planning a Super Bowl party. We figured we could wait until after the fun to start tearing the house apart for new pipes. To prepare for the party, I cleaned up and reorganized the garage. I moved the beer closer to the kitchen and added a cabinet for the pint glasses and thought how much our guests would be able to enjoy the home brew with ease. I made a menu and a shopping list. The beer was brewed and just needed to be kegged. All that was left was making and sending the Evite.
Then I went to put something out in the newly organized garage and heard a strange loud hissing. Then I saw a big puddle in the far corner near the water heater room. Then I told Jason,
“Something bad is happening.”
We ran out there and found a pipe coming from the water heater had split and water was shooting all over. We turned off the main. First thing in the morning, we called Curtis and told him to bring the new pipes with him.
So Curtis came Monday and fixed the busted pipe and turned the water back on. Tuesday he started working on putting in the new pipes.
The house is on a slab, which makes it hard to add new things to the first floor that require wiring because there’s no access to the walls. Curtis had mentioned the better way to run the pipes would be to go through the floor between first and second floors, so the pipes would be in insulated space, instead of attic space where the temperature fluctuates more. But there would be damage to the ceilings in the kitchen and living room if he ran them through the floor.
We agreed to go through the floor. Curtis was trilled he was not going to have to go into an attic and we figured we could use the opportunity to get some new wiring. Dad the Electrician packed up the Electric Van and headed down with Dan and loads of recess lights. We have now have two in the pantry and more than I can count in the living room and kitchen. Its awesome.
Less than 48 hours after leaving in the Electric Van, Dad was back, this time on a plane with Mom. We still watched the Super Bowl, but we spent the other 3 days of their visit tearing the tile out of the bathroom, installing more recess lights in the dining room, running the network and speaker wires and rewiring the master bath. Oh and making 17 trips to Lowe’s and/or Home Depot. Since the master bath is directly over the kitchen, this is a great opportunity to redo that too.
That’s pretty much why you weren’t invited to the Super Bowl Party (unless we don’t know you, then that’s the reason). The big Super Bowl Party turned into a more intimate gathering for four with way too much chili and Coors Light.
At this point, we still have no ceilings in the kitchen or living room and only 1 of 3 bathrooms is operating. The next step will be ordering the fixtures for the master bath and getting the drywall guy into put the walls back in the bathroom and the ceilings back in the other rooms. I’ll try to keep you updated.
We had a great trip to NJ for Christmas and came home to this. Well, not exactly this. We helped this along by tearing soggy Pergo out of the way. I wish these pictures were of the scratch-and-sniff variety so I could share the full experience with you.
In addition to recycled pumpkins, we have other fully seasonal decorations as well.
We will officially unveil our latest home improvement project at tomorrow’s Thanksgiving Feast, but I’ve included a sneak peek here for the 301,139,935 Americans who will be giving thanks at a Camp other than Willow Creek.
The project was installing chair rail molding and “those little squares” as Jason and I call them. Others might use fancy terms like “wainscoting” which I always thought referred to having some kind of actual paneling from the chair rail down, but according to Wikipedia, the material isn’t really important, its the idea of covering the lower half of the wall. Well, that’s what we did, albeit, mostly with paint.
First I painted some test spots for the top half of the walls with the two cans of unopened paint I had on hand. After buying a 10-inch miter saw (with stand!) and miles of molding, I thought it was important to be frugal and use paint we already had on hand. Actually, I didn’t want to look at 400 swatches of color in the paint store only to get it home and have it look nothing like it did in the store. So I painted a big square of each and Oolong beat out Rope handsdown to become the official color of the Dining Room.
You might recognize Oolong from another CWC project that I like to call “Operation Remove Pink From Master Bath Before We Have to Actually Shower Here.” It was my first solo painting project, and you can tell, but it wasn’t Oolong’s fault. And Oolong had a perfectly good second can just begging to be properly applied to a wall and shown off pro udly.
Thanksgiving is your day, Oolong.
So, ok, I painted the wall while Jason cut all the molding. Then he came back in and we started putting it up on the wall. As soon as the first piece was nailed to the wall, we could tell it was going to turn out really cool. Woot!
But then the fun woodworking, Bob Villa part of the project was over and the painting the white part of the wall part of the project began. Wow – white semi-glosses are hard to paint. I thought I was going to be sitting on the floor still painting while everyone enjoyed Turkey dinner.
Eventually, it was over and I cleaned up the room and put everything back. We’re both really happy with how it came out. I want to put chair rails in every room. Even rooms with no chairs! Jason wants to get back to playing his new video game.
Look! Over there on the right –>
Now that the photo gallery is more or less working (still lots of titles and captions missing), I’ve made it a little easier to go poke around in there.
The links over there, under the heading “Pictures” will jump you right into the photo albums. You can go to the main page or one of categories. For example, if you’re looking for snapshots from our latest travel adventure (Chattanooga, TN for Kathy and Gary’s wedding), you can jump right into the “Long Distance” album.
Have fun.
In the spirit of taking pictures of dash boards, like I don’t get enough of that at work, I felt it was only fair to add these two.
The conversation a few minutes before went something like this: “Burger King? Sure I can stop. If I go that way is there a Quik Trip? My car is claiming it only has 6 miles to empty.”
Yes, six miles to empty and I am concerned about what brand of gasoline instead of HOW CLOSE IS IT? Luckily it was also on the right. I hate when the QuikTrip is not on the right.
It may set your mind at ease that these pictures were both taken at Quik Trip. At pump 4. I pulled in and snapped the first (1 mile) then realized my settings were all gafloogered, so I reset and snapped the second. By the time I did she had dropped down to the zero mark.
I was kinda disappointed that there were no alarms or anything. Very uneventful to run out of gas at the gas station. Sigh.
This is what 1000 miles looks like.
It looks like 12pm on a Saturday afternoon.
It looks like you’re 1/10 of a mile from home stuck in weekend construction traffic on your way to meet your friend Kathy for a fancy salon make-up session.
It looks like its not all that bad a day to be stuck in traffic, since you can, after all, roll the top back and gaze at a clear blue winter sky.
It looks like the snarl will only last a few minutes and you’ll still have time for some yummy ginger chicken at the trendy Thai place in the strip mall with the salon.
And it looks like it will be nice enough to eat outside even though its January 13th.
1000 miles looks pretty good.
Clearly I’ve been way too busy driving around in my new car to update this website. I’ve added some pictures from our Brew Year’s Eve party. The weather was kind of awful, but the food was good and there was a lot of it because Nancy and I spent all day making sure of that.
Yes, Mom, we went shopping last weekend.
When we took the test drive, the truck had 2 miles on it. By the time they washed it and filled it up with gas and we took it home, it had 7. I got to drive 1/2 way home before Jason decided he wanted to drive.
I haven’t driven since, but he drove to Bed Bath and Beyond and that tells me this must be one great truck.
