Astute

Mr. Fixer pointed out something the other day, after listening to me whine about the serious lack of 'actual DIY blogging couples' -- i.e. people who do the work instead of posting a million pictures of their contractors doing the work (that they could have done themselves, if they tried) and their splendid PAINTING abilities (gimmee a break! the only thing you did was PAINT?! --- as I rub sheet rock dust out of my eyes) ;

Him: "Honey do you know why more 'actual DIY bloggers' don't exist?"

Me: (brief pause) "They don't have time to blog, because they are actually doing the work themselves?"

Him: "Exactly."

The flu

Mr. Fixer and I had the flu, alternately, for he last two weekends. Luckily, not the swine flu. We live in the south (I think Mr. Fixer just cringed when he read that, since he misses living in the NE) therefore the flu is a serious concern. Also, as a topping on the poo cake, my lab was audited this week. This means I worked several very long days in a row, running around and fetching documentation for the auditor to inspect. The good news is that the audit is done! Yay. It went well, thank goodness.

Last weekend Mr. Fixer bought more raw materials; sheetrock, plywood, whatnots, etc.

This means we can get back to the Fixer-Upper grind this weekend. I would love to complete the living room by Christmas, but I am not sure if that is just a hopeful fantasy. If it is not done, I won't be devastated...but patience is not my strong point.

Disclaimer: If you are not a person who can see things "as they will be, and not only as they are" then you should never attempt home repair. You should NEVER rip out all the walls and floors in your house. You should buy a nice,new, pre-finished sub-division house. While you still will have to worry about the normal homeowner things, like exploding plumbing, leaking gas lines and ginormous mice, you won't have to worry about wearing shoes in the house so that you can walk from the living room to the bathroom without getting shards of wood or concrete dust (which itches) on your feet. You also won't have to worry about removing popcorn-like texture from every wall of your house, or panicking at work when you realize you MAY have left your hairdryer plugged in and the wiring upstairs is still old and frightening, or wonder why the toilet water in the upstairs bathroom is yellow even though it's clean. Yes, old houses have issues.

We have a lot of work to catch up on to bring our house up to our specifications. It sounds suckier than it is, I suppose. Then again, when you are functioning on three hours of sleep, EVERYTHING seems suckier than it really is. Damn working.

I know we will really enjoy the house and yard at the end of this process. Our little, vintage foreclosure will transform into a cute, cottage-like home.


Oooo--I almost forgot! Last weekend we put up some of our Fall/Halloween-y decorations. I will post pics soon. I love me some Halloween.
Last year we only had two trick-or-treaters, from the same house. I was bummed. Maybe this year we should give out cold, hard cash. Kids like that, right? I am not above bribery.

Sheet rock does not rock.

The people who owned the house before Mr. Fixer and I were definitely "touched", as my grandma would say. Either that, or they just really liked the 'popcorn' texture on...well, everything. Every wall and ceiling in our house is either covered in a 'popcorn' texture, or what Mr. Fixer called "knock down" --- which means they spray clumpy stuff on the wall and knock it down slightly with a tool.

Or, something like that.


What it means, in the end, is that when we moved into the house every wall you ran your hands over felt diseased. I have never seen that much "texture" in my life! So, being the frugal folks that we are, we decided to sand and scrape the existing sheet rock (so that it will match the new, pretty flat stuff we are installing) rather than replace it. It sounded like a good idea, which is usually how all bad ideas begin.

After completing one room, we decided that it was not worth it. From here on out; new sheet rock all the way baby! After the awful experience of trying to save the guest room sheet rock, it is so nice to put up a wall in the living room, even if it does cost slightly more to just replace the crap. In my mind, we are paying for sanity --- pure sanity. After weeks of sore arms, sore legs and weight gain from ingesting large amounts of chocolate to prevent you from killing your significant other; you will feel the same way.

Mr. Fixer says we need to add pictures from the beginning of our reno --starting with the Hurricane. So, hopefully I will get to that soon. Currently, I am insanely busy at work most of the time, and all free time is spent trying to motivate myself to do productive things when we get home (which apparently does not involve watching episodes of 'The Guild' or playing Pathwords on Facebook). In other words, same old same old. Tonight we are going to attempt to prep the ceiling for the crown molding install. The thought that we might have all of the molding ( casing and crown) up soon is super sexy! Oh dear, I need help.

We are certified!

This inspector from the city came by this morning, and gave us our little green sticker saying that we passed the inspection, and can finally have some hot water again.
The bad news? We may have been duped by the plumber. We are thinking this whole"code" stuff wasn't as necessary as he led us to believe.
In the mean time the Energy Company is digging Marianas Trench through the back yard, and the little lemon tree near the back of the house is getting a new home.
Home AGAIN from work, but working at home.
Mr. Fixer drove to the energy company this morning, allowing me to go to work early. However, he missed half a day of work and will need to make it up. He seems to be in better spirits about the whole thing than I am, but I feel sorry for that plumber if he screwed us. I fear Mr. Fixer will be a force to be reckoned with. Hot water soon!

It's a gas, gas, gas...

Let me start this post by saying "It could be worse."

The plumber came by to complete the leak test, and found a small leak when he hooked up the gauge, about 1/2 psi an hour --but he was pushing 4 psi through a line that normally hold 1/2 a psi. Two hours later he found the leak, with the aid of Mr. Fixer Upper. Once Mr. Fixer Upper heard we were paying $100 per hour for them to leak hunt, he left work early and started ripping down sheet rock in the house, looking for old gas lines. 'Cause that's how we roll. Someone give that man a crowbar.

They did find a small leak in an old line in the downstairs bathroom, apparently before the house was updated with central heating there were small ceramic heaters inset into the wall. When the heaters were removed, probably thirty years go, they capped the lines poorly. At least one of these lines has probably been leaking ever since. The bad news is that our house still isn't up to "safety code" at this point, and the plumber is threatening to go to the city and pull his permit (he needed to request a permit from the city to start work on the gas line) unless we have this, that and the other thing done. All of which are small jobs, but expensive. Such things as replacing the hot water heater vent cap with one that does not allow the re-penetration of radon, cutting some sheet rock away from gas lines because they are supposed to have a two inch air gap around them, etc. The cost, $2000. Slightly more than the $500 we have budgeted for. I whine, and mope, eat chocolate and consider going back to work while Mr. Fixer supervises the work. We are hoping to be "certification ready" by the end of the day, so that the energy company can start work tomorrow. I KNOW that we are doing the right thing, our safety and whatnot. It's still hard to write those checks.

Shortly I will be leaving to drive out to meet the Energy Company rep and write another check so that they can start their work tomorrow. Then back to work to make some more money to spend on the house.

So, what does this leave us? House poor and experience rich? There has to be a silver lining somewhere, so I suppose the fact that our house will not spontaneously combust must be the lining in this case. I guess the other 'good thing' is that we do not have to replace all the piping in the house. The plumber estimated that would have easily been an $8000 to $10000 job, Ouch. Time to switch to electric heat and hot water ----

In other, more positive news, the cat is absolutely enthralled to have us home in the middle of the day. He has been lounging around the house, following us from room to room, and is currently sitting on the desk in front of me, purring as I type. Sometimes, it's the small things. Otherwise, we would all be running around like neurotic basket cases, screaming at each other and pulling our hair out.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Mr. Fixer Upper and I are starting to get the remodeling blues. I think every family that goes through a remodel of our enormity probably feels the same way. The money is appalling, the actual labor is truly hard and you miss spending time with normal people; the kind that have appliances and flooring. Every free moment you know that there are things you should be doing, but the amount of work is so overwhelming that you don't do any at all. Instead you eat popcorn and chocolate while lounging on the sofa for the entire weekend, watching bad reality TV (The Duggars, seriously?! Another one?!) and feeling extremely guilty. However, there are also times when you leave your work site...err...home, stay at a hotel and enjoy the luxury of things like carpeting and sheet rock. You wake up each morning and can walk around without wearing shoes, without the fear that you will step on a rogue nail or get a giant splinter injection on the soles of your feet. We did that last week. It was glorious. However, now that we are certified DIYers, we tend to notice imperfections in the hotel room that we would not have noticed before. How tight are the joints on that casing molding? Why are there small gaps where the hardwood flooring meets the doorway? Did they even SAND before painting these walls?! Yes, we inspect everything. At one point I even found myself running my hands over the walls in the bathroom, checking for paint runs and patched areas. We have lost our minds.

When we returned from vacation, Mr. Hippie (the neighbor) stopped by and we thanked him for mowing the lawn for us while we were away. He was happy to help. We forced him to take some gas money before we left for vacation and he eventually obliged. Truly a nice guy. He immediately drags Mr. Fixer outside and points out something, the smell of natural gas spilling out the pipe coming out the house. Damn. He was weed-eating, to be nice, near the pipe and noticed the smell. Mr. Fixer Upper said that a few weeks ago he thought he smelled a bit of it as well. I recall telling him I did not smell it. Damn again. So, this morning I call the energy company, and rush home from work to meet them. (thank goodness my job is flexible) The technician immediately disconnects the gas and meter, giving me the bad news that we will either need to have the meter relocated to the side of the house (it currently resides in the middle of the back yard) or have the pipe that goes from the meter to the house dug up and replaced by a plumber. Apparently the 47 year old pipe just corroded and disintegrated underground. Also, when our wonderfully nice neighbor was weed-eating he probably hit the pipe, causing the pipe to give out and crumble. What might have been a pinhole leak is an obviously missing chunk. There are several places he finds corrosion (but no leaks) as he digs around the pipe's entrance to the house. It would have gone at some point, he says. The technician calls out another rep, someone from the construction division, and he takes some measurements behind the house. The construction rep tells me that moving the meter 53 feet, from the middle of the back yard onto the side of the house, would be the best option because any future line issues would be their responsibility. You see, the utility company is only responsible up to the meter, meaning any line we run off the meter will always be our responsibility---and will eventually crumble again. However, if the meter is attached to the house, our only responsibility would me to make sure there are no leaks IN the house. Plus, it frees up the back yard a bit, since the meter in the middle of the yard is a bit of an eyesore. The cost? $710.48 to the energy company for their part. He gives me instructions for the plumber we will have to hire to install a new elbow on the house fitting. The plumber will also have to install a pressure gauge on the house to prove to the inspector that there are no gas leaks in the house. Once the we get the inspectors approval, we will have a "green sticker" placed in the fitting protruding from the house and we can go ahead and have the meter installed. This means no heat, no hot water, no dryer and no cooking gas until everything is completed.

I drive back to work and e-mail Mr. Fixer Upper letting him know that we will need to get all of this coordinated ASAP. We decide to use the plumber that we have had a good experience with in the past. Chuck with Average Plumbing Inc. (made up names) says an additional $387.50 for the leak test and pipe re-work, ASSUMING that there are no leaks in the house. If he finds leaks, it will be more. Oh well. Bye bye savings, it was nice knowing you. Damn my husband and I for trying to make home improvements and NOT get into debt. It's sad to see the accounts dwindle, but soothing to know that SOMEDAY we will be done. We will be done, right? Someday? Soon?

So, the gas leak saga continues another day --- but hopefully not another week.

I was joking with my husband this morning --- this was the most EXPENSIVE lawn mowing service ever! (at least for a 1/2 acre lot)