This cOld House 3

The temperature has dropped the past week and as such, my missives will be written under a new Subject: 'This cOld House'. Mim was complaining about it a couple days ago - how she doesn't like our new house because I make her wear slippers all the time because the floors are cold. Both the kids still run around in bare feet and it makes me cold just looking at them.

Dan and I spent an illuminating weekend working in the garage, which has been kind of a catch all for us since moving in. Aside from all of the tools et cetera that came out of the basement in the other house, we have other junk that is still awaiting a final resting place. We at least were able to tackle getting the last of the basement/garage boxes unpacked, which means I now have all our tools out so I can start to actually work on some fix-it projects.

It was a little nippy yesterday, so instead of opening the garage door to let some light in, we hauled out the halogen work lights. These are the lights we use when we paint, since they are so bright all flaws are apparent. Evidently they work the same way on decrepit areas. We aimed them up at the newly exposed ceiling. When we bought the house it had been freshly drywalled since the building code dictates that with living space right on top, there has to be an impermeable barrier. Dan was suspect of it and once we got into doing some stuff, (like stringing new cable which took the poor installers 10 hours,) we realized it was going to have to come down to access the utilities. We found all sorts of stuff, including insect damage in the floor beams, duct-taped electrical work, holes in HVAC ducting, and what appears to be a levitating back stoop. At least we think it's levitating, since it's a concrete slab poured between two joists with no visible means of support. I discussed most of this with my contractor on Monday.

Also on Monday, I got a bid to rip out the super-structure in the coal bin, where we had the small scenic waterfall last week. We'd do it ourselves but Dan's gone all week on a business trip and we can't get a refuse bin delivered from the city until the end of leaf season. It will be moldy and attracting wood boring insect before you know it so it's gotta go this week. So Dan will get a jump start on his wine cellar - his vision for that space.

Speaking of leaf season, 4 landscapers showed up on Friday and worked all day weeding, cutting brush and dead heading. They got about two-thirds of it done, and returned on Monday with reserves. We'll be working on a phased plan to simplify the garden so we can work it ourselves. I'm imaging a lot of weed cloth and gravel - at least behind the pool house and along the back wall where the trees and weeds grow tall. Naomi loves gravel... she can play with it for hours. We don't know what we're going to do with the wild area outside the fence - I'm thinking Agent Orange.

My new hero is Rick the carpenter, who singlehandedly lifted the living room floor 3 inches to bring it back to (almost) grade. We are still off by about 1/4 - 1/2 inch, but we didn't want to push it with the wall full of windows above. The built-in bookcase will be shimmed the last half inch or so, and that's ok with me. Rick will be coming tomorrow morning to tackle the other side of the living room floor and so when Dan returns from Orlando at the end of the week, I may actually have the last of the boxes all unpacked and everything put away. Hurray!

I met the mysterious neighbor today. He showed up to mow the yard. At the age of 91, his Mom moved into an assisted living facility last spring, leaving him with the huge responsibility of taking care of the house. He came over to apologize for the state of the yard, and gave me his name and number, and was peeking over my shoulder to see how big the kids were 'cause he's looking for another patsy to do the mowing. (Patsy because Johngineer told us that he stiffed them on the mowing last year, and the landscaper told me the same thing.)

By the way, Johngineer is the former owner of this place. He said he's a chemical, electrical, mechanical and astro-aeronautical engineer with a doctorate who teaches down the hill at UD. (And he plumbs with duct tape.)

- Robyn -

This cOld House 2

I am grateful that we have the resources to take care of the mess into which we've gotten.

I got a call from my general contractor yesterday letting me know that he should have numbers in today, and he'll give me a shout or drop something off tomorrow so we can make some decisions about what gets done and when. The landscapers showed up yesterday and blew all our leaves, (2 guys for 3 1/2 hours,) and the clean up crew should be by by Friday to do all the weeding and dead head for winter. The irrigation guys showed up this morning to blow out the system, and imagine my surprise when I went downstairs to the pit to turn off the irrigation valve and discovered a small stream coming from the coal bin.

This was not the usual pond that accumulates after a rain. I can handle that. It seeps in under the concrete wall and collects in the old coal dip, and will be taken care of when we dig down next to there to add the new garage. This new creek was coming from the coal bin, but appeared to be more of the waterfall variety, cascading through the dropped ceiling, (which Dan wants to remove,) and running off the built up floor, underneath the wall and to the floor drain in the adjacent furnace room. I removed what we had left stored in there, (a garage box and the bar stools,) and set about going into a full panic. I called two handymans and the GC and couldn't get through to anyone and settled on the plumber who did our backflow re-cert on short notice in September. Sure enough they had a guy over here in 20 minutes. We ripped down the ceiling and found a plastic pressure sleeve DUCT-TAPED around an old galvanized pipe. Except for the expletives, I was speechless.

In shutting off the water to repair it, I discovered that the entire kitchen is plumbed off the outside line that runs through the deduct meter. (A deduct meter is a device added to count the 'outside' water that is used in the house. We don't get charged a sewer fee on the water we use in the pool, irrigation system or outside hose bibbs.) This was done by the former frugal owner and is very un-kosher.

Every time we do anything, we find something like this: The disposal plumbed incorrectly, with no trap attached; the 240 volt outlet in the laundry room... no-not for the dryer - it's just a regular outlet; the aluminum gutter straps used to hold on a whole section of roof; the 115,000 BTU piece of crap furnace that is only 2 years old but needs to be replaced because it's grossly over-sized for the space it heats (and by association, cools or in its case, doesn't cool because the blower is too grossly over-sized to run A/C.)

It just keeps getting better and better.

Good news! The carpenter is supposed to be by on Monday to start on the sunken/sinkin' living room. We may be able to get the stacks of books and boxes out of the foyer by the time our guests arrive for Thanksgiving. Wish us luck at the zoning approval meeting tonight for the garage. I hope no disgruntled neighbors show up. Dan's attending in his uniform, just in case. Bad form, to pick on the military these days.

More later, I'm going to go wash my dishes with illegally plumbed stolen water.

- R -