Home Ownership with all it's suckitude

A while ago, we noticed the basement seemed a little more damp than usual. Then, water stains started appearing on the baseboards in my office. This is one of those things you just don't want to know. If you investigate, you know it's going to cost some mucho dinero. Finally, though, we felt we had to get to the bottom of it.

In my office is a gorgeous wood shelf that was placed inside an alcove. Well, there WAS a shelf. I had to rip it out piece by piece since that seemed to be the focal point of the water stains. Once that was done, we had someone stop by to give us an estimate. After looking at my demolition work, he thought there might not be a crack in the foundation at all, it might be coming over the top of the wall somehow. Oh how I hoepd he was right. Alas, no. Today's rains showed water emanating from a hole in the middle of the wall. One leak found.

While looking outside, I noticed another crack in the foundation that seemed significant. Its location could not be worse. 1 foot to the left and it's in the unfinished basement. 1 foot to the right and it's accessible by a drop ceiling. Unfortunately, it's right where our ceiling had to be built around an I-Beam. So, more demolition for me as soon as I figure out how to put the computers somewhere functional. I'm not going to live without my computers damnit!

That nut still has his lights up!

Palm Sunday. I time to reflect and prepare for the coming Holy Week. A time to search your soul. A time to take down the Christmas Lights.

Yeah ... March 16th marked the day I was finally able to take down our Christmas lights. Now, the lights have been off since the 2nd week of January. I'm lazy, not psychotic. Just think, this was the first weekend since January that hasn't had a significant amount of snow or ice making such a task far too dangerous for a clumsy oaf like myself. I tried arguing that the layer of snow would help cushion a fall off the roof, but Debbie would have none of that. Can't imagine why. Who would have thought in December that getting the lights down before Easter would have been an iffy proposition?

Hot Water Stank

Whenever we go on vacation, arriving home is usually a relief with one exception. Even for weekend jaunts, the hot water always has a rotten egg smell for a few days. It's been a problem since we moved in, but my natural procrastinaty self decided to wait until now to figure out what to do about it. The source of the odor is pretty much agreed upon (bacteria) and all agree it's harmless, but annoying. There are a lot of opinions and advice on what to do to fix this, all involving work which I try to avoid. Some suggest removing the anode rod from the hot water heater. That sounded dangerous, so ... no! Another suggestion was to completely drain the hot water heater. Nice, but Debbie doesn't like taking cold baths, so again ... no! I did manage to find a solution that required what I consider to be in my sweet spot for work required: Raise the temperature to hot temporarily. My initial test with this method was wildly successful, so, naturally, I had to share my discovery. I feel a little like Galileo but without the excommunication. The night we got back from Baltimore, I raised the thermostat on the hot water heater and left it there over night. With the raised temperature, the smell was gone by the time I took my morning bath! How awesome is that? A simple turn of the wrist (two since I have to lower it the next morning) and Voila! Un-stinky hot water!
Feel free to share my brilliance with others.

Return of the possum ... or is it? Dun Dun Duuuun!

I had to call an animal eviction firm again. A smell began to emanate from our basement that was less than pleasant. As the dutiful father, husband, and supposed man of the house, I was required to poke my head around in the ceiling of the basement. My search was for one of 2 thing: a dead animal or a live one. Do not ask me which I preferred because I still don't know. While I didn't find anything living or dead, I did spy something to horrify me. After our last encounter with wild life, I felt I had done a good job making sure the little buggers would stay out. Apparently, the little buggers scoffed at my silly notion of securing the house. There ... in the ceiling ... right where the previous possum had made his home ... there was a brand new, nice and comfy, bedded with leaves and insulation, nest. WTF!!!!!!!!! How the hell did he get in this time? I think I need to step up my prevention efforts now.
The good news is that it does appear the nest had been unused for some time (much like Dantooine). I may have hindered their ability to get in the house by blocking a major hole they had dug under the deck. Who knows? The animal eviction guy gave me some pointers on filling in the remaining areas with dirt and rock and monitoring for any activity. *sigh* Looks like I may have to try my hand at concrete work again.

Decorating Advice

I have a question for the more decor inclined of my readers. As you may know, we recently replaced all the windows in our house. For almost all the windows, we ordered new blinds which will be installed tomorrow. The question I have regards the 2 large windows in the Living Room/Dining Room. Our plan is to decorate these with draperies to accent the room. The curtain rod we have in mind has a large orb shaped object on the end. We felt given the scale of the room (i,e, vaulted ceilings), we wanted something that wouldn't be lost. However, this presents a little decorating problem. The LR window is fine, but the DR window has 1 side with only 5 inches of clearance between it and the wall. You can see a picture of that here. So that leaves me with what I think are 2 choices: have matching curtain rod ends, but remove it from the end against the wall or use a plain rod for the dining room. Would having 1 side with nothing on it seem odd to many out there? What about 2 different rod sets? Thoughts would be greatly appreciated here.

Infuriating

There were noises coming from the nursery to clue me into the fact something was going on. I simply ignored them. So, I got quite a shock when I went to get Lauren and saw her like this:
 
Now, my initial reaction was shock and anger, but that cute little smile disarmed the feeling almost immediately. That and, when she saw me, Lauren held up a rather large piece of wallpaper like a cat holds up a prized bird and said in her proudest voice: "Daddy ... RIP!!!". All I could do was smile and say "Yes dear, you ripped *sigh*". Good thing we were planning on changing the wallpaper border anyway, otherwise this would be extremely infuriating.

Thankfully, fireworks were avoided

How did you spend your New Year's? I spent mine installing a light. Of course, this wasn't the take out the old light and put in the new light. No, that would be too easy. This had to be the cut a hole in the ceiling, install a junction box, THEN install the light and run wires. And leave it to the Home Depot DIY Book to make me feel inadequate. I believe the estimated time for this job for a beginner was about 3 hours. I did it in 6. Yeah for incompetence!!
The job wasn't as technically difficult as it could have been. The joists in the ceiling run perpendicular to the direction I needed to take the electrical wire, so instead of trying to gut a big ass drill and go through 3 joists, I got one of those hide-a-cord thingies. Easily saved me from making this a 2 day job or more. Also, the light is actually connected to an outlet that is controlled by a light switch, so that saved me a lot of time too.
One good thing about all of this is there were no fireworks. The light did not explode when plugged in and I never got close to feeling those mild tinglies you get before the giant ZAP! And now, we are finally able to play in the playroom after the sun goes down! HOORAY!

PS There is no better feeling than doing a job like this and then hearing your daughter squeal: YEAH DADDY!

Handymanny weekend!

The nerve of some people. I have a perfectly good post I've been wanting to write since Monday. Then these people come along and demand my time just because they give me a paycheck. Don't these people understand I have more important things to do than earn that paycheck? Now, on to my post ...

As Debbie alluded, I had a pretty handy Sunday this past weekend. I knocked out two projects that have been on my to-do list for a while, and one other project that popped up just this weekend. The newly added project involved fixing the guest bath tub faucet. Apparently, two screws had come loose and one of them was impeding the faucet handle, causing an occasional drip. I took off the faucet handle, tightened the screws and put the handle back. Well ... OK ... I did the handle thing twice because I put it on upside down the first time, but there's no need to go there.
The second project was to fix the sliding closet doors in the playroom. We have a patio door lock on them so Lauren can't get into the closet. This is required because we're pretty sure if Lauren wanders in there, she will be lost forever. Anyway, the lock was scraping the door leaving this wonderful silver line. This job required a screwdriver to remove the stopper from the door and a hammer to bang the living crap out of the lock to knock it back a few microns.
The final project involved insulation, I know you all are just wishing you were doing this instead of me. This was the final step in the Possum Entrance Elimination. When the little feller made his home, he made himself right at home in the insulation. With that, I felt it best to remove the old insulation and put in some new ones. This presented the opportunity for a new tool. I got myself a staple gun with the forward press trigger. I needed this to attach the insulation to the sub floor and keep it off the ceiling tiles. The insulation installation (ooh alliteration!!!) went very well and now, all aspects of the possum entrance project are complete. YEA!!!!