Brain Enema of a Savage Mind

Baby in a Construction Site.

Before the construction began I was worried that Gabriel would have problems with all the banging and assorted symphony of power tool noises. I was wracking my brains to come up with places to go to give him a reprieve from all the chaos. If anything, he’s been dealing with it better than I have.

It hasn’t been so bad, really. It’s just I find myself constantly relocating around the house in search of a room where they aren’t banging away just outside. This of course involves not only moving Gabriel with me, but also an army of little toys, seats, mats, blankets, and other assorted baby paraphernalia. This of course makes it a bit of a production number for me. I’m the one looking for little escapes for awhile. As for Gabriel, he’s napping away on his play mat while they tear large sections of wood siding right outisde the window.

Never a Dull Moment When they Remodel Your House.

I’ve always known that whoever did the additions to this house in the 80′s had no clue what they were doing.  I don’t know whether they were some sort of incompetent contractor, or some do it yourself yahoo who was reaching way too far with their ability.  I’ve cursed their unknown names like some religious mantra, almost daily since I moved in to this place.  While most of my best cursing is reserved for anything involving the kitchen, the living room hasn’t escaped my fury either.

My favorite example is when we went to replace the rather ugly and weather worn front door.  We bought a brand spanking new door from Home Depot.  Nice, clean looking, great window in the middle, and highly energy efficient.  We watched videos on replacing your own door and had some good printed material.  We’re both fairly handy and felt that the job was well within our means.  When we tore out the old door we discovered many things.  The first was they used no insulation in the walls at all.  The second, and more damning, was the fact that the door frame was cut at an angle.  We always thought warping caused our door to stick, but no, it was because it was put in at a bit of an angle.  Lots of sanding and pounding with a chisel later we had a frame that was much closer to resembling something straight.  A few dozen shims later and we had a door that looked good and opened and closed with ease.

All of this brings us today and the newest discovery of previous owner ass-hattery.  While stripping the siding above our deck one of the works idly kicked at a board on the outside wall of the house.  Next thing we knew our deck partially collapsed.  Yes, while on one side of the deck they dug posts, poured concrete, and all that jazz, on the side attached to the house they attached it to the masonry with wood lags.  And went less than a 1/4″ in to the masonry.  Seriously, a tiny bolt meant to hold some wood together was the only thing keeping our porch vaguely attached to the house.  That it never collapsed before this is a bit of a miracle.  Fortunately no one was hurt, and now it’ll get attached properly.

We knew there would be something that would got beyond the initial estimate.  There pretty much always is.  This certainly wasn’t what we had been expecting it to be.  With fingers crossed we hope this is the last deviation from the master plan of home repair, but you just never know.  Stay tuned.

Banging around the house.

Lately I’ve been managing to keep myself busy around the house.  I’ve been doing repainting and repairs around the house – there’s certainly more than enough that needs to be taken care of.  So far I’ve managed to paint the guest bedroom which was badly in need of it.  While it’s not the shade of yellow I would have picked, it has certainly grown on me.  It’s a very warm and inviting color.  All the trim is finally done, and other than touching up a few spots I’m ready to start moving stuff in to the guestroom to get it all setup.

The other day we ripped out our old front door and put in a brand new one.  The old one was pretty badly hung, and the area cut out for the door isn’t exactly straight.  It took us a bit of sawing, chiseling, and sanding down of things to get the new door frame in straight.  It’s in nicely now.  A brand new door knob and lock and it really looks greats.  Just need to touch up a little bit of paint on the frame and the door but that won’t taken terribly long.

The next big project is putting in the new ceiling fan that we bought.  We’re calling in a little help on that one as a lot of new electrical needs to be run and we’d rather have that taken care of by someone who knows what the hell they are doing.  It’ll be nice to have the fan (and light) in here.  It gets a little bit stuffy in the summer so it will be really nice to have some airflow in here.  It’s even reversible so that you can circulate the warm air in the winter.

After that I’ll be replacing all the light switches in the house with matching ones rather than the mismatched collection that came with the place.  I’m also going to fix one of the dimmer lights that never worked quite right.  There’s also some GFCI outlets that need to be installed for the bathroom sinks and by the kitchen sink.

Finally I’m going to set up the room we’ve been using as a library/storage as a home office/library.  That will mostly involve a lot of moving stuff around and finding places for things.  Likely it will mean more stuff being piled in to the basement – the basement that is a project for a much later date.  Right now my focus is on the upstairs and finding a home for everything.  It’s a great feeling to be busy again.