How I Spent my Birthday:

Adulting

So, my 40-year old house has a leak in the water line IN the foundation.  This is a masonry home, and the drywall is laid directly on the masonry walls, I believe, which means re-piping the house is going to be messy.  And expensive.

Dammit.

Sometimes adulting sucks.

UPDATE:  Second Plumbing contractor came out.  Couldn't find a wet spot, didn't try to jack my wife around, recommended calling a leak detection specialist who said "don't call until the wet spot returns, or we'll have a hell of a time finding the leak." Oh, and "It'll be much less expensive to find and fix the leak than to re-pipe the whole house, and it should be covered by your homeowner's insurance."

I feel better now.

2nd Update: It's not a slab leak. It's a canine leak. Apparently one of our dogs has anxiety issues when neither my wife or I are at home. The bedroom door will be kept closed from this point on.

It's a lot cheaper than a re-pipe.

No, I'm Not Dead...

...and neither is this site. I should have my home computer reconnected by Tuesday. However, we still have a lot of reassembly work to do around the house, so my time is going to be severely limited for a bit longer.

Thanks for checking in here, though.

Remodel Status Update:

Flooring work begins tomorrow. EVERYTHING off the floor in the kitchen, hallway, diningroom, bathrooms, and one bedroom. That means my computer desk gets to spend some quality time in the garage, where there is no way to hook it up.

No posting for a while. Sorry.

Remodel Update

I started back to work on Monday. We're almost finished painting. I plopped down an obscene amount for the kitchen countertops this afternoon. The carpet & tile place called tonight and the walk-through is scheduled for Friday; installation begins Monday.

I. Am. Sick. And. Tired. Of. It. All.

Blogging will probably be light this week. There's a thousand-and-one details we've got to complete before tile installation starts.

Status Update, 11/21/05

Well, the remodel/repainting progresses. The kitchen and two bedrooms are painted, the kitchen cabinets are about 75% installed (there were some install problems) and the installers will be back today... sometime. The island won't fit as planned, but I've rearranged the components and it will work out OK. I've got to do some surgery to the cabinet the cooktop will be installed over. Oh fun.

We had a bee swarm in the front yard on Sunday. $150 worth of dead bees is not that big a pile, let me tell you.

And I am sick of having my house screwed up.

Tile and carpet installation begins Dec. 5.

Please. Shoot me now.

Remodel Update: We Have Cabinets!

Delivered as promised, this morning at 08:40. Lots and lots and lots of boxes. Installation is scheduled for tomorrow. Measurement for countertops is next Wednesday. A sheet of 3/4" marine-grade plywood is in my immediate future, I can see. I'm not going without any kind of kitchen sink for another four to six weeks.

In the mean time, prep and painting on the rest of the interior continues.

Painting isn't so bad. Prepping for paint sucks.

Please. Make it Stop.

Day #4 of the kitchen portion of the remodel of Casa Minority. All the cabinets (save one, that I'm still using) have been removed from the kitchen. The 12"x12" pressure-sensitive adhesive tiles (26 years old like everything else in the house) are removed from the kitchen floor. Spackle has been applied at strategic places where the drywall mud had detached from the metal corner flashing. Actually, I stripped damned near all of it off and redid it. The electrician comes tomorrow to run new circuits for the wall oven, cook top, microwave range hood, and center island. The plumber comes Tuesday to replace the hot and cold water valves and put in one to feed the icemaker on the new refrigerator. The cabinets show Thurdsay. Installation is supposed to start Friday. Three to four weeks more for countertops. Tile & carpet the first full week of December.

Painting starts tomorrow. My wife and I will be doing the painting. I have two gallons of primer (for the ceilings where I had the popcorn crap removed) and eleven gallons of paint in not two, not three, but four different colors.

I don't go back to "work" until 11/28.

By then, I'm going to need a vacation.