Question of the Day

Why do box springs have a thin fabric covering on the bottom that's essentially a thick spider web?

All it's good for is providing the cats a place to hide that I have to work to get them out of. I'm getting a little tired of rolling around on the floor every morning reaching under the bed in order to grab Scooter. And he's probably not too happy about the fact that I scruffed his butt instead of his neck last week because visibility was poor and all I could see was a bundle of fur.

If I were a better pet owner I would work on getting Scooter to show up when called like all the other cats. But instead I'll probably just end up cutting off the rest of the fabric on the bottom of the box springs...

Give Me Back My Ignorance!

The problem with letting a competent general contractor into your house is not that he will tell you about all of the things that he is going to do, but that he will tell you about all of the things that he isn't going to be doing that need to be done.

I'm capable of ignoring almost any problem if I have enough time to rationalize it away. That's not really a positive trait, but it does allow me to live in a house that was crappily built in 1958 and then had fifty years of neglect and abuse applied.

Then Brandon comes in and looks at the floor, and the crawlspace, and the attic, and everything else and tells me things like this:

• My pipes are galvanized. Apparently that's something that contractors refer to as "bad". It also explains why I have to take off all the faucet aerators every once in a while and wash out all the chunks of metal that are keeping the water from coming out. The good news is that they can replace all the pipes under the house. The bad news is that because the pipes are under the house, they will need to be replaced with copper pipes. Since people are getting electrocuted trying to steal copper wire, I'm guessing copper pipe is somewhat expensive...
• The tub is leaking.
• The toilet is probably leaking, too.
• One side of the house drops off an inch in the last five feet. (To be fair, I'd actually noticed this problem even though I tried to believe I was making it up.) That could be "bad" or maybe just not that good, depending on what is causing it. The current theory is subsidence. If it doesn't change any more it's just a flaw that adds character to the house. If it keeps moving, my not-yet-installed beautiful tiled floor in the bathroom will probably crack although Brandon is going to do a bunch of stuff to try to keep that from happening.
• Also, the other side of the house drops off a bit as well.
• Even though I only noticed a leak in the roof in one spot before I had the roof replaced a couple of years ago, apparently it was leaking a little bit all over the place. That's "bad". We think it's all fixed now, but since it hasn't really rained since the roof was replaced, we'll just have to trust that it's all good and that the new ceiling won't be destroyed.

Home ownership -- it's a great way to save for retirement!

The Hiding Closet

Now the hall bathroom (aka, the working bathroom) has a different hole in the wall. At least this time it doesn't communicate directly with the master bedroom.

The white area on the left is where the old linen closet (now the new master shower) was. The new hole to the right is where the new closet is going to be. And just to the right of that is the door from the bathroom into the hallway.

So right now, you go into the bathroom and the big hole in the wall is hidden by the open door. And then you go further into the bathroom and turn around and that's when you notice that there's a hole in the wall.

Now if you're me, you walk back every time and look into it because it's the perfect space for someone to be hiding. I mean, I'm pretty sure Ginger would let me know if there was anyone else in the house (since she's been letting me know that non-stop all week), but still... I'm paranoid. Oh well.

Anyhow, you can see that the stress is really affecting Guido...

Maybe She'll Learn Basket Weaving At Camp

So it turns out that I can concentrate on work just fine through all the dust and various construction noises, slamming front door, that one contractor who at least a few times a day asks "Are you kidding me?" when he's trying to do something that isn't working out, and power outages to the kitchen because they keep forgetting that they can't run the saw and the air compressor on the same circuit at the same time. What I can't deal with is the little dog doing a short bark/howl at least once a minute for hours on end.

It wasn't a problem last week. When I talked to the site manager last Tuesday morning he said that on Monday she'd either quieted down quickly or he'd tuned out the noise. The rest of the week she would bark a bit in the morning when people came into the house, and then she was quiet the rest of the day.

This week... not so much.

On Tuesday when she kept barking I thought it was because she was wound up from being attacked during our walk earlier. (The big dog from down the street got out of his yard and attacked her as we were going in our gate. Ginger was fine -- her hair was wet from saliva but I couldn't find any punctures. I pulled her back out of the yard and slammed the gate, trapping the other dog inside, then I went down the street and pounded on their door hard enough that it opened and I not-very-calmly informed the guy that he needed to come get his dog and fix his fence. I didn't attack him. See, I showed restraint!) Anyhow, I gave her the benefit of the doubt on Tuesday.

Wednesday she kept barking, but since the contractors were gone for a large part of the day it didn't matter. Also, the work passed the rough inspection, so -- progress!

Today even the ridiculousness of having another inspection (to count the number of nails/screws fastening the drywall) one day after the previous inspection failed to make her tolerable. I put up with it for about three hours and then caved and took her to doggy daycare.

If they had doggy daycare at the gym, I might even exercise...

Slip Sliding Away...

Did I say I was going to update the blog every day during October? A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds and all that.

I'm going to blame the day off on the fact that in an incredibly graceful (and possibly ironic, although I can never remember the correct meaning of the word) moment, I severely decreased my potential energy during agility class. For those who didn't pay attention in physics, that means I fell.

It was a fine sliding fall, worthy of being filmed, and the only saving grace is that it wasn't being filmed or I'm sure someone would have a link to it in facebook by now. The course went from the teeter to a jump and then a sharp turn to the A-frame, and the dog made the sharp turn and I didn't. He's a service dog, though, so he stopped halfway up the A-frame to make sure I was okay. There was a little reproach in his gaze, too, because he really likes running full tilt over the A-frame. Yes, the dog was trying to make me feel guilty.

It's not really a good excuse for not updating the blog, though, since I didn't really feel the effects until this evening. Luckily I fell on a well-padded portion of my body. Hm. That describes most of it. I guess I'm just lucky I didn't fall on my head.

Anyhow, that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it. Tomorrow I'll be back to telling more remodeling stories.

Unless I forget again.

Get Off My Lawn! (part 47)

When did it become required to decorate your house with orange lights for Halloween starting at the end of September?

I mean, sure, I can see going with a Fall theme -- a few pumpkins, a gourd or two, maybe a sheaf of wheat. It's time to celebrate the harvest, after all.

But when half the neighborhood puts up orange Christmas lights (or red, or purple, or in one particularly nightmarish scenario, red and orange and purple) on ever exposed surface of the house along with the odd outline of a group of bats, I cry foul. Not fowl, because that would mean turkeys are involved and that's back to the harvest festival idea.

Anyhow, that's today's rant. Harrumph.

Did Someone Say More Tape?

Because it's not bad enough that I have to be all ready for the contractors to show up by 7am (which rules out rolling out of bed at 7:30 since the cats, birds, and dog need to be fed and safely locked up before anyone else gets there), I have to deal with the sound of tape being pulled off the floor protection in the middle of the night.

It's hard to get a good picture of a black cat rolling around on the floor if you have my photography skills, but what you should be able to see are all the little pieces of blue painter's tape that used to be holding down the sides. And you can't even see how much he has pulled up, chewed on, and left connected.

I can't even imagine what the contractors are going to think when they get here tomorrow...