Floods and Updates

It was as I had expected. That inspector was definitely a hard ass. And the strange thing was, he had been instructed only to take pics of the boiler, the bathroom, and the kitchen. All of which are in perfect working order. Mike tried to explain to him that we'd made improvements to avoid cancellation and pointed these out to him, but no no. He didn't need any of that.

Apparently he had a photo of the house with the farmer's porch on it - so they'd been to the house before without our knowledge, taking pics of the exterior. And that's honestly fine with me - but we JUST added the railings a few days ago. Not to mention the gutters. Again, Mike tried to explain this, but to no avail.

When I found out around 4 yesterday, I immediately got on the phone with our rep to make her aware of it. She was going to be following up with the insurance company anyway. And she better not take any guff from them if they try to say things aren't done. I wish I could talk to them myself.... on second thought, probably not the best idea.

"Home insurance cancelled due to psychotic home owner." Yeah, I'm definitely a liability.

Anyway, long overdue, here are some pics of the recent inspection-ready improvements:

Gutters and downspouts on one side - Mike's advice - it is easier to put them together on the ground and then put them up as one unit instead of trying to attach them to the house piece by piece.

Gutter on the back - much needed!

Temporary porch railing - lookin good.

Ah the exterior lights are back up again. It's all for temp, but still...

Completed basement railing - a little funky, but still functional.

And now on to the drama.

After clicking on the title to this post you're probably wondering where the flood's at. Well, it was a dark and stormy night. (Last night.) We started out with snow in the morning, which changed to rain in the afternoon and evening as the temperature climbed from the 30's to the mid 50's! What an incredible change. The wind was wild, the fog was everywhere, and by the time I got home, melting snow was creating huge rivers and puddles.

Around 7 I suddenly turned down the volume on the TV - I heard water. Not just dripping water either - this was definitely a fast moving waterfall dripping on some kind of hard surface. We started walking around, hoping that it was just the new gutters doing their job. Unfortunately, when we reached the basement - we discovered our favorite back window leaking again.

And not a small leak either.

Immediately, Mike shut off the boiler - which you can see in the pic is right in the line of fire. I had to quickly prop up a wooden sleigh bed I was storing near by on a few pieces of wood to keep it out of the fast growing puddle - although luckily that was the only thing I was worried about being damaged.

Mike grabbed his gordan's fisherman outfit and rushed outside, where he discovered that it wasn't so much the falling rain off the roof, but a river of melting snow running off the hill, straight into the window.

He was outside for nearly an hour with a shovel and the skid steer trying to divert the oncoming tide. Meanwhile I'm in the basement snapping a few pics... I guess I nearly gave the poor guy a heart attack. He thought the flash was something electrical arcing out in the basement!

Note the faint line about halfway up the window glass - that's where the water is. Trapped in the window well. It looked like a fish tank.

Eventually Mike was able to divert the water and slow the flow as it were. The flood ended with a quick vacuum of the basement with the wet dry vac.

Thank god the inspector wasn't around for that!

A Late Start to a Long Day

Saturday - the final frontier.

And Mike and I totally slept in after holding a little going away party for one of our friends on the previous night. We didn't even get moving until around noon, believe it or not. And even then we were still moving around pretty sluggishly.

Nevertheless, it was with a heavy heart that we took the old side door and mudroom windows to the dump... NAH, just kidding. That was awesome. Goodbye seashell door knocker. Goodbye energy deficient windows. Goodbye to that stupid awning thing over the old door. And good riddance to all.

We got home, feeling a little more motivated, and measured and cut the exterior trim for the new windows. Then we gave them a coat of paint.



While waiting for the paint to dry, we quickly installed the doorbell and exterior light that we had moved the wiring for when we moved the door. (Read that sentence at least three times to fully understand.) That didn't take too long, so, while all the electrical tools were handy, we installed a new light in the basement stairway and wired it to the switch.

We had at first wanted the stair light and the basement lights to come on at the same time with the same switchs. But, finding the wiring very very very confusing, (two switches, two sets of lights, two feeds, and a partridge in a pear tree) we just decided to make one switch turn on the stair light and one turn on the rest of the lights. It seemed to make more sense for future anyway. So we did that.


But once the light was on in that basement stairway, it illuminated a big problem. The drywall looked like crap. Having previously been a closet, the now stairway had not received very much care and attention from the drywallers. And now lit up for all the world to see - it was rather pathetic looking.

Plus - remember that big 'ol hole in the hallway where the under-stair closet used to be?
(Here's a pic from last summer - notice, that space under the stairs is still a closet.)

Well - that was now a giant hole, as you can see from this more recent pic.

I pondered a lot of your suggestions while thinking of what to do with such a hole and finally decided to make shelves on the inside - ie, the basement stairs side. Thus providing a secret space for secret nick nacks or tools or whatever. It just made more sense than shelves on the other side, which would be at your feet. That just seemed silly to have to bend down to look at whatever was on them. Plus, we'd have to create a cat door in the same hole so our two cats could get downstairs.

Wow, tangent. Anyhoo - those were the problems at hand. Also, at this point it was late in the day - maybe around 5pm. But nevertheless (can you believed I've used the word 'nevertheless" twice in here? Unbelievable.) NEVERTHELESS (3, had to do it.) Mike wanted to go down to the DeepHo for drywall.

Again, I was not one to stop the motivation train. Plus, I had about $9 on a gift card leftover from a return. So I figured, what the heck. We went down, picked up some stuffx, and started working as soon as we got home. Mike started in on the drywall while I gave those window trim pieces another coat of pain... I mean, paint. Hahaha.



Mike was still working when I finished the painting.

"You know what," he said, "We should really paint that bathroom ceiling."

Hmmm, I thought. He was right. It was brown in spots and disgusting. So I took the exterior paint I had been working with, grabbed a roller, and started painting the bathroom ceiling. But once I had most of the ceiling done, I was frustrated. Now the stark white bathroom walls looked mismatched against the cream colored ceiling. So I took everything out of the bathroom and started painting everything - the walls, the trim, the door - everything that looked dirty or gross or white, I painted.


Then I unscrewed and took down the old metal shower curtain rod that we didn't use. (It was too short for Mike, so we had a spring loaded one up.) And while I was painting the window trim I noticed a piece of tape under the window. Of course I thought, I'm going to take this tape off. Little did I know it was holding a couple of tiles on... which came off with it. I showed Mike and he laughed and came in to the bathroom and ripped off one of the stupid towel bars that I hated.



After that, Mike continued on the drywall - hanging all of the oddly shaped pieces. He also made my shelves and the cat door hole.



By the time we both realized we were hungry, it was around 10:30pm. Luckily, I had some leftovers, which we heated up. After that, the paint in the bathroom was pretty much dry and I was able to put everything back. Mike was done hanging and ready to sand, but didn't want to fire up his loud palm sander at 11:00 at night. So we went to bed.

And that was Saturday.