Dare I even say out loud that things are on a pretty even keel at the moment?
I have a nice handle on things for Oktoberfest this year. It's in less than two weeks and I'm not in a crazy rushed panic like I was last year! I suppose it helps that Dad and Nate aren't still building the bar! The snags Nate ran into last week are more or less corrected. He has one more part coming so he can actually add the 7th tap. It is pretty exciting.
Yesterday we filled up a "Tub" style dumpster with some junk we've been meaning to get rid of for awhile now. It isn't a huge dumpster so we weren't able to get rid of everything, but we managed to throw out the concrete from the old laundry sink and several doors we've replaced. Man it feels good to purge sometimes! We'll do it again this spring more than likely.
Driving to and from work this week I have been in absolute awe of the Fall colors. I know I keep saying that but seriously, the hues, reds, oranges, golds....they are amazing. And while I don't love warm weather at this time of year, I am also keeping it in perspective and enjoying it while it last because sometimes it still feels like yesterday that we were shoveling out from 12 inches of snow.
I miss my morning walks and runs with Nate, but man has he been sleeping good lately. And he's doing better overall. We're still struggling to make time for evening walks, but I still think we'll get some of those in before the snow falls!
I'm back to a "living in the moment" kind of pace and I'm feeling more peaceful and serene. I'm ignoring the little voice that tries to creep up saying "but where's the other shoe?" because you know what, it might be out there waiting to fall, but I am not going to be concerned with that. I will instead enjoy these warm, happy feelings every second that I have them.
Showing posts with label This old house. Show all posts
Showing posts with label This old house. Show all posts
10/5/11
7/18/11
Water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink
Water. Oh water. It is so good when you are thirsty or when you want to use it to cool off in a swimming pool or a beach. It is an essential part of life.
It is not so good when it shows up somewhere it doesn't belong!!
We have a sump pump in our basement, it's in our laundry room and earlier this summer it wasn't working right, but Nate fixed it and it works great now. And with all the rain we had on Friday night, it was certainly working overtime to keep the water out of the basement. I am thankful for that. But apparently, it can't fix everything.
I had mentioned in my last post about looking forward to a "me day" on Saturday. And it certainly started out that way! Nate got up early to go work on the car and I took my time getting up, getting ready and going about my day. After coffee with my parents I came back home and started some laundry. I noticed in the most northern part of my laundry room that there was a little bit of water along the edge of the wall - this does happen from time to time because the yard in the back needs some attention, we need to get it flowing away from the house, right now it flows toward the house. When we get a little water in that area, it's not too bad and it is concrete at least so it dries and all is well.
After seeing that though, I figured, I'd better check the northeast corner of the basement too. The first summer we lived in the house, we had a bad storm like the one on Friday and ended up with water in that area of the basement. There are some horrible cracks in the foundation right above that spot, where our front steps are and part of the driveway. This is something on our list to fix when the magical money fairy gifts us some more money. That first summer it was pretty bad, but we used a dehumidifier and it took care of the problem in about 48 hours. Knock on wood, it hasn't really happened again. Earlier this summer that area got a tiny bit damp, but not too bad, some Damp Rid (major product plug - this stuff works wonders, I'll be their spokesperson, seriously) took care of the issue. So,I wandered over to that spot and it seemed dry.
Satisfied, I went about my day, hung out with my mom for a bit, had some lunch, was gone maybe two hours or so. Came back down to switch my laundry around. The water in the laundry room was a bit worse. But I figured, the ground is soooo saturated out there and it's probably slowly sinking in and can't help but end up in the house a little bit. And again, this was just the concrete area of the laundry room, so I threw some crappy old towels down and freshened up the Damp Rid (seriously, Damp Rid people, your product rocks, hire me to pimp it for you!) and figured, all righty, problem solved. It was still early enough in the afternoon and I wasn't expecting Nate for hours so I decided, it was chick flick time, and headed back into the main room of the basement to watch a movie.
I was barefoot and as I approached the TV I discovered the shag carpet felt a little...odd as I was walking on it. Cold. Squishy. Wet. WET? Oh crap.
Further investigation proved that we had water - quite a bit of water - in that same corner from the first summer. Now, I give myself a lot of credit here, the Beth of five years ago would have freaked out, probably started bawling and swearing and more or less throwing a tantrum. No joke, I am not proud of past behaviors! But the Beth of Today said, ok, well, we still have a dehumidifier but I don't think it works. I will call Mr. Nate and see what he thinks.
So I called him and he said I could try the old unit, but my best bet might be running to Home Depot and getting a new one. I decided that would be best as well and set out. Man, I was lucky to get one - the cashier I went to said he had sold 18 Dehumidifiers and 37 Shop Vacs that day. Almost comforting to know we were in somewhat good company I guess with a damp basement!
Got home and set it all up and then just waited for Nate to come home. He made it home around 7:00 and assessed the situation and decided we'd let it run all night and see how things were come Sunday. It was still a bit squishy on Sunday, so after church he got the Shop Vac out and sucked up a bunch of it. Between that and running the new dehumidifier non-stop, we're getting it most of the way dry. I would say in the next day or two it should be better.
Then he did something that makes me love him even more - he went out in the soup yesterday and sealed up some of the cracks in the foundation so we can hopefully limp through the rest of the summer without replacing the steps just yet. Cause unless the magic money fairy comes to visit, we'll probably need to save a little bit over the winter and then replace all of it next year - hopefully.
So, there you have it. I'm thankful for the sunshine today - I really hope it dries up the water outside! I also hope this humid heatwave doesn't last terribly long. I'm still keeping it all in perspective though - I have air conditioning and at least it wasn't 12 inches of snow that we had to dig out of or something!!
It is not so good when it shows up somewhere it doesn't belong!!
We have a sump pump in our basement, it's in our laundry room and earlier this summer it wasn't working right, but Nate fixed it and it works great now. And with all the rain we had on Friday night, it was certainly working overtime to keep the water out of the basement. I am thankful for that. But apparently, it can't fix everything.
I had mentioned in my last post about looking forward to a "me day" on Saturday. And it certainly started out that way! Nate got up early to go work on the car and I took my time getting up, getting ready and going about my day. After coffee with my parents I came back home and started some laundry. I noticed in the most northern part of my laundry room that there was a little bit of water along the edge of the wall - this does happen from time to time because the yard in the back needs some attention, we need to get it flowing away from the house, right now it flows toward the house. When we get a little water in that area, it's not too bad and it is concrete at least so it dries and all is well.
After seeing that though, I figured, I'd better check the northeast corner of the basement too. The first summer we lived in the house, we had a bad storm like the one on Friday and ended up with water in that area of the basement. There are some horrible cracks in the foundation right above that spot, where our front steps are and part of the driveway. This is something on our list to fix when the magical money fairy gifts us some more money. That first summer it was pretty bad, but we used a dehumidifier and it took care of the problem in about 48 hours. Knock on wood, it hasn't really happened again. Earlier this summer that area got a tiny bit damp, but not too bad, some Damp Rid (major product plug - this stuff works wonders, I'll be their spokesperson, seriously) took care of the issue. So,I wandered over to that spot and it seemed dry.
Satisfied, I went about my day, hung out with my mom for a bit, had some lunch, was gone maybe two hours or so. Came back down to switch my laundry around. The water in the laundry room was a bit worse. But I figured, the ground is soooo saturated out there and it's probably slowly sinking in and can't help but end up in the house a little bit. And again, this was just the concrete area of the laundry room, so I threw some crappy old towels down and freshened up the Damp Rid (seriously, Damp Rid people, your product rocks, hire me to pimp it for you!) and figured, all righty, problem solved. It was still early enough in the afternoon and I wasn't expecting Nate for hours so I decided, it was chick flick time, and headed back into the main room of the basement to watch a movie.
I was barefoot and as I approached the TV I discovered the shag carpet felt a little...odd as I was walking on it. Cold. Squishy. Wet. WET? Oh crap.
Further investigation proved that we had water - quite a bit of water - in that same corner from the first summer. Now, I give myself a lot of credit here, the Beth of five years ago would have freaked out, probably started bawling and swearing and more or less throwing a tantrum. No joke, I am not proud of past behaviors! But the Beth of Today said, ok, well, we still have a dehumidifier but I don't think it works. I will call Mr. Nate and see what he thinks.
So I called him and he said I could try the old unit, but my best bet might be running to Home Depot and getting a new one. I decided that would be best as well and set out. Man, I was lucky to get one - the cashier I went to said he had sold 18 Dehumidifiers and 37 Shop Vacs that day. Almost comforting to know we were in somewhat good company I guess with a damp basement!
Got home and set it all up and then just waited for Nate to come home. He made it home around 7:00 and assessed the situation and decided we'd let it run all night and see how things were come Sunday. It was still a bit squishy on Sunday, so after church he got the Shop Vac out and sucked up a bunch of it. Between that and running the new dehumidifier non-stop, we're getting it most of the way dry. I would say in the next day or two it should be better.
Then he did something that makes me love him even more - he went out in the soup yesterday and sealed up some of the cracks in the foundation so we can hopefully limp through the rest of the summer without replacing the steps just yet. Cause unless the magic money fairy comes to visit, we'll probably need to save a little bit over the winter and then replace all of it next year - hopefully.
So, there you have it. I'm thankful for the sunshine today - I really hope it dries up the water outside! I also hope this humid heatwave doesn't last terribly long. I'm still keeping it all in perspective though - I have air conditioning and at least it wasn't 12 inches of snow that we had to dig out of or something!!
3/28/11
Home Improvement
Ahh, the life of a homeowner. Or I guess I should say the life of an "older home" home owner. The projects are never ending. We had have a little lull in house projects over the winter here, but we're picking up again, almost in full speed.
So yesterday my dad came over to look at the lighting in our basement again. We've had some conversations in the past about it - basically we are going to take down two very industrial looking fluorescent light fixtures and move those into my laundry room to give more light in there and replace them with nicer light fixtures in the main room. But of course, when they took just one of these fixtures down yesterday it was revealed (not surprising though given other things we've found in the house) that the ceiling was patched horribly around the hole for the light and that there are extra wires up in the ceiling as well that serve no purpose whatsoever. My dad said, ok, a little more work that we would like, but let's do this right. He will cut a nicer cleaner hole in the ceiling and patch it up nicely, paint over it and then install our new light fixtures.
We also mentioned that over the bar we have been having this little water issue, something being caused from the upstairs bathroom. So, Nate and my dad took down part of the wall that is on the overhang over the bar and talked about it and we now think it's caused from cracked and falling apart grout up in our upstairs bathtub. So guess what other project we're going to tackle, hopefully in the next few days? Scraping out old grout and re-doing some of the grout in the upstairs bathtub. It really needs to be done even without the water problems it's causing. We'll have to really clean our downstairs shower so we can use it for a few days. Ultimately though we want to get this water problem solved, not only so it doesn't ruin our lovely brand new bar, but also so Nate can install some track lighting up above the bar as well.
So once again, what sounds like simple little projects at the start, have turned into something much more, but they are again things that will make our house just that much nicer in the long run!
So yesterday my dad came over to look at the lighting in our basement again. We've had some conversations in the past about it - basically we are going to take down two very industrial looking fluorescent light fixtures and move those into my laundry room to give more light in there and replace them with nicer light fixtures in the main room. But of course, when they took just one of these fixtures down yesterday it was revealed (not surprising though given other things we've found in the house) that the ceiling was patched horribly around the hole for the light and that there are extra wires up in the ceiling as well that serve no purpose whatsoever. My dad said, ok, a little more work that we would like, but let's do this right. He will cut a nicer cleaner hole in the ceiling and patch it up nicely, paint over it and then install our new light fixtures.
We also mentioned that over the bar we have been having this little water issue, something being caused from the upstairs bathroom. So, Nate and my dad took down part of the wall that is on the overhang over the bar and talked about it and we now think it's caused from cracked and falling apart grout up in our upstairs bathtub. So guess what other project we're going to tackle, hopefully in the next few days? Scraping out old grout and re-doing some of the grout in the upstairs bathtub. It really needs to be done even without the water problems it's causing. We'll have to really clean our downstairs shower so we can use it for a few days. Ultimately though we want to get this water problem solved, not only so it doesn't ruin our lovely brand new bar, but also so Nate can install some track lighting up above the bar as well.
So once again, what sounds like simple little projects at the start, have turned into something much more, but they are again things that will make our house just that much nicer in the long run!
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