well as promised, i will get right into the highlights of the circus' visit to town - although, since yesterday i started to really think hard about the timeline of events, and things started coming back to me a little and i might be able to lay it out slightly more linear than if id tried to in the last post.
projects.
[wednesday]
as i mentioned in the last blog, wednesday was the day my parents arrived, and one of the first things we did was head to the depot [oh this was only the first of many, many, many - too numerous to count - trips to the depot over the duration of their trip. basically, if we didnt go at least once a day - usually more like 2 to 3 times a day - to lowes or the depot, then the day just wasnt over yet...] and pick up a few fasteners for me to repair the dining room table. this is the same table i mentioned many moons ago [i find it necessary at times to allude in a light hearted manor to my native american heritage, feel free to ignore it altogether, but it makes me happy] in another blog that wed acquired via craigslist. its kind of a 50's diner style vintage thing with chrome framing and a blue vinyl top/leaf and came with 4 matching chairs, also chrome frame, but with green vinyl cushioning.
anyway, the legs on this thing had slowly been getting more and more loose as time progressed, and tuesday night [the night before the circus arrived] they all but completely gave out on us. we were in the middle of dinner when the table shook, then all four legs splayed out like those old cartoons with the dog chasing the cat out onto the frozen lake, and the table fell about 2 feet. luckily nothing came off the table, but at that point id had enough. id tried several times to fix this stupid thing by tightening its bolts, but the problem was that the bolts were rusted solid, and the original brackets for this table had somewhere along the line been replaced with some roughly cut wood shims... not exactly the original design intent.
so anyway, when we got back from the depot wednesday night, i finally fixed the stupid legs with a few electrical conduit brackets and that was that. we flipped it over just as karen was getting home and it was good as gold - we havent had a problem with it since! =] other than that, like i mentioned in the last post, we procured the necessary permits from the i.b.i. and were ready to get going on the electrical whenever the time came. [definitely a great accomplishment!]
[thursday]
well karen and i were both back to work as usual on thursday so we missed out on all the fun that took place back at the house, but the general highlights of the day were as follows:
[1]the security company came by to repair the security system. recently we'd had a small number of false alarms and since we were still under warranty with the system, they sent out a guy to check the whole thing out and as it turned out, replace a bad sensor and a few batteries. since then we've had no further incidents - im sure the police are pleased.
[2]kimber decided to take upon herself the task of cleaning our basement. its much like any other basement in that its very dusty, dirty, and cobwebby [yeah, i made that up]. well by the end of the day shed swept up and vacuumed somewhere around 100lbs of dirt and debris from our basement into a giant trashcan - which proved to be something of an issue when it came to moving said trashcan... - and the basement had had a significant transformation! she did a great job, and we were very pleased.
[3]mom had taken on the task of cleaning out the office and the closet on the second floor and getting the rooms prepped and ready for painting. additionally, shed gone through most of the house doing general organizing, cleaning, vacuuming, and some minor prepping to the various rooms we were planning to eventually tackle during their stay.
[4]dad had spent his day going about tracing out a number of wires in the basement and trying to figure out what was going where, what was feeding what, where and how things were linked together, and starting to devise a plan of action to correct the numerous issues he was uncovering [yes, on top of the ones we were already well aware of].
[additionally]
well, im not sure when this actually happened in the whole time-line scheme of things, but i figured id go ahead and give you the details now, as it will eventually be relevant to the rest of the story. i cant remember now if i mentioned it or not - i think i did - but just before my parents were scheduled to make their visit we decided to see if we could get the certificate of occupancy. as such, we discussed all the necessary permits and issues with our friendly city inspector, and we even ended up building a railing for the stairway up to the "penthouse" [as we're now referring to the attic suite - thanks mom.] and around the stair opening in the same. well im not sure if i got in to depth on how the inspection went, but we did pass - sorta....
he approved us in that the house was indeed a habitable domain, and as such we were legally allowed to occupy it [instead of continuing our stint as illegal squatters on our own property], however this was a conditional situation. during the inspection of the basement he found 3 places that he deemed "structural problems" in that there was "significant or considerable" termite damage to some of our floor joists from a previous infestation in the house. [as youll recall, we had a termite guy out earlier in the blog posts and he assured us there was no active infestation of any kind.] so in essence, we were given occupancy under the condition that sometime in the near future we would repair the structural defects and return the house to a safe environment.
well the kicker was the way in which he was wanting this done. he wanted us to cut out all the bad wood in the floor joists, replace them with good wood. furthermore, where the new met the old we would need to add at minimum a 6x6 wood column to take the majority of the load off the new segment. if that wasnt enough, the new column was going to need to be placed within a new concrete footing that was basically an 18" cube, with 12" below the floor of our basement, and 6" above the floor which would also be the 6" the column should be set in.
so.... considering i dont have a saw to cut concrete, nor did we have the time to tackle all of that additional mess on top of the electrical issues and whatever other problems we would run into while the folks were here, karen and i decided to have our contractor do the joist stuff in addition to the roof he was still working on.
and so... until i have a little more time and a jog in the memory, we'll leave this tbc...
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