when.the.circus.comes.to.town [ch.2]

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...

for.my.favorite.mother.in.law

well i know my mother-in-law is waiting as patiently as she can, so lets get to this shall we?

saturday[11.15.08]

i forgot to mention in my thursday portion of the last entry that i also filled out one of those online forms for a free termite inspection from terminix. we havent seen any termites in the house, but the inspector noted some past termite damage in his report [which means youre much more likely to have future infestations and i'll explain why later] and during the inspection he kicked over a dead stump in the front yard only to discover a virtual hive of termites swarming around in there. so to be on the safe side, we wanted an inspection just to make sure or possibly to investigate some preventative measures. so i filled out the little online form and later that day the guy called me and set up an appointment for saturday morning between 8 and 10am. 

so saturday morning started early. [morning karen did not appreciate this, lol. shes gorgeous even when she wakes up, but usually a bit grumpy when leaving the super cozy+comfy bed & bedding, hehe!] we actually slept in a little longer than i wanted after staying up for the movie the night before [and just to clarify, yes, the wine-tasting thing was actually at whole foods, lol! you guys must have thought it was pretty random we just decided to meet amanda at whole foods, lol! sorry im a bit unclear on things at times - my mind only works in so many directions at once, hehe] so we didnt actually get going till 9, but we were at the house by 9:30 and hadnt actually heard anything from the inspector so we got lucky. actually... we were a little worried about that... 10 was quickly approaching and we had lots to do that day. however, at 9:55 when i was getting ready to try and decipher which of the hundred or so recent calls was the terminix guys number, we had a knock on the door. awesome. right on time - more or less. 

so we let him in, made introductions, hand shakes, what have you and then ventured into our basement... or "the lair" as im thinking of re-naming it for the sake of comedic injection.  anyway, into the lair we go. so we discuss why we called him, not having seen termites actively, and all the stuff i mentioned much earlier, and he pokes around for about a half an hour thoroughly checking everything in the lair and talking us through it all. come to find out [here it is!] that the reason termites are more likely to come back if youve had past damage is because they leave a pheromone tracking sensor for all the other lovely cousins of theirs [and they have large families, let me tell you... you thought china was overpopulated, shit, china as termites could live in just a few houses!] to come and find at a later time if they ever vacate the place [forcibly or otherwise]. 

anyway, we have a great stacked stone foundation, everyone weve talked to says its in great shape, will last another hundred years [man i love real craftsmanship] but the terminix guy says theyre terrible for termites. so many little voids and such between the stones let the little bastards right in. well anyway, he determines that we have no termites and that we should be in the clear for a while longer. the house had obviously been treated within the last 10 yrs [he actually pointed out where] and that usually protects the place for at least 10 years. so, weve got at least another season or so. he offered us a protection plan we can get in on thats like 175 bucks a year [in monthly or quarterly installments if you like] that covers us for up to a million bucks in damage, but we decided to fore-go that for now and if we need to we can get another free inspection in 6 months-a yr and the offer will still stand if necessary then. not to mention, he says theres a number of houses up and down our block that are already covered under this plan, so hopefully if any termites do pop up, theyll kill em off at another house before they find ours.

so now to the rest of the day. 

feeling pretty good after passing that first test, we decide to grab a quick breakfast [oh wendy's breakfast, how i love thee, what took you so long to arrive in our lives?? although whataburger will forever be number one for fast-food breakfast on the go! holla!] and coordinate our plan of attack for the day. after breakfast we decided to head out to home depot to stock up on supplies for the weekend projects. 

so what are the projects you ask? [and i know you do] well, we decided to completely re-vamp the entry. karen wanted a bit of a break this weekend, so we were just going to do easy stuff [ha! right!] like paint and new molding. simple enough, right? so we go to the depot and spend quite a bit of time making decisions. these are serious matters to a couple of designers, lol, and we had to make sure we got just the right stuff. well after a RECORD BREAKING COST, we left the depot some hundreds dollars poorer, but with tons of linear feet of molding, a few cans of paint and primer, a 2 gallon bucket of plaster, some new faucets [the plumber had mentioned we'd need to replace the faucets in the kitchen and the attic bathroom] and other tools, odds, and ends. i tell you, remodeling... not cheap. but ignoring the price [because its the only way i sleep at night...] we had all kinds of great stuff to work with and a ton of work left to do, so homeward-bound!

well the trip to the house was very short-lived, because to do all this fun stuff, we needed tools. ah. tools. like what? well... we got all kinds of awesome stuff for wedding presents [registering at the depot was probably one of our greatest ideas of all time!] and amongst the tools still in our storage were a miter saw [kind of a must for properly installing molding, eh?] all our paint rollers, extension polls, painting tape, and other paint stuff, a circular saw, a power sander, oh, and the washing machine we bought some months ago, lol! [not really necessary for the projects, but weve been talking about getting it out ever since we scheduled the plumber to come out.]

well to add a little extra fun to this day, it had been drizzling all day long. so not only was everything in the back of the truck, from the depot, wet from the drive to the house, but we were also going to have to move everything from the storage unit in the rain as well - fantastic. [mrs.holm would LOVE that sentence, hehehe...]

so we went to the storage place and after oh... 2 hours or so, we'd finally found [that was the hardest part, lol!] all the stuff we needed [and some stuff we just wanted, lol!] and loaded up to go back to the house. now for those of you that are optimists and were just totally sure the rain had stopped in that 2 hours, you are wrong. the glass - half empty "my friends." so back to the house with a truckload of stuff, in the freezing drizzle. [did i mention freezing before? it was effing cold this weekend!] well most of the stuff was fine and we unloaded it all with no problems, just a little dampness. but the washer. well... this this is pretty freakin big, and wet, and slippery, and it was much less fun to unload. luckily, wed remembered to get the dolly. and although karen got a good bump on the head [poor thing!] we managed to get it in the house, and in place with only SOME difficulty, lol! well once we got it in place we discovered, um, yeah we didnt have the proper water hoses to hook it up. great, put that on the list for the next trip, lol! oh-well, its after 5 at this point and we've still got tons to do! luckily, the plumbers had rigged up the plumbing temporarily and we had water! and hot water at that! and toilets that flush! amazing!! =]

well, the next several hours are much less exciting. before you get to the fun of painting, you have to do the prepping. ugh. so we spent hours [literally] pulling nails and screws, patching the holes, i learned to plaster through a little trial and error [remember that chunk of stair wall we ripped off a few entries ago to see what was behind it... yeah, that was bright...], tearing out all the old obnoxiously bright orange trim that that same loser had shottily [yes i know its not a word] installed, just generally scrubbing all the walls, floors, and ceiling, and finally [oh, yes mom, my favorite part... gr...] taping. [ugh.] eventually we even got a nice even coat of primer on the entire entryway and one coat of the ceiling paint onto the ceiling [it didnt need a primer] before calling it quits a little after midnight. 

obviously this was a lengthy day [with a lengthy post to match!] and my lunch hour is again, over. so you guys will just have to hang tight for yet another installment of our looong weekend. but dont lose hope! the next installment will have pictures!