"The Dangling Conversation"

It's been an interesting week. 

The final (I hope) installer/repairman is in the process of leaving.  I think that means that our new AC is finally finished, installed, complete, and up and running, without being jerry-rigged.  It appears to be putting out cold air.  They started on Saturday and today is what.....Thursday?

To be fair, we have had cold air, but the only way it could work was to have an industrial strength extension cord snaking it's way from the unit in the attic, dangling down to the nearest electrical outlet in the hallway outside my bedroom.  Very attractive.  

Well, the cord is gone so that's a big step in the right direction. 

Maybe I should start from the beginning.


Saturday morning:

Two young men arrived at 8:30 am, with the brand new unit.  Because they  had to shut off the AC completely, by 9:30 the house was pretty hot, so I packed up a couple of books, a big bottle of iced tea, and departed to spend a few hours ensconced in my mobile cool refuge, commonly known as my car.  They told us the whole process would take about 6-8 hours.  After periodic updates throughout the day from the Big Guy (who had to remain behind in what was his version of Hell), I ran out of places to go and went home.  It was almost 8:30 pm, 12 hours later!  They were still there. They hadn't even stopped for lunch, so I went to get them some sub sandwiches.  By the time I returned they were starting to get things cleaned up and packed up and we had a big ol' extension cord dangling from the ceiling.  Thus began "The Dangling Conversation".

According to what I learned, there was some problem with the 220v line in the attic, thus the cord to the working outlet downstairs.  It was ok though, we had cold air, and they said that they would have an electrician come out on Sunday to repair the problem.  OK, we were cooling off, so we could live with it overnight, right?

About 10:30pm the temperature had dropped to 79F inside and we were feeling comfortable again.  By 11:30 the temperature had climbed back up to 84F!!  What the......????  The brand new AC unit conked out!  We had nothing but fans again.  There wasn't anything we could do about it, except call the AC place (they have a 24 "hot line") to report the failure.  Of course, by that time, there wasn't anything that could be done about it until the next day.  So we went off to bed for another too warm night.

Sunday:

The repair guy finally showed up around 1:30 pm.  In a repeat of the day before, I grabbed a couple of different books and more tea and abandoned ship.  Surprisingly, it was only about an hour later that the Big Guy called to let me know it was "fixed",  I gave it another hour or so to let the house cool down again and then went home.  (I was pretty sick of my car by that point.)

When I got home, the first thing I saw was the dangling extension cord!  Arrrggghh! It was still there!   I thought it was fixed!!  Turns out that the reason it shut down was that there was a short caused by a twisted wire and that had been repaired, but there was still a problem with the 220v line and the repairman who fixed the twisted wire was not an electrician and he couldn't do anything about the 220 problem.  An electrician would come out the next day to fix it.  He didn't.

Monday:

No progress on the AC.  It was cool, which was good, but we saw no electrician, no repairman, no anybody and we still had the dangling conversation!  We also still had most of the mess, because:

A)  There was no point in cleaning everything up, until all the things were done and we would have no more visitors to our unbearable attic!

B)  It had been too warm in the house to do anything as sweat-producing as cleaning and putting things back to rights. 

C)  I was pretty much distracted by the next problem to crop up in our never-ending cycle of mini-disasters that plague us.

The Big Guy had gone off to work as usual and a little later, I was ready to leave the house on my standard errands and such.  Got into my car, turned the key, and got......a fluttery clicking noise that did nothing to actually start the car!!! 

I hate the feeling of being trapped and without a functioning car I was trapped in my house.  It sort of feels like claustrophobia and it makes me very anxious.  Obviously I wasn't really trapped, I could leave the house to be outside, but it was 103F and the idea of walking anywhere made me twitch! 

Called Mikey.  Called AAA.  Called Kia to alert them I might have to be towed in for repair.  Called Enterprise to arrange for a possible rental car.  Waited in the hot garage to flag the tow truck when it arrived.   All of which happened in good time.  AAA came and got the car started but their little computer said the battery was barely functional.  Time to get a new battery.  In the meantime I could drive as long as I didn't shut off the engine!     Oh wonderful, more time spent in my car to go to places that had drive-thrus where I could at least accomplish a few things....that limited me to Walgreens and McDonalds.  What fun....


Tuesday:

The Big Guy couldn't get my car started even though it had a charger on it all night, so he had to remove the battery, and take it to be replaced (under warranty supposedly).  When he got home he was livid.  The place that sold him the original (now non-functioning battery) would not honor the warranty until they tested the battery and tried to recharge it.  They pretty much didn't believe that it had been on a charger all night and that Mikey knew anything about anything.  So he was forced to buy a new battery, because they couldn't (read, wouldn't) go against their policy!

AC still working, cord still dangling, no electrician in sight....

Wednesday:

Sales guy from AC company came out to "inspect" the installation.  He was up there about 3 minutes.  Came back down and told us everything looked fine.  Well, except for the cord dangling from the attic, of course.  Still no electrician!  Evidently Austin only has ONE electrician and he was busy!   Right. 

Phone call that afternoon.  Electrician coming at 8:00 am Thursday morning.  Again, with the early morning visits!! 


Thursday:

I was awakened at 10:00 a.m. by hammering.  A lot of very loud and nearby hammering!!  There had better be an electrician out there making that noise or I was going to have a full-fledged meltdown.
Mikey told me it was, in fact, the electrician (who arrived at 9:30!), there to sort out the 110v/220v situation. He was up there for not quite an hour.  When he came down, he told us he couldn't find any problem with the 220 line!!  He rerouted something just in case that was a problem, but basically all was what it should be!  SO WHY HAVE I HAD A DANGLING CONVERSATION OUTSIDE MY DOOR FOR THE LAST F0UR DAYS???  Answer?  Unknown.

But it was done.  The house was cool, the repairmen were gone, everything was back up and running, we were finished with AC people climbing around.  It was OVE.... (What?)  Excuse me, folks, the Big Guy is trying to tell me something.......(What? Tomorrow??? What are you....)   [.....whimpering.....]

Well, I was wrong.  It appears that we are NOT done. 

It seems that when the installers were up there (way back on Saturday), they discovered that the heat/cool register in Mikey's office had no duct work connected to the furnace.  We've lived here 10 years and Mikey never noticed that this was a totally non-functioning register!  So they agreed to come back and install the required duct work.  And guess when they are coming!  Tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m.!!!   ARRRGGGGHHHHHH!  Will this never end?

Friday:

If the installers actually arrive and actually get it done today (and I won't believe it till it happens) that will mean that getting a new air conditioner takes:

2 Installers
3 Sales Presentations
2 Repairmen
1 Salesman/Inspector
1 Electrician
1-2 Duct Work Installers
6 visits to our house
5 1/2 days of Dangling extension cords
10,000 pieces of insulation floating around
1 Week (7 full days)

Sheesh!  Remind me never to ask this crowd to change a lightbulb!

And we are now up to 71 consecutive days of temperatures over 100F.  Like I said, it's been an interesting week.


Oh, by the way, we finally heard back from the battery place.  After attempting to recharge it for over 48 hours, they have found that the battery is no good.  No Shit, Sherlock!  That's what Mikey TOLD you!  They will be giving us a refund.    Maybe we'll use the money for a trip to the south of France!  HAH!

"This Old House"

Wallpaper is a home fashion that comes and goes.  Right now I think it is out of favor, which is too bad.  There are some beautiful papers out there that can give a room real warmth and character.  Nevertheless, putting up new wallpaper is not easy, especially if you have to remove the old stuff first.  Some people don't even attempt to do it themselves because of the difficulties they have heard about.   Luckily for me, the times that I have chosen wallpaper for a room, the Big Guy has always been up to the challenge.

I was reading a blog the other day about the horrors of removing old wallpaper from walls.  Anyone who has ever done it knows that it can be tedious at best and impossible at worst.   Although many people don't do it, removing the old paper is really necessary, even if you're just going to paint a room.  Otherwise the wall will be bumpy and a mess.

The saga detailing the other blogger's experience reminded me of the last home we bought in Chicago.  It was an older house that had great bones but it was definitely a fixer-upper decor-wise! 

It wasn't a wreck, but it had been "decorated" in a manner that was more suited to a bordello than a nice family home!  Very dramatic window treatments and wallpapers were in the living room, dining room, bathrooms, and one of the bedrooms.  None of it was to our taste, and it all had to go!  We began doing our re-dos in stages. 

One of the bedrooms had obviously been occupied by a teen aged boy.  It wasn't as bad as the other rooms, but it definitely had it's own problems.  Two walls of the room were covered in an okay wallpaper that was white with evenly spaced dark blue stripes.  The stripes were only about 1/4 in. wide.   There were several pennants from various major league and NFL teams.  Those two walls didn't look bad, it was kind of reminiscent of a baseball uniform.

The other two walls, however, were covered from floor to ceiling with sports posters of various kinds.  Not a wallpaper of posters, you understand, they were the actual individual posters in a kind of collage effect.  It was great if you were a 14 year old sports nut, but not so great for my 22 year old grad student daughter who would call that room home!!    We moved into the  house in early Fall while she was away at school, but she would be home in just a few weeks.  And she wasn't coming alone!  She was bringing her boyfriend whom we had never met!!We had to fix it asap!  We promised her it would be presentable by the time they got home for Thanksgiving.

I really hoped those posters would just peel off easily.  They didn't!  We tried all sorts of  things. Ultimately the Big Guy did practically all the work himself.  It took him days and a huge amount of scraping and steaming and chemicals and more scraping to get them off.  The posters came off in little bits only a couple of inches square.  It was an enormous mess! 

I don't know what kind of adhesive they used to stick those posters to the wall, but getting them off the wall was one of the worst jobs the Big Guy had ever undertaken.  Quite a lot of cussing and yelling went on and he almost threw in the towel several times....but eventually my guy finally managed to get all traces of those posters off the wall.  The walls below ended up in horrid condition (with gouges and lumps and unfinished drywall beneath the posters), but that was a project we could put on hold for a few weeks. 

In the interim, he just painted those two walls and called it done.  When Ratchlet made it home with her beau, she was grateful to no longer have all those athletes surrounding her as she slept, and she wasn't embarrassed to have a guest see her room.  The Big Guy was grateful the job was finished for now and that the former owners lived far, far away; that way he didn't have to track them down and knock some heads together for leaving such a horrible job for us to do!  And me, I knew when we bought "This Old House", that we had a lot of work ahead of us.

Mostly though I was just so grateful that it hadn't been worse; after all, their son could have been older and decorated his room with posters of nudes!

"This Old House"

Before we were married the Big Guy promised me that we'd be wealthy one day....and we were!  I think it was October 27, 1995!
(such wit!) 

The point I was (ever so slyly) trying to make, is that we are not now, nor have we ever been financially solid.   We don't have creditors beating at the door, but we haven't won the lottery either (not for lack of trying!)  Unfortunately, the problem arises from the fact that both of us have expensive tastes in almost everything; which leads to a lot of frustration, deep sighs, and wishful thinking!!  Especially when it comes to houses. 

I absolutely adore looking at houses, going to open houses, searching for interesting local homes for sale, and driving around neighborhoods with interesting older homes.   I can't do it very often because I can get kind of depressed by all those places with so much potential and none of them are mine! 

My dream would be to find a hidden gem of a house, a house we could afford without selling off our firstborn child, an older house loaded with nooks and crannies and unusual details and a big wrap-around front porch just right for a swing.  If it were kind of neglected and in need of renovation or restoration and some TLC, but not a total dump, I would fall in love with it and get everything into mint condition and live in "this old house" for the rest of my days.

It's not going to ever happen again I know.  And, yes, it did happen once, at least partially.  We were still living in Chicago in our first home, the one my father-in-law said was a "nice little starter house".   After we had lived in our nice little starter house for about 20 years (!), I got the itch to move into a bigger, nicer house....not because we needed more room exactly, but just because I wanted  a house that was closer to that dream house. 

We did find one, not exactly like my dream house, but close enough that I think it would have suited us for a very long time.  Wonder of wonders, I talked the Big Guy into it and because he loved me, we moved about 3 miles from where we had been.

I may not have been blessed with wealth and riches, but I really won the office pool when it came to getting a guy that could do-it-himself!  Just as a little aside, in over 40 years of marriage, we have needed to call in a repair man no more that 10 times or so!  Seriously!! 

The Big Guy has repaired just about every major appliance we've ever had, he has installed wood floors, carpeting, lighting fixtures, cabinets, plumbing, created closets where none existed, built window seats, painted (repeatedly),  wall-papered,  torn out walls, put up walls, built kitchen islands,  turned closets into work spaces, put up and taken down doors, and lots and lots of shelving.  If we had those things "installed" or done by professionals, we never could have afforded half of it!  But let me tell you, if you can do it yourself well enough, you can do it for a LOT LESS MONEY!  The Big Guy isn't fast, mind you, (I was once without a functional kitchen sink or stove for four months!!), but once he finishes, its gorgeous and just what I wanted.

So when we moved into our second house, there was a lot we wanted to do to make it right.  So the Big Guy started on all the projects as soon as we signed the papers.  First he completely redid the kitchen and dining room.  He completely redid the first floor powder room, painted and carpeted the family room, completely redid the 2nd floor bathroom, painted and carpeted the third bedroom, tore out wall-paper and sports posters (which were glued to the wall) in the second bedroom, and recarpeted and wall-papered the stairway. 

That put him more than half-way through the "to-do" list.  Still to do was the master bedroom, the living room and the basement.  Well, you know how they say, that life is what happens while you're making other plans??  Well, all of those jobs that he finished were over a time period of about three or four years.  And that was when big changes came our way.  We moved to CA for really great job opportunities, leaving that old house behind!

In CA it took us a year to find a house we liked and could afford, but ultimately we did find one.  It was a beautiful house in great condition, we loved it.  And it didn't need any work!  We spent ten years in that house. 

When we moved from CA to Texas to be close to Ratchlet and her new family, we again found a newer home rather than a fixer upper that I had been thinking about.  This house is a nice house with a lot of great features, but it isn't my dream home.  Over the ten years we've lived in Austin, the Big Guy hasn't done any big do-it-youself projects here at all.  None were really needed and other than some painting, there aren't plans to do any in the future.

So were does that leave me in my desire to live in an older home, with lots of nooks and crannies, interesting details, charm and character?  It has gotten more and more unlikely that it will ever happen.  The Big Guy is not interested in moving again, nor does he share my love of old houses anymore, and we really can't afford finding a new house. 

I'll more than likely live out my days here in this not perfect but acceptable house.  In my heart of hearts I know that our second house was as close to "this old house" as I'll ever get. 

About the only thing that could change that, is if Ratchlet moved to another city, because we would most likely go too.  Or if we won the lottery!!  Then it would be off to the races all over again!!