It's Always Something

It's our new family motto

So we've pushed back our Open House date.  Again.  This time our reason was that because all the rest of the house was all fresh and new-painty, it made the basement look like crap.  So we're repainting the basement too, just because we don't have enough to do.  Actually, Mr. Pickles got most of the basement done just today, with help from an awesome teenaged member of the same awesome family who helped us finish our bedroom last weekend. 

see?  doesn't it look better already?  (actually, I took this picture as further evidence of the state my poor house is currently in.)  (that would be: "a wreck")

Mr. Pickles is a veritable painting machine, I tell you.  I have had to relinquish most of the painting to him, because a) SOMEONE has to feed the bottomless pits known as Our Children, several times a day even, and b) we have very, very different painting styles.  For the sake of marital harmony I am giving him (almost) complete freedom to follow whatever process seems most logical to him.  If there is a process.  I wouldn't know.

N-E-WAY, there's always something.  Whatever house-related task we undertake can never be simple.  When we first started Doing Stuff, the toilet tank in the front bath decided that Mr. Pickles wasn't busy enough and gave him 3 extra days of work trying to deal with totally rusted bolts.  (Why, WHY would one make a bolt for a toilet tank using non-rustproof metal?  WHY?)

Then after removing all the kitchen cabinet doors and TSP'ing the cabinets and priming them (twice) and painting them (twice), I realized I hated the color.  On the card it was a lovely, neutral straw-ish.  ("Ivoire" by Sherwin Williams.  Who comes up with these names???)  On the cabinets, it was yellow.  Like, hello! yellow.  It's a weird trick of the light in that room.  And after the new countertops were installed, it definitely did Not Go.  So, now what?

Oh, we gained a new Picklesbane: the banisters!  After dealing with the wood of the kitchen cabinets, we realized what a pain painting the banisters was going to be (2 flights of stairs plus rails plus supports plus 6 spindles on each side plus upstairs and dining room times TSP times primer squared times paint squared times polyurethane equals BIT FAT STINKING HEADACHE), and went through several days of mental anguish trying to decide what to do.  Meanwhile the TSP we were using to clean them was actually taking off the top layer of finish (in addition to the accumulated years' worth of greasy handprints which I had never been able really to clean off), so we had to do SOMEthing and couldn't just stick it to the new owners.

Most recently, after the new double sink was installed, Mr. Pickles was hooking up the plumbing all by hisself (despite the fact that he is haunted by a personal plumbing poltergeist the sole purpose of whose existence is to make any ostensibly simple plumbing job take at least 3 days and 4 trips to the hardware store to finish -- seriously, it's like a curse) and after attaching the faucet with cold water (only cold at first b/c the hot connection was giving him trouble, natch) and getting one drain attached (huzzah!), he realized that when the house was built, the drain pipe for the other sink was installed A FOOT TOO HIGH.  So the pipe was butting up against the bottom of the new sink.  And there was no room for the u-bend.  Who does these things?!?

----------

I am so, so, so thankful that none of the kids has had fevers, or the stomach flu, or fallen off their bike/scooter and gotten a concussion/broken bone/scrape-induced infection.  Because you know that's what's missing from our lives right now.

Oh, the baby did fall down the stairs today.  That probably counts.  And I thought I was getting mastitis earlier this week.

----------

You know, as much as all these issues made us want to pull out whatever hair we have left, we've been able to find solutions for them all.  Nothing has been insurmountable... so far.  (Quick!  Find wood! *knock knock knock*)

1) Mr. Pickles, through sheer force of will, fixed the toilet tank.  I don't even remember what he did, it was so many eons ago, before we'd given up hope of a social life.  I think it involved his hacksaw.

2) We're painting the kitchen cabinets white.  We just happen to have a gallon of Ultra Pure White semi-gloss which we are using on the trim.  We considered getting half a dozen samples of varying paint shades and trying them on a couple cabinet doors to find one which worked, and then I pondered the logistics of first choosing half a dozen paint samples that matched both the walls and the granite and then bringing my entourage (that would be the children) to the paint aisle of the hardware store and then painting the cabinet doors and then going BACK to the hardware store to purchase the color we'd chosen and then I think at this point my brain stalled and my attitude became something along the lines of "who the hell cares" and I decided to save myself a migraine and go with what's trending now anyway.  (Go ahead!  Search Pinterest!)  Plus if the new owners hate it, white is really easy to paint over!

3) For the banisters, a friend recommended Minwax, a water-based squeezy-tube wood stain-with-finish, thereby earning herself after her death an honored seat among the seraphim.  It squeezes out of a tube!  You rub it on with a rag!!  It looks fabulous!!!  And you don't even have to sand the life out of your banisters first!!!!  We will probably still need to put some kind of a protectant on top, since these rails get some serious use.  But they are going to look awesome!

4) So after Mr. Pickles realized that he had been overpowered by his plumbing poltergeist curse, he called the granite installers and told them of his difficulty, and they sent a plumber THAT DAY to fix it. (!!)  The plumber agreed that whoever installed the pipe that high was an idiot. (paraphrasing)  But, because he's a professional plumber, he has Tools and Supplies which are not available to mere mortals.  He had a u-bend that was deeper than standard issue at the local Home Despot, and was able to attach the drain.  Huzzah!  ...Until he realized there was a clog in the pipe.  It had never given us trouble before, but it was very obviously draining e x t r e m e l y  s l o w l y.  He ran a snake down and pulled it back with all this disgusting gunk on the end.  Sigh, it's always something.  But wait!  This story also has a happy ending -- because it is a double sink, that means it has double drains, and therefore double drain pipes, one of which is fully functional -- so he simply capped off the evil too-high-nastily-clogged pipe, and redirected the sink's drain so the two sinks share a drain pipe.

behold, the Frankendrain!

Let me tell you, that plumber's bill was worth every penny.

Oh, you want to see the actual SINK?  And the new granite countertops?

ta-da! Don't they look lov-- ...er...

Well, too bad, because within 2.5 minutes of them being installed, they were covered with Stuff.  And now they pretty much always look like this.  (This is what they look like after we clean up!)

I pinky-promise we will do a huge reveal of all the rooms, after I get all this guldurned junk outta the place so you can see the bright! shiny!  The photographer will hopefully be coming in not this Tuesday but the next, and the realtor will come over the day before with her "staging team" (sounds kind of ominous to me) to basically make the place look like 7 people don't live here.  I wish them luck.  At any rate I will take pictures before that, of all the things WE'VE done, just so we can have a record of how awesome our place could look if we're willing to forgo sleep for 2 months.

----------

Oh, and I don't have mastitis.  And I promised myself not to skip any more of baby's feedings just to fit one more essential errand in.  You know, every day something's gotta give -- either it's the laundry, or the housecleaning, or the homsechooling, or sleep or regular meals or personal hygiene... not everything can be done every day.  I just get to choose what's going to get neglected each day.  (Note to self: not baby.)  The plugged duct also could have been due to massive stress -- I think that was the day we realized that we were going to have to call a plumber plus our basement looked like crap and we were going to have to paint it.  So as soon as I felt flu-like symptoms I abandoned all semblances of being productive, took baby to bed and drank gallons of water.  And said a prayer of thanksgiving that my body can speak so clearly: "Stop moving for five minutes, you idiot, and take a break!"

---------

Sorry this post is a little more... dippy than usual -- I think I'm a little high from priming the cabinet doors in a semi-enclosed space.   Wheeeeeeeee!

----------

And because no post is complete without a totally unrelated picture of adorable baby:

Latest installment in the Money Pit Series...

So, barely a month after we got the new fridge, our washer died. Just like that. It made a horrible clanking sound, emitted this horrible smell, and refused to agitate or spin anymore. Praise the Powers That Be that it occurred during the final rinse cycle of the diaper load, and NOT during the pre-rinse! Ick. So I only had to wring out and drip-dry an already clean load. PLUS the diapers were the last in the line of the week's laundry, so everyone had clothes to wear for several days before I would have to resort to hauling the laundry down to the nearest river and beating it on rocks.

Mr. Pickles is such a good bargain shopper.  He is also a scrupulous user-review checker.  We read lots of reviews for various machines, and found one that was hands-down the most popular.  So many of them had people who either loved it or hated it -- for this one the overwhelming majority raved about it.  So after we made our choice, Mr. Pickles saw from a flyer that it was on sale at one appliance store, but after more research he discovered that Sears will match a sale price, plus add a discount!  So, to Sears we went, and made a salesman there very happy, as we decided to purchase the matching dryer and a 3-year warranty.  (we figured we might as well get a new dryer too -- the old one was needing two cycles to get some loads dry)

To prepare for the arrival of my new toys we had to clear a path through The Dungeon Of Death.  I wish we'd taken a "before" picture -- it was a true disaster.  I'd had to carve myself a path through the carnage with a machete just to get to the laundry machines.

The somewhat-cleared Dungeon Of Death (and occupant)

The Dungeon (sans death)

AAACK!

We took the opportunity to finish a couple quick fix-it projects that had been piling up.  Here is Mr. Pickles teaching Miriam the essential skill of how to use a power drill.

Then he took apart the old washer for fun.

ewwww....

ooh! a secret entrance!

breaking appliances is fun!

So the new machines arrived the day after we bought them -- and I had been bracing myself for the possibility of a week without clean laundry!  I have to state my amazement at the physical prowess of delivery men.  They just look like ordinary dudes, and yet they're able to wield and maneuver these giant UNwieldy machines into place in a matter of a few short minutes, including hauling them up and down several stairs.  Both these guys and the refrigerator guys had this cool harness thing that they wore -- it had a long strap that attached to a buckle on the front of each guy's harness.  They would run the strap from one guy's harness, under the machine, to the other guy's harness, then squat down while they tightened it.  When they stood up, they could easily lift the machine between the two of them, only using their hands to steady it.  I'm sure it was still heavy, but they made it look easy-peasy.  I wish I had thought to take a picture.  It was really cool to watch.

Anyway, the machines we chose were LG high-efficiency machines -- I'm convinced the LG stands for Laundry Goddess because these things are AMAZING.  Everyone I knew who had an LG machine raved about them, and now I know why.  They get the clothes SO CLEAN.

Quality Inspection in progress

I had to adjust the valves for the water intake so that the warm is actually warm, but I had to do that with the old machine anyway.  I'm also concerned about the low water -- I wonder how well things are getting rinsed.  (WARNING: Non-parents do not read to the end of this sentence: I've noticed when I wash diapers that they're covered with a fine sand even after an extra rinse.  But they smell extra-clean, so maybe it's more of a lack-of-filter issue than a low-water-level issue.)

the clear top is SO COOL

The dryer is great too.  I can't tweak all the settings quite as simply as I can with the washer, but so far I've been able to figure out how to choose the settings I need for whatever load I'm doing.

The only cons I can think of to these machines are that a) the washer seems to be a lint-making machine -- I'm afraid it's going to be rougher on our clothes; and b) the cycles take a looooong time.  But!  They sing a cute little song when they're done, so I always know when a load is finished.  All in all I like my new toys. :)

Finally, when life gives you a messy basement...

...make a blanket city!

Next on the Money Pit list is a new oven -- we're at the point now where we have to kick it sometimes to make it work. :)

We worship the ground we walk on

...because it's so purdy now!

So, here's the before of the basement:

interior decorating suggestion by the resident master of chaos and destruction (aka The Toddler)

It's the only "before" I took, really only to document a certain Small Person's naughtiness (thankfully it was only chalk).  But the view you get of the rest of the downstairs is a pretty good sample of the disaster zone-ness.  I spent a couple days last week pitching and boxing and moving stuff, and Mr. Pickles ripped out the rest of the carpet the night before the installation crew came.  (That giant overflowing cardboard box is gone now, thank heavens -- it was full of spiral notebooks and comb-bound xeroxed materials from college.  Sorry, Uncle Jim, but as life-changing as it was I don't think I really need to keep my notes from the metaphysics class I took with you freshman year!)

Aaaaaaaand after:

bing!

It is soooo soft and cushy.  We're really happy with how it looks and feels!  The kids enjoyed the crew of men who came to install it.  One of them kept singing Spanish love songs in a silly, loud voice (at least I assume they were love songs -- the only word I could pick out was "corazon") and making Joseph laugh,  "Dat man is so funny!"

So that was Thursday.  Saturday the installers for the wood floor were supposed to come, so I spent Friday moving lots of things back downstairs (Mr. Pickles had already done a lot of the kids' toys on Thursday afternoon) and starting to clean out the dining room and kitchen.

boxes of flooring acclimatizing on the carpet-formerly-known-as-beige only a few days from its doom!

That was a big job.  We had to empty the china cabinet, move all the sewing stuff downstairs, clear off the kitchen table, move the kitchen bookcase, move the bunny, and clear out the bottom of the pantry closet.  It was so echo-y in the kitchen when we were done!

Saturday was a big mess.  In the morning we finished clearing everything out, I made bag lunches (since we wouldn't have access to the kitchen for several hours), and then we waited.  And we waited.  And we waited.  Finally Mr. Pickles called the store to find out where the installers were, so our salesman called the installation company and found out that "something came up" and the scheduled installer wouldn't be able to make it and had called to notify the store earlier in the week but somehow the message never reached our salesman so he had to make some calls and then FINALLY someone came over, hours later.

Because they had such a late start, it took wayyyy longer than we were expecting for it to be done.  The carpet installers took five hours for a crew of 3, which included doing the stairs.  The wood installers, who were only 2 men, finally left after 8 hours, with several hours of work left to do.  Apparently there was a glitch in the measurement so they had to be extra careful that there was enough material for everything.  They also had to do a small repair on a soft spot in front of the sink which took more time.  And, of course, carpet is quick because you can just roll out the whole room, but planks of wood take so much longer because you have to place each one and make sure they fit well.  I felt so bad for the guys!  They worked hard.  We had to order pizza for our dinner, since we couldn't work in the kitchen, and offered the leftovers to them.  They wouldn't take the beers Mr. Pickles offered, even though they deserved it. :)

Our neighbors probably hate us (even more than they already do, with all the noise we make) -- the men were sawing wood on our front lawn until around 8, and then one man came back early the next day (you know, Sunday, the first day of Standard Time, official national sleep-in day!) to put the molding all around the edges of the floor.  He used a nail gun with a compressor, which the boys thought was way cool.  But finally, finally it was done, all major appliances dusted and put back, floors swept, everything finished.... and the guy left his jacket here!

It turned out to be a blessing that we had this particular crew.  The main craftsman was really an artist.  He asked us which direction we wanted the planks to run, and then gave his artistic opinion about which way showcased the wood better.  He was so right!  I hope he's paid well.

bing!

They did such a beautiful job (unlike my picture-taking abilities).

why are my no-flash photos always so lousy?

The wood is so warm-looking -- it's perfect for these rooms.  It goes well with the reddish walls.

unfortunately, I did not need to declutter the wall, so it will probably remain in its chaotic state until I feel the urge to paint).  also, those kid cups and bowls are usually scattered all over the kitchen floor (see "resident master of chaos and destruction" above)

I took the opportunity to do some rearranging in the kitchen.  I couldn't bring myself to put the bunny's scratchy metal cage on that gorgeous, shiny, pristine floor, so she is going to stay downstairs indefinitely.  (I suggested to Mr. Pickles that we let the children ride around the new floor on their scooters to teach us detachment, but that suggestion was not taken well.  I believe his exact words were: "Gaaaaack!")

So now with such gorgeous floors, I'm noticing other things.  I already cleaned the windows and washed the grease spots off one of the walls in the kitchen.  But the dining room set needs a good scrubbing, the paint could stand to be freshened up here and there, and wow are the cupboards dinged up, and gosh that living room carpet looks so dingy now, and....

didn't notice the little stinker checking for treasure when I took this shot