More leaks, crappy cable & fridge escapades

Knowing that we have one leak is bad enough but finding out you have a second and bigger leak is never fun. While Mike's dad was trying to stop the leak in the bar area (see yesterday) he had to turn off the water to the whole house. Which is when we discovered the existing gate valve that should turn it off to the house didn't work properly and that our water meter box was wet which implies a leak. Today he went to replace the valve that would turn off water to the whole house and found that the leak to the water meter was much worse. He described it as a like a faucet was on half way. So the water has been turned off to our whole property, at the meter, until we can dig up some more of the pipe to replace it. Talking to one of our neighbors we found out he had to replace the same pipe along its whole length from the house to the street, about 20'. Ours has a 3' piece of cement walkway over it and well established bushes. Fun fun.

We knew before we bought the house that cable came from outside under the patio, around the brick fireplace and to where the TV was in the family room. What we did not know until Mike's friends Tim and Steve came to visit was:
1. The cable comes from outside into the house only to go out of the house again before coming back in through the attic. No bueno.
2. There are several dozen feet of excess cable.
3. There is evidence of mice in the attic and crawl space.
4. There is evidence of rats in the crawl space.
5. The phone and internet wires are just as jacked up.
6. It will not be easy to fix it.

Steve and Tim looked around the house for awhile before we could get there. They crawled under the house and found a rat's nest. They crawled into the attic space above the living room and dining room and found boxes of poison for mice. And blown in insulation which always gets everywhere and itches (sorry Tim!). The four of us sat around and discussed options for getting cable to the TV wall without leaving it in front of the fireplace. Because that portion of the house is on slab and there is no crawl space between floors, it will not be easy. After lots of discussion and exploration we think we will be able to feed everything from the crawl space into the closet under the stairs. Which Mike had envisioned as a "media closet" anyway. From there we hope there is enough room in the soffit above the bar to run cable, internet and speaker wire across to the other wall. We will have to cut a 6'x4" hole across that wall to run the wires through. More drywall patching, more painting.

Steve and Tim were surprised at some of the installation of cable and phone lines throughout the house. Its always discouraging when they would just stare at something and shake their heads. But we know they will fix it and then it will be done. We're planning on wiring the kids' rooms (again, we only have one right now!) with TV, phone and internet because someday they will need it. Someday we may want to turn it all off but let's be optimistic at the moment.

After Steve and Tim left we decided to start digging up the irrigation at the suspected trouble area. While well intentioned, we had no idea where our shovels ended up and 6:30pm on a Friday was not the time to start rearranging the garage to find them. So we decided that our refrigerator had been on the side of the house long enough and with two of us we could actually get it inside. But it was gross; so very gross. We don't know how we could have used the fridge and not noticed before. But I think its the same kind of thing as when you think your house is clean until someone comes to visit and you can suddenly see every dust bunny.

So we decided a thorough cleaning and a quick move inside would be enough work for one evening. We disassembled the whole thing; we took out every drawer, drawer tray, door tray and shelf in the whole thing. As soon as we sprayed a cleaning product all over it we realized we had no water. Mike had the idea of bringing over the coiled house which we attempted to empty into one of the fridge drawers. We got a cup or two and that lasted us a little while. Mike took two more drawers to our neighbors and had to ask for water.  In addition to the typical crumbs and sticky stuff we found dog hair. Beau's hair really does get everywhere.

We finished scrubbing down the fridge and after we figured out how to reassemble it we thought we were good to go. The fridge was so big and the hand truck so small we had to use plywood from the scrap heap to support it. Luckily we have double doors at the front door so we headed there. Then we remembered we had steps. It took some massive coordination but we managed to lift the fridge up the four steps to bring it to the doors and up one more to get it inside. From there it was a straight shot into the kitchen ... that its, if it fits.

"I measured it!"  Mike says but we still discovered that the doorway to the kitchen was several inches smaller than the fridge. Luckily, we have another door to the kitchen from the dining room so we headed over there. It didn't fit either. 33" wide refrigerator (and yes that is the "narrow" side), meet 30" standard door frame. We managed to get the handles of the fridge off which gained us a few inches but not enough. There is no excess moulding on the doorway so in order to get a wider opening we would actually have to pull out the frame of the door. That's not a viable option. So I hopped up on a step ladder and found the mechanism that keeps the door attached to the body of the fridge. We guessed that the door rested on a bottom axle and we were right. We managed to get it all detached and Mike went to lift it off only to discover that the water line that connected to the ice maker ran through the door. As soon as we saw that we both thought "duh"and started looking for a way of disconnecting it. It was after 8pm, we were hungry, tired and missing the baby so we decided that at least the fridge was inside and it wasn't going anywhere until morning.

Tomorrow we head back to:
1. Actually get refrigerator into the kitchen. We will be trying a "pivot" method ;)
2. Dig up irrigation to hopefully find the leak in the front yard is easily accessible.
3. Pull out everything in the garage so that we can get the boxes into the kitchen, sort the rest of it by room, find shovels and tools, make a clear path to the water heater, and get our couches indoors instead of under the patio.
 
At some point we hope to live there. Oh and I finally saw the cows this morning at an 8:30am fence estimate appointment so at least there's that. We have heard them before but had not seen them. "Katherine, what does a cow say?"
"Moooooo!"