Trailer Trash no more!

The north side fence is wrought iron and very open. You can see the whole side yard and part of the back yard from the street. Which was helpful when we were stalking the house before we bought it but a little disconcerting with the baby back there. We finally sent in our HOA approval so that we can get the A-okay on the fence design. It'll probably take another few weeks.

Until then, we've been worried about the amount of trash on the side of the house. We look like trailer trash with the previous owners old fridge just hanging out and piles of junk. There's been a lot out there since we moved it although its slowly being depleted. When our fence guy came back to take the rest of his materials away he offered to take the remaining junk on the side of the house. It was really sweet of him to offer, he was going to the dumps anyways. He took away the old zip drive, stair step, and luggage rack we'd found in the garage and the rest of the baseboards, the last newell and the cork paneling we couldn't fit into the garbage. While we still have the hazmat stuff, the old back door shutters, gardening stuff waiting for a shed and vintage suitcases, the side yard is looking a lot better. The fence guy also let me take the blocks of scrap redwood from our job for our classroom. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet but I'm excited!

Mike finally had a chance to post some stuff we wanted to get rid of on Craigslist. There were a few people interested in the fridge they had had in the garage. It was a nice one, had an ice-maker and water in the door, it was just older. Someone was supposed to come by between 4-5pm last night but didn't show up until 8pm. English was not his first language and I felt bad because he came by all by himself. He had tried to pick up a worker outside of Home Depot but no one was there by the time he went. He was very anxious to get out of my way but there was no way he could lift it by himself. He tried to tip it into his truck bed and I knew it wouldn't work because the fridge's center of mass was below the tail gate. (That's Physics for you) But I didn't think I'd be able to communicate that to him; he was going to try another approach anyway. He got a ladder out of his truck and laid it down like a ramp than used some pieces of our wood over it. Luckily he realized that wasn't going to work before I had to tell him. We ended up just tipping it onto the truck bed then lifting it from the ground and sliding it in. He insisted on getting it upright again in his truck and had to lift it up by himself. I tried to tell him that he had to let it sit up, vertically, for 24 hours once he got home before he plugged it in because he had moved it. "So I plug it in right away?" "No, you have to wait a day and let it sit up." [repeat multiple times] By the time he left I think he got it....I hope so. It feels good to have it gone. Now we just have to get rid of hazmat waste and the giant shutters. There's more to sell but at least the rest of it fits in the garage.

In the last few days Mike has had off, he's been busy working on electrical and plumbing, the two eternal projects it seems in this house. He replaced the last of the old switches in the kid bathroom and laundry room hallway. He patched the hole from the old thermostat and old phone in the bar area. He moved the cute Noah's ark light switch from the downstairs guest bath to the green bedroom upstairs. We still have to replace the downstairs bathroom and kitchen outlets with GFI outlets. If you don't have GFI outlets in bathrooms or your kitchen you usually have a GFI breaker at the electrical panel. We do have a GFI breaker, marked "W P" which is not hooked up to the kitchen or any bathroom. Mystery #382 for this house.

Mike also worked on the sink in our room and the kids' bathroom. The kids' bathroom was an easy fix, the "cold" handle was 90 degrees off of normal.That means while the "hot" handle was off when parallel to the mirror behind it, the "cold" handle was actually parallel to the sink when off.

Our sink on the other hand was not easy. Our bathroom sink leaks, as does our shower, and then there was the mystery half of a threaded piece of PVC that just appeared under our sink. We both looked and couldn't tell what it was a part of.

So Mike took apart the plumbing to try and fix it. A pic at right gives you an idea how many small parts there are to a sink and accompanying handle. As far as he could tell, the very small rubber O rings that fit several pieces along the handle mechanism must no longer be tight. When I say small, we're talking about less than a half an inch in diameter. Once he got it all apart, and we were sink-less for awhile, we headed to the store to replace them. But it is difficult to take off rings smaller than a half an inch that are tight on a valve and a few inches long. We tried what we had with us which was my work keys and a paper clip but couldn't get them off. We even asked an employee to try a box cutter and he couldn't get it off. The baby fell asleep while we were trying to get them off. So we were holding up the rings, still on the valve, to the packages trying to best guess if it was a 3/4", 1/2", 11/16", etc diameter O ring. Mike tried it again the next day and I got a phone call that we were just replacing the whole thing. Now it works but he had to replace the vertical part of the valve. And it still leaks.

Our shower is better after he replaced the entire valve assembly. In order to get hot water in our shower, you have to crank the hot handle all the way over with no cold water and even then its tepid most days. In addition to a leaking shower head, the hot handle pours out water when cranked all the way over. Mike ended up having to replace the entire handle assembly to fix it. The valve was stuck in the wall apparently and he has to go get special tools to get it out. But its fixed and doesn't leak anymore, still not hot though.

The dog got out twice this week. Once when Mike was in the backyard Beau saw our neighbors' cat through the fence, jumped the retaining wall and had a clear shot to the front yard. Apparently he ran across the street chasing the cat into our neighbor's yard. When she rang the doorbell Mike had no idea he had gotten out so he was surprised to see him at the front door. Another time Mike and his dad were working so hard on the house they didn't realize the front door was open. After awhile they realized that they hadn't seen the dog in awhile. They went looking for him, got worried he'd gone far and then found him sitting in the driver's seat of Bob's van. He apparently wanted to go play with his cousins.

We finally have some pictures up! Not many because we're still finding out where pieces really fit. We got the family wedding photo and our wedding photo with the guest signatures on the mat, our big railroad picture from the Yukon and some of our flower pictures up. The dining room table is still cluttered with more frames, there's a least a dozen in the office waiting to go up. But its starting to look like real people live here.