Blown Fuse

As luck would have it...

Some good news on the kitchen floor front: the voice of reason (my mother-in-law) suggested that little accidents like that are sort of what having homeowner's insurance is for.

The insurance chickie came out yesterday, measured the kitchen, analyzed the situation, and I guess determined that there's nothing we could have done to intentionally put the floor in that condition (for the sake of having it replaced). So, she's going to cut us a check. That's a helluva lot better of a situation than covering up the problem with the snappy matching utility rugs I purchased at Target...

So, this was sort of a blessing in desguise. We were going to have to replace the subfloor when we tiled the floor anyway, and we didn't want to leap headfirst into that expense just yet. Now that our crooked floor creates a trip hazard and that there's the potential of mold and gunk growing as a result of the little flood, insurance kicks in.

I think this situation calls for a "W00t!"

I'm a little stoked. Like I said before, we'd planned on working on the kitchen last because it needs the most cash thrown at it (fridge needs to be replaced, countertops replaced, ugly stained glass cabinet thingie replaced, floors, etc.). It helps move our timeline up a bit, and bonus points are applied for the fact that the floor needed to be replaced before all that other crap got done.

Good news and bad news.

Good news: Ugly fucking ceiling fan in the t.v. room is gone. In its place are seven new recessed lights. I couldn't for the life of me find the "before" picture, but I'm pretty sure one exists somewhere.

Bad news: Our trusty electrician is being called back up by the Army "any time now."

That sucks so badly. For him and us. For one thing, he has two little girls at home. He did his time (I'm really not trying to make it sound like prison, but...), came out, and now contributes to the local economy as a citizen with a trade skill. There are very few people I'd trust to be doing work in my house when I'm not home, and he's one of them. His work is top-notch and he doesn't try to rip you a new asshole with ridiculous prices. As we still have a couple of rooms that need lighting work, I don't know what we're going to do.

If we could afford to go ahead an finish the lighting renovations in the house all at once I'd certainly push for that right now, but it ain't in the cards. Meanwhile, we're picking paint colors for the living room and trying to decide whether we want to paint the fireplace brick. Don't know what direction we're going to go in, but I assure you that the ceiling won't be goldenrod when we're done.

Just fix my damn house.

If any of you are knowledgeable about how residential contractors work, I'd be interested in hearing your commentary.

Scott got a referral from our electrician, who has proven himself to be quite trustworthy, for the name of a guy to finish up some carpentry work around the roof and paint the house. We trusted that this guy would be good (and speedy) based on the electrician's mention that he lived two doors down from him and that they've gone to church together for a long time. Our electrician always shows up when he says he will and does good work for a good price.

Seeing as how our last carpenter decided that his original quote was too low and didn't want to finish the work for the price, we kind of thought, "Well. He goes to church. What are the chances he'll screw us?" He even calls his two-man company some bible-inspired name.

Okay, so the guy hasn't technically screwed us yet, but our house is still in a state of "under renovation" and we can't get the roofer to come out and put the gutters back up until everyone else does their job.

The contractor and his assistant came out on schedule to finish the carpentry and powerwash the house. Everything was great - the driveway was clean and white. After a couple of days of rain, they came out to do some sanding and paint stripping. That took a couple of days, however before finishing they disappeared, leaving their ladder and extension cord running across the yard. There's drippy melted paint goop coming off the soffits they didn't scrape.

Last Thursday and Friday were both beautiful, warm, sunny days - both of which they were supposed to be out to work on the house. They didn't show either day and didn't return phone calls.

They've been paid half down for the job with the other half payable upon completion.

So...what's the deal here? Are they trying to shaft us (time is money) or are they simply trying to squeeze us in between larger, higher-paying jobs?

Aw, hell.

I made some grumblings last week about the parade of signs in front of our house. I didn't mind the roofer's sign being there because they did their job FAST, but the carpenter, feh.

Well, when I came home today the carpenter's sign was gone. The damned sign had been there for 10 days and the only work that had been done was to strip our house of some rotten boards (making the house quite ugly) and leaving some tarp-covered tools in the front yard.

Every afternoon since the guy put his sign down I'd call Scott when I got home: "The carpenter hasn't been here. There's still a hole in the garage."

Last week, the carpenter had some kind of chest cold. That's fine. Come Friday it was a beautiful 70 degrees - no carpenter. He showed up for a few hours on Tuesday to bring more crap to leave on the front stoop. Yesterday and today have been the warmest days of the year and no carpenter.

When I came home today and saw his sign gone I thought, "He's done!" But, no, the sign is just gone. His shit is still in the front yard and his ladders are tied to our deck.

What I don't understand is if you take someone's deposit to do a job, especially a small residential job the size of ours, you should do it in a relatively timely manner, right? With all the right supplies he should have been done in less than three days. If you can't get the supplies for whatever reason, you do NOT strip a hole in the homeowners' house and leave it that way.

He probably pulled up his sign so that nobody would know who the slow fuck was working on our house.

I just want there not to be a hole in my garage wall is all.

*clutches heart*

Isn't that cute? A caravan of free advertising is forming in our front yard. My husband never does anything half-assed, so when we got the roof fixed, he decided that at the same time the siding needed to be repaired as well as the (insert technical term here) thingamabobs that the gutters get nailed on.

Well, the roof has been up for a couple of weeks now and the carpenter made his first trip out today. Looks like we'll be living in an igloo tonight seeing as how we have big-ass holes in our house.

It's a good thing our neighborhood gets verrrrrry dark at night, or else I'd be quite paranoid that some ruffian would try to break in through the garage.

*crosses legs tightly*

We're having a new roof put on. When I pulled up to the Circle this afternoon at 5, as always, I discovered that my yards have become construction site theme parks. There are huge tarps covering God-knows-what, boxes of supplies blocking my driveway, and shingles in the mailman's delivery truck path (he actually had to get out of the truck to deliver the mail, heh).

I had to tiptoe and creep to get into the house without significant damage to my person.

Being the exceptionally paranoid ranter that I am, I'm terrified that I'm going to go into the bathroom, where there's a vent in the ceiling, and look up to see one of the contractors looking down at me. I realize that they're simply taking the shingles off and NOT the wood beneath it, but I can't help but to think that they can see me.

To make matters worse, I went into the bathroom two minutes ago to try to pee with some dignity and a bunch of roof crud came showering down from the vent as I stood there.

I backed out slowly and turned off the light.

I can hold it......

Hot to Trot

They're clean, virginal machines that I'm the first to use...unlike the old ones.

So far the only thing I've cooked is tea, but hey - that's promising!

We're looking into getting a new fridge and Corian countertops in the new year.

Throws in the towel.

I know I haven't done a whole lot of complaining about my kitchen situation. I've been too busy complaining about work and people I work with.

Well, here's the deal: I like to cook. Really, I do. I like cooking foods that people found dry and bland during childhood and make them edible. I like it when people pick up their fork and eat nonstop because they fear that whatever it is on their plate will be swiped by food pirates.

I don't cook much anymore. There are a multitude of problems in our kitchen, one of them being the fact that our stove and oven (see figure A) don't fit our lifestyle. It's one of those units where it was sold with interchangeable cartridges for the cooktop. The buyers chose to get 1 regular coil cartridge and one grill cartridge. The only time I ever use the grill is when I don't have enough burners to cook my met on. It's too damn hard to clean when you're done, and frankly if you don't clean it, the house stinks. The burner unit is less than fully functional because the back burner is too small and too close to the front burner to put anything but a small pot on. That's great when you're heating up some canned green beans but using it to make gravy while you mash potatoes up front is impossible.

The oven, *sigh*. It just doesn't cook evenly, and it's really hard to put a full-sized cookie sheet in there. They just don't fit unless you slant them against the side wall.

The microwave. Well, the microwave is sort of stigmatized. When we moved in it (and the stove) were caked with grease and mold and STANK very badly. It's the kind that doesn't rotate the food and the rack is missing. It grosses me out to think of how it smelled when I opened it the first time.

Wait - not done yet. We have a severe lack of counter space because of the fact that we have a second microwave next to the sink. We have to have the second microwave because the only thing the one over the stove is good for is melting butter.

So, quite diplomatically we chose a new stand-alone range/oven and over-the-range microwave
to replace both pieces.

I'll be able to have a meat, two vegs, and gravy, and I'll have room on the countertop for that stainless Kitchenaid mixer I've been eyeing for a few years. (Oh, bread dough, I've missed you so!)

Three down, Four to Go

I've been nagging Scott for some time to get the living room renovations done. He bitched and moaned (mostly, I think, because he would need to find some new place to store his "collection"). Well, yesterday we had an electrician (and his strange little apprentice) come and install recessed lighting in there. There was no overhead lighting in there before, merely a plug-in lamp that turned on by a wall switch.

Tell me this room doesn't look fucking awesome. Here's a before picture that shows some of the room: Click Here. It was an awesomely bad mess. Anyway.

I'm happy. Furniture is being delivered on Friday and now we can have people green with envy when they come in through the front door.

*does Snoopy dance*

Piano Plaque

Been busy busy busy. I don't remember much of Saturday, but certainly I spent it productively.

I spent about 6 hours in the garage yesterday working on that damned piano.

I've gone from stinky, eye-watering paint stripper, to a heat gun, to goopy peach-colored paint stripper that smells like oranges.

How close to completion am I? Well, the paint is almost gone. If I can get out there one evening this week I can get that cleaned up once and for all. Then the sanding begins. I'm sort of dreading that because there are so many nooks and crannies to get your hands cramped up in. That's one of the reasons the actual paint removal is taking so long, but anyway.

I did a test stain on the bench with the black I bought. Looks good. I like it. Now I just have to decide if I want a glossy overcoat or something satin.

And in case you're keeping track on that bet, no the floors haven't cured yet.

Gotta get Crack-a-lackin'

When I started this journal back in...shit, January '04?...anyway. One of my earliest complaints was of the white giantess known as the upright piano that now sits in my garage.

We drove to the homeplace (I love that word. It souds so country-as-hell) to extricate it from my grandmother's living room before she began renting the place out. We drove it back to Durham on the back of a Dodge pick-up truck along with several other artifacts of my rural childhood.

The piano sat out in the wind and the rian for about a week until Scott could bring home a few strapping lads to get the thing off without flattening them in the process - the thing weighs as much as a small car, you know.

Since then, it's been sitting out in the garage covered in cobwebs. My plan was to strip it, stain it, varnish it and get it into the house before the cold or humidity could do any further damage to it. Well, a gallon of paint stripper later it's still out there.

I sort of underestimated how large the task would be. Who knew that three coats of white paint could be so stubborn?

Well, Friday I put my foot down and said to myself, "Self, it's been 18 months since that piano has been put in the garage. Seeing as how you can't afford the $3,000 the refinisher wants to do it, I suggest you get your lard ass out there to get 'er done."

Well, I went to Home Depot and bought a heat gun. In two days I've accomplished more than I had in the past year and a half. I'm still going to have to do some chemical stripping to get the residual specks up, but this process is really speeding along.

Scott made a bet with me that if the piano was ready by the time the polyurethane on the living room floor cured (a week from today) he would gift to me a sum equal to my salary for the rest of the year.

*cracks knuckles*

See ya. Pictures later.

Oh, no they di-in't

My across-the-street neighbors got a new mailbox and post. Good. That's good thinking - we need to do the same and are simply still shopping for a unique mailbox that fits the architecture of our home. We live in one of those neighborhoods where everyone has the same front door - merely in different colors. Everyone has the same mailbox - merely on different posts. We're trying to change both of those things. No, there are no community bylaws preventing such. People are just lazy and too afraid to purchase items that can't be found at Home Depot.

Previously our mailboxes were posted about one foot apart and they (the neighbors) have a ugly-ass Nandina growing in front of theirs which they don't prune. Its roots have impeded the growth of the perennials I plant there each spring. We sneak out there on occasion when we're doing yard work and knock it down a couple of feet so that we can access our mailbox without daddy long legs jumping on us. Well, they've moved their mailbox about eight feet away from ours and have left that damned bush behind.

I'll wait until tomorrow while they're circling the neighborhood walking their dogs to rip the entire plant out from the roots. I'll make sure they can see me. I see them in their yard admiring their mailbox from afar right now.

I'm pissed because if we get a mailbox and post that are totally different than what they just put out there people will think that we're trying to either one-up them or just be contrary. The fact that they moved their new set so far away from ours makes them look like they have a problem with the way our current mailbox looks.

Yes, I'm petty.

Gladious.

This is the first one to begin opening this season, and boy I planted a LOT of these. I didn't know which color this bag would be as they were marked as "assorted"...I guess I planted the all-orange ones right next to the house.

He didn't hate it.

While I fully expected Scott to have some unkind words about the paint color, he really didn't. I think that he was just so happy to be home that he didn't really give a shit. He claims that if he truly didn't like it he would have said so. I don't know about that, but he's commented that we need to paint the rest of the kitchen that color now, too. I was going to do white, but eh.

To refresh your memory, the kitchen was "I'll be a sunbeam" yellow before where it is now brown. Here's a picture taken in September of 2001 before we moved in (do note the overgrown camellia shrouding the window):

We still have a lot of work yet to go, but at least now there's one less thing to do.

Turn out the light.

Does anyone see anything morally wrong with slinking around the neighborhood in the dark and snipping sprigs of certain neighbors' flowering bushes? I'm just wondering because I it would be a favor to those neighbors because they'd be getting those unruly runners clipped....right?

Bad Business

Okay, so. (Yes, I'm still at home. I have to check in to the hospital at 1:30 today. Why, yes, I am starving and craving a gallon on water. How did you know?)

The Service Magic-affiliated schmuck that was supposed to stop by two weeks ago to give me an estimate on cleaning up the yard finally got back to me with an estimate. In his "estimate" he basically stated that he couldn't do it because he only mows residential yards. On his own website he states that he does spring clean-ups and fall leaf removal. So, ??????

That sounds ass-backwards to me. In my original request for a quote I stated that I needed leaf removal and de-thatching.

Somehow this idiot thinks that I'm so stupid that I don't know the difference between moss and thatch. And I quote:

"I just wanted to drop you a note to let you know that I looked at you yard and it's something that we don't do. We do residential work, but only those that we mow. You yard has allot of Moss, I think you called it thatch. IT can we controlled by adjusting the pH of the soil. If you just remove the moss, you are going to create a erosion problem. Good luck and Thanks for considering XXX landscaping"......

Excuse me? Did we not speak on the phone and I told you quite bluntly that I needed all of the FUCKING LEAVES REMOVED and that there was a lot of THATCH BUILD-UP UNDER the leaves? Did you not say "Okay?" At any point did I ever say anything about mowing grass? WE DON'T HAVE ANY FUCKING GRASS! Do you know why you see moss? Because THAT'S WHAT'S GROWING ON TOP OF THE THATCH, YOU DUMBASS!!!!!!!!!!

*regains composure*

I don't like liars. He didn't show up at the scheduled time, and then didn't call when he was supposed to, so that's two strikes. If he didn't want to do the job or was unable to, that's what he should have said. I don't need creative little excuses. There's nothing wrong with my pH. Theoretically it's the exact same as my neighbors' right? Well, they all have grass with no maintenance. Shit, WE have grass in the back yard.

I think I'm going to cross my fingers and place an ad for some college kid to come in and do it for like $7 bucks an hour. Maybe I won't get an axe-murderer.

Put on your workin' shoes.

There are a few things I'd like to accomplish today, most of them involving yard work.

The landscaper that was supposed to stop by last week to give me an estimate on cleaning up the front yard never did. When I was at Jiffy Lube getting my oil changed he called and asked if he could come early, wondering if it mattered if I were home. I told him I'd be a while since Jiffy Lube was backed up and to come on out. He said he'd call me in the afternoon to let me know his impressions.

Well, I don't know if he ever showed up, but he certainly never called me. He had at least three different phone numbers to access me at so whatever cockamamie excuse he had at not showing doesn't fly with me. Incidentally, it was someone I found through Service Magic. I contemplated leaving him a bad rating and a nasty comment on his page, but I restrained myself.

I've resigned myself to cleaning up the yard alone. If I were slightly less antisocial I'd go across the street and ask Lady with Huge Dog who that country bumpkin' who cleans up her yard is. I'm sure he'd charge a helluva lot less than anyone who has ads posted on the internet. He doesn't even look like the sort who knows how to use a computer.

Eh. Wish me luck.

Yo ho, heave ho.

I did a little bit of work in the front yard yesterday. I dug a new (small) bed for some of the gladiolus corms I bought at Home Depot a couple of weeks ago. There were about 50 in the bag. I don't know what I was thinking. I saw the word "Value!" printed on the packaging and couldn't resist. I planted about 20 and threw five moldy ones out. I need to put on my thinking cap and find somewhere for the rest of the pack. I'm telling you, digging compacted clay is a BITCH.

I have a guy coming tomorrow to give me an estimate on cleaning up all the leaves in the front yard and getting up the thatch. I have a good idea of what I think that's worth but it should be an educational experience to see what he quotes.

I've never had to hire anyone to do work in or around the house so I'm a little scared that I'll just assume that he's not going to try to take advantage of me because I'm a woman and don't know any better. (right.)

What's a standard hourly rate for yard clean-up? I'm not even talking about "landscaping" here--I'm talking about some dude with a leaf blower and a garbage bag.

2 Down, 6 to Go

I installed the new light fixture in the hallway yesterday which pretty much marks the completion of anything we're going to do there. We're going to change all of the doorknobs to a chrome color to match the new lighting fixture, and will probably put up a new thermostat cover and doorbell box....other than that, finito. Here's what the old fixture looked like (it's now in the trash):

See the extended entry for a before and after of the hallway.

(click to enlarge photos)

...all the paint stripping,

...and scraping,

All done.

*cries a little*

Home Depot really doesn't have a whole hell of a lot of spring bulbs. Or any. Maybe I missed them, but um...isn't it still winter? Why are the summer bulbs all they have?

Anyhow, seeing as how everything in my yard blooms whenever the fuck they feel like it, I went ahead and bought an assload of orange crocosmia, some gladiolis, and some canna. They'll probably start shooting up next week if last year's premature irises are any indicator. I planted the canna today as the tree cutters played circus-freak up in the branches.

I plan on buying plants that grow disgustingly large (like pampas grass) and then flooding the front yard. It'll be like a swamp, see, with crazy shit growing everywhere....like Maybe, just maybe I'll even get a crocodile.

*sulks off discouraged at rapid moss invasion in yard*

Contemplation...

Have any of you ever bought bulbs (flower) from Home Depot or the like? Were they viable? Did they suck ass? Were they true to color?

I remember when I was living in the sticks and when you went to a feed and seed to buy agricultural products, you knew exactly what you were getting...not so much around here.

Oh well. I think I'll go buy some manure and make myself feel country out in the flower beds.

Tree guys are here....

...and they're blocking my driveway.

Scott hired some guys to cut down a dead tree in our back yard. They weren't supposed to be here until tomorrow or Thursday, but I guess they're taking advantage of the nice weather.

Technically, I shouldn't be home right now. I went to the dentist [Scott--I know why you called that one room the "closet" now] and figured, "Hey, let's actually get some home-related stuff done today!" so I took a half day off. Yes, Bossman did plead for my mercy. I told him that the plants will keep him company until tomorrow.

Please, stop teasing me.

As I feared/suspected, the unseasonably warm weather here in the south have caused some of my early spring bulbs to bloom. I figured that the one that bloomed last weekend was a fluke...but here they all are.

If this will be at all similar to last year's blooming cycle, lily greenery will be popping up in a few weeks if we don't get a good freeze. In the meantime, the daffodils have decided to join in the fun.

Ass.

It'll be just my luck that we'll get a hard freeze and they'll die before they bloom.

The Six-Month Project

Okay, don't be afraid--everythings all copasetic now. I'll get around to deleting the other 300 or so comment farts as soon as I'm patient enough to sit down and find them. They were much easier to find when they were listed on my start page as one of the last five comments. Since there have been real comments after those, they've disappeared into the darkness of my archives.

Now then, I've disabled the "post" feature in the comment pop-up window. You'll have to hit "preview" and then click post from that screen. Next I'll go about setting up the heavy artillery for the more robust spambots.

Now then, today I've been up to my nose in paint and paint stripper fumes. Scott has been working on the hallway, and I've been working on the piano.

I posted extensively about my work in the hallway back when I was unemployed between gigs. Well, the troublesome hallway in which I stripped all that paint from the mouldings is done. Except for the floor. Scott is touching up the paint around the door frames as I type.

The piano....well. That's another issue. I'm using a spray-on stripper which is a lot faster of a job than the paint-on variety, but even so the piano is the size of an elephant. Since it's been in the garage for a year, the turning (what was left of it) is completely shot--some keys won't even hammer.

At some point it had a really rich cherry stain on it. I don't know what happened that provoked someone to paint it white. Blech.

If the weather remains mild this week, I hope to at least get all the paint off. Then the cycle of blackmailing negotiating with all my male acquaintances to help get it into the house begins.

Progress

Scott and I did a little scraping on the linen closet door yesterday. I hate the fact that instead of getting some soap and water and wiping off the damn inkpen mark someone's kid left up there, they got out the paint and covered it up.

Smart people also don't paint over varnish...because it peels up.

We got the bulk of it up with a little gentle scraping--most of it came
up in large pieces. In some spots I had to use paint stripper, which was
a pain in the ass. There's still some paint residue that will probably
come up with a little sanding, and there's just enough varnish still up
there that we'll be able to match the color of the other doors. I
foresee a heat gun purchase in my near future.

I like the wood pattern on the doors (our doors are full wood slabs, not
hollow). It's sort of a retroesque swirl pattern that'll look nice when
we get the floors cleaned up and some paint on the walls.

All we have left to do in the hallway is finish sanding the spackle off
the ceiling and sand the floors. Then we'll slap up some paint (I had
originally purchased flat paint for the front room and hallway, but
considering how much trouble that'll be with handprints and all, I'll go
and get a bucket of latex for the hall), and worry about doing the
floors right before we go on vacation--so that we can't walk on them.

Then I'll be able to hang pictures and stuff. And then we can start on
retiling the hallway bathroom.

So...folks, don't paint wood. MDF? Fine. Plywood? Sure, g'wan. Wood?
Hells no.

Fuckity fuck fuck...

My grandma has this saying: "If it ain't one thing, it's another."

That's all I could say yesterday when I was doing paint prepwork in the
hallway.

Just damn.

I was sanding and stripping off the old caulk from around the woodwork
when a piece of the paint started peeling. I thought it was fine at
first: I could get a chance to see all the different colors of paint
that have been used over the years (beige, white, yellow, blue, and then
white and the wood has been mint green at some point). But when the
paint started coming off in chunks the size of my head, I knew there'd
be a problem.

I'm going to try to spackle the edges and sand it down. It'd be a real
bitch if all of these paint layers had to be stripped off the entire wall.

Wanna have a happy Thanksgiving? Skip the trip to Michael's and come get your holiday crafting supplies from my front yard.

Across the street, the spinsters must be preparing for Christmas. The front is all clear for a nativity scene and some florescent Santas. Next door looks like Easter. They still have green grass and are maintaining flowering plants in November. It looks very Thanksgivingy in my yard. There isn't an inch of grass that isn't covered by leaf material.

I remember the good ol' days of kindergarten when wll my time was spent creating arts 'n crafts, taking naps, peeing my pants, and eating snacks. For Thanksgiving, we took leaves that looked sufficiently enough like a turkey body, glued them to construction paper, and drew the turkey head and legs around it. We would then write "Hapy Thinksgiven" on the top, sprinkle it with macaroni and glitter, fold it up, and stick it in our backpacks until Christmas break when Mom cleaned the gooey monstrosities out.

There are enough leaves in my yard to create such cards--maybe enough for each North Carolinian kindergardener to make 5. So...like 150 katrillion leaves.

They're not fun leaves that you see in the comic strips in which the carefreee youngun's jump into them and Dad goes, "Ohhhh. Son. I just raked those. Now I have to rake them again." These are nasty, sharp, bug-infested wet, moldy leaves that make them extremely uncomfortable should someone fall on them. In fact, if there was a way for me to create some devious plan in which a certain ex-boyfriend could come in contact with said leaves, that would be okay.

Yes, I'm trying real hard to get someone else other than myself clean up the yard, as you can see from previous posts. The fact that if nay raking gets done it gets done by me is beginning to piss me off a tad. I guess hubby figures that since I'm home almost all day that I should do it. Whatthefuckever. Fair is fair and he's twice my size--could probably rake in less half the time with his huge stride and sweep.

He could at least not criticize my rake job when he gets home. Who the hell criticizes a rake job, anyway? It's like criticizing a blow job: as long as there are no teeth, you should be happy you're getting one.

Bob Villa don't have a damn thing on me...even WITH the beard.

I'm like "whoa." I can fix stuff all by myself without the assistance of how-to manuals, and especially advice from my husband.

See, I've installed a doorknob or two in my day--that's the benefit of growing up with grandma and being in charge of all the maintenance work around the house. It was either I did it or granny would have to break out the wallet and have some guy come out and overcharge us for his primate ability to grasp a screwdriver.

All but two of the doorknobs in the house had been rendered uncapable of locking by the previous homeowners. Apparently they had rugrats that liked to lock them out of rooms (the selfsame rugrats that liked to chew gnaw marks on the windowsills and cable wires).

The doorknobs look to be as old as the house, evident by the fact that when I disassembled one, there was green gunk growing inside. I figured that, as in all other locks I've encountered, there had to be some sort of switch on the inside that would enable one to prevent undesired locking (which is pointless if you ask me--they DO make doorknobs that don't have locks at all. Get with the times, people!)

Anyhow, sure enough, there was a screw on the shaft that merely needed to be reversed to allow proper usage of the locking mechanism.

So you think, "Well, that's all well and good, but who cares? You fixed a lock. F-ing yay!" Point is, my husband told me it couldn't be done--it was supposed to be that way. Then again, this is coming from the same person who told me that I didn't need to remove the screws to take the knob off...maybe what he was really saying was that I couldn't do it.

Mu wu ha ha ha!

Hoes are expensive.

That wasn't a misspelling. I do mean "hoe" as in "spade." (I have no reason to pay for sex, even if I was a dude). I've been working on cleaning out the numerous flower beds around the house and decided that I was at least one tool short of completing a certain patch.

First, we bought a rake--plastic, green and courtesy of Martha Stewart Inc. as K-Mart doesn't sell a whole heap else.

Next came the shovel because we needed to dig trenches. The neighbor kids like to throw pine cones at us when we walk outside because they're ill-trained little brats who won't be getting candy this Halloween. We dug holes to hide in and launch water baloon missiles. No, I'm lying. We bought a shovel to dig drainage runs. We actually got it at the Home Depot, who honestly doesn't have that many more brands than the local K-Mart.

Digging up weeds and roots with the shovel became a pain in the back, so I just got over it and bought the hoe. I was going to wait until spring time when I would actually be planting something, but the yard looks so bad right now that I just had to do it.

I had to go to Home Depot...my paycheck hadn't cleared and all I had was three bucks (that I was willing to spend) and a $7 gift card. The whole place had two hoe choices: the premium "like hell if I'm spending that for something that reminds me of someone bending over cotton in Ol' Virginny" brand, and the cheap-ass, "I'll bet it'll break as soon as it encounters a worm it doesn't like" alternative.

I bought the cheap-ass alternative and so far it has served me well. I still use it with my head turned away in case the metal part goes flying off.

Next thing: buying a chainsaw to demolish the kid's playset the lazy p.ho's left in the back yard. They said they would come get it, but oh well. Someone better stake a claim on it before we start playing "Monster Garage" on it.

How come? (Or "why come?" for my 3-year-old niece)

How come I got to have the yard that everyone else's leaves blow into? How come? Why, damn it? Why doesn't the lady across the street have leaves? She has as many trees as we do. I see her go out there every now and then to pick up the one single, solitary leaf that dares to fall in her yard. I actually had to go to the home improvement store to get their very last pair of gardening gloves today because the leaves in my yard have piled up so high that the squirrels think the roof of my house is on the same level with the forest floor and I don't wanna be reaching into a pile a leaves to have some Cujo-squirrel gnaw the hell out of my arm.

No, seriously though--I think the guy next door has a leaf blower and he blows all his sh*@ over here on Saturday mornings when I'm too knocked out to hear him turn it on. See, we don't have a lawn mower yet (or even a darn mulcher for that matter), so I'm having to rake up the 1 foot plus layer of leaves manually every couple days until the trees get done pissing me off for the year. Do they make Rogaine for oak trees?

Oh, you don't believe I have that many leaves piled up like a layer of crispy frosting over my yard? Well, I'll take a picture of it tomorrow. It's kind of dark right now and I'm not going out there to expose myself to Bambi and his gang that like to triapse through my yard at full throttle. Mind you, we don't have a dog and wouldn't keep one in there if it had to drown in those leaves. For all I know, there could be pirhanas living in there *shudder* (or at least some Carolina snake that I haven't learned to identify).

The ground is soooooooooooooooo hard. Hard dirt means no aeration. No aeration means....c'mon, guess. No, guess! Fine, don't guess. It means NO grass! I don't know what those nimwits (the p.hos) were doing to the lawn, but other than a few patches of moss and 'shrooms, we aint got grass. Nuh uh. The thing is--it could have been completely preventable. If they had mosied a lawn mower over the grass every now and then to help shred up some of the leaves they never raked (allowing no sun to the green stuff beneath), everything would be dandy.

Paint stinks, but it does miraculous things.

Hmmmm.....nothing says nausea like the smell of mildew-combating paint--especially when there's no ventiallation. If that smell is that strong merely from painting one piddly little closet, then Lord help us when we start painting big rooms.

I swear I was having hallucenogenic dreams last night induced from the paint fumes...I think I was a mint green paint chip being drowned in bucket of white Kilz (the aforementioned mildew-killing paint).

Hubby started working on closet #1 last night, and meticulous as he is, it took several hours. The time spent cutting paint into corners and avoiding the floor was well worth it as it no longer looks like a kindergartener's green paint project gone awry.

Here is a "before" and "after" for your viewing pleasure. If you can't tell, that putrid color in the "before" is mint green. The shelves will be put back in as soon as they dry completely.

It'd better be laced with gold flecks for THAT price.

Um...yeah. I'm confused. See, I'm pretty smart--I know how to use a calculator, and often remember to change the empty toilet paper roll before I sit on the seat. So, can anybody explain to me how any gallon of paint should cost $30? I'm not going to mention any brands here, but lets call it, hmm, R.L. First of all, anyone who would spend $30 on designer white paint is a bit touched in the head. Second, anyone who can AFFORD to spend $30 on designer white paint should be able to afford to have someone paint FOR them. Third, do you think the professionals will actually BUY designer white paint when no-frills will suffice?

To me, buying a good brand of paint is like going to the dollar store and buying the off-brand dish detergent. It may be a weird color, and it may not smell as nice as your Palmolive, but damn it, you've used it before and it works exactly the same. Buying paint should be the same way. I'll buy the good, trusted $11 gallon of flat paint, know that it's reliable, and not kick myself for spending more than I can afford. I can use the $19 I saved to, hmm, BUY MORE DAMN PAINT!

Sure, it looks pretty in a PICTURE.

When my husband and I set out on our househunting expedition several months ago, we have several things in mind that we definately needed to have in a home:

1. At least 2 bathrooms
2. At least 2 bedrooms with space for an office
3. A kitchen that we wouldn't be tripping over each other in
4. A large enough yard to entertain in or at least enough space for guests to park their cars on.

We wanted something in an established neighborhood at least 20 years ago--can't trust the quality of homes that are thrown up in two weeks.

We finally, after much looking, stumbled upon a gem of a house that had a few correctable quirks. Sure, the grass in the yard was unmowed and the plant life was untended, but not all sellers are master gardeners. I believe I called it "charming" when the realtor showed it to us. It has wood floors, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, a family room AND living room, but currently it's lacking a few things, namely, oh...shall I say it? RELIABILITY?

When we were schlepping our stuff in on move-in day, wouldn't you know it problems surfaced--big, nasty, gnarly ugly ones that reared their atrocious heads AFTER we had the place inspected. Oh well, fix it and get over it? Sure, can do, but what's next?

Over the next several months I'll be posting my home renovation progress up here and otherwise griping about the new problems that surface. Wait and see, I bet next I'll fall through a hole in the floor. If you don't hear from me, call the paramedics and tell my grandma I love her.