we moved a few weeks ago. it feels like months because a lot has happened and we wrecked our lives attempting to move ourselves from the apartment to the townhouse. but we did it. Brian and I didn't kill each other and i'd venture to say that if you can conquer what we've conquered in the past few weeks and still want to be in the same room with each other - then that is LOVE my friends. true. freaking. love.
i set a fairly rigid schedule on moving day and we NAILED IT. we returned the truck by 5 pm, picked up the animals from Shannons place (thank you for babysitting the critters), spent 30 minutes trying to find a parking spot while meeting all the neighbors in a brief investigation into who was parking in our assigned parking spot, and settled in to pass out.
initially, there were some concerns about the state of the house. small things. reasonably easy to fix type things. 1. neither the front door nor the back door locked properly. 2. the security bar on the back door was broken. 3. the master bathroom vanity drawer was missing a vital piece of hardware necessary for function. 4. the master bathroom shower was a bit leaky around the showerhead.
little things that we could work around.
day 2 in the new house was tough on the jazz. she was stressed and when shes stressed, apparently she pees. anywhere. her new bed arrived late morning, i unwrapped it and presented this new, fluffy, social-media-proven-to-be-anti-stress bed to her. 23 seconds later, i noticed a puddle on the floor adjacent to where i was constructing monsters new litterbox cabinet.
her bed was now soaked in urine. i didn't see it happen. in this new house apparently shes a pissing ninja.
BUT AT LEAST THE FLOORS ARE HARDWOOD.
no big deal. the cabinet pieces were safe from pee. i cleaned it up and took it downstairs to the laundry room. i started a load... and nothing happened.
i added to the list:
5. the washing machine doesn't work.
brian briefed me on functionality of washing machines and i turned the water on manually only for there to be a small flood from the cold water hose which was initially concerning but seemed to slow, then stop. i set the water temperature to cold and let the washing machine do its thing, assuming this would function as any other washing machine that ive ever encountered.
i was wrong.
i had the door to the washer still open as i threw in some other towels and what not and noticed steam coming from the water. i stuck my dominant hand under the water flow to assess the temperature and realized it was second degree burn level hot. on the cold setting. maybe the hoses are switched? i stopped the cycle and pulled the machine away from the wall and using my super handyman powers, i touched the hoses to assess the temperature and realized the hoses were indeed switched. after a few more tests, i realized that regardless of what temperature setting the washing machine was set at, only boiling hot water was flowing into the machine. logic told me to just turn off the hot water access which seemed to fix the issue. cool.
45 minutes later, i was done with the cat cabinet and i threw the wash into the dryer. i hit start and... nothing. i checked to see if it was plugged in and realized there was no plug.
6. the dryer doesn't work.
after a trip to home depot, we had the plug, brian installed it and we were back in business. id like to thank youtube for the many things it has taught me over the years, but ive never been more thankful for DIY videos.
i decided to install the hardware on the bathroom cabinet and i only slightly effed it up, so brian fixed that too and we had a working drawer for the first time since moving in.
as we were upacking the kitchen, we noticed a spot on the ceiling over the microwave that was damaged and two cabinet doors were rubbing on the ceiling. bri had noticed this during the initial walk-through but it wasn't fixed prior to us moving in.
7. the ceiling has a defective area that impedes the opening of two cabinet doors.
i could still live with this for the time being - i knew not to fully open the door with the drinking glasses and the door over the microwave wasn't going to get used much anyway.
by this point, after numerous trips to home depot, the locks on the doors were fixed and the security bar was fixed.
i'd also like to thank home depot for its extended hours of operation.
a few days later... 8. the filtered water in the fridge door stopped working.
brian did some research, bought some repair kit off amazon and like magic, it worked again.
after a number of days of "doing laundry", i realized that on certain settings, the washing machine would indefinitely pause and i would have to baby it with motivational words to get it to go through a full cycle. which, it never did. for some reason, it continued to stop after the initial rinse cycle, failing to go into the spin cycle. this was annoying and finally - after one of the infinite pause cycles - i told brian we needed to have this fixed. he reversed the hoses and in exploring the issue, he accidently broke the piece that triggers the cycle to start when the door is closed.
i called the repairman - i have a thing about laundry. my top priority in a place of living is in-unit laundry. thats all i want. i want to do my whites, darks, tri-gear, towels, red clothing, yellow clothing, light bed sheets, dark bedsheets, etc in their own obsessive compulsive loads.
i don't ask for much.
brian ordered the replacement part and the repairman was scheduled to come out the following day. i decided to do my workouts on that particular day and finish off my afternoon with a nice bath in the soaking tub in the masterbath room (with JETS), a glitter bath bomb, and a protein shake.
i filled the tub - which took a very long time - and threw the bath bomb in and admired its glittery goodness. the water was high enough to get in and i savored the delight of the deep tub with super hot water. a couple minutes later, brian rushed in saying "we have a problem" in a very calm, measured voice.
this, i learned, is also his panic voice.
noted: when brian says theres a problem - theres a PROBLEM.
9. the defective part of the ceiling is actually from water damage and currently there was an active waterfall in the kitchen.
i jumped out of the tub and ran downstairs. there was now a bucket collecting water and the flow had slowed to a couple drips. since the tub had been filling for 20 minutes (10. the water pressure sucks.) and only flooded when i got in, i suspected it was the overflow part of the tub that leaking. i stayed in the kitchen while brian confirmed and to my delight, the waterfall from the ceiling resumed.
we contacted the landlord for the 6th time and he sent some people over to assess. by that evening, there was now a square cut out in the ceiling, a dehumidifier and three industrial fans in the kitchen.
the following day, the plumber showed up, replaced the gasket which was totally shot, and we repeated our experiment. my job was to hold the bucket to collect the water while brian showed him what we had done the day before. as a sidebar, i had just made tea and the electric stove was still quite hot. i placed the bucket on the stove and smelled burning plastic and observed a fair amount of steam. a couple seconds too late, i realized that i had slightly melted the bottom of the bucket.
11. plastic bucket melts when exposed to hot stove.
so... um, i'll take that one. sorry stove. sorry bucket.
the washing machine guy showed up and did a bypass action to replace the job of the door switch and pronounced the machine fixed. apparently switching the hoses fixed the issue and brian is now a legitimate handyman. trusting that we could replace the broken door switch, we paid the man and thanked him for his time.
that night, we decided to order food since the fans in the kitchen were loud and stressing everyone out. we ate in the basement and at some point i glanced at the ceiling and noticed it looked a little odd but i was too tired to really make a solid mental note of it.
the next morning, bri and i were having coffee in the basement and i looked at the ceiling again and that initial picture flooded back to me. "does the ceiling look different to you?" i asked him. in my head, the area of concern was larger than it was the night before. he cocked his head, got up and touched the spot (since hes over 6 feet tall, apparently he can touch the ceiling without a step ladder).
it was damp and sagging.
12. water damage in the basement ceiling - no where near the initial waterfall in the kitchen.
i sort of blacked out and lost it for a few minutes so im not sure what was said. but the spot was right over the brand new couch so we disassembled the sectional and moved it out of harms way and brian taped garbage bags to the floor with that trusty - still functional - plastic bucket in case the ceiling decided to cave in and create a second water feature in the basement.
i basically said eff this, and went to work completely forgetting about breakfast for probably the second time in my life.
when i returned home, there was a second square cut out of the basement ceiling and a single industrial fan. apparently it was a slow leak from the masterbath plumbing and completely unrelated to the first water issue.
curiously, we noticed the ceiling had previously been repaired - you could see the slight step in the drywall and the slight difference in paint in that area. same with the area in the kitchen ceiling. im not sure if the repairs were just quick bandaids from the previous tenants or the landlord or what but it is what it is at this point.
a couple days ago, the ceilings were repaired over the course of a day in quite the dexter-like plastic sheet fashion. ive never seen an entire room wrapped in plastic other than on the murder showtime serial killer series. it was awesome. you know what else is awesome? we now have a normal ceiling and we can fully open both cabinet doors without specks of drywall falling on the stove.
ive noticed a few more issues (13. broken drawers in fridge 14. broken silverware container in dishwasher 15. broken rail on the top rack of the dishwasher 16. broken cabinet rack for the pots and pans) but if you are gentle in opening/moving things, none of these issues are a significant problem...
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in all seriousness, i actually really like this house. its finally feeling like home and we are fully moved in and settled in. so, come visit! i sort-of promise the ceiling won't fall on your head.
