This morning, I have eaten, done dishes, avoided helping to shellac, responded to mizkit‘s blog, cried, and posted a recipe. I should be doing something useful. 🙂
It is really funny, I think of things I want to talk about on here, but by the time I get here they have run out of my little blond head.
Sad.
Pat and I noticed when we were going through pictures last night that we both look a lot older than we did before we bought this house. Granted, it has been almost 6 years, but it has obviously been a rough 6 years.
We thought we were buying a non-fixer-upper house. We weren’t. Our inspector was useless and we didn’t know enough to know what to look for.
When I was looking through pictures to take to talk to the insulation contractor, I ran across some from the housewarming party. Right there on the beam in the living room were obvious water marks (the stripes on the far left). If only we had known.
We have learned a great deal about how to build (from negative example) and about construction methods in Anchorage in the 1980’s. Did you know that during the oil boom, the city inspectors would inspect the 1st house on the street or block and pass all of the rest on the street or block based on what they saw there. Our house was obviously not the one they inspected. We have 3 theories. The first is that our house was the experiment house “Let’s see if this works. Oops, nope. Better not try that method again!” The second is that they had run out of funds by the time they got to us, so they had to use whatever materials they had left. The third is that whoever they built it for kept changing their mind about the details, so we ended up with things like…the washer and dryer upstairs (which I love), but the dryer venting right under the gable vent which makes it so that the steam from the dryer gets sucked right into the attic, which makes for water condensation and drips in the living room. Any way sucks for us.
We are slowly fixing the problems, but we have decided we are done. We have spent way to much money and time and frustration on this house that is never going to be our dream house. Pat needs a workshop. I would like a separate library from the craft room/exercise/guest bedroom (yes, it is a crowded little room). We both want a bigger kitchen (all four of us don’t fit in it at the same time. Granted, Dumas and Butch are small, but Butch can’t seem to stay out from underfoot. Klutzy human + klutzy dog in a small kitchen makes for injured bodies). I want a larger yard, so that the puppy can have her space for her…umm…business, and I can have space that I can walk in the grass barefooted.
Seems like every time we turn around there is something else. This morning it is that the middle bathroom toilet is weeping. The mixing valve (which is supposed to send warm water through the toilet lines so that water does not condense on the outside of the tank) was howling, so Pat had a plumber that he knows come out and take a look. The plumber said that they aren’t necessary up here, so Pat closed it off. Now the middle toilet is cold enough you could chill beer in the tank were you so inclined. Convenient, but no.
The cat is crawling all over me, which means he is done with me being on the computer. Guess I will go do something useful.