The Home Improver

Last night, Caedmon and I began listing aloud all the improvements Derek has made to this house since we moved in last June, because list-making is a fun pastime.  Our youngest was born with this truism etched on his heart.  That, or he's seen me making one bajillion lists over the course of his lifetime and it rubbed off.  The former sounds nicer.

I don't feel bad writing out the list here the way I would if I forced you to listen to my recitation; you're free to skim the list at will and it will likely take you seconds.  If I did this verbally, I would no doubt pause periodically to wander down myriad rabbit trails with side stories and side-side stories.  I am not brief when writing and even less brief when I story-tell aloud.  At least in this format, you have a choice and don't have to find a polite way out of the conversation.

• Tore down kitchen cabinets
• Installed open kitchen shelves
• Hung bucket-things
• Replaced knob and lock on back door
• Installed storm door
• Installed new kitchen lighting
• Installed new basement lighting
• Installing new outdoor shutters (in progress!)
• Installed new front outdoor light
• Installed new living room sconce
• Created built-in bookcases
• Installed new bedroom lighting
• Installed new bedroom closet shelving
• Tore down cabinets in kid's bedroom
• Caulked and insulated around five outdoor windows
• Built storage shelving under stairs
• Built shelving for storage in basement
• Built and installed sliding barn door for kid's room
• Shaved down bathroom door so it would close
• Did scary plumbing stuff
• Installed new coat closet door 

This isn't even going into building a few Ikea storage pieces and aaaallllll the electrical work he's done throughout the house.  This place was a deathtrap, I swear, with its knob and tube wiring and non-grounded outlets and who knows what else.  (Derek does.)  We've also had a few things professionally installed because Husband knows his limits.  As do I.  Our limits for home improvement projects are just very different.  Joanna Gaines, I am not- but if you need book recommendations, I'm your gal!  (Laughs weakly.)

I've been combing through our various before, during, and after photos for some of these projects Derek has accomplished and plan on writing a few posts describing them.  I'll try to avoid excruciating detail, but that's really not something I can realistically promise.  Actually, wait- yes, I can!  Since I was at work while 90% of the labor involved in these things was done, I don't even really know what all went into most of it, just that I would arrive home and a new light fixture would be up, or I could see progress on the bookcases, or whatever.  I will also be sure to tell you the one minor service I provided with each one, often involving paint, in the same way a child will wave their hand in the air and cry, "I halped!"


Also:  we've been in the house just a few days shy of nine months.  It's like all this drilling and sawing and hammering and measuring and on and on is Derek's version of gestation.  He's been gestating DeWalt tools.  Or hang on, I feel like I'm using this metaphor imperfectly- is it the projects that he's been gestating?  Is the book case I'm currently looking at his project baby?  Since he worked alone, was it immaculate conception?  (Did things just get weird?  I think things just got weird.)


Look here:  in the time since I wrote all the previous words early this morning and right now, Derek began and finished another dang project.  He says he loves switching out light fixtures because it's "quick and easy and such a drastic change."  I would call him a liar but he does make it look easy, even with the decrepit wiring in this house that he's slowly bringing into the 21st century.  And so:  behold!  One fewer boob light in this house!

Full disclosure:  this isn't the actual light he took down.  He began this project before I could take a "before" picture, so I walked ten feet to the side and took a picture of another light that will someday be replaced.

Tadaaaaa!  Look how happy he looks.

I wanted to get a picture of the new light fixture without the light bulbs on, but as it turns out when you turn the light off it gets darker in the room and I was too impatient to wait until morning when we had some natural light, so the coloring on this is wonky because I edited the daylights (haha) out of it on my phone.  But... behold!  Our new fixture, wavy glass, Edison bulbs, and all, and Derek's newest product of gestation!

I promise I'll come back with a better term.

Old House, New Things

The thing about owning a home is you are always fixing something.  That goes double if you live in an old home.

Don't get me wrong, I love our old house.  I love the woodwork, the built-in bench and window seat, the pocket doors and newel posts.  I love the big windows and egg-and-dart molding.  It is a charming home, and I didn't have to do a thing to make it that way.

The things that I don't love about living in an old house?  Oh, you know.  There are a few.

Bats.  Poorly insulated sections in the walls.  Finding rusty nails and other pieces of metal every time I turn over a piece of earth in the yard.  No garage, as there was little need for one when you were building a house in town in 1900.  Limited storage space.  Previous owners who took every shortcut in the book with little things like the wiring, plumbing, etc.  Did I mention bats?

We are lucky in many ways, in that at least a couple of those previous owners made big improvements to the house.  The old plaster walls and ceilings have been covered with nice, textured sheet rock.  (I know there are some old house purists who are reading that and gasping, but really, the only time I need to see plaster walls are when I'm touring something that's been made into a museum.)  There is one small triangle of plaster remaining in the stairwell, in between bits of woodwork, and man, am I glad that stuff is gone.  What a nightmare.

The bathrooms had been redone by the time we moved in.  It had a new roof, and a laundry room and half bath had been added.  Someone had added in-house access to the basement; I'm thankful not to have to exit the house to enter the basement.

They had also done away with the back half of the double staircase.  I'm thankful for the big kitchen this created, even if I grieve a bit over the fact that we could have had a double staircase.  I'm so glad no one ever painted all this woodwork with whatever the color de rigueur was at each family's time of ownership.  I like that we have small bedrooms upstairs and a big living space downstairs as it forces the kids out of their rooms and into family time.  I sometimes despise having small bedrooms and a big living space as it forces the kids out of their rooms and into family time.


I like to think that we have been conscientious owners of this house.  We added gutters where before there had been none (so.much.water. in our basement before the gutters).  We've replaced the air conditioner and kitchen cabinets, and added tons of insulation, not to mention storm doors, tiling the kitchen backsplash, and so many other things.

For every thing we've added or replaced, though, we have five more yet to do.  Built-in bookcases in the living room.  Finish the built-in dressers Derek's grandpa constructed and installed for us before he passed away.  Possible future garage.

You know how it is.


All that to say:  we got a new Thing.  An exciting Thing.  A Thing for our house.

WE GOT A...

*drumroll*

...NEW HOT WATER HEATER!  (Go back and read that in the voice of Rod Roddy on The Price is Right if you didn't the first time.  Please and thank you.)

A new hot water heater sounds like the least exciting thing on the planet, unless you've ever lived with an old hot water heater.  Think short showers.  Very short showers.  Forget about soaking your sore muscles in the occasional bath, unless you are able to soak in just a few inches of water.  And remember:  inform everyone in the family that I Am Going to Take a Shower, DO NOT Run the Dishwasher, Washing Machine, or Even Wash Your Hands in Warm Water Until I Exit the Bathroom, On Pain of Death.

We're not sure when the old hot water heater- the one on the right in the photo up there- was installed, but Derek did find a date on it:  1988.  The average lifespan of a hot water heater is 12-14 years.  Just in case you lose track of time the way I do, it is not the year 2000.  It is, in fact, the year 2017.  That old water heater has been begging to be put out of its misery for quite some time now.  Last Saturday, Derek and his band of merry helpers obliged the poor old thing.

At 7:30 AM, Derek and I trooped down the stairs.  We disconnected the (corroded, rusted, stiff, STUBBORN) pipes at the top of the old heater.  Derek did... other things, I don't know what.  I struggled to be more of a help than a hindrance, something that's always a crapshoot for me in these types of situations.  I said, "Good job, Husband!" a lot- I really wanted a new hot water heater.

Atticus helped, too.

At one point Derek's dad arrived, and I gratefully scampered back up the stairs, out of the way and into the warmth.  All of Derek's helpers were in and out of the basement throughout the day, but Derek himself was down there for the better part of 7:30 AM to 3:30 PM, in a space where he has trouble standing up straight thanks to being an unusually tall man and old, low, spider-webby ceilings.  

Sunday morning I took a shower, and didn't have to do my old routine of turn the handle to about 70%, shower for a minute, turn it to 80% as it's already started to lose its warmth, turn the handle to 90%, shower for a minute, turn the handle to 100% and try to pump my arms and move around as much as possible because my hair has been washed but I haven't shaved and I'm already getting goosebumps.

No, instead I turned the handle to 60%, and there it stayed. I don't take particularly long showers (due to years of training, no doubt- thanks, aging hot water heater!), but it was astonishing to realize that you could set the handle at a certain spot and have the hot water last for all seven minutes of your shower.  What extravagance!  What luxury!

Three cheers for Derek!

I Didn't Even Have to Throw a Shoe

After four days without access to our kitchen sink, on Sunday Derek restored peace and equilibrium to my favorite tiny boring kingdom and fixed it.  Over the weekend there was much disconnecting of things under the sink and rooting around with our ten foot drain snake, followed by pouring an entire bottle's worth of a truly scary chemical concoction down the drain, all mixed with generous doses of frustration and angry muttering, not to mention yelling back and forth from the kitchen to the basement between the two of us. ("CAN YOU HEAR THE SNAKE?"  "I CAN HEAR IT BUT I DON'T KNOW WHERE IT IS."  "WHERE IS IT?  CAN YOU TELL?"  "SOMEWHERE BETWEEN THE WALL AND THE LIGHT BULB, MAYBE?  MOVE IT AROUND AGAIN!  NO, WAIT... THERE, MAYBE?  OR MAYBE IT'S OVER THERE?"  "HAS IT MADE IT AROUND THE BEND?"  "I CAN HEAR IT BUT I STILL HAVE NO IDEA WHERE IT IS.")   This was all exactly as clear and helpful and exciting as I am making it sound.  We party hard in this house.

This all culminated in Derek purchasing a fifty-foot drain snake and finally dislodging whatever disgustingness was wedged in there.  Derek's face after I shared my suspicion as to what the clog was made it clear that our minds are still two very different kinds of creatures.  Derek seemed to think it was an obstruction shoved down there by certain children.  I suspected a mouse king.  Either way, it has been vanquished by Husband, my very own Nutcracker!  (If you are lost at this point, then please allow me to say that I'm sorry your childhood was so sad.  Multiple readings and attendances of The Nutcracker through my formative years have given me an acute appreciation for Hoffmann and Tchaikovsky and Balanchine, with the minor side effect of suspecting mouse kings lurking in just about any dark space.  Worth it.)

Please notice Caedmon's toy tools that he scurried to retrieve once he realized Derek was about to go about fixing something.  Atticus was just there for the show.  Like I said, a tiny boring kingdom.  I love it so much.

It took just long enough to get the whole thing fixed that I am majorly appreciating it today.  Every time I walk through the kitchen, I smile happily, because hey!  I have functional indoor plumbing!  I can cook again, and do dishes, and not worry about mouse kings summoning their army!  I celebrated all this by trying a new recipe today, because with access restored to my kitchen, I can once again to do that!  Apple, Cranberry, and Almond Coleslaw, Derek and I both love you in a way that is strange, considering you're basically a big bowl of cabbage.  This is the traditional way to celebrate the absence of rodent royalty, you know.

Things You Need Water For

(Or "Things For Which You Need Water," if dangling prepositions drive you especially crazy.)

• Bathing

• Using the Bathroom

• Washing your hands

• Washing the dishes

• Washing your clothes

• Wiping down tables and countertops

• Making more of your homemade cleaner

• Quenching your apparently insatiable thirst

• Cooking

• Brushing your teeth

Plus many, many more things that I won't be taking for granted any time soon.

At one point Christmas Eve afternoon, Derek ventured into the basement to put some things away (just so we're clear, our basement is not a place our family goes to hang out, unless there's a tornado anywhere in our proximity; it's a cold, damp place, with concrete and brick walls, low ceilings, and countless spiderwebs), and discovered water all kinds of places it shouldn't be.

A pipe had sprung a leak.  A rather serious leak, actually.  Hoo- to the -ray.

We spent that night and all of yesterday- Christmas day- with our water shut off, except at short, specific times when we herded all the children into the bathroom to use the toilet and brush their teeth, and I did things like frantically wash whatever dishes had piled up and take mercilessly short showers.  The rest of the day we yelled at our kids for strange things like flushing the toilet and getting themselves a drink of water- Merry Christmas, kiddies!

This morning Derek got up bright and early in order to be at Lowe's at 6 am; he wanted to try and fix the problem himself before we called in any kind of professional reinforcements.  (This wasn't terrifying at all.)  I played the predictable role of anxious-hand-wringer after he retreated back into the basement to play plumber with some tools and parts he bought whose names I don't remember because they seem to be comprised of completely random words like "compression" and "joint" and "cheese."  Or maybe not "cheese."  I honestly don't know.

There was a bad moment when he was down there when I heard a rather large CLANK followed by the sound of gushing water.  Derek later reported that at that point he was thinking, Well, if we didn't need a plumber before, we do now.  Evidently this was supposed to happen, at least according to the foreign YouTube videos Derek was using as guidance (which inspires exactly as much confidence as you might assume).

Twenty minutes later, Derek emerged victorious.  I went down there and gazed in wonder at the shiny new compression cheese joint he had somehow affixed to the old no-longer-leaky copper pipe, then I started a load of laundry, drank three mugs of water straight down, and used the bathroom whenever the heck I wanted.

I'm still a little agog at Derek's somewhat new-found home repair abilities.  In the last year, he has completely dismantled the driver's side door of our van to repair the automatic window (something about replacing a little motor that had burnt out in there?  Or possibly signing a new union contract with the tiny elves that reside in there and winch the window up and down by hand whenever I press the little button?  Really, either is equally plausible to my mind), completely dismantled the bathtub faucet to stop what had become more of a constant stream of water rather than a leak (something about a tiny piece of metal that had to be replaced?  Or elves again?), and now cut off a piece of ancient pipe and put the cheese-plumber thing in its place.  It's all pretty amazing to me, and fortunate for our entire family that I'm not in charge of fixing pretty much anything that's not made out of fabric or food.  (I promise I'm not actively trying to spit in the face of feminism.)

So!  Three cheers for Derek!  And water!  And foreign YouTube videos and/or successful contract negotiations with the elves!