Friday, October 20, 2023
A Useless Warranty
Friday, September 01, 2023
About That Leak . . .
Stuff piled in the kitchen. |
Stuff piled in the garage. |
The shelving we took out. |
The place where it leaked. |
The original tile. I still like it. Too bad you can't find it anymore. |
The one spot that concerns me. We can't decide if that's mold or just a little wood rot. We'll be able to tell more when it is completely dry. |
Wednesday, August 30, 2023
Happiness Challenge - Day 30
I am happy today that my husband found a water leak in the garage before it got worse.
It was bad enough as it was.
We had turned a half bath into a closet (we weren't using the bathroom), and the valve in there had started leaking, unbeknownst to us.
My husband needed something out of the closet and discovered the leak. It had already done a significant amount of damage - ruined the bottom shelf of the shelving we were using, ruined the tile floor (no great loss, it was 36 years old), messed up the baseboards and trim.
There was mold in behind the baseboards, so we had to cut out the dry wall. Plus, we had to empty those shelves, which were full of paper towels, Dr. Pepper, tissue paper, extra rolls of aluminum foil, glass jars, trash bags, and other assorted items that didn't belong in the house.
It took us several hours to empty out the shelving and for him to tear out the bad wood. I held the flashlight so he could see what he was doing as the bathroom/closet was not well lit.
The water had been dripping a good while, that was obvious.
After he had everything removed, we bleached everything to kill the mold, and now it has to dry.
The good news is it could have been worse if we hadn't found it. The bad news is it didn't help my back issues any, but that's life.
Wednesday, January 18, 2023
The Power Men Cometh
Today I have spent hours learning about electricity.
First, a gentleman from a whole-house generator installer came out to give us an estimate on the installation of one of those. I'd rather not have a repeat of the lack of power and heat that we had a few weeks ago.
It is expensive, though. We will have to think about it. Ultimately, it will be up to my husband to decide, since he would be the one having to deal with generators and such should the power go out again.
Then, a man from the electric company showed up after I called and told them I was being shocked in the shower. He came within an hour of my call, which I had not expected.
Apparently, being shocked in the shower is fairly common. The workman who came was a nice fellow who went above and beyond the call of duty to help us sort out this "ghost," as he called it.
After some kicking around and digging, he and my husband found the ground rod buried in the dirt outside of the house. He sanded off the grounding wire and reworked it and reconnected it because it was loose. He thought this might be the source of the problem.
This was actually something the electrician we'd had out earlier should have checked, I suppose, but the power company fellow wanted to fix the problem. He lives just down the road, we learned, and he said he was helping out a neighbor.
I like nice men who enjoy their work and want to help. He had a ruddy complexion and was quick to smile. He was stocky and exactly what you'd expect an electric repair guy to look like. He was very polite and called me ma'am.
He also gave me his cell number and told me to call him personally if the issue continued. I appreciate that kind of gesture.
We'll see how it goes in the shower tonight, but my fingers are crossed that we have resolved the issue, and there will be no more shocks in the shower.
Tuesday, January 17, 2023
Sparks in the Shower
Wednesday, June 15, 2022
Damn Dryer
In April, we bought a new dryer because the one we bought in 2019 was constantly needing a new timer.
The thing isn't even two months old, and the handle fell off.
A $1,300 piece of crap.
Monday, May 23, 2022
Three Cheers!
Last week, I finished up my last bottle of Cheer Free & Gentle. I've used this detergent since before I married. My mother used it.
Yes, there's a note on the bottle reminding my husband not to use this detergent. |
But even before the pandemic, it had become hard to find.
After the pandemic, it was nigh impossible, unless I wanted to pay $30.00 for a 64 oz bottle on Amazon.
I did not.
So, I used it only on my personal intimate clothes, and squeezed about a year out of this bottle.
I tossed it into the recycling bin with much sorrow.
Then, on a whim, I checked for it again on Amazon. Still $30 a bottle. A comment, though, suggested it was now available at Walmart again.
I checked there and hit the jackpot!
I could get Cheer Free & Gentle for $8.08 for a 64 oz bottle! Yes!
It arrived over the weekend, and I am so pleased.
For my other clothes, I use All Free. I have been asked in the past why I don't simply use All Free for everything.
The answer?
Because I suspect I can use All Free on my intimates and not break out, but I know for certain I can use Cheer Free on them and not have any issues.
Hurray for Cheer Free!
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
New(ish) Gnome
This firefighter gnome came to live with us years ago. Maybe 15 years ago or more, I don't remember. I don't know where I bought him or what I paid for him.
The gnome |
He was looking his age, though. All the color was gone from his hat, and his boots were all scraped up. Otherwise, he was in good shape.
I brought him inside and washed him off, scrubbing him with one of those smiling scrubby things, which took off even more paint.
I sat him aside, but over the last week, I've been repainting him.
Now he looks like this:
The gnome repainted! |
Side/rear shot of Mr. Firefighter Gnome |
Ta dah!
Now to find some clear coat paint to finish him off, and then he'll go back out into what used to be the rose garden, but which now is a rock garden.
Wednesday, April 06, 2022
Exterior Spruce-Up
When we built this house, we put the rear where the front should be. Back then, when you built a house on top of a hill, you put the front of the house toward the view.
However, we drive up to the back of the house, and everyone comes in the back doors. I don't think anyone has ever come through my front door. There are no steps leading to it, and no real reason to walk around there.
In fact, the only time I know of anyone using the front door, or the small porch there, was one year when the UPS man left a package there during bad weather when no one was home, and I didn't find it for three months.
The back part of the house is where the heat pump is, and we've always kept a flower bed around the heat pump. I started out with perennials, but soon switched to roses only. My husband's grandmother was a prize rose grower, and she gave me starter plants.
The roses never did as well as I wanted. The ground here is Virginia clay, and that doesn't grow things well. Mulch and flower food helped, but since the roses were never strong to start with, they easily caught disease and were home to aphids and Japanese beetles (although come to think of it, I haven't seen Japanese beetles in some time. Maybe the stink bugs ate them.)
Of course, I am older now, and I've some health problems, so weeding and keeping up with this little plot had become something I wasn't doing as well as I wanted.
Monday, the last of Grandma's roses went to the compost pile. My husband had decided he wanted something that looked better there.
It does look better, and once I buy some flower baskets there will be flowers. Also, there are mums in the old whisky barrel.
Of course, all of this could have been avoided if we'd reversed the house to begin with, so that the heat pump was not by the driveway, main entrance, and patio.
Live and learn.
Monday, December 13, 2021
A Clear Phone Screen
Wednesday, August 18, 2021
August 18 Happiness Challenge
My house is clean! Not clean like I keep it clean, but sparkling. It's really clean.
I have a young woman who comes in about every 5 weeks to do the mopping and heavy cleaning that I'm no longer able to due thanks to the f*cked up surgery I had in my abdominal area over eight years ago. While it sucks to not have the strength to mop and crawl around under the bed cleaning up spider webs, I'm very happy that we can afford to have this young woman come in and help me every so often. With the heavy cleaning under control, I can manage to dust occasionally and run the vacuum to keep the dirt down.
Today was cleaning day. I'm very thankful that this young woman is available to help me out.
And very happy to have the spider webs gone.
Each day in August you are to post about something that makes *you* happy. Pretty simple. And, it doesn't even have to be every day if you don't want it to be. It's a great way to remind ourselves that there are positive things going on in our lives, our communities, and the world.
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
The Clothes Dryer
I do a lot of laundry, considering there are only two people here.
My husband can go through three changes of clothes in a day, working on the farm. In the winter, there are extras - insulated coveralls, jackets, thermal underwear.
If I don't stay on top of it, stuff piles up.
Saturday is always change-the-bed day. However, the day after Christmas, I suggested we wait and change it on Sunday because I had not done the laundry for two days plus we'd each received new clothing. All of that needed to be washed.
I put my husband to work taking a few items from his closet. It's the rule - new clothes in, old clothes must come out.
I washed a load of clothes, hung them up. Turned around and loaded the dryer with a load of towels.
I turned the dial and there was nothing. It moved freely. This dial on this dryer had always been a bear to turn; even my husband found it difficult to move around the circle.
Now it moved and nothing happened.
I bought the dryer on February 21, 2019. It hadn't even hit two years yet.
"The dryer won't run," I yelled. He came in and twisted the dial.
"The timer is broken," he said.
I went to the warranty drawer (yes, I am organized enough that I have a warranty drawer), and pulled out the file marked GE Dryer 2019. I had purchased a 3-year extended warranty through Lowes.
First I tried to call. I ended up somehow with GE, even though I'd called Lowe's, and was informed the one-year manufacturer's warranty had ended.
My husband took the phone from me and went through the menu options again, this time getting the correct place.
He was on the phone for over an hour. The customer service person, whom we shall call Miriam, did everything she could think of to keep from having to pay out on this warranty claim. She asked for non-existent numbers, non-existent invoices, etc., etc.
My husband, finally, had had it.
"Let me get this right. I'm sitting here with a receipt for a warranty I paid $130 for, and a receipt for a dryer that I paid for, and you're telling me because there isn't some number that you think I am supposed to have, that you're not going to service this dryer. Is that what you're telling me?" His voice was terse and his jaw was set.
But yes, that was what she was telling us. She would, however, set up an appointment with their factory repair people and someone would be in touch.
In the meantime, I had a load of wet towels to deal with. I have a clothes rack, so I put it up in the kitchen next to a space heater and eventually got the towels dry. They were stiff as a board, but they were dry.
My husband watched a video on how to fix the dryer at some point during the day.
Sunday night, as we were getting ready for bed, I had a thought. "You know, I've always turned that dial clockwise," I told my husband. "Maybe I should try turning it counterclockwise."
He laughed at me.
I went in to the laundry room and turned the dial counterclockwise. After a few turns, it started making the strange ticking sound it had always made when I turned it before. I stopped it on a drying cycle, and hit the start button.
It ran.
My husband cursed.
That wasn't the end of it, of course. Monday morning he rose at 5 a.m., because he had to feed. He threw a load of his thermal underwear in the washer and put it in the dryer.
I watched the timer. It went a little long, but it dried the clothes. He left to feed and I tossed another load in the washer. This time, the dryer didn't want to work as well. It stopped before the clothes were dry. I backed it up and started it again.
When my husband came back from feeding, I told him the dryer still wasn't working right. He called Tribles, which is a place that carries appliance parts, and told them what he needed.
They had a timer.
He went after it. I emptied out the laundry room so he'd have room to work. He came home, replaced the timer, and just like that, we were back in the laundry business.
We cancelled the appointment with the repair person.
I learned several things. First, I will never, ever buy the extended warranty from Lowes again. In all likelihood, I will never purchase another appliance from Lowes. Their customer service is simply awful.
Second, I had no idea how much my life revolved around doing the laundry. I hop up and down every 45 minutes to go wash something or dry something. I also like doing it.
Lastly, this thing of planned obsolescence that the manufacturers have going on simply is horrible for consumers. A $600 dryer should last me a very long time, not less than two years.
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
The Mattress Saga
I initially thought it had something to do with the ankle surgery he had in November. I solved the problem by bringing a kitchen chair into the bedroom so he could sit and put on his shoes.
However, when Saturday came and it was time to change the linens, I discovered that the mattress on his side of the bed was bulging out about three inches. Super bulging, actually. This was why he couldn't sit on the bed - the mattress was collapsing.
We'd purchased the mattress in June 2012. At that time, my husband was complaining constantly of his back hurting and I thought a new mattress would help the problem; it did. Score one for the wife.
I hunted up the warranty paperwork. To find the warranty, it said, one had to look at the "do not remove" tag on the mattress.
This tag was hidden from me, as we have a hypoallergenic cover on the mattress. And of course the tag, once I felt around for it, was not at the end that opened. The mattress cover had to be removed.
This mattress is huge and fat. It weighs about 150 pounds. I can barely lift a corner to get the sheets tucked in properly. After much cursing, tugging, and pulling, I got the mattress cover off and threw it in the wash.
I took pictures of the tag with the information I needed. My husband came in and helped me put the now-clean mattress cover back on it. We left the tag at the zipper end. We also turned the mattress so that the bulge was down at my feet and not at our upper bodies.
We'd purchased this mattress from Haverty's. Haverty's went out of business locally in 2013, though I understand the chain still exists in other places. Nowhere near us, though.
I contacted the furniture store we use now, and asked if they could help. The manager called me back with a number to call for the mattress manufacturer. I called that number. A nice woman told me that my mattress still was under warranty but I should deal with the store from which I bought the mattress.
After much explaining, she understood that the store is no longer in my area. The mattress warranty then fell under the mattress manufacturer. They needed pictures. They needed to be sure the mattress wasn't soiled or otherwise misused. They also needed a picture of the silk tag identifying the mattress.
The silk tag, of course, was at the end of the mattress under the cover and not where the thing zips up.
We waited until the next Saturday, because I change the bed linens every weekend, to take the mattress cover off again and take pictures. We took every photo I could think to take, including one with a ruler showing the bulge, and measurements of the mattress across the bottom and at the bulge. We could also see that the mattress was bulging on the sides in other areas, so total failure at some point was imminent.
The is the biggest bulge in the mattress. |
Our effort to measure the bulge. |
I went to the website and submitted the photos, the warranty information, the receipt, and everything else they had asked for.
Then I received a notice that they needed more pictures. Sigh.
I called to see what they needed, because I couldn't imagine what there was left to take a photo of. The helpful person on the phone put me on hold, reviewed the photos, and immediately approved my claim.
Then she looked up what an exchange mattress would be, because mattresses do not stay the same. They change every year, like clothing, so that you can't go back the following year and purchase the exact same mattress.
It seems to me that if one makes a good product, one should stick with that, but I'm not a manufacturer or in retail, so perhaps there is some profit motive I am missing. I also think a mattress with a 10-year full replacement warranty and 25 years of some kind of restitution after that would last at least 10 years, but it didn't. (I think refrigerators, dishwashers, and washers and dryers also should last a good 25 years or more, like they used to do, but they don't anymore.)
At any rate, the next step was to test the mattress the helpful lady said would be the replacement.
The furniture stores here are not completely closed. They have limited hours. But I have been trying hard to self-isolate (up until yesterday) because of my asthma and my propensity to catch every virus that flies past me in the air.
So we did not go straight out to test a mattress. The company gave us 90 days to do that because of the current shut-downs and the virus situation.
Since we had to go out yesterday to take care of my husband's retirement paperwork, we decided to go by the furniture store and check out the mattress. My husband had called around on Saturday and found a store that had one.
When we reached the store, they would not allow us in because they were limiting patrons to 10 at a time. I did not mind the wait. I thought this was a good thing. One person came out and the man doing the counting said one of us could go in. I told my husband to go in and check out the mattress and then he could come out and I could go check out the mattress. He put on his mask and went inside.
Later another person left and the man motioned that I could join my husband. I put on my mask and went inside. I tested the mattress, which my husband thought was great. I thought it was a little hard but I actually sleep on a bed wedge anyway, for the most part, and not on the mattress.
My husband said that was the mattress he wanted.
Yesterday I called the mattress company again to order the mattress. I was told that (a) the plant is not operating at the moment and (b) if I ordered one now, it would be delivered to the doorstep and dropped off. Or I could wait and call back after May 15 and see if they were bringing items into homes and setting up the mattresses.
The man on the phone told me the new mattress would weigh 153 pounds. That is very heavy.
The part of me that is concerned about off-gassing from this mattress wouldn't mind letting it sit in the garage for a few days before we tried to sleep on it. However, the part of me that knows there is no way my husband and I could remove the old mattress and bring in the new one won out, and I will call back after May 15.
In the meantime, I am hoping the mattress holds together and we don't end up on the floor. We don't have a spare bedroom and the couch isn't made for sleeping.
I don't think this is something duct tape can fix.
So we've also had this going on in the midst of this pandemic. A sagging mattress. It is always something.
Monday, March 23, 2020
Thrift Store Jungles
Decluttering.
Organizing.
Rearranging.
Goodwill and similar resources will be the recipients of discarded, yet still useful, items, I suppose.
I don't go into Goodwill not because I'm too good for it but because it smells like my attic. I don't go in my attic, either.
Both upset my allergies.
This is not the time to have a yard sale, not when folks are supposed to be separated and no more than 10 people in an area at a time. Perhaps in 10 weeks there will be lots of yard sales.
The last time I went to a yard sale was probably 20 years ago. I went in the early hours and the dew was still wet on everything. I slipped on the asphalt at the home with a steep driveway and fell. I tore my pants, bruised up my arm, and bent my glasses.
Not a soul saw me fall, as best I could tell. If they did, they didn't say anything.
I picked myself up and went home, and haven't been to a yard sale since. If I were an eBay seller, though, I would go to yard sales and auctions because people rid themselves of nice stuff sometimes. However, I am not an eBay seller.
Most folks have too many things. Sometimes there is a good reason for replacements or buying new. For example, I have sneakers that I replace every six months. They're still basically good shoes, they've just worn too much for my feet. I have very picky feet that require a stiff-soled shoe. After a while, the soles become loose and I begin having pain. That's when I know it's time to buy a new pair of shoes.
I don't think I've bought a pair of worn shoes. I wonder if they really sell them at Goodwill, or do they go to some other place to be melted down or whatever one might do with a shoe.
Other times, though, people buy new things for unknown reasons. I have a pair or two of shoes that I doubt I will ever wear again, shoes I bought to wear to a special event. I wonder when we will have special events again.
At any rate, when the curfews are lifted and we're all free to go back to browsing things, I look for eBay and the local thrift stores to have loads of stuff available because people are home going through boxes and realizing they've done without this whatsit for 10 years so they may as well rid themselves of it.
I am not doing any of that at the moment. I am home all the time anyway and I clear stuff out when the mood strikes me. Besides, the things I need to clear out are generally papers and they need to be burned or shredded, not sent to a thrift store.
Maybe clearing a shelf would be good therapy, though. Perhaps I'll give it a go, and send my own things to the thrift store jungles.
Monday, April 01, 2019
The Curtains Came Down
And yet, when I visited her bathroom, I would find people and objects in the linoleum. I even talked to them.
Along the bus route, I found a dinosaur in a tree stump and visited with it every day as we passed by. How sad I was when the following year I realized the stump had been removed by the landowner, and the dinosaur was no more.
It is like finding shapes in clouds, something most of us do as children, only I tend to see them in places where they do not exist - or are not supposed to exist. I see lines that, if I could draw, would magically become art. A unicorn here, a sobbing woman there, a guitar elsewhere.
Nothing with a design is safe from my imagination. As a child I feared electric sockets not because they shocked me, but because they had a face - two eyes and a mouth. When we built our house, my father, who was helping us wire it (you could do that 32 years ago), asked if we wanted the receptacles "monkey face up or monkey face down." I immediately responded "monkey face up" because when the receptacles are upside down I don't see the face. At the time most things were two-pronged plug-in items anyway. How was I to know that in the not-so-distant future most everything would have three prongs, and sometimes the monkey-face-up thing can be a pain?
Anyway, this ability, if one wants to call it that, has followed me into my middle age (Is 55 middle-aged?). The new tile we put down in the kitchen has no obvious designs in it, yet I see a woman. A dolphin shows itself in the tile in the bathroom. Even the new hardwood floors has little critters in them. Fortunately, I only seem them in passing, fleeting images as I walk over. If asked, I could not find it again.
Do you see the woman in this tile? Or maybe it looks more like a bird. |
The new curtains were a nice shade of dark blue in design on a whitish background. But they weren't up long before I realized there were faces in the things. Everywhere. And not nice faces, either. Evil faces.
Do you see the multiple tribe of people in this design? |
He thinks I am silly, but I am glad to be rid of those curtains.
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
End in Sight
The bedroom is getting new flooring today. |
Bedroom drawers in the living room. |
Parts of the living room in the kitchen. |
This is home renovation at its finest. Even here in my office, my most sacred space, I have piles of items around me, things that belong elsewhere. No free space has been spared of a drawer or box.
Stuff in my office. Yikes! |
My house hasn't been this wrecked in years. I guess the last time would have been 2005, when we put down the carpet we are now ridding ourselves of in favor of hardwood flooring.
I have been trying to work on our taxes but it is very hard to think with all of this going on. This morning I went through dresser drawers in the living room, filling a nice big box for donations and another with trash. I threw away every pair of panty hose I own. I have no plans to ever put on a pair again. I always hated those things.
Anyway, the work continues. I'm still here. I know I am privileged to be able to do this, to update my home a bit. We're trying to make it easy for the next 20 years, because we both plan to die here. So we've put handrails in the showers, we're making the floor care easier, and I'm tossing out items whilst we are in the midst of this.
All is good. Just very, very tiring.
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Flooring Update
They started tearing up the carpet in the living room and installing the engineered hardwood flooring yesterday.
Here are some photos:
Replaced tile. Notice the carpet on the lower right. |
Tile against the carpet. |
Ta da! Hardwood flooring! |
Hardwood flooring against the tile. |
Close up of tile against the hardwood. |
Friday, January 25, 2019
Flooring Update
The old tile was removed in about an hour. This should have taken all day, but the initial tile was so poorly installed that if we hadn't had it taken up within a few months we would have started noticing cracks and tiles breaking.
Essentially the only thing holding the tile to the floor was the grout.
Now the new tile is down, and as best we can tell, it has no raised corners to stumble over. We could also tell it was put down with a much better quality of workmanship by a man who takes pride in his work.
This still needs to be grouted. The area by the door with the blue specks are tiles that were installed this morning. |
After the kitchen is grouted and that is dry, then we will move all the stuff piled in the living room into the kitchen, and tear up the carpet and install hardwood flooring. |
Hopefully in 10 days or so my life will be restored to some semblance of normal. In the meantime, I'm trying not to stress over things. However, I'm the kind of girl who worries about everything, so of course I'm stressing over all of this.
But it is what it is.
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
They Broke the Oven
My oven is a Jenn-Air, and it was expensive when we purchased it about 30 years ago. I don't know how it was broken as I wasn't here, and I don't know if there is other damage to the oven. The tile man has managed to locate the only single existing piece of glass for this oven door in the entire United States and is having it shipped here, but that doesn't relieve my anxiety about whether or not the door seals have been compromised.
A new Jenn-Air is expensive - about $3,500, actually. So I am guessing the tile man is hoping this piece of glass he's ordered really does fix things. Otherwise someone's insurance will be buying me a new stove. I have no issues with my oven so I don't know whether to hope the glass fits or not. I had no plans to replace my oven. It has worked just fine all of this time and if it isn't broke I don't replace things simply to replace them.
In the meantime, the old tile that was laid in early October came up incredibly easy, almost by hand, because the first tile-layers did such a crappy job. My husband said the only thing holding the tile down was the grout, basically. That turned out to be good because no jackhammers or other heavy equipment was necessary to get the tile out, and it mostly came up in single pieces. These will be donated to Habitat for Humanity for reuse in someone else's home, according to the tile contractor, since they are in good shape.
The other trauma that happened yesterday involved some adhesive crap that the tile people spread all over the cement. I don't know why my husband didn't stop them, because it smells and everyone has been told 100 times that I am sensitive to chemical odors and have asthma. Nevertheless, this stuff was put down.
It smells terrible and after a little while my lips started tingling and swelling, which is where I tend to react to things. We left for a while to eat dinner and go to Lowes, and it was still stinking when we returned, so we left the windows open and the furnace on (our light bill will be hideous this month) and left to spend the night at my mother-in-law's house.
We came back early this morning (around 6:15 a.m.) and have been trying to air out the house so it doesn't smell so. James is hoping that once the tile is over the stinky stuff the odor will dissipate even more. The odor isn't bothering me quite so much but I am staying back in my office with the door shut and I also have taken extra allergy medication.
This adventure living during a renovation is not for me, I have to say.