A Sunday in December

Creaky morning after such a big push on Saturday. We had a bunch of small things left on our list for the weekend. I got up, made coffee, started washing dishes and foolishly (and apropos of nothing) said to John, "I'm glad we don't have to go in the crawlspace today."

A few minutes later I was draining the dishwater and heard a funny sound under the sink. Busted drain line! John checked under the house and sure enough, there was soapy water making a lake on the vapor barrier. So, after a bowl of oatmeal for fortification, it was into the crawlspace with me.

I pushed up on the drain, John screwed the fitting back together in the kitchen, and then I put a piece of strapping under the elbow for good measure. Mopped up the puddle. Onward.

We plan to have our main electrical line moved to a different point on the outside of the house. (That's because it now takes a pathway between the power pole and the house that crosses right over our second-floor deck—according to our home inspector, "the most outrageous safety violation [he'd] ever seen.") All the eaves and trim on that side of the house need to be scraped and painted, and I figured I'd do the area where the electrical line will be going. Then we can have it moved and I can scrape the rest. And so, John helped me put the ladder in place and I climbed up there and did the deed. It started raining before I could finish the painting, but what can you do?

Meanwhile, John was putting in clamp fittings to support the pex lines that come inside from the Heatmor and go to the water heater. These have been flopping over and looking unprofessional. Now they're all nice and square.

Next up: A whole bunch of cleaning. Can I tell you about the way we've been living since we started the kitchen ceiling project? All our kitchen stuff has been piled all over our living room. The dining room has had 4x8' sheets of plywood and drywall stacked in the middle of the floor, leaving small pathways around the edges of the room. Our table has been next to the kitchen window, meaning our cat thinks she has the right to sit on it and look outside and leave a thick layer of fur on the tabletop. Sawdust and filth has covered everything from the countertops to the couch. When we want an onion or a jar of nutmeg to add to our filthy dinner simmering on our filthy stove, we wedge ourselves between large objects in the living room and reach down onto a filthy attic step where the onions and spicerack are ignominiously stored.

So we fixed all that and now we feel much better.

- Erika