Sunday, December 8, 2013

Eclectic Expansion by Guest Blogger

    
Eclectic Expansion

Construction hasn't moved for several days. I think they were waiting for an inspection. To date, we have a foundation, cross beams in the subfloor, plumbing for the half-bath (not totally attached yet), and a stack of insulation in the backyard.

Bounty is learning that he is now to go outside via the side door, and there is less dirt inside the house. While it's less, it's still quite a bit; dusting one day doesn't do much good as the next day there's another layer of dust on everything. Someone wise told me it will stay that way until the construction workers wave goodbye to me.

The water poltergeist is unhappy. H-2-Uh-Oh is still around, yes. We know this because in the last week the filtration stopped in the aquarium, the plumbing has air in it, and when I tried to take a shower tonight, the water was brown. Well, until it stopped flowing completely it was brown. Oh, and Harry's new coffeepot is leaking all over the counter, but only when it's unplugged. Bizarre.

The dominoes continue and we've added stuff to our construction. Now we're involving our existing bathrooms, too. We came home one day to see the bottom corner of our bathtub through the side wall, where construction/destruction had peeled away the stucco. It didn't take us long to make the obvious connection -- if they're already that far into the wall, they can fix the plumbing to that tub. The bathtub hasn't truly worked in years. When our friend was staying here in '97/'98, we had a garden hose hooked up to run water into the tub via the sink. Not convenient when you want to trickle in just a bit more hot water. I'm not sure I can imagine what it'd be like to have a tub again.

And while they're at it, the shower, which backs against the tub, using one "wet wall" (sounds kinky, don't you think?) is having some issues, too, so why not fix it at the same time?

The quote I got for the bathrooms also contains new sinks and tile inserts. Meanwhile, we battle with the boxes from our move out and in for the floors and we've gradually realized we just don't have enough storage space. So...

... we got a quote for cabinets in the computer room, too, from a different guy. (And Harry wants a pathway to the shop for when it rains and we're going to need some kind of covering for the window seat and we need carpet in the new room before the pool table comes home and and and.)

We realized we didn't have enough money as well as enough cabinets. So back to the bank we went. Two hours worth of paperwork, fifteen signatures (each), and today I looked online and we have a brand new equity line of credit.

The amount is more money than I've ever been responsible for in my life. It's exciting. It's invigorating. And it's terrifying.

It's also, apparently, HexHouse's year.
 


Copyright 2013 Michelle Hakala
http://www.winebird.com/

    

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