I know. It's been a while. A long while. But the only interesting things that have happened since my last post have been time consuming things. Like the water leak. Oh, yeah. The water line coming into the house came apart. Literally. Two pieces of pipe. Not connected. Pond in Juli's yard. My friend (and for a brief time, till the novelty of running water in my house wore off again, a minor god) Michael is a bit of a plumber, so he said, "Let's take a look." I wasn't sure I should let him get involved in my problem, but aren't other people's projects always more fun than one's own? Of course they are. I would be cruel to deny him a weekend of avoiding his own chores. So we started digging a hole where the water seemed the worst, which was right where the line comes into the house. We got about six inches underground when we discovered a repair job - I use the term loosely. It was a lousy repair job. Really lousy. They had used couplings instead of joints and cement, and one of the pipe ends (they use PVC down here where the ground doesn't feeze) was cut at such an angle that the "lower" end barely touched the coupling. No wonder it came apart when the ground was dry and shifting during our drought!
At this point, I believe, Michael's involvement switched from "casual task avoidance/helping a friend" to "righteous affrontery," that someone could do such a shoddy repair job. But something was not right. The water was shut off at the street, and still the meter spun... and spun... and spun. Turns out that my shut-off vavle was more of a trickle-through valve. We couldn't get the water completely shut off, no matter what we tried. That explained why the former owners had done what they did, but I? I called the city and told them to get their asses out here... I mean, I requested that someone replace the shut-off valve so that we could complete the repair. Two days later, the valve was fixed and my line was repaired. Joy.
I believe that I did promise you some pictures of the recently-painted entryway - the one that took me two weeks to paint, 4-8 hours per day, because of a little issue with latex paint not sticking to the underlying oil paint. Turns out primer didn't even help much. Anyway.
The floor hardly ever looks this clean. Don't worry; I'm still me.
See... every bit of white is latex over oil, so I had to edge in the grey using, basically, an oversized putty knife to protect the white. I had to wipe it off every two or three lengths. It took forfrigginever. But doesn't it look NICE? It's the only thing in the house that looks the way I planned it.
At this point, I believe, Michael's involvement switched from "casual task avoidance/helping a friend" to "righteous affrontery," that someone could do such a shoddy repair job. But something was not right. The water was shut off at the street, and still the meter spun... and spun... and spun. Turns out that my shut-off vavle was more of a trickle-through valve. We couldn't get the water completely shut off, no matter what we tried. That explained why the former owners had done what they did, but I? I called the city and told them to get their asses out here... I mean, I requested that someone replace the shut-off valve so that we could complete the repair. Two days later, the valve was fixed and my line was repaired. Joy.
I believe that I did promise you some pictures of the recently-painted entryway - the one that took me two weeks to paint, 4-8 hours per day, because of a little issue with latex paint not sticking to the underlying oil paint. Turns out primer didn't even help much. Anyway.
The floor hardly ever looks this clean. Don't worry; I'm still me.
See... every bit of white is latex over oil, so I had to edge in the grey using, basically, an oversized putty knife to protect the white. I had to wipe it off every two or three lengths. It took forfrigginever. But doesn't it look NICE? It's the only thing in the house that looks the way I planned it.
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