Monday, August 10, 2009

What month is it?

I have to find a way to update this. Problem is the only time I have is at work, and the only time I can add photos is at home, where the is no such thing as time. I'll figure it out somehow, but today is just a faceless update with visuals left up to the imagination.

Tory and I bought a house (well actually we borrowed some money from the bank, and used it to buy a house. A house that was worth money that the person we gave it to had not spent on it in the first place. Strange.) Anyhow, it's a great house. It's old with arched doorways, an old heavy pewter door handle, 5 bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms (although if you took the random shower in the basement, and combined it with the 2 piece bathroom upstairs, it kinda makes 2?).

It has a yard. Priorities were the yard, and a potential space for a jam spot/recording studio. We got both and more for a really great price.

Now the cost, because we're obviously not rich, it can't be that easy. It was an old lady's house. She had been in a wheelchair for quite some time (we have a wheelchair ramp as well, which creates a halfway-up-the-driveway-before-coming-back-down-it sort of detour every time we need to get to one side of the backyard). She lived only on the main floor, never going upstairs or down, and never maintaining or cleaning a thing. She also had 2 dogs, that she rarely let outside. She also had a family who weren't the slightest bit interested in visiting or helping her with anything.

I hear people all the time going on about how much unexpected work they find when they buy a house. I get that, and was prepared, but I think the worst is when you're trying to prepare for that on top of all of the expected renovations that you're willingly taking on in the first place. Wow. It's been an interesting and exhausting ride since April 1st.

So far we've refinished all of the hardwood floors on 2 floors, gutted and redone the entire kitchen, and halfway through painting the living room and dining room. The kitchen was hell. Absolute hell. There were some days where both of us were just beyond frustrated and desperate for a tiny break. It gave us none. On top of that we were two busy vegans with no kitchen. No stove or fridge. Just a bar fridge in the basement, and a microwave and a kettle. Working your ass off while being severely malnourished takes absolutely everything out of you, and on top of that we were trying to get whatever we could done between our work schedules.

On top of that I found out that I have a disease called Pernicious Anemia, which made some days very difficult to function, especially when it had been a few weeks since an injection.

Everything in the house was wallpapered, some 2 layers, most the old kind with the actual glue used to make it adhere to the wall. All of the outlets had to be redone, and a stove/oven/dishwasher ancient combo had to be removed from being hardwired. The hose outside had almost non-existent pressure, and after trying to replace the valve, we busted a pipe in the ceiling of the basement. We learned how to solder pipes and fit plumbing quickly. We now have water pressure and dont have to stnd directly over top of eevry single plant while watering it. We cut a sink space in our countertop, and put together and assembled and mounted all of our cupboards.

We learned the downfall of painting over top of oil paint, and had to repaint our kitchen 7 times. Including the ceiling.

We dug out a gigantic garden borrowing our neighbor's rototiller. It was ancient, had a screwdriver balanced in the gas tank, and a rope holding the handle. It kind of worked, but because it had no pin, it had not control, and almost rode Tory around the yard.

We changed light fixtures, and bought a bed for the sole purpose of building the frame in our bedroom, because ours wont fit up the stairs.

We called Roto-Rooter when our basement backed up years of an old woman's shit. A product of our monstrous (and amazing) maple tree creeping into our pipes.

We scraped and painted our entire basement gaining a lung infection from the old paint and bad masks. We installed a faucet with a redirecting piece for a shower head, and sealed leaks in drains.

We unpacked our kitchen and finally got to cook a meal, and do the dishes in a functioning sink.

We puttied over the 140 pin holes where she had 140 pictures of King Charles Spaniels.

Not in that order, because I dont know what I did when. I dont even know what I'm doing today.

The last thing that I do remember in that house is that last night, covered in orange paint with a glass of vodka and cranberry juice, I got to watch an incredibly big loud storm in a sunroom full of windows. Worth every minute.

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