Rehabber’s Rehab

We’d been pretty unhappy with the electrician, from his constant complaining, scratching up our newly refinished floors, and leaving messes around, he has been one of our least favorite contractors (although I am sure he has not liked this project either as he is deathly allergic to cats, and has been miserable the whole time).  But when I mentioned my biggest pet peeve to him, that the two plugs in the bathroom above the sink were not level with one another, I was told that it would be “no problem” to fix it.

So when I came home from work tonight, and went in the bathroom and saw the GIANT hole in the wall indicating he had fixed it, I figured it was no problem, no big deal.  I said “so…I guess the electrician was here.”  Thor had been home for a couple of hours at the time and replied “yup, he was just finishing up a couple of things.”  Thor seemed happy with having our electrical work done. I asked Thor if the electrician was done, and he repplied in the affirmative, everthing looked good.  I asked Thor if the two electrical boxes were level now, and he said “huh?  The electrical boxes?”

He then went into the bathroom.

“*Fudge! Gosh Darn it!  Gosh darn child of an un kind woman! What the fudge!  What the fudge was he thinking.  That fudging incompetent unmentionable…” and so on.  And on.

Meanwhile I am in the kitchen wondering what just happened.  I ask him if he’s hurt.  Because if this was about the hole in the wall, how had he managed to miss it the previous two hours while he was home.  To which Thor replied “*Fracking butt eater.  He put a giant hole in the wall.  In my newly dry-walled forking wall!”

I guess he hadn’t noticed.

The house was dark when I came in tonight, but that was no surprise since Thor was out working.  I turn on the kitchen light, and nothing happens.  Maybe I flipped the wrong switch?  I’m still not used to even having light switches that turn things on.  Nope, the other switch doesn’t work either.  Now I start to worry.  I walk through the house trying to turn on every thing I can, and each time am met with the same result: nothing.  There is no power anywhere to anything, and the house is incredibly cold.

This is more than a blown fuse.  Did we even have fuses any more?  I call Thor, and he has no idea, but suggests maybe ComEd came and switched our service.  I go outside, and sure enough, the meter had been removed and the original power lines that fed into the house had been cut.

We were pretty hesitant to try and turn the new electrical panel on ourselves.  We vaguely recalled being warned about messing with “something” that if touched could basically blow the house up.  So what followed was a series of phone tag between myself, Thor, Matt, the head electrician, and then the guy who has been working on our house, and a few frantic calls to the power company’s various voice mails.  The result was me sitting in the dark and cold in-between running out to the car to keep my phone charged up wondering why in the hell the electric company hadn’t let us know that they were going to switch our power.

The electrician finally showed up (he had been dragged from his sick bed by his boss), it turned out to be a pretty simple matter of first checking to make sure the connection to the old box was off so the house didn’t blow up.  Then as he flipped the on switch to the new panel I could hear the furnace rumble to life, and the rest of the house turn itself back on.

Framing complete, plumbing roughed-in, and electrical racing to get done. That can mean only one thing, INSPECTIONS.

Inspections are like the big toll bridge and the inspectors are the trolls. If you fail your inspections you cannot pass go or collect (spend) $200. The next month is huge for us, because I actually have two weekends off to work. So in theory we could do insulation the first weekend, an insulation inspection during the week, and then drywalling the next weekend. Then the spackler could come in, followed by the floor guy, and some quick painting which would allow us to install the cabinets after Christmas just before the new year. That would be a level of completion that we thought was impossible just a couple of weeks away.

But this whole schedule rested on the decisions of inspectors who could ridicule the slightest problem.

(more…)

You might have noticed our site was hacked.  They got in through our photo gallery.  It’s a Wordpress plugin that I have really enjoyed, NexGen Gallery.  I am still figuring out how to make it more secure in the future but still get it to run. Things were looking fine yesterday, and today it’s just exploded.   I’ve gotten a billion messages from my web hostinging service.  I guess it’s good to know they care.

Some folks are pretty on top of things, I’ve gotten several e-mails and comments as well.  I’m only moderately technically savvy - enough to keep things barely running normally.  Looks like some wachovia thing.  No wonder those guys got bought up.

Why, why, why would someone attack our poor innocent little house blog?  Sometimes people suck.

I have been feeling oppressed by my house lately.  This has been coming on for about a week or two now.  If you have noticed a lack of posts, it is in direct correlation with (what feels like) a lack of work.  When we are busy working on projects, walls are coming down, windows are going up, I feel good.  Although the situation is not ideal, we are making progress that gets us closer to the end.  Lately, through, it seems that I have been living with 2×4 studs and dirty floors forever.  Instead of coming home from work and having a wave of relaxation and relief wash over me as I sit on the couch and take my shoes off, I just look at the dirty floor and insulation flecks on the couch and feel my skin start to crawl. 

I can barely stand to take a shower any more.  The bathroom is so disgusting and dirty, and cold.  It is impossible to keep warm with the draft that blows in between the plastic sheets.  It used to be that my shower is what got me going in the morning.  Now it is a thing I dread getting out of bed for.

Thor tells me I am a trooper, and to keep it up, and I just sigh.  I don’t even feel up to telling him where to shove it anymore.

Things are happening at the house.  The plumber was there all last week.  But the things he is doing are largely imperceptible.  Sure, a new copper pipe appears out of the wall every once in a while, but it hasn’t changed my life any.  The water pressure is still as bad as ever.

But, real change is happening today.  As I type, Randy, Thor and Matt are ripping off the roof of the sunroom and putting a new one on.  I only hope they have it back up when I get home, because it is supposed to be 28 degrees outside tonight.