Sexy new ceilings and serious hot water

So - I have a confession. (bless me father for I have...)

Actually it's not nearly that good a confession, so don't get your hopes up. I did, sadly, have to contract out my first job. Sigh. I can no longer say it's all been done-myself. But, from this contracting I did get a fancy new on-demand water heater (tankless, very sleek, I feel all kinds of fancy with this thing!)

I went to the home-show this past weekend with Jan, Marg and an assortment of other folk and stopped to ask a local company about the tankless water heaters, which was kind of entertaining. The conversation went something like this:

KR (old-timey owner of water heater company): so how old is your current heater
Amy: Well, it was put in when the house was built, but I think it was second hand because it says 1978 on the side.
Long pause.
KR (to fellow water heater guy): What is the shelf life on a gas water heater?
Other water heater guy: 8-10 years, why?
Long pause.
KR (to me): Do you like your floors?

It was kind of funny actually because the water heater people were mildly panicked about my apparently antique water heater and rearranged their installation schedule to get me a new water heater on Tuesday (i.e. two days later). The whole thing had kind of the air of self-congratulation re. crisis averted. It felt like there should have been a champagne toast or confetti or something.

When they hauled the old one out they were remarking about it's unusual weight and the possibility that it was actually half filled with sediment. Lovely. So now I have a fancy-pants new water heater that is mounted outside, so if it malfunctions (which I have been assured it never does) it will malfunction on the grass, and not my floor.

Outside of that little bit of excitement Dad and I scraped the popcorn off the downstairs ceiling and he put in a ridiculous amount of work to get it sanded and patched and primed, so I have the uber-sexy smooth ceiling - which looks fabulous. Now I just have to figure out what I actually want to do with the downstairs. Ideas anyone? Color scheme? It's a ridiculously long room, so it could take some color, but I haven't thought beyond major repairs to actually form any ideas about style. The only think I've decided for sure is that I want to stain the concrete, but beyond that, I'm at a loss. All ideas welcome at this point!

The merit of reading instructions.

So, hypothetically speaking, if one were to discover a minor swamp in the bottom of the dishwasher because it has suddenly ceased to drain, should one:

a) shake one's fist and swear like a sailor?
b) disassemble the awkward-to-reach bottom/filter/outlet of the dishwasher?
c) check to make sure the drainage hose actually drains somewhere?
d) all of the above?

Um... So I chose D. Wasn't the right answer, but I chose D.

I took apart, in the smelly swamp of stale dishwasher water, all of the filter-bits and cleaned them to make sure water could drain out. I can not emphasize enough the disgustingness of this job - the filter had what looked like a rubberized mold layer on the bottom that jammed up all the little holes. Given the mold-plug over the filter, I sensed victory and ran the dishwasher again. Alas, no drainage except onto the floor where it over-filled.

Dad had the genius idea of disconnecting the outflow hose that drains into the garbage disposal and, like magic, the disconnected hose drained just fine into a bucket under the sink. That sent us scurrying around the house trying to find the garbage-disposal instructions to see what went wrong (they were in a baggie on the low shelf hidden behind my car in the garage. Obviously. Where else would they be?).

In the Troubleshooting Guide we find...
Problem: Dishwasher flooding
Possible Cause: Knockout drain plug still in place.
Solution: Fire the idiot that didn't read the instructions. Seriously.

No - actually it said Insert screwdriver in knockout plug and tap with hammer. But I'm sure they were thinking fire the idiot...

So, having knocked out the knockout drain plug, and reassembled the red-herring filters at the bottom of the dishwasher, I felt a fit of cleanliness come over me and sprayed out the inside of the dishwasher with "Awesome Orange" - the off-brand orange oil cleaner to 'really do the job right'. Huh.

After this, the dishwasher was spic and span and we gave it a test run.

This is when it turns into an "I Love Lucy" episode. Apparently "Awesome Orange" foams like mad, hence creating the foam-overflow river in my kitchen. The saddest part is, this is not the first time I've had the foam thing happen, but I'm not telling the other story.

So anyway, dad and I had to bale out the foam-filled dishwasher a few times throughout the cycle and then run it again to clean the thing out. After that, we stopped for lunch because by this point we'd frittered away the entire morning with the only productive part (the knockout drain) having taken all of 5 minutes. Best quote of the day happened when I asked dad if he wanted tea - he said, in a serious, slightly grim voice "Tea? We should be drinking rum."

The afternoon, however, was actually productive - we took up the laminate flooring that was slapped together over half of the living room (I'm assuming this was a well-intentioned attempt at making the house more attractive to buyers). Then we scraped the gross, smoke-stained popcorn ceiling off of the entire downstairs except for the kitchen. The kitchen, in a bold interior design move, was completely hermetically sealed with plastic like some freakish crime scene. Granted, it kept the kitchen clean, but it's kind of creepy now that it's past sundown.

The only bad part is that I just discovered this little piece that's supposed to go under the bottom-most filter in the dishwasher sitting on my kitchen counter, innocently, as though it's supposed to be there... Damn.

Oh. My. God.

If any of your friends tell you that they're going to buy and remodel a house, and that they've never done that before then please pass along these well chosen words of advice. YOU ARE INSANE - GO TO THE MOVIES IN YOUR FREE TIME LIKE A NORMAL PERSON. I hurt everywhere. Everywhere. I hurt in places that I didn't know had muscles.


We closed Wednesday and three agents, 57 signatures, two trees worth of paper and one fire alarm later, I became the proud owner of one helluva house. Friday my parents and I actually came over with a load of tools, grungy clothes, patio furniture (currently the only furniture) and an air mattress and settled in to work.

Here was our to-do list over the weekend:
1. Fix the leak under the sink
2. Fix the outspout from the waterheater as it doesn't actually drain outside the house but rather directly into the wall (clever).
3. Remove satelite dish and accompanying mile or so of thick black wire which is strung carefully over every surface of the house.
4. Patch holes in attic to protect from "varmints" (my inspector actually said the word "varmints" in a sentence)
5. Patch holes in screens

Here's what we actually did:
1. Located the leak, which is actually from the dishwasher, which we are learning is made entirely from irreplaceable parts. It is located, but not fixed.
2. Detached half of the wire from the satellite dish, and pulled it out of the drilled holes in the siding and walls. The actual dish itself required different tools than I had while I was on the roof, so I left the roof and then forgot about the dish. Hmmm.
3. Patched for varmints. Wouldn't want any varmints.
4. Ripped the carpet off the stairs - potentially the most vile and repulsive of all activities. Never again will I have carpet in a house. I don't think I can bear to look at other people's carpet. Do you know what's under there? Do you? The dirt from under the carpet weighed more than the carpet itself. Completely repulsive.
5. Vented frustrations with a crobar on all those damn little spikey things that they use around carpet edges to fasten them down. There are still miles of them, but at least they're off the stairs and out of the living room.
6. De-popcorned not one but two ceilings. TWO! This is potentially the second most disgusting job ever because first you spray everything with water, liberally coating yourself in the process, then you scrape a thick layer of goo that smells like a beverage room from a motel from the 1950s off the ceiling directly on to your person. Repeat.

Essentially we worked all weekend, managed to inflame or somehow aggravate every muscle in our collective bodies, and completed one out of five of our goal tasks. Awesome. I'm going to curl up on my air mattress in my sleeping bag and pretend I'm at the Hilton.