Sunday Update: Week 14 - Home Edition

Last week was all about home and hearth, folks.  And most of the big stuff, my husband did. 

Here the deal.  We bought this house a year ago, and ever since, we've been doing things to make it a home.  The first thing we had to do was secure the house against water.  You see, we live on the downslope of a hill.  Every time it rained, the water coming down the hill at us would cheerfully run right under the house.  (The people who built this place didn't bother sealing the foundation.) So, Hubs dug the foundation, slapped sealant on it, and then moved a shit-ton of retaining wall blocks into place.  Together we filled the new space with topsoil and gardening soil and potting soil to make gardens.

The crawl space is now dry.  Yay.

We also noticed that the former people here didn't bother with gutter on the north side of the house, so we paid some nice folks to come gutter up the place.

The unfinished water heater room is now dry, too.

Then we noticed that our dry crawl space had new dampness.  Hubs' shower was leaking.  A couple small holes in his bathroom wall and a simple tightening of loose fittings later and...

The underside of our house is dry.  Super yay!

Oh, almost forget the vent pipe through the roof that wasn't flashed or sealed, so every time it rained, water ran through that.  Thank goodness Hubs isn't afraid of heights*.  We bought a gasket thingie and he scampered up there to get that taken care of.  (He's so handy.)

So, anyway, all of that is done.  What we're doing now is hitting the next phase of our to-do list.

- electric
- pests
- plumbing
- cosmetic stuff
- painting or stripping or sanding the orange off the outside of the house

Last week... bet you were wondering when I'd actually get to last week... we had an electrician drop by and do a total walk through.  Hubs pointed out all the things we've been concerned about.  The Electric Dude (E.D.) pointed out a few others.  They came to an agreement about what would get done and E.D. called back with a quote - which was actually less than Hubs had estimated.  E.D. will be here Monday and possibly Tuesday to do the work.  (Under budget and quick turnaround?  That's what I call service.)

We also scheduled service for taking care of the pests.  This Friday, a pest control dude... PCD... will be coming to give our home and yard a thorough spritzing.  Which is good because as I was typing about the water problems, what I believe was a German cockroach skittered down the curtain next to my desk and I damn near had a conniption.  Also, the ticks have arrived with the warmer weather.  Little bastards.  PCD will arrive and KILL THEM ALL.  Without harming us or our pets or the local fur and feathers crew, btw. (Plus, the Dude specializes in Brown Recluse spiders.  Which are all over this area.  :shudder:)

And lastly, I did something I've been meaning to do for a while now.  I scheduled eye appts for both of us.  I know we both need glasses.  This whole getting older thing blows.  My question is whether a regular optometrist can even work with me and my stupid damaged eye.  (the accident caused... ahem... 'Partial paralysis of the 4th nerve of the left eye'... which causes occasional double vision - like when my eyes are tired.  Like after a day of computing or reading.)  :shrug:

So, between all that and everything else?  Well, I signed up for a month of Ancestry.com.  Yeah, that, too.

Which led me to decide that I would be taking this month off writing.  (Which I wasn't doing so well at anyway, so no hugely hard decision there.) 

Of course, as soon as I said I wouldn't be writing in April, my muse went... "Hey, what if we do this and then that?!"  So I jotted some notes in a spiral bound notebook. 

Sorry for the long and winding post, but that's where I'm at right now - the long and winding. 

How are things in your world?