The Joys of Homeownership

We’ve been very lucky.  We bought an old house and we haven’t had anything really go wrong with it.  It needs work, but we haven’t had any emergencies.  Which is why I wasn’t totally surprised when I got up this morning and found a puddle on the kitchen floor and water dripping from the ceiling.

At first we assumed it was a leaky radiator pipe.  We called our plumber (who is, of course, snowed in) and prepared to wait without heat until the pipe was repaired.  But when we went outside to shovel we noticed big icicles on the back of the house.  And Janie noticed that she could hear dripping from inside the back wall on the second floor.  So I was sent up to the roof to check out the gutters which were overflowing with slush.  Which I fixed by chipping at the ice with a screwdriver, garden spade, and hammer while kneeling in a puddle of slush in front of a 30 foot drop.  Problem solved (sort of).  We still aren’t sure how the water was getting into the walls.

Cleaning the rain barrel.

Today I drained and put away the rain barrel for the winter.  We recently realized that if it froze, the overflow wouldn’t work and the barrel would probably crack.  And, if the conditions were right, we’d end up with an ice rink in the backyard.  Which would be nice now that I think about it.  Anyway, the top of the barrel is covered with the stuff that washes off the roof into the gutters (and floats).  It’s mostly big seeds from the birds.  But today I found this very strangely shaped seed.  It’s also from a bird.

Tomatoes

Janie and I got back from Spain today and found lots of ripe tomatoes in the garden.

Bikes!

Can you count all the bicycles in the garage?

New Kitchen Floor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Janie decided the kitchen floor was way too gross.  She did all the work.  I (Brad) did a little troubleshooting and posed with the nail gun.  Stewart helped too.

Gordo

There are a lot of cats in our neighborhood.  We call this one Fatty.  He used to hang out on top of the pile of carpet padding in the garage (the door doesn’t quite close all the way).  You can’t tell from the photo, but he’s really, really fat.  We were worried that we had a pregnant cat in our garage, but don’t worry, he’s just morbidly obese.  I finally started throwing away all the old carpet so his perch is gone and he doesn’t come around as often.

1/4″ to 3/8″ Adapter

Janie bought a paint stirrer to stir the 5 gallons of white paint we bought for painting the kitchen, trim, etc.  But when she tried to use it she found that the stirrer is 3/8″.

Our vintage drill (a hand-me-down from Dad)…

…is 1/4″.

So after failing to find some sort of 1/4″ to 3/8″ adapter, Janie taped a 1/4″ drill bit to the stirrer with packing tape.  And it worked!  Low rpms only, please.

Our paratrooper

This is our kitchen sink light pull/wedding ring holder.  It works so well, our wedding rings spend more time here than on our fingers.  Man, that wall is disgusting.

Who has no arms and legs and lies on the floor?

Some people have their cats declawed so they don’t scratch the furniture.  Stewart doesn’t really scratch our furniture, but we went one step further and had his legs removed.

Fingers

Kate got Waldie’s big fingers in the art swap.