Tuesday, February 25, 2014

We're cooking with gas!

In honor of 7,701 page hits on my blog, here is a picture of poodle fixing my range:


She worked really hard and to celebrate our ability to fry, sauté, bake, boil, simmer and otherwise cook with high heat, guess what I'm having for dinner.  A salad.  Huh.

While this was happening, a delivery truck was here.  I was expecting an 18-wheeler and while the truck may have had 18 wheels, it was one of those flatbeds with a fork lift velcroed onto the back.  You can see it parked a bit down the road.  These shrinkwrapped packages...


... turned into this:



There is also a box full of bathtub upstairs.  The two biggest cabinets (sink base and 30" base) were damaged but my contractors said they can fix them easily.  Four guys came over on their lunch hour and carried everything inside for me.  They.  Are.  Awesome.  Which reminds me - did I tell you what happened over the weekend?  At about 9:30 Friday night I suddenly had no water.

That's right, no water.

Seriously?  Just as I was getting a little excited about seeing progress next door, now I've got no water.  Talk about taking four steps back.  I'd be making more progress if I just turned around.  I was due to have company for the weekend and now I had no water.  Grr.

I spent a few hours online looking up "no water" and "no water pressure".  I learned a lot and can probably add "amateur plumber" to my resume, but I still couldn't figure out why I had no water.  The pressure tank sounded fine but the gauge was at zero.  I sent a text message to Jane, the broker who sold me this property and my only real friend in Morrisville at this point (the contractors work for her husband Nathan, and one of them is her son and one is her son-in-law), and went to bed hoping against hope I didn't need a new well pump.

Woke up Saturday morning to the phone ringing - it was Jane.  I really need to stop sending her distress signals, but she has been my savior many times over.  She sent Nathan and Dean (her son-in-law, who fixed all my plumbing next door) over and they figured out the problem in about five minutes.  It took about 15 minutes to wrap it all up because of the awkward way everything is installed in here.  See this thing?


I saw it Friday night while I was doing my diagnostics (heh, that makes me sound like a professional) but I couldn't tell what it was.  I had to reach my arm way behind the pressure tank and take a picture of it to see what the label said.  Turns out the guts of this baby don't make a full electrical connection unless the lid is screwed down tight, and we are guessing whoever installed it (the date on the label is 2012) couldn't reach back there to tighten the screws all the way.  Over time they wiggled loose and suddenly, on Friday night, they became just loose enough to lose the electrical connection.  Dean was contorting himself around the pressure tank to screw the lid back on, and Nathan was trying to lean over Dean so he could hold a flashlight in the right spot.  They saved my bacon.  I told Jane those boys are keepers.

And back to present day, when Erin, Jeff, Dean and a fourth guy (whose name I can't remember) came over to help move the cabinets inside, I told Dean I still have water.  He laughed and said he didn't!  On Sunday HIS water was off and he didn't get it back until Monday when he had to replace his water pump.  GET!  OUT!  I couldn't believe it.

Jumping back to the weekend, Kathy, Abby and Evan arrived Saturday at about 6pm.  They had the dubious honor of being the first people to sleep upstairs next door, even though there is no working bathroom over there.  First Evan fell asleep with poodle on mom's chaise:


Johnny came over on Sunday after finishing the Stowe Derby (you can read about that event here) to take a shower and regale us with tales of his athletic prowess.  He went back home Sunday afternoon but the other three stayed until Monday.  We watched Despicable Me 2 (GREAT movie) and made many a bracelet on Evan's Rainbow Loom:


Roxie was very sad when everybody went home, but she crashed right after dinner and was out for the count.

Tomorrow will be a painting day.  It's time to commit to a color for the kitchen cabinets and for the bathroom walls.  Tonight I'm going to assemble the cart I got for the pantry.  It's the least important thing I need to do, so of course I shall do it first.

Over and out.

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