Big One Two: The Power Thingy Is Finally Done

After we moved, we realized that the power cables that came from the street pole were about to fall into pieces. Piece of crap. The cable must be old as the house (and according to the neighbors, who try to demonstrate the historic importance of the house, this was one of the first ones in the neighborhood!)





When I called the city to see if they could replace the cables, they said "yeah, sure, no biggie. There's a problem, though. Your meter doesn't comply with the code, and you need to move it to the west side of the house." It's a "wesside" meter now. The problem was that these cables shouldn't turn around a corner of the house as the old cable did (first picture up there), and it has to be at least 30 inches away from any window, and these cables are like two inches above two of our windows.

It took the electricians three days to finish the thing. They removed the old meter and installed a new one. Then they had to connect the meter to the switchboard (which was also replaced), and it wasn't easy, since they are in opposite sides of the house now. Anyway, it's done, it looks better, and above all, now I know that my power cables won't fall apart any minute now.

The red bubble shows the old cable from the pole to the part of the house where it goes around the corner. The old meter was in the back of the house (south side):


The new cable is in the red bubble, and the green circle surrounds the new meter. You can see where they cut the old cable. For some reason they left a little bit of it:


Old/New switchboard. We still have to cover that hole on top of the new switchboard, but we have like 200 projects to complete first...

The Nastiest Shed Ever

These guys used to have a dog in the shed. The shed was covered with straw, and surrounded by a kennel.





Problem: there was poop in the straw. Lots of it. The shed was so stinky, it wasn't even funny. So, after a few hours, and a bunch of garbage bags, later, we were done.



The shed now shelters our garden tools, and after having bleached the floor, thoroughfully sprayed the place with Fabreze, and letting two of those nice smelling cones that are supposed to di-stink rooms, the shed still smells like a zoo. Gosh, I hate that dog... Yeah, it was all the dog's fault...

It's doorless for now, but as soon as someone gives me a door, I'll fix that.

Big One One: The Tree's Gone!

I mentioned this huge, ugly tree that we had in the front of the house. It was ugly, the pine needles killed the grass, and it didn't let any light in. So, it's gone.

This is how the house looked with the pine (ugly):





View from inside the house (dark):



View from the back:



A friend of a friend of a friend came and chopped off the tree for really cheap. It took him three days, but he used most of that time cleaning up the branches. I wanted to film it, but I thought that the guy would have felt really uncomfortable, so I just took some pictures now and then. The process was very interesting. We noted that at some point or another, all of our neighbors came to see it, and also that the people that drove by had their heads in funny angles trying to see the guy in top of the tree.

The guy first cut the branches, from the bottom up.



Then, he started cutting the trunk, chunk by chunk.



End of the first day:





Final thing:



View from inside (with tree and blinds gone!)



The front of our house now:



Leftover wood (cheap!!!)

Paint

I definitively hate painting. But we finished the living room, so that's good. It's actually the hardest room to paint, because it's so big, and because it was painted this ugly dark brown, so it took like three coats of paint when we applied the lighter yellow.

The paint took forever to get here, because it's supposed to be this really good paint (Benjamin Moore), and we had to special order it.

We painted two of the walls Butter, and two Yellow Something. In this picture you can make up the butter color in the right, and the old brown in the left (the brown looks brighter than it actually is).



The Butter color in the opposite wall:



Comparing the three colors: The Butter (right), the old brown, and the Yellow Something (Left). I accept donations of new digital cameras.



Final thing:



The wall that connects with the kitchen had some ugly gray, 70s looking, counter tops, and I forgot to take a picture of them, but here they are after we ripped them off:



Wall without the counter tops:



After plastering and painting:



Meg wants to put some ceramics on it, which I'm sure will make it look much nicer than it is now.

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Random Picture:

Little Things

So, a week after I fixed that danged pipe, it broke somewhere else. Fortunately, this time it was easier to fix because it wasn't under concrete like the last time, but it still was a pain, and it worries me that the whole thing is going to come apart.

Besides that, we've been cleaning the shed and the house. The shed was covered in hay, because it used to be the dog's house, so it was also covered in crap. Literally, crap and solidified hair. Nine large hefty bags later, only the zoo smell remains.

It kills me that I can't organize better inside the house because we can't paint yet, and we can't paint because the paint we ordered is not here after forever, and who knows when it's going to arrive. So, in the meantime I have to entertain myself doing the lawn and cutting the ugly bushes outside our windows.

Some little things we've done this week:

1. We replaced the outside light fixtures. The old ones were pretty rusty and full of garbage inside.




Yes mama, I'm cheap and crappy, but I'm clean, I'm clean!
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2. We replaced the shower head. The old one was dirty and it didn't have any presure. We replaced it for one of those huge ones. I love it.

Ok, I forgot to take a picture of the old one when it was still installed, but you got the picture. It's up there, in the left. You know.

3. The mail box.
This was supposed to be an easy one, but it took me a while. The soil was fill with rocks, so I had to dig two feet and just then I could stick it. It's a small thing, but the front of the house looks much better already.

I told you these were small ones. This and next week we are doing the big ones: we are changing the power meter to a different wall, because the wires are extremely old and about to fall apart, and the power company won't replace them until we decide to comply with the darned code (big and expensive: now you have a hint for birthday, Christmas, son's day, etc.'s presents). Also, we are cutting the big tree in front of the house. There are two big trees, but we are starting with the bigger one, because it's right in front of the living room window, and we can't get any sunlight at all.

Right Before Hitting 30...

Here...

Last Saturday we moved to the new house. It was pretty crazy: we have much more stuff than we thought, and most of it is just small things, so it's a pain to clean and organize. We had a lot of help, but still it took forever.

I wanted to start cleaning right away, but Monday was my last day of school, an eight hour class that was more pointless than a horn in a plane. On Tuesday I had to clean the old house because the psycho landlord wasn't happy with the way we cleaned the blinds and stuff. On Tuesday I spent the whole day fixing a leak under the driveway. It's funny, because the guy that used to live here was a plumber, but he just didn't notice it. I mean, it was just leaking five gallons of water a second, so I can understand that the poor guy overlooked it...


So, yesterday I could finally start cleaning the house, and man, those windows were dirty. I had to take the screens out so I could clean them, and it took me like an hour to clean each one. I don't think that these guys ever cleaned them in the six years they lived here.

Today is my graduation, so I don't think I'll be doing much. Tomorrow we are going to shop for furniture, so that'll be fun.