You Load 16 Tons

As promised, the story and the picture of the front of the house, with almost everything done (we still need the new fence. And grass. Grass would be great).

Alright, for this to work at all, you will need to do this blog in stages.

16 tons

I have attached a YouTube link above. If you wouldn't mind, would you go and get that playing in another window. (If you are running a windows based system, right click on the link and chose the closest option to "load in a new window". Ok, off you go. I'll wait.) For verisimilitude, you can imagine Mr. Spit and I, covered in gravel dust, and singing this.

All right, so we have:

2 tons or so of concrete removed. There was the concrete we all saw weeks ago. Underneath that, there was another layer of concrete. And then there was a layer of asphalt (it was about this time our neighbour started joking he could see Jimmy Hoffa's nose!). It was like a bad infomercial. It just kept coming and coming. . .

Which took us down about 10-12 inches, and in some places as far as 24 inches below what we might reasonably call grade. Now, if you think about it rationally, bricks are about 3 inches thick, and what goes out, must come back in.

(If you haven't reach a chorus yet, just wait. . . )

One makes up that difference with dirt and gravel and sand.

Sing it with me.

You load 16 tons and what do you get?

Oh, about this.

This is not a blog post with Pictures of the Front of the House

If you would like one of those, please come back tomorrow, when there will be light, so that I can take said photo's.

This is a blog post to say that it is done.

(and also to say that Mr. Spit did the lion's share. He nicely fired me from putting in the bricks, since I am, as it turns out, not very good at that).

Pavers are in. Remainder are moved to the back yard.

25 - 55Kg bags of concrete are moved to the back yard (it was on sale!)

Polymeric sand is swept into the cracks and watered.

Alleluia.

Done.

The Power of the Keyboard

I wrote a blog entry a few days ago, about rotten customer service experiences, and a few days after I published it, a lovely representative from Home Depot Customer Service emailed me, asking for more information about the store I was at, and what happened. She apologized profusely, and we emailed back and forth a few times, so I could provide her details.

Finally, a store manager called me, from the store. Actually, she called me yesterday, and I didn't have a chance to call her back, so she called again today.

And the store manager and I spoke. And I'm go to call the store before I go next time (when I go and buy the tile and the vanity for the bathroom reno) so that she can arrange to be there, she'd like to apologize in person.

And I have to say, after I complained about their service, this knocked my socks off. More than knocking my socks off, this earned more of my business. (And it's not like we don't do any reno's here at Chez Spit.)

And the entire point of this post is to say say Home Depot may have sucked, but they have done a really great job redeeming themselves! In fact, this rocked.

The tag below says evil corporations, but I'm pretty impressed with this one!

****
FWIW, I have not heard a word from Michaels, who apparently doesn't care that they lost out on $150 worth of my custom. I think we should start an anti-Michaels revolution!

This Post Will Not Have Home Renovation Pictures

The deck is painted and the furniture is back, and Mr. Spit helpfully pressure washed the front porch. The concrete is removed, and we have a rubble strewn path to dig up, lay down gravel and sand, and then pavers, also a raised flower bed to dismantle. Eventually, I think this summer, we will be replacing our fence in the front.

You can see those photo's when the work is done, in early September. (I know, we are mean that way)

I have a bigger problem today.

I have been looking at fridges, enviously, for a while. I stop in stores, and I open the doors, and I pull out the freezer on the bottom, and I debate drawer-style or door-style freezers. I look at the adjustable shelving, and when I see a fruit and vegetable crisper, I cannot tell a lie, I swoon a bit. I debate 2 door and 1 door fridges, and I absolutely do not want a water dispenser or an ice maker. I don't want stainless steel, which would look like lipstick on a pig in my old house, and I can't decide between white or black. I know that I want the space to put eggs in, you know with the cups, but very few fridges have them any more. I look at the adjustable shelving, and a little shiver runs down my spine, and I giggle a bit, to myself. I know what space I have to work in, and what size I can be. I tell no lie, every time I try to cram my groceries into the inferior fridge I own, the resentment wells up in me.

I have looked at websites, determining what I want, and energy costs, and I have been surprised to discover that your fridge is probably your biggest energy guzzler. My fridge, that is at least 20 years old, and has a "problem" with smells, while it freezes vegetables randomly; this fridge is guzzling energy from my budget. It will not only make me happier, it will help save the planet to replace it. After all Mrs. Spit, think of the cute penguins in Antarctica, right?

I have been on, not so much a campaign as a barnstorm, to get a new fridge, looking at prices and budgets, and I have established that fridges go on sale in August and January. (We can't afford a fridge in August, just in case you were wondering). But, we are putting money away. Maybe January, probably January. And in the interim, I look at them. I can see myself getting guests cream from my new fridge, in my blue dress, with an apron, and black high heels, with a lovely string of pearls around my neck. (and the lack of blue dress, an apron, or a string of pearls, does not send me into worry, I merely brush this aside, a new fridge will solve a multitude of sins)

The oven died today.

Oh, we have tried to pretend it wasn't a problem, I have ignored erratic temperatures, and the entire Spaghetti Sauce repair bill, but no. 90 minutes after I had turned it on, it managed to achieve the princely temperature of 215 degrees F. Since I didn't 3 hours to cook dinner, we came up with plan B. And no, I'm not going to call the repair man again, because it's just not worth the minimum $200 cost, plus what ever he needs to fix it.

The oven heard we were looking at fridges, and it died today.

(Good-bye fair fridge. How I would have loved thee.)

Hello new oven, including the cost of a gas fitter, because I will not have another blinking electric stove in my life time.

I shall set my face as iron when I go to Sears tomorrow, looking at the . . .

Stoves.

In Which I Mention Liquidity Hardly at All.

I am tearing myself away from my draft policy on liquidity, to write this blog. The draft policy is a test assignment from the job interview I had last week, and is due tomorrow, and possibly I should have started it before now. If you would like to scold, go ahead, but frankly, I`m way ahead of you, and I wish I started earlier too.

If there is any saving grace in this, it is that I write policy for a living, and I understand liquidity and the compliance requirements, so I should be able to explain them in 3 pages. Having said that, I`m still freaked.

I am extremely focused on being very clear about liquidity. I contemplated writing about it here, just so you could all understand it, thinking you might be laying awake at night, wishing you only knew what liquidity was, but I decided it really wasn`t that interesting, and you didn`t want to hear about it. I`m not going to talk about it at all.

Back to the reno`s.


This is a mail box, on a post. Except for the really big problem with the letters, I believe we can call the mailbox issue solved. Also, I can`t show you the rest of the porch, because I have only painted the one railing, so you could see the effect. Yes, that`s right, I was painting a railing, in weather that was threatening rain, while not writing about liquidity, so I could show you the entire effect. Also, because like all painting situations, I knew I would start putting the paint on, and I would panic and hate it, and think I had the biggest mistake of the entire universe, bigger even than a bank who screws up their liquidity ratio`s, and suffers a company specific event, and thus suffers a liquidity failure, also known as a funding deficit.

Tell me you like the paint.

Anyway. Micheal`s is apparently doing inventory for the month of August, which means that they aren`t re-stocking anything.


So, Micheal`s doesn`t have any letter ``L` or any number 1`s left, which is going to make it really hard to paint them white and put them on my mail box (spelling `MAIL`), or on the plaque which will have my house number on it. It`s rather like it would be if senior management had not established a market access strategy and did not delineate between first and second priority assets to release in the case of a company-specific liquidity crises, as part of their OFSI mandated contingency plan.

(and because I will almost certainly forget to ask, yes Martha, I do need you to check your Michaels, please!)

Ah, freshly painted blue door, with charming letter slot (not functional) picked out in silver paint. Also, nice, drooly mastiff, looking about as fierce as OFSI would were they to discover that you did not have templates of your liquidity reports for them to view, as part of your liquidity and funding plan.

And finally, jack hammered concrete, which Mr. Spit is calling `the cobblestone effect`, that is treacherous to walk on, only an initial step in bigger project to get pavers put in and reflects a need for significantly more work, much like an organization that has only completed one liquidity stress test, and not used the most conservative of assumptions.

Also, dear J. came by tonight, looked at our back door, refrained from laughing at the Joe Job of the previous owner and told us that not only did everything have to come out, we needed to buy a new door, and we also needed to come up with a way of shoring up the sagging flooring. All of this in a bid to finish mudding and taping some dry wall, and fixing up the flooring in the back entrance to our house. It is perhaps worth noting that we started the entire front porch project because the floor was sagging, and we didn`t like the outdoor carpet.

(and you were asking how these things got started).

Well, that`s it for me tonight, and look, I didn`t talk about liquidity at all!

Also, I don`t know why my apostrophe`s are all wrong. I can`t figure it out, and since it relates to neither home reno`s or liquidity, I`m not going to worry about it.

A Step into the Future

Red Green says if they don`t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.
Actually, he`s both.

All done (Except for the staining.) We would stain now, but it`s going to rain, all week. On the bright side, we did buy the stain, and the paint to do the door, and the mailbox. I might paint the door tomorrow.

Also, Tomorrow, tomorrow we rip this out:

We have 75lb jack hammer on standby. Can`t wait!
Paving stones, here we come. . . (And the bed on the left is going too.)
We are going to be so shwanky, we won`t know what to do with ourselves.

You Know What Would Be Handy?

Ok, so the first thing to note, we solved the mail box impasse opportunity. We both like these, they are wood, which means we can stain them a slightly darker blue than the deck, and I went to Michael's to get wooden letters, which spell out "Mail". The bottom plate will have our house numbers on it.

We are both pleased, and we got both pieces for less than half of the mail box from yesterday. We are happy. (And, I can keep buying wool. The way I figure it, I saved us $100 on the mailbox from yesterday, so I can spend the $100 saved, plus my commission as a frugalista, so another $50, right?)

And you know what would be handy? Really handy? Astonishingly handy? A home renovation store right next to our house. By my calculations we lost somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2 hours at the Rona. . .

First we forgot the angle brackets, and then we had to re-visit the mail box hostility issue, and then we needed another 10 feet of flashing (which was the first place we looked at each other, and had problems doing very basic math).

So, we got home, and we started the stairs. And then we realized that we couldn't finish the stairs, because while we had purchased angle brackets (2 of them, sitting all shiny and new, on the floor boards), we needed 7 angle brackets. And no matter how bad you are at math, 2 doesn't make 7. So, back to the hardware store.

But, this person turned up, and she was the best thing we had seen all day (including the mail box we selected). She turned up at 9:00 tonight, with coffee in her hands. She also said very nice things about our work. Thanks Mum!


So, where else did we lose time? Oh yeah. The stairs. In our time estimate, we said, "Stairs. Stairs will take about an hour." Did you know time telling is part of math? Must be. We got that wrong too. We were only 25% right. It didn't take one hour to do the stairs, it took 4. Also, a few tense moments, especially because the measuring tape continually disappeared. Measuring tape gremlins, Mr. Spit is convinced. (Probably, also, they were buggering up our math).


So, here's the finished product, with railings and all. Which, when you think about it, is exactly what we started with. Flooring and railings.

These look better, right?

Look, a Mail Box is a Very Demanding Thing

You go to your hardware store, and you pick one. You find something that half-way matches your house and then you carry on. Screw the thing up, and get your mail out of it.

To refresh you, this is what our present mail box looks like.



Which Simply Will Not Do.

Options.

A wooden one that we could stain the same colour as the deck and the railing (Gettysburg Blue from Behr).Which would be ok, but I'm not convinced that we wouldn't have the same problem, because it would blend in to the house, and we would still get our mail in a wide variety of places, because no one can find the mail box. Not a charming or delightful, or even pleasing mail box. Sufficient, I suppose.

Mr. Spit, being fiscally prudent, looks at the metal ones. Which are adequate. I mean: they do the job. You put mail in them, they have those curved thingies to put the paper in. (Which is totally retarded, as we don't get the paper, and when we did, they kid just threw it on the deck) Any way, they would work, I guess, if they had to. But I'm telling you, very pedestrian. Ho Hum. Positively ubiquitous. A metal mail box says something about you. That your last name is Smith, you dress in beige and you drive a brown car, which you bought used, because it was reliable, and cheap and easy to keep clean. Also last night, you had boiled potatoes for dinner, and have never bought an avocado in your life.

Such a mail box is Clearly Not Suitable for Chez Spit, so I keep looking. (Mr. Spit, dear man, keeps talking about the metal boxes, mostly repeating $18 dollars in an increasingly excited voice).

That's it. Black, top loading with a splendid brass maple leaf on it, says mail in a charming script. It's not adequate, banal, or ubiquitous. No, not at all, this mail box, it is a symphony, it is a large canvas, an opus work. This mail box is enthralling and bewitching, and possibly it would be using too many adjectives (but hey, they're cheap): this mail box is delectable and irresistible, electrifying and seductive. This is a mail box I tell you, all others are aluminum wanna-be's. All others are merely things that hold your mail. This mail box has possibility.

What do you suppose a lovely black mail box, looking like wrought iron, not forgetting the brass maple leaf, and the words "mail" in lovely, soft, inviting font, would cost a home owner?

Did you guess $187 dollars?

Yeah. Me neither.

But I like it. Mr. Spit did too, until he saw the price. Which doesn't mean much, as I have been pointing out all day; because he does like it, he just doesn't like the price, and if you amortize the cost of the mailbox over the life of the house, well that's actually less than $2 per year, which is a pittance, peanuts, I tell you. Besides, everybody knows that it's those little finishing touches that really make or break a first impression. Curb appeal makes such a big difference, and I know we aren't planning on selling this house, you know, ever; but it still matters, and we want the neighbours to like us and think well of us, and we have new sidewalks, and new street lights, and new curbs, and a whole new paved street, and the city is shelling out 20 million on the revitalization, and the very least we can do is shell out a mere $187 on a mail box that fits into the neighbourhood. It's our duty. It's practically patriotic.

(at which point the Lancaster Bomber flew overhead, and I think maybe Mr. Spit was thinking that Churchill was, by far, the better orator)

Anyway, back to the mail box. So, we are still arguing discussing about what we are going to do, and in the mean time the current one will stay where it is.

But, oh wise internets, you think I'm right, don't you? The choice of mail box is a very demanding one, and you just can't cheap out on these sorts of things. After all, the neighbourhood is depending on us!

Oh, and while we were feuding calmly debating the merits of the best mail box in the store, we got some more stuff done.

There's a Reason I Don't Have a Blog Today

the deck is stained.

the deck has stair rails.

the front veranda has no indoor/outdoor carpet on it anymore (and which idiot invented that, anyway?)

the front veranda has no railings (but oh, I love sledge hammers!)

the front veranda is missing some floor boards (ditto on the crow bar)

the front veranda has a rotten floor joist (and that's how you see yourself over budget and behind time, before the project has even really started.)

Pictures tomorrow. More Advil right now.

Ding Dong

For a few months now, I have been noticing that we need to replace the batteries in our door bell chime. The ding starts out ok, but then it degenerates into this long and unearthly sounding wail, leaving you looking around to see which cat has been put in a blender. It finally peters out into silence, but the shivers in your spine and the vibrations in the glassware take a bit more time to fully subside.

Replace batteries in door bell has been on the list since this summer. The problem is, we aren't certain where the door bell chime is. The last time I saw it - after we took it down to wall paper the hall, I think it was on top of the fridge. But we try not to talk about the whole wallpapering experience, which has some how also turned into not talking about where the doorbell chime might be located.

The batteries (assuming that it does not take some obscure form only available at one hardware store located in Vulcan, Alberta, which is only open on days that are 23 hours long) are up in the linen closet that I have been meaning to clean out for a year. Every time I open the door the large duvet for the spare room falls on my head, leaving me confused and enveloped, also likely scrambling to catch run away rolls of toilet paper. Anyway, between the lost chime, the possibility of losing my life in the closet, and the fact that I don't get many people ringing my doorbell to remind me of the need for replacement, this item has not been crossed off the list.

Last night, we were sitting at the kitchen table, and I noticed that the door bell proper was on the table. Mr. Spit comments that our last visitor handed it to him earlier that evening. It fell off the wall (Again, old house). I observed that the door bell had clearly had enough of the way it sounded and our inability to solve this problem, and decided to take matters into its own hands. I commented that we should just go and buy a new one - it's only slightly embarrassing when your doorbell commits suicide.

Mr. Spit, sitting at the kitchen table, picks up the door bell, and pushes the button with his finger.

He does this, while I am watching him. Watching him in that way we have of watching others without really paying attention or processing what they are doing.

I hear the doorbell ring. The dogs bark.

I push my chair back from the table.

Yes, that's right.

I started getting up to go and answer the door.

Ding Dong!

It feels like home to me

It feels like home to me, it feels like home to me

It feels like I'm all the way back where I come from

It feels like home to me, it feels like home to me

It feels like I'm all the way back where I belong

(in case you were wondering where I was . . .)

Need more room for books. Let's build floor to ceiling book shelves. (Note the classy "crown moulding")

This ceiling is really ugly. It has to go. Can't stand it. We should totally rip down that really ugly acoustic tile. I hate the acoustic tile.

Hmmm. We know why there was acoustic tile. Add re-drywall ceiling to list. Right below the item marked "learn to drywall"

Oh look, we added re-drywall walls to the list (Seeing as Mr. Spit was all practiced up now). Dinning room not exactly fit for company, unless the company is used to eating off sawhorses.

And. . . . living room is not fit for company either, unless the company is used to moving around power tools.

Bookshelves.

Wow, a table in the dinning room! (Gee, and we don't miss the sawhorses, whoda thunk it?)

And live able space in the living room. Note the absence of lumber and the lack of router table on the couch.

And finally, attractive ceiling. (Which really was the major motivation for the project, if you are me. . .)

All Tapped Out

Have I told you about the sad tale of woe that is my bathroom taps?

Ah, Dear Reader, pull up a chair, grab a coffee and let Mrs. Spit tell you all about it. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll wonder if you should be holding your nose.

So, Chez Spit is a grand old house. Well, she's old and a house, and I think she's grand. (Mr. Spit is perhaps less convinced of this. Silly man wants to spend his weekends doing something other than destructing and reconstructing the house) Part of this grand old house is a claw foot tub with a shower attachment. (Other parts include an original front door that lets every breath of the North East Wind in, and a hot water tank that is, shall we say, fickle). Please note, I said "a bath tub and shower". Singular. There is only one. One bathing spot in the entire house. This fact shall become strangely important.

Said claw foot tub has required re-finishing for all the time we have lived in the house (a shade over 3 years), but we never quite got around to doing it. We came very close to doing it last year, but in a fit of pique, Canada's tax man said "no tax refund for you!" and that was the end of that. Perhaps, amidst all the renovations, the bathroom felt left out. We did paint it as soon as we moved in, and gave it some lovely wainscoting, and a new towel holder and shower curtain rods, attempting to make this room feel loved and cared for. Alas, the bathtub does continue to scream that it is ugly, and perhaps, it feels left out of the constant repairs.

Three Saturday's ago, I got home from the horrible torture chamber gym, and was rushing to have a shower before going to another event. I turned on the hot water tap, (the part of it that remains, half was broken off before we ever bought the place) and then I turned on the cold water tap. And nothing came out. There was a weird shrieking sort of noise, then the noise of a thousand flatulent dogs, then . . . nothing. No water, nothing.

"Oh Mr. Spit" called I. "Could you come up here? We have got a challenge."

And so, Mr. Spit in that time honoured tradition of not actually believing a person that says something is broken, moved past me and turned the tap off, and on again. Unsurprisingly, it still didn't work.

"It's broken", said he.

"Uh huh. Can you fix it?", said I.

"I'm not sure", said he. "I'm not a plumber".

Thought I: I think you'd better go find that Reader's Digest book and learn really fast. I need to be at my scrap booking thing in 20 minutes, and I need a shower.

I didn't get the shower. Tools started coming out. Thoughts of a completed bookshelf fled the collective minds of the Spit's. Must Fix Shower became our mantra.

Well, ok, it was Mr. Spit's Mantra. I went scrap booking. I came home some several hours later, and, alas, the shower was not fixed. Nay, it was more broken than before. The tap was irrevocably altered past any reasonable sense of the words "use and working" and the shower was in 4 parts. And Mr. Spit?

Mr. Spit was broken too. A defeated shell of himself, full of bile and hatred for the perfidy that is 1911 plumbing. He had called my uncle the plumber, and other wholesale places, and even visited his place of home handy man bliss, and the water gods that control the fates of such unimportant things as, you know, personal hygiene, continued to respond with a clipped and brisk:

"No."

No assistance, no help, no quarter given. Do not pass go. Do not expect help. Perhaps most importantly, do not shower.

My uncle the plumber drove up to our fair home. He looked at the bathtub. He looked at the hot water tank. The hot water tank he pronounced "too small to be of much use".

"Not so", say I.

Why every night that tank keeps me guessing, in a state of constant and total suspense:

"Will tonight be the night I get to have a hot bath? Or shall it be merely tepid, like our fair Premier, sticking firmly to his script while being grilled on the question of campaign donations from big oil, during the last election. Or shall it be shockingly cold? Where I put the very tips of my toes in, and shriek at the icy cold that runs up my leg and pools in the centre of my back, like that feeling I get when that creepy guy from works keeps looking at my chest and not my face? "

Indeed, our hot water tank is of much use. The taps on the other hand, they were:

"Completely busted and not worth fixing."

"Well", said we. "We are intrepid Internet shoppers. And this uncle in the plumbing business, surely he can get us a deal on new fixtures". In our famous home renovation last words, which, each and every time we carelessly throw around, we pledge to remove our tongues if we ever say again, we said:

"How hard can this be?".

Indeed, dear reader. Let us consider the question of purchasing new taps. Let us look at websites and look at costs, and look at the fact that the mere thought of replacing these taps shall cause you to sweat blood, as you contemplate the exorbitant cost of replacement and the meager sum in your pathetic bank account (And you thought that you were upper middle class!) And then let us contemplate the fact that you need a bloody Ph.D. in molecular biology with a specialty in astro physics as they apply to the planet Uranus, to install the wretched things. . .

Given the fickleness of the hot water tank, I only need use the hot water tap to fill the bath tub up. And so, every night, I play the bath lottery. On those sad, yet frequent, occasions where the bath lottery fails me, I go to the gym. (I'm not actually allowed to exercise, what with the sky high blood pressure), but I go to the gym. There I shower in a tiny little enclosure with a shower curtain that doesn't quite fit across it. Struggling with water that is decidedly not hot, coming out at the rate of a rhino with a bladder problem, such that I am almost blown out of the tiny enclosure, wearing nothing but a pair of flip flops with green frogs on them. I watch women breeze in and out, coming for a quick rinse off. I am strangely envious of these women, as I struggle to shave my legs in a 2 foot square space that I can't quite turn around in.

And the taps? Well, let us just say we are still trying to find a set. We are concerned about the gush, nay flood of funds from our account. We have a sinking feeling about our ability to stop the flow of money in this matter. You might say that we are drowning in the idea of spending $700 for a set of taps. We are showering websites with queries about lower priced options. We are drained of options. We are bathed in hope that someone can sell us a set of wall mounted taps for a claw foot tub for less than a month's worth of mortgage payments. We are . . . .

All tapped out.