Our First Failure

February  2011
 

O no, our first admitted house failure.  I came home from work on Monday and was watching TV on the couch.  While I was watching* I heard an omnious sound that seemed to be cracking coming from the dining room.  I turned off the TV and raced into the room.  There carefully looking at the ceiling I started noticing two hairline cracks that were not there before.  It could only mean one thing, our chandelier that had been up for nearly 24 hours was cracking the ceiling.  

Your first immediate reaction is GET IT DOWN, but I was alone in my house and was kinda hopeless.  I removed everything off the table and started assembling the tools.  When Josh arrived home an hour later, the longest hour of my life.  I attempted to tell him as calmly as possible. Of course, in my head, I had a mental image of our dining room covered in lath and plaster dust everywhere, furniture ruined, tears.... you get the picture.  Josh agreed we needed to get it down that night so at 6:30pm we went to work.  We hurried and turn off the breaker, grabbed the ladder and started to unhook the chandelier.  Thirty minutes later our brand new, super beautiful, and excited about chandelier laid on the ground.  After that, we did some test drills to find our why it was cracking.  We soon realized it was exactly what we had feared.  The prior light's mounting bracket was not screwed into the structure it was only screwed into the lath. This was fine for the 2lb boob lamp but would in no way hold our 50lb chandelier.   We felt like idiots.  We assumed that in the center of a room there would be a joists and that the prior mounting bracket would be on it.  There is actually no joist in the center of our dining room.... now what?

 

The next weekend, Josh engineered a solution guaranteed to hold up not only the chandelier but also a large silver-backed ape swinging on it.  We went upstairs in the attic and installed a 2'x4' between our two joists to act as a bridge.  We place all thread rods through the 2'x4' and through the ceiling in the dining room and mounted the bracket to it.  Just to be sure we marked all the old cracks in the ceiling and then installed the chandelier back.  Good news, it was quicker the second time, bad news it still weighed a ton. For the next week we watched the cracks to see if they grew.  They did not, and I did not hear anything else from the dining room.  We patched the cracks and painted and pretended like it had never happened.  Except I just told everyone on the internet, and everytime a contractor goes in our attic they say-- what's with the 2x4?

*side note for everyone, I tend to watch TV at an alarmly quiet level-- seriously like level 8, I am half deaf (no hearing in the left) and this makes it even weirder. But I swear I hear it better if it's lower.  This annoys Josh who needs it at level 25 which feels insane to me.

Dishwasher Debacle Day 2 & 3 & 4

September 2010

Fast forward 5 hours after the countertop install and we have the dishwasher in place, and the sink is set... however we have no plumbing.  No worries, it should be a quick number to split the water supply over to the dishwasher and run the dishwasher waste into the sewer line... right?  It's a Wednesday and I decided that as a 'gift' to Josh who had been pulling some long hours at work that I would have my friend Gordon come over and help me get everything working by the time he comes home.  You see I can be nice everyone once and a while!

 

Gordon showed up at 5:00pm and quickly alerted me to the fact that this was NOT going to be simple.  Our amazing new-to-us sink was significantly deeper then our previous harvest gold number.  A whole 9" deeper, which now means the waste line is far too high in the wall, urgh.  So, he rips a hole in the wall under the sink and he explains he will need to cut into the sewer line put in a new T and cap above it.  I am all for it, but another snag, our sewer line is not your modern day PVC pipe.  It's galvanized steel, so now he is cutting it with his drummel wearing goggles and spraying my kitchen with sparks at 6:15pm.  He also needs supplies, new supply lines, a new elbow for the waste line, etc.  He leaves at 7:00pm.  This was the point I thought we would be toasting our working dishwasher over a beer. He comes back at 8:00pm.  8:15 Gordon is on his back under my sink re-plumbing my entire wall.  He finally gets the sink hooked up and it appears to be draining properly.  Next, we find out the faucet that came with the sink is busted and leaks, we need new o-rings. Josh comes home to a hole in our wall and a quasi functional sink. It's 9:00pm.  Next we try and run the dishwasher.  It's not draining properly, it needs to be re-balanced and secured to the countertop for stability. Gordon calls it a night at 10:00pm. I am sure cursing me and my house.

 

The next morning I purchased a new faucet on-line (upside-- I get to buy some new bling that looks AMAZING) and manage to score the item on Overstock for 50% off.  I decide for the next 2-3 days we can live with a towel wrapped around the old faucet handles.  Two days later, the cabinet guys show up to finish the cabinets and help us re-balance the dishwasher and screw it in place.  We ran our first load of dishes 3 months, 2 weeks and 3 days after we purchased it.  No sweat right? 

 

So for those that have been following, this is how you can take a $600 dishwasher and spend $1,000 installing it.  Although in all fairness this included: all new countertops, a new sink, a new faucet and cabinetry-- but lesson learned. Well mostly, we learned Gordon is a good friend and we cannot be trusted.  I have also included a picture of the new counter on the other side of the kitchen.  As you can see we still have to install a backsplash, add trim to the underside of the countertops and touch up paint.  But we had working appliances so it felt like a win after a bunch of fails.