Future Old Man

Just sittin' by the fahr. Hopefully by the time he's an old man he'll have the wherewithal to put on some clothes first. Either that or he'll come full circle and sit around naked again.

We have a fireplace! A real, honest-to-goodness fireplace!

One of our Big To-Do Items is checked off, along with my new-found ability to do laundry without the pipes leaking -- following a mere $239 visit(s) from the plumber, finally, after John gave it the good ole' college try.

So far we can chalk these expenses up to the cash-back we got at closing for the "habitability" items that were dinged during the house inspection. Not that a fireplace is necessary for "habitability", but the house description listed a fireplace and neglected to say it wasn't warranted, so ... we asked for a working fireplace.

The leaky pipes for the washer were a complete surprise and have since given us a boost up on our Learning Curve for House Buyers. I really don't know or understand if it was something that the whole house inspector should have caught -- are they supposed to check behind the washer and dryer? But when we moved in it was very noticeable that there was some water damage on the wall where the washer goes. What didn't occur to us was that it was on-going damage. That is, you couldn't run the washer without the pipes leaking.

Apparently this is common for homes at least as old as ours, which was built in the 1970s. Back then the washers didn't drain so fast, and those original-sized pipes can't keep up with the faster cycles in the washers of today. Simple as that. What isn't so simple is understanding why the former owners didn't do something about it themselves? It was obvious that it had leaked, like, the whole time.

And it's not so simple to fix, until you start throwing money at it. John tried getting these adapter-thingies from Home Depot that you afix to the washer to sort of stem the flow during the drain cycle: it will slow it down but not harm the washer, they say. Wasn't enough. In the midst of all this, we also had problems with the washer. Remember how we decided to save money by buying used? Well, "Sometimes you get what you paid for". Luckily, GoodOleBoy came through with his 30-day guarantee and gave us a new one that he just got in, which coincidentally happens to exactly match the dryer. Not that we ever cared, but, hey, a bonus.

So between the switching of the washers and trying DIY fixes for the pipe leak, we were quickly running out of clean underwear. Everytime we needed to do a "test" load it was full of all the dirty underwear and socks I could find, and the kids were starting to wonder if they only owned one pair of pajamas.

But that little kink seems to be all worked out now, other than the gaping hole in the wall where the new pipes are. John is determined to repair that himself; after all, what better place to try your hand at drywall than on a wall behind a washer. He's still knee-deep in SOS reading, though, so I'm not sure when that task will make it onto the short list.