You weirdo! (Ekjiram) We are actually considering buying TWO refrigerators, that's how much we use them! Or really, we just need one regular fridge and one chest freezer, for freezing 8,000 pounds of apples every fall, plus corn and blueberries. My regular freezer is full of compost and scraps for soup stock. What have I become
I know! We need to be better about eating at home, but whenever I ambitiously fill the fridge it ends up going to waste, so we've resorted to shopping every day or two, meaning it's never very full.
That is very European--just buying what you need for dinner that night. Nothing wrong with that!
Since moving back east (haha) I find we cook at home even more than we did in pdx, which was already a lot. Not sure why! Oh wait, maybe because there is only one place to go out to eat here
Also though I've just gotten heavily into these domestic projects, like bread-baking, composting, making my own stock, fridge pickles, other kinds of things like that. So the fridge and freezer have slowly gotten more and more crowded.
Re; appliances and infrastructure. I did a to-walls and -subfloor kitchen remodel. On appliances two experiences.
Major appliance dealers have new; scratch/dent/demo (demos are essentially perfect); used. I got "used" a perfect range returned as new because there "was a spot in the oven" = never used, half price. Shop all options.
If you are buying new and you have a specific model number, send a request for quote on a plausible architect/contractor/remodeler letterhead requesting a price with whatever delivery needs. Make it known you are sending to competitors.
today in home ownership news: after calling every plumber in the entire valley, only one would return our calls/take such a "small job." They sent over an actual kid (he was 23 and an apprentice) to do the job. He was still learning his trade, and did a bunch of stuff he was probably not authorized to do (poking around in the water heater). At one point he insisted we just didn't have the boiler turned up high enough (which doesn't make sense for a number of reasons), so he turned it up to 200 degrees, and the entire house filled up with hot steam. He called his boss and Gary could hear the boss on the phone being like "turn that boiler down NOW!!" the kid rolled his eyes and said his boss is "too cautious"
But, due to his sort of haphazard poking around, he ended up revealing some crucial information, and so Gary himself was actually able to diagnose our problem, which is that the water heater only puts out 2 gallons a minute. So while all the sink faucets in the house put out less volume than that, the bathtub faucet puts out more. This is why it goes cold immediately. So to take a hot bath, you just have to turn the hot faucet on a TINY bit and let the water kind of dribble out. It takes forever to fill up, but now you can indeed take a hot bath, so we are feeling fantastic.
Fuck kickstart, I will use my own goddamn money I EARN at my JOB like a good PROTESTANT CAPITALIST
but yeah, we prob are gonna need a new water heater at some point. I'm just so enormously relieved not to be taking horrible lukewarm horse baths squatting in the tub, especially now that it's getting COLD, that I don't care about the future
At my old house we had an electric water heater that was SO RAD. There was no tank! The water took a bit longer to get hot than if there was a big old tank but the hot water was LIMITLESS! And really hot! And energy efficient!
When I talked to an energy efficiency contractor about tankless water heater, he said it wouldn't really make much of a difference with only two people in the house.
If your water heater is electric, there are some fancy things on the horizon, depending on your electric utility. It is called demand response - where the timing of when your water heater heats and how hot above minimum is managed by the utility over the interwebs to give you a discount on your bill. The future way of doing this is a CEA 2045 plug on the water heater. Utilities also like heat pump water heaters for efficiency, I'm not sure how reliable they are in comparison to original style ones.
I believe there is a plumbing part that is a flow reducer that fits into 1/2" screw pipe plumbing fixtures. They are found on showers, but if the tub faucet unscrews, it might fit in there. Teflon pipe dope is a useful thing for DIY threaded plumbing.
I lobbied for demand response systems to have a real time savings display on the phone, but they took the cheap way for now. Eventually it will come.
every day is a new adventure! today at 6:00 a.m. the toilet broke then I left my day planner at home, which gives me the howling fantods. I had to call Gary and wake him up AGAIN (first time was for broken toilet) and make him read me the insane list written under "wednesday" the dog took an unbelievable stress dump right outside the door to the kennel, and I had to use three bags to get it all, and I got dogshit on my hand, so I had to drive to work with a plastic bag on my hand now I gotta go get a cavity filled and we still don't have lights in a bunch of our house
YT, you just gotta hang in there til that large wine comes. I bet the dog was feeling the collective anxiety and was doing more of an empathetic stress dump? What a good boy.
I have almost no furniture, no free time, and only like 4 friends, and winter is coming with its piles of snow. Also, there are no burritos here and Dunkin Donuts cups litter the land.
The toilet in the basement does this weird thing where it hangs right at the point of being full after flushing, so it's wasting water, but only like 30 seconds of water. I have no idea how to make it more "sensitive" or whatever so that it shuts off correctly.
My garage and dining room electricity is off and there doesn't seem to be a switch on the breaker box for them? I have no idea where the electricity is coming from or how to restore it.
The downstairs shower is spraying onto the doorframe and causing it to get waterlogged, which is going to make the wood in the wall rot if I don't do something about it (but I haven't done anything about it and it's been a problem for many months!!).
our rad electrician came and installed all our light fixtures and complimented us on our taste and told us the next time he gets called to an old crumbling mansion where the owners are THROWING BEAUTIFUL LIGHT FIXTURES FROM THE 1920s IN THE LITERAL GARBAGE he will grab some for us!
OOOH, what are your light fixtures YT? Did they arrive with the house? Ours had horrible fixtures everywhere (a 90s fan spray-painted sage green using leaves as relief, some kind of horrible dangly bohemian thing with ruby jewels and chains everywhere, and then some boring nipples).
We now have a manic light fixture situation at the house. After interminable fiddling with the beastly one in the living room I've discovered it needs rewiring :/
Light fixtures, towel rods and cabinet pulls are very hard to find good (for modern). Modern light fixtures, there are some great Italian lines, designers in the Netherlands. Lighting fixtures are a #futurebusinessplan.
the house had some rad old (20s) pull-chain fixtures that were like heavy dangling ornate glass globes, but the electrician said he couldn't put them back up--there was some wiring issue. The rest of the fixtures that came with the house were all Home Depot and blah---a weird enormous glass globe in the dining room, a boring nipple, and two horrible gigantic elaborate Ikea dangling things. We took all of them out (except one Ikea one we can't figure out how to get off) and bought old fixtures off ebay. They are all glass globes: one with white pattern on outside (porch), one that has like black and white art-deco paint splatters all over it, and one that is attached to like a garland of golden leaves. Then we got a shitty one at Home Depot for the dining room because it was an emergency
Asbestos abatement guy came over, and helpfully said that the asbestos was really not that bad and we could clean it up ourselves with a HEPA vacuum and a spray bottle full of soap, and we really should be worried about the BLACK MOLD EVERYWHERE all over the basement.
Then we cleaned up the asbestos tonight and found termite damage!
So stressed out I joined the YMCA so I could use their sauna.
Comments
We are actually considering buying TWO refrigerators, that's how much we use them!
Or really, we just need one regular fridge and one chest freezer, for freezing 8,000 pounds of apples every fall, plus corn and blueberries. My regular freezer is full of compost and scraps for soup stock. What have I become
Since moving back east (haha) I find we cook at home even more than we did in pdx, which was already a lot. Not sure why! Oh wait, maybe because there is only one place to go out to eat here
Also though I've just gotten heavily into these domestic projects, like bread-baking, composting, making my own stock, fridge pickles, other kinds of things like that. So the fridge and freezer have slowly gotten more and more crowded.
Our fridge currently is SO emo
2. they are easy
3. they look cool
4. they don't give you botulism accidentally
Major appliance dealers have new; scratch/dent/demo (demos are essentially perfect); used. I got "used" a perfect range returned as new because there "was a spot in the oven" = never used, half price. Shop all options.
If you are buying new and you have a specific model number, send a request for quote on a plausible architect/contractor/remodeler letterhead requesting a price with whatever delivery needs. Make it known you are sending to competitors.
Go wholesale, be a pro. You are a pro, right?
But, due to his sort of haphazard poking around, he ended up revealing some crucial information, and so Gary himself was actually able to diagnose our problem, which is that the water heater only puts out 2 gallons a minute. So while all the sink faucets in the house put out less volume than that, the bathtub faucet puts out more. This is why it goes cold immediately. So to take a hot bath, you just have to turn the hot faucet on a TINY bit and let the water kind of dribble out. It takes forever to fill up, but now you can indeed take a hot bath, so we are feeling fantastic.
Only cost $90
but yeah, we prob are gonna need a new water heater at some point. I'm just so enormously relieved not to be taking horrible lukewarm horse baths squatting in the tub, especially now that it's getting COLD, that I don't care about the future
Would recommend.
I believe there is a plumbing part that is a flow reducer that fits into 1/2" screw pipe plumbing fixtures. They are found on showers, but if the tub faucet unscrews, it might fit in there. Teflon pipe dope is a useful thing for DIY threaded plumbing.
I lobbied for demand response systems to have a real time savings display on the phone, but they took the cheap way for now. Eventually it will come.
That's a handsome A-frame there BTW.
Have started drywalling the inside in-between the beams:
They were AWESOME, by the way, if you ever need any exterior painting work done. Quite affordable compared to other quotes, too.
http://franksanitipainting.com/
Especially because I just found out we have asbestos! #homeownership #itsatrip #fuckinghell
today at 6:00 a.m. the toilet broke
then I left my day planner at home, which gives me the howling fantods. I had to call Gary and wake him up AGAIN (first time was for broken toilet) and make him read me the insane list written under "wednesday"
the dog took an unbelievable stress dump right outside the door to the kennel, and I had to use three bags to get it all, and I got dogshit on my hand, so I had to drive to work with a plastic bag on my hand
now I gotta go get a cavity filled
and we still don't have lights in a bunch of our house
just a snapshot of my life, thanks for listening
https://www.redfin.com/OR/Portland/3216-NE-55th-Ave-97213/home/25788656
Is anyone actually looking right now? I don't get that sense. Probably because it's so tough and depressing, eh?
I bet the dog was feeling the collective anxiety and was doing more of an empathetic stress dump? What a good boy.
;)
let me have little victories
8-X
My garage and dining room electricity is off and there doesn't seem to be a switch on the breaker box for them? I have no idea where the electricity is coming from or how to restore it.
We now have a manic light fixture situation at the house. After interminable fiddling with the beastly one in the living room I've discovered it needs rewiring :/
Then we cleaned up the asbestos tonight and found termite damage!
So stressed out I joined the YMCA so I could use their sauna.