Small Shovels. Big Results.

In Hot Water

Zero hot water. That is what I have. Zero. For a handful of reasons not caused by a failing water heater, I decided to replace it anyway. Because I'm an idiot. 

Here is my train of thought:

-gap under the door is letting air in

-air is blowing my pilot light out

-find new unit without pilot light

-put it outside because its too big anyway

I don't judge.

Ok, ok. I assume you think I've lost my mind, and I may well have. But I'm not totally crazy. They actually make these. Luckily, the sketchy Craigslist guy had a brand new one that could do my whole house for a few hundred dollars. 

The neighbors were confused

Great! So I get this thing home and I realize, like every time, I have no idea what I'm doing. So I go to Menards(Lowes sucks) and start wandering around with the three other, equally confused, shoppers. After an hour or so I settle on these amazing combo valves that allow me to shut off the water, send it out another "service port", and still leaves me a place to put the safety valve. They were advertised for a hot tub, but it's cool. 

Its on the wall! That's literally 2% of the work. Now we can run the lines through the wall and into the crawl space. PROBLEM. I don't have a crawl space, yet. This is where things get bad. Genuinely bad.  I should have just put a new seal on the door. 

Goodbye Furnace

I wasn't joking about something being dead

With my old hot water heater slated to be replaced, I thought I should do the same for my furnace. Again, I'm not entirely stupid. 

I'll explain:

-old duct work is all leaking into the 6" gap that we can refer to as my crawl space

-the furnace is way to large for the size of my home

-something died in it

-it actually blocks the side door from opening

The solution? Put it in my attic. Takes up zero space, doesn't make noise, no vents covered by furniture, and I can use that new hole in my floor as another access to my crawl space. So I tore it out, and began the process of putting a new one in the attic. Basically halting the hot water heater project.

Step one: get the thing up there. Here's a problem. If you put an appliance in your attic, you must have a certain sized opening for installation and maintenance. I don't. So I made one! Sorry kitchen ceiling. 

Step two: shovel insulation. This sucks. It actually inflates when you move it. And it makes dust. And its hot up there. 

Step three: duct work. Uh oh. George doesn't know how that works. So I learned. 

ohhhhh shiny

I went to menards with a whole day to spend. And I spent it. I layed out my entire house worth of duct work on the floor. I received many weird looks, but I got the job done. Spending $800 and a truck load of ducting was my reward. Now the exciting part, putting it all together.

Step four: installation. It's a simple concept. Start at the furnace, run your trunk. Branch off to cover the sections. Luckily, my house is tiny and square. My brain needed a break at that point anyway.

Should have used flex duct

The main trunk is in. Things are looking promising.

I only fell through the ceiling once

 

This finishes the duct work for the living room. Luckily most things were straight shots and 90* angles. Most. 

 Problem. Still don't have a crawl space. Still need to get down there. Uh, what did you say? Child Labor? I PAID THEM!

So, the neighbor kids dug out the crawl space. One 5 gallon bucket at a time. It took a while. Like 2 years actually. But I only needed 1/4 of it done for the time, so that only took a couple weeks.

Bud Light and Microwave Rice

The Land of Accomplishments

That isn't a filter. Broadlands is just yellow.

Son of a bitch, I've done it! I bought a house. A small, one bedroom home nine miles from the nearest fuel station. The garage is larger than the house, the yard is void of any trees, the roof doesn't leak and it came with all of the necessary appliances.
Full of new pride and still not being able to buy my own alcohol, my desires to do some house work are greater than they will ever be again.

72 seconds is fine. 74 seconds is bad.

I spend my next few weeks basking in every inch of the 650sq ft of the home I now own. Writing up lists and making dreams of future projects, moving things around to see what looks the best, cleaning, more unpacking, more to-do lists. Liberated with my efforts, I'd end every night with six cold Bud Lights and any variant of Uncle Ben's microwaveable rice. It was a good time to be me.

Commence Bad Decisions

If you're anything like me, you have to destroy perfectly functional things because you just don't like them. Begin every mistake I've ever made as a homeowner: now. The glory days are over. Yellow walls are bothering me. Dark wooden trim causes a contrast that burns my eyes. And who the fuck put blue carpet in there? So now we start the fun things! Kind of.

Gross.

Simple concept I suppose.
-tear out the old
-put the floor in(jumped the gun a little)
-paint what stays
-cut some holes
-cut other holes
-patch the previous ones
-add some lights
-move some wires
-put in some switches
-DONE

Ahhh, the fruits of my labor.

Great! Now I have a dope new living room that looks as fancy and shiny as I wanted. Now lets do it to the bedroom.

Again, standard things here.

Pokeball.

-tear out the old
-paint what stays
-oh shit

At this point I realized the images in my head are not going to work out. Keeping the bead board and the chair rail white while painting the upper section a dark red. I've made a major mistake. Now I have no carpet, no trim, and my bedroom looks like a fucking pokeball. With no better options I call in a professional. By professional, I mean Soozie. She picks the colors for things around the office I work in. Her immediate response was "Irish spring green. Its like grey with green and yellow". I politely thanked her for her time, and went back to the drawing board.

Everytime.

With my head hung low, feeling completely defeated by everything that has happened in the past 24 hours, I go to Lowes to look at the paint swatches. Immediately the guy bombards me with "Would you like help choosing a color!?" I informed him he wanted no part of this mess, to which he denied. So, we are, walking in circles like two drunk girls looking for an ear ring. "This one, or this?" he would ask every two seconds. At this point I was just entertaining his complete dedication to my issue. An actual hour goes by and he says "Alright, this is the one you want." He hands it to me and I'm seriously impressed. It was perfect. Except one issue.
IT WAS IRISH SPRING GREEN!

Tries to be an adult; only owns beach towels

At this point I can only assume he has Soozie in his little stupid ear piece playing a joke or something. But no. He's some kind of paint whisperer. Little dude hooked me up with a gallon of that stuff and some new roller pan liners. Had my room looking like a grown ass man lived there by midnight. Finally, I can commence with flooring. Then a new door because the old one had gold glitter on it. Some trim work, and boom. My room is looking real fresh.

Well, that is the end of my normal home improvement. It gets weird from here. Weird, bad, cold, itchy, really annoying, and a hint of defeat. I'm getting sad thinking about it. I need a beer.