Adventures in home ownership

First it was the replacing the stove. Then, after we escaped the tornadoes that hit our region, the next week a storm blew part of the huge maple tree on our neighbors lot on to part of our deck. After making arrangements to get that cleaned up, and I must add here that after having had a run in with the neighbor in question in the past, he could not have been nicer over all the tree clean up business, after mowing the lawn last Friday, I came in to find that one of the two water heaters that were here when we bought our current house had sprung a leak.

I called our plumber, and if you live near me and need a plumber I highly recommend the guy we use, and he came right out and fixed things. He could not however fix the water damaged carpeting that was in the basement.

We'd been threatening to rip that ugly ass carpet up from day one but we never could get motivated to do it. But having huge parts of it soaked with water did the trick. No amount of blotting would have saved that carpet and had we left it, it would have become a breeding ground for toxic mold. So Sunday morning we ripped it up.

We pulled it up and cut it into sections we could easily carry up the stairs and which would fit into the Sparky mobile. We pulled up the padding and we took out the strips of tack filled wood that they used to keep the edges down. This is the mound of carpet that is destined for our county dump:
And here's the basement floor without the carpet on it:
Giddy with joy after having gotten the carpet in the basement up and out, we decided to take the carpet on the steps up, it was the same awful pink/dusty rose color. We decided that if we didn't it would haunt us for the rest of our days. So up and out it went. Removing all the staples, carpet tacks, and tacking strips off the steps and the landing was a huge pain in the ass, actually it was a pain in my arm, knees, and back. It took us three days to get all of them out.

Next step is to scrape the basement floor, use a high powered concrete cleaner on it, paint it, and seal it. Hopefully, the fumes from the cleaner, the paint, and the sealer won't get us and neither will the labor involved.

During the dealing with all that the tree guys came Monday, after I had to call them and remind them that they agreed to come out that day, to cut the storm damaged tree off of our and our neighbor's property. They got to our place around 2PM and got to work. By 5:30 they had broken part of the wooden fence and snapped our cable, which put us out of watching any cable TV, using the phone, and kept us offline. Thankfully the tree is gone and Charter cable sent out a huffy little dude who got my cable hooked back up and all is well on that front, for the time being.

So dealing with all that shit has put me behind in my blogging, my Facebooking, and in finishing my current graphic novel. Once we get the floor done downstairs, maybe I can get back to some semblance of normal and I can finish Hip Deep, Mountain High by the middle of June.

On a happier note, I did manage to find time to make a batch of strawberry jam from locally grown strawberries.