Jerm's Insanity

So there were were at the end of august…. puzting aroudn with the pre-electrician wiring, doing little stuff here and there, and coming dangerously close to stagnation. I was completely overthinking the while electrical wiring updating scheme and finally broke down and just called the electrician. Figuring the moeny that i’d save on labor by doing most of it myself would be far overshadowed by the further rent that would need to be paid at our current dwellings while i fumbled through the process.

So we called Al. I like Al. He’s the husband of a dear coworker friend of mine, so i knew him before we hired him. He was an electrician years ago, then became a commercial/charter pilot flying Citations and Lears, and then went back to electricianism for fun & profit. Suffice to say he’s intelligent, fabulously detail oriented, and fun to work with. We made the best of the frightening state of mt former house wiring and turned it into something that i actually feel safe about living with. This all happened over the course of a few days and now were’ ready for our wiring and framing inspections. Once those are done, we can insulate and sheetrock. The end is nigh….

When you’ve sick (ie: sneezy, light headed, etc…) attic work is not recommended.

…dom to do very little.

No, I don’t have a pet snake. Imagine my surprise when i went to water my spider plant and encountered this little guy:

Mind you, this is inside my dwelling. On the window sill that houses my plants, next to the door that i use a couple of times per day. Not exactly the place i expected to see a 2′ snake. And this isn’t the first time. This same little bugger, or one looking just like him, was sitting right on the ledge startled me back in April when i walked through the door one day. That would explain the shed snake skin i had found mounths earlier in the same spot. The whole ledge is a stone wall that separates inside form out and is largely sub-terranian on the other side. I kicked him out both times, but he seems to like that plant :-/

Seeing the fruits of one’s labor is a a wonderful thing. It’s an important thing as well — without it, what would be the point of the labor? You’d be left with stagnation, slavery, or a bunch of very pissed off people outside the Boss’s door. Many of them would undoubtedly have pitchforks. This is why i stay out of management.

My point is that the journey of rejuvination on which we’ve embarked our future dwelling has, up until recently, been largely destructive. Step by step along the way we’ve seen parts of our collosal purchase cut, chopped, bashed, disassebled and outright demolished. I’m sure this process is old-hat among the seasoned home reconditioner, but for the neophytes behind this blog it’s been a tremendous effort to keep a fix on the light at the end of rennovation tunnel and keep our inner pitchfork-branding-hordes outside the gates.

Until early last week.

Two weekends ago I finished the digging of the holes. There was then a government mandated waiting period to get someone to inspect my holes. He said that my holes were OK, but he wanted some re-bar in them. So, we stuck 3 pieces of re-bar into each of my holes and the pouring of the concrete commenced. WOOHOO!! We were officially (read: mostly) done damaging the house and finally started improving it! (*NOTE: it could be successfully argued that our first step of ripping down the paneling was a marked improvement to the house, but that was weeks ago)

Also fabulous, during the waiting period, we got very much of the interior furring out of the walls done.

Yes boys and girls and those not quite sure, progress is a wonderful thing. They say getting there is half the fun and it’s finally starting to feel true.

This explains a lot

For the past two weeks i’ve been living somewhat of a double life: Mild-mannered unshod IT hunk by day, and Teamster by night, and evening, and weekend. Here is where i would normally make some wisecrack about how the teamster reference doesn’t apply because i was working far too hard, but i think now i kind-of get it. You know when there’s a road crew and you see one guy jack-hammering and 3 guys standing around drinking coffee, and you think, “gotta love mt tax dollars going to 1 guy working and 3 guys standing around drinking coffe?” I don’t think that any more. I have been schooled. I have seen the light, and the darkness that lies there.

Who Knew

It seems that jack-hammering, and chainsawing and digging, and augering are all hard work. Like, “Oh-my-god-this-validates-my-decision-to-be-an-IT-geek-for-a-living. Thank-“Bob”-i-was-clever-enough-to-not-have-to-do-this every-fucking-day-of-my-working-life” hard work. One gets dirty. One gets tired. One gets blisters even with gloves on.

The Guys drinking coffe aren’t thinking, “boy ove got it good, i’m drinking coffee while that poor fool is working.” They’re thinking, “Oh hell, I’m next up on the jack-hammer.”

There is a bright side, though. All of this is going into the history books. I was fortunate enough to be working during some of the recent days of thermal record-breaking. woohoo!

It seems the gods of kiln and autoclave have backed off of their north american onslaught for the time being, what with daytime temperatures backing off to a mere sweltering and all. Unlike many unfortunate souls out there, i have air conditioning at all 3 of my residences now. Yes, I have 3 places where i commonly dwell: My dungeon in cousindave’s place, heidi’s towering apartment, and our newly purchased home.

Anyway, to beat the heat i spent the past few days outside demolishing my wooden deck on the back of the house. Yes, that’s right. I chose 2 of the hottest days of the year to muck about with chainsaws, sawzalls, sledge hammers and the manual transporting of several hundred pounds of rotting lumber. Oh yes, and there was also digging in the rock garden-eque earth that passes for poughkeepsie top-soil. Mensa-inductee I am not. Then again, 2 Doctorate-holding friends of mine, the latest members of the local ODA (Otter Defilers Anonymous) chapter were right there with us. Wasted student loans or great friends? I’ll let you be the judge.

Unfortunately, my camera containing the recent snapshots is MIA (i suspect it took refuge in heidi’s apartment, as i kept using it in the hellfires known as NY weather recently), you’ll have to wait for the post-deck-removal photos and the totally hot action shots of me with a chainsaw (don’t worry, i’m sure your imagination will fill in the blanks enough to get you through the night, you cad). For now just rest happily in the knowledge that you were most-likely much smarter than I with respect to hot to deal with the heat. I hope so, for your sake. Think of the children.

Congratulate me (or pitty me, depending on your POV) folks, I’m a homeowner. The closing yestery went just swimmingly. So swimmingly that between the two of us, heidi and I wrote a total of 2 checks. And one of those was a cashier’s check, all i had to sdow as sign it. I dunno if it was the bank or my lawyer or my title company or what, but we signed a bunch of papers, handed over 2 checks, and the bank did all of the dispersal of funds to the appropriate places. To make matters even better, we walked out of there with a check for $2004.00. Through their continuing ineptitude with numbers and inability to “get it”, in addition to our tossing in $2000 for the Deck Debacle, the bank added $2000 onto our mortgage so to fun our portion of the deck debacle. It doesn’t net us any money, of course, but i’m quite happy to pay $13 more on my mortgage payment and have this $2000 to use for appliances and rennovations. I know it doens’t work out financially in the long run, but i also don’t plan on staying here forever, so i’ll deal with it.

At any rate, the weight of responsability of the whole thing is remarkably less than the weight if making sure it was all getting done. I’m feeling much better now that the closing is over and we have they keys to our place.

Having orchestrated the whole thing, I’m not sure if I would use a mortgage broker next time. On one hand, i learned the process and have neither the curiosity of how it all works nor the desire for all of that stress again. On the other, being somewhat of a control freak i think i’d have a hard time entrusting all of that craziness to someone else.

woohoo!!

Passing this one along cause it’s… wow.

Permission (via Kristin (via Jef))