Beethoven In Trance - Episode 12

Water.

is good to us most of the time. Only when I start to own a 1953 house. Water becomes a problem.

Too much water in the air for example, is nothing we usually care about until it condenses itself in the basement and creates a ‘wet basement’ (house maintenance 101). The water in the air is measured by percentage and labeled as ‘moisture level’. The comfortable level is around 40% - 60%. My basement has a moisture level of over 80%. That’s when a dehumidifier comes into play.

Got one from Bestbuy for $200 (ouch) last Friday night and put it into use right away. It sounds louder than I expected, but it works. Couple hours later, I pulled out the bucket, and found the water half full. All right, keep up the good work. Emptied the bucket and put it back in. Keep pumping! (let’s wait and see this month’s electricity bill!).

Dehumidifier is not the only unit in the basement working hard in the last couple days. A small desk fan has been blowing down there all day long – to increase air circulation and ventilation so that dehumidifier and dry out air efficiently (my theory). The smell in the basement has been improved (good job). Can’t wait to clear out the basement (we dumped everything there when we moved in), so that I can rent a carpet cleaner to clean the carpet floor.

And the sofa in the basement. Dirty. My girl washed the cushion cover last Saturday. The sofa cover itself is not detachable so we need to vacuum it then buy another cover to layer on the top of it.

Speaking of vacuum, another expensive item ($300). We got one from Sears last Sunday. The unit is supposed to be quite when it runs (called whispering bell). Well, it should be called ‘thunder bell’ by my standard. I can’t imaging how much louder a vacuum machine can get. Anyway, the unit is supposed to be able to used for floor, carpet, walls, and inside of a car (with an attachment). We will find out soon how well does it work. By the way, it’s a canister vacuum, supposed to be the best option for bare floor.

So, we spent $500 on tools to clean up the house and dry the air (electricity bill not included), does it sound like a good deal to you?

Got ripped off by Sears guy on the lawn mower starter-plug though. Next time, go to Homedepot! No impulse buying! Always research before go into the store! The lawn mower still doesn’t start right away (after plug change). Might be the filter (Sears again).
About the lawn. Oh, thanks for asking. It’s taken over by weed. The neighbor across the street told me to get some chemical to spray on the lawn. ‘You can bring the lawn back’ he said, ‘look I have a beautiful lawn…’, yeah, thank you for the advice. Let me see how to squeeze this project into my future weekends.

Weekend? What weekend? Weekend is work day in the house. The highlight of this weekend is patching the garage roof. Before I get to the details, I need to talk about our neighbor first.

Our neighbor is a licensed electrician, and a handyman in general. He is remodeling his basement, and fixing all around the house. He and his wife and daughter all seem very nice, they have been offering help to us since we closed the house. They are happy that we become the neighbor because previous owner has a gang of biker friends. You can imagine the noise level. Last Saturday, we had the cable guy over to install the internet, and I had the chance to drop by their house (as the cable guy needs to go over to their backyard to activate the service). They were nice enough to show me the house and work-in-process basement project. Later, the guy came over looking at our leaking spigot in the back yard, and decided to pull that spigot out. He showed me how to pull out the siding (now I know how vinyl siding works), disconnected down sprout, then pulled the spigot out. He ran back to house and came back with a new spigot like mine. Before he could put it back in, he found the fitting inside the wall is rotten and leaky too, so it needs to be replaced first. After trying difference wrenches and tools, he decided to give up. That fitting is just rotten and we didn’t have a good grip on it to pull it out. The only way out seems to be cut the pipe from inside then, replace the whole thing. The job calls for a plumber, his brother is a plumber. How convenient! I am now just waiting on plumber come over to fix it….

He also gave me some three prone to two prone adapter so that I can plug my computer in. My home network is up and running. TV is on too. Nice…

While he and I were working in the backyard. My girl made some strawberry smoothie for his wife and daughter. They were polite enough to empty the smoothie (not to say the smoothie taste awful).

So, the night we went to Chinese grocery store, we bought some noodle and soy sauce for them (they mentioned the soy sauce before). They gladly accepted it (and wondering what are they going to do with it in their mind I bet). The guy brought out Jonny Walker Blue Label Scotch, and we had a shot together. The wife came back with anther cup of drink from her home country. My girl had a shot. Well, it was fun. Next morning I woke up, no headache.

After the Sunday lawn mower racing, I started to work on the garage roof. Neighbor saw me up there and right away pointed out what I needed to do the job right. He threw me a tube of roof patch cement. Put it into my caulk gun, I was ready to rumble. Put down the shingle, nailed it, caulked around the shingle and nails (as neighbor suggested). Took me about one and half hour to get it done, and hope it won’t rain any time soon. Well, woke up this morning and notice it has been raining. Went into garage, water again… not sure where is it from though, the water leak is not as bad as before, but still a small paddle on the floor. Where is it from??? Hopefully it’s not because of the caulk not completely dry as I really don’t want to climb up there again! (But do I have a choice?)

Other than the roof caulking. Also did the bathtub caulking last night. It needs 24 hours to cure, so can’t use it till around mid night tonight.

Well, so much for the caulking!

So this weekend, I patched the garage roof (and the improvement is not clear as I still see water in the garage). I caulked the bathtub ( we will see how does it go tonight). We bought a vacuum and a dehumidifier. Our neighbor pulled the leaking spigot out from the back of the house (come to think of it, I might need to seal the hole temporary with duck tape so that the rain won’t get into the wall… see, now I think like water). Our basement moisture has been reduced because of the dehumidifier. My girl washed the sofa cushion. I set up all three PCs in the house, speakers and home network. We didn’t get chance to vacuum the house as we planned though. And I still need to find some storage cabinet and rack for my kitchen (when do I have time to shop?)

Friday night we went to a friend’s house. We met them when we were studying towards our first MBA degree. Another classmate just graduated from Ph.D and got a teaching job in NJ. He dropped by Cleveland before NJ and stay in their house for the night. So, we got together in their new house. Yes, it’s a 1994 new house, and a big one too. My girl still likes ourselves (who doesn’t like their own house) as our house is closer to work and smaller (not necessarily easier to maintain though). As for me, I don’t know. Both houses have pros and cons. It’s good to work in the house a bit so that I start to learn the house - the electricity, the plumbing and various kinds of job. But those learning takes time. One can use the time to make money, ex. stock market, investment etc. But am I a finance person or handyman? That’s a question I don’t have an answer to now. So, let me just fix the house emergencies first then I sit down to reevaluate how I shall spend my weekends.

What are the projects for next weekend?