Lucky Number Thirteen

When we last left off, there were a number of things wrong with our house; wrong enough, that is, to preclude us from passing our inspection to receive Montgomery County's seal of approval to officially move into the house.  Since then, we have found out that number: 13-- not usually the luckiest of numbers.  There are 13 things wrong enough with our house to cause us to fail the inspection.  The inspection was on June 6; today is June 16.  What, you may ask, has been done in those ten days to remediate those issues?  I can tell you definitively, in fact: Nothing.

My hostas are going to have to be dug up temporarily.
But they're just beginning to bloom!

Mind you, that doesn't mean we haven't been in contact with our contractors.  There have been a couple of strongly worded emails from us.  There have been a couple of nonchalant replies back.  There have been two telephone conversations: one right off the bat, explaining Montgomery County had "misplaced" or "misfiled" the certification that our retaining wall had passed inspection; and one tonight, explaining that they were waiting for a period of time when there were three consecutive sunny days forecast-- enough to re-dig our front yard to expose the subterranean retaining wall, schedule an inspection for the next day, and refill the whole on the following day.  While that made perfect sense, here's what I heard from that explanation: Blah blah blah someone screwed up it's not us; Blah blah blah it's too rainy; Blah blah blah we want to rip out your hostas just as they're starting to take.  (Oh, and no mention of who's paying for this re-exposition of the aforementioned wall with the mysterious lack of ,municipal approvals.

In the meantime, Mark assures me, there will be a guy out here tomorrow to fix most of the stuff on the list.  And what's on that list?  I'm glad you asked:

1. "Stabize the lot."  Yeah, I think they mean "stabilize," but I'm not quite sure what's so unstable about our lot.  I mean, the house has been here for 115 years; it ain't going anywhere.
2. "Outside outlet is loose."
3. "Need backfill inspection for retaining wall."  Discussed above.
4. "Anti-tip device for cook tops."  Oh, you mean the one that was sitting on our counter for a month?  And our dishwasher leans forward, too, when you pull out either rack.
5. "Shower curtain rod."  The one thing that's our fault, but we have ordered the upstairs shower door, and it's due to be delivered and installed this week courtesy of Navij, our friendly Next Shower Door salesman.
6. "Bedroom closet lights too close to shelf."  Don't know how he's gonna fix that.  It better not involve just getting rid of the light.
7. "Need four-inch clearance on back of fireplace."  This may just involve moving the gas unit forward; I'm not sure.
8. "Mudroom outlet missing cover plate."  Really?  I'd hope that, were this the only problem, it wouldn't have failed us.
9. "Need arc fault breakers."  Um, okay.  Something electric.
10. "AC breaker max 25 amp."  Thinking it needs to be bigger?
11. "Panel directory too general."  I agree.  I want to know exactly how to turn everything off if there's a problem or a project.
12. "Patch storage wall."  Yeah, that thing my dad has been complaining about for months.
13. "Schedule all permits together."  Because obviously we're attempting to make this go as slowly as possible.

So in my estimation, there are about eight things that need to be fixed.  Hopefully at least six of them can be done tomorrow.  In addition, we have had a storage-room door sitting at Home Depot in Aspen Hill for a week now, and I just found out yesterday that our last remaining cabinet door is ready for pickup there as well.  Was going to pick them both up tonight after we put the kids to bed, but I forgot that the place closes at 8:00 on Sunday, so I'll either go tomorrow evening or attempt to get them to deliver, since they offered to deliver the cabinet door for free.  What I can do at this point, however, is to call the cabinet-install guys and schedule the final install for the kitchen, which should finalize not just that one remaining door, but also our pulls, as well as the things that go around the microwave and dishwasher to make the cabinets look complete.

While the contractors have been busy "working behind the scenes" (ahem), we have been semi-productive these last ten days.  I won't lie and say we've done tons of stuff and are being held back entirely by the contractors, but I will say that there are things we've done that, with a little work from the contractors, will help us finish everything up.  Abby, for instance, finally found bathroom hardware she likes.  We got the stuff at Lowe's and have it in a bag, ready to mount.  We are going to put Xs on the walls to show where we want everything mounted, because without doing so we're pretty sure everything will be put about a foot lower than it should be.  Our tradesmen are great workers, but apparently they think we're midgets-- something I think I've noted previously.  Our range hood is about 18 inches above the stove top, our vanities were originally set so low I had to bend over to brush my teeth-- I still have to stoop at the current, "highest possible" height-- and our mailbox is so low on the outside of the house that I'm fully expecting the Wicked Witch of the East's legs to be sticking out under our front porch.  To all who have not met us: I am 6' 1", my wife is 5' 10", and my kids are both above the 90th percentile for their age in height.  We have no need for those tiny toilets or baby-sized towel bars set two feet off the ground, thank you very much.

The new sidewalk out back,
and the new setback for our bushes.

We've also gone ahead and hired someone to help us with some landscaping issues; namely, that we have a number of spots on our property that are paved over that shouldn't be.  Along the back side of the house, under the kids' bedroom windows, there's a sidewalk that comes right up and literally touches the house in parts.  There is no need for strangers to walk that close to the house, easement or no easement.  So we had Paulino, a guy who does work for Paula and Richard (the Windmill's owners), smash up the concrete on that side.  The sidewalk's community property, sure, but the part of it that touched our house was on our land.  So now that things are smashed up, he's going to build a nice, straight, new sidewalk along the property line, where it should be.  With that extra space, we are going to put bushes in to form a border between what's public and what's private-- maybe something prickly, so as to discourage our kids from escaping out their windows in their teenage years...

All this blacktop was removed from the yard before we woke up today.
Amazing what can happen when people actually want your business.

Second, parts of our postage-stamp front yard are covered by multiple layers of blacktop.  When you look at old pictures of this place, one of the things that stands out is the constantly evolving shape of the front yard; sometimes it's straight across, sometimes jagged, sometimes rounded.  Currently, the yard is bounded by a curved curb.  However, inside that curb is a layer (or more, in places) of blacktop that impedes any sort of attempts anyone might have to actually grow anything.  Paulino pulled it all up Saturday morning and hauled it away before we woke up this morning.  Excellent!  (And just in time for Mark to come and dig it all back up... wonder how long it would have taken him to get around to pulling it up, had we asked?)  Finally-- and this is something I'm a bit wary of actually letting Mark know-- Paulino is going to pour a concrete pad underneath our AC unit on the side of the house.  Currently, there's a specially-made pad on top of concrete blocks-- I kid you not-- for the condenser.  (That's what the outside part's called, right?)  Paulino's going to make it so the unit doesn't fall down the slope during a hard rain, basically, which is something Abby and my dad helped forestall by putting in the longer drain hoses a few weeks ago.  All in all, I bet he'll be done before midweek.  And all this after two consecutive days of frustrating tries at meeting up-- first, I told him we lived next-door to Paula and Richard, not remembering they had another house; next, I told him Abby would be home, but told Abby I'd call her when he replied, and forgot to.  No worries-- he showed up unannounced on Friday and all was set.  On Saturday, the sound of him working on the concrete outside our window woke us up.  At 7:00.  On a Saturday morning.

This morning was Father's Day, and we had planned to get up early enough to make pecan pancakes and leave by 10 to make it out to my sister's place in Gainesville, where we'd spend the day with my parents at my sister's pool.  At about 8:00, I was aware Abby was not in bed, but rather with the kids outside doing something.  Unconcerned, I went back to sleep.  About 90 minutes later, I woke up, scrambled to take a shower, and found the three of them cleaning out our disgusting car as part of my Father's Day present.  So, pancakes were out, but so was the smell of spilled chocolate milk in the backseat.  I started to get bathing suits together and headed out to see what they were doing when I saw a family walking around the Windmill, heading toward the Colonial.  Wait-- they didn't look like tourists.  Could they be...  I had to ask... Yes!  They're the people who bought the Colonial-- the yellow house two over that was Abby's favorite, and that had fallen through so many times right before it was sold.  Eric and Christina (sp?) are native Marylanders who live with their two kids (Ryan is only three months older than Isaac and in the same grade!!) in Fort Lauderdale.  He's an attorney/developer, and they're considering making this their permanent residence.  Eric had bought the place without showing the kids, so now that Florida's schools are out, that's what they were doing.  Immediately, I volunteered my kids to show them the "Magic Trail" that starts under their house and leads to the Castle.  We all went along, barefoot, listened to their plans for the place, and commiserated with them about the approvals process.  (Hopefully we didn't scare them away...)  Regardless, not only is the house now truly owned by someone, but it's owned by someone who seems to a) know what they're doing, b) understand what needs to happen, and c) HAS KIDS ABOUT THE SAME AGE AS OURS.  Not that I'm excited about that potential or anything...  Funny thing is that my kids are so unused to having neighbors that are their age-- seeing as they've never had any-- that we had to actually explain what we meant by going next door to ring the bell and see if they were home.  "No, really, you can go over and see if your friend wants to play, without setting a play date.  No, really."

So there you have it: what I hope is read as a not-entirely-negative post.  (I think my sister may think we're suicidal based on some of my previous rants...)  Now, we just have to see if tomorrow really pans out as a cure-all with the contractor, and how deep we actually have to dig (in our yard and in our pockets) to get that damn Certificate of Occupancy.  And it's all based on the ten-day-old failed inspection and that (hopefully) lucky number 13.

"Biblical Failure," or, "What is a Nick Nack?"

"There is nothing new under the sun." --Ecclesiastes 1:4-11*

"This is the song that doesn't end / Yes, it goes on and on my friend" --Lamb Chop

"I knew we were gonna fail." --Abby Wahl

Every Wednesday for two school years, I've been lucky enough to be able to take a half-day off from work in order to pick my kids up from their school, with its wacky Wednesday-half-day policy. We try to do fun things, like going to a museum or the planetarium or something, but often end up just going to the playground and/or the library, which is what we did this week. It started not only as a continuation of our set-up at Isaac's pre-school co-op, where one of us had to go in once a week and the other had to watch the baby, but as a good way for me to use my excess comp time and give Abby a half-day of non-parental adulthood. But lately, she's been joining us, whether on playground or museum jaunts, or at the house to meet with contractors, inspectors, or anyone else who needs the focus of both of us during working hours. at those times, the kids have occasionally gotten pushed to the back, either having to endure hours of cross-town driving, boring materials showrooms where a single executive putt-putt hole was the only distraction, or being shushed while they play pool or foosball in the community room.

Yesterday's plan was to keep the kids out of Abby's hair as much as possible, so we did the playground across the street from their school, spent an hour or so at the Mount Pleasant library, and went to Target to buy air freshener for our stinky car, before finally heading home at five. When we got home, Abby was in her painting clothes, having finished about a third of the first coat of Poppyseed paint on the trim in our family room. All around her, there were piles of boxes, displaced furniture, and empty cabinetry-- but not because she had carefully removed things from their place to make sure nothing got splattered. No, it was because she had spent the entire day packing up the house, so that when the inspector came today, he wouldn't see signs that we have effectively been squatting there for the last seven weeks. Her work took much of the day, and we continued with last-minute touches this morning, bagging all the contents of our freezer and fridge to stash temporarily across the street in the community room's fridge, taking sheets off our beds and leaning the mattresses up against the walls, emptying the dryer of clean clothes and packing our clothes away in the boxes they had come in back in April.

I left the house a bit late, due to all this re-packing, telling Abby that at least once we re-unpacked, we could get rid of the boxes once and for all, we could hang things on walls once and for all, we could cross "inspections" off our need-to-do list once and for all. Then, just before lunchtime, I get the following email:

"Gregory, the inspection failed. It's just a few nick nack items and one major item. The major item is the inspector couldn't find a sign off for the retaining wall, so we both are researching now to get to the bottom of this"literally"."

I had been waiting for his email all morning, having asked him to email me rather than texting, since I can't read texts at work. So when I saw his name in my inbox, I got excited momentarily. You know, like how you feel in the third quarter of a Bills game versus the Patriots. Just as fast as the adrenaline came, it left when I read the opening line. You know, like how you feel in the fourth quarter of a Bills game versus the Patriots.

Immediate questions: whose responsibility is it to have that sign-off handy? What are "nick nack items," and how many is "a few?" When will this stuff be found and fixed? How much will Abby hate me for telling her the news? Will we have to re-unpack, then re-repack, then, OMG, re-re-unpack?

So that's where we stand. Limbo. Abby was nonplussed when I told her this afternoon, giving me her quote at top in a resigned monotone. We'll bring all the food back into the kitchen, put the clothes back into the closets, arrange the toiletries and toys back into the vanities and shelves, redistribute the furniture to its proper place, reconnect the satellite and modem. Then we'll wait until we have to undo, then redo, it all over again.

*Those of you who know me personally may find it strange that I open this blog post quoting scripture. Be assured I had no idea of its biblical origin. The Shakespearean origin I had assumed was actually just a paraphrase. Thank you, Google.

Penultimate Passage

I won't beat around the bush, because I'm sure you all want to know: Yes, we have passed our plumbing inspection! Weeks after the plumbing was "done," and at least a double-digit number of days since it was actually completed, we finally got us a sticker. Despite having an inspection scheduled for last week (supposedly), it took until yesterday to do it, since we had to secure an inspection on the fireplace beforehand. Wish we had known that sooner, because last week, while thinking "hell, we might as well get some stuff done on our own," we called our trusted fireplace people and had them cap our flue and do some pointing. So of course, as soon as I pay them, I hear we need to find a chimney guy. "Nope, we're calling my guys and that's it." Within 48 hours, we had our certificate. (Granted, the inspector had a whale of a time trying to discern what the paper actually said, because of poor penmanship, but hey, maybe the guy was Dr. Chimney, thank you very much.)

But it's not just a piece of paper that we've scored since I last wrote. Our two straggler windows were finally delivered from the custom shop in Baltimore and installed; the one in the balcony doesn't make that big of an impact, but the one in the dining room is amazing, because it was the one window we never actually saw light through-- it had been boarded up since the first time we saw the house 28 months ago. Now? I sit at my dining-room table and am actually a bit distracted by seeing the top of the windmill on the right side of my peripheral vision. It's a distraction about which I will never complain.

Speaking of the dining room, we finally got our chairs. Or rather, we finally ordered our chairs, and they were delivered crazy-fast. We had been holding off until most of the construction was finished, and once we reached the point where we needed to self-propel, they were an obvious choice. We got six, and plan to get two more, either matching or complementary. They're uber-modern, metal chairs-- three with white coating and three copper. They look really great with the striated table from my grandma. They arrived in pieces, and we had to put them together; IKEA definitely didn't write these directions! After wrestling with the first chair, I got an expletive-laden voice-mail message from Abby about the experience, but by the time numbers five and six were constructed while I watched House Hunters Sunday night, they took about five minutes apiece. For metal chairs, they're really comfortable, although I did have a bit of an accident while constructing #4, and have a gash on my right wrist to prove it.

Also completed recently is the switch of our hot and cold controls on the kitchen sink, as well as the installation of the dishwasher. No more washing dishes in the bathroom, and the machine is really, really quiet, which is great. So quiet, actually, that it's already been opened twice mistakenly during the rinse cycle. Gonna have to learn how to lock it! Although it is working, it's not anchored to the cabinets, so when you empty the contents it lurches forward just enough to make you think that this is the time it'll fall completely out, just like my recurring dreams as a kid of that strong wind knocking my house over to the extent that the mailbox post across the street would come through my window. Yeah, not gonna happen, but not taking any chances. The fridge also leans too far forward, and the freezer opens every time you close the fridge door. But it's wedged so tightly in the cabinets that I can't pull it out to adjust the tilt. Gonna have to wait for the cabinet guys to finish up to see if they can do it for us.

Ahh, the cabinets. Still unfinished, but supposedly the last door is going to be delivered to Home Depot tomorrow. Once it's in, they'll come out, switch out that glass door for the solid wood one they mistakenly installed in April, and do a couple other tweaks--like anchoring the dishwasher. Also hoping they'll install all of our handles and drawer pulls, despite us having purchased them online rather than from Home Depot. Abby's not so sure they will, but I have faith.

We've done a lot of buying lately, but the fun kind of buying: home furnishings, rather than home improvement.  There were the aforementioned dining-room chairs, which are BluDot Real Good Chairs from Fab.com.  Then there's the computer desk we got on clearance from West Elm.  And the painting we bought from an alternative art shop in Old Town Winchester during our anniversary weekend-- I haggled them from $150 to $100, so I feel productive on that one.  There's the mailbox we found on eBay and bought, only to have the letter carrier say we should really have one on the curb instead of the house, so we just put it on the porch for the time being, but today we found it to have been installed by our contractor on the wall.

On the flip side, there's the storage-room door we swear we bought but is nowhere to be found, so we had to reorder it from Home Depot and it's due in later this week.   And of course the bathroom hardware for the upstairs bathroom that we found online and had shipped to us, only for Abby to decide she doesn't like it; it's already on its way back.  Oh, and the still-nonexistent upstairs-shower door that we had measured last month, received the quote for yesterday, and think we can do better on.  So obviously, WE still have some work to do; the ball's not entirely in the contractor's court.

But for now, our next big date is Thursday; that's when we have our big, final inspection.  Pass that, and we get our Certificate of Occupancy.  In other words, we won't be squatters here anymore.  We refinanced a few weeks back-- had our mortgage payment cut by more than a thousand bucks a month, which is like getting a KILLER raise-- and I had been worried that we'd need the Certificate of Occupancy in order to finalize the closing.  I don't know why, other than my mortgage company told me I would.  But here I am, with a new mortgage and my old one so officially closed that my website login has been disabled.  So all the inspection will mean to us is that Maryland blesses the work that's been done.  But we also have to pretend we're not living here for that to happen.  And by pretend, I mean pack up a bunch of our stuff and seriously pretend we're not living here.  Seriously.  So tomorrow, on what would normally be a fun half-day at work picking up the kids from their half-day, it'll be more about making sure the kids are happy and occupied while Abby and I repack the most important things we have here, into the boxes that have been sitting in the living room for a month awaiting this day.  Our clothes will go back into bags, our food... um... maybe into the community room fridge for a few hours?  (Luckily, I haven't been grocery shopping in a week and we're running low on basically everything.)  But hopefully, come Thursday night, we can forget about permits forever, and start focusing on the end goal: living here, with no more work to be done by the contractors, and beginning our quest for landscaping and that big Maryland Historical Trust payoff.  

In the meantime, though, off to repack our house.  

DIY Because They Certainly Won't

Our newly-painted stair risers

Last Monday, I wrote to our contractor, asking when four specific items would be completed. He picked one-- sanding and painting the risers on the stairway-- and said that'd actually been planned to be done the next day. (What a coincidence!) It was, but here we are a week later and nothing else has been done--on the list or otherwise. By Wednesday, we knew we'd be in this situation, so we started brainstorming everything that was left. Lots of little things, for sure, but "lots" is the important word here, not "little!"

Maybe the mailman
can find us now...

One of those things was an issue with the fireplace. (We did the gas fireplace ourselves, and just had his guys install it.) There is no way to close the flue to the fireplace, which means when we turn it on, we lose almost all of the heat up the chimney. Granted, we're more worried about getting rid of heat right now, but hey, I'm nothing if not a box checker. The good thing about this whole situation is that, of all the contractors we have worked with in both house projects, there is one who has come through on multiple occasions with flying colors: American Professional Chimney Services. I would recommend these guys without reservation. In fact, I called them for an estimate, didn't even bother calling around, just hired them to do the work, and expect that they'll be done before I get home from work tomorrow.  By the end of the week, we'll have all the pointing done, the flue will be capped, we'll have paid the bill, and we won't have to think about our chimney again for a long time. Over the weekend, Abby and I thought maybe we could incorporate a whole-house fan into the project, and the owner actually emailed back and forth with me several times (on a weekend evening!) to discuss the issue. Ultimately, we just went with the original plan, but why the heck can't all of this job be this way?

They say if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Or, at least micromanagers say that. But when my parents asked us what we would have done differently with this project, my answer in all seriousness was that we should have hired Abby as our general contractor. Sure, we tried to do that with the first house, but that was also while we were both working, and eventually, while she was pregnant with and then nursing Isaac. This time? She's not planning to go back to work until the fall, the kids are in school, and she did so much anyhow; it just seems like such a waste to have gone the route we did.

One of six Hostas, originally from Tonawanda, via
Grand Island and Petworth.

But at this point, I'm not whining. I'm happy living in the house-- even if we're still technically squatters. And it's not just because it's not the basement, although that's definitely part of it! It's nice to be able to get home from work, do normal family stuff, then maybe do something on the house after the kids go to bed. Last week I spent a half-hour hanging hooks in my closet. Tiny stuff for sure, but now my belts and backpack and shirts in need of laundering are up off the floor, and the closet can actually look clean. This weekend we were able to make IKEA runs to pick up some As-Is cabinetry Abby found (that is identical to the stuff we already had, but already put together and 30% off) while the kids took naps. I was able to go to the old house and dig up a couple of my Buffalo Hostas, then transplant them into the front yard, while Abby was in the shower. Heck: we can grill out now that we've replaced our sad old wedding-gift grill with a snazzy new one, just a couple weeks shy of our tenth wedding anniversary.  If you want to get something done, just do it yourself, right?

My dad helped me move the
perfectly-sized extra cabinet
into the laundry room yesterday.

But we can't do everything. We were able to keep a couple of the cabinets Home Depot brought that had been mismeasured, and put them downstairs: one fits perfectly in the laundry room with not even an inch to spare, (thanks Dad!) while the other will serve as our coat closet in the mudroom. But we had to wait an agonizing two weeks for a plumbing inspection; the inspector's coming "Wednesday or Thursday," but the hot and cold are still reversed on the kitchen faucet, Abby says the spigot on the yard side of the house is leaking, and there's still the possible issue of the pipe behind the laundry room that my dad strenuously objects to due to the fact that it may overflow and spread poop all over the area under the stairs. The inspection for the Certificate of Occupancy can come only when the plumbing's been certified, and our refinance, which is set for Thursday night, can only be finalized once our current bank sees the occupancy permit. Dominoes have to fall, and we're not in charge of finger-flicking; no matter how hard we try, they're not being blown over with our breath alone.

Our new doorbell

So where we stand is in the middle of a construction-zone-that-isn't. It is a construction zone, because, you know, the thing's not finished. It looks like a construction zone, because we have piles of boxes and cardboard on the floors, just in case we need to make like we're not actually living in it for the sake of the occupancy permit. It feels like a construction zone because on the way back from taking a shower in the gorgeous bathroom, your feet get gritty from stepping on dust left by prior projects on those cardboard panels, and your family and friends are constantly referencing the fact that you live in an unfinished project. But it isn't a construction zone because, well, no construction is actually going on. Little projects, sure. But nothing ongoing, and nothing integral.  In the spirit of DIY, I guess the next thing we've gotta do is have the kids drywall the rest of the storage room.  But in the meantime, Abby and I will be enjoying the burgers I just made on our grill, eating under the new dining-room chandelier that we commissioned, and watching So You Think You Can Dance on the DirecTV we ordered.  Oh, and stuffing food down the disposal we think we're gonna keep (thanks to commentary on my last post), because that's just a crazy novelty at this point...

On the Line

A few of things were supposed to happen on Tuesday, and an hour into my phone call with DirecTV Tech Support, it appeared that not only would we fail on all counts, but we may have to begin the search for Internet providers -- if not television as well -- all over again.

The issue with DirecTV was not that the satellite wasn't working. On the contrary, we had watched TV for a couple of nights in a row, and except for the temporary appearance of rainbow-colored vertical bars on the screen on Monday, everything was good. Everything, that is, except our On Demand feature. Granted, this isn't a huge deal, but what it meant was that the satellite was not hooking up to the Internet, where all the On Demand content is stored. It would mean that we'd have access to current programming, but not to anything in the past, unless we DVR'd it. We'd also have no access to the "10,000 movies and TV shows" they say we have, which is a major part of the subscription cost, I would guess. 

As the hour-long call progressed, I became more and more nervous about having to scrap our Clear Internet and go webless for a while longer, until the cable companies got their act together and ran a wire under our street. That's because this weekend, two different DirecTV reps told me the two systems were incompatible. Of course, I didn't believe them-- not because I'm some electronics expert (ha!) but rather because a) Clear assured me I could get between 3-6 mbps for downloads, and DirecTV only required 2 mbps; and b) the Clear sales department directed me to DirecTV-- I used the same phone call to order both!-- so how the heck could they be incompatible?  But now, faced with a 15-day Clear trial period already half over, and a 2-year contract for DirecTV that has $20/month cancellation penalties, I was thinking I'd have to send back the system and not only have to deal with a cable company for Internet service, but at an exorbitant rate, due to us not actually getting cable from them. So as the 1:00:00 mark hit on my phone call, things were not looking good.

Earlier in the day, I had been on the receiving end of a sorry-'bout-that message, as Rory wrote to tell me the plumber couldn't come until Thursday. We have been waiting for him to come hook up the kitchen plumbing for a week now, since not only does it mean we can apply for a certificate of occupancy (and finally finalize our refinance), but also that we could put an end to microwaving water for tea, waiting for ice cubes, smelling a weird NYC-subway-like stench in the storage room caused by an incorrectly-sized waste pipe, and (most importantly) having to wash our dishes in the bathroom sink. Seriously, things like excess milk and chicken soup don't look very nice poured in your toilet-- trust me.

We're also waiting for the last piece of our dining-room chandelier: the lighting. Well, half of the lighting, to be exact. James, a local artist from our old neighborhood, created a larger version of an Anthropologie light fixture Abby really liked. It's installed now, after a process that freaked Abby out, since it involved him standing on the top rung of our step ladder, itself atop a six-foot scaffold on the dining-room side of the great room, with Abby holding things steady as James reached to place the electric box at the apex of the cathedral ceiling. But the install looks great; you don't notice the box at all, silver on the white ceiling, and hidden behind one of the rafters. (That's more than I can say for the smoke detector mid-room, which is still hooked onto the dark rafter like a big blob of marshmallow fluff on a Twix bar.) The unfinished part of the chandelier is that, as we plugged the bulbs in-- Edison bulbs, so as to make sure we pad the Pepco CEO's annual bonus more effectively-- we noticed only four of the eight sockets worked. James seemed unaffected, announcing he knew what the problem was, and that he'd fix it when he came back later in the week to adjust the height of the fixture. I'm still not a fawning fan of the thing, but I think it'll grow on me, and it's definitely a plus to have adequate lighting during dinner.

We did have some things completed this week. On Monday morning, we had our first trash pick-up, following the end of our annoying "please recognize us as an address, since we pay taxes and stuff" issue with the county. We have two different recycling bins, which means that we have to separate paper and cardboard from bottles and cans. And what's really weird is that we're responsible for providing our own trash bin, as opposed to the Supercans provided by DC to residents there. We also have to urge the mailman to start delivering mail to us, since everything's still being dropped off at the property manager's office even though we have our address on the wall now. Granted, we have no mailbox as of yet, but we have a doormat; just put it under that!  It's a pain because the office is only open during business hours, and as mail isn't exactly a priority for me dear wife, we can go a week without retrieving it. (Love ya, babe.) 

Pay no attention to the non-working bulb to Abby's right.

We also found out that our assessment of the plumbing situation wasn’t entirely correct—in both good and annoying ways.  The good way was that it turned out that our fridge actually had been hooked up, and the ice is now being made.  (C’mon, that’s the one bit of progress? I’ll trade you for a dishwasher!) When the plumber stopped by momentarily this week, he apparently was able to do that, as well as to affix the faucet to the countertop—albeit with no actual plumbing hookup underneath the counter.  He said that the subway smell was probably not going to happen anymore, since the washing machine was now working and there was enough water in the pipes to keep burps from the sewer down where they belong—although I don’t know whether I should buy that explanation.   But he also said they’re going to have to install a garbage disposal in our sink.  A disposal had kept showing up very early in the planning process, and we kept telling them that we didn’t want one.  But time and again, there it was on the planning documents.  Well, I guess one of the documents it was on was the plumbing permits, and without an install, we won’t pass the inspection.  So they had to install an accompanying switch on the backsplash to go with it.  My guess is that I’ll be charged for both of these things—whether on a line item or, more likely, buried in other costs—when I explicitly said on multiple occasions that we didn’t want a disposal.  I’m guessing it’ll be taken out after the inspection—again at my expense?—and I have no idea whether our access to the hot-water tap will suffer during that time, but I’m going to guess so.

Which leads me back to the beginning of the second hour on the phone with DirecTV.  Things aren’t looking good.  The lack of 50% of my chandelier, and the lack of progress on my plumbing was wearing on my mind, and I was looking for a way—any way!—to just end the call without pissing the guy off for having wasted an hour of his time.  Abby walks into the room, having spent the last hour (or so it seemed) in the shower, and plops down in front of the computer.  She announces that the Internet’s not working.  Wait, it was working at the beginning of my phone call.  I tell Mr. DirecTV, and we’re puzzled.  I say, “wait: would that switch we threw a half-hour back have changed that?”  Maybe.  I go over, throw the switch, and the web comes back online. And, an hour and three minutes into my call, all of a sudden a message shows up on the TV screen: “Congratulations?  Your DirecTV system has been connected to the Internet!”  Bells ring, angels sing, babies coo.  Happily, I take the piping hot receiver away from my ear, and sit down to watch our On Demand.  Hey—we ain’t got a kitchen sink, but we can watch Tosh.0, and that’s really all that matters, right?

An End to Fancy Camping?

When we first moved into our house in the District, Abby and I joked that we were "fancy camping," what with our one working electric outlet and our daily trek to the basement to use the shower, and our lack of central heating.  More than eight years later, we have found ourselves "fancy camping" once more.  Only this time, the hardships are the lack of television, Internet, and a kitchen sink.  Lo and behold: this week.

Up until Monday, I had been holding out hope that some cable company would come to our rescue.  You see, our neighbors all have cable.  That's because, well, they live in 2013.  Unfortunately, Dewitt Drive separates the historic from the pre-historic.  That's because while 9615 Dewitt Drive, across the street, has their choice of Comcast or Verizon, 9618 Dewitt Drive, us, is left in the dark ages.  No wires cross the street, aboveground or underground.  And although a conduit runs from approximately 250 feet up the street over to a location near our parking spots, it is empty.  Just like when we found out last year that our house was "eligible" to have public water supply access, but didn't actually have a connection, we found out this weekend that we are "close" to having cable companies accept our money in their exorbitant pricing schemes, but no proverbial cigar is anywhere to be found.  So on Monday night, after a fruitless meeting with Comcast, I officially gave up on cable.

Therefore, enlightenment.  Yesterday we got a FedEx package in the mail with our new Clear Internet equipment in it.  Clear is a provider that gives you Internet from cell towers, and doesn't require any wiring at all.  We unpacked the box, plugged in the receiver, scratched our heads for a moment while our computer told us we weren't installing something correctly, then noticed the web was already working in the background.  Yep, not even one button to press: Internet.  As a gift to ourselves, after we put the kids to bed, we officially sat down on the couch for the first time in the new house and watched an episode of our favorite British TV Game show, Q.I., off of YouTube.  And there was much rejoicing.  (For those of you who are interested, Clear is $50/month, and you can even take it with you when you travel.  You basically make yourself into a wi-fi hotspot for up to ten devices, which is great because we have a lot of things that want to hook themselves to the Internet, like our thermostat and likely the security system we haven't gotten yet.  Another thing that wants to hook to the Internet is...)

Television!  Today: Dish Network.  Nope, sorry, DirecTV.  (I always get them mixed up; it's the "D.")  After I called Clear on Monday night, I called DirecTV and scheduled an install.  They assured me that, despite our weird angles and the fact that the main NPS building overshadows the house, we'd be able to get perfectly good coverage.  Last week in Buffalo, when I realized satellite service may be in my future, I talked with my cousin Jenny about it, and she assured me that she had never lost coverage before-- and she lives n Buffalo, where there's this thing called "weather."  So we asked DirecTV to come out today, and of course Abby has a migraine.  But she was a trooper, because she knew it meant television was en route.  We had wanted the installer to put the dish on the side roof, above the first-floor bathroom, because it would be out of the way, but it needs to face in a southwesterly direction, and the house would block it there.  So the main roof was the only option, but as with everything here, there are considerations.  So I called the property management company and asked them what their satellite dish policy was.  Kwame, the property manager, told me there's actually an FCC regulation prohibiting prohibitions on satellite dishes, but that we should put it in the least conspicuous place possible, and not on community property.  Bonnie, from Save Our Seminary, said she didn't know of anyone else who had a dish on the property, but she also didn't know of anyone whose request for one had been denied; she also quoted the FCC regulation.  So we are now the proud owner of a satellite dish, located at the far eastern corner of the roof, where it can't be seen at all from the front of the house, and where it's partially obscured by the 100-year-old yews in the yard.  And I've already set the DVR to record Parks & Recreation.  Again, about $50/month, so $100 for cable and Internet, which would have been $139 with Comcast... whenever they decided to lay the lines.

Our new faucet.  All that's missing is water.

The entertainment hole has been filled now, but there are a few other holes that have been missing.  Namely, when our counters were set a few weeks ago, some holes were left undrilled.  The countertop guys came out for the install and asked Abby for the faucet we'd be using in the kitchen, so she handed them the box.  Only more than a week later, when we took the faucet out of the box, did we realize that, um, the faucet had never been taken out of the box.  Only one hole had been drilled, and it was a three-hole faucet.  I called the countertop people and got a definite attitude from the manager.  So I made Abby call back, because no one dislikes Abby.  And what do you know: we now have the proper number of holes drilled for our faucet, and should have a completely functioning suite of water-using fixtures in our kitchen by early next week.  And not a moment too soon, either, because washing dishes in a bathroom sink is truly disgusting.  I don't know why that is, actually, because it's not even like we're using the upstairs bathroom much, since the door to it only went in this week, and the shower's still doorless.  It's just that when you're cleaning out a pot that has cheese and tomato sauce stuck inside of it, and it's all going down the drain in your brand-new ultra-modern sink, it doesn't sit right.  One thing I'm sure of: we'll make very, very good use of the dishwasher once it's hooked in.

The dishwasher, pre-spacers

The dishwasher, by the way, does not need to be replaced.  Phew!  We had thought there was an issue because of the large gaps separating the dishwasher from both the cabinets on either side of it and the counter on top.  But when the guys came back to finish cabinet installation, fillers magically appeared on the sides.  Granted, the cabinet installation is still not completed, not the least of which is because the gap between the dishwasher and the countertop remains, but at least we know we don't have to buy a new one.  As for the cabinets, they're now all in.  The problems are very minor now: one door is solid, but was ordered to be glass; the drawer pulls were not attached; and the space above the dishwasher needs to be filled.  The fridge needs to be leveled, which is less the fault of the cabinet installers and more the fault of us having put the kitchen on a slanted surface (that used to be a porch).  Also, having bought "supercabinets" for the corners, convinced the inserts would allow us to use more of the space in the corner cabinets to each side of the range, we realized very quickly that the supercabinet inserts actually preclude us from using the back third of each cabinet.  We're going to try to return the inserts, but at the very least we'll be removing them from the cabinets and just using basic shelving.  We'll totally deal with having to bend down and stretch to get the less frequently-used stuff hiding in the back if it means we're not wasting so much space in the first place.  Oh, and our contractors have to raise the range hood, because they apparently think we're about three feet tall.

Our kitchen as it stands today.
The cabinet to the right of the range hood should have a glass door,
and the range hood will be raised significantly.

As for space, we are bouncing back and forth between thinking we have way too much or not enough.  I think it's because as we put stuff away, we see the empty boxes and think, "wow, there's not much left to unpack!"  Then we go to another room and realize, "wait, there are kitchen boxes stored in the library.  Crap."  And more boxes shift to the rapidly filling cabinets.  I think in the end, we'll be just about right, with maybe a bit of extra room, but not too much.

My doorbell!
It goes "Brrrrrrring!

As for other new stuff, we've now got all the doors installed.  Except the one for the storage area, which we swear we ordered but is not here.  So we'll have to buy another one.  But there are no doors sitting around anymore, waiting to be installed.  About half the trim is in, but none of it is painted.  That is going to be a huge, immensely boring undertaking that I'm totally going to pawn off on Abby if I can help it!  The misplaced door hardware has been corrected, and I realized the deadbolt on the back door was not done incorrectly-- it just works that way.  It's a keypad doorlock, which is awesome because it means we don't have to give anyone a key if they want to come over when we're not here-- we just give them the code and they walk right in.  I love it, because it's fantastic when you have your arms filled with groceries.  And speaking of awesome: my doorbell has been installed!  No one has rung it yet, though, because even though our house numbers have also gone up out front, still nobody can find our house.  I constantly have delivery people wondering where we are.  "I'm on a traffic circle, and all I see is a big building and a green house."  Duh, look at the numbers on the wall, blind guy!

Our main goal now is unpacking.  Because once we unpack, I really feel we can do landscaping, which I desperately want to do.  Oh, and because it will then feel less like "fancy camping" and more like "living in a house you've owned for 23 months already."  Abby and I had a bitch session while washing dishes in the bathroom last night, and went over all the reasons we were unhappy with the house.  My unhappiness has already been expounded on in this forum, but is generally concerned with my not wanting to have had a "fancy camping" experience in this place.  Hers, though, can be compared to watching that show on HGTV where they show people what their house would look like if it were rehabbed with an unlimited budget, but then they just go out and buy stuff from flea markets instead; yeah, it's way better than your old place, but you had so much more in your head.  Once we're settled, I'm sure it'll keep getting closer to that picture in our heads.  But for now, I'm looking forward to using the Internet, watching the television, and washing dishes in the kitchen.  In other words, the end of "fancy camping" for good.

The new up-lighting in our Great Room.  Decidedly NOT fancy camping.

Living in a Fish Bowl

Not much has happened with the house since last I wrote, although a lot has happened in it.  My parents spent the weekend-- our first guests! --and helped us put a whole bunch of stuff away, emptying a lot of boxes and creating actual open space in the great room, rather than the huge pile anchored by our two enormous armoires and covered with plastic sheeting.  We put Lola's bed together, and decided to buy a new version from IKEA rather than putting together the identical one we bought from a couple off of Craigslist what seems like ages ago; it worked out, too, because my parents took the used one back to their place so the kids can use it when they sleep over.  Slowly but surely, the place is becoming livable.

Living in the house is definitely going to be interesting.  We have chosen to be in a fish bowl by buying the house that's pretty much at the center of the community-- and don't forget the 49 windows-- but at the same time, it'd be nice to, oh, I don't know, be able to change my pants in my own bedroom!  For the first four workdays this week, I would go downstairs to take a shower in the morning (the upstairs shower is still doorless), then come back up and grab clothes from my closet, then head to the upstairs bathroom to change.  One day I picked a shirt that was too wrinkled, so I came back into my bedroom only wearing pants, and a neighbor walked right by.  I'm sure all she saw was me standing there with no shirt on, but I'm also pretty sure by the look on her face that she was pretty sure I was naked.  Oh well-- that's what they get for letting exhibitionists into their fishbowl, right?  (Um, right?)  However, as of the weekend, all of that has changed, as we have had our cellular shades installed.  We got the kind that can be pulled up or down, so we can still have daylight in, say, the top two windows without putting on a show for the neighborhood.  The shades are in the three bedrooms, and should assuage my sister's fears of people watching the kids while they sleep.

The kids, by the way, are sleeping just fine.  The first night they slept with each other in Isaac's room, but ever since they've used their own bed. Lola's tickled pink about her new bed, and I'm sure she'll be even more so once Abby gets her built-in completed.  Isaac's still in his old bed, which will eventually be given over to the guest room once we get a new mattress and give him our current one, but his room's all decked out with the solar system on the ceiling, his toys already strewn all over the place, and his aquarium humming in the corner.  Ah yes, the aquarium.  Abby tried her darnedest to get that thing to stay in DC, but it's made its way over, which I'm happy about.  Having had one all through growing up, I really liked staring at mine as I was falling asleep, and I know I was much healthier for having had a giant humidifier in the room.  That said, we'll take much better care of it in the new place than we did in the basement; when I emptied the water there, it looked more like iced tea than something fish would want to live in.  Driving the six miles with the aquarium in my passenger seat was a lesson in how smoothly I don't drive; even when I tried the most babyish of rolling stops and starts, the couple inches of water I had left in there (with all 30-some fish wondering what the heck was going on) sloshed in a great example of what a tsunami might look like if the earth was placed in a car and driven up 16th Street...

The commute's not nearly as bad as I feared, although it's much better in the morning than in the evening.  In the morning, I'm getting up at 6 instead of 6:10, and I'm not making the kids' lunches-- at least not yet.  If I get out the door before 6:45, I can catch a Montgomery County Ride On bus right outside, take that to Silver Spring Metro station, and I get to work in Rosslyn by 7:40.  If I miss the bus, it's a one-mile walk to Forest Glen Metro station, which takes about 17 minutes.  Of the seven morning commutes I've had so far, I've missed the bus twice, but only once have I gotten to work late, and even then by only about ten minutes.  On the walk to Forest Glen, I see practically no one, which is weird.  That's not the same on the way home, though. Twice I've been timing myself to see which way walking from Forest Glen is the fastest, and each time I've been thwarted by pesky neighbors wanting to --gasp!-- talk to me!  Actually, it's great, because I'm making an effort to learn people's names, and there's no better way to do that than to actually meet them on a regular basis.  I'll admit that after living in our house in DC, there was one household on our block that knew everything about us, but we knew the names of exactly two people in their large family.  Yeah, after nearly a decade on the block.  Now you can imagine how embarrassing this was for me, since I grew up as the paperboy who at least knew the name of the head of every household on my block.  So this time around, I mean business, and started by going to the Homeowners' Association meeting on Thursday, and taking detailed notes not on the issues at hand (which are mostly about money), but about people's names and where they live.

So Susan and Ron, who moved here from Pennsylvania, I was very happy to talk to you two on the way home from work the other day.  And Amy, who just had a baby with her husband Tony, I'm sorry if I freaked you out by knowing your name (and saying it) twice as I walked by over the last couple of days.  And Bobby, who works as a wine specialist at Dean + Deluca, I hope you did well on your test, and will refer you to the winos that are my mother-in-law and her husband when they come by this weekend; and I'm definitely intrigued by your wife, because I can honestly say I've never met a woman named Lady Stacey. And Paula and Richard and Peg with the Easter egg tree and Minh and Janice from Australia and Miss Sally and her daughter Shelly and Jim and Susan and Carol and Lou (whose dogs are Diva and Pierre) and Brian and Laura (hey! I know two Brian-and-Lauras now!) and... well... you get the picture.  We may live in a fishbowl, but those things are made of glass and the fish can see out just as well as we see inside.  Abby and I want to live here for a long time, so it makes no sense not to know our neighbors.  So, neighbors?  Please don't get freaked out when I call you by name, because if I don't do it now, it'll be 2023 and I'll be asking my kids to find out the names of the people we've known since before we moved in.

So moving back inside the house, I guess there have been some small things going on.  All four new windows are supposedly in now.  One has been installed-- in the kitchen-- which is good, since any time the wind blew, the insulation that was there made a crinkly sound that reverberated throughout the whole level. I see one other one ready to go in up on the balcony, but have no idea where the others are.  The cabinets are not complete yet, but the last one has finally been delivered, so we are in the process of scheduling the final install.  Once that's done, they'll take back all the mistake cabinets, which will free up another huge corner of the great room.  The countertop is done, except we realized we needed them to drill four holes instead of two, based on our choice of faucets.  So I emailed them last night and am still waiting for a response.  As a result, the kitchen sink is still out of commission, so tonight I had to wash the dishes in the bathroom. It's gross to wash the dishes in the bathroom, but it's also very nerve-wracking to have to do it on a brand-new porcelain sink that is ridiculously shallow.  I was treating each dish as if it were bone china, not because of the preciousness of the dish, but because I didn't want the sink to get another chip.  Yeah, I said "another;" no idea how/when/why, but there's a tiny chip right on the inside corner of our upstairs vanity.  Already.  I guess it just follows us, since there's one in our upstairs sink from DC that's been there ever since I mistakenly dropped one of Abby's mysterious glass bottles from the medicine cabinet way back when. (Who'd'a thunk that the porcelain would break and the glass bottle would come out the victor in that contest?)

Tomorrow we're having the measure for the upstairs shower door.  If you'll recall, we turned down the $3000 custom door our contractor suggested, but Abby also turned down the perfectly good $700 one I found online because it had an edge on the side, and she wanted a perfectly frameless one.  So we're going to inch up a bit, and go for the Home Depot custom ones that are about $1500, after which we can take a shower in our own bathroom instead of running up and down the stairs to do it.  After that, hopefully the cabinets will be installed within the next few days, which will include the hookup of the dishwasher and range, and the ability of our contractors to install the range hood.  Next Monday we're scheduled for a Comcast install for Internet, cable, and a security system, although we're pretty sure none of it is going to work.  You see, we've been going back and forth with both Comcast and Verizon for weeks, trying to see if they actually provide service to us.  At first neither recognized our addresses, but then they did.  Now they want to just come out and do an appointment, even though Lee told us the windmill next-door was told they can't get service because no wires have been pulled for our side of the street.  If you can imagine, I'm trying to get Comcast to put my house on the same work order as theirs, to save us time as well as to save the Comcast guy from having to come out for no reason.  Comcast refuses to give me any information on an account that's not mine, even when I assure them I in fact want absolutely no information.  "Just look at their account, don't say a word, and see if they can physically get cable; if they can, great! Schedule the appointment for us; but if they can't, wouldn't it save us all the trouble?"  "I'm sorry, sir, but I can't give information out on anyone else's account."  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.   So Comcast is coming out on Monday, but the smart money's on us not having cable on Tuesday.

So that's the update for now.  Again, due to that whole not-having-cable thing, I can't upload pictures.  So I promise a buttload of pictures once everything's hooked up.  In the meantime, I've gotta run home and pack for my three-day Buffalo adventure that starts tomorrow and will hopefully include Duff's chicken wings, Anderson's lemon ice, and Alex Trebek. :)