Posted on 2015-07-31 in HomeMade
I’m not sure if this counts as a /HomeMade/ because we just bought our way out of this problem. But I like the progression from the kids making Cardboard Furniture to going to the store, to getting it delivered while the kids slept (at 10:30pm).
One added awesomeness is that we finally decided to go get the furniture because the day before we heard from our loan officer that we were “cleared for closing” or that we were vetted for our loan and could get our loan papers drawn up.
This, for us, was the signal that we could actually go spend some money on some furniture instead of sitting on the ground. BUT, when we pulled up to the store I got a call from our mortgage people saying that the whole thing was dead in the water because our escrow company had mishandled the fees sent to our mortgage broker for my loan estimate.
I had to call four or five people to sort everything out and for some reason, even though I have been unabashedly candid about my inexperience, I seem to be the most competent person involved in this home purchase. That is a scary notion.
We bought the furniture anyway. Â My couch chairs showed up at the door 9 hours later and Mariel’s couch shows up some time a week or two from now.
 
Posted on 2015-07-31 in HomeMade
“When you give a Matt a Muffin”
There’s a children’s book that most young parents know about lately called “If You Give a Moose a Muffin” where some moose wants a muffin, but needs jam, and a sweater, and sheets, and other things in an ever cascading list of gating events.
This morning I got in a good one. Needed to fix the irrigation valve, but needed my multimeter, which needed a new battery, but needed a jewel sized philips head screw driver to open the case and then I needed a good 9V battery which is packed away “who knows where”, then I found out that the fuse inside my /good/ multi-meter had blown so I needed to get one from radio shack, closest radio shack is… no where, they are all dead, so need to get one from amazon, but I might as well get those spa chemicals I needed so I check which of those I needed, and while I’m at it I might as well do the chem check on the spa, and while I’m out there I should look at the irrigation control to see why zone 5 and 6 aren’t working, but I’ll need a multi-meter for that… MAYBE COFFEE WILL HELP THIS SITUATION!
Posted on 2015-07-29 in Happenings
One of our (many) irrigation zones has a pump that won’t start AND a profuse leak at the elbow for the back flow valve. Â I ran that manually for a bit while trying to plan out how I would go about fixing it. And while no ideas came to mind I wandered upon a massive gusher out side the outer perimeter. Something had chewed threw the irrigation hose because of “nature spite”. Â Once I patched that up the back-flow valve leak settled down and barely made a weep.
I’m calling that a win for today.
The kids also helped map out an unconventional furniture idea we had for the grand room. It looks like it may work out.
Mariel is a clown when done with commute.
 
Posted on 2015-07-27 in Happenings
The updates are a bit weak for this post. Firstly, I just cut a piece of crappy irrigation pipe that someone else tried to fix and had “less of a clue than I”.
Then I had to snip our fruit picker because it was not designed with “Citrus Maximus” in mind and we couldn’t get the biggest of our pomelos off the tree.
Last but not least; since we are kind of in a furniture limbo (waiting for our loan to solidify before making any big purchases) we made a mock up, with cardboard, of one the pieces we are considering for the big room.
It turned out to be a fruitful exercise because more than once Dex and I said “Wait, what? It can’t be that big!”
Posted on 2015-07-25 in Happenings, HomeMade
Phew – yesterday was a big day. We (Kevin and I) strapped the water heater, painted a tiny spot outside the house, cleaned up a million palms trees and weeded/mulched some stuff (Tami and Mariel handled all that). Ooh, and fixed some irrigation and emptied more boxes.
Found a spider that cast a big shadow. Used a wide variety of tools which confirmed by bias for collecting them.
And then had a semi furnished little dinner party after that.
Lots of homemade.
Multi-disciplinary tool use day. Used circular saw for the 2×4″ standoff behind the tank. Rotary tool to adjust the size of the water heater strap. Tapped and drilled a new hole through the steel, filed off the ends to reduce bleeding, ratchet for driving the lag bolts into the studs and clamps galore.
And I was able to lend out tarps to a neighbor, use my pull saw to cut some palm bark, and the ladder to get the joist painted (where it was cut for dry rot before tenting). Usually I feel lots of guilt for hoarding so many tools – but today kind of made up for a huge chunk of that because I had /almost/ everything we needed to complete lots of muffins .
Posted on 2015-07-25 in Happenings
Did lots today, but the thing that drove me to drink was making a replacement screen for one of our windows.
Posted on 2015-07-23 in Happenings
Today was a hot tub refurbishment day. Had to drain out what we got and refill it with fresh waters and add the concoction explained to me by a mystic spa shop guy.
Since we had to wait for it to drain, and I had to scrub it down I figured we would let the oppressive summer sun great our water.
At the very least, it was a good excuse to empty moving bins and teach the kids about solar energy.
We got about 320 gallons cooked up to 93°F degrees and it took about 15 minutes to fill the tub once I was done cleaning it. Then it took about one hour for the electric heater to get it back up to 102°F
Most necessary after straining our backs moving. The spa was sitting in my blind spot for the whole new house thing. But it’s a pretty good perk.
Posted on 2015-07-22 in HomeMade
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/California_Quail/id
Saw these two little birds walking in the yard today.
Posted on 2015-07-22 in Happenings, HomeMade
Buying a home is a like a new hobby in that there is no limit to the amount of time, worry, and money you can pour into it.
I wanted to post all sorts of home stuff but watned to redesign the site a bit first, or maybe make an offshoot for storing just home related stuff.
But now I’m thinking “MOAR CONTENT BETTER” and I’ll throw more stuff at the wall and do a post process sort.
Tagged as “HomeMade”
First thing is to make a place to put the list of things to put the list of things on in order to put the list of things somewhere.