The grand and glorious tenth b-day of Thing 2 went off swimmingly last night. As a special bonus, I came home with a door prize - Luther the fish now lives in my apartment. He just wasn't gettin' the love at the house; the algae-coated fishbowl attests to that.
(<----- that is not Luther, but is very very close indeed. His house has the plant and similar rocks, but he is a glorious purple color rather than that garish bloo. Well, he WILL be once I clean out the bowl. Poor Luther.)
So, he now resides on my kitchen counter, where tonight he will get a change of water and some talkin' to.
Luther needs the lurve, y'all. Luther is a terribly introspective fish, and can cast a sidelong glance that speaks volumes even though he doesn't say a word. Nobody better think I'm crazy on this, but that little fish and I are buddies. I look forward to him sharing the apartment with me for another month; after which time we'll move to the tiny house together.
Once I get rid of the mice that live there.
The mice that pooped all over the kitchen counters and carpets.
I might also need a cat. Hope Luther doesn't mind sharing my attention.
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The carpet tear-out on the house is complete, and might I just say that if I never do THAT again it will be too soon? As gross as I started out thinking it was going to be, it got even worse. There were stains and wet spots all OVER the daggone place. The carpet housed all manner of dirt and crumbs and chips of things I don't even want to think about what they were.
There was carpet covering an air vent, which puzzled me, and also carpet covering up a child's wooden puzzle, which puzzled me even more until I took away the puzzle and found a hole.
A rather large hole. In the floor, yes, but even better, in the floor by the old hearth, which revealed a certain troubling something underneath. That something being a rather sizeable deficit in the support for the chimney that runs up the middle of the house, and COULD be the reason the the floor sags noticeably in that area.
Huh. Ain't that some shizz. There's a big hole in the floor, no support for the fire brick or chimney, some kind of sawdusty ash under the hole....hey, ya think I got a problem here?????
Tellingly, the child's puzzle that was covering UP the hole was marked with the name of the child that used to occupy that room.
Ya think the previous owners KNEW about the hole?
More curiously, perhaps, is the appearance of a subfloor just underneath the hole, which would have kept the inspector from seeing the GAPING ISSUE in the floor as he crawled around in the crawlspace during his inspection.
Ya think this is a cover-up, y'all? Ya think I've got something to bring up with the realtor and the previous homeowner? Do ya?
I do.
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Also discovered in the house this weekend: A second ceiling about 2 feet above the ones currently visible. These second ceilings are made of beadboard, which would be so cool to uncover, but, troublingly, they are in terrible, awful, no good, very bad shape and that kind of project is for someone with more energy/knowhow/patience than me.
Also for someone who won't mind taking all the CRAP out of the attic that was left there by generations of homeowners before me. Serious. There are piles of stuff up there. Piles of stuff resting on the low ceiling, piles of stuff chucked into the attic, piles of stuff from other people's lives that will no doubt require many trips up and down the attic stair to remove.
Trips into the hot attic. The attic with no real floor. The attic with the funky weird blown-in insulation. But also, the attic that's big enough to stand up in and would make one heck of a great family room. Or yoga studio. Or mama's getaway.
I could almost double the size of my tiny house by finishing that attic. I could form a retreat for myself - a bedroom and study maybe, a wide open light-filled space up under the eaves just for me. Problem is, there's really no place for a stairway right now. But I'm thinking on it.
Sad fact is that it's highly likely that by the time I get done with everything else that needs to be done on the tiny house, I'll be too old, arthritic, and tired to climb those stairs to my personal aerie in the attic. As I see it, there's only one solution to THAT problem. That's right, I'm thinking ELEVATOR.
More than one way to skin a cat, don'tcha know. Now all I have to do is hire some lackeys who don't mind dirty work to clean OUT the attic, and there's nothing left but details. Wonder what lackeys get an hour nowadays? Would they work for beer and cheese sammiches, like they did in the old days?
More research is required.
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No QOTD, because this post is peppered with questions. Feel free to chime in on any of 'em in the comments. Laters!
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