Homeowner Thread

Appraisal came back and was slightly over the agreed-upon price so that's a relief in terms of loan stuff. Now, it's basically twiddling thumbs* until closing in August. Huzzah?

I have started acquiring quotes for new gutters. The first company rep came out today. They probably do have the best product, and $2600 after the promotion is just inside my guess at the price range, but sorry buddy I am not agreeing to buy today before I get other bids and that's all there is to it. Don't think an awkward silence is going to make me crack; you don't know who you're dealing with.

This was pretty much my experience. First quote was from Lowes - he basically took 15 minutes and then wrote me up a simple invoice for $2500 to do only the most basic work (i.e. replace my 5" gutters with 5" gutters). No hard sell; just left me a card. Then Home Depot came, took almost an hour to tell me how everything on my house needed to be replaced: I needed new fascia, soffits, the works, and then quoted me $4K (for "standard" gutters - which are 5"). Then I got a quote from a recommended small business - the owner came and walked through the job with me, suggested where I could move or eliminate downspouts, and quoted me $3k for 6" gutters and new, reconfigured downspouts. It was helpful to get the Lowe's quote as a baseline. It also occurred to me while talking to Home Depot that a small job isn't worth their time, so they want to inflate it into a bigger job if they can by offering financing packages and 'discounts'. If you don't go with a big box company, there are 10 suckers behind you who will take the bait of 0% down, rebates, etc. I ended up going with the small business bid because his business is built on word of mouth and reputation.

I also despise hard sales. Both times we've gone car shopping in the last five years, we had some models in mind but wanted to do some test drives and then take a few days to think about it, crunch numbers, etc. When shopping for me we ran into a guy who thought our general interest meant we had to buy Right Then and There and we got up, left, and I wrote a bad yelp review. We bought a car somewhere else that didn't hassle us.

The good news was that the yelp review garnered multiple apologies from the manager and promises of a no-hassle future sale - so we did later end up buying my husband's car there with a much more easygoing salesman.

About a month ago we noticed that our relatively new fridge wasn't keeping food as cold as it normally did, though the freezer was working just fine. It was luckily still under warranty since they had caused some minor cosmetic damage to it during delivery and we decided to take an extended warranty rather than wait for them to order and deliver a new fridge. The repairman came over two weeks ago, poked around, and decided that we just needed a new fan for the fridge portion which he would have to special order.

The part came in and we were scheduled to have the fridge repaired which meant that we would need to remove all of the food overnight and defrost the fridge so it could be worked on. The appointment came and went without anyone showing up and we finally received all that the repairman was sick and since it was a Friday, he wouldn't be able to come by until Monday. Fine, okay, we can just go through the whole rigmarole of emptying out the fridge again on Sunday night. Monday came around, and he was still sick, and this time when we plugged the fridge back in it would no longer cool anything down. Extended Warranty, actually being rather easy to work with, gave us credit to buy a mini-fridge from their store which would be a stop-gap until the fridge could be repaired.

The repairman finally came by last Wednesday, installed the new fan, and tried some other minor maintenance, but the fridge and freezer would not cool down. I guess the compressor was on its last legs and losing power killed it for good. He made some calls, and it turned out they wouldn't be able to get parts until August, at which point Extended Warranty offered to buy-out the fridge, minus depreciation, and they would get back to us later that day to let us know how much store credit they would extend us. They haven't returned our calls or answered email since then. We wound up just buying a new fridge on Friday, hoping that we can recoup at least some of the cost since we can't wait any longer consider even then it wont be delivered until Tomorrow.

So we've basically been using mini-fridge for over a week (it's actually pretty nice with its own self-contained freezer unit rather than the cold-box inside the fridge that most mini-fridges have and ultimately just ice-up). I've actually gotten to like it as it forces us to buy less food and think about how we want to deal with leftovers. Reminded me of House Hunter International episodes where Americans want to lease a place in Europe and are taken aback at how small the fridges are.

Yesterday evening before we left for pub trivia, we were sitting in the living room and there was a strange stuttering noise. It seemed to be too fast to be a creature running on the roof, or it was taking great bounds in many directions. Finally when I went downstairs, I saw that a house sparrow had gotten inside through the downstairs hearth. I chased it around a bit, then Wifemate caught it with our old homemade butterfly net. She volunteers with a bird banding conservation group, so she knew how to handle it safely to get it out of the net and out of the house.

The bird came in through the unused downstairs hearth, the port for a wood-burning stove. I had cut a piece of plywood to fit into the pipe and block it, but the bird managed to push its way through. That chimney doesn't have a hat on it either, so rain must be slowly getting in to the base. That's on my list of things to do. Also I was supposed to shop for a pellet stove for that hearth now that it's off-season and cheaper maybe.

Small jobs are always a pain, price-wise.  For a contractor a job like that could take up an entire day, when you take transit and such into account.  If they're lucky they've got a steady gig (say plumbing a new apartment building) and can slip away for half a day to do your job and come back, but if they're hustling for smaller jobs then things tend to not line up well and they might not have something else they could schedule.

I just had my third estimate for gutters, and I decided to sign up on this same day. The cost is about 2/3 of the other two guys, but that's not the real reason. The one company had a promotion that expired at the end of June. The other company had a reasonably better product and better guarantees, but without any trees directly over my roof I don't expect a huge difference, and I didn't like their salesman giving me the hard sell.

Oh my God, you have been through it with your house lately.

Installment #2 of This Crappy Condo, in which I spend ridiculous amounts of money replacing all the awful, broken ancient bits of my condo to get it a) livable b) sellable was this weekend. The plumber came out and replaced both the kitchen and bathroom faucets, fixed the stupidly un-code set up where my dishwasher water line was soldered to the kitchen sink line, and replaced the toilet handle.

Now, of course, because he cut off the soldered line, I don't have a working dishwasher. That's fine, I can hand wash for a week or two before I get a new one delivered. The dishwasher is also ancient and awful and needed to be be replaced years ago.

I found a good one, but Home Depot won't deliver and install if the current dishwasher is hardwired versus having a plug. Guess what? There's no plug under my sink. I suppose it could be behind the dishwasher maybe, but I think it's likelier mine's hard-wired and now I'll need to have someone out to create a GFCI outlet (I'm assuming GFCI is necessary for under the kitchen sink) first. UGH. Another roadblock and money I wasn't intending to spend.

Wait, there are repair people who don't talk about The Gray Ghost?

Ha, looks like my house. I actually have that in a couple of places, one is the main line from outside that goes into a closet and then doubles back in to the other wall to reach the breaker box which was hidden inside a kitchen cabinet. That one, I just stood a board up in the corner kind of hiding it. 

It is a bit of work but could you frame around it and drywall it in? It does not look like there are any junction boxes, so that could be legal and not as messy as tearing the wall apart.

I'm not sure it's live. I don't have a meter (I wonder if I can borrow one from work). I was going to stop by after work today to see if I could follow it into the attic. It might be for one of the attic lights. It's definitely nothing in that bedroom, since that room doesn't have overhead lighting.

One of my friends posted this listing for a property in TX. 


www.har.com/4302-colony-west-dr/sale_78077894#

I love that the only references to the absolute insane shit everywhere is one caption that says "Unfortunately the art goes with the artist"

My house has been hit with a plague of flies, and I'm not even keeping Israel in bondage. We have probably swatted 75 houseflies since Wednesday afternoon. I came home that day and there were like five on the window next to the front door. We went to garden and came home to about twenty buzzing through the dining room. Thursday and Friday were really the worst, and we've swatted another 15 this morning. The mostly congregate on the sliding glass door in the dining room, some on the front door's window, and hardly anywhere else. I have no idea where this is coming from. I can't find any openings on the outside (and flies don't try to sneak in spaces like spiders or roaches); I can't find any bad smell in the house; I can't think of anything we brought inside that would be secretly infested with maggots that became flies all at the same time. My only conclusion is that Pasteur was wrong and spontaneous generation is real.