Clogged AC Drain, Insulation, and Chickens

Why are my house projects never-ending? Does everyone else do as much with their house? It's really my own fault. But sometimes I look around at my beautiful light fixtures, new bathrooms, wonderful shelves, and I think....my house is fabulous.

Monday through Thursday I was in San Antonio at our home office on a business trip. I worked a partial day Friday and then went home after lunch. Joseph and I took my truck to pick up some mulch. I didn't count how many wheelbarrows we filled and dumped in my truck, but it was ten to unload. J found the woman on a forum who was advertising the free mulch; she had extra from a large delivery. I asked J how much it cost to have mulch delivered. He said it was free, you just had to contact a tree removal place; they deliver it to you instead of paying to take it to a dump. I looked at him with narrowed eyes and said, "You mean someone could have delivered it to us for FREE instead of doing all that work to go get it?" J then informed me that we were gathering good karma by helping the woman out and taking the mulch off her hands.

The first thing we did Saturday was run to Lowe's.

Our first project was to take care of our AC drain line. We have two pipes that release water on the side of our house (which I very helpfully circled in red below). Usually the bottom pipe is the one that drains, but the top one started leaking, which we were told is a potential problem, since it's an indication the other one could be clogged. J went into the attic and saw that the drain pan had standing water, another bad sign. So we bought a wet vac and hosed it out.

You can also see the sunscreens we had added to our house recently. We're trying to cut back on the electricity bill, which brings us to project two.

We have been meaning to add insulation to the attic, and this weekend was slightly cooler and cloudy/rainy, so J thought it was a good opportunity to jump on that project. I'm pretty proud that I was able to get 20 bags of insulation, the insulation blower, the two hoses to the blower, and the wet vac in my truck and all tied down. We made it home without anything flying off. Admire it. Just admire it.

I fed the insulation into the blower while J was in the attic with the hose. This is the before shot. Afterwards his clothes were completely covered in dust and insulation.

This is during one of our breaks. He was drenched in sweat. It was not a fun job. It took about three hours and we had to break multiple times. One time we had to break because I got my fingers caught in the blower. It kept getting clogged, and I couldn't just keep stopping it and turning it back on, so I would quickly push it through and pull my fingers out. But I miscalculated once and I am so lucky to still have all the fingers on the left hand. It hurt like the dickens. (Who are the dickens and why do they hurt?)

We also have a big trash pick-up coming through so we did some yard work - trimming of trees/bushes, pulling weeds, general clean-up. J has been using Photoshop and has a master plan of our future backyard (to include an outside kitchen). I'm sure it will take years until it is how he wants it, but since the inside of our house is pretty much done, we may as well move outside. I just want a second shed and grass. But J is mad about trees. I think by the time he's done we're going to have a forest.

We also got some new chickens. Do you remember the old chickens (post found here - read the comments to find out what happened to them)? Well we have replaced them. I only wanted two but J found someone who was getting rid of three and she said they were good layers. We just got them yesterday and I already have two eggs!!!! Joseph made a rule that the eggs must be washed. Which makes me wonder if the eggs you buy from the store are washed. They do come from a chicken's butt...

My Truck

A couple weeks ago I was driving along in a parking lot minding my own business and a guy in a bigger truck backed into me.

Here it is before it was repaired.

And here is the after. It actually looks better than it did before - those weird marks around the wheel well have been there for awhile - I have no clue where they came from. And the little ding in the back has been there for awhile - I paid just a little extra to have that dent removed. So now one side of my truck is perfect.

I can't decide if I love it or if it's weird because now it doesn't match the rest of the truck that is showing its age with dings and wear. The guy who backed into me probably thinks I'm weird for getting it fixed, but that's a pretty big dent he put in there.

I think I love it.

I hurt my wrist but it was worth it

When we first looked at the house, I noticed the bathtub in the master bath was dirty. I figured it wasn't anything a good scrubbing couldn't take care of.

I was wrong.

It wasn't just dirty. There is a section in the bottom of the tub and another on one of the ledges where water settles in a pool and it has formed stains over the years. I tried everything. Bleach, apple cider vinegar, bar keeper's friend, magic eraser, soft scrub, magic bubbles, anything and everything, nothing worked. It was a serious issue for me. I googled and searched, tried different things mentioned on pinterest, but nothing helped.

Pinterest had helped me get candle wax out of my pants (that was an unfortunate incident that speaks to my clumsiness), helped me remove difficult laundry stains, but in this, it failed me. I made sure my shower curtain was always closed and I just resigned myself to a stained tub. I wondered how it would go over if we ever put the house on the market.

Well, I mentioned in my last blog that last Saturday I went to Abby's apartment to help her clean. Her husband's mother came over to help, and I was told she cleans houses for a living. I asked her what could be done for really stubborn bathtub stains. I had about a 15% hope that she could help, but I figured, eh, may as well just ask.

She told me she had a secret. My hope jumped to 75%. She showed me a stainless steel scrubber. My hope plummeted down to 3%. A stainless steel scrubber would scratch up my tub.

She went into the kitchen, where I had already scrubbed the laminate countertop with a regular lysol cleaner. She put some soft scrub down and started scrubbing with her stainless steel ball. She pulled up rust stains, and I was amazed. When she washed off the cleaner, I ran my hand over the laminate, expecting it to be torn up, but it was fine. My hope went up to 85%. I asked her where I could get a stainless steel scrubber.

She said she got them from Amway. You can't get them at a store, you have to special order them. Dangit.

Joseph and I had to go to Fry's later that day to buy food. I stopped in the cleaning aisle. And found...

Stainless steel scrubbers that looked exactly like what David's mom showed me. I was skeptical - it says for pots and pans! - would it ruin my tub? Eh, my tub is already gross, let's just try it.

I used some soft scrub I already had (it had failed me by itself) but combined with the stainless steel, I started to see an improvement. I scrubbed. And I scrubbed. And I scrubbed. I could only do about 5-10 minutes before my hand felt like it would fall off, so I did it over a course of six days. My stainless steel ball took a beating.

AND IT WORKED!!

This corner was seriously disgusting. Once I got the first brown layer off, there was an additional layer of crust I had to scrub off.

You can still kind of see the bottom stain. That is still a work in progress - it's a bit harder since we have that non-slip stuff on the bottom. But it looks 100 times better than it did.

I'm so bummed I didn't take before pictures. But my bathtub was nasty. Who would have thought to take a picture of that? I did find a photo on the internet....

My tub wasn't that bad. But it was that brownish color that I just could not get rid of.

I had to wear a brace to work because my wrist was killing me by Thursday night. But it was worth it. Now my clean tub matches my gorgeous bathrooms.

I can't believe it didn't scratch my tub to pieces. I'm so glad it worked. Now I can actually feel like I'm clean after my bath. Sometimes when I go into my bathroom, I just stare at the tub and grin like a fool. Because I can leave the curtain open now.

House Projects: Tub Diverter and a Shelf

It's been awhile since we've done a house project. Joseph's brother Jacob is coming to live with us so I need to get the guest bedroom cleaned out. I have been using that closet for storage and it is packed. Also, during the bathroom remodel I showered in the guest bathroom and found out that the shower pressure sucks because the tub diverter needs to be replaced.

So my weekend started out by going shoe shopping Friday night. I wore my black flats during a painting project and thought to myself, "Hmm, should I change my shoes? Nah, I will be careful." So I needed some new black flats because I got paint on my shoes. I have actually been looking around for awhile now. It was one of those problems where because I needed something specific, I found all sorts of wonderful shoes - brown wedges, pumps, etc - but no black flats. Luckily, my sister Kristi agreed to go shoe shopping with me and she found me not one but TWO pairs of beautiful black flats. And I had a coupon.

Maybe it's time for a new shoe blog.

Saturday morning I went to my friend Abby's apartment to help her clean because they just bought a house. Because she just had twins. Who is going to turn down that woman's plea for help? Before I left, I helped J move everything out of the kitchen/living room and asked him to sweep and said when I came back I would mop. After cleaning so much my arm felt like it was going to fall off, I came home in no mood to mop. But J had done it for me. And cleaned the kitchen. I appreciated it so much I teared up a little.

It was now time to start the house projects. I had already researched online how to remove the tub diverter, and luckily we have the one that just screws off. J had to muscle it off. I love watching that man use his muscles.

Then we went to Lowe's and bought the appropriate tub diverter, and put the new one back on. Works perfectly.

While at Lowe's we bought a big sheet of MDF and had them cut it down using the measurements I had taken earlier.

This is the first project where the cuts weren't spot on. But it was only a hair off - you can see how much we had to shave it down. Which is where our first problem came in - our table saw made a loud noise and something smelled burned. There was something plastic shredded to bits. We took it apart and found out that the plastic guard on the bottom somehow came loose and that was what broke. We removed the guard, put the saw back together, and finished the cuts.

Then we measured and started drilling. And ran into problem two.

This is what we thought was a stud (the stud finder flashed). Nope, J was smart enough to realize it was not a stud. He poked around in the hole and found out it was metal. So I got him a blade from the toolchest and he cut a piece of the drywall out - he didn't think it was a pipe, it was too thin for that. He pulled off our attic door and looked above and found the metal dryer vent.

So we patched it and drilled a new hole a safe distance away and continued on.

The top shelf is the new shelf. The bottom shelf was there when we bought the house. All ready to hold random stuff that we just can't live without.

The only issue now is that the laundry room is the ONLY room in the house we haven't painted. And I painted the shelf with a white we used in other rooms, and the laundry room is a gross yellow-ish color. I mentioned this to J. He informed me he is not painting the laundry room. I looked at him and smiled. He told me to quit looking at him like that or he would have to change his mind. I walked away, then peeked around the corner and smiled at him again. He told me he would think about it. Which translated, means we are painting the laundry room. But definitely later.

The guest bedroom is now mostly cleared out. We are now utilizing the top den shelf (built that here) and also re-arranged other closets.

Sunday nights are usually dinner at my parents' house to see the family, but we took dinner to my friend Abby since she just had her twins. Joseph made the most delicious pulled pork sandwiches and homemade coleslaw. Dessert was brownies with frosting.

This is their older sister Adilyn. She is such a ham. 

Abby informed us we would be helping re-assemble the TV stand. 

I cannot believe how much stuff we got done this weekend. I'm going to pop some popcorn and watch a movie with my Love. Next weekend I will probably be doing nothing. Jacob should be here by then. I'll have J make him do stuff.