A Comedy of Errors (or Murphy's Law Strikes Again)

Just a word of warning...this one's long, and it has nothing to do with Nathaniel.

Kristina and I had one simple project for this week...okay maybe two, plant the garden and paint the living room.  So we went to bed on a hot and humid Sunday night prepared to get our work done.  Of course, we had to turn on our air conditioning for the first time of the year.  After a relatively comfortable night's rest, Kristina remarked that the AC ran all night and wasn't as cool as it should be.  So we called someone to come check it out.  They would come around noon, so that gave us all morning to search for our garden plants.

Well, we got back just under the wire, but the AC guy seemed to be a bit delayed.  He came just before my doctor appointment, so I left him with Kristina.  At the doctor's office I received a call from Kristina telling me that our AC was dead, and a man was coming to talk about our options.  So, we ordered a new AC and planned to have it installed on Wed or Thurs.  Of course, that didn't help us in our 85 degree bedroom that night.  However, we felt good knowing that not only would we have a new AC (the old one was 18 years old), but it would be moved to the other side of our house...out from under our deck and away from dryer vent.

The next sweltering day, we decided it would be cooler to work on the garden rather than prep the living room for painting.  I also weed-whacked a path to the north side of our house (it's a dead zone between our house and the neighbor's) for the upcoming AC installation.  After a grueling day tilling, shoveling, planting, watering, weeding, etc., we moved furniture in our still 80+ degree living room for painting the next day. 

On Wednesday, we scraped, sanded, brushed, swept, spackled...scraped and sanded some more in our still fairly hot house.  Please note the use of eye and respiratory protection by at least one of us (see photo)  Unfortunately, dealing with 70 years worth of paint and plaster made having smooth surfaces an impossibility (short of gutting the place).  After getting over some initial disappointment that the living room wouldn't be perfect, Kristina dubbed "OK" the new "perfect."  That became our mantra for the rest of the week.  We finished scrubbing down all our walls, windows and molding shortly before going to bed in a slightly cooler (but still in the 80s) house.

The next morning was delightfully cooler, just in time for AC guys to come first thing in the morning.  I went to school for the first time this week to go to an emergency meeting.  Shortly before that meeting, Kristina called saying we had a serious problem.  Turns out our neighbor's bedroom window faces that "dead zone" between the houses, and he did not want the AC unit there...especially if it was on his property.  Kristina did a quick check of the survey we got with the house and found that the AC unit would be 6 inches on the neighbors' property.  I rushed home to help Kristina figure out where to put it.  We couldn't put it back where the original was...we'd have to remove our deck.  After considering the few other options remaining, we decided to place it under our kitchen window.  That required moving our beloved plant, Gladys the Clematis (see photo below).  After figuring out where to move Gladys, we found we'd have to move a hosta plant to make room.  Finally, with both plants in their new locations, the men could continue their work, and I returned to my meeting.

When I returned around 1pm, the AC guys were still working and Kristina was priming and painting in the living room.  The living room was a wonderful 75 degrees, perfect for painting.  The men completed their work.  We had a brand new, efficient AC and no immediate need for it..  Nonetheless, Kristina and I painted the walls with gusto until it was time for bed (except for dinner and a play with Nathaniel break).

Finally, it was Friday morning and hopefully our last day of painting.  We painted trim, windows and baseboards all day, and after dinner, into the night.  As we were getting closer to being finished, I was washing some brushes and a roller in the utility sink in our basement.  However, I was unable to turn the hot water off completely.  In fact, the more I messed with it, the less completely I could turn it off.  By this time, it was after 9pm and nothing could be done about it.  We had to turn off the hot water for the entire house because there was no way to cut off the supply to the faucet.  We turned it on only long enough to take showers.  We weren't very optimistic about our options on a Friday night of a 3-day weekend.

Kristina had to cancel an all day first aid/CPR class she's been wanting to take to help watch Nathaniel while I dealt with the sink situation.  After much debate we decided to see if we could find a plumber, I was concerned about the 70 year old pipes and faucet coming apart and me being unable to fix it with no water supply to the house on a holiday weekend.  Given how the week had gone so far, that seemed like a highly probable scenario.

Kristina found a plumber in the paper and online that sounded good.  Fortunately, we was grudgingly willing to come on a holiday weekend to help us out.  To make a long story short (too late for that, isn't it?!), he did some triage so we can run hot water to the house without it coming out the faucet.  He recommended we get a new faucet.  He was really nice and told me how to do it myself.  However, I think I may end up having him do it.  I don't need an excuse for something else to go wrong.

Christopher