PixelBrat's Blog

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August 28, 2007

Ouch...

Rob and I discovered a damp area of flooring in our downstairs bathroom a couple of months ago.  We pulled up the floor tiles and found the concrete foundation was saturated.  We called a plumber and they gave us some suggestions of inexpensive things to try that might fix the problem.  Unfortunately (and predictably) the cheap solutions didn't work.  We feared the pipe under the concrete foundation was leaking so we called him out again.  He jack-hammered the concrete floor and cut 4 holes in our walls to find the leak.  Several hours and $1,200 later and it's finally fixed. Ouch.  The unbelievable thing is what was actually causing the problem... It was the pipe coming down through the wall from our upstairs bathroom.  Our damn builder apparently put a screw-cap on the PVC drainage pipe, presumably for the purpose of it being an easy access point in case there was a clog.  That cap wasn't screwed on tightly enough, causing it to leak down and soak into the concrete below!   To add insult to injury the damn builder put no access door to actually get to that screw-cap, so even if there was a clog you would have to cut a hole in the wall to get to it!    The picture below is where he jack-hammered the floor, only to learn the leak wasn't there.  Click the link to see more photos:

You can bet if I could find our builder I'd be taking a $1,200 bite out of his ass right now.

Posted by pixelbrat at 11:16 PM

August 26, 2007

Our new adventure begins...

I know I have been woefully lax in updating my blog.  I guess I haven't had much to write about aside from our new addition.  That has now changed.  Rob and I have begun doing repairs to our house in preparation for selling it and moving to the mountains.  To get an idea of what we were in for we wrote down all the things that needed to be done.  The list is frighteningly long. We started out with getting some minor roof repairs.  Fortunately that wasn't as financially painful as we feared.  This weekend we removed some old linoleum out of our laundry room and installed matching checkerboard flooring from the hallway.

I forgot to get a true "before" picture of the old flooring but I assure you, the new stuff is a huge improvement.  Admittedly this is but a small drop in the giant bucket of what we still have to do but it's a start.  Stay tuned for more DIY home improvement goodies!

Posted by pixelbrat at 12:13 PM | Comments (1)

August 18, 2007

We got suckered...

Rob was taking out the trash early Friday morning and this little fur ball jumped out of the bushes and started rubbing on his leg, mewing it's little heart out.  He called me outside and one look at it's blue eyes and I immediately fell in love.  It was friendly but pretty dirty and skinny so we think it may have been dumped by someone.  The poor thing ate an entire can of food and seemed like it drank its weight in water.  We thought it was a boy at first but after a quick trip to the vet we learned he was a she.  Aside from some ear mites the vet said she was fairly healthy and probably about 3 months old.  She got medication for the mites and her first shots. By the time we got home we had decided to name her Luna.  She looks to be a mix of tabby and Siamese.  She's mostly cream colored with gray ears and faint tabby stripes on her legs and tail.  She has gorgeous blue eyes and has the sweetest personality.  She seemed so even-tempered and friendly that we introduced her to our other 3 cats after only one night.  So far everyone seems to be taking to her quite well, which is truly remarkable.  Hopefully things will stay peaceful going forward.  Click the link after the photo below for more photos.

Posted by pixelbrat at 10:53 PM | Comments (3)