Does Anyone Else Hear the Sound of Water?

This Super Bowl weekend brought the following things:

1) An embarrassment to Jerry Jones as his ultra elitist stadium failed to have enough seating for everyone he sold tickets to (not to mention all the sound, and operations issues)

2) An embarrassment to Texas as our power grid couldn’t handle the influx of people and cold weather at the same time

3) The sound of rushing water and an impromptu lake forming out in my garage

That’s right, when the weather finally warmed up on Sunday, Amy and I were shocked to find that a pipe in our garage burst.  Fortunately, it was not attached to the water heater, but rather it led to a faucet in the backyard.  I had placed one of those nifty faucet covers over it, but apparently it just wasn’t enough to protect this poor little guy.

When we finally discovered the leak it had accumulated about 2-3 inches of water in our garage.  Thankfully, our garage is a step or two lower than the rest of our home so the only thing that got wet was some concrete floors.  After turning off the water to the house and sweeping the water out of the garage I discovered some interesting things.

The first was that the previous owner of this home clearly experienced this problem as there was replacement piece of drywall covering the exact location where the pipe had burst.

The second was a reconfirmation that the previous owner of this house, was not the handiest of men.  That or he always got his repairs done by the lowest bidder, which in this neighborhood is about 10 minutes east, you’ll find a group of very handy, hardworking men who will work dirt cheap all standing outside a gas station starting at 6 AM, and then bought sub-par parts for them to work with.

Here’s a picture of the pipe that burst. 

Now I’d like to point out that the shiny silver pipe in the wall is the faucet I purchased to replace this broken pipe and faucet.  I had to cut off the pipe at the elbow and sweat on a new piece (thanks again Mr. Pait for teaching me how to do that!).  Here’s a picture of the burst  pipe after the fact.

If you can’t tell, that pipe is paper thin, it’s really not the kind of pipe you should use in a location that is going to have to endure cold temperatures, but you could probably get away with it if you at least put some insulation around it.  It only costs 2 bucks for a six foot long section of copper pipe insulation, come on!

Regardless, in its place, I’m putting an anti-freeze faucet.  The concept with this faucet is that every time you turn the faucet off, it empties the pipe behind the faucet preventing the pipe from bursting from the cold (If you don’t quite get it, just google “Anti-freeze faucet)

Unfortunately, since I had to cut off some of the pipe, things didn’t quiet connect.  So I just brought the faucet inside the garage for a little bit until I have a Saturday when I can solder on a little extension.

The final thing Amy and I did this weekend was to take the mantel off the fireplace.  We have our TV there and the mantel is just in the way.  We were hoping to place it higher on the brick, but it turned out that rather than being attached via mason screws, they had actually replaced a layer of brick with wood and nailed into the wood.  So we decided just to put it into the attic until we leave the home or we decide we want it back.

We also decided that we wanted to prevent our cat from crawling into the fireplace, but didn’t want to shell out the bucks for a some sliding glass doors in front of it.  Amy mom’s had the excellent suggestion of putting Plexi-glass to cover the opening, a trip to Home Depot later and here’s the results!

(For those interested, other fun home projects Amy and I have done include putting lights in the attic, putting on a water heater blanket, and if the weather get’s warm and dry enough for us to finish it, rain gutters)

Does Anyone Else Hear the Sound of Water?

More Piano Fun

The other night Amy's mom came by to see the new piano and got caught tapping out a tune!

More Piano Fun

It will probably be sold with the house

Every so often Amy and I like to take stock with one another and just see how each other are doing emotionally, spiritually, etc. This past time around I wanted to know if there was anything Amy just wanted. We had some wedding cash left and since so much of it has gone towards home projects (well, I guess it was only Home Depot and Lowe’s gift cards, but it was still a lot) and decor, I wanted to check with her and see if there was anything that she wanted but considered frivolous.

Amy’s initial response was no, but a day or so later she came back and informed me that she wanted a piano. So Amy and I leapt off to craigslist. Needless to say, there were a LOT of crummy pianos for the price range we were looking in.

After several days, we found an upright piano that was just amazing looking. We contacted the lady selling it and scheduled a time to come by, a time which she cancelled on us and rescheduled for a later date.

On Sunday we were finally able to come by and take a look at it. It was amazing, but HUGE! We decided that there was NO way we were going to be able to lift that sucker into the back of my dad’s pickup even if I could get four other guys to help me out. So instead we decided to rent a U-haul and just push it on up the ramp.

I pick up the U-haul on Monday and swung by the lady’s house with Amy. We began the arduous task of getting the Piano out of the house. Fortunately, we had picked up some sliders and the piano moved relatively easily. We had a little tight spot at the door, and a step down. We managed to get out the door, but we were caught by the step. As the last bit of the piano cleared the door, the back heavy piano tipped right over!

Thankfully, no one was hurt and a strong metal chair caught the piano from falling all the way. I was able to push it back upright, but it was clear that if it had fallen all the way, we never would have gotten it up again.

It was fairly easy from there to get it to the back of the U-haul, but as we approached the ramp we hit an insurmountable obstacle; the ramp, while wide enough for the wheels, was too narrow to accommodate the full body of the piano. While that in and of itself could have been worked around, the side of the ramp have a raised boarder of a couple inches that was larger than the wheels. The piano was NOT going up that ramp.

Rather than trying to force the issue with an 800 pound piano, Amy and called it quits. We went ahead and paid the lady (some cosmetic damage had occurred to the back of the piano when it tipped) and decided to call an inexpensive piano mover I had come across randomly on craigslist.

It took a couple tries with the mover to nail down a date, but he was able to do it tonight and Amy was able to get her piano!

Here's a video I took too!

The Piano is a Williams & Son piano with a serial number of 113696. I haven't been able to find out much of anything on this piano, but what little I have found has lead me to believe that it was built somewhere between 1900-1920, and, due to it's higher serial number, probably close to 1920 (possibly 1918ish)

It will probably be sold with the house

Circuits, Breakers, and Electricity. Oh My!

Amy and I are having a lot of fun doing home projects and getting everything just the way we want things.  Today, I was going to add a new circuit breaker to take power out to the front yard.  An area that is painfully lacking in an electrical outlet.

The plan, as always, was a simple one.  The pervious owners of this house had a hot tub (it was, thankfully, gone when we moved in).  I knew that dropping a new electrical wire would be a nigh impossible task with how full this circuit breaker box is, so we decided to simply high jack the electrical line that used to go to the hot tub.

Basically, we’d take the 30 AMP breaker that is presently in there and replace it with a 15 AMP breaker.  Then we’d take the electrical line that is sitting in the attic (attached to nothing, don’t worry) and simply attach the new line to the end of that line inside a junction box.

That’s when I was introduced to a type of breaker called Zinsco.  They look like this

They are also HORRIBLY outdated.  They are also, and more importantly, against electrical codes due to a design flaw in which the circuit breaker's connection to the bus bar becomes loose, causing arcing and subsequent overheating.

How did I find all this out?  I went to Home Depot where a kindly associate pointed me to the replacement breaker that cost 70 dollars!  OUCH!

The long story short is that I was able to purchase a replacement on eBay for 7 bucks and will continue this project in a couple weeks.  In the long run, I will need to replace the entire panel, but that’s a very expensive (though only slightly more than how much Home Depot would have charged me for the breaker) and timely, so it will be a project for much letter.

Ironically, however, I’m thinking about changing my mode of attack for putting an electrical outlet out there.  Where before I was going to drop the line through a water proof pipe out of my attic down the side of my house and into a waterproof outlet box.  I’m thinking that a better option may be to actually just boor a whole in my outer brick wall and tap into an outlet in the guest bedroom.

Then I’ll just flush mount the waterproof outlet and it will look significantly nicer.  It’s not like I need a huge AMP rating on this outlet either.  I literally just need an outlet out there to hook my weed eater up.  The only other things on this circuit (Amy and I mapped all the circuits last week) are the outlets in the guest room and 2 in the office and 2 in the master bedroom.  So unless I decide to hook a ridiculous amount of high Amperage equipment to each outlet at once, tapping in to the preexisting outlet should work just fine.

Any thoughts? (other than call Daniel’s father-in-law, our local electrician)

Circuits, Breakers, and Electricity. Oh My!

Married!

Yay - we got married and it is almost our 1 month anniversary!

Married!

Birthday fun!

We celebrated my (Amy) 23rd birthday this past weekend. It was great fun to get to together the families. Here is a picture of the three girls:

We had my favorite dessert: funfetti cookies

My cute niece delievered my presents to me one by one -- even the four pounds of bird seeds! She was determinded to get them to me! It was so adorable. She loves her aunt Amy!

My sister made the most adorable home made gifts. I love how creative she is! Check out the cool stuff she made!!

The first is a hand drawn picture with the design that was on our wedding invitation. What a special keepsake!

Next is an adorable plastic bag holder -- with the same cute wedding icon.

And don't forget about the cute customized hand towels -- the kind grandma used to have!

I don't have any of the pictures from the celebration at the Bennett's but it was a good time too! Thank you all for the gifts and the good times!

Amy

Birthday fun!

Well, that was Quite the Adventure wasn’t it? Hmm?

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

James 1:2 – 4 (Emphasis Added)

Amy and I had a lesson in perseverance yesterday night. We had gone out to Spaghetti Warehouse to celebrate Patrick’s birthday and on the way back to their house Amy and I decided that we would stop by the home we our buying (oh yeah, I guess I should mention Amy and I are buying a home) and see if any of the repair work to some outside issue had started yet.

About a week ago, one of the fence panels fell down. This was not a surprise to me, I had walked the fence and found that the post it was attached to was the only one that needed to be replaced, and I have replaced quite a few fence posts so I was not overly concerned by it. What was concerning is the fact that the fallen panel was completely detached from both posts as if someone had been walking over it. We also noticed that some kind of sheet had been placed over the windows in the backyard.

Hoping that it was the construction guy who is going to replace all the air ducts, we decided to take a quick peek through a window. As we approached, however, we found that the storm window had been completely removed and glass was covering the backyard. Moreover, taking a peek in the window revealed garbage on the counters, several holes punched in a wall, and garbage in the fireplace.

Our future home had been vandalized.

We walked the perimeter and finding the front door unlocked, ventured inside. We found paint on the carpet, paint on the wood floors, someone had written, in paint, on one of the closet doors, and worse of all, the garage was just completely trashed. It looks as if they had taken turns throwing a paint can at a wall, painting obscenities and racial epithets all over the garage floor, walls, and door. Additionally, it appeared that they had been bathing and showing there.

Seeing the garage was devastating to Amy, and infuriating to me. I admit that I am guilty of sneaking into an unoccupied home when I was a child and chilling there. But the amount of senseless destruction… it boggles the mind. There is simply no rhyme or reason why someone would write some of the words they did in an empty garage or punch holes in the walls.

We made very certain that we changed nothing from how we found it and left. We called up our realtor and informed him of what had happened. He promised to call the seller’s realtor and find out whatever he could. About 10 minutes later we got a call back from him and found out that the police had actually caught 2 of the individuals involved in the vandalism. They know that there are two others and the 2 who were caught are informing the police who the remaining two are.

We also got some more good news today. The seller was already aware of the break in and has a contractor out there getting an estimate and starting repairs this week as soon as the police’s investigation is finished and work is allowed to resume on the house. Other points of God’s provision in this include:

• We have extensive photographic records of the condition of the house before the vandalism by ourselves, the seller’s agent, the inspectors (2 of them), and the appraiser was there just before this happened!
• The seller is already committed to fixing these issues (we are praying that the parents of the individuals who committed this crime are held responsible for the bill and not the seller. The seller has been real nice to us during this process and we really hope he isn’t burdened by this)
• The closing date should remain unchanged
• The seller is fixing the fallen fence panel for us now too (originally I was just going to do it)
• The police are going to be keeping an eye out on our house until we move in to make sure this does not happen again.

I’d like to take a moment and put some of our friends’ fears to rest who have responded to this story with extreme concern about the safety of the neighborhood. This is actually a very nice neighborhood. Every time I’ve gone by I’ve seen plenty of people out in their yards, there aren’t bars on the windows, and even the kids who walk past us on their way home from school have been friendly and well dressed (with one or two exceptions, but hey, if you saw some of my pictures from that age you’d be surprised too).

The simple truth of the matter is that this place has been empty for the past 4 months, the backyard was wide open for anyone to traipse into, and… it was spring break when it happened. I’d be hard pressed to find a neighborhood in which something didn’t happen to a home in similar circumstances.

And, just so you know, Amy and I are not worried about the safety of the neighborhood and we are still closing on the house on schedule. Letting a couple kids who got stupid rowdy keep us from closing on this amazing home would be beyond idiotic and painfully short-sighted!

Thanks for all your prayers!

Matthew and Amy

Well, that was Quite the Adventure wasn’t it? Hmm?