Tweaker Construction at your service, Ma'am.

To begin, I have not posted the amazing photo of our electrical box on the side of the house. The previous owner was "an electrical genius"...obviously. Yes, that is a dead mouse in the lower left corner of the box. He fried himself on a live wire. Tweaker Electricity.

And if you are following this blog and read the last post, you may be interested to know why the crawlspace under the house is my worst nightmare, taking 1st place, even over The Dump. This is why.

Here is a perfect example of what we call "Tweaker Construction". The previous owners went under the house, ostensibly to level the floors or fix something, who knows...and this is the amazing job they did. A chunk of a 2x4 on top of a broken piece of scrap wood, wedged in with a broken piece of concrete, with the HOUSE balanced on top of it. What the @#$%!!!!! These $&%*@#* idiots!!! We went to Home Depot and rented some jacks to jack up the house, and our neighbor Jim, who is quite handy and getting his contractors license went under and built the proper support. Interestingly, the house did not fall down during the earthquake we had on Easter. Maybe it was holding the place up, and we should have left it alone? They did live here for 30 years like this. Hmm.

On to something happy. I've gotten the dining room painted and the built-in cabinet painted and papered. I've been gushing about this Damask wallpaper I found and am using in the inserts of the upper kitchen cabinets. I have plenty, so I also used it to back the cabinet, which will look amazing when the kithcen is done, since we now also have the cut-out window started. I can see how it is going to play out when we are done. The house looks so much bigger!

We had Bill and Suzy in town over Easter weekend, so after golf, Warren forced Bill to do some work before it was time to get ready for dinner in Downtown Fullerton with the family. Bill got the fun, I mean it, job of Pressure Washing. If you have not had the pleasure, it's really fun, except for the loudness. It gets things so clean!!! And that's an amazing thing around here. Bill called the previous owners "animals". Hahahahaaaa.....

Welcome to The Dump

Ahhh, the lovely smell of The Dump. The beautiful creatures that reside there...it reminds me of the film "The Birds" which scared the daylights out of me when I was a kid. And the dump accomplished the same thing.

We had (have) quite a bit of construction trash to dispose of, and a lot of it can be put out with the trash that the city picks up, but some stuff they won't take. So off we went to the dump to get rid of "treated wood", drywall, etc.

The Dump terrifies me. If you know me well, you know how I obsess over trash and recycling. I freak out as the amount of trash that I personally create in a week, and I am very cautious about waste. I take the average person that doesn't care about it as much as I do, and then imagine their trash, then multiply by weeks, years, etc. and I practically have a coronary. Well, I got to see my nightmare played out. Welcome to The Dump.

I was unable to get a picture of the really awesome dude that works there and directed us to the spot in which we were to literally dump all our crap out on to the ground. To paint a picture, he was wearing one Dreamcatcher earring, a neon yellow vest and smoking a Marlboro Red, with out gloves on. You work at the Dump, dude! Wear gloves! And who knows what gases and combustibles are seeping into the air...maybe NOT the best place to smoke. But, I guess that is why you work at the dump, instead of being a CEO of a Fortune 500.

The huge trucks lined up as we left to get in and drop off who know's what freaked me out. The mountains of crap just piled up freaked me out.

I just decided that when we have kids, we are using cloth diapers. I already tote my own shopping bags everywhere. I am notorious for saving things to re-use, such as tissue paper and wrapping paper and ribbon. But I may get all crazy about it now. That place is my worst nightmare. Well, one of them. The crawlspace under our house turns out to be my WORST nightmare. Read my next blog to find out why.

The Money Pit

We thought it would be hilarious to watch "The Money Pit". It did make us laugh, because it hit all too close to home. We had to laugh, or else we'd cry.

Our favorite lines from the movie are the ones we've heard in real life:

"It's got a good foundation. As long as you've got a good foundation, anything can be fixed!"

"This house is going to be great!"

"It'll take about 2 weeks or so."

I do wish that crazy biker crew and their groupies would show up, like in the movie, and work on the house. We're getting a little tired.