It's okay to love a tree, but don't LOVE your tree, you know?

First and foremost, a picture of what we now just refer to as “Tom’s Tree” because I’m pretty sure one of these days I’ll find him outside carving “Tom + This Tree = 2gether 4ever” into the trunk of it.

Based on our exhaustive research (we Wikipedia’ed it) it’s a Larch – either a Tamarack Larch or a European Larch, but we lost interest pretty quickly when trying to figure out which. When I was cropping the photograph I noticed how the north side of the tree is infiltrating the overhead line that runs along the fence, and I think it’s either cable or phone? If a strong enough gust of wind comes through our backyard, that sound you’ll hear will be Tom and I bitching about how our Internet is down. We can live without a lot of things, but Internet is not one of them. Another thing we can’t live without: A dishwasher that doesn’t smell like dead animals. Here is our new one in all its glory, after having narrowly escaped an incident with a crowbar.

The other night while Tom was having words with the dishwasher I was camped out in our bedroom closet removing wallpaper. The closets in both upstairs bedrooms are wallpapered floor to ceiling INCLUDING THE SHELVES. It must have filled someone with quite a sense of accomplishment back in the 50s to see their totally wallpapered closet, and apparently every inhabitant of the house in the years since didn’t have the heart to destroy all that hard work. Had the wallpaper been in good condition I might have wrestled with the idea of leaving it up, because the pattern in our closet was *just* kitschy enough that it bordered on likable.

We spent most of the day on Saturday priming and painting the bedroom, which we had agreed to paint the same shade of “barely there” blue as the bedroom in my previous house. In my old house I left the original wood trim because all the windows were new with a woodgrain finish and I didn’t want to paint new windows white. I prefer white trim for its clean line and the contrast against the walls, so this time around we painted it white. We also gave the ceiling a fresh coat of white paint as it was in desperate need of it. The room still isn’t totally done, but you can get the general gist of it from this picture. Mostly you see how there is no wallpaper in the closet anymore.

There will be no lying around tonight - even though I have what I believe is a chemical headache from attacking the bathroom tile with caustic chemicals last night. Our new carpet is scheduled to be installed on Thursday morning, and before they get here we need to lay down laminate wood floor in the entry because we’re not going to go with a carpeted entryway like the previous owners. We lucked out because my mom had almost a full box of laminate floor left from when they remodeled their house and since our entryway is only about 12 sq. ft. it winds up being more than enough to meet our needs.

While Tom is tackling that, I promised Nicholas that I’d have all his toys unpacked and moderately organized before I pick him up from school on Wednesday so I'm going to get started on that. Since most of our bedroom furniture is crammed into his bedroom, I’ll also be moving all of that back into our bedroom now that it’s predominantly painted. And I’d imagine at some point I’ll be watching Tom stare longingly at the power sander because the dining room floor is really eating away at him.

My-my-my-my music hits me so hard, makes me say Oh my Lord

Pictures to come of our weekend warrior projects, but I forgot to grab the memory card out of the camera this morning.

After a 3-day struggle Tom managed to wrestle the new dishwasher into place late Saturday night. It takes very little to get me to throw my arms up into the air, shout a few obscenities and walk off a job - but Tom seemingly has the patience of a Saint and I very rarely (read: never) see him frustrated. I reserve the right to find this endearing and annoying as hell all at the same time.

However, at one point on Saturday I walked into the kitchen and found him with both arms underneath the dishwasher, his head leaning up against the door, and he was just staring blankly at the floor ... not moving. The thought immediately crossed my mind that he had gotten stuck under there and after a week of home improvement projects he no longer had the strength or the will to shout for help.

After I asked him what the problem was he informed me that he was trying to get the supply line to thread onto the elbow on the bottom of the dishwasher, which had to be done while the dishwasher was already in place due to the copper pipe (of course!) in our house, and that he was now resisting the urge to beat the dishwasher with a crowbar because it refused to cooperate.

I had to fight back the tears because I was ready to beat the dishwasher about 10 minutes into the whole project, and I was glad he was finally on board.

De-stinking a Dishwasher 101

After our home inspection we had asked that the seller hire a plumber to fix a leaky valve underneath the sink, then to investigate and solve (keyword: solve!) whatever was causing the dead animal smell emanating from the dishwasher.

When we showed up at closing we were shown a copy of the plumbing bill that stated he had replaced the valve and pipe beneath the sink. Below that it said - and I'm not making this up - "De-stink the dishwasher". We had done our final walk-through two days prior and when we ran the dishwasher again it only smelled as though someone had dumped a massive amount of bleach into the machine, so we figured it was as good of time as any to voice our concern with the plumber's "destinking" method. The seller's agent told us a nice little tale about how the plumber actually pulls the entire machine out from under the counter and vacuums all around it, cleans it all up, then puts it back. Then we were told that perhaps we should try running a cycle with vinegar? Because the house had been vacant for 3 months, you know.

My first house sat vacant for 10 months before it sold, and never once did it smell as though anything had died in it. Let me just get that out into the open right now.

Last night on our way home from the home improvement store we stopped in to Guyer's Builders Supply and through a fabulous series of events - being that my step-father's brother installs their kitchen displays - we were able to procure this fabulous new dishwasher for a song. I won't say exactly how much we saved on it compared to the same model at Sears, but I will say that it rhymes with one-hundred-and-twenty dollars.

When we went to remove the old dishwasher, though, we found all the proof we needed that the plumber had, in fact, NOT de-stunk the dishwasher at all. Pulled it out and cleaned all around it?

My. Ass.

How do we know that the plumber never moved that dishwasher an inch? Because getting the dishwasher out required this very loud and highly invasive tool:



We had to unscrew the countertop from the base cabinets and cut through a large shim with the reciprocating saw just to give ourselves enough clearance to edge the dishwasher up over the tile lip and out of its nasty little home. We're not always the most observant people, but I'm pretty sure we would have noticed if someone had done these things before us.

Plus, once the dishwasher was out we unearthed the source of our little aroma problem:


And it wasn't just under the dishwasher, it was actually on the dishwasher. Embedded in the fiberglass insulation all AROUND the dishwasher.

I actually sized those down considerably just to stay within the "mildly disturbing" level of Internet sharing, because the larger-scale versions would freak your freak out. If you think you have it bad right now looking at these pictures, you should take a second and consider that someone (Tom) had to get up close and personal with this dishwasher because someone (Tom) had to disconnect the plumbing and electrical lines because someone else (Me) was taking pictures so that everyone (you!) could get in on the action.




Afterwards we hermetically sealed the entire thing with plastic and got it the hell out of our house. Then someone (Tom again!) vacuumed up all traces of animal life and we sprayed every square millimeter of the floor, cabinets and wall down with enough chemicals to kill all remaining scientifically studied life-forms. After that we took 6 showers. Each.

Tonight we'll hopefully get the new dishwasher installed and we can put this entire episode behind us, except for the nightmares which will understandably haunt us for months.

Shockingly enough the air quality in the kitchen increased by about 400% when we were done. Who would have imagined? If only someone could have suggested some sort of solution a few days ago. If only....

And in the event that any future rodents decide our house looks like a nice place to take the family out for a bite to eat, they will be greeted by our pest control specialist: