The Drive of Shame

So, as perceptive readers of this blog will have noted, I managed to take out the entire rear window of my minivan this past weekend, amidst all the DIY hysteria. Fortunately nothing was hurt other than my pride and my wallet ($500 deductible, you know). Today was the appointed day to get it fixed, finally. Initially my insurance company had deemed it drive-able. My DH got on the phone with them and explained about the micro-shards of glass all over the car, how the plastic covering kept trying to rip off no matter what tape we used, and they changed their minds and let me get a rental vehicle.

For four days I have been tooling around in a Jeep Liberty with the kids. I have to say it is a sporty drive and it has some eye candy design features, such as the swoopy styling of the hoodline and the neat-o pop up glass rear window and swing-arm rear door. This particular model has some choke issues, which the rental salesperson yammered about the vacuum fuel system yada yada, going to get it fixed, yada yada yada. Whatever, I don't care as long as it runs and doesn't cut out on me. And it has four wheel drive, so for the span of about ten nanoseconds DH & I contemplated getting a babysitter and (as a neighbor put it), "goin' Jeepin'". However, the rational brain clicked in with numerous objections, such as, we don't even know where people can (legally) go 4x4-ing around here, and having never done so previously what the heck would we do if we got stuck? So that was a no-go from the get-go.

Anyway, this morning dawned and I had made arrangements with our neighbor to watch the kids while I drove the van, complete with flapping semi-translucent plastic, to the repair shop eight miles away to get it fixed. I felt like I had a scarlet letter "S" tattooed on my forehead, "Stupid!" writ large across the sides of the van. I had to stop twice to reattach the plastic to the van, and once to take off the shower curtain liner I had affixed with some twist-ties to the top rack as added insurance against glass potentially falling off. Most of the glass had fallen off already, but we did not knock the rest down and I didn't want to endanger other drivers, nor did I want to get pulled over for littering broken tempered glass. I had 4 mil plastic taped up with duct tape (use what you have, right?) but found quite quickly that it had to be amended with plain old Scotch tape (the only kind I had in the car). And the top half of a shower curtain liner, while a good idea to keep the rain out, was not the best at local street speeds. I found I could only achieve a top speed of 40 mph before the plastic was threatening to leave the vehicle entirely, which would not have been good.

Therefore, I drove with more than a little trepidation, at just 40 mph, watching like a hawk to make sure my plastic covering didn't abandon ship and mask another driver's view. Visions of a semi-transparent plastic obscuring another car's windshield and causing a crash made me question the wisdom of leaving it intact, but then again I did not want to be littering glass on cars either! And of course I felt like every car behind me somehow knew it was my fault that my window was gone. As people passed me I was alert for any stares or looks as I crept toward my destination.

And it's not like I don't know that EVERYONE has done something like this. I have had neighbors coming out of the woodwork to tell me about their own self-inflicted accidents with their cars. It just smarts a bit when you do it yourself...and having to drive your own damaged car to the repair shop is just the final twinge. I am waiting for the call now to retrieve my repaired car...it can't come soon enough for me!

Random Bits of DIY Induced Hysteria

First, let me say that I have amended my list of life skills that children should know before they fledge from the nest, so to speak:

1. How to change a flat tire
2. How to put on snow chains
3. How to change the oil in their car
4. How to cook
5. How to clean
6. How to do laundry
7. How to budget & pay bills
8. *NEW* How to solder a copper pipe connection

Yes, I am convinced it is that important, because in learning this particular skill my children could someday save themselves a thousand dollars or more, or whatever the equivalent of $455.69 is in twenty years' time. Because that is what we paid the plumber to completely fix the nicked toilet water supply line, plus to refit our tub/shower controls to an all-in-one lever unit. All for the fine art of copper pipe soldering, yes sir. Yippee.

On the plus side, we no longer have water dripping from any bathroom plumbing into our crawlspace or designated buckets. Yay! And, DH & I have made the decision that instead of patching the vinyl floor, we are going to go ahead and tile the bathroom. I have found reasonably priced tiles, and now I have the fun of planning out the patterns for the floor and tub/shower surround, including what thickness of grout we want, etc. I am wishing we had some graph paper lying around to make life easier, but that's just me. I will probably be fine with some plain old paper and a ruler.

Our kids are coping reasonably well with the loss of their bathroom. We had our first shower instead of a bath last night, and they did pretty well, I think. The only downside is it is now a two person job to get them bathed, because DS has to come straight out when he's done and one of us has to be ready to wrangle him and then keep him away from the shower. DD still isn't too keen on the sprayer but she is happy as long as she gets to hold it, so we will work with that.

Next up we have to remove the vanity & double sinks, then rip up all the old vinyl in that room. DH also wants to get rid of the venetian plastered wall, which was plastered to cover up painted over, textured wallpaper. He just wants to start fresh with new drywall, and I can't say as I blame him. What is a little MORE drywalling when we are going to be hanging cementboard for the tub surround anyway? Personally I will be happier when the demolition is completely done and we are moving forward with putting it back together again.

Hopefully tomorrow we will get the rest of the floor in, now that the plumber has worked his magic. I have to figure out how to get the insulation up in the crawlspace since it's a pretty inaccessible area, so I will have to do as much as possible stapling from above and hopefully we can avoid trying to staple/attach insulation with 6" of clearance (the fun of pipes being in the way in the crawlspace). I hate to drag the kids back to the home improvement store today, but I can't see any way around it since we have to buy the insulation, plus more 1/2" pipe insulation. Fun fun fun!

Like I said, I just want to get started putting it all back together now. Wish us luck, folks.

Where Do I Start?

It's late & I'm tired, so here is a brief summary of our weekend:

1. Rip up vinyl flooring on Saturday morning. Find a total of 4 layers of vinyl covering tarpaper over the particleboard subfloor. Particleboard was exposed to moisture long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, and had pretty much disintegrated, held in place by aforementioned tarpaper...which also held in place the moisture from whatever disaster befell this bathroom earlier in its existence. Moisture was dried up and gone for a relatively long time, leaving DRY ROT. Oh goodie.
2. DH & Handy Neighbor with Power Tools & Experience We Don't Have (herein referred to as HN #1) cut open a bigger hole to find out how far dry rot extends. Discover floor joists are not 16" on center but much further apart, like 24" on center. Hmmmmm. But apparently this was not uncommon "back in the day", i.e. 1978, when this house was built. Main floor joist underneath spongy area has dry rot extending about 1" into the beam. Dry rot extends to either side, toward the bathtub, and toward the toilet.
3. Pull the toilet to find out if dry rot extends underneath the toilet. It does. Cut back boards to determine if dry rot extends under the wall (into the other bathroom & other toilet). It does not. *phew*
4. Cut apart tub and remove to determine if dry rot is underneath the tub. Dry rot appears to be contained and doesn't extend further. *phew*
5. (today) Go to big box home improvement store (BBHIS) for lumber needed for "sisters" for partially dry rotted joist & all the perpendicular joists to be run out to the good joists on either side. Also purchased plywood for new (proper) subfloor and new cement backerboard for new tub surround.
6. Finish removing dry rotted subfloor boards (2 x 6 tongue & groove). HN #1 accidentally nicks toilet supply line with sawzall. Run & shut off water to the house. New priority becomes fixing water supply line so we can have water in the house. I go to BBHIS to get copper coupler, flux, solder, torch, etc. with DS in tow. Return home to try my hand at copper soldering. Fail first attempt. Leave to pick up takeaway lunch.
7. Back minivan straight into the lumber in HN #1's compact truck, handily lined up exactly behind the minivan & not viewable in rearview mirror. Curse self handily for failing to check side mirrors while picking up the bazillion pieces of rearview window which were sprayed all over (gravel) driveway and HN #1's truck & its lumber contents. Call car insurance company, no one is home. Car insurance claim (minus $500 deductible, just to make it sting a little more) is first on the agenda tomorrow morning.
8. Send DH to pick up lunch. Attempt 2nd soldering while DH is gone. Fail again. Give up again and eat lunch. Put DS down for nap. Distract DD with Dora the Explorer with DH attempts 3rd soldering and fails. Pack up whole family for a trip through the Starbucks drive-thru (shameless bribe) and Lowes for a 6" copper sweat sleeve.
9. Get back home, put DS to bed. DH cuts off pipe coupler and fits sleeve, attempts soldering with water soluble flux. I turn on the water again and the sleeve blows off the pipe. Turn off the water (thank the Lord for walkie-talkies) and DH & I have a mini-conclave to determine if we should call our friend the plumber or not. DH heads off to BBHIS again to get a cap for the line so we can hopefully cap it and call it a night. On his way down to the store, DH has a brain wave and suggests calling Helpful Neighbor #2, who plumbed his entire garage addition himself.
10. Call HN #2, who comes over within 10 minutes. He assesses the situation and states that he has soldered many copper pipes. Within fifteen minutes of his arrival, he has soldered on the sleeve and the water is again flowing through the house. Hallelujah! I effusively thank HN #2, who offers to help with anything we may need and also offers to loan DH his air power tools, such as his nail gun. HN #2 also suggests we re-do that section of piping anyway, as it is at a slight angle and might be putting some torque on the joint, which is a bad thing. DH arrives home 2 minutes later and gives a Tim Taylor grin at the mention of an air-powered nail gun. *eye roll*

You know, given the happenings today, I don't think I should let DH anywhere near an air gun of any shape. If you'll excuse me, I have to go transfer money from our emergency fund to cover this little home repair boondoggle.

The Good News & the Bad News

Well, DH did get all suited up in the Tyvek suit and mask yesterday and headed down into the crawlspace last night. The mask lasted about two seconds, as it made him feel claustrophobic, but fortunately he discovered no signs of rodents. Hooray! No droppings, no dead rodents, no beady eyes staring at him, nada. So that is definitely good news. Also he had a cursory look at our ducts and all the insulation on them appears to be in good shape, so another hooray! We probably ought to go back down there again to look at the far reaches of the house, but so far, so good.

Then DH got to the part of the house that he thought was the bathroom. To verify that he was at the spongy floor section, he had me jump on it, which I will post for your amusement:

This particular area is mostly inaccessible due to pipes crossing directly under that section of floor, so DH could only pull back at the insulation a bit to see what the subfloor looked like. This is what he found:

Yeah, that's mold. That floor is a 1"+ thick tongue & groove hemlock or fir subfloor, my friends...so we can only imagine what the subfloor above that looks like, if it's leaking through at the seams on the underside. A positive is that it's not all over the place, making us worry about our house being condemned. It is, however, there, so we must deal with it.

The next step, therefore, is to cut the vinyl flooring in the bathroom, pull it back, repeat with the old vinyl that the installers just laid the new one over, and see what the state of the plywood subfloor is. Perhaps they used particleboard or something that is not rated for bathrooms as their subfloor, and just the normal use of the bathroom has caused this. However, we are going to give the kids a bath tonight, and if we find moisture in the subfloor tomorrow, we will know it is the bathtub. I also have to persuade my DD to use our toilet all day, because then we can really isolate any leak from the toilet from any leak from the tub. I really don't think it's the toilet, as it's brand new, it is rock solid & does not move, and it was installed by a plumber. I would be very surprised if it was a problem with the toilet (and we would be calling that plumber about it!).

I am still thinking it's the bathtub. There is no way of knowing, however, without wading in and causing damage to the floor, which we will at a minimum have to repair. Luckily we have some scraps of the vinyl to use as a patch. We will see what tomorrow brings.

Home Maintenance, Delayed

Well, the time has come on our 30 year old house for some more extensive repairs than we have ever attempted by ourselves before. Our neighbors noticed that our kid/guest bathroom floor between the toilet & bathtub was "spongy" during our vacation. Oh joy. It could be from the toilet, but since we had the toilets replaced about 18 months ago, we are suspecting it is more likely from the hairline cracks which we've noticed around the drain in the fiberglass bathtub. We are pretty certain it is the original fiberglass tub/surround from when the house was built, because the opening of the pocket door would not allow it to fit through. Nope, that puppy has been there since the house was framed in.

When we moved into this house about two years ago, our home inspector noted some chips in the fiberglass bottom of the tub, but he also noted that it did not appear to be leaking in the crawlspace. However, we have noticed since examining the spongy floor area, that the caulk has separated from our vinyl flooring at the tub, and also discolored. We had the flooring replaced about 20 months ago, so this is clearly something that has happened since then. The vinyl has also delaminated slightly around the toilet...so who knows? Maybe it is a leaky toilet...or maybe the toilet has started leaking because the floor is spongy. We won't know until we get into our rodent infested likely rodent afflicted crawlspace to get a good look at the floor under the tub & toilet. I say "we" but I mean "DH", because I have no wish to go crawling around in the fiberglass and feces that is probably the current state of our crawlspace. I'm sure neither does he, but in the assignation of household jobs this one falls squarely into DH's camp.

I am expecting to find some mold, frankly. I am hoping that it is contained to the bathroom, so we can treat it relatively painlessly with bleach, dry it out, and move on with our lives. However, this whole process is going to force dealing with the crawlspace rodent issue, because we can't leave the bathroom open to the crawlspace without inviting a host of mice to crawl in and make themselves at home in our house. I've been there enough times, thank you very much, and I would like to avoid any future problems. Thus we have bought bait and traps, and we will be deploying them post-haste. Furthermore, we will probably have to do what we need to do to keep the little buggers out permanently, which is to get to all crawlspace vents from the inside of the crawlspace and staple fine steel mesh to the inside to keep them out. DH might as well staple up some strapping to our silt-plagued kitchen drain line too, while he's down there, so it doesn't sag between the floor joists.

Actually, there are a whole host of jobs to be done in the crawlspace--the mesh on the vents, the drain line strapping, and also finding and sealing up holes in our heating ducts, as well as making sure they are all properly insulated. With energy prices heading up, up, up, I have no interest in paying extra to heat my crawlspace. We had hoped to do this in the autumn when it's cool, but clearly the rodent issue isn't going to wait. I had just better have plenty of shandy fixings for my DH, I think, plus batteries for the 2 way radios so he can tell me if he gets stuck anywhere. Sorry, remind me again why we bought a 30 year old home?

The Fava Bean Breakfast

Much to my delight, when we came home our vegetable garden was producing abundantly. Apparently none of the neighbors took us up on our offer to help themselves to anything they liked, as we have a full crop of peas (some of which are drying on the vine), fava beans, and lettuces. Perhaps they had a few ripe tomatoes, but otherwise it is untouched. Thus I have been busy picking & shelling peas and beans, plus figuring out how to serve them up for dinner in a way that my DH might actually eat them.

I had forgotten from my childhood exactly how tiresome a process shelling peas is. In the youthful exuberance of a five or six year old, I simply remembered the fun of picking and shelling your own peas, eating a few as you went. I did not remember having to pick off the little bits of stem still attached to the pea, nor did I remember the annoyance of pods that wouldn't fully separate, so you had to peel them around and around like an apple to get the peas out of the pod. Nonetheless, the "Little Marvel" peas that we ate with dinner on Saturday night were really sweet and yummy. They tasted a lot like sweet corn to me, except with a creamier texture. I ate them until they got cold on my plate, and then I wouldn't touch them (ditto with sweet corn, I'm afraid--just not as appetizing). The kids loved them and even our possibly-picky son enjoyed eating them raw from the pod, and then ate some cooked peas. My DH mixed them in with his spaghetti and ate them, which is a huge step for him. He did rib me about the peas I left on my plate--I don't think he believed me about them going cold.

Anyway, I also picked a bunch of fava bean pods and they were sitting there, waiting to be shelled. I did that last night, and had a bunch of fat fava beans sitting in a bowl to be cooked. However, we forgot to cook them and after I read that I had to peel the beans after cooking, well, I just wasn't too enthused for that chore last night. So when I got up this morning, I was confronted by my bowl of shelled fava beans, looking for a home. I figured the best thing was to cook them and eat them! I am not sure of the shelf life of shelled fava beans, and some were already discolored from their 12 hour time outside of their pods...so I forged on with cooking them for...breakfast! Hey, it's a high protein food, low fat, right? And my kids probably won't care, they will eat them anyway.

It took about five minutes to cook them in some salted water, and about fifteen to shuck them out of their outer skins. The kids ate some and I ate some, but I have to admit that a fava bean breakfast isn't so hot. As a side dish to a meal, yeah, these things would rock. But as a starring starter for the day...hmmm. I am going to cook some oatmeal now, and my cooked fava beans might be reintroduced in a salad later today. Or they might be tossed out. I haven't decided yet. Flavor, good. Looks, good. Timing, bad. My bad.

And a Month Later--Travel Notes!

We have returned from our sojourn in the Emerald Isle. Our children survived the flights, which is a miracle considering that DS was probably the most unhappy child I have ever seen on a plane, and there were probably any number of addlepated adults who were cheerfully contemplating strangling him on hour 2 of him screaming at the top of his lungs. *draws the curtain over that dark chapter of our lives*

*ahem* Here are a few travel observations about that illustrious airport, often held up as a pantheon of the Traveler's Airport, Heathrow.

First, the journey from the States to London. We arrived utterly sleepless at Heathrow's Terminal 4, and had to transfer from Terminal 4 to Terminal 1. Our children had slept about four hours total of the nine plus hour flight, so suffice it to say, we were a bit tetchy. We followed all the signs for "Connecting Flights", walking about a mile through endless labyrinthine passageways before we arrived at the inter-terminal transit option--a bus. Oh joy. Because having to divert endlessly to find elevators (aka "lifts") was not enough hassle--now we had to heft the carseats on the GoGo travel wheels with the children in them onto the bus. A kneeling bus, I might add, which the bus driver pointedly chose not to kneel to assist us. That had DH complaining a bit, I can tell you.

Now, we had gotten from Terminal 4 to Terminal 1, but we had not gone through any sort of passport check or Customs, nothing. We were a bit bemused by this, as there were several points along the journey at which we could have just wandered off and evaded passport control and customs entirely. And there were no signs indicating that we were actually going to encounter Customs or Passport Control, which made us a bit nervous. We did eventually encounter them, but then we had to go through security, again. I ask you, what is the point of making connecting travelers go through airport security again? I cannot fathom any point other than the sadistic leanings of some bureaucratic airport controller who secretly delights in watching weary parents juggle all their carseats & children & peripheral electronics (to keep the children happy en route) through metal detectors and hand screening of the carseats. And we found ourselves finally through security and blearily eyeing the screens in the terminal to determine which gate we would be at for our flight to Dublin.

To add to the fun of security, the British have added another layer, called "Biometric Security". This consisted of us having our pictures taken in one part of the airport, and then we had to have someone match us to our pictures before we were completely through security. Which would have been fine, except the woman taking my picture and DS' picture had difficulty with her camera, so we had to stand there for about fifteen minutes while she tried to get her computer and camera to cooperate. And she took about ten different pictures of DS in his carseat, until she finally admitted the camera couldn't focus properly on him at that (low) height, and could we please take him out & hold him up for the camera? Grrrr. And then, when we got to where they check your pictures, that screener couldn't find my picture. At all. We had to stand there for over twenty minutes while this woman consulted her peers, dabbled around on the computer, and searched through picture files by timestamp until she finally found me...only to lose the photo again when she tried to clear me through. Can we say, "eye tic"?

Now I don't know how many of you have flown internationally, but it is a common practice at British airports to not tell you the departure gate when you receive your boarding pass. Instead, you have to periodically check large screens to see which gate has been assigned to your flight. Having just come from a 9 plus hour flight, and spent nearly 2 hours navigating through Heathrow airport and all of their incompetent security screeners, all we wanted was to get some food into ourselves and our children before we had to be at our gate in 30-40 minutes. However, this was apparently too much to ask of airport planners. I remember reading about Heathrow making efforts to offer only healthy food, and my hazy memory thought they might have banned fast food...but at that juncture, trying desperately to find a place to eat in a short timeframe, I was ready to cheerfully choke the Do Gooders who thought it was a good idea to remove any and all fast food options. A sandwich chain anywhere? Some sort of helpful signs pointing toward "food on the go"? Nope! Just a collection of sit-down restaurants offering items that would take at least 20 minutes to receive, which was not good enough. We bought chips (crisps) and candy and water at a newsagents' shop, and made do with that.

We had the same problem on our return through Terminal 4. Two, just TWO, sit-down restaurants available, and at one of those the waitresses didn't even bother to say "hello" or "be right with you" while we stood at the "Please Wait to Be Seated" sign for five minutes. By the time we had cruised down to the OTHER END OF THE TERMINAL to the other restaurant, we had no time to eat. Again with the crisps and water/sodas. Is it really too much to ask that parents have ONE fast food option, where their kids can get something reasonably familiar after a multitude of hours on an unfamiliar plane with unfamiliar food? I mean, really, it's not like people are going to be rushing to the AIRPORT to visit McDonald's! It's just for TRAVELERS, for goodness sake! But hey, if you wanted to buy a Mulberry handbag or some jewelry from Asprey, Terminal 4 was the place for you! Because, you know, it's more important to cater to the 0.5% of travelers with tons of cash, than the hoardes of common peasants who just want a quick meal. *eye tic*

I'm not even discussing the complete failure of Aer Lingus to offer pre-boarding for parents with small children, or their insistence on seeing the line in our carseat manual stating that they were certified for use on airplanes, or the radar problems at Dublin Airport that resulted in our flight from London to Dublin being delayed. And I've not mentioned the complete lack of common sense that has travelers from Terminal 1 to Terminal 4 boarding an efficient train, then to be dumped into a lobby with only four elevators to carry a whole trainload of passengers up to the rest of the terminal. Yep, no stairs, no escalators...just 4 elevators. And that brings up the intelligence test that was routinely flunked by our fellow travelers, who kept pushing the elevator button before the full elevator had departed, resulting in continued delay. Yep, traveling. Good times. I hope I don't ever have to go through Heathrow again, and you can bet I'm sending some feedback their way...and it's not of a complimentary nature. Stay the he## away from Heathrow peeps. Seriously. Gatwick was WAAAAAY better. That will be my first choice from now on.