I almost didn’t write this Thursday 13 because what we have going on is basically nothing in the grand scheme of everything happening in the world right now. But I didn’t post one last week, and I don’t want to skip another week.
Most of my
Thursday 13s are about whatever is going on in my little corner of the world,
so I decided to go ahead and post. I
just want to preface by saying I know that these are very much first-world
“problems,” and that we’re still pretty fortunate. And I’ll try not to whine too much.
1.
We’ve
known for a while that replacing our water heater is on the horizon. It’s about 13 years old. It’s also in the crawlspace, and we’re fairly
certain all of the flooding didn’t do anything good for it. So, while it was frustrating and unpleasant
that the water heater finally gave out for good on Monday morning (why does
everything happen Monday morning?!?), it wasn’t at all surprising.
2.
Our
current setup is an electric water heater and natural gas heat. We’ve wanted to change to a natural gas water
heater for a while now, but it’s a fairly complicated process.
3.
The
“crawl” part of describing our crawlspace is extremely accurate. It’s short!
The current water heater is a low-boy.
That wasn’t an option for natural gas.
(From what we can tell, the low-boy gas water heaters have gone on and
off the market for years due to fire safety issues.) So, switching to a natural gas water heater
meant moving it out from under the house.
4.
After
meeting with the company, we decided to go with a tankless natural gas water
heater. Unfortunately, the tankless
still has to be in the house due to our climate. They also have to run more gas lines and more
water lines.
5.
The
project started yesterday morning. They
told us ahead of time that we had to move some furniture and empty out one
cabinet.
 |
| A box of stuff from the cabinet is on the bench in the living room. |
6.
Moving
the furniture and emptying the cabinet already created a lot of mess and
disorder. The cabinet is the biggest one
in the kitchen, and it was full. The
furniture is a big, bulky armoire with lots of things in and on it.
 |
| Kitchen utensils are on a bookshelf in the living room. |
7.
As
always seems to be the case, existing lines and pipes weren’t up to code or had
other problems, so the project has grown.
8.
The
company emptied out two more kitchen cabinets, a kitchen counter, and the
bathroom cabinets. They also had to
drill a hole in the kitchen wall.
 |
| Nick ziptied a piece of a cube shelf (the cubes are 13x13 to give you an idea of the size of the hole) to keep the cats from getting into the wall. If you have cats, you understand the concern! |
9.
So
yesterday we came home to a hole in the kitchen wall, the refrigerator in the
middle of the kitchen, the washing machine in the middle of the room, lots of
stuff moved off of shelves, and more things outside of cabinets than in
cabinets.
10. Today is looking a little better. The refrigerator and washing machine are back
where they belong. And I did get to clean
under and behind where the refrigerator goes without us having to move it. Tiny silver lining. Everything else is still in total
disarray. And we still have the hole in
the wall.
11. The company assures us that they’re still
on track to finish up by tomorrow afternoon.
It will be so nice to have hot water again! In the meantime, we both have access to
showers at work. Another thing that I
know we’re very fortunate to have. Yes,
it’s inconvenient to pack up everything to shower at work, but it’s also
extremely nice to have that available.
12. Our plans for the weekend are to put
everything away, get the house back in order, probably some fairly major reorganization
due to the space we lost by moving the water heater inside, and work on
figuring out how to fix the hole in the kitchen wall. And, hopefully, to revel in the pleasure of
having a nearly endless supply of hot water.
With any luck, soon I’ll be posting about some of the reorganization.
13. Since it seems like most Thursday 13s
involve at least one cat picture (and to keep this from turning into a total
whine-fest), enjoy the latest picture of Theodore. I think he looks very majestic!
I don't like the term "first world problems". Yeah, it's not like you're hungry or sick, but no hot water is a major disruption. You're very fortunate you can shower at work. And work like this always goes sideways. (I did a Thursday 13 all about installing a new shower: a 2-day project that took 3 months.)
ReplyDeleteI sometimes have to be reminded that even if someone else has it worse, it's okay to be upset and frustrated with your own problems. And it sounds like you've have a frustrating few days. Once everything settles down, you'll have to let us know how the well the tankless water heater works.
ReplyDeleteOh my, what a project! It sounds like my house, you start a big project and then it grows and grows. I always say - it will be great when it is done, but the process!!!
ReplyDeleteI hope it is completed by the weekend and you can get everything put back together by Monday!!!