Thursday 13: Cold Water, A Hole In the Wall, and the Mess That Keeps Growing

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!