noir was waiting for the bedding to finish being washed, so she hugged onto one of my scarves until fresh linens were ready.

and how was the dryer fixed? with steven and his dad taking it apart and figuring it out. in all honesty though, the dryer was kind of falling apart when the previous owners left the house (oh… those previous owners make me so angry) so it was no loss to them, but then it seems like they never tried to repair anything or do regular maintenance.  the dryer was already missing one of it’s tumble bars, and another one was loose, and the third seemed okay. it turns out it was the third one that was the problem. a screw that holds it in place had snaked it’s way back  from it’s place and was knocking around on the outer rim of the drum, making that horrible noise and the force was making it rock. they had to totally take out the loose tumbler, but they fixed that one. we are now drying with just one tumbler.  seems to work okay yay for steven and his dad!

so while they were doing that, the goblin was nice enough to get an extension cord out and hook up electric the weed whacker i bought at a yard sale for 5$ and give some of the yard a go. steven then tried to give the lawnmower a go but it kept dying and when the goblin looked in the house, it seems the extension cord was drawing too much power and the breaker needed to be flipped. this happened twice before he gave up and steven cursed at the lawnmower (now working because he’s mowing the yard today on his day off).

at the end of the day, steven and i went to go take a nice refreshing shower together only to find the hot water was quickly becoming cold. the next day steven checks it all out with his father and it seems the hot water heater is working just fine. the goblin had no problems when he took a shower.

but last night, man oh man, it lost it’s scalding hotness again.

like Roseanne Rosannadanna used to say “it’s always something.” oddly enough, my hair looks like hers currently just not as poofy. he he he.

tomorrow will be about the laundry room cabinet i scored from steel rod’s grandmother and how the install went. have a good monday!

i don’t think you know how angry and frustrated i was. but you have no clue why, so let me get to that.

i was in the bathroom when i saw a corner of the linoleum peeling up. i gave it a tug to see what was going on to find yet another layer of linoleum below. i rolled my eyes but my curiosity got the best of me, i wanted to see what was below that. oh man, it was beautiful hardwood floors! excited, i started pulling up both of those layers and thinking “refinishing hardwoods is easy but hard work. easy but hard and reasonably priced! and so beautiful in the end result!” that is what i was thinking, but i forgot we had bought the house the previous owners were real dicks about.

why was there TWO layers of linoleum? because there was water damage they wanted to hide. one layer would give way so you could feel the rotting wood beneath but two layers made it more sturdy and not so noticeable! oh these lazy bastards thought they were so smart…

so i peel up both layers and i see rotting wood, water damage and HIDDEN GIANT HOLES! yes! you read that right, big old holes. how did i not feel those? well, it’s between the sink and the tub and there isn’t any room there. they just laid a piece of plywood on it and i guess they thought that was that. the hole isn’t just on the floor, but as stated before is underneath the sink as well, where they ingeniously put a piece of carpet as if it would fix everything.

now why is the wood rotting? it seems they took out the wall behind the toilet and replaced it with a sheet of faux tiling. the ridiculously funny thing about this all is they left the edging of the wall that once was there behind this sheet of faux tile so you know a wall WAS there at some point. what is between the sheet of faux tile and the outside wall? a thin piece of plastic sheeting. yep. that’s it.

now, what is happening is every time somebody takes a shower, condensation collects on that piece of plastic, beads up, drips down and settles on the floor, rotting it slowly. HOW WAS THIS A GOOD IDEA!?!? DID THEY NOT THINK OF THIS???

oh the rage. the fiery red horrific rage. and the rotting around the toilet? well, that is just because they never sealed the toilet. so they slapped another layer on the linoleum they must of already had and called it a day instead of fixing the fact the floor WAS ROTTING.

stated in the video is the black on the floors is mold. it is not. as soon as i stopped filming i bent over and scraped up some of the substance. it’s actually adhesive from previous flooring. oh thank god.

but that is why i’ve been silent. i was so angry, i threw down any and all work i wanted to do because of frustration to the point of almost having an aneurysm and the lack of money to fix these problems.

but things have picked up as mentioned earlier. the ball is rolling and life is going on. one day i’ll get back to fixing that bathroom, but it’s not anytime soon.

i know i promised pictures, but i thought a video would be easier and nicer. granted i might be repeating myself here (from video to type) but some points need to be made. three coats of Kilz, whew! that alpine green just won’t give up the ghost! i had the same problem with it in the kitchen (which we will discuss at a later time and date. that is a beast of it’s own).

the bathroom feels 3 times larger and looks so much brighter. not to mention, it also looks so much less run down and ghetto. all with a half of a gallon of primer. wooo doggie! cheap fix quick and fast! just look at how that horrible faux tiled wall sort of blends in now more than it sticks out. so crazy. it’s refreshing.

i took a bath in there and i didn’t want to wash and run. i even took my time brushing my teeth, it was a delight. that green just makes a room feel so much more clastrophobic, and not to mention it was painted badly. so much damage was done because of that paint and when i was priming, parts just kind of fell off of things, like the plastic toilet paper holder came off the wall. it seems before the alpine green was wallpaper they just painted over. once they decided to paint over it, they screwed cheap plastic things into the wall and attached cheap plastic things on the wall with some kind of adhesive. when the toilet paper roll came off, so did some wallpaper and some wood it was badly screwed into.

i swear, the previous owners just didn’t give a crap about the way things worked, looked, or functioned. hell, i found bugs SMEARED into the wall underneath the mirror, partly painted. so you know they saw it, smeared it, and then brushed it over. dear lord.

i promise you, not all poor people are classless or careless. some of us work very hard for what little we have and we appreciate it and take care of the best to our abilities. and then there is the previous owners.

back to the bathroom and it’s new whiteness. it’s new hotness. this obviously isn’t the direction we ultimately want to go in, but for now it’ll do since the paint is here, might as well use it. i’m gonna paint some accents the same colors found in the shower curtain.

again, a cheap easy fix. if i had a ladder it would of been done in one day (at least the white parts). i think a gallon of the primer was some where around 12$. this was a 6$ fix. how’s that for changing the feel of a bad room on a budget??

shiver at the horror of that horrible alpine green!

i’m going to take a break from writing about how we got this beast to what i’m currently trying to do to it, one room at a time. today we’ll talk about the master bath and the horrors it has brought us and how today i’m gonna whip some of it’s sad ass in shape.

the above photo is of the bathroom the morning we bought the house. oh the surprises it had lurking for us, waiting for us, hiding from us. ready to taunt us and laugh silently.

apparently the people who lived here before either didn’t care about how to do things right or…. didn’t care about anything. they slapped paint on, literally. it was slapped on. it wasn’t carefully applied and the whole purpose of painting something is to make it look better than what it was before. there are paint streaks in places that weren’t supposed to have paint on them, and they just painted over hardware and dead bugs. that is right, ladies and gentlemen, throughout the house, where ever they have painted, they just painted over what laid in front of it. dead bugs, clumps of dirt and dust, whatever was there.

don’t even get me started on how badly they painted the kitchen. grrr!

but the paint isn’t the only problem with the master bath. oh, no. far from! we’ll talk about function first!

this bathroom doesn’t really “function” in the ways normal bathrooms function. the sink actually pulls away from the wall. under the sink i found a piece of carpet that was rather gross, and when removing it, found it was actually covering a giant open hole to underneath the house where any critter could get in and things can fall out. the fan and exhaust are loud and noisy and don’t really vent anything. the shower head they left didn’t rain water down on you, it pounded you with a hot mist that made every surface in the bathroom wet for hours (since the fan didn’t work) including the outlets. it took us a week to figure out how to turn the shower on from the bath, because you actually have to pull on the bath spigot, which is made of cheap plastic, and the spigot isn’t attached to the wall of the bathstall, no, it juts out, easy to knock around. the bathstall itself is one of those horrible install-a-stall jobs done badly. they installed it over a useful window! not to mention the size of it is so tiny and cramped as it is. the cream of the crop of the non function bathroom is… the toilet didn’t work for two weeks.

that’s right folks, i had to poop in a bucket. oh, modern spoiled america!

we used three different types of plungers. two different kinds of plumbing snakes. that horrible acid smelling stuff you buy at the hardware store. even yogurt! all to no avail. what was it that was stopping up the toilet? well, the goblin found out when he unbolted the toilet and reached a gloved hand down there. the previous owners must of had lots of hate in them, because they flushed down a box of qtips, but with the plastic bars, instead of the fibery cotton. all the cotton had been eaten away by our acid stuff, but the plastic bars were crisscrossed in such a manner, nothing solid would go through, but did give leeway to the snakes poking down and about then would later reconvene like a baptist church on wednesday night to make troubles again with our pipes.

i hope never to poop in a bucket again in this house. in the woods, in a third world country, in the doctor’s office lest i get the bowel cancer, but never in my house again!

it also wouldn’t have been a problem if the half bathroom in the description of the house meant more than just somebody sitting a newly purchased toilet and sink in a room, but never connecting them to anything.

so these are the horrors of the master bath linked to functionality. onto the cosmetic!

that horrible alpine green. dear lord, it makes me gag. not to mention once more, the fact hardware is painted over, which makes life a little harder when you’re trying to correct alpine green mistakes. let us not forget the odd one vinyl sided wall made to look like bad tiling. it doesn’t even match the alpine green or the weird pink and green linoleum flooring. the put the shelf above the toilet way too high, and then have a random wooden shelf near the ceiling. wtf!?!?

the toilet is practically up against one wall and far from where they painted over the plastic toilet paper dispenser. they also painted over some plastic hooks to put towels on. on top of it all, they used some pale yellow for all the trim. again, painting over dust and dirt they didn’t bother to wash off before painting. not to mention the fact that the medicine cabinet that is built into the wall isn’t even centered with the sink. it’s man little things like that that make the whole room feel uneasy. noboday wants to stay or relax in that room. ever. it’s an in and out kind of thing.

if there was money falling from the sky into our laps, steel rod and i have decided we would re do this bathroom in an ancient roman style. tile and mosaics, clay colors, brass and/or copper fixtures, bigger tub, move the sink and toilet. maybe even get a fountain in there and make some storage. sounds simple enough, but kinda pricey. well, we don’t have that kind of cash (pft, we don’t really have any cash to spare currently) so i’m just gonna prime the bathroom today with some white Kilz i have left over from when some friends came down to help me prime the kitchen. i got a nice shower curtain i picked out from the place we lived before, and a matching bath rug i’ve had for ages. it should look tons better when i’m done with it today than it has in ages.

hell, eventually i want to go outside, open up that window, and cut that window out of that horrible install-a-stall and open up the bathroom even more.

so, less yakking from me, more painting. i can’t take that much ugly anymore! i’ll show you pictures tomorrow. promise.