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!

okay, so it doesn’t look as all bad as that picture, but last night there was an incident. let me set it up for you:

the guys left to go gaming at a buddies house and i’m munching on dinner and lazing about the house with the dogs when i get the gumption to do like … 5 things at once (which is normal for me. either on idle or full throttle). i get a load of work clothes and undies in the wash and i start making this horrible concoction called a kool aid pie. while doing this, i’m cleaning up here and there around the house and piddling with some commissioned artwork, and picking up a book every few minutes and reading 3 pages at a time (i told you, idle or full throttle). once the pie is in the fridge, the artwork frustrating, and counters wiped, and a chapter ending, i go to put the wash in the dryer.  once done so, i set the time and then hit the button.

the poor dryer moves like the load is unbalanced and is making some horrible noise so i open her up and re-arrange things and close it back and start it up again. i stand and watch with a finger tapping my bottom lip as it continues to make the horrible noise and move side to side. i open it up and can smell some faint burning rubber. i take out half the load and close the door and try again, maybe it was too large despite the fact i honestly didn’t think that. same thing. frustrated i put it all back in and turn it off.

i go to turn the satellite radio onto station 4 (40′s on 4. i love love love me some big band music) and try to think as i pace. eventually i get really sleepy and go lay on the bed reading my book. while reading said book about serial killers, i come to the conclusion it must be a busted belt of some sort. it would explain the faint burnt rubber smell, the horrible noise, AND the wobbling. yes, my mind clears more when it’s busy than when i’m pacing. i fall asleep face first at a diagonal on the bed, drooling on poor steven’s pillow while dogs walk all over me.

the boys come home and i wake up because the dogs love to cause a welcoming commotion. it is their way of saying “i love you! i missed you! oh i missed you! welcome home! love me back!” so i get half awake and inform steven of said dryer affairs. this is where it gets from frustrating to making me mad.

the goblin pipes up with “oh yeah, it’s been doing that. it still dries, you just  got to deal with the noise.” he is named goblin because of such things. this gets steven riled up and i would have been as well of i was more than half asleep.

now i have a dryer full of wet clothes i need for work and all my undies… despite the pair i am currently wearing. oh, the misery and the woe. if it’s not one thing, it’s another. maybe i should put up a laundry line just in case of incidents like this, but do i really want the countryside and rabbits in the feild next door to be able to see all my polka dotted unmentionables? i dare not think so.

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.