But It's a Dry Heat

Archive for the ‘Home repair’ Category

Some Home Time Religion

Do it yourself (DIY) projects are for people who don’t want weekends. The kind of twisted mofos who might also enjoy a nice evening of waterboarding.

Uh, okay. Hyperbole. But the dining room project is the last big DIY project that’s happening in the history of ever after at Casa de Kirby. Because..gah…never again. The interior work was completed (mostly) a few months ago; but it wasn’t officially done until this weekend.

Once upon a time, on a desert planet far, far away, the dining room was a garage. A small garage; so teeny, you couldn’t park a clown car in it without grease and a shoehorn. For a time, it functioned as an artist’s studio, where (more…)

A Woman’s Perogative

The average size for a home in the U.S., as of 2009, was 2700 square feet. Our little casa, at 1200, is a mite shy of average. It, along with a half dozen other houses in the neighborhood, was a builder’s concession to the notion of “affordable housing.”

As home for two humans and one large dog, Casa de Kirby doesn’t need to be a McMansion. Any issues with space are the result of a tendency toward packrat-ism that could easily be cured by a trip to the dump.

One exception. The dining room. Or the lack thereof. Events like Christmas dinner take place in a tiny corner of our tinier kitchen. When everyone is seated, getting stuff out of the fridge requires a hybrid game of Twister and Musical Chairs.

The attached garage, like everything else in (more…)

That Home Time Religion

Wednesday night. Under a gray sky, a mass of fat rainclouds rolled over the house. So low you could almost touch them, but opaque and thick like dark gray cotton balls, not misty, like fog. They moved fast. Lifelike spooky, leviathans that hurried east across the valley where they collided with the Sandia Mountains, and broke apart as rain.

Husband critter and I watched, delighted by the first rainfall in months.  Outside, rain collected in puddles on the brick pathways.

After a few minutes we looked at each other and said, “The roof!”  We made for the master bathroom.  (“Master bathroom” being such an incongruous term for a room the size of a closet.)  Once there, we studied a section of ceiling near the ventilation fan.

See, the homebuilder didn’t bother to hook the bathroom fan vents to the exterior vents (Tiffany/Collatz Builders, I’m lookin’ at you).  So for nearly a decade, the ventilation fan had been pumping humid air into the gap between the drywall and roof.  Ruining the roof, insulation and some of the roof framing.

Husband critter and his parents repaired most of the damage.  But that section of roof still leaks on the rare occasion of a real rainfall.

Fortunately, the roof held on Wednesday night.  So scratch “roof-tar-goopy-stuff” off the weekly Home Depot/Lowe’s list. Nevertheless, we both surveyed the bathroom, silently cataloging a litany of dreams.  A new vanity.  Fresh paint.  And did the mold just move?

Our household doesn’t just shop at Home Depot. We tithe there weekly.