December 2003

December 3, 2003: Well, as we predicted last weekend, our houseguests didn't care a whit about the fact that the family room had no ceiling.

What they did care about, however, was the fact that we had no hot water. Apparently, the eight people staying in the house the night before Thanksgiving, and the big breakfast Thursday morning, and the meal preparation for Thanksgiving dinner Thursday night taxed our 50 gallon hot water heater beyond capacity, and it chose 9:30 am on Thanksgiving day to declare itself verklempt. It took a powder to recover for the entire rest of the day. We juggled showers for the rest of the morning, and amongst some grumbling, managed to get everyone clean and the essential cookware clean and ready for dinner.

We managed to serve a four-course meal Thanksgiving evening for twelve, with wine pairings and a healthy dose of after-dinner single malt scotch with dessert. Everyone at the table said that it was the best holiday dinner we'd had yet. Amazing what you can do with no hot water if you've got good alcohol enough that no one cares...

Now the dirty dishes, they sat on the counter until Friday morning. We got them washed, served up Friday brunch for another eight, and sent our guests off fat and happy (we hope) at 2:00 in the afternoon. By then, the water heater had, once again, declared itself verklempt, and frankly, so had we.

The next morning, however, found us fully recovered, bright and early, in the water heater section of the Despot. What do you want? We were desperate, and the guys at our local plumbing supply were off enjoying a long holiday weekend with their families. The Despot is, well, despotic... but it has its place. Anyway, we wandered around, found the biggest piece of hardware in the aisle (that we didn't already come in with) and staggered out of there with a big, huge, honkin' 80-gallon water heater, with all appropriate plumbing fittings in tow. She was a pretty sight, we tell you, though in all honesty, she was heavy as hell. How does this happen to us? Someday, we want to leave a home improvement center, any home improvement center, with a big, light, fluffy truckload of insulation or something.

But, we got her down the Bilco doors into the basement, hacked into all the brand-new plumbing we'd installed last winter in the basement, and hooked our newly acquired Big Bertha up in tandem with the 50-gallon water heater we already had. Plumbing was a breeze, and electrical wasn't too bad, either. We stole the 30-amp breaker dedicated to the sauna (finally put it to good use), and aside from some holiday weekend hijinks hunting down 10-2 BX cable, the installation was smooth as could be. It was a match made in heaven.

Think Antony and Cleopatra... Napoleon and Josephine... Halderman and Ehrlichman... Err, never mind.

The water heaters worked. 130 gallons of steaming H20 stored neatly and efficiently in our basement, all comfy and cozy. Take that, houseguests... bring on your meanest 20-minute showers!

We gloat now, but we're well aware that in just a few weeks comes... Christmas. After that, we'll be able to let you know how our hydronic dynamic duo really held up under pressure...

December 15, 2003: Well, the water heaters are primed, the Christmas Tree is up, the house is festooned with pine garlands, and any surface we'd be looking to renovate is either covered with pine, or too close to pine to risk smothering with plaster dust. So...

Happy Holidays to All!

Original artwork generously donated by the youngest member of the Brickman House renovation team, age 5.

Hope you all find power tools under the tree... see you in a few weeks!

December 28, 2003: Wow, 2003 is fixing to go out with a BANG... old house style.

Christmas was a blast at Brickman House, as usual. We hosted a fun, four-course Christmas Eve dinner for family and friends... finally retiring in the wee hours of the morning, well-fed, well-boozed, and happy.

And for all of you who are wondering, after we removed the family room ceiling, the Christmas Tree fit perfectly:

The top wasn't mushed, and the bow looked good! Mission accomplished. We'll deal with the ceiling itself, umm ... later.

And, even after that huge dinner, we were proud of ourselves-- we were actually responsible enough to load the dishwasher full of dishes the night before, so we had a head start on cleaning up, and we could tackle the pots and cooking implements the next day. Merry Christmas to Us!

We woke up Christmas morning to presents under the tree, and guests to see off. Gifts were opened, and we made sure everyone got to the airport on time. Then we headed on back home for an easy afternoon, cleaning up the rest of the kitchen, and watching movies.

We went back to the kitchen, opened up the dishwasher to put away the china, and found a door full of caked-on detergent crusting from the night before, and a load of still-dirty dishes. Wait... we did run the dishwasher the night before, yeah?

So we investigated, and discovered that the motor/pump assembly just. died. Gah. I hate when that happens, especially when it happens just before doing a load of nine place settings. Then we discovered that replacing the motor/pump assembly was about as costly as buying a new dishwasher, even though we'd replaced the dishwasher 18 months ago, after the da** prior owners narrowly escaped death using the original one.

Ohhh, we didn't tell you that story? Sorry, thought we'd covered it all in the Story So Far section when we started this site, but clearly we missed one.

So here it is... a few days after we moved in, after spending three solid, sleepless days tearing every possible animal urine-soaked surface out of the house, we decided it'd probably be a good idea to load the dishes we'd accumulated from our sporadic meals into the dishwasher, so that we'd have something clean to eat from for our next 72 hours. So we loaded everything in the dishwasher, dug out some detergent from the myriad of piled cardboard boxes labeled "KITCHEN" stacked haphazardly everywhere, squirted some in the dishwasher, closed the door, and pushed the button labeled "START".

In normal houses, pushing the "START" button apparently means starting the dishwasher cycle. At Brickman House, circa April 2002, pushing the "START" button meant re-creating the Battle of Gettysburg in the kitchen. Holy Mother of G... The sparks started flying, flames shot out, things were popping everywhere. We about hurt each other getting down the basement steps to get to the circuit breaker to kill power to the demon appliance.

We managed to successfully quash the flames, evict Generals Lee and Meade, and calm our heartbeats to a reasonable level. After doing so, we gingerly teased the smoking dishwasher out from under the countertop. We discovered the dishwasher had apparently been leaking for quite some time (like, maybe 30 years... thanks, Joey!) and had been slowly sinking into the resulting rotted subfloor. Of course, under the dishwasher was the power cord, and as the dishwasher sank, it sank onto the cord until it rubbed it raw. So every time the dishwasher started, it leaked, accumulating into a puddle formed by the sinking floor, through which the increasingly bare 12-2 wire ran.

Scary... After we saw this particular set-up, we had a discussion, and tried to determine (without success) whether it is entirely possible that the prior owners were just. too. stupid. to. die. It really is true, the Lord protects fools, drunks and little children.

Anyway, our next item on the agenda at that time was replacing the lethal dishwasher with a perfectly serviceable model that served us perfectly until it left us high and dry with 18 filthy pieces of glassware, 40 dishes with food caked-on, and enough crusty silverware to feed the Bolivian army on Christmas Day.

Now, we'd been kicking around the idea of having two dishwashers in the kitchen for a while, so we decided, hey! No time like the present... If we were going to replace one dishwasher, we might as well get two. So we hacked out the cabinet on the other side of the sink, vacuumed up another mountain o'mouse droppings (which we've come to expect as par for the course anytime we remove an element of this kitchen), and went shopping at our local scratch and dent appliance store for twins. Alas, we could only find one dishwasher that looked like it worked, and wasn't exactly what we had. Here's the latest addition to the household-- hopefully it's twin will arrive soon!

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