DIY Disasters
Our house was an ugly duckling.
Looked like it popped right out of That 70’s Show. Antique brass everywhere. The fake kind.
Instead of popping a champagne bottle, we popped a paint can.
But we didn’t stop at paint….
The kitchen ceiling, for instance, was lower than everything else by about nine inches. It was covered with a textured wallpaper to mimic an old-fashioned tin ceiling. Then it was painted cream.
A 3×4 hole in the ceiling held a fluorescent light fixture that you’d expect to find in a dungeon. The whole thing was “trimmed out” with strips of some unidentifiable wood product, stained to match nothing else in the house.
I could palm the ceiling like Shaq with a basketball. I am not tall.
So…………..in our eager enthusiasm, we said, “Oh, I’m sure that’s only there because of this horrific, homemade ‘california light.’ Let’s raise the roof!”
We ripped it all down.
Don’t ever do that.
We found all kinds of plumbing housed in the extra space between the ceiling and the second floor joists….turns out the big master bath that we fell in love with and really sold us on the house? Yeah, that used to be a bedroom.
Sigh.
But the most interesting thing was not the education in plumbing or the weeks of open joists and drywall dust….it was an aluminum turkey roasting pan. Cradling a twelve-inch hunk of R-18 insulation like a precious newborn. Just tucked up there, above the stove, resting on top of the drywall.
What the what??
We had the ceiling torn apart for quite a while. Never did figure it out. Got the new soffits built, new drywall hung, taped, sanded….painted.
Then one day, a couple months later, we notice water stains on the ceiling and soffit over the stove. We put on our Superman x-ray vision and realize that the guest bathroom is just above the stove. Where the turkey roaster used to be.
Not joking.
Wish I was making this up
I CAN’T make this up.
The people before us had built a turkey roaster INTO THE HOUSE to catch the leak instead of repairing it.
It ended up being a $20 fix–a leaky cartridge in the bathtub faucet.
I do think the insulation was a stroke of genius…absorbing and then allowing the water to evaporate rather than sitting in a puddle to stagnate and breed mosquitos between the floorboards……but still.
***
As I’m settling into the new blog, i’m finding a few turkey pans nestled in the ceiling.
- Last week, those of you who subscribe by email received a random old post. A photo of Guanajuato Market from last summer’s mission trip to Mexico, in fact.
- Those of you who have subscribed to the RSS feed might have noticed that post dates and order are a little, um, well, off-kilter.
- Some of the old posts appear three or four times.
- Some of the old posts are missing.
I’m working through these issues, and still discovering new ones. As I clean things up, I appreciate your patience, and hope that when strangely random old posts hit your inbox, you will enjoy the memories with me.
What’s the most ambitious DIY project you’ve taken on? Leave a comment!
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About Christine
I am a writer, a project manager, and a corporate refugee with a heart for orphans around the world. My two daughters were adopted from Ukraine at ages 12 and 14. I post about writing, chasing dreams, and making a difference in the world, and sometimes I share fun snippets of fiction in-progress.
When my father moved into his house, twenty-odd years ago, he knew there were some water issues he’d have to handle. But when he cleared out the basement and yanked out the green astroturf the prior owner had carpeted the whole floor with, he found little concrete ridges, about 1/2-3/4 inch high, about two inches from every wall, and also down the middle of each room.
My Dad, master of the Thinking Man’s Laziness for many years, knew instantly what they were: drainage channels. When it rained even a little bit, the basement had so much water that you could hear the trickling of each little stream as it turned a corner or went down a step. Though I was already past the time when I thought I knew all the good words in English, I learned a few new ones from my father that first rain day.
It took an entire summer and presumably many many dollars to re-do the drainage around the house and repair the basement walls. I had quite a bit of fun pulling up the little channel walls and painting the floor after.
But I admit, that really isn’t quite in the same league as the turkey pan.
WOW….I agree it’s in a different league…carpet over drainage channels qualifies those folks for the Major League.