With most of the kitchen hauled away with the first dumpster, we took off a few days from heavy demolition while the electricity and the HVAC were complete. We feel that we were probably ripped off monetarily a little by the electrician, and the HVAC job is another story entirely.
The company we chose last Thursday to do all of the work came in yesterday with almost two full crews. The first problem appeared when we started to discuss the insulation. The salesman said that this company would take out the old insulation (including rat droppings and urine) from the attic and put in all new. The workmen and foreman insisted that they "never take out the old" insulation, just adding the new on top. That was not OK with us. We chose this company because they have been in business a number of years, and the salesman applied some magic to get us 36 month financing. At this point, that is the only way that we could afford to have a new air handler, heat pump, and duct work installed. What he promised and what the workmen were planning to do, however, were two different things.
We told the workmen to stop until we could call the salesman and the company. After much negotiation, we agreed that we would hire someone else to deal with the insulation, and that part of the job cost would come out of the loan. The duct work that they pulled out of the house was disgusting. One workman said, "At one time, someone smoked heavily in this house." The ducts also had numerous holes where the fruit rats had decided to take up a cool abode inside the insulation next to the cold duct work. Smart rats, eh? They let people air condition their nests! Only in Florida.
Remember the scary toilet that I wrote about? It was 1960s blue and bugs crawled out from under it when we took it off of a disintegrated wax ring. The thing was utterly disgusting, so we hauled it out to the magic curb where is disappeared within half an hour. Tonight, as we started our walk, I spied the blue toilet in the garage of the house across the street kitty-corner from us. As we walked past, a younger woman was begging a man in his 30s to install the blue toilet for her somewhere. More power to you, lady. I don't think the thing works anymore! But if I see the cockroaches that crawled out from under it, I will send them over free of charge. After all, that would be the only neighborly thing to do.
Today the pest control man came to the house to help us eradicate the fruit rats. Rick and I put up the rest of the new soffit vents so the little critters could not so freely come into the eaves of the house and thus attic. He showed us a few other places that the could come in, so we will take care of those places later today or tomorrow.
One access area for the rats is through the trees. Since the big tree in the back yard will remain for at least one more year, we went to Home Depot today and bought a pruning saw. After dinner, Rick climbed onto the roof and gave the tree a haircut to beat all trims. The disturbing part of that was not that he was on the roof, but rather that he was able to snap off the branches so easily. The tree is brittle, and I certainly hope that all good windstorms come off the Gulf and blow everything to the east away from our house.
Our neighbor lady, Michelle, came knocking at our door today with a wonderful gift: a home made key lime pie. Little did she know that Rick's favorite pie is key lime. He just had a piece, smacked his lips, and said, "Sher, this pie will not agree with your diabetes. In fact, I don't think you should even taste it. I'll just take care of all of it for you." Isn't he a nice guy? The jerk! When I get done with this blog, I am going to have a piece of pie and take the motherload of an insulin hit.
Another task completed today was that Rick put in new lights in the kitchen. Do the words scary and fire hazard sound familiar? The wiring in this house still leaves much to be desired, but everything will just take a little more time and a lot more money.
I really do not want this blog to give you the wrong impression. We love Dunedin. The downtown is purposely quaint with little shops, wonderful restaurants to explore, and extremely friendly people. The downtown reminds us of the shops in Ephraim in Door County. Tonight, just moments ago, we went for a walk around the block. Since the houses across the street all surround a little private lake, we literally walked around the whole lake tonight. While the temperature is still in the high 80s, a 20 mile an hour tropical breeze made the walk very relaxing.
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