Sinuses, Sills, and Swells

I spent Wednesday, my birthday, by refusing to work.  Everyone needs a day off, so I used that birthday as an excuse to be a bum for a day.  Mind you, I still completed two loads of laundry and other little chores around the house, but I did not touch a ladder, paintbrush, or shovel for the entire day.  What bliss!

Rick was still not feeling well, so he eventually went to quick care and was diagnosed with a sinus infection.  Go figure.  We have been so careful to avoid anyone who is coughing or sneezing, and he is overprotective of me to keep things germ free, yet he gets downed by germs anyway.  When we were in Sarasota at The Ringling, the weather was horrible, he got chilled, and there was a man in our tour group who was coughing.  Perhaps his lowered resistance to germs and the man who was not smart enough to keep his germs at home were enough to make Rick susceptible.  At any rate, he is on medication and sleeping in the guest room until he feels better and stops coughing himself awake.

Because he is not feeling well, progress has slowed a bit on the house.  He was able to get the soffits painted on the south side, and he has the first coat of paint on stucco around the windows and on the windowsills on the south.  The front bedroom part still need soffit work and a second coat of paint on the window surround.  We also need to scrape, sand, and paint the windowsill.

As with all old houses, the windowsills tell the story of the house.  On top of the original white primer, we have found coats of light brown, pink, blue, turquoise, and now white. I am not sure what color the house was when the trim was brown or pink, but I suspect that at one time Gladys was white with blue and then white with turquoise trim.  When the house was spray-painted tan before we bought it, the sills were changed to white, and we will keep them white to go with our new yellow paint. I guess Gladys really has had a colorful past!

Yesterday I painted the first coat on the last of the casing to go around the doors for the inside of the house. We have rain predicted for Monday and Tuesday of next week, so if we get stuck inside the house, we want to have the casing ready to cut and to install.  Once we get the casing inside the bathroom closet, I can finally unload the bathtub by putting all of the closet items back where they belong.  I have to admit that as we have been working on these closets, we have reorganized and sometimes discarded some of the items we have had.  Gladys has taught us that simplicity is the key to living in a small house.  We both hate clutter, so having only what we need and having a place to store what we have has helped us maintain a neat, orderly, and inviting environment.  Doing so also lets me keep my sanity because I know where everything is and can find it when Rick needs something. (Yes, I am an organizational maniac and a neat-freak.)

While I painted the casing, Rick worked on painting the windows and sills on the south side of the house.

Then it happened again: the HVAC system went down.  $@%$!  We thought we had the problem solved after Rick rewired the connection from the heat pump to the electrical box because everything had been working well.  Wrong.  Once the shut-down started, the system would run for 10 seconds and then shut down.  Then it would run for 10 seconds and shut down again.  We called Palm Harbor Heating to tell them that their $400 in "fixes" that we have tried in the past still was not working.  We were told that they would have to call us back. They never did.

Frustrated with their lack of response, we called Burgess Heating and Air Conditioning.  We had a certified technician out right away, and he said that we needed a new motor and control board.  That is what Rick had been telling Palm Harbor all along; apparently Palm Harbor did not want to go through the effort of changing out the parts.  The man from Burgess pointed out other things that were done incorrectly on our unit, and right now a second technician from Burgess is back at our house today installing surge protectors for the system and putting in the new motor and control board.  We will pay less for all of that than we did for the of Palm Harbor's "guesses" as to what might solve our problems.  We will never use Palm Harbor again. We wasted $400 on service calls and a new thermostat that was totally unnecessary.  We just pray that with this repair, we no longer will have to worry about our HVAC while we are gone this summer.  We have discussed leaving a key with the neighbors, however, so they can check on the house for us a few times.  An extra set of eyes and ears is always a good thing, and we have gotten to know the neighbors enough so that we can trust them.

The mounds of dirt in front of the house are now gone, and the
edging and stone will soon follow.

After the technician left yesterday, Rick and I worked on the dirt mounds that we had removed from around the foundation of the house.  We want to surround the house with twelve inches of stone held in place by stone edging.  We ran string lines again, removed excess dirt while still maintaining a grade away from the house, and redistributed the excess dirt into some low areas in the front yard.  Frankly, the front yard resembles a wavy ocean.  The yard has mounds and swells with low levels in between.  What we really need is heavy machinery to completely regrade the whole yard, but with our budget, that definitely is NOT going to happen.  We will have to do what we can with our shovels, rakes, and wheelbarrow.  We hope the results will be a pleasing to look at yard with no water sitting next to the house or forming pools for the wood storks.  Thankfully, the large indentations that we have in the yard are all from trees that have been removed either by us or by others rather than from suspected sinkholes!

We have to take the Toyota in for repairs once the Burgess man leaves; daily maintenance on cars and the inside of the house never end.  After that, perhaps we can get back to digging around in the dirt a bit.  We would like to get the paver base down and the stone edging in place on the south side of the house.  Then we can lay landscape fabric and buy some stone to go on top.  I am anxious to see how it all will look when we are finished with it.

I have to have patience... one project at a time. My goal right now is to get the house completely sealed and painted before we leave in May.  That sounds like an achievable goal and it will be as long as these other interrupting projects or problems do not keep showing up.  I must remember that each step we take is one step closer to meeting our goals and visions for Gladys.