Casa PK

9-26-13 – Somewhere over the USA, in route to DFW

Back of the house.  Lots of green grass here in Ohio

The house hunt is officially over.  We have procured a place to raise our future child, which we found out is going to be a girl.  All very exciting.  I have decided the process of looking for a house is not as romantic as they make it seem in the commercials.  In the commercials the loving couple holds hands while gazing fondly at their perfect house with the beautiful green grass out front as they imagine how they will grow old and raise a family in the one house they hope to someday own.  Little do they tell you that they are looking at the neighbors house who has spent half his life making it nice and every Saturday tending the lawn.  They never seem to mention how  many crappy, foreclosed houses they’ve already looked at.  You know, the houses they can actually afford on their newly married with a kid on the way budget.  Or how the house they actually ended up with “has potential.”  Well that was us.  Our new house “has potential”, was foreclosed on and apparently had the dirtiest people in the city living in it.  But just like old Autumn Wind; the owners a few back had big plans and did some great things.  Like that couple we are excited to see our little girl play in the back yard and gaze across our beautifully green grass.  But we may be getting ahead of ourselves.  First we need to make it water proof and provide a source of heat for this January baby.  The roof was old and we knew that.  Did you know that some insurance companies will not insure you if your roof is older than 20 years?  We didn’t.  So we did not properly answer the very first question they asked which was “name, address and how old is the roof?”  Our answer of “I don’t know, but it looks really old” disqualified us from normal insurance.  So we got stuck with high risk insurance for 300% of the normal until the roof was replaced, that is with the company that would insure us, one company say no thanks we can’t insure you.  So we have anew roof now.

Removing some floors

On to the furnace.  This one was a little bit unexpected but we should have known.  The inspector checked the CO2 level and immediately red tagged the furnace.  It was unusable until fixed or replaced.  It was so bad, it took his meter around an hour to go back to normal after reading so high.  He said something about the flames coming out the front instead of going up the flue?  Sounded bad to me.  So now we have a new furnace also.  Both good investments in our future I suppose, but not nearly as fun as a new RIB with a 9.9 off the back.

At least when you disconnect this drain
water doesn't come IN!

With the house functional again we were able to focus on the interior with paint, fixtures, flooring, trim, appliances, plumbing etc…. Maybe we should have just built a new house.  In the interest of keeping our future baby safe, Elizabeth has deferred all of the painting to me, yea!  For being a prego, she has been right in there, removing trim and wallpaper, cleaning up the last owners mess and pulling nails out of the wood floor.  Since there were no appliances when we bought the house, it gave us the “opportunity” to buy new ones, Each of which has given me just a little fight to install.  Nothings just as easy as they show in the installation directions that were written in China by a person who has never seen an over the range microwave let alone tried to install one.  Aren’t all houses set up with an appropriately placed outlet and set of cabinets to mount your micro to?

Having a baby in her belly didn't stop
E from working hard

Thankfully the funds have run low and it has given me a chance to stop working on the house for a few weeks while we head out to Reno to retrieve our stuff.  Oh yea, did I mention that in order to do all this stuff we have had to beg and borrow every tool needed off of various family members, from ladders to a screwdriver, everything we own is in Reno. It just adds to the comedy of the situation.  I believe we should name the house, just like a boat.  Right now Casa PK seems to fit, but that may change.  I’ve also tried to convince Elizabeth that we need to have anchor downs every time we successfully make it into the garage; she isn’t buying it yet.  We have decided that after working on our floating house for a year, how hard can this be?  Fixing a thru hull could sink your boat.  An engine problem could leave you stranded for days or weeks trying to fix it.  Painting a ceiling or installing a microwave, while potentially frustrating, has a much lower probability of destroying you house.  And if a car breaks down, there’s always another one.  Better yet, you’re not stuck in your car for a week while 
 

 
you try to figure out why it won’t start.  Casa PK is coming along nicely and we are excited to unload our clothes from a bag and have a place of our own after 4 months of borrowing other peoples beds.

Update on the baby growing status