Planting Day

Some of you may have noticed the line of queen palms that line the side of our driveway. Some people really like it but it doesn't really fit our style. They are not esthetically pleasing to us, they provide no shade to speak of, and they will not provide us with any fruit or nuts. So we've decided to get rid of them.

We definitely need a shade tree in front of the house. The sun shines down on this part of the house all day. Originally, Christian wanted to plant some oak trees. But as we would like to benefit from the fruits of our labor before we have grandchildren, we have opted for an alternative. We decided on a camphor tree because they grow moderately fast, without being too brittle, and they grow wider than they do taller to provide lots of excellent shade (and the girls love it because that is where Totoro lives).

They have these little cut outs along the driveway for the trees but they are rather small. Christian's brother Mark came out with his dad again to help us cut a bigger hole in the cement to provide more growing room for a real tree.


After scoring the cement a bunch of times, Christian's dad took some whacks to it with a big sledge hammer.
Christian decided to try his hand with the sledge hammer as well, with the guidance of this father.


Then it was time to prepare the soil for the tree.


And this is our little camphor tree. I hope it grows fast enough to be of use when summer comes upon us. We'll need it!
We picked up our camphor tree on valentines day, so Christian let the girls pick out some flowers for our garden. They chose some flower seeds instead so they wanted to plant their seeds while dad planted our new tree.

Ode to a husband...

...no, not really. I'm not going to attempt to write a poem. But I had a friend come by earlier today and as I was telling her the story of my new refrigerator, I was reminded that I never got to post that on my blog as I had intended to...when I got internet access, that is.

The day we finished moving (the day before all hell and apparently, water broke loose at the Caldwell household, we went by Lowes to pick up some odds and ends for the house when we ran upon this refrigerator. It was one of those clearance items because it had been repaired or has a ding in it. And it was one of the best prices we'd seen so we just had to have it.

My refrigerator has been too small ever since our family started growing, plus the inside of the door is kind of well...busted. So I was always complaining that there was not enough room in the refrigerator and stuff would always fall out at me when I would try to get something out of the freezer.

When we were moving, we had decided to get rid of a lot of things that we'd been holding on to for one reason or another. Christian decided that he was going to sell his engine. He had been collecting parts and working on rebuilding this 302 engine for an old Ford Bronco for quite some time before the girls came. He had the block worked on at some speed shop in San Diego and had collected all these performance parts for it...it was one of his prides and joys. But we had to get rid of the Bronco some time ago and he did not want to take up room in the garage for the engine anymore and decided to sell it at a fire sale rate to buy me some new appliances for our house. I don't think most people would understand what a sacrifice this was for him unless you knew him and knew what this engine was.

This is one of the things we spent the money on. I love it. Thanks husband...you're the best!

p.s. Thanks also to our friends who came to our aid to help unload this huge thing!

House choice

A lot of people wondered why we chose this "modern" house over all the other houses we've been looking at. Which were mostly old Tudor and craftsman type houses which we LOVE. We also never wanted a modern house on a slab for the very reason that you can't fix pipes stuck in cement. The main reason we didn't get a cute little bungalow though is because well, we never won those bids. But the next reasons we chose this house is because it is near Christian's work, it is quiet and it is below these mountains. Here is a picture of the house on one of those rainy days after the plumbers had quit for the day (notice the trench in our front lawn). It is really beautiful here.

Oh, and here is a picture a little earlier of the view from the backyard....

Camp out (in?)

When we didn't have any running water, we had to make our meals simple to keep the amount of dishes we had to do to a minimum. Needless to say, we ate a lot of frozen pizzas, frozen burritos, cup of noodles, sandwiches and the like. Plus, we used paper cups, plates and plastic utensils as much as we could. We were mostly eating this way during all the move as well mostly because we didn't have time to cook so we were already sick of instant foods.

One cold night (we've had quite a few lately), we decided to roast hot dogs over the fire and marshmallows for dessert. The girls had a great time on our little camp out...um, camp in.

Water

After just over a week with no running water, on Monday the plumbers managed to get pipe water into one of the toilets so that we can at least flush! We've been living off of our water storage barrels all week. Luckily, we have such great friends who have invited us over for occasional showers, laundry, meals and even a refill of a water barrel. Thanks you guys, you don't know how much it meant to us.

Since we have become home owners, we've been reduced to a band of travelling gypsies it seemed.

By Tuesday, we got a shower and sink back. Basically, the 3/4 bath in the master became functional again.

They finished work on Wednesday. We had an inspector come out on Thursday to approve it (although, they won't sign off on it completely until the wall are closed back up). We still don't have the main bathroom functioning since they had to rip into a lot of the wall and into the tiles to re-pipe that bathrooms. That's the room with the most damage in it. The master bedroom is the next I guess...and then the garage. Christian finally managed to go back into work today.

btw...I highly recommend you stock up on your water storage...you never know what might happen!

The continuation of problems...

I finally got internet access again! So I want to finish my story so that I can finally move on.

The second plumber from the home warranty company arrived. He took a quick glance at both of the leaks and said that we did not need a leak detection because the leaks were obvious...again, duh. Meanwhile, we find out that the home warranty we got only covered $1,000 for pipes in the house (for the entire term of the contract btw). Oh yeah, and the first plumber cost $60. The second plumber they sent out cost another $60. So, we are actually down to $880...well, $825 since we also had to pay $55 for the call to the home warranty company. Basically, it won't pay for a whole heck of a lot. We cashed out on the contract to pay for the first plumber. Now we are down to...$475.

We spend another couple of days going back and forth with the home insurance company. Only to find out that our deductible is $1,250.00. They want to make it two different claims because it was two different pipes occurring at two different times (hours apart) at two different locations in the house. So you can take that deductible and multiply by two.

But wait, there is more. Every plumber that came out including their own, said that we need to re-pipe the entire house. The first plumber would not even take the job to do a direct access patch job because with these old houses that has galvanized steel pipes in the slab, what they find a lot of the times is that they can't even re-thread the pipe because it will just crumble on them. And they may cause leaks elsewhere while drilling into the slab. It is just too much trouble. Some plumbers may recommend doing direct access if you don't have any money and you just had your first leak but having a second leak hours from the first, it's just not a good idea. However, the insurance company will only pay for direct access plus patching up the work and the damage it caused. Basically, we found out that our deductible is still more than what they will pay for direct access work. And the amount that our insurance will go up for the next three years because we made two claims will be more than what they will pay in patching up the work and whatever damage it caused. Basically, they will make money off of the deal. How's that for fair?

We cancelled the claims. We spent another couple of days and got a bunch of estimates from various plumbers. They started work on Friday morning and we are paying for it all ourselves.

Problems

We finally finished moving,cleaning the old house and turned in the key in to our landlady on Saturday late afternoon. We thought that all we had to worry about was unpacking the house now.

We had some problems with AT&T. First, there is no DSL available at our new house. So our only choices are cable or back to dial up. Neither choices are that palatable to us. However, in trying to transfer our land line to our new house, we ran into some problems and ended up cancelling it completely. Now we don't have a land line nor do we have internet services.

So our first full day in the house was Sunday. On Sunday late afternoon/early evening, we were about to leave the house to see a friend when we heard the water running or splashing somewhere. After investigating, we found water coming through the floor in the kitchen. We called a plumber out to detect the leak because we could not tell if it was coming from the wall or floor. He drilled a bunch of holes but the wall was dry so apparently, the water was coming from a hot water line under the kitchen floor (that cost us $250). We shut off the hot water valve but still had cold running water and got an estimate for the house warranty company.

Hours later, as we calmed down and decided to put our bedroom in order, we stepped into a puddle of wet carpet in the master bedroom. Apparently we now have a slab leak by the main lines into the house under the master bedroom. We shut off all the water and vacuumed up several buckets of water from the carpet.

We spoke to the insurance people first thing this morning and they sent out a plumber this afternoon. He basically looked in our house and said, yup, you have several leaks under your slab...duh.

And they won't pay for the plumber that came out last night. Now we have to wait until tomorrow afternoon for someone else to come out and detect the leaks and go over the options with us. They also won't replace the flooring or tile that will be demolished in the process.

To be continued...