The Gatannah Files: The Joys of Home Ownership, and other adventures

This week, we're having the big old Chinaberry in our front yard cut down because it mostly died during the freeze in February, and it had already dropped multiple limbs in the yard and onto our roof and the open patio, shearing off a corner of a support post.

I hate to see any tree go, even an invasive one, but especially one that was so big and lovely. But we did see this coming and planted a pear tree about 15 feet further away from the house last spring. We've been fortunate enough to have a bunch of rain, so the tree "took" very well, and has some new green growth since we first planted it. It even had a few wimpy flowers earlier.

Speaking of rain... take a look at this extended forecast for the rest of July:

This is MUCH lower than Austin's "average" high of 95.2 (which usually involves a few days of these temps, and equal days of high-90s/100+). On the one hand, the cooler temperatures should keep us from running the air conditioner as much. On the other, the cloud cover means we won't generate much solar so our actual bill might be higher. Still... I'm never going to complain about milder temperatures. It's been practically lovely so far this month. A few super humid, sweltering days. But not many. It's weird.

We have a plumber coming on Thursday, and this will allegedly complete the master bathtub repairs that we've needed for more than two months. I don't know if this is common practice or a new thing, but one reason it's taken so long for us to have the repairs completed (aside from one of the issues NOT being plumbing, but being a roof leak) is that we are having to get our own parts, and we are lay people who do not speak "plumber."

Like, when they told us we needed to acquire a shower valve, that's what I did. When they showed up to install it, they asked if I got a trim kit. I said no, and asked if we needed one. They said we did. Since this was the second time it had been suggested that we might want to replace our "trim" and I had no idea what they were talking about, I just said, "Can you point at what I need to get?" Well, now I know that a "trim kit" is the shower head, handle, and tub spout. When the first plumber suggested that to take care of a leak, we might want to replace our trim, what WE thought he meant was the really crappy wooden tack-up job that handyman did for us at the beginning of the pandemic. We know it's not perfect, but it IS actually better than what was there before, and I was pretty sure it wasn't allowing water to leak anywhere.

New information in hand, I ran to Lowe's, bought the only non-chrome trim kit that they had, and got back in time for the plumbers to install it. Except that it wasn't Moen. THEY DIDN'T TELL ME THAT THE BRAND WAS IMPORTANT. Sigh. So they left, and I shopped for a Moen handle kit. At that time, I realized that we could have bought an inclusive trim kit with valve for much less than we piecemealed it. Double sigh.

We decided that we could install this ourselves, and would reuse the spout we already had. I gave it a good CLR bath, and that helped a lot.

Nice, huh? Can you tell that we have VERY hard water?

Unfortunately, once we tried to put the spout back on, we couldn't get the base of it flush with the tile. It was about 1/4 inch away from the wall. I looked on YouTube at ways to fix this, and it involved cutting into the stud, which I'm not comfortable doing, especially that close to plumbing infrastructure. So we're going to pay the plumbers to install it (we bought a new spout which is Danco brand, but it's the same size and apparently the off-brand universal replacement for Moen) so we don't end up with leaks in the wall.

Then Saturday, the man who's going to fix our guest bath ceiling is supposed to start on that. While he's here, we'll have him give us an estimate to repair the drywall in the bathroom (which we've kept open until the whole master bath tub is dealt with), and HOPEFULLY that will be it for a while.

So, is it new that homeowners have to provide what I consider plumbing supplies on their own? When I was a property manager, our plumbing contractors had warehouses where they got stuff. If we needed something they didn't have, we paid them to find and procure it. Is it normal that they don't do that now? Or is it because of the pandemic supply chain?

And if this is normal now, I'm going to need plumbers to leave me a detailed list of what I need, including brand, size, etc. Because I have no idea and it all looks pretty similar to me. I'm so tired of the whole thing; I need it to be over.

Honestly, we do have leaks in both our back (since we've lived here) and front (since the freeze) porches, and I don't know how much there is to do about those. It doesn't get into the house, so it's not a priority.

This stuff all coming up right after we got an AMAZING offer on our house and just weren't able to move on it makes it even more maddening, honestly. Like, we could be in a different house RIGHT NOW and not dealing with this. Although I have no doubt that other places would have issues, too. This is just one more incentive to rent. I know you're not building up equity, but we've spent LOADS on repairs and upgrades since we moved in here.

Anyhoo, this week is a busy one. Mal went to Urban Air today and a friend of his ended up showing up unexpectedly. Tomorrow, we're going up to Temple to see Nana and Pappy, and to swim with Hannah and Chance. The Brownies are coming up in the evening, because it's Tian's birthday. We plan to hang out to see them for at least a few. Wednesday, we have the tree people coming. Thursday, I'm meeting a friend at a coffee place (no coffee for me, thanks). Friday, we might be going back to Urban Air or Indigo Play with two of Mal's neighborhood (kind of) friends. Saturday is one of Mal's homeschool friend's birthday party.

I'm going to end with a few pictures from our trip last week, because I totally forgot even to mention it. We drove to Dallas on Sunday, July 4, and came back on Tuesday, July 6. But we had a fun time, and wanted Mal to get to visit Peppa Pig's World of Play before we have to hunker down with the puppy pretty seriously for a few months. It was good times with the fam (except for D, who thoroughly enjoyed having the house empty, and who took great care of everything while we were gone!).