When the leaning Tower of Pisa becomes the Titanic

Those of you who have visited the new house might have been shown our own personal leaning Tower of Pisa, aka the utility pole that wasn't upright and pulled mightily on our electric line and phone line.

I complained about it to every CenterPoint Energy employee I ever saw at a neighbor's house (and that was several). Most of them said, "it'll be fine, I've seen much worse." Finally, one day last October, I called CPE -again- and used the "right words" to get to a live person and then continued using the "right words" (imminent danger, I believe) to get someone sent out to evaluate the pole immediately.

Thus, we got a red service tag on our door letting us know that he'd put in a straightening order, but "pole is fine until straighten".

Fast forward several months. I happened to be home when I saw a truck carrying utility poles driving down the street. I went out to meet the guy and found out we were getting a new pole as part of a larger pole replacement project in the area. Although the pole is technically not in our yard, the only access to the pole is via our yard (which we will want to take into consideration as we redesign our garage and access to our backyard, which is currently wide open to the driveway and not gated).

Weeks have gone by. The end street had several poles replaced weeks ago, but still our new pole languishes, killing off our neighbor's grass (with our trees out front, they couldn't deposit the pole at our house).

Then, on Saturday, 4/13, (yes, the day after the great Tile Move), as we were about to lie down for a nap, the most awful noise started. It sounded like the whole house was groaning and grinding. Then it stopped. Then it started up again, mere seconds later. Roy later likened it to what the Titanic sounded like when it struck the iceberg in the movie. It was horrible.

Then, the crashing and popping and undefinable noises started. We wondered whether a tree had fallen onto the house and power lines. I ran to the back door (utility room), which was open (for the kitties to come and go as they pleased), and discovered all of our utility lines laying on the ground, phone line pooled in loops and draped up at our door and on the deck, electric line draped over one of the worm bins, etc. (Yes, I freaked out, as both cats were outside.) This all transpired in maybe half a minute.

Then the zapping and zonking and popping started up again. The middle set of lines on the pole (where the houses connect to) were crossing in the trees and sparking and smoking, etc. The trash trees that had been allowed to grow under the lines were all that was keeping the pole and its two transformers from crashing all the way to the ground.

 

That was about 11:30 AM that Saturday. Over the course of the next 6 hours, we talked to lots of CPE folks and we took lots of pictures and video. They initially started to winch the pole vertical using only human labor. Later, when they decided that the pole could snap and swing at any minute and become a serious danger to the workers, they left and brought back a motorized winch to assist the manual winches. (I highly recommend you watch the video - I think it's pretty interesting.)

The end result is that the broken pole is bolted to a stub pole, which is tied off to one of our galvanized fence posts.

The broken pole is further tied off to our tree up by our deck. Yeah. It's quite the sight to see.

You can see from the pictures of the base of the pole that it is completely rotted (or termite-eaten) inside. But, "it'll be fine".

Oh - and the Titanic-sounding noises? That was our weatherhead and house holding up the pole and its two transformers, then the stranded metal wire connecting our line to the pole giving way under incredible stress. Most awful sounds to have experienced, reverberating through our house via the attic.

Minor correction

We realized that we didn't move 2 tons of tile on Friday - we moved 4 tons of tile. We put 2 tons of tile onto dollies in batches of roughly 250 and 500 pounds each trip upstairs - and then we had to pick up that tile and put it in our storage unit.

So, we moved 2 tons, twice, which equals 4 tons. And we lived to tell about it!

Insanity confirmed

We survived the moving of almost 2 tons (3,941.30 pounds in 75 boxes, to be precise) of tile today. I only wound up with a few smashed fingertips. We've both taken some Advil (and will take more later, I'm sure) and Roy said he is beginning to feel it across his shoulders. I'm sure we'll both be pretty stiff and sore tomorrow.

Yes, I helped move tile. The larger and slightly heavier (54 lb) boxes (the Poseidon Lake tile for the pool room) were actually easier to move as you could tilt them and pivot them. The boxes of Unika Crema (50 lbs each) were small and very dense (plus we moved them last) and I found it hard to get a good handle on a box, so Roy had to move most of that 27 boxes.

Some of the boxes of the Poseidon Lake were pretty wet and the cardboard holding the tiles together somewhat disintegrated/disintegrating. When we saw that, we were kind of like, "well, I guess we could have stored them in the new house's garage which gets wet when it rains. Seems like they are used to it." But that was a little late as they had already been unloaded at the storage unit facility by then.

Ah, well. You'll all have your chance to help us move the 2 tons of tile again - into a vehicle and then to a house, so never fear! There's always next time!

The very definition of insanity

No update in a while, because we have been busy.

I have designed the kitchen cabinetry layout fitted (roughly) into the architect's suggested new floorplan (which has some walls and doors moved). We have begun the arduous task of re-selecting products for the floors, kitchen, and bathrooms. Again.

And, what would you imagine we discover while making product selections? Why, YES, they have discontinued most of the selections we made back in 2010, so we had to start all over. On everything for the old house.

Only, wait a minute, the blue/gray tile for the pool room (to be located in the new house) has been discontinued?!?!?! Nooooooo.........but there is still some 2000 sf of the larger size in the warehouse? Okay, we can probably make that work.

And then...wait a minute, the tile I just selected for the hall bathroom LAST WEEK is being "phased out" and there is only 300 square feet of it left in the warehouse now?That's ridiculous.

So, we asked our architect to go out of his way to purchase the tiles for us. All 800 sf of them.

Only, we can't store them at the old house anywhere as it will be remodeled real soon now (late summer) we hope. And we can't store them at the new house, as that worthless garage takes on water everytime it rains.

So, on Friday, the tiles, all 800 sf of them, will be delivered to our storage unit location, where they will be forklifted off of the truck. And then...

yes, Roy thinks he is going to move all 2 tons of tile, box by box, from the delivery drop zone to a flatbed dolly to our upstairs storage unit. And he thinks he will be able to move a box every minute from drop zone to dolly and dolly to the floor of the unit.

By my estimate (we don't know how many tile per box but we do know weight per tile), that's crazy talk. I know I won't be able to help much, if at all.

If anyone wants a real back-breaker event, come join us Friday afternoon.

I'll try to get some pics on Friday to share.

Forward, Ho!

I just have time for a quick note, but it is an important one — we met with an architect!

Last fall, Roy had taken a course from Rice University's School of Continuing Studies. It is a course we had long considered, and with me freed from daytime obligations with my May layoff, we planned for me to take it, starting in September. Only fate intervened, and I began working at a client site in downtown Houston in August! Drats!

So, we considered our options. Since Roy works from home on Tuesdays, we decided that he'd just take the time (10am-12noon for 6 weeks) to take the course and "reteach" it to me in the evenings. (Since he's paid hourly, he can do things like that.)

The whole point of that story is that this morning we met with the architect (also a Rice grad) who teaches that course each semester. We walked through both houses and he will start on a "big picture" design of the old house, with a few alternatives. We'll select a design based on "overall feel" (or something) so that we can get rough estimates from a few general contractors (to get an idea of the price we're looking at). Then we'll go back to him for a detailed plan (which type of cabinet goes where in the kitchen, etc.) that can be built from.

So, woohoo! Progress!

Out of Chaos...

We all have one.

You know, the drawer that starts out in life mostly empty, but over time and laziness (and possibly a bit of space-time continuum issues) begins the accumulation of "stuff".

Stuff like the spare set of house keys for the pet sitter, the address book (and all of those business cards), the badge and key to the office you no longer have, the rubber band from the head of broccoli (plus the next 16 heads and let's not forget those bunches of asparagus!), the twist-ties, paper clips, binder clips, pencils, notepads, address labels, pens you permanently borrowed, coupons, etc.

The largest drawer in our kitchen is a giant one that spans the 36-inch wide pots-and-pans cabinet. It started out tidy and fairly empty. Over the past year and a half, however, it had gotten to where you could never find what you were looking for in it and to get it closed sometimes required a bit of "shoofing" of contents. I'd been wanting to take everything out for some time now and get it organized, but I hadn't had the time (or energy) since returning to the workforce full-time back in August (as a contractor) (some of you knew I'd returned to work, but probably not all of you).

Sometimes, though, the great universe hears such grumblings and takes it upon itself to see just how much you really meant it. So on 1/2/13, my latest contract was abruptly terminated when the company we were auditing discovered they had no need of auditors for 2012 as their lender decided not to audit them. (I suspect the lender's thought process went something along the lines of "well, they are in bankruptcy, all of their assets are up for auction or sale, we're already not going to get everything we're owed, do we really want to throw good money after bad?!?!")

So I suddenly found myself without scheduled work for an unforeseeable time period, which could be a day or two or seven or more. Friday marked seven work days, but I also found out on Friday that I have a new contract for 3-4 weeks beginning on Monday.

My proudest accomplishment during my unexpected time off has been to completely overhaul that drawer and get it organized. I am sorry to say that I forgot to take a before picture, but find your fullest junk drawer (or better yet, one of your parents' junk drawers), open it, and then imagine if it were as big as ours, and you'll probably be pretty close to visualizing how ours looked at the start.

Most of the bins came from The Container Store. I cannot remember where the white "desk" organizer on the upper right came from - it could be TCS or it could be from someplace else entirely. (The top of the white organizer slides down to reveal even more compartments in the lower level!)

Eat your heart out, Martha Stewart!

(PS For those who didn't catch the pun in the title of the previous post about our new door, "Lovin' a Door", it's a pun on "love and adore" from the hymn "Come Thou Almighty King". One guess who titled that post! :) )

(PPS Almost everything was returned to the drawer - the only exceptions were 6 napkins that aren't everyday so didn't belong, the 2nd calculator, the dead mini voice recorder, the mini multi-tool that was a gift (and needs to go to the car), and a pen/USB drive from my defunct company. I even put Roy's badge and key back in there - they now inhabit that empty white rhomboid next to the orange-handled scissors. Into the spaces you can't see in the white organizer, I'm continuing to move things from our bedroom and the bookcase that would really serve us better being closer to the cars, such as spare keys.)

Lovin' a Door

On Christmas Day, we sat down to make our charitable donations for the year. In sorting through the myriad request letters, we discovered that the Houston chapter of Habitat for Humanity celebrated 25 years this year and had created a special project in honor of their anniversary - 25 reclaimed doors were decorated by local and national artists and local student artists. One of the pictured doors in the flyer was created by the middle school to which we are zoned, Johnston (yes, with a 't') Middle School. 

The doors had spent the fall on display in a museum or two and then were displayed at Habitat's fall gala. Some had been successfully auctioned off or otherwise found new homes, but there were still some doors available for "adoption" (for a donation above a given amount). We looked at the check we had already written and went "hmm. We qualify for a door - wonder if the Johnston door is still available?"

So we e-mailed the project's contact name, Bronwyn, on Christmas Day, and very surprisingly, received a response that evening. She was pretty sure the JMS door was still available!

Fast forward to today, after several phone calls and e-mails back and forth with Bronwyn, we were set to visit the Habitat office and look at the available doors. We took the 2nd row of seats out of the minivan, tossed in some cardboard and other stuff to protect the seat rails, and off we went.

The doors were very neat - we forgot to take a camera, so we don't have any pictures of the other doors. There was an ordinary-sized door that had been painted by The Kincaid School which was stunning - a 6-panel, burgundy ground, with groupings of pears in each of the panels, all done in 3-D acrylics. It had been adopted, just not picked up. It was very lovely.

The JMS door, I have neglected to mention, is HUGE. It is a 96-inch tall door. Yep, 8-foot tall! While we have no place for it in our current 8-ft tall ceilinged home, we can certainly make room for it in the new house's expansion, perhaps in the pool room, or perhaps in the garage/workroom. We loved it just as much in person as we had on paper - in the flyer, we had seen the side with the sun. As a surprise bonus, the other side of the door is painted entirely differently, so we effectively have 2 different doors.

We believe this to be an interior door (based on thickness), but it was never used, apparently, as there are no mortises for the hinges or core drilled for a handle-set. Right now, it is mounted on stand braces (for display), so that is how we have stored it in the new house's garage (which has no ceiling, so the door can stand upright on some bricks until we are ready for it).

Rugen Cat is checking out the door in the pictures.

Happy New Year, everyone!