The tagline of this blog should be...

Instead of, "How our old house changed our lives," our tagline really should read, "How we unfucked our old house, one catastrophe at a time."

Seriously, sometimes I wonder if the people who owned the house before the folks we bought it from did anything right.  D across the street said that Mr. F was "handy".  While I commend them for not letting the house fall down, I have to wonder, fairly often, what were they thinking?!

When we had the dishwasher installed, we found that the water supply and drain lines were both the same diameter of pipe.  That made the supply line too big and the drain too small.  Also, both were some sort of cheap flexible plastic pipe commonly used in trailers and campers, not braided line for the supply and a strong, flexible hose for the drain.  Don't even get me started on the pipe arrangement for the dishwasher supply and drain.  Our installer also noted that the supply lines for the back porch bathroom was clear plastic tubing of the type normally installed for ice makers.  He said it wasn't designed for long-term, full-time use, and he was surprised that in its 20 years of use, it hadn't yet cracked.  What's even weirder is that they ran copper supply lines to the washer out there.  Why use copper for part of it, and cheap, crappy plastic for the rest?

Because of the goofy plumbing, he couldn't actually hook up the dishwasher supply line.  We have Shayne's plumber friend coming over tomorrow to straighten everything out.

Seriously, people.  Is it so hard to do things right the first time?!

Muddling through

Or, another post in which I whine about my life. I feel like I've been griping a lot lately. Maybe I have. Maybe I have something to gripe about... But I hate feeling like a whiner, so hopefully this will be the last of it. I just need to get it all out of my system, I think.
Although everything with the house and our lives are basically the same as they were 10 years ago, I feel much worse about it all. With the loss of our pregnancy, I feel like the rose-colored glasses have come off. I hate the house, and it's never-ending list of projects. I feel like we haven't accomplished anything in 3 years, even though I know logically that's not true. I completely understand now how the PO's could just say "fuck it" and put up paneling. 3 years ago, when we moved in, the house at least looked habitable. Now it's something of a train wreck. Every room I walk into, all I can see is how many unfinished projects there are or how I wish the room looked.

And we do have the living room. The one room of sanity. But instead of being my inspiration, I now feel like it's taunting me. It's telling me that this is what the rest of the house could look like if I'd get off my lazy ass and work on it.

I know I'm not really seeing things how they are. I wish I could come into the house and see it with an unjaundiced eye. All my friends tell me that they love our house, so it really can't be that bad. It just feels like it...