Queen For A Day

This reminded my mom of that terrible old show where women would tell their tale of woe and the one with the saddest story would win stuff. Can you guess why? It’s not because my life is impressively sad.

No, it has something to do with my washer and dryer. And the big priority was getting something that fits. Remember how narrow my stairwell is? (It’s not this dirty anymore.)

The only place to go for this is a Mom and Pop South Philly appliance store. Somewhere under that siding is a Victorian building, but we’ll rant about that kind of thing later.

Usually in my family buying appliances is complicated, but not here. They told me that I can get the fancy Speed Queen top load washer with the digital controls or the plain one with a knob that was $100 cheaper. And my mom said that’s what they gave to the women on the show.

They also told me that the the breakdown guy was going on vacation and so I got them delivered the very next day! Eep, so weird to go fast! And what do I mean by the breakdown guy? The one who does this.

I guess that very expensive paneled wall was worth it now.

And then was what may have been a reality TV level tale of woe. The new plumber had some staffing issues and backed out of coming a couple times this week. So when he finally showed up yesterday it was super exciting. I may be done with Phase 1 contractors now!

And you remember what my basement used to look like? Here, I’ll remind you.

After the stuff went away only the dirt remained. I used 15 gallons of water. First tried scrubbing normally but it wasn’t working. The procedure that did work was pour water out from the bucket, scrub, vacuum up, repeat. Most of it needed to be done 3 times. Behind the boiler was worse. The floor at the bottom right in this photo used to be black and now it’s clean enough that you can see where the paint is peeling! Yay!

And this little halfassed shelf I built above the shut off valves – I’m getting too happy over little things. And using the gas line as a clothes bar is totally fine, right?

So there we are! The house is 100% functional! My roommate had to use a laundromat once (and got a discount on the rent accordingly) and then was so out of her clothes I did her laundry – 3 loads between the 2 of us. But this too was exciting.

And then some more odds and ends – I had 4 mystery bins in the basement. Going through them made the house messy all over again. I took a lot of random crap and then when my grandmother went to assisted living I got better crap. This one was the most ridiculous – mostly scrap metal. But I found corner braces and 12 pair of scissors, pulled out the flatware to sell, and put out the rest for scrap. My roommate donated some furniture to Habitat and I sent some more stuff off with them.

And I finally unpacked the china! Because every civilized home needs a celery and salt dish set. I’ll eventually paint this cabinet blue and stand plates up in the back.

And the roomie and I came out of Aldi with a 2 foot long receipt. And with this I think it’s a fully functional house!

 

 

Let’s talk tile!

I’ve been waiting a really long time to say that! But I’m going to wait one more paragraph because I also want to talk about the washing machine. My stairs are really, really narrow, particularly heading down to the basement because the foundation walls are rubble stone and much thicker than the brick that was used above grade. At this bottleneck, I measured about 22 inches. That’s not a typo. I could widen it to 25 by tearing out the wall separating the stairwell from the living room but it looks like if I want a standard size washer and dryer down there, I will need to either grind out part of the stone wall or cut out part of the living room floor – it sticks out beyond a joist, so I could do this. That doesn’t mean I want to. So, I may have to go with 24 inch European appliances.

On the bright side, my dad is smart. He suggested that since there isn’t much holding the stairs in, we’ll just disconnect them, put them aside, and hoist the washer and dryer down with ropes, so at least I’ll save the cost of having them dismantled in my living room and reassembled in the basement. I also want to see if I can do anything creative with the wall framing to get a teeny bit more width in there. I will never gain the extra 14 inches code requires, but I hope I can pick up something.

Now on to the bathroom! First, a reminder. I moved it about 8 feet toward the front of the house and sacrificed one of the house’s 3 original bedrooms. In exchange, I got 3 usable closets (on top of the one original closet that I kept and will use for linens because it’s shallow), larger (but still small) back bedroom, and a pretty generously sized bathroom with 2 sinks and a large window that is across the room from the tub. Here’s a floor plan and photo of the tile:

Game of the week – guess what’s holding my basement stairs up!

Before we get to the basement, let’s resolve the insulation issue. The contractor fixed everything I complained about without giving me any trouble at all. I have to hand it to them for that. It’s still lumpy, but there’s now a good air seal everywhere, I think. And if not, they’re coming back a fifth time. The 3 windows that I ordered with the contract are supposed to arrive in late February, and after they go in, they will set up a blower door to depressurize my house and then do more air sealing.