akaemi.com

The mold man gave his diagnosis, a shower wall and floor full of the oh-so-scary stackybockus. 

The worst part isn’t the toxic headache and fatigue inducing substance.  The worst part is the price tag for removing it all.  And, after forking over a few thousand dollars, we will be left with a giant hole in our living room ceiling.  And an unusable shower in the bathroom that already has an unusable tub. 

So, it looks like that trip to Italy will have to be postponed, as we get ready to remodel the bathroom.  Which sucks and all, but I do realize I have a pretty awesome life if my choices are: go to Italy, or get a new bathroom?  In an economy where many are choosing between groceries or gas, I’ll gladly take my lumps.

Ok, I’m still sick, but much less cranky now.  So here’s some screenshots of my preliminary basement design.

Pretend the shark is a turtle.  In a giant rubbermaid tub.  I’ve been doing some research, and apparently it is downright cruel to keep a tortoise in a clear enclosure - they’ll continually try to walk through anything they can see through.  So it looks like it’s rubbermaid for poor tortellini - though I think I’ll spring for a new one with the basement remodel, she’s probably tired of blue by now.

Oh, and pretend the series of desks in the corner is really one sleek corner desk.  The furniture selection in my software leaves much to be desired.

And also the hideous CRT monitor is really a 19″ LCD tv.

Floorplan:

Some screenshots:

The husband and I have run into a dilemma with our basement remodel.  Namely, the fireplace.

We have never used the fireplace; it’s just too much work.  Plus we’re not really fireplace people; we had a gas fireplace in our old apartment that I used all 3 times - and all I had to do was flip a switch. 

The fireplace is also very outdated.  The house was built in 1992, and it’s really starting to look it.  The brass accents on the fireplace door and the marble hearth were top-notch, I’m sure, when the house was born - but it really doesn’t jive for me today.

We use the basement as more of a den; it is where the desks, computers and books live.  Oh yeah, and an exercise bike.  Oh, and our old set of couches that we can’t seem to craigslist so they’ll be going out for trash pickup one of these Thursdays.  Oh, and that’s where the turtle lives.  In a giant rubbermaid bin.  Oh, and I can’t forget Jimmy. 

So we want a multi-purpose room, but we’re having a hard time placing everything.  What with a fireplace in one corner.  A fireplace with a mantle, so we’d have to tear it off to, say, hide it with bookshelves ….

We’re also having a hard time picking a paint color.

And also a hard time figuring out where, exactly, you stop painting a room when it is just a large open space whose last wall goes up the stairs.

The husband just wants to dump the couches, buy himself a new desk, paint, replace the 13″ tv/vcr with a 19″ lcdtv, and call it done.

While I’d like to turn it into something less … eclectic.  And with recessed lighting!  And a fancy new fireplace!  And an actual terrarium for the poor turtle!  And with fancy bookshelves with little doors on the bottom!  And fancy leather seating!

I’ve been doing some 3D modeling, but I’m sick and cranky right now, so I don’t have the patience to take screen shots to post … so they may or may not be coming later …

I like hot showers.  I mean, really hot, where the skin on my belly is pink-red when I get out.  Two degrees before blisters hot. 

If I don’t get my hot shower, my hands and feet turn blue.  For real, my body feels the lukewarm water, freaks out, and shuts off blood flow to the extremities.  I know that’s not a normal physiological response, but what can I say, my body is really quick on the draw for that hypothermia stuff.  Good thing I’m not a caveman, I never woulda survived to adulthood.

So, last winter, I discovered that my hot water heater wasn’t cutting it.  With the heat level set to ‘A’ (what does that even MEAN?  The available settings are 1, 2, 3, A, B and C) I did not get my hot morning shower.  I dreaded getting out of bed into my cold house (the husband likes to keep it at 66) just so I could jump into a shivery blue-handed shower. 

So I cranked the temperature up on the water heater, to ‘B’.  There’s a huge warning on the heater about how setting your hot water temp to more than 125 degrees could result in FIERY, BURNY DEATH for the hapless soul who turn on STRAIGHT hot water and JUMPS IN without testing it first, with, say, an expendable pinky toe.  I vaguely wondered how hot ‘B’ was, in fahrenheit degrees, but figured it didn’t matter too much since only adults and non-opposoble-thumbed animals live in my house.

That increased the temp slightly, but my hands were still blue-ish.  I came to discover that some mornings I had hot showers, while other mornings I had mostly warmish showers - and eventually correlated it with my dishwasher-running schedule.  If the dishwasher had run the night before, I got a toasty nice shower, and all was well with the world.  If not, it was blue hands for me.  Through some trial and error, I discovered that my hottest showers happened when the dishwasher ran at 3 am.  Addicted to hot showers, I would even schedule a 10-minute quick rinse cycle on no dishes days.

It would seem, though, that my last-winter’s water extravagance caused a drought in Loudoun County over the summer.  So this winter I’ve decided to not be a water waster - and instead the husband and I have turned the hot water heater up to the last notch of ‘C.’

I had a few nice mornings, with wonderfully hot showers, but this afternoon I discovered my basement full of water.  After using all 10 of our towels to mop up half the mess, the husband consulted our how-to plumbing guide - to discover that water leaking from the pressure valve can mean that you have the temperature set too high.

So that’s it for my hot showers, at least until I can get someone to come out and look at my tank.  If nothing can be repaired or adjusted, it may just be time to replace it.

And I won! It has been approved! I can now go rebuild a modified version of my original rock garden. It will have more “green”, including one section of moss. Since there will be actual living things in my garden, that means I’ll have to work harder at making sure everything stays alive, but, I suppose I’m up to the challenge. And, if not, I can always just buy more plants …

I think there were 3 factors in getting my HOA to relent:

I showed a willingness to work with them, and let them be involved in the “design” process. Everybody likes to feel like they are part of something; no one likes to feel like something was thrust upon them unexpectedly.

I played the race card. And it wasn’t even that hard! Once I made mention to one HOA member that I built the Japanese rock garden “in celebration of my heritage,” he passed along the sentiment for me. And everybody got the hint that “celebrating my heritage” meant that I didn’t mind calling up the ACLU to see how they felt about my situation.

I joined the HOA Architectural Review Bard. Yup, that’s right, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Just the threat of me being at the meetings every month, as a peer, was enough to soften their hearts. I had every intention of submitting a new “plan” for consideration at every meeting, until they gave in. And if that didn’t work after a few months, I was gonna start making “motions” at every meeting to repeal the “no rocks in landscaping” rule. Hmm, I actually might still do that. Because, honestly, who even cares? Why make silly rules when you are the people that have to enforce them?

So, I guess fighting the good fight does sometimes work out. And I hope that as a bona fide HOA ARB member, I’ll be able to help others fight the good fight as well.

Ok, so I’ve been playing with my bathroom. I have not yet come up with any designs that involve moving the closet wall; those are next.

I was doing some reading online about bathroom remodels, and it turns out that moving plumbing can be difficult to impossible, depending on your house. So these three designs try to keep the toilet in the same place (the most difficult plumbing to move), and keep some of the other plumbing in place.

This option keeps the toilet in the exact same place, gives up a sink, and trades the existing tub and shower for “corner” tub and shower units. I believe that all existing plumbing could be easily used with this option.

This option also moves the door from the bedroom to the bathroom a teency bit, and doesn’t require that the closet door be removed. (I removed it in this diagram, but mostly cuz I was moving stuff all over the place before I settled on this.)
(I know that pedestal sinks are the new rage, but I got to have my counter space, as well as under-sink storage.)

This second option sorta keeps the toilet in the same place, it just rotates it. The extra-long, double sink vanity is maintained, and the tub is moved from one side of the bathroom to the other.
The shower is traded up to a slightly larger corner shower.

This requires moving the closet door to the bedroom wall, and moving the door into the bathroom just a teeny bit.

This third option rotates the toilet, gives up a sink, and requires moving both doors. The gain is in getting a larger corner shower, as well as getting a corner tub (not any larger, but perhaps fancier looking).

Votes? Comments?

Apparently, my bathroom was a point of discussion with my husband and his coworkers today - and so it has been requested that I post 3D pics of my bathroom in its current state.

I would like to remodel my bathroom, and am open for any suggestions! Doors can be moved, and we only use one sink in the vanity, so I don’t see a need to keep the double sinks (unless it helps with resale value). I also don’t use the tub (mostly because it’s a whirlpool tub with completely moldy nastiness in the jets), but having no tub in the bathroom reduces the bathroom to a 3/4 state, and I suppose it’s never a good idea to downgrade the status of your house.

Master suite floorplan - I included the whole thing, so you can see where you might be able to move doors to (i.e., the walk-in closet door to the bedroom/closet wall).

The bathroom measurements are about 8′ x 11′.

Here are some 3D views:

And I didn’t even cry this time.

I attended the HOA ARB meeting tonight, to discuss how one might go about building a Japanese rock garden that would meet with HOA guidelines, and was surprised to find that they all thought my garden was beautiful. One of the members, seeing me on the agenda, even came to my house to check it out, and was surprised to find a flowerbed filled with dirt.

The problem seemed to be, however, that they had turned down tons of other people for having rocks in landscaping. Because, really, what they want to have a rule on, is “no white trashiness.” Since that is not quantifiable, they instead made a rule of “no rocks in landscaping.”

They have allowed people to have “foundation” rocks, within the first 18 inches from the house. And they would like to see “more green” in my garden. I’ll certainly try with the “more green” part, but I was not blessed with a green thumb - nothing I plant will stay green for long …

So, I got some … tips … on adding more green, and making things more zenny, so I’ll make up another design, resubmit, and see where it goes from there.

I also told them I want to participate in the HOA. That should win me points, right? I actually really do want to join some HOA board, because someday, I want to work my way up to be in charge of sending out letters to “offenders.” Because the letter they sent me made me cry. (Now, I didn’t even cry at my own wedding. I wasn’t one of those teenage girls who ran to my room in tears all the time. So the fact that they brought me to tears is an impressive feat.) Nine times out of ten, the offender isn’t going out of their way to be offensive or neglectful. It’s just an oversight or a lack of knowledge about rules - so there’s no reason to get snippy and make people feel like criminals and not give them any options other than “comply in 10 days or you will be fined.”

So, if I’m on the board the next time my application comes around, I’ll be just one step closer to my own personal zen.

That’s the number of burnt out light bulbs in my house. Well, actually that number is now down to 12, because I replaced 5 of them. The other 12 will have to wait till it drops to 90 outside (I’m hoping about 6 tonight) and I make a Home Depot run to buy the appropriate bulbs: 6 giant round bulbs, 4 small round bulbs, 1 small spotlighty bulb, and 1 of those small, oblong, pointy bulbs.

17 burnt out light bulbs. You may very well be wondering: “have you been sitting in the dark??” And the answer to that question is no. There happen to be 80 light sockets in my house. (That’s right, 80 light sockets and 3.5 bathrooms for 2 people. It didn’t seem so excessive when we bought the place …) With 63 bulbs still burning bright, it’s easy to miss the 17 burnt out ones. Until all the lights in single fixture go out - which is what happened, and what prompted me to start on this light bulb escapade.

Thursday morning, I awoke to find that I had no light in the Master closet. Which is troublesome, as that is where I pick out my wardrobe for the day. And that’s hard, when you can’t see much. So this morning, on my errand-running-before-it-hit-100-degrees trip, I purchased 2 4-packs of regular 60 watt bulbs, thinking I’d replace a few other burnt out bulbs I had noticed, and then I’d have a few to spare. Because bulbs are always burning out in my house. Or, rather, it seems like bulbs are always burning out, but when you’ve got 80 to keep up with, it’s not surprising.

So, when I told my husband I was replacing the Master closet lights, he mentioned that of the two light fixtures in the upstairs hall, there is only 1 light bulb providing light. 1, tiny, 40-watt, oblong pointy bulb. Lighting the staircase to the upstairs. And it is sure to give out at any moment, plunging the staircase into treacherous darkness. None of those fixtures takes regular bulbs, however, so that requires a trip to Home Depot. Once the temps drop below ‘instant death.’

(Ok, I know 100, by itself, isn’t instant death. I lived in the Phoenix area till I was 8 years old, and survived just fine, with plenty of running around outside in ridiculous temperatures. But, that, as they say, is a dry heat. Virginia, on the other hand, has a miserably wet heat, a heat that makes you wonder why you even bothered taking a shower if you were going to go outside, because you are sticky-sweaty-wet the instant you step into it. That sticky-sweaty-wet stays with you, even when your car’s AC finally cools the car, even when you make it to the freezer section of the grocery store.)

So, anyway, since I have to go buy specialty bulbs, I decided to take inventory of the whole house. Which is when I realized that all the bathrooms have at least one burnt out bulb. And that one of the recessed lighting bulbs in the living room is burnt out. And that … well, you get the point. I never knew I had so many different kinds of bulb needs! I don’t even know what, exactly, these bulbs are. Which is why I will be taking them with me to the Home Depot lighting center, to play a little game of ‘match’.

Sometime, later this evening, I will have 80 functioning light bulbs. And I will have a stockpile of bulbs, in 5 different sizes, in preparation of the next burnout.