Big Projects & Big Messes

Gary made it safely to Iraq. He flew from North Carolina to Main, then to Germany, then Kuwait, then to Iraq. They gave him a small pox shot before he left so he was sick for part of the journey but he made it to Fallujah where he will be stationed. I have updated his address on the blog, and to send letters/packages you do not have to pay international postage. It took about ten days for a package I sent to get to him. He mailed me a letter two weeks ago and I still haven't gotten it, so it takes longer for me to get things from him than it does for him to get things from me. If you go to http://www.motomail.us/ you can send him a letter that will be downloaded and delivered to him fairly quickly and then it saves a stamp. To set up the account you have to get the information off his address that is posted on this blog. For the first couple weeks he was in Iraq he was only able to call once a week and was limited to 30 minutes, but this past week he's been able to call more and it has been nice. There's a phone in their barracks that they use to call Tooele and ask to be connected to an outside line, then he uses a calling card to call me. That way we don't have to pay international rates. There is an article at the link listed below about what the unit he's replacing has been doing and it gives an idea of the types of things he'll be doing while he's there. http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/main5/184DBEB57E7C24AD8525736E003915D0?opendocument

Things have been pretty crazy around my house these past few weeks. There's been some big projects that needed to be done before winter comes, so I've been keeping my neighbors and family pretty busy. I keep telling them that by the time Gary gets home they will wish they were in Iraq instead. I had a huge weeping willow tree in my backyard that was mostly dead. It was basically just wired together in the middle, and could easily split if there was a heavy wind storm, and then it would end up in my kitchen. My next door neighbor, Bob, and his family helped me out by cutting it down and hauling away what couldn't be used for fire wood. I really owe them big time not only for cutting the tree down, but also for finding my wedding ring that I lost during the process. Thank you Manookin family!!

This branch split after one of the other branches came down.

The back yard looks so much different without the tree. It looks a lot bigger now.

Now I've got a pretty good wood pile to get me through the winter.

My next big project is a result of a valve breaking on my fridge. As I stepped inside my house one day after work, I could hear running water. Never a good sign when you've been gone all day. The valve on the thing in the freezer that fills up the ice dispenser with water broke, causing the water to keep running. Water was pouring out of the ice dispenser and when I opened the freezer water came gushing out. It was all over the kitchen floor and had leaked through the walls into the basement. It was a mess.

The water dripped through a light fixture at the bottom of the stairs to make this really big puddle. The carpet was wet half way down the hall in the basement and also half of the carpet was wet in the downstairs living room. There was water dripping from the ceiling in the food storage area. The floor was wet in that area and under the stairs. I had a lot of stuff boxed up underneath the stairs. The boxes were ruined, but luckily it didn't really hurt anything inside the boxes.

I called Lance, our insurance agent, who is Gary's old roommate and of course he was on vacation. The people in his office took care of me though. They had me call a construction company they work with a lot to come clean up the mess. They pulled the carpet back, and threw out the padding underneath that had been ruined. All the water was vacuumed up, and then they put fans all over the place blowing above and below the carpet. They took some baseboards off the wall and drilled holes to get air up into the wall to dry that out. After leaving the fans blowing for a few days they came back and evaluated the damage. Lance filed a claim for me and the construction company is beginning the repairs today. I told Lance he'd better not go on any more vacations until Gary gets back.

I am hoping that the roof will be the final big project on my house until Gary gets back. With the luck I've had recently I've invested in new smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors just in case with fire extinguishers to follow shortly. I've got MRE's for food storage, but no water yet. I intended to get some water for storage after my water main broke, but have been too preoccupied with other things to follow through with that. I plan on getting everything in order as quickly as possible though because I keep wondering what will happen next. The problem with the roof was that the previous owners of the home had the water leak from the swamp cooler, run down the roof, and drip onto the deck. You can see the damage in one of the pictures above of the tree being cut down. It ruined the shingles and damaged the plywood underneath. We had the house inspected before we bought it and were aware of the problem, but decided to have the people we bought it from come down in price and then we were going to fix it ourselves. It turned into a bigger project that we anticipated. We ended up having to strip off all the shingles on the back side of the house, remove all the rotted plywood (which ended up being about half of the back side of the roof), replace it with new plywood, and then put on new shingles.

Bob had a few days off work, so he and his family helped me out again. Mom and Dad came up from Richfield to help, and other family came to help as well. While Bob and Janna were scraping the shingles off they put their feet through the plywood a couple times where it had been damaged.

The swamp cooler broke just before Gary got home for the two weeks in September. I decided to have them take it off the roof and patch the hole in hopes that we'll be able to get central air in the Spring. If not I guess we'll have to find a window unit. Our house had some solar panels on it that didn't work and so they pulled that off the house and patched the holes. This is the mess of stuff to be hauled to the dump. The finished product. It looks great!! Once again, a big thanks to the Manookin family, Mom and Dad, and everyone else who helped!! I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate all your hard work. When Gary gets back you can put him to work at your houses! I'm not sure if Josh is trying to mail himself off for a visit to his Dad, or Grammy Debbie. If one more thing goes wrong at my house I may crawl in the box and go with him or maybe we'll try it anyway!