Kimberly A. Cook

Military Romance Author

home repair

Christmas Confessions?

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by Kimberly A. Cook

How is it December? The past five months I’ve been involved in packing and moving my mother to her new house, three major home repair projects and the holidays. According to my personal internal calendar, it should be September.

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Big pink teddy bear with baby bear! Demonstrating exactly what I want to do for the holidays. Relax and recline. 

 

Still working on the glamour of cleaning out the family home and moving items from here to there.  And there to here. And back again. More about all that move stuff next week.

So to say I’ve become even more attached to Lowe’s and The Home Depot is an understatement.  Imagine my glee on a recent trip to the orange box store when this giant pink teddy bear appeared next to the light bulbs. In the lounge chair and ottoman. So cute.

On another trip, you can’t make just one trip a week to Home Depot, there were more big pink teddy bears. One sat on a bar-be-cue, kids don’t do that at home, and one in a lawn chair. No idea why the big pink bears have invaded The Home Depot, but I approve.

So with Christmas fast approaching, I’m trying to get organized. The wreaths went up outside on Monday; right after the contractors finished the eave vent holes for the roof and the new gutters were put up.

Plus tomorrow is the big day I can drive Subie back into the garage. She’s been on the street for ten days while my driveway was ripped out and poured due to tree root damage. Which means now I need to heft the other move boxes out of the garage to Goodwill so I can get her back inside.

Maybe if all the boxes I’ve lifted in the past three months were gift-wrapped I’d feel more festive. On the good side, my biceps are finally back in shape. And I got to fill up a dumpster last week too. Woo Hoo!

Just heard footsteps on the roof. Not reindeer. Must be the roofers getting ready to replace my skylight; which happens to be over Spec Ops Cat litter box in the office bathroom. Spec Ops Cat is not a fan of the roofers, or the gutter guys or the concrete jack hammer dudes. I can relate. Will need to pry him out of the pantry or from under the bed. Again.

In all this continuing chaos, I did manage to do some fiction writing. Flipping miracle! My kingdom for a yurt in the woods or “not a creature was stirring, not even a roofer.” Not sure that’s exactly how it goes. (They’ve been on and off our row homes for five months. Don’t even ask.)

Besides making my holiday to do list, maybe I need to go buy a big pink bear. To match my big pink rabbit. Tis the Season!

Got Christmas confessions?

 

How To Get A New Closet

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by Kimberly A. Cook                   (Twitter@  WarriorTales)

Ding, dong the beast is dead! No, I’m not talking about a witch, but my electric furnace/heat pump. When I bought my house eighteen years ago, I had this marvelous heating and cooling machine that worked great for about six years, then it started getting cranky.

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Spec Ops Cat makes one final inspection of the beast before it meets the demo team.

 

The first time was a winter night when I heard a Huey helicopter landing upstairs in my office; except there was no chopper. When I called HVAC guy to come inspect, it was a block of ice in the heat pump thingy that the fan blades were clanging against.

Turned on the emergency heat strips and proceeded to devise a gravity drain using my orange bucket and leftover aquarium tubing to catch the melting water. This contraption would prove invaluable over the coming years.

A year or two later sitting in my living room I heard drips. Never a good sign. There were not supposed to be drips. Followed the noise into the kitchen and found my ceiling was peeing water into the silverware basket of my dish drainer. From upstairs.

The drain line which goes outside from the heat pump had frozen, backed up the water and then more peeing ensued.

So there followed many more instances of peeing ceilings. After they ripped the innards out and put in bigger pipes in the unit I had the kitchen ceiling fixed. Not long after, more peeing once again. Gave up and left the hole as artwork.

So on a hot day in August, ninety-seven degrees to be exact, peeing and no cooling. Yes siree folks, the entire unit officially died dead.

Next came the bid rodeo. It came down to replace the electric furnace/heat pump with a split unit/furnace or with split unit/ductless. All in all the cost was either $12,800 or $13,600ish. Ack!

Doing my due diligence I called Energy Trust to ask the big question. Turns out the electric furnace is a major power suck, no matter how efficient.

Also, given how my row house is arranged, I wanted to improve the air flow and be able to regulate the temperature in each room; the only way to accomplish that was to go ductless. The best part? They would rip out the peeing beast, take it away and I would get a new closet. SOLD!

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Presto! Magic! It’s gone! This picture only lasted for about ten minutes before I started moving stuff into this space. Will do a makeover in the Spring and paint it pink. Because I can, that’s why.   

 

So for three days in October two great guys and one wild electrician were in every room of my house, the crawl space and the attic while drilling, sawing and making noise. Spec Ops Cat was not amused. They also covered all the carpet with floor coverings, so the entire house looked like it had a diaper.

Found the crawlspace door I had not touched in eighteen years. Then spent time chasing Spec Ops Cat to stay out of it! Most of the time he camped under my bed, unless they were working in there too.

I could sit in the LaZBoy or at the kitchen table since every other area was a construction zone. Managed to sort my tax receipts and read.

They dragged the metal beast out of the house in a driving rainstorm complete with thunder and lightning, which proves my point it was the devil’s spawn. It didn’t want to go. I did pray they were not lit up as lightning rods and they got back safely.

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This is the big boy of the four units in the house. This heats/cools the living room, kitchen and dining room. Spec Ops Cat is still keeping an eye on it these days; it’s a new contraption. Yes, my living room walls are pink.  

 

Now I am toasty warm. More so than I’ve ever been. I have to keep turning the heat down, the house is too warm. I’ve come to the conclusion the beast pretty much heated only itself in its final days.

Now  I have four remotes, one for each unit. And yes, I have already stuffed things into the new closet, a staging space for when I can paint it pink and move in four more bookshelves and my personal yarn store.

Can’t wait to see my heating bill. Expect it to go down forty percent. Old furnace used 180 watts, all ductless units use 25 watts. More money for books!

Do you need a new closet?