For those of you who haven't heard the stories of our getting settled, I will give you a quick recount. Our landlord inherited a house from his uncle and came up with the brilliant idea of flipping the house with a friend of his who has a contractor's license. His uncle was a character who lived alone in the house with his pet ducks. Apparently, our house was the most run down house on the block. They fixed up the house, meaning they gave it lots of curb appeal, and then the housing market crashed. So here's what happened when we moved in.
On our first full day in the house Joe drove off to work to report. As soon as he left I noticed yellow water in the bath. The entire plumbing was backed up and we had to call the plumbers in. Latter that day the neighbor comes over and smells a gas leak. Called the gas company and a man came to the house with his gas detector machine and found a gas leak. He wasn't allowed to fix it, but I think he took pity on me when he saw me with two dogs, a baby, lots of boxes, and backed up plumbing. Needless to say, he fixed it for me. And as for the dogs, when we agreed to rent the house the owners agreed to have a fence put in back and railings put on the staircase to the basement and the front porch. The fence went up almost three weeks after we moved in (talk about one crazy mama trying to unpack, entertain a toddler, and exercise two hyper dogs who should be running around in the backyard), and we still don't have any railings. Oh well. At least they gave us blinds for the windows.
The next day I was boiling pasta on the stove and suddenly the smoke detector goes off...and no, it wasn't because of my cooking. As Joe looked around for the smoke detector, the only one in our house I might add, he realized our brilliant landlords had hung it directly in the middle of our stairwell going down to the basement. In other words, you either have to have a ladder on the stairs to reach about 17 feet to the ceiling, or you have to have a ladder at the top of the staircase and lean over about 6 feet. A pretty crazy place to put it if you ask us.
And while we are talking about the kitchen, these guys spent $30k in granted counter tops, slate floors, and new cabinets, but didn't bother to put in a garbage disposal.
A few days after being in the house the phone company comes out to install the phone. We have no phone line running to our house from the telephone poll thanks to the guys taking it down when they cleared out the backyard. We have to get digital phone service, so we get a package through the cable company. After it is installed the cable guy says he can only make it work to one phone line in the basement. I guess the guys put wiring throughout the house, but they didn't bother to tie it all together. Another guy eventually came out and tied most of the lines together, so now we have phones in more than just our basement.
But while we only had a phone in our basement, latter that night Joe and I wake up at 3:30 in the morning to a loud crash. We check on Annika, and then Joe starts looking around the house. It sounded as if someone had either broke or crashed into our house. As Joe was walking around the house I realized this is crazy. What if I had to call 911. Would I be able to make it to the basement for a phone? After looking throughout the house he comes back to our room and says he doesn't know what the noise was. Scary!!! He walks into our bathroom to discover the entire shelving unit in our closet had come crashing to the ground, breaking everything on the top shelves, yes, including a bunch of sentimental things of mine that I'd still rather not think about, and dumping all our clothes on the ground. The next morning when Joe looked at the shelve he discovered that the guys installed an 11 foot closet unit with 3 screw inserted into the drywall. No wonder it came crashing down.
Speaking of our bathroom. The shower would leak every time you used it creating a very slippery floor. Another plumber had to come fix that. Turns out the guys didn't want him to install the doors and they didn't caulk them right. Also, there is no insulation, if there is any it's very minimal, and we have to run 2 heaters in there for at least an hour just to be able to tolerate the cold. It feels like our bathroom is outside, it's that cold. And the coldness emanates to our bedroom. When it gets really cold at night we have to run a space heater in our room just to stay warm. It's so hard to crawl out of bed on cold mornings. The only thing that gets you up is knowing once you leave the confines of our room the rest of our house is nice and warm.
We have also become a little too familiar with spider crickets. They had infiltrated the basement in the year this house stood empty. We don't see as many anymore, but every once and a while they still pop up. They are basically these blind spiders with cricket legs. When you try to step on them they jump right at you. Real run having one jump up your pant leg. Google them if you want to see a picture.
So now that we've hopefully worked out the kinks of this house, here are some pictures.
Annika so proud of herself. This is the first time she went poop in the potty. She really is ready to be potty trained, I'm just holding back until she can give more warning. Plus, what do you do when you are driving or someplace where a bathroom isn't immediately accessible? Let me know if you have any tips. In the meantime, I guess we will just wait a little longer.
One Proud Little Girl!
She is a Daddy's girl through and through! Joe's already teaching her all about football.
One of our favorite places; Annapolis.
Annika got a balloon from the restaurant in Annapolis. We love the seafood and they have a great view overlooking the bay.
Who knew a balloon could make you so happy!
Annika would not let go of that balloon, and not just because it was tied to her arm. She loved that balloon.
The end of a beautiful evening in Annapolis.
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