DIY Disasters

Our house was an ugly duckling.

Looked like it popped right out of That 70’s Show.  Antique brass everywhere.  The fake kind.

Instead of popping a champagne bottle, we popped a paint can.

But we didn’t stop at paint….

The kitchen ceiling, for instance, was lower than everything else by about nine inches.  It was covered with a textured wallpaper to mimic an old-fashioned tin ceiling.  Then it was painted cream.

A 3×4 hole in the ceiling held a fluorescent light fixture that you’d expect to find in a dungeon.  The whole thing was “trimmed out” with strips of some unidentifiable wood product, stained to match nothing else in the house.

I could palm the ceiling like Shaq with a basketball. I am not tall.

So…………..in our eager enthusiasm, we said, “Oh, I’m sure that’s only there because of this horrific, homemade ‘california light.’ Let’s raise the roof!”

We ripped it all down.

Don’t ever do that.

We found all kinds of plumbing housed in the extra space between the ceiling and the second floor joists….turns out the big master bath that we fell in love with and really sold us on the house?  Yeah, that used to be a bedroom.

Sigh.

But the most interesting thing was not the education in plumbing or the weeks of open joists and drywall dust….it was an aluminum turkey roasting pan.  Cradling a twelve-inch hunk of R-18 insulation like a precious newborn.  Just tucked up there, above the stove, resting on top of the drywall.

What the what??

We had the ceiling torn apart for quite a while.  Never did figure it out.  Got the new soffits built, new drywall hung, taped, sanded….painted.

Then one day, a couple months later, we notice water stains on the ceiling and soffit over the stove.  We put on our Superman x-ray vision and realize that the guest bathroom is just above the stove.  Where the turkey roaster used to be.

Not joking.

Wish I was making this up

I CAN’T make this up.

The people before us had built a turkey roaster INTO THE HOUSE to catch the leak instead of repairing it.

It ended up being a $20 fix–a leaky cartridge in the bathtub faucet.

I do think the insulation was a stroke of genius…absorbing and then allowing the water to evaporate rather than sitting in a puddle to stagnate and breed mosquitos between the floorboards……but still.

***

As I’m settling into the new blog, i’m finding a few turkey pans nestled in the ceiling.

• Last week, those of you who subscribe by email received a random old post.  A photo of Guanajuato Market from last summer’s mission trip to Mexico, in fact.
• Those of you who have subscribed to the RSS feed might have noticed that post dates and order are a little, um, well, off-kilter.
• Some of the old posts appear three or four times.
• Some of the old posts are missing.

I’m working through these issues, and still discovering new ones.  As I clean things up, I appreciate your patience, and hope that when strangely random old posts hit your inbox, you will enjoy the memories with me.

What’s the most ambitious DIY project you’ve taken on?  Leave a comment!