The Joys of Home Ownership

Well, as usual, things don’t always go as expected.

I went downstairs yesterday to do laundry and decided to check the washer out a little closer. When I did laundry this past weekend I noticed green blobs were showing up. While grossed out, I just picked them out of the tub and moved on. Yesterday I noticed a decidedly funky smell. I also noticed some green goop on the bleach dispenser cup thingy. Out of curiosity I popped that out and was greeted by a mass of more green goop and something fuzzy. Not good. So I got Adam down to look at it. Turns out the green goop/fuzzy something went all the way around the top of the spinny thingy and there was no way either he or I would be able to get it all off. We tried bleach, paper towel (he suggested a toothbrush but we didn’t have any extras.) Pretty much the only way to assure it would all be gone would be to take the tub out of the washer. And as handy as Adam is, I think that’s too much to ask.

So it was determined that we needed a new washer. I just couldn’t go on washing our clothing in a mold farm. Just doesn’t seem sanitary. So much for the saving money by taking his parents’ old stuff deal... Oh well, that’s what a month in a stuffy garage will do to you. Fortunately we had a 10% off coupon from Home Depot that Lowe’s said they’d match. We made the trek out and picked out a new washer/dryer set. (If we had to get one, might as well make them match…) Luckily they had a delivery slot open for tonight so I get to high-tail it home from work to make sure I’m there before they are. Along with the cable guy installing the phone, tonight will be a busy one in the Dodds-Paalman household.

While at Lowe’s we got the dryer ductwork needed. Except we got about 10 feet too little. Whoops. We also picked up the last door lock needed along with the new garage door (well, not the garage door but a door for an entrance on the side of the house…) Since the guy who re-keys locks was already gone for the night Adam talked the manager into letting him use their equipment to re-key it himself. He did this while working at Menards and managed to do it a lot faster than the guy who did our other ones. Possesses all kinds of skills, this one does… Anywho, some paint for the new front door (which is installed but windowless) and a Spongebob Lava Lamp Nightlight (really, it’s as cool as it sounds) rounded out another frighteningly expensive trip to Lowe’s. Aside from picking up the additional ductwork needed (and I’m not sure we’ll go to Lowe’s for that) hopefully we’re almost done spending money on the house. Unexpected money at least.

We haven’t made much progress in getting the rest of our crap from the apartment to the house. I haven’t even gone to the apartment since Monday. Tonight I hope to unpack my books and then use all the empty boxes from those and the media collection to pack my kitchen stuff up and get it to the house. We go up to Door County for the weekend on Friday afternoon so we also have to get all our camping gear and pack for that. I have all day tomorrow off though so I hope to get some stuff done then. We’ll see.

The house is still a disaster area. We have a little more than a week to get everything over, clean the apartment, and get the house in “Housewarming Party” mode? And Adam still needs to assemble the grill and make sure it works. Can we do it? :) Stay tuned!