blue moon (2)

Friday, June 17, 2011

Tripping Through Time ©

Work, work, work, seems that’s what I’m always doing.
Mostly it’s cleaning the damn house.
When I am not cleaning I am updating or repairing the parts that are falling apart.

The main project for me this summer is the kitchen.
I had a couple of people give me some quotes and the average was about fifteen thousand.
That’s dollars.
Canadian dollars…….
No wonder people are loosing their homes with prices like that.
Well I for one am not paying that to renovate mine.
I figure most can be salvaged.
The countertop and whole base has to go.
New floor and cabinet doors should give the cabinets new life.
I figure if I did the work myself it will cost me a thousand and that’s with a granite countertop and back splash.

The plumber has already told me he will cost me 400 to run new lines and remove the lead and galvanized pipes between the walls.
Yes I live in an older house but it has good bones and I live in the heart of the city, within walking distance to anything I might need.

Every year when the snow melts I find out what I will be doing for the summer and fall as the white blanket recedes taking it of the house with it, it seems..
A lot of it is minor but this year I have to finish painting the balcony and porch we put in last fall
Sometime in the next couple of months I will be having an electrician in to replace the knob and tube wiring I currently have with new electrical which also mean this fall I will be painting the house, yet again.

I have to do all of this while still juggling life and living next door to my parents who seem to have one thing after another going wrong.
Like the other day, their stove died, specifically, the oven.
It just stopped working so whom are they going to call?
My brother who doesn’t answer his phone or the person who lives next door and if HE doesn’t pick up the phone they can use their key and come right upstairs to the bedroom to interrupt a well needed blowjob to get “their” problem dealt with.
My throbbing problem doesn’t matter as long as their world is kop acetic.
OK I was daydreaming while jerking off but it’s still the same, right?
But the “like father like son” crack from my mother was uncalled for.

So I go next door to see what’s wrong with the stove.
They were both sitting there, my mother one the small love seat and my father in his lazy boy.
They have turned the kitchen into a living room this way snakes aren’t to far to go for.

I look the stove over and the top elements all work fine as did everything else but the oven.
The oven is HUGE in my parent’s house.
It keeps my mother busy so that my father can take off to do his playing around in the garden but if she isn’t inside baking he has to stay there to or he will hear her wrath and let me tell you, a four foot four 82 year old Greek woman can wield some mean wrath when she wants too.

My father thinks it the oven elements but I doubted it because it would be highly unlikely that both would go at the same time.
I knew it had to be electrical like a transformer but he insisted so I took the stove apart and gave him one of the elements to have checked at the parts dealer while I sat there and with my meter looked for the problem.
By the time he came back with the news that the element was fine I had traced the problem to the transformer.
Simple fix.
Well it would be if they hadn’t attached the fucken thing to the module control of the stove.
Cocksuckers, they did that on purpose.
It’s a four dollar part that could have been put on its own somewhere on the back of the stove but by incorporating it into the module you now were forced to buy the whole freakin thing.
.
I pick up the phone and call the parts dealer and give him the part number and five minutes later comes on and says he can get the part but it will take a couple of days and $350.
WHAT?!!
I don’t fucken think so.

This stove was a pain in the ass from the day my parents bought it.
I told them that it wasn’t worth the $1700 they paid for it because it had a convection oven they NEVER used in the five years they had it
Five year old, that’s all it was and I had to fix it half a dozen times before the other days.
IO said don’t buy it but they listen to my brother who always tells them what to get and it always is shit.
He sold them a washer dryer once and they didn’t fit downstairs so he knocked down a wall and it still didn’t fit.
Then he phones me and says the old lady wants to see me and leaves.
I get there to find my parents house trashed and the washer dryer sitting in the hallway.
I have no idea why they listen to him.

I told my father we had to buy a new stove and if he ever wanted to see his garden again we would have to do it today.
That’s all it took and we were in the car on our way to buy a new stove.

Long story short, I got them a Frigidaire stove with a ceramic top and the elements in the oven are behind the bottom and top plates making it easy to clean.
My mother feel in love with it and it was sold before you can say beefsteak tomato.
Well and $800 of course but my mother will have her new stove on Friday, which by some coincidence is today.

Yes today at 8 am in the morning the delivered the stove to my parents place and by 8:01am my phone was ringing off the hook.
My parents needed to see m e right at that minute.
8 am, what the fuck, it couldn’t wait.

I get next door and my father was walking out to go to Canadian Tire to buy a plug for the stove.
I was to call an electrician to get it installed.
Huh, why I asked him?!
He said because the stove came without a stove.
I told him that was impossible and leaned over the back of the stove and could clearly see a plug.
I told him there was a plug there but he vehemently said there wasn’t
Grabbing him by the arm and forced him to look and as he did he saw the plug.

“It wasn’t there before, I swear it”.
My mother jumped in and said, ”It’s true I looked too”.
“Uh huh, maybe I should have gotten you an easy bake oven instead of a real one”.

Have a nice weekend

Walker

5 comments:

Jenny said...

First, Happy Father's Day.

Second, Classic Walker post. I don't know how you survive living next to your parents, but I also they couldn't suvive if they didn't.

I need to get my kitchen updated but the idea of spening money AND sweat isn't appealing... and I've been saying this for the past five years.

P.S. Easy bake ovens ROCKED.

BlazngScarlet said...

I want an easy bake oven.
Or someone to clean my kitchen.
Or remodel it.

You and your family seriously need your own "reality" show. =)

HAPPY FATHERS DAY!

Peter said...

Good to see your parents still have you wrapped around their fingers Walker, it would not bear thinking about how much trouble they would be in otherwise.

itisi said...

STOP right there in your tracks, dude!!!
Clearly you are remodeling the WRONG kitchen!!!
Mine is the one that needs remodeling!
I had more space in my kitchen when I lived in the trailer than I do in this house! :)
Anyhow, in your spare time do you think you tell me something about slate or stone flooring and exactly what I need to know about the subflooring.
Cuz like, I am pretty sure I am getting a snowjob about subflooring.
(I know! You are still reeling from the "spare time" part, but I can wait!) :)

PBS said...

Ugh, houses are just so much WORK! And taking care of your own place plus parent's doesn't sound much fun at all. At least you keep your sense of humor about it all!