My 7 month renovation is still going on and draining my will to live. Lately we’ve been focusing on the inside. New flooring throughout the house done yourselves is no joke. We are moving west to east through the house. I’m mainly focused on finishing up the interior painting the past couple of days. I really hate cutting in. My hands are pretty painty at the end of the day. Magic erasers are really wonderful at getting paint off your hands. Don’t scrub yourself with them of course, but whilst washing your hands, just touching the magic eraser a little takes the paint right off. Also, I’ve started making my way around the house cleaning the exterior of my windows. My bastard stucco guys and house painters really did a number on them. I scrape with a razor blade, glass plus, then magic eraser the residual schmutz and then glass plus again. Thanks magic eraser! 🪄
Jules, if misery loves company, I will sit in your corner with you. Here are my tales of woe.
When we had the subzero temps in Tn, 3 weeks ago, my kitchen sink pipe froze and burst behind the wall of my kitchen. It flooded into my den area, and ruined several feet of hardwood in my kitchen and my den. The burst pipe ended up ruining all the moulding, paneling, a huge portion of the wall, the cabinets under the sink, the sub flooring, etc. The plumber helpfully cut out the wall in 2 areas before he located the burst pipe. I had electrical outlets that were soaked and I am in the process of going thru getting estimates for the insurance company from electricians, carpenters. Man that stinks, I thought, well, just keep going.
On Friday, my downstairs hvac unit ran out of freon and suddenly quit working, it will take a week for the new unit to be installed. I also found out that, evidently, in the past few weeks, a skunk has happily dug a hole and made a home under the slab housing the hvac unit to be replaced. I have to figure out how to get the little skunky critter to move. Oh man, I thought, people are facing much worse than this, just figure it out and keep rolling.
Then yesterday, I was driving down my driveway and was close to turning onto the street when 2 deer came flying out of the trees across the street and were frantically running directly towards the front of my car. I quickly swerved my car over so I would not hit the deer. Sadly and unfortunately, as I swerved, the side of my car hit the corner of my oversized metal mailbox, and the corner of the mailbox sliced completely straight thru the exterior 3 panels of my suv ( the front door panel, the back door panel, and a portion of the panel over the back tirewell. The corner of the mailbox cut completely thru the panels of my car just like you were opening a tuna can. I am taking my car on Tuesday for repair estimates to replace the panels but was told it would be at least a month before the body shop had an open slot to repair my car.
As I gazed at the top half of the sliced panels on the entire side of the car bowing out about 6 inches from the bottom portion across the entire length of the suv, I thought, screw it, I am now just pissed. The past 3 weeks have sucked rocks,
So, I am with you, my friend, in your frustration. I am now concentrating on figuring out how to get the skunk to move within the next week, so I can fill the hole up and screen the sides of the slab so the skunk cannot burrow underneath it again. . I threw a bunch of mothballs down the hole Friday evening and by Saturday morning, all the mothballs had been thrown out of the hole by the skunk. I had called about 3 animal trappers who could trap and move the skunk but they will not trap skunks because they end up getting sprayed. I put a solar light with the light facing in the hole to see if it would bother the skunk and make it leave, but it didn’t work, the skunk is still under the hvac slab.
If anyone has any suggestions about getting the skunk to move, it would be greatly appreciated. FYI: Swerving my car allowed the deer to dash by without running into the grill of my suv, avoiding squishing both of them and the front of the car. They ran into the woods and I assume had a lovely evening.