THIS HOUSE IS FULL OF #*&$!

We could see the finish line, and it was soooo close. The basic elements of the house – paint colors, ceiling, flooring - had come together nicely, and Amazon shipments of curtain rods, towel hooks, rugs, bed frames and mattresses were arriving daily. Meanwhile, Greg and I scurried around mowing the acre-plus lawn, staining and polyurethaning boards that would become bedside tables, and generally managing through chaos.

Our very first guests were set to arrive on Friday, and it seemed that each day leading up to that drop-dead date we were walking through quicksand. Despite having all the elements at our fingertips, the house looked no different by the end of each day. Clutter remained all over the floors so they couldn’t be swept. We couldn’t figure out where to store the clutter, so it remained. I didn’t want to hang the curtains over a dirty floor, and I couldn’t clean the floors because of the clutter. Everything was in a very frustrating holding pattern.

Finally, Wednesday was a big day. Our daughter, Erin, came down from KC specifically to help spiff and clean the house so that it would be guest-ready. We stashed the clutter in the garage, our lake house, our cars - anywhere we could think of. We washed all the windows both inside and out, and swept/vacuumed and mopped and washed load after load of laundry, dishes and glasses before storing them away. At one point Greg and I were looking at something back in the bathroom and we heard a weird “glug, glug, glug…” from the shower drain. “That’s weird…huh – I wonder why it made that sound.” That’s as far as our thought process went at the time. A short while later a toilet was flushed in the other bathroom and rather than going down, the water instead rose higher and higher in the bowl. You all know the panic that overcomes in that moment, right? That’s when we finally connected the dots and realized that we had a BIG problem. And it wasn’t going to be pretty.

Nearly two years ago when we began the process of renovating this house, one of our first courses of action was to turn off the water and remove all fixtures.We used absolutely NO plumbing in all that time, because it all had to be replaced. Every pipe in every wall. Almost every fixture (we saved the tub.)

We finally installed a working toilet only last November, after surviving more than a year without one. And since that time it’s been used, ya know – a bit while we’ve been over here, along with the bathroom sink. So in other words, we have not contributed a ton to our septic system since we’ve owned this house. Yet somehow, for some reason on the day that we were power-loading the septic tank with laundry and dishwasher water, we experienced a back-up.

The “Honey Wagon” septic man arrived Thursday morning and pumped out what was there, but he had a hunch that the real problem was worse - a bad clog, or a crushed pipe possibly.(Me: Blood pressure rising; panic setting in.) He, of course, doesn’t do that stuff – you’ll have to call another company for that.(Me: Blood pressure now through the roof, panic alarming, now looking toward nearby deadly cliff, thinking this might be my only out.)Septic guy, noting the look on my face, volunteers to call Drain Clean Out guy (Mike) for me.Mike can’t come until Thursday evening.Fine. OK – Thursday evening.I’ll take it – whatever.Just BE here before our guests arrive, and get the issue resolved.

Mike arrived earlier than expected - a nice surprise that hopefully signaled that this bad situation might become nothing but a memory with happy hearts and rainbows floating all about. He set to work with his huge electronic tunneling snake, dredging from the yard toward the house. He worked and worked at it, but the dredging stopped at a specific point in the yard. He then set to work INSIDE the house filling the bathtub and kitchen sink full of water, turning on every faucet and flushing all toilets. He flooded the system with so much water and snaked and dredged, hoping to knock the blockage loose. Finally, success! He felt that the amount of water draining from the house to complete its run to the septic tank seemed equal, and we celebrated with happy cheers and rainbows and happy hearts all around! Crises averted, we finished cleaning on Friday, guests arrived later that day, and all seemed well.

The family of six, including teens and young adults, arrived Friday afternoon and used the house as anyone would. Showers, baths, laundry, toilets – just living life. Suddenly by 6:00 PM Monday THEY realized that water was not heading in the right direction. The house became flooded with water from the shower drain and toilet, seeping all over the bathroom floor and underneath the wall to the front door. Bath towels and anything they could find were thrown on the floor to try to sop up the water, to no avail. The water was relentless. They called me and I called Mike, and he arrived soon after. A neighbor, hearing our plight, quickly arrived on scene with his backhoe. (I’ve noted previously how amazing this neighborhood is, right?!)

A hole was dug, revealing the REAL culprit and Mike’s first suspicion: A crushed pipe. Sorry guests – you cannot send another single drop of water down any drain until this is fixed. Delightful.

Why a crushed pipe, you ask?Well, to be honest it was my fault.You see, around a year and a half ago I called the power company because the power pole near our house was ratty-looking and leaning.It looked kind of ugly, and was clearly visible outside the kitchen window.I wondered whether they might take pity on us and decide to replace it.A YEAR AND A HALF AGO.Since that time we witnessed on our security cameras, three different power company workers roll up to the house, take copious measurements and pictures, write notes in their log books, and leave.They never left a note, a hang tag on the door, a sticker – nothing!

Finally, around two months ago I called to follow up, and after a few more weeks of back and forth and confusing conversations we finally learned that YES, they DO want to replace our pole. (Sorry we didn’t tell you, they said – it’s a non-critical change, so it was pushed out…) It’s actually unsafe because it’s leaning, BUT there’s a catch: you have non-conforming overhead power leading from the pole to your garage, and that is no longer OK. YOU will have to dig a trench, pay an electrician to move the connection down to the trench and into your garage before we will agree to move this pole.

Hmmm…well, given all that and the fact that it is now mid-July and we are pushing all cylinders just to meet our guest deadline, we are no longer interested in pole replacement at this time, thank you. Their response: WRONG! This has now become critical to us, and we will be arriving July 22nd to replace your pole. There’s the date, right there. Deal with it. And so it was.

On the appointed date, the power company planted their huge truck right on top of our septic line to pull and replace our decrepit and leaning power pole. Isn’t it beautiful? Sooooo worth it, right??

Yeah, so our “free” pole has so far cost us over $1K in damages ranging from a nicked electrical wire to our well pump, resulting in no water to the house ($400 - electrician), two visits from Mike, the friendly drain clean-out tech ($600), one unhappy family of six with no use of toilets or showers for over 12 hours, and over 500 new grey hairs in my head. And that does not include additional work that the power company is insisting upon – burying and re-connecting the power to our garage. Who knows how much that will cost. For now the electrical lines are simply laying across the yard, which is a great look for all comers. Thanks, Carroll Electric. Nice pole.

Back to the septic back up: Early the next morning, Greg and I dashed out to buy a new section of septic pipe and two connectors. We went ahead and bought four connectors because – what if?! By 8:30 AM we were on scene. Why did I wear a white t-shirt and tennis skort for this type of work? What was I thinking??!!

In any case, I got into the pit and dug dirt away from the pipe at both ends that were to be cut away, and Greg reached down with his "Sawzall" to cut the bad section of the pipe away. The section farthest from the house cut away easily with no disruption to the area, so I didn't think a thing about it. He then worked on the portion nearer to the house (where the blockage began.) The pipe was stubborn and difficult to cut all the way through. Yes, effluent leached out and was disgusting, but I just stepped aside and all was well. Then Greg asked me to jostle the pipe back and forth because he couldn’t seem to get a clean cut through the entire pipe, so I gamely took hold of the pipe with my gloved hands and began to wrench it back and forth. Suddenly a pipe-sized, cylindrical 6” long thick brown chunk flew out, followed by a powerful spout of putrid dark liquid. I swear I have not vertically jumped so fast or so high since my cheerleading days in the mid-70’s. Miraculously I was able to spring out of there just before being engulfed in gallons and gallons of fetid backed up sewage. I fished the clog out and threw it in a trash bag. Yes, I did. Now the pipe had to be repaired.

It seems that at this point our guests, Jill and Tony, who had been amazingly kind and flexible through this entire mess, took complete pity on me.Tony had actually helped a good friend with his septic system before and wasn’t averse to getting his hands dirty.After the effluent was sucked out with our Shop Vac (trust me - a new one is now on his Christmas list), Tony allowed me to step aside, and he and Greg worked to set the new pipe in place.

Meanwhile, Jill and I watched the goings-on from the Adirondack chairs on the patio while sipping our morning coffee. Once the new pipe was secured we thoroughly tested the house and pipes and all seemed well. Given the "All Clear" signal, the pipe pit was covered with dirt and we called it a day.

That was Tuesday morning. We heard not a peep from our guests through the rest of the week, which was great news. It seems that all is well – FINALLY!

I hope and pray that we, nor certainly our guests, will never, ever, EVER have to deal with anything like that again. But we have so much to be grateful for: understanding and helpful guests, neighbors that jumped in to assist, and accommodating service folks. OH – and let’s not forget the BEAUTIFUL new power pole.

OH! Were you interested in seeing some Before and Afters? Get that popcorn ready because it’s a video. Here ya go:

We are ready for guests. Let me know if you'd like to come down for a visit, now that everything's fixed. We would love to see you all!

Rats! We're Not Quite Finished!

Can you believe that my last status on the round house was posted on May 25th? Time moves so slowly any more, that seems like eons ago now, and yet we are STILL not finished. There are so many nit pickin’ little things to do, some must-have and some nice-to-have, but ALL critical things must be finished by July 31st because that’s when our first renters will show up at the door. The clock is ticking.

We have lived a lifetime since May 25th, and not all of it has revolved around the round house. Summer is here, and though our bi-annual Bowen Family Reunion ended up being shelved for the time being we’ve still had our own kids down here a few times, which is always fun. The neighborhood here at the lake is busier with families coming down to spend more time at their weekend places, so the ‘hood has been bustling with friends old and new. Many of you already heard the news that our sweet greyhound, Bo, passed away last month, which was tough on us all. And the circumstances surrounding his final trip home provided me yet another story to share with you.

We have a 2-car garage down here at the lake but one side is dedicated to Greg’s truck, which is always loaded down with all the tools required to keep things moving over on the house project. The other stall of the garage is filled with large boxes of brand new outdoor furniture from Costco, purchased more than two years ago and destined for our deck-expansion-that-never-was. But it WILL be someday I swear, so the furniture remains hermetically sealed and preserved in this sacred spot, along with our Polaris Ranger that ferries us to and from the boat dock on those rare occasions that we actually do lake-things, like other folks do around here. My car? Its spot was out on the driveway most nights, which has always been fine in the 20-odd years that we have owned a lake house in southern Missouri. Until now.

So on the morning that we had to load sweet Bo up in Greg’s truck and take the long journey back to KC to meet with Bo’s vet, we pulled Greg’s truck out of the garage and put my 2012 Prius in its spot, where it could luxuriate in indoor comfort and shade while we were gone. Upon our return four days later, we pulled the Prius back outside and drove the truck into its normal spot. Three days later I flitted out to my car to run some errands, pushed the start button and got…nothin’. All the lights on the dashboard lit up like Las Vegas, so I knew something was awry. I opened the glove box to pull the manuals out and study up on what it means when every single light lights up on the dashboard, and this clump of wires fell out. That was my first clue that my problem was not just a dead battery.

OK great – something got into my car and actively munched down on its guts. Are you KIDDING ME??!!! Friends happened to stop by just then, and with their support and encouragement I braved the idea of lifting the hood, only to discovered this:

These are the hallmark signs of a packrat. It is unfortunate that they are undeniably cute - I mean, look at those eyes!

But, do you see the colorful purple glove, the Bounce Sheet, and the dusty rose-colored tulle? Do you see the environmentally friendly rat poison (which obviously did not work quickly enough), and the t-shirt rag? All these items were scavenged from our garage by the rat while we were away. It seems that this cute, destructive packrat made its way into my car while it was parked outside, chewed its way through the cabin air filter and found luxurious nesting grounds inside my car. Packrats are nocturnal animals, so it was asleep IN MY CAR when I pulled it into the garage for “safety” while we were away. We have cameras in the garage, so after all of this was discovered, Greg reviewed the week’s footage and witnessed night after night of the thing foraging through our garage and gathering random items to pack away in the engine compartment. When we returned on Friday I moved the car back outside – again WITH THE THING INSIDE. Between Friday and Monday the animal completely demolished my car, chewing through all three wiring harnesses and using the trunk area as its bathroom. I’ll save you the details of all that.

Just before the tow truck driver arrived to haul my car away, Greg discovered that the packrat was STILL inside the thing, alive and well. We tried everything we knew to try to roust it out, but it wouldn’t cooperate. Just before sending my car off, we loaded it up with mouse traps and anything we could think of to get it stopped in its tracks. I didn’t want a live rat in my car of course, but I also didn’t want a DEAD rat in my car, in the heat, in my unattended car, away from me where no one would care. The Toyota dealership service manager called as soon as my car arrived there, and I quickly filled him in on the situation. He responded that he was sorry, but he was swamped and wouldn’t be able to even look at my car until later in the week/early the following week. I implored him to please let his folks know about the rat. Please check. Please get rid of it. “Yes ma’am. We will.” (Sure.) That was Monday. On Friday afternoon I received a call. “Well ma’am, we got your rat. It’s dead.” And what tipped them off, pray tell? The smell, of course.

Suffice it to say, my car was totaled. The repair estimate topped $12,500, and that did not include disinfectant. In my normal life I would have been devastated with this news. And in certain moments, I sort of was. But because Greg and I are living this alternate reality down at the lake we really don’t do much apart from one another, the blessing in all this was the fact that we could function pretty easily with just one vehicle. But one fateful day Greg was perusing the Shell Knob Online Yard Sale Facebook page, which is normally cluttered with items most folks would simply put out at the curb, but this day was special. On this day, someone listed their 2016 Toyota RAV 4 for sale. We followed up, it was legit, we bought it, and here I am:

And we have rearranged the garage so that THIS baby can be parked inside.

With the round house in the background, I’ll pivot to the latest goings-on over there. When we last left-off, I told you all the sad story of the mini-me round house burning to the ground and the collateral damage exhibited in the garage. Greg needed to “sister” longer, sturdier boards to the garage rafters to shore up our sinking garage roof, and once again an amazing neighbor along the street came to the rescue.

If you happen to need a backhoe, an arc welder, a scissor-lift, or any sort of big, manly “toy,” just come on down to our street because someone will have just what you need and will be happy to lend it. So, Kent was our knight in shining armor with his scissor lift. The lift provided Greg a stable platform and the ability to independently work on the rafters without leaning on them, and he got this dirty job done in record time.

Back to the house, where we had one last window to replace. Greg had resisted the idea of replacement here because he:

a) Wanted to save money, and

b) He thought this window was “so cool!”

I, meanwhile, railed on the fact that we had replaced every single window in this house except this one. This window bugged me for the following reasons:

a) It looked ugly, and didn’t match the look of the others

b) It consisted of four independent pieces of glass, two of which slid back and forth on a filthy track for no reason. I guess if you messed with it long enough you could actually OPEN the window to get some air in, but you almost needed an engineering degree to figure out how.

c) It was a pain to clean, for reasons noted above.

It took nearly a year of haranguing, but this week I finally got my wish. Immediately after he set the thing in place Greg agreed – it’s amazing. It’s big, fits in with all the rest, and is simple to clean. It’s just a picture window, and while a kitchen should normally have a functioning window to open and ventilate the room after, oh I don’t know – burning popcorn in the microwave? – it’s important to note that THIS kitchen is part of the living/dining area where there are already four 60” double hung windows and two sliding doors, plus an entry door just a few steps away, so there are plenty of ways to ventilate the space.

With that in place we can now finish the backsplash tile. We’ve come a long way overall, so here’s a little teaser of the latest improvements.

1. Hallway doors, with hardware - finally

2. Kitchen - we're getting there

3. Messy Living Room, in use

4. Queen bedroom, with picture that may hang above bed

5. Adjacent bathroom to Queen bedroom

6. Finished shower in that bathroom

7. King bedroom

Greg's second cousin, Kathleen, and her husband, Glen, were down here for a visit with friends, and broke away for a short while to check on our progress. We were grateful for the break, and had a great time catching up.

Now it's time to boat and float. Look for another update SOON!

We Are Sooooooo Close...!

The spring rains have brought with them multitudes of ants, sporadic flooding, and the near onset of depression in many of us. But at the same time...LOOK! Gorgeous yellow iris are popping up all around the round house, along with a myriad of crazy native plants and animals. We drive slowly down the street now as we watch for baby deer who have joined the sizable herds that roam the neighborhood. The other day we had to stop on the road for a fox that was simply ambling down the way toward our car. He paid us no mind as he walked right on through. A bobcat strolled past Greg one afternoon as he was using the chop saw, and hung around long enough for Greg to pop his head inside to alert me so that I could enjoy watching him too. It's a magical place, I tell ya!

Between all the storms we’ve kept ourselves busy working on the round house.

In our last installment I included this picture of 55 boxes of cork flooring waiting for installation. We were so anxious to see that project finished, but before we could get started Greg had to level the concrete floors throughout the main living space.

Another week later and the concrete was set. Greg and Mitch, our son, worked their tails off to get all the cork flooring installed throughout the house.

We love the look of it so much, and the added cushioning and room insulation is night-and-day noticeable on our tender feet.

All interior doors have now been painted, and most of them are now hung. Lighting is now installed and working.

And then there’s the kitchen...

I finally put the hammer down on our Ikea kitchen purchase in late February, back when life was normal. (Remember what “normal” used to be like? Swoon!!) I’d chosen a design style for the kitchen that included three drawers per lower cabinet, and no upper cabinets at all – save a few open shelves, because the designer had advised that the uniformity would help to make the room look larger.

Yeah, fine. Sounds good.

Word to the wise: when you buy Ikea cabinets, you slap down your credit card for the purchase, wait a few hours for their warehouse folks to pick all the disparate items and chuck them onto rolling carts, and then YOU schlep those heavily loaded carts onto the freight elevator, roll them down the way to your waiting trailer, and then you work together as a couple to load each heavy melamine-ladened box onto the trailer, all the while snarking and growling at one another and complaining about the lack of any assistance from the store that just took thousands of your hard-earned dollars. It took four separate trips up and down the elevator to assemble all four cart loads onto our trailer, but we got it done.

On the day of our kitchen purchase, our Ikea store was out of nine drawer fronts, along with a few other elements. But that was no big deal. We’ll just pick them up in another week or so, no problem! We had plenty of other things to work on at the house, so there wasn’t a real rush. We happily drove our trailer load of 100+ boxes of cabinets and 55 boxes of cork flooring down to the house with visions of cushy cork and soft-closing drawers dancing in my head.

Back to reality: In our order of operations the flooring had to be put down first, so the Ikea boxes remained on the trailer inside the garage for a few weeks while the flooring was leveled, then laid, and then…this stupid pandemic set in. And as soon as the coronavirus hit, Ikea swatted out their lights, locked their doors, and walked away from their buildings – world wide. I mean lights OUT. No ordering online, no customer service email/chat/live, all stores closed with no projected opening date that I am aware of. So our kitchen has remained in limbo, with drawers with no fronts, and a few open areas where cabinets really ought to be…GAH! Just the other day - May 22nd – Ikea finally rose from the dead to wave a flag. My hopes soared when I learned that our KC store had become a “Click and Collect” location. My Shopping Cart was quickly filled, checked and double checked and I hit “PURCHASE” with such pent up enthusiasm that I nearly burst. But alas – this was the response from Ikea:

We have received our maximum order capacity for the day, for this location. Please try again tomorrow.

I tried again multiple times that day because hey, it’s a worldwide company. When does THEIR “tomorrow” begin?? And I tried multiple times the next day, and the next – but to no avail. Same response. So our kitchen looks like this, and we have no idea when we can expect it to be complete. The actual cabinet color is deceptive, as there is a protective plastic coating over all cabinet fronts that hasn't been removed yet. The color we chose is "Bodarp," which is described by Ikea as grey-green. I can't picture grey-green, but I like Bodarp!

And…one more thing about Ikea before we leave this subject. Anyone who has tackled the assembly of an Ikea product knows how maddening it can be to decipher their pictorial instructions. I mean, can they not use ONE English word to help guide the process? (Oh wait – I see the word *Click* periodically, so I know that they CAN use words, or certainly onomatopoeia, if desired.) Hey Ikea, here’s an idea: How about use of an arrow to point to the critical issue at hand, or a big “X” PLUS an arrow to emphasize what not to do? Is all of this just too difficult to do? Because, for the life of me we could not decipher what in the world they were trying to convey through this:

Is this a new at-home version of a coronavirus test kit? Are we to use this part to fling our heads back haughtily like your picture, for some important reason? WHAT are you trying to say, Ikea? In any case, this gave us a much-needed laugh as we plugged away that day, and maybe THAT was the intent of the image in the first place. Clever!

Though our focus has been on the round house itself, I’ve kept you in the dark regarding the OTHER big project looming on the horizon – our garage. Our garage is a large metal building that measures 24’ x 36’, with two (undersized for the scale of the building, and ugly) garage doors, and ample space to park two cars or two boats, or with modification to the garage door, a large RV plus a boat or car. In addition, it has a nice sized work shop cordoned off in the back, a huge alcove for storage shelving, pull-down stairs for more storage above the vehicles, plumbing and electricity. And it looks horrible.

We were excited to simply replace the rotted wood trim around the doors and paint the thing in the same colors of the round house – dark grey with white trim. *POOF!*. Instant AAHHHHHHH. But no – nothing works that easily for us! We knew a quite bit about the sad maintenance history of this round house and property, but a closer look at the garage revealed that it had succumbed to more than we had originally recognized, and the building would require quite a bit of attention before we could simply slap on a coat of paint.

Below is an aerial photo of our round house, dated 2015, along with a photo of how things look today. In the top photo the large white circle is the round house, and next to it is a “mini-me” structure - a smaller version of the same. Like the house, the small round building was constructed of pre-fabricated curved fiberglass walls and roofing sections, and was built on a round concrete slab. (A moment of silence, please, for the loss of this sweet little structure. I was veklempt for months when I first learned of its loss.) Adjacent to the “mini-me” round house is the garage. In the second photo you see only a round patio in that spot.

One fateful day a few years ago, the then-owner of the round house decided to rake up his fall leaves and burn them on the property. This is commonly done down here, and if it’s a calm day and the fire is monitored, the task is normally completed without incident. But if instead the fire is set and then the task manager goes inside to watch TV and take a nap, incidents may occur – as happened on that ill-fated afternoon. The flames were carried by the breeze, took hold of that cute mini-me round building and burned it completely to the ground, and in so doing they also licked at the adjacent garage structure, seriously damaging the six roofing trusses on the front/left quarter of the building.

Sadly, all that remains of the mini-me structure today is that round patio slab foundation, now a patio. And the affected garage trusses look like triangles of charcoal. To add insult to injury, the owners apparently contracted “Larry, Darryl, and his other brother, Darryl” to repair the damage sustained by the garage. Net result: the front quarter section of our garage roof is visibly drooping and will require intervention before any cosmetic work can begin.

As usual, Greg concocted a means to address the weakened garage trusses that involved a “Danger Rating” of at least 9. His idea involved a car jack, found in the back of the garage, a small chunk of 4” x 4”, with a 10’ tall beefy board set on top.

While I held the tall board steady, Greg slowly pumped up the car jack until the tall timber met the underside of the affected roofing truss. Then a couple more pumps of the jack raised the truss to the proper spot. Greg’s hillbilly solution was not particularly dangerous I suppose, but the next aspect of the operation was a spine chiller. Greg then propped his tall ladder against the affected truss, and proceeded to “sister” an 8’ 2” x 4” to the badly burned timber using construction adhesive and lots of screws. The work forced him to lean and push against the very part of the roofing structure that he was trying to mend, which forced me to wince and worry below, as I mentally calculated how to mitigate his fall when it inevitably occurred. He attached exactly one long board to one truss before we mutually concurred on the folly of this process. There has got to be a better way. Stay tuned on that one.

Meanwhile we decided to replace some of the metal panels on the face of the garage. We noticed that the garage front had been pieced together with random short metal sheets, like a puzzle. We presumed that the pieces were scavenged after the fire by “Larry, Darryl and his other brother Darryl.” Instead we learned that those jigsaw puzzle-pieced sheets pre-dated the fire, AND we discovered perfectly good long metal sheets just sitting up there in the garage! They’re smoke-smudged, but are otherwise perfectly fine.

Our neighbors surely think that we’ve made the garage even WORSE at this point. But as we all know, paint is the great equalizer, and I cannot WAIT for this building to get a new coat!

Thanks for your support and for remaining interested in our crazy journey in rehabbing this place. It's been a fun ride, and we are nearing the end.