Subscribe
Friday, March 13th, 2009
This has been a week of improvements - some small and easy, some large and complicated, all making life just a little better.
1. The 50-gallon water heater. We wanted a tankless, but that didn’t work out, so we bought a 50-gallon water heater to replace our broken 40-gallon one. This one is bigger but more energy efficient, so maybe our gas bill won’t go up, and now we won’t run out of hot water every time we share a shower or I shave my legs.
The installation of this water heater caused much drama for poor D, who bought a shut-off valve to install with it, so in case it ever leaks, we can shut off water just to it and not the whole house. The first shut-off valve kept leaking, and he redid it FIVE TIMES, each time having to crawl under the house to turn off the water, crawl back out, unsolder the pipes, resolder them, and so on. Then he gave up on the valve, soldered everything back together, and then something ELSE started leaking. Finally, he had to turn the water off for a day (fun for me, working from home), go back to Lowe’s and get a different valve and different threaded coupling thingies, and redo everything one more time. This time it worked, thank goodness, and now we have hot running water again.
And can I just say my husband is a genius? I am lucky to be married to a guy who can figure out how to do absolutely anything.
2. The toilet seat. The toilet in our master bathroom is a 1969 model, the only thing remaining of the bathroom that was here when we moved in. This toilet sat outside in the yard for a long time while we remodeled the bathroom, so long that the tank cracked, and we had to combine up two toilets, the one from our hall bathroom that had a cracked bowl, and the one from the master bathroom that had a cracked tank.
Somehow though, we never replaced the toilet seat, which was crazed in some spots, making it hard to get pristinely clean, and the plastic thingies underneath kept breaking off in bits and falling in the toilet. We’ve been planning to replace it for ages, but we only recently remembered on a trip to Target. Now we have a nice glistening white toilet seat with anti-microbial properties. My butt is very thankful.
3. Black-out curtains. The curtains in our bedroom are gorgeous, exotic-print, pale yellow sheers I got on clearance from Anthropologie. It’s hard to find affordable curtains in the proper length for our super-tall windows, let alone find pretty, perfect ones, so I’m in love with these curtains. Alas, our bedroom faces the east, so every morning the sun blithely wakes us up and blinds us with its glare, preventing us from ever sleeping late. With our work schedules, we require sleeping late - it is essential to life. I didn’t realize how bad it really was when I was still at my old job and waking up at the crack o’ dawn, and D - not being a complainer - rarely mentioned it.
I’ve been working this schedule for months, but it’s only now started to really bug me. You know how you can be riding in a car with the a/c blasting on you, and it takes you 15 minutes of freezing to realize, “duh, I could turn the air off”? So I only recently began brainstorming a solution to this problem. I didn’t want to lose my adorable curtains, and new ones for three windows cost a bazillion dollars. Also, we change our bedspread based on the season, so what would match everything except these curtains I already have, which - did I mention - are perfect?
Last weekend we tried buying some cheapo dark green curtains. In the store, we held all the sample curtains up to the fluorescent lights and determined which were the darkest. The plan was to hang them behind our pretty curtains, but when I got them home, that just didn’t work. I had to hang them on top, hiding the pretty curtains, and they just looked like … well … complete ass.
They did block the light, though. After a morning of halfway decent sleep (I only had the dark curtain up on one window, so when I turned to the left I could rest, but when I turned to the right I was blinded by the sun glaring off our white house), I was more determined than ever to fix this problem. I searched online for the better part of an evening, and finally concluded that the most economical and possibly most attractive option would be to buy these white blackout curtain liners and put them behind the pre-existing curtains.
Shockingly, the liners arrived less than two days after I ordered them. We hung them that afternoon, they look totally fine behind our pretty curtains, and this morning I was able to sleep till a glorious 10 a.m. I used to like how bright and sunny our bedroom was - in the daytime, while I was awake - but it just wasn’t practical. Now, we have a shady sleep-cave, and as a bonus, these curtains block out the super-bright moon that used to fill the room like a floodlight; dampens the weird electric humming sound that sometimes comes from the nearby hospital, the train and street noises, the barking dogs, etc.; AND insulates against heat and cold. I swear, the room is so much toastier today than it usually gets when the heat is on!
We may have to get some of these for the baby’s room eventually, too! And the living room!
4. Oh, and I almost forgot about the Roku player! It is a little player thing that hooks up with Netflix and Amazon to let you download movies and watch them on your TV instantly! Just like that, I can watch (almost) any movie I want! It’s the wave of the future, I tell you.
I’m hoping this stops me from feeling the need to buy DVDs and also maximize my Netflix account (their 12,000 instant play movies and TV shows are free with our one-at-a-time unlimited monthly plan).
So far, though, I’ve had a little trouble maintaining wireless connectivity. I’ve watched two movies on it so far, but when I tried to watch It Happened One Night this morning, it went a little bonkers and kept shutting off. So it remains to be seen how life-improving this device will be.
5. The bedroom light switch. For a couple of months now, the light switch in our bedroom has been misbehaving. It stopped switching on the normal way, and we had to start flipping up and simultaneously pushing in. Then that trick stopped working, and we had to start flipping it up and then shaking it back and forth at the top. Then last night, it finally ceased functioning entirely. D has promised that he will replace the light switch today. He’s outside working on the lawnmower now, but I’m sure he’ll get around to it, and we can begin flipping the switch normally again asap.
So with all these life improvements, I am feeling very cheerful these days. It’s so lovely to fix these teensy little problems that bug me on a daily basis. It leaves more room in the day to worry about the big problems - like should I dye my hair red again when this fades out? Yes, I think I should.
we just watched “it happened one night” on our new netflix account the other night, too! it was much better than i was expecting. those old movies are great escapism ;)
i envy #1! we had a hot water heater go out last summer and had to have repairmen fix it for us. you are very lucky to have a hubby who is so handy! :-)