rock bottom

Our basement floor has been a long-standing Issue (yes, with a capital "i"). Just before Chase was born, we were finally able to carpet half of it after installing a moisture barrier - so it's carpeted, but every once in a while it sounds as though you're walking on a tarp... because you are. Whatever, better than a moldy rug, right?

Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you consider the two recent flooding events) we never addressed the other half of the basement, mainly because it had been relegated to a disorganized "storage" area where we kept all of our old crap that we didn't feel like sorting, since sorting it would make us realize how old and crappy it really was, forcing us to part with such treasured belongings as Battlefield Earth on VHS and issues of Seventeen magazine featuring the cast of My So-Called Life. (I'm not making this up. When I was 13, that was total scrapbook material.) But I digress... That whole side of the basement was nothing more than a corridor from the stairs to the washing machine.

our trash heap (sadly, this was taken after a major re-org. yes, it used to be much worse.)

After Chase started crawling, however, this room became the key to my sanity. He needed somewhere wide open to play in, and nothing in our quartered Cape Cod quite fit the bill. In fact, the only room in our house larger than 12x12 was our "remodeled" basement family room - where we'd torn down the wall separating two illegal bedrooms; the same space we'd had carpeted - which we'd inadvertently re-devided into an adult TV spot/Chase play area. It was impossible to watch TV while he was playing (we're trying to save his little synapses from TMZ for a few more months), and we certainly couldn't leave him there for any amount of time, since he'd automatically go for the power cords and/or Wii-motes. So, in a desperation-fueled mania, I "cleaned" (read: moved piles in) the junk room and tore up the tiles. And the space actually started feeling... well, perhaps not livable, but at least not disgusting.

Then we were stuck with the exact same conundrum we'd faced with the other side: What on earth to do with the potentially-sweaty concrete subfloor? (Other questions included: How the f**k do you get up tiling glue without horrible chemicals? and: What's the worst that could happen if I just dumped a bucket of primer on the floor?) Oh, and to make things more interesting, my goal was to finish the project before my cousin and her family came to visit on April 1. So I went with the primer idea. Erik was dubious. Honestly, even I was dubious. But it was a lot of fun, and you know what? It worked. (I forgot to take a picture, but it just looks like a white concrete floor now, and the primer covered up all the glue and years of neglect/water damage really well.)

The only problem was, it felt like the bottom of a really crappy pool. Certainly not what you want underneath your feet when you're trying to get snuggly and watch a movie. Chase even refused to crawl on it. So we got a rug!

And I promptly shoved it through a wall! Whoops. (NOTE: Don't let a 5x8 area rug slide down the stairs. It seems easier at the time, but it won't seem like such a good idea when you're spending an entire afternoon plastering the wall you ruined.) Moving on...

Overall, we're happy with our new space. The walls still need some work (no, not just the hole... we also need to paint everything and find a way to cover the circuit box), we still need to mount the TV, and I'm experimenting with the spacing (I've never had an area rug before, so I have no idea how to position it), but it feels new - heck, in our eyes we just added some serious square footage to our house. And Chase is thrilled to have the largest room in our house all to himself. (That's another project - post coming soon.)

Now all we have to worry about is what's behind that curtain. I'll give you a hint - it involves John Travolta, Claire Danes, and Jared Leto.

There have been some not-so-awesome things happening in our house lately. You know, to add to the list of not-so-awesome things that have been happening since we bought this place. (Dear Little House: We are appreciative of all that you do for us, but 60 years just isn't treating you well. Please don't take this post personally and start getting even worse.)

First, the monsoon season left us with a flooded basement. I'm exaggerating a bit: only half of the basement flooded. And there was less than an inch of standing water, but still. Luckily (?) our basement is really uneven and half of it is still covered in musty vinyl tiles (something we hope to take care of this weekend), so the high ground (carpeted side) was saved.

Second, after weeks of messing with the wiring, we're pretty sure that the only usable telephone jack is in the nursery. And since we're still stuck in the dark ages what with our DSL connection and all, that means that the modem and phone have to remain plugged in there. This brings our total super-baby-safe square footage down to exactly ... 0. Before Chase could crawl, that didn't seem to matter. Now it does. A lot.

Third, and most annoying/expensive/not-so-awesome: our washing machine broke down last night. And it didn't break in between loads or anything. No, it broke right in the middle of the first diaper rinse cycle. We bought the machine new last January (Whirlpool Duet, in case you're in the market for appliances to avoid), installed it in April, and have been using it 2-3 times a week since, mostly just for the diapers. (We're not really big laundry people.) Anyways, it reeked of burning plastic and wouldn't do anything, so I hauled the semi-poopy cloth upstairs to the tub (which, of course, we'd just scrubbed out to start using for Chase's baths) and stomped around in human waste while Erik tried to diagnose the problem.

[Side note: please realize I'm exaggerating again. Cloth diapers get a bum rap for being disgusting, and I'm taking full advantage of that for entertainment purposes. The boring truth is that I was basically just rinsing pee out of cotton.]

So anyways, where were we? Ah yes, cursing our washing machine. We checked in with Whirlpool - we were officially 57 days out of warranty, and the soonest they could be here was Tuesday for $129 plus parts. So we shopped around: Best Buy's Geek Squad would be $100 for the first visit, parts, and $35/15 minutes of install labor; Sears was even more; and our nice local guy doesn't do washers. Assuming it was the motor, we'd be out anywhere from $250-$350. To fix a machine that might crap out again in 11 months. Long story short, we decided we'd be better off just buying a new, cheap top-loader. But first, I typed out a bitter note to Whirlpool, mostly to get it off my chest.

Well this morning I got a call, bright and early, from their Customer Service Department. The company is "very stringent about their warranty periods, probably because of the recession" but my lady had totally "talked to her boss and convinced him to grant a 6-month warranty extension!" Well hooray! "Beginning after this repair." Umm... so they, like, totally stand behind their product not to break again for the next six months, once we have it serviced back to like-new condition? In nicer words, I told her to shove it. She put me on hold. "Okay, great news," she whispered conspiratorially, "we'll cover the cost of the part or parts. You're really lucky, we don't do this for everyone." Right, you only do it for people who expect more than a year's worth of work out of the appliance they dropped half a grand on. Isn't it nice to know that we've become so complacent?

And the moral of the story is: Ask, and ye shall probably get what you pretty much deserved in the first place.