We Got a Real Door

I hear there are a few devoted blog followers interested in the minutia of the few little projects we still have going on at the house.  This is for you, Uncle Gary!

So, this is the craftsman syle door Erik put up sometime in October.  We had to wait until the temperature cooled down below 85 degrees to stain the door according to the directions that came with the fiberglass stain kit.  Erik did a great job minus a minor mishap involving a dent that now exists in the hood of my car.  Doesn't it look great?  Hey, Regan!

Here are our holiday decorations in the casa:

Here's our table in the breakfast nook.  Erik is currently building a built-in hutch to fit in the recessed area there.  It's going to be awesome.  He's already built the cabinets over the washer and dryer and they're hung and funcioning well.  I'll have to get pictures of those, too:

Here you can see part of the backsplash Erik did in the kitchen along with all of my Thanksgiving baking:

These are the smaller tiles on the island:

Here's the new dining room table from Craigslist:

The tv armoir I got at the thrift store here in Rockwall:

Here are the rocking chairs I got for the front porch:

And since this post is dedicated to Uncle Gary, a lake-faring man himself, here's a picture of Erik cruising us around in our fixer-upper pontoon barge this summer:

Water, Water, Everywhere...Again

This is the second house we've owned to which we have come home only to find water in the garage where it shouldn't be.  This time it wasn't anything like the Flood of 2006 when it was raining from the ceiling in the downstairs of our home in Round Rock.  But that's another story for another time.  This is the Minor Water Gushing of 2009.  May that is.  This is late in coming, but cannot be overlooked and deserves it's own post.

We came home to water in the garage floor, followed it to the source, and found water streaming out of the breaker box.  Electricity + water = can't be a good thing

Thankfully, there was a hole in the dry wall where the electrician did something so we could see that there was water actually POURING inside the dry wall from somewhere, but just a little bit was making it through the breaker box and down the wall.  You can tell that I immediately jumped into "take pictures for insurance" mode as we have been through this before.  Drama.

What I don't have pictures of are the scenes between the discovery moment and the final moments when we realize what is really going on, is when we go to the side of the house to see where the water is coming into the breaker box.  It was just too dark.  What we found is water gushing out of the pvc pipe in which the wires run into the house.  What made it into the house, made it into the garage.  That was when the lightbulb went off.  Gravity, right?  It had to come from a higher source for that to happen.  Our electrical box, seen below, is up on top of the retaining wall, yes, higher than the breaker box.  The lid to said box was found to be unsecured and filled with water.  Thanks, Oncor.  Thanks for not taking care of this issue. 

There was also some issue with the actual pipe connection which I really don't remember (maybe something about foam or sealing up the pipe), but I spent the next day on the phone with that silly company trying to get someone out. We were afraid to leave our electriciy on due to all the water, so slept without air conditioning and power that night. We finally got the problem solved and our box is nice and tight.  There had been so much rain and such a bad storm that they were dealing with power outages before getting to us.  As far as I was concerned, this was a power outage, since I couldn't use my computer : )

Erik installed a French drain along the retaining wall to help with the drainage and has one planned for the side of the house.  He runs outside to check if water is coming out the end of it by the greenbelt every time it rains : )