To Those Who Have Stayed in Our House… Sunday, Nov 30 2008

We’re sorry.
We had no idea.
Let us explain…
Poor Dad.
The hot water tank died a slow death.
Dad decided this past Saturday to replace it.
First, he had to drain out all the water left in the tank.

Dixie was wondering what was going on in the basement…

This is what was going on.
This is why we’re apologizing to all those who have stayed at our house.
Because THIS is what drained out of the bottom of the tank.
Daddy (who knows like everything ever about home improvement) has NOOOOO idea what this crud is.
We are sickened!
Oh it’s so gross!
Nastier than this? You be the judge.

Next Owen & Dad used Grandpa’s old dolly to haul it up the stairs and out the back door.
Notice Dad’s back pocket…those are paper towels…???

Yeah! The new tank!

She’s a beauty! Holds a bit more water than the old one too.

They look like they’re trying to figure out something…

Hopefully no more “crystals”…
Dad did a great job of installing the new one and we can’t wait to have ya’ll over again!

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Cannibal Crickets Saturday, Nov 22 2008

Everyone knows what crickets look like…like this, right?
This is a good example of the black colored crickets that we were used to in Arkansas and Tennessee.
When we moved to Virginia a couple of years ago, we noticed that the crickets don’t look quite right.
They don’t look very…healthy…or something.
First off, they’re brown (or light tan if you want to be exact); they can jump really high up in the air; they look like spiders but then they hop all over you; they can crawl all over the walls and ceiling and who knows what else. Nasty.
The grossest thing ever is that they are cannibals!
Our basement is the only place in our house where you ever see these critters.
There are tons of them in the basement, despite the fact that we have “bombed” them numerous times.
We are pretty sure they could survive a nuclear attack.
They start off realllllly tiny – like the head of a pen but they grow to be quite large.
We had Owen take a bunch of pictures since we know you wanna see what they look like.

Now we understand that you might not think they’re that fierce looking…
BUT…one day we found out that they eat other bugs and each other!
It is so gross to go down to the basement to do your laundry and have to see this kind of carnage!
We are going to leave you with some pictures of one of these crickets about to eat another one.
So nasty!


Here is all that remains of dinner (not ours…the crickets).
Ew.

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Nastiest Basement Ever Tuesday, Nov 18 2008

It’s official.
We have the nastiest basement ever.
It is strictly utilitarian. There are no windows or doors to the outside.
There are scary bugs with thousands of legs and hair (we’re not kidding) and crickets from Mars. We’ve never seen crickets that look like the crickets in our basement (one day we are going to devote an entire post just to these little critters).  And they climb on everything.
We discovered a little too late that when it rains, water leaks into the basement. Because of this, we’ve had to throw away rotted and mildewed items that were being stored down there.
All of this pales in comparison to the weirdness that there is…
*drum roll please*

a working toilet smack dab in the middle of the basement.
That’s right. No doors. No walls. No privacy.
When we bought the house, we thought the previous owners had just left an extra toilet in the basement.
And NO folks, not a single Gladu has ever used this piece of nastiness.
We were almost too embarrassed to post this picture:

EW.
This toilet needed to go (no pun intended)!

It was a wonderful day when Dad and Owen busted it out and hauled it off to the dump (no pun intended again). hehe.

It’s gone!
Eventually, the plan is to tile the whole basement, put up a drop ceiling, and use this area for extra storage.

While the boys were downstairs, they went ahead and busted out a HUGE old concrete (cement?) sink.
We weren’t being wasteful, this thing was nasty and the only way to get it out was to break it up.
Plus men love to demo things right?

All of this mess was cleaned up and Dad painted the walls and floor.
We hope we didn’t scare ya’ll too much with our basement story.

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We’re Glad It Was Owen & Not Us… Monday, Jul 14 2008

We are back after a fun filled week of plumbing the house (well, not us, but Dad, Owen and the plumber).
Thursday through Saturday we had a plumber come out and put all new pvc pipes throughout the house.
Owen drew the short straw and had to be the one to crawl through the nasty crawl space “window” in our basement.  He was helping Dad string electrical wire all the way from the upstairs master bathroom down to the breakfast room and finally to the crawl space beside the basement.
You have to lift up a rusty old glass window to get under the crawl space under the 1950’s addition of the house.

Poor Owen! We have a feeling that he was enjoying every minute of this adventure.
Owen thought that this would be a perfect area to hide a body.
Thankfully, Dad and Owen successfully ran all the wire to the basement. Now Dad can install the jacuzzi tub in the master bath.
In the meantime…

Dad was setting up a obstacle course in Grandma’s bathroom.
Actually, those boards are there to keep the new wall boards from buckling while the adhesive sets.
Since we weren’t able to take out all that ugly pink and blue tile on the walls, we are going to cover it up with a beautiful cream colored wainscoting.

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