Roadrunner: Week 9 Update

Grillo cuts a template to speed installing the siding around the newly replaced arch windows.

This post originally appeared on the 2016-07-29.

Yes, we're into the ninth week of our six-week renovation on the Roadrunner house. How did that happen?

Back Orders

Well, the primary culprit has been back orders. We thought we were ordering fairly common appliances, but Lowe's apparently didn't know the manufacturer was in the midst of an inventory reduction. The cook top we ordered didn't come in with the rest of the appliance order, which came in on time.

When we checked on the order, the cook top didn't have a delivery date. When we pressed the commercial desk to pressure the vendor for a date, they found out the manufacturer hadn't even scheduled another production run of the cook top.

Here is the siding installed around those arch windows. There are five of them in the front of the house. They'll look better painted.

We were able to cancel that order and order a different cooktop. But guess what? It didn't come in last Monday as promised. We'll see if it's here next week.

The arched windows were also backordered and didn't come in with the rest of the doors and windows for the house. We had planned on four to six weeks for the glass doors and windows to be manufactured and delivered. The bulk of the order came in after seven weeks. The arched windows came in 10 days later. There is so much new construction and renovation going on right now nationwide, the manufacturers simply can't keep up with the demand and are taking longer than usual to fulfill orders.

Invisible Repairs

This drain should prevent water flowing from the driveway into the garage. We'll see how well it stands up to hurricane Harvey.

Remember all those "invisible repairs" I've mentioned in this series? Well, many of them were unplanned, like having to reframe some of the windows we're replacing. It turns out the old windows were not only ugly and inefficient, they were beginning to leak. The leakage had caused some of the framing that holds them in place to deteriorate. Had this been allowed to continue, the damage could have extended to the walls and eventually made the house unsafe. We don't leave problems like that when we find them. We fix them. Luckily, we were able to get the house dried in again the day before Harvey hit.

We did complete two more "invisible repairs" this week. One was planned, on was not.

The unplanned repair only took a couple of hours to complete. We replaced the retractable attic stairs and repainted them. We hadn't planned to replace them because they looked fine during the inspection. But at some point, as different people accessed the attic, one of the springs gave way. Rather than replace the spring and leave the other one for someone else, we replaced the whole stair unit.

The planned invisible repair fixes a drainage problem. The driveway was sloped to drain into the garage. A previous owner had nailed a treated 2x4 across the entrance to keep water out, but that was an ugly solution that cause a trip hazard. So we cut four inches out of the driveway next to the garage and installed a drain. To get the water away from the house, we ran drainage pipes to the side yard. From there, the water will flow naturally to the small creek at the back of the house. Harvey will be a great way to test the effectiveness of this fix.

Hopefully, we'll be able to put the house on the market next week without any more delays. We'll have to see what Harvey does.

Ike’s Aftermath

Yup. That’s me watering the sagging sunflowers while Ike inundates the Texas coast. Just shows to go ya how big this state is.

Photo by Beccano

It’s a good thing that Friday’s Feast remains dormant this week. Most of my day seems to have been taken up with preparation for Ike. Now we knew that we wouldn’t feel much impact from the storm, so much of my preparation involved watching the radar images of Ike advancing on the coast. Oh, and there was that bit of working with kids to bring the plants and lawn furniture into the garage.

I have touched base with all my friends and family, and all of them seem to have survived. My remaining brother even evacuated to Central Texas, in spite of my dad telling me that they were going to ride it out at home. My did did, but he said the clouds never even covered the moon last night.

My heart goes out to those people whom the storm hurt.

So what happened here? Nothing. We got a little wind but not even one drop of rain. Don’t get me wrong. I certainly don’t want to have gone through what they did on the coast; I have done enough of that in my time. But I would like have have had a little rain. This is the third storm to hit the Texas coast without giving us any rain at all—much less breaking the drought. Sigh.