I went into the barn to photograph our new, but not quite hooked up water treatment equipment. The white cylinder next to the furnace is the water softener—our water is so hard that when you fill up a glass, it clanks. Next to that, the black cylinder is a sand filter and the little blue thing is a UV treatment to kill bacteria.

If you notice the hole cut in the wall, that is because of the drywall screws discovered by the plumber in the drainpipe from the upstairs bathroom. Needless to say, it will need to be replaced.

Here you have a better view of the screws. When we replace this pipe, we will add a drain for the water treatment equipment. We had a drain in for them, but we would have had to run the line to it around the water heater to the sink. Since we have opened the wall, we can use the opportunity to add a closer drain.

The water treatment equipment has posed another problem as well. The sprinkler system needs to be on the house water line (as opposed to the irrigation line—which is untreated) but the water treatment equipment reduces the pressure too much for the sprinkler system. Kai is going to reconfigure the pipes so we can run water to the house and through the sprinklers, then back to the barn to be treated then back to the house.

It sounds like a lot of work, but the barn and guest cottage need their water treated as well and this equipment will handle all of it, not just the house.

Screws! Yikes!

I am just so glad we discovered this now. The specter of what would have happened if we hadn’t caught it is just too vivid—the mysterious smell that we avoided dealing with because we thought it was a dead rodent in the wall, getting worse and worse, finally located, with attendant dry rot, stud damage, and general grossness plus the disruption of the repair while we get sub after sub back to do their little repairs. It is the stuff of nightmares. And Jim, ever Mr. Optimistic, said, "What if there are more like this?" Hopefully, not!

After my morning meeting, I came back and spent the afternoon polishing the floor in the guest cottage. Todd Jersey told me not to use acrylic sealer on the stained floor, because if there was any moisture in the slab, it would come to the surface and cloud the sealer. He had recommended paste wax, so I had gotten some extremely PC, environmentally sound, no VOC’s paste wax to put on the floor.

The previous Friday, I had cleaned and mopped the floor and Kai had kept everyone out until today. I mopped it again in the morning before I went to my weekly meeting and spent the afternoon waxing and polishing. The floor really came out great.

Wax looks so much different than the nail polish look of sealer. I had kind of forgotten that. It has swirly polish marks from the floor polisher, which I got from my mother-in-law many years ago.

Here you can see how shiny it is—check the reflection of the bathroom door frame in the floor.

Several weeks ago, we picked up my mom’s old fridge at her ranch. It was only a year or two old when she remodeled her ranch and got a fancy new fridge (which I don’t think she likes too much.) Anyway, she gave us her used one.

Unfortunately, her contractors had used it for a job fridge and it is pretty grubby, including splashes of concrete on one side. Somehow, cleaning it is just tremendously unappealing—especially without any hot water. I have decided to pace myself and have cleaned the outside—except for the door handles, which are stubborn. I will tackle the inside next week.

Meanwhile, it lends the cottage porch a distinctly WT housing* kind of look . All we need now is a car on blocks.

*White Trash housing