Thursday, May 07, 2009

The joys of home ownership ....

So, it's been one of those weeks here at the new house. Well, I guess the problems really started last week when the temperatures in DC hit 94F (34c) for about 3 days in a row. Those days revealed how warm the upstairs in our 1913 row house could get and really meant we had insufficient insulation in the attic.

On Saturday, then, I finally climbed up to the attic to survey the situation. And yes, there was not just too little insulation, there was NO insulation in the attic. Why the previous owner didn't bother installing any when he retrofitted A/C into the place, I'll never know.

To make matters worse, in looking around, I found a couple of cracked roof beams that need some TLC. And of course, given the way the house is arranged, you can't just climb into the attic and fix the beams. Instead we're going to have to go through the ceiling in the second guest bedroom.

And then finally, on Thursday of last week, the refrigerator gave up the ghost. At first, I thought it was the defrost timer, so I replaced that. Turns out that was a problem because when I plugged it back in and turned it on, the relay did kick over to turn on the fridge ... and then the circuit breaker popped. Turns out the defrost timer was burnt out because the compressor had kicked the bucket. So, now we have a new refrigerator too.

This whole house thing is becoming expensive. But hey, at least we can control how these things are fixed.

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