House Projects

I'm waiting for this electrician guy to come and fix our fireplace.

We have a gas fireplace, that you "turn on" with a switch, and while we initially thought this was the height of cheese, we enjoyed it the first time we turned on our fire. This was maybe 8 months ago. The second time we turned on our fire we were sitting, enjoying the illusion of warmth, when the whole thing made this sucking sound and died. The switch - thereafter - did nothing. We were still getting things sorted and unboxed and moved into and painted and constructed and we didn't have time to address it, then the summer came and who in their right mind would want FIRE in your house in a CA summer? Then the weather started to cool down again, and there's the whole "stockings" thing and what not. And we have no fire, and our house warranty is about to expire.

So I'm waiting for this electrician guy to come and fix our fireplace. Which just feels weird. I'm actually a little worried that it's not the electrics, that there's something else going on. And our home warranty only pays for the electrician to check the switch. If it's a problem with the actual FIREPLACE they don't cover it. Even though that's what they're coming out to fix.

Then there's the kitchen situation. We took our counters off two weeks ago for the counter top guy to come and measure for the new ones. We were told "two weeks" like that was the magic number so we thought we'd have counter tops... now. I don't want to go into the whole story but it includes such elements as: lost paperwork, Home Depot guy unable to pick up phone to call contractor, confusion about whether a guy even came to measure our kitchen despite the fact that I was here and I talked to him and I said "so what's next?" and he said "oh, you just go to Home Depot to sign off on the estimate and pay," and JB finally getting on the phone every 2 hours until someone from Home Depot picked up the phone and called the contractor and got it all straightened out.

I just got a little chill typing "all straightened out." I hope that didn't jinx us. Because we still have no kitchen counters, no kitchen sink, no access to the dishwasher which drains through the kitchen sink plumbing, no place to prepare food. For the record, I will acknowledge that it is "all straightened out" when I'm staring at the water flowing - leaklessly - through the kitchen faucet.