Breaking the Seal

Yes its official, I broke the seal on our new condo by putting my first dent into the new laminate flooring. Ahh, freaken aye.

The last few days have been filled with ups and downs for me, probably the biggest downer was making the dent on the kitchen flooring. Stupid me, decided to change the direction the refrigerator doors open. It had been bugging me that the fridge doors opend toward the kitchen and not away from it. Since I didn't have a manual, I thought I would wing it. I took out my power screw driver and began taking the doors off. So in the process, both doors came off at the same time and I fumbled around to keep them from dropping. I managed to stop the bottom door with my shoeless foot, which hurt like a mofo, but as I reached for the freezer drawer it slipped and hit the laminate floor with a big thud. Ohh, the pain! I don't know what was more painful, the fridge door smashing against my foot or the freezer door making a dent in the new floor. Nevertheless, I took it like a man and I didn't cry...even though I wanted to.

So I began to change the hinges and handles on the fridge doors and came across a small obstacle. How do you take the handles off? The screws on top were easy, but how do the ones directly on the door come off. I first tried to pull them off like many of the screw plugs on the fridge, no go. Then I tried to spin it around and unscrew it, negative. Dang, how do these things come off. So after 10 minutes of trying to take them off I yanked one off and snap it broke. Errr, this whole experience is not going to well, but I quickly noticed that there was a cover that slid off and covered the main screw. Ok, my wife is gonna kill me when she sees the broken handle. So I composed myself and began putting everything back together. I soon figured out the correct method of putting and taking the doors off. To put-on, work from bottom to top...and to take-off work from top to bottom. Lesson learned too late, but at least the doors now open away from the kitchen for much easier access.

After that little debacle, I felt like crap. So I used my wife's shoping therapy to make me feel better. When my wife came home she wasn't too upset, so we headed to Sears and bought a new 26" flat panel lcd tv. I had been researching this for a while and I found this great Sylvanian tv on the Circuit City site. Its amazing how much cheaper these televisions are these days. However I was still weary of the plethora of inexpensive no-name brands that are out there. So I read through all the online reviews for this model on the CC site and I was convinced that I wasn't going to throw my money away. So we ended up buying at Sears because they have a price match guarantee and they'll even take 10% off from the price difference. Ooh exciting...we got a new toy, which helped take away some the sting from the floor incident.

Yesterday, we had the contractors come in and finish the molding in our kitchen and bathroom. They came in and put the caulking, filled in the nail holes and painted them white...it looks very nice. Our stove was also recently delivered, so the kitchen's makeover is almost complete. All we are waiting for now, is the dishwasher and the range hood. Wow, this kitchen looks totally differnt now. I will post pictures when its complete.

Finally, another downer. The day the stove was delivered I came home from work early to wait for the delivery guys (whom I almost missed). I walked into the kitchen and noticed a small syrupy brown puddle under the sink. I immediatly thought my wife might have dropped some soda on the floor by accident, so I cleaned it up. I went to the bathroom for a second and when I returned to the kitchen the puddle was there again. Thats weird, something is not right. As I openned the door underneath the sink it smelled wierd and noticed an even bigger puddle. Oh great, were the new pipes defective? I began clearing all the stuff under the sink, and the boxes that were in the empty dishwasher slot. It was very moist and some mold had formed. I quickly began wiping everything down and put a fan to begin drying everything, but for some reason I couldn't find where the water was coming from. I finally stuck my hand behind the pipes and felt a tiny mist, it was a leak and it was coming from the pipe that connects to the dishwasher. When the plumbers repaired the sink a few weeks back they broke the old copper pipe that connected to dishwasher. Since we didn't have a new dishwasher yet, as a temporary fix they soldered the pipe to seal it. But I guess they missed a spot, which means that the mist had been running for 3 weeks. The sucky thing is that if the cabinets weren't already so water damaged I probably would have caught it sooner. I'm hoping we can put in new cabinets next summer. In the mean while I have a bucket to retain the water, just until we get our dishwasher installed on Saturday.

Ah, the joy of homeownership.