Moving and the Demon Sink

Hello friends!

It's been a little bit since my last update, but I have been CRAZY BUSY moving and dealing with some chaos. Here are some before pics of the packing progress.

The bead studio at the apartment just about all packed up.

The family room all packed up to the last few things.

The Saturday morning we moved. This was the storm that rolled in just before we picked up the truck. It went from this to....

This. Ugh... So we decided to go out for breakfast to wait for the rain to pass. It was literally over in like 30 minutes.

In 2.5 hours Ricky, Josh and myself  loaded up our truck. Here was our whole apartment packed into one 14 foot truck! A HUGE thank you to Josh for his help loading. It SUCKS to move stuff from a 3rd floor to ground level place!

When we arrived at the house to unload we had some more help from some good friends. We got it unloaded very quickly which rocked! After this Ricky and I went to mom's to load up my studio and pick up a recliner from my friend Amanda. Needless to say we were WIPED after all of that. That last load ended up in the garage since we barely had the energy to move anything else.

That night we got the bed set up(most important thing first after a hard day of work) and began unpacking the kitchen. 

We have a TON of cabinet space in this little kitchen so we decided to make this little area our "Coffee Station". 

Ahhh it felt great to get the kitchen all organized and ready to cook some food.

Our good friends, Rossi, and Abram were kind enough to bring over 2 grocery bags FULL of amazing organic veggies and fruits. Ricky whipped us up some yummy quinoa salad!

When you finally unpack you get to find all kinds of things you forgot about that you didn't have room to unpack from before. Mom gifted me with these amazing panda bear creamer and sugar bowl dishes I loved as a child. They are from the 70's and the inside of the pandas are a brighter baby blue.

Here is my jewelry studio before I go to unpacking. 

That night I tried to hop into the shower and the water was FREEZING COLD. I waited a bit for the water to heat up, but it never did. Ricky checked downstairs and it appeared the pilot was not lit. He read the instructions and tried to lite it with no luck. It was Saturday night and we thought that maybe the gas was still turned off from when the pipe froze and busted in the house before we moved in. So it we wouldn't be able to call them until Monday morning :( We ran over to mom's and showered. Thank God for that!

We were pretty stoked to have a washer and dryer where we live again, FINALLY, but we couldn't do a small load of laundry without our drain backing up :/ 

The next morning our plumber came out to fix our dishwasher. We asked him about the water heater and he ended up getting the pilot lit. We have an older one where you have to light it with a match. I didn't blame Ricky for giving up after trying the other night. That would freak me out too. So we were in business! The water was HOT again Hooray!

After our plumber had left Ricky hooked up the washer and dryer only to find out the washer backed up lots of water after only doing ONE small load :( So we had

Meanwhile I noticed that the faucet in the main bathroom was stuck on hot with  this thin stream. I went to turn the handle only to find out it was STUCK on :(

The back of the sink revealed there was NO shut off valve for the sink! I put in a call, but the plumber wasn't able to make it out until the morning.

The water running noise was driving me crazy so I tried again to move the faucet in any position to get the water to run less only to make it WORSE and turn the thin stream into a wider one! *slaps forehead*

That night our friend Jon came over to try to figure out how to get the water to stop. He found the hot water shut off and turned the handle. The water had stopped running, but then began to drip out of the tub faucet instead. It was much better than a running faucet, but still bothersome :/  At least there was some temporary relief of the constant water noise! 

Morning rolled around and our plumber came out to put a pressure regulator in the line to see if that would relieve the problem since it seemed like a water pressure problem. The tub stopped dripping, but then the hot water was still stuck on. He was baffled as to what the problem was. He swapped out the washer in the faucet and fixed the spring inside. When he went to turn on the water the hot water problem was fixed! HOLY CRAP! All of that mess over such a small part! The crazy thing was that the washer inside the sink was just fine and looked exactly like the new one he just installed. Weird... Hooray for the water problem being fixed! 

He was also able to put a little plug on the washer drain so we could do laundry again. I guess the older drains dont' have great flow so people open them up to have better flow in the drain, but doing that can back them up. The little plug on the drain allows the water to move where it needs to go without over flowing the drain. 

We got lucky this round and got a fridge that had a built in ICE MAKER! So stoked! So we asked our plumber about hooking that up as well. He told us we just needed a saddle valve for the ice maker and that would allow us to use it. So Ricky went to the Lowe's to pick one up. 

The saddle valve is the little brass looking jobby with the tiny turn handle connected to that clear hose. Well Ricky got it all installed and it still wasn't working. So we asked our plumber if he could check it out to make sure Ricky installed it properly. 

Upon inspection of behind the fridge we found out that the line Ricky had attached to was CAPPED OFF. You can see the little cap on the top middle of the photo above where you see the tiny hose. Well that sure makes sense as to why it doesn't work huh? So our plumber just told me that we needed to connect the capped end to the other little hose and how Ricky could easily take care of it. My husband isn't a super handy guy so I shyly asked our plumber if he wouldn't mind just connecting it real quickly. He said yes, but you could tell he didn't really want to mess with it. 

As he attached the line I watched to learn how to connect the line and as I watched I was glad I had given that little push and asked. Pretty sure we don't have ANY of the necessary tools to have connected that line. So our plumber went downstairs to turn on the water to the ice maker. I watched as the water traveled up the little hose. YES we can have ice and water to the fridge!!

Seconds later I watched water pour out the back of the fridge.... *sigh*  I told our plumber that it was leaking and I felt like a total asshole for asking him to attach the ice maker. I asked him if that was why had not wanted to attach the line in the first place and he had said yes. So I continued with "So this is why people have so many problems with fridges with ice makers huh?". He had said yes to that as well. It turns out that there is some little part in the fridge that cracked from the cold of winter. The pipes had burst in this place before we have moved in so that makes total sense that it would have affected the fridge as well. Our plumber told me where I could call to find out how much the part would be. 

So later on I call to find out how much the part for the fridge is. $75 dollars! Can you believe that?! Then to have it installed would be another $35. *sigh* I guess we aren't using the ice maker right away huh? What a bummer :( At least the fridge still works....

In the midst of the chaos I began unpacking and organizing.

Here is the master bathroom. It's pretty tiny so I will have to really be creative to find a way to store my stuff in the bathroom or will most likely have to store some of it in the closet in the hallway. It's a super cute little bathroom though with really nice fixtures.

I organized my closet.

As you can see I took up those side shelves to store some bathroom stuff since there really wasn't space in the bathroom.

Here's the master bedroom. It's bigger than the photo, but I took the shot from the empty space in the bedroom to show the finished spot.

Here is the jewelry studio so far. I still have to figure out where I am going to hang the artwork on the wall and where to store the rest of the stuff. It works though ;)

Here is where I am typing up my blog as we speak. Where just seconds ago I clicked the last two photos ;)

We were gifted 2 large bags of organic veggies and fruits including a TON of bananas. I spent some time trying out some Paleo recipes and made the goodies below.

Banana and coconut flour muffins. So I pulled out the TBS and used an over flowing spoon by accident. I also had to sub some dried currants since I didn't have blue berries. Holy crap are these amazing!

Banana and Almond butter "Ice Cream" I added some cacao nibs for some crunch :D This turned out yummy and awesome. I want to try this with some more frozen fruit :D

"2 Ingredient Banana Pudding" This was really good too! I love the texture!

So remember how I was excited to be able to do laundry? Well I did probably 4 loads of laundry and ran the dishwasher. It was awesome to get some stuff done and have hot water gain. When I went down to put my last load in the dryer I saw this....

SHIT!! Where is this water coming from NOW?! Is the washer leaking????

This was the view from inside the hot water heater closet just  next to the washer. OMG! Now what?! I panicked and called my neighbor boys and "men on duty" Josh and Jon(my friends bf/hubby's) to help me figure out the problem. They came over and quickly located what they believed to be the source of the problem.

They said it looked like the water was coming from this pipe and to have the plumber come back out and look at it. FML... Well at least I got all of the laundry done and water isn't leaking out of it when I don't do the wash, right? 

So how do you deal with this problem? Walk away and do something else. 

When I walked upstairs this was the view from our front deck.

Ahhhhh... Now that is worth it, isn't it?

Just look at how inviting that is.

Now I just need a porch swing so Ricky can just swing away and think of this song.

Until next time...

xoxo Genea