After calling the city and all the utilities people to come and mark where wires were buried, we started digging a long (think 100ft +) trench so we could plop some (60) evergreens in to replace an old fence.

As we’re digging away with our rented mini backhowe, we pull up a thick black “root”. At first we didn’t think it was anything more than a root from one of the large trees… Then we dug up a similar “root”, then another… I should mention that it had started to rain and get dark by the time we were about 75% done.

Later in the evening, our neighbour comes by and asks us if our tv is working (we say yes, because we’ve got satelite). Then another neighbour drops by… Same thing.

At the end of the day, we put two and two togehter! The “root” that we dug up, was the main cable tv line for our block! Oops!

Needless to say, we weren’t too popular for the rest of the weekend, and the cable guy that came by the next day to fix it didn’t like us much either… We had damaged the wire in about 4 places! Yikes!

Lesson learned: Even if you “call before you dig”, you may still dig something up!

Disaster #2 – same kitchen. During finishing touches stages I asked my hubby to hang a shelf along the length of one wall. First 2 brackets no sweat. But the last bracket provided the lessons (and ingrained the fear) of hanging things from plaster and lathe walls. I’m telling you my husband for a moment was a ringer for Yosemite Sam. :P

At the top of our list is kitchen countertops. In an effort to be budget friendly we picked out some beautiful large stone tiles that we were going to use as our countertops in our small galley kitchen. My husband did tile professionally so all seemed well. Until we got to the part where we had to have the template cut for the sink. The tiles that went around the sink were professionally cut but we miscalculated the cuts and they were made too narrow–so when they were laid and grouted in–if one person put down a pot that was too heavy or pressed on the tile too hard they would crack! The way they had to be laid–they had to be attached to the sink so in order to replace any future (and inevitable) cracks you would have to remove the entire sink!

Completely disheartened, and finally defeated the hubs and I have now made a trip to Lowes and picked out a single surface countertop–one that comes with professional installation! The tiles cost us $600. The countertop cost us $2,000. The lesson we have learned though: A kitchen countertop is one of those things where you just buck up and budget out the cost of materials and labor and save yourself the trouble! You can make up the costs in other places!

A few years ago — well, gosh, maybe 15 — we were on vacation. We were in Baltimore at an Orioles game, and after the game decided to drive home instead of spending the night there. Three hours later, maybe 2:00 am, we get to our house. My ex was carrying older son David (six years old), I had three year old Elliot. We walked in the front door … and there was no furniture in our downstairs. No rugs, no furniture … no nothing. We carried the boys upstairs, put them to bed, looked at each other … and just went to bed.

The next morning I called my mom (who had been feeding the cat in our absence) and learned that the kitchen faucet, recently DIY-installed, had broken off, and hot water had flooded the downstairs. My aunt had come by to feed the cat, and when she opened the front door it was like a cartoon, with a waterfall pouring out onto her feet (and the cat leaping from the stairs out the door and out into the yard!). She sounded the alarm and got five neighbor families involved in squeegy-ing, mopping, and moving all the furniture onto the deck!

The hardwood floors were a total loss and had to be replace (itself a disaster), but eventually all was put right.

But nobody could believe we just went to bed when we saw it!

… I stayed awake late watching BBC shows on Youtube. Around 11:45, I went out to feed our annoying cat and I heard a hissing sound begin as I was turning around to go back inside. You see the weather had gone from freezing or well below, to about 40 degrees in a matter of hours. We had this ridiculous pipe situation – installed by the crack-heads who owned this house previously- in the stair well to the basement, where the furnace resides, is a pipe which is connected to the hose spigot for the back yard. It was wrapped in an insulating foam tube (except for a small line down the back, presumably where it was split to allow you to get the pipe foamy stuff onto the pipe. Well, that was where it cracked. Sending out an enormous stream of water, right into the stairwell and right into the basement. My husband had fallen asleep while reading to our little girl and so I ran in to tell him. He wakes up hard so it was a struggle. He came out and got a pipe wrench and a shovel to dig to the shut-off valve in the front yard. He had built an igloo for our daughter right over the valve shut-off. While he was out there, he dropped the wrench in the snow and couldn’t find it again. I was down the icy stairs, bucketing water. Then I ran inside and called my sister. Scared her half to death – late night calls do that. She said to call the fire department. Which I did. They rushed over, shut the valve off, cut the offending pipe off the house, installed a temporary faucet, vacuumed the basement full of 4-6 inches of water and then left. It was 2:30 before we got to sleep. Our daughter slept through it all. The firemen tromping through the house, cutting the pipe off, running up and down the icy stairs with their wet-vacs, shouting, joking, me panicking. Her aunt and uncle showing up for moral support. Dear heavens. So, we are now the proud owners of a wet/dry vac and a nifty, hastily built awning for the back stairs – to prevent the ice dam that is melting out of our gutters from further flooding the basement and its nasty set of stairs. Some architect/50′s home designer has a lot to answer for. Who in the heck would design such a crappy basement entrance? And yes, we are slackers, we should have replaced the cruddy pipe/spigot thingy long ago. Nothing like a swimming pool in your basement as a wake-up call! And I will forever be grateful to the fire department. Way to go guys!

Hey everyone – loving the stories, so please keep them coming (hazmat suits, anna see?? WOW!).

Jill asked for our horror story and we unfortunately (or fortunately) don’t have a completely insane one quite yet. Our closest call was when we simply wanted to replace the fixtures in our shower because they were a little rusted. When we pulled back the access panel behind the tub it revealed even worse rust and corrosion around the 50+ year old pipes in the wall. They began leaking after the slightest touch. That, coupled with the fact that it’s very difficult to turn off the water to our house (I have to stick my hand down a hole in the front yard – and it was pouring rain on this particular day), meant we were on the road to disaster. But I got the water turned off and we waved the white flag and called in a professional to replace the entire shower plumbing for us. Now it’s as good as new!

But trust us, if we have a horror story anytime soon you guys will be the first to hear about it.

-John

Hey Lauren,

The midnight blue color sounds lovely! And for future reference, the best true black paint we’ve found is Glidden’s Dark Secret. As for the little bumps on the cabinets, it sounds like it could have been the roller (good quality wool rollers don’t rile up the paint as much and cause bubbles and prickling like a foam one can). It also could have been the paint itself (if you mix paint a lot it gets sort of bubbly and foamy (sort of like soap) so we always mix it slowly with a paint stick and let it settle for a bit, and whenever we pour it into our paint tray we do it slowly to avoid the foamy paint predicament. Hope it helps!

xo,
Sherry

But that wasn’t the big disaster. The paint, that was the big disaster. We wanted our 70 year old cabinets to be black. We have this too cute original retro stove/oven that is pale yellow that we thought would really pop with the black cabinets. Well, getting black paint is easier said than done. First we went with a Behr paint, Ace of Spades. Looked black on the card, but after the first coat we realized it was more of a charcoal grey. Well that led my beloved to Home Depot where he picked up a can of what the HD paint guy swore was the blackest of the black, Ralph Lauren Tea Kettle Black.

He must have mixed incorrectly because the color we ended up with was not the same color as the paint chip- we got a midnight blue color. Perfectly lovely, but true black she ain’t. Ce la vie, they’re pretty. Will send our before and after pics for your judgement!

Thanks! And keep on keepin’ on with younghouselove!