Vacation? ... not really!

THE TOUR is closed from Christmas thru New Years, but this has NOT been a vacation for me. I drove down to Weston to take care of fixing everything at my house that didn't pass inspection. I made calls all day yesterday & surprisingly got a lot done. I just didn't have much time to take blog pix.

Today "Tex" the handyman showed up first. He had a lot to repair so he spent the whole day here. After 2 trips to Home Depot, he fixed a leaky kitchen sink supply valve, a toilet flow valve, wired in 2 new smoke detectors, replaced 2 garage coach light fixtures + 2 corner floodlight fixtures, rescreened 3 sliding door panels & replaced/primed/painted a 2" section of garage door trim that had wood rot.

Shortly after Tex arrived, the electrician came to replace 4 GFI outlets that were not tripping, figure out why the office's east outlets were not functional (the last electrician I hired to remove a lot of outlets apparently cut the wire to 2 others) & see why the inspector claimed 2 out of 7 ceiling fans were not grounded (they were actually all grounded).

I also managed to fit in 2 roofing estimates & 2 termite estimates. The inspector claimed he saw drywood termite droppings in a pocket door in between the guest bedroom & guest bathroom. I asked what termite droppings look like (since 2 other estimators could not find any termite evidence) & he said ground pepper or coffee. I said it probably was ground coffee. In any event, I had to treat it since it was on the inspection report.

Terminix sent 2 guys (one was a termite expert). He was the first to actually thoroughly examine things like insulation with a powerful lighted microscope. He was in the studio admiring the lightstand storage cabinet when I mentioned that we tried to remove the strips that the super industrial drawer rails were screwed into, but 4 of 12 screws were completely inaccessible. Mr Termite Expert climbed into the cabinet & continually knocked the custom built heavy-duty sliding insert gently until it extended past the screws. Voila ... he was pretty jazzed he was able to unscrew the rails & remove the insert (he still had to loosen 6 door hinges to get it out of the cabinet.

Later in the afternoon "Two Men in a Truck" came to move Mary's furniture into her townhouse. They were great movers. We loved the giant rubber bands they used to keep the dresser drawers closed.