Today's lesson - garbage disposal edition

It's safe to assume that sometimes I'm going to get super slammed at my job and not be able to post for awhile. Sorry about that!

This is going to be a quick one. Tonight, Shoe turned on the disposal. It made a groan and then nothing. Silence.

All houses get to the point where things start breaking, one at a time. After the garage door, the shower leak, the sprinkler system, the microwave... yada yada... we immediately panicked at the disposal.

First thing I did was send Shoe to the garage to check the fuses. Nothing there.

Then I looked at our homeowner's warranty.

(Homeowner's Warranty, as a side-note to home buyers, is something you're forced to get upon closing. But it's actually a good thing. It covers major appliances and some other things for a year after you move in.)

The disposal was covered. An immediate "phew." But I also decided to take a moment and google "garbage disposal not working."

Turns out garbage disposals have reset buttons, like a hairdryer. Who knew? Shoe pressed the little red button on the bottom of the disposal. And voila, it worked again. One thing not broken! Yay!

The lessons:
1) Don't panic
2) Google everything
3) Garbage disposals have reset buttons

Techno thermo.

We've done a bunch of projects to this house already. I hope to eventually catch up and talk about what we're doing that very day/week. But in the meantime...

When we moved in, we had an old, regular thermostat - I would assume it was the one that originally came with the house. It was kind of ugly, it was kind of falling off the wall. It had programs that you could set up, I think, but it was pretty complicated. However, it worked okay. I mean, it turned on the A/C and turned if off when it got to the set temperature.

Honestly,  I didn't think much of it. Until a friend of mine installed Nest. I started doing some research.

Nest is a modern, kind of pricey thermostat. It's wifi enabled so you can run it from your iPhone, even when you're away from the house. You can set it to "away" and it'll lower/raise the temp to save energy. It also learns your habits so eventually, you don't even have to move it to away manually - it does it itself. I was concerned about our cats and the thermostat making it too hot for them, but you set the minimum and maximum temperatures for when you're away. The cats would be perfectly happy snoozing all day at 78 degrees.

At first, I thought the thermostat was too much and unnecessary. But it's the kind of thing that festers in your mind. And you just want it and want it and want it. And then you get a Lowe's coupon and voila - you're installing a new thermostat.

We probably would've never taken on a thermostat installation, but my dad had recently taught us how to change light switches and install dimmers (a later post.) Shoe was riding a wave of confidence. Besides, if you have the right kind of A/C system, Nest is incredibly easy to install. Check out the website: Nest.com

The system comes with labels for the wires and you can watch the videos online... it really felt like the makers thought of every way to simplify the process. The hardest part was getting the old thermostat off the wall - even though it was basically hanging there, it was still un-yank-able. I googled the manufacturer, found the manual and eventually, we figured it out. We had to touch up the paint, since Nest is so much smaller but that was no big deal. We're painting pros at this point.

In short, Nest has been great. It looks great, it works well and we love it. Totally worth the upgrade. And I can't wait to see the power bill.

Before, after and close up. The light on the display only lights up when it senses motion. (The remote on the wall is for our ceiling fan. It's nice to have a remote but I'd love to upgrade that look... hmmm...)

We just had no idea: Garage edition.

When you buy a house, your first house, you really have no idea what you're getting into. There will be little surprises that pop up along the way, no matter what.

Today's surprise, the garage. Specifically, the garage door openers.

As mentioned previously, our home has two garage doors. They work separately - each with its own garage door opener.

When we moved in, the door on the left was working. The door on the right was not. Both could be opened manually. Both were Sears Craftsman doors (I later found the original boxes, circa 1998, in the garage) and the previous owner left us with no push-button openers. They did give us the number code to the box right outside the garage door. So that's how we opened it - pull into the driveway, put the car in park, leap out and punch in the code, get back in the car. It wasn't ideal, but we had bigger fish to fry and opted to live with it.

I should stop to mention the weirder item now: There is an attic space above the garage. The garage door opener blocked access to it. You couldn't get the door down without it hitting the end of the opener. This struck me as scary, mainly because I had no idea what kind of wreckage had been left up there for us to deal with.

Photo from inspection. The Craftsman opener, blocking entry to the attic.

I was researching the garage doors already for the future possibility of fixing the door on the right and for adjusting the door on the left to not block the attic. It seemed expensive though - about $300-400 just to fix one of them using a garage door company.

And then... both doors broke. It became leap out of the car, yank the door up, get back in the car. I was OVER IT in a matter of days. And basically on a whim, like I purchase most things, I decided to go ahead and get a new opener from Lowe's and have their people install it.

I chose this one (Genie 3/4-HP Intellicode 2 Belt Garage Door Opener) because it was both quiet and not the most expensive.

From left to right: openers for the car, opener for beside the house door, sensors to make sure nobody gets crushed, opener for outside the garage door.)

The installation guy shows up and I tell him we're looking to fix the door on the left. He immediately takes one look at the attic situation and declares it impossible.

Hey, guess what you should know about garage door openers? Most need to be at least 10 feet back from the opening of the garage. Which would put our opener right over the attic door. Basically, to EVER fix this issue, we'll have to hire a contractor to completely relocate the attic door. Sounds super cheap and easy.

What gets me most about this: Why wasn't this built right to begin with? I know they had garage door openers when this house was built. Nobody saw this as an issue? The attic door clearly can't open! Rage face.

Anyway, I digress. I asked the installer to fix the right garage door instead. (He seemed amazed that we had two broken doors, which I found funny. I've never had a garage in all these apartments. Any garage - even a broken one - was a step up!) My husband and I rushed to clear that right area which had become a dumping ground for paint, bird seed, trash cans, etc. Then the installer took about an hour and a half to get the door up. And it's pretty awesome. So quiet! Like a remote control car. You can also turn the light on and off manually. And lock the door completely.

A couple of weeks later, I finally got around to programming the push button opener outside the garage. And I learned how to lock the broken door on the left manually, because really anybody could just pull it open. (To lock: there are metal bars on the inside of the garage door that basically expand and slide into grooves on the walls beside the garage. The metal grooves stop the door from going up. That description makes little sense, sorry.)

I've been pretty happy with the one working door for awhile now. Though I did run into an issue - our bathroom started leaking (individual post(s) to come) and I needed to get into that space because it was near the damage. I told Shoe I wanted to take down that garage door opener so we could open the attic door. But he delayed me - said we should wait for my dad to visit or wait for the upcoming weekend.

Impatience and rage do a lot for me. So while Shoe was at a late work function, I dragged out the ladder, some screwdrivers, wrenches and such, and got to work. At first, I thought I could just take the opener off the ceiling - wrong. The opener connects to a long bar that goes all the way to the other wall of the garage. I wouldn't be able to hold all that weight on a ladder by myself. So I decided to just dismantle the opener, piece by piece, until I got enough clearance.

By the end, I was hot, sweaty, angry, etc. But this was the eventual result:

Let that be a warning to all electronics that mess with me.

Voila! I was in the attic space where there was all good news - no mess left behind, a relatively big space that we can add a plywood flooring to for storage, and no leaks. Also, no scary, rabid raccoon running at my face which was my true fear when I poked my head up there.

The garage door opener hung in that state for a few weeks. Then my dad visited and we took down the whole thing. Goodbye broken opener! Good riddance. 

But... weren't microwaves invented to make life easier?

Let's talk about that microwave. As pictured before:

From the original house ad.

First of all, I had no idea what a "built-in microwave" was. And maybe you don't either. There are actual "built-in microwaves" out there. They are very expensive and they open in a totally different way. They look like little ovens. I know nothing about them, nor do I care to.

Here is a photo of one. Also sometimes referred to as a microwave drawer or a built-in convection oven. This one costs over $1k at Lowe's.

The built-in microwave we had was a countertop microwave with an optional trim kit. In this cabinet hole, there are metal-lined walls. And in the back is a plug. That's it - "built in." Sadly, we can't get larger on the original microwave photo, but the trim kit is basically a big rectangle with a microwave size hole in the middle. The trim kit overlaps and screws into the cabinet and comes with a piece that props the microwave up to the correct height.

The microwave in the photo was a GE. It had likely been there for many, many years. Our house was build in... 1996? I think? So this microwave had probably lived a long life. When you cut it on, it made a microwave noise and all that jazz, yet nothing warmed. Sad.

On to buying a new microwave and trim kit. So nowhere on this GE microwave did it say the cubic footage and that's basically how microwaves are measured and marketed. All I had was the measurement of the hole in the cabinets and the length and width of the current microwave. That meant every time I looked at a microwave, I had to go into the "details" section and find its specs, or turn the box over and over in the store, looking for inches.

I also put to use my Consumer Reports subscription. Kenmore is a very highly rated microwave so I was in for that. Though finding the corresponding trim kit proved... difficult. And by difficult, I mean impossible. The websites do not have this information - at least not clearly marked. I figured what I bought would work together if both the microwave and trim kit were Kenmore - especially since I bought it at a Sears appliance center.

And we also decided on stainless steel. A conversion we'd eventually like to make on all the kitchen appliances.

My mistake was going to a Sears appliance center. It was newly opened. It was poorly stocked. They don't carry tons of stuff at these centers. They are mainly showrooms for people to look at big appliances that you typically have delivered. Not products you can throw in your trunk like a microwave. So I had to place an order for the microwave and trim kit I wanted, both of which would fit the dimensions of my cabinet hole.

The Kenmore microwave and trim kit we ordered.

And then we waited... without a microwave... for one week... and then another... the Sears appliance center got our trim kit in, they called to say. That would really not do us much good. The microwave was coming soon. "Soon" proved to be another week. The day they called to offer to go pick up the microwave at their warehouse and bring it the next day - only to call back an hour later and say that, no, it would take another three days - that's the day I quit. I picked up my trim kit, canceled the order and picked up the same microwave, ready to go, at an actual Sears.

We got it home, we put it in the hole. The microwave fit! We opened the trim kit. We held it up to the microwave... the trim kit was a no-go. It didn't fit the space, it didn't fit the microwave.

I retreated to more research. I was reading comments sections, instructional manuals downloaded as PDFs, anything to find a trim kit to fit this microwave. It quickly became apparent that this microwave would be too small for any trim kit. After all that waiting, both microwave and trim kit had to go back. Furthermore, Kenmore was out of the running - I couldn't find any information on a matching set anywhere.

The kicker during my research? I'd find a trim kit with the model numbers for a corresponding microwave. I'd search for the microwave - discontinued. Then I'd find a microwave with model numbers for the corresponding trim kit. I'd search for the trim kit - discontinued. FETAL POSITION.

It was back to square one. And we were still without this convenience that you really didn't know how much you used until it wasn't there.

Finally - finally, finally, finally - I thought I found a trim kit with a matching microwave that would fit our space. A Whirlpool combination. We went to Home Depot to see if we could find it. This was on July 20th. We ordered our first wrong microwave on July 2nd. And low and behold... the employee at Home Depot, this angel in an orange apron, actually pulled out the Whirlpool manufacturer catalog (WHY IS THAT NOT ONLINE??) and helped us match the microwave up with a trim kit and helped us place an order for free delivery.

When the kindly delivery men dropped off our 27" Whirlpool microwave and trim kit, we were thrilled to find that they fit the space and fit with each other. We (Shoe) installed it, screwed in the trim kit and voila, a working microwave.

The new microwave! Crappy photo by me.

Of course, life isn't perfect. We discovered that when the previous owners painted the cabinets, they failed to take down the trim kit and paint below it. So now there's a line of "raw" cabinet around our new trim kit. No matter - we're planning to take on the kitchen cabinets one day anyhow.

Microwave post done. Ding!

What we knew.

When we bought our new house, we knew there were a few things that needed to be done:

1) The door going from the house into the garage had a kitty door on it. Our cats are way too sheltered to be allowed in the garage. (Battery acid, pesticide, the car, an opening and closing garage door, etc.) We knew we'd have to get a new door to replace that one.

Photo from inspector. The kitty door actually creates a fire hazard too, according to inspection.

2) Our garage doors are two separate doors. The one on the right was not working.

3) The microwave (built-in) was not working. And by "built-in," I mean there was a space in the cabinet for the microwave to go with a plug in the back. That whole experience deserves its own post though. Trying to replace that microwave may be the closest I've gotten so far to going into the fetal position and staying there.

From the original ad for the house. Perfectly fine looking microwave. Perfectly not warming anything.

4) The water heater was on its last leg. It still worked, but not optimally and could go down at any moment.

Photo from inspector. Super retro, huh? There were rust stains and water leaks on the sides of the heater.

5) There were little things too: debris in the gutter, a downspout that sprayed onto the deck, a light fixture with a shattered bulb in it, etc.

6) We also knew we'd have to get the locks changed (that's apparently a thing with a new house because you never know how many spare keys are floating around out there) and hire a lawn company, since we had no mower.

I dove right into research. I joined Angie's List and Consumer Reports. My Google Docs were impressive. Lists of handymen, lawn companies, remodeling companies, garage door companies, locksmiths, plumbers, etc. My iPhone quickly added apps for Home Depot and Lowe's. Magazines stacked up.

And it became immediately clear that we had no idea what we were doing with this house.

However, the thing to know about me is that, even without prior experience, general knowledge or common sense, I still think I (meaning Shoe) can do anything myself. All I need is a book or a YouTube video or a little bit of research, right? Thank god for Shoe. And the internet.

1) I quickly learned that replacing a door was not as simple as unscrewing the old one and putting the new one in. With a steel door (all doors to the outside should be steel for fire and safety reasons), you need to replace the frame too. So we hired a handyman I found on Angie's List. When I saw him replace the door (about a thirty minute process that involved removing the frame, lots of hammering and more), I was so glad we didn't do it ourselves.

2) We decided to hold off on the garage door since we only have one car. This was fine for awhile, until the other door broke too. Now it warrants its own post.

3) As stated, the microwave was a nightmare. NIGHTMARE. It will also have its own post.

4) We bought a new water heater at Lowe's - a Whirlpool, which is a brand that's really well-rated online. We used Lowe's installation services - which basically means Lowe's acts as a middle-man between you and a plumbing service. This costs a lot, but Shoe insisted since our water heater was gas and errors with gas can have serious consequences. Things to know about water heaters: gallon size, gas or electric and city codes. You're going to need to install a pan underneath it in case it leaks and you'll likely need new connection pipes, especially if it's in the shape ours was. The water heater took about an hour to install and it passed city code. Our water is so warm now. It's great.

5) The handyman took care of the gutter debris too. I'd love to get a ladder that's tall enough for us to handle that stuff but Shoe's not big on heights. The downspout issue was solved by an extender piece purchased at Lowe's. And the bulb was easily replaced.

6) The locksmith came over and changed all of our locks, leaving us with four copies of keys. We had one small issue - our handle lock on our patio door wasn't working so he couldn't do that one. I ended up doing it myself later, which I will try to remember to blog about. And I hired a mowing company to come every other Monday.

That's it for the overall start-out post. Individual chaos coming soon.

Whose blog is this?

My name is Heather and my husband, who I'm sure will be mentioned repeatedly, is named Shoe. We are both writers in advertising fields.

I am the dreamer. Shoe is the realist. I start multiple projects at once. Shoe finishes them one at a time. I make large messes. Shoe works orderly. I take risks. Shoe panics. We balance each other out.

We also have two cats - Wall-e, the bold, and Arnold, the timid. They are trouble. And we are obsessed with them.

Before July, Shoe and I lived in apartments. In fact, Shoe and I have lived in four different apartments in three different states - North Carolina, New York and Texas - since we moved in together. Some were disasters and some were much nicer, but all were maintained by landlords and/or angry maintenance men. In other words, we learned very little besides basic communication skills.

I haven't lived in an honest-to-God house since I graduated high school in 2000. Shoe rented a house when we first met, but it's hardly the same as owning one. My dad has tried, often futilely, to teach me basic life skills for years and years and years. I remain inept and lacking in common sense. Shoe didn't have lessons in home maintenance, but he does have natural common sense.

And in July, we bought our first house.

This is a log of what happened next, what's happening now and what we hope to do in the future. Welcome to our home.