Guntherisms

Uh oh. I fear the pig butt pic amuses my inner middle-school self just a wee bit too much.

I was helping my mom set up a fancy schmancy online photo book thing last night and the pig butt was chosen as the official placeholder pic for pages where she needs to dig up certain other pics. The photo book is being created in honor of the 10th anniversary of the golf tourney mom hosts in Florida w/ a bunch of her friends. Notable is the fact that the boobie prize for this golf tourney is a golf club cover in the shape of a pig butt. Maybe this fondness for pig butts is a hereditary thing.

But(t) this morning we had the pig-buttiest moment of them all! Anybody who knows us or has been reading this blog for a while knows we've been working on fixing up our...ahem..."handyman's special" of a 100+ y.o. house for the duration of our time here (15 years and counting), slowly but surely, room by room. It's the ultimate DIY project -- a baker and a transcriptionist figuring out how to do plumbing, framing, tiling, sheetrocking, etc. (You've already seen floor refinishing, upstairs hall gutting , wood stripping, stained glass window rebuilding, Jesse's bedroom renovation, destruction of the ugliest porch on the face of the planet.)

The guy who owned this house before us was named Gunther and his remuddling projects, or Guntherisms, have often left us shaking our heads in giggling bewilderment. We spend half our project time undoing his fine handiwork and the other half then moving forward again in ways that are safe, legal, functioning, and suitable to the age and style of the house.

You all know you can't solder PVC pipe, right? Gunther didn't. FYI: Soldered PVC looks a lot like a marshmallow that got too close to the campfire.

You all know that if wallpaper is coming loose, they make glue for that, right? Gunther didn't. Staples all the way, man!

You all know that if you cut live electrical wires and bury them in a wall, they should be capped or at least taped and inside a junction box, right? Not our friend, Gunther, oh no! Live, uncapped wires buried inside a wall! Lucky we haven't woken up in a pile of ashes, don'cha think?

If there was a gap between the roof and the horribly cheesy addition that you smacked onto the back end of your house, and that gap let in all kinds of weather and critters, you might think of any number of weatherproof/critter-resistant solutions, right? Gunther's answer: Stuff a towel in there. The man was clearly a genius.

You all know that five million linear feet of gorgeous chestnut trim should NOT be painted Brady Bunch turquoise and orange, right? RIGHT?!! Yes, of course you do. Gunther. Did. Not.

But this morning, in pig-butt Guntherismus maximus, we discovered that not only did Gunther glue that nasty crap carpet to the subfloor in Jesse's room (subfloor that is not installed at a height matching the rest of the house's flooring, BTW) so that its nasty black foam backing junk can never be removed, but he also NAILED down the edge of the carpet. INSIDE THE CLOSET! As if that area gets so much foot traffic. And as if glue and gravity weren't sufficient.

Ah, Gunther. We can always count on you for another entertaining chapter in our home renovation adventures. We shall miss your antics when we are finished fixing this old house up.

bwahahahaha...as if we're ever going to be finished fixing this place up. Me so funny!

Okay, enough of a break. Back to the oak planks and the chop saw!