Day One

Today is the first day of our home improvements. We purposely bought this condo to avoid some of the work that was necessary to update many of the older Berkeley homes we were looking at. Nevertheless, we've already got an extensive project list.

Today was a busy day...

- Comcast came out to set up our cable and internet. Apparently, the person (or people) who lived here before were a little cable-crazy so there are a ton of cable outlets throughout the house (many rooms have two). The line needed to be fixed and "excess" outlets taken out of the loop to make sure a couple newly-connected ones would work. The guy ended up being here for two hours. I got to listen to him talk endlessly about strategies for picking up "chicks," including his friend's apparently successful strategy of going to "tranny bars." However, he did do a lot of work for us to make sure it all worked so I gave him a $20 tip.

- We also wanted to change our locks. A guy came by and replaced all of the locks (we only need one key now), all the while using WAY too much lube (doors needed to be cleaned after).

- The last contractor I got to deal with today was a plumber. Sometime after our home inspection and before we moved in, the downstairs toilet stopped working. It was probably just poor timing, made worse by one of the seller's contractors turning the water off and on while doing some work. Luckily, the seller said he would cover the cost. The plumber replaced two older parts and everything's flushin' as it should. Cost would have been $150, but someone else is paying.

A time-consuming day, but all-in-all a success to start things off. Next up, new appliances!

You'll notice that the sidebar counts some trips to IKEA and Home Depot. That's because Ilana likes to get ideas. No work or supplies have yet to result from said trips.