EcoWater Installed

Rachel and I try to be healthy and environmentally conscious so we decided we’d have a soft water system installed. For starters, do you have any idea what’s legally allowed in your drinking water? Put it this way, the LA-DWP site reads, “Is Los Angeles City water safe to drink right from the faucet? Probably yes.” I’m not kidding.

Second, the expense of buying all those bottles of water is nothing compared to the environmental expense. Not to mention that almost all of that bottled water is nothing more than tap water. I could go on and on.

Well, today EcoWater installed our new Water Refiner and Reverse Osmosis system, but not without a hitch (of course.) After they left, so did Rachel and I. When we returned we found water leaking out around the base of the foundation to the new chimney.

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A few panicked phone calls later we got the installer to come back. Turns out that the vibration of cutting the pipes below had burst a leak in the pipe further down. The solution? Replace the entire pipe with a new copper pipe, from the front of the house all the way to the back. When all was said and done, we had a new refiner in the cellar, a reverse osmosis unit under the sink (with a line to the ice maker) and all the pure water we could drink.

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Bathroom Wallpaper

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As I mentioned before, every room in the house was wallpapered when we bought it. Rachel and I decided we’d take off the wallpaper in some of the rooms ourselves, and leave some to the professionals. Mike from Safe & Simple Wallpaper Removal came out and gave us some quotes, some advice and a crash course on wallpaper removal. We decided we’d do the bedroom, office, sun room, hall, living room and dining room ourselves to try and save some money. We’d pay to have the bathroom, kitchen and laundry room—the harder rooms—done by the pros. It was money well spent. They finished the bathroom in no time.

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Once the wallpaper was off we discovered a few things: what we thought might be tile on the bottom was actually just plaster that had been made to look like tile (a common practice at the time.) The plaster was in bad shape and had to be replaced. There was an old electric wall heater that had to be removed and there were signs of a gas heater from back in the day. We also discovered some wood rot around the tub which needed to be fixed. Did I mention the toilet and sink were both cracked and the sink faucet leaked and had to be replaced?

Birth of a Ditch, Death of a Tree?

I had another one of those panic feelings and thought I’d better check on the Sinai Construction guys. I discovered they cut through some major roots in two of the trees in the front yard while digging a drainage ditch for the new alley drain. They didn’t think it was worth mentioning, what’s new?

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I’m pretty sure the younger tree is a goner, but I’m hoping the 20+ year old Sweetgum tree will make it. The ditch runs all the way to the street through the front yard.

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What’s next? Wait, don’t answer that.