Just a Little Blue House

SO, we know that moving a water heater is dull and uneventful, but we also know that Kellan and Rebekah Vincent moving a water heater is simply the most exciting thing ever! Trust me, we were laughing at every single mishap… yeahhhh. I’d say we (we meaning Rebekah’s muscles) are super good at a lot of the house work we do, but somethings just don’t go right. However I think this one was only 3 trips to Lowes, so that’s pretty good for us!

We decided that the only place for the hot water heater was the attic. It was sitting the the kitchen, but as we need all the space we can get in the kitchen, it had to go. It’s a big tank, and we didn’t have the option of going tankless so, moving it was the only option. The basic idea of the job is that we take the heater out, solder a bunch of copper pipes together to reach the attic, then reconnect the water heater to electricity and the water supply. Sounds simple.

We went to get all our supplies the day before at Lowes, and a nice helpful worker came up to ask what we were up to. We chatted for a bit and he asks:

Lowes Dude: Well! Have any questions for me?

Rebekah: Will we have to come back here this weekend?

Lowes Dude: Yes.

Rebekah: Ohhhh….

I don’t remember the conversation exactly, but that dude was right. Twice over! They hire good people at Lowes!

We got what we thought were all the supplies we needed for the weekend and happily went on our way. We started work the next morning with enthusiasm!!! Kellan drained the tank, disconnected it, etc. So then we tried our hand at soldering. I was in charge of the important task of holding the propane tank while Kellan tried to solder the pipes together, I watched. While watching I realized, “HEY! I know how to do this!” Kellan was skeptical, but psh, I showed him whats what. Mhm. However, the only reason why I knew how to do solder was because I took a jewelry making class in Ecuador where I learned how to solder itsy bitsy pieces of silver together! Kellan was impressed! Either because I actually knew a piece of construction more than he did, or because he didn’t have to solder any more of the 12 joints together! Either way he was proud of me.

While this isn't super good or anything, its pretty good for a non-professional

This is an example of a terrible soldering job! This one I soldered, then it was leaking, so I tried it again, and it ended up looking like this... NOT a good joint!

Back to the comedy…

I did forget to mention that we bought the wrong size pipe the first time around, so that’s why we had to make a second trip to Lowes. The third time was because we messed up a joint so bad we needed more pipe! What a surprise! I honestly don’t know why we haven’t bought stock in Lowes yet…

ANYWAY. To me, the most amusing part of this whole water heater moving experience was when we actually had to haul the water heater from the ground floor, to the second floor, to the attic. Because my muscles were tired at this point, we asked Ross, Kellan’s dad, come over to assist in the lugging around of the water heater. Well first, they tried bear-hugging the water heater up our rickity ladder to the second floor while I stood around and looked pretty. Then they discovered that wouldn’t work. So Ross pulled his handy ratchet strap out of his truck and they tied it around the tank. Then, we discovered we had to lift it up to the balcony first because the ladder was getting in the way. So Kellan got to bear-hug the water heater again. They successfully lifted the tank up to the second floor, but then had the quandry of how to lift it into the attic as the opening in the sheetrock is only 24” x 30” and the tank has a diameter of 24”. As this point I was told:

Kellan: Rebekah, stay away when we’re lifting it up, in case we slip!

Ross: [5 minutes later] Rebekah, don’t get under this while we’re lifting it up.

Well, as they start to lift it up into the attic, the tank swings to the side and I hear:

Kellan, Ross: Rebekah!! Line it up under hole!!!!!

So much for staying out from underneath the thing….

Well, all this to say, we have hot water, and it now comes from the attic instead of the kitchen! YAY!

I know this is pretty self-congradultory, but I had to find some way to make a post on moving the hot water heater interesting! All I did was solder the joints, Kellan did the hard work!

Pipes in the kitchen, running upstairs...

Pipes running up in the 2nd floor closet...

ANDDD Finally in the attic!

Happy New Year! I know these are Christmas pictures, but yeahhh, we’re definitely behind on blog posts and it’s catch-up time! So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.

Early Christmas morning!

We had a wonderful first holiday season together and we’re looking forward to more. Christmas was a very different time for both of us I think. It was a little odd because before we were married of course we did what our families did, and now having our own family, we got to make our own Christmas! It is odd though! You just get so used to doing things one way and then its not there all the sudden. I’m not complaining or anything and Christmas was wonderful; simply reflecting back on that time makes me think about the switch that happened! We had a very fun and exciting first Christmas together with friends and family!

One of my favorite things we did was find our own Christmas tree! Austin is full of cedar trees which look close enough to Christmas trees if you ask me. Soooo we snuck out in the dark, found the perfect tree, cut ‘er down and dragged it home! Haha, really the tree was on our property so we didn’t have to go too far! We did get a strange look from a neighbor walking by though…. I really loved our tree. It was very home-y and with Kellan’s excellent pruning skills, he shaped it too look just right! Since we’re living in just a couple of rooms in the house right now, we set the tree up just a few feet away from our bed and I really liked laying in bed at night and looking at the lights! I wouldn’t mind cutting down another cedar next year to be honest! We were joking though that next year we should find one of the pre-decorated ones along the road… Austinites have a tradition of decorating random Christmas trees with balls and ribbons along certain roads, and I love seeing them every year!

Cedar trees get a facelift

So that was some of our first Christmas together! We didn’t have an angel or star to put on top of the Christmas tree so we put a stuffed animal up there Kellan gave me a while back, I think its cute, untraditional, but cute! And of course, here is our complete family picture with our nutter of a cat.

Us with Oso

We’ll be updating more very shortly, so look for things like “bear-hugging the waterheater up to the attic” and “who is the better solder-er in the vincent household???” and “LBC” (hint: we say LBH to shorten saying Little Blue House) and maybe a “virtual” tour of the house soon! Thanks for reading, hope you all have a wonderful 2011 (WHOOP!).