Yikes.

Yesterday was bonus day here at Hasbro. I am due 10% of my yearly earnings, which, after taxes, works out to about .005% of my yearly earnings. That said, up until about 5pm yesterday, I had a few thousand dollars more than I started the day with. At 5pm, I was back in the red.

I went to the house to check up on things and pay some people. The skylights are in (awesome) and they've started fixing some ceiling problems. The plumbers are starting to plumb the master bathroom, and the electrician is doing his job, and being kind of stupid (more on this later).

I talked to the plumbers first, which was my most expensive conversation of the day. They're going to have to drop a ceiling in one of the first floor bedrooms down about 6 inches, which is fine, as they're a little over 9 feet to begin with. The house uses tiny little joists, and thus, cutting a big hole in the middle of it might compromise the structural integrity, leaving about a sixteenth of an inch of wood at the top and bottom of the hole. Again, no big deal to drop the ceiling a little if it means having a shower connected to the master bedroom.

After that conversation, I cut them a check for three grand (oof) and they were back to work.

Next up was my electrician. I went over some recessed lighting placement with him in the living room and talked about hardwired vs. battery operated smoke/carbon monoxide detectors. He wants to hard wire them, to the tune of 150 bucks, plus the cost of the alarms. I didn't really want to spend that much. I told him I'd get back to him.

As for the recessed lighting, this little exchange occurred. See photo for referenced living room area:

Electrician Ron: "So what are you going to do with this little area?"

Ryan: "Probably a little reading area or something."

ER: "Yea, like a little jerk off area?"

Ryan "Um."

I may be relatively new to RI, and I'm not familiar with all of the colloquialisms yet, but a little "jerk off area" isn't really what I had in mind, and I'm not sure I'll market the house that way. I'm sure he meant it like "relaxing" or something. Regardless, consider it filed away as at least one possibility for staging when the house is ready for an open house. Gross.

Getting back to the decisions at hand, rather than decisions to be made in the coming months, I decided on two recessed lights in the little READING area and four more surrounding the ceiling fan in the main living area. Originally, it was going to be four in the living room, but they have two extra 'cans' (recessed lighting housing) so I might as well use them if they're not going to charge me for labor.

The conversation then shifted to the kitchen. The old owner, who was a terrible handyman (dis-handyman?) had plugged the over the range hood into a wall socket above the stove, then threaded the cord back up through the wall (behind the drywall/tile) to the hood above. I had never seen anything like it. Essentially, he plugged in the hood, then put up a wall, then tiled, leaving the hood's plug exposed. See below if you don't believe me (also, please notice the fine tiling workmanship. Nice clean cuts for the electrical box, tile seams line up perfectly, immaculate grout,etc):

After he explained how this is going to be fixed, he asked me about a weird little door in the kitchen. See below:




The refrigerator is going in front of the little closet thing, as it's pretty much useless. Or so I thought.

Electrician Ron made a delightful suggestion to me, and I swear to you that he wasn't joking. First he asked me what I did for a living, and I told him I'm a professional nerd for Hasbro. He then thought for a second, and suggested that I use the little closet spot, especially once the fridge is there, as a good hiding spot for my valuables. What valuables you ask? Well, my gold bars of course. Unreal.