and the high line is a wonderful repurposing of misplaced infrastructure to an elevated park for the community it originally bisected

Misplaced?

Our last night we went to see Hell's Kitchen, a musical by Alicia Keys. We really enjoyed it.

Back home now and ready to get back to the boondoggle.

Today's mission is to replace this guy.

Ugh

We found two wet areas in the wall. My guess is one might be from the washing machine drain and one might be from seepage out of the old copper pipes. I can't really figure out a source for either one, but I pulled the sheetrock out of the garage side and we'll hook stuff up and try to identify.

I had to pull some sheetrock out to get to the wet areas. I think it's fine. We dried it all out and I don't see any water coming in.

New cabinets are in. The sink was too big for the cabinet so I had to saw it some. I checked the old ones and whoever put them in did the same thing.

The countertop was all kinds of heavy. My wife and I really struggled with it but....

Great Success!

Kinda surprised, thought you'd go with duals on the replace. Nice work, glad there's not a leak after all.

Got the guest bathroom ready for the new cabinets.

The countertop goes the entire length of the bathroom and it's tight. I thought I could back out the screws holding the old cabinets in and pull the entire assembly out but it wouldn't budge. Missed a couple screws and one just wouldn't back out.

So loosened the countertop and slid it on top of the old cabinets we pulled from the master.

Super tight but I was able to remove everything.

Worst mold we've found.

Do you think the mold has been there a while?

I don't think so. But it is in the same area we had the drain pipe leak. So, maybe.

The guest bathroom was beyond difficult.

First, there wasn't any room to work. I was able to squeeze in between the new cabinets and the huge countertop but we had a brace under the countertop that was sticking out that I had to climb over every time I moved from one end to the other. My second challenge was just getting the new cabinets up and over the countertop and in place.

Something was off that I still can't pinpoint. Either the wall isn't square or the new cabinets aren't square because when I set them on the floor the bottom butts up to the wall, but the top is more than a 1/4 inch off. It's enough to matter.

Screwing the cabinets together was a huge challenge. I just couldn't get them all exactly flush to each other. It's enough to bother me.

We were able to get the countertop on the existing cabinets but it was really difficult. We had about 1/4 ' to play with so just moving it a little more on one side would bind it against the walls. My wife isn't strong enough to slide it so we had to switch ends every time we were able to move it in a few inches.

We finally got it on after 1/2 hour of extremely difficult work.

I'm not really happy with the end result. They don't line up perfectly at all. It's probably not enough that anyone would ever notice once doors and drawers are in, but I'm not sure I can live with it.

I have to take a day off. I'm not sure if it was the amount of work I did yesterday, or the fact I got a flu shot monday, or maybe a combination, but my body is completely wiped out.

I'll give it a day or two before I get back in and try to fix things up a little better. I'm not sure if it is even possible with all that weight on it now, but I'll try.

This was every bit as hard as I thought it would be, maybe even harder.

I've been debating doing the tile floors myself. My "you can do this" attitude keeps at me, but I'm not good at tile and I botched one tile job years ago. Once it isn't right, it never lets you forget.

Our next door neighbor is getting all new tile. That's a story in itself. They spent a year remodeling and he put down laminate floor himself in the entire house. It took him weeks. That was about 6 months before the flood and it all had to come up. He's not going to try to do it himself again.

Anyway, I talked to the guys doing the work and I think I might go with them if they are reasonable. The first thing he told me is it isn't a good idea to slap new tile directly onto a terrazzo floor. He says the terrazzo is really smooth and won't bond properly with the thinset. They have to "rough it up" first to guarantee a long lasting floor. I'm not sure I'm ready to tackle all this myself, plus I'm really getting exhausted from all this.

He'll give me a bid tonight and I'm leaning towards using him since he's doing a fantastic job on the neighbor's house.

I tried to rewire the boat lift breaker box. Because I can't remember much of anything. I put tape on every single wire and marked it. From what I can tell I did it correctly, but nothing works and it's even weirder than that. Stuff works that shouldn't. I'm baffled.

I sent an PM to Mark to see if he has any clue. I'm definitely clueless.

I somewhat figured it out, maybe. I at least go the boat lift working. Nothing else does but at least I've narrowed the issue down.

The hits just keep coming.

We bought my wife's car several weeks ago, in the middle of all the chaos. We got her a Honda Accord.

But we left without the paperwork so we called and asked them to send it to us. It took over a week to get it and all we got was the loan agreement.

The loan amount was $14,000 MORE than the price of the car. Something is really wrong. They sent us no other paperwork.

They have to know this is a mistake. There aren't any accords anywhere for sale even close to the loan amount. Not even close.

This is the kind of thing that keeps happening in the middle of all of this. You have to deal with so many issues and it's like never ending machine gun fire. It just never stops and you can't be on top of things.

And to top it all off, there's yet another storm brewing that has a chance of coming our way.

The bid was higher than what I wanted to pay, but my expert google searching suggests he is on the low end of tile labor costs. I just don't want to be looking at a tile job I botched for the rest of my days here so I'm going to hire him. He said he can start in 2 weeks.

Fun with electricity part...whatever part this is.

I've been trying to debug my dock/lift electricity. It just wasn't making a lick of sense. Wires were hot that shouldn't be, nothing really worked right.

So, I decided to separate circuits as best I could. Isolated the lift box - worked fine. Isolated the receptacle on the pole. Worked fine.

The only thing left was a light and light switch. I had a red/black/white/green wire going from the light to the switch. My guess was that the black was hot going into the switch and the red was supposed to be coming from the switch back to the light. They had a weird dimmer thing going that I didn't understand, but I figured my analysis was correct.

The only thing was, the red wire coming back from the switch was hot no matter which way the switch was. Maybe a bad switch? I dunno, I've never encountered that before.

So, I just disconnected the switch, turned on the breaker, and the red wire was still hot. WAT!? Then for shits and giggles I tested the white. Also hot. Every damn wire was hot. So, maybe a wire somewhere in the conduit got stripped or rotted or something. Didn't make any sense. They are fairly new wires.

So, I started pulling the wires out. First one out was wet. Hmmm.... I went ahead and took the conduit off. It was full of water - saltwater. I wouldn't have thought that it would cause a short but I have no other explanation.

So, my wife went to the dealership. They completely stonewalled her. They refused to give her any of the paperwork other than the final loan agreement. They just kept telling her, it all looks good. Then I called and they guy also said it all looks good. I told him we didn't get any of the paperwork and he said he would have to ask if he could email it to me. Haven't heard anything since.

The guy on the phone mentioned a couple of the add-ons that he said were on it. The two he mentioned we SPECIFIALLY refused. I remember being asked and we said no.

Something smells rotten with this one. This is almost 50% higher than the price we agreed on.

I've sent a google review on it and emailed the honda corporate office. We have a local news person that looks into stuff like this that I'll email. We will also be hiring an attorney.

I just checked the loan agreement on the truck I bought a few days after from Chevrolet. The amount of the loan is EXACTLY what we agreed on. Not a single add-on.

I'm just boiling on this one.

We continue to battle the car dealership. They refuse to tell us why there is such a huge difference between the agreed upon price, and the loan amount. They continue to refuse to give us any supporting documentation.

I've filed a complaint with BBB and the attorney general.

We finally got someone at the Honda dealership to contact us. My guess was the 1 star rating we gave them on google (more on this later).

It turns out they did overcharge us and admitted to it. They blamed it on a "clerical error." We spent quite a bit of time with the sales manager and the end result was they corrected the "clerical error" and agreed to reimburse us for the difference. Nothing more.

The sales manager then requested we change the google review rating to 5 stars. I told him that I would post the follow-up that they corrected things but there was no way this was a 5 star experience.

He then called back again several minutes later and asked if we could find it in our hearts to give him a 5 star rating. I told him once again that it was anything but a 5 star experience and the only thing he did was correct what they did wrong and it took several days of refusing to do anything before they did. I also told him about my experience with the chevy dealership when I bought my truck and told him THAT was a 5 star experience. He continued to try to get me to change the rating to 5 stars.

I did not and I explained in my review why.

Finally got the guest bathroom cabinets in correctly. We had them in but they weren't straight and flush with each other. We were so exhausted when we finally got the countertop on that I wasn't inclined to spend any more time trying to fix it.

We lifted the countertop again and got things fixed. Looks fine now. Whew, that was really hard.

We finally got out on the boat for a booze cruise. We putted around our neighborhood. What a mess. Almost every dock facing the bay is damaged, many completely destroyed. Quite a few seawalls destroyed. Boats in people's backyards.

Holy crap, I imagine fixing the seawall in the second picture is going to be quite a chore.

If the Honda dealer asked me to change my review after this debacle, pretty sure I wouldn't have been so calm. Quite certain the phrase, "****ing kidding me?' would've been said.

Amazing to me it apparently didn't occur to them to offer anything for your hassles--even a couple oil changes or something would've went a long way. Guess you're never buying from them again.