Men on the Roof and Mom's Coming For a Visit

There Are Men On the Roof!
Only ten days left until my Mom comes from Port Townsend Washington to visit. This will be a first since we've been in Bakersfield. Oh, she's got a reason, of course. The 8th grade class is throwing a full scale graduation at the church/Community Center across the street (from our house).
I don't remember having a fancy graduation with cap and gown leaving Middle School...do you? Regardless, she is coming and we want to be ready.
We took care of the necesseties, plumbing, heat AC, even did rug/carpet cleaning, room painting and used the homeowners insurance for heating, AC, plumbing and even a dishwasher repairman.
Since we've been in this house I have done more home Improvement than any house I have owned or lived in.
Even though we purchased this house as a Fixer-Upper, we had no clue how much fixing up it really needed.
There was a family living here for not sure how long, but it couldn't be that bad if they were living here, right? I barely noticed that they were bundled up, wearing hooded sweatshirts and it seemed a little dark inside the house. It hadn't come to my attention that the lawn was dead, or close to it, or that the roof looked like a jumbled pile of shingles.
After we moved in the reason for that unfolded. The heater wasn't working and the repairman said it hadn't worked for two seasons. But there's more-
Other things were wrong, things like a clogged main drain, this is good! When you'd use the kitchen sink, the garage/shop sink or the back bathrooms the drain would fill and overflow out the side of the house below the kitchen sink and run down the driveway to the curb...then along the streetside. We found that out after rinsing out a green paintbrish.
Over half the electrical system was shut down and blowing breakers, so the lighting and electrical was working at only half capacity. The polarity of the plugs in the bar-turned-office was reversed, plugs and lights did not work.
I can tell you this first hand and if you want go deeper into detail having worked as a commercial electrician in Seattle Washington and in California for over 23 years.
Things were warming up, temperatures creeping up to one-hundred degrees in April, so we checked for AC. Oh, it wasn't really for ourselves, the fans and flow-through air works wonders to keep cool...it is for my Mom when she comes to visit.
Her life in Port Townsend is one where the weather is typical of the NorthWest; it rains 6 months out of the year and temperatures stay below 70 degrees there, generally speaking.
Found out from the repairman the AC unit had not worked for over 2 years. The AC repairman disconnected the power, and sprayed down the unit (which is on the ground) with a garden hose. That's right, a garden hose! He instructed me to "clean up around the unit and it may last the life of your house".
So Mom, we have A/C now, just for you!
Then came the roof leaks. No, more like small rivers coming in to three parts of the house where water would rush in when it rained. We had pans buckets and mysterious wet spots in the carpets along the walls.
There was another mysterious wet spot in the hall carpet. We thought it was the roof leaking but it turned out to be a plumbing leak behind the small referigerator in the bar area. The ice-maker water hose had sprung a leak and it leaked under the floor in the bar and under the carpet in the hallway. No matter how much I vacuumed the hall, the water kept coming! This was easily repaired but not before ripping out the hardwood floor in the bar area which was ruined.
I've got to hand it to the folks living here on keeping their cool when we walked through the house the first time. How the kids didn't spout out, "oh that light doesnt work", or mention the heater not working is beyond me!
Anyway, The things we did lately far surpass any of the efforts so far to make this place a home. Take a look and see for yourself.
I made 2 slideshows of what we've done in the past ten days.
First Changing the Color from Blue to Bright.
The blue to us was well, no more than ghastly.
Then, due to the fact that there were holes you could put your arm through in it, we had the roof re-done.
Take a look at the slideshow, you will even see Us, On The Roof.