The dryer is finally hooked up!

Yesterday (after I finished putting towel racks on the kitchen cart) my parents and my brother stopped by for a visit. They brought us an extremely generous housewarming gift of a patio set, and helped us set it up!

You guys are the best!

And since that wasn't nice enough, my dad also helped Adamo set up the dryer vent. The old vent was crappy and falling apart, so it needed to be replaced before we could use it. It had a ten-year-old newspaper and a pair of men's underwear stuffed in it so that various animals couldn't just crawl in the basement. Nice. (I handled the grundies with gloves.)

We had decided that it would be easier to simply remove the boarded up window where the vent went out to, because there was a GIANT RUBBLE PILE in the way of accessing it under the porch.

Seriously, wtf?!

It was a really bad time removing the board, though, because it was screwed on with millenia-old screws. Same with the vent itself on the board. 

Look at that teamwork

Luckily, my dad and Adamo are the greatest and managed to acquire some replacement screws and attach everything back up again. 

Aww, I can't see outside anymore. 

Then my dad and Adamo hooked up the tubey part of the vent (that's a technical term). We used the semi-firm stuff because I saw a youtube video where some guy lit the squishy kind on fire and OMG NO I JUST CANNOT HANDLE THAT.

Hooray, we can do laundry at last! Without any fire!

We also put a cabinet we got from craigslist next to the washer for a bit of storage. (One door will be used to the trash pull-out in the kitchen!)

I guess we could put toilet paper in there for the Lonely Basement Toilet

Meanwhile, Kevin was going around on a spider annihilation mission, using the spider repellent that I made. I guess it kills them, too. 

He cleared out the entrance to the basement like a true hero

My mom and I mostly aimlessly wandered around the first floor and basement, but at one point my mom found these weird brass things in the ceiling space. Why were they there? What are they??

Seriously, anyone know what they are??? 

We didn't accomplish much else because we got distracted by pizza and the Apple TV, but it was a super productive day! Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to do about 276842184645 loads of laundry.