The VW was towed today by a car donation agency (a few hours later than the window they set up). It hadn’t been started in three weeks. We jump-started it and it was running rough, and if the jumper cables were removed it would die. Looks like the alternator died while it was sitting there.
Bye bye. It went 178,464 miles in 8.5 years.
I took some pictures of the kitchen backsplash, and the tile we’re going to use in the bathroom.
This afternoon we should be able to paint the bathroom.
We have hot water now! The plumber came back yesterday to check into the lack of hot water problem. He experimented with running a temporary dedicated gas line to the water heater, but that didn’t help though he did determine that out gas pressure was a little too low, especially if the house heater is running at the same time so we do need another line for the water heater, but it’s not an immediate need depending in how many gas thing we use at once.
The problem ended up being the roughed in plumbing for the incomplete bathroom. Right now the water is mixing in there and giving us warm water. Turning off the valve to that side of the house solved the problem and when the real plumbing fixtures are in place it won’t be a problem there either.
Hang ‘Em High
The is the second old Clint Eastwood western I’ve seen, the first was The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. I think I liked this one better. The characters feel real and have difficult decisions to make, even the minor ones seem to stand out.
The Family Stone
I just wanted to say that I enjoyed this movie and that Sarah Jessica Parker does a good job of playing the most uptight woman on the planet. The entire cast is fun to watch.
Hostel
This movie easily splits into three parts. College student sex romp through Europe, uncomfortable torture scenes, and Troma style humorous fake violence. Afetr 30 minutes you’re thinking “Is this movie related to what I saw in the trailer?” Then you get to the torture and you’re glad it’s over. By the end most of the audience is laughing at how rediculous it all is. The transitions work between the three sections so it ends up being entertaining overall.
I know they all seem like state of the house, but it seems like there are a lot of little things to mention.
The kitchen has walls now. If you stand in the middle of it you feel like you’re in a padded cell.
Between the holidays, and buying a new car, I haven’t had time to take or post many pictures. That works out though because contractors and sub-contractors also take time off for the holidays so not much gets done.
Anyway, here are pictures of the kitchen and bathroom that cover the highlights of the last few weeks.
You can see a picture of the message sent to us from the UK on the bubblewrap for our cooktop as a bonus!
Updates should happen more often and things should happen pretty fast now!
Chevrolet HHR wagon – I saw there was a funky wagon in Consumer Reports and when we parked at the auto mall there it was. We walked up to take a look and they asked if we wanted to drive it. We did and it’s a pretty good car overall. It has a lot of interior plastic, but the seats are comfortable captain style seats which is impressive since it isn’t that tall. The big drawback is the visibility is poor.
Toyota Highlander Hybrid – Our second time driving it and still just as nice. It’s about the same length as our Passat Wagon, slightly wider, and definitely taller.
Toyota Highlander – We drove a low-milage used Highlander and it was pretty good too but not as nice as the new hybrid. Not as smooth.
Honda Pilot – We didn’t actually drive this because we couldn’t find a sales person and they only had three on the lot anyway.
Hyundai Santa Fe – I liked this car. It handled well, and it seemed well put together. The big down side is that there wasn’t any leg room so my knees were next to the steering wheel.
Volvo V70 (5 cylinder turbo) – Unfortuately Nicole drove this first and fell in love with it. Unfortunate because by the end of the test drive I couldn’t wait to get out of the driver’s seat which fell like it was pressing into my back and sides. The seat is made to hold smaller people in place. It’s a shame because I was looking forward to driving it from my memory of the one I drove when I got the Passat.
Mazda 6 Wagon – I totally forgot about the Mazda 6 wagon, which is the only reasonably sized wagon under $30k. So when the Volvo/Mazda salesman suggested it we went for it. It’s a fun car to drive and has plenty of space. Nicole was afraid she might forget she had the dogs in the back and start tossing them around on turns because it felt more like a car.
Two weeks ago we were told that the transmission and clutch are in need of replacing. No one does rebuilds of them because with 5 different manual transmissions used for the 97 Passat it just doesn’t make sense unless you are VW. The cost of a new one installed is $3500. The average yearly cost of maintenance on it has been running about $1800, and $900 on a light year. All that totalled up is way more than the value of the car which is $4000.
Last Friday Sandy came over in a new Highlander Hybrid to get the key so she could look in on the dogs on X-Mas eve. We asked and she let us test drive it and Nicole and I both though it was pretty nice. We were thinking about new cars but we weren’t going to start looking until after the first so it would be more calm in general. That night a noise and feeling in the handling started which turned out to be the CV joint making the car not so safe to drive any longer.
Saturday I scrambled to find a rental car that could hold dogs and ended up with the B9 Tribeca SUV from Subaru. We drove to Sacramento and back for X-mas eve with Nicole’s family and then Sunday morning we drove to LA for Channukah with my family.
Monday morning my dad brought out the latest Consumer Reports book and car magazine that he had from my sister’s recent car purchase. I saw in the “Bad Bets” list the 97 Passat and that VW in general is one the maker some of the most unreliable cars for the past few years, beating out Lincoln and not really anything else. Also, European cars are the least reliable right now, followed by American cars, and Asian cars are the most reliable. We decided to go car test driving in the land of many cars so we went to the Valencia Auto Mall, parked, and walked among all the dealers to test drive. After a day of test driving we liked the Toyota Highlander and the Mazda 6 wagon. The Toyota being rated excellent in every catagory and the Mazda being rated average.
Tuesday we went to a bigger Toyota dealer (two parking structures of Toyotas instead of one smaller one) but they didn’t have the Highlander Hybrid that we wanted but we got a nice golf cart ride out of it. We decided to call Toyota of Santa Cruz to see what they had. They had one that was rejected but it wasn’t one we wanted and the waiting list was 2 months to 1.5 years. I decided to call over the hill Toyota dealers and found that Capitol Toyota in San Jose had one we wanted. After about 15 minutes Capitol called back saying that if we came in today they would knock off $500.
We started back home from LA and on the grapevine Capitol called saying that the one we wanted actually was sold yesterday. All that was left was the gold colored ones that Nicole really didn’t want. They offered to knock off another $500 if we wanted the gold but we said “No thanks.” Then the dealer from the on-line quote called but I couldn’t hear his name before we got disconnected. I remembered that one of the ones calling was from Fremont so we looked up the number and called there and found that had a number of them in stock that we wanted. Nicole called back to see what the prices were to see if they were jacking the price up with some dealer incentive. They weren’t so we mentioned that we were offered a car for $1000 off at Capitol and they told us they would knock off $1500. Which allowed us to get the 4×4 for the full price we were goign to pay for the 4×2 to begin with. Yay!
We got home, unloaded the car and drove to Fremont and at 10PM drove home in a nice car with 17 miles on it.
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