One Sixty: Trudging Thru the Mud

Trudging Thru the Mud

Here I am reporting live from the scene of yet another exploding logo. And wait... is that big booms & explosion SFX?! Oh my god - isn't that the coolest most awesome thing you've ever seen?!

Yeah right. I need more warm & fuzz in my life right now.

Anyway, so as you can tell, work has totally infiltrated my sanity.... if there was any there to begin with, it's gone now. I should start a second blog - but then our clients might get a hold of it and that would just suck. Because boy would I have a few choice words for a few choice individuals. As in, "NO MORE EXPLOSIONS!"

Back home... yeah, home - what's that? But seriously folks, the grass is coming in nicely. We put down some additional seed plus starter fertilizer to begin filling in the blank spaces.

We also got a cable splitter. Now, here's an issue I'd like to bring up. Those things are dam expensive! Way back when, when we did the wiring, we put cable, phone, and internet in every room... except the bathroom. The bathroom just got cable.

(Could you imagine me blogging from my bathtub?! I could add a web cam and make millions from idiots watching me blog naked live in my bathtub. Unfortunately for all of you, I'm not greedy and shameless enough.)

Back to the story - so we have eight cable cables that need cable hooked up to them. (Yes, I'm a video professional, leave me alone about the ridiculous girly techno babble..) Of course, Comcast doesn't do diddly but give you a two from one adapter and say, "All done!" So Mike and I went to the DeepHo after he gave me my cool new kitchen TV looking for a better splitter with 8 outputs.

And they had one! It was perfect, one in, eight out - amplified and ready to mount on the wall. The price for this little box no bigger than a Dove Ice Cream bar box - $130.

$130!!! Let's take a minute to examine that. That's outrageous. $130 just so I can watch TV in every room. I don't even have a TV in every room, but why spend $60 to have TV in three or four rooms just to spend $60 again later down the line?

I could have had my stairway banister all finished and my office floor done with $130. Which, by the way, needs to be spent/done this Saturday. I can't even tell you how frustrating that is. I've spoken to it before - these little things that end up costing big bucks.

But I bought it anyway. Needed to. I'll have to eventually. The price is never going to go down. (Famous last words.)

Meanwhile a debate has begun on the stairway - should the railing go over the poles or between them? I prefer the over and Mike prefers the in-between. We'll probably go with what he wants this time around. Even though it's f-ing ugly.

I want the metal balusters though - none of this all wood junk. It'll be too woody. I wouldn't mind if Mike would let me paint the wood. But wood on wood on wood is just too much wood.

And now back, to Summerfest2007. KABOOM!

Blog Story

My now husband Mike and I purchased this quaint home back in spring of 2004 - our first home - and, being the handy folks we are, expected to have the entire thing renovated in about a year or so.

And here we still are... renovating away.

This house needed a complete overhaul. Its plaster walls were uninsulated, its attic floor covered in 2" of bat guano, its basement - dirt and snakes, its exterior - asbestos siding, and lead paint windows in every room. The electric had not been updated and light sockets hung bare from the ceiling. Plumbing featured cast iron radiators - and only one for the entire upstairs.

We began by gutting almost the entire house from top to bottom. (sans bathroom - we needed to pee) We rebuilt the entire upstairs, with a new floor (not new carpet or wood - the once unstable framing underneath) and turned 3 small rooms into two. We reinvented the downstairs by turning a closet into a hallway and eliminating interior exterior windows and doors from old half-assed additions.

New insulation, windows, electrical wiring (including phone and CAT-5 internet), plumbing and baseboards, and drywall were all added.

We purchased kitchen cabinets from a yard sale. (None existed previously.) Our families helped us replace and purchase new appliances including the once also missing washer & dryer.

Then we had the entire house lifted - straight into the air - dug out the dirt, and had a real basement foundation poured. We updated our oil tank and burner and created heating zones.

Outside, we took down trees and planted grass. We dug out an awkward hill to create a 2nd part to the driveway and used the rocks our house once sat on as a retaining wall. We electrified and repainted the garage.

And of course, we spent many an hour on finish work like paint, trim, closet doors, lighting fixtures, hardwood floors, curtain rods, dimmer switches, and many other things everyone else takes for granted. We are still working to complete all this final finishing, but happy to report that we are FINALLY nearing completion of all little things in all rooms!

In 2008 we began overhauling the exterior by creating a new french door entryway and building a farmer's porch and garage addition. We replaced our roof and then stripped off our siding and replaced with new clapboards. We then planted two new flowering trees and a maple in the front yard - our first major landscape purchases. I'm happy to report that here in 2011, the porch is nearing completion and the back yard is on the road to recovery with some new loam and grass. More plantings soon to come!

In 2012 we plan to attack the last MAJOR (emphasis on major) job in the house - the dreaded BATHROOM! We plan to first add a second bathroom in the basement. Then, demolish our current bathroom and rebuild it, adding a second bathroom on top for the upstairs.

And that pretty much brings you up to date. The battle continues day to day as we try and complete everything.