One Sixty

Is There Bathroom Yet?

2012-01-27T19:52:00.000-05:00

Would you believe after our disappointing run to the HD,Mike went to begin plumbing and discovered that we’d purchased the wrong gaugeof pipe? A fitting end to a trip fated for disaster.

But it all ended well, since on the same trip to return thepipe, Mike returned a bunch of lattice connectors (leftover from summerfarmer’s porch work) that we didn’t need.

*And let me take a time out here because I had to FORCE himto take this stuff back. What is up with guys and returning stuff? Sure it’sbeen months. Sure we don’t have the receipt. But they’re Home Depot! Unlessyou’ve cut it, drilled it, or damaged it in some obvious way – they will takeit back! But did he want to take it back? Noooooo. Not without me. I said,“Fine, I’ll go.” Then, the reply was, “But I’ll have to put away all the stuffin the garage…[that was littered about the driveway]” So I said, “Ok, then Iwon’t – but you’re going to take it back! I would do it myself, but it won’tfit in my truck.” He grudgingly loaded it up… And came back with nearly $50 instore credit from the lattice connectors alone! ($40 additional in cash from the pipe, which he’dhad the receipt for.)

$50 that would have been otherwise just sitting in thebasement until it was damaged and needed to be thrown away. GUYS! And by the way,I have embarrased myself plenty of times trying to bring stuff back that wascut, drilled, and/or damaged in an obvious way. So what? It’s worth the tryevery time.

Going back to the bathroom – Mike then purchased the pipe athis work for a better price. Boo-yah, meant to be. He’s been plumbing all weekafter a flair up of eczema on my face got us both back thinking about the illhealth effects of that dang old bathroom.

And as for the tile? My sweet sweet sweet tile. I asked Miketo measure and give me the amount of tiles we needed. (12x12 makes it simple –one square foot each.) The grand total: 120 tiles, and of course we’d needextra. No problemo. I hop back onto Lowes.com, find my tile, put the price intomy caculator and…. HAD A FREAKIN HEART ATTACK.

A box o tile contains 11 tiles. A box o tile costs about$58. I estimated we’d want to get at least 13 boxes. THAT’S OVER $700!!!!! Plustax, thanks Massachusetts.

I was so flabbergasted. I thought about it for over a week, looked at other tile onother websites, and even visited Lowes the store. $58 for 11 was a comparableprice. Plus, I didn’t like anything else I saw anywhere else. There’s just notmuch choice in the Blue color scheme. Much of it was 12x12 squares made up ofitty bitty mosaic tiles. No thanks.

I thought about it. Thought about it. Then last night, Mikegave me the news… he was going to be finishing up the plumbing. The closetwould need to be built – a fairly easy task. And then the tile. That was justthe next step.

I had to make a decision and I bought it. My plastic isstill steamy hot from the transaction. Ugh. Who would have thought the flooringwould have been nearly as expensive as all the fixtures?

It will be delivered to the store 2/8. Almost makes me wishI had ordered it a week ago, but no matter. Plenty of time to finish up theplumbing, closet, and tie up any other lose ends.

And we may be getting a brand new kitchen… yes. Maybe.

DeepHo Lack of Anything

2012-01-17T19:34:00.000-05:00

With the beginning of a new week, Mike and I were all fired up to get back on track and back downstairs a-workin. But, first thing was first. We needed more materials! So Mike made a list on Monday and we packed up the fam and headed off to the Home Depot around 6:30pm.

Upon our arrival, we decided to pick out the tile first. They had NOTHING. And I mean NOTHING besides gross, ugly, mundane, monochromatic, or cheeseball. I couldn't believe it. No brilliant colors whatsoever (besides black - cheeseball) and no aesthetically pleasing textures or designs. It was all these boring earthtones - brown, brown, lighter brown, greenish brown, etc etc. They reminded me of tile you'd find in the bathroom at your local Casual Family Dining Establishment Chain. Ew and gross. No.

What I'm looking for is a brilliantly interestingly textured dark blue (like the deepest depths of the ocean and you get lost at sea just looking into it) tile. Big tiles - 12x12. Here's ones I like from Lowes: Awesome Tile This will be in stark contrast to the walls, which will be a light (but still "deep" if you know what I mean) grey. Think of that same day on the middle of the ocean... the sky covered in clouds - but not storm clouds. Peaceful, quiet grey... no harsh sun beating down on you. You're all with me on my design vision here now, right? The white tub and toilet, brushed nickle fixtures, and dark wood trim and vanity hint at a nautical feel without putting stupid boats and life preservers on the wall. Because I'm not "beachy," despite being a native Cape Codder, and I'm not "boaty" either. In fact, I have an aversion to either theme and all the related items sold at Christmas Tree Shops.

Long story already made long, we left the flooring department empty handed. I'll go to Lowes, where the tile selection is so much better. (This is where I purchased my mudroom tile.)

Next stop - plumbing, for all the copper piping and fittings. Only one problem. Hardly ANY copper pipes. And I mean there were like 5 for each size category. I'm not exaggerating. We picked them dry of the category we needed, (with 5) leaving a warped 6th pipe on the shelf. It was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever seen, especially since all the other shelves of PVC were stocked full. As you can imagine, this did not satisfy our list. Mike picked out all the fittings he could, but still couldn't find many of the other things on his list.

Mikey and I left him for a bit to pick out a fan/light fixture in the next aisle. (Didn't quite plan on it, but sometimes I don't get to go on these DeepHo trips. May as well pick out what I want while I'm here. Plus, we wanted to get up to $299 to avoid interest on the DeepHo card... fat chance with the lack of copper, but we would soon see.) So there we two were, in the fan/light fixture section. I picked out one at a median price that moved a lot of air while still being very quite - plus had a light and night light feature. Just what I wanted!

Problem was, they didn't have any in stock. I even got down on the floor and searched through all the boxes. No luck.

Mike and I met up shortly after. He had bad luck, I had bad luck, and the cart wasn't very full at all. It was very frustrating for the two of us, who were already frustrated that we were behind schedule and hadn't been able to get out and purchase these materials. The one night we decided to just do it - we're sh*t outta luck and outta stock.

Needless to say, we did not make the $299. I'll have to buy tile in cash since I don't have a Lowes card. (And don't want one at the moment.) Urg. Not as planned.

Maylay and Delay

2012-01-13T19:09:00.000-05:00

It's been a full 10 days since I last said of our progress, "Wow." Today, on the other hand, I say, "Eh." Eh because we've accomplished nothing substantial. Eh because I've been just flat out dead tired and not feeling well. Eh because I had to work last weekend and that sent me into a spiral of exhaustion from which I am just now starting to escape from. Hey, other then that, things are just peachy keen.

I'm hoping we can start turning all that around this weekend. Already this past Tuesday night, Mike brought home a new filter for our furnace and installed it. (Whole house still smells like oil... or maybe I'm just super sensitive to it.) But we're both pretty happy since that seems to have fixed our whiny, noisy furnace issue.

The cement is probably dry downstairs at this point and ready for tile. Too bad we have yet to purchase the tile... It's on the shopping list along with all the copper piping to finish the rough plumbing. If we can purchase all that this weekend, great. If we can start plumbing this weekend, even better. If we can schedule the tiling... well, that would just be ice cream next to a cake that had already been iced.

In with the Water Out

2012-01-03T19:30:00.000-05:00

Wow. That's all I have to say. Our plumber came out Sunday morning as planned and he and Mike hooked up all the drains (bathtub, toilet, sink) in under an hour. Mike spent the rest of Sunday morning and early afternoon cleaning out all the rest of the broken cement, rocks, and dirt from the basement. (Throwing large pieces up and out the window, carrying small bits and dirt up in bucket loads.)

By late Sunday afternoon, he was on his way to the DeepHo to pickup cement.

By late Sunday evening, all the trenches and pipes within the trenches were sealed and re-cemented beautifully. Not to mention that the entire area was clean and free of cement debris.

Pipe Pattern

The Evacuator

Cat prints immortalized

To repeat, Wow.

Too bad the dump was closed today. (Monday)

Next up, all the copper piping to plumb the water "in." (Since we already have the water "out" covered... literally at this point.) Then tile, electrical, insulation, and drywall. As far as I'm concerned, all that is the easy part. Once the copper is bought and installed, the difficult and expensive part will be officially complete.

What a way to ring in the new year!

Not Enough Hole for My Pocket

2011-12-30T17:03:00.000-05:00

Pipe – check. Lumber – check. Pocket door framed out – check….

Mike spent an entire laborious Thursday setting up for thepocket door. Turns out, we didn’t leave enough room after all. Mike had tomodify the door to make it work and it took ALL day.

So, check your pocket door kit installation instructionsbefore you do anything, everybody. You may need more space then you think.

And now we’re officially ready for Sunday – hoping we’restill on with the plumbers!

Happy Post -Holiday

2011-12-27T19:49:00.000-05:00

Happy post-holidays. I’m so glad they’re over. Have Iannounced on this blog that we’re expecting? Surprise! 10 weeks and absolutelyexhausted. I can’t take it anymore. I was dead on the couch for over six hoursyesterday, unable to sleep, unable to move. Eating mass quantities of fudge.Yes, fudge. Shut up. I’m a blimp. I know.

Mike spent most of his pre-holiday break at work downstairs.He jack hammered out a space for the evacuator and dug out the dirt aroundwhere the pipes will go. He then painstakingly carried the dirt up and outside,two 5 gallon buckets at a time. So now, minus some pvc and lumber, we’re readyfor this coming Sunday.

Once all the drains are plumbed, the flooring will need tobe installed, then drywall, and then all the fixtures. (Hmmm, probably someadditional plumbing between flooring and drywall now that I think about it.)

We had a very lovely Christmas, despite my near completeincapacitation. The house is completely destroyed by toys and I can’t bear toorganize or clean yet. Or even think about it for that matter.

My parents got us a much needed new trash shed to replaceour racoon & possum (yes possum) ravaged trash hut. On Monday Mike puttogether the new rubbermaid model in a record setting 15mins… possibly less.And most of that was getting the dang thing out of the box! I highly recommendthis shed for ease of putting-together. Then, Mike had the distinct pleasure ofdestroying the old hut with the skid steere. He first rammed into it, the droveover it, then picked up half of it and dropped it on itself for good measure. Ihad the pleasure of watching the whole thing. It was highly satisfying. It’sgoing to be even more satisfying to be able to safely bring out trash in theevening, or put it out Tuesday morning for pickup without having to shoveltrash debris from the half the yard first.

Hammered Out

2011-12-22T09:29:00.000-05:00

The jack hammering is done. It was actually finished the same day I posted my last post... I was amazed.

Our drop cloth dust shielding

Some of the first lines in the floor cut with the saw

I guess you could call this the "before"


Here's the after - note the tunnels in the floor, now covered with the drop cloths to keep the dust down and the cats out.

At this point we haven't done much more. We had our plumber purchase the Evacuator for us. (Does what the name implies - makes water go UP into the septic.) Let me tell you, that thing is expensive. Even at his discounted pro price, it was still $420. Ouch. But I understand - this thing is IMPORTANT. You can't cheap out when it comes to moving dirty water.

Mike picked it up last night and scheduled our plumber to come out on New Years Day. (We'll see if that actually happens - I don't think either of them realized it was the holiday.) In prep, we have to purchase a bunch of PVC and accessories. Mike's goal is to have all the drains plumbed and the furnace serviced all in one morning.

Meanwhile, I'm thinking of the new bathroom every time I'm in the old bathroom. I want to be using it by the end of Jan - finished or no, it will certainly be functional by then.

Floored Again

2011-12-15T17:22:00.001-05:00

Way back in the day when our basement was brand new.... (Yes, we lifted our house off it's original stone foundation and dug out and poured a basement. Check it out here.) We hired some random people to pour the cement floor. (Not included in your basement wall purchase.) And when I say random, I mean these guys saw our house lifted, stopped in, and offered to do the job. We took their card and said yes.

Thus far we've been pretty happy with our basement floor. I mean, come on. It's a slab 'o concrete. What more do you want of it?

But now that it's time to dig into it to plumb the basement bathroom, there's a problem. Mike brought home the big impressive saw to cut into the concrete last weekend. Turns out, that floor is 6-7" thick. Now I don't know much about basement floors, but that's freakin wicked thick! (NE accent, folks.) Mike seems to think it's only supposed to be around 2" thick. So he was cutting and cutting and cutting - up until the point I couldn't bare the cloud of dust anymore - and barely made any headway.

However, he was right in his assumption that it would be, "the messiest thing ever." Even with the bathroom area walled off with drop cloths and even with fans in two basement windows and the door to the outside open - the cloud of dust permeated upstairs into the house, lightly dusting everything.

Just yesterday, Mike brought home a jackhammer to begin the laborious task of removing concrete within the cut areas. He didn't have any goal set for today, jackhammer day, but he expected it to be slow and painful. I'm looking forward to checking out the progress later this evening...

Hostile DeepHo Takeover

2011-12-06T19:22:00.000-05:00

Two empty carts and orange plastic in our pockets. An empty bathroom department, just ripe for a hostile takeover. Dream Day Sunday at the Home Depot.

Yes, there we were, picking out all our fixtures with all but blatant disregard for their prices. It was incredible.

First, the tub and shower enclosure. We chose the sturdiest tub option with a smooth shower enclosure that included built in shelving. Cost as expected, about $200 for the tub, $200 for the shower enclosure. (Caulk-less installation, cool!) That filled one cart. Mike dropped it off at customer service and returned with another.

Toilets. I wanted a name brand with Water Sense savings and high flush power. We chose a mid-range priced Kohler with those two features. $188.

On to the sink/vanities. Here, we ran into a snag. Mike wanted wood colored. I wanted white. We both wanted something of a decent size with the sink included in the price. There was nothing with a sink included that we could agree on, and the prices were outrageous. $400-$600 and no sink?! That was not what I had planned on. Then, around the corner, in between the aisles, there was a clearance vanity. A beautiful dark walnut colored, good size vanity with a white marble inset sink. "I like that one," I said. Mike liked it too, and it didn't have any major damage. Just some drywall dust a some small dings from a prior attempted installation.

We quickly brought over the sales lady who looked up the price, $199. SOLD. She even told us that we could probably get another 10% off at the register. We hungrily loaded it up next to the toilet.

Next stop, fixtures. Mike and I both immediately gravitated towards the brushed nickle and picked out a low to mid-range priced set for both the shower/tub and sink. (Matching at that!) Just over $100 each.

We didn't even bother with picking out the remaining needed lumber. This was a full truck load.

Amazingly, bringing it all into the basement was as difficult as we'd expected. The toilet was no prob. The vanity was a little awkward, but still no prob. The tub wasn't even a prob! The only challenging bit was the large shower enclosure back. No way was that fitting down the exterior basement door/stairs. But turns out we were able to easily bring it through the house's main entrance and down the interior basement door/stairs.

With everything in the room, it took just 15 minutes to arrange, rearrange, and decide on a layout. (And it definitely wasn't what either of us had originally imagined - yay for early fixture purchase!) The tub will go in the left corner, a closet will go across it on the right. The toilet will sit next to the closet and the vanity will sit between the two doors. In the end, this was the configuration that made the most sense to us.

Yesterday, our plumber friend came out to look at everything and advised Mike on clearances and all other things-good-to-know. The two of them will work together to plumb it out... hopefully soon.

That's a Big 'Ol Bathroom

2011-12-02T14:05:00.001-05:00

Progress continues! Here, not even a week into this bathroomproject, and three out of four walls are completely framed – vapor barrier up.The two doors, including one pocket door kit, have been purchased. And that 4^thwall? Well, it would have been completed had Mike not run out of wood.

Next step - obviously, more wood. And I think it's time for the fixtures... (I'm looking forward to arranging things BEFORE plumbing them in.)

Thanks Indeed

2011-11-29T08:30:00.000-05:00

Turkey Day. A time to remember how thankful we are forfamily, friends, food… employment. And a big fat check from the MG guy! He’llbe here the first full week of December to load it up and take it away – thusending our long long journey with that little red monster.

With money in hand, we were quick to disperse it. Mike paidoff his friend for the purchase of his motorcycle. I paid off the credit cardand repaid our savings for paying the credit card. I also paid off the fridgeon the DeepHo card, bringing us back to a $0 balance on all fronts once again.What a great feeling! Much of the pressure we’d been building up over the pastfew months was gone immediately.

And, with our new found financial and obligatory freedom, wegot right back to work on the house. I put up the tree and all the Christmasdécor on Black Friday. (Staying as far from stores as humanly possible.) Mikepicked up the Pex for the radiant heat on Saturday. Sunday, we really got downto business.

We didn’t get started until after lunch. (Notate that.)Then, Mike drained the heating system and disconnected the pipes downstairs.Upstairs, I moved the furniture in the kitchen and mudroom and disassembled thebaseboards in both rooms. Then, it was off to the DeepHo for strapping and 2x6’s.

Upon our return, Mike quickly nailed up the strappingunderneath the mudroom and drilled all the Pex tubing holes. Then, thedifficult part. We both unrolled and tugged and pulled and fed and twisted andpulled and tugged and connected the tubing in and out of the floor joists. Notas easy as it sounds, since the tubing isn’t so flexible when hot water isn’trunning through it.

We removed both baseboards from the kitchen and mudroom andput the former mudroom baseboard into the kitchen. (Wow, this means we finallycan have an end-cap in the kitchen… no more no-name brand baseboard that wecan’t find the ends to.)

And finally, around 6:30pm, Mike reconnected all the copperconnections and pressurized the system. Kudos for re-using so many fittingstoo… although I wouldn’t advise doing such a thing. We had a couple leaks onfirst pressurization, but they were quickly fixed and the system was workingbeautifully by 8pm.

The whole job is made even more unbelievable when you takeinto account that we had to clean out and move just about our entire stock oflumber – which was all in the absolute worst spot ever. We had to remove it allfrom the saw horses, stack it, move the saw horses, and then put it all backon. What a pain in the butt… but good in helping us take stock of what we have.Lots of good sized trim pieces, for example. Plus, it was good reason to getrid of all the too-small or crappy bits. We threw those out the window.

Of course, that left us with a big mess outside to clean upat 8:30 at night. We were so toast, tired and achy at that point, but managedto clean at least the driveway.

And all those 2x6’s we also bought at HD? I bet you werewondering what those were for. Bathroom, baby, bathroom. Mike will beginframing TONIGHT. Boy, are we going to push forward with this one. It’s aChristmas gift to us and long time coming at that.

TUESDAY MORNING UPDATE:
Most of one wall is up!

Out of One Pool of Hot Water, Into Another of Cold Water

2011-11-18T19:09:00.000-05:00

I’d like to report a momentous occasion… champagne at theready? THE MG RESTORATION IS COMPLETE! Yes, this project has consumed nearlyall of Mike’s free time over thepast year. His few spare moments waiting for parts were spent in complete exhaustedfrustration. This car has been nothing but what it was supposed to be – a simpleput-together-the-pieces and hook-up-everything project. Instead, everythingfought him. A million parts were needed. Work done by others was incomplete orincorrect. Mike’s own high standards frustrated him. He did many things hehates in the name of keeping things high quality and cost efficient, includingall the upholstery.

Now, we just await final payment and approval from theowner. Check’s in the mail, or so we’ve been told. It was supposed to beovernighted Monday, but didn’t arrive Tuesday. It didn’t arrive Wednesday. Itdidn’t arrive Thursday. Nerve racking.

But despite the missing money, we have our lives together back!(Don’t forget, I’ve been practically a single mom for a year.) What a goodfeeling that is! Back to normal.

This weekend, I’m hoping we can move the mudroom baseboard.We won’t get many more 60 degree days now, but we’ll have one on Sunday and I’dlike to put it to good use. Just bite the bullet and get it out of the waybefore my piano is ruined. I’m not going to run into a free piano I love morethen this one.

After the heat is good to go and the money arrives – we’restarting on the bathroom. Gulp. Just got to jump into that one head first, nomatter how cold the water is.

Oldy and Now Officially Moldy

2011-11-15T19:45:00.000-05:00

For a while now we’ve known that our lone(single) bathroom was leaking water from the shower/tub onto the floor. Theproblem became all the more obvious when we covered the old floor with a cheapsheet of linoleum. Water continued to leak… and get under the linoluem! Squishsquish squish – discusting.

Mike finally got around to purchasing atube of caulk and re-caulking the entire tub at the end of last week.Unfortunately, after my first long shower after the caulk dried, squish squishsquish under the flooring again. The problem seemed worse then ever. Mikeremoved the cold water handle and discovered that the inside was all corroded.Not a good sign. He removed the access panel next to the toilet and confirmedour fears.

The water wasn’t leaking outside andrunning down the shower and tub. It was leaking inside the wall. And has beenfor quite some time judging by the amount of MOLD in there.

I literally had a panic attack. Could thisbe the cause of my random onset of severe allergies?? (After never having hadallergies before, I suddenly began suffering terribly during the winter of lastyear.) The very thought of it sends chills down my spine. And our two year old…I was petrified at the thought of any more serious health problems cropping up.

We closed the wall that night. Nothing tobe done about it then. We only have the one bathroom, after all. But soonenough, as soon as MG money comes in, we have no choice but to build thebasement bathroom and completely GUT the upstairs bathroom.

I began researching bathroom fixures onthe cheap. (And might I just say that Home Depot’s website is just about themost useless thing ever. You can’t find anything on there and the navigationleaves much to be desired. Lowes website is much more user friendly, althoughI’ll probably end up buying at the Home Deepo.)

Fixtures alone:

Bathtub/shower kit (with wall surround):$477

Small single vanity with sink: $100

Toilet (water savign): $100

Sink faucet (decent looking): $40

Shower fixtures (head & control):$100

That brings us to a total of $817 for thebasic set of researchable fixutres. (And these are all near bottom of the linecheapest – without going completely ugly.)

Beyond that you have to take intoconsideration building materials:

Framing

Drywall

Pocket door (maximizing space)

Paint

Tile (for floor)

Electrical, including outlets, wires, etc.

Plumbing, including pipes, fittings, anddon’t forget this is all in a basement so we need a pump

And all related hardware and supplies

Then there’s all the stoopid stuff youalways forget to tally:

Shower curtain and rod

Towel racks

A mirror

Possible linen closet or other storage

Lighting

Bathroom fan

Heat (cause there’s none downstairscurrently)

It’s been a while since we built somethingfrom scratch. We’re even trying to finish things now that we started fromscratch years and years ago. Although, I’m looking so forward to demolishingthe old bathroom. I’m going to personally wreck that thing and every singletile and fixture in there.

Nor'Easter Blowing Out Irene's Bad Luck

2011-11-03T19:36:00.000-04:00

Doom and gloom update - literally, because at this date, this are looking up. I have not had any weird or catastrophic bad luck in the past four days... not since I broke part of the kitchen track light on Saturday. Yes, I was cleaning the fixtures that hold the bulbs when one came crashing down and exploded into a million pieces. At the time I was really broken up about it. (no pun intended) I bought this light years ago, what are the chances I'll be able to replace just that one fixture?? There's a good chance they don't even make ones to fit anymore... forcing consumers like me to buy a whole new track light. Companies just love to stick it to you like that.

But as I said, now I'm feeling more optimistic. The bulb to that particular fixture still fits in and lights up and there are still 5 other light fixtures on the track. I can live without for a while. Plus, after that incident, the weekend was great. The day previous, Friday, our neighbor came over and fixed the kitchen drywall. Mike even painted on a coat of primer for me in the same evening. That Saturday night, during the Nor'Easter, I painted the newly fixed drywall with the plenty-of-kitchen-paint we had left over from our last kitchen drywall adventure. (Fixing a hole in the wall.) Believe it or not, we even had kitchen ceiling paint leftover from the last time we painted the ceiling... which was the first time we painted it years ago.

Yes, we opened up that can 'o brown, expecting an unusable mass of chocolate colored goo. Instead, we found something that still sort of resembled paint. It was just a little thick. Mike added some water, stirred, added more water, stirred some more, and there ya go. Enough paint to paint what little ceiling there needed to be done.

I have to admit, I got carried away in the excitement and painted until after midnight. (Storm raging outside, lights flickering, and everything.) I painted the new drywall fix around the new window. I painted the ceiling where drywall had been touched up around the newly fixed wall. I touched up and lightly painted the adjacent walls. I painted the two doorways where it was yucky from fingerprints and furniture moving. I even chipped off a bunch of the crumbling paint from the area around the stove - ceiling and wall - and painted that. I even moved the stove, vacuumed up all the crud that was in there (tots gross by the way) and painted behind the stove where it had not been painted before! I went nuts and had a blast.

Then, I cleaned and rearranged some of my kitchen elements. I re-positioned the Mocha sign so that it would cover the phone jack on one wall. (I always had fond memories of a wall phone in the kitchen at the house I grew up in and installed one in my own house... Too bad home phones are outdated and I don't ever want to pay for one in this, the age of the cell phone.) I also re-hung my canvas martini signs and re-arranged some things on the countertop. It looked great.

Sunday, Mike purchased and prepared the trim for the kitchen window. (We spluurged, $25.) He shimmed the window opening, measured for and cut all the trim, and stained it. On Monday, he installed it all and boy does it look beautiful.

Meanwhile, I spent my Sunday fixing the printer and putting stuff on Craigslist. By late afternoon, I was actually able to print pictures to fill my art wall. (I was very satisfied with printer quality, by the way.) Now, minus one enlargement that I have to buy, that project is complete as well.

I couldn't have been more satisfied unless we had porch steps going in.

Bad Karma

2011-10-26T19:31:00.000-04:00

It's me. I have some little black cloud over my head,raining ridiculousness. Day in, day out. More bad news upon more bad luck uponjust plain insanity. Let me give you just a small sample of the madness:

I get a new (used) truck and the check engine light comes onduring my maiden voyage.

The hood won't shut.

I lock myself out of my office for over a half hour with nophone.

I drop a Pillsbury ready-to-make bread in Walmart and itexplodes, leaving me to carry this doughy blob up to checkout.

Daycare announces a HUGE weekly price increase. I have tocut back and take the camaro and motorcycle off the road. Looking to cut backelsewhere too.

I receive the wrong t-shirt in the mail for Mike's Halloweencostume.

I buy some picture frames on sale for an art wall only todiscover that half of them are missing hangers – they’re desk frames only.

My new printer all of a sudden won't print.

And this is all just since Friday. Not even a week’s worthof the last 3+ months of pure poo. Sound like I'm complaining? Darntootin. It would be one thing if it was all stoopid little stuff. I canlaugh about getting locked out of the office and dropping the dough. I can’tlaugh about vehicle problems. I can’t laugh about the rising cost of daycare. Ican’t afford to laugh. Not anymore.

So this extreme monetary stress and automotive anxiety isbeing compounded by a rash of incredible bad juju. I need a cleansing orsomething – and fast.

To make matters somewhat worse, the last of the MG parts areon a boat from England, delaying the completion of that project. Here in NewEngland, cold weather has finally hit and I can’t delay updates to our heatingsystem… a baseboard currently behind the piano needs to be moved as soon aspossible, or it will ruin the piano. And while we have things disconnected, wemay as well complete the radiant heating system we began installing lastwinter. (So far, it’s only in the living room and needs to be extended into thekitchen, mudroom, hallway, and Mikey’s room.)

Cha-ching, cha-ching.

Then there’s the desperately needed new trash shed. We’vegiven up even propping the door on the old broken one. The animals get in oneway or another. Racoon and now possum. It’s a backyard buffet!

I’ve given up hope on the completion of the porch this year.Dam we were close. Just the rest of the trim and front steps… But I can’t doit. All the siding for the next side of the house and an octagonal window…can’t do that either and half of that stuff is already bought! And forget aboutmuch needed bathrooms. I get choked up thinking about it. I regret not tearingthat thing off in the beginning. I can’t believe I’ll have to live with itindefinitely now, with no sign of economic improvement on the horizon.

Over the weekend, I did manage to hang all those frames inthe hallway – now a gorgeous art wall. Except for the art. I can’t afford tofill the frames right now. (And hey, there’s that new printer that won’t work.I’ve got to look at that tonight.) I almost regret buying the frames except forthe beauty and potential of the art wall.

Our neighbor has promised promised he’ll finish our kitchendrywall around the new (now kinda old) window. If I’m lucky, we’ll still havesome of the right color of paint downstairs. I so want to trim out the window,but fat chance of that too.

I’m just fulla sunshine, huh? Boy are you glad I haven’tbeen writing as often as I should. Nobody would want to hear about it. I don’teven want to hear about it. We still have our jobs and can still squeak byliving a modest but comfy lifestyle without crazy amounts of debt. At the sametime, I’m not getting any younger. Life doesn’t wait for me to save money. And ifthere’s one thing I hate, it’s wasting time.

Again With the Grass

2011-10-10T19:41:00.000-04:00

Upon talking to Mike, I discovered he never received my text and therefor, never ordered the new trash hut. Meanwhile we're still waiting on our canopy and swing things for Mikey's playset. Sometimes when you think you're walking forward, you're actually just standing around making weird leg movements. So hopefully we can iron that out in the coming weeks. (And I mean weeks because I have since spent the trash hut money.)

This weekend was so beautiful, we hardly did any work. And though for most it's a three day weekend, we were stuck with our normal weekend with me still working on Monday. However, we did do our fall grass seeding throughout the yard. Mike brought home the slice seeder and made quick work of the entire job. It took him longer to mow then it did to seed.

And that's all there is to report. We just can't move forward on much else right now. Finishing the MG project is both of our priorities. Parts willing, it will be all over in the next four weeks and we can return to our regularly scheduled lives.

Hello New World

2011-09-30T17:09:00.002-04:00

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I have a valid excuse thistime. My entire world has been just turned upside down. And while you think thatmay be an exaggeration, consider this: my beautiful ’88 Toyota 4Runner hasproblems so epic that an engine, wiring, and computer change didn’t fix themand have been ordered to give up on the ‘ol girl as a daily driver. I don’twant any other vehicle, nor can I afford a decently new and reliable one.Uncertainty nags at my sanity. Myprofessional editing software, Final Cut Pro, has been consumerized. Though Ican still edit on it for now, I will soon need to convert to something else –and I am unsatisfied with prosumer choices and stodgy old-fart industrystandards. My professional tool of choice is gone. My Tuesday night Zum-Bellydance class has as of last night, disbanded. The fitness club where it was heldis going out of business. My weekly dose of fun, stress relief is gone. Workhas been chaotic in a way that I can’t even describe. I continue to bust mybutt. Meanwhile, life with one or one and one borrowed vehicle is no fun. Mikeis sick of the breakdowns and the diagnosis. He’s sick of working late nightsweeks on end, months on end, now close to a year on the complex MG project. Hebought a new motorcycle and I can’t deny he deserves it for all the hard work.His old one has yet to be officially sold, though promises are asserted weekly.I stress about money while at the same time continue to move forward. We took atrip to Chicago and forgot about the world for a weekend – spent a boatload –came back to the same problems and minus money. It was infamously worth it. Ifeel like we hadn’t spent more then a half hour together watching the weatherchannel. I barely see my friends. I barely have time for things like Halloweenparty invites and piano practice. I barely have time for sleep. I’ve probablygained some weight, what with my hand in the candy dish three times a day. Thisall started with Hurricane Irene. That devil knocked out more then our power, Ithink. It’s all been a swift downhill since then.

We had a second hurricane scare not a week after Irene. Mikewas so petrified of losing the garage that he took down the giant tree on thehill above it. It was more then a little scary. He tied it off with a tree anda rope and chain hooked into the truck, then began cutting in. The wind wasagainst him. One wrong gust and the massive trunk would obliterate the garageand its contents. Mike frantically signalled to our neighbor, who was in thetruck’s driver’s seat, and he hit the gas. A lucky break with a gust of wind inthe right direction – the tree fell to the back, safely. We lost one beam onthe playset, which Mike replaced within the same week. In the same time, hebrought home a chipper and ate through all the branches. We still have thetrunk laying down there today and Mike hopes to fashion a bench from it. (Ihave my doubts, he’s no woodworker. No hurt to try though.) The rest of thewood, (from the other tree that came down in the storm) was packed up anddelivered to a friend of ours with a fireplace. He was very appreciative.

Tree Chain

Truck hooked up, Tree ready to fall

Tree Falling

Tree Down

Top of Tree in Playset

Truck of Tree

Log Mess

Branch Mess

Truck o Logs

Hill looking weird without the tree there

The weekend after that we lost ourselves in more yard work.I had a 50% off a tree coupon at Morrisons, so this time we picked out a Fujiapple tree for the backyard and a flowering shrub. (25% off the shrub.) Thetree, the shrub, and soil for both totalled up under $100 and we were bothextremely satisfied. We planted both that afternoon. After that, I went crazypulling out vines and weeds both dead and alive in the area where we took downthe tree the previous week. (We’ll need to do something about the stump, maybea chair or something?) That area is looking so much better, but will still needmore help with additional plantings and… dare I say it, grass?

While I was weeding away, Mike used up the rest of our porchstain on Mikey’s playset. It will need another coat, but for now, looking great.We ordered the canopy and new swing brackets, which should be in soon.

New Apple Tree, Shrub behind to left

Newly Fixed and now Red Playset

And speaking of ordering, we finally ordered a new shed forour trash cans. You may recall that we’ve been having nightly run-ins with agiant racoon, who freqents our busted trash hut and chows down on our deliciousgarbage. This thing is huge. At my first encounter, I thought it was asweatshirt. The door to our current, homemade trash hut has long since fallenoff its hinges, and this big boy (or girl) has been eating like a king (orqueen) ever since. The new shed is a simple, modest Rubbermaid model big enoughto hold a couple of trash cans. I’ll miss all the extra cardboard box storageof the old trash hut, but it’s a small price to pay to keep out the coons. Ican’t wait until it arrives so we can take the old one to the dump – along witha bunch of other items that have been awaiting a big dump run.

So, with another week coming to an end I have to reflect oneverything as a whole. On the one hand, things are just terrible. The 4Runner,the FCP, the Zum-belly, the work, the money, the MG, the late nights, thesleeplessness and timelessness… And on the other hand, new plantings, newstain, new trash hut.... weekends ignoring and procrastinating the inevitable….Yeah, things still kinda suck.

Electrical Aftermath

2011-09-17T16:03:00.001-04:00

Hurricane Irene. You may remember my last post - dated the day after the hurricane. Well, little did I know what fun and exciting horrors were yet to come. Bottom line - we were powerless for over 6 days with a 2 year old with the stomach flu. If that's not bad enough, we were powerless over three days longer then any of our neighbors... and we're the only ones in the area with a small child.

A branch knocked off our power line from the pole to our house.

This pic, taken during the hurricane shows the branch there behind the lilac bush... and the line, right below it on the ground in the right of the photo.

Here's what it did to our electrical box - ripped it nearly off the house.

And this is what caused all the problems. We first reported the down line as soon as it happend. When we lost power several hours later, we called again and reported that. No big shake - the entire area was out of power. Then, the days went by. On day one, the milk went bad, Mikey was throwing up, and we were out of hot water. Mike went down to Brewster where they had power (Brewster had power? They never have power! But they did this time!) and he borrowed a generator. (We own a generator of course, a super huge one... it was broken at the time.)

It was all downhill from there. Day two, I took some pukey clothes and laundry into work so my co-worker could wash them for me. Mikey was still sick. We ate a strange mix of things prepared on the grill. But in the evening of day two, around 11pm, Nstar rolled up. We were both in bed, but upon hearing the truck, Mike jumped up and began putting on his clothes to go and talk to them. By the time he was halfway down the stairs, they were pulling away - gone. We wondered what that had been all about. The power was still out and the line was still down.

On day three, Mike took a turn taking laundry down to Brewster. Mikey was starting to improve. Mike took him to the Dr. just in case. And sometime that day, the rest of the neighborhood got power back. Mike called Nstar and was informed that the truck that had visited us previously had cut our line so they could safely turn on power to everyone else. We were completely cut off.

Day four and still no power. I called Nstar and after describing what was going on with the torn out electrical box, the associate told me I'd probably have to have an electrician come out and fix it before they could turn the power back on. Mike said, "screw that!" and went out and re-attached the box to the house himself.

Day five, I called Nstar again in the morning and they said they'd have the power on the next day by noon. Mikey was well enough to go to school. Things were looking up. But when we got home that evening, our neighbor warned us that they still might not hook up the power with the box as it was. Mike called our electrician. He said he'd try to come out the next day to check things out. That evening, in desperation, we brought up an old TV/VCR from the basement, hooked it up to the generator, and watched the muppet show on VHS.

Day 6 was Saturday. Mikey and I waited at home for the electrician. It was getting close to noon and we hadn't seen Nstar either. I texted Mike and asked him to call again. We were both very angry and frustrated at this point. Mike called me back almost immediately, "hey, I've got Nstar on the other line and they say the job is completed...."

I was livid. "No, I was just outside and the wires are still on the ground."

Yup, it had somehow been marked completed in the computer system. Mike threw a fit and they promised to have it on by 7pm that evening. We would not wait until after labor day - another three days. No way. The electrician called sometime after, he had gotten jammed up and couldn't come. We sent him a photo of the box hookup and he said we should be ok - they would turn us on.

But 7pm rolled around fast and still no Nstar. As soon as the clock hit 7, Mike hit the phone again. This time, he was even less polite, especially when he found out that the job had been marked completed - again. This time, the supervisor promised to have it on by sometime that night. Additionally, Mike demanded they send someone out to take down the tree. They promised they would send an arborist sometime soon.

Around 9pm, they finally came. And they sent two trucks!

We were ecstatic. Mike ran out with his flashlight to give them a hand. The minute the guys saw the old wires, they flipped out. "These are so old, they must be the first wires used to connect this house to the pole whenever it was first wired for electricity," they said. Remember, this house was built in 1910. Woe. Seriously overdue for an upgrade, don't you think?

The electric dudes hooked us up with all new wires and turned us back on. Mike offered them a tip, but they refused to take it. They did hook him up with some killer electrical tape, which he was geeking out over for the rest of the night.

And finally, all returned to somewhat normal. Our electrician will come visit as soon as he can to make sure everything is electrically normal too. I'm going to keep on Nstar about that arborist. Expect another call in a few more weeks!

Hurricane Irene

2011-08-29T19:19:00.000-04:00

Whenever ill weather strikes, New Englanders glue themselves to the tube 24/7. Then, we all delight in discussing how useless and pointless the coverage was after the fact. New Englanders also love to complain that a storm wasn't "bad," as if they truly wanted complete and total annihilation. "Now that's a storm," they say. Worthy enough for a t-shirt, like the "I Survived Hurricane Bob" craze. We start trying to one-up each other, "in the blizzard of '78 I went days with my food in the snow" or "a tree fell over the driveway and I was stuck for ages" or "we bailed out the basement with a coffee can..."

Ridiculous.

But I'm a New Englander and a born Cape Codder. As in, born at Cape Cod Hospital and lived in the area all my life Cape Codder. And we're the worst offenders. Sure enough, I had my eyes stuck to the weather channel morning, noon, and night - even before the storm.

Sure enough, we were well prepared. I went grocery shopping on Tuesday. Thursday, we stayed up late cleaning the yard. Yup, up until midnight putting lumber in the basement, securing the garages, taking down the swings, and trashing the trash. We gassed up the chainsaws and the trucks.

Sunday, the storm was upon us. First thing in the morning, we lost a huge maple in the backyard. Thank god the boat was safe at Mike's work... it fell right on its normal parking space - just barely missing the playground, a tractor, and the skid steere. Mike was able to cut up some of it right then. But he was nervous about another old tree, perched precariously atop the hill next to the garage. It was primed to take out the garage and really taking a beating from the winds. Some of its higher limbs cracked and hung by some miracle of something.

Meanwhile, out front, a huge limb came off the locust, taking out the power lines to the house and ripping the box right off the outside wall. (This is a tree that Nstar cut off half of a few years ago. Now it's all lopsided and it still took out the power lines. Thanks, Nstar.) Luckily, we still had power for quite some time after that. And then our luck ran out - off by 3pm.

And it's still off. Now I'm regretting that huge food shopping trip. According to the National Food Inspection folks, food in an unopened fridge with no power is good only for 4 hours. Here we are at over 24 with a possibly 8 day wait ahead of us. Thank god for phones, or I would have never been able to check the weather.

Good News Bad News No News

2011-08-15T19:10:00.000-04:00

Nothing of particular interest happened this weekend. I was exhausted and allergic on Saturday and spent my day cleaning in hopes of some relief. I didn't even have an extra half hour afterwards to paint another porch ceiling section... which I had been planning on.

Sunday, Mike cleaned out the garage and garage addition, installed the springs to the garage addition door, and drove in his car. And that's about it. I could barely function on Sunday, I was so pooped from a Saturday night out. (Good times, but rough day without coffee.)

Good news, our neighbor Richard dropped by on the way home from a drywall side job. He wants to wrap up our kitchen drywall this week. I'll be so happy to have that taken care of! Then we can finally trim out the once-new-now-kinda-old window.

It's tough times once again thanks to vehicle dysfunction. Yes that''s dysfunction and not malfunction. My motor bit the dust and I'm more then bummed about it. It's supposed to rain most of the week. We have zero dollars. I'm trying to stay somewhat optimistic because things could always be worse. I just hate standing stagnant in my home improvement puddle. Life's too short for projects to sit unfinished!

Taking Little Bites

2011-08-09T19:19:00.002-04:00

Unexpected weekend! Going into it, I had no real plans, no real to-do lists, and no expectations. (Hard to believe, yes I know.) It started out small. Saturday I weeded, cleaned, vacuumed the basement, and re-set our backyard watering timer.

Then, I got the notion to try the old soapy water plus household vinegar (5%) plus as-hot-as-my-tap-will-make water poison ivy killer. I mixed the three in a bucket - very liberal on the vinegar and soap - no other measurements - and I threw the bucket contents over the rocks. After the first bucket I realized I was in a bit over my head. One bucket only covered the smallest of areas. But I had enough vinegar to do three buckets full, figuring that this would be a good test.

Side 1 Rocks: Before

Side 1 Rocks: After

Side 2 Rocks Before

Side 2 Rocks: After

As you can see from the results - it's obvious where I threw the mixture. The leaves turned black, then to white in those areas. Conclusion - I need more vinegar and a bigger bucket. Actually, I need a 50 gallon barrel with a pressure washer attached to it. I could market that.... Anyhoo, I'm going to keep watch to see if those areas and plants actually die. Then, I'll go to BJ's for another giant vinegar and make a little one-girl bucket brigade.

If that wasn't enough for one day, I randomly decided to paint that one fan-section of the farmer's porch ceiling. So randomly in fact, I only had a half hour window in which to prep, paint, and clean up. But I somehow made it happen. I started around 2:30 and was out of the shower by 3:45 and out the door to a house warming party.

Sunday morning, Mike installed the fan for me. And it looks beautiful! More importantly, the dang box is out of the living room!! Hooray! It's only been in there since my mom's bday. (May)

Then he took care of some other little things:
Installed the front door doorbell.
Replaced the one odd GFCI outlet on the porch with a normal one.
Cut two outlet covers in half to fit the porch outlets by the french doors.
Put up my Bermuda weather sign. (Gift from some friends of ours who went there... I was not so lucky to have gone.)
Removed the yucky Yukka plant from next to the lilac in the front yard. (Looks so much better without!)
Fertilized the back yard.

For the remainder of his rainy Sunday, Mike got to pick his own project. Installing the old garage door on the new garage addition! (Previously, we had a drop cloth keeping weather out of that area and didn't store anything steal-able in there.)

But as usual, it wasn't as easy a project as he had hoped. The door opening was 6" too big for the door. So, after using all the rest of our scrap wood, Mike had to hit the DeepHo for a few more pieces to build out one side. What a pain in the butt! After finally finishing the framing and installing the door tracks, it was close to 8:30pm. He called it a night and installed the door on Monday.

Looking at this door now, I can hardly believe it used to be on the front of our garage. It's super gross and ugly. I wish I could have bought Mike a new door for this space at the same time I bought the other door. But he really wanted the super huge door instead of two small ones for the front. And I can't blame him for that. We can live with this for a while.

Paint & Playground Paradise

2011-08-04T19:19:00.000-04:00

The weekend turned out to be much hotter then expected. And I'm not one to complain about the heat - I love it! The trouble is, you can't always be sitting by a pool drinking cool refreshing beverages when it's hot out. Sometimes you have to do hard labor and sweat yourself to death.

It started for me on Saturday. Mike didn't bring home the fuzzy rollers Friday night, but I decided that it would be smart to start cutting in. I could cut in around the largest part of the porch, paint that one section on Sunday, and have the fan installed by Sunday night. That was my original thought. It turned into two hours of pure sweat. Because of course, the porch is covered with furniture and the floor has already been stained. So to do the first section, I had to move the furniture, put down the drop cloth, clean off the bugs with a broom (which is a whole other disgusting story), and drag out and put up the ladder.

Wow, when I type it out like that I really sound like I'm complaining about the most menial of tasks. (Reminds me of someone else I know.) I'm not complaining. I'm stating. There was a lot of prep involved.

I cut in the first section with a brush fairly quickly and decided to move on. I had to move the furniture back, move more furniture out of the way, move the drop cloth and the ladder, clean more bugs, and remove outlet covers. Then I could cut in the next section. And then I just kept going. Move, move, clean, remove, move, paint... again and again until the entire porch was cut. By the last section, I was so sweaty toast. I was forcing myself to keep going, to finish. (Nevermind that I had to clean up afterwards.)

Needless to say, I accomplished much more then I set out to do. But after that hot hot Saturday afternoon experience, I just couldn't bring myself to do it again on Sunday with the roller. Not even in that first area where the ceiling fan is going to go. The mere thought! (That and the fact we were at a house party until 3am Saturday night.)

But don't think that we ended up lazing about on Sunday. The day was as jam packed as it was sweltering. Mike loaded up the playground dude's tractor parts (yeah, it ended up being unworthy of fixing), tools, and a chainsaw. A couple hours later he was back with the playground, drenched in sweat. He and his friend Marcus discovered that it was cemented into the ground... cemented as in 4' sonotubes into the ground kind-of cemented. And you thought it weird that he was bringing a chainsaw! They broke a truck jack trying to remove the thing and ended up having to cut it off its foundation.

While the boys were wrestling with the playground, Mikey and I were home with Timmy and Richard, who came over and wrapped the last side-stair post and installed the last railing on the side stair. After that, they were both wiped and called it a day. Timmy said he might have a stair-thingie at his shop that would fit for our front steps.... So he wanted to check that out before he started out front anyway.

It wasn't but a few minutes after they left that Mike and Marcus pulled in with the playground. We spent the remainder of the afternoon putting it together.

I had originally thought of facing the set towards the garage on the left side of the backyard. That plan had me worried because of all the poison ivy in that area, but with trees on the right hand side, I saw little other option. Mike suggested turning it the other way, facing the hillside, so it could go on the right hand side of the yard. I've got to hand it to him - it was the perfect spot.

But much like previous playground owners before us, we found it to be too unstable to just stand there in the yard. We'd have to cement it in. And luckily for us, we just happened to have four extra bags of concrete! The perfect amount for the four holes we dug around the tower portion.

After we poured the cement, we put on the slide and installed the two new swings we bought. (The third spot will be for an infant swing.) It looked good - really good. The slide is a little short... and weak from years of weather and use. We'll probably have to increase the angle and purchase a new slide. All in good time. I measured for the canopy and it looks like it will fit perfectly! Although we'll have to fashion a new ladder - the old one is not safe.

Now, in regards to the poison ivy on the other side of the lawn. Sunday night, Mike just mowed it all down. And the lawn looks AWESOME.

I know it's pretty hard to tell from this picture... but the area on the left by the septic vent? It looks awesome. Unfortunately, there's still poison ivy over there by that old Jeep thing. (The red thing by the tree in the picture.) And poison ivy is also climbing up the tree.

How do I know it's poison ivy? I looked it up on this website: http://www.poison-ivy.org/. The entire time, we just thought most of it was regular ivy, because it wasn't shiny and the leaves weren't reddish, as we had always been taught. Boy were we mistaken. The leaves don't have to be reddish or shiny. They can climb, creep, and even grow into a shrub! And the bad news is, there's no full proof way to get rid of it.

Mike is going to physically pull out the ivy by the Jeep. We have a whole bunch of it on our rock wall too, just to the right of this picture, out of frame. For areas where you don't want ANYTHING to grow, you can use a mixture of dish washing soap and vinegar. I'm going to try it on the rocks this weekend if time permits. I wouldn't mind that garbage of plants dying off. You can't even see the rocks!

And thus concludes our program. Thanks for reading.

Scrapping Sunday

2011-07-29T19:35:00.002-04:00

You know, I was feeling blue on the entire financial::improvement situation. "We're not where I want us to be," I kept thinking, angry at myself as if I could control any of it. Then I took a look at where we were at a year ago, July 2010. The porch was still ceiling-less! We were just trying to wire it at that point. The garage addition wasn't finished either! We still had two and a half Dodges and two 4Runners in the yard! Still browsing the posts I thought, "Wow! We've actually come such a long way!" And I felt much better.

Plus, despite a lack of new materials, Timmy's coming over on Sunday to do what he can with what we have. It'll be interesting. I think we have enough to wrap the last side-stair post and install the stair rail. Mike thinks he may have a good amount of front-stair material too. Time will tell. But if there's one thing Timmy's good at, it's making use of scraps. Very little goes to waste when he's around, and he's always thinking about ways to save money on materials.

Meanwhile, I know I told you all that I would have that playground this week. I haven't forgotten it. Poor Mike has spent every night in the garage this week, working super late nights on what we have dubbed, "The Poop Car." He needs to fix the lawn tractor belonging the the playground owner before we pick it up, but that shouldn't take long. I need to push him to do in the next couple days. Drop off the tractor and pickup the playground Sunday AM?

This week, the two swings we ordered from TV came in too. We're ready. Just fix the tractor, pickup the playground, set it up, install the swings, and measure for the canopy.

I've been looking up a safe and natural poison ivy killer for the backyard. Many online recommend soap and/or a combination of soapy water and vinegar... trouble is, this mixture kills everything. So I found this product. It's a plant based defoliant that I'm going to test out. Safe for pets, kids, and other plants... so they say anyhow.

Playground Time

2011-07-22T16:19:00.000-04:00

So here's that free playground! We haven't picked it up yet though. Mike sent me this pic from his phone when he went to go look at it on Wednesday. I think it's a pretty sweet find for $0. All we need now are three swings and a canopy for the fort. Later on we can add more stuff - another slide, a climbing wall, a fire pole, a captains wheel... the options are endless on these wooden playsets. That's why I like them so much more then the plastic. Plus, the wood blends in with the yard so much better then brightly colored plastics.

Ever since Wednesday, I've had playground fever. I want this thing so badly. I even offered to help Mike pick it up myself. (Literally, as the tower needs to be picked up and put on the truck in one piece.) I may petition him to try it this evening if Mikey isn't totally wiped out from day care...

If not, maybe Mike will have remembered my fuzzy rollers and I can get out on the porch and paint tonight. Yeah, it's the hottest day of the year. That might not be the most practical of ideas, even in lower evening temps. Plus there's the threat of mosquitoes. I already have some poison ivy on my foot from all that backyard work I did. (Yes, yes. Don't where flip flops. I know. But I'd rather have the poison ivy then subject my feet to socks and shoes right now.)

This weekend's going to be jam-packed with exciting activities too, leaving little room for work around the house. Cruel summer! But I will have the playground within the next week, with you all as my witnesses.

I showed the pic to Mikey and he kept repeating, "Mikey slide! Mikey slide!" Turns out to have been a bad idea. I told him Daddy wasn't bringing home the playground yet and he cried and kept repeating, "Daddy, playground! Daddy, playground!"

Lots Mow To Do 'Round Here

2011-07-18T15:09:00.000-04:00

I'm not the lawn mowing type. I just don't like it and I have a recently discovered severe grass allergy. But this past Friday night, I made an exception. One section of our yard, the steepest hill where lawn tractors fear to tread, was seriously out of control. Grass like long hair flowing downhill... Locusts popping up everywhere. Weeds! Prickers! It was absolutely untamed.

Mike taught me how to run the push mower... yelled at me for wearing flip flops.... and I was off and mowing. Turns out it's pretty difficult to mow such a steep grade. Mike ended up having to help me because I was in serious danger of falling down the hill with the dang mower. I just couldn't cut it. (Ha ha, lawnmower humor.) But with the two of us, we mowed the most of it.

Then, I pulled out all the weeds and locust sprouts. Mike was inspired to teach me how to run the small chainsaw, since I'd done so well with the lawn mower. I successfully cut down one small locust that was choking out a maple. Although as soon as it came down, huge spiders started jumping out of the tree like rats off a sinking ship. It was terrible. I hate spiders. So I guess I won't be quitting my day job for a landscaping life anytime soon.

After the weeding, we still have a little more mowing to do, but by this time, the sun had set. No use trying to mow in the dark. At the last moment, Mike got out the weed whacker and cut the grass on the very edge of the hill, finishing at least that half of it. And we need a retaining wall there pretty badly, I thought. But these things must wait.

Saturday afternoon, I spread some of our leftover gravel in the "machine parking area" at the back of on the yard. There wasn't enough gravel left to even cover half of the area properly, but at least my little bit of shoveling and raking took down the few small piles hanging out in the far corner. One of Mike's clients is giving him a free wooden playset on Wednesday, so I knew I had to at least attempt to tidy up back there. And yes, I just said a free wood playset. A big one with a slide, swings, and a fort on top. I'm so psyched about that. Hopefully Mike will be able to actually move his trailer and pick it up on Wednesday. That would make my week right there.

I should have been painting the porch ceiling Saturday afternoon, but I discovered that we're out of fuzzy rollers. Ok, they're probably like $1. But it was also about 85 freakin degrees out and I didn't really feel like taking off all the patio furniture, lugging out the ladder, and so on and so forth with the drop cloth and yadda yah. Maybe the thing to do is to paint in the evenings when it's cooler. I'll just have to get myself a fuzzy roller and half a glass of motivation later on this week.

Back to Normal!

2011-07-12T13:11:00.000-04:00

Ok, so the weekend is back. Time to ask myself what's happening? Are we too sick to move? Are we rushing from one event to another? Is there some sort of holiday? Some vacation to go on? A birthday party to attend? A Minute Clinic to waste the day at?

This past weekend, the answers were surprisingly - No, we're feelin good. No events. No holidays. No vacay. No party. Nowhere to go, errands to run, nothing, naught, nada, zip, zilch, zoop. All quiet on the home front.... Weird!

So, Mike and I held our breath, fearing the next event and/or disaster, and scheduled Timmy to come over Sunday to work on the porch. Sunday morning, Mike mowed the lawn. Everything was still surprisingly normal. Timmy came over and got right to work.

He added another post to our side staircase. Then, he built a wooden form for our last step, which would be made of cement. Mike went to HomeDeep, got the concrete, mixed it, and poured it into the form. Last step - done.

Then, Timmy got to our last two railings, which had been sitting on the side of the house in their boxes since May. One full rail went up on the main part of the porch. The last of the porch rails! Half of the second rail circled the side stairway. The last of the straight rails!

The only thing that remains to be done on the side stairway is the actual angled stair railing - which we have in stock, still in the box of course. The guys ran out of time on Sunday and will have to install this one another day. Timmy also gave us a short list for the front stairway. (Sweet! I love short lists!) The next couple weeks are back to events and occasions, but since I can't afford any new materials anyway, I don't much mind.

Maybe in that time, we can find a moment or two to tackle our back hill, where mini locust trees are sprouting all over the place. We need to weed whack in a desperate way. Also, the back yard grass, though still growing well, needs fertilizer.

Upcoming in August! The porch gets done! Once it's over with, we'll strip the siding off the left side of the house, install the octagonal window, and finally use up the rest of our in-stock siding. Do or die time. Summer's hourglass is quickly filling into fall....

A Lot of Trouble for Little Things

2011-06-30T16:06:00.000-04:00

Time to gripe. First off - I'm so sick of Couptessa ads on Pandora. Every time one comes on, I want to throw up. Secondly, I hate having to "sign up" for your stoopid website before you let me see any of the "awesome" deals... which always turn out to be more like mediocre deals on poop I don't need or want anyway.

Now that that's out of the way...

I've been trying for months, years in fact, to get the right dang end caps for my baseboard heat radiators. The problem originated years ago. Mike bought a buncha radiators without buying the end caps. He bought them from a pro-plumbing store open Mon-Fri 9-5. So obviously, since we work longer hours then that, it's been hard to go there to pick them up. Plus I never wanted to go on my own... not being a pro-plumber.

I finally mustered up the courage after a doctor's appointment put me in that neighborhood. I walked in there and received no assistance from staff. In fact, they directed me to the wrong place. A helpful pro-plumber actually helped me find the end caps, which I purchased four of.

Get home and they didn't fit. I told Mike I wouldn't go back there. So there they sat. $55 worth of end caps that didn't fit. Sitting around for months on end. But, as luck would have it, Mike had an opportunity to try and exchange them just yesterday. He came home with four different style caps at only a $10 increase in price. I was ecstatic!

But they didn't fit either. So now we have $65 worth of end caps that don't fit. I'm just ready to stab someone. I know the original mistake was not to purchase at the same time as the radiators... because over the years, lo and behold, stuff changes. Tis nature's way. But we have no way of knowing even the make and model of the radiators to order old-style ones... they have no brand names or markings on them and it's been too long to remember or have any of the boxes.

One of our pro-plumber friends is going to have to come over and try and identify the durn things... and then try and see if he can order or find the right caps. Two left. Two right.

I am so frustrated.

Then, last weekend, we put together Mikey's big boy bed. It was a gift, used, from some friends. And I assumed it would be a twin.... we get it home, it's a full. Good god the thing is huge, but we managed to fit it in Mikey's room and kind or sort of get things organized around it. Then, I fell in love with this bedding set from Target. Notice that the amazon link says "Twin." Just three days after I fell in love with the set - Target discontinued the Full size! I went to two local Targets to try and catch one left in stock. Nope. I went to Amazon and Ebay and a lot of other online bedding stores. Nope.

I started looking at other bed sets. Target, Walmart, Kohls, Home Goods, Bed Bath and Beyond, Overstock.com, smaller bedding websites, Macy's, Sears, Kmart... you name it, I looked there. And I hated everything.

Why did they discontinue the perfect bedding set three days after I fell in love with it??? That's almost reason enough to send some hate email.

Through some more mad searching, I finally got a wicked deal on ebay on a Tonka truck comforter. (Bought sheets and pillows at Target) See the Tonka tough comforter there on Amazon priced at $60? I got it on ebay for $30 plus $15 shipping. $45 comforter plus $25 sheet set equals $70. Original price of the Target bed-in-a-bag set? $69.99. At least I didn't lose money on this deal, but I'd still rather much have the build-it bedding set. The Tonka comforter by all accounts is thin and cheapy. I'm glad I didn't pay full price.

Mikey doesn't even like to sleep under the sheets and blankets. I'm probably driving myself crazy for no reason.

Meanwhile, nothing else has gotten done lately. We over seeded the back yard, which is actually growing quite nicely. My tree still looks sickly, but I just make sure it gets watered twice a week and hope for the best. Mike was terribly sick last weekend and I had bad allergy symptoms. We were both grounded.

I managed to pick out a paint color for the porch ceiling... but Mike hasn't been able to pick it up from work yet. Our neighbor Richard has been recovering from some minor surgery and hasn't been feeling up to drywall work. Timmy has been MIA, probably fishing. Not that it matters because we haven't been available either.

As you can tell I'm feeling pretty down about everything. Summer flies post 4th of July. This is not where I wanted to be right now.

Inspiring (Though Temporary) Fix

2011-06-19T10:24:00.001-04:00

We were at Bike Week last week... Great time, terrible weather, by the way. And while we were gone, Mike's mom (Kathy) was at our house watching out for both Mikey and our two cats. Cool, right?

Well, I returned on Wednesday evening to a few surprises. First, Kathy had totally organized the toys in the living room, with two new shelves, a canvas bin, and a new little table. Now, Mikey can clean up and put away his toys and they'll actually have a place to go.... Then Kathy says to me, "Now look in the bathroom."

Woe. The second I opened the door I was blown away. She'd accomplished something that I'd been thinking of doing time and time again for the better part of six years. She bought a roll of that cheapo linoleum and laid it down on the bathroom floor. It looked AWESOME. I mean like, exceeding any of my cheapo-linoleum expectations awesome. Plus, she got an actually toilet paper roller to go in our built-in holder and a new shade, which she had trimmed with some pink fabric trim to match the rest of the room.

Now, before I post pics, let me tell you just how inspiring this was. I decided just yesterday that this new and clean/fresh bathroom needed to be re-organized. So I started re-arranging all the crud. The four yaffa blocks I had serving as a vanity cabinet (leftovers from college), I moved to next to the bathtub. Nah - that just wasn't going to work. I moved them back. "I just wish these things were thinner," I thought.

Then, I had an epiphany.

Down in the basement, I had two thin plastic rolling drawer cabinets (also leftover from college) that I knew were practically empty. I measured them. I measured the space. This just might work. So I emptied and cleaned them and brought them in to the bathroom. This was going to be good - as long as my towels from the yaffa blocks would all fit in these smaller cabinets. I cleaned out the yaffa blocks and folded the towels.

They fit.

In fact, I had extra room and cleaned out my other bathroom/medicine cabinet, putting some of the bulk purchase items and annoyingly inconveniently sized items (hairdryer and curling iron) in the new cabinets as well!

I only wish I had a proper "before" picture for you. In fact, the only wide shot of the bano I could find on this blog was from 2005. And believe me, it looked much worse now in 2011 then it did then. Let me paint you a picture - the floor was dark green very old linoleum. (or something like that) It was cracked, warped, water damaged, rippled, and breaking all over the place. You'd leave the bathroom with gross pieces of flooring stuck to your feet. Of course dark green gross linoleum matches the light pink tile and teal green bathroom fixtures...not. The shade we previously had was a "temporary" shade made out of paper. Yes, paper. Costs like $2.00 at your local home improvement warehouse. The vanity cabinet, as I said, was made out of two stacks of two yaffa blocks, which didn't exactly fit well under the sink due to the plumbing. The yaffa blocks were made to look as one cohesive unit with a decorative towel draped on top and two cheap kitchen curtains hung across the front on a curtain rod. We kept the TP on top of the yaffa blocks and not in the TP holder because we didn't own a roller. (Hard to believe my husband works at a hardware store.... but I just couldn't spend money on this sh*t hole.)

Now, with all that in mind.... check this out:

In the pictures, the cheapo stuff looks nearly real. The real life view isn't quite as real - but it's 250% better then what it was before. The entire room is so much lighter now... easier to clean.... better on your bare feet.... It's still terribly ugly - but at least we can live with this now until we can manage to redo it for real.

Later on yesterday afternoon I cleaned up and organized the storage in the basement using the yaffa blocks. So that's looking more organized as well. All at NO additional cost. (Love that part!)

I can't wait until we can re-do that basement and get our other bathroom going on down there. But for now, of course, it's summer. And outdoor projects need tending to. Mike will be home today, and rumor has it, our neighbor will be over next week to finish the kitchen drywall so we can paint and trim out the new (now sorta old) window. Next Sunday, Timmy is raring to go on railing installation... After that, steps. After that, siding the other side of the house. After that, (pending funds) new gravel in the side driveway and a fence for the backyard.

That should get us through the remainder of summer.

Tree Woes and Grass Grows

2011-06-09T19:59:00.002-04:00

Saturday I was out in the yard with Mikey near our new Japanese maple and nearly died. The leaves on the maple were crinkly and dry. Petrified that tree-death was imminent, I had Mike water it well. Then, I hopped on the internet and read this article from someone in my exact situation.

Ok, phew. After reading all the comments, I came to the conclusion that this was normal - probably transplant shock - maples are hardy, we were watering enough, and not to freak out.

But I still can't help but worry. It's only gotten worse since Saturday. Now, most of the leaves have fallen off. It's been pretty warm, but we had rain this morning and a little last night. Rain is due again over the weekend... other then that, there's not much else I can do but pray it'll bounce back like the article advises it will.

I love this tree and it was so beautiful and full when I brought it home. Now it's a wreck and if it dies I'm going to be absolutely heartbroken. The two cherry trees out in front of our house are absolutely flourishing - despite being eaten again this year by bugs. So I feel like if those can succeed, this maple will too. I'm trying to keep the faith.

Out in the back yard, grass is coming up nicely! We've watered with the sprinklers every morning and evening with great results. It's nearly ready to walk upon!

Unfortunately, all other projects are on hold due to a couple of busy weekends in a row. Hopefully we'll have the rest of the porch railings up by July 4th. I still need to paint. The kitchen needs drywall. The siding is just hanging out on the side yard. The octagonal window is in the basement.

Plenty of materials - I'm not spending anything else until we exhaust our current stock.

Seeding Brings Sun

2011-05-31T19:21:00.000-04:00

I predicted this. We had half the neighborhood over on Sunday with rakes and shovels to spread the loam, lime, and seed over the backyard... and now the forecast is nothing but sunsusnsunsunsunsunsunsun- possible 30% chance of rain- sunsunsunsunsun. (Previously, when the loam sat idle, we had nothing but rain-showers-morerain in the forecast.) This always happens and probably has contributed to our lawn issues over the past 4 or 5 years.

But, yet again, we've strategically placed our sprinklers across the back yard and started a strict twice a day, 20mins a whack watering regiment. And we're really hoping the good quality loam will give us a nice fluffy, fertile blanket of grass.

All the neighbors made quick work of the job too. Mike managed to squeeze some life out of our skid steere and placed mounds of loam here there and everywhere in the back yard. Then, the neighbors would shovel it out and rake it smooth. When the whole thing was shoveled and raked, (and by the by, the 18 yards of loam did in fact cover the entire back yard - for those who saw and disbelieved) the lime and seed was spread. We left the side driveway barren, to be covered soon by that asphalty stuff... which can be covered by gravel. (I say, "what'ev's" at this point.) Within just a couple hours it was done.

And that's it.

Mike spent the rest of the Mem Day weekend working on the boat. Draining the boat. Cleaning the boat. Fixing the boat. But not going out on the boat. No time. But I suppose it's good to have all that other malarkey out of the way.

Looming....

2011-05-21T16:17:00.000-04:00

The loam has arrived! Mike ordered it early thinking that there may be a run on loam deliveries for Memorial Day Weekend. Smart. Now stay tuned for some spreading....

Now I'm Luvin It

2011-05-16T19:23:00.002-04:00

My painting from last weekend...

Mike sometimes just knows how to make it happen. And boy did great things happen between last Thursday and last Sunday.

Wednesday night, as you recall, Mike picked up all the lattice.
Thursday night, we had a small cocktail party for a friend's birthday - going out on a weeknight, I know! Livin on the edge over here.
Friday was our first big lattice day.

Mike first dug a trench in front of the porch, then stapled up the screening. The lattice came next. And so on and so forth for each section of lattice, each section of porch. He finished the entire front side that evening.

You may recall that I was going to purchase a tree on Friday. But I didn't. Turns out, Morrison's prices and selection were so good, I could afford a bigger and better tree then I ever imagined! (Plus I had my 25% off coupon.) Unfortunately, such a nice tree would not fit in my driver's seat. So I borrowed Mike's truck on Saturday to pick up the tree - a beautiful Japanese maple around 8' tall.

I must say I was also very satisfied with my tree-buying experience. A helpful dude got the tree for me, loaded it into the truck, suggested the type and amount of planting soil, rented me a free tarp to protect the tree from the perils of driving, gave me a How-To-Plant sheet, and he was kind and courteous about it. The tree was $189 - add in my coupon and a couple bags of soil - total of approx $169. I think that was a fabulous deal. I will shop there again, for sure!

Saturday night, Mike planted the tree for me - on the left side of the house (if looking from the street.) It's awesome! I can look at it from my chairs on the porch and I just love it. When it grows up a bit, the shade will really help the grass on that side. (It needs all the help it can get.)

Sunday Morning! It's the big day - the day of Mikey's 2nd Birthday Party, and boy do we have a lot to do. (I'll save you from all my food-prep and cleaning/decorating tasks and stick to the house blogg'dness of it all.) Mike begins the morning by latticing (is that a word?) Fail, try again. Mike begins the morning by applying the lattice to the right hand side of the porch - at least up to the soon-to-be-finished steps.

Then, off to the dump. He trashed all the old wood and gutters that we had previously been storing under the porch. (Yeah, they all got wrecked when we stained... should'a thought'a that.) He also trashed all our coon-munched trash and he even trashed our huge, impossible-to-dump-cause-it's-too-heavy-when-full trash can.

Upon the return home, Mike grabbed a chair from our mudroom to return to a friend of ours. (Yes, we had a chair on loan... best not to ask questions. Long story.) But we needed to return it ASAP to make room for the coming piano... I've been taking lessons. Another long story.

So he dropped the chair off, picked up all our party rentals, returned home just in time to get it all set up, and the party went off with very few hitches.

And now that the madness is over, we have a beautiful new tree... beautiful new lattice... no chair.... Things are good! This Sunday, weather permitting, we'll be picking up the piano. Oh, and I may have neglected to mention that our two porch railings that have been on back order? They were delivered on Wednesday.

Wouldn't it be great if Timmy could come by for a bit on Sunday to install?

Next on the List: (because Memorial Day Weekend is right around the corner)
Finish the railings and the steps.
Trim over the lattice.
Loam and seed the back yard.
Finish the kitchen drywall and paint.
Paint out all porch trim and the porch ceiling.
Purchase and install a porch ceiling fan.
Rip all the siding off the left hand side of the house.
Install the octagonal window.
Install new siding.

Not in that order. I'm not sure about Timmy's schedule, but we plan to at least do the loam over Mem Day Weekend. The small things like paint and fixtures, I will keep pushing for myself to take care of. Beyond that - I can't forecast.

But I think we've caught up with ourselves from being sick, at least.

Not Lovin My Lattice Yet

2011-05-12T17:23:00.000-04:00

Hyannis HD just sux. I don't know why I even told Mike to go there to get the lattice. Of course they were out of stock! He returned home with only the screening... and a couple of circle dirt things that go at the base of the trees. (Freebies from work.)

Luckily, HD spring hours are long enough to accommodate toddler bedtimes. 10pm EST. After I returned home from piano at 8:30, Mike went to our local HD and picked up everything we needed. We'll be ready to rock and roll on Friday, as long as Mike can cut the stuff. (His saw and some other tools are at the present time, conveniently located at his sister's house.)

Also on Friday, I'm going to purchase a tree. (Good thing Mike got a random 3 of those circle dirt things.) We'll be installing that as well Friday evening.

As for this weekend - rain. Next week - rain. Would have been lovely to have that loam down with some grass seed... we'd have a full fledged lawn by June. You just watch. As soon as we get da stuff... heat wave. Drought. All summer long.

50 Ways to Love Your Lattice

2011-05-11T19:55:00.001-04:00

No screen last night. Mike had to measure first - which he did last night. Good news, he's going to get the screen and the lattice and do it all at once, tonight. (Can you tell I'm being just a little pushy?)

Meanwhile, I gave a call to Morse Lumber yesterday, since those last two railings have been on back order for more then a month now. The answer? They'd be delivered on Thursday. Awesome. Will they be up in time for the weekend? No. But at least they'll be here. I asked too for a price on 6" solar lit post end caps and did not receive a callback. That makes me wonder if they just slapped them on the order without giving me the price first... Mmmm, nerve racking.

Also, I received in the mail a coupon for 25% off any tree or shrub at Morrison's Home and Garden. (As if I needed any excuse to purchase a tree or shrub, right?) So I'm thinkin Friday I'll purchase a tree. A tree for the side of the house, since the back isn't ready yet. Not sure what type of tree yet, but I'm flexible. I'll see what they have in stock. I'd really love to have one those purple-leaf'd trees...

*As I said to some co-workers, "I'm not very botanical!"

So if all that wasn't enough, I got myself a good scare last night while taking out the trash. And if you didn't know, we have a cruddy little trash hut made out of plywood out in back of the house. This past winter, with all the rough weather, the hinges on the door of the thing finally gave way. And with all the other goings on, fixing it hasn't been even ON the list.

So there I am, fist fulla boxes in the dark of night. I pull off the plywood door, which is just leaning against the hut, and I stare. "When did I throw away a sweatshirt," I'm asking myself. Suddenly, the sweatshirt looked up. And I'm staring into the fuzzy face of one of the biggest raccoons I've ever seen. He's just chillin in the trash can, chowin down.

I screamed and ran. He was not phased. Perhaps a little surprised that I so rudely interrupted his dinner, that's all. He was big - I mean come on, I thought he was a sweatshirt laying on top of the trash can. Fat as a coon who's been munching on our trash since the door broke over the winter, undoubtedly.

I went right inside. "Did you hear me scream?"
"No."
Well, that was comforting. Good to know I could have been mauled by a fat coon without anyone to hear me and come to my aid. I related the story to Mike, who immediately went out to the garage looking for his pellet gun.

But by then our furry new friend was no longer in the hut. But he hadn't gone far. He was brazen enough to stick around close, hanging out under an adjacent tree. Mike got one good shot off, hitting him in the face before he scurried into the darkness. By the time Mike got a proper flashlight, he'd gone. Or maybe found a better hiding place.

Another great reason to love your lattice.

And another great reason to get a new freakin trash hut. A real live small shed would be fabulous. Something not made out of scraps... I shouldn't complain. It's lasted thus far.

Rock'N Out

2011-05-11T14:54:00.000-04:00

My back is kinda sore, but the rock wall is done! And we actually had a good time, Mike and I. Yes we did. We grabbed a couple beers, set up the work light, and chucked rocks at dirt for the better part of 2 hours. It was great. Just like old times.

And I must admit, I'm pretty happy with the results. We used up all the rocks we gathered on Sunday, plus some huge ones we managed to roll into place.

Can't Stop the Rock

So as you can see, the rock wall now turns neatly to the right.... or left, depending on where you're standing. We went as far as the amount of rocks could take us. What we're going to do with the hillside to the left of the rocks in this pic... unknown. Maybe that area will just be grass.

And speaking of which, Mike is going to attempt to just change the oil in his skid steere and make it go - at least enough to spread loam. Plus, while we were standing around admiring our work last night...he noticed a high area that he'd like to grade down. Urgh. In my opinion, that man could find fault in the yard for an eternity just so he could keep digging with the big machine.

Then, he also dropped the bomb that he doesn't want to re-gravel the side driveway. He wants to put down something... I forget the word. But it's the poop they scrape off highways when they repave. Old asphalt. I don't like that idea at all. He's slowly trying to pave the entire yard is what he's doing. I much prefer the natural gravel look - it goes with the rock wall, and it provides better drainage. HE wants to eventually put a car lift in the side driveway.

Nuh-uh. No ways.

We'll see who wins out on this one. We did not come to any kind of agreement at that time.

But seeing as how we made so much great progress last night - I want to keep the train going and have Mike bring home that meshy stuff that goes under the lattice for the bottom part of the porch. If we can maybe get that stuff on tonight and the lattice tomorrow or Thursday?! Keep up the pace! THIS is the spring I'm talkin about.

If At First You Don't Succeed.... Get a Bigger Machine

2011-05-09T19:46:00.005-04:00

AKA The Big Machine Fiasco of 2011.

Mike brought home the big machine on Thursday - a Case skid steere on tires. As you recall from last post, he spent all of Thursday night cleaning the yard in preparation. Friday he planned to dig up the side gravel driveway so that we'd be able to have the loam delivered and dropped there on Saturday.

It was all so smooth and easy and going according to plan. So of course, something had to go terribly wrong.

Friday night's disaster started with the Case. It couldn't even dig itself out of its own way! Seriously - no power. Mike struggled for a couple hours and finally gave in when the stoopid thing couldn't even get over a small dirt hump. He switched to our own John Deere skid steere... which we hadn't planned to use because we always considered it an inferior machine. Turns out, it kicks the stuffing out of the Case. It was actually doing a credible job... that is, until the motor blew up.

Yes, that little machine kicked the bucket at the absolute wrong time. Mike spent the rest of the night trying in desperation to fix it - but gave in upon the realization that the motor should really be re-built.

Saturday. Obviously, we weren't going to order loam without the means to move it and without a place to put it. Sad days.

Then Mike called me on his way home from work Saturday night. He was on his way to a job site where he would pick up a bigger big machine from another friend of his. The same bigger big machine, it turns out, that dug our basement years prior. (Ah, memories.)

Saturday night we had three machines - three trailers - and one boat in the neighbor's yard. OMG just doesn't cover what the neighbors must have thought... although they've got to be used to it by now. (We are good friends with most of them, one family hates us, and we have one newbie on one side that I think likes us...)

Anyway, when Mike rolled off the trailer with that third machine - a big Cat on tracks - he drove right over to the gravel driveway, scooped a scoop, and dumped it over the hill. Power! At long last! Sunday was going to be good... except now we didn't have the loam. Only one day with the machine and no loam...

8am Mike started up the machine. And it went so fast, I was convinced he was going to be finished with the whole job at noon! Sure enough, the driveway was done before 10.

Before noon, Mike had brought down the grade of the entire back yard to the correct level. Before 1, he cut a bit out of the hill on the other side of the garage - where we hadn't even planned to cut! Before 2, the entire back yard was smoothed over. Mike took the machine down back into the hole, where we picked up rocks to create a rock wall where our current rock wall now makes a sharp right. Before three, Mike decided to dig a hole out in the way back and bury two huge stumps.

Before 4, the machine was washed and back on its trailer and on its way back to the job site where it came from. Before 5, the cruddy tire Case was back on its trailer and on its way back to where it came from.

And we were all home about 8, having stopped for dinner on the way home.

The Old Gravel Driveway, now Dirt

The Opposite Side of the Garage soon to be Tie Wall

The New, Flat Back Yard

Now the only problem is the loam. How are we going to spread it once it's delivered? We may not be able to get the machine again... and ours is kaputkz.

For now, those thoughts are going to have to wait. This week, I hope to complete the rock wall on the new right hand turn of the back yard. I also hope to get some PT ties for the side yard on the other side of the garage. We can't have either side washing out... but I have no clue what's involved for the ties. Rocks are easy. You just throw 'em on. Looks rustic. I might even do that tonight if I can muster my strength enough.

Stain, Dig, Repeat

2011-05-06T19:45:00.001-04:00

Allergies. I have severe allergies. And boy did I suffer last weekend... right after I cursed myself by saying, "F this sickness, I'm going to keep on doing whatever I wanna do." Yup. Never ever say that. Because the sick came back with a vengeance and bit me in the butt so hard I could barely get off the couch to make myself some Sleepytime tea.

I was going through a box o tissues a day. But after going to the Dr's on Wednesday, I'm Clariten clear! Now I understand that ad campaign - because I was in a serious fog o allergies. And that Netipot that I swore I'd never do? I'm doing it daily. And I'm going to be seeing a specialist.... Loverly.

But despite the pain... progress cannot be stopped. (Just slowed a little bit, which is super frustrating when you're on a tight spring chore/project schedule!)

Mike did in fact get the porch stainer and stain last weekend. The stainer thing looks a bit like a Swiffer, except with a brush in the middle to get the insides of the boards. Unfortunately, due to sickness, the porch was not cleaned off or prepared before Sunday as was planned. Mike had to do it all... and the job took all day.

Additionally, we realized last Sunday, "Hey it's May 1st and it's the last day we can burn!" And boy did we have a pile from all that yard work and trimming of trees we did a few weeks-a month back. So Mike set up a burn while he worked out front. It was a little hectic for a while...

But the brush got burnt and the stuff got stained.

The porch looks AMAZING! Not only because of the beautiful dark cherry stain, but also because all the poop is gone. (And by poop, I mean siding, wood, tools, etc.) I put back our porch furniture just a few days ago, plus a couple potted plants from BJ's.... OMG it looks like a real live nice person's house. I'm in love all over again.

I Actually Had a Nice Cup of Coffee Out Here While Mikey Played on the Bus

The Plants Make a Difference - So Nice!

The only unfortunate news - it's going to need another coat. And, with this week just made for diggin', I just don't think we're going to get to it in time for Mikey's 2nd bday party on the 15th.

But speaking of diggin', Mike picked up the machine on Thursday and began the lovely process of cleaning up the yard. (Did I mention he took the camper back to our friends' house on Tuesday night?) So the camper was already gone. Next, Mike cleared around the garage (again) and put some scrap metal in his truck for the dump. The boat he moved to our vacant neighbor's house. Mikey's little bus - on the porch.

And that's about all we had time for on Thursday....

Can You Dig It?

2011-04-28T19:44:00.000-04:00

Just call me A Mess. After a near- recovery, I've slipped into relapse town. I don't know if this is allergies, viruses, infections, or just generalized internal chaos (great band name by the way) but I'm sick and tired of it. So sick and tired that I've resumed all normal activity - whether I feel like poo or feel like sunshine, I do whatever I normally do. I just have to. That's the bottom line. I can't stay stagnant for weeks on end.

Since the garage doors are in and working and since the remainder of my railings are still on back order, Mike and I have moved forward on other projects. Just last Friday I came home early and painted a lot of the farmer's porch trim and puttied some more nail holes. I still have the front facing, exterior farmer's porch trim to putty and paint - but that will have to wait until Mike sets up the ladder for me. Because I'm petrified of heights. (As my good friend Ryan put it, "I'm not afraid of heights - it's just that 'Woe!' feeling you get when you're on top of the ladder.")

Mike, meanwhile, continues to clean up his mechanical hoarding. Last weekend he gave away a set of rims and a giant tire.

And just this week, we're gearing up for warm sunny weekend weather with a couple projects in mind. Just last night, for example, I tidied the camper in preparation for its departure on Friday. Tonight, Mike will install his brake controller so he can safely tow the thing to our friends' house. (Yes, we share the camper.)

This move will free up the gravel driveway so that Mike can use his skid steere to remove all the rocks and fix the grade. (Out and away from the garage this time!) Once this has been accomplished, we'll order a dump load of loam and have it dumped right in the once-gravel driveway area. And this is because....

Next Sunday the 8th, Mike is borrowing a bigger machine from some friends of his to grade the backyard and spread the loam. (Nothing says Happy Mom's Day more then big machinery....) And I know we previously decided NOT to re-grade... but Mike has the opportunity to borrow the machine for free and we're eager to dig below and cover up any broken glass and debris leftover from last year's vehicle headaches and trash burying of years past. SO, there ya go.

Additionally, Friday or Saturday night, Mike is going to pick up stain and the porch staining machine. (Three non-rainy days in a row? Yup, I'll stain for that.) Tonight and/or tomorrow night, my task will be to clean off the porch in preparation. And hopefully with the machine, it won't take too much time once we get started either.

Stay tuned - this renovation freight train is coming through....

The Doors

2011-04-20T19:14:00.000-04:00

It's been awhile. And I apologize... but I've been pretty much on my death bed for the entire month of April. First, as you know, it was the strep. Then I came down with conjunctivitis. Then I came down with some sort of bronchitis, from which I am still recovering by the way.

Mike got none of it - of course.

But despite my online absence, we've still been working. (And when I say we, I mean Mike because I've been totally out of commission.)

Let me start first with our door drama.

As you know, the fam and I bought Mike a giant garage door for xmas. A giant garage door for our two-car one-door not-one-large-door-one-small-door garage. But due to inclement weather and misc sickness, it's been sitting around since January in boxes. The door itself, the hardware, the tracks, and all the accessories we purchased... just hanging out in the boxes.

A few Sundays ago, we were finally ready to install. And I mean, this was do or die. The previous Saturday night, Mike and a few of his friends cleaned out the garage, cut a gigantic hole, removed the old door, and pushed out the project cars. A door had to go in by end of day Sunday. Otherwise let me just put up a red flag and a sign out front: FREE STUFF! GARAGE NOW OPEN FOR LOOTING!

Sunday morning Mike went out to the HD and purchased the garage door opener. (Eeee! So exciting!) As soon as he arrived back home, the door dude arrived. The weather was beautiful, the pre-construction was accurate, and everything was perfect.... But we were missing pieces. Big deal pieces. The low headroom kit that would allow the door to open properly was missing.

I could've sworn we paid for that.

But we had no invoice, receipt, order confirmation, package inventory, or other manner of documentation could be found anywhere. I had an email, which I received after ordering the door on Home Depot's online garage door custom ordering website. You know what it said? "Thanks for ordering blah blah blah." Nothing about - here's what you ordered and here's the cost breakdown...

Lovely.

The guys went back to the DeepHo, purchased the low headroom kit in stock, and returned after all that to find out that it wasn't going to work. So the door was installed.... but it couldn't go up. (At least our stuff was safe though.... So safe, not even we could get to it!)

Now, at this point, I'd like to take a break in the narrative to talk about WHAT a difference the new door (working or not) has made to the garage. First, the outside. It looks like a real live two car garage now. A nice one at that... save for a little trim around the edges. And when you open the door... (not that it could be opened at this point in the story) the whole garage world is your oyster!

Inside, the white of the door makes the entire garage look bigger when the door is closed. Mike is thrilled beyond belief.

And now we fast forward to just last weekend. Mike called the door company and they confirmed that in fact we did not order a low headroom kit. (Uh-huh, is my response. I need to call them back to get an actual receipt.) So, back to the DeepHo. But the salesperson told Mike the kit he'd bought previously would work. So, back home.

Mike and the door dude make some modifications and at long last, the door went up and down! Mike installed the opener too - so just imagine, we hit the button and it opens! No more of this fumbling for the padlock key and trying to get the durn thing to open when it's frozen in the middle of winter. The garage door opener even came with a wireless keypad for the side of the garage. (Yet to be installed.) All these creature comforts! I'm loving it and I haven't even pressed my button yet.

Sick Like Winter

2011-04-07T19:26:00.003-04:00

This is an April fool's joke, isn't it? First the snow, then strep throat. WTF?! Yes, sick again. The snow came first, tuned me into a minor cold which turned into major pain. And by last Friday, I was completely incapacitated. Saturday I went to the Minute Clinic - strep.

But I wasn't alone! The door dude called Mike. He was sick as well... sounded worse then I did, Mike said. (How that was possible, I didn't know.) The garage door installation was again postponed.

My good gal pal Heidi and her 4-kid crew were also supposed to come by for family hair day. (She does the hair, if you hadn't guessed.) Strep unfortunately canceled that date too. No need to expose two older kids, a toddler, and a newborn to ANYTHING like that.

Timmy, on the other hand, was healthy and well and arrived on Sunday around noon for more railing installation. (I was quarantined to the house as soon as folks arrived.) He and Mike (and Richard, who joined the party a couple hours later) wrapped the last full height pole and installed our last in-stock railing. (Two more on backorder, yet to arrive.) Then, they wrapped the three half poles of the side stairway. Ready to rock.

At the end of the day, the guys figured out how the front porch steps were going to go. Mike and Richard dug and prepared the stairway landing area for concrete. Pending a break in the rain, Mike will bring home the cement mixer and pour the front stair landing and the remainder of the side stair landing. (Which we previously - and accidentally - poured only halfway.)

*UPDATE
So here I am on Thursday.... still having not posted the post that I started writing on Monday. Blame the sickness! (That's what I do.)

While I was busy not-blogging, Mike and Richard picked up the cement last night. Mike had brought home the cement mixer, but there just wasn't enough daylight and energy to make it happen. Plus, we had a little bit of rain. Tonight perhaps?

Meanwhile, I've been trying to research solar post end caps. And if you click on that nifty link, you'll see that Amazon has a wide price range of products. Some of these dang solar lit post caps are big bucks. Like this one for $49.99... IT'S ONLY ONE CAP, PEOPLE!
Home Depot has a 4" x 4" one for $3.99. Yes it's crap, but it's only $3.99! Compared with $50??? What's wrong with the world? If I had a 4" x 4" post, I'd buy a few for $3.99 and if they turned out to be poo, I wouldn't give a poo.

The thing of it is, the reviews for the expensive ones aren't that great. They stopped working... they came broken... they're not bright at all... etc etc.

Unfortunately for us, we have the harder-to-find 6" x 6" post. So I can't just pick up a $3.99 cap and call it done. In fact, I'm having a difficult time finding a 6" for a decent price. I found this one here, but I'm not really in love with the design. I more like the design of the $50 one. Not that it comes in my size anyway.

And other websites - deckdepot and decklighting and otherstoopiddecksites.com? Yeah, I've found that their pricing is NOT at all competitive, their sites have poor design and navigation, the information is lacking, the selection is limited, and overall - I've come to the conclusion that I probably won't be able to find these online.

Changies in Schedule

2011-03-31T19:05:00.001-04:00

As you may recall, we were tentatively scheduled to work on the farmer's porch this weekend, garage door next weekend, and possibly backyard grading the weekend after that.

But, as always, nothing goes as planned. Garage door is still scheduled for next weekend. And now the farmer's porch is scheduled for next weekend as well. (Timmy was stuck at work this past Sunday and couldn't make it over.)

So, what were we to do but start on the backyard?

Mike firstly came to the realization that he just couldn't and shouldn't grade the entire backyard. It was too much and our little skid steere would spend the next billion years trying... probably blowing itself up in the process. Mike decided that the best course of action would be to pour more cement and increase the height of the garage addition floor. He'd also grade down the gravel driveway, and angle it towards the pavement driveway so that water would flow in that direction instead of towards the garage.

We spoke about the possibility of getting rid of the gravel entirely and pouring a cement side-driveway. I told Mike if we were going to do that, we should do the entire driveway at the same time... we imagined it would be an expensive proposition and left the idea on the table for the time being. One thing at a time.

The backyard.

Now, this all started when I got out my rake and started raking the rocks. (Yes, the rocks. They were fulla leaves.) And when I got near to the end I thought, "Why should I rake this corner when I want it gone anyway?" So I asked Mike if he would get the skid steere and cut the corner.

He agreed and made a nice circular sweep around, creating a new entrance down into the backyard hole. (Which we'll eventually add gravel to...) Meanwhile I kept on raking the back of the backyard where I had left off a few weekends ago. That led into my next problem - there were all these new, small trees growing sideways that were in my way. So Mike got out his chainsaw and we chopped a bunch of them and piled them on the Trogdor for later burnination. (Next weekend, perhaps?)

Well that helped with the raking, to have all those out of the way. And it looked a heck of a lot better. Except now Mike's CB antenna was in the way. So our neighbors from up the hill came down and gave Mike a hand raising the thing to back on the back of the garage. Mike secured it as I continued raking, now unimpeded.

When that was done, I asked Mike to help me out on the waaaay back of the back. I had him skim the top, (where all the gross old leaves and logs were) with the skid steere. This would make a big difference in ease of raking. But that raised another problem. Mike couldn't effectively smooth out the area due to large, massive old stumps.

So he had to hook up chains and drag out a couple giant stumps, which he then loaded onto the truck for a Monday dump run.

Meanwhile I kept raking. (Never go years and years without raking people. You'll die - like I did at about this point.) I raked the bulk of the leaves and called it a day when my arms were about ready to fall off.

And at about the time Mike finished loading the stumps - he was beat too. We called it a day.

Would You Like Windows With That?

2011-03-24T17:12:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I'm stoopid. I'm checking out Monday's post and reading right there in my own writing, "no windows [on the left hand side of the house.]"

This is entirely wrong.

There are two windows - the two living room windows - on that side. DUR. But the siding will still be easy. In looking at that side of the house, I forgot that our gambrel style roof goes waaay down. Like to the level of the first floor ceiling. Yes, we won't be siding up two stories even!

Incredible - that's not a lot of siding at all. I can see that side really getting done sh*t quick....

Clean Up, Siding, and An Unexpected Guest

2011-03-21T19:48:00.003-04:00

Yes, it's time again for the Sunday Show! The show where we present, for your reading and viewing pleasure, all the awesome and wonderful things that happened around the house on Sunday! You may have thought we were off the air - but yesterday unexpectedly kicked off the spring season of the Sunday Show in ways never thought possible.

We were up at our usual early hour on Sunday. And, inspired by a Saturday burn by our neighbor up the hill, (and not to mention my stick-gathering of two weeks ago) Mike went downtown at 9am and got a burn permit. Needless to say, we were burninating by before 10am. Awesome.

Shortly after the fire was self sufficient, Mike went about moving stuff in the yard. The camper - back to the gravel driveway. Those old logs - pushed down the hill with the skid steere. One lawn tractor - gave to a neighbor. Snowmobile - on the side of the garage, cover on. Junk - loaded in the truck for the dump. Sweet.

Although I must admit, this after photo doesn't look like much. But it looked a lot worse before. Additionally, Mike considered the grading project. He'll need to get himself a bigger machine, that's for sure. He estimated about an 18 inch difference from the garage addition to the edge of the hill. Plus, this nasty bit you see in the bottom third of this photo? All that has to be cut off as well. I'll be prodding Mike this week to remind him to source out a machine he can borrow on the cheap/free. Sounds like a plan.

And if you think that's all we've got on this edition of the Sunday Show - well, you're wrong! Around 12:30pm, Timmy and Richard came over and got right to work finishing the siding. Mudroom/Kitchen Side - done. (Save for a bit of trim and trim-painting.)

It's all one cohesive side! Imagine that.... Mike also cleaned up that side driveway whatever-you-want-to-call-it area. We had a buncha dirt piles there from snow plowing and sanding over the winter. Plus, we had our garage doors stored there on saw-horses. No more. Mike moved those, dug out the dirt, and put in some pea stone from the gravel driveway to fill in. Sigh of unexpected relief. I'll be prodding Mike some more to schedule his friend for garage door installation as soon as this upcoming weekend.

The last little triangle of siding up on top? (There on the right.) Oh yeah, it's done. Trim's back up. All is well with the world of siding.

If you simplify all and everything - you could call our siding half done. But, as Mike is quick to point out, the left hand side of the house is barren - no windows (save for an octagonal one yet to be installed), no doors, no additions, no porch, no nada. And without any of those strange cuts and jags, it will be quick work to side the left. (Not to mention less wasteful as well.) We're so much more then halfway there.

Nearing the end of the Sunday Show, Timmy made us a materials list for another upcoming Sunday Show. And believe it or not, it's not going to pinch my pockets too too badly.

Wrap for the last of the porch posts
Two more railings and a stair rail
Misc trim - and not much of it

Weather permitting, I will be prodding Mike to order everything on Friday. (Lotta prodding going on this week.)

Now it's time for the most Unexpected thing to ever happen on the Sunday Show. And I Missed It. MISSED IT! I'm so pissed. Ken Thompson stopped by. Name ring a bell? As in, just a couple weeks ago I was talking about Mr. and Mrs Robert Thompson, previous owners? And how the strange coincidence of my friend Christine having visited Mrs. Thompson caused me to reconsider all the unanswered questions about my house in my own mind??

And the dude shows up and Mike gives him the grand tour and I'm not there. Oh, I was livid.

Needless to say, he was impressed. Surprised that the bathroom had gone basically unchanged. Loved the kitchen, loved the tile. He did tell Mike in regards to the yard that they dug out a huge hill in order to build the garage. They dug it out and pushed it down the hill in back. It used to be just one giant hill in back of the house. And the family had always wanted to renovate, but didn't have the means to do what we did.

He said he usually has to go to the Cape for something every couple months. Mike encouraged him to stop by at any time, and I hope he does.

After that, Mike cleaned up the gravel driveway with the leaf blower.

And that's all we have time for this week on the Sunday Show! If you can't tell, I'm just giddy with excitement. Everything all of a sudden seems so close and easy again. If we can get that garage door installed next weekend.... If we can get the last posts trimmed and the last railings up next weekend.... If we can grade the backyard the weekend after that....

It's never that easy though, is it?

In the Glass of Her Boudoir

2011-03-19T15:50:00.000-04:00

Boudoir - French, literally means "sulking place." I'd like to think of my all-new office as a boudoir. Yes, you heard it here first, all-new. As in, I'm sick of sitting stagnant and couldn't live in the virtual photoshop renovation world any longer. I decided to re-arrange my upstairs office.

It had been annoying me for quite some time - ever since I started my piano lessons and found I couldn't get at the keyboard comfortably with three computers, a TV, a sewing machine, and various pictures, nic-nacs, and other oddities all over the desk. Plus, the excess dust and garbage was highly aggravating to look at. I mean, I had old empty boxes of nothing, giant dust bunnies, a file cabinet from the dump, and wires - wires everywhere! Oh, and the books! Tons and tons of books!

This is what happens when you have a little boy and don't use your office for near to two years.
It was high time I stormed the castle and regained my place on the office-throne.

As usual, I highly underestimated the time it would take me to do such a thing. Two hours tops. Four hours later and I still wasn't done. I'm actually still not done. It took an additional two nights to clean up the major mess and now I need to organize the minor mess that still remains.

Why did it take so long? Well, I suppose I should have gone back to photoshop land first, because I rearranged that room every which way to Sunday. I knew I wanted to flip the desk around so the chair would face the wall instead of facing out. But beyond that - uugh!

I flipped the desk and centered it. I flipped it and put it to the left - the right - back to the left. Measured to determine if it would fit on another wall. And finally I flipped it so it faced the window. Now, I thought, I was on to something. The rest would be easy! WRONG. Where to put the couches? I can't even tell you how many couch configurations I did. This was the bulk of my time. I moved those things again and again and again. Finally, as the sun began to set, I said, "Come on, think outside the box here." And that seemed to work - I put the large couch in the middle of the room.

Now I was really onto something! All of a sudden I had two defined areas, which solved the problem of a big freakin gap in the middle of the room.

But the love seat was still a problem. I wanted it to fit opposite the couch, but it was just too big for the space. I needed a chair. I didn't have a chair. I needed to buy a chair.

And that pretty much brought me to the end of Day1.

On Day2 I left the dang love seat where it was and brought in all the misc items I had stuffed into the bedroom on Day1. Books, video equipment, nic-nacks, etc.

On Day3 I went into HomeGoods to check out their chairs. I had previously looked online at IKEA and decided I didn't like anything there for the money. I planned to check out HomeGoods and take some measurements and on Day4, get an armchair for around $200. But - I had a total Maxx moment. They had, in the back, a perfectly matching chair... same color as the couches, microfiber, very soft.... on Clearance - $75. It didn't have any arms, but for a price like that, I didn't care.

I brought it home at put it in place of the love seat. And unfortunately I had to stick the love seat on the other side of the room temporarily. I need to get it out of there, but since it won't fit thru the living room basement door, I have to wait until the temps warm up enough for us to open up the exterior basement door.

Final thoughts - the chair could be bigger, but for the money, I think it's great.

Full Frontal Photoshop

2011-03-11T17:20:00.000-05:00

I'm getting waaay too ambitious again. Either that or my vitamin D level has dropped to catastrophically low proportions. Whatever the reason - I hit the photoshop again. And despite the fact that I'm not totally finished with this pic, I have a need to share anyway.

Click to Enlarge

Check it out!!! The green grass, the lush trees, the fully-doored garage, the nicely paved driveway, the shutters, the front steps, the maple tree on the left hand side that you can barely see, the lattice, and of course the rock wall.

That's the unfinished part. I have to put some plantings in there. Listen to me, I talk like the photoshopping is the hardest part of this whole landscaping thing. If I think this is difficult... woo! I ain't seen nothin yet.

Here's the "Before" picture. (I quote it because in reality, we're still in the "Before" state.)

A Girl with a Rake and a Dream

2011-03-07T19:44:00.002-05:00

We had some unseasonably warm weather over the weekend. Or was it seasonable? Winter has been so terrible that I've lost all concept of normal. BUT, seasonable or not, I was motivated by my own summer backyard photoshopping to get out there in the yard and make things happen!

First, I cleaned up and organized some of the JUNK around the garage. (Remember last year when I totally cleared and cleaned up both sides of the garage for painting... yeah, both sides have become a dumping ground yet again.)

Then, I dug out my handy dandy rake... oh wait, I didn't need to dig it out. It was on the side of the garage. Nevertheless, rake in hand, I set myself on the back of the backyard. (You know, the skid steere/trailer parking area.) And I raked until my blisters popped and then kept on raking. Then I went inside and baked cookies. (Oh, the strange and random life I lead...)

So with probably near to two or two and a half hours of sheer raking agony, you'd probably expect that I'd have finished the entire back of the back yard. Wrong. I finished half of the back of the back. And not even the most horrendous half. Looming just to the other side I have more then just leaves and sticks to contend with. I have logs! As in, there used to be a log pile there a million years ago. And there are still some gross old logs hanging out under a buncha gross old leaves.

I've got to find out whether or not the logs are salvageable, and if so, make a new and neat pile. If not, I need to chuck them down the hill with all the leaves and sticks. And if that wasn't bad enough, this section of yard has NEVER been nice. The good twin next door used to be lush, shady, grassy, and wonderful. Its evil twin has been leaf'd upon, log'd upon, and neglected for eons. And that means layer upon layer of disgusting old leaves, decomposing logs, prickers, bugs, and possible snakes/frogs... all the more reason to get a-rakin before spring really springs back.

Mike has some strange notion that come spring, he's going to re-grade the entire garage area so the garage doesn't flood again with snow melt and heavy rain. You know what I've got to say to that... Uh-huh. Not that I'm not in favor of such a thing. In fact, when I was cleaning the yard, I discovered that over the winter, Mike dug a huge hole in the yard to get sand with which to spread over the then icy driveway! And so now I have a freakin huge hole to contend with.

And I'm wondering if I should just bring in the pro's with a skid steere that doesn't have street tires on it that dig in and ruin the lawn. Grade the yard, fix the hole, push the malarkey down the hill, and then spread loam so we can seed. I wonder how much it would cost? I can't remember how much it was when we had Nick Mitchell grade the front after the house lift.... but I remember how incredibly happy I was with the work.

Like I said before, Uh-huh.

In the short term, I need to have Mike move the camper back to the gravel driveway now that Dodge #2 is gone. Then, I need to finish raking the back of the back and move on to the front/mid of the back. And I want to buy those two trees this spring too.

It's Curtains For Me... and I'm Quite Pleased About It

2011-02-28T19:00:00.001-05:00

This is a story about one living room window. Last year, when we totally re-did the living room, (fixing the drywall and re-painting, securing the floor, installing the hardwood) we re-installed two out of three window curtain sets. Two brackets per window, two rods per window, two curtains per window.

*And don't make that rookie mistake of installing your curtains right tight to the window frame. That is incorrect. Install at least 4" away from the window frame in each direction. That means 4" above and 4" aside from your frame. This will make your windows look so much bigger and more professional.

However, our third window just would not have it. One bracket installed on the left just perfectly, as normal. But the one on the right found nothing to hold on to. No stud - all mud. A drywall screw couldn't hold it. The molly bolts we had in stock couldn't hold it.

And so, that poor little window sat there sans curtains, sans rods, and sans uno bracket for near to a year. NEAR TO A YEAR! But just this past Saturday, Mike brought home a molly bolt that worked! (For the outrageous price of just a few short cents mind you...) And we were finally able to put up the last set of rods and curtains.

What a difference and what a relief to have something so stoopid finally taken care of. And now those pictures in the center of those two windows look un-centered. I decided at the time not to worry about it. Maybe I'll re-center them next year....

And speaking of stuff that's been hanging over our heads for a year or so... Dodge #2 is GONE! The guy and his posse came back on Sunday as promised, tow truck in tow, and carted it away. We can breath another sigh of relief. That, plus another load of yard fodder gone to the dump... kinda makes me think there's hope in the world after all.

But that's it.

I had wild dreams of starting some new and exciting project this Sunday... or at least making progress on an oldy-moldy project this Sunday. No such luck. I'm having renovation withdrawal and I don't like it.

Strange Coincidence?

2011-02-24T17:13:00.000-05:00

Things about my house's past totally freak me out. Things about my house's previous owners freak me out. Way back when we first bought the house, I even purchased this book from the historical society: Bournedale the forgotten village, which recounts the story of the families of Bournedale, including the man who built our house.

But I haven't been able to stop thinking about what happened Monday night.

My zumba/belly dance instructor Christine came to pick me up for an African dance class we were going to together. But when I hopped in her car, she said, "I think I've been to one of your neighbor's houses... maybe 10 years ago when I did meals on wheels. Is there an old lady that lives over there?"

She gestured to my neighbor's house.

"Not for a long time," I replied. "The owner of that house just recently passed away maybe 6 months ago." Then something struck me.

"Mrs. Thompson?" I asked.

"YES! That was it."

I gasped. That was my house. That was the previous owner, who had outlived her husband and died just previous to us purchasing the house. Of course she'd never recognize the house in its present state... plus it was dark outside. "That was my house," I said in disbelief.

"I only went there once, but I was in there talking to the woman for over an hour," Christine went on. "Then as I was leaving, the VNA nurse came in and told me, 'If you want to come here, you have to come all the time - every day. You can't let her down.' So I didn't go back." She frowned. "I just couldn't make that commitment."

It seems like a very small coincidence. I mean, Bourne is a small town. But still... I couldn't stop thinking about it. "You have to come in - do you mind?" I asked Christine on our way home after the class. "We've done so much work... you won't believe it."

To expect someone to remember a house they were in for an hour 10 years after the fact is a bit of a stretch, but I couldn't help it. She had remembered being there, after all. And when we went in she couldn't recognize a thing until I prompted her... "and this room was covered in wood paneling..."

"Yes, and it was very dark!"

Of course Mrs Thompson would have never given her the grand tour, but I certainly did. I couldn't help myself. And I just yacked and yacked away about this and that, before and after. At the end of the tour I remembered I had a "before" picture of the outside of the house hanging up in the living room. I pulled it down and showed her.

"That was it. Oh my god."

I thought about it long after Christine had gone. It doesn't creep me out as much as it just amazes me. The prior life of the house I live in. I wish I had access to more pictures... stories... something. I'd probably seem psycho trying to hunt them down from the Thompson kids. (They had three boys who no longer live in the area.) I have so many questions....

Why is there only one garage door? Why was the chimney cut off and walled off? How did you survive with three boys and no washer/dryer? What was the condition of the house like when you renovated it in 1955? What was the bathroom like before it was pink and green? And who picked out those colors? Who's idea was it to stick a clock over the hole in the kitchen wall? Where did you keep your towels? When did you stop burying your trash? Or did you.... What was up with all those dang tires in the backyard? I don't even know what the Thompsons look like.

I had forgotten about all these questions until I talked to Christine.

Wishful Photoshopping

2011-02-21T15:14:00.002-05:00

Ta-Da! Look, it's beautiful end-of-May-type weather and Mikey and I are headed out to the backyard to play... and the backyard looks so beautiful that I can't help but take this photo.... (click to enlarge)

That's the reality I wish I was living in right now.

This is an extremely photoshopped landscape portrait of the backyard - which I created by merging two skuzzy pictures from Spring, 2010.

Look, the garage addition hasn't even been built yet in this pic. Amazing! (Hard to believe it was just last year? I had to think about it... was it 2009? No - I looked it up on the blog. We began garage addition construction in April of 2010.)

So obviously I added in the addition - with an addition of an addition door. I extended our side-gravel driveway up to that door and added the most perfect grass you've ever seen. The green in the background I actually stole from a much earlier summertime backyard photo - so that is actually what it will look like in back.

Then, since we have a lovely drop-off style cliff just on the horizon of the backyard, I decided to add a Mikey fence. Behind which, we'd store the skid steere and the trailer. (Actual skid steere and trailer may vary. Images for illustrative purposes only.)

Then some hydrangeas on the base of the hill to the left... some azaleas on the base of the hill to the right.... a coat of black paint for our Trogdor burninator apparatus (plus some gravel underneath for safety)... and two of my favorite trees in the known universe.

Looks oh so simple, right? (I tell myself while at the same time reminding myself that We-Can't-Start-Any-New-Projects.) I wish I could just handoff the pic to some landscape dude and say, "Make it so #1."

Unfortunately that's not all. The first pic came out so awesome that I just couldn't help but do another angle.

I took the liberty of adding a bucket of Coronas to this pic... add me sitting in one of those chairs and Mikey going down the little slide... Oh yeah. That would be a dream come true.

Hey! There's a quarter in the gravel! I guess I forgot to take one out. Oh well.

Believe it or not, I went through several incarnations of this angle to really get something sweet. I tried everything on that back garage wall. A couple wall mounted trellises.... a cabana thing... a different patio set... but I really just like this simple awning with the two chairs, a burning bush, and a small decorative trellis. I don't have THAT much room back there, after all.

Here's the pic I started with this time. Note I kinda moved the scene to the left... couldn't help but to do it. I don't have any pics facing the right direction.

Ok landscapers. I'll pay you like $100 and you make my yard look like this. Deal? Deal.

Frustrations and Looming Spring

2011-02-14T17:04:00.000-05:00

I was so hoping for big joyful tax returns to jump start spring projects like they always do. (Lowes, by the way, has what I think is a genius promotion. Put your tax returns on a Lowes gift card, then come in on March 18th or something like that, and it'll be worth an additional 10%.)

Unfortunately, I have a gorgeous new fridge and porch railings to pay off. And apparently, we make too much now to get more then that amount back. I suppose I should be thankful not to owe.

Meanwhile, temps have increased and the snow-pack is melting down. I can actually see grass! Which is getting me thinking about landscaping again. And over the weekend we took a deposit on Dodge #2. In the next two weeks, if I'm not cursing myself by saying such a thing, it'll be gone. (And don't think for a second I get a piece of that big money action... Mike needs it to get his trans in the current Dodge fixed.) Bottom line - I get the back yard back. And with the garage addition completed and the Dodge gone... and the porch out front still unfinished, I can't help but think about the landscape.

What about the porch? Well, we still have a decent amount of snow and ice on that side of the house. But if by some miracle we get enough melting to actually work, the next step is to wrap the next pole, install our last "in-stock" railing, and finish the side steps. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Front steps still need to be built and the bottom needs to be wrapped. We have to purchase a fan and install that, as well as the remaining outlet covers.

And don't forget that new garage door that's just hangin out on saw horses. Unfortunately, there's a big mound-a-snow in front of the garage, making installation impossible. That whole thing needs to melt. Then Mike needs to cut the hole and have his friend come by for installation. (I have to purchase the opener at that point in time too.)

Inside, I have it on my to-do list to count and purchase end caps for all the dang radiators. Plus, we need to finish the radiant heat on one of these warm days. (It's been waaay too cold to turn the heat off for even a second, never mind an entire day.)

Donde esta el bano?! Home Depot has been running these "Bathroom Savings Event" ads on the radio and they're driving me crazy. It's like they know.... They know we're way behind schedule and they're mocking me. Mocking me!

Mike was sick again on Sunday, much to his frustration. He wanted to move the camper and get Dodge #2 into the driveway and ready to fly.

And this is what winter has been - sick and frustrating. Oh, and the weather has been nothing short of THE WORST WEATHER EVER. So unlike previous years, here we are at the center point of Feb, with nothing to show for Nov-Feb save for a kitchen window and a new fridge.

This might be ok for some weekend warriors. For us, it's our least productive winter ever. For example, last year on this very day we installed the hardwood floors in the living room. We had spent the better part of Jan-Feb preparing the living room - fixing the drywall, securing the floor, repainting, etc. The whole works. And on Valentines Day, we tag teamed that floor and did it all, trim and everything, IN ONE DAY. (And we managed a seafood lunch from Eastwind too.)

This winter's accomplishments are nothing more then shameful.

Ode to a Fridge

2011-02-09T19:11:00.002-05:00

2004. We're new home owners and demolishing our brand new (old) home. The kitchen is so dilapidated and smelly that I think any food I cook there is somehow tainted. It tastes weird and I don't know if I'm imagining it or not. There's a fridge, a gas stove, and a sink. Four cabinets. Two above the sink and two below. Thaz-it.

Over the years, a new stove, a new dishwasher, a granite sink, and a full set of yard sale cabinets for $200. The fridge stands alone.

We stick stickers on it. Renovation stickers from new windows, new washer/dryer, and more. Giant stickers. Tiny stickers. Silly print outs from natalie dee.

Mike puts 30 packs in it and I'm annoyed because they take up half the fridge. This prompts a Christmas gift, a kegerator.

2010. The replacement fridge is purchased on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

2011. The replacement fridge is delivered on Feb. 5th.

I wanted to keep that old fridge. I wanted to stick it in the basement, not plug it in, and put a TV in the freezer and keep the bottom fridge part for storage. How cool would that be in a cool hangout basement room? I had been thinking about this for years when Mike snapped me back into reality just a few days before new fridge arrival, pointing out that unless I cleaned that thing to the N'th degree, it was going to mold. And he did not want to carry it downstairs either. Plus, it was impossible to carry down anyway, since we winterized the basement's exterior door. (The interior door is too small for a fridge to fit.)

So my dreams were crushed and I elected to say "Adios old fridge." I removed as many of the stickers as I could and watched the delivery dudes as they hauled it out.

And by the way, I swear they were drinking beers in the truck. I was a bit concerned as they pulled up, not backing into the driveway. They just sat there for a few minutes and I caught a glimpse of a silver and blue can... I suppose I could give them the benefit of the doubt and call it a Pepsi.

They did a good job though - beers or not. They measured the doorways, helped me move some furniture out of the way, removed the old fridge even though I told the store I wanted to keep it, kept the box from the new fridge, put it nicely into place, double checked its functionality... I was very pleased.

And I spent the remainder of Saturday afternoon loading the thing up and reading the instruction manual. Mikey figured out how to defeat the child lock on the LED display within the first five minutes. WHY they put the lock button on the bottom of the display where a 1 1/2 year old can reach it... I have half a mind to write them an email.

This particular model as the ice and water in the door, so Mike will have to run water up for it at some point. I'm not EXACTLY sure of its placement, since I want to replace that cabinet to the left with a corner cabinet that we can butt the fridge right up to. And as to when I will have that cabinet?! That's a bit of a laughing matter, since the kitchen is waaaay at the bottom of any kind of list.

The only reason I got the fridge was the amazing deal...

And by the way, it is amazing. This model features that cool blue lighting like you see in all the grocery freezer sections now adays. Plus a slim ice maker that still allows for storage on the left hand door. (Specifically, can storage - which is great for those beers when we have cans.) It has sliding, spill proof shelves. It has a big 'ol platter drawer for your sheet cake, cheese platter, etc. Adjustable crisper drawers. Water and ice in the door - selectable ice shape. Pull out freezer with two drawer levels. And it's so efficient and quiet... Wouldn't that be so cool if my electric bill went down?

Breakfast Discussion = Nooooo

2011-01-31T19:18:00.001-05:00

First thing Sunday morning, Dodge Dude showed up - truck and trailer at the ready. But with the 60 or so total inches of snow we've had this winter, plus the less then 48hrs dig-out notice, Mike hadn't yet had the opportunity to dig his way to the backyard.

Remember, Dodge #2 has no brakes. It can't just be driven outta there... well, it shouldn't anyway. So we have to move 1 giant snow bank and 1 camper to even gain access to the dang thing. Lucky us, we've got a skid steere.

The DD decided to go to breakfast with his GF while Mike worked feverishly on the snow bank. Or, I should say, the ice bank, because that thing had a solid, impenetrable core. Meanwhile, I dug out the title confidently. I shouldn't have been so bold.

DD returned as Mike was still desperately trying to clear snow from the front of the camper. And all of a sudden he was having second thoughts. He wanted a Dodge. He knew this was a good deal. He had his trailer and, undoubtedly, a pocket-fulla cash. No one shows up at a place with all this and goes home empty handed. (Although this is the second time it's happened with this particular truck... strange.) Not only that, he knew Mike was working his butt off to get the thing out for him.

I imagine that the breakfast discussion with the GF just didn't go so well. I bet she told him it looked like a piece and it wasn't worth that kind of money and she didn't like it and so on and so forth.

He's going to think about it.

I suppose it would be worse. Mike could have completely dug out the camper, moved it, dragged the truck into the driveway.... I don't want to even think about it.

Bottom line - Dodge still for sale and it's going back on Craigslist. Like tonight or tomorrow.

But I do have good news! The new garage door arrived today! So exciting! As to when and how we're going to get it installed... your guess is as good as mine.

Wonderland? N. O.

2011-01-28T19:13:00.007-05:00

The snow is once again upon us, undoubtedly translating into another missed Sunday out on the porch. Meanwhile, winter is ticking away and all those "winter" projects haven't even been started yet. I'm about ready to throw my own No-New-Projects mantra out the window until New England thaws out a little. I mean, how can you possibly install railings when there's a solid couple of inches of ice on the porch?! How can you pour concrete in subzero temps?

It's just silly. The porch cannot be finished in these kind of conditions.

At least we can rest assured in the fact that the kitchen window wall is coming together. Richard came over just a couple nights ago and taped/mudded all our hodge podge seams. Of course, with all the cold weather, we're going to give it a good week to really dry up before we invite him back for sanding.

And can you believe the new fridge is set to be delivered on 2/5?! Seems like just yesterday when I purchased it and complained about the two month + backorder.

Adding to the madness, I'm still (yes, still) sick. This sinus thing makes me want to rip my throbbing face off and then sing about it in a death metal song. I felt great yesterday.... today I feel as bad as Wednesday if not worse. Am I drinking enough fluids? No. Am I taking my vittamins? No. Am I staying home on the couch with tea and Vicks until the pain goes away? No. So, therefore, I already know what my problems are and why I'm still ill. But sometimes you just can't do the things you'd like to do.

Unlike the dreaded Man Cold - where the dude of the house is incapacitated on the couch for days, watching an ungodly long war-themed show/mini-series/movie and/or the entire Rocky series OnDemand, unable to mutter more then an "eeuuurrr, can you make me some ramen noodles?" Yeah. I've been sick since last Saturday, at work every single day but Wednesday, and generally doing everything I normally do. (Miserably but still doing it.)

That's all I'll say about the Man Cold.

Now, on to some additional pleasant news!
THIS JUST IN.... DODGE #2 (is it #2? Well, it is poopy - so, I'll go with #2.) HAS BEEN SOLD!
For the amazingly low sum of just $2500.

That barely covers what we have into the thing. Don't you just love that? But I nearly had a conniption fit when Mike suggested he sell it for $1500. The dang new transfer case alone was $1000! So I'm pleased. And if all goes swimmingly, it may even be gone this weekend.

And, it's been purchased by the same doode who's putting on my new tires and aligning my truck. (Special vehicle = special alignment doode required.) So, I feel pretty confident he'll give us a little bit of a deal, since he knows this dodge is a steal. He only wants the motor!!!

Just think.... when the snow melts, no more vehicles in the backyard! Just a boat, a trailer, a skid steere, the camper, the snowmobile, and that little jeep go-cart thing. BUT! At least there will be no more VEHICLES!

I'm even laughing at myself and how ghetto that sounds. I should start a new toy-inventory blog that tracks vehicle acquisitions and transfers.

Two Words

2011-01-25T17:43:00.000-05:00

I'm sick.

Third word: Again.

But the good news is, our neighbor and drywaller Richard is coming over tonight to tape up the hodge podge wall job Mike completed a couple weeks ago.

Finally, something to make my day a little brighter. T-minus less then two weeks until new Fridge time.

Movin In

2011-01-12T14:04:00.000-05:00

The No New Projects rule cannot apply to Still Outstanding Projects. (And we have many.) Or I should say, Projects I Consider Complete But Aren't Really Because of Something Stoopid.

Like for instance, our baseboard heating. Sure, we've had baseboards for eons now. But do they have end caps? Heck no! Do we own end caps? Well, I thought not, until I found one when I was cleaning the basement Christmas Eve Eve. (Just one... interesting, huh? Like... who buys just one end cap?)

So at that time, I tried to slap it on the end of the mudroom baseboard. Didn't fit. Well, it was supposed to. It was the perfect size, but didn't want to go on there. Being Christmas Eve Eve and having better things to do, I gave up at that time. But wouldn't you know, Mike started complaining about lack of end caps on Sunday... so I just had to pull out our 1 token cap for him to try and put on.

Sure enough, no go. The baseboard was too low, since we had re-floored. Plus, there was that one piece of wood floor that was destined for underneath the baseboard that we'd never installed. (And how long ago did we hardwood in the mudroom? That was the first downstairs room we did!) And there was a screw in the wrong place - blocking the cap.

Ok - time to fix all that... x amount of years after the fact. Mike detached and raised the baseboard, installed the one piece of hardwood, and then put on the end cap - which now fit beautifully.

Now on to the second small matter at hand: the kitchen drywall. As in, we needed some, since removing the old and adding the new window. But did we have enough "in stock" to do the job. That was the question. We had one full sheet and a buncha pieces. We needed at least one full sheet and a buncha pieces. It was going to be close. We didn't want to buy anything.

Luckily, we had some expanding foam in stock - and we were able to steal some insulation from the garage to meet our draft elimination/insulation needs. (There's a big 'ol new door going on that garage soon... we won't need all of that insulation anymore.)

The one full sheet slipped in perfectly, since Mike had purposely cut the old drywall at the seams.

The smaller pieces were not so easy. But it was less of a hack job then I expected. Mike did fabulously! (And Mikey was super helpful throwing things away for us and taking care of the measuring tape.)

At the end of Sunday, we had more then half the drywall up.

At the end of Monday, it was all hung - with every single last scrap we had in stock!

Happy What?

2011-01-01T21:29:00.001-05:00

La la la la - WHAT? 2011? Shoot.

Sorry, I've been totally MIA for about three weeks, preparing for xmas and for the annual family trip to Baltimore. (From which we returned just last night.) Oh, and yeah, there was a giant blizzard in the middle of all that. Throw in a buncha crazy deadlines, the stomach flu, the common cold, a toddler, traffic, and an unnatural love of bananas.... and boy you've got a stinky Christmas stew bad enough to send even the most devout Christmas fan to sheer insanity.

DUDE - ok, the ad just came on TV and I'm pissed. I bought a chicken sandwich at BK yesterday and did not get one free. Dam you jersey turnpike!

Anyway, needless to say, I'm glad to return to reality... whatever that is. Honestly, I need another vacation. Say... ME... on a cushy lounge chair.... next to a pool... in 85 degree temps, light breeze... and, oooo! Bay Breeze! In my hand, pink umbrella, bendy straw. No such luck, welcome to 2011 - it's still winter in New England and we've got things to do.

The boys did some work the weekend before Christmas. Mike had some of the guys over, plus Timmy, to help him with the siding on the kitchen/mudroom side. (Ahhh, as I recall now, this was the day I got the stomach flu.) But despite my incapacitation, the four-five guys made amazing progress within an amazingly little amount of time. When I peeked out at them around 1pm, they had already stripped the shingles off the mudroom, removed the temporary tar paper from the kitchen side, stapled up TvVek, and installed siding up to the bottom of the windows.

The most amazing part - the kitchen/mudroom were now one cohesive side! Not one side with one tacked on addition. The mad plywood leveling was paying off big time!

Unfortunately, that was the last thing I saw before I was totally bathroom bound. BUT - when I was feeling better, I saw that Timmy and the guys had continued until they were at the top of the mudroom windows. It looked incredible! Our house suddenly is looking like a really nice house...

Just today, Mike cleaned up that side and continued siding - all the way to the top of the kitchen window! He's left some of the difficult cuts for Timmy, who should be by next weekend. And don't think I've forgotten about the porch... Hopefully we'll have some snow melt by that time too.

All I Want for Christmas 5

2010-12-16T19:53:00.001-05:00

The yearly tradition continues! Want to see what I wanted in 2009? Click Here What about 2008? Click Here What about 2007? Click here. What about 2006? Click here.

And now for 2010:

Ok here we go:

1. New Downstairs Bathroom: stand up shower American Standard Champion toilet, small vanity, stand up shower, mosaic tile, river stone floor tile, pocket door

2. Kitchen: Fix drywall and repaint, new cabinets

3. MudRoom: reinstall wainscot, baseboard trim, dining set from IKEA - the white round table and the wickerish chairs.

4. Living Room: crown moulding, reinstall that one crooked window, fix the durn curtain rod, fireplace?

5. Hallway/Stairway: banister, stairway trim, top stair step, dimmer for stair light, install octagonal window, second electrical outlet

6. Mikey's Room: fix closet light

7. Office: Closet organizer, door to the attic crawl space, bigger area rug

8. Bedroom: new mattress, new HDTV, more drawers for my Closetmaid set, door for attic loft space, window and closet door trim

9. Upstairs Bath: BUILD IT - frame it, electrify, insulate, drywall, paint, pretty tile, Corner Jacuzzi tub for two, new vanity, stand up shower, American Standard Champion toilet, pocket door, linen closet

10. Garage: Drywall and paint, Three garage doors, storage system with shelves

11. House exterior: new clapboard siding on the remaining 3 sides, complete farmer's porch stairs, window boxes, green shutters, lamppost, more nice plantings, a shed, chimney overlay, another chimney to vent wood stove, hammock, new driveway (ie, repour it), re-do the rocks

12. Basement: finish it off with a bathroom (toilet, vanity, stand up shower), bedroom, work room, and rec room (comfy dark colored furniture and rug, pool table, air hockey, HDTV and storage unit). And I want my wood stove hooked up down therez.

Amazing how much I was able to delete off the list this year! What an exciting time! There's finally l
light at the end of the tunnel after more then 6 years working, more then 5 years blogging!

Our goals for this year?
Complete the porch before winter really sets in
Re-side the new-window side of the house before winter really sets in
Complete the radiant heat
Install all new garage doors
Build the basement bathroom
Frame out the basement bedroom (since we're right there anyway)
Begin work on 1st and new 2nd floor bathroom

Radiating

2010-12-15T19:30:00.001-05:00

Rainy Sunday. No fun. Except if you decide to install radiant heating!

Now, if you recall (no, not the most famous reindeer of all) we ordered all the materials needed months ago from TruVal... but just hadn't had the time to pick them up and install. Until this past Sunday! The forecast was rainy and windy, so the guys weren't planning on working outside. But it was also going to be 50 degrees - what a perfect time to shut down the heat for the day! So Mike grabbed up all the tubing and fittings on his way home from work on Saturday.

Sunday, everything went fairly smoothly - for a heating job. Usually, when copper pipe is involved, it's a long, strenuous, expensive day. And we get leaks and other things go wrong... Plumbing is downright difficult! Mike's become rather adept at it over the years, but he's no master plumber. This experience was the exact opposite. The only real problem - and we knew it as soon as we started uncoiling the tubing - we didn't have enough to do the entire downstairs, only the living room. (And we also had to run to the DeepHo for about 10 extra feet...)

We cut and removed a couple of the long copper sections, then just attached one end of the tube at the beginning of the loop, snaked it up and down the floor joists, and attached it at the end of the loop. (Sounds like it took 5 minutes, but there was a lot of drilling and connecting involved.) At the end of the day, Mike strapped the entire living room section to hold the tubing up near the floor.

Pre-strapping - the white may look like wires. Nope it's tubing.

The concept is simple. Hot water travels through the pipes. Heat radiates out and up onto the floor. Then, heat radiates up from the floor and heats the room. We still have our baseboards, this just helps our home reach optimum temp faster and more efficiently. Plus, the floors are toasty.

We've had heating problemos in the past, mostly because our house is old, but partially because we didn't evenly distribute the length of baseboards when we installed. (Mikey's room, strangely enough, has the longest one, so if his door is closed, his room gets super warm while the rest of the house is at a normal temp.) The only zone downstairs is controlled by a thermostat in the living room. We had at first considered adding another zone for Mikey's room... but we think this will prove more economical and efficient.

We hope to complete the radiant heat in the rest of the downstairs soon, before it gets any colder around here. Of course, the porch still needs finishing. My "no-new-projects" rule is still kinda upheld... this just happened to be a "rainy-day-project." And that's totally different, right?

Window In

2010-12-09T18:21:00.000-05:00

It's window-time! Now, break it down! Yes, yes, Sunday was Dia de Los Windows, as Mike set himself about cutting out plywood and installing the new window! I brought Mikey outside for the occasion, so we could watch the magic driveway-side.

Cutting cutting cutting (From Inside Out of course!)

Here it comes!

There it goes!


Hey, that's my kitchen!

Here's Mikey helping on the stairs.

Mikey jots down the measurements

Unfortunately, installing the window was a bit more difficult. We had to shim and re-shim and level and re-level.... Mikey was throwing a fit because we wouldn't allow him to play with the Sazzall.... It was just madness! But we finally accomplished it with beautiful results:

Window!

Mikey holds the level, which he kept calling "Bubble" Strangely appropriate, but I think he was trying to say level.

Mike applies heat to adhere the ice and water - keeping those drafty winter winds out.

After nearly 5 days, I'm still not used the view. We pushed the fridge over to it's proper location and I'm loving the extra room in that little dining area we have. Once we have a corner cabinet on the other side and the new fridge... look out world! But the best part is the loss of two tragically drafty old circa 1950's windows. We can already feel a big difference. Just in time too, as temps are dropping to the teens this week.

This coming weekend, the guys will hopefully be back at work on the stairs. And, now that the window's in, all that shingling on the mudroom end of the kitchen/mudroom side of the house has to go too. Then, that entire side can be sided. Lucky for us, we should have enough siding in stock. Will it all happen this Sunday? Probably no. Will it all happen before Christmas? Likely not. Will it all happen eventually? I hope so.

Stairs, Windows, and Random Plywood

2010-12-02T18:29:00.002-05:00

Mike was feeling much better this Sunday. And, with cabin fever setting in, and Timmy due over (haha due-over) to work on the stairs, Mike decided to get himself back to work on the kitchen window. I had some friends coming over at 2:30pm, so the guys were on a strict stop-everything a las 2:30 deadline.

Mike measured the wall and the window, allowing for new-fridge and future-corner-cabinet width. Then, we decided on the exact placement of the new window.

Next step was to create the window frame and insulate the sans-window area. Then came the difficult part. You see - our mudroom was an addition, tacked on to what used to be a cement porch. Unfortunately, when they joined the exterior mudroom wall to the exterior kitchen wall, they did not do a very good job. The two walls are at two different depths....

So... if we want to side that entire side with siding and make it look like a nice, one-piece, continuous house with no stoopid additions that weren't done correctly... We would need to build out the kitchen wall to match the depth of the mudroom wall. Build it out how? Plywood. Layers of plywood.

Lucky for us, we happened to have plywood. Plywood in the basement, plywood in the garage, plywood in the garage addition... plywood plywood everywhere! Leftover from this that or the other project.

You can see here the puzzle of plywood Mike and our neighbor Richard put together. Amazing that we just happened to have just enough to complete the job. Unfortunately, the hunt for plywood + cutting of the plywood + installation of the plywood = longer then expected. Mike was hoping to be able to install the window before the 2:30 deadline, but just couldn't make it. He papered the plywood and called it done for the day.

MEANWHILE! Timmy was hard at work on the side steps. To start, he had to pull up some of the decking to make room for the first post. The second post went down on top of the footing Mike poured last weekend.

From there, it was a simple matter of framing and decking the landing, then the first step. By the time my guests were arriving between 2:30 and 3:00, they had a step to enter on. And by the time they left around 5:30, they had a second step to exit on.

Mike will need to pour some additional concrete for the final groundish-level landing step, but all in all, I'm totally psyched about how the steps came out. Mike decided to make them nice and big - key for bringing up large items, large amounts of people, large people, and holding hands with kids down the stairs.

To finish off the kitchen wall for temporary, Mike put up tar paper. This weekend, the window goes in, do or die. And Timmy will be back on Sunday as well. It's a whole new look for the holidays!

We're so happy to be wrapping up our summer/fall projects. Winter once again will take us indoors, where the basement bathroom will be taking shape soon.

PS - Guess who couldn't resist the Home Depot black Friday appliance sale? I GOT MY FRIDGE! It's the LG model lfx28978ST.... and I saved over $800. The MSRP is $2700 .... I bought for $1899. WITH 18 months of 0% financing and a 4 year extended warranty for only $80 extra!!! Boo-Yah! Only problem is I'll have to wait until Feb 5th for delivery. Backorder.

Corrections

2010-11-27T21:56:00.001-05:00

Shortly after I finished my last post, Mike returned home, and I discovered that I had my story all wrong. Mike was actually removing the windows at the time of the incident. He had a window in his hands and jumped down with it off the ladder... and right onto a nail, which was sticking out of a board on the ground.

The nail didn't fully penetrate his foot, but went pretty deep. And lucky for Mike, it landed right through a nerve, making the injury very painful. He's been out of work and on crutches all week. The foot is looking much better today though, much to both our relief. Unbelievable how much a little nail can really mess you up.

Meanwhile, I've been working hard at leaving my own mark on the kitchen.

Mikey added the blue with a crayon... Of course, I thought to myself as he watched me write with a sharpie, "I should not be showing and encouraging him to write on the wall." Too late!

After that, Mikey and I did some decorating.

Beautiful porch & trees!

Mikey gets the candy canes!

And puts them on the tree

Beautiful!

Second Time These Windows Sent Somebody to the Hospital

2010-11-22T22:49:00.001-05:00

An explanation for that title is certainly due. Several years ago - pre-baby, pre-prego, for sure, I had a TRIP at my house. (TRIP = Totally Random Incredible Party) This TRIP was in honor of my bday, a small affair that turned a little crazay thanks to a little green fairie.

We were all in the kitchen when Mike tripped (literally this time) and his hand landed on one of the old windows... and when right through the glass. And me? I was so excited about the window breaking. "I hate these windows!" I think I yelled, and started punching out the remaining glass panes. I may have destroyed the neighborhood had the guys not pulled me away to the sink, where they washed my now bloody hand and bandaided me up. Then I ran off and started dancin' but that's another story.

Mike and I post-accident at the TRIP with Wigs!

The next morning, Mike and I woke up with swollen, painful wounds on our punching hands and had a nifty story to tell the morning crew at the ER.

That was the FIRST time the old kitchen windows sent someone to the hospital. Now let me set you up for the second time.

Sunday, Timmy's son had a brand new baby - so he was definitely excused for stair-duty. But Mike decided to get started anyway. He dug and poured the one needed sonotube footing.

He also prepared and poured the larger slab footing.

But after that, he was excited to rip off the siding on the kitchen. Excited... PSHAW. You couldn't keep that man from his mission. But I'm proud to say, he set himself a stop point. He'd take the siding off, but not the old shingles underneath. Good thing. If the shingles came off, that was the point of no return. Shingles off - you have to put up plywood, take out the old windows, and tyvek. And at this point it was 1pm, soooo... yeah. Shingles off - he'd be working til midnight.

I'm proud to say he stuck to his stop point too! He took off the siding and then cleaned up and that was it!

Here was the outside of the kitchen - this morning.

We're getting to the hospital story now...

So today Mike got some free time and decided to finish up the job. He took off all the shingles and repaired the sill, which was leaking air like crazy. I talked to Mike on the phone and he said he could already feel a difference in how the room was holding heat. Awesome, I thought.

Now... somewhere between the shingles off and the plywood on, there was an incident. I'm still not quite sure of the details, but basically - nail gun + foot = mucho malo. (Our framing gun has gained itself a little bit of a temperamental reputation. I'm scared of it, personally.) Thinking it wasn't so bad, Mike kept on working. He took out the windows and completed the plywood.

Unfortunately, by the time I got home from work, he was in a whole bunch of pain and decided to go to the ER. He's probably on his way back right now, actually. He sent me a text and said they had to cut into his foot. Sounds terrible! I almost don't want to hear the details. And I definitely don't want to see the foot, but I know that's the first thing he's going to want to show me.

Anyway! (I'm not thinking about it!) Those windows were cursed, and I'm so happy they're gone. This is not a trilogy!

Window Wating

2010-11-15T19:09:00.005-05:00

What a difference from last weekend's hustle and bustle! This one was calm in comparison - a much needed breather for both of us, for sure. Sunday was calmer then calm, since the guys weren't able to come by to work on the porch. Stairs next weekend! We even have the materials list in hand and soon to be ordered up.

We actually attempted to go to Home Depot, since we needed less then our usual HUGE load of materials. Plus, I wanted to check out and purchase a big 'ol window for the kitchen. (Tax credit expires 12/31 people!) But, once again, HD let us down. They didn't have the right length of board. Ok, fine. I'll give them that. So Mike went to pick out the next longer, no problem. But all the boards were of very poor quality. He gave in quickly. We didn't need them at that very moment anyway, so why not order them?

Moving on to the kitchen window.
We currently have dos kitchen windows with the fridge in between.

We'd like to push the fridge over to the left, ditch that first left-side window, and install a larger window centered on the right hand side. A little Photoshop action and you can see the possible result:

Pretty sweet, right? Imagine this with a new fridge.... oooo, so cool. (Literally)

So I researched the possible fridges I might want and found that they all were about 36" wide. (By the by, that's like 6" wider then our current fridge... imagine the space!) I then measured the approx space taken up by our corner cabinet, since we'd need to install a second one to butt up to the fridge. That was about 6" additional. In total, I figured we'd have a max rough opening size of 60" by 48" - and that's the MAX.

Back at the 'ol HD, we checked out the window section. I didn't imagine they'd have anything in stock to meet our needs. I thought we'd be ordering something for sure. But believe it or not, they had a 4' x 4' sliding glass window with screen in stock for the low low price of just $107.

That seemed like a super low price to me. For some reason, I had it stuck in my head that we paid around $100 for the small sliding window above our stove. Maybe not.

Then I started thinking out loud, well we've got more room then that. Maybe this is going to be too small. But as Mike pointed out, "How big a view of the DRIVEWAY do you want."

Excellent point.

We were there, the window was there, it matched our over-the-stove slider, and it was only $107. I'd be a ding-dong not to buy it. So we did.

Mike was even half tempted to seize the day, rip all the siding off that side of the house, remove both old kitchen windows, install the new one, and plywood the entire side. (Since we probably have enough ply in the basement to do such a thing.) But he also really needed to do some wiring in his truck as well as an oil change and a few other maintenance type things in and around the garage. In the end, sanity won out and we didn't rip apart anything. Probably for the best. No job that large is ever so easy that you can complete it in one day. Something always goes awry.

Next weekend, our wood will arrive and stairs will be built, come what may.

This Organization brought to you by Rubbermaid

2010-11-11T07:45:00.003-05:00

I've written much about ClosetMaid. Specifically, ClosetMaid completions in the now discontinued cherry color. I loved that closet organizer - thought it was awesome, chic, high brow, etc etc.

But I was wrong.

Time travel back a few weeks.... I go down to the basement to put away a jacket in my locker (yes locker, a metal locker) full of coats & winter hats/gloves/scarfs, only to discover that everything has gone moldy/musty over the summer. After meticulously washing and airing out everything, I decided that I just couldn't reload the locker. History would just repeat itself next summer and I'd have to repeat the cleaning process all over again.

Solution - An organizer for the mudroom/laundry closet featuring a section for hanging coats.

Now, back in the day, I had all these lofty closet ideas for this particular closet. But at this very moment, I just wanted all those coats, hats, gloves, and scarfs up and outta my way... especially with the party coming down on us. I decided it would be easy and inexpensive to buy a couple of those white metal shelves. On a whim, I went to Lowes to check 'em out.

What I found there was a set by Rubbermaid that was completely customizable. Brackets could be hung on the wall, and then you could move your shelves up and down at will, place clothes racks on whichever shelves you wanted, and purchase add-on pieces that you could also move at will. I was completely blown away. It's called Rubbermaid Configurations. I purchased the 4 to 8 ft set, since I needed 48" shelves. (The set came with two 48", three 22", a bunch of clothes hanger bars, and all the brackets and hardware.) Note that I've added the image and link from Amazon.com... but also note - I did my do-diligence on this one and calculated that Lowes had the best price. ($93 at Lowes. Amazon is cheaper yes, but not when you add the shipping.)

We installed the organizer easily in just about an hour one evening and I couldn't be happier with how it looks. PLUS, if I ever want to change my configuration, add shelves, add hangers, add a sliding bin or basket.... I CAN! Seriously, I'm still freaking out over it.

Those stoopid ClosetMaid completions sets suddenly pale in comparison. They're expensive #1. They don't come with as many shelves and hangers #2. They take forever to put together and install #3. Add on pieces are even more expensive #4. You can't change your design once it's installed #5. And the cherry color I loved originally has now been discontinued and I can't get any more add-ons #6. (Yes, many bloggers have come forward and offered to sell me their pieces, but the shipping is just too outrageous.)

I'm now toying with the idea of ripping out my completions sets and replacing them with Rubbermaid Configurations sets. That's how much I love how the Rubbermaid turned out in the mudroom.

Check it out! The clothes bar hangs right on the shelf, so you can move it if need be. Plus I still have room for my dresser, which houses our sheets, and my cleaning cart, vacuum, and trash. If I ever want to add more shelves and move the dresser - I CAN!

Flying and Dying

2010-11-10T19:34:00.002-05:00

We'll begin with the dying - as in, dying of STRESS, first and foremost. Crazy deadlines at work plus three days at a conference plus Halloween party prep plus mad errands equals massive brain hemorrhage. And the weekend before last, we headed out to the Woodshed Halloween party... not good. Or maybe it was, but I can't remember half the night. All I know - Sunday the 31st was the worst day ever and I was soooo sick. All day sick. Dead sick. Can't get out of bed, embarrassed like crazy, missed taking my baby trick-or-treating, infuriated at my stoopid self sick.

Then I woke up at 5am Monday and had to go to the conference.... (And now we go with the flying...)
Got back Wednesday night and started editing for Thursday and Friday deadlines...
Managed my Friday deadline by the skin of my teeth - like done at 4pm skin of my teeth....
And rushed out of work like a rocket to do party errands....
Cut errands short because Mike was sick....
Put the baby to bed and went back out to the grocery store....
Came home and made jello shots until 10pm.
Woke up early and didn't stop party prep until the party officially started at 8pm Saturday eve...
Partied until 2am and had an awesome time.
Woke up at 10 and cleaned until 3pm....
Then collapsed on the couch and watched movies while hacking my lungs out.

Did I mention I've been sick with a cold since Wednesday?!

Mini Mummy Pizzas

Snake Sandwiches

Decor - Note Peeps are Werewolves this year

I'm Goldilocks

Jello Shots going fast

Group Pics

Can Dance

I'm so pretty!

You all have no idea how glad I am that it's all over. And everything was a success at that! The party was a hit and still the talk of the town two days later. The clients are happy with their videos. Mike is feeling better. I'm still sick, but at least I don't have madness to deal with. The only complaint I received:

Not enough jello shots. And I knew that, but I had no time to run to the liquor store on Friday night. It was too late by the time I was back out running errands. It's sad, because I can remember the days when we made 10 boxes worth of jello shots and were stuffing them down people's throats all night.... next year.

But ASIDE from all of that, let's reverse the clock and head back to Sunday 10/31. Yes, I was sick as a dog, but be that as it may, Mike and the guys still managed to install 4 out of 5 railings. (The 5th couldn't be installed since the last pole hasn't been wrapped since the stairs haven't been done since we needed the temporary stairs for the party!)

This pic was taken post party - note that we also cleaned up and brought back the furniture for the occasion. The party also gave us an opportunity to test out the electrical with my collection of halloween icicle lights. It worked perfectly! Mike even picked up a bunch of small hooks, which we screwed into the trim, to hold up the lights. These hooks will stay in permanently for all future holiday lighting opportunities.

This weekend, we hope work will commence again! Stairs... here we come.

Electrifying

2010-10-27T19:20:00.000-04:00

Gung-ho, that was me. Bloggin on a mission and then POOF, drop off the face of the blogosphere for near to a week... leaving thousands in anger and suspense.

Or not.

But flaky and manic as I've been, it's all been for good reason. I've been extremely focused on crossing off items on that 'ol to-do list. First off, the electrical hook-up on the porch. Turns out, we had 9 of the 10 needed outlets in stock. And, Mike decided to patch the porch in with an already under-loaded breaker. So we didn't need that either. So so... we were able to complete the wiring without having to head to the DeepHo.

But that doesn't mean we didn't head down there anyway. I still had a pole to return! And despite his grumblings, Mike was as glad as I was to bring it back and receive a $33 store credit, which we used to purchase porch outlet covers and concrete.

*TANGENT!*
While at the HD, we checked out the garage doors, which I'm planning to purchase for Mike for X-mas. (No secret. He knows, I know, and we're both happy about it.) This whole freakin' time, we thought they were mad expensive.

*SECOND TANGENT*
Years ago, when we were still in drywall-phase of the house, I had Overhead Door come and look at my garage for door-cost estimation purposes. Well, I don't know whether it was me looking so young, my house looking so old, or my vehicle and yard looking so.... redneck.... But the door dude had the audacity to ask my drywall guys if I "paid my bills." And I was so insulted that I completely severed contact with them - despite the fact that I had the cash and was ready to go at that moment.

But I realize now, it was meant to be. Because the HD has insulated garage doors in stock in store.... for the price of just around $250. When I saw, I sh*t. We don't need no fancy pants doors. We don't need no windows. (And we don't need no grammar either.) And apparently, we don't need to pay upwards of $1,000! Another $150-$200 and you can get yourself a nice garage door opener, complete with two remotes, an exterior keypad, and an interior button.

So, back to the current HD visit. After I had seen the doors and the prices on the internet, we just had to find out if they came with all the springs, tracks, etc. needed to install. Sure enough, everything came in the box! Amazing, isn't it? Three doors, coming right up this holiday season!

HD visit: successful on so many levels.
Electrical: complete!

And now for the bad news. Or, I should say, postponement news. Timmy was called into work on Sunday and couldn't come over to work on the stairs. Mike used the time to complete the electrical, so I can't complain too much. I was really hoping and dreaming that we'd be able to get the concrete poured.

I found out, by the way, that we in fact do not need sonotubes because we're not going to pour footings. We're going to pour pads. Big pads! iPads! (Sorry, couldn't resist.) So the entire footprint of the stairs will be concrete. This is beneficial in a few ways. First, it is a far lesser pain in the butt then to dig and pour footings. Second, with concrete under the entire stairway, there's no chance of annoying plant growth. I'm cool with that.

Unfortunately, we don't know what materials we'll need for the stairs, so we couldn't purchase those. The railings, however, I am going to have Mike purchase tomorrow for delivery on Friday. I figure, if the guys pour the pads on Sunday, they're going to need to dry. What to do while the concrete is drying? How about some railings! Sounds good to me, I just need to remember to send Mike to work with the paperwork that shows what to order.

Truck'pdate, Smidgets, and Upcoming Electrical

2010-10-21T18:45:00.002-04:00

At around 11pm Tuesday night, the truck arrived! (Safe and sound, I might add, much to our relief.) So here it is, Thursday, and I haven't even gotten much more then a glimpse of it. I was in bed when it arrived, rushed out of the house Wednesday morning, rushed into the house Wednesday night, crashed early to bed, and rushed out of the house this morning... not that it mattered, because the truck was gone at that point anyway. Mike drove it to work today.

How, you ask?

Turns out, he didn't need to wait 24hrs for that fuel pump. He ordered it in the AM - received it in the PM - and went straight to work as soon as he got home. I had no clue what was going on. He didn't even come in to say, "Hi what's up? Got to get to work, the fuel pump came in early." Oh well. I found out eventually. (Although I didn't know how it turned out, since I crashed early. Apparently, it turned out just fine if he's driving the thing....)

The early fuel pump pushed back my electrical plans. Honestly, I thought Mike had just plain forgot about it, but he texted me this morning, "Got to do some wiring for you tonight." Silly me, I'm imagining he's still talking about the truck. I thought, "Why the heck would that be for me??" Then it hit me - DUR. I'm the one that forgot... but only for a second.

So there's the outlets and the breaker... should probably get concrete and some sonotubes for the stair footings.... unless Mike had those at his store. Speaking of which, how bigga footings we talking about here? Do we need a hole digger? I have no clue. And if the side steps are going up the side of the house.... is that side going to need de-siding?! And if we're in the process of de-siding the side, should I be ordering a nice picture window for the kitchen, where new siding equals new window configuration because you don't want to side just to de-side and re-side?!

These are all questions I do not have the answers to.

Speaking of stuff we need, I should probably add trim for front door to that list. And speaking of the front door - where the heck is the doorbell button?! We really need to put that thing back on again.

And it's Thursday - should I be ordering materials from Morse right now?! Should I be ordering railings from Morse right now? Should I be asking you all these questions?!

Probably not. You'd probably go nuts and tell me to buy up the whole Home Depot.

OH - DOODES! I'm seriously going to return that extra steel basement support thing we've had in our basement for the last three-four years. I don't even care if I only get $2 for it. (But $1 and I'm walkin.) And no Mike is going to stop me this time. MUAH-HA-HA-HA!

But seriously, all questions aside, we need to have electrical up and running and we need to prepare for Sunday. *Was that just thunder?! Why does it rain every time we need to buy concrete?*

Switching topics - I finally remembered to take those pics for you.

Ok, so a little out of focus, but you can see the Smidget clearly here. Think it's no big deal? Doesn't look anything fancy to you? Well, just check out the wide shot:

It looks good. I mean, real good. And it's not even puttied and painted yet! (At this point I'm losing faith that I'll have the painting completed by party-time.) Another brilliant Tim-Idea.

Electrical updates due tomorrow!

Pole Wrapped

2010-10-18T19:49:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was a perfect day for pole wrapping. Sun, fair temps, low wind... heavenly fall to say the least. And within a few short hours, the three guys had finished 4 poles!!! They would have even finished the last and final fourth pole, but this one is currently holding up our temporary steps... which, we're still in need of at the moment.

Plus, Timmy had a marvel idea. (And once I explain this, you'll see why I just love him to death!) You see, to fit the posts, the white pre-primed wood needed to be cut down by just a smidget. Obviously, that leaves us with a bunch of scrap smidgets. Trash, you ask? I would have thought so too. That is, until Timmy held one up to the ceiling where the trim meets the bead board. USE THE SMIDGETS TO TRIM THE CEILING! Oh my god, it was a revelation and it looked fabulous! So simple, but we never would have thought of it. We would have just gone out and spent hundreds of more dollars on trim, then burned the smidgets come January when burn season opens up.

Timmy, once again, saved us some big bucks. So I was so happy and excited to write him out a big check that very afternoon. (And, he never asks for any money... usually refuses it, actually. Which made me all the happier to finally be able to give him a substantial amount.)

Anyhoo - check out the new frontal view:

Pretty swank, isn't it? (I forgot a pic of the smidget trim - I will try to grab one tomorrow.)

Once the poles were finished, the guys attempted to complete the trim up on the gambrel. (At the peak there.) However, something about having the wrong saw or no blade or something like that prevented them from completing it, and they ended for the day.

Plans for next Sunday - the steps begin! Concrete will need to be poured for the step footings, which I had never realized before. Once it cures, the steps can be built. Then - duh duh duh duh - railings. With the Halloween season upon us, I'm hoping to get an early jump on the railings. I have these crazy imaginings that I'll order them and have Mike pre-assemble all the sections so we're ready to slap them up as soon as possible.

Whether he'll be hip to that idea is another story. Hopefully, (oh please oh please) his new truck will be arriving via pro vehicle transport tomorrow. And once it's in our driveway, he's going to do nothing until he installs the needed fuel pump.

But I warned him last night! I said, I'm going to need the electrical on the porch hooked up for Halloween lighting. And I'm going to need it like, this week. On the shopping list there: all the outlets and a new breaker. With the truck arriving tomorrow, we should actually go out and purchase those like... oh, I dunno... NOW.

Halloween Party is Nov 6th.... the race to the finish is ON!

Week of A Million Catastrophes!

2010-10-12T20:11:00.007-04:00

Well, of course #1 Catastrophe: Mike returned from South Butt late Monday night/early Tuesday morning sans Dodge. And upon his return, I got the entire U-Haul scoop, which was, unbelievably, worse then I could have ever imagined. (Full disclosure expose' to come!)

#2 Catastrophe: A crazy guy set my office building on fire last Monday night. Thank god our offices are in back - they sustained no damage. But due to the arson investigation and then lack of electrical power, we were unable to get into the building until late Thursday afternoon.

#3 Catastrophe: Crazy mad deadline rush at work Thurs-Fri!!!

And #4 - #1 million Catastrophe were of course, smaller in nature, but all directly related to the first three major catastrophes.

All in all, a week that most certainly took some years off my life. But, amidst all the stress, I have good news to report.

Firstly, Mike and I found ourselves together on Tuesday.... yes! Together on a weekday during normal business hours! (Imagine that?) So after Mike finished his lengthy phone calls to U-Haul, we high tailed it over to Morse Lumber to pick out railings for the farmer's porch. Azek was the composite brand recommended to us - good quality, a best seller, and no-maintenance. (You have to think to yourself - do you really want to re-paint railings year after year? Square poles and trim are one thing - one easy thing. A whole buncha railings and balusters?! A whole buncha pain-in-the-butt.)

We selected a basic white model - no frills, but complete with the bracket-hiding kit or whatever they call it. We'd need 8 sections, not including the stairways. (The figuring for those will come at a later date, as we haven't spoken to Timmy about them yet.) Total cost, approx. $1400.

That probably sounds outrageous.... and, admittedly, we could probably purchase wood for 1/3 of that... but I just don't want to go wood. Wood posts - fine. Wood trim - fine. Wood railings?! Not so much, in my opinion. We saved a boatload going wood on the rest of the porch, so I feel like we can spluurge a little bit where it's going to count.

We didn't order, since we want to check in with Timmy and make sure it's cool. Luckily, what we want is in stock, can be delivered next day, and likely be installed by Mike in one weekend. Each section comes in a box. You just put the pieces together and then attach to the poles. Hopefully, it will be easy.

(Pole wrap hasn't been completed yet, as the guys took this Sunday off, which worked out for us as you'll see in a moment.)

Secondly, 4Runner #1 has been sold! Though I didn't get quite as much as I was hoping, it's gone and the buyer was very happy with it and understood all its problems and quirks. Sweet. Two vehicles down, one to go.

Third, I return you to this past Sunday. As I said, the guys took a break from the porch, so Mike jumped on the opportunity to get Dodge #2 put together. (You know, the one in pieces in the back yard?) He devoted near to the entire day on it and stopped just short of 100% completion. He'll need a little more time, but when it's as tidy as can be for $0, it can be put up for sale as is. And with the sale of Dodge #2, we'll have no more extra vehicles!!!! (Amazing to think.)

Monday, Columbus Day, I took it upon myself to paint the garage and garage addition. I painted the garage white about two years ago.... then we picked out a grey siding for the house. So that white was in need of an update, plus the addition needed a coat of SOMETHING before winter. And what better time then a random Monday off?

Back two years ago, I did the job with a roller and a brush... and it took me hours upon laborious hours. Days, in fact. Yes, I'm pretty sure it took me days. This time around, however, I had a new painting weapon. A super duper power painter. This thing painted one side of the garage is less then 5 minutes. It took longer to clear away all the mechanical misc from either side then it did to paint! I was blown away! A little bit of touching up on the trim from over-spray and the job was done.

Of course the job still took all day.... Why? Well, the clearing and cleaning up of all the mechanic misc of course! (I took the initiative and loaded up that garage addition. I mean, come on. It was empty and all this junk was outside, next to the garage. Ridiculous!)

Just check out the awesome results:

Look, Ma, no junk!

Complete With Matching Addition

And the Other Side - One Hood and One Wheelbarrow Left, not too shabby

We survived the Week of a Million Catastrophes and somehow managed to come out.... well, not on top, but pretty high in elevation nonetheless. At this point, no expectations for this week. My brain is no longer processing information.

When Things Are Too Quiet...

2010-10-05T09:00:00.019-04:00

With Mike and a couple of his friends off on a Dodge 2500 extended cab buying adventure, and Mikey being such a sleepy baby, I was able to take in some serious R&R on Sunday. Plus, Timmy and Richard were over to start on the posts - and they brought me a coffee! Life is good, right?

Timmy had to leave around noon, so it was a short work day, but they got one post wrapped with a promise that the rest will fly, since they now have the method down. The two plan to return to work one night this week at earliest. Sweet! I was happy with that, for sure.

Plus, I finally got someone who will come to the house and design the yard for me in terms of plantings and such. Woo-hoo! He and I tentatively decided to meet up perhaps next weekend or even some time this week if the opportunity presents itself.

Everything was so smooth.... so relaxing.... So I should have known that the sheet was about to hit the fan. And when I say sheet, I mean U-Haul. And when I say hit the fan, I mean smack us in the face with the wrong trailer. Let me elaborate.

Firstly, understand that this particular Dodge 2500 is in its current condition, un-driveable. Needs work. (Not much - and the price is right - it's worth it.) In Mike's words the truck is "awesome" and just what he's been looking for. We're saving in total $6500 - $7500 on this vehicle.

Here's the initial catch - the boys had to travel a good distance and way into the sticks of South Butt* to pick up the thing. Mike enlisted his BFF Andy and his Dodge diesel along with another friend to help. Mike reserved a large U-Haul trailer at the South Butt location for the price of $250 at our local U-Haul office. The one-way trailer would save us big time in fuel and tolls. The guys would travel down sans trailer, pick it up at U-Haul, and then drive back and return the trailer to our local U-Haul office. Good deal.

Or so it would have been if it had happened as it was reserved.

Mike purchases the truck this morning and the guys go to pick up the trailer and U-Haul. But the one they have is not the trailer Mike reserved. It's too small. It's also $450..... ok hold the phone right there, nearly double the dough for a smaller trailer?! But it's all they've got and Mike grudgingly pays for and takes it in the hope that it will work.

It doesn't work. It's too small.

The boys spend the next 4 hours in a desperate search of South Butt for a proper trailer. But Butt is a rural area and choices are limited... very limited. After four hours of wasted time, the guys have exhausted all resources without a solution. Mike is forced to put the Dodge 2500 in self-storage at the South Butt U-Haul. Lucky for us, at least they agreed to give him that for free.

And now they're en route home. Without the truck. We'll now have to pay to have a professional vehicle transport go down to get it. Add that cost to the cost of this trip - the fuel, the tolls, the food and bev for three guys, the one night hotel stay, and not to mention the 48 total hours of 100% wasted time. Does not compute!

Mike had near to $1500 extra with him on the trip and spent it all on the above mentioned trip-related expenses. So we're basically out $1500 plus another $500-$1000 for a vehicle transport?!!

I'm livid and I haven't even heard the entire story yet. U-Haul is going to get it from me. They owe me at least $2000, but I know I'll never see it. I'm going to read them the riot act though.

By the time you read this, the boys will be home, as I have delayed the post time of this post.
I can't wait to begin drafting my complaint.

*When I say "South Butt," I hope you all realize that I am disguising the actual location with a silly name that's fun to say in conversation. If there is a real place called South Butt and it has a U-Haul office - I recognize and admit that it had nothing to do with any of this wrong-doing.

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Putt Putt Putt

2010-09-30T18:31:00.006-04:00

Before I commence with the home updates, I'd like to take a moment to recognize the vehicle previously known as Dodge #1 - now known as SOLD. You have no idea what a relief it was... watching it drive away last night. (Especially after the 45 minutes or so in which we couldn't find the title. That ordeal took a few years off my life, it was so stressful... what with the buyer in an airplane on his one way ticket here from south butt.)

That leaves the Dodge tally down to uno - Dodge #2. Fixing that up to a reasonable state without any major parts purchases is vehicle goal numero dos. Meanwhile, stress level goes back up through the roof at the end of this week, when Mike will be doing some traveling of his own to pickup a new (used) Dodge 2500.

Vehicles on my mind. Anyway! Forcibly pushing aside those stresses, it was a great weekend. Productivity and optimism were both up something percent.

Saturday, despite battling some crazy sinus thing that I've had forever that decided to come to a head at the end of last week... yeah, despite that - I completed puttying on the porch trim and ceiling. Sunday I even had an opportunity to paint some more of the ceiling! (More, but not all, unfortunately.)

Mike decided Sunday morning he finally wanted to install that cat door we've had new in the box for probably about six months now. (Back when we put in the basement and basement stairs, we left a hole in the hallway/stairway wall for the cats to go in and out of. Since having a baby, and since stuffing a pillow in the hole for cat-control just isn't the best cat-control method, we knew we'd need a proper cat door.)

Installing the thing was actually more of a pain then you might imagine. You see, the small-cat cat door is square shaped. The large-cat cat door is not. It's circular on the bottom. We have large cats... and we made a square shaped hole when we made our hole years ago. (Back when we didn't have the cat-door shape knowledge we have today.) So Mike had to trim the hole and cut a new - half circular - piece of drywall to be able to install the thing.

And I must admit, it looks pretty good. Trouble now is the cats don't know how to use the thing. And no, it's not one of those auto-opening-when-the-collar-gets-close type of door. Those things are mad expensive. But this one does have a magnet at the bottom to keep the door shut tight when not in use. Too tight, I'm afraid. The cats don't know how to (or just don't want to - because let's face it, they are cats) push the durn thing hard enough.

But, bottom line, after 17 months, I'm happy to cross "Cat Door" off of the list-of-stuff-that-should-get-done-but-nobody-cares-about.

Speaking of that particular list, Mike had the brilliant notion after finishing the cat door that he'd like to complete the siding on the top of the gambrel of the house. He called our carpenter friend TJ, who came over in the afternoon to give him a hand.

TA-DA! Now, we can officially call siding on the front of the house - DONE! We still need some trim up there on the top peak, but that's for another day.

To complete the weekend, Timmy and Richard came over to give us another materials list for this coming weekend. This time, it's time to wrap the posts. And lucky for us, we still have some of the needed materials in stock. Mike ordered the rest today and it should be delivered tomorrow.

Me, I'd like to finish up painting. Soon enough I'll have to paint out all the pre-primed white board - white - and the ceiling again - in its actual blue color. It's all on the list-of-stuff-that-everyone-cares-about. Just as soon as those posts are wrapped up tight.

After that? It's railing time. Mike and I have to make time to go and pick out what we want in that department. Hopefully Morse Lumber is open before 9 on a Monday, because that's the only time we'd have within their business days/hours.

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Playing with Putty

2010-09-22T19:11:00.001-04:00

After I returned home late last Thursday night, and after Mike dropped the bomb that he'd be fixing the floor in his Dodge on Sunday, I scrapped any vague hopes of progress over last weekend.

But be that as it may, we still made a couple baby steps forward. On Sunday I began puttying all the nail holes... and managed to fill quite a few before Mikey woke up. (There are still quite a few more to go, but I'm hoping I can finish up this weekend.) Also, a plumber friend of ours came by to impart some of his infinite plumbing wisdom in regards to a basement bathroom. (I'm still trying to reel Mike in on this one - I'm shocked he didn't want to halt work on his floor to begin framing the thing out!)

All in due time, my friends.

And now look at this - it's Wednesday, end of day, and I don't have a clue and half what the next step is or how much it's going to cost or when it can be implemented. This weekend is starting to look left out too...

At least a dude is coming to purchase the Dodge on Sunday morning. Yes, when I wake up, one Dodge will be gone. Mike hopes to schedule some time off so he can rock and roll on Dodge #2. Stick that on the market, make some more money, and buy a 2500. That's the plan. Those 2500 4x4 diesel quad cabs don't come cheap though. 3500 dually's though? Dime a dozen these days. The automotive market is so ackbasswards right now.

We've got a dirt bike on craigslist too... hoping to dump for $300 - 1970 Yamaha DT-250. You know you want it!

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Happy Surprise

2010-09-15T08:22:00.001-04:00

Here I am work-a-holicking at a conference when Mike sends me a text:
"Farmer's porch trim is done." Followed by a picture:

Note the neat white trim from the start of the farmer's porch, straight through and now over the top of the mudroom. Ok, wow, I was thinking. That's great. "So what's next? The inside side trim?"
That was replied with another picture:

"All that's left is the post and 1/2 round"

Here note the trim where the porch ceiling meets the house. I freaked out. No way had I expected it ALL to be done! I wished I'd been in a position to actually call him back to chit chat about it. "Show me by the door," I replied hurriedly.

I'm impressed. Straight out impressed. I didn't even know if the guys would be working over the weekend, so what a nice surprise!! To think... next we'll wrap the posts. Perhaps this weekend?

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Unworthy of Even a T-Shirt

2010-09-07T19:08:00.001-04:00

So Hurricane Earl turned... literally turned... out to be a big fat sack of nothing. Durn it, no "I Survived Blah Blah Blah" t-shirt.

And eventually we'll have the unhappy task of moving all the lumber and patio furniture back up to ground level from the basement... but not this Labor Day Weekend. Yes, as usual I had high hopes for big accomplishments over the past few days. Unfortunately, I've been feeling like poo for most of the weekend and couldn't bring myself to do anything Sunday and Monday.

Mike managed to cross off some long-standing items on his to-do list. Fixing the snow blower for neighbor 1, fixing the lawn tractor for neighbor 2, fixing his own lawn tractor, installing his fuel pump, fixing the mini 4-wheeler, fixing some dude's 4wheeler, returning neighbor 2's tiller....

I suppose it's a very good thing to have all those things taken care of - especially as we go into fall and we look towards cleaning up the yard.

But I had really wanted to go over to the HD and pick up wood putty and trim for the porch. (The more we've thought about it, the more we've thought that caulk will expand and contract - wood putty is made for nail holes, so we may as well do the right thing and use it.) The trim we need will go where the bead board ceiling meets the pre-primed white interior wrapping as well as around the front door.

I dreampt of purchasing it all and painting it all... but no such luck.

Mike also mentioned the kitchen to me again... I said don't tempt me, I'll buy a window today. So maybe it's a good thing that this sinus thing kept me unmotivated and stuck in the house. I probably would have purchased a big 'ol window. (Though I did scold him once again, "Read my lips, No NEW projects!")

Oh, and then he started with the, "You better start thinking about the layout of the basement bathroom."

And I'm thinking to myself, "Dude, you are getting waaay ahead of yourself here." It is so impossible to keep him focused sometimes. I need to tattoo "FINISH THE PORCH" on his forehead or something.

Speaking of which, Timmy had some parties 'n stuff this weekend, putting further construction on hold. Which is cool, because as I said, Mike had things to do, I wasn't feeling well, and let's face it, Timmy's been working weeks straight on our house, so a break is more then well deserved.

Back to work this weekend? It's not up to me - I'll be working I'm afraid.

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Hurricane Earl A'Comin

2010-09-01T20:42:00.001-04:00

Ah, Cape Cod on Labor Day weekend. Time to kick back, roll down the windows, and prepare to sit yo' ass in traffic for the next two hours. And, oh yeah, there's a hurricane a'comin!

Having already lived through the "I Survived Hurricane Bob" t-shirt craze, I can't wait to add an Earl to the list of incredible Northeast natural disasters. But, since we're always under construction at home.... and since we're always a mess in the yard... we have some doings to do to prepare, and we don't have much time in which to do them.

Take in the porch furniture
Take in tools and other small items littering the porch
Secure all lumber
Take in the plants
Move the grill inside
Secure the trash hut
Move all machines inside the garage
Move all machine parts inside the garage
Secure Dodge #2
Secure the boat and camper
Put all trash in the trash hut and secure it again!
Take in Mikey's bus
Start up the generator and make sure it works

So far, the latest info from weather.com shows Earl hitting us sometime late Friday, early Saturday - with wind gusts of 90-100mph. Although they admit, these are only just educated guesses.

This will be our first hurricane in our home, but I doubt it will be the last.

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