I like to check my horoscope every now and then. I find them interesting even though I don't believe in them. Anyway, my horoscope for yesterday said -"Your emotional state is pretty volatile today." LOL! What is should have said was that this would pertain not to me but to the guys in my life. From the moment my son woke up he was in a bad mood. No matter what I said to him it would invoke a temper tantrum. He refused to eat all day. Seriously, I think he only had a spoon full of rice all day. He finally cooled down sometime after dinner when is father took over. (Things were not going well working on the house) At least his temper tantrum ended with him cleaning the house. :)
I'm not going to tell you how old I am, you will just have to guess! We are still working on our house. Always working on our house! I just stopped to take a break from painting shelves. The kids bedroom is somewhat finished. We still have to decide on what trim we are going to be using. We put the old carpet back down for the time being. We are going to put the new hardwood floor down all at once. It has so be in before summer. My mom is coming out to check up on... I mean to see us(really just the kids).
I'm back to washing dishes in the shower for awhile I was hoping that my birthday present from Ed would be a working kitchen sink. Ah maybe for mothers day then.
I bought myself some plants for the front yard. We really need some help out there. I've been waiting and hoping to run into Ahmed Hassan from DIY yard crashers. I am always at the home improvement stores. Ahmed where are you? Now look at this you would have thought my neighbors would have called Desperate Landscape crew already.
Yay, all our sheet rock is up! It has been so long since I've had sheet rock on the walls. I'm so excited. We have been working like crazy. Most of the house had the first coat of spackle already. Another week and we should be painting. Love it!!!
John spraying the foam.
I don't know why, but knowing they used the soy based foam made me fell better. My husband wanted to totally fill the studs with foam but it would have been sooooooo expensive. Since we already have the yucky fiberglass stuff we had them spray only an inch of foam and we are going to reuse our fiberglass stuff on top.
Our igloo!
Ed reinstalling the fiberglass batts. We didn't get as much in as we wanted. We ran out of light and staples. I could tell within the first hour that is was totally worth it. There isn't a draft anywhere is the house and it held the heat very nicely. I had posted that picture of Aunt Nancy from home a few days ago. I believe it was taken last week. We had pulled all the insulation out of the house and Aunt Nancy stacked it in the basement. Not fun! Nancy and I also removed every piece of sheet rock from the walls and ceiling. Oh yeah, Uncle Ray helped too:) We really didn't have much left just around the pantry bathroom and one bedroom wall. We passed two more inspections yesterday- Framing and fire. We also got the OK to pour the basement floor in the addition. I think I'm more excited about finishing the kids playroom in the basement than finishing my living room or kitchen. Tomorrow they are spraying the closed cell insulation, then lucky us we get to bring all that fiberglass insulation back up and reinstall it. I'm still not sure if I want to paint a nice butter yellow or light coffee on the walls.... Um......I think it's time to to go down stairs for breakfast!
Oh yeah, the insurance company finally come through with the last check for the repairs on my car. If everything goes OK, I should be getting my baby back Thursday. Yay!!!!
Every thing we own is in plastic. Those large black garbage bags are my fanciest of luggage right now. We have been dismantling everything in the house and I mean everything. We passed our electric and plumbing inspections this past week. Monday we have our framing and fire inspections. Wednesday they are spraying the closed cell insulation. I'm excited! This time when we get the kitchen cabinets back on the wall that is where they are going to stay! I'm never taking those things out again.
I still haven't gotten my car back from the auto body shop. I miss my baby. It took a long time to get my seat shaped perfectly for my big butt. For some reason it took forever to OK the $1500 additional work (bent axle) that was needed. I did get a call from my insurance company that the other woman took full responsibility for the accident so that was nice.
Some more good news my husband came home with a new camera for me on Valentines Day. YAY! Ah, it feels so good to have a camera again. I love it! Love it!!!! I have been going crazy taking pictures of the kids. So look for lots of pictures soon....
Our week started off in the hospital and end back at the hospital. I haven't had a check up in a few years. Ed had to go to the doctors so we made an appointment for the same time. Then off for blood work. Ed was sent for a chest xray, EKG and an echo cardiogram. We are all fine. A few little tweaks here and there and we will be as good as new.
Since it's been cold the work on the addition we are doing has been going slow. It's going -but slow. We had hoped to be framing by now but at least it's moving forward.
On our house we are close to calling for our next inspection. This one is a big one. We need to install outlets in the bedroom and the smoke detectors. Then we have to disassemble the kitchen and bathroom. We invited ourselves over to Ray and Nancy's for a few days. I can live without a kitchen sink. I can live without a stove. There is no way I am living without a sink, stove, shower and toilet. This is where Ed says "Your such a Princess!"
We also got a call on our car. After the shop inspected the car they found the rear axle is bent. We are back to waiting for the insurance company to see what happens next.
So anyway yesterday we ended back in the hospital. Ed sprained his ankle and is on crutches. I think he did it on purpose just because he needed a rest. He is currently parked on the couch with his foot up. Every once in awhile I hear him call me to get him something. I think we may just be out of eggs, milk or something equally important and I have to go to the store...... for a couple of hours.
There is no rest for us. Not even on the weekends. We spent this weekend installing a new kitchen and kitchen floor. It's a small kitchen. In fact it's the same as how our house used to look before we took the wall down between the kitchen and the living room. Wow our house was so small before and I mean claustrophobic small. I just love our new layout. I love our house even with the plywood floors. As much as I would like the hardwood floors installed I am sort of glad that they aren't. Our kids make such a mess I know they would destroy it. I guess that's mostly my fault. I let them (I really mean me) ride their bikes and even skate in the house. Since we don't have any of our decor out we play ball in the house. Oh boy I'm going to have a hard time when I'm going to have to limit them (as well as myself) to the playroom.
We are off now to drop off our car for repairs. The insurance company gave us an estimate of $3500 in damage. I know a lot of people hate SUVs but I don't know what I would do with out mine. I can't image putting my babies in any other car. Well maybe Ed's dump truck. That thing is like a tank.
Yeah, everyone is asleep and I have the computer to myself. That doesn't happen very much. As soon as they hear the little click, click of the keys the kids are on me fighting to play a game or do their letters on starfall. So, I will try to post fast before one of them wakes.
I just looked and I have about 20 something draft blogs saved that I have never finished. All the way back to Thanksgiving. Let's hope I can finish this one.
We have all been so sick here, that work on our house has been going slow. We just don't have the energy to do much. Ed has been doing some of the electric work in our addition when he pulled some of the insulation off the wall and the plywood was wet. It seems that our house is too warm and humid. We even found some mold in the new walls. Yuck! Could this be why we are so sick or why we aren't getting any better?
Now we have to pull all the insulation out to spray for the mold and let it dry out. When that is dry we are going to spray the inside cavities with 1-2 inches of foam insulation. I would love to do the green thing and use the soy spray but it cost twice as much. I'm hoping this means our days of taking our time to close up the walls are over and we can seal everything up soon. Wow, it has been so long I don't think I can imagine our walls with sheetrock on it.
Time to wake everyone up and get to work.
So anyone who has been reading this blog knows we have been working on our house. Over the winter we installed an instant hot water heater. Not only did we get a great deal on the heater, but the past three months our gas bill has only been $30-$45. I love it!!! I actually get excited when the bill comes in and I have to go and compare it to last years bills. Right now our gas bill is a little over a 1/3 of what it was last year. I love it- LOVE IT!! As you can tell I get very excited about saving money. We have also made other changes as well. I started washing our laundry in cold water- all except whites , an idea I got from my blogging friend Kate. I still use the dryer for everything, but I would like to start hanging some of our things outside. I'll have to work on that! I'm wondering if a big part of our savings has to do with the new gas line they put in last year, but then again I also went 125 days without using the stove and our bill is still a lot less than last year. What ever the reasons I am very happy. Now I would love to compare our electric bill from this year to last but we still haven't finished rewiring the house and I only have 3 lights right now. I would love to put a solar panel up on the roof but they are still to expensive. We have also installed larger windows in our house. The new windows let in soooooo much more light that I find I don't turn on the lights, that we do have until dusk. It wasn't that way with the old tiny drafty windows. I think we had the lights on all the time before, our house was like a dungeon! We just finished replacing our heating ducts and sealing them so there won't be any air loss that way. They where in really bad shape- so many holes. We still have so much to do. Ed is working on sealing every little opening in the house and upgrading our insulation. That should be a big help.
What does the summer of 2008 mean to you? This was a summer of hard work. This was the summer I went with out a kitchen sink! That's right from Memorial Day to Patriots Day, I survived washing dishes in the shower.
The kids love to paint. They ask to paint nearly everyday. This weekend their craft time consisted of painting and sealing our air conditioning and heating vents as we put them together. They are a little messy but the kids had a blast helping us. We even had them sign them and dated them before we put them up. We have one more run to do and then we are finished replacing all the duct work. I can't wait to check that off our list.
We got a virus. A very nasty virus (windows antivirus 2008) on our computer. It took a long time to get rid of it. Me being (cheap) me. I didn't want to pay for anything. Norton wanted to charge me $99. So I disconnected my computer and used Ed for a short time until I could find a free malware removal software. This is the one I used. http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/malware-removal/antivirus-2008 I scanned the computer a few times and then rescanned it with Norton. Now it's better than it's been in a long time.
We have been working like crazy on our house. Almost every thing we own is packed away right now. I finally have a kitchen sink again (since May 30). I just can't used it yet. The drain is not hooked up but it's getting there.
We did get all the siding up on the house. We had some problems with the trim coming in damaged or the wrong color. I think when the pilasters go on the front door it make a huge difference in the look if the house.
Right now I came down to the computer to find a template for window boxes. OK really I came down to clean up some of the broken concrete and the computer just called to me.
I just wanted to post my very crazy kitchen and dining room - lemon and lime Project Palette Board. I know its busy. These are just the colors I like. I already have the apron on the right and the canisters. I'm hoping to do my own painting similar to the flower one below.
Hey I just realized that my kitchen and dining room colors match my blog.
My mom is here visiting so I'm not getting as much done as I should. I've really been quite lazy this past week. Ed worked this weekend at his brothers house so we didn't get as much done as we would have liked. We did manage to get some more siding up.
Today we started the siding on the side of the house. We got 4 or 5 courses up when it started to rain. Well at least we started, right? So we decided to work inside on the wall to the bedroom. We moved it out about two feet. We also removed everything in there that was up against the front wall of the house. We have to take that down next to add more windows. We are almost to the end-at least for replacing all the plywood on the out side of the house. Once we finish this area in the front its all about the siding baby. I'm getting excited. I may just have a normal looking house soon. At least from the outside. Now all I need is my kitchen sink back and maybe some steps to get use our new doors. Oh and maybe.... I could keep on going!
I've been with out a computer again for a few days. I snuck down into the basement and hooked up Eds office computer to the Internet. I couldn't take it anymore. I can't believe how much I took the Internet for granted. You know it the little things, like being able to look up the weather.
Saturday we took out the old bathroom. Remember when I said the bathroom really just need to be painted and everything was in decent shape. How wrong I was! The skylight had leaked. Just a little here and there. When we took up the floor we found out most of the floor had rotted away. Not only that, when they installed the toilet almost 50 years ago, they just cut the joist in half and it was just hanging there doing nothing. We ending up having to replace three more floor joist.
The funny thing is, while I was cleaning up the mess I found this index card rolled up really tight sitting in the corner. I almost threw it out. I don't know why I picked it up. It was first dated 1969. Eds older brother Ken put it in the wall when he was 11 helping is father remodel the bathroom. It was also found, signed and replaced again in 92 when we remodeled it again. I don't remember Ken putting it in the wall. The cute thing is he had is daughters sign it also before replacing back . Cait was 5 at the time and Allison was 2.
Sunday we took off the front wall of the house. We framed for the new front door and the windows. Removing the large bay window was not easy. For some reason I found myself standing outside holding up the window by myself while Ed was prying it away from the studs. I don't know what I was thinking other than I am really, really, insane. It didn't go that bad. I broke one of the glass panes. I was very lucky that my hand didn't go all the way through.
Today we put in two of the window. While Ed was cutting the openning for one of the windows a leg on his ladder broke off. He got a little banged up. His ankle is really swollen. Once again we got lucky. It could have been so much worse. I was a wreck. It really scared me. I don't know what I would do without him. I mean who else would I get to do this remodel :)
Oh, it is so nice to have windows that open on the front of the house. It's not so oppressive in the house anymore.
