What We've Been Doing

So in the few years since I have posted a lot has happened! Here's a quick rundown of house related things that have been done...

-buiilt an office in the second bedroom (split 1 huge room into 2 smaller rooms

-some painting

-new fridge (French door stainless steel!)

-replaced main electrical to house from pole due to storm damage ripping the old out

-new theater style couch

-replaced toilet

-new rug in living room

-changed all light bulbs to CFL

-Some other odd electrical work

-filled some gaps and cracks in laundry room walls

-other odd things 

And that's really it. Not a lot, but that's changing quickly. I've started tearing out the kitchen floor, the rest of the kitchen will begin once that's done, and our HVAC duct work is getting cleaned out in a couple of weeks.

Up next: the kitchen. And I promise pictures!

Life and owning an old house

It has officially been almost 3 years since I have written a post and about 4 years since any projects have been done. We had a hiatus on all house projects for a really long time for a lot of reasons. Everything came to a screeching halt when a combination of things happened, and every time we were ready to start again something else happened and we had to put it on hold again. When I say screeching halt, I really mean it. Our dining room is still halfway through demo with stacks of ceiling tiles that have been sitting around for about 4 years and paint chips that have been on the walls for so ling they're curling and discolored, the bathroom still hasn't been tiled, and countless other projects that were started have not been done. 

In the years since I last updated this we have done some things but only when needed and only what was needed at that time. It's not that we're lazy, it's just that life happened and the house projects were less important than everything else going on. By life happened I mean it happened on a level that the saying "God only gives us what He thinks we can handle. Apparently God thinks I'm a badass" applies. In the middle of all that I've learned to look at the bigger picture, how to appreciate the small things in life, and to always look for the bright side of a bad situation. Life is too short for anything else. When it comes to our house I've learned that as much as I hate it, I can live in a partially demoed, chaotic construction zone of a house because in the end it will be worth it. I've learned that when it comes to our house "if it ain't broke don't fix it" has to work sometimes no matter how much it makes me cringe. In the end we're going to have great stories to tell and eventually we'll laugh about how we lived in a construction zone for so long. We'll also have a much better appreciation of the end result and all our hard work because of what we had to go through to get there. 

Life is finally starting to get back to normal and we have decided its time to begin work again. Partly because some big things have become necessary and partly because we're tired of looking at it and now have the ability to handle it. We've also decided to take a different direction than we had originally planned and I will still have to walk through a dining room that's partially demoed for a while and deal with a barely functioning bathroom but the flip side is I'm going to have a freshly updated, de-grandma-field kitchen! Due to a series of unfortunate events involving the ancient linoleum the floor has to be replaced ASAP so we decided to also give the rest of the room a makeover.

Up next, what has been done since the last post, followed by what is going on with the kitchen.

Some people should never touch power tools. Ever.

Why do I say this? Because some idiot with a staple gun did this to our living room window:Since you can't really tell see the staples in question, here's a better look:


See all the brown spots? That's where the guy that rented our house before we bought it borrowed a staple gun from our neighbor and violated the beautiful wood work with well over a hundred staples to hold plastic sheeting and with a cardboard frame to the window to "winterize" the window. In some places there were clusters of up to 10 staples! And a lot of them only had one side of the staple in the wood, which is good for us, but makes me wonder what the point was in the first place. And this is not the only one he did it too...there are 5 other windows that he did it to and on 3 of them he not only did the inside, but also the OUTSIDE!

It took LOTS of work and patience, but I finally got the window to this condition, which is not great, but a HUGE improvement (and I tried like hell to get that bracket out, but the nails just wouldn't give so James is going to have to handle it)
To get the window to look that nice again it took a pair of needle nose pliers and a lot of cleaning. The cleaning part was because in my whole I-don't-care-what-the-house-looks-like-I-have-homework attitude towards housekeeping over the last 2 years, I did not clean the windows. Which was really, really, really stupid cause the 5 minutes I would've spent every month would have saved me the 2 hours with a shop vac, Murphy's Oil Soap, and glass cleaner.

Speaking of glass cleaner, this is the most awesome glass cleaner. Ever. And I'm being serious. Sprayway Glass Cleaner...it's in an aerosol can, sprays as a mist or foam (depending on how fast you move when spraying), it's super clingy & never runs, will remove ANYTHING from glass, the can lasts forever, and it's cheap (about $2!). And when I say it'll remove anything, I mean it removed dried, rock hard barbecue sauce from my glass cutting board in one swipe using it as foam!
Ok, back to the window. Here's the pile of staples I removed from the window, and there's way more than it look like there is. I counted a hundred before I lost interest in counting them, and there were still more!
This is probably going to get me in trouble with my hubby. It's a pile of rotting caulk that I accidentally removed from the bottom of the storm window with the shop vac. But in my defense, if it came out with a shop vac, and it was almost unrecognizable as being caulking, then it probably needed to go anyway. Right?

And in case you're wondering how we know that the renter borrowed a staple gun from one of our neighbors to do this, the neighbor told us! We were talking to him one day and I don't remember what brought it up, but the neighbor told us that the renter borrowed a staple gun one time, but didn't say what it was for. The neighbor had no idea that he used it to staple plastic to the window frames. And the people we bought the house from said that if the renter would've said something to them about the windows being drafty, they would've taken care of it for him, and it would not have involved staples!

So now that I have this taken care of, the window is ready for new glaze and caulk, and the frame and trim are ready to be refinished. I really didn't want to do it because I love the patina of the old varnish, but due to the high visibility of all the staple holes, it will have to be done. So that will be coming up soon!


***Edit:  I thought this was done with a power tool.  It wasn't.  It was a basic hand held staple gun.  So the title is totally wrong.  My bad.

Need some help with exterior colors!!

We are officially getting back to work on the house!! The first big project is painting the exterior trim, and I have no idea what color to choose! Our house is kind of a off white or pale gray color and I'm lost as to what color to use on the trim. My husband pretty much said no to plain white, and would prefer gray. I have no idea what would look good, but I do know that I do not like the black seen around the windows in this picture. And we're not painting the house, just the trim since we will be putting new siding on in the next couple of years.

What color would you paint the trim of an all white house? Would you go bright, neutral, or dark? Would you also paint the gabel face a color that ties the trim to the rest of the house or just leave it white? Also, does any one know any links where I could look at pictures of white houses with color trim? I tried google and that was pretty much pointless...all that it showed were pure white houses with no color or pictures of white houses with black trim.

Hmm...more Eames chairs?

Just realized fishing season is almost here and so I'm wondering if the place on 15th street will be throwing more Eames chairs out to the curb. Apparently it's a really weird redneck thing around here. When fishing season starts this person sets these awesome Eames chairs out on the curb and people take them for fishing chairs! Apparently, according to several people that obviously don't know any better, they are awesome for fishing because they are comfortable and sink into the mud nicely so they don't have to worry about their chairs falling over. When some one takes one of the chairs this person sets another out! I think it's just weird that I've noticed several housebloggers that drool over these chairs and here in southern Indiana, where no one apparently knows what they are, they're used for fishing!

How I found out about this is one of my hubby's friends got one last year and showed up at the river camp with it. I told him it looks like an Eames chair and he informed me he had no idea what that meant, but that it's the most awesome fishing chair ever. So before he buried it in the mud I turned it over and his almost brand new looking "fishing chair" had the original Charles Eames sticker on the bottom! I tried and tried to talk him into giving it to me and he told me no. Repeatedly. And then proceeded to bury it in the mud and sand on the river bank where he used it that one time before the river flooded and took it away.

Does any one else find this really, really odd? Or am I the only one?

Quick Update

I just wanted to say that although I have pretty much completely abandoned our blog, we have been really busy, but I haven't had any time to post about anything. School has pretty much taken over my life, it's gotten really hard and I've been loaded down with hours of homework every night. The good news is that it's almost over!! I graduate in May and will finally be able to get back to working on the house (and finding a job)!!!

More good news....we have done a few things around here and when spring break starts in a little over a week I'm going to start posting about all the little things that have been done such as....new washer and dryer, finished bedroom closet, the mini bathroom make over, new-to-us fridge, the mountains of mulch, as well as some of the bad things that have happened such as....gutters falling, pet problems, wall warping issues, and more.


If there's any one left who actually checks our blog...please be patient, we're almost back!!!

Too much to do, not enough time

That's the excuse I'm giving for my current blog abandonment. School is really hard this year and I'm buried to my eyeballs in homework! I have an average of 2-3 hours of homework a night on top of all the normal stuff (like making dinner, laundry, cleaning) so there just hasn't been any time to do anything to the house. Which means nothing to blog about. The only thing I've done is pick a paint color for the bedroom, but I won't be able to actually paint until maybe Thanksgiving.

We do have some things planned though for when I can finally catch a break from school. We're going to be getting a new washer and dryer, tearing out some walls to insulate, and of course painting the bedroom. I decided on Valspar Silver Fox for the walls and Rising Tide for the ceiling. Silver Fox is a pretty blue-gray color (think blue sky with a storm coming in) and Rising tide is a really light grayish blue color that looks great with the main color. We have to get a new washer and dryer because our 15 year old set is quickly dying...3 hours to do one load of laundry is a bit ridiculous! It's taking that long because the washer is having a hard time spinning the water out and the dryer isn't getting hot (high is now almost the same as low). And we are NOT tearing out plaster walls to insulate, we're tearing out the plywood walls in the laundry room.

And I haven't forgotten to post the pictures of the closet transformation...just haven't had time, but I still plan to put them up sometime, probably Thanksgiving break.