Drumroll Please....

We finally have a date confimed by a city historian! This amazing picture of the original house was taken in 1867!! The historian said that date has to be within one 1 year!
This was confirmed through census reports and death records. The little boy in the picture (in a dress) is about 3 years old. In the 1870 census he was 5 years old. The death records were used to find the true ages of the family in the census report. The historian said they could be off, but according to records, they are correct. I also learned that the Marter family was considered well to do because they had $1887 in property and $525 in assets. According to the historian this was really good at that time. Unfortunately there were virtually no records kept outside the city limits, so the "official" date of the new house is still 1890 until we can find a builder, tax record, or some other kind of documentation showing otherwise. The house that we live in is not the house in the picture. But the house in the picture may be part of the house we live in. If that makes any sense.

A Pappy Moment

The best thing about this couch? It not hand-me-down! We actually bought our first piece of NEW furniture! It's microfiber, reclines, and was CHEAP!! We have been looking for a new couch for a while and were mainly looking at used because we thought we couldn't afford new. I went to Value City Furniture and found this "damaged" couch. The damage is so small you can't even see it unless you are looking for it and it saved us $400! I saw it, took a pic, sent it to James and he said take it. There were 2 other people lookingat it so I planted myself on the couch and waited for a salesman! I had to wait about 15 minutes, but the other people finally left. Now I have to decide on a color for the walls because what I wanted is actually pretty close to the color of the couch, and that won't work very well. Oh, and the black spot on the wall is where the plaster is crumbling.



About the Pappy thing for the people who read this and aren't family...Pappy was my Grandpa. He always looked for the best deals on everything. He found a lot of nice things for really cheap, especially furniture. When Grandma wanted something new Pappy would start looking for deals. I pretty much did the same thing. My Uncle Bill called me while I was getting the living room ready for the new couch and I told him all about it and and he said I "pulled a Pappy"

The Kitchen

Since I have never showed the kitchen I figured why not do it today.
I would love to do something with this side of the kitchen but really can't
This is the main area. It needs a lot of work. The "island" is actually a microwave cart serving a new purpose. And all the stuff on the top of the cabinet is a vintage glass collection. Everything from McDonald's and Coke glasses to alcohol bottles and vases. And I love the glass backsplash.
This cabinet will eventually be torn out. All it usually does is serve as a catch all for junk, but we need the storage space so it can't go anywhere yet. I need that little orange stool to reach the top shelf of the cabinets.
This cabinet is the only one original to the house and is most likely the only cabinet that was built with the house. I found out that there were originally pass throughs to the dining room.

Here's the plans for this room:

Tear out the base cabinet where the sink is because its rotting from water damage and have a custom cabinet made

Refinish the upper cabinets. They were made by Mr. Yochum in our garage and are amazing. They are very well made, I just don't like the finish or the pulls.

Tear out that little cabinet and maybe install shelving

Find an island

Tear out the floor and retore the hardwood. Its linoleum with some kind of subfloor with hardwood underneath. The linoleum is stained, cracking and peeling up in some places.

Paint, new curtains, refinish window frames, refinish lower cabinet, put pass throughs back in, remove wallpaper

Add more outlets. There is a power strip, one for the refrigerator and Pet Safe, and one for the microwave. Its enough (the power strip has 6 plug ins), but not in the right places.

Teach the cats to stay out of cabinets and off the counter, stove, refrigerator

Puppies

Awww...aren't they cute?! This was the first time I could get close enough to get a picture of the puppies and it came out good. There are 4 black and 1 brown. They are now about 4 weeks old and are already almost the size of our Shih-Tzu! We had to disrupt the pile shortly after this picture was taken though. We had old blankets in there and the mama ripped them to shreds, so then we had cedar chips in it and she dug them all out. So now we have straw in there and she seems ok with it so far.

Beauty Advisor to Housewife in 2 seconds

I was fired from my job Friday due to a simple mix up. The schedules were posted out of order causing me to be 4 hours late and therefore fired. I was really upset about it at first because I have never been fired before, but now I'm doing fine. So I am no longer a beauty advisor, instead I am now a housewife. And in a few months a student. So it looks like 2008 is going to be a year of changes. And big adjustments. I have had 1-3 jobs and worked up to 90 hours a week for 8 years, so it'll take a little bit to get used to this. Financially we're going to be fine, but any work on the house will be little to none. There will be things like painting and refinishing, but the big things we had planned like completely restoring the dining room and gutting the bathroom will have to wait a while. Right now I'm mainly focused on taking control of the house back from the animals and finally getting unpacked. Our 2 dogs and 2 cats we have inside seem to think that they rule the house and can help themselves to food in cabinets, tear up/eat the furniture, and drag things wherever they please because they do all these things when no one is home and they can't be punished since we can't figure out which one did it. Well that has ended. And as far as unpacking we have lived here for about a year and a half and still have a mountain of boxes that have been sitting unpacked. And that means I can finally decorate so it looks like some one lives here!

Back from Ohio

We got back from our little vacation on Monday and I've been on the go ever since. This is where we went...
Yes, that was a really familiar site. We went to Wellington, Ohio to my cousin's wedding. That would be this happy family...
That's my cousin Chris and his wife and their adorable son. The wedding was simple but beautiful and we had a lot of fun. I also got to see the rest of my family that I haven't seen in a long time.

And of course it wouldn't be a house blog with out a house to show...

We saw lots of amazing houses and shops in the historic districts, but this one just really caught my eye every time we went by it. I think it was the bright yellow paint or the green front door, or all of it. We stayed with my cousin Dusty and his family the first night who also lives in an old house that they are currently remodeling, and we stayed with my uncle who lives in another old house that is almost done and its amazing. I guess its just in my family that we're attracted to them. I think Dusty's house has the most work that needs to be done. They decided to stucco over the plaster in the living room because the plaster was in such bad shape(I never thought of that), and they have to replace the foundation, and they are going to expand the kitchen. But the house has been in their family for many, many years. it belonged to his grandparents, so it'll be worth it in the end. And my cousin Pam is living in an amazing farm house. She said it was built in the late 18Th century and for the most part looks to be all original...all the was down to gas lamps that have been converted to electric. The trip was a lot of fun and I wish we could do it again soon, but it took me 2 days to recover (I have permanent damage in my neck so I don't handle long trips well) so it'll be awhile. I did invite all my family to come and visit us though.

Oh, and to Gary over at This Old Crack House...I feel sorry for you if you have to drive through all the construction in Dayton! That was horrible...its like a freakin death trap trying to drive though it! And we also learned something...30 degrees in Ohio is not as bad as 30 degrees in Southern Indiana. You know why? No wind! Even as close to Lake Erie as we were there was no wind. Down here 30 is actually about 10 sometimes!

Show Off!

Just for fun I had to show this off. Its my new car!
2000 Mustang convertible fully loaded, leather seats, 5 speed, low miles! Love it! I'm so excited...this is kind of my new year gift to my self. I've had a little 4x4 for about 4 years now and this is so much more me. I love cute little sports cars. And that is my hubby poking around in the trunk. This is probably the closest to a real picture of him you will ever see on here. He laughs at me every time I call it a cute little sports car. He says it muscle cause thats what the insurance classified it as, and that mustangs are not "cute".

And a little preview of what my summer will be like: Check out the windows. They're in sad shape, especially the ones in the laundry room (the row to the left) they are so bad the panes are about ready to fall out. So this summer James and his friends are going to remove them and then I am going to restore them. Should be fun. I have never done anything like this before, but another one of our friends is a pro at this so she said she might be able to help me, depending on when I start.

Ta-Da! Meet the newest improvement to our house.

This is our newest unexpected purchase for the house. On December 22 James came home around 8pm for a few minutes and and everything was fine at home. then we went out for a little while after I got off work. We got home around midnight and started watching a movie. I thought it was chilly so I put on a sweatshirt. An hour later I was still cold so I got a blanket. Another hour goes by and James is getting cold. So I check the thermostat and its set for 70 but the actual temp was 54! So at 3am we were down in the basement checking it out. Couldn't figure out what was wrong and finally gave up at about 5am. The next day was Sunday, then Christmas eve, Christmas day...still no heat and no one open. At this point we are using space heaters to keep it around 60 degrees and no place is open because of the holidays. The day after Christmas James tried to fix it. The heating guy said it was one of 2 things wrong...either expensive or cheap to fix. Turns out it was the expensive one. so since the furnace was an 80's model we decided to put a new one in instead of fixing it and waiting another year before it says good bye for good. While we were at it we had a new thermostat installed too since the other was really, really old. It cost a fortune (to us anyway) but hopefully will pay off in the long run. This furnace is 95% efficient versus the 85% (heating guy said actually about 60%) that the other was so that will save us a lot. And we get a reimbursement from the gas company.

While I was at it taking this picture I did a video tour of our basement with my new camera (12 mega pixel, HD video...sweet) but I can't get it to load, so I'll try that again later. I have figured out that either my computer or blogger doesn't like high quality pictures. At 6 mega pixel they load fine. At 12 they take forever. I think its blogger because they went onto the computer just fine but are taking forever to upload to blogger.

A little catching up

I have just realized I have not posted anything in almost 2 months! But it been a really eventful couple of months though. From new babies, puppies, furnace, car, and lots of other things. I'll have several new entries here soon. First off though, I wish I could get a picture of the puppies to put on here, but mama won't let me close with a camera so it's going to take some work to get a picture. There were 10 puppies, 8 black and 2 brown! They are all pure bred lab. But since this was Clementine's first litter (and a big litter) not all of them made it. We now have 4 black and 1 brown. And they are all doing great. Next up, one of my best friends welcomed a new baby boy on December 22! His name is Thomas Allen and he's so adorable! That same weekend the furnace died so unfortunately I have not seen the baby yet, just pictures. I have a lot more stuff, but I'm posting that separate.