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?

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.

Stupid Cable Company

It's been awhile since my last post. There's not much going on here because school is taking priority right now. I officially made the deans list again. I have one more week of clinicals and then I will be able to get back to work on the dining room and bathroom restoration/remodel....the dining room is a restoration, bathroom a remodel. Classes start again in the middle of August, so I have to get most of it done before then or it won't be done for another year.


We got home Thursday and there were two green pipes sticking up in our yard, and there was spray paint all over the grass and deep ruts all over the side yard. We were a little confused about what was going on so I asked the neighbor. She hadn't seen anything because she hadn't been home. But she did say that our local cable company is going to be burying their cable line so that's probably what it's for. So Friday I tried calling the cable company and I got a whole lot of answers I didn't like such as "we may be burying lines, but if you don't have cable we don't have to tell you" and "we don't have to notify you that we're going to be using your property for our use if you are not a cable customer." All this did was irritate me even more, so I went into the local store and talked to a receptionist. Actually I kind of yelled and bitched a little bit at a receptionist. She took it well, and apologized, then took my name and number and a supervisor will be calling me Monday. I can't wait. If they don't fix what they did and compensate for it somehow, I will be contacting some one with a little more authority to find out what to do. Hopefully it's all resolved tomorrow.

Car for Sale

I hate to see it go, but I have decided to sell my Kia Sportage. I don't really drive it much any more, so it's better to sell it to some one who can get some use out of it.

It's cute, isn't it? I hate to sell it...I love driving it, but it's not doing much good sitting around and I really need the money more than I do another car taking up space (we have 7 right now including this one). It'll make a nice cheap car for some one.

If any one out there in blogger land is interested in buying a car I'm only asking $3,500 and the book value is over $4,000 so it's a great deal! It's a 2001 with around 81,000 miles, 5sp, 4wd, alarm, about as loaded as a Kia gets and top is in excellent condition with no leaks and easy to remove. Really fun to drive!

That's all of my shameless advertising for the day.

Antique Curio Cabinet Pictures

I have some pictures today. It's the cabinet I got for Christmas! (Please ignore the mess around it)

There are glass shelves that go in it and it has lights in the top that were added a few years ago. Not really sure if they're going to stay or not.

The pretty handle

Just a little bit of the antique glass that came with it. There are 3 boxes all together, and it's almost all antique and it belong to James grandma and great grandma. I haven't been through all the boxes yet, but so far I've found cobalt, green, and milk glass, and several old (1800's) medicine bottles and jars and cooking bottles (oil, seasonings, spices). I also saw some silver teapot shaped place card holders, some really old Christmas decorations, and a ton of glass ashtrays.

I'm going to stain it the same dark red-brown I used on the mirror. You can't really tell from the pictures, but it does need to be refinished...there's some wear on the corners. And it doesn't match the dark wood that we have all through the house.

I would have pictures of the garage, but it's been snowing and sleeting today on top of cold and windy. And I'm a baby so I'm not going out there. Hopefully I'll have them next time

Quick Update

I'm a little behind on posting, so there will probably be several posts over the next few days. I hadn't realized that it has been nearly two months since my last post so there's a lot of catching up. Things have been a little busy here. I am between classes at school right now so I don't have my camera which means no pictures right now. But they're coming.

Since my last post James got the garage cleaned up and installed a woodburner in there so he can be warm while working on cars when it's around zero degrees out (like it has been lately). He's also been slaving away at my moms truck when he hasn't been sick.

Not much has been going on inside the house though. I didn't get the dining room done cause I was working so hard on finals I kinda forgot about it. It paid off though, I just found out I made the deans list!! But we didn't have dinner here this year. Maybe I'll get it done by next year. Actually I'm hoping we have it done by next year cause I don't think I can look at it in the state it's in for another year.

For Christmas I got an antique curio cabinet that I think originally belong to James grandma, although his parents bought it for me from his uncles dad, and it came with a lot of antique glass, buttons and thimbles that had belonged to his grandma and great grandma. As soon as it gets warm out I'm going to refinish it and I think it's going to go in the living room until I decide where I want it to stay permanently.


School has started again so that and work and playing Wii Fit (I also got a Wii and Wii Fit for Christmas) and cleaning and playing more Wii and homework are about all I've been doing.


I'll be posting pictures of the woodburner, the clean garage (which is like a miracle...it was a disaster), and the cabinet before too long

Quick update

I have successfully stripped for the first time! The mirror is finally done! Well, almost done. It still needs to be stained but the worst part is over and it was much easier than I thought it would be. I chose Minwax Red Mahogany stain which is a dark reddish stain like I had planned to use all along. And I'm hoping to get it stained this weekend. I would do it sooner but I have a huge test I have to study for and some cleaning that needs to be done before I can do it.

We've also been getting ready for winter since the temp has already dropped to freezing at night here. We removed the a/c unit from the bedroom and laid it to rest in the garage for the winter, and James put a new filter in the furnace last night because we finally had to start using it, and we put a heater in the laundry room to keep the pipes from freezing since the room is not insulated.

I found the material to make the curtains for the living room on clearance at WalMart for $1 a yard! It's actually pretty good material, but I wanted cheap because I know I'll have to make more before too long. One of the joys of having a lab that feels the window is his and anything covering it must be removed. Which is the reason why there are no curtains there right now...he tore them off the widow. Along with the curtain rod.

Termite Inspection and Dining Room Progress

We had our annual termite inspection yeasterday and it went well. No activity, sprayed for other bugs (spiders, crickets, ants, etc) and it was all under $100! When we were under the house last fall we found evidence of previous termite damage in one area. It wasn't anything really bad as far as termite damage goes, but we were curious as to how long ago it had happened so when I made the appointment I asked them. They had no idea and said that there was no record of it in the account history so it had to be before the account became active. So the next obvious question was...What year would that have been? 1946! Our house has had continuous termite inspections since 1946 with no record of activity and the person I talked to said that it was one of their oldest accounts! He also said that since there is no record that it had to have happened before 1946 so it's really nothing to worry about. That makes me feel better.

The dining room is still slowly coming along. A lot of ceiling tiles have been removed from the house and most of the nails are out. Bought patching plaster today to fill the nail holes so I'll be starting on that soon. Hopefully next week. Still have to wait for James to sand the glue off the wall before I can really do anything with that wall. New deadline to have it all done is Christmas since I have to work Thanksgiving Day.

Stupid Computer

I tried to make some changes on my layout and I'm not sure if it was a Blogger problem or computer problem, but some thing doesn't like me. See the way the page looks? It's not suppossed to be like that. The blogroll is supposed to be towards the bottom, and it's not complete...it only listed a few of the sites I entered. And I can't move it or delete it, so I'm going to have to figure out something to do about it. I really wanted to add the blogroll so I don't have to sit here and try to remember the names of all my favorite blogs while houseblogs.net is down. So expect more changes soon, because it's not going to look like this for long.

In house news it's something like baby steps. A little bit everyday, but not a whole lot at one time. Especially since I now have to rewash all the clothes that were in the laundry room. They have that nasty dead mouse smell so they're all getting a good dousing of Tide, Febreeze Laundry, and Clorox 2. And I finally decided on paint colors for the dining room. I think. For now anyway. Now I just have to find the time to get to Lowes and get the patching plaster so I can fix the 100's of nail holes in the walls and ceiling. But, I no longer have a Thankgiving deadline, it's now Christmas since I have to work Thanksgiving.

Well, it's starting to get a little cooler here so things are getting ready to start back up on the house. It's still blistering hot during the middle of the day, but morning, evening and nights are cooler. We've mainly been working on the yard some. The other day James parents gave us a bunch of pretty concrete edgers so we'll be doing some landscaping soon. And I'm still loving the weedeater. But that's really all we've been doing here. Nothing worth posting any pictures about yet. There's other news though...

We have a coal mine under us now...or beside us...I'm really not exactly sure which, but I was told yesterday that it's here and that's what all the soil samples and drilling in the field next to us and down the road.

A hot air balloon went down in the field behind us yesterday! We were talking to the neighbor and heard something so we looked around our garage and there was a hot air balloon flying kind of low, so we started watching it and it went down in the bean field behind our house. I ran in to get my camera while James and the neighbor were trying to figure out what to do (call the balloon company, 911, or walk back and see what was going on) and by the time I got back out it was just about out of sight and thats when the balloon company van went by our house. There is a company here that does hot air balloon rides and tours, so seeing one around here wasn't a big deal, but seeing one go down is.

That about covers it for now...more to come on the house soon!

Loving Black & Decker, and taking a break

We got a new weedeater! It's a Black & Decker cordless battery operated 18 volt weedeater and it's awesome! It's super light and doesn't vibrate, and has a built in edger. It won't tear through the thick stuff like a gas powered one will, but it works great on everything else and the battery lasts a pretty long time. It works just like we thought it would, which is great. I definitely recommend it to any one. We checked out several others but went with this one because of the weight and the reviews. I have weight restrictions and this one weighs 6.5 pounds compared to the 10 or more of the others. And the battery is interchangeable with all other Black & Decker 18 volt tools which is a plus.

But I have some sad news too...due to the unbearable heat here in southern Indiana we will not be doing any work on the house until we get a break from it. It's been around 100 degrees with 100% humidity and a "real feel" around 115! I don't see how all you southerners do it...it's so hot out that you can' breathe and everything sticks to you. most of the things we need to do involve stain and paint and I'm afraid if I try it the stain will just boil instead of drying like it's supposed too. And we are also having that problem that goes with owning an old house...no a/c! We have two little window units that are working overtime to keep the inside of our house around 80 degrees. And it gets even worse when I cook anything. And even worse when Cledus turns the digital a/c unit off. It was 85 in here today when I got home! We don't know how, but some how he's turning it off. OK...I'm done complaining now. Just wanted to share that there won't be much for updates for awhile.

I just Can't Decide!!

We have been planning a vacation to Gatlinburg for the last year. It's our delayed honeymoon. The time has finally come to finalize all the plans and book the cabin. We already picked it out and the only days left are the days we wanted. It's perfect with beautiful views for miles from the hot tub on the deck. Completely secluded at the top of a mountain, but not very far from Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge. 2 nights, plus gas and food are going to cost us around $500. Well, last night we were talking to some one we know and found out that they know some one who has a pool for sale. For $500, for everything including deck and privacy fence. Now here's the thing...we have been talking about getting a pool for over a year now, but we were going to wait awhile because they are so expensive. This is really, really cheap though. The problem is if we get the pool we can't go to Tennessee, because they are the same price and, well, we just don't have the money for both right now. However, we can get the pool this year, and go on vacation later (as in a couple of years). James has left the decision up to me, and I don't know what to do. I love the thought of kicking back in a hot tub and looking at amazing veiws of mountians from the middle of nowhere for a few days, but the temp here in Southern Indiana stays between 90-100 degrees with 100% humudity all summer.

Which would you do...get the pool now and vacation later, or vacation for 2 days now and no pool for a long time?

Flood Pictures

Today I decided to post some pictures of the flood. I have a lot more taken from different areas than where these were. The water is now starting to go down some, and the National Guard has pretty much left the area. For a week we were seeing the National Guard everywhere, and we are very thankful for all their hard work. These are random pictures that were e-mailed to me. The first is due to levee breaks on the Wabash river, the rest are from the White river.

This is Westport Auto. Taken from a boat. They started moving their cars on Thursday (last week, not this past Thurs.) evening, and got them all moved by Thursday night. The levee broke and flooded their lot the next morning. Their cars are in Kmart's parking lot (my work) and they are selling lots of cars there.

This is Highway 358 going to Davies County (Washington, IN...taken from helicopter). If you look in the right side you can see the water over the road. Also on the right at the bottom of the tree line you can see the water running over the levee.

Edwardsport. This is not very far from where we camped on a sandbar in the river on our honeymoon last year. This was also taken from a helicopter. The river is the squiggly line between the trees in the middle of the left side. The power plant is in the brown spot in the middle of the upper part of the picture

This is Highway 67 looking from Edwardsport to Bicknell. Bicknell is top, Edwardsport is bottom.

I also found lots of pictures of Lake Lawrence in Lawrenceville, IL (just across the river from us) but I'm not going to post those because they are mostly all of people's homes, and I'm not going to put their flooded houses on here because I know if our house was under water I wouldn't want some one to do that to us. I think nearly every house on the lake has some water, but some are all the way to the roof and one even looked like it was starting to collapse. On top of that a water main broke in Lawrenceville, and all the stores in Vincennes ran out of bottled water because several other towns were already under boil order or without running water. And as fascinating as it was to see the water that high, I hope that it never happens again.

And as far as I know, Mt. Carmel is still OK. They were worried about the water breaking the levees in East Mt. Carmel and on the southside of town, but I haven't heard any more about it, so I'm assuming they are ok for now. I do have a picture of the train bridge on my phone and as soon as I get a memory card for my phone I'll post that one. It was taken by my best friend and the water is level with the tracks on the train bridge, which I don't think has ever happened.

Memorial Day Weekend

Sadly our extended Memorial Day weekend has come to an end. James went back to work today, and I go back tomorrow. (I worked Sat. & Sun. though). It was great to have nothing to do for a few days. James weekend wasn't as easy though. He installed a new Mohawk wood laminate floor in his parents living room. It looks really good, but he got a little frustrated with it a few times. I didn't take an pics because I didn't have my camera, but they are doing the hall this weekend so I might have some then. Yesterday and monday we were lazy though. I didn't know that my dad was a speaker at the Memorial Day services in Mt. Carmel or we would have gone to that. I didn't know until yesterday when my mom called to tell me that he was on the front page of the Daily Republican Register (the Mt. Carmel mewspaper). Yesteray we went to see my best friends new house. It was a great hour and a half drive with the top down (well, until the rain hit about a half hour from her house). Her house is actually an old house thats already (mostly) remodeled. Its really nice and it looks like the p.o.'s did a good job on the remodel. I did notice that her stairs had been relocated at some point, which confused her. There is a flue cover in the wall on the staircase. That means that there used to be a stove or fireplace of some kind there at some point. But the stairs have also obviously been where they are now for a really long time. And James pointed out that her bathrooms were most likely originally a porch because of the low sloping ceilings. They still have a little bit of painting to do but thats really all that needs to be done, and its really nice. Makes me wish our house was already done. Speaking of which, if I can get a day with no wind I'm finally going to drag all the paneling and the ceiling tiles outside to burn them. And then I can get started playing with plaster!

Too much to do and too little time

Well I haven't posted in over a week, but it's been a pretty productive week. I am almost done with the disaster in the spare bedroom, scrubbed the floors (on my hands and knees with a brush), got all my winter clothes put away and all my summer clothes out, started working on the landscaping in the front of the house, and I have done about 50 loads of laundry. And today I got a job. Pretty easy. Filled out the application, had the interview and was hired...all within 2 hours! Of course I have already worked for the company before so it went a little faster. That's right, for any one that knows me, I went crawling back to K Mart. After swearing I wouldn't and saying that they can kiss my ass before I work for them again, I went back. I need a job and no one else will hire me, so I'm putting aside what they did last time and I'm going back to work there. Yep, I'm an idiot.

The reason for putting the spare room in order and scrubbing the floors is so that the room can finally be set up as a bedroom because some one is staying with us for a few weeks. James friend is coming home for a few weeks to work in the recruiters office here (he's in the Marines) and is going to be staying here. So I am busting my butt to get that room to somewhat resemble a bedroom (you know, doing things like putting the bed together and de-junking it so you can actually move around the room).

Earthquake Damage

It turns out the damage to our foundation is worse than I thought. I have to call the insurance company Monday to see what they say about it. When James got home he looked at it closer than what I did and he pushed the bricks back in on the corners and under the corner of the laundry room/back porch. It looks like the whole foundation under the kitchen is going to have to be replaced and then some repairs around the rest of the house.

Some Exterior Details

Well, it's official...the epicenter of the first earthquake was my parents backyard! The USGS has officially said that the center was Mesa Lake, which is where my parents live. How cool is that?! They are also saying that we are having an earthquake storm and to expect more (possibly worse) earthquakes over the next few days. Great.

I took these pictures yesterday, but couldn't get them to upload so I'm posting them now. These are all exterior details of our house.
I can't wait to strip this down and refinish it. Both of the front doors have the same details. And the black part isn't uneven, it's just cobwebs.
The inside and outside of the door knobs and locks match, it's just the inside picture shows the detail better. If any one out there knows how to date these, please let me know.

I have no idea what these are, but they are on the top of the storm windows. And they are about 14 feet off the ground (I love zoom) so I can't get up there to check it out because I can't move the ladder.
This is the outside of the doorbell. This is another one that I can't wait to strip and refinish. The only problem is I can't figure out how to get it off the house. There are no nails or screws in it. And the actual doorbell on the other side of it won't pry off the frame either. Notice how the detail on it matches the lock plate for the doorknob? Unfortunately it doesn't work right now. I need a new button. You can see where I scrapped the paint off it to see if that might work, but it didn't.

The other day I finally got James to agree on a paint scheme! It's going to be dark gray, light gray, blue-gray, deep blue, and bright white. I guess it'll qualify as a painted lady when we're done since our house is victorian style and we're using more than 3 colors. Downside is that we have to wait 2 years to start work :( Since I'm going back to school we really don't have the money to do it until I'm working again. I'm figuring it's going to be expensive (even though we're doing it ourselves) because we have to remove all the shingle siding, repair/replace any bad spots in the wood siding, and then scrape, prime, and paint. At least we have a ton of windows and doors (3 doors and 16 windows on a 1400 sq ft house) so that'll be less paint we need.

Earthquake!

Now that the internet is working right again I can explain the last post. We had an earthquake this morning. It was a 5.2 (officially...when I posted before it still wasn't official) and the center was close to here. We were still in bed, but awake when it hit and I knew it was an earthquake but we still checked to make sure it wasn't a tornado. We looked around the house to make sure nothing was broken, and luckily nothing was. The dogs were scared, the laptop was almost on the floor, and a piece of trim on a bookcase was sitting at an angle. When the sun came up I checked out the foundation (it's 130 year old brick that already needed some repairs) and sure enough it absorbed most of the shaking which caused damage. There are bricks that are recessed now, morter broken and laying on the ground, gaps, and cracks. Which means that we need to reinforce it immediately because they said that this happened on a fault line that has been inactive so there is a good chance of another possibly stronger one coming.



Right after it happened I turned on the TV and they said it was felt in Terra Haute which was about the time my cousin called to see if we were ok. He said they were all fine down in Princeton. I then called my parents and my mom was laughing! She said there was stuff falling all over the place and flying across the rooms, and it sounded like an explosion there. And they were already having aftershocks. It turns out they were right at about the center of it. The center was between West Salem and Allendale, IL and that's about where they live. I called my best friend who lives in Allendale and she said it scared her and there was stuff falling off the walls but they were ok too. It turns out that it was felt all over the country...Chicago, Nashville, Detroit, Minneapolis, Louisville!



When we had the last earthquake in 2002 they said we weren't suppossed to have any more again. Now they're saying there may be more. That means I'm going to put off hanging the giant mirrors that we have (they're each about 3-4 feet tall and 3 feet wide) and I'm going to move my huge glass collection to a safer place (Not sitting 8 feet up in the air on the open top of the cabinets!)

5.4!!

Earthquake! We are 30 miles from the center. The center was in West Salem, IL which is just a few miles from my parents and my best friend. I already talked to them and they're fine. Internet keeps coming and going but we're fine too. Getting ready to go check out the outside. I'll post more later when things calm down here. We're still getting aftershocks.

What is that?

I have had a ton of people ask "what's a twitter?" since I put it on here. The first was my mom, then James dad, then James, then Sandy, then even more people asked! So...a twitter is a nifty little way that I can update what I'm doing with out actually posting a full entry. I can update it from twitter.com, my cell phone, or IM. I put it on there when I was loaded up on medicine and had nothing better to do. It's actually a good idea, that way I'm not compelled to post about pointless, non-house related stuff. My goal is to keep it up to date for a whole day, but I'm not doing so great with that. Any way, that's what it is.


Speaking of house stuff...I've been so busy trying to play catch up from all that time I was out of commission that I haven't had time to get back to work on the dining room, but I hope to get back to it this week. In the meantime, if you're curious about what I'm doing, just check the twitter.