Category: LIFE AS IT HAPPENS

Every day seems to be over before I get my list accomplished!  Today’s to do list started with:

• haul out as much trash as humanly possible
• master bedroom closet molding
• hang clothes
• meet with electrician
• paint entry
• paint pantry
• fix laundry leak from the foundation people
• make stew
• quit early

LOL hubby and I spent over an hour looking for the miter box to do the molding and never did find it so we moved onto the next project until we get to Lowes tomorrow.

We love the new electrician!  He was able to fix what the last electrician broke and then some.  Our biggest concern was an outlet in the office area that shorted out when I plugged in the shop vac a few weeks ago.  Hubby was going to change out the outlet, but the insulation started cracking off on ALL the wires so we decided it was time to call in an expert. He found that someone (probably my grandfather) had made an outlet where there wasn’t one before by using the outlet in the next room and a length of cut up extension cord. He’ll be back next week for the next go round fixing the kitchen issues!

The water had been seeping under the linoleum for the past couple weeks and making a HUGE mess!  This place was already a fixer and didn’t need any help at being a project!

LOVE how they ran the pipes from the hot water tank above AND below the gas line hook up for the dryer.

It’s NOT pretty, in fact it’s REALLY UGLY, but at least it is somewhat clean now.

When the foundation people were here they broke 3 things concerning the plumbing.  The first was the main into the house and we got that fixed.  The second was the drain line for the washing machine under the slab and they fixed that while they had the hole open.  The third was (according to them) and elbow for the washer drain in the wall.  Today we found were going to fix that leak except it is not what they said.  The leak is in a piece of pipe that goes through the slab.  So, once again we are deferring to the professionals (if they ever call us back).  Bad news is that we are not going to b able to laundry here for awhile!

BEFORE

AFTER

Getting the pantry clean and then painted has been a real issue with both of us.  It also seems to have taken forever! There’s only coat of paint so far and it will get 3, but it feels beautiful already!

 A couple weeks ago hubby and I started the entryway by removing the 2 layers of old cat pee soaked tiles as well as some carpeting and tack strips.  We’ve been treating the area and FINALLY the smell is gone and the area is sanitized. I started the first coat of paint and can’t wait until we can get the new front door.  We definitely need one with some light for this dark hallway.  We also bought a new light fixture with a higher voltage to add to the lighting issue here.

Remember when hubby found the garage issues?

Well we found a temporary fix with pressure treated 2×4’s and Liquid nails.

I woke up feeling a bit more optimistic, even a little excited about how well things have been going.

 I was able to get the first layer of grout down fairly easily on the master bedroom closet floor.  The carpet installer came and measured the bedroom and said we might even be able to have carpet by next week! I also got my desk chair put together – it’s been in the box for 5 years! I also got 5 loads of laundry done, folded and put away.  I was able to put together a “rag” tote for hubby in the garage and today was trash day so spent some time hauling things out for our awesome trash guys.  They would take it all anyway, but with the beer/soda incentive they do it with smiles on their faces.

We were able to narrow down the paint color choice – FINALLY! We started with BEHR “Bakery Box”, but hated it after it was on the walls – too institutional.  Good thing each rooms needs at least 2 coats and 3 in some areas LOL.  Next we chose SHERWIN WILLIAMS “Greek Villa” but found it too plain despite what we saw in the store so it has now become the “primer” for the master bedroom and kitchen.  We finally decided on OLYMPIC “Arctic Cotton”. It will not only match the gray tone carpet, but also the whitewashed birch tone tile for the farmhouse kitchen and bathrooms.

I helped hubby move a few heavy things in the garage and that’s where our day started taking a turn for the not so great.  You’ll notice behind hubby what appears to be daylight near the floor.

Well, it not only appears to be daylight, but IS daylight.  The siding is rotting away and in about 40% of the areas not even attached to the studs so we’re looking at some serious reinforcing and rebuild in these areas.

After helping hubby and feeling so good about so much trash being gone, I decided it was time to tackle the master bath vanity in preparation of getting the new vanity.  The water was turned off due to a leak in this bathroom quite some time ago.  What I was afraid of is what came to light – mold.  We will need to tear out every wall, find the leak, change out the plumbing and build from the ground up so to speak.

I have NO idea how long the water leaked before it was turned off.  I also have NO idea why or even where it leaked so this should be loads of fun!

DAMN I was really hoping NOT to find that BIG black spot!

As it always is with water it will take the path of least resistance.  In this case it was a crack in the floor under the linoleum.

Like water, mold will follow that same path.  In this case it also traveled up the back side of the wall paper so ALL these walls will be torn out and replaced after the leak is found and repaired.

So we decided we needed a quite “special” meal and since we still don’t have a kitchen we broke out the BBQ! We added a baked potato and salad and it was perfect!

We no longer have a 5 second rule even for the dogs around here!  The things we have found and cleaned up have left us longing for a finished house. We have been in transition for so long here, but are finally seeing the end of the clean-up, at least in the house.  Under the kitchen sink and the master bedroom vanity are the only areas left to surprise – I hope! We were able to get a bit more of the kichen ripped out and was also able to get the wreath and Frosty up as decorations.

The foundation work that was done a couple weeks ago was a joke.  Their finish work on the inside holes left the fill 1/2 inch taller in the centers than the edges – NOT conducive to putting down a decent floor.  After we were able to get the owner of the company to see the problem last Tuesday he said someone would call later that day to set up an appointment for next week and we’ have at least 48 hours notice.  4PM yesterday I get a call saying they’d be here at 830AM today.  I told the woman 9 would be better since I have so many things to move out of their way.  They finally showed up at 10:15AM, didn’t bring what they needed to cover things again nor did they bring any new concrete mix.  They left for 2 hours to get concrete and “lunch” and finished the day at 5:45 effectively screwing up our ENTIRE day once again.  At least the new concrete is relatively flush with the foundation.  I did get a few new graffiti chances though.

Hubby notched out the shelving/shoe storage in the master closet for me so we could start the tile work.  We still need a few pieces though and will pick those up tomorrow along with the molding for the edges.  If all goes well, the clothes will be in the closet by Tuesday.

We have been working REALLY hard around here.  Our goal is to have the master bedroom finished by Christmas and a fairly livable living room.  It seems like for every step forward we are taking 7 backwards!

We keep encountering things like a loaded full freezer in the garage which we finally got open yesterday.  We were prepared to drill the lock, but it turns out it wasn’t locked, just frozen shut.  We can’t quite figure it out though.  Once we got the door open it was a solid block of ice.  Hubby started chipping away at it so we could bag the food for today’s trash.  Once he broke through the ice we found defrosted smelly food.  I think every Hickory Farms package my uncle ever sent her for Christmas was inside as well as bags and bags of smoked chili peppers!

Then we keep encountering outlets that look like this.  It’s a wonder this house never burnt down! We still have no light in the sewing room, spare bedroom closet or the office and the electrician has not returned ANY calls since he was here Tuesday.  I think it is time to find a new electrician!

On a positive note I was able to get the walk in closet painted!  Hopefully if all goes well I’ll lay the tile tomorrow afternoon.  Remember the foundation guys that created such havoc?  They called late this afternoon to say they’d be here tomorrow morning to break out the concrete they did wrong and redo it.  I was told on Tuesday they would call me later that afternoon to schedule something for next week.  I told the guy I needed at least 48 hours notice to move things out of the way.  So I got 16 hours notice and spent 2 hours after dinner trying to make things accessible AGAIN! As soon as they are done I will start tiling the closet.  I’m hoping to have the clothes in the closet by Monday.  That will eliminate A LOT of totes from the living room!

You can really see the color difference in this bedroom picture.  I had just a little paint left in the can so decided to start cutting in and covering some of the larger patch areas.  The nicotine stains are the hardest to cover.

We are ending week 5 on this project and are almost ready to begin the transformation – FINALLY.  We are still waiting for a large piece of furniture to be removed, but hubby took it apart today so it was ready for transport.  It wouldn’t have traveled all assembled because of its rickety and fragile nature.

We got A HUGE surprise yesterday when an early Christmas present arrived from my mom. We love our new TV – THANK YOU!! Last night we watched my favorite Christmas movie, It’s a Wonderful life!

Hubby has been working diligently to get as much detritus out of the house before the dumpster gets here so that it is here for the shortest amount of time possible.

The electrician was here yesterday and disconnected the non-working appliances so hubby pulled those out today and our backyard is starting to look like the local dump. I can’t wait until the dumpster arrives and we are rid of all the crap. Hard to believe this was a “self-cleaning” oven.

At the end of the day the new kitchen shape is really taking shape.  Soffits and faux wall and all appliances are gone! Hopefully we’ve encountered the last rat’s nest, but we always wear our gloves and stay vigilant. 

 We have found so many oddities here that nothing surprises us anymore.

When we moved here we left behind some really wonderful friends, leaving them behind was even a deciding factor in the move.  They have 3 young munchkins that I just adore and miss SO much.  We decided to do “cousin” elfs and I post my pictures to Instagram so the kids see them each day.  We are really having some fun with this one.

475 combined hours and we FINALLY have a room ready, well ready like a blank canvas in the sense that we can finally begin the transformation.

Today we were able to finish removing the rest of the tack strip, wall paper and we not only bought the new ceiling fan, but we picked the carpet and paint color for our new haven to be. Deciding to do the master bedroom first I think will be our best decision.  We are SOOOO tired at this point that having a place to shut the door on the rest of what needs to be done at the end of the day will be a way to finally feel refreshed.  Sleeping in our own bed instead of the futon will be AWESOME! not to mention rejuvenating to not only our backs but also our spirits!

BEHR “Bakery Box”

These carpet rolls are only here waiting for today’s rain to stop and will get moved tomorrow to the junk pile, er back yard to wait for the dumpster next week.  We’ll only have the dumpster for 5 days total so we are trying to get as much wrecked out before it gets here as possible.  It will take us a full 8-10 hours just to load it!

The bathroom will take a bit more effort, but we hope it will go quickly after we remove the mold covered (on the inside) vanity and toilet, deal with the water leaks, put up the new wall board, paint the shower, add a can light to the shower and add a shower door. Yep, you read that right, add a light to the shower.  There is currently NO light in the shower so it is like a cave, but the attic is directly above it so the electrician will be here Tuesday anyway so we’ll have him deal with the shower too. It’s a large shower and with the added light will also be ready to be painted and sealed so it is like new. BTW anyone notice anything wrong (besides the obvious) in this picture below?

If you look closely you’ll see that the light fixture is 2 inches higher on the left hand side than the right and NO it is not an optical illusion.  We didn’t buy a new light yet, but we did narrow down our choices a bit today. We will be removing the mirror and adding recessed medicine chests with mirrored fronts.

Pretty sure this is the vanity we will be going with.  And one of these light fixtures will probably win.

We did leave our mark on the new concrete patch from the foundation work.  It doesn’t matter that it will be under the carpet, we’ll know it’s there.

I know I said we were going to take day 27 and 28 off, but our plans fell through and we ended up working part of each day, but today was the most productive.  Our goal is to have a master bedroom and living room by Christmas. My favorite movie of ALL time is It’s A Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed.  As we work on this house I feel more and more like Mary Bailey fixing up their old house!

Hubby has been trying to move forward in the garage and saw some serious headway today.  Here is the before picture.

Here is the after picture.  Hubs has made serious progress!

Unfortunately, the front half is still full of “STUFF” that needs to go. 

As for me I worked in the master bedroom.  We had filled the majority of the room with our boxes from the move while the foundation people were here.  Now that they have finished we had to move things back out of the master bedroom so we could begin the work on it.

Here is the before picture from 2 days ago.

All these boxes as well as the ones in the walk in closet behind them have been moved elsewhere and then I “emptied” the attic above of all the old “treasures”.  You know what they say, one man’s junk is another man’s treasure only in reverse in this case! I found my uncle’s foot locker from Vietnam era, old wood, broken fans and calculators, carpet rolls, linoleum, and my mother’s vanity from childhood that everyone wants her to have, but she wants to see go away forever.

Here are the after pictures from when I quit for the day earlier.

Treating the concrete to neutralize the smell is our biggest issue but we are getting there.

The carpet you see on the floor is actually not there, I just did not get a last picture evidently.  It has all been cut into pieces, rolled and tied for the dumpster.  Then I showered for an hour and burned my clothes. Okay so I didn’t burn the clothes, but the did get washed IMMEDIATELY!

Day 27, 449 combined hours (that does not include the hours spent on our own things getting moved in or moved around for the foundation people) and we still haven’t seen the end or the bottom of the mess we committed to.  We ARE committed to this project, but honestly would have turned around and headed back the moment we stepped into this house day one and saw how bad it really was if we hadn’t spent a small fortune to get here and traveled a week with aging animals.

This is trash day 8 since we arrived.  The backyard is full of the larger items waiting on the dumpster and and the garage is still 1/3 full of things to go as well as a loaded, locked and heavier than hell 6 foot freezer.

We have spent a small fortune in beer and soda to keep the trash guys happy.  Fortunately they come twice a week. $45 a week adds up fast – $325 so far which would have paid for half a dumpster so after Thanksgiving we will bite the bullet and order the dumpster for $625 and start getting serious about wrecking out the kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities and ALL flooring!

The driver is always a really happy guy, I’m sure because he gets to ride with the beer!

One of the hardest parts of this all for us is that there isn’t a surface, fixture, faucet, floor or wall that doesn’t need to be wrecked out and replaced or have major repairs so we can’t even unpack!  1700 square feet and we’re living in less than 200 of it. And I’m still cleaning up after the idiot foundation people from last week.
 
I was working in the living room today and could no longer handle the smell of the front foyer so started “removing” the carpet and padding only to find 2 layers of OLD tile underneath.  Evidently the foyer is where the cat boxes were and as my uncle would say, “her cats were not disciplined”. After removing each layer the odor got worse and worse.

Hubby came to help and between the two of us we finally removed all 4 layers and the base board and were able to treat the area so you no longer need a gas mask to walk through it.

So our conclusion is that we need some time away from this ALL and will be playing tomorrow and Thanksgiving.  We will start up again on Friday!

This week’s work hasn’t gone quite as planned.  The foundation work was set to begin on Monday and be done by Wednesday.

Monday began fairly well.  The crew showed up and began digging while Raul came inside to show us where they would be jack hammering.  The original estimate included them moving whatever was in the way, but we felt that if we helped it would save a bit of time.  Since we just moved in everything is still in boxes so moving things around was pretty easy.  We were also told that they would spend an hour making plastic drapes to protect our things from the concrete dust.  The promise was that we would never even know they had been here when they were done.

On Tuesday we had a HUGE storm with tons of rain and the crew was called off because of the weather so we were anxious for them to show up on Wednesday and begin the inside work.

Wednesday comes and Raul tells us the plans are that they will be doing more (9) inside holes instead of the (5) holes he told us on Monday.  More holes that forced us to kennel (not in the original plan or the original budget since they now had to have regional shots not necessary otherwise at their age at a large cost) our dogs because of the additional locations.

While we were gone kenneling the dogs the crew began the inside work.  When we got home we found that they had been jack hammering for 2 hours and NEVER bothered with the plastic drapes.  The tarp and sheet you see here we put up over more sensitive items.  When I asked Raul about it, he said they’d just taken it down! I DO NOT like bold faced liars! After a bit of discussion he did go buy the plastic that was supposed to already be in place, but I already had a 1/2 inch layer of concrete dust EVERYWHERE!  I will be rewashing clothes and linens I just washed for days and days!

To top off a long week, they managed to break the water main AND the washer drain too.

While this is a fixer upper, it IS our home and we DO NOT appreciate being disrespected by workers being paid to do a job, but acting as if our home and things are disposable.

The foundation work began today on our house. Unfortunately they did not get as far as they originally intended and with the storm expected tomorrow they are predicting that they will not be able to get far tomorrow.  As of now the 2-3 job is expected to take 4 or so.  :SIGH: We will see.

It is amazing how hard these guys work and what a great job they are doing.

So we’re covered and hoping the storm doesn’t fill the holes with water that will need to be pumped out.

We’re at the 2 1/2 week mark of this new adventure and it feels more like 2 1/2 months.  Hubs and I have a combined 315 hours invested and still have not completed the removal of my cousin’s and gramp’s “things” from the house, attic and garage.  I even found my great grandmother’s financial and funeral records in the attic. 

Bucky was my cousin’s first hunting kill, but relax the deer was eaten for family food.  Bucky hung in the same place for so long that he has a permanent tattoo from the Mardis Gras beads that hung around his neck forever!

As you can see from these globes we will be purchasing a new ceiling fan and not even trying to clean this one!

On a REALLY happy note we did buy a new fridge today that will be delivered next week after the foundation work is done and we are extremely excited. It’s 28 cubic feet with all the bells and whistles and we were able to get it in white without an extra fee!  I’m so excited that we won’t be living out of a dorm fridge any longer!

I am going to be able to salvage gram and gramp’s head board for the spare bedroom.  It will look better than ever when I’m done. And trust me when I say EVERY piece of wallpaper in this house will be going away!

This is load 5, 6 and 7 of donations and trash with no end in sight!

While the house is now cleaner and free of all of her things the piles have now been replaced with our things from storage.  We put the furniture into a spare bedroom and the boxes are stacked in the living room and master bedroom. We are not going to unpack any more items until after the foundation work is done this next week.  We have 3 really large pieces left in the house from my cousin that we hope to get to the garage tomorrow for my uncle to arrange for their removal.

The first 2 weeks were tiring to say the least! Hubby and I clocked almost 300 hours just trying to make this place livable while we do the work.

I’m almost embarrassed to show you these before pictures, but it is what it is and the after pictures will be so good.

This is the master bedroom after 8 hours, but before vacuuming.

The master bedroom needs EVERYTHING! The paint on the walls is flat and at least 20 years old.  There are cigarette burns everywhere in the carpet and the electrical is all original except for the jerry rigging everywhere else. I’ve already blown out 2 plugs just plugging in the vacuum. I am cleaning the nicotine layer off the head board and able to salvage it for a spare bedroom.  It is my grandparent’s from the early 1930’s.

I use a Rainbow vacuum (water canister based) and after pouring off the water this colander holds the debris from the floor of the bedroom.

This room doesn’t look too bad – until you look super close.  I won’t even tell you what all was found in this room.

There was “STUFF” everywhere.  How any one person could stuff so much into one home is beyond me. After 12 days I still have more to send to donation and have used 78, yes I said 78 thirty gallon trash bags. It also has cost me $45 in beer and soda to get the trash men to take a little extra each time.  Fortunately they come twice a week.

The kitchen is usually my favorite room of the house…until now!  The kitchen also needs EVERYTHING!  The cabinets are coated in nicotine and food, and are also dry rotted, the floor is chipped and peeling.  No appliance is in the least bit salvageable including the kitchen sink.

There were fire ants all through the pantry and the refrigerator had become an overgrown science project.  The construction dumpster gets here Thursday and EVERYTHING goes!

The water heater and AC are all that can be saved.