More Around the House

We've done more work in the bathroom. Installed a new toilet, made our own vanity, installed a vessel sink and made our own medicine cabinet. The sink/vaniety cost us under $100.00 total. The stand we got for free, I think someone was using it as w potting table. We cleaned it up, cut it down to size, and added a marble slab that was on sale at Home Depot for $25, and a white vessel sink, also from HD and also on sale for $25. The faucet looks like bronze bamboo up close and cost $35 from ebay. We also update the lights, these were also on sale from Lowes, I believe it was around $50. I can try to add some close up photos later. This pictures are what I have on my computer now, I will take some more recent photos (we've finished painting and cleaned up a bit) and add them soon.

Painted Floors

Well, I intended to do a decent post about our "new" painted floors. It is really just the slab, painted brown, a temporary fix until we can afford to put down real floors. Problem is half of my photos are on my computer and the other half are on Tony's. I will leave you with one picture and update this post later on.

Living Room

Here is a quick pic of our no longer concrete living room floor. The pictures make the seams look a little funky, it looks really good in person.

What time is it?

Last night Tony and I stayed up until 2am watching Dexter on Netflix. I haven't stayed up that late in over a year. In fact, I normally can't stay up much later than 10pm. Needless to say, I didn't wake up until almost 11:30am this morning and now my whole day is going to be thrown off.

We got a fair amount of stuff done around the house yesterday.

In the bathroom we put up our temporary shower curtain rod made out of copper pipe (thanks for the suggestion mom). It is not so beautiful, but oh so much more functional than the curtain contraption we had put up at waist level. The small blocks on the ceiling will be painted white when we repaint the ceiling and the things that suspend the pipe will have more copper pipe put over them to cover up the ugliness. I think I need to iron the shower curtain.

(Tony felt the need to pose in this picture I guess)

We also managed to get a new door up in the bathroom. It was a major pain in the ass seeing as our doorway was not perfectly level. Oh well it is up. We finally have a full length mirror up in there as well. I felt so disheveled with out it. I had a few days where I would catch my reflection in the mirrors at work and wonder what the hell was i thinking about certain outfit choices. I should be safe again now. If I get to it, I will stain the door today and I am thinking about redoing the wall in front of the washer and dryer. $20 bucks says I don't get to it.

We also did some stuff in the bedroom and in the sunroom, but I don't have any pictures of that right now so I will post about it another time.

First Alert

Over the last few weeks, our house has become smokier and smokier everytime we had the woodstove crancking. First it was just super smokey when you opened the door to add wood. Smoke would bellow out at you. We figured it was just a draft issue. Then smoke started seeping out of the connections between the stove pipes.In the last few days, smoke has been coming out of the cracks in the stone wall behind the wood stove. I would guess the 3 day migrane I had going for me had something to do with all of the smoke.
Today we decided it was time to finally replace the stove pipe and see if it would help the situation. Tony removed the old pipes, and holy shit.... where they bad. I literally had an anxiety attack and had to go outside for some fresh air. The pipes were a chimney fire just waiting to happen.
Mom made me pick up a CO2 detector today. We got one and it is all plugged in. New pipes are in place and all seems well. I am sure my Dad is shaking his head reading this. He is not a fan of fire and would get mad at me when i was a teenager for burning incense in my room. I think this was worse than burning incense.
So the old stove is smoke free. Next i think i want to find some stove blackening to refinish the ugly thing.
Good news is we were able to find some seasoned hardwood and we have 2 cords waiting for us to pick up. Looks like we will at least stay warm this winter.

Bathroom Changes

The wall in front of the washing machine and water tank is never right. It has been changed 3 or 4 times now by us, but hopefully this will be the last change for a while. We put up an actual door to access the washer and dryer and we will be putting in some type of removable shelving unit in front of the on demand water heater and tank.

Storms coming

They are predicting a big storm to hit tonite and tomorrow. I have heard all different predictions, some saying up to 2 feet, some saying 8-12, some say all snow, some say sleet and rain. While I really don't want any type of storm right now (except for the fact of a snow day), I espically don't want an ice storm. I enjoy having electricity thank you.

Meanwhile on the homestead, I have been working all morning, cleaning and rearraging the house. There is WAY too much crap in here for me to get what I want done. We still have piles of Earl's stuff to get rid of plus extra furniture pieces that we need to move out to the garage. I moved our computers out to the main room. The living room just doesn't get warm in the winter and we both spend a lot of time on the puters so we should be nice and cosey by the wood stove....for about 3 days or so until we run out of dry wood. We are desperately trying to track seasoned hardwood down but there has been a big demand this year and the while state is having a shortage. Super.

Still no xmas tree or wreath but i did manage to string up some lights on the spiral staircase. I will add more pictures later as once again i need to change the batteries in my camera.

cleanish side

messy side

Post

Well, Earls apartment is offically ALMOST done. I didn't take any pictures while we were there yesterday, mostly because I am so over it. I think the black footprints that got tracked on the new rug I just installed and the green stain on the new vinyl in the middle of the bathroom floor pushed me over the edge. Anyways, the new tenant is in, and believe it or not she has expressed some interest in maybe purchasing the apartment house. I certainly don't have my hopes up though. In other EXCELLENT apartment house news, it seems one of the boilers has died and the upstairs apartment is only getting heat in the front half. SUPER.

I had my doctors appointment the other day. I feel like I have been there every week for the last month. They removed more skin around a mole that had a bad biopsy. They also took a third mole off my back. The big one.

We got a lot of snow last weekend and I am already ready for it to all melt. Our wood pile is looking dismal, and my latest call to buy more dry wood turned up empty handed. I am getting worried. It has been all over the news up here that everyone is out of seasoned firewood. We only have enough to get us through a couple more weeks if we are lucky. The bunnies waterbottles are freezing up. I have to dethaw once in the morning and once at night. The chickens haven't come out of the coop all week. They have stopped laying as well so I put the light back up in the coop in hopes to get them going. I had to buy eggs at the store the other day. Something I haven't had to do in over a year. Once you have fresh eggs the grocery store eggs just seem and look so wrong. Today I get to spend cleaning house. It has been so neglected due to our weekly trips out to Bath. Its bad. Really bad.

Orange you glad your waters clear

Our water turned super orange on Wednesday. I am talking rusty Sunkist soda orange. Thick orange. And our water pressure went caca ( is caca spelled caca or kaka?).So...... I cut a hole in the wall in our newly painted bathroom so that i could get to the water tank. Unfortuantely the way our washer and dryer are set in and the way I built that wall, this was the only means to getting to the bottom of the tank. In came the hose and after both myself and tony draining the tank a couple times, our water seems to be mostly back to normal. There was some floaty crud and sediment in out faucet filters so I am hoping that some of the stuff in the bottom of the tank just got stirred up and the problem is solved.

Sorry no pics of the water when it was nuclear orange. I was in a state of panic and didn;t think to take a pic. O, and that hole in the wall is now even bigger.

More Earl's Apartment

My blog has not been allowing me to post pics for days now. I've decided to try again though.

Here is Earl's booze collection. He did not drink a drop though, just bought a bottle everytime he went to the grocery store.

I stacked those Dalwhinnie's in the window to count them. I think there was close to 40. There are also about 40 bottles of Moet, and 40 bottles of Remy Martin. Then there are about 60 other assorted bottles.

Just SOME of Earl's papers.

We have been emptying his place of the valuables (in case anyone missed it, his wife and daughter told us to keep everything in the place) and piling them up here. We plan to sell as much as we can on ebay or anywhere else. This is what our house is looking like now since it has become a warehouse. The piles of dusty mess include, Viking cookware, emile henry ceramics, Denby ceramics. Waterford crystal, Booze, Linhof camera and equipment, Rollei camera and equipment, Rollei projector, Lintz and Zeiss binoculars, Orvis clothing (new), LLBean clothing (new), tons of books, and oh so much dust.

Alllmmmoooossstttttt.......

More progress on the bathroom. The radiant heat mat and all of the tiles have been installed. Next is a little more grouting, then we are on the walls, putting up chairrail and picking paint colors. We also need to decide it we are putting the old sink back in or if we are going to replace it. The old sink/vaniety is kinda cheesey looking but more importantly it is kinda big for our space. We may have a DIY vaniety in the works. I have also been researching making our own concrete counter top if we choose to go this route. If it happens, i think we would end up putting a countertop vessel sink in as well. We shall see though because we have nothing along the lines of extra income.

Slowly But Surely

Well, not a ton has been happening lately with any of our little renovation projects. Nothing major at least. We did get new dry wall up in the bathroom and put up some baseboard in the hall way area. We still need to add a quarter round to the baseboard to cover the gaps the former homeowner left when he put down the floors ( which i still hate). For the first time in over 4 years we have a toilet paper holder. Ahhhh, the luxury. Next in the bathroom is primer, chair-rail, and the floors. We are still trying to figure out paint colors as well.