Where Do We Stand?

It has been a while since I have written a blog. I need to do a little update on where we stand right now. I haven't blogged because not a lot has happened since my last post. We have basically been trying to recover financially from the expense of all the work we did last winter. We also still have the financial obligations that come with still owning our old house. On top of those things I am feeling a bit poor due to the number of shoes I have purchased over the past year. For about a year now I have had very painful bursitis in both of my feet. (I think all of the cement floors in this house could be exacerbating the issue.) I have really struggled with finding comfortable shoes.  I would have much rather put the money I have spent on shoes into a new house project.

We were considering having the house painted this past summer. But, we did not get the roof damage I posted about here fixed until this past summer. We called in October of 2013 about getting the roof fixed and it took close to a year to finally get it repaired. The leak from the roof caused a lot of damage to the door frame of the storage shed in the carport. So, there was no point in painting until the roof was repaired. By the time the roof was fixed the weather wasn't very conducive to painting. The painting will most likely be next summer's project. We have no plans to make any drastic change to the color of the house. We just want to freshen it up.

We also have not had the yard and sidewalk repaired after putting in the new sewer line. We had to wait to let the ground settle. It has now settled and doesn't look quite as much like a giant mole went through our yard. Since the weather is cold this is most likely something that will be taken care of when the weather warms up. We would also like to eventually have some landscaping done to the yard. We are not planning to make any major changes but all of the bushes are very old (maybe even original). They have gotten very woody without having much green. We would like to freshen them up. There were also a few trees that were lost in the yard during large storms. There are some really key spots where trees are missing that we would like to have replaced. We also need to add some rock around the house to protect it from standing water.

Inside we still need to get a new dishwasher. Ours is really ugly and doesn't do the greatest job but it is limping along for now. Eventually we would like to get a stainless steel one to match the rest of the kitchen. We need to put new ceiling tiles in the family room (former dog kennel). The tiles that were there were sagging and didn't look very nice. Then when the toilet flooded last year some of the tiles got water damage. We also have yet to tackle the pink and blue bathroom. We finally have furniture in the guest bedroom. I will make a post about that later. Our family room is without a TV which is still at the other house. We need to eventually paint the laundry room. This isn't a pressing issue but when they stained the floor they got one large splash of stain on the laundry room wall which kind of annoys me. We also need to eventually get a new mailbox. Ours has an issue with collecting water. I will have to do a post about mailboxes at some point. I have found a cool one that I want.

As you can see there has not been a lot of action here so no new photos. Oh yes! I forgot to tell you that we got the door on the indoor kitchen grill repaired. It is now in great shape. Thank you to my wonderful cousin for taking care of that for us. I forgot to add the fireplace to our list of to dos. My husband would kill me if I forget to list it because I think it is at the top of his list! When we had the house inspected we were told they didn't think our fireplace was lined. Apparently not having a lined fireplace is extremely dangerous even though the fireplace has been used in the past. We need to have it inspected by an expert (along with the chimney to the kitchen grill) and then decide how we will proceed if it is not lined. There is a pretty good chance we will turn it into a gas fireplace.

A Mess Until March

Wow! Things have been a mess! On January 22, the work finally began on our house. We had 3 workers here every day until February 25. A whole month!! Our house was a DISASTER the whole time they were here. All of our furniture was piled into every room they weren't working in except our bedroom. There was dust everywhere. There was paper covering much of the floor. That paper was coated in stripper or stain. It was a yucky, yucky mess. We were unable to use our kitchen or sit in our living room for a month.

Our living room a couple of weeks ago

We actually ended up spending a lot of time at home with the workers. I have completely lost count of how many snow days we have had this winter. There were many days we did not have work and stayed home. My husband stayed home with them for a week after suffering through the beginning of anaphylaxis. If you don't know what that is, it basically means you quit breathing due to an allergic reaction. He didn't quit breathing but he was headed in that direction.

Thankfully we loved our workers. They did an awesome job on our house and they were fun to talk to. We don't have one single complaint. It was kind of sad when they left. It was depressing on the last day when they walked out with their radio. I knew they would not be coming back! They were also quite handy to have around. They helped us figure out that we had a basement full of water due to our sewer backing up.

A week later they saved us from having a completely flooded house. The toilet backed up after I left for work. Water went in the bathroom, bedroom, down the hall and through the ceiling into the basement. Luckily, one of them was in the basement and saw the water pouring through the ceiling. They had a shop vac and they were able to clean it up quickly and call me at work to come home and deal with it. So, on top of everything else that was done we now also have a new sewer line. So, not only was the inside of the house a mess but the outside too!

The giant mole hill in our front yard after getting a new sewer line.

 Finally,  everything is done except the two new toilets we will be getting Sunday because of their contribution to our sewer problems and the new roof on the carport which we can't get until the weather warms up. Believe it or not we are forecast to have MORE snow Sunday night. Today we got new vertical blinds in the living room to prevent having so much sun damage again. We also had the walls refinished in the living room and guest room, new very thin molding added around the ceiling in the family room and guest bedroom, new floor molding added in the family room and downstairs hallway, refinished stairs, kitchen cabinets and molding refinished, painted the kitchen, built in grill repaired, stove hood repaired, basement door repaired, new thresholds leading into all bathrooms, bathroom cabinets refinished, all inside doors to closets, bedroom etc. refinished, and new shower door. My next post well be lots of photos of all the new work that was done.

Sheffield Serenade & Saturated Shingles

I didn't beat my old record and make it three days in a row with blog posts. I still need to post about paint colors and take some photos of the original labels on the bedroom doors. It seems like I am never home during the daylight to take some nice photos of the paint. We haven't really had decent internet since we moved in. To make a long story short. Stay away from Mediacom Cable if there is anyway you can possibly avoid them. Much of the past month we have been frequenting coffee shops for most of our internet needs which has limited my internet time.

Instead of telling you about paint I decided to post a photo of our new china. This photo is not really of our new china but it is exactly what our new china looks like and probably a much prettier photo than I could manage without breaking a few pieces in the process. We got it at the same place we got the Catherin Holm pot I posted about last time. George's Resale is a great place to find quality stuff at a decent price. George always has furniture that is much higher quality than anything your could find in most furniture stores today. When we bought the Catherin Holm pot I saw these dishes and I loved them except......they are yellow. I liked that they looked kind of retro without going over board. I think the tea cups that are a different color on the inside than the outside is what really got me. I always love that! But, I wanted olive green. So, we went back a few days later to look at the stamp and see if we could do some googling and find them in olive green. Turns out they were never made in olive green but George gave us a bargain we couldn't refuse so we settled for yellow. The china is called Sheffield Serenade. It is by Homer Laughlin who is also responsible for the well know Fiesta china pattern.

Another bit of excitement has happened since I last posted. I woke up the other night and heard an awful banging noise. I thought it was one of our cats being "bad". I decided if I ignored it they would stop but they didn't. Then I decided maybe it wasn't a cat. At this point I thought about waking my sleeping husband up because he obviously wasn't waking up on his own. It was around this time I realized that I very likely could be murdered by a serial killer in my bed and my husband would not wake up to save me. I was on my own! I laid there and thought about where the sound was coming from and what it could possibly be. It was very repetitious so I decided it was not a serial killer unless he was unsuccessfully attempting to bang down the front door. I finally pinpointed the sound to the shed door which is off the carport and under our bedroom. I realized it was raining and decided the door had blown open in the wind and possibly a critter had even gotten in there and was banging around. Again I told myself if I ignored it the noise would stop. After a bit longer I realized the noise was NOT going to stop and I was not going to be able to sleep.

So, I decided to wake my husband up. He went outside with the flashlight. After some time he came back and reported that our roof was sagging and it had pushed the door open. At first I thought it sounded quite dramatic and had visions of the roof sagging down and almost touching my car. We had known there was a small leak on the carport roof but didn't realize how serious it was. It was pretty amazing what happened and how quick. The physics behind the whole thing took me a while to figure out! From what I understand the frame around the door filled with water, it expanded and started coming apart and caused the door to come open. On Saturday we had someone come and take a look at it. He didn't seem to be too phased by it and thankfully it is just the carport roof and not the whole house. We think it is very likely the original roof! We don't have an estimate on the roof yet. We are hoping it is nothing to exorbitant and the people are of higher quality than the folks who did our floors. These people come highly recommended (as did the floor people). So, maybe soon I can post some photos of our new rubber membrane roof and gutters.