19 posts tagged “home-improvement”

I could totally kill for a cup of hot chocolate right now.  I took some Excedrine for my stupid head just a bit ago though, so no additional caffeine (or sugar) for me tonight.  I'll probably be up half the night as it is.  :p

Had a good day today, despite this ...cold or allergies or plague or whatever the hell it is that's kicking my ass, or sinuses rather.  I finally got the thresholds for the kitchen doors painted, so Craig will probably put those in tomorrow.  Next on my never-ending project list is staining my china shelf, I think.  Depending on how I feel, I might do that tomorrow.  Or I might paint the back door, or paint the mudroom ceiling, ...or maybe none of the above; maybe I'll just sit on my ass and read.  I definitely want to get my Halloween decor up, and bake a sour cream apple pie at least.

We also did a little shopping today.  I got a nice allergen-barrier/mattress pad combo for the antique brass bed Craig set up in the extra room.  Found it on clearance, and had a 20% off coupon too so, good shopping!  Next I get to shop for a quilt/comforter, which is far more interesting than a mattress pad.  That'll have to wait for my next paycheck though.  After that, I'll need a bed skirt, sheets and pillows, lots of pillows for that one.  It's going to be a far more comfortable guest bed than the tiny futon upstairs.  It'll be a lovely place I can lounge under a blanket and read too.  :)

I helped Craig shop for some new jeans tonight, and we found some that he can totally rock.  They're a smaller size than the last time he bought jeans, so yay for him!  ...And me!  *wink-wink*  ;)  I bought new jeans for myself today too, and a cute, purple jacket, but Craig doesn't know that, so shhh!  *L*  I had a 40% off coupon that was good for online shopping only, so I'm hoping they fit well and I don't have to return them and continue shopping.

We also went to my favorite restaurant for Lebanese food tonight.  It was a late dinner and our eyes were much bigger than our stomaches.  It seemed like we ordered one of almost everything on the menu.  heh.  Of course, we brought most of it home.  We'll probably get another dinner and a lunch out of what's in the fridge yet.  :D  YUM!

There's so much I want to do tomorrow, but it's going to be a nice, low-key day at home, regardless of the long to-do list.  Maybe I'll get enough sleep tonight that I'll be up to doing at least half of what I have tentatively planned.  Sleep would be very good.

I've got my office curtains down and in the wash right now.  Tomorrow we'll take the AC out of the living room window, and I'll wash those curtains, and that's the last of them!  Clean curtains all around!  I know that's really more of a spring chore, but I'm really keen on eliminating as much dust and dirt from this house as possible before we start closing it up for the winter when it's just me and my asthma against a winter's worth of dust.

My office is pretty damn cluttered.  I haven't minded having the curtains down on any of the other windows, but I'm feeling a bit exposed right now.  What a mess!  It's good motivation to get that clutter under control though.

I'm pretty pleased with all the seasonal cleaning I've been doing lately.  I just about have the worst of the dusty corners cleaned out, and I have my chores on a manageable weekly schedule that sees everything getting regularly vacuumed and dusted as a matter of maintenance. 

I've always been somewhat comfortable in a mess.  I like to have the things I'm currently working on laid out within arm's reach, and I like to have the things that need my attention sitting out somewhere to visually nag me.  To an extent, I'm more comfortable with that than I am a neat and tidy home.  I like the lived-in feel more than the magazine-ready look.  The more stuff we pare down though, the easier it is to find a comfortable balance between the two.  I still have lots of stuff I want to sell somewhere, but I'm already at the point where no extra house cleaning is necessary if we wanted to have company.  That's my ultimate goal: to always have the house guest-ready.

Speaking of which, I'd like to start having people over for dinner once in a while.  Yes, I'm still very introverted and I really hate committing to plans, but if the house is clean enough for company, and all I have to do is make dinner, it seems like it would be really nice to entertain once a month or so.  I have really awesome friends and the only reason I haven't done more inviting over the years was because cooking AND cleaning AND getting over my introverted self was just too much.  Two out of three ain't bad though.  :)

So the cleaner house is making me *very* happy.  In other happy Jen news, I saw a number on the scale this morning that has been one of my weight-loss goals for TEN YEARS now!  It's really not a great number, always meant to be just the first step of many, but it's eluded me in all my many years of false starts at getting in shape, to the point where it was starting to feel impossible.  I stepped on the scale this morning though, and VOILA!  There it was!  After weeks of bouncing around just above it, getting close but never quite there.  After feeling like utter shit off and on all week long, wondering if it was allergies or something worse coming on.  After not only skipping yesterday's workout, but also having a latte AND sharing a piece of cheesecake!  On a day I was the least hopeful, there it was!  I did something I almost never do in the morning, and giggled uncontrollably.  That feels really frakking awesome!

I'm down two pants sizes from where I was in mid-July when I started this.  Two pants sizes in two and a half months is progress I'm quite happy with!  It's hard to judge how I look, because I never noticed I was getting fat until I just was, but there are things I'm noticing that make me so very happy.  I have room in the sleeves of my t-shirts because my upper arms are shaping up.  No more sausage arms!  I'm more comfortable in shorts because my legs are more toned.  Specifically, I'm not self-conscious about sitting in shorts because my thighs have some firmness and shape now, and don't simply mold to the surface I'm sitting on.  *L*  The thing that makes me the happiest though is my tummy.  Where some girls have a pooch, ...well, I had enough that I was always expecting people to ask if I was pregnant.  Bleh!  And now I've lost enough that I feel normal.  I don't feel like my belly goes before me everywhere.  I can actually dress without feeling like I have to camouflage, without needing a long shirt that flares out.

I'm not skinny.  I really haven't lost that much, seriously.  But I feel 100 times better for the bit I have lost.  I don't feel fat any more, and that's freaking awesome.  I'd still like to lose about 50 pounds.  That will get me to a very healthy weight, one I haven't seen in 15 years or more.  And it's my goal to get there before my 40th birthday next year, which shouldn't be too terrible.  If I can lose just five pounds a month, which isn't a lofty goal *at all*, I could hit my goal with a month to spare.  Honestly, I expect to hit it even sooner.  I may even be looking swank in a bikini at the start of next summer, which is something I never thought I'd be able to pull off again.  :D  It seems very possible right now though, and just to feel the possibilities again, that's better than what the scale or the labels in my clothes or even the image in the mirror has to say.  I love the possibilities.

So my house is shaping up and my body is shaping up, even our debt is getting paid down at a nice rate.  Next on the list is getting work caught up to the point that I'm working on current issues with the programmers rather than always trying to catch up.  Simaltaneously, I want to be working out my artistic skills on a regular basis -that's HUGELY important to me.  Less than a year away from 40, and it feels like everything is coming together so nicely.  I am one content woman!

What I've learned, what started all of this progress though, was realizing how much easier it is to make improvements when you start out being okay with how things are in the present moment.  When I felt bad about myself or my situations, the thought of making things better seemed so huge, so impossible to achieve.  But when I took stock of the present moment and said to myself, "This is what I have now, and all things considered, this is really pretty damn good," then suddenly small changes seemed not only possible, but enjoyable.  And a small change or two lead to more.  It's so much easier to build momentum when you start with your focus just on the tiniest of movements.  Before you're even aware of it, those tiny movements are adding up pretty quickly.  It's a helluva a trip!

Some people have dreams about forbidden lovers or whirlwind adventures; my hot dreams are about usable space!

I had a dream about a house last night, a house in the woods.  At first glance, it was kind of small and the floors were scary uneven.  We had to live there though, so I picked a bedroom and started thinking about color for the walls.  Then I noticed the closet, which was more like a small hallway.  There was another door at the end of the closet/hallway and it opened up on a some strange, high-tech wing of the house.  It was old classroom space.  The rooms were small, but clean and beautifully decorated.  There was a room there for every one of my hobbies, and some of them still had equipment in them.  There was a library, and a kitchen.  There was an archeology room with many shelves full of tiny bins that once held artifacts, but which would soon be holding beads!  There was a chemistry room soon-to-be glass studio with stainless steel tables and an industrial quality fume hood.  There was even a home-ec. room with a couple of sewing machines and a serger.  And every room had tons cupboards and bins and movable walls and a view of the forest.  *le sigh* 

I really hated to wake up from that one.  I opened my eyes just long enough to realize it was only a dream, and I moaned and pinched my eyes closed again, hoping I could get back there.

Argh.  I *really* need to organize something today!  We may even be painting a room this weekend.  heh.

Friday was a loooong day.  Craig took the day off so we could get a jump-start on our weekend project: replacing the kitchen floor.

We started into the floor a little before lunch time, and so far so good!  We're still in the tear-out phase, but our plans to take out the cupboards and put new floor underneath them changed when Craig took a look and saw a mess of plumbing there.  Huh?  Plumbing *over the floor*?  *L*  Ok.  Whatever.  The kitchen pipes never freeze.  :)  But even better, that means the cupboards/sink/countertop stay where they are and we put flooring in only up to that point.  I'm not sure if this is considered "ok" or "half-assing it" (I'm pretty sure it's half-assing it), but it does mean *A WHOLE LOT LESS* work for us.

When it was going on 5pm, we called it quits and went into town to buy our new floor.  Normally I'm *EXTREMELY* picky about house projects and would never have thought about starting tear-out until I'd found *the perfect* new floor, but the kitchen floor was so hideous and we've spent so long debating what we wanted to replace it with over the years (while we procrastinated the actual work) that I was content to just plan on buying the best option we could quickly find.  We totally lucked out on that!

We borrowed the pick-up truck from work, and headed out to Anderson's to stock up on supplies for the project.  The first thing we did was look to see what flooring options they had in stock.  Craig's been thinking laminate and I've been thinking darkly colored, so it was a no-brainer when we almost immediately spotted a dark walnut laminate for less than $2 a square foot!  It's *GORGEOUS* flooring, and I think it's going to look so perfect in this old house.  Oooo!!!  I can't wait until it's installed!

But anyhow, enough about flooring, (for now).  We hauled our goods back home, unloaded, and drove back into town to drop the truck back off at the office.  I think it's so cool that our employers opted to trade in the fleet car for a company truck and allow employees to sign it out for brief hauling needs!  Seriously.  This is an IT company, so it's not like a pick-up would be a standard fleet vehicle for them, but damn that comes in handy!!!

After dropping off the truck, it was time to feed.  I was having mad cravings for our favorite Chinese restaurant, so even though we were a little dusty, we went out to eat.  We totally lucked out there because they had a buffet set up.  :D  Mmmmm.  It was delicious.

We got back home around 8pm, cleaned ourselves up a little, and headed out to see a friend's band play.  They play every other Friday at the Old Pines Golf Course Clubhouse, way out on CoRd 13 between M and N.  We got there and the clubhouse is like a double-wide all-season porch.  :)  The band was already playing loudly, and it looked like everyone in the 10 mile radius (of wide-open farmland - heh) had crammed into this tiny building.  We found a couple of chairs in a corner, Craig bought a Corona and a can of Mountain Dew for $2.50, and we listened and tapped our toes until the band took a break and we could go talk to the base player (someone Craig knows from his ham radio club).

We went out on the patio to talk to A., and we spent the rest of the evening out there, under the stars.  It was a glorious night, clear and cool.  We talked to a couple other hams who'd come out to hear A's classic rock/country band.  We tapped our toes and sang along and even danced a little when the band played "Neon Moon", a song we used to like to dance to when we were dating.  There was a crack made about the "Tomb of the Unknown Camper" regarding some flags that had been set up in some shrubs to decorate for the holiday weekend, and we joked about taking a golf cart out joy-riding.  It was a good time and I definitely want to go back out there again.

This was our second opportunity to hear live music this week.  Monday night we'd also gone out, just down a few blocks to a local church where people gather to play bluegrass and gospel every Monday.  We got there late, and there were only ten or so musicians still playing, but there were chairs set up for at least thirty, and we were told that around 7pm, when they start, it's usually standing room only.  The musicians were skilled and the music was fantastic.  I guess it's just people who like getting together and jamming, and they do it every Monday.  I definitely want to go back there on occasion too.

I love live music of all sorts, and I think it's absolutely fantastic that I have both of these options to get out and hear some tunes and even dance a bit, both close to home (out here in the sticks!) and both free to the public.  It's pretty damn sweet!  :)  Last night I'd told Craig, "If we're going to come out here now and then, I suppose we should get to know some of these people," and he replied, "Let's not get all crazy now!"  *L* 

Toodledo.com is seriously the best thing that's ever happened to my brain.  It's taken me a week to tweak my account settings and make it all work for me, but if I weren't already married, I would seriously marry this lovely little organizational tool because I want it in my life forever.  *Every* little "I should..." and "Someday..." that crosses my mind can be filed away safely in my toodledo account to be dealt with later so I don't have to mentally juggle it with every other idea I've had and don't want to lose.  I love the goal planning too.  One of my new favorite rituals is taking some time on Sunday nights to go over my task list and get everything organized for the week ahead.  This week will be a real test of Toodledo time management.  I have *A LOT* on my schedule, and I'm going to focus solely on working my way down the list each day, letting it dictate what I do next, and checking things off as they're done.  We'll see how productive this week is in comparison.  I have 43 tasks on my list right now, 22 of which are due today.  Oi.  We shall see.  If nothing else though, it's sweet relief just to have a place to organize all my thoughts so thoroughly!

It's a good thing I'm not in a traveling mood so far this year, because our house wants some expensive attention.  We spent a little while yesterday prioritizing our needed home improvement projects for the year (in Toodledo, of course) and our house wants MONEY!   Let's just say we'll be doing our share pumping money into the local economy.

• We have an ice dam problem that we've had repaired before, but obviously we need to take more drastic measures.  Melting snow and ice on the roof is leaking in and down through some walls, causing a moisture and mold problem indoors.  This year we need to have the roof repaired in a major way once and for all, and I'm insisting we hire someone (rather than do it ourselves) to remove the moisture damaged drywall and clean up the mold, someone with the expertise and equipment to clean it completely out and safely.
• Our kitchen is the last "original", un-renovated room in our house, and the floor is *BAD*!  I don't just mean it's ugly (it seriously is!!!), but it's so old and weak that you can easily see where the floor joists are through the sagging floor.  We can address this issue ourselves for just the cost of materials, but it ain't going to be easy.  We're going to have to move appliances, remove the countertop and sink, and rip out cupboards before we can even get to the floor.  And I'm nervous about picking the perfect weekend for this job: warm enough that exposed crawlspace doesn't make the house too miserable, yet not so warm that we have spring/summer insects inviting themselves in through the open floor.  *shudder*  I have to admit I am kind of looking forward to it though.  I'm really wanting a pretty kitchen, and Craig and I are really good at the whole fix-it-up thing.  It's been a while since our last major home improvement project.
• When we had a plumber in not too long ago to put a whole-house shut-off valve in for us, he warned us that the main water line is looking really bad and we should expect to need to replace it soon.  That's going to be expensive, so I definitely want a second opinion, and if it is a needed repair, I want it done before it becomes an emergency situation.  :/  We need to get a few quotes, and I'm really hoping one of the companies that offers the "trenchless" line replacement will find the job doable.  *crossing all fingers and toes*
• We also want to insulate the mudroom, not only do I want that because that's where I'm setting up my glass studio, but more importantly, to try and prevent the whole freezing and broken pipe thing we dealt with again this year.
  

Those are the major projects.  There are always smaller things in the works, like painting the front door, stripping and staining the porch, painting the mudroom, all the other kitchen improvements we want to do besides the floor, ...  There's always a long list of work to do when you're a home owner, but this year there are those expensive and mandatory projects on the list also.  *sigh*  it still beats the hell out of renting!

Ok.  My coffee is done and my task list is calling.  Always so much to do!

This morning, Menard's delivered a storm door for the front entrance, a screen door for the back, and a closet door for the back room.  Craig has already installed the front door, and I *LOVE* it!  We can now leave the front door open and get a direct cross-breeze between the front and back doors.  It's fabulous!  ...Plus a man doing home improvement is a big turn-on!  :D

Catalpa Blossoms

It's a gorgeous day today.  The heat wave broke and it's blue skies and mild breezes today.  Our catalpa tree is in full-bloom, and every light breeze makes blossoms rain down on the grass like a scene right out of a fairy tale.  People are out walking and biking, the neighbors are having a yard sale, and village maintenance is hanging the summer flags along Main Street.  It's just a perfect Saturday.

The community wide garage sale is next weekend.  I'm debating whether or not I want to participate.  I played garage sale last year and got rid of a lot of stuff.  I'm trying to weed through even more now, but all the "garage sale" types of things sold last year.  The stuff I have left that I'm looking to part with is mostly worthy of ebaying, as a lot of it should fetch decent money, the kinds of prices garage sale shoppers balk at.  I don't know.  I'll probably do a slow walk through the house today and take a quick inventory of all the things I'm looking to find new homes for, and then decide whether or not to start piling it up for next weekend.

As a side note, someone please chain me in the house next weekend so I'm not tempted to wander the neighborhood buying other people's crap.  heh.

I've kind of had my life on hold until the manuals I'm working on are done (for over a year now, sadly), and I'm really starting to realize how very stupid that is.  Not only am I down a lot of the time because I feel like I can't devote time to my passions until I'm done with work, but I'm now sure my work productivity is suffering too because I've just plain burned myself out with the pressure to finish.  (I've been naggingreminding Craig a lot this week about not working to the point of burn out, and I'm starting to see I have that same problem myself.)  It's one of the dangers of working at home.  You're always right there with your work, always thinking about it, whether or not you tell yourself you're going to enforce a daily quitting time.

I've picked five activities that I really miss, and I'm going to make them as mandatory as work is.  One of those is my lampwork.  Starting Monday, I'm going to require a minimum of one hour of lampwork a day, probably first thing, before work even, since mornings are cooler and torchwork and heavy/protective clothing don't mix well with the heat of summer.  I was thinking about a minimum bead requirement, but since one bead can sometimes take twenty minutes or more to make, a time requirement for practice makes more sense.  I really want to get better at this bead craft, and I'm not getting any better waiting for that "someday" when work is caught up.  Not to mention that most days I sit down to work and I'm bummed as hell that I "don't have more time" for the things I really love doing.  It's long past time to make time.

I slip in and out of these feelings of dissatisfaction with life all the time, and I'm pretty damn sure it's because I've relegated all the stuff that makes me feel alive to "someday".  How stupid is that?!!  I'm kind of slow sometimes, but I almost always eventually figure these things out.  ...And then forget them for a while and have to relearn the lessons.  Some day this stuff will stick.

My tailbone is broken.  I'm near sure of it.  If it's not broken, it's deeply bruised, but I've never felt pain like this before in my life.  It's worse in the mornings too.  I can't even count how many times my knees have given out on me this morning from the waves of intense pain.  This really, REALLY SUCKS!  Especially since we have a road trip planned in a couple of weeks here, with 10 hours of driving just on the first day.  And it's bike season.  I'm very cranky about all of this, but what can you really do for a tailbone injury?  Try not to sit much, and sit on a split cushion when you do.  That's about it.

The thing that's almost laughable, is that I think this is a work-related, writing injury.  Yes, a writing injury.  (Go me!  ...What a geek!)  That's all I can figure.  After being sick in early April, I spent a few long days at the keyboard to make up for lost time,  It was just after that when I started feeling intense lower back pain, which over the past couple of weeks has receded to just this blinding pain in my tailbone.  ARGH!  I'm so sick of this.  ...  Tylenol, the breakfast of champions.  Mmm, crunch, crunch, crunch.

Also, my allergies are back with the spring pollen.  ...Wow, is sneezing ever an all new kind of pain in the ass!  *cries*

In more fun news, my torch went out on me last night (with glass in the flame - ARGH!) so I get to go shopping for fuel this weekend.  I'm going to look and see what kind of fuel I can find in refillable canisters, but I'm going to have to stick with the little disposable canisters until I can order the right hoses and hook-ups for a refillable tank.

In surfing for that equipment last night, I looked at some annealing kilns too.  *covet*  I found some wee ones for only a few hundred that would work for me, but the $1500 ones I looked at sure were nice.  Someday.  For now, I still need to put in an order for some glass, and I might splurge on a few marvers and mashers too.  :)

And when I was telling Craig that it was a little chilly for melting glass last night, he reminded me that I was talking last fall about setting myself up a work area in the mudroom.  I'm definitely going to have to start cleaning up some space.  I should be able to get enough cross-breeze in that room full of windows that I shouldn't even have to worry about carbon-monoxide or any of the other lovely fumes.  I've been wanting to clean that room up and paint it anyhow, since it could be a lovely little room and it's the first room people walk into in my backwards house.  :)

Speaking of home-improvement, I think I'm going to try and talk Craig into letting me paint the front door purple, a nice deep plum/eggplant shade.  It's going to have to wait until we get a storm door though, so I can take the door off without worrying about all of nature coming into my home uninvited.

Argh.  Too much sitting.  So done now.  ow.

AHHAHAHAAAAHAHAHAAAA!!! 

So, I've had a plumber and some utility people tromping through my house for a few hours, all sorts of clanking around, consultation, discussion, more clanking around, trickling water, no water, water again.  All is said and done and the plumber comes back in with the bill.  $190 even.  A great deal(!), IMO, given the hours of labor, the new main valve, new wiring on the meter, new valves in the kitchen, new lines to the faucet (granted, we supplied parts for the kitchen work), and hot and cold back on the proper sides after all these years.

The plumber is telling me his work is guaranteed for thirty days and he says, "Oh yeah!  And I noticed you had a lot of calcium build-up on your kitchen faucet, so I jiggled it a little forcefully a few times to knock all that off."

Guess what doesn't drip any more.

Remember where this saga started?

Jen says, "The kitchen faucet drips."

LMAO!!!

Whatever,  We did need those new valves regardless of the kitchen faucet situation, I've always been annoyed that hot and cold were in the wrong place, and at least we now know we need to think about getting the feed line replaced soon rather than being surprised by a break.

Too funny!

Jen says, "The kitchen faucet drips."
Craig says, "It's a really old, ugly faucet and I can't find part info on it, we should just replace it."
...Jen & Craig go shopping...
Jen says, "This one!"
...Craig buys it and brings it home...
...Jen cleans out under the sink to prep for the procedure...
Craig says, "Our pipe fittings aren't standard for this hook-up."
Jen says, "Let's go shopping."
...all the parts and pieces to fix the previous home-owners crappy work are purchased...
...Craig tries to turn off water main, but it's stuck and crumbling...
Craig says, "I'm calling a plumber so we don't wind up with Old Faithful in the basement."
...plumber comes to assess the situation...
Plumber says, "You only have one inch of pipe sticking out of the wall, I can try this but we might have to dig."
...Jen prays to the patron saint of plumbing (St. Vincent Ferrer if you're wondering ...yes, I looked it up) because she doesn't want to dig up the patio and/or the deck...
Plumber says, "I need the village to shut off the water for me, I'll call you."
...20 minutes pass...
...Plumber and two hotties knock on the door to ask if the water is indeed off now (WOW!  Same day service!)...
Plumber says, "EUREKA!"
Jen says, "HALLELUIAH!"
Plumber says, "You have a ton of calcium build-up in those pipes though, which is why your water pressure sucks, and you will need to replace those before too long."
...Jen's trying not to think about that right now...
...
...Oi!  Putting in that patio was *A LOT* of work!  *cry*...

The plumber is still here working on replacing that valve.  Eventually though, ...some time soon, I should have a new main water valve, and running water once again, and A SHOWER!!!

That will bring us right back to where we started weeks ago, with the dripping faucet and the fact that we still need to replace it.

argh.