Tuesday, January 20, 2009

WHEW!

An historic day. I am glad to be able to experience this graceful (mostly) transition of power in such trying times. Some moms and babes came over to do a little gym/baby watching exchange today and watch the inauguration. Although Peanut is a little young to grasp the impact of today, I felt like she should see it somehow, and I sure as heck was not going to take her to the mall in the cold and crowds! It was nice to be home and warm and I relished the idea of the little ones being able to roam freely and be relatively safe from construction debris!

We have continued our whirlwind of projects, and as usual, every one of them has become several by virtue of the fact that nothing is simple. Our "easy and free" sink turned out to be anything but. We realized it was leaking from the sink drain as well as at the wall, and had to take it all apart and put it back together. Turns out the sink drain had never had plumbers putty applied - that's a bulk builder for you. Also turns out our pipe that joined with the drain in the wall had no glue so it was just pushed on there. So our plumbing supply stash gets bigger, and confidence grows. Moving the sink over in the upstairs bath is looking more and more like a do it yourself job to me.

We put a door on our gym, and this was another "should have been easy, but it was not" project. We bought a bi fold closet door and had the whole thing beautifully installed on the original frame. Unfortunately, when we tried to close the door, it got stuck on the inner jambs, so we decided to remove those. Well, getting the center off of a split jamb door is really an ordeal. After pulling the parts out and ripping up some of the trim, we decided to try patching it. One side worked fine, but the other was really bad, and we would have needed a gallon of putty or patch to finish it. Then we decided to pull the whole jamb out and re frame the inside of the door with drywall. Well, we discovered that the shims behind the jamb were pieces of shingle (!) and that the frame was not plumb nor level. We did a mediocre drywall job, and got the door in, but a project that should have been less than an hour took most of a three day weekend. Ugh!
We did get some fancy new gutters and a rain barrel that really look nice! It is amazing what a clean neat gutter can do. Here are some pictures of our pretty new exteriors:






Two of my favorite things here are the fact that we no longer have a downspout going directly into the ground next to the wall of the family room, and that the spout by the sun room is attatched. Before it was just hanging there and when it rained, it flopped around as the water went pretty much directly onto the siding. i am excited about the rain barrel too. I'm not really sure how I will use the water in there, but I felt bad just letting it all go down the drain so to speak. Since we already have a well for irrigation, I anticipate being the place to be to wash cars and grow a garden this summer - it seems we have an endless supply of water!













Speaking of gardens, I got my first seed catalog of the season and it has just sent me over the edge. I am so excited about all the space I have in this yard for gardening and can't wait to get started. It also reminds me ans saddens me to think of all of the beautiful bulbs, shrubs and perennials, that I left for the new owners of our old house only to find they were ripped out within a week. I am looking at the prices of things too, and realizing that my raspberry that took a few years to get to a full producing bust goes for quite a pretty penny, as do the outrageously beautiful purple iris that were all along the fence. Well, it is time to build a new garden from scratch, and with the knowledge of many gardens before, this one will be fantastic! My biggest concern is the deer. I have heard they are very forward here, and I want to prevent them from ever getting a taste of the greens, but that entails a big tall ugly fence. I'm sure there are options - I'll have to look into it further.
So next on the list is getting the pretty roof leak pictured above fixed so we can hang the chandelier in the dining room. We also need to get and install new shutters, add some thresholds to the bathroom floors, paint the sun room and the downstairs hall, office and guestroom, finish the curtains for Peanut's room, and make a decision on our master bathroom. We need to rip it apart and then figure out who is putting it back together. I have this sinking suspicion that it might be us :)

1 comment:

A said...

The house really looks amazing. I am so glad that I saw it "before" so that I can appreciate how far it's come. Thanks for having us over for "gym time!"