In with the Old Love: February 2011

2.27.2011

Listen to the Music...Round 4

You know the deal by now. Here is another rendition of motivation music. Check out Round 1, Round 2 and Round 3.

This music follows me around in my back pocket (no, I don't have one hand in my pocket) whenever I work outside.

"Peter Gunn" by Duane Eddy
"Why Bother?" by Weezer
"Sunny" by B.W. Stevenson
"Blue Jeans" by Jessie James (a guilty pleasure...I hate admitting this one)
"Get Over It" by Ok Go
"Laugh Laugh" by Beau Brummels
"Radar Love" by Golden Earring
"Cha Cha Twist" by The Detroit Cobras
"Race Car Ya-Yas" by Cake
"Pike County Breakdown" by Flatt and Scruggs
"No Time" by The Guess Who
"Get Rhythm" by Johnny Cash
"Point of Know Return" by Kansas
"Lookin' Out My Back Door" by CCR
"In the Midnight Hour" by Wilson Pickett
"Ms. Jackson" by Outkast
"Dig" by Incubus
"Like a Prayer" by Madonna
"My Generation" by The Who

Short list this time, I know. Send me some mix cd's and they will show up on the next list!

Jessie

Currently Listening to "Take Me to the River" by The Talking Heads

Sunny

Today it was about 80 degrees out. Awesome. For about an hour in the morning, we took some coffee outside and walked around the yard to decide where we are going to plant our garden. Onions, shallots, garlic, jalapenos, bell peppers, brussels sprouts, lettuce, tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, organic tomatoes (you get the point), squash, beans, zucchini, cucumbers, watermelons, peas and some other stuff.

Tom was doing some reffing at the YMCA, so I had a bunch of time for myself. Since it was warm enough for me outside, I sat outside and read a book (#10 of my 50 book goal for the year) while Optimus laid next to me. Then, I got super bored and still had a lot of time, so I pulled up a ton of ugly concrete paver things from the yard. Thank you so much to whoever took the time to make the yard look ugly. Ugh. Now they are sitting by the road waiting for somebody on Craiglist to come and haul them away.

In the meantime, I was searching for more to do. We had discussed the possibility of several raised beds for the yard. One or two little ones would have a bunch of wildflowers and one would be a big one dedicated to a large strawberry patch. Strawberries spread like crazy, so keeping them contained is a must.

Typical raised beds are made out of railroad ties or treated lumber. Both leach chemicals into the ground around it. One of the things that has been running through my head lately is an alternative to this. As you may have seen in a previous post, we have a bajillion pallets that we got for free off CL. Pallets are made out of untreated wood, so I have been working on dismantling them in order to build raised beds out of them. We'll paint them with a pretty exterior paint that we'll most likely get from the Habitat Restore.

In the meantime, I was looking for more to do. Speaking of things to get rid of, the lathing strips from under the plaster has been in our house for a LONG time. We don't want to take it to the landfill and we haven't figured out what to do with it.

Genius idea! First of all, I painted the lathing strips with exterior paint (from the Habitat Restore) and then took puffy paint and labeled them to use as garden marking stakes. Next, I'll cut them with the chop saw and we'll be good to go. As soon as the weather gets warmer, there are so many more things to do!

Jessie

Currently Listening to "In the Evening" by Led Zeppelin

2.13.2011

I'm So Tired

Ahhhhh. I lost half of the post, so that's what you'll get here.

Yes, I am not in school anymore. However, I do have homework for getting a proposal together for a social work conference. Procrastinating is way more fun, plus you all get to see what we have been spending our time on away from the computer. This is months overdue, we know.

We finally moved into the back bedroom over the holidays since we had lots of guests and needed more space. To give us some privacy from the people staying in the back bedroom, we put up sheets (to also keep some of the dust to a minimum). Under that blue panel, we did find some more brick. Instead of chiseling all 3" of plaster off by hand, which is a HUGE pain and takes forever, we got a $15 air hammer/chisel. Tip: Those are one of the best tools EVER.

While our room looks pretty and colorful, there were also a few problems. Well, at least one that really stuck out. In a normal house, the humidity is supposed to be at 45%. Ours is at a dusty 16%. With the humidifier working overtime since Christmas, we've gotten it up to about 33%. Better, but not great.

Meanwhile, this is what the future master bathroom looked like. On top of the window are all of the boards we pulled out from the old door and casing, moulding and trim from around the room.
CAUTION: DISASTER.

Well, there are super old 2x4's in that stud wall. We had to remove two of them to make room for a bathroom door. That bathroom door happened to come from the entrance to the 2nd bedroom, so we moved the ENTIRE old rickety frame and door to a new location. We're really going for that whole reduce, reuse, recycle thing...or whatever. Basically just the part where we want to make the house as old and authentic as possible without buying a ton of new stuff. When we took the studs out, we cut them down to reuse them. However, you can see the interesting stuff we found when we took them out. Original 88 year old bark on them as well as sap still oozing out of the wood. Pretty cool, huh?

Bathroom progress! You can also see the paint swatches I'm testing out to see what goes best with the future bathroom. We're still trying to do earthy tones, but we figured terra cotta would be best to match with the brick and the tiles we want to put down. I'm fairly certain we are going with the bottom color. We also got a tub at the Habitat ReStore for $25. I just wanted one that was bigger and deeper, but didn't care about having jets. This one had been marked down from $75 and was the loner, so, of course, I wanted it. There was grout and caulk around the edges, but all I needed was a putty knife. Simple, easy.