Time For Bed!

Ok, I could see how that would be confusing, when Jessie says "time for bed" what she really meant was "time to build a bed before you sleep in it." Not cool.


Thankfully, she already had her own set of plans for a super-tall, indestructible bed that would have space underneath for clothes bins, a bed for Optimus that he will never ever use, and other normal bedroom items like a chop saw and air compressor fittings. All I had to do was shut up and cut or hold boards how she told me to. This was quite nice.



Before you knew it, we had a bed! Simple, quick, easy.



Ok, if you're reading this you know it couldn't just happen like that. But I'll let Jessie tell that tale...


Side note, while working on the bed I went to get a beer from our fridge. Actually from the "freezer" because a while ago our freezer stopped working; the fridge was actually substantially colder. No problem, now we have a fridge and a beer fridge!

Yeah. Apparently the freezer started working again at some point. In our house when someone says "grab me a cold one" they need to be more specific.

Ok, so now that we had a huge bed for Optimus to hog, we thought the room felt a little stuffy....yep, that wall has to go.


We had planned on making some changes anyways, like adding in a closet and making the other bedroom into a master bathroom, thus necessitating a doorway. Probably best to do the dirty demo work before bringing our clean mattress into the room. The main attraction of this wall is the chimney that we wanted to expose. Raw original brick would look awesome in our bedroom and bathroom....if it weren't for the inch-thick layer of plaster applied directly to the brick, it would be easy. Jessie's brother and sister took turns a while ago with hammers attacking the plaster and made tons of progress. We however, are not as awesome or patient as they are, so we brought in the heavy artillery.



We managed to clean off the bedroom side in less than 30 minutes and it was actually pretty fun. Air-powered demolition tools = fun. One problem with this much fun is the amount of dust and crap it kicks up in the air. The hippo light will help demonstrate to your left with the cleaned off brick to the right. Another problem is the several hundred pounds of plaster (basically concrete) waste that you end up with in Rubbermaid containers that can easily bury a room's floor.

Jessie will elaborate on the design details of the room, but there are a few things we needed to make room for, such as the closet. The door to the other bedroom would be entering directly into the closet, so we removed that with the entire frame and transplanted it to the other opening. Lest we forget, this house is really old, so we encountered plenty of annoyances, the least of which was probably the hinges for the door that been painted over so much it no longer needed screws to hold it in place. The door actually opened and closed just fine without them. Super fun.

This leaves us with a gaping hole in yet another wall, but a new, functioning entrance to the future master bath. Even better, it matches the rest of the house because it's original, meaning less new materials to buy/consume. In the end, this is actually progress. I mean, we did end up sleeping in a room with three walls for a couple months, but as of a few weeks ago we've got 3.5 walls....so we're almost there!

Tom

Currently listening to "Buried Alive" by Avenged Sevenfold

Time-Suck Theater: 3rd Time's a...Something...

Let's shoot back to last week for a moment, when we were going to transform the random concrete landing strips on the backyard into a beautiful garden space by planting a bunch of tulips and lilies around the concrete. My awesome sister-in-law had already helped us out by getting rid of the overgrowth on top of the concrete. Working together this should only take us another reasonable 2 hours. Dig holes, plop in bulbs, cover them up. Easy, right?


Wro......well, actually yeah, it was pretty easy. We got half the bulbs planted when I pulled out the shovel to dig some 6" deep holes for a batch of bulbs that required it. Then, clunk.

Wrong! (You see what's happening here?) All we wanted to do was plant pretty flowers! Apparently this house has other plans...namely, to dig up the parking lot under the entire yard. That might be a bit of hyperbole, but here's the first chunk of concrete I dug up. This is just the beginning. On all sides of the random visible strips are about 5 to 6 feet of buried concrete (with some brick mixed in). I think we'll be leaving the rest of it in place...except for the areas that need to be dug up to plant things. Here's the pile of giant amalgamated concrete and brick blocks we dug up that afternoon...are you kidding me?!?



There were even some random pieces of terra cotta block in here. Yes, this real. In case you don't remember what that is, it's the very strange offspring of cinderblocks and bricks that are used as foundation walls in the mid-20's...like in our basement (as demonstrated by Jessie). Some other shards of ceramic looked a lot like pieces from an old clay smokestack. We just so happen to have roughly 40% of one left in our attic above the kitchen. Sweet.

Task #3: Success! It only took us 4 hours to almost finish a 2 hour job. Yeah. House: 3, Tom and Jessie: 0.

So...we lose. But wait! We did manage to get all of the door sweeps installed. That means no more light and wind gusts coming in under every door to the outside world. w00t. House: 3, Tom and Jessie: an emphatic 1.

However, while I was installing the door sweeps Jessie was filling in some cracks in the foundation with Great Stuff...then she asked me to come look at this:


That half-eaten sheath around those two giant wires is supposed to be protecting the main power feed into our house. The squirrels have other plans, which is not cool. No problem, I'll grab some extra thick dielectric tape and wrap it up before it gets any worse, just a 5 minute delay....right?



Wrong. What is going on here? This is a giant collection of flies just hanging out on the inside of this one basement window next to the electric meter. Words cannot express...I mean seriously, what is this crap? After cleaning that up, it's another 10 minutes of delay...bringing the final score to House: 4...no, 5. Tom and Jessie: 1.


That's all for this edition of Time-Suck Theater. Join us next time...we try to do anything. Yay us.

Tom

Currently listening to "Midnight" by Blindside

Quirks about our House

Now that our parents have left for their various states, I feel the strong pull to actually provide a real update. Tom has been picking up on my slack lately. You don't mind 5 rapid-fire posts, right??

For starters...

1. We have a buttload of ants. EVERYWHERE.

They keep getting into the house and crawl up and down the porch rails and steps and brick support columns and we cannot get rid of them. See the post about "The Hole" to see pictures of the ants pouring out of the new GFCI. So far, we've tried the ant traps that takes the chemical back and supposedly kills the colony within 24-48 hours. WRONG. Finally, I caved and did something very toxic and unfriendly to the earth and bought a can of Raid ant spray. My parents were coming and there were ants in every room except the bedrooms. Basically, we did some spot shots and haven't really used it since. Next plan = Borax mixed with essential oils? Other ideas??

Example: All of those tiny little specks are ants. In this picture, there are at least 12 of them within a 4" area. They weren't just chilling there, but seemed to be on a mission to get somewhere.


TIP: We just found out this weekend that sprinkling cinnamon around an ant path keeps them away. They refuse to touch the cinnamon. Right now, we have lines of it sprinkled on our doorway entrances, around the base of the deck posts downstairs, around the pillars on the front porch and some other places... Try it out. Cinnamon is cheap. It works. It smells good. Unfortunately, there is not enough cinnamon in NC to cover the base of our home well enough to keep these ants out.

2. We also have lots of crickets and beetles.

As much as I love forensics anthropology, cadaver dissection, osteology, blood, guts and gore, I HATE HATE HATE small disgusting creepy crawling things (minus snakes) and rodents. So far no rodents, but definitely a bird that somehow got into our house. Not crazy about birds either. In the past, I've had far too many run-ins with bats to like small flying creatures. Living in this house, I am going to learn to have cohabitants of the creepy, scary kind.

No pictures to accompany this one. Shocker, right?

TIP: No solution thus far, but we have found out that crickets don't crawl into the upstairs when we leave the AC or fan on.

3. Our range vents into the basement stairwell.

What the heck? Guess we aren't turning that on for a while.

SOLUTION: Eventually rearranging the kitchen to make an island that has a drop-in cooktop in it. For the last several months, we have been combing craigslist for it. This will probably take QUITE a while. At least it will be a while before we can get to that.

4. We have three at least partial chimneys in our place.

One is just above the kitchen in the attic. One in the living room actually is used as a fireplace (or has been sometime somewhat recently) and goes from the basement to through the roof. There are partial remnants of charred logs in the fireplace and a rack outside to stack firewood. The third fireplace goes from the basement to the attic.

SOLUTION: We do not plan to knock any of these down since that seems dangerous and time consuming. Instead, in the two back bedrooms, we are prying the plaster off of the walls, then the layer of concrete until we get to the exposed brick. I've always been a fan of that brick facade which is usually fake. We will, however, have a REAL brick wall...at least part of a brick wall.


5. There is water leaking under the porch.

A portion of the bricks on the outside wall of the porch are caving in. It is compromising the integrity of the porch and speeding up water damage. At one point, I saw a cat trying to squeeze in there. We have to fix that soon...somehow.



SOLUTION: We are probably going to combine #5 and #6 on this one. We are going to temporarily remove the decking on the right side of the porch where the crumbling bricks are. Then, we will be able to get under the porch and into that space to reinforce existing structures and to redo that crumbling wall.

6. Our deck boards are starting to disintegrate on the ends of the boards closest to the yard.

Example:

SOLUTION: Instead of replacing them, we are just going to rotate them (the boards we pulled up for #5) out for other boards in good shape on the porch. Since the ones that are in roughest shape are the ones leading to the steps outside, those are the worst ones. Another way to NOT spend money - just a time investment.

7. We have .68 acres and a 20" reel lawn mower.

Ugh for trying to be all environmentally responsible. At least when I am trying to cut the grass in 90-100 degree weather for hours.

8. Our bathroom toilet seat is soft and squishy.

Apparently lots of people think that is weird and that it feels uncomfortable.

9. On our deck, the treads on the stairs (the part you step on) are all curling up.

SOLUTION: When you build a deck, make sure the face on the lumber is sad. By that, I mean to put the tree rings that are in a semi-circle face down onto the board you are screwing them into.

Jessie

Currently Listening to "Get Ready" by Rare Earth

Example: The Happy Face on the lumber makes the edges start curling up and going crooked. The Sad Face shown is the decking we just put in. Of course I made sure Tom knew the sad and happy faces before he started screwing the decking on (even though I was totally going to do that).

BAD


Good!