what a crazy month

Mom left at the end of last month and work on the house came to almost a hault. Some of it was planned. Like our anniversary was the last day of the month. So we decided to get away from house work and Longview for the day. We ended up just going to Shreveport. On the way, we stopped at Gator and Friends on the stateline. Totally not worth the money. If you want to go to a zoo go elsewhere. I was not impressed. We also stopped at the Shreveport Water Works Museum. It was the water treatment plant for Shreveport for a very long time. It was in operation for about 100 years. It was operated by steam. It was a hot day when we walked through the museum and I cannot imagine working there in the heat of the day along side all the steam heat. The next day we drove down to Mansfield to go to the Civil War state park, but it was closed :( I was looking forward to going. We will probably do that another time. The drive back from Shreveport was a nice one. Enjoyed the "long" way back to the house. On our way back we stopped in Logansport. I was able to wander through an old cemetary. Back in 1996, an boy scout for his Eagle project drew up a map of all the plots with their names.

On the friday before we left for our trip, I found a little kitten at the door to my office. Tim said that we could keep it. I had someone watch it over the weekend while we were gone. He came home with me on July 1st. We ended up naming him Oliver (after the Oliver tractor). He was a blast to have around. He had some problems on friday, but nothing a little food would not solve. However, Oliver ended up passing away in my arms early Sunday morning. It hit us both pretty hard. We burried him in the back yard under the big oak tree.

Jen came to visit over the 4th. Well, she was in a wedding but stayed with us. It was great to see her again. I always enjoy the time I have with her.

We have done some work on the house. Over the 4 day 4th weekend, we ended up grouting the backsplash and finishing up the floor tile between the kitchen and laundry room. Tim also loaded his shed on to the trailer from the other house. We ended up moving it early Sunday morning. We have also been bringing stuff over from the other house's yard slowly. We moved the big tractor with the brushhog on the previous friday. We emptied out the car port shed this past sunday. All that is left at the other house is the big carport and the little tractor.

We are in the process in picking out countertop colors. Very hard decision to pick out a color using small squares for such a big area. The color looks great on the card but we have no idea what it would like in the big sheets.

We ended up getting a new refridgerator. We were using one from the duplex that was not needed. However, the one at the duplex broke. So we picked up a new one for us. Well it was a new used one. Not really what I wanted, but it was what we could afford. With the fridge out of the living room, the living room seems bigger. We also moved the dryer into its home. The dishwasher is now in the living room, but it does not look as big as the dryer and fridge.

I am planning a bday get together for Tim on Saturday. I am working on trying to get everything ready for it. I am excited to have people over and share in Tim's bday and show off the work we have been doing on the house.

Kitchen

We worked very hard on the kitchen this weekend. We needed to get the cabinets up and and screwed in place and the backsplash together before Mom leaves this Weds. Having mom around has definately helped with the process of getting the house ready and liveable. We would not be in this position we are in right now if it was only Tim and I working on the house. Mom did all the painting and the kitchen floor and a bunch of other things. Here is the kitchen transformation so far:

Here is what the kitchen looked like to begin with. This was taken at the beginning of May.

Here is the kitchen about a month later. Took all the cabinets out.

 Moving the water lines.

Putting in a new door to the kitchen.

 Closing the old kitchen door off. By doing this, I have a really nice and big kitchen. As you see in the before, there was nothing in the kitchen. It was not even really a usable kitchen for someone who likes to cook and bake.

Here is putting the kitchen cabinets bases in their proper spot to see how everything looks.

Cabinets going up. Took all morning Saturday to put the cabinets up.

 Placing my new oven in place. (On Monday, Tim put the oven vent up). My diswasher goes where the box fan is right now. We just need to work on the dishwasher to make it become a permenant one.

The right side is where the refridgerator will go. There is a huge and deep cabinet on top with some smaller ones next to it. I even have two book shelves there. One for display and one for all my cookbooks.

Here is the backsplash started. Mom began it yesterday. There is going to be some green added to it over the sink and the oven. I think it looks sharp. I cannot wait to see it finished. It took us a few months to decide on what kind of design we would like. We also had ideas of colors but it was not until saturday night at lowes that we finalized them. It is hard to pick out colors when you are unsure about the color of the floor. The backsplash adds a lot to the kitchen.

We put on the rest of the plywood for the counter tops last night. We have not picked out any counter top yet. We have not been able to decide on what we want.  We still have quite about of work left on the kitchen. I am crossing my fingers that I will have a kitchen sink with water hooked up to it by middle of next month. It will take forever just to unpack all the kitchen boxes and figuring out where everything will go.

This weekend is our one year anniversary. It is hard to believe that it has been one year since I do. But Tim's mom bought us this hutch as a late wedding/early anniversary gift. I have been wanting one for a while, and I really like this one. It is heavy and real wood. I am glad that she was able to find us one.



House Update

 Life has been pretty busy at the house lately. We have completely moved out of the inside of the old house. We moved our beds over friday after work. It was strange not having to go anywhere when we were done working. We are not done moving stuff tho. We still need to move a few tractors, a shed, a carport, a couple of grills and whatever else there is in the yard at the old house.

In addition to moving this past weekend, We moved the sewer vent in the attic and ran new water lines. Tim from down the street came over to help in the attic. It was a tight fit to move the sewer vent. We did not want to cut a new hole in the roof so we made the new line meet up with the old line. There was only just on problem - the AC ducts for the house made it almost impossible to work over in that area. Only my Tim could fit in the area. He was laying on his side with no room to get the vent taken care off.

We also decided to run water lines in the attic. It was easier to go from the water lines under the AC/Heat Unit up the wall and through the attic and then down. If we did not do that, we would have had to jack hammer all the way back to the closet and set all new pipes. You cannot add on to existing pipes unless you do a J-Box and we did not have room for that.

Since Saturday was so hot and busy, we decided to take an easy on Sunday. We decided to hook up the new water heater that we got from some friends. Everything was going good until a shut off valve broke. It was nothing that we did to it. So we had to run all the way across town to visit Home Depot for a new valve and some other parts that we needed in order to get hot water.

Later that day, we serviced the AC unit. It had been freezing up a lot. I had control of the AC valves while we added freon to the system. I was afraid that I would add too much. If I did that, we would have caused the compressor to lock up. That would not be a great thing. We would have to replace the entire unit. Glad that I was able to get it right. The AC has not been frozen since we did that.

We also hung the cabinets in the laundry room. It is not done yet. Still have some work to do like shelves and the sheet rock.

With no kitchen and no dishwasher, I have been washing dishes in our tub. It is nice to not have to heat up water anymore to do dishes.

Mom has been very busy getting the tile laid in the kitchen. She finished putting all the tile down yesterday. Today she was planning to grout what is left. The kitchen floor looks really nice now. I cannot wait to start moving in cabinets and having a kitchen again. We might work on the refridgerator corner. We wan wire for the fridge last night along with wire for my under the counter lights. We still need to run wire for the microwave. Other than that and the oven, all the wire has been run in the kitchen. We just need to run an outlet in the library but that is not extremely important right now.

Before:

After:

We still have to connect all the water lines we ran the other day. So we will be working on that for the next few days. I will also be working on putting cabinets together so we move them into the kitchen.

Cabinets

Tim has been wanting the cabinet that will be next to the oven built because he wanted to see how the oven electrical would hook up. So while he was wandering around the house last night looking lost, I pulled out the box for the cabinet. It was a huge and heavy box since it is a corner cabinet with a lazysusan. I am excited to be able to have this type of cabinet. What I was not expecting when I moved the box was a stinking huge spider. Spiders and Sarah do not get along. Tim was trying to get it out of the garage instead of killing it. The spider ran under the other cabinet boxes and then disappeared. While I was standing holding the cabinet box, Tim said that the spider was next to my foot. Talk about freaking out. Tim did finally kill it.

Anyways, we brought in the cabinet box and laid it on the living room floor. We do not really have a whole lot of room to build cabinets. I like the color of the cabinets. Of course, the corner cabinet is one of the harder ones to build. I think it rates up there with the drawers. Took us about an hour to put it together. The instructions that they came with are horrible. They just showed pictures no written instruction. There was also a bunch a screws tossed in a bag. The "instructions" was labeled with A, B, and so forth. But none of the pieces were labeled. Took some time trying to figure out what piece was what.

All said and done, I do like the cabinet and the color. We ordered cabinets online because they came out cheaper. I really wanted dark kitchen cabinets. We looked at Home Depot preassembled cabinets, but they would have put us way over budget. Also, ordering online gave us more options on sizes and styles which was nice. We saved quite a bit of money ordering online. There had to be some compromises. I really wanted a wall oven, but a cabinet for wall oven is like $1000. Way to much. So no wall oven even though I really like them.

Will post pictures soon of the cabinets.


In other news, we are almost out of the inside of our old house. There is just a few beds and what I did not pack of my kitchen stuff. We will be out of the inside this weekend. The outside is a different story. At least the owners are working with us on getting the stuff out of the yard. There are two tractors, a carport, a shed, and few grills and who knows what else. We hopefully will have all that gone in another month.

odds and ends

Did not do a whole lot of house work yesterday. We went to pick up a water heater from some friends who were wanting to get rid of it. We also had another visit to Home Depot. I think we should buy stock in Home Depot and Lowes since we have been spending so much money there.

We never made it out to the new house. We spent time loading my truck up with stuff last night. I had spent all yesterday morning making a pile in the living room. This pile is what we moved to my truck last night. I then went to the bedrooms and cleaned up a bit and tossing odds and ends into boxes and putting those in the living room. We also took down our outside attenna and got that ready to move.

Today, I called Atmos Energy to cancel the gas service. But they refused to talk to me because my name was not on the account. Everywhere else, I have been able to cancel service over the phone as long as I had all the information. Atmos kept telling me it was due to the privacy laws. But would not everyone have to abide by those same rules. It was frustrating that they were such butt heads about it. I was able to do it online using the exact same information that I used every where else to cancel service or move service.

We also got our first payment book in the mail for our mortgage. It has already been sold to another mortgage company. It lasted a whole 2 weeks with who we did the application through. We did not even get a chance to make a payment. At least on the payment stub I can put a specific amount I would like to apply to principal on top of our normal payment. I do like that. It will be nice to get this paid off before we hit 30 years. (we cannot wait to get the school loans paid off either).

More house work

This weekend was a busy one. We moved majority of the furniture out of our old house. The only thing that is left in the house is beds and a lot of odds and ends that needs to be put into boxes. It is hard to leave the old house. We have made it ours over time. Now we will be working  hard to make this house ours.

 

Last week, we were working hard to move the gray water lines. The sink is being moved and a door is being put in where the sink was. Here is what it looks like. 

 

 

 

 

Last Thursday, Tim and Tim poured concrete to cover up the hole for the gray water. Cannot really tell in this picture that the line was moved. 

 

 

 

Saturday, we spent a lot of time doing electrical work. We ran a new electrical line (which is heaver than the old one) for the water heater. It took a lot of wire to run it up the wall across majority of the house over the garage and down to the electrical panel. We also added a bunch of outlet boxes. One can never have to many outlets in the kitchen. I made a few request. There will be a light switch controlling both fans. I also asked for a couple double outlets (4 plugs) and outlets and light switches together. Tim even let me put them in. There are still a few more that we are adding but have not been wired in yet. 

 

 

Because we put a door in where the sink used to be, we are closing up a door. This will allow me to have a lot of counter space. Here we are building studs to put up so we can attach sheet rock. 

 

Here is the doorway we are enclosing. I cannot wait to see the finished product. We cannot put up the sheet rock on the inside yet because we still have to put in the gray water vent. This goes up the wall into the attic and out of a hole through the roof.

 

 We still had to prep the laundry room for a new floor. The saw saw with the scrapper blade did not work on the linoleum. So we had to get a different tool. Here is Tim using the multimaster with a scrapper tool. It took a while to get up the glue.

 

 

Here is the tile floor going down. Mom is putting the tile down for us. It should hopefully be done by the end of the week. Fingers are crossed. When taking pictures, the walls look blue, but the paint is not. It is green. Still have not figured out why the walls keep showing up blue. 

 We did make it to church Sunday morning. This is what the sky looked like when we existed yesterday.

 

 

Still have a lot to do with the house. Finish the kitchen is the major project. We still need to make a few more decisions. Backsplash and counter tops. After the kitchen is done, we will tackle moving all our out buildings from the old house to the new house and tackle the unpacking of all the boxes 

Bathroom Finished Pics

Here are some pictures of the bathrooms:

 

 

The light in the hall bathroom. Cannot really tell that the wall is a very pale blue. It does look better than the wall paper.

 

 

The new shower curtain for the bathroom. We also picked out new blinds for the bathroom. They are the 2 inch faux wood. 

The master bathroom. This is the same color as the walls in the bedroom. I like the curtain much better than the door that did not work.

The cabinets in the master bathroom. The cabinets in the other bedroom is also painted the same color. I like the lighter color better than the dark cabinets.