86'n It

We had a pretty lazy weekend. :(
We took Saturday "off" and went searching for doors. We didn't have any luck (besides the door that Marc found earlier this week), but it was awfully nice to not be slaving away in the kitchen. (Especially because the mosquitoes have been HORRID.)

On Sunday, I did get busy and wire up all the kitchen and dining room light switches and dimmers. Of course, most of these were 3-ways, so it took me FOREVER and 3 calls to my dad to figure it out. But they are working and it is great! Now Marc has no excuse to not get to mudding and taping that drywall well into the night! Hee! Hee!

Marc found this great, solid wood door at Asheville's Habitat for Humanity Store for $30!!

It is going in place of the white door from the hallway to the back porch (the door to the right in the photo) . It needs to be cleaned up and re-stained much darker.

We still need a door for the kitchen-to-back-porch and a new front door, but this one give me hope. What a deal! I'm betting we will want to do some kind of thermal blind in the winter, but it will look great.

(Oh, and I should say that the reason that we are getting new doors is that the yellow one in the photo is torn UP. It's isn't square and the edges are messed up. The front door is in horrid shape too. It has the DEEP scratches on the inside of the old owner's dogs wanting to be let out, and DEEP scratches on the outside from them wanting to be let in! Ugh!)

I was tagged by Ben at DC Rowhouse.

The rules: Answer the following questions about yourself. At the end of the post you pass on the questions to 6 (or so) other bloggers and list their names. Then write them a comment telling them that they've been tagged and ask them to read your blog.




1. What did you do 10 years ago?
Let's see, I'm from rural Ohio, and like everyone there, my college jobs were in random factories So I think that at this very moment 10 years ago I was either:

a) Holding the end of a piece of fabric and running around this huge table with a pair of the largest scissors that you have ever seen. This fabric would become the awning on an RV. I was cursing the 500lb woman who was my partner at this cutting station because she would just stand there holding the other end of this fabric while I ran around. Other partner teams would share cutting and running duties, but as it was far too physical a chore for this woman to move her feet, she would only hold, not cut or run. Bitch.
OR
b) Adjusting a huge grid of hot wires, then pushing a 5' cube of foam thru these wires, which would cut them into pieces, turning the whole thing 90 degrees, then pushing it thru the wires again (without the whole thing falling apart). Then I'd roll it over to the banding machine which would put those super durable plastic straps around the foam bundle. If I was lucky the guys I worked with would NOT tell me the machine was jammed and I would NOT lean over and into it to unjam it, at which point they would NOT push the button and NOT "band" me to the machine at about 70mph, knocking the wind out of me, and rendering me helplessly stuck on the machine until they stopped laughing and cut me out. Oh good times that job was.

2. Five items on your to-do list today:
1 - Go measure a liquor store for work. (Seriously, don't I have the best job?)
2 - Give Tuna her flea medication. (I hate giving her chemicals, but its better than waking up because fleas are pinging around your pillow.)
3 - Package up and send technically illegal package across state lines.
4 - Go home after work and hang the last pieces of drywall.
5 - Try to remember to bring a chair upstairs and put it next to my closet so that every piece of clothing I try on in the morning when deciding what to wear doesn't just get thrown on the floor for the cat to barf hairballs on. (That is what Marc's construction shorts are for, duh!)

3. Snacks I enjoy:
CANDY. Any kind, but my top 3 are: Smarties, Chewy Sweettarts & Snickers. ( I can say this with conviction because Marc and I once conducted a candy bracket.) I am bound to give myself diabetes. And Yes according to my nurse sister, you can give yourself diabetes. Scary.

4. What would you do if you were a billionaire?
Pay off the houses of all my family and closest friends. Buy my parents a private jet and houses near all their grandchildren.

5. Places I would live:
Vieques, Puerto Rico and if these people that are renovating a house just like ours on the next block get their selling price (which is 3x's what we paid for ours) then we are selling and moving!

6. Bloggers I am passing the challenge onto are:

RE:Habitat, Barefoot Foodie, Fun Things to do in Ohio, There Are Two Sides

Because we haven't started mudding and taping our kitchen yet, I thought I'd give an update on the color scheme of my sister's new house in Indy. The plum color is up and it looks FAB!

Now they need to buy a TV so that their new couches aren't starring at a blank wall! Great floors too right?

(Obviously, my family knows how to buy houses right? Well, me not so much maybe seeing how I bought a crack house. )

I would like to introduce you to this stool, Benjamin, as proof that Ikea does not suck.

Sure if you are buying the cheap plastic cd rack, don't expect it to last forever and don't use it as your reason for proclaiming to the world that Ikea sucks and you shop only at Ethan Allen. (FYI: it's totally all particle board too, its just way more $$.)

Benjamin the Stool has seen me thru 3 moves, has been useful as a step stool, a seat, a side table and if you have 2 of them (as I do) and a piece of plywood it makes a mighty fine table. He is still holding up great, even though the top is delaminating some due to the potted plant that leaked extra water on it for about 6 months.

We currently use him as a construction ladder. He's been tested by my father, my husband, and me for weight carrying capacity and never so much as creaked. His top is now soiled by whatever gross black dust lives in our walls, but he is still looking great.

So if you find yourself an Ikea hater, go get a Benjamin (Only $19.99!) and be converted. Oh and while you are there, I recommend getting a soft serve cone, a pack of those ginger cookies, and a soda, 1/2 Lingenberry, 1/2 sprite, (of course).

I am in the process of updating my blogs look, so bear with me please!

Phew. This was a tough one to make myself study for. Between the kitchen, the new job, and the nice weather it was hard to make myself sit down and study. I probably studied the least for it our of all the tests so far, and that might have been ok. I would say that 1/2 of the questions were stuff that was NOT in the study material, but rather should be drawn from work experience. That is very very tricky as everyone's work experiences are different. I guess that is why I feel a little uneasy right now.

I hope I'll only have to wait the standard 2 weeks for results, because I'm telling you that flip-clock is really really cool, and I NEED it.

On Saturday, Marc installed the water line across the kitchen to the future in-refridgerator ice maker. It will be terrific not to have to buy bagged ice anymore!


I was busy running the speaker wiring from the basement, to the future volume control and then to the future speaker locations. It should be sooo awesome to have a built-in speaker system. Even though running the wiring involved another jaunt into the pet cemetery. EW.



Then on Sunday, I insulated the ceiling. At least this time it was cooler, so I could wear pants and a long sleeve shirt to avoid the insanity-inducing itchiness. (Like how I color-coordinated my PJ pants with the insulation?)

We also installed the exhaust ducting for the stove vent. This kitchen never had a stove vent before, so now we can feel free to cook up bushels of cabbage and not worry about stinking up the rest of the house. This had to be run thru the roof, so I had some more fun time on the HOT roof with the en fuego asphalt bits from the old shingles embedding themselves in the back of my thighs. Good Times.

We did manage to get some plywood on the walls which made me very happy. These walls will eventually get the wood panels, so they needed plywood to nail into.

So I did this color scheme for my sister for her new house. The computer screen colors are a little wonky, but this illustrates the general idea. Now I am just trying to figure out where I can use this plum in my own house. Hmmmmm....Any suggestions?

FYI, her husband LOVES purple. Always has. Check out the graduation suit that his wife and I got him. ------------> Awesome right? He wanted a purple fedora, but we couldn't find one in time.
That is their dog in the foreground stealing the show, BTW. Click to enlarge the photo, it is HILARIOUS! And Congrats to John on getting his MBA!

Our poor neighbors, I cut 2 holes in our roof at 7:30am Saturday and even then it was too hot.

I LOVE the sun tunnels, even though on the outside, they look like our house has zits! They will shine sunlight right on the bar & sink areas. They are open now, but will be closed after we sheetrock.

Don't let the fluffy pink cotton candy look fool you, this stuff is horrid. The millons of little fibers stick into your skin and make you want to die. I literally almost passed out in the shower afterwards. Good thing is that it already made the kitchen cooler!


#3: Scrape & Sand something that contains a ton of (pet & human) urine.

Marc worked hard removing and relaying the heart pine flooring. Too bad it came from either the kitchen (and had dog & cat pee all over it) or from the upstairs bathroom by the toilet. EW!
These boards are old, great, HARD wood. So hard that when you take them up, they go back to their natural (bowed) shape. We had to go to ridiculous lengths to straighten them back out and get them to lay down. Like use a truck-bed tie down and wrap it around your stud wall! Hey it is ridiculous, but it WORKED! (Next up for the flooring, more SANDING & the clear-coat stain.)

It was nice to burn some lath, but I was afraid of burning down the house when the pyros decided to tee pee the fire about 5 feet high. Sad thing is, it didn't even make a dent in the lath pile.

(Oh, and a funny note, if you would like 5 photos of my butt, send me an email. Marc took that photo of me on the roof, so of course, it was the only one I could use because the other 5 were zoomed in on my butt. Or if you are interested in a 38 photo photo-essay of our cat sitting around the yard trying not to get heat exhaustion, send me an email too, because he went a little nuts on that one.)

I realized that this picture is probably pretty hilarious, but because I had to live it, I just don't see the humor right now.

I will admit that while I didn't like finding Porch Kitty #1 or #2, it gave us a really great story. But this just makes me want to cry:

Marc was repairing the floor where the old brick flue was, and just stepped back and said very matter of fact: "Well Nik, it's 3 now." I somehow knew immediately what he meant. I turned and looked and literally teared up. I'm sick of finding dead animals.

Marc wanted to leave it. That was just unacceptable to me. So I got on my gloves, put plastic bags over them (hey, they are nice leather gloves) and retreived the poor guy. Honestly, to me it looks like a little dog, but Marc insists that it was an opossum, so we are going with that. RIP opossum.

So, of course when I'm down there. I also located #4 (and one of the opossum's missing legs). This is the last straw. Poor #4. He doesn't even have a skull. I don't even know what he/she was.

Oh heck yes!
And I even found out a day early. I had to call the state office and update my address. So I asked if they had sent out my results yet (I usually get them on the 2nd Wednesday).
The lady was so cool. She said they had. And I asked: "You can't tell me over the phone... Can you?"
And she said: "No, but I can tell you that you WON'T have to take it again!"

Yipppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

Only one more hard one (scheduled for the 17th) and then 3 easy ones left and I'll be a Registered Architect!!