HEAT!

Baby steps are better than none, right? Since the weather had turned cold The Man made his way to my house to put in the thermostat. I didn't realize that it was such an involved process! I figured you'd just slap it on the wall and be done. No. It involved drilling and cutting holes in the drywall. Then there was going under the house (not me, HAHA) to move the wires. The most difficult part of the whole thing was actually deciding where to put it.

In other news, my big plan of moving reusing the sliding glass door from the bedroom in the livingroom is a huge NO GO. Apparently the frame is all busted and crappy. Also, whoever "installed" it did a pretty crap-ass job of it.

After deciding to go with a normal door/window combo at the front of the house the decision of location had to be made. (I swear deciding where to put things makes me crazy! Once choice affects seemingly EVERYTHING else that's already been decided, lol.) It's all very draining, lol. We now have to go back and re-evaluate everything that hasn't already been done. Joy among joys, I say.

But, at least I can control the temperature now :)

It's been a while...

I haven't posted in a really long time. The house is still torn apart. I had some health issues that had to be taken care of and The Man has been super busy with his own life.

I do have some updated pics that I'm going to try to post this week. I've been pretty down about not having more done, but I can only do what I can do, right?

Tired

I don't have as much time to do things at the new house as I'd like. Part of that is because I don't like taking the kids down there. They tend to get all hyper and run around in circles...much like a herd of chimps on meth. (I realize chimps don't run in herds, but I really don't care!)

Anywho, today I bit the bullet and took them down so they could see the progress. The entire front of the house is pretty much completely open, except for some 2X4s that will eventually be a real wall. My homework for the week involved scraping up more carpet padding and cleaning some boards by removing all the nails. The Man (contractor/friend/life coach person) left me a handy scraper thing on a pole. I handed some smaller, hand-held scrapers to the oldest two while I used the bigger tool. They had a blast. The oldest even called The Man to say "thank you for leaving stuff for us to do!" (They're weird kids...much like their momma.)

Needless to say, they had fun. The 5 year old was on broom duty. The 3 year old was on "stay out of all the nails!" duty. It worked fairly well-no injuries. I even coached the oldest 3 on the fine art of pulling nails.

Ahhh, PROGRESS!

Okay, it may not look like a lot to some. I'm pretty happy with the progress so far. I had the joy of pulling nails and ripping up carpet. Ah, pretty green carpet-How I'll Miss Thee!

So, wall between bedroom and livingroom is completely out. There are some boards down where the walls will be...Got a shopping list a mile long and I'm just itching to go to Lowe's and SPEND SPEND SPEND! Okay, the SPEND SPEND SPEND part is a bit of an exaggeration. I'm not that excited to spend money. I am excited by progress though :)


My shopping list...(I'm sure I've screwed up some of the actual items, but the man knows!)

250 ft roll o'wire (12-3)
250 ft roll o'wire (12-2)
Two 2x4x12 boards
Two 2x4x10 again, boards
Sixteen 2x4x8 studs (those are apparently boards as well...)
Three 2x6x 8 boards? studs? who can keep it all straight?!?!
104 sq ft of insulation
Five ceiling fan boxes
Ten single gang (crips? bloods?) recepticle boxes
Two 2 gang yada yada yada
One 3 gang and so on and so forth...

Before class tomorrow night, I get to stop by Lowe's and check out the windows. Ah...windows.
Now, the pics!


Bye Bye Wall!




The boards show where the new wall will be! Yep, front door will also go bye bye.




Other wall and closet. The black stuff is old carpet padding that I get to scrape up. Yay homework!




There's the green carpet prior to being hauled away. Good bye, old friend.








Most important...one of my MANY boo-boos! Notice the ripped up carpet in the background? All me, baby!

A New Work-Out Craze!

I've been thinking I won't need to actually ever work out...I'll just remodel. After pulling nails and ripping carpet and throwing around broken drywall and paneling I'm going to be pretty buff. Okay, not really. The thought is a good one though...

Pictures coming soon on my bucket o' pulled nails and carpetless livingroom :)

Ugh.

Illness sucks. I've had a yucky cold since Monday. I had hoped to get some clean up done at the house, but I've just felt to0 bad. I did find a church that will take all the old-lady belongings off my hands. I just need to call them back tomorrow to schedule a time. Sadly enough, my only free time is looking like Sunday. I doubt they'll be willing to do a pick up on their day of rest. Maybe I can swing it on Saturday afternoon/evening. We shall see!

After the purge, I get to pull up 35 year old carpet! That's not going to suck in any way whatsoever :)

Demolition!

I took the kidlets down to the new house to show them the changes that were being made. I heard, from more than one child, "For the love of God, what DID YOU DO???" Once I explained it was necessary to rip out walls so they could have privacy (foreign concept with our current living situation) they were fine with it.

This was taken from the inside of the bedroom, looking into the living room. If you recall the pictures from the last post, this used to be the closet.

The living room-around the front door. The door will be moved to accomodate a bedroom.

This is Joe...he's standing outside of what is currently the laundry room. It will eventually be his bedroom. (The kid rarely has his eyes all the way open in pictures.)

And so it begins...

I recently became a homeowner. I'm still surprised that it happened. The mortgage broker could call me tomorrow and say, "Oops, I wasn't supposed to get you a loan. I'll need those keys now." It wouldn't surprise me at all. But, for now, I own a house :) For $55,000, I bought a 1,296 square foot house. It has a nice little yard in both the front and back of the house. It was built in 1972 AND HASN'T BEEN UPDATED SINCE! That's right, boys and girls...green (used to be shag) carpeting! Okay, so the walls were painted and there is new linolium in the kitchen...but really the green carpet cancels all that out, don't you think?

So, my plan (well, my friend/contractor/life coach's plan that I'm totally on board with) is to transform my slightly under 1,300 sq ft home from 3 bedrooms/1 bath to 5 bedrooms/2 baths. What would Bob the Builder say? (I have no idea, my kids never liked that cartoon.) Anyway, it should be an adventure, and I'm going to blog about it...WITH PICTURES!


These are the before pics of the living room and part of the girls' room. We're moving a wall and cutting the bedroom into 2 rooms. Today we ripped out all the dry wall between the wall on the left there and where the closet is in the 2nd pic. The 3rd is a "hey look what it was before" kind of pic. I plan to post the demolition pics as soon as I get around to taking them :)