Christmas- moving and building...AAAaaaahhhhh

Home Sweet Home 2010

  Christmas day saw us out of the old house and into the new. Old house swept, steamed and bleached. One garage empty one to go. God bless you Mary McIntire and all those light bulbs. I hope your smiling from heaven up there. Wayne got your light bulbs moved today and he may have reached his breaking point on this last garage. Yesterday was Christmas though and Angie had to work from 6 am till 2 pm. Since yesterday her dad and I still liked each other we were busy little elves working hard to surprise her when she got home.




Remember this corner that would someday be Angie's room?

Here is the same corner as of Christmas 2010!!!!!

The Mantle Piece mirror now head board was a Christmas gift find from a local antique shop.




















The busy elves also hung her medicine cabinet- Maybe the only place I wish the cabinets were not oak- but it will work for now. I painted her shower ceiling and around her shower stall.
The grays were here choice. Lightest gray on her bedroom walls. med gray in her bathroom matches her bedroom ceiling and the darker oil based around her shower is around her bathroom window and will be on her vanity cabinet. White sink, chrome features. yep the oak will have to go.
 No pics but she also got a closet rod and shelf and a door knob.
Next will be 2 shower curtains. One will cover her shower and the other will cover that hot water heater next to it. Couldn't find anything gray local so I will look up north when we see Barbi.
 Her floor temporarily has self stick tiles down but we have enough white ceramic tile to do her floor when we have the funds to rent a wet saw to cut them. Heat Lamp and exhaust fan are in. Needs a timer for the heat lamp so that it can't be accidentally left on. 250W bulb. Thank you Mary for light bulbs that Wayne had to move today.
Another Christmas present was Angie new padded toilet seat.
Tell me Santa didn't have her on the nice list!!!
Moving has stressed us all to our limits but we are going to keep on keepin on, or kill each other trying!
Merry Christmas Everyone!!!  Pam

Almost a house

Have not had time to blog but I will up date some photos for those that are following and praying. I do hope that every one that is following is praying!!!

Angie's Bathroom has plumbing

my room before

I am getting better at this plaster stuff

from the living room to my room

lets see some more of that hard wood

Some of my rooms furniture. It does feel better to see something moved. Everything is away from the walls to allow access for the electrician.

before from front door toward kitchen

after from front towards kitchen. Looking forward to us and dog not tracking dust onto the hard wood

lets look back at the kitchen

Kitchen today

Now you saw my bedframe in my room. I cant move my mattress into my room till Angie has a room. Must not leave my children behind. So lets see her room.

Before

now

new floor and paint

tile going in

Thought we would finish this project Saturday but we had 8 hours of sewer issues instead.
 Got this far Sunday before we ran out of glue with the hardware store closed.



 One more in progress pic that we didn't finish Sunday. Rough weekend-

This is our other bath or will be. The shower tub and sink all are completely functional now. The toilet and floors are next.

 We are tired sore and overly emotional but we are plowing through. The end is in site and it looks like it will be a happy one.


Hope everyone's holidays are happy and construction free. Pam

November news

  Spent some time recovering from the creepy crud bugs. That is cold and flu bugs not spiders.
  The house kept moving along without me. Now  I am back to share some more pics for those that enjoy watching us grow and to show off  some of what we have gotten done.
   All the sheet rock downstairs is up and screwed in. Thank you Bobby for helping us figure out some of those tough spots and for your patience and ingenuity with us and our budget! Bobby was here in the day time this last week while Wayne was at work and I had my hands full with the one year old I babysit. In the evening I get to go over and mud and tape the joints. I have not even come close to keeping up with the rate the sheet rock is going up.

  Wayne spent Friday and Saturday working on the back of the house. to the right is the before. The big black rectangle is where the back door used to be and the tan rectangle is where the old window was. We also discovered when it rained last week that there was a drip in Angie's room from the seam between the 2 roofs. So after a couple days of tar and flashing the leak is fixed and the stucco is patched. Now we have one door and 3 new double insulated windows. The window on the left is in my laundry. The middle window is Angie's room and the little window on the right is Angie's bathroom.

Now for kitchen progress

getting better

spooky kitchen

Our dishwasher should be here Tuesday and the kitchen is getting closer. What a nice surprise to see that those cabinets are oak!  =) 

This pic was taken before the electrical outlets went in yesterday. I am sure I will enjoy all those outlets when we are in the house. Right now it seems a little excessive.

Yesterday I finally got back to my project. we have to see some befores first though.

remember this

and this

then this

and at least one of these

then this

now a layer of plaster started

yep thats me playin in the mud!

yes that is a sawhorse in the middle of my living room

finally done at 1:30 this morning

lets see one of those before pics again

That is a shadow under the window and by tonight it should all dry to a uniform color. 

We are all really happy about how it turned out. 

Especially me since...

 I did it all by myself.

 I will try to post more soon but everything is starting to come together so fast.

 Tomorrow we should have the floor in upstairs. 

Upstairs?

 Have I mentioned an upstairs? 

Here is a sneak peak at some of the before pics.

 Before the sheet rock you could see the stairs between the living room and my room.

 Here is Wayne on the stairs after building this pony wall and working on leveling floor joists and putting in studs for sheet rock. 

Post you again soon.

 May the Lord bless all your endeavors!

Pam

Fall into Autumn

   Good morning and good progress in all endeavors for  our project and anything you may be trying to achieve as well.
   To the left is a picture of my kitchen. Those pipes hold the promise of the modern convenience of a dishwasher. Modern conveniences are so awesome. I am so excited about living in a house with a dishwasher again. I can not even begin to tell you how happy this will make me. My oldest daughter Barbi was an awesome dishwasher before she moved out. Her younger sister Angie is not that adept or consistent in this important endeavor.


Here is that same part of my kitchen with walls up. Yay! We love walls! The stove is almost where it will be. It is sitting out in the middle of the room now in front of the corner it will be in. This weekend we had some help from our friend Bobby.


Here is Bobby. Bobby has been a framer by trade but now beside being our sooper helper he works at the local dairy. I think he is missing his cows. I try to moo a lot and stand in the way so that he doesn't miss them to much. Thanks Bobby! We saw a bunch of sheetrock go up this weekend.

You boys definitely deserve a cold one.
Another friend that came buy this weekend was Greg. He got all my breakers in my breaker box. This little house will have 57 outlets when we are done. I guess there has to be one every 4 feet along the wall. Then each bedroom needs to be on a Arc Fault Interrupting breaker. The kitchen and bathrooms and laundry are all on Ground Fault Interrupting Breakers. Thank you Greg. I will try to get a picture of you soon.


My project is getting closer to complete. Wayne gets 1000 credits as he patiently allows me to play in the mud with only a little helpful advice and never making me feel like he could get this up much better and faster. He says I am doing very good and he is just glad he doesn't have to mess with it. I got a little slowed down with a design element that I changed my mind about how to do. Wayne says the more time I spend planning the less time we have to spend undoing things that didn't work. I did get my brown coat done.

This is what I started with. To the right and below right is the same spot on the wall



To the left is where I got to last week. To the right is part of this weekends work.
This is the coat that the plaster will go over. It goes on brown but will dry gray. The plaster will go on gray and dry white.






Not great lighting but you can tell where this weeks wet meets last weeks dry. This weeks mud goes all the way over the door and down to the floor.  It will all cure to the same color. Today I will get my wood trim cut and ready to go so and my secret, to be revealed, design element ready so that I can get the plaster done before the weekend. Bobby will be back thru this week to get more dry wall up and we have tape and mud guys coming in the evening. This week I should be able to get the kitchen cabinets assembled so that next weekend I might be able to have running water in the kitchen and a dishwasher. Ta Ta for today! Pam

sweet sore success

My personal project got a good start this weekend. Well it got a good start weeks ago as I started researching and planning. I started Friday with this-

    This is my front living room wall. A piece of which I shared before (above right). See under the right side of the window where there is a plastic bag. It is full of more plastic bags and fills a whole where the adobe bricks are missing for some unknown reason. This house has many mysteries as we try to decipher what Henry(seller) could have had in mind or thought might have worked somehow. 

     This is my wall. Wayne with a few friends has been very busy putting up sheetrock and taping and mudding the rest of the house making very straight square walls with smooth surfaces and square corners. This is where they have decided to let me have an outlet for my creative energy and let me honor more traditional building methods. Now adobe homes in this area may be structured out of more native natural materials but they are not fashioned in a native american style. They were built in mass for the miners that mined some gold and silver but mostly coal from the many mines that dot the landscape all through this county. 

     Still adobe structures are not perfectly flat and smooth and should not have square corners. 

    The house I rent next door is also adobe, but only the exterior walls. All the interior walls are of a more modern frame with dry wall. My new home has many interior adobe walls. They follow the lines of the original rooms. It is easy to tell the adobe from the others even if they have been covered by more drywall or paneling. The walls are 18 to 24 inches thick. 

    Tidbit- Adobe is not an insulator  at all. It is a capacitor and stores heat wonderfully. No heat can be stored in insulation. So adobe does wonderful things when it is understood and for that reason much of the world's population lives in earthen homes quite comfortably while nearby homes of new, manufactured, technological sources leave the occupants panting for air conditioning or screaming for heat. quote from green home.com 

   So Friday I visited my nearest local adobe supplier, my shed out back, with my trusty side kick and construction assistant Truth. She kinda looks like a blurry fat belly-ed pig in this photo but we are both getting lots of exercise hauling and toting and running back and forth between houses. 

She is assuring me that there are no spiders.

 She lies.

 I can locate at least 3 jumping spiders every day. Harmless but creepy just the same because they, you know, jump. 

Black widows are also plentiful. You can tell when you are in her vicinity. Her webs feel wiry and tough. more of an obstacle than some filmy  annoyance. She also doesn't really lay out a pretty symmetrical creation like Charlotte in Charlotte's Web. She tends to kinda glue other debris and leaves together. However she does not seem really aggressive and would rather hang on and hide or skittle away to safety.

                 The spider indigenous to this area that I have not seen but cause me the most heeby jeebies is the Brown Recluse or Fiddleback.  I have never seen one because, you know, their reclusive. But their reputation is much more aggressive when disturbed. Their bites are a lot more nasty to.

    Now a black widow bite may cause some stomach or leg cramping in a healthy adult and really only life threatening to children unless there is an allergic reaction. 

The brown recluse when it bites causes a flesh eating ulcerating sore that grows and deepens. 

 EEEEwWwWWW! 

 O.K. enough of the arachnophobic insights.

 Lets see how far I got on my project. 

Are you ready?

Ok this is just a step in the process and I still have 

a ways to go after this step dries.

But it is definitely progress.

Are you ready now?

TAAAA! DAAAA!

Two wheel barrows full of mud from my own recipe. 

Wayne shakes his head at me because I want to use my own tools that include but are not limited to the garden and my kitchen. A rubber spatula is awesome in so many applications. My purple flowered gardening gloves should be the next construction craze. Till next time, after two Ibuprofen and a hot bath, and 36 hours to set,   Pam