Weekend In Pictures

I am the sanding bandit! We did some sanding of the walls downstairs to smooth plaster from mudding. What a mess! Plaster dust everywhere! We were coated white-- if you look close, you can see it in my hair, on my face and shirt. I had to use a bandana for a face mask to keep from breathing in all the dust. We went outside afterwards and dusted each other off before we went into the main part of the house. I'll be so happy when this step of the work is done.


Had Firehand do some "modeling" of my rune pendant necklaces. I'm taking pictures for my etsy store. I've been trying to work up the courage to open an etsy store for--- oh, ages now. Nydia has recently become my cheerleader on this subject! Thanks, girlfriend!

Have been making sure the feeder is full for the birds. Here's a cute little finch who stopped by for dinner. Look how plump and colorful he is! I love finches.


Not pictured: We rented a few movies this weekend. Sweeny Todd (dark, gruesome and a musical, I've been wanting to see it for ages), Grace Has Gone (wonderful and sad film about a man who loses his wife in the Iraq war and is unable to figure out how to tell his young daughters), and The Golden Compass (intriguing fantasy with lots of moral/ethical questions). Firehand also watched Beowulf.

The Golden Compass was sort of filmed in a way that was confusing if you were not familiar with the story. The book is almost always better than the movie, so when we were at the bookstore this weekend, we got the GC trilogy to read. Looking forward to it.

Attack of the Pods

Remember when I posted pictures of our tree in bloom? Well, now the flowers have turned to "fruit"-- or in this case, pods. They are everywhere! The pods grow so thick and heavy that the branches of our tree begin to bow down.

I'm showing my Iowa upbringing by saying this, but they look similar to soybeans. Only not fuzzy and not growing in a field. That's how I remembering eating soybeans, right out in the field. Here in Colorado, soybeans are popular served as an appetizer in the sushi restaurants and are called by the fancy name edamame instead (the price is fancy, too). But I digress...

Our pod/beans are eaten by the squirrels. The squirrels leap from the neighbor's elm tree onto our roof, gallop across the roof and leap onto our tree, collect the pods and gallop back across the roof to go store them away. All day long. THUMP! Ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum...

That's what autumn sounds like around here.

Mudding & Laundry

That’s what I have been doing for the past two weekends– mudding the walls downstairs and doing laundry.

I’ve never done mudding before and it is hard work. But I’ve learned a lot about how to do it just by doing it– slapping it on, spreading it out, scraping it down. I’ve learned that corner trowels DON’T work for making nice, neat corners; so I’ve learned how to make corners without ‘em. I’ve learned that when you’re short, mudding requires that you have a variety of at least 2-3 step-stools or ladders handy for reaching high places. I’ve also learned that when your hands are covered in mud from scraping out the bottom of the container, it’s best to just wipe ‘em on your shirt. But the most important thing I’ve learned is that you shouldn’t mud the ceiling with your mouth hanging open. Something could fall in, and it wouldn’t be very tasty.

And while I’ve been doing all this learning with mud, I’ve been doing laundry at the same time. Laundry, AT HOME! Hallelujah! At long last! It’s only been FOUR MONTHS since I’ve had the privilege. There were a couple of times where I thought I was going to be able to do laundry at home, only to be appalled by water back-up when the washer drained between cycles. So, here comes the plumber, YET AGAIN, (”I’m getting to know your place like the back of my hand,” he says) and we determine that construction debris and some roots from the tree in the front yard are clogging our line, which he cleans out so thoroughly that he gives us a one-year warranty on the work. And just for good measure, he caps off the toilet access in the downstairs bathroom for now, until we can get the stool put back in, and he has us “shock” our sewer line with copper sulfate something-or-other to kill off any remaining roots. And NOW, finally, I can do laundry at home! Which is good, because it was reaching critical mass.

So, as of this past weekend, we have achieved our 3rd (and hopefully, last) coat of mud on the walls, and all my laundry is caught up. We celebrated on Sunday by having our traditional Sunday bagel breakfast, followed by a trip to the bookstore, which we haven’t done in ages.

Next up: sanding the walls, most likely.

Last Thursday vs. Today

Firehand’s parents were here for five days helping us put up drywall, mud and tape down in the basement. We actually have rooms again! Here are some pictures to compare and contrast, starting with the family room before:

And after…

Bathroom walls and framed-in shower with new shower pan before…

And after (below)… Installing the shower has been a bit tricky because of the window in the way, which is why it’s not quite finished being walled in yet. The contractor had to frame the shower stall around the window. The minus side to this is that there is a shelf in the shower stall, to the right, below the window. The plus side is that Firehand did an excellent job creating a slight slope to the shelf so that it will drain and not collect water. Because the slope is so slight, the shelf will still be handy to use for holding soap and shampoo bottles.

Also, we now have a little bathroom storage space, where before, when there was a tub/shower, there was none. MIL suggested installing shelves that slide in and out, since the space is narrow and deep, to maximize use of the space. I think it’s a great idea and we’re going to look into how to accomplish this once we get that far along in the building process.

Here we are with the laundry room before (looking through into the bathroom in the first picture)…

And after drywall installation… You may notice that we only did the mud and taping halfway down the wall; that’s because we have another idea for the lower half of the wall, more pics later when that project is completed.

And last, but absolutely not least, our shiny new support post, right where its supposed to be, holding up the house:

And here it is again, hidden in the new walls of the guest room (to the left of the doorway):

Now we just have to mud everything at least 2 more times, sand, prime, texture and paint! And then new carpet, new baseboards, new doors framed and hung, vinyl in the laundry room and bathroom, tile the shower stall, get a new sink and vanity cabinet installed, install the toilet again, install a shower door, finished the new bathroom storage space… yeah, its gonna be a while… and I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things that need done, too…

But we made excellent progress! It’s beginning to look ever so much better!

Blossoming

About 2 weeks ago, the tree in our front yard started to blossom:

Every day, whenever we leave the house or return, hundreds of little white petals float through the air and swirl all around us. It’s rather like a fantasy, reminds me of that 80’s movie with Tom Cruise and Mia Sara– remember Legend? And for the first half hour of the movie, wherever they went, little flower petals were magically wafting through the air, dancing in the sunbeams…

Yeah, it’s kinda been like that around here…

SPC~ Get Your Shine On #3

In the late afternoon/early evening, the sun shines directly in through my kitchen window, reflecting off the floor, the walls and even the refrigerator, making the entire room glow.

And as of this past weekend, the sun has a brand-new fridge to light up…

Our old fridge had been making the most horrible squealing noise off and on for at least the past six months or so. It would squeal and grind for a couple of hours and we’d beg it to hang in there for a while longer– refrigerators are expensive!– and it would stop squealing eventually and continue to run just fine.

Until this past week. It became clear that our fridge was gasping its last breath. It would only stop squealing if I came over and gave it a good solid thump; 30 seconds later, it would begin again. Our fridge was so ancient, we couldn’t even find parts for our particular model so that we could try to fix it.

So we spent 2 days pricing refrigerators at the home improvement and scratch-and-dent discount appliance stores. This is the one we ended up choosing. And since the plumber was at our house this weekend doing work for us anyway, we decided to ask just how difficult it would be to have a hook-up installed in the kitchen for an ice-maker in the new fridge. Not difficult at all, says he.

And so, for the first time ever in my life, I not only have a shiny NEW refrigerator, I also have an automatic ice maker. So luxurious! I feel extremely pampered.

To see more interpretations on the theme “Get Your Shine On” visit this week’s Self-Portrait Challenge.

Happy Noise

Lotsa sawing, drilling and pounding going on in our basement. We finally have a contractor and he’s begun work!

Did I tell you that after removing soggy carpet, carpet padding and 2 layers of floor tile after the flood, we made the horrific discovery that a very important structural support post had been removed? You know, the post that holds up one half of the house? Yeah. I guess it was in the way when the brainiac who finished the basement was building his wall, so… he just cut off the post level with the concrete floor and continued on his merry way.

Like I said, this flood has been a blessing in disguise. We discovered the missing support post early enough that no structural damage has occurred to the house. But if we’d never had to remove that flooring… our house would have started to sag and the walls crack and we would never have known why.

Consequently, replacing that post has been the first order of business. Last night Firehand and I both went downstairs and gazed adoringly at the shiny new support post, solidly in place, back where it belongs. As a homeowner, I find that little things like this make me a very happy woman. I am also excited about the newly framed and properly floated wall in the bathroom.

Just think how ecstatic I’m going to be when I get my new shower base and the new wall and doorway to the guest bedroom! And when the laundry room walls have been completed and the plumbing in there is fixed and I’m able to wash my clothes at home again… I’ll probably SWOON!