gifts of spring

so this little post is going to stay outside of the house. sam's been sanding and it's looken' real good...but i'll let him tell you all about that.

I wanted to share a couple gifts that spring has brought to us...

gift #1 : Trash picked lawn furniture! once we have some of our other priorities out of the way, like plumbing and whatnot, all we have to do is slap a coat of paint on this little set and get some cushions and viola! we are ready to enjoy the great out doors. come to find out, our neighbor dave didn't like the style, so we were happy to relieve their curb of it.

gift #2: Our very first flower clipping ever from our very first yard: pink hyacinth. Everyone elses hyacinths bloomed about 3 weeks ago. i kinda like that we have late bloomers. it's nice to have things in common with your flowers.

gift #3: Our neighbor's enormous crab apple tree cried all over her driveway until it had a lovely coat of hot pink. I walked to her house with my camera, and she happen to be outside, so we got to meet....sweet little lady with thick as bottle glasses, simultaneously embarrassed that she hadn't swept her driveway (why on earth would you want to sweep?) and tickled that i thought it so beautiful to make a special trip with my camera. She told me she planted the tree 17 years ago, when a friend gave it to her after her husband passed away. and the tree still cries it's beautiful pink tears every year.

It's Been A While

Hello, faithful few followers. Yes, it's been a while. I won't bore you with details, but I will show you pictures.

First, just to get everyone up to speed, we destroyed the bathroom on the 2nd floor. It's gone.





So sad. We'll build a more different bathroom on the other end of the 2nd floor hallway. This old bathroom was put in as an afterthought, and only left about a foot and a half walkway between the wall and stair railing.

Next up: the 1st floor "closet" door off the dining room.



Huzzah! Got it covered.

And now, in rapid succession, the kitchen and 1st floor bathroom get insulation and drywall. Watch closely now.... wait for it....


Awwww, dang, did you miss it? Sorry, not doing it again. Next, Paint!




It's coming along nicely. Expect to see some floor-re-do-ing pics in the coming weeks.

bye for now.

the bird's nest

we had to quickly design a floorplan for our future 3rd floor, so we know where to put the plumbing in the walls. enjoy the "pictures".

our birds, our tree and our electric lawn mower

There are all sorts of fantastic (and messy) things happening in bud and ellies house. sam will have to tell you about that stuff with great precision. in the mean time, i would like to share photos of

#1 our lawn mower...given to us by the family of Burl and Merl the patriarch and matriarch of the block who live across the street from us. (btw, Merl had a brother named Earl). The owned the house next door to us, to the right when facing the house, currently owned by Bernie (who also shares the block with multiple family members. Anyhoo, the grand thing about this lawn mower is that it is super light weight and we can release it down our hill on a pully to mow the grass. The bad thing about it is the chord that you have to alway watch and move, so as not to chop up you power supply. And a former bad thing about it was for the first 5 minutes of mowing it made a horrible ten-pigs-squeeling at the top of their pigly lungs sound. Sam fixed this problem (see photo 1)

#2 our tree got all gussyed up for fall. Aunt she purdy?

#3 and be sure to admire our birds. they flew directly above our house, clearly in the patch of sky that we purchased, so they belong to us now.

shrubbery!

so i've (elizabeth) been painting the front porch for the last two weekends, while the weather's nice-ish. someday we'd like to have thick spindley columns and ornament all victorian like, but for now we will spend extra cash on the more urgent needs like a furnace and insulation and whatnot....the front shrubs were a bit of a concession though...a little bit of beauty in the middle of a great deal of chaos (productive chaos) does the heart good. plus shrubs and trees are 50% off at the local nursery these days. we got 5 stewartsonian azeleas that will hopefully grow into one big ole hedgy shrub and turn bright orangy red with spring flowers around march/april. the two topiaries are lilacs.

sam is framing a new door for our downstairs bathroom as i type and putting up framing to cover the current two doors we are walling over. i'm glad he knows about all that stuff, cuz i certianly don't. Infact, I'm not even sure I have the terminology right. refer to photos below if you are confused. nathan is standing with sam in our bathroom, chatting about renovation woes and joys. he and his wife becca just bought a house within spitting distance from us. (not that we plan to or even wish to spit on them)

alright, all you lovely people. tell us what you think. should we open up the ceiling? it would help us get all the spray-foam in the cracks and tighten up the room, but beyond that, it would be a purely aesthetic decision.

really, tell us what you think.

in the kitchen with sam and elizabeth...

oh, kitchen, we hardly knew ye.

so, we discovered that the kitchen walls / ceiling have no insulation. zero. the kitchen consists of a 12x13 room with three exterior walls. not a good place for zero insulation. also, the ugerly plastic tiles had to go one way or another. so, we did what any overkill-prone people would do. down came the walls. plaster, lath, and all. we'll look in to closed-cell sprayed-in insulation, since we only have 4" of stud bay clearance (fiberglass = R12, closed cell = R24). I'll cut an access panel for the attic space and lay out some blankets of R32 fiberglass or something.

i also discovered a moderate case of dry rot in one corner, which may have come from an upstairs bathroom or malfunctioning roof flashing. i have yet to formulate a plan for this. anyway, enjoy the pictures.