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.

wallpaper be gone!

and it was so....or...it will be so. I (Elizabeth) started the process. The beginning was actually pretty cathartic, like a good sunburn after it stops hurting and is ready for some OCD focused pealing. Then it got decidedly harder. All the parts that didn't detach the first try gave us grief for sure. But Sam devised a plan involving steam and goo and special tools too secret to mention and violia, down like Jerrico. (before that, we tried an different kind of goo in sam's compressor sprayer and i think it may have poisoned us. we didn't die.)

you remember betsy boo, don't you???

just wanted to show you the result of some disgusting work.

around 40 bags full of .... well, let's not dwell on what they're full of.

basement clean-up

before the cleanup:

This is Behr 1-part expoxy paint. Should last a while.

walk-through (before major work)

Well, here's some pics of a walk through, before major operations begin. notice the ugly carpet... and if this blog were scratch-n-sniff, you wouldn't want to scratch your monitor right about now...

outdoor project(s)

some projects in the great out-of-doors...

first, let's take a look at a freshly-mowed lawn.




These are some awesome lights we found at Building Value. even awesomer when they're lit up at night.

so we bought this house...

sounds like the start of a bad joke, no?