Future Bird Bath?

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Update--We are down to 9!! (;

No more word verification

ologeo and pacti are two words Im gonna have to look up...
Meanwhile, you can stop entering silly words for verification.
If my friends arent reading my blog--I DOUBT bots are.
Prove me wrong!

A Laugh at my expense

**Dont try this at home**
In my eagerness to use up samples..."Natural Dish Liquid" does not mean dishwasher safe.
I even read the little package to see if it said -Do not use in dishwasher-
As you can see, It didnt.

Project # 117 & 121

What looks to be innocent little pavers covering our patio--are actually giant cinder blocks!!!
This is what it takes to remove one in the center with your bare hands(and available garden tools)
20+ pounds each.
And the reason we have water with nowhere to go underneath???
They have been filled with sand and dirt.
Who wants to help us empty them?


And an update on Travis baby beams (Travis does not approve this comment).
Our move upstairs date was postponed after he spent a good 6 hours on these 6 ft.

Each beam being 30ft or more, that would be oh... 54 more hours for phase 2.
Phase 3 is the detail work(60 more hours?!?!)
And Phase 4 is staining these bad boys!



Im off to update our to do list. I was a bit eager writing it the first time.
So many things that seemed important are irrelevant in the short term.

The easy stuff

This is how we spent 2 hours in the course of 3 weeks.

Fixed slider 5 mins
Free-screwdriver

Aligned cupboard doors 10 mins
Free-screwdriver

Fixed lower kitchen faucet 30 mins
$2.69 washer

Fixed toilet running 30 secs
Free, bend rod

Fixed dripping outdoor faucet 20 mins
69 cent pack of 2 washers

Superglued screen door handle 30 secs
75 cent superglue

Replaced thermostat 10 mins
$30 new digital one

Doorbell working 5 mins.
$5 batteries

Fence latches 5 mins
Free, twine and screwdriver

Straightened fence 30 mins
Free, Shovel dug some holes, filled some holes

Bulbs in over oven light 2 mins
$6 for 2 bulbs

A house not about to make you tear your hair out?
Priceless

Public apology

I would like to publicly apologize to my neighbors for the spreading of dandelions.
I will get to it(read travis will get to it) when we can.
Until then...Make a wish!

First fix

The last walk thru someone wise put a bucket under the dripping back faucet...
the next day it was over flowing.
The next day we emptied it 2x.
The next day we emptied it 2x.
The next day we emptied it 2x.
The next day we emptied it 2x.
The next day we emptied it 2x.
The next day we emptied it 2x.
The next day we emptied it 2x.
That was not a mistake--we emptied it 2x every day til we moved in.
69 cents...saved us from having a swimming pool under our patio
Travis is forever my hero... I told him not to bother with it that day... I mean we had JUST loaded and unloaded a 24ft truck and hadnt eaten lunch yet.
But like he ever listens to me.
Maybe this picture explains why the seller didnt fix it. You cant even see the faucet
Here it is drip drip dripping.

And the magic bucket.

After it was done, the moving party sat and watched the remaining drips.

Imagine 5 adults watching a faucet drip. for over 5 minutes.

First 1 sec apart.

Then 3..

then 5 seconds, 7 seconds, 13 seconds, 30 seconds!!! Wooot.

And we continued to watch...

1 minute... 2 minutes...5 minutes..

and here we lost interest.

Travis is amazing!

Birthday BBQ

Quickly thrown together BBQ for my last day of 29!
Of course I was too busy drinking and eating to take any pics.
This is all that remains of proof:

Amazingly enough, our house is still standing and the flaming lemon tart was delicious!

Here is Travis posing for an action shot.
Best. gift. ever!
(The chef is ARMED. Hows my cooking?)

We even had a new neighbor stop by! Old neighbors and new neighbors. What a night!

Pre-garden pics

2 weeks ago
1 weeks ago

2 days ago

2 hours ago

1 hour ago

Now!

I think it is time for a nap!

Lets do the TIME WARP agaaaaain...

It's just a jump to the left ....

I have many of these...the covers are in the garage with paint splatters on them... I feel like Im at school
No, the picture isnt sideways.. I have inherited 2 of these... they put off almost NO light. I think all the light was sucked back to 1970...

This one isnt too bad... once it was raised up from eye level.
*Warning* Do not look directly in to the fixture...

These--if they werent covered in 10yrs of grease(Grease?) would be nice. How can you go wrong with round white lights? Cute retro and aesthetically pleasing. But still 70's

I dont even want to talk about this one. Its the first thing you see when coming in the door--eeek!

If my house was a submarine--this WOULD be fitting.

I believe my grandparents had this in there kitchen.

And the BEST for last---the FIRE DETECTORS!
Not smoke, no. FIRE. When FIRE reaches my ceiling... these go off, like a school alarm bell waking you from a bad dream. Too bad we would be unconscious from the smoke inhalation by then...
I love Travis even more for removing these monstrosities from our ceilings.

And now back to 2010!

Time Warp

In case you had any doubts, the tile from my fireplace is ALSO from the 70's. I had hoped I could find 1 single tile to make this look more complete, but no.
1 single tile. Now I get to learn to do tile... someday. Luckily its less than 20sqft so even with nice tile it shouldnt be to expensive. Oh--now Travis tells me the entry way should match-doh!

Carpet fiasco

We inherited some pretty dirty carpet... so I scheduled a guy to come clean them....
And he said he put on extra water because they were extra dirty.... I assumed(ASS+U+ME) he would have sucked up EXTRA dirty water... WRONG...

This pic below, is after we removed all the carpet on the stairs--a very disgusting process...4 DAYS AFTER THE CLEANING!!!

And then we removed 92 staples from each step and 92 staples from every riser(no, I didnt count) it took about 3 hours to remove them all...

Now this is the first morning in our new house, hungover, and before breakfast (read: leftover chinese)

The 3rd stair from the bottom was STILL WET 4 days and 3 hrs later. Wow.

We are going to give this guy a chance to pay us for the replacement carpet... given they were only DIRTY when we moved in, and not mildewing as they were 4 days later.

Stay tuned to see if we learn about small claims court and smearing names on the internet!

Or if we get a check from the guy. Ill definetly tell you who he is once Im done.

Beware when you hire carpet cleaners til then!

Sneak peak!

Here is a bit of our progress so far. If you want to see more you're just gonna have to come visit!

Stay tuned for before and afters... someday Ill find the camera cable and sit down(sit?!? I havent sat in over a week with all this work, sounds lovely) to upload some pics and post them here.