Demolition

So, this is our front porch now.

We decided that since we have so much work planned for the house we might as well pay the extra money to have a dumpster that is emptied each week. Thank goodness we made that choice! What you see on our front porch is what is left after the dumpster was filled with a whole bunch of carpet. So, once the dumpster is emptied, we can fill it again with the stuff on the front porch. Unfortunately, we still have plenty more to tear up in the house. Oh well, we'll get rid of it week by week.

As you can imagine, all of this demolition is creating quite a mess. The carpet had plenty of dust in it, but the big culprit is the tile and it's concrete backer board. Andy chiseled up the tiles and then pulverized and tore up the concrete backer board that was under the tile. He had hoped that the backer board could remain down with the laminate laid on top of it. Several flooring people at the big box stores said that was probably the best way to do it even. But of course, that wasn't what I wanted because then the entry and our breakfast nook (the two places with the tile being removed) would sit about an inch above the rest of the flooring. YUCK!

Here's another picture of the layer of dust that is coating much of our house currently.

We have one "clean room" downstairs. Even with the plastic on one side and curtains on the inside, some of the dust still made it through.

Andy learned that the recommendation to use a sledge hammer to demolish concrete backer board should be followed. If you use a wood splitter rather than a sledge hammer, you might have a little too much force. You might go through the concrete backer board (including the metal mesh in the middle of it) on down to the plywood subfloor. Since it is not advisable to have big holes in your subfloor, you would have to cut out and replace the subfloor in those areas.

OOPS!

OOPS again (sigh - actually you might hear sounds more like a grizzly bear)

2012 New Year letter

My goodness, another year has passed. I can’t really even remember what was happening at the beginning of 2011. We had just started to settle in to our house in Fort Worth. Andy’s boss had told him to settle in to his position because there wouldn’t be any shuffling around or transfers to other departments in 2011. We planted a vegetable garden in the back-yard; the squashes, cucumbers, and tomatoes were growing like gang-busters, and then… Major changes started in May when Andy was unexpectedly offered a new job at one of his company’s plants in California. So, in one month, we packed and closed up things in Texas. We drove away at the beginning of June with our Honda Civic packed to the brim with clothes, valuable, the two pets, and us. We were all so thankful to not get into the car after three days on the road.

We lived at a hotel for four LONG months. After a month’s delay in the purchase of our new house, we finally moved in with a borrowed air mattress and two newly purchased Adirondack chairs. Our household goods were delivered, and I got busy trying to dig us out of boxes. Things were quickly put away so that we can have everything off of the floor quickly and easily. We planned this so that the nasty carpet can be ripped out and new floors put down in January of 2012. Then we can put everything where we truly want it, making the house into a home. We have all kinds of renovations planned for the next few years, including a new façade, kitchen, bathrooms, patio, and an outdoor dining area. Now doesn’t that sound like a whole new house?

The new house is in a small town with one four way stop. The town considers itself a community of equine enthusiasts although we also have a local vineyard. Despite its rural location, Andy only has a 20-minute commute, and the stores we frequent are only about 10 minutes. Our property has over three acres, a small barn, and arena. The house is a two-story farmhouse with 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, and a 3-car garage. Andy is thrilled that we have a wood-burning fireplace that we are using regularly since the temperatures are below freezing at night.

After about a month in our new house, our cat, Cappuccino, went out one evening to go potty one last time and never came home. We assume that he became coyote or mountain lion food. We still miss him quite a bit.

We’ve had a few other notable occurrences this year. Our laptop’s hard drive crashed while we were living in the hotel. We thought this wasn’t an enormous issue since we have a back-up hard drive that Andy is quite religious about using. Unfortunately, we discovered that it backed-up our applications but not any of our documents, pictures, or music. So, basically, we lost everything that we were trying to save. The folks at our local Apple Store managed to replace the burned-out hard-drive and restore the operating system. Apparently this was happening to everyone with our type of laptop (something to do with hard-drive vendor quality control). Recovering the data from the old drive will most likely require a clean-room (you know, the kind with the full-body suits and gas masks, where no dust exists) and a lot of time & money. The fried hard drive is the main reason that we can’t really remember what was going on at the beginning of the year.

Andy’s sister, Cici, had her second baby at the end of August. He’s very mellow and smiles a lot. The birth of Hudson Fritts brings the count to half a dozen nieces and nephews for us.

We both read/listened to the entire Harry Potter series this year. We also saw the final film in the series this summer. I enjoyed being able to go through the books one right after the other instead of reading each when it was published.

Andy is really enjoying the challenges that his new job is providing. He now does quite a bit of creative thinking and problem solving while working on lots of “cool stuff”. He’s fitting in quite well, and they saw fit to give him a promotion, despite having only been in CA for a five months. Sometimes his brain is quite tired by the time that he gets home, only to have to begin his schoolwork at night. Three courses and a written thesis are the remaining obstacles for his Master’s degree.

We hope that you have all had a lovely holiday season and are looking forward to many adventures in 2012.

Fireside Chat

You're welcome history lovers ;)

We took this picture before our goods were delivered from storage. We had our stuff from the hotel, borrowed air mattress & linens, and two newly purchased plastic patio chairs.

We have quite a bit of cut wood on the property so we decided to have a nice relaxing fire one evening as we had very little else we could do (no tv or internet).

Snow!

You can just make out the snow on the mountains in the far distance. We haven't had any snow at our house, but we did have some sleet a few days ago. It probably won't be long before our evening temperatures are below freezing, but the temperatures rise 20-30 points during the day. It will take a while before any sort of snow could stick around the house for long.

Our house

Andy's birthday picture

Renovation Projects

At this point I figure I need to occupy myself and make a plan for what we will be doing to our house once we close. Previously, I've looked for images of rooms and furniture for inspiration. Now, I'm looking for diy projects to educate myself about what we can do ourselves...expertise and time required to complete each... I have found a blog that is AWESOME (is an exclamation point really needed after all caps...probably not but I am really tempted to put one).

Remodelaholic features projects, crafts, and recipes of big and small sizes. The author and contributing writers are so good about provided detailed information and pictures for all of the steps of a project. The blog also has buttons that link to other's projects. What a plethora of ideas! As I know very little about diy beyond what we've done (crown molding, installing laminate floors, baseboards), I appreciate all of the steps and tips. Before Andy & I got married, I'd never even painted a wall. I've learned a lot with our first house but am going to have to learn a whole lot more with this house. Here are some of my favorite projects:

Make your own curtain rods out of conduit pipe

5 year kitchen remodel - that's a really long time, but they did amazing work

Doilies as wall art

Make a garden out of a pallet - I'm thinking herb garden

Make children's bookshelves out of a pallet

Hanging pots and pans inside of a cabinet - can't wait to do since our kitchen doesn't have the big drawers that are so popular today

Remodelaholic also has had multiple posts on re-doing stairs and adding molding/millwork ( board and batten, crown molding, baseboards, archways, pillars/columns, built in bookcases) that I found very informative.

The author also gave a tip that I think will really help us figure out what we want to do in each room. She recommends taking a picture of all of the walls and printing those out on paper. Then use colored pencils to draw in what you are considering adding or moving. This is beautifully demonstrated here.

If any of you have any diy blogs that you really like, please pass them on to me.

EARTHQUAKE

I feel like I have been initiated into California life now because I experience my first earthquake last week. Andy didn't feel anything at work though. It wasn't very strong; I just noticed the bed shaking a little bit. I thought that the dog was leaned up against the bed as he scratched.

Trying to buy a house

So after waiting a month for all of the utilities to be hooked up, we've had all our inspections and appraisal done. There are a few repairs that we have to make (because the bank selling the foreclosed property won't do ANYTHING) before our loan can be funded. So that is happening in the next week. We'll do the other repairs once we close on the house. Our bank has told us that the closing date is September 26, but we are working with them to try to make it happen a little sooner. I think that we wrote our offer on the house on July 15...how crazy!

We would love to be able to move in a beautifully refinished house but have decided that will not be the case. Paying for just under two months of our time and the hotel and the unknown cost of the repairs to our house after the cost of purchasing the home means that our bank account won't be thrilled. So, we've decided to be patient for most of the renovations we would like to do to the house. We'll replace the carpet in the bedrooms before we have our good delivered, but the other flooring will have to wait a little while.

We will be very excited to be able to move in to our house whenever that comes to pass! The house will stay a diamond in the rough for a while but will eventually start to shine.

Gifts for new moms

I've always enjoyed posts on this blog, but this post, Ways to Bless a New Mom, spoke to me since we will soon have a new nephew. We haven't lived close by many family or friends when they have had a baby so we haven't been able to these things for the mothers in our lives. But I have talked to several women who have had a baby. I've heard of wonderful ways they have been helped by other women...food deliveries, childcare, grocery shopping, pick-ups and drop-offs, laundry...

One of the best ideas I've heard was experience by my sister. The family moved to a new city and joined a new church shortly before the baby's birth. When they returned home from the hospital, the ladies of the church had a schedule so that someone dropped off food every other day for several weeks. There was always enough food with each delivery for dinner and leftovers for lunch or another dinner. I thought this was an amazing ministry for the ladies of the church to provide. My sister was able to get to know ladies in the church as well as have meals and fewer groceries to buy.

The author of the blog post, says her wonderful friends would also clean a bathroom before leaving her house. I never thought about how hard it might be get that done...finding the time or energy...and who cares about the dirty bathroom when the baby is crying... I also imagine that it is hard physically to reach all of the different places in a bathroom when recovering from labor. I'm definitely adding this one to my list of things to do for new moms. Sorry Cici that we can't do any of these things for you when Hudson comes home.