drywall and dirt

Ok so we got back from Kentucky, and Dave started putting screws in the drywall. Lots of 'em.

And we spent yesterday filling in nail holes, and taping the joints, and doing the same old drywall mudding that you gotta do to make your walls smooth.

But let's go back to the dirt situation, from the neighbor's pond, that I ended my last post with.

I am not going to say I was happy when I first saw this....

When I was told we were going to get the dirt, and it would be a good thing so we could raise the front yard to the level it is supposed to be, I was ok with it.

But I had no idea it was this much dirt! And when I first saw it I was snapping pics with my phone and sending them to Dave at work.....WTH!!!!

This is where the dump truck drove up into our yard. This is an easy fix.

But all this.....not so easy.

I'm pretending it isn't there for now.

Dave did have to fix the gutters right away though.

Since the yard level was raised, the gutters were too low, and the tube thing that the water would run through was buried.

And then there was the issue of tearing the osb off of the porch to fill underneath it with dirt....to raise the level.

This was the area across from the bee yard. It had a huge slope to it and was very hard to mow.

But this is what the area looks like now! I'm thinking of moving my bees to it and we've decided to plant it in white clover.

We used to have a ladder leaning against the porch. We had to climb the ladder to get on the porch. Not anymore! Now we can just step up on the porch...

If it had a floor that we could step up on!

Cindy

Insulation, drywall, dirt, and a craft room!

I've got a mess on my hands! In between hanging insulation and drywall, I've been trying to get some order to a craft room. I've collected crafty stuff for years, as you can tell.



And now that the insulation is finished...

we're hanging drywall.

And it's very close to being done.

The hanging part that is. We still have to do a lot of mudding and taping and sanding...UGH.

In the meantime, our neighbor is having a HUGE pond dug.

Guess where all the dirt is going?

Yup....our place.

More on that later.

Cindy

Insulation

On Sunday and Monday, I hung insulation in the bath/laundry room in the basement. Why is it, that anytime I hang insulation, it is HOT out? When working with insulation you have to wear jeans, long sleeves, gloves and a mask. I took several breaks.
And speaking of breaks, I temporarily broke the stapler. I was fighting and fighting with it. After a couple of hours of it jamming constantly, I went and bought a new one. Dave fixed it, but he had to take the entire thing apart. Apparently it was some sort of jam.


Anyway, people think because it's a small room, it should be done quicker. Quite the opposite.

In a small room, especially a room that has duct work

and pex

and pipes and drains

and wires

you have to figure out how to fit it all in this small room. It would have been easier to have a big room. Then I had to figure out how to get insulation above and/or behind all this stuff. It was a long, hot, two days. I felt glass slivers in my skin even though I wore long sleeves. I'm glad it's over. So glad. The temps have gone up to 101 - 103 degrees outside. We don't have air conditioning in this room, but since it's in the basement, it's cooler than outside. It almost feels like air conditioning. Almost...

Cindy

Pex, Paint, and cleaning

House update....

This is called pex - this white tubing stuff....

and it needs to be run through the entire house, now. Even though, once again, we are only wanting to finish the basement bathroom. But we have to run it through the entire house, because it all goes through the basement walls/ceiling.

So we had to figure out where we wanted the tub, toilet, and sink, in the upstairs bathroom. Way upstairs bathroom....as in 2nd story. We already figured out the main bathroom. AND because of the placing of the toilet in the 2nd story bathroom, we have to move the door entryway. But we'll do that later. Way later.

So, when you consider all of the water faucets in the house, you have a mess like this. Which explains why we are not moved in yet.

My husband did all of this. I'm amazed.

And last Saturday we decided to paint the West end of the house, again, as we sang "we are stupid" to the tune of "Alleluia!" We should have painted it with paint to begin with. We have put so much money into this end of the house that we could have had it sided several times over.

So anyway, this is what it looked like after going through one winter of the linseed oil/turpentine mixture. Not good.

And because we used linseed oil on it, we had to use oil based primer on it.

What a mess. We had paint all over us. And we went through two gallons of primer. When I realized at 5:00 pm that we needed another gallon, at approximately 40 bucks a gallon, I called Mom and Dad. They went to Sherwin Williams, which closed at 6:00, got the primer, and brought it to us, just in time for it to start storming!

I am not kidding. We haven't had rain for six weeks. The grass breaks when you walk on it. And we got a storm, that lasted about 20 minutes!

Long enough to get the side of the house wet. We had to stop painting for the night.

Dave is on vacation this week, so we got back to it on Monday and finished it late Monday evening.

I never want to paint this end of the house again.

EVAH! You hear me?

And we got this room cleaned up. I failed to take a picture of it beforehand, but if I looked hard enough through some old pics, I might be able to find one. But I'm not going to. I'm too tired! You'll have to take my word for it. And Gloria's, and Mom & Dad's. They saw it. They know it was a mess.

So now that the end of the house is done, the pex are installed, and this room is clean enough to walk through, Dave is hooking up the water heater and the water softener.

And that is what's up folks. 'Cept for me working in my craft room, which I will show you later.

See ya,

Cindy

Dave has been working on the bathroom/laundry room in the basement for the last couple of weeks. Plumbing seems to be taking quite a long time. He has to think about the bathrooms upstairs, because the plumbing in those bathrooms and laundry room have to drain into the drains in the basement. It's quite the engineering job.

So he called me out there one evening to help him decide where we are going to put the toilet, vanity, tub, and shower in the upstairs bathroom. Who knows....I can't get past this bathroom in the basement! We talked it through, and figured things out. My goodness, who knew it would be like this.

These two pipes, above and below, had to hook up. He had a little bit of trouble with that, but it's done now.

Plus working above ductwork adds an extra challenge.

Also had to install a bathroom fan.

In the meantime, while I was in Italy, the concrete guy poured our patio! We went with terra cotta.

The color seemed a little bright at first.

But after it dried real well, and was sealed. I decided I like it.

Also had a piece of roofing fly off the house! He makes me nervous when he does stuff like this.

Cindy