On the pegboard

I forgot to include a picture of the pegboard side of the garage with my previous update - so before I begin with our updated to-do list - here's a taste:

Before

After

Now on to the tentative to-do list for 2009 -- sure, we're getting a late start but... well - we just don't care anymore! *cackle*

Lingering Hurricane Katrina repairs in blue.

1. Replace main circuit breakers on outside of house (DONE.)
2. Brace kitchen sink in some manner other than that which was used by the 'professionals' to brace it. (DONE.)
3. Install threshold/transition between William's closet and his bedroom.
4. Replace light fixtures throughout upstairs.
5. Install ceiling light fixtures in game room/library.
6. Have skylights tinted to prevent upstairs hallway from melting.
7. Build a rabbit hutch.
8. Install dimmer switches on various light fixtures throughout the house (because we despise overhead lighting otherwise).
9. Replace rusted french doors on back porch.
10. Replace rusted ceiling fans on back porch.
11. Install ceiling fans on front porch.
12. Repair rotten column trim.
13. Repaint living room.
14. Reinstall a door for the guest bathroom.
15. Install a/c registers upstairs where the last crew not only failed to do so but also lost at least one register in question and all of the screws. Ugh.
16. Replace windows. All of them.
17. Paint the ceilings. All of them. House-wide. Ugh.
18. Make the roughed-in horrible storage room into the bathroom it was intended to be.
19. Remove broken grout and replace with caulk in all of those areas where some bonehead grouted up to dissimilar surfaces.
    
20. Touch up kitchen grout with stain (No - we never actually finished the kitchen floor. The kitchen floor made us insane. I don't want to touch up the kitchen grout with stain. Ever. But I'm putting it on this list because it just seems like I should.)
21. Replace disintegrated chandelier in foyer.
22. Paint stair rails and banisters.

Of course there's more to add to this list when everything is checked off. There's always something to add to the list when everything is checked off.... This is the nature - the very essence - of homeownership, is it not? It has certainly defined our homeownership experience thus far.... And if we're doing it wrong - it's too late to tell us now.

More to come.

It didn't actually take three months to do this....

Click here for before

But we did finish the garage.

If you can really call it finished ever. There are plenty of somedays out there -- just as there are around the house. Someday we would like to do something snazzy with the garage floor. Someday we'd like to devise a better storage system for the seven (!) bikes out there. But for now we are done with an honestly massive overhaul of our car-storage area.... The proof that we've accomplished something amazing: We can now regularly store at least one car in our two-car garage.

Sooo.. If it didn't actually take three months to finish up - how long did it take? One more day. We were literally finished the night after my previous post and supremely happy with our results. We actually spent a good chunk of the next evening sitting in the garage in lawn chairs like complete lunatics just so we could enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Updating the blog is where we ran into problems.

Immediately following our garage-redo triumph I became sick again. Yes, again. I recall a couple of weeks of pain (and pain killers) and frantic trips to doctors offices and ultrasound technicians and labs - but the exact order and nature of all of that is lost to me now. I eventually ended up having a very hastily scheduled surgery to remove a chronically inflamed gall bladder and a wayward lymph node. The last few months have been recovery... not from the surgery as much as from the drama (not trauma) of the whole thing.

And now.. we're back.

Tiny, teeny, pathetic projects are on the horizon! A post with our updated to-do list is to follow.

In the meantime, hello DWSHKON readers! Nice to be back.

At last!

We have managed to make our garage look even worse than it did when we started. I admit - I didn't think it could be done.

We've picked a nice gray for the walls to go with the cabinets that we will eventually purchase and install... and once we get past the minor sheetrock problems we'll be ready to paint the whole place.

Ah. Progress.

Garage Redo: The saga begins

After a couple of weeks of recovery - and a totally unrelated trip to the emergency room for me this past weekend... We are ready to officially begin making our garage less of an unholy mess.

In order to motivate (read: publicly humiliate) us to really roll up our sleeves on this one and get going... I present the following 'before' pictures:

The pictures only get worse from here. The patchwork look on the pictured wall represents where a pegboard once hung... where wire shelves were once anchored to the studs with thoroughly stripped 2" screws... and where the sheetrock was cut out and replaced at 4 feet following Hurricane Katrina. The clutter is just our life.

More sheer ugliness. The bench in the left-hand corner of the garage pictured here was removed by Dave just yesterday. There are no pictures of the gaping holes in the wall where said bench was once attached -- yet.

Somewhere under that pile of stuff you would find two neatly-stacked rows of packed moving boxes which represent our original plan to redo the garage in an orderly fashion.

(Yes. That is a Christmas reindeer. Yes. It's February. I know.)
This is our most-used entrance to our house. Luckily, we've grown so accustomed to conditions out in the garage that we barely notice it -- that is until we take pictures of it and publish it on the internet for all to see.

And just to lift the spirits a little -- here's a little progress. Dave has officially installed two Hyloft hanging shelves in the space above our garage door for storage. We have room for at least two more of these nifty units -- and intend to use it.

If you've ever read this blog before then you're probably aware that our first step in any project is to make an even bigger mess of the area than what we were originally trying to correct.... As you can see from these pictures -- we have completed step one.

I'm currently doing a little sheetrock repair here and there while we save up money and sell possessions so that we can afford some halfway decent cabinetry for the long (west) wall of the garage. We had originally planned on wall repairs and painting before we got started on storage - because of the budget constraints... However - the fact is that putting in the cabinets first will a) give us somewhere to store the unholy mess while we paint and b) considerably cut down on the amount of wall that needs to be painted.

As always -- more to come...

Not bad for a couple hours work

Particularly for a couple of hours after a long day at work (for Dave) or chasing five cranky children around the house (for me). And after cooking and consuming a large burrito dinner. After watching Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer at least seven times. OH - and all of this after being up for a great deal of the night before with our inconsolable (teething) one year old.

Ugh. I feel incoherent.


So here's the first peek at the carpet tile for George's room. We like it. We hope that George does too. If he doesn't that's just too bad. Actually - none of this really matters anyway... It's only a matter of weeks before we're finished and he moves in and this new floor is completely covered with dirty socks and Popular Science magazines.

More to come.

Weakened Warriors

Since we've now resorted to using weekend time for what remains of our home repairs and projects - I suppose that should qualify us as 'weekend warriors' on the home improvement front. However, it's hard to feel like a warrior when scaling back to a single project every couple of weeks after several years of constant back-breaking labor.

Still -- we can be happy when something gets done. We finally finished laying and grouting the upstairs bathroom floor as promised... And will (hopefully) move on to replacing the trim - baseboards in particular - and knobs and light fixtures over the next couple of weeks.

We need to seal the grout sometime soon.

We also started putting together what we've intended to be the guest bedroom upstairs (ever since we no longer had a need for a home office for Dave). The walls need decor. The window needs a curtain. There's a need for lighting and furniture.... And we should probably repair the ceiling where Dave stepped through from the attic a couple of years ago....

Finally - I should update the status of our property-buying project: Scrapped! The realtor did manage to get the appraiser to admit that she had appraised the wrong property... However - the value of the new appraisal was no different. Though the property owner was willing to sell us the lot for the new appraised value - we frankly had lost all interest. The question still remained whether or not the lot -- even the right lot -- could be used for a camp... And besides - a property that was such a hassle to appraise and inspect would not be much of an investment. True. Yes.

Paint comes in a can, it was put there by a man...

who works in Lowe's. A man finally put my Sandy Shell Valspar Ultra Premium base paint in a can. He was wary at first and said they're not supposed to do it, but I convinced him to do it as a color match and that everything would be fine. And everything is fine except Anita and I have had no motivation to work on the house since we finished William's room. If anyone has any motivation to spare please share.

And we'll always have these memories to share....

I am hormonal. We tackled a major home improvement project.
I suspect there is some cause and effect going on here.

Right about the time of each lunar cycle when I become my meanest -- it also becomes absolutely necessary that we accomplish some major task around the house. I think this has been referred to as 'nesting syndrome' in the past. That just sounds too sweet a description for the raging three-headed, order-barking, hammer-wielding beast I become. But then, come to think of it, I have run into quite a few poor-tempered nesting birds in my life.

Getting the baseboards up and painted and caulked on Saturday was a major accomplishment. But not all that remarkable unless you take into account that we managed to do it with our marriage still intact.

Me: What are you doing in that corner?
Dave: Nothing.
Me: Yes. I know there's a gap. Looking at it won't make it smaller.
Dave: It is a pretty big gap.
Me: Yes. That's what caulk is for.

(Silence)

Dave: You think caulk will cover that?
Me: I highly recommend you get out of that corner now.

(Silence)

Me: (screaming) Look! The walls aren't square okay? And it's hot in this stupid room and I don't want to take out what's already nailed. I messed up the cut. It's not perfect. So shoot me.
Dave: (softly) You're right. Caulk will take care of it. It will be fine.
Me: (hysterically) NO. NO. You're just saying that so I don't get hysterical. You hate the corner. You hate the room. You hate me.
Dave: (more softly) No no. It will be fine. I was being silly - of course caulk will cover it. You're doing a great job and I love it.
Me: (evilly) Oh reeaally? Then why do you keep staring at it?
Dave: I'm not staring at it. I'm no where near it.
Me: Yeah but you're thinking about it.

(Silence)

Me: That's it. I quit.

(Sound of heavy footsteps stomping down stairs)

Repeat that scene a couple dozen times and you have a pretty good idea of what it was like upstairs at our house on Friday and Saturday. (And Sunday. Laying the carpet tiles didn't bring out the best in me either.)

But.. we did it! And you know what I'll always remember about the experience? I mean other than the really sore back and knees and the sensation of sawdust up my nose.... I'll always remember just how quickly we laughed about it all later.

Roof & Hoot both have two O's

And that's about the only thing I can think of that might tie today's two stories together. Sorry.

Great Horned Owl Photo by Keith Skinner (http://bayouvisions.com)

But late last night - somewhere close to midnight (we went out to enjoy the rare 70-degrees-in-June weather)... Dave spotted something on our then almost-completed rooftop... At first he thought the roofers left something up there for tomorrow - then he called me over to look. I recognized it immediately -- our big spooky owl friend who frequents our yard on moonlit nights. I've seen it many times over the last couple of years since Katrina.. and heard it even more.... But usually he prefers to perch at the very top of our neighbor's willow tree where it hangs over our yard. This is the first time I've seen him actually sitting on our house.

Maybe he was inspecting the new roofing job... I hope he approves.

Today is no where near 70 degrees - as you can probably tell by the heat-haze swallowing the house in this photo taken earlier this afternoon.... BUT the roof is finally complete.

We need to do a thorough visual inspection before we settle payment with our contractors tomorrow... and I'll be sure to get some better pictures of the job between now and then for the blog.

Still with the roof thing

I've given up on worrying about my plants now... They never stood a chance, I guess.
I just want the roof done.

I think - though I can't be sure because I didn't look everywhere this afternoon.. That the large section which includes the skylights is the last section to be done before our roof is complete.
I just want it not to leak.

More to come. Stay tuned.