things getting done

This has been a busy weekend. It's been a list crossing off kind of weekend. The kind with a few sore muscles to remind you, that you got a lot done.
Well it finally got warm here. I know it's crazy but here it is middle of may and it is the first weekend that the high was above 50. It was actually 85 today. So with this warm weather Eric and i decided that we should look at the ceiling fans while we were at the hardware store. Then wouldn't you know the fans that we had liked before were on clearance. Now priced at $75 from $105 and only three left one of which was the floor model. So we happily bought the last two fans. We hadn't planned on it but it worked out wonderfully. I am enjoying their cooling breeze now.
Then we said to ourselves we had better buy some edging stones before they sell out. We waited too long last year and the store sold out. While Eric was installing fans i put in edging stones around my pond enclosure and i have almost finished the tree enclosure in the front yard. In between trips to the store for additional stones i removed another six feet of vines from the driveway fence. I also filled the newly fixed wheel barrow with drive way dirt twice. I am slowly but surely chipping away at that project list.
We squeezed all this in, in between two birthday parties. Eric's went wonderfully on Friday. Everyone ate lots of food but only the Hawker's braved the cold to watch the whole movie. Then we went to wonderland for a friend's five year old birthday today. Eric and the girl's mini golfed and had a blast.
Well i am tired and dirty and tickled pink about it. Hope your weekend was good too.

projects

projects that are in the air, started, need to be finished, or otherwise in some state of development. In no particular order.

DRIVEWAY- 1. Gravel driveway 2. removal of dirt for gravel 3. prep area that dirt is to go 4.remove vegetation from fence and near fence 5. apply fabric screen to fence
GARAGE- 1. remove old roof 2.apply new roof 3. paint 4. scrape old paint
WINDOWS- 1. measure, count, determine pieces needed for storm windows 2. price out storm windows 3. buy storm windows 4. install windows
LIGHTING- 1. install new light fixture in dining room 2.install switch in dining room 3. purchase ceiling fan for living room and playroom 4. install fans
KITCHEN- to numerous to list but will name current 5. 1. paint window frames 2.paint window wall 3. fix holes in walls 4. paint existing cabinets brown 5. put new knobs on existing cabinets
FURNACE- no idea what needs to be done but i have two furnaces in my basement. the one installed is before energy ratings existed. the new to us one has a decent energy rating.
GARDEN ENCLOSURES- 1. Edge stones around tree out front 2. Edge stones for porch flower bed 3. edge stones for pond area 4. edge stones for flower bed by lilac bush 5. Edging for hedge in front yard

sunshine

my house is the perfect house for a fat, old, house cat.
The sunshine comes through our 6ft tall windows and pools on the floor. There are several of these large windows in every room of the house. We enjoy the sunlight filling our rooms as long as the sun is up.
Our current cat is not old, fat, or much of a house cat. She prefers to enjoy her sun bathing from the top of a tree. She really only comes inside to say hello, get a drink, a good scratch, and a nap in a lap. Then she is off again to catch those pesky birds and chase squirrels.
Our previous cat was a stately, large, house cat. Every spring as our hardwood floors turn into carmel pools of sunlight, i think of him pondering the day away. He was determined to find the best sun spot in the house. He did not catch birds but he enjoyed watching them while he napped.
I miss my Franklin.

being responsible

So, I may have mentioned that I am terribly eager to redo my kitchen. In case I haven't mentioned it, I have ants in my pants and a tax return burning a whole in my pocket to redo my kitchen.
One little hitch. I am a fiscally responsible person. Heck that's why I feel confident in accomplishing a completely new kitchen with a $2290 tax return. You see I am also a good mom. My darling little girl needs over $2000 in dental work. I am still waiting to hear how much the hospital is going to cost for the dental work to be done in. We are going to have Kaitlyn completely knocked out in a hospital and the dentist is going to do all the work in one shot. It is this best solution to save her teeth. The dentist was worried that if we tried to do it in several appointments, that Kaitlyn would only last for one maybe two appointments. If she were to get too upset after that we would have to completely knock her out to finish. Not to mention that she would then have a fear of the dentist and hate to go the rest of her life.
My dreams of a kitchen with cabinets instead of metal racks, actual counter space to cook on, counter tops that are not fake wood, and a hood over the stove to vent grease....... will just have to wait. I have waited seven years for a new kitchen, one more won't kill me.

monday and all that goes with it

I always have a happy euphoric feeling after i finish cleaning. A job well done always feels good. I also feel more peaceful when my surrounding are in order and tidy. Mostly though when it comes to cleaning the bathroom i think i get that light headed feeling from breathing in to many chemicals. I am currently a little light headed and taking a break while bathroom airs out.
My house is tidy on all fronts. The bedrooms, living room, playroom, dining room, kitchen and basement all picked up. I have even made major headway with the laundry. If it's clean it's folded and put away. If it's dirty, it's downstairs waiting to be washed. I am almost back to normal after not doing much for a week. A little elbow grease goes a long way.
We made good progress on our kitchen this weekend. We worked out the time frame on many things, priced out a few things at home depot, we are ready to paint window wall, checked to see if the cabinets we priced out last Aug were still available, and cleaned & organized shop area of basement. So much prep still to be done before we gut the kitchen to refinish the floors then put it back together in a different order with new cabinets, sink, and counter tops.

Ahhh.... the magic of Saturday

Happy day folks. It has been a busy one for us.
First off I love sat morning cartoons. Girls woke up early but it's sat. So I snuggled them in with a blanket on the couch then got them a banana, blueberry bagel, and a glass of milk. Checked my on line TV guide and set them up with a channel that had appropriate cartoons for an hour. I took a shower uninterrupted, did the dishes and had a cup of coffee. This only works on Saturdays. Maybe it's because Eric and i are both home, maybe it's the cartoons, maybe Saturdays are just magical, I don't know.
I also got to watch my baby brother play a hockey game today. He is almost 16 and i love him to death. He plays hockey and travels almost every weekend to play. He's only home to play a few games a year and i try my best to see him when he's home. It was a fun game to watch and they won. GO CHIEFS!! or as Samantha chanted through out the game Go Cheese Go! Go Cheese Go! really cute her clapping and cheering for the cheese.
We ate dinner at probably the best Chinese in Spokane Peking North with my mom and older sister. The girls call it the soup restaurant with Chinese food. They love the egg flower soup there.
Checked out the new WinCo Foods. Their soy milk is more expensive than walmart $1.20 more a gallon. We buy allot of soy milk between 12-14 gallons a month. So sorry WinCo but walmart did not lose a customer today.
Last but not least we watched changeling with Angelina Jolie. It was good. It broke my heart, made me want to cry, then still managed to end with a chance at happy. Gotta love anything that Clint directs.
It is now late and i am tired. Sleep tight and have wonderful dreams.

Our 1908 house

I have been looking online most of the morning at vintage light fixtures and turn of the century bathrooms and kitchens. While not and sometimes while looking at the pictures i have been reading a cute blog about a couple that have been restoring their 1912 bungalow near L.A. After reading many of their posts our house is in much better condition than i thought. We have not run in to the problems that we could have and that they did. Not to say we haven't had our own fun with our house.
I am now unsure if after reading all of this that i am more excited to work on gutting and redoing our kitchen or more nervous because maybe our luck has run out. We have been very lucky with our house. Although it has been neglected in some of it's more than a hundred years it has also had some very loving owners. We bought the house in Feb 2002 after it had been vacant for about a year and a half. Because our house has had loving care and fix it quick years, most of the time we discover gems in our house. Poorly applied drywall, in disrepair, once removed shows beautiful wood trim and a light switch that was walled in. A light switch that was left in the on position and still operates the celing light in the room; a light that currently has a pull string. More than once we started one project and because of certain discoveries while working, when we were done we can cross off two other projects from our list.
Our bathroom has a walled over window in it. It currently is still walled over but the window goes to the backyard and the insulation that was put up against the glass is visible. When we pull down the wall will the two inch trim and crown & base molding still be in place around the window? Will the wall tiles that appear to disappear under the wall still be intact? If our luck holds out, then the answer will be yes to most of that. If the construction style continues from other projects we have undone in the house; the window ledge will have been sawed off so the plywood would fit better but everything else will look just like it did before someone decided to cover up the window. It's the reason that they covered it up that worries us. Was their a leak of some kind and instead of repairing they just covered it up? We will only find out when we pull down this poorly installed and never finished bathroom project.
so your next question maybe is, it's been 7 years since you bought the house, why haven't you pulled it down yet? The answer is a simple one. We worked on our house non stop for a year straight and planned a large wedding. After that year we were married and our house was livable. We decided we would take a breather.
Four years and two kids later we decided that we needed the backyard that we had mostly forgotten about. (We live on a park we never needed the backyard) After 4 months of daily sweat & tears, along with @ 2 tons of discovered concrete, & $900 we had a play area, patio, enclosed pond & garden area, sprinkler system and lots of beautiful green grass. Now we are sitting in our awesome backyard enjoying the fruits of our labor and there is this insulation filled window staring directly at us. We had mostly forgotten about this window. It's easy to do if you never look at the house from outside in the backyard.
And there on our patio table a plan was made to finish the work we had started 4 years earlier. The backyard project got us back on the restore the inside of our house wagon. The writing is hard to read because of the severely beat up knuckles and there is little red spots on the paper (i mentioned the blood, sweat, & tears that went into the backyard) but there in writing a plan was formed to finish the inside of the house.
We are now on year two and items have been crossed off that list. As we steadily if not slowly have started to work on our home after our 4 year breather.

Finding the thing you have been looking for.

We have been revamping our house, just a make over really. New paint, new furniture, new drapes, sprucing up the old furnace grates, and putting in new switch plates and outlet covers. We have an glorious old home that we love. It's over 100 years old and it has all the charm and character that an old home has. Ten foot ceilings, 4inch trim on the original hard wood floors, gorgeous crown molding, beautiful molding around all of the 6ft tall windows, built-ins like a china hutch and dressers in the bedrooms, anyway we love it. The light fixtures have been giving us a bit of a hard time though. At some point in time someone replaced every light in the house with the home depot "glass dome with brass trim" special. They are ugly, to say the least. We have been looking and looking at habitat for humanity and volunteers of America and browns building supply but nothing has really fit. We are restoring the house to a point in it more glorious days. Needless to say modern is not what we want and nothing from the 60's - 80's fits either.
Today we stopped by habitat and looked not expecting much since we have been looking for almost a year now. And there it was, a 50's style silver chandelier just the right size for our dining room. Then if that wasn't enough to just be beyond awesome, it was only $25. Even the cheap ones we have looked at were $35 and would require that we put more money into them bring the price to closer to $60. Not this one, it's perfect.
Now I just have to wait for Eric to install it. Then our dining room will officially be done.
One light fixture found, six to go.