Garage!

He thought he was being cute when he put this sign on the toilet...



The parents came down over labor day weekend to complete the task of framing out and installing a garage door. The garage is perfectly capable of having a garage door and fitting a car inside, but rather it has two people doors that the motorcycle won't even fit through. This was my main concern.
After ripping out some sheetrock it is decided that it will be a much easier job then anticipated.
This picture shows the walls that will be torn out to put in one wall with a garage door on it:

Here is the wall from the outside, with a people door making the garage practically useless for vehicles.

When we were tearing out the walls there were many problems that we found which started with termite nests and damage to the studs. There were no termites though so that was good.

Front of the garage, working on getting the siding off in one piece so it can be used later.

The next problem was a village of hornets nests, this haulted productivity until wasp spray was bought. This picture shows that there was an extension added to the front of the original garage. The lighter wood is new, the dark wood is old.

Upon closer inspection the dark wood wasn't just old, it is dark as a result of extensive fire damage.

We also found that there was mold on the walls that we were taking out. We have to think about how to keep the water from flowing through the garage when it rains and rotting the wood again.

There was this little wall that stuck out about a foot from the perimeter wall, it was kind of in the way for driving cars into the garage and I wanted it gone. When we went through the sheetrock it was revealed that it was the original outer wall with the siding still on it.

Here is the wall again, it was really in the way.

It took longer to get the walls torn out then it took to put it back together

We put in a people door outside the back door, yay!

More pictures to come of the completed front

recent events

So I do not have any pictures because:



event #1: This morning after using the toilet, I flushed it then pulled up my shorts, which had my phone in the front pocket (I learned after the high school incident that if I kept my phone in my back pocket then it would end up in the toilet) and the phone fell in the toilet just as the water was being sucked down and with it went my phone... never to be seen again, or so I thought... I even went so far as to put my hand in the toilet (it had clean water) but nothing, all those precious pictures of my kitty were lost.



I discovered that you can call people via gmail which was pretty cool, but they couldn't call me back which was a bummer.



Event #2: I took another flight lesson in an open cabin plane and hardly had any motion sickness, yay me! and I was so prepared this time, I had ginger ale, ginger snaps, bracelets, other meds... Towards the end I was feeling like I needed to take a deep breath, drink some water and take a walk, but we landed and took off a couple times and I learned how to turn, it was great!

Event #3: I came home from the flight lesson to find the toilet taken apart on it's side and my phone in the bathtub! I may have just married a closet handyman! He told me that he decided that we should be adults and do it ourselves so he did and what he described sounded disgusting. My phone still doesn't work (and I didn't even try), but now the toilet does!

Pictures may once again ensue once I have a phone.

Windows

So today was the day. After long procrastination I finally decided to tackle the window project and realized that it was more difficult then was expected. I have sash windows which means that they have cords connecting the windows to weights hidden inside the wall to help the window stay open. Well, on the side of the window there is supposed to be a little cut out that is called a weight pocket to make accessing the weights easy...my windows don't have this. I took the windows basically completely apart and then ended up taking off the trim around the window to get to the weights. Tomorrow I am going to strip the paint off the windows and then repaint them before reinstalling. Luckily we have a storm window also, so no bugs are getting in while I have the window all torn apart. This window was kind of a practice run, next time I will take pictures at every step.

Today we also found some baby squirrels that don't even have their eyes open. They aren't kittens, but we still couldn't leave them, so they are in a box and tomorrow morning I will be taking them to a wildlife person to tend to them. I will maybe post pics tomorrow.

Little Things

I have been stalling to get the windows started because they will take a lot of work and I think it will take all day or maybe two to get the paint stripped and repainted...
So I have been doing little things such as:
I got some new doorknobs. I put the decision to The Nana about which door knobs she wants and her vote was the crystal, so she brought me more and these ones are a bit different.

I also had her bring over some assorted skeleton keys of which only one works so I am able to lock people in or out of the study...


We did have a twin bed in here, and a queen in the garage, so now the twin is in the garage and the queen is in the study. I want the colors to be yellow and blue, and our flannel sheets are blue so they ended up on the bed. This bed remains comforterless until I am in possession of more than one queen comforter. This is really turning out to be a nice guest bedroom/ study.

I randomly wanted a new doorbell, even though our old one worked. The old one was one of those plastic rectangle ones, and this new one matches the house so much better and it was only 5 dollars. I will eventually need to paint behind it, where the old one was.

A little story about today: I have been thinking about taking pilot lessons, and the lessons start next week, so I went today to the airport to sign up and was offered a ride in a little plane. I was let to sit in the pilot seat and taxi the plane and do the take off, but not long into the flight I started to get motion sickness as we flew further from the airport until I finally told the instructor who could see that I was having a hard time and turned around. As we got closer I was very concerned that I might actually get sick in the plane and was already preparing to use my shirt as a catch all if need be. Thankfully we made it down without further embarassment and quickly went back to the lobby where there where couches and I rested until I could drive myself home nearly an hour later. Once home I stayed in bed another couple hours until the husband arrived and could make me some food.

After feeling so awful, I'm not sure if I still want to have pilot lessons, I have until next week to decide.

Shut the door!

So I have been working on painting the doors in the study and boiling the paint off the hardware. The last door has been giving me some trouble. The door would not shut, so I have been sanding the edges, and it now shuts, but will not secure into place where you have to turn the handle to escape. I finally identified that the cause of the problem was that this metal piece did not line up with the piece on the door that fits into it. You can see the black marks on the door jam where the door has been hitting, and where it should be hitting.

So it would have been nice to have a chisel, but a screw driver and hammer worked just fine to move the metal piece up about a half inch so the door can now shut properly.

I should be done with the doors today and maybe work on the windows tomorrow!

Door knobs

As I've said before, the previous tenants painted over everything:

Today I took off the hardware on the doors and boiled them with baking soda and the paint came off very nicely. These are two different door knobs, I have two of each in the house, I'm trying to decide which ones to go with because I want them all to be uniform.

I also cleaned out the lock, now all I need is several skeleton keys!

It's all in the details

Once again, I got quite a bit done today. The study is almost finished. We moved some furniture in today and it looks like a guest bedroom/study finally. I'm going to have to find some bedding for the twin bed, probably good will. I am finished with the walls, but still need to paint the ceiling.

Disclaimer: The room is not really this lemon yellow, it is just because it is night and the lights are yellow.

We finished scrubbing the floor and put in the book shelf.

Here is the corner with the bed and the crown molding which I painted. Tomorrow I will fill in any gaps with caulking.

I finished the two layers of quarter round on the baseboards and painted them, they look so nice and match the ones in the living room.

Garbage kitty has started climbing into her cat carrier to sleep. I have been giving her treats every time I see her in it to encourage this behavior. Hopefully next time we road trip putting her in will be easier.
Hopefully tomorrow I will caulk the crown molding and paint the ceiling. I still have to work on the windows and paint the doors. Almost done!