Almost Done!

Yay!  The house is coming along good!!!

Dave is a neighbor who I hired to give me a hand with some of the jobs around the house.  He is awesome!

Bill has also done a great job helping me out.  When I snapped this pic, he about fell right off the ladder, because the flash totally spooked him.  Hehe.  :-)

I will say, I have done the majority of the work myself.  Most recently, I glued the tub surround in place:

Umm, yeah, my bracing skills are not the best, but it worked.  The panel kept trying to bubble up there.  I had to place the mop to hold it down.

The bathroom light looks good, and a minor hole from the old fixture got patched.

A new light for the hall helped to brighten the place up a bit.

Mom painted the basement door white.  I cut the scrap from the tub surround paneling to fit the beat up storm door.  It worked out well.

One of the most exciting jobs to have completed has been fixing those sinking back steps.  Bill was able to fill in the sinkhole and properly align the steps.  It took a few bags of concrete/mortar mix, but it's done!

The tree cutters dropped off a slice of wood.  Dave is planning on making a coffee table out of it!

I played with the pressure washer the other day.  After cleaning the basement with it, and the outside of the house, I used it to edge the sidewalk.

The neighborhood looks so much different without the grove of trees.  I can hardly wait for the new trees to be planted!!!

This past Friday, I began preparing the floors; I am planning to paint them.  Overall, I am not a fan of painting wood floors, but in this case I think it's the thing to do.  Removing staples and tacking strips from the carpeting was a time consuming job.

The basement didn't look that much different after I pressure washed it.  The mold is still there, but I sprayed it down with bleach.

The pressure washer did get most of the loose paint chips off and quite a few spider webs down.

Afterward, I kept the door open and ran a fan to circulate air in hopes that it would dry quickly.  Luckily, it did dry up nicely, even though the weather was rainy here.

Almost every evening at home, I make stuff.  Crocheting has been a hobby of mine ever since I was a little kid.  Here's a sneak peak of the latest crochet project, (I'll tell ya'all what it is soon!).  ;-)

Today, Mom went to the dungeon and swept up all the loose paint.

Here are the before pics, after pics will be posted next time.

Today was such a pretty day outside.  The first thing I tackled was cleaning up the basement windows. 

I had a paint mess on the glass from when I touched up the trim.  FYI-- masonry paint does not easily come off of glass like other paints do. 

I managed to scrap it off anyways, but it's not nearly as fun as regular ole paint.

Another exciting project today was reinforcing the front porch railing.

Bill was able to get me some custom  made rod iron "boots" for the railing.  The old section of railing has deteriorated to an unsafe condition.

Cleaning the baseboards in the house was quite the job. 

Painting them is exciting though, cause it means I am almost done!!! 

I've also been working on getting the remaining linoleum glue/paper off the wood floors.  What a tedious job!  The way it is supposed to work, is the hot steam iron loosens up the glue and then I am able to scrap it right off.  The way it really works, is the iron loosens up the glue, but not quite enough to come loose easy.  At least the wood floor won't have wrinkles in it.  :-)

The porch railing needs a bit of paint, but it's looking much safer.

I can hardly wait to see the progress this week will bring!  I have a feeling the house will be ready to list soon!!!  :-)

Garbage Day!

Hello!

The house $$$ Experiment is coming along GREAT!   So great in fact, that I've began thinking about staging the house!  I bought a handful of purple sweaters at a garage sale the other day, and I made throw pillows & doggie sweaters.

The pillows and sweaters were easy to do.  Basically, I just cut off the sleeves and stitched em up.  I turned the sleeves into doggie sweaters by cutting holes for Sophies arms er legs. 

Garbage day at the house was exciting!!!  Laporte had a town wide clean-up, which meant the garbage trucks picked up big stuff too!

Umm, we had the stuff!

Plus, tree removal was the same day!  We're getting new sidewalks and trees soon!  Sadly, the old trees were stricken with disease.

It's amazing that all that garbage fit into the truck. 

In other news, Mom and I went looking at-----  Another House!

 

It had built in speed bumps in the front room.

 
Tons of charm on the outside.

I love the stained glass windows.

If our experiment goes well, this may be our next investment:

Okay, back to the current house project.  I epoxied the sink and tub the other day.

The tub turned out fairly well after a couple coats.




The small pic above is the before pic.  The after pic below is the tub with only one coat of epoxy.

This is the kit that I used:

Mom cleaned the fridge!

Painting is still a huge part of the process.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to get the cracks covered in the sink.  I am beginning to think a new sink might be in order.

Jamie was brave enough to remove the skeletons from the cubbie under the stairs!  JK-- we left em there.

Prime n Paint, has been the name of the game lately.

Jean-- sitting down on the job:

The girls are eager to see how this whole deal will pan out.

I shall update soon.  Take Care.

Surprises & Treasures

Hiya Folk's!

Did I mention the tub was sinking?  Tis true!  The actual tub is visible from the basement.  The good news is, it seems to be well supported. 

 

The tub and sink are fixin to get makeovers, here real soon.  By that, I mean I am refinishing them to make them look new.  First, I need to finish painting the ceiling and walls, that way if I slop paint on em, I can fix it when I refinish em.

 The kitchen is rather challenging too.  The walls continue to drip with grease and grime even after being mopped with hot, soapy water.

I decided to spray oven cleaner on the walls!  I let it sit on there while I worked on painting the living room.  I contemplated the possibility of finding bare studs for walls when I returned to the kitchen.  That didn't happen and the oven cleaner worked great!

Mom and I are planing to pull up the old linoleum in the kitchen.  Mainly, because we want to see what kind of treasures awaits us in the cubbie hole, but the flooring is in the way.  Sigh!  Also, the kitchen flooring has a very soft spot in it, so that baby will need fixed.

In other areas of the house, I am happy to announce that I am still continuing to progress!  Painting the trim feels like one heck of a milestone to me!

My buddy, Todd, gave me a hand fixing the leaking toilet.  All we had to do was replace the wax ring.  Still-- it's a totally disgusting job!

I was very thankful to have Todd show me how it's done! 

I think the linoleum in the bathroom will stay.  I feel it is a good candidate for painting; more on that topic later.

The basement is still half full of plastic storage bins, full of stuff.

The plan for these bins, is to remove them from the basement and some day, Mom and I will go through them.  Perhaps, we will make some extra $$$ at a local flea market.

In the meantime, they are being stored in a utility trailer.  Wouldn't it be something if they were full of treasures!?!  Yes, we peaked, and they might be!  Most of them contain collectables of different sorts.  Oh, Mom found a box with a garbage bag a "yard clippings" in it.  Yes, really!  We properly disposed of it.