Still Alive - Lamest. Blogger. Ever.

Wow - talk about leaving you hanging!  Like I said, lamest blogger ever.  I'll work on that.

Speaking of working on that, round one of major-ass renos are done.  This would include:

• 22 new windows (and yet not all are done yet)
• New roofs on the garage and family room addition
• New roof on front of house
• New front of house (ground floor porch with supporting cast, enclosed front porch with supporting case and of course, 2nd story enclosed porch with supporting trusses and the like)
• New propane furnace and ducting to 2nd floor
• New propane hot water tank
• New steel I-beam in basement with jack posts = no more sagging floors = awesome
• New jack posts on 100 year old beam
• New wiring throughout house (old wiring was original knob and tube = fire hazard)
• Ducts cleaned
• Small leaks fixed
• New garage door with opener beyotches!
• New person door to garage
• New Arts and Crafts lights flanking new front door with 2/3 window = awesome (again, I know)
• New garage light above door = being able to see in the dark = major coolness

I think that's it - not too exciting cosmetically except for the facelift on the front of the house - curb appeal has majorly improved.

Let's see, my Mom (shout out here) has been great with helping me rip out the nasty (we'll just leave it at that m'kay?) carpet from upstairs, the cat-pissy smelling (not courtesy of my boyz btw and thankyouverymuch) and demo'd the wall in the basement.  We've also ripped out the suspended ceiling (won't tell  you what showered down while demoing..), removed skanky trim and most of the first layer of paneling in the basement.  It doesn't smell nearly as much - in fact, barely notice anything - either that or I'm just used to it.

Change of plans - kitchen was going to be one of the last rooms to be done but has moved up the list to being the first.  Why you ask?  Well, let's see - the first incident was finding a shredded mouse hanging out of a hole beside the junk drawer (fess up - we ALL have one in our kitchens) - that was before I'd had my coffee one Sunday morning.  I can't get the blood out of the horrid wallpaper and peeled off what I could.  On the good news side, I'm developing a stomach of steel living out here.

Next, was going to get my oven mitts out of said junk drawer to find chewed holes in them and mouse turds everywhere.  Threw the oven mitts out and haven't opened the drawer since. Now I'd like to mention that this drawer is isolated from the others by my dishwasher.

Now and then I see the cats sitting on the counter and staring down or at the wall beside - freaks me out because I KNOW the little bastards are in there somewhere.....

The cats are great mousers and bless their hearts, they do their jobs.  I keep telling myself that every time I come across (or nearly step on) a corpse.  Again, stomach of steel - just call me Superwoman.

The last straw was taking out my wooden spoon from the utensils drawer at the polar opposite end of the run of counters of the mouse loo and finding a turd on it.  That was it.

I purchased my new kitchen and countertops this past week (this is what gets me excited now people - would somebody please shoot me or introduce me to a great guy?).  The cabinets arrive Thursday.  We'll talk about that later.  I will post before shots and after shots and you can guess where the kitchen came from.  Oh the fun and the mystery!

Now I'm going to attempt to upload some photos - I know you're waiting with bated breath.

These are some of the in-progress photos of the front. The following pictures show you the finished facade and how I did it up for the holidays.

I'm not done the front yet - got to figure out how to add some colour in there.... stay tuned.

Well, done for tonight.  BTW - loading up pics = easy and I should have done this sooner.  Ah well - before kitchen pics coming up in the next post.

Until then, I leave you with this quote from a country song (yes, I like country music)
" God is great, beer is good and people are crazy."