I learned something today....

I learned that we are slobs.  Maybe some of you already knew that and are happy that we have now come to this conclusion ourselves as it has saved you an awkward conversation!  We are completely out of the Huxley house.  I spent ALL day cleaning it and I didn't even  have to do the bathrooms- I did those yesterday!  I had a few friends watching kids and as I dropped them off I said- I am just going to go clean today- I should only be a few hours!! HA HA HA!  The floors were horrible and took more than a few passes of the cleaner AND then spot cleaned on my hands and knees and then a few more passes of the cleaner.... granted that was only in 1 room and the others were just mostly gross.  After cleaning downstairs I glumly walked upstairs knowing that there was a toothpaste mess in the TV room.  That's right, toothpaste blue toothpaste. The kids who tattle if someone breathes their air watched the baby do a little artwork on the carpet with toothpaste as his "medium". nice.   ANYWAY unbeknownst to me a friend who was over yesterday cleaned it up for me!  Amy--I LOVE YOU!!  that's right, I dropped the "L" bomb.  Anyone who cleans up toothpaste and soil....(yeah, that was the other mess- Harrison had a cup of grass growing in his window sill and it tipped and was smeared into the carpet--his way of cleaning it up)  gets the "L" bomb.  ANYWAY 7 hours later the walls still aren't clean.

We have friends who don't let anyone touch their walls....I used to think that was a bit much, but after today I think that we are going to adopt that little rule.  My "magic" erasure today was paint.  The walls were painted with flat paint.  flat flat flat.  Flat yellow, flat darker yellow and flat white.  White in the stairwell and the hallway.  Really????  Yeah, there is no way to clean that except with paint.

So sorry- no pics today, just a really long and ranting post BUT get ready for some kitchen news and pics in the next few days-

The Kitchen cont.....or eeeeee the horror!!

 OK you're right, this is not my kitchen.  This is a picture of what was in the linen closet- ick  seriously?  wood paneling contact paper?  You're not foolin anybody with that.

 ahhhhhh much better.  This house may be small, but this linen closet is HUGE!  I can fit double layer of towels in this baby and in the words of Taylor..."this would be a great place to hide for hide and seek."

Here it is.... no that is not swiss cheese, it is in fact the kitchen wall.  yeah, that's right.  Termites.  LUCKILY that is all old damage and it did not penetrate through the wood.  SO we will not have to rip out all the framing....phew!  We had the termite guy come out and inspect just to make sure that there wasn't anything new and we are in the clear AND we learned a little tip:  You are much more likely to get termites from new construction.  Yup.  Termites are subterranean insects and all the digging that is involved with new construction disturbs their hives and that is when they notice all this lovely fresh wood to munch. 

 Here you can see where the water pipes come out.  We are having a guy come out and reroute them through the wall to the sink.  Which is why we pulled all the drywall off.  THEN Arrrrrrrrmando will come and drywall it all up for us.  Apparently if you want drywall done in West Lafayette, there is only ONE man for the job!  

 There are/were 4 layers of linoleum.  We had one of the young men come and finish this little jobby.  ahhhhh the joys of paying someone else for something that you REALLY don't want to do but needs to get done.  Which is why Arrrrrrrmando will be doing our drywall.

Here is the "progress" in packing my current kitchen.  I hate moving.  For those of you keeping track, this is our 12th move.  blech.  

*sigh*

I know I know- it has been 2 days since my last confession----err I mean post.  Patience people!  Rome wasn't built in a day.  I have finished painting the bookshelves in the Family room and the girls room.  I will get pics of the finished products up ASAP!  I promise.  In the meantime- here is the cabinet update.  Today at approximately 9:53 am my phone rang and the caller ID said "The Home Depot"  eeeeeee!!!  I was so excited!!! UNTIL the lackluster voice at the other end told me that my cabinets would be here on July 6th......bleh...what???  what happened to 3-4 weeks?  by my reckoning that makes it nearly 6!!  That is like telling my kids that Christmas is the 25- and once the 25 was close telling them that they would have to wait another 2 weeks to get their presents!!  NOOOOO!

On another note- some of you may recall getting "life with Harry" emails- well- here is another installment in that thrilling saga!
I was sitting at the computer when I hear:
"mom- um I put a plate in the toaster oven"
Harry was trying to warm up a sausage link on an IKEA kids plate in the toaster oven!  There were "cheesy" strings of pink plastic dripping down through the rack and reaching to the burners and the lovely aroma of burnt plastic hung in the air.  When I took it out it it stiffened to form pink stalactites.  nice.  I know!  I should have taken a picture, but it was taking all my brain power to calmly fix the situation!  I am pretty sure that we need a new toaster oven now......which isn't *too* bad.

Bye bye border

I tried to go at this the lazy way by painting over the border but that was leaving a big seam in the paint. SO with a big sigh, we grabbed the scraping tool again and Dave went at it with some wall paper remover.  Better him than me!

Go Dave go!

 

In the meantime, I was working on the bookshelf.  It was primed and ready to go, and I thought that I would make quick work of it....I was wrong.  The paint was doing some seriously weird things.  It was streaking almost like I had put down that-oh what is that?  that paint that makes it looks all crinkly and old.  Some parts were OK after a few coats, but other parts kept reverting back to the weirdness.   I am a little scared to go over and see what it looks like today.  I am worried that it is going to look all crinkled.

 YEA!  Here is the living room.  As you can see, the color that we are using isn't too different from what was there already- on this wall anyway.  The other walls were painted a dark red color--which I am not opposed to, but this room was so dark because of all the shade we needed to lighted it up a bit. We are going to put up a chair rail and box out frames in white underneath it.  Do you think that is too much?  Boxed out frames in the living room and the board and batten downstairs?

AHHHHH! a little paint dribbled on my floors! I know I know, you are thinking "why in the world did they do the floors BEFORE they painted the walls!"  I don't know.  There really was/is a good reason and most of it has to do with when the kitchen cabinets will get here and all the dust that we made....whatever.  It is all done now!  

 So pretty. 

All done!  Now to do something with all those metal bi-fold doors.  They are floor to ceiling and are in all the bedrooms.  We thought that we would just paint them white and leave them in since I think that they give the room height.....but after getting our totally plush carpet and pad they don't open and close anymore.  drat.  I don't know- maybe that is a good idea, since it means that the kids can't get all their clothes out and leave them on the floor!  but I guess running around in their underwear isn't the best option either....I guess.  So unless anyone has any brilliant ideas about how to shave a 1/4 inch or so off the bottom- they are going to have to come down.  Which means having to drywall a little more wall so that we can hang some new doors- because apparently 8 ft doors are not "standard"  I actually HATE bi-fold doors, so any alternate closet door ideas would be appreciated!  ANY comments would be appreciated!  I feel like I am talking to myself here!  

Stained Floors

I figured that it took me more than a day to get the floor done- so you shouldn't get to see all the pics in one day! That and, we "stained" the cameras into the closet and couldn't get to them! At the bottom of this post is the final floor picture!

This is what the floor looked like after we put the stripper on. More stripper=a lot easier to scrape. I was SO excited to see this and even more excited when (for the most part) it all just scraped right off.

Any guesses as to what this is? It is the sand paper for the sander! I have never seen anything like it- it was 20 grit. It looked like a roof shingle- We were so surprised that it didn't even touch the floor.

A pile-o-wax. Toxic wax. The stripper stung. I discovered that wearing shorts was a bad idea. All the bits that we scraped off turned the floor into something like a bed of jelly fish. I wonder if I will ever have to shave my legs where I burned them? That would be nice.

The LAST square!! OK- well we thought it was the last square until we started to sand and noticed little bits here and there. Dave and I ended up crawling all over the floor with box cutters scraping the wax off of the corners of the wood tiles. nice.

I think that Taylor lasted for about 2 minutes with the sander. Remember those "weight loss" machines from the 80s? it was this jiggler thing? you stood on a platform and wrapped this belt around your waist and it wiggled your tummy chub right off?? Yeah the sander is like that for your arms! I am pretty sure that a few hours with the sander did more for my arm wiggle waggle than P90x!! I am totally going to market this!

FINALLY we get to sand and have it....you know...sand the floor! (I know you are like--but you were sanding in the last picture!- but we still weren't sanding floor- Taylor was sanding off the stripped wax)

WOOOHOOO!!!! ALL SANDED! NOW we get to do the afore mentioned sweep and sweep and sweep some more.

"Why would they start staining in the middle of the floor?" you ask. Yeah, that wasn't the plan. We poured the stain in the pan and it was quickly apparent that there was a crack in the pan. Stain started to spread all over the floor! YIKES!

oooooooh so pretty.

OK- So there we were. I was finishing in the landing and Dave was doing a few stairs......we got a little carried away. The idea was that he was going to do a few stairs, so that I could get down and then wipe them off.....we overestimated the length of my legs. whoops.

AFTER Dave took this picture he actually decided to help me down. You would think that I would have learned my lesson, but when I went back to put on the first coat of "poly" I did the same thing.

ooooh shiny!

¡Finalmente! Spanish, I know random, but I accidentally hit the "option" key instead of the shift key to get an exclamation mark and discovered that it made one of those upside down thingies. So of course I had to use it!

FINALLY!

The floors are finally done!!

Here is the Before- they didn't look bad, we just wanted something a little darker, a little less like a basketball court.

Looking very much like a construction zone!

The must haves for fashion this summer! Aren't we cute in our matchy matchy knee pads?? We are totally ready for Sadies! (a girls choice dance in high school, where you wear cutsie little matching outfits!)Ahhhh.....so naive so excited about doing this.....little did we know.

Dave the destroyer.

I know right? I bet you are wondering why I have never been cast in one of those medical drama TV shows.

Here are the stairs all done..... little did we know what was lurking on the rest of the floor.

dun dun dun. THIS was our worst enemy.......WAX. It was everywhere except the stairs. It was HORRIBLE. I know it might look like it is sanded down there, but it isn't. We spent 9 hours on Saturday sanding, scraping, sanding again, begging, a friend came over with his sander to help,we even got a stripper (get your mind out of the gutter!) NOTHING! we didn't even get half of the floor sanded and it isn't a big room! We were scraping tile by tile and each tile took 5-10 minutes. Needless to say, we went home that night feeling totally defeated.

So on Monday, I woke up bright and early full of determination and headed out to Menards (a home improvement store) and bought this.....

That's right, a power stripper. About 3 hours later we were ready to stain.....well we were ready to sweep again and again and again and vacuum and then sweep again and then dry mop and then sweep again and THEN stain.

Nothing new....yet

I don't have anything new to post- but soon! I am anxiously waiting to apply the second coat of poly on our wood floor- THAT will be quite a post because it was quite an ordeal! So in the meantime, I thought I would post a few more carpet pics. Here are most of the people, the oldest was at scout camp. They are all doing the "carpet angels" that I posted about earlier!

Yea, not really sure here.....crime scene maybe? maybe they are smelling the new carpet in all of it's plush fiber-y goodness?? who doesn't like that new house smell? It's all good!

Ta-da! no more wall! SO, according to the inspector and our handy man friend this was not a load bearing wall! HA! I hope that they were right!! ha ha ha ahhhhh good times.

Out with the old.

A little shout out to Tony and the whole P90X crew!

Macho macho man....I want to be a macho man! dude! Back off ladies! He is all mine :)

OK so you can't really tell, and I don't think we took a picture of it so you might have to use your imagination a little! The pipes for the sink are directly in front of Dave and the sink is under the window...huh? they come out of the wall, right angle and parallel the wall, then corner again to the sink right through the middle of the base cabinets. The hope is that we can reroute them under the cabinets.

A little outside time

There is so much shade we didn't have many choices when it came to where to put a garden. This is the before picture of the side of the house- it really does get more sun than this, it was overcast that day!

We ended up with 3 tomato plants 2 zucchini and 2 cucumber--OK so it still doesn't look sunny in this one either, but they do get at least 6-7 hours a day. They look AWESOME! and didn't even get transplant shock!!

And this little beauty spot is for the.....

Raspberries!!!! My mom brought some older cane along with the new AND we are actually going to get a few dozen berries THIS YEAR!!!! I can't wait. I am going to secretly hoard them and then make myself a late night ice cream!! We aren't sure if bunnies like raspberries (anybody know? they never ate ours in Kansas, but apparently the bunnies here are a bit more nefarious!).

The view from our back door. This little cement pad that will make the perfect four square playing "field" isn't that what everyone looks for in a house?

Back there in that little grove is where we are going to make a permanent fire pit! It is going to be awesome!

Dave brushed off his knot tying skills to hang this.