Thursday June 29th in the Basement

The basement is apparently where all the wiring in the house goes to die. There were so many wires hanging from the rafters, intertwined with so SO many cobwebs, it was hard to determine what was what. As the years went by, and new wiring was introduced, the previous owners never removed old wiring, they just disconnected the old and left it there alongside the new.

The below is a terrible photo, but it gives you an idea of the cobweb situation.

Matt and his friend Ron worked from 9 until 3pm, solving wiring mysteries. They would just choose a wire and follow it to its source. More than not, there was no source, just a cut wire, or a dead end of some sort. These they pulled and put into a huge pile on the floor. Kara worked alongside them all morning with the wet/dry vac, just sucking up cobwebs! They succeeded in connecting all of the basement lights, and disconnecting everything above that. Slowly they'll work toward re-connecting the well, replacing the main, and then get everything else back on line.

At some point these big oil drums will need to be cut out and removed from the basement - that's going to be a tough job, but will open up a neat little alcove.

It was a hot day, but the guys kept cool down there! I kept busy preparing for yet another rehearsal, as well as washing another wall (this time with a product new to me called Dirtex, that's supposed to be better for walls than PineSol, as it leaves no residue and is pretty hard on dirt), running to get people food and watching Kara remove some more flooring, which will get its own post.

Another thing that will happen in the basement, is a new pole. Right now the posts holding up the floor above in some areas are actual tree trunks! But the floor is sagging in the kitchen above, so what Matt will do is dig a hole, fill it with cement, and then place this metal pole atop it, and secure it to the beam above. The pole has a handle on the side, and every week or so, Matt will give the handle (or crank?) a full turn, raising the pole a bit. He plans to raise the floor above about 3 inches. This affects our timeline for painting, and for window installation, because everything is going to be affected by the floor being raised. We will have to give the walls time to settle, and then we can patch cracks in the walls and install windows. 

Sunday June 25

We've been heading down to Greenwood about once a week, sometimes twice - always on Matt's day off (Sunday or Thursday), and it's always fun to watch Matt doing what he really wants to be doing on his day off...working.

We had just a few hours last Sunday evening to work, and Matt's friend Brian came to help. They decided to repair the worst corner of the foundation (the decorative stone) that was crumbling. It was fun to hear how they went about doing this, which is something neither had attempted before.

They looked over the wall, headed to Home Depot for supplies and came back with cement and a trowel and a big mixing pan. Then they just made it up as they went along!

It turned out great, and they both had a lot of fun even though they were completely muddy and bloody after it was over. Apparently they had to dig out any loose stone, then fill the cavity with cement and stones and replace the biggest stones in some decorative fashion. There was a lot of chiseling and pounding with hammers, laughter and sweat. Good times were had by all.

Before:

During:

 

After:

I was playing a service at Westwind's while they worked, and Kara was pulling up the flooring in the small room off of the master bedroom that will eventually become a big bathroom.

It was a great day!

Something I Washed Off Of Our Bedroom Wall

There were some other things written on the wall that I really really wanted to remove but this won the contest of "Things I Really Want To Scrub Off".

Partly because of  how gross it was (and this bug was BIG), and partly because of the bad grammar, haha.

Father's Day at Greenwood

I asked Matt what he wanted to do for Father's Day and he said, "Work." So, he mowed the lawn in Webberville and then we drove to Greenwood and he mowed THAT lawn. Happy Father's Day! I am truly blessed with a husband who thinks this is fun.

I had a gig in Devil's Lake on Saturday night, and Beth came from Somerset Beach Campground where she's working as a counselor this summer, and brought all of her counselor friends! They danced a lot - such a nice group of kids. After that, she rode home with me and in the morning walked downstairs and surprised Matt! He loved getting to sit and have coffee with her!

We spent the morning with a trip to Walmart and then mowing the lawn, drove the twins back to camp (James had come home Friday night with me), and then headed to Greenwood.

Matt's folks popped out to see us and walked Buddy around, which was great, because he slept in his bed after they left, allowing me to get more work done. While Matt mowed the lawn, I got to work on wall number 2 in the master. This is really hard, slow work, and I'm not even going to put before and after photos, because unless you look closely, I don't think you can really see much of a difference, sadly. But the layer of grime that I take off of these walls is really satisfying. This time I used a sponge mop to get higher on the walls, but the problem is I couldn't really scrub up there at the top, so maybe I'll have Matt fashion me a sponge mop with a scrubber attached. Every time I work in here, the smell is better. I noticed a big difference after Kara removed that soiled carpet.

Still, the kitchen is bothering me with its "heavy" smell. I tried to eat something in there yesterday and I couldn't really stomach it. I think one big reason is that it's so shut up. The windows are screwed shut to keep it secure, and there's just no breeze so the air is super stale. I got one window to open in the master bedroom, and that is really helping. Next time we work, Matt is going to unscrew the windows in the kitchen so that we can get a cross breeze through and see how that changes things.

I've really been thinking a lot about kitchen design. Matt wants to pull up the existing floor (some linoleum covered with a parquet vinyl) to expose the original wood floor, have someone come in to sand it, then we would stain and finish it. However, my long goal is to completely gut the kitchen - I don't have feelings of animosity about anything in this house except the kitchen design. I want to eventually remove a coat closet that juts out into the kitchen space, and remove the upper cabinets, plus a long wall of cabinets. I wonder, if we refinish the floor now, we are just going to have to do it all again when we remove these big items. Why not just pull it all out now and do the whole floor and start from scratch?

The answer of course is money. It's going to be several years before we can afford a new kitchen. The cabinets and counter tops will be the most expensive. Do I leave the current kitchen arrangement and just re-do the floors around the cabinets? Or do I tear it all out, redo all of the floors once, and then just cobble together a workable kitchen that will be temporary?

My hesitation in doing the floors twice (once now, and again when we remodel) is that it may never happen. It's a huge job, tearing out these cupboards, and a huge mess. There's a part of me that feels as though now is the time to do it. I'm not sure people will understand, because honestly the kitchen is the one area in this house that looks sort of usable. But trust me, when you get up close, the cupboards are terrible. Some of the cupboards don't even open and close properly because they're not aligned. They're not very high quality, and they, along with everything else, are covered with a thin layer of grime. Not to be a princess, but the one area that I really want to feel "clean" and "done" is the kitchen.

So, I'd like to tear everything out. Unless we have to destroy the cabinets as we remove them (I know nothing about the process), couldn't I conceivably drag them out into the sun, power-wash some of them (so to speak) and sanitize them, paint them, and then re-use them - sparingly - on top of a beautifully refinished floor that is completely ready for a full new kitchen sometime down the road? Yeah I think I could! Re-use some of the cabinets, find used appliances, but have a completely redone floor.

Here are some photos of the current kitchen and some of my ideas (subject to change). Looking into the kitchen from the side door, you see a closet on your left, along with a bit of counter. I'd like to remove that entire closet and counter. On the other side of the closet are upper cabinets, so these would go too. One possibility is to create a bar/counter with bar stools in place of the closet/counter. There would be no upper cabinets, so this area would be all open.

We love the counter with bar stools at our current house, but this time I'd like the counter to be raised - we tend to hunch over to eat at our current counters. Maybe a raised counter on this side, and a second, lower counter on the other.  Here is another photo of the closet/counter, so you can see how this would really open up the kitchen to take it out. Also, the wall o'cabinets on the far wall (with the range hood) would be completely removed, opening up floor space. It's possible to keep the lower cabinets, but the upper ones have to go. Yep, I know I'm sacrificing lots of storage.

Here is a look at the side door with the closet on the right. A dream that I have would be to put windows all along this wall - maybe from the current window to the kitchen window, which is right on the other side of the closet. We have a small patio/porch outside of this window below, that is eventually going to be extended the length of the house. Wouldn't it be cool to have windows along this wall - I even read about having a small counter on the other side of the wall so that you could "pass through" dishes from the kitchen to an eating area on the patio. That was probably a huge porch, haha, but hey, this is the time for dreaming!

Here is another photo that shows just how much floor space that wall o'cabinets on the right takes up. It also makes the window at the end of the cabinets sort of off-center, coming right up to the edge of it:

I really just want to throw out all of my current ideas of what a kitchen has to be, and create a temporary kitchen that is serviceable and fun, and then later add in the expensive stuff, but have the floors completely redone now. Oh and in case you wondered, all of that thin oak trim will be removed, along with the wallpaper.

Front Porch Cleaning Befores and Afters

Here are the photos I promised from Kara who swept it all out - we were really starting to track in a lot of dirt so this will help so much with that.

Before:

After:

Looks great Kara!  Yesterday Kara and I sat down to watch the old movie,"Money Pit" on Netflix with Tom Hanks and Shelley Long.  If you like really cheesy, dated and funny movies this is a good one. If you are restoring an old farmhouse and finding lots of surprises along the way, it's even funnier as long as you're looking at your project with a REALLY positive attitude.

I just re-read the above paragraph and to be clear, Tom Hanks and Shelley Long are IN the movie, we did not sit down with them to watch a movie but I can understand if that is what you thought, sorry to get everybody really excited. Wouldn't it be fun to watch a funny movie with Tom Hanks? He has the best laugh. Okay, going to work on some music!

Matt, Kara and I Do Gross Stuff!

Today I got up at 5 and drove to Westwind's Church in Jackson where I occasionally play for services. It was a lot of fun except at around 10:30 when I couldn't stand it anymore and had to eat something. Sometimes it just hits me and I have to eat right then! Somebody found me this wafer thing and it was kind of like a child's teething biscuit, but I scarfed it down and it tided me over. Matt and Kara came to the last service at 11, and then we all headed to Greenwood. First stop, Dollar General, where we had to buy water because we still don't have running water out there - we got two big jugs but it felt terrible paying for water just for cleaning.

They brought a picnic lunch, so we had grilled chicken on a salad, some carrots and Gatorade. It was HOT! Matt set to work cutting up the tree with a chainsaw, but I didn't really get a photo because I was too scared to watch. Once I looked out and he was sitting in the running car with the a/c on because he got overheated. He always works fast and hard, so I need to make sure I keep an eye on him.

Here he is taking a breather and Kara very nicely scratched an itch for him. We're always holding up our arms and legs to each other to double check for ticks (we have yet to see even one, but we're kinda paranoid).

Here are two "before" photos of part of the roof that they found was really rotten. This is where the most extensive repairs had to be made. We're really lucky that most of the roof didn't look this bad! It's fun to look back on these pictures of the roof because it looks so nice now.

Kara was such a hard worker today! I had pulled the carpet out of the the master closet, but the padding was still in there, and yes full of cat stuff. It's kind of fun working on the house because you can walk in and literally do ANYTHING that you want to do at this point. Because we haven't sold our current house, we don't have any money to really do much to it except clean. So Kara decided she wanted to tackle that padding. She removed it all as well as the carpet strips inside:

It looks great, and more importantly SMELLS...well I was gonna say it smells great, but it's not quite there yet.

My goal was to wash the walls of the entire master bedroom. I really have it in my head that I want that room clean first, because if Matt and I can spend the night in the house it will be a) super creepy but also b) really convenient for getting two days worth of cleaning done without all the driving. I only got one wall clean. And when I say "clean" I mean that the first layer of grime has been removed. Here you can see I've cleaned the wall to the left of the window, but not the right for comparison:

Here's the Before:

And After:

You can see in the above photo how I couldn't reach all the way to the top because my ladder was too short. I really want to do the ceilings as well in there. I wish I could have done the whole room but it was SO hot, we all just ran out of steam after awhile. After this I wiped down the kitchen and swept the whole house as well as vacuumed under the stairs. The weird/gross thing about wiping down surfaces is that I often come upon a "spatter" of unknown origin. Really gross. But a great feeling when it's gone!

The front porch was all full of leaves until Kara swept it all out, and then decided to wipe down the walls out there. She's pretty sure she wiped off a lot of paint? But whatever, at least it's cleaner now! She has the befores and afters of the porch and if she sends them to me I'll post them.

After I vacuumed as much as I could under the stairs, Kara decided to rip up the carpet with her bare hands!  No not really, she found some good work gloves but still!  It was a super gross job because, you guessed it, I think that was the cats' second home after the master closet. It smelled so bad. We think that the little amounts of carpet that we're finding are really holding the odors in - especially as the weather gets warmer. This under-stair area is going to be a tiny half-bath.

It's really hot and sweaty work, so I was really impressed, she did a great job! We threw the carpet into the trash and set it out by the road, we'll see what happens to it.

Next, Kara went out to drag the branches of the tree that fell over off into a burn pile -- Matt cut lots of logs that we hope somebody will take, but the branches needed to be cleared out. I was inside cleaning and I heard Kara yell, "Mom!" so I ran out to find her standing under the apple tree. She couldn't move because her hair got caught in it. Even the trees are haunted here!! She was very good natured about getting grabbed by the tree though and I only had to pull out a little of her hair to get her unstuck. Below she just looks like she's standing there but she is totally stuck:

The last thing I'll mention is that I was standing in the bedroom and one of the windows just fell in and crashed to the floor. It was weird and spooky! Kara cleaned it up for me.

It's a good thing the new windows have been delivered!

It's gonna be awhile before these are installed, but it's really fun to see them!

About 4 days ago I told Michael I would for sure post that night

But I did not.

The last couple of weeks have been so crazy and busy and I'm still trying to catch up with it all.

I had my student recital (16 students this year!) - it went great, but was hard to say goodbye to them.

Next, Memorial Day at my parents -- this was a blast because we got to show my family our house! A big group of us met at 10am and I laughed because Matt was a total tour guide with this big group of people walking around the house and then inside, so obediently following him everywhere. He is so proud and excited. Everybody oohed and ahhhed and nobody made worried faces or acted freaked out, so I really appreciated the support! Michael got to see the house for the first time too! It was great to be able to show it to him.

After that, the twins graduated! There was a flurry of last-minute assignments to finish, online classes, their senior portfolios and Beth's speech to submit, as well as the last track meet, the last baseball game, the last concerts...so everybody was rushing around. The next night I had a gig, the next day I had another gig, and then on Sunday everyone descended again on the Pardee house for the twins' graduation party! It was fantastic in every way - weather, the turnout, everything.

Wednesday I drove the twins to Somerset Beach Campground so that they could report for duty - they are staying there all summer to work. They're really excited this first week after training, because it's Senior Teen camp. Since they are barely older than the senior teens, they can't be counselors, so they are helping with activities. This is great because they get to DO all of the activities along with the kids. They will have fun.

Right now I am waiting for the photos I took today to upload so that I can post them here! We did a lot, stay tuned! This time I PROMISE I will post! Unfortunately our internet is so slow that I'm gonna have to stay up late waiting for the photos. In the meantime, here's the only photo I took from the graduation party, (afterwards) when Mark fell asleep after working hard all day helping.