Turkey and then some....

OOOOOO.....I ate too much. I always do. We had a really wonderful day on Thursday. Lots of good company minus my pod mate :( ..... but we did get to talk to her....RoJo carried around her laptop with A's head talking away....they had found a way with the cameras and IM to hook up and have A there for a while. It was fun.

And now that I am home it is back to the grind. Cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning......

The countertops come Tuesday or Wednesday. I cannot wait!!! I took Thursday off to clean and Friday I head over to Jasper, IN to see A and her new apartment. Will be another good weekend. Gonna eat German food....yummmmmmm.

I have discovered that cleaning this new floor is even easier than the last post. Just use water. Forget the chemicals....get a floor rag just damp with warm water and everything comes right off with none of the streaking that the chemical mist was leaving (that I didn't see until the sun shone across the floor....eeeeek). I am really glad this is getting better and better because there is an awful lot of this floor in this house now! Would be a real pain if I didn't like it so well.

I have been noodling where I want to put stuff in the cupboards etc. Mo had some good suggestions and I suppose I will figure it out sooner or later, but I really would like to get STARTED. I have to dig out the rest of the stuff I crammed into the back bedroom before I can even get to the kitchen stuff. Poo. I must essentially put the rest of the house together before I can even get really started on the kitchen....dummy....I packed the kitchen first...went into the room first...is behind all the other crap....poo. Oh well.....

I suppose I should get started on today's list. Cleaning my room (very eeek), putting away tools etc in the kitchen so they can set the countertops without having to move all my crap, laundry, hanging ceiling fans, and playing with colors for the walls....

I am thinking about changing the colors in here. Mo had a bunch of paint chips that we were digging thru to pick a color range for her livingroom....I found one I think will work better in here with the new cabinets and flooring. I like my cocoa colored walls, but the color isn't carried anymore and I can't fix the bangs on the walls. It also is only OK with the new wood floor/cabinets. I think the new colors will be WOW with the new wood floors/cabinets. And WOW is what it is all about.

OK...I am going....later......

Drywall Dust .....

I am inundated with drywall dust. I am supposed to clean it up today.....I don't want to. What a colossal mess!!! The contractors are done with the wall and ceiling patching and sanding and now it is my turn to clean, prime, and paint. Yipeeeeee.....

I am already using the new doorway to the diningroom....should have been there the whole time. It is amazing what a 42" hole in a wall can do to both rooms! Really opens up the spaces. The kitchen/diningroom will be much, much more user friendly now.

I bought the primer and paint last nite...have today off to clean...Greg is gonna help tomorrow and Sunday and we are going to get this house in shape in nothing flat....yeah right. AAAGGGGHHHHHHHHH.....

The range hood came yesterday....I want to peek in the boxes sooooo bad. But I will behave. Jim is going to hang the thing as soon as the floor is done. And the floor starts going in Monday! The subfloor is going to disappear very quickly. YEAH

Well, I am not getting anything done sitting here. I gotta go get my shots and then get my butt busy with the shop vac. Holy Toledo....

Later.....

Well under way....

I tried to post some pictures and that didn't go too well. Will have to play with it later and post some. I am not the most computer savvy person in the world...just slow.

Let's see....The doorway to the dining room is cut out. And low and behold, what did we find, but the gas line running right down the middle of the doorway....poop. Oh well, they got that moved today after much gnashing of teeth...it was a very icky job. Up in the attic one minute and down in the crawlspace the next. Everyone expected it to run up from under the house and the stupid thing runs down from the attic.

The "vestibule" is all framed in and is really cool.

The wiring is just about done. Can lights are positioned and wired, circuits are run for the fridge, microwave, the range hood, and added switches for over sink lights. They got the phone jack lowered so I don't have to sit the phone on a pile of phone books to reach the plug (dinky short cord or way too long cord wadded up on the counter). I think I will have some extra receptacles when all is said and done. Oh, and got the circuit run for the range hood and figured out what all that is gonna take to install.

I was doing some research on the laptop out in the family room and kinda rubbed my elbow along my side and a damn bee nailed me! Hurt like a son of a gun!!! Jim had to knock him off my arm..the damn thing had his stinger buried in my arm and couldn't get loose. I had hold of the laptop with one hand and couldn't drop it to knock the stupid bee off my arm. Jeez. I had a nice fat welt where the venim was pumped in...that has flattened out now, but it is still a big red spot and kinda hot. Stupid damn bee. I haven't been stung in years....can't say that now...hee hee.

Tomorrow they start rocking. Hanging drywall that is. They are gonna fix a few cracks and such and have to replace all the rock they cut away to chase wires, pipes and such. They will frame in the doorway to the diningroom and cut out the doorway to the vestibule (mini mud room) and finish frame it and rock everything. Jim thinks they will start taping and mudding on Monday. Looks like I am going to have to paint ceilings whether I like it or not. Lots of drywall work on the ceiling.

I should be able to paint (prime) everything next weekend I hope. He is bringing the baseboarding in too and I can get a coat or two of paint on them also. Shouldn't take too long to slap a coat of paint on the baseboarding...can do that after work.

Well, I gotta go get sleepy. My ACM at work starts tomorrow and I need my beauty sleep. ACM is bi-annual maintenance time we get to tear into big projects on the line. We tear machines apart, replace lots of parts and put them back together. Hopefully it all runs after that. That is the plan anyway... hee hee.

Later.....

Demolition Done!!!

I thought my house echoed before....YOWZA!!! Tuesday nite M&M got here and said "we'll get the appliances moved tonite"....and 3 HOURS later...the kitchen was G-O-N-E. Once we got started there was no stopping. The cabinets came down in minutes, the countertop cut in half and sledged out in seconds, and the base cabinets were gone in nothing flat. I was amazed!!! Here I was thinking this destruction thing would take a day at least and M kept saying "This is demolition....." and, wham, something else bit the dust. It was fun.

Wednesday we moved the rest of the furniture into the back bedroom, made a trip to Lowe's to get stuff to stub off the plumbing, went to Home Depot and ordered my faucet, shopped some for fridges for M&M and microwaves for me, and we went out to the newly rebuilt Lone Star Steakhouse in Middletown. Yum. We also spent a good while discussing what needs to happen in this house to make it "work for me" and be visitor friendly. I am going to reclaim the front room as a living room and move my art crap into the back bedroom. The dining room is huge and could absorb the computer/desk work space if pared down and a new desk was designed for the spot. I can have a couch!!!! I don't have a couch now...haven't had since I moved down here 16yrs ago.

The new Lone Star is very pleasant, nicely decorated (even the big longhorn on the wall over the bar was not tacky), very comfortable seating, bright, and no where near as noisy as before. This is a new design and the only one in the country. If it works well here in the test restaurant, then all new Lone Stars will be built like this one. I liked it very much. And the food was absolutely wonderful!!! I think it really helped that we were STARVING...hee hee. But it was very good. Better than before I think. The state of our waddling out of there spoke volumes. Mo and I thought Mark was gonna explode. hee hee

All in all, it was a very productive couple of days. We had fun, ate good, and worked hard. And now my old kitchen resides as a heap in the garage. It all will be hauled off by the contractor.

I had a day off Thursday and did some things that needed finished up (moved some stuff, reversed the doors on the fridge, cleaned the old stove to get it ready to sell..) and went back to work Friday. This morning I was up at 5ish and put a coat of primer/hider on the stencil in the dining room and cleaned up my painting tools by 6:30 . I ate soup for breakfast and am going to finish this post and fly to Lowes to buy painting supplies, paint, and do a little microwave shopping at Sears. I would like to get the dining room painted today. I need to figure out the color of the family room (the paint chips are stashed somewhere and I can't find them)...so will bring home chips and match it. I think I have a gallon, but want to make sure so I have paint to touch up with after construction is done. I need to pick out a color for the fireplace.

During our arm waving session in here, M&M suggested I paint the fireplace brick.....I like that idea immensely! I hate the brick. It is totally the wrong color for in here...it was when I moved in and the colors were still the previous owner's colors. I just know it was picked because it was on sale/discontinued/free/cheap.....just like the damn pink floor and everything else he built this house with. So I am gonna find a dark chocolate color and paint that damn brick!!!! Yipeeeee.

My new rugs for the family room, dining room and front foyer came yesterday, too. I didn't expect them so soon. Oh well, 3 more things to cram in the back bedroom. They look to be the perfect colors. We will see when I can get them rolled out onto the floors....that won't be for a while yet. pooooh.

Well, I suppose I should get off my butt and get this day under way. I have to work tomorrow for a little in the morning, so can't work too late today. Sooo...I am off like a dirty shirt!!!!!