I was about to post a whiney Facebook status about my love/hate relationship with owning a fixer-upper house. Then I realized, I don't want to be a whiner on Facebook. I'm sure I do sometimes, sorry, so I decided it was time to blog.
So, Hola!
I really hate the beginning of the month. Every month. Everything seems to fall apart, majority of the folks who rent from us wait until the very last minute to pay the much needed rent, for us to pay the mortgages, and Rick does the bills. That last one, that's the one that really sucks. I know I am down right spoiled and do my best to to rake in all the "thank you, Karma," acts I can do. Inevitably, I always get in trouble. I actually said to Rick recently, "I feel like I'm always in trouble." "You usually are," was his reply, with a laugh. (thank god)
Here comes the whine... Rick took my pent up excitement, copper hoarding enthusiasm (collecting to sell it like a homeless man looking for soda cans), laid it gently down on the table and guillotined it's head right off. "Allie, it just isn't a good idea to go to Florida with Michelle and Corey." I had one of those face drops that turn white moments. Hogwarts, wizards, sea shells, and shark teeth, Shark Teeth, SHARK TEETH! had been whizzing through my head the last two months. I gotta admit, he did a good job at breaking the news to me, prepared with an ultimatum. Florida or no money for another year to make much needed repairs to my house that we rent. I've been dying to repair, replace falling off siding and paint the whole house a new color, along with a few other updates. It looks pretty sad right now. So, I took the, "I hate being an adult," bargain to add some equity to my house. I admit, I know Rick isn't all to blame for this stab in the excited heart. It's just easier to say it's all his fault.
Love you, Richard.
Owning a major fixer-upper can really suck sometimes. Like how you're always broke, covered in some sort of grime and fight over where a light switch needs to be. But, it also teaches you to be thirfty, frugal and patient.
As many of you know we are currently remodeling our kitchen. That is a whole blog on it's own, I won't go into much detail of that right now. But, right now the walls are totally bare. Bare as in just the studs, and lots and lots of wires and pipes. Over the last 108 years the house has gone through about three major remodels, and some parts more. Like the kitchen. The amount of wires, and pipes hidden through out every nook and cranny is unbelievable. All of that tangled, dangerous wire mess and hundreds of unnecessary pipes needs to be sorted, redirected, removed and safe. Rick has spent the last month and a half cutting out pipes and fishing wires through walls. The pile of wire we have could probably make a suitable nest for a pterodactyl. Knock on wood, Rick has only gotten one decent shock. Which leads me to this...
This thing is AMAZING. It's about the size of a fat Sharpie marker it changes colors and beeps when you find live wires. You can poke it in an outlet, touch a light switch, and wave it past the old pipes that held wires back in the day. This little guy has probably, literally saved our lives many times over.
Along with ripping the kitchen apart we've been able to find some killer wallpaper. This one above is my favorite. It's way to cute. I wish I could find more, but years of other wallpaper on top of it seems to have it glued to the back of another forever. Seriously! Look! The carrot one! You can see a yellow pant leg and shoe, and a hoe. I wanna see that person so bad!
There was also this one, which we found in what would have been the butlers pantry. I wish this was all over our house. It's so pretty and fancy, and makes me imagine I have butlers and maids running around our grand house as I sip tea in some big hot high collared dress, watching the children play croquet. :)
I can't remember if I posted about Henry, so If I did, sorry. He's too damn cute not to talk about. We have acquired another four legged child. King Henry the Corgi. He's a three year old rescue who has one of the most quirkiest personalities of any dog I've known. He's also a mama's boy, so that melts my heart a little more. What is amazing is how well Cosmo and him get along. Cosmo an 8 year old lab that we rescued was pretty stoked to be living with us, until we brought home Henry. Then he transformed into the happiest dog ever. I have no idea how these two lived without each other. They play, wrestle, run and sleep together all day. It's a beautiful friendship.
I've acquired these two beauts.
I'm a sucker for mid-century, especially double tier lamp shades. It has no home yet, but soon it will. Also, I scored this beautiful, post-civil war dry sink. I call it a vanity. Either way, I'm quite proud of it. When we got it home it was neat looking and sort of dingy. After three days of cleaning, feeding and polishing the wood this piece of furniture came back to life with one hell of a thankful glow. It has marble tops, rosewood veneer and the original-heavy as hell mirror. I really need my friend Michelle to get her butt back to KC, I'm sort of convinced she's my good luck charm for finding things. I also got a Fiestaware, rose, disk pitcher with this buy!!!
I've discovered wallpaper books at Lowes. I have no problem sitting in an aisle of Lowes surrounded by different wallpaper books, hoping Rick finds me soon because, he HAS to see all 50 patterns I love and need in my life. I think I have more pictures of wallpaper, than pictures of my cats on my phone.
I started digging out a flower bed. The vision I have in my head, if it comes to fruition... is going to need a few pats on the back for it. I planted nearly 300 canna lilies and bee loving wild flowers so far. Our next door neighbor is a bee keeper, so I'm trying to keep the bee's nice and fat this summer. I'm sure my neighbors have raised an eye brow to this project as I have piles of stones I dug up laying all over the place along with red bricks all over the place. I also have planned to lay a red brick sidewalk and stairs that lead across the lawn in front of our carriage house that we rent out. The progress is slow. Rick won't let me buy the ~120 smaller sized paver blocks I need at one time. So I'm praying some one buys some of the crap I'm going to list on craigslist to get some more money to buy more blocks.
(If any of you readers are in Kansas City,
feel free to donate as many red building bricks
to my sidewalk project. I need a lot. )
The last few days, at the end of the month Rick and I feverishly worked on our carriage house apartment to get it ready for out new tenant, Tuesday!
Hi, Tuesday! We're so happy to have you and Goose!
After about 48 hours of being in the apartment together, some small "hangery" moments, battles of what would look better and 100's of "motherfucker's" we finished in the knick of time.
Don't worry, the MF's were not at each other but at all the things we broke, discovered broken and dropped. We're starting to think instead of ghosts, we have a curse on the house.
Oooohhhh! This is my favorite find recently. In our master bedroom we have a fireplace that is covered in red subway tile. Typically, Arts and Craft style homes have green tiles, so I thought maybe these weren't original or maybe painted. Wrong. Dona Boley, who co-wrote, Kansas City's Historic Hyde Park, told me, "these are definitely original and worth some money." They are Rookwood tiles, which if you ever are in the subway in New York, all of those tiles are made by the same company and time as our's were. Okay, cool, original tiles, but why doesn't it look right? DING! I realized ALL of the woodwork in our bedroom had been painted. It was convincingly painted to look like wood too. A little time with the heat gun and scraper I under covered beautiful dark wood that looks right with the red tiles. On the left is the painted color and on the right is the original. It's still needs to go through some serious cleaning, feeding and polishing, but, HELL YEAH! Now the blinds I dropped some rather serious money on last summer don't match. I hope I can get a decent chunk of money for them by selling them. Ugh. I feel like a drug dealer, always pushing something on someone to buy.
Hope you didn't lose too much money betting on the horses this weekend!
Happy spring, happy great time of the year for sales at hardware stores and thanks for reading!
P.S. Almost always, Home Depot during Memorial Day weekend,
has a sale which you receive a $5.00 rebate for paint.
What better time to open up your windows
and freshen up a room with a new color!
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