Wedding Fever!

I'VE BEEN HIT!

I'VE BEEN HIT BY WEDDING FEVER!

I guess it was bound to happen!

All I can say, 

It's going to be pretty freakin' awesome.

If only our house was a doll house.

We're going to lose our hurrah when we run into unexpected events in the house,  they're becoming second nature!

We started ripping up our third floor bathroom, it all started because the toilet needed new parts put inside of it. The parts didn't fit, so we broke down and bought a new toilet. Which, likely is a brilliant idea when I start to imagine how many people have crapped in the toilettes in the house. sick. Then it turned into having to rip out the one, two, three, four, five layers of different kinds of floors, to find that the very bottom was rotten. joy. 

While working on this bathroom, it kind of gave me bathroom fever. We have this HUGE handicap accessible bathroom on the second floor, which I will, forever as it exists, tell you when I show you, it's there for when Rick gets real old and I have to wheel him into the shower. :) But, it's location happens to be right behind the makeshift wall which, whichever genius decided to build for a hot water tank closet. Our house is built based off an octagon. Our house has been butchered into a whole different layout for the dozen or so disabled folks who once lived in the house. So when Rick and I got to thinking about why the things were the way they are and how they might had been before, out came the hammer. We tapped holes into different walls to figure out that the hot water tank closet, which was once the entrance to a bathroom room likely a guest bathroom, and the bathroom in the master bedroom and the not so blue room are all connected. Ta-Dah! You should and can, and will be able to walk in a full circle through the second floor of the house. We haven't even gutted enough walls yet to walk though to each room, unless you're one of the cats, but I keep finding myself getting lost in the house all over again. Ha. 

So because of this discovery, mixed with our frustrations with all the work it's taking us to just pee in the third floor bathroom, and Rick's friend Carlos telling us just move to the second floor. (Our master bedroom) We've decided to rearrange the house. Our third floor master bedroom suite idea, thrown out the window. Our huge homemade bed unscrewed dragged down stairs and put back together and now sits in the former TV room. 

We're not quite set on what we're going to do now with the rest of the house, we have an empty room on the third floor, and a need for a TV room, but we sure as hell are not going to drag the couch up to the third floor. ( Rick, when you read this, remember I REFUSE to move that thing up those stairs.) 

Oh and we've gotten two sheets of dry wall up on the blue room. Ha, we're moving at snail pace, and it doesn't help that my dream of being a total bad ass with the power drill, isn't coming into fruition so awesomely.

Panorama Pictures if you click on them! 

This is the pathetic master bathroom. In front of the sink, if you were looking at the mirror that we pulled off, the other side of the wall, is the handicap bathroom and to the right where the shower is, is where the entrance from the hallway to the bathroom once was and is now a hot water tank room.

This is the wonderful handicap bathroom! The wall directly in front, if you could see through it would be looking over the sink of the master bathroom.{above} The big old hunk of wall right behind/next to the shower holds some of the hotwater tank room.

Hot water tank room! 

You can see the hole that's been started, and see into the handicap bathroom!

There's also a bunch of huge not duct taped together plastic air duct tubes in there too. Yay, energy efficient. ha. 

Today, we bring sad news that our beloved dog Cosmo is now in the great farm in the sky. 

Coming in at a little over 12 years old Cosmo has gone through so much and been there for so much. 

He kept it real through diabetes, the lost of his brother Cisco and laughed in the face of cancer. 

May this always happy pup, be happy and remembered forever. 

We love you Cosmo and miss you. 

Love,

Your Dad Rick and Allie

The not so blue room.

One of the best ways Rick and I have been able to tell each other which room we are talking about in our house is by the color of the room. Which, as I type this makes me think of my folks... they have a green room, blue room and a pink room. Ha. But, anyhoo, this is the progress of the not so blue, blue room!

If you click on the pictures, they will take you to an interactive panorama picture!

The "Blue Room" will be my room. Rick and I each have our own rooms to do whatever we want to do with. Basically our offices. Mine is my homework, computer and sewing room. This room is connected to a sunroom.

If you look to the back of the room, center of the picture you can see tall metal beams, in the first picture it looks like a blue wall with a door between, but there were skinny closets behind each wall. We knocked out the closets to give the room another three more feet. The closets seem to be installed as a, "why not" since they had a big air duct at the top of them. 

So long, closets and air duct! We had no problem with ripping out the air duct because it was there to lead into the garden room. By the time the air got to the garden room it was worthless. Which they must have quickly figured out since they installed one of those hotel sort of a/c and heat units under a window. 

This is the view of the room from the garden room, the door to the hallway is to your front left. 

As I began tearing down rotten, moldy, poorly installed drywall Rick was going behind me fixing the original plaster walls. (Please note the kick-ass, giant, handicap accessible bathroom, shower to the right in the picture! Second floor handicap bathroom, what?) As we made our way around we kept finding more and more problems. 

• Black mold!
• A huge drain pipe not flush behind a wall
• Rotten woodwork
• Cement and plaster walls falling apart
• Mismatched woodwork
• Old wiring with deteriorating fabric insulation

        All I wanted to do was rip off the chair rail that was on one wall only. That chair rail quickly snowballed into gutting the whole room! I'm pretty certain it would be easier to build a free standing room from scratch than going through and gutting the thing! I guess you can say we're half way though, we're putting new dry wall up tomorrow. I wanted to keep it all original plaster walls, but that's A LOT of work and time. Different layers of different thicknesses of different plasters with different curing/drying times plus trying to hang something into a solid plaster wall. Ha. So now, we will have fresh not moldy walls with fresh new woodwork without mega thick layers of white paint on it.

Works also in progress...

• Ricks office
• Third floor/ Master bathroom
• Drawing room

Modern Literature of Ping Pong

Since Rick and I are on a rather frugal and picky, thrift, craigslist, or estate sale kind of furniture shopping requirement for the house, finding furniture has been really slow going. A few grand spent at Nebraska Furniture Mart can be a few grand spent on dry wall, paint, electric wires, outlets, sand paper and so much more that the bones of our house need more than the eye of our guests.

After going out hunting for some thrift store furniture we came home with this.....

Our drawing room/library is one of the few rooms in the house that doesn't need much done to it. We're waiting out to pick out paint colors until we find some kind of showcase sort of piece of furniture, like a couch. So, until God drops a fantastic couch off on our front porch, this $20.00 ping-pong table will do just fine!

We have the room, and need something to do in between ripping out dry wall, laundry, and fighting off black mold. Plus, our oh, so glamorous camping chairs were crying for some company in this room. ha.

In other exciting news we have a plan for the floor! Yahoo! We were quoted $3 a square foot for refinishing our floors. You do the math for nearly 5000 square feet of floors. I wanted to cry. Not anymore! We're on a waiting list at Home Depot, oh our beloved Home Depot, to buy a used drum sander. With the help of some friends with past experience, and youtube we're going to redo our floors ourselves! AND-- save a TON of money! Plus having the opportunity to own our own sander will eliminate the pressure of trying to get all of the floors finished in so many days without having to pay more rental costs. We also know in the future when Rick and I sell our houses we rent out, we will need to refinish the floors too. Win-win. Rick is also convinced he can hire me out to sand other peoples floors, yeah.

Back to the grind of school work. All the snow days were great, but now all of the teachers are trying to catch up with the time missed, thus making our lives miserable.

oh! oh! I also scored a brand stinkin' new iMac!

So I no longer struggle to upload, and post and edit blogs via my phone or my kindle! 

I vow to try and figure out how to make interactive panorama pictures work on this blog!

Hola!

I finally found a blog app for my phone! Hello blog posts! My poor old old old Mac book is finicky and with out battery and usually lost in the house.

Right now I love my new full time job!

Being a homemaker. 

•I don't just cook, bake, clean and say sweet nothing's to Rick but I also rip out walls, put up dry wall, install new light fixtures and soon so much more!  

•our house is a wreck! I love it! We are in full blown house make over. The first month has been hard. Moving in, jobs, school, pets and becoming accustomed to the house and trying to find things all of the time. 

• I am so excited this Friday my mom, my sister Kate and her two kiddos Helen and Jack are coming to visit and spend the night!

•I've been having one heck of a time clothes shopping! Now I can buy anything! Before I pretty much only bought clothes that I could wear to work! From NASA t-shirt, to cool gap pants and a not tacky cat button up shirt! So good!

• I love love LOVE! Getting to leave the door open to the second floor balcony for the cats to come and go as they please!

• we finally pried open some windows! Fresh air!

I'm still trying to figure out how to get these sweet panorama pictures to work on my blog. But until then you can check out my picture line up!

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HERE!

The blue room we discovered was poorly dry walled so when we wanted to do just one wall it turned into a huge project! We found all sorts of black mold that had been covered up by the shotty dry wall job and rotting base boards. So we've decided to gut it! We're restoring the original plaster and cement walls. So long dry wall! 

Don't worry we have masks gloves eye wear, bleach and sprint for the shower after each mold exposure. This is about 1:50 of what we cleared out. 

 

Another picture you will see is our other major project. The third floor bathroom. This bathroom we plan to expand and put in a lavish master bathroom. Well maybe no lavish, I just really wanted to use that word. This bathroom was a nightmare from the get go. I think all the water and rain damage helped wars off prospective buyers.  This one is going to be a lot of fun to watch transform!

Off to sleep! I'm currently reading Upton sinclairs -The Jungle. 

Have you read it? If not get your butt to half price books and buy it and read it. I can't stop thinking about it. Wow. 

busy, busy, busy

The last few weeks have been crazy!
School has kept me super busy and sort of sad because i want to work on the house!

this is a short and sweet post! I'll be back soon with fun  pictures and stories!

• all of our appliances suck, besides the fridge, which we bought new  
• every project even as small as replacing a light fixture turns into a much larger project  
• our neighbors are twilight zone friendly, kick ass when you get used to it
• we found black mold
• i stepped on a nail, right into the bend of my big toe. ouch..
• we have decided to knock out all the walls we need to at one time, easier to get rid of all the debris
• and i only have 23 credits until i get an associates and move to UMKC in the spring!
• and we're collecting addresses for wedding invites!