SCORE......

Last week we ran into Home Depot looking at appliances.  It's not getting even close to the time we need them, but we wanted to start doing some price shopping.  We do have a budget after all.  So last week when we were looking the saleslady was nice enough to tell us that there was a huge sale starting Veterans Day..Today!...and it would be worth our while to check the website first thing this morning.  We did...and were shocked... The price on this collection was unbelievable..

Stainless steel, 4 pieces and a great price that you can see on their website...(left side about halfway down). I don't think I will miss the ice/water on the door..  I never use it anyway and this one has an ice maker that's easy to get to...  The dishwasher is just a dishwasher...nothing fancy although it is a "tall tub" whatever that means... And a microwave.  It's more fancy than we need, but it's the package microwave.. I only use mine to heat water for tea or hot chocolate and then my frozen veggies... We did upgrade to a different stove.  Ours will have a convection oven, steam clean and dual heat burners.  Just like this one... (yes, I did take photos at Home Depot.)

and then we went down the road a bit and picked up our flooring...  We ordered from Lumber Liquidators.. There was a bit of a snafu ... We ordered our flooring a week ago Monday.  It had to be shipped from Memphis to our local store and we were told they would call us when it was in.  tap, tap, tap...no phone call.
Rich finally called and oops, it wasn't ordered and now Memphis is out of the flooring.  Luckily they found some in Toledo...we were worried because the floor we purchased is being discontinued .  They are keeping the color, but they are changing the finish and we liked the old finish. 

This is 50 of the 72 boxes we ordered...  A whole lot of weight in that truck.  It will head out to the house this weekend to sit in the sewing room and "acclimate" to the house...  It will have plenty of time as the floors are the last thing that will be done...

This weekend is the start of deer season in Missouri...not sure how much work will get done..

See ya Monday...

Nancy

lots accomplished this weekend...

 This post will be very photo heavy.  Rich took off Thursday afternoon for the house and worked straight through until Sunday night.(he still has some vacation days left)..  I had a dr's appt that I couldn't change so I didn't get to the house until Friday afternoon...  When I walked in this is what I saw...

 All of the upper cabinets in the kitchen were gone except for the overhead on the stove and that's only because he needed me to stand there and tell him when the electric was off... it's nice to be needed...if only for the fact that I can see and yell loud enough he can hear...  

He also had pulled all the linoleum up off of the kitchen floor. 

 He also got all the drywall put up on the wall that now separates the basement steps from the kitchen.  MUCH...BETTER...

 Here is the other side.  Rich believes in ghosts and he thinks all those floating orbs are spirits left in the house from the previous owners...  I think it's dust... anyway...if it is spirits? They need to start helping out.  I plan on leaving a list next weekend..   We probably won't drywall the other side of this wall for two reasons.. we don't feel like hanging drywall over steps and we don't care...cause it's only to the basement and I won't be going down there...at...all...ever...for any reason...and there will be a nice 6 panel white door at the top of the steps and a nice solid outside door at the bottom.

Then Rich got started on the electric in the kitchen.  He started to the right of the sink...  Sorry..no before photo.   He rewired a plug and a light switch.

 Then he started to the left of the sink.  There was some discussion about what I wanted.  I don't know a lot about electric, so I asked "what can I have?"...his pat answer is always "whatever you want, honey".  LOL
Really?  cause i want this to be done...

Anyway...I decided I wanted a double light switch.  1 switch will operate the outside light over the deck and the other will turn on the lights over the long counter.  Then I asked for a double electric plug.  I need one for the coffee pot (or Bev will never visit!) and a few more for other appliances..

Inside this wall we found a plumbing stack .. It's one of those black lines down there.  The other black lines are tape on some old...old...old...very stinky...insulation.  It was really bad.  It stunk like old mouse urine.  Which is what it was.  It's all gone now...thankyouverymuch..

 

for some reason all the outlets were filled with spray insulation which makes it very difficult to get them out...

most of the insulation is gone now

we can make quite the mess...

This is where the upper cabinets were...Rich is adding electric for hanging lights over the long counter that has a seating area for stools..  We didn't have the dimensions for the countertop and I couldn't get them on a Sunday so we just picked a spot for the electric and will make a final decision when I do have them.

KIDS - DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME

 Occasionally we get out and go here...

We buy a lot here... We even have a Friends and Family card that is supposed to give us a rebate back on our purchases... 

And when we go there...we pass some of our neighbors..

Cows out in the pasture...

Prisoners inside the walls... you never see them outside...I guess they were really bad..and some of them are certifiably crazy... really...they were certified by the court system..

Let's look at what else we did this weekend...

This is the view inside the fridge area.   The fridge that they left is apartment size..  And there was this BIG HOLE and the opening went all the way up to the ceiling..  I needed that fixed.. so we got to making a false ceiling..

Here we are using the stove as our worktable.  It's ok..it's safe...it doesn't work..

And there it is...

ah...much better

See...this is the kind of stuff we find.  Instead of removing the electric plate..they just painted it.  And it's not even the same color blue as the wall.  So that means they purposely painted it..a different color.  And not a very good paint job either...  That's ok..it will soon be all covered in primer..with new outlet covers.

And Rich climbed up onto the roof and covered the flue.  Rich HATES to climb on anything.. He does not like heights..  This took some doing on his part.  Luckily the roofs pitch is small so it wasn't too bad.  I was supposed to hold the ladder...instead I took photos...

neighbors to the left... you can just see them.. it's that white dot in the middle of the photo..

neighbor to the right.  can't see them at all.

trash pile from the last two weekends... we have a great guy who comes out every time we call him and hauls it all away and we pay him cash.  It's a win-win situation..

 

 

 

 

woops..  better hold the ladder.

And here is the kitchen as we left on Sunday evening...  but before you see that.. I must tell you one thing.

This weekend was daylight savings time.  Spring forward and Fall back.  So we were going to gain an hour. Somewhere along the line.  Rich gave me a choice.. I could chose to sleep later on Sunday morning or leave earlier on Sunday night.  I could ONLY GET MY HOUR ONCE...  I couldn't sleep late AND leave early.  I opted to leave early on Sunday night.  We got to leave at 5pm instead of 6pm...LOVELY...  : - )

And here's the promised photo of the kitchen...

see ya next weekend
Nancy

forgot to mentionables...

Some things I forgot to mention yesterday...

1.  When putting up the wall in the kitchen we had to use Algebra....you know, that stuff you told your parents you would never use again..specifically the  "Pythagorean Theorem" ...  We needed that kitchen wall to be dead on straight for the cabinets and that's how he figured it out. It involved the tape measure, calculator and 2 people.  I don't pretend to understand it, but it worked.

2. Go back to the last post and check out photo number 4.  Oh shoot, I'll save you the trouble. 

Now check out the wires that are located in the middle top of the photo.  See them there?  Those are 12 volt wires...leading to the light over the kitchen sink...which is a 110 volt light... Even I know that isn't what you do.  

3.  There are no inspections in the county where this house lives.  You can pretty much do what you want, where and how you want to.  Of course if you add on outside the county assessor WILL drive by and note it and your real estate tax bill will go up...  If you knock something down, they will never notice and your bill will not be reduced..  

4.  The kitties are still there..  Momma cat comes and goes, but we fill the feeders full and there usually isn't much left by the following weekend.  We have never had cats before as both daughters are allergic.  We are both getting such a kick out of them.  They stay outside and in the beginning they would scatter as soon as the back door was opened.  Now they kind of scoot off to the side of the deck and sit and watch.  If we get too close they will scatter, but there are a couple of brave ones that will just watch us...  These are the brave ones...  the one on the left is looking in the dining room window where Oliver is barking at it...

They will actually come up to the glass door and watch us work.  They will paw at the door at Oliver knowing full well he can only bark...not really harm them...  We will continue to feed the cats.  They will be outside cats and hopefully catch all the county mice.  We hadn't found any evidence of mice until we took down that kitchen wall where we found a nest on top of the turn-around, 3 dead mice and lots of mouse droppings...  (sorry, hope you weren't eating)

5.  The second wall we took down... the half wall by the steps?  It wasn't nailed into the floor.  Nope.  We found that there used to be an open wood railing there and all they did was box it up.  Yea...real safe...

I guess that's all I forgot to say last night.

Nancy

two days and two walls...

Friday night, this is what the kitchen looks like... PHOTO WAS TAKEN PRIOR TO FRIDAY NIGHT..

I know! You are thinking...why redo? Actually a friend of hubby's asked that very thing...we just kind of stared at him...  cause nothing in the kitchen works..NOTHING...
the oven doesn't work
the dishwasher doesn't work
the microwave was so dirty, we were afraid to turn it on (not the stainless one. that's ours and very clean...thankyouverymuch..)
the trash compactor doesn't work..(but really who cares)
if there was a garbage disposal I would bet it wouldn't work





We Rich started bright and early on Saturday morning...

I woke up to this. "This" is the common wall between the kitchen and the living room. I emphasize wall because really...a wall has some 2x4's and maybe some screws and such... Not THIS wall.. This is the back of the kitchen cabinets. People...there is drywall there on the back of the cabinets. ONLY drywall. No wall. Apparently in the rural areas you don't have to hang cabinets on actual walls... you just hang the cabinets (on air?) and then slap some drywall on the back.. paint and you are done...

So first we have to have a wall. You know...with studs and such...

going....

going....

almost gone....

gone!!

now how about some studs....

oh my...check out that light fixture..another thing to go..

oh look...a real wall....

(isn't that golden yellow on the walls pretty? yea, in real life? It's peach..ugly...)

oh look...there is my step stool and my constant companion..drywall compound.....

Did you notice that only the middle part of the wall is mudded and taped? The cabinets are 42" and will reach the ceiling so only the middle 18" will show. I am all for doing what's gonna show..

yippee!! We now have a brand new wall between the kitchen and the living room.
Ain't it purdy?

And so day one ends....


And onto day two....

Today Rich got the rest of the sub floor in the master closet..and took the flue out of the living room.  You can just see it in the corner of this photo..  There is a wood stove in the basement..then the flue goes up through the living room floor and up into the ceiling..  nice... and really never finished.  It should have black pipe all the way up.  Nope...just the silver lining.  So that is gone now...  oh and so is the satellite tv....dang seller finally called and had it turned off.  After a reminder from me.  After I was pushed into reminding her by hubby.

and then Rich started in on the wall in the kitchen... This is the only photo I have of the wall before.  It is over there on the bottom left.  This photo was taken before the seller moved out.

See?  It's a finished half wall and the steps lead to the basement.  A cement basement...where the door is an inside door with a hook and eye..like the old screen doors had.  Not a look I want to keep. 

So....  Here it is with all the trim removed...bunches of trim work.  The whole house is FULL of trim work...overkill with the trim work already...

That's not Rich posing.  He is holding up the wall cause I made him put it back up so I could get a photo...

down it goes...

a bit scary ...

3 different wallpaper samples.. all of them UGLY!

Oh..let's have a FULL WALL...like an all the way to the ceiling wall...

DONE...well except for drywall which it will get next weekend.

And it is now Sunday night at 7pm and that means we have been here an hour past our usual time.  We cleaned up, loaded the truck and drove home...

After a fiasco at IMO's pizza where they charged us $53.84 for two individual pizza's (lucky for us, I noticed that they gave us the wrong pizza's and then we checked the ticket!)  we got home to find out we missed all the trick-r-treaters and now I have a bowl of M&M's and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups...neither of which I can eat..

Monday - lucky us...we got an electric bill, a water bill and the real estate tax bill in the mail today...

Nancy