Goings on.....

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!  We had a wonderful weekend full of family and friends.  AND, unlike last year, I was not up until 3 am making and wrapping presents!  Actually, a good friend and I got togegther on Thursday, and while the kids ran wild played nicely at her house, we wrapped all of our presents.  We will definitely do that one again! 

See my pretty new bedroom in progress?  It's hard to get a true picture of the color - it's a lovely blue/gray color.  I painted it the week after Thanksgiving.  I had grand intentions of going to get laminate wood flooring to replace the icky pink carpeting that was in this house when we brought it.

Well, it's going to be torn up again real soon. Christmas Day night Todd was walking between the bed and that wall getting ready for bed, and right up against the wall the floor gave way under him.  Monday we pulled the carpeting away from the wall and found this hole:

Apparently, were the addition meets the original house, there is a gap under the shingles.  And there has been water leaking in here for who knows how long.  It probably didn't help that this year has been the wettest year on record for Ohio!

On the other side of that corner is our living room - and when I moved the stuff out of the corner, I found this:

See that nice gap between the floor and the baseboard?  Yeah, the floor is  rotting away under there...

I KNOW it wasn't like that last spring, because I wanted to re-arrange that end of the room where the TV and stero sits, but Todd wanted it back the way it was after I pulled everything out, cleaned back there and moved it all.  And I'm very certain I would have noticed that!!!

And this is what we found in the basement (the sub floor under the living room).....

So the contractor who put the addition on came out yesterday and poked around.  That whole corner will need torn apart and the end truss fixed, new shingles, siding, 2x4 walls, insulation, drywall, subfloor and floor joists put in along with who all knows what else.  An adjuster from our insurance company should be coming out in the next couple of days to give us the go ahead to get started. 

But....the good part?  I did NOT put new flooring down in our bedroom which would have to be ripped out (although if I had we might have noticed it a litte bit sooner)....small good part yes, but still good.

We (Todd, the contractor and I) are really hoping we can get this fixed soon...before more damage happends.  The weather here has been just horrible (lots of rain) so that might be tough....but our contractor says 2-3 days and he can have the outside all ripped out and rebuilt.

So...I'm off this week and going to clean out the basement.  Some stuff that we had to move to get back into that corner is water damaged, so I'm planning on getting rid of LOTS of things.....

In love.....

We've been wanting to re-do our kitchen for quite some time now. Technically I have wanted to gut it and redo it since we moved in way back in July, 1998. It started with Jessie and I removing a hutch from our kitchen way back when.

I'm happy to say that this weekend, phase 1 (the kitchen island) was installed. In about 4 hours!


I ripped out the little wall that separated the kitchen from the family room. I will never understand why someone would want to close in their kitchen by putting in a 40" wide wall.

Give me space any day! (I also don't understand why anyone would put white linoleum down in a kitchen on a farm but....me? I'd rather have poop brown.....hides the dirt better)

My BIL came over yesterday and they started installing the base cabinets. They aren't anything fancy - American Classic cabinets from Home Depot - but considering the shape our kitchen cabinets are in - these are wonderful! We are doing this as we can afford to, paying cash as we go (or in the case of the base cabinets - gift cards from Home Depot gifted to me).

The countertop? I am seriously in love with it although it wasn't my first choice. I really wanted poured concrete.

Todd said not on his life was he doing concrete counterops. He must have thought they would be hard to do or something:)

I knew I didn't want laminate. And granite is WAY out of our price range. So are the solid wood countertops from Home Depot.

Until I found an Amish woodworker who built me a 42" by 8' butcherblock countertop. For just over $400:

I still need to oil the top side. So it will darken considerably once I do that. But it's heavy, solid and gorgeous! I love it so much we are doing the rest of the countertops exactly the same when we get to the rest of the kitchen! Yes, they are a bit of maintenance (you have to oil them every month to seal them) but.....

We chose oak, maple, cherry and walnut. Had we left out the walnut, it would have been $375.

There is still a lot of finish work to do (move the light switch for the light over the island - you can see it hanging in the first photo), stain the backside of the island (stock kitchen cabinets you need to put a nicer back on them - in this case oak plywood), oil the top of the cabinet and put the toe kick boards under the fronts of the cabinets. Oh and I have to find some bar stools that I like (preferrably with backs on them).

Next up? We are saving our pennies to have our Amish neighbor build us cabinets for the rest of the kitchen (which won't be all that much really - it's only about a 6 foot stretch which includes the sink and the dishwasher), which will also have the butcher block countertop, new laminate wood flooring, new pantry cabinet and a new window. The flooring will be the absolute last as we want the laminate to also go into the family room.


Although it may have to wait until this fall/next winter. I told Todd he could put his addition on the barn before we finish the kitchen.....