My Weblog

Dear House,

Dear House,

How long have we known each other?  5 years this month, I think.  We loved you at first sight.  I feel like we have been together long enough for me to be honest with you:

I am tired of your passive-agressive ways!

I look at you day after day, and you tell me that you are fine.  But month after month, I find myself shelling out more and more money to help you improve your flaws.  Maybe if you would just come clean about everything, we could address it and move forward together. 

Please, don't deny.  I can site examples:  twice now, I have had to deconstruct your walls to make repairs.  Twice now, you have assured me that you were fine, and it would not happen again.  And yet, I am finding more damage, more repairs to be made.  I know you have not intentionally hurt us, but the time we have to spend attending to your every need is time taken away from time I could spend with the garden (please do no be jealous) or on other interests.  It is not all about you, House!

Also, you keep poor company.  Though your immediate neighbors are fine, I take issue with the ones across the street.  I am not comfortable around them.

So, here is my proposition:  we will continue with this relationship, however honest you want to make it.  We will agree to provide you with money for up-keep and accessories.  But, the end of our relationship is near.  We will uphold our end of the deal, and we hope in another year or two, we can leave each other on mutually good terms.

Thank you, House, for hearing me out.  We do still love you.

Owners

Project #1: After!

In my previous post, I promised to create a functional office space out of the pile of clutter that was our existing back porch before the end of the month.  Well, I have delivered!  It still looks a little messy and cluttered, but just look at the Before pictures, and you will see how much better this is.

 

We still have some tools and construction equipment stacked in the shelves.  Keep in mind also that the walls are not finished. 

BUT!  I finally have a space to do office things again!  Mike has his own space back too.  That may have been a mistake, because he is back to building models.  That leaves precious little time to do anything else around the house.  Hmmm...

Anyway:

 

 

 

The floor is mostly done, which was the biggest obstacle in getting a functional room.  The only thing left to do are two patches in the door ways, where we plan to put some kind of tile.  (When the walls are done, we will have to do base boards of course, but that will be forever from now, so it doesn't count.)

Thanks for the flooring, Uncle Mike and Aunt Gail!

Project #1: Before

Project #1:

Liam kicked us out of our office just about one year ago.  We had a semi-finished, enclosed back porch area that we decided to transform into a new office.  There really was no other way to even have an office again unless we used the back porch.  I took some before before pictures when the wall was made of a colage of  glass doors and wooden slats.  We don't know what the previous owners were thinking, doing, going for, whatever.  I don't know where those pictures went. 

Last summer, we (my dad and husband) re-built the strange wall into an actual, solid wall, and we had it sided to match the rest of the house during the winter...the bank made us or they would have refused to refinance! 

 

But it was still really an unusable room. 

Before:

 

Looks bad, huh?  It's as bad as it looks.  Quite possibly worse.  We were using it as a storage room for everything, including most of our displaced office furniture and supplies.

Part of the problem was the floor.  It was just an uneven cement slab.  We brain-stormed for the last year, trying to figure out how to get an actual, even floor into the room.  What we (I) came up with was building a frame, stabilizing it from underneath with shims to make it even, and putting plywood on top for a subfloor.

 

So, keep these horrifying Before pictues in mind.  My goal is to have a functional office by the end of the month.  The walls will not be finished (read: no drywall, paint, etc.  Let's not get too carried away!)  But, even without finished interior walls, it will still be an office...finally...a year later!

(I admit right now that my Project #1 before and after post is cheating a little.  We are already well past these Before pictures.  There is still much to be done, so it still counts.  I have just been procrastinating on actually posting the Before pictutes.  I waited so long that we are now closer to the After than the Before.)

 

Are You Sitting Down?

Here is my mansion:

(I stole these pictures from the realtor site.  Are there ethical issues here?  I see it as giving them free publicity...right?  And less creepy than me taking pictures from the sidewalk!) 

 

 

 

Just a couple interior photos.  Do you love it?  Can you stand to look at it and not have it?!? 

It's much better in person.  Like from the position of drooling over the fence...not that I would know. 

There was an article in our local paper at one point discussing the architecture of houses on Billings' South Side.  (My actual house was featured too!)  But this house was there.  It used to be a home, then retirement home, then daycare, possibly...back to home.  It was built in 1905.  I think we learned that it had 26 different rooms at one time.  3 stories tall.  Huge yard.  Ugh.  Covetting is exhausting.

*sigh*

I happen to work with a guy who knows the family that is currently selling the house.  He promised me that he would introduce me (since I'm kind of neighbors to them), and get them to give me a tour.  I think he forgot about me.  Anyway, I also happen to know the reason they are selling the house...but I can say no more.  It has nothing to do with the house itself.  Despite my initial reaction, they are not doing it simply to torture me.

*SIGH*

On a similar note, since I seem to be stuck in this house for the time being...until I become a millionaire...I recently decided to post BEFORE and AFTER PROJECTS.  In this post I showed pictures of Liam's room.  Those pictures were technically AFTER pictures, but I was still looking for things to put on his walls to truly finish the room.  Well, after posting it, I got in gear.  

Here is the final AFTER pictures:

I bought a few things (I already had the giraffe hanging).

 

And I crafted a few other things:

 

(The large picture frames are the new part.  All I did was stick some giraffe patterned paper in them.)

 

And I bought some smaller frames and drew some giraffes inside. I find myself walking a thin line between making his room fabulous to my eyes and fun/cute for Liam...since it is his room and all.  Enjoy my artwork:

  
  

 

 

I also got some cardboard letters and covered them to match the walls.

 

I spent a few hours sewing fur onto the "I"

 

Liam's room: FINISHED!
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

My Poor Heart

I don't know how much more my poor heart can take. 

My baby just left on a road trip with Mike.  It is Mike's oldest son's birthday today.  (Dominic.  Now 11.  Last summer, he advised us that he could not eat from the kid's menu at Applebees because he was 12 years old.  When we raised our eyebrows, he confessed that he was "Well, almost 12...well, 11...almost."  So 10 still?)

Anyway, Mike and I went to visit the boys last spring for Alec's 7th birthday.  We had planned to do the same for Dominic.  But this month went by at warp-speed for me, so I was totally unprepared and had not even contemplated asking for the day off of work.  So, Mike and Liam left without me.  I keep envisioning how much I can get done around the house without having to stop for bottle breaks, diaper breaks, play breaks, nap breaks, etc.  But if I am truthful, they have been gone for 30 minutes, and my heart already hurts.

I miss my baby!

And on top of that, I need $257,000 so I can own the house that I HAVE TO HAVE. 

It is a mansion.  Literally.  It is called a Peter Yegan Mansion--he basically built Billings, and it was one of his houses...mansions.  It is only 2 blocks away from my house.  It went up for sale just a week after we purchased this house.  It was out of our price range at that point.  At that same price, we would be able to afford it now, though.

It now costs $257,000.  It is advertised as having 6 bedrooms and 2 baths.  3 stories!  Mike and I did some research a few years ago on the Yegan Mansion.  I had like 26 seperate rooms at one point.  Not sure how many have been combined since then, but 6 bedrooms?!? 

It is 6,700 squ. feet.  Imagine.  With that kind of room, Mike and I could each have our own set of rooms, and I would be able to close myself off from his man mess.  Each kid could have his own room, plus a seperate play room that could just stay messy for all I care!

*Sigh*  I have covetted that house for 5 years.  Now it is for sale, and I can't have it.  Not fair!

I guess I will go take advantage of my day off all by myself.  Maybe I will stop for a nap break first...

Finished Projects...my new thing.

So, I've decided to try a new thing.  I have noticed that I am only able to function as a house keeper and properly clean my house when I have a deadline, like a guest coming to stay.  I think that the same may be true for projects.  But I don't get that many guests. 

I have decided to give myself on-line deadlines instead.  I will blog about an un-done project and give myself a deadline to meet.  I will post before pictures, I will meet my deadline (fingers crossed), and I will post after pictures.  Should work, right?

Before I do that, however, I wanted to post pictures of Liam's finished bedroom.  I worked very hard on it and am very proud of how it turned out.  I do not believe that I ever posted pictures of it, and I can't believe I didn't sooner.  So, here it is:

It is giraffe-themed, by the way.  (With other jungle animal accents.)

I did the paint job all by myself.  I remember asking the doctor if I was allowed to paint while pregnant.  His response was to look at Mike, then whisper to me, "Do you want to paint?"  In other words, he was going to give me the right answer.  Well, I did want to paint, so he gave me the go-ahead.  (I loved my doctor.)

As surprising as it may seem, it would have taken a hugely complex mathematical formula in order to make the stripes match up on the 4th wall.  Think about it for a moment...perhaps if your walls are perfectly measured and divisible by a common denominator.  That's right, I said it.  Ever think you would hear that phrase outside of school?  Now that I think it over, if I had centered the stripes on each wall individually instead of starting at one point and wrapping around to each wall...hmm...

Anyway, too difficult.  So I decided to paint the spots.  I am so glad I did.  I love how they look, and I had forgotten that the bedding had spots, so they match wonderfully!

I am still searching for a lamp to go on the dresser.  I cannot find one.  The only white ones have pink or otherwise-frilly shades.  I will have to try a specialty store, like Once Source Lighting.

The giraffe decoration on the wall is one of my favorite pieces!  Thank you, Aunt Gail and Uncle Mike!

That closet was a strange, long, thin closet with only the one door closest to the wall.  Totally non-functional.  I have no idea what the architect was thinking.  Mike built in the second door for me.  So much better!  Looks pretty good, huh?

And the chair?  It started out as a horrible plain wood-brown with awful blue cushions.  Like unspeakably awful blue.  I have never seen a blue that I didn't like...maybe one that didn't match, or was too bright, but this blue...ugh!  Ugly doesn't describe.  Anyway, my mom sewed the green covers for the cushions.  She also painted much of the woodwork.  Mike's mother did a coat of white paint too, I think.  My contribution was to sew the ties on the corners of the cushions.  They are very cute, but you will have to imagine them.
 

I am totally in love with this bedding.  Each color of fabric has a different texture, like furry or corderoy (spelling??)  The inside of the crib bumper has the white and animal faces too.  Love it.  L.O.V.E. it.

Toy storage under the bed.  ...I sewed the pillow on the floor to match the chair.

So that room is one of the only finished projects in my entire house.  I am still looking for wall decorations, but I still declare this it as finished.

Oh, and as a strange coincidence, just a day after I posted about my Martha Stewart-y gourd decoration, I received an offer in the mail to get the Martha Stewart Living catalogue.  I am totally getting it, but I will still claim the projects as my own!

A Very Productive Day

These are rare at my house, productive days, I mean.  We usually begin projects with the best intentions, but then get side-tracked or get to a stopping point and never start up again.  I was apparently struggling to catch up on my sleep from yesterday's long shift, so I slept until 2pm.  I was sure that today would be a usual day of project non-completion.  I was pleasantly surprised:

* We got our rock landscaping finished. Finally.  I weeded much of my garden while Mike moved rocks.  I meant to take a picture of the finished product, but forgot about it until after the sun had gone down.  Tomorrow.

*  We then took Bo out for an adventure at the river (not really a project, but I'm counting it anyway). 

Bo is a difficult subject to photograph due to his extreme fear of cameras, so these were the best views I was able to capture. 

The leaves are all starting to change colors, and there were some fabulous bright red ones that caught my eye.

These were my trophies for the day.

I picked up this stick because this end of it looks like a snail with antenae.

* Then we came home and painted almost an entire room.  (This is the leaky room where we had to take apart part of the wall.  It is still dismantled, so that section did not get painted.)

The colors look a little washed out in the photo.  Also, we plan to put a chair rail (or crown molding in the middle of the wall instead of on top, as I had to explain it to Mike) where the two colors meet.

The photo is also at a weird angle:  I was already sitting at the computer desk when I snapped the picture, and didn't feel like standing all the way back up again.

This was the most exciting part of my day.  I was beginning to feel like this room would never be painted.  Of course, there is still that gaping hole in one wall, but at least we're one step closer.  I was also excited because I didn't think I would get Mike to agree to painting, but he seemed happy to do it.  First the garage cleaning, now this?  Hmm.  Perhaps it's something in the water.  Or the subliminal messages I have been sending him through the TV.  Either way, I'll take it!

Flower Update

I've been meaning to post a flower update for a while now, and kept hoping that my pretty blossoms would not wilt before I got the chance to photograph them.

Bad news first:  My poor sweet peas did not survive.  They lasted through my abscence when Mike was graduating from the Police Academy.  When I got back, I moved them to a different place in the yard.  I'm not sure if it was the move, or if that just happened to coincide with an extreme heat wave, but the next day, they were all brittle and yellow.  I was a little crushed.

Everything else was doing well until I went on my most recent visit to Bozeman.  I left Mike with instructions to "please water the yard and my flowers while I'm gone."  Well it rained for a couple days, so he figured that nature just took care of itself.  He did not water at all.  It would have been ok, except for my one flower box that is attached to the house, and sits under the overhang of out roof.  My wild flower box.  That got no water at all.  They died.  Mike's excuse when I pointed out that he must not even have checked on them was that he can't tell the difference between alive and dead flowers anyway.  Hmm.  I'm just not sure I buy that one. 

Anyway, here are some photos of the ones that did make it.  Excuse the weeds.  They will not stop growing, and weeding has just not made it to #1 on my days-off to-do list.

These are 4 O'Clocks.  I have decided that I love them, and must plant more.  I had hoped to get pictures when their blossoms were actually open, but they are among those plants that blooms and closes each day.  I havn't paid enough attention to confirm this, but I think they may open sometime around 4 O'clock. 

Anyway, you can see that the first group has pink blossoms, and the second group has mostly yellow ones.

Items in one of my planters.  These were both advertised to be able to grow even in the hottest, driest environments.  Perfect since it's apparently hard to get water when you're a plant around my house.

I love these:  I'm not sure what they are, but I think there area at least 2 different plants in there.  I planted one on purpose, and the other just snuck in and they both survived.

My one true sunflower that isn't the miniature, darker kind, which I photographed for a much earlier post.

And some cool flowers that I don't know the names of.

Well, that's my flower update.  We just got a load of gravel last week, so I will be able to finally finish my landscaping project.  When that's done and the garden is weed-free, I will have more pictures to share.

Tile Trauma

Yesterday I got bored of working on my yard, plus it was too hot to be outside.  Well, I can't just not have a project going on, so I decided to tile our front porch.  Now the porch already had tiles on it, but they were just set down on top of a rubber mat.  No mortar, no grout, nothing.  Ever since moving in, putting the tiles down properly has been on my To Do List.  It never occurred to me that I may not be qualified To Do it.

  This is the porch minus tile.  Obviously the person who owned the house before us had a small child.  Looks like they did some sort of footprints-in-paint art project before covering the area in tile. 

That greenish color is the same paint that was used in my kitchen, by the way.

One of the tiles that had been in here was broken, but we found some extra tiles in the garage, so I thought I'd be able to just replace the broken one.  Also, the last row of tiles in here were much smaller and they did not match (the original floor-doers just put them there to finish the floor without having to cut any tile, I think).  I removed those and bought some 1" square tiles to place in a pattern with the large ones instead.

  Here are some lessons I learned in doing this project:

LESSON 1:  "Matching" tiles from the garage may just be an optical illusion and should always be double checked before throwing away any other tiles.

Original tile from the porch...

Tile from the garage...

Porch tile (right) compared to garage tile (left).  You see my problem.  I ended up having to fish the broken tile out of the garbage and use it anyway.  It worked out though.

LESSON 2:  Just because the tiles fit on the floor in the trial run is no guarantee that they will fit once you start cementing them down.  Why should they?

As in so many of my projects lately, I got this close to the end before the problem struck.  The last two tiles wouldn't fit!!!

LESSON 3:  Lowe's can cut tile, so think of that before panicking and trying to chip away the edge of a tile with a hammer to make it fit.  (That edge is tucked under a door frame, so is not noticeable, thank goodness).

LESSON 4:  Tile mortar and grout is messy, but big dumb dogs don't understand what you mean when you shriek, "AAAHHHHH!  Don't walk on there!!!!"

LESSON 5:  Tiles are sharp, like razor blade sharp.  Don't press the pad of your thumb on the broken edge of one while trying in vain to make it fit.

Ouch.

And the final lesson...this has less to do with the tile project, and more just a life observation:

LESSON 6:  Life is approximately 8% harder when you have a bandage on your thumb.  (Also, it's very hard to take a picture of your right hand with your left hand.)

Hmm...this photo makes it look like I have Spencer fingers.  I think they're longer in real life.

Here's the new porch.  This is pre-grout.

And, the final product:

That is Alec's foot in the doorway.  Then Dominic got upset that he didn't get a picture taken of his foot on the floor.  huh.......?   Must just be a sibling rivalry thing.

I must say that I'm pretty proud of myself.  I'm sure a professional tile person would cringe at my attempt, but it was my first time, and I'm happy with it.  No matter what, it looks and functions much better than having the tiles just sitting on the floor.  (The next project will be to paint the strange pink walls out there.  They throw off the tile color in my opinion.)

More Recent Work

As I have mentioned previously, I have been doing quite a bit of work painting the rooms in my house.  All of the rooms were a tanish, creamish color...all but the living room, which is bright yellow (really the same color as orange juice, I noticed one day while drinking a glass), and the kitchen, which is a strange greenish, weirdish color.  Oh, and our upstairs bathroom, which is a calmer yellow.  Anyway, progress is slow, but here's what I have accomplished so far:

The boys' room (sideways again, obviously).  It was the tanish color, but had stencilled handprints in a line around the middle.  Dominic told me he thought they were creepy.  I like this much better.  I think they will too.

Mike built that red pirate ship (yes, that's what that is) by himself out of Legos, and not with one of those kits--just loose Legos.  Impressive, if you're into that kind of thing.

Dining room...sideways.  Those are Pier 1 banana leaves on the wall.  They are one of my favorite decorative possessions right now.

(That's some of my birthday mail on the table)

(That's a coat rack that Mike built.  It has yet to be stained to match either the table or the trim...we can't decide.)

I am also in the process of texturizing the walls of what will become our "media room."  It's technically supposed to be the master bedroom, but I didn't want a bedroom on the ground floor.  (It has a semi-large walk-in closet that I turned into my craft room.)  We tried a dark gray color around the bottom of the walls at first, but I decided it was too dark.  Eventually the room will be tan on the textured part and a brown or darker tan on the bottom.

I ran out of texturizer with THIS MUCH wall left to go.  AAAHHHHH!!!  (Just the tan and light gray area are left.  The texturizer is 2 colors because some of it was still wet.)

Also, the weather has been unusually rainy over the past couple of months.  To our great dismay, I discovered that this room leaks.  Badly. 

That part of the wall will have to be replaced, I'm sure.  I'm mostly mad because I had already texturized that part.  If I hadn't done that, I would have had enough to finish the rest of the walls that aren't damaged!

We believe we will need to invest in some new siding for the house.  (Cry.)

So, that's the progess...and set backs so far.

(Those red curtains were here when we moved in.  They will not stay.)