TBT - Old Blog Post

I'm sure you can tell by my fabulous writing skills that this is not my first blog.  I think I have had 3 others and maybe a Live Journal for half a second at like age 13.  They were pretty short-lived so I was going through my posts.  I found two entries that were house related so I'm going to include them this week and next week.  Happy Throwback Thursday!

July 13, 2012

That Poison
The list item I am currently working on is tearing out the m***** f****** yard.  I apologize for my bad language which is not typical of me (except lately for some reason, I've been using the f word a lot.  Sorry mom!) but if nothing else deserves such bad language, my yard does.  My house was an estate sale, and no, no one dided in the house.  Apparently though the old lady who lived in it before us lived to garden.  Much of our yard has been gardened and it's infuriating.  The reason is that I'm sure at one time was lovely but from what we have been told, she got sick the last one to two years of her life and couldn't keep it up.  The house was then on the market for almost a year and her family definitely didn't see a need to keep the yard up.  All of these things +2 years of living there with minimal work done to it (unbelievably there were more important projects to work on first + our wedding) = a jungle in the midst of Northern Kentucky).

This Spring/Summer we have been in a good position to work on it.  Jon and I have been really bad about wearing any protective items because we're tough and awesome, or so I thought.  I have been warned to stop wearing flip flops while shoveling (I know, I know) and to watch out for the poison ivy (which I have never experienced so am clearly not allergic to so why wear long sleeves in 104 degree weather??).  Well, one particular day I tore out this fairly small area that was just jam packed with horrible greenery.  The next day I found this weird bump on my toe and then broke out on my nose (infuriating because I'm 27 and should not be breaking out).  I then found a few bumps on my arm.  I started panicking about what I am allergic to now as I had literally just recovered from hive attack after being exposed to a laundry additive that makes your clothes smell good (I can't help that I'm a delicate little flower!).  More and more bumps started showing up so I asked Dr. Mom to look at it.  She immediately said, "That's poison ivy."  I mean duh, I should have put that together but I honestly thought I wasn't allergic.  My mom is smarter than me though and is a poison ivy expert because if she stands near it and the wind blows I swear her eyes sweel shut.

As the hours and days passed, the rash continued to spread... my chin, the sides of my face, neck, my arms, literally covering my stomach (including the inside of my belly button, vom) and thights, and my bikini line ( I swear I had shorts on).  My hubs kept encouraging me to go to the doctor but I kept saying no because I'm stubborn and well, just plain dumb.  The reasonn I was saying that is because by the time I really realized how bad it was, parts of me were already healing.  However, for those of you fortunate enough to have never experienced this atrocious reaction, there are not words to describe how truly miserable it is.  When you have one bump it is really annoying but when it is covering your entire body you want to rip off every piece of your skin.  Again, I am dumb.  Finally, only when I developed an unrelated case of bronchitis did I go to the doctor.  While I was there, I showed her part of my rash (PART, mind you) and the horrified reaction from her really made me feel better (I for realsies love my doc).  She shot me up with some steroids and I'm not back in the game.

This story was just to illustrate the use of mfing and why I hate working on my yard.  I will forge on though b/c I'm a bad ass... and also because I now shower with Dawn after every single time I do yard work.

This is a VERY small sample of the ridiculousness of the yard (this is also after days of working on the area).  You can barely see it but in the very back of the photo there is a thing that looks like a bush in the left hand corner.  That is where the culprit resided.

Decked Out

Speaking of decks, I'd like to tell you of another project related to it. As mentioned previously the deck was one of my first priorities as it was the first one I had ever owned or lived with...?  I feel like to say it was in a state of disrepair may be a little dramatic but I'll just say it hadn't looked like it had been maintained for minimum 5 years.  It was majorly splintered, the stain was obviously coming off and many of the floor boards were loose. I knew I had to spruce this baby up so I did some research and looked for the first long weekend available to tackle this project. I bought the house in late March/early April so I planned for Memorial Day.

Let me tell you, I am so happy we did it on a 3-dayer.  Remeber me talkign about how happy I was that this thing was so big?  I cursed myself for feeling excited about that in the middle of this project.  As I had mentioned I'm pretty sure this thing hadn't been touched for minimum 5 years.  Therefore, every inch needed to be sanded.  It. Took. For... Ever. At one point our poor next door neighbors were having a Memorial Day cookout and invited us over.  We are positive that was done in order to get a break from the sanding for a few minutes.

We spent countless hours in the sweltering heat sanding and sanding. Some of you may be wondering what took us so long.  We had rented a floor sander to make the main floor part easy.  But it was the railing.  All of those rails.  Those flipping rails.  I'm pretty sure most people don't waste their time with them but I wanted it all sanded!  After days we ended up getting the worst part finished (sanding) and moved onto painting.  We made a little bit of a mistake in that we purchased color that was a little more red than we had intended but 3 or 4 years later it has grown on me a little.  We ended up painting the majority of the deck that weekend but had to touch it up a few days later that week.

I can't seem to find an after photo immediately after finishing it soa  photo of it today will have to do! (See the before photo in the previous post).

Let There Be Deck Lights

Photo of Deck From Online Listing (Arrow Added)

When I bought my house, one of the main features that I loved was the deck.  It was enormous (to me at least).  I had never lived in a house with a deck so I was pretty psyched about the prospect of a nice outdoor entertaining space. One of the cool features of the deck was that there were two lights built into it on the railing.  They weren’t super cool lights but that didn’t matter, a light was a light. 

I went ahead and put an offer in on the house, we negotiated, and made a deal.  I moved onto the inspection stage where quite a long list of items were flagged. I was overwhelmed with the amount of work required and ended up walking away from the contract.  The sellers came back (I like to imagine in a panic, because of course, I was in control of the situation) and essentially said we will fix everything, just buy it. I said okay but you need to give me a new electrical box. They agreed and the rest is history. 

I moved into the house, excited about my first home with millions of projects to tackle. One of the first things I purchased was an outdoor table and chairs because of my deck excitement. However, I was sorely disappointed when I tried to turn the deck lights on with no luck. I tried changing the lightbulbs and that didn’t work. I then thought maybe I should check the wires.  At some point, and I’m not sure if it was when they were fixing one of the electrical issues or if it was when they replaced the electrical box, but the electrical line for those lights was cut off. I was bummed but still happy with the deck so I just overlooked it, assuming at some point we would just remove the lights.

Fast forward 4 years of living in the house. We are in the middle of a bathroom remodel (more on this project in a later post) and needed to get a bunch of electrical things moved/added.  When the electrician came to provide the quote, my husband also asked him to check an outlet on our deck that was also non-functional. He said he would look into it.

Today, while I was at work the electrician came and did all of the fun work we requested.  I pulled my car around back, got out of my car and looked at the deck.  To my shock and complete and utter elation, the deck lights were on. I mean I think I almost teared up. After 3 years of thinking (for some reason) that there would be no salvaging these things, they were on! Apparently, when the electrician fixed the outdoor outlet this also fixed the deck lights.  What an amazing surprise! I think I need to plan a party. J

A Wreath and a Break-in

This really doesn’t qualify as a house project but it will be hanging in my house, so close enough. I’m not a huge crafter but I like to do them at times when I become especially inspired. And by inspired I mean I see a photo of something I want to copy. A few weeks ago in one of my too many hours perusing Facebook I saw a photo of a 4^th of July clothespin wreath.  I thought it was really cute so I was determined to make it.  However, as all projects go, I procrastinated. Realizing that the 4^th of July is less than a week away I decided I needed to get ‘er done (vom). Anyhoo, I spent yesterday buying the supplies and painting all of these little pins by hand.  I was told I just should have done them with spray paint but I like the brush strokes and there is just something kind of relaxing about painting. It took me all afternoon but I rate this as a great success. I am very pleased and usually I’m a tough critic of my own work. If it’s not perfect, it’s terrible. So this is obviously perfect. J

Also, random home story…

A few weeks ago we had a bricklayers move an exterior window in our master bathroom.  The bathroom is completely gutted at the moment and we are moving the window in order to install a bathtub. On Thursday I pulled into the driveway, when it suddenly hit me that I had no access into the house.  My husband had taken my car to the shop so I had stolen my mom’s car. I never grabbed a spare key so I was shut out.  I spent about a half an hour at my parents’ house looking for a key to my house to no avail.  I finally returned back to my house in hopes of finding an unlocked window. I angrily stomped to the backyard to see if one of the windows on my deck would let me in… when I saw my uninstalled bathroom window, duh. I proceeded to un-wedge the window, drag a chair over to the gaping hole and very ungracefully slide through. I was so happy I was actually inside of my house. However, I’m even more concerned about how easy that was. Hopefully no one decides to un-wedge in before we can get it fixed! I think it’s time to buy a fake rock to hide a spare key.