Grocery Shrink

Last week my Father-in-Law brought down his skid-loader since we couldn’t find one in town to rent.  It was a blessing he was here, because DH hurt his back the same day and we needed a lot of help.  My mother-in-law came too and ended up staying with us several days which was a blessing.

Here’s the front of our house from April 2012.  That was before new front doors and the tree trimming. Most of the yard was ground cover ivy instead of grass.

The side yard by the driveway was full of misc. trees and bushes that always looked scraggly to me.  I’d been begging Darren to let me cut them down since we bought the house.

They are gone now! Don’t worry, we still have a lot of beautiful trees left, but everything looks a lot cleaner.

I was thrilled to say goodbye to a yard full of weeds, and hello to beautiful dirt angled to keep water from seeping under the foundation.  We took several bids on gutters but don’t think we’ve found the right company yet.  The house is 4 stories tall in the back and we need something that doesn’t have to be cleaned out every week back there.

It took most of the week to get the dirt work done.  Then Cloyce tilled the entire yard 3 times to smooth everything out and prepare it for grass seed.  You can see him on the right with his garden tiller.  Oh man, this was a serious amount of work. Darren was in no position to help–he was laid so flat I was dressing him and feeding him too…I’m thankful he’s starting to get better.

While Cloyce worked out front, Bonnie (my mother-in-law) planted Hostas fro me in our jungle bed out back.  She pulled out a lot more of the invasive ground cover, which I was so thankful for.  I got my hands dirty a little bit too, but my job at the school interrupted our most productive work times.

When she wasn’t working here, she was inside helping with dishes and laundry, and reading stories to the cutest 2 year old named Grant.

We are expecting a second opinion on the foundation this Friday and will know more how to proceed.  It feels like a long time to wait.

So Foundation Guy was here.  I was exercising with friends and DH handled the main walk through.  I came in for the verdict.  The look on his face was a cross-between maybe you should sit down and it could be worse.

We bought the house from the original owners, who designed and built the house. They lived a good portion of time in Europe, and found the maintenance on the home from across the seas to be daunting.  Especially cleaning leaves out of the gutters.  Soooooo, they took the gutters down when the house was a year old. That was 41 years ago.

The lack of gutters forced water to fall off the house next to the foundation and erode the soil away.  This allowed water to seep UNDER the foundation and heave up the center of the house.  There is a heaved up crack in the basement floor and the house is 2+” higher in the center then at the edges.  The drywall in the attic is cracking and buckling.

Foundation Guy suggested we relandscape the front yard, do some mud-jacking of washed out areas under the front porch, put on gutters and wait for the house to settle back down before proceeding with the kitchen.

“You’re kidding right?  You totally had me going there. Your face looked soooo serious…..you’re not kidding?  You ARE serious? Catch me….I’m going down.”

How much is that going to cost?  How long will that take? We are making phone calls….but so far JUST the mud-jacking is $800.  And a structural engineer for a second opinion?  $400 and a wait time of two weeks.  Then we can rent a skid-steer because DH has Skills. Expecting $200 a day for that which is way less than hiring a landscape company.  But we are on a waiting list to get one–looks like lots of folks have the same idea. Foundation Guy thought we had enough dirt in the high spots of our yard that we wouldn’t need to buy more–good news.  And then the gutters….not sure on that but expecting 4 figures.

And once we get that done, how long before the house settles?  No one can tell us. Darren has already called his mother and suggested she start thinking about plan B for Christmas since we won’t have a house to host it in.

Breathe…..slowly.  It’s not cancer.  We are still in love.  Our children are safe and healthy.  We have food and an emergency fund and maybe when the furlough is over DH will still have a job.  The dry erase marker came out of my new sofa this morning with a shot of hand sanitizer and Grant is really sorry and will never do it again.  My washer and dryer are still functioning as are our 17 year old cars. There’s so much to be thankful for.  Thankfulness takes the sting away.

I still need chocolate.  Good thing I bought the Halloween candy early….or maybe not.

Tuesday, I’ll tell you what Foundation Guy said.  Until then, let’s try to forget about it and enjoy some photos.

Before the laundry room was just six feet wide and 18 feet long!  It was painted a mustard orange color with matching linoleum and lined on both sides with cabinets.  The cabinets even partly covered the tiny window at the end.  The cabinet doors were too narrow to fit most items in, so the room was in constant chaos.

We started by removing one set of cabinets which opened things up quite a bit.  But it still felt pretty cramped.

So we widened the room 2 feet, painted it a lighter color, removed the popcorn ceiling, and moved the doorway to the other end.  This left the opposite end able to receive shelves all the way around for a pantry and prep kitchen.

The dining room started with the same linoleum as the laundry room and was painted in two other dark shades pulled from the floor. It has one very small window that was covered with heavy lined drapes the exact print of the linoleum. We  repainted the room, added light filtering curtains, replaced the chair rail, and added crown molding.  Then I temporarily covered the linoleum with a paper bag floor.

View from another angle.  The door to the right leads into the old laundry room.  I rarely closed it since we do laundry so often and I didn’t like hiking down the long skinny room to get to the machines.

Here we dropped the old laundry room wall, in preparation to widen the laundry and create room for a pantry.  Before removing any walls we consulted with a structural engineer and the original blue prints.  None of the walls we changed were support walls.

The new wall framed in. An arched doorway was high on my wish list to add character to the architecture.  And it echoes the arch of the brick fireplace.

Pulling back to the view from our bedroom doorway.  Notice the 6 foot wall separating the old kitchen from our family room.  Our family room was completely sealed inside the house with rooms all the way around and received no natural light of it’s own.  (The mustard yellow paint color didn’t help much.)  Here Caleb is carrying books to our library downstairs so we can tear the wall down.

Ripping stuff out is VERY satisfying. And the fastest part of the job.

The wall is gone allowing a lot more light to come into the family room.  The popcorn ceilings are now smooth and the drywall is ready for painting.

View of the old kitchen from the back of the fireplace.  It was very chopped up with the stove next to the dining room. My back was to the oven as I took this picture–the two appliances weren’t anywhere near each other.  The dishwasher was across from the refrigerator and there was not enough room to walk through to the dining room with the dishwasher open.  Also the refrigerator could not open with the dishwasher open.  This was very frustrating when it was time to clear the table, load the dishes and put the food away after a meal.  Also notice the pantry door straight ahead on the right?  It is not near ANY of the prep areas.  There were a lot of waisted steps designed into this kitchen.

That pesky range hood is now down.  Whew, we though we would NEVER get it to budge!

Pantry drywall is down.  Woo hoo! Progress!

Goodbye pantry.  Goodbye linoleum.

Ready for paint. The light from the few windows we have can flow through the house much better now.

Another angle shows a half wall with 2 windows in it.  The previous owners hung fake vinyl stain glass pieces in the openings.  The goal was to block the view of the messy kitchen from the formal living room.  But it also managed to keep light from traveling through the space.

View from the formal living room.

I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this one!

Grrr, take that!

That thing sticking up out of our floor was our old central vacuum.  The suction was great, but the attachments didn’t work anymore.

View from the other direction.  I’m standing with my back against the dining room wall that boarders the laundry room.

So this is where our project is today.  When we get it done, it’s going to be amazing.  But that could be awhile yet.  I’ll tell you why tomorrow.

Wide open space!  All subfloor–no more mismatch.  No more 1971 linoleum with cuts and dirt ground in deep.  This is the view from the door to my bedroom.

Next stop hardwood floors.  We cut the old floor into squares–it was a floating floor, but they glued each tongue together so we couldn’t reuse it.  I was REALLY bummed about that.  My mom came over and carried it out while I was teaching school.

Then DH started laying out the new floor to see how things would go.  The floors are really not level, and our choices to level them up include taking up the subfloor and planing down the high joists.  Or taking up the subfloor and shimming up the low areas.  Or pouring in a silicone leveler that can be nailed through (except some of the low areas are 2 inches low which is too much for the leveler.) And then it hit us, “Why is the floor this bad?”  “Why is the wall in the attic cracking? Was it cracked that much last year when we moved in?”

So we placed a call to a structural expert who will be here at 9 am tomorrow.  It feels like everything is on hold and we are afraid to breathe.  We had foundation problems at our previous house and they are costly to repair.  Here’s to hoping it’s not too bad.  It’s frustrating to DH because he is furloughed and has time to work on the project, but can’t move forward until the experts give their ok.

Tomorrow, I’ll show some before and current pictures of our progress.  Even though we aren’t close to done, it’s amazing how far we’ve come.

P.S.  DH is a federal agent of sorts and his most recent background check came up with this blog.  They sweetly asked if I would stop using his name in my posts…So trying to remember to use DH instead of the real thing, even though I’ve never been a secretive sort of person.  And not mad at all, just extremely flattered that they considered this tiny blog important enough to make the request.

P.P.S. A weight loss scam stole my weight loss pictures and used them on facebook to try to sell their junk.  I’m half mad; half flattered that they thought my transformation was good enough to steal.  But I still made a stink and asked them to take it down, as did my trainer, the amazing Holly Rigsby (button the right.)

Random Excerpt: Happy Birthday to the best mother a girl could have! Mine.  Hope Dad takes you shopping and lets you look at whatever you want to for as long as you want to and not just computers and electronic stuff.

Ok, A lot of paint.  The size of this space is huge about 60 feet by 18 feet.  So we took advantage of an Angie’s list special and hired 2 painters for a day.  That was a very good decision.

They left us this cool bucket, with paint screen and a roller.  I had never seen one before and it totally eliminates the need for a roller pan and multiple refills.

DH and I still painted about 8 hours on Saturday together, after we ran our first 5k as a couple, in the rain, in the wee hours of the morning.  Yes we are totally drenched in this picture.  At least he had the good sense to wear a hat. He got a medal too, but wasn’t as excited about it as I was.  Um, his first time was less than 28 minutes….I arrived across the finish line 3 minutes later. He mostly has a desk job–I work out a lot.  And even though I wasn’t any where near a fast time, I cried when they put the medal on my neck.  It was after all to help save unborn babies and their mothers.

You can get a good sense of the color in the photo above.  It’s Behr Silver Drop–which is a very light,very neutral greige.  I’d call it a warm gray or a cool beige.  I’ve used really wall colors in my house before and get tired of them really quickly.  I’m a neutral kind of girl and I really love white.  And then pops of color from rugs or curtains, pillows and such–or just really clean and almost bare.

Ok, here’s a confession that I can say here, because this isn’t a decorating blog.  I kind of like builder’s grade–and everywhere beige or gray.  Ever since I was a little girl, seeing a new house with builder grade everything was like the height of luxury.  Our house was built in the 30’s with original doors and knobs and everything that is cool right now, but back then it was 40 years old–the same as 70’s stuff is today.  We had pleasant dreams at night of builder’s grade.  We had no idea how charming everything could be if we just restored the house to it’s original glory.  Now when I read decorating blogs (and I’m subscribed to about 20 of them) they commonly bashing builder’s grade and working to eradicate it all from their home.  Their transformations are amazing, but I’d be happy with the before and not even realize a transformation was needed.

I love how the kids like to be close to us.  They brought a tiny lap top in to watch a movie where Darren was working even though we have rooms with furniture somewhere in the house :).  Hmmm, I wonder where Dub was?  Oh and paint the fireplace or no?  I go back and forth every day on what to do.  Everyone in my house says NO.  But I love a nice white painted fireplace. And a mantle.  Think I could stick a mantle above the arch?  Would that look wonky?

Because dust means progress.  I know we’re making lots of progress, because DUST is everywhere!

But the sheetrock is done and as soon as I get this mess cleaned up–the painting can begin!

Need. Water. Drywall.

We are challenged right now, getting our drywall guy to show up.  Or call us back….

Our friend started the drywall process for us and I love his work and how that arched doorway is shaping up. He is too busy or I’d hire him to finish the job.

So in the meantime, I’m scraping more popcorn ceilings.  And trying to hold it together for the family.

Soccer, ballet, violin lessons, piano lessons, tutoring, teaching voice…..IT has started. The crazies are here and the fear that gave me hives last spring has come true.  That our kitchen would still look like this when the crazies come.  I’m ready to bake fall cookies and homemade bread.  I’m ready to have family dinners around a table and look at each other and talk.

But for now I’m being grateful.  Grateful for this huge house that was ugly enough that we could afford it.  Grateful for the kids to fill it up.  Grateful for just enough money to do a project like this.  Grateful for friends who will come and help. And for plenty of food; and air conditioning, for the kids’ school and the best job in the world I get to do there, for boxes of real hardwood floor and a 6 burner gas range ready in the garage for their moment to come. And that we are healthy and in love. Somehow remembering what I have to be thankful for makes the waiting and the longing and the taking forever bearable one more day.