I'm back!!

Well, nothing really got done over the winter to the house (except a few new electrical wires ran), so that's why nothing was posted over the winter. Then I couldn't get into my blog for quite a while, so that kept me from posting earlier. But, I'm back, and ready to start blogging once again. I've been trying to keep busy out in the yard. We've gotten the pond emptied, cleaned out, and refilled. I'm still cleaning in the backyard....and I've lost count of how many yard waste bags I've thrown out. This morning I cut down one of the dead trees that was in the backyard. Later on today (or possibly tomorrow, depending on how the day goes), I'll get the photos posted. But I'll leave you with a picture of our tree in the front yard earlier this spring...it was so beautiful!

We are moved!!! Carpet time!!

Well, we are now moved completely into our new house. Moving day wasn't too bad at all. We had gotten a lot of the boxes moved over beforehand, so only the furniture was left to move. We still have quite a few boxes left to unpack, but things are coming together quite nicely. I don't remember if I mentioned that we bought a washer off of Craigslist, but it's a pretty good machine. We do have a bit of leakage when we run it, but I don't know if it's the machine, or the connections (and I haven't worried too much about it--it's not much at all). We found out we have a good little leak when it rains hard, and it comes from behind our water heater. We'll work on fixing that by spring I think. Again, nothing too bad...since we know about it, we can live with it for a while. One little (well, maybe not little) thing about our house is very screwy--the circuits (or I guess they would be fuses). We've made it a game to see what combination of appliances/items we can run together to blow the fuse. Currently, it looks like our washer, dryer, entire kitchen, half of the living room, and the bathroom are all on one fuse. Another fuse has the other half of the living room, outside lights, basement lights, Dalton's room, and the upstairs lights on it. My wonderful electrician of a Daddy is going to help us out with that (thanks Dad!!). We also discovered that the previous owners fixed a hole in the bathroom sink pipe, and that caused the sink to run slow. We've also had Roto Rooter out here to snake our kitchen sink (stopped up the one night we have friends over to show off the place), and fix the bathroom sink and snake it. At least the toilet and bathtub worked correctly. :) Overall, the problems haven't bothered me too much--they could have been a lot worse.

Onto other things:

Dalton's carpet--we bought an area rug that fits most of his room. I'm going to work on getting the carpet around it cleaned up, but it was much easier to put in than a whole room of carpet.

Here's David carrying in the carpet we bought.




Remember this floor? You can see spots that I cleaned and the real color is showing through there. It's just a horribly dirty, stained carpet.


Another shot of it:

David attaching the tape to the underside of the area rug
And voila!

It really helps brighten up his room (and Dalton just loves having his blue carpet)

David admiring his work (the carpet looks much darker than it really is in this shot)


We also bought an area rug for under our couches. They were sliding around way too much on the hardwood (and leaving some nice big scratches). I think it really defines the sitting area, and gives Dalton a nice soft (and warm) area to play on.

It is a uniform color (I don't know why it looks speckled in the photos??)

"Help Mommy! I stuck!"


My craft room/exercise room....remember this mess? It is no longer there.

Putting the padding down

"Mommy, I helping Daddy!"

And the carpet is down!





We still need to put the moldings back around the wall, but I'm not too worried about them. I'll prolly try getting the room painted before we put those back on.

And our last little bit of news....
Sunday we bought a puppy. Shyla is a eight week old black lab. She's as cute as a button, has tons of energy, and just loves terrorizing Dalton. They'll be best pals in a few weeks I bet. :)


That's all for now! Hope everyone has a wonderful (and safe) Halloween tonight!

Moving day TOMORROW!!!!

Well, the big day has come. We are moving into the new house tomorrow. We are going to be without internet for a week (or more, if the phone company can't come out and hook something up--we should have called them sooner, hee hee). I'll try to update at least once between now and then, but it will not have any photos.

The ceiling in our living room and main foyer is peeling and falling off. It's a textured type of ceiling, with a white base paint underneath. It looks like I just need to scrape it off. I'll prolly try to do that this coming week, but we'll see how that all goes.

Wish us luck tomorrow!! :)

Exhaustion, appliances, moving, oh my!

My goal was to update on Sunday, but I was hit by a horrible bout of exhaustion, plus a little stomach bug. I'm still recuperating, but doing fine.

I finally got over to look at my floors, and they look great! (if I do say so myself...hee hee) There are some spots that look like I'll need to touch them up, but overall, it's good (especially for a first time attempt). :)

Dalton loves the floors. He was having a blast running and jumping everywhere.




I think I mentioned that our appliances were delivered on Saturday. We finally got the stove hooked up on Monday, and everything seems to be working great so far. :)




We also picked up a washer on Tuesday off of Craigslist, but I don't have any photos of it yet. I'm sure I'll get one by the end of the week.

We are moving on Saturday!! I still have a lot to pack up, so that's going to be my biggest goal for the rest of this week. As long as we get the big stuff moved, and all essentials to function from the house, I can always work on packing up the rest next week. Time sure is flying by!

Hardwood, plumbing, pine needles, firetruck

I got up at the crack of dawn today to accomplish a big task--put the polyurethane on the living room floor.

Remember this?

Well, it now looks like this:

The floor is still drying, so I couldn't get too many pictures from different angles. I got two coats of polyurethane on (it took about 5-6 hours for the first coat to dry, instead of the 4 the container said), and might get one more on if I feel like it needs it after it dries.

I don't know if you are able to see it too well, but in this picture, the boards on the left running horizontally are coated and the five (or so) on the right are coated, but the ones in the middle are not. It was amazing to see the difference, but I don't think it showed up too well in the photo.

Me working hard on the second coat.

Smile for the camera!!

Another picture of the finished floor.


A few other notables that I haven't mentioned....

The water heater and plumbing was installed/fixed on Thursday. I didn't get any before shots (not that they'd be particularly interesting, according to David), but here's the new water heater that was put in.

This is the main water line coming into the house. We had a pretty good leak going here, and that's 100% gone now (YAY!).

The white pipe is the new pipe here. This one looked like it had a big bite taken out of it, what caused it, I don't know (prolly because it froze last winter). The valves are also new (leaked like crazy too).


I also got quite a bit of work done in the yard today while waiting for the polyurethane to dry. I managed to get eight 30-gallon bags of pine needles bagged up.

And my pile of sticks that are growing. After I took this photo, I got a pretty good sized branch down from the tree. :)

Even though I got so much cleared away, there's still a nice little pile that keeps growing as I get more and more pulled out of the yard.

But look! A clear spot! The only one that exists so far in the backyard. The little tree on the right will be pulled up at some point.

Also, while waiting for the polyurethane to dry, we took a drive out to Lowe's. This month is fire prevention month, so they have a workshop for kids to make a firetruck. Colerain Township also had a firetruck out for the kids to see. Dalton was so excited to see the firetruck. He also had a blast while we made his firetruck. They gave him his own Lowe's apron, fire hat, and a few other goodies. Here's some pictures of him working on his firetruck.

He got tired of trying to do it himself (he just wanted to play with his firetruck), so David and I had to finish it for him. No pictures of the finished product, since I had a little buzz going from all the polyurethane, and the body of the truck ended up on at a funky angle. :)

And last, but not least, just a picture of the cutie himself. :)

Dalton's room--almost done!!

Even though I've been busy with the house this week, I just wasn't able to find time to update. I bought the carpet for my craft room, and hopefully we'll get that in one day next week. David also bought our appliances, and they are suppose to be delivered on Saturday. The plumber was out on Thursday to fix our pipes, faucet, and install a new hot water heater. My biggest project this week was trying to get Dalton's room done. For the most part, it is done. I just have to change a light bulb and put the cover back on it, put the register cover on, install the door stop, and figure out what I did wrong to his door (I think I somehow stripped the little screw that holds the doorknob in place--can't get it in right, so the doorknob won't open the door from the outside....really need to work on that. I just hope I didn't mess it up completely--I love the old hardware on the doors).

I found out the hard way that an eight-foot ladder is almost too tall for the room. Let's just say I had to touch up the ceiling in a few places. :)

A photo of after I got the blue all touched up.

"Mommy, look! A baby bug! Don't touch baby bug!" When we went to the house Wednesday night to remove the tape, Dalton found a bug on his wall. I have no idea of what type of bug it was, but Dalton was fascinated with it. I guess he is a typical boy, right?

And some finished shots. You can still see some of the paint drying. I painted the trim to the door, the windows, and the closet.

Just ignore the funky light orbs in this photo. :)

I still need to get Dalton's hand prints on the door. Maybe we'll do that this weekend.

I copped out a bit on his closet. It's done the way it is. I'd have to remove those shelves to paint the rest, and I can't figure out how to remove them without destroying them. It'll be a nice reminder of what the closet use to look like. :) Dalton looks so small in his closet, don't you think?

Now that Dalton's room is painted, his floor look awful. I was going to rent a cleaner and try to make it look better, but David told me to go out and buy some carpet for it (after he makes sure he can get the carpet installed correctly in the craft room).

A few other random photos. I found these pots behind the outdoor fireplace, but I have no idea of what they are used for. Mom said they were for special cacti, but I have no idea of what the PVC pipe in the center would have been used for. Any ideas?

A shot of the outdoor fireplace. I'm wondering if it is salvageable. I also have no idea of how it is suppose to work (or if it is really a fireplace or a grill or whatever it is).

This is a bad photo (was really starting to get dark) of the pile of pine needles we have sitting on our backyard patio. The pile isn't even all of them!

The Caprice now fits in it's parking spot. :)

As we were were walking back up the path to the front, what I do I see??

The last flower blooming of the season. Dalton grabbed it before I was able to snap the picture, so it took some damage. But what a beautiful flower. :)

Tonight I am prepping the wood floor to be polyurethaned, and that is going on tomorrow. It should be an all-day type job.