The Goings On

Ellen walks around with a paper hippopotamus on her hand saying, "Sorry, sorry, sorry."  Because, you know, if you can say 'hippopotamus', you can say 'I'm sorry.'

There's a satellite dish buried in our backyard.  The former house owners put it there to be fish pond until it became a giant mosquito breeding ground and then they used it as a fire pit and then they buried it with a bunch of trash.  They were super classy.  Steve's been unearthing it, which has left a giant hole in the yard for The Bairn to spend his mornings exploring.

Ellen loves to dress herself.  She has a preference for hats, boots, ruffles and anything 'fancy.'

The garden is mostly all planted.  We didn't label our seedlings very well, so we're not really sure what we're growing.  Lots of tomatoes, some sort of peppers, a variety of squashes, beans, maybe pumpkins, maybe melons, kale, cucumbers.  The Bairn loves walking up and down the rows.

I am having all the FEELINGS about our lawn.  Our lawn tractor is broken and we can't afford to fix it and it takes me 3 hours with Ellen on my back to mow it with the push mower but the teenagers (and more specifically their parents) ask rates I consider scandalous to do the job.  We're currently paying a kid more per hour than Steve's draftsman charges to have a tidy lawn.

Sneak Peek

Steve spent the last week fixing our front hallway.  It needed a lot of work.  You probably can't really appreciate how good it looks if you haven't been to our house. 

I don't even have any shocking 'before' pictures.  This is the closest thing I've got.  You can see the blue beadboard and maybe the drywall on the stairs.  You cannot, however, see the spot where the butterfly-shaped mirrors left holes in the wall or the spot where bolts were pulled out of the wall creating more holes or the door frames which were grey from years of dogs leaning against them or all the spots where there was no trim or the black light switches (or better yet the loon light switch plate) or the electrical outlet that gave BOTH my children shocks.  Also, the living room and hallway are the same color, but the color changes a huge amount based on the kind of light coming in the house.

So, BEFORE.

And AFTER  (see, now the living room looks yellow but it's not)

And AFTER (but still 'before' because we haven't hung pictures or mirrors)

The Glory of Beige

I had a birthday.

We ate fish (and scallops) and chips at our local chip ship while The Bairn played in the sand pile nearby.  Then we took him to look at the live lobsters in the market next door.  They creep me out but The Bairn finds them fascinating and pretty.

The Bairn helped me blow out the candles on my German chocolate birthday cake.  Pretend that there's a tablecloth or something on that table instead of some kid's clothes.

Part two of my birthday transpired on Saturday when Steve painted our kitchen.  The kitchen was a color that I can only describe as Highlighter Yellow, and the previous home owners painted the walls, the ceiling, AND the trim that overwhelming color.  Steve's finishing the new paint job tonight if The Bairn ever goes to bed.  The new color is Corinthian Pillar, the same color as our living room.  It's kind of beige.  It's glorious.  It might be impossible to know how wonderful it is to have a beige kitchen unless you visited our house during the Yellow Year.  And white trim is a revelation.  Steve just pulled up a chair to sit and admire the door frame with white trim.  Beautiful.

Here's Steve cutting in with the new color.  Ceiling and trim were already completed.  The white spots are spackle.  There's always lots of spackling to do in this house before we paint.

I took the kids outside in the afternoon to keep them out of Steve's way, even though the weather was dreary.  They liked it out there
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Who Needs Toys?

Our house is heated with oil and wood. We can either turn on the oil side of the furnace (which is like burning up $20 bills every 30 seconds) or the wood side (which involves going down to the basement with the beetles and stoking and other scary things).  I'm not so much a fan of the system.

But for The Bairn, a wood-burning furnace is a wonder.  Steve bribes him with promises of going to look at the furnace (and the fire!  right in our house!)  AND (and!) the wood was dumped in our yard by a dump truck.  The Bairn was thrilled.

AND (yeah, there's more!) The Bairn likes to go out and play with the little wood scraps.  He has a few favorite pieces--'castle' and 'chunk' and, my favorite, 'sea monster.'  I think sea monster actually does look a bit like Nessie.

The Bairn and Sea Monster

carrying Sea Monster around the backyard

Midway Renovations

The week we went camping, the drywallers finished mudding our new walls and Steve painted the living room. The room is still not actually done, because there's a big bookcase that takes up most of the back wall that needs to be painted and until we move that in, we're not putting anything on the walls. Still, we're very pleased to have a bit of renovation progress on the main floor.

BEFORE.  Things to note: pink walls, border, pine panelling, piano window on the back (right hand side in this picture) wall.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION.  Things to note: The Bairn likes to play the piano but is deeply unsettled that his play area is in disarray.  Asks daily about his kitchen, which was stored in the basement.

ALMOST AFTER. Things to note: 'Corinthian pillar' walls, no border, no pine, piano window (which you couldn't see in this shot anyway) has been drywalled over.

I took this shot earlier in the day.  The room looks really yellow because of all the natural light, but it's really more the color of the photo above.  Also, you can see in this picture that the arm chair is up against a wall that didn't exist before.

Renovations

Steve's parents have been visiting for several weeks, which means that, among other things, Steve has helpers to work on the house.  I'm not from a handy family, so I'm extra amazed when Steve and his dad do things like build a wall and move light switches and raise the ceiling above the stairs, all of which they did last week.  Steve just needs to build one more tiny wall this week and then we can have the mudders come and make a huge mess of our house AND THEN I can paint the worst of the downstairs (except for the truck stop bathroom).  The pink living room is really getting me down.

The Bairn is extremely interested in the renovations.  He calls the new office Steve's "housh" and he enjoys examining all of Daddy and Papa's tools.  Here he is watching Steve raise the ceiling above the stairs and jiggering the guest room closet.

The Bairn hates the noise of the drill and nail gun, but he tolerates it okay (no sobbing) if Grammy covers his ears.

But he likes it best when he can get in on the action.  Steve removed two cabinets from the kitchen to install our new (to us) dishwasher.  The Bairn helped.

The First Room Transformation

I was rejoicing earlier this week that The Bairn's room is the first to finally be complete, but then I realized that it's not true. He still needs curtains (although he finally has a roller blind!) and Steve's going to make him some wall-mounted shelves when we have some free time and money (ha ha, that's a joke; we will never have either of those, but Steve will make the shelves one day) AND his dresser really needs to be replaced or refinished, since it came to us free from a relative's cottage shed.  BUT, the room is painted, the electrical outlets and light fixture are replaced and his baby art is hung.  Behold!

BEFORE with creepy rainbow

AFTER with darling child

Projects completed since moving into the house:

4 bedrooms painted
Most electrical outlets rewired and light switches replaced
Pine paneling removed and drywall put up
Basement bedroom demolished
Basement door fixed so that small child will not fall down onto hard, cold cement
Weird, useless window drywalled over
Locks changed
Mailbox moved as per mail service directions
Boarded up doors on garage replaced (mostly)
Broken carriage lights replaced
Garden tilled (by kindly neighbor)
Curtains hung in 5 rooms
Exploding furnace serviced
Water turned from red/brown/nasty to mostly clear
Broken toilet flapper replaced
Smelly, smelly washing machine cleaned so that it is now slightly less smelly


Projects remaining:

Too many

Interspecies Love

The previous owners of our house left us a number of things we do not want--an exploding furnace, rolls of teddy bear wallpaper, and a tole painted toilet paper holder shaped like a cat.  I wanted Steve to chop up the cat and burn it in the exploding furnace, but The Bairn has other plans.  He loves Miss Kitty and plans to marry her.  Every time he sees her, he cries out, 'Mao, mao!' and proceeds to carry her around the house.  I cannot stand in the way of their true love.

Carrying his love into the very messy/still not unpacked master bedroom.

Visiting her (with a runny nose and sad sick face) in her home.

Taking her on a little trip.

Including Miss Kitty in a visit to Daddy's office.

Our New House: A Selection of BEFORE Pictures

We took possession of our house on Friday.  It's a country lot next door to a strawberry farm.  Steve and his mom have been slaving away for the last two days to clean and paint.  Unfortunately, we don't have time to paint the whole house right now, but we're hoping to get all the bedrooms done before we move in next week.  I cannot sleep with teddy bears staring at me.

The living room looking out to the stairs and den (piano included with house; the family was going to chop it up for firewood if we didn't take it).

Living room looking out the front window (that wood paneling is coming down).

The Bairn's bedroom with inexplicable pink trim and unfortunate rainbow.

The guest bedroom, or, the bedroom that almost kept us from buying the house because it made us weep tears of sorrow, especially with the busty ladies that used to adorn the closet.

Special helper who loves to use a 'brumm brumm.'

Back of the master bedroom looking toward the closets and PINK bathroom.

Special helper also likes to Swiffer.

And while he loves the kitchen cupboards, he's appalled! at the terrible shade of yellow in the kitchen (and WHY did they paint the ceiling, walls and trim all the same color?

We've got our work cut out for us.