Presidents Day Weekend - Florida....

Headed down Friday night. Ready to WORK





Beautiful sunset!

Day one - Saturday. Got over to the house and hung all the bathroom cabinet doors and put all the hardware on...no pictures :( not sure why at this point cause there was no reason to not have taken a quick snap shot.


Angela started in on the doors they are fully primed and were drying by noon on Saturday. Even flipped over once too :)


The cabinet doors before.


After being sanded in place. We went to Home Depot to get better sanding pads. We got home, had some lunch and headed back to the house ...that's when I stared to feel off. Not quite right. A bit pukey. And it didn't get better. So I gave up and headed to Sally's. I took a shower and No sooner got out of the shower then I became quit ill. Poor Angela happened to be outside the door for part of it and she thought I was dying. I wasn't. Just sick.

Poor pitiful me. I was in and out of sleep Sunday. Thank goodness for Sally, she took excellent care of me while I was quietly dying inside.

Today I was feeling a bit more human and ready to drive home.

First stop was to get a car wash as the birds had taken target practice on the car while I was down and out.


Then the drive home.


Angela's goofy toy from Wendy's. Ha!

Day three and we have a GATE

Well up and at'em again











Nailed to the gate section but not cut loose.





Can you see the blade going through the bottom?


And it's OPEN!!!!








Tweeked tweeked and more tweeks


And the edges installed again. And it's looking GREAT and like it's not there at all!





I'm so excited. Easy access. Fast treks to Sally's. Whoot!!

Day two.

Ok the original first row is now shoved under the cabinets. The load from last night is in the room AND the next and last load was loaded to the room.





And we are DONE moving tile!! That my dears is 86 boxes of tile. My backs gonna hurt tomorrow!!


And with the last few bags of thinset in as well. 15 bags, 86 boxes of tile. Sigh. It's nice to look at it IN the laundry and know we don't have to do that again.

And with that we opted to work in a gate mostly because I was starting to whine about it ;) so off to Lowes we went to get the gate kit.





And while waiting for Butch to get some stuff from Sally's house, I took the opportunity to take pictures of the camellia in the back yard. ;) The front had a white flowered bush.








And here is the start of the gate! I'm so excited that it's started!! Now to finish it and I'll be super stoked!!


And with that I think we shall wrap up this working weekend and be happy about it.

Another trip to Florida

Good morning!!
Butch and I are headed to FL to pick up the last part of the tile order.

Angela opted out this weekend and stayed in school (weird kid doesn't want to ditch school) and stayed with the neighbors for the weekend.


I couldn't resist showing a picture of the old tile I had picked out. Sad it's not going to be a reality. :(


Here is what is going into the house. Don't get me wrong, it's pretty, but it's not the first one. :(





Load number two on the trailer. I didn't get a picture of it in the house. I did get it all shoved under the shelves to make more room for all the rest of the tile to be moved in. Tomorrow. I'll take pictures of that.

Leaving a job

Panorama of the office... Farewell to the office with the door. You can see some boxes packed and getting ready to go.


Walking in from the hallway. You can see my office to the far right. Way back in the corner. Door one in front of me. The far end has another door. That is the door that has the issues with its gasket.


Looking into the old office.


So long and thanks for the memories.

Tile and layouts

Well the trip to Florida was full of changes. The tile that Angela and I chose last time we were down was out voted. The tile that has replaced it is this lovely 18x18 porcelain tile:


This one makes Butch happy because it's porcelain. It makes me happy because it's tile. I'm sad because the wood look is officially out, but I'm OK with this tile because it's pretty and inexpensive. Win - win in my books.

Now comes the fun part. How much is required to tile an entire house? That would be 86 boxes. Oh yeah. So we look at our truck, then look at the tile.

We were able to get one pallet into the poor truck. I wish I would have gotten a video of the poor thing dropping a foot. I swear it groaned and cursed us right then. Poor thing. Then we added 8 of the 15 bags (50lb) of thinset and the 5 boxes of unsanded grout. We have opted for thin grout lines and they tell us 5 boxes is ample. I don't see it, but OK.

This was all we could load before closing time. We won't go there with a great timing factor either. We weren't able to leave until Saturday morning and the other half was SUPER slow moving. I dropped off a car with mom and dad and was able to play three games of Rummie Cube before they got to their house to pick me up and get on the road. Sigh.

But I digress. It's now 3pm and our truck has all it can hold and we have made arrangements to get the remainder next weekend. AND the pickup will be at two different stores as this store only has part of the order on hand. It is and outlet store after all. So Pensacola is on the list of places to see next weekend as well :)

So off to the house we go at a creep. It's a good thing we are only 1/2 mile from the house!

Unloading went smoothly with Angela in the truck cutting the tile boxes apart for us. They were bundled in twos. Yikes, no!!








And this is 1/3 of the tile!! Next weekend we will be placing tile at the back along the wall at a 90 degree angle from these in an effort to fit them all in.

While we were here we also laid out the lights for the kitchen as well as cleaned out the kitchen area to allow electricians more room to work.








Using snap lines is wonderful!!
We also snapped the cabinet locations and in doing so discovered that the layout I had would be tighter than Butch was comfortable with in the walkway area.


I have to agree this is going to work just as well and will look good. Who would have that he was such a stickler for symmetry? NOT me!!

The new plans are now short one 9" slide out, (which makes me sad, but I'll live) the microwave moved closer to the wall and the removal of the outlet at the end of the bar. I may miss that outlet I may not.





Oh and here is our stove sitting in the laundry room waiting patiently to be installed!

And while we're here, you want to see the OLD electrical service?





Not very pretty is it? Soon it will be beautiful. ;)

Sandblasting for dummies:

Sandblasting for dummies:
Buy $20 sand blaster from Harbor Freight
Buy play sand from Home Depot (recommended)
Have issues with clogging on blaster (curse)
Read instructions
Note: do not use sand
Curse some more
Start sifting sand to keep tiny little pebbles out of the $&@}%*+ blaster
Work for HOURS
Finish one item.....





There are a few spots on here that are iffy still. I'll have to hit it a few more times again with a sanding block.

I regret not taking a before picture. Sigh.

I hit one of the ceiling cents and it comes off OK, but not great.





Butch was a dear and sifted all of the remaining sand so I'm ready to hit it again sometime soon.

Until the were watching MLK movies and cleaning the house. (Finally putting Christmas - what little we had out) into the attic.

Tiny House - Investment or Money Pit?

I was asked by the 3rd or 4th person if we were in a Money Pit situation with our Tiny House.
The short answer is "no".
The long answer goes something like this:

Paid X for the house
Will invest 20% of the cost of the house to bring it up to the current century bringing the value to 1.2(X) we'll call this R now
House down the street with a similar layout is listed currently at 1.6*(R) so
What you have to understand is the house down the street is the same plan house however extended into the carport (maybe gaining 200sq foot) and done poorly in my opinion AND with horrible carpet and a general need of remodel that WE need in our house - paint, new floor, some small remodels to get it up to par. So THAT would be a money pit!

So, you see... the house down the street in its CURRENT state is still higher than my max investment into this house. I can figure I would double my money after renovations if I were to sell it then... so is it a money pit? Nope. Does it seem like it at times? Heck yeah!! It's a time sucker for sure... and it will take a GREAT outflow of money at the onset. Now did it have to? No, not really. I could have left the stupid kitchen wall in place, spiffed it up, bought a new electric stove (there was no recovering THAT stove), dealt with the lack of plugs in the bathroom and no electricity to add a dishwasher. But, let's face reality, it was LONG overdue for a remodel in most of these areas, it was still stuck firmly in the 60s.

I'm trying to be patient... I'm trying to do things in the right order, choose my contractors wisely. I think I'm there. I'm using Angie's list to get some good folks. I'm now waiting for our general contractor's calendar to clear to get the flooring and drywall done. I've chosen an electrician to do the electrical work... and now negotiating the order of work and the fact that some things just have to be rough in work until we can get the cabinets in place... which has to wait for floors, which has to wait for wall repair, which has to wait for electrical to be completed ... so you can see how things are just snowballs of fun, right? I think I have the order of work down pat now and now to coordinate and schedule and we'll get the party started and the money flowing.... then we'll deal with getting it rented a few times to pay for itself (or become a great tax shelter)