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)

Animal from the trip

 

As we were rushing back to the ship in Cozumel – dashing through Playa Del Carmen, we heard a rustling in the bushes to our left and looked over to see one of these

I didn’t think to take a picture of it, so I snatched this off the internet.

I couldn’t figure out what on earth it was, but it was cute and appeared to be grazing in a little section there in the bushes…

So after a while of forgetting to look it up, I did today and here is what I found:

Agouti are about 16-25" long, weigh from 2 to 9 pounds. They are rodents with coarse black or brown hair, active during the day.  Agoutis are active during the day and live in monogamous pairs.^[4] They mainly feed on fruits and seeds, and are important seed dispersers

 

Ours was active and it was about 4:30pm … so that’s about right…

A mouse in the house...

Well, not really a mouse in the HOUSE, but a mouse at work. For those of you who don't know I have horrible floaters... they can look like spiders and mice they are quite large. Doc says there is nothing to be concerned about... I would beg to differ the first few years that I would about jump out of my skin when I would see something out of the corner of my eye... but as time went on I have gotten quite used to my skitterie little "friends". So, why the discussion about floaties and such? Well, yesterday as I was sitting at work I saw something out of the corner of my eye and thought... "hum"... nawh, has to be a floatie... so I moved my keyboard a little so I could see better into the darkness under my desk and what should I see but a cute little field mouse. Yep...
I'm glad I'm no easily freaked out... I just shooed him away and told the building custodian who brought me a trap. Yeah... I'm too lazy to live trap him and take him far away.. he will have to "go". Poor mousie.
I did joke that we should capture him and make him like the mouse on the movie The Green Mile.
Yeah, not going to happen... then came stories of the Big House in Missouri and the mouse in the chair - Freddie Krueger style in the arm of the chair eating off the lining of the vinyl! The mouse going up the stairs and me talking to it telling it that it better NOT get into my suitcase or we would have issues. Ha!
Why is It that mice don't gross me out as much as roaches and such?

Cruise Food...

Ok, so only the food Liz decided she wanted pictures of... I should have taken a picture of my rack of lamb I had...

And sometimes we just got too carried away and had to eat it as it came in because it looked and tasted sooooo good!