Friday, April 29, 2005

By Request: Puppy Photos!

Ok, the puppy's name ended up being "Sparky" but only because I can't look into my four-year-old's brown eyes and say no.

Here's some pics. Dutch is one year old, and Sparky is 7 weeks on Saturday, so he's REALLY young. They are English Shepherds.

Sparky

Dutch

Dutch & Sparky

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

The Upstairs So Far

Ok, here's some pics of the upstairs so far. I have two more rooms I'm finishing tonight, so I'll post those tomorrow. For you to get an accurate comparison on the room sizes the windows are 4x6 feet, and the ceiling height upstairs is 8.5 feet. Click the image to get the full description on the rooms

The somewhat before photo of our daughter's room:
Cupcake's Room: Before

The after photo:
Cupcake's Room: After

The before photo of the master bedroom:
Master Bedroom: Before

The after photo:
Master Bedroom: After

The somewhat before photo of the main staircase/foyer:
Staircase/Foyer: Before

The after photo:
Staircase/Foyer: After

The somewhat before photo of the top of same staircase:
Staircase Top: Halfway there!

The after photo (sorry, the color is a little off):
Staircase Top: After

SO, we've been REALLY busy for the appraiser! Hopefully these more cosmetic touches will help out.

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Weekend Warrior!

Holy Cats, we were busy! Thank God our appraiser chnaged his schedule to Thursday. We get a few extra days of work. The only injury that occured was Karl knocking himself out by hitting his head TWICE in the same spot. That cut Saturday night short! He reminds me of those cartoons where they get the bumps on their head. You can't miss his, and he's got quite a cut to mathc. Everytime I look at him, I start laughing, thinking of these cartoons. I probably would have taken him to the hospital, but I was roaring. I'm glad he understands!

This weekend we have accomplished (with a 6 week old puppy, a two year old daughter who thinks she is the QUEEN, and a four year old son):

Master Bedroom:
1. tore down the wallpaper, and rewallpapered it.
2. finally removed the jack that was holding our ceiling up, and repaired the plaster using really wide washers.
3. installed carpeting.
4. scraped and repainted the trim and windows.
5. fixed the central air duct that was misalligned
6. replaced the ceiling fan with a new light, and ceiling medallion
7. put up roller shades and sheer curtains to replace the heavy ones to make the room bigger. (It's the smallest room in the house: 12x14)

Guest Bedroom:
1. put in new carpet
2. finished building the closet

Cupcake's Bedroom:
1. wallpapered (used liner and wallpaper, because some idiot used sanded lead paint in there once upon a time, a LONG time ago)
2. repaired her ceiling from the roof leak
3. painted her new door

Kern's room:
1. finished building closet

General house:
1. painted dining room ceiling patch
2. touched up bad plaster areas
3. repaired porch, put up crown molding underneath, and stained
4. repaired roof
5. got rid of the extremely ugly boat disgracing our yard

What we'd like to have done by Thursday:
1. make stained glass door for side entry (although it might be tough to find the lockset we need)
2. paint master bathtub, and wainscoting
3. finish painting main stairwell
4. clean up basement

I'll post photos this week, when we get our camera back. I also added a sidebar of the finished first floor rooms of the home for your "viewing pleasure".

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Old Roof Blues

Go figure, just when you think you are done with any major projects, your roof decides to leak.

And, I found that I have tendonitis in my left wrist or carpal tunnel, whatever. I'm not supposed to use my left wrist (my dominant hand). How is that possible in this house with two kids? And now a leaky roof? I have this "bubble" underneath my wrist, and this aching pain up my arm. If I don't stop using it, I might have to have a "surgical release" to aleviate the pain and swelling. Nice.

Anyways, because of this new leak in the roof, our plaster ceilings were damaged. Yeah, NOT a small leak as you can gather. The plaster is coated in lead paint, and the one ceiling in in our daughter's bedroom. My stars are so not in alignment.

So, Karl and I will be working in shifts fixing the roof and the ceilings. There may be the option of just drywalling over the damage (after fixing the leak), but that's so cheap. We'll see. I'm having problems with the picture uploader, so I'll get some pics in later of the damage. It would be nice to just replace the roof, but it would also be nice to have the money to do so, lol.

Friday, April 08, 2005

Looking for comments/advice

Ok, my friend found a puppy this afternoon, and I ended up with it. I have the fenced yard, and my dog loves everybody. This puppy looks about 12 weeks old. I called the Post Office (the big "hang out" in an 850 person village), the grocery store, and the school looking for the owners. I also made flyers for all the locations, and put an ad in the paper, although it won't be until Tuesday when it's published. So, that's the background.

Well, it looks like this puppy is ill. The belly looks swollen, and it's whining. So, I don't want to have it suffer until the owner shows up, if ever. The humane society has a bad reputation from what I understand, so I don't mind hanging on to it. I'm taking it to the vet tomorrow morning, as soon as it opens.

My question:

Is it ok that I require the owners to pay for the bill?

The Mind, The Body

Ok, those who live in the Midwest have had an awsome weather week. It's been warm, sunny, and thanks to the clocks jumping ahead an hour, the sun is out longer.

My mind sees all the beautiful bulbs I planted last fall, the grass turning green, and the trees getting ready to leave out. This put my mind into gear to start the yardwork. This past week, I've accomplished:

1. Taking out the tree in the front yard. You can see in the photo at the top of the page title that the tree is ugly as sin, and only shades the ground beneath it, not the house. How useless. In it's 35 year life, it's only provided an ample breeding ground for creeping charlie and chiggers that hide underneath its leaves. So, down it came! We had a guy cut it down, because we had powerlines to the south of it, the east of it, the house to the north, and other trees to the west. They used ropes to "guide" it's fall, and while it missed the lines, it landed on my cherry trees. Luckily, I have the trees supported with a heavy duty support, so it didn't affect it. We kept the stump for fire wood for our woodstove.

2. Next, to move the stump out of the front yard, so it doesn't kill the new grass. That was HARD. I can move up to a 12" diameter log, (hey, I grew up in WI, all us northern chicks can do that), but anything over that, forget it. Frustrated, I, like any other WI girl, just took a fence panel down, tied a tow strap around the hitch of our truck, and the stump, and just dragged it around the corner. The strap broke, but at least it did it around the place I wanted it anyway. Our friends also took down their tree, and we got their stump also.

3. The rest of our tree was chipped. We had the dump truck dump the chips to the side of our driveway, because we couldn't get it to the side of the house. I want to chip the west side of the house because our neighbors have trees that hang over the property line, and NO grass grows there. I only have mud. I'm very tired of the kids, dog, and husband tracking it into the house. So. I grab the wheelbarrow, a shovel, and get to work. I've stayed home from Karl's office the last two days, and have been working, moving the chips from 9am to 7pm. I want the chips at least four inches deep so they can't get kicked up or moved around. I had a really nice guy offer to bring his bobcat over to do the work for me (did I look THAT bad?), but I need the exercise.

4. My new perrenials are coming in by the day, and the biggest order of plants, the hedge roses, came in a few days ago. They shipped bareroot, so they can't be stored very long. They came bigger than I expected, and that meant digging 24, two feet deep holes across the front yard. Ugh.

Now, here comes the body part. This has been going on all week, and my body isn't thinking this is so cool anymore. This morning, I think it went on strike because my mind had to coax it out of bed. Come on, I still have the last 15 feet of chipping to do! There's more plants to be planted! More work to be done! Man, I'm just out of shape. I hope I lose some weight in this deal, because then it's worth it.

The kids have done well. My four year old son has taken over the parenting of our younger daughter, and he has been doing an excellent job keeping her out of trouble and from getting hurt. I never thought I could trust a four year old to do such a good job. Our dog got out, and he called him back. Cupcake wanted water, and he went in a got it for her (somehow, I won't ask), without help from me. On his own initiative. That's so sweet. It also REALLY helps me out, while I'm trying to get through this last leg of hard work.

Hopefully that ends today, and we can all enjoy the wonderful weekend (which means ignoring ALL the other projects this stupid house needs done), mud free. Saturday I have my good friend coming over so we can take Cupcake out for her birthday, and Kern's surrogate uncle and Karl are taking him fishing. Did I mention margaritas are on the menu, lol?


Monday, April 04, 2005

The Time has Come

Sigh... the moment every parent dreads has reared it's ugly head again in the Zeimetz household.

Our daughter is outgrowing her crib. Yesterday morning, she greeted me with a smile, and her leg over the top of her crib rail. Ugh.

Living in a newer home, I suppose this wouldn't be a problem to most, a few child proof latches, a toddler bed, and you're set. Not in an older home. Our windows drop to about 5 inches above the floor level, are single pane, barely set in by decades old glazing. That means reinforced shutters or bars. There is sanded (what were they thinking?) lead paint, and and that means lining the walls, and applying new wallpaper over it. Painting the baseboards, and checking for loose paint. Removing the space heater, and coming up with a different heat source for her room. We'll probably install a duct going from the parlour to her room, so she won't freeze, and then there's no electrical parts for her to touch. There's new locks on the closet door, and the two other doors in her room. We have to anchor her dresser to the studs, so she doesn't tip it, and then there's saftey latches so she can't climb the dresser.

Just what I wanted to do when the weather is getting warmer. Speaking of which, we had our first tornado warning last Wednesday, and I was able to finish the door to the shelter, and we had nothing to worry about, yay. That was a relief. The only bad thing that happened was that I was working on the door so fast (I had an hour time frame), I put a nail into the nail bed of my pinky. THAT hurt.