If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

The New House and Smooth Nuts

Hey remember me?
I used to blog rather frequently.  Lately I have been slacking but whatever....

I have a new house.  New houses are a lot of work.  New houses are a lot of fun.  Fun as in working the wrinkles right out of your nuts kinda fun. 
I must confess I'm loving every minute of it.  It is what I've been waiting to do for a long time.
I am a handy man.  Jack of all trades master of none.  It really comes in handy.  All of those times helping my Dad when I was growing up comes into play now.  Of course I'm not afraid to attempt anything I've never done before and that can be an attribute unless of course I get in over my head.  I'm sure you won't see me dangling from the telephone pole with a crescent wrench clamped in my teeth and a pocket full of screwdrivers attempting to upgrade my service.  There are limits people.  (my ladder is only 6 ft. tall)
I will however re-landscape the entire yard (and in doing so make sure every poison ivy plant touches my bare skin), I will change out the s-traps under the sinks (and remove the previous owner's hair balls), I will replace the faucet in the shower.......
At least that was my intention.   Ugh Hum!  To make an expensive long story short the stem would not come out of the mixing valve so I had to remove the vanity and sink, cut an access hole through the drywall, remove entire valving system and replace it.  Of course the new valve was not set up like the old valve so plenty of fittings and lengths of pipe were needed in order to achieve the desired effect.
Nevertheless I finished late last night with what I hope to be the last and final leak re-soldered.  Oh and by the way when I pulled out the vanity it was in shambles and the seller had completely Obamanized it with chunks of 2x4s and odd sizes of plywood and the laminate was not adhered to the top in spots and there was enough water damage that I wondered if he bought it at a post Katrina sale. 
So of course we just can't put it back in.  We picked up a new vanity top which was nothing more than a 4 foot chunk of kitchen counter top that I will modify and cut to size.  A new faucet (the old one sucked) and a nice stack of decorative tiles for the back splash.  I will also re-construct the lower vanity and give it a nice paint job that coordinates with the colors of the sink, top and tiles.  The good news is that the sink is ok.
Other than the toilet the bathroom will pretty much be all new. 
This was supposed to be winter work and I squelched at the wife when she wanted the drippy faucet replaced first.  I wanted gutters on the garage.  (would have been much cheaper too) 
We really needed them the past few days.  We have had a ton of rain.  I would guess 5-6 inches in like 2 days.  The river was almost over the road and it has the neighbors yards flooded.
The end of our driveway is now in the lawn and there are foot deep trenches where the deluge washed away all the gravel I just put in there.  Add it to the list I say!
We also have a new person we are adding to the household albeit only for a week.  Her name is Leah and she is in the foreign soccer coach exchange thingamajig.  Basically college students, with a keen knowledge of the game, are here attending school and during the summer they travel from school to school teaching kids new and better soccer skills.  Kaitlin attends this camp every year and we have signed up to be a host family for a week.  Should be interesting.  The majority of the kids are from the UK so I might get some more practice on my lousy British accent.  It sounds more like a mix of British, Australian and a tad bit of Apu from the Simpsons and his Indian dialect.  Amusing at the very least!
I have been getting some pictures to go through the gauntlet of phone, email and computer thing but it takes forever.  My new phone is really cool but I think it had VD because it doesn't seem to work correctly.  Momma is taking it in today while I re-construct the bathroom so hang tight.  I have pictures of my bath remodel they just haven't made it through the "system".  Here are some pictures of the outside of the house and one of the inside.  (only one of the inside made it through the gauntlet)


Yes the boys do love the new house and the yard and the woods and the chipmunks and the opossums and the birds and the....well you get the point they're dogs!

Cheers!

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Sunday Salutations, The Lawn Reclamation Act of 2011 and a A Surprise Visit

Hey there, Sunday Salutations to all of you!  Do you ever feel like you ate way too much Mexican and drank way too many beers and margaritas the night before?  Yeah me neither.  What fun!
I'll start off by telling you I was completely surprised yesterday and that doesn't happen to often.

I was off and running first thing in the morning, pruning and cutting wood and basically reclaiming the back yard which was being swallowed up the jungle of trees and scrub growing everywhere.  Not that I enjoy having to cut more lawn but  I enjoy it more when my yard doesn't look like a scene from Platoon where Charlie Sheen is slapping giant mosquitos and ants from his neck while a python slithers over his foot setting amidst a giant slough of bamboo, vines and poison ivy (I threw the ivy in there just so I could relate).
So that is what I did.  It was hot and I had the pool full for the dogs and the hose running so I could continually wet a towel to drape over my head.

Both of these pics are of the back corner and the back "fence" row.
I had sprayed round up on the junk about a week ago.  The first pic was after I cleaned all the crap out.  It used to be plugged solid.


This area is next to my shed and it was completely packed full of crap too.  There was a ramshackle chicken coop, I think, built onto the shed and they may have just left the chickens to die because there were bones everywhere.  This is going to be one area where I have a nice shade garden and a frog pond.


Here is the view from my back upper deck at the western edge or "fencerow"

I tore down the gaudy chicken coop and built Kaitlin's rabbit, Floppy, a new little outdoor play area.  He has access to the inside of the shed where there is another pen in case it rains or what not.

So anyways I was bustin' my butt until around noon.  I had reclaimed a good amount of square footage and cleaned up the debris and officially declared it Miller Time.  It is the weekend you know!  So into the house and a shower later I was standing at the sink admiring my handy work sipping a cold beer and who of all people just happens to walk across the back deck?  My Florida parents!  Unannounced and totally caught me by surprise.  I about choked on my beer!  I don't get to see them much so what a delight it was.
They got to see our new house and we hung out for awhile and went to dinner (Mexican) before they had to leave for other venues.  What a great day it was.  I had been waiting all day to talk to my Dad because I had text him that I was going to be calling him around 8 Saturday morning.  He never answered and sent me a text around 10:30 asking if I was gonna be around most of the day.  I said I would be here all day and he said OK he would talk to me in awhile.  I had no clue that they were in Michigan.  So it was funny that I was walking around the house with my phone in my hand just waiting for him to call.  We hadn't really talked in a couple weeks and I had so much to talk about.  Then he just shows up.  Crazy!  So after dinner and one huge Dos Equis with a hunk of lime in it they went there way and we headed home for Margaritas on the back deck.  A nice cap on an already great day.
I have some after pictures of the lawn reclamation act of 2011 but I have to wait for my stupid phone to send them to my stupid email so I can access them.  New phone didn't show up last week and camera is still broke!  Bear with me please!

Friday, July 15, 2011

Bonfires and Frog Ponds!

Good Morning to you!
In light of recent events I regret to tell you that I will be unable to continue any normal posting routine for quite some time.  Thought I was gonna quit blogging didn't ya?  Nope it's too addicting.  I will say however with the new house and all the things going on here I've been a bit busy.  My normal Thursday routine would be a few cold beers, a computer and a list of top ten.  Last night was indeed beer but I spent the whole evening outside working in the yard.  The beautiful children were just finishing up the mowing when I arrived home from work and I spent some time watching them work for a change. (Highly rewarding I must say)
Then I fired a few porterhouses on the grill with a saute of asparagus, pepper, onion and garlic.  Another beer and one more after that and I was off and pruning.  Yes pruning, no I didn't soak in the tub, wrong kind of pruning.  You see my house is bordered on the South side by about 100-150 acres of woods with a small river running through it.  On the West side (back) is a treeline or what we call a fence row, which consists of roughly 10-20 foot wide strip of trees and brush with a small alfalfa field behind that. 
Well the wood line and fence row were apparently a catch all for any thing the old owners and/or the guy who just flipped this house.  It is loaded with old firewood chunks, bushes that were ripped out of the landscape, numerous tree limbs, brick pavers, concrete chunks and the normal things that actually occur in a wooded setting.  This bothers me.  I don't care for clutter and you might say I'm a little OCD or just plain anal.  I think they are connected anyways.  So I started dragging branches and vines and what not out of the edge of the woods and along the treeline and set them alight.  I hauled and burned brush until midnight.  There is plenty more to do but I have to wait for the hair to regrow on my arms and legs before another fire is to occur.  It looks much better and there are certain areas inside the wood line that I will be turning into nice little shade gardens full of ferns and hostas and a little forest pond for the frogs to live in.  Pictures will be along soon.  The camera is still broke but I am getting a new phone today that should take some decent pics.  Stay tuned.  I will continue with my top ten and thirsty Thursday because it was always one of my favorites.  I'll be back later!

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

I'm Back (yeah I know...Damn It)

Well in case you haven't heard.....I moved......for real this time!  All moved in, boxes unpacked, furniture in place, pain reliever applied liberally to every moving part of my body.  ( well most of them).  Satellite TV is hooked up (now I have access to the best bra channel) Internet satellite hooked up (now I have access to publish this crap again).  Finally found my bed clothes this morning ( now the neighbors don't have access to my junk anymore) and things are beginning to settle a wee bit.  I have a lot of stuff to talk about and pics of things I have done and would like to do so keep checking back.  I need to get the darn camera working again or borrow one otherwise it will be phone pictures and that's like buying a cassette tape these days.  At least with my phone which has zero signal here.  Baby Joe Joe recently discovered if he climbs over the railing on the upper deck in the back of the house he can walk up the roof to text his dear girlfriend.  I do have homeowners but I don't want to spend it on that, I was thinking new siding and a few windows.

So I just wanted to say Hi.  I received my gift from http://gillianhefer.blogspot.com/ for winning her caption a freaky photo contest  and my copy of the zombie book I also won from Oil Field Trash @ MakeDaddy A Sammich
 I will post pics of my prize and updates on the book soon.
Thanks for being patient and reading my nonsense!
Until next time,
Bushman