Latest Project

Detasseling 2011 is over for me.  The crew will go out two more days, but due to other commitments, yesterday was my last day.  With just a few weeks left before school starts, I should probably be preparing for the fall semester.  However, a few others things must be done first.

Technically, we live in the attic.  The previous owners finished out the attic into livable space.  It super cool but does have its drawbacks.  One of those is the shower.  With the pitch ceiling and the shower location, steam and such accumulates and rolls down.  It leaves unsightly hard water marks on the paint.  Even worse is that it has caused a small section of the sheetrock to rot.

I've spent the morning cutting out a piece and getting a replacement piece installed and initial mud on it.  I think it is going to bother me some that it isn't going to be perfect.  However, considering that I only have about 2 1/2 days to get it all done, I think I can settle for now and perfect it later.  After all, it is more important to stop the damage from spreading at this point.  So now I'm in the waiting stage.  If you've ever mudded, you know there is a lot of hurry up and wait.

The hardest part was getting the sheetrock to the right size.  The shower insert has a lip so I had to make about an inch gap all the way down the sheetrock.  I don't know if you are really supposed to do that, but I did.  If you won't tell, I won't.

This afternoon, I'll clean up the basement a bit from the mud and grime of detasseling so we can use it for a few days.

Here's a few pics.  I couldn't find the camera so they are from my phone and, therefore, not that great.

Merry Rock'n'Rollin' Christmas

I love Christmas.  I'm like a little kid.  There is great excitement and anticipation trying to figure out (aka, trick people into telling you, aka, lawyering them) what gifts you're getting...I've gotten my mom a few times with this technique.  Now, it is even more exciting because of Coop and Cal.  They still don't fully get it yet, but it is still a lot of fun with them.  It was great to see Coop's reaction as we came around the corner this morning to see it big present.  It wasn't quite what I expected; I'm not sure he knew what to think or what was going on, but it was still priceless.

Coop and Cal must be worn out as they are napping.  Momma's getting ready for the day, and I'm currently prepping Christmas lunch.  It's a little departure from what we decided would be our "traditional" Christmas meal a few years back, but that kind of happens when you squeal into town on Christmas eve and need to do some grocery shopping before the store closes with no idea of what you really need.  This year, we will be having prime rib, loaded mashed potatoes, fancy green bean thingy, rolls, and red velvet cake.  I hope it tastes as good as it smells.

No white Christmas for us; more of an ice Christmas.  From the way it looks though, some of those back in the motherland are having a white Christmas.  Sounds like fun.  I've got a snowblower you guys can use and lot's of snow gear, but you'll have to come get it.

It is about time for me to hit the shower, but here's a little Christmas video for you.

Story Time

After a whirlwind trip, we arrived back in town just around 5 p.m. Christmas Eve.  We didn't get home until closer to 5:45 or so, because we had to stop by the Walmart to get some groceries.  I had thought about posting this story last night, but there were cars to unload, kids to bathe, presents to wrap...you get the point.  The last blog teased of a story.  Face-to-face ones have been done with great reactions.  I'll leave out some of the details for you and get more to the point.

Before Thanksgiving, the basement toilet clogged up.  No big deal, right?  Wrong!  All the usual stuff didn't work.  I did move it from a clogged toilet to a slow draining one with clean water in the bowl, so I left it that way for our failed Thanksgiving trip.  The drain continued to drain slowly but seemed a little improved.  Because of its location, I didn't want to do a lot of work on it after the kids went down for fear of waking Cal up.

A Tuesday afternoon, I came home early knowing the kids would be at the sitter for a while.  My mission: to fix the toilet, whatever it took.  More plunging.  More snaking.  Still nothing would work.  I had already decided to remove the stool if you I needed; maybe the actual pipe was severely stopped up.  I was prepared for the worst, but not this worst.  Save some details, shortly after removing the stool I discovered the real problem and proceeded to pull out a huge rodent from the stool.  There are no pictures because of safety and time concerns of having to clean, take pictures, reglove, clean, take pictures, reglove, etc.  That thing had to be at least 5 pounds of more.

The best I can tell is that this sewer rat was in the sewer system, chose our toilet to try to live that lifestyle behind, and was too big to make it out.  Needless to say, he either drowned or suffocated.  It was all nasty.  And now, I look twice and still am a little uneasy when I use the basement bathroom; but at least you can now say, "Hey, I know a guy..."

Projects?

Does putting up the Christmas tree count as a home project?  If so, I should have updated a while back.

There are several small projects around that need to be tackled but I/we keep finding ways to put them off.  I had originally planned on doing some of them over the Christmas break but that probably won't happen now.  Due to the failed Thanksgiving trip, we're making one over this break.

I did finally get around to a project this earlier this week that I kind of wish I had done a few weeks back.  Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on who you are, there are no pictures of this project.  I didn't really think about taking pictures during the project and it would have made it longer and posed a bit of a safety issue.  Does that peak your interest?  I hope so because you'll have to wait a week or two to hear about it.  There are a couple of people who read this blog that I want to tell in person before they read it here so I can see their faces.

Random Thoughts

I really don't know what to do with this blog as there are no major projects currently underway.  The few minor projects are mainly organizing and decorating/redecorating the kid's rooms.  This is turning out to be a slower process than I had hoped.  The basement project was easy to work on while they were asleep, but its probably not a good idea to work in their rooms after bedtime.  Oh well, it may be Christmas break before it gets finished, but eventually it will be finished and pictures will flow.

This blog was started as an easy way to keep our parents up-to-date on the basement, but it has been shared with a few others.  Just so you know, most of my posts are not thought out and are free flowing.  I also normally do not check for grammar and such.  So, when you see grammar mistakes, I probably know they are there but am not going to fix them.

I may try to post weekly randomness on here, or keep this site pure and start another for that...who knows?

It's starting to turn cold here and I'm hoping that the snow waits until we return from the motherland in a few weeks.  Then bring it on!

Curtains

Here are some pictures of the curtains.  I know I said last week I'd get Calleigh's posted.  When I went to upload them, they weren't there.  Apparently, I hadn't taken them yet.  But it's all good because now I have the ones from her room and the guestroom.  Special thanks to Christi's mom for helping us out with these.

Curtain and Decorating

If you haven't noticed, the updates are slowing down.  I think that's a good thing.  To me, it means either 1) projects are being completed; or 2) I've become lazy and quit working on them.  I'm going with the latter.

Christi's mom completed the curtain for Calleigh's room Saturday and it's been hanging in there ever since.  I have pictures and will post them later, hopefully this evening.  That's about all that's been done as of late.  The process of cleaning out her closet, which had become a resting place for items without a home, is still in process.  Unfortunately, even that small job seems to be caught in the web of inter-relatedness.  It is turning out that we need to clean/organize a little bit in one room to make space for junk from another room so we can start on yet another room to find a permanent resting place for items.  Did you catch all of that?

Hopefully, the kids will be good this weekend and their nap schedule will let us do a little more work in Calleigh's room and get some things hung.

We do have the final pieces of trim in hand and I hope to get those installed, as well as the door hung properly before the end of November.  If not, I'll take care of it during Christmas break. 

The third bay of the garge still needs to be cleaned out.  It's starting to turn colder here, so maybe that will be motivation to get it done.  I kind of find it funny that one's it sort of cleaned up, I'll probably just be filling it back up with junk to make the cleaning/organizing process inside the house easier.  I didn't realize how much junk we had until we starting the basement project and lost what had become a catchall junk room.