Catch Up: The Demolition of Slapdash

This is kind of old news, I know. But I never posted photos or devoted a proper post(s) to the home project that dominated the better part of our summer.

Our house was built in 1950. In 1970 the previous owners added a beautiful dining room addition & renovated the kitchen. Somewhere during the 80's they added what we call The Slapdash Room. We assume The Slapdash Room was originally used for a bedroom for one of the six kids that were raised in our house. It was not the most impressive of rooms, probably more so in it's early years. By the time we came along the carpet was musty, smelly & laid over a concrete slab that was cracking & heaving. The walls were a combination of vinyl siding, 2x4s used as bricks & wood sheeting. There was an entrance/exit to outside (probably pretty sweet for a teenager) & 3 windows that no longer opened.

Initially our plan was to keep the structure as is but replace all the walls with screens & make a screen porch. Then our inspector came through & encouraged us to tear down & start over. We knew if we waited longer than a year it might never happen. So during the winter we started making plans & in May we tore The Slapdash Room down.

9 May, 2010
Randy + his dad, Jim tearing down.


Through the demolition we discovered that The Slapdash Room was originally a covered patio. The previous owners merely built two walls, a sub roof & a sub ceiling with lots of insulation in between. Here is what's left of the aluminum patio roof. Amazing.
All gone! Randy & Gus, our contractor & husband to my cousin, Heather.

A few days later, the concrete people came & made way for the new concrete. A lot of the old concrete pieces were used in our patio.

I must admit that while I knew it would be spectacular when it was finished. When our yard was in this state it did make me feel a little nervous.
More to come!
xoxx

Weekend of Gratitude.

•I am grateful for the person(s) who had the thought to recycle the barn whose wood is currently gracing the presence of our backyard.

•I am grateful for The Reuse Center of Minneapolis who sold me the barnwood and gave me some pretty sweet glass doors too.

•I am grateful for Handsome Randy, my handsome husband, who is always willing to trust my visions, such as barnwood on the walls & ceiling of our soon to be 3 season porch.

•I am grateful for our neighbors to the south for being patient with my late night wood sanding. Sorry if I disturbed you - I was so focused on finishing that I didn't think about it until I was nearly done with the task at hand.

•I am grateful for the motion light on the garage of our neighbors to the north; the moon wasn't quite enough light for me to finish that last coat.

• I am grateful to live in a neighborhood in which I feel safe working on a project in my driveway at midnight with no second thoughts about it.

•I am grateful for my mom from who I inherited the ability to persevere so that I can do anything, like shellack 500 square feet of barnwood by myself over a weekend.

•I am grateful for the my mom again, she not only brought me dinner, she brought me Jung's Chicken Chow Mein for dinner.

•I am grateful for the quite perfect patio table given to us by Tim. Yay!

•I am grateful for my cat, Cyrus, who seems to have come around again after the loss of his companion of 9 years, Asha.

•I am grateful for my neighborhood Taco Bell being open late. The thought of a Cheesarito is really what kept me going during the very last stretch of sanding & shellacking.

•I am grateful to have a house and the resources to build a porch for it.

•I am grateful for the bathtub that I will soon sink into filled with hot water & epson salts. I will soak my aches and pains away while reading and dozing. Can't wait.

xoxx

So Much.

These are things I am itching to write about:

New York April 17 - 20
My House/Yard
New Haircut
Random (but very profound) thoughts.

What is keeping me?

Well, this major project I have undergone as of this week: Our impending Patio.
Here it is in it's glory as of this moment:

















This is what it will look like, hopefully in about one week.


xoxx

15 Bags of Leaves.

I felt triumphed when I counted 15 bags. Then I went to work & heard stories of yards that produced 30 bags of leaves or in one case over 90. What amazed me about my first raking experience on Fillmore Street is that I truly enjoyed it & had a sense of pride over it all. Sort of like when one finishes painting a room; it's a nice change that was accomplished by your own hands.

And since I'm writing about the yard & house...there is this walkway next to our garage that I didn't know existed until a week or two after we moved in. I love it. I don't really know why, I suppose it's just one of those things, an added bonus, if you will. I think it's such a pretty spot. If I were about 25 years younger I'd be plotting to build a fort here.

xoxx

A Shift

Handsome Randy is currently on the road and will be for a while. I spend so much time at our new house just being and puttering and glowing and feeling old (in a very good way).

This coming weekend my dad & stepmom are coming to Minneapolis for a wedding & they're staying with me. I think this officially seals my fate as an adult. I now live in a house that my parents feel comfortable and excited to stay in and I am comfortable and excited for them to do so.

Many aspects of Homeownership seem to Adultate me. When my Uncle Chris is over helping with random things like installing new stairs outside (today) or fixing the lock on our garage (Monday) and he asks me for a tool and not only do we have it (thanks in large part to him) but there is a convenient place for it & it's there.

I am consumed with gardening. I have planted so many perennials in the past few weeks and I still have more in my garage & at my mom's waiting for me. Listen to me, I am trading perennials with my mom.

There also seems to be coffee on all the time since we acquired our new residence. For me this is also synonymous with adulthood. So whenever anyone stops by to visit (or install a small staircase) it's ready to serve. My grandparents seemed to always have coffee on, and this house seems to bring out a lot of my grandma that's in me; I keep a sheet covering the sofa at all times (except when company's over) so it won't get dirty.

I'm not complaining. I love this shift, in fact I am reveling in it.

xoxx

Getting in Focus.

Today is Thursday yet it seems like maybe it should be Tuesday. The last few days have been a blur as I have been so sick with some stupid virus that for two whole days left me sleeping in our bed or on the bathroom floor because it required me to be in there so often. Yes, it was that kind of virus. Good times.

And now I am left thirsty (a little dehydrated yet), hungry (a little skiddish to eat my regular stuff) and trying to get that blur into a focused picture. Handsome Randy is leaving today for a month long tour. The last few days of his homestay were not spent in the usual nor ideal ways. I was cranky, critical & crabby which probably made it quite hard to want buy me much needed Gatorade. But he smiled, kissed my forehead, took me to the doctor and brought me Gatorade and bananas despite his very real work deadlines and crabby ladyfriend.

Yesterday when I came to and it hit me that he was leaving in less than 24 hours I wanted to cry. Actually I did cry for a good solid minute and I felt such dispair for having been so out of it and so sick and so crabby that I think it made me feel worse rather than better.

But this happens everytime I am sick. When I come out of it it's almost as if I mourn the time I've lost from being ill. Everything feels out of whack as I haven't been to work, the house is a mess and I never once watered my plants. The feeling of neglect toward my life is overhwhelming. So I do what comes best to me, I cry. Then I wipe my nose, water my plants and slowly put my routine back in motion. It all gets better that way.

While HR was home we definitely accomplished our mission and bought a house, one we both love and can hardly wait to make our own. I, gleefully, have been granted full license to choose colors and what we do with our extra bedrooms as he is just happy to have a "comfy house". In the midst of my virus, we had our house inspected. While it is all kind of a blur to me, it was nice to just be there for two hours. We sat around talking and it was so comfortable and filled with nice energy. Fillmore Street will be a great place for us. We can hardly wait.

So here's to being virus free, lucky enough to have a partner who is not only Handsome but very patient and forgiving of his sick lady and to our upcoming and very happy home.

xoxx

A New Fight.

In the past few weeks I have been seemingly fighting a lot of battles. There have been some with others (our landlord). There have been some with myself (why did/didn't you say/do that, Dahli?!). And then, of course, there are just the every day battles of life (traffic, long lines, work, etc).

There is now one more to add to the roster.

Tinea Pellionella

Wish me luck.

xoxx

productivity.

It will never cease to amaze me how much more productive I feel when our house is clean and I am all caught up with various menial tasks.

We are having a furnace problem and while it is spring, it is still cold at night & I would like more help keeping warm than the 3 blankets that are on our bed. So our landlord is allegedly stopping by tomorrow or Saturday to take a look at & hopefully remedy the problem.

This is when the messy house becomes a problem.

Our back hallway where the furnace resides is a disaster - it is our recycling area and it's also the drop off point for things that need to go upstairs except those things never seem to get there. The majority of my clothes that are in current circulation of being worn are on the floor in the bathroom as well as 4 or 5 pairs of my shoes. Junk mail is in a pile on the living room floor. I took the garbage out yesterday but the trash can is still in the middle of the kitchen floor waiting for a new bag.

You get it. Embarrassingly messy.

So tonight I remedied all of it. All of it. No joke. And to top it off I finally downloaded 6 CDs into itunes that I've been meaning to for so long. And that is what felt the best of everything.

By the way, Handsome Randy if you are reading this, you are not allowed to give me shit for our messy house that I tout as being so spic and span clean whilst you are on the road. This was a minor slip...

xoxx

Beginning of the End.

Our house is such a 'sty right now. The thing that always gets me moving is washing the bathroom & kitchen towels. But our washer is out of order presently so I have to go to the Laundromat or a kind relative's house & that takes a little more planning & effort. I working on a plan right now...I swear.

But seriously, it's lucky for me that the weather warmed up because I could just move into my summer clothes & not worry about which dirty clothing item is the cleanest. We all have done this is dire times right?

Handsome Randy is leaving for SXSW early tomorrow. His absence always seems to inspire a major cleaning overhaul. Tomorrow it will for sure begin. It obviously won't happen today as I am too busy writing about it.

I never stop feeling amazed at how much more productive I feel with a clean house. Perhaps because the housekeeping isn't hanging over my head to get done or I feel more organized or something. But it always feels like i get so much more get accomplished, even if all my day consisted of was watching a Bravo reality TV marathon. I guess I could pay closer attention without the distraction of random, accumulated junk on our coffee table.

And by the way, at which moment did we give up on our clean living quarters & start to leave random junk on the coffee table. And dining & kitchen tables for that matter? That is always the beginning of the end of a clean house. It probably began the same day we started leaving our dirty clothes in the bathroom.
xoxx