Jeff and Jeanne

I took a time lapse video of us painting our bedroom. I don’t know why, but I find these fun.

Video

Here’s some pictures too.  I’ll post more when the room is put back together.

Well, I was calling all you Black Friday shoppers crazy… I guess I’m crazy.  We wound up going to Home Depot to try to take advantage of their Ryobi sale.  We did, just not quite what we had initially wanted.  I now have a new 18v drill, circular saw and spiral saw.  Sweet hu?  The batteries for my old Craftsman cordless drill were dead and it cost way too much to replace them.  So, I didn’t. 

We also made it to the mall later in the evening to look for curtains.  That wasn’t as bad as I expected.  But, we didn’t find any curtains for our living room.  We finally ordered them all online.  UPS should be making some deliveries over the next week or two.

Greenage!
More to come…

We’ve finally started to put our “touch” on the house.  We started painting this weekend.  We’re stating small though.  We’re beginning with the entryway.

Yesterday, I spackled a ton of nail holes and sanded down some putty spots the previous owner never bothered to.  After taking the covers off all the switches and outlets, I primed the whole thing.  Jeanne taped off the window and started to paint trim.  Scout helped with the taping too.  Somehow I also managed to prime his tail too.  We’ll see what happens when we get to the wall color.

Today, we painted the ceiling.  Jeanne did the cut-in work, I did the rolling.  I think with the difference in color between the ceiling white and the primer, even Momma could tell where she had painted. 

That last picture shows three distinct colors, the wall, the primed ceiling and the painted ceiling.  It’s really funny to see the difference in the primed wall and the primed ceiling.  It’s the same primer!  Maybe it’s just the angle.  It doesn’t look the different when you are looking at it.

And no, that is not the final wall color.  Wait until you see that! 

So, yesterday at lunch I noticed I didn’t have a cold Coke in the fridge.  So, I stuck one in the freezer then another in the fridge for later.  I set a timer for 25 minutes so I’d remember to grab the Coke out of the freezer on the way back to work.  So, I did.  As I started to drink it, I didn’t think it was as cold as it was the last time I had done this.  Oh well.

Cut to today.  I go to grab my cold Coke I had put in the fridge yesterday.  But, there was no Coke.  Did I drink it last night?  I guess I’ll just throw another one in the freezer and set the timer.  So, I grab a Coke, and open the freezer and this is what I was greeted by:

Nice hu?  Turns out the reason my Coke yesterday was a little warm was because I actually grabbed the one from the fridge.  I guess I have some cleaning to do.

As I mentioned in the previous post, last weekend, we went up to Granny’s to split some hostas. They were getting too big for her planting bed, and she was willing to share. Actually, she got them from us when we split the hostas at one of the houses we rented in Spring Lake. So, with a little shovel work, we had them split and rearranged in her beds. We loaded them up into old kitty litter buckets to take home.

When we had them home, we made a bed in front of our patio. That required us to tear up the grass. So, I cut it up into chunks with the spade, and while I mowed, Jeanne tore up the sod and knocked most of the dirt out of the roots. With a quick layout, I dug some holes and they were planted. They look really good there, don’t you think? Now I just need to fix the sprinkler head there so they will actually get some water. I was going to do that today, but it’s raining. So, no need.

While I mowed the back yard, Jeanne also planted some lily bulbs in the corner flower bed in the back yard. It was a variety pack with Stargazers and two other kinds. Stargazers are her favorites. I don’t know how long it will take for them to come up, but I’m sure we’ll have pictures of them when they do.

If you would like to see the rest of the pictures, including some large night crawlers I found while raking up some leaves, click here.

Today I finished taking down the frame of the old bulkhead above the cabinets and the valance above the window. Amazingly, the valance came down in one piece. I figured It would break for sure. I have no idea what to do with the fancy scallop cut piece. But the top board was a nice 1×12 piece of fairly clear pine. I may make some bird houses out of it. Who knows. It looks like I’ll have to do a little varnishing. The cabinets must have been varnished once they were put up because I’ve not got some bear spots.

I tried to take that large chunk of 8/3 wire out of the attic. No such luck. It’s tacked down somewhere in there because I tried pulling it from the attic and the basement and it didn’t budge. Oh well. Maybe I’ll find a need for 220 up there someday.

I also rearranged the vent a bit. It meant knocking a new hole in the drywall, but it takes up less space. So, I’ll have to build a smaller box around this to cover it up. Yeah, I have to patch a rather large hole in the ceiling, but I think I can manage that. Don’t you think it looks better this way? Ok, I won’t hold you to an answer until the hole is patched.

After a little cleanup, the kitchen was back to “normal”. It helped putting sheets over the counter this time.

As usual, you can see all the pictures here. It does include all the pictures from last time, just click on page 2.

It was just a matter of time. We’ve been talking about painting and doing some work in the kitchen since we moved in back in July. But, like most things we talk about, we haven’t done anything. Until now. This week we stopped by Home Depot to get some paint samples. We found colors we liked for every room on the 1st floor. Well, except for the bathroom, but that will probably be a project all it’s own. But, while at Home Depot, we picked up some dust mask and a pry bar. LOOK OUT! As you can see, Jeanne went to town on the “bulkhead” above the kitchen cupboards. I use the term bulkhead very loosely because it was merely a facade. It was just 1×1′s as a frame, then some cheap paneling painted white. Yes, it did hide the vent for the microwave. But it also hid the fact that the vent was partially unhooked. Yummy.

It’s always fun to pull things apart in an older house because you never know what you might find. Well, mostly what we found was dust. Dust, dust, and more dust. But, we also found a copy of The Instructor for the Sunday School. This appears to be a publication for the Christian Reformed Church that was published in the `50s in Grand Rapids. This particular issue has a date of July 27th, 1952. I’ll scan the entire publication and post it sometime in the future.

That was really the only thing we found of interest. Did I mention there was a lot of dust? The shop vac made quick work of that. Oh, the CRC publication may have been the only thing we found above the cupboards, but there was plenty of interesting things hidden by the bulkhead. These were really wiring related. First was a very large wire that could be seen coming out of hole in the wall next to the microwave vent then went up into the attic with the duct. Upon further inspection, this is an 8/3 wire. That means it’s 8 gauge wire (quite large) and 3 conductors. Must have been for the stove. But why is it going up? The breaker box is in the basement. So, instead of going a foot or so down, then across the floor to the breaker box that is under the steps going down stairs, it goes up, across the kitchen ceiling, then down one of the walls to the breaker box. Actually, it’s not hooked up to either end any more. I’m going to try to pull it out. With the price of copper right now, I may be able to sell it to pay for part of the paint!

The other interesting thing was the wiring for the light above the sink. It’s an outlet in a handy box attached to a wire that just goes up into a hole in the plaster in the ceiling. The light over the sink had a cord wired to it that plugged into this outlet. I don’t think that was ever code. The cable for our under-cabinet TV also comes from that hole. We’re going to have to do some rearranging.

That’s as far as we made it this weekend. While Jeanne was doing the tear down, I was out cleaning up the leaves that had fallen and blown into our yard after the snow fell. That was great fun. I also did the spring cleanup of Scout exhaust. I’m not real good about doing that when the snow covers it up.

This was also a good cooking weekend. This morning I through a batch of summer sausage in the smoker. It took about 5 hours to cook. I tried a bit after dinner. I think it was another successful batch. We had Jeanne’s mom over for dinner and made beef ribs on the charcoal grill. That turned out quite good too. The ribs had a recipe for a BBQ sauce on the package. It was plumb jam, garlic powder, ginger, red wine vinegar and soy sauce. From the ingredients, I wasn’t sure how it was going to be. It wound up being more of a glaze, but man was it good.

That’s all I’ve got for now.  You can check out all the pictures of the first part of the tear down by clicking here.

And a couple of fish!

Ok, before you start making any comments, you should know that they all came from the local pet store, and that the crabs are Blue Legged Hermit Crabs. We’ve got three of them now. Along with a Royal Gramma and a Percula Clown.

For those of you that have been by the house in the last couple of months, I’m sure you noticed the 20 gallon fish tank in the eating area all set up with water and no fish. Well no more. Last weekend (January 26th) we made a trip to Rochester’s Reef in Grand Haven and came home with Spot, Dynamite, Larry, Moe and Curly.

Spot is the Royal Gramma. We named it spot because of the little black dot on front of it’s dorsal fin. We started with Dot, but Spot came out accidentally a couple times, so we switched to Spot. It seemed more natural. This is one quick fish too. Spot can shoot across the tank in the blink of an eye. And you wouldn’t believe the size of the mouth on this thing. When the crab gets into the lower hole in the rock, Spot gets a bit defensive and lets the crab know by biting the shell. No harm comes to either of them. But it’s fun to watch.

Dynamite is the Clown. I came of with the name in honor of Rudy Grahek, aka Dynamite the Clown. Dynamite the Clown was a local clown while I was growing up, famous throughout Northern Michigan. He lives near Reed City. In fact, we would pass his house every day on the way to school. It seemed like a fitting name. He’s fun to watch. He likes to get up behind the overflow of the filter, laying sideways, play peek-a-boo? The first time he did this, Jeanne thought he was sick. Turns out he’s just playing.

The hermit crabs are named after the Three Stooges. If you watch them for a few minutes, you’d know why. They do some strange things! Physical comedy is definitely their thing. They have been seen climbing (and falling off of) the large rock in the aquarium. Occasionally they fight. One night the largest of the three (Curly) was running laps around the rock. He would climb up through the lower hole in the rock to the back, come around the right side, then back through the hole. He must have done that a dozen or more times. He finally stopped when the light turned off for the night. These guys aren’t very big either. Shell and all, they are maybe 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch long. They are in a constant search for food and new homes. Every conical shell that was in the tank (the bottom of the tank is covered in crushed sea shells) has been picked over and moved a bunch of times. In fact the smallest crab (Larry) has switched shells at least twice. We’ll need to get some new ones soon as they will shortly outgrow the shells they have.

They’ve all made it a week, so no more warranty! Not that I expected them to kick off. I feed them twice a day. Usually at lunch time and again in the evening. They get a mixture of a flake food and frozen brine shrimp. They really like the brine shrimp. They don’t actually get them frozen. I take a small chunk of the frozen shrimp and thaw them in a dish of water out of the tank. Then I dribble them in over a couple minute period. The fish love them. I’m sure the crabs get some too since the fish don’t always eat the partial pieces. The crabs seem to like the flake food too. They catch the left overs and greedily munch them down. I guess it’s mostly meat products anyway, so why not!

That’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll keep updating on any new additions. I’ve taken a few pictures, if you want to see them all, check here. I just noticed I have no pictures of the tank as a whole. I’ll get some and put them up later.

Today was “Black Friday”.  While we don’t normally go out into that chaos, we did make a trip to Art Van and Potters (local lighting store).  At Art Van we ordered a new table and chairs.  a nice round table with 6 chairs was on sale today.  While they were out of stock we were able to order it at the sale price.  We just have to wait until mid February.

But that wasn’t the old, and only part of the new.

  The old was this awful, ugly, cheap looking chandelier that was in our eating area.  It’s as bad as it looks.  It’s plastic made to look like brass.  Even the “crystals” are plastic.

   The new is this nice new brushed nickel chandelier.  It’s an early Christmas present from Jeanne’s Mom.  It’s so much nicer.  We love it.  We also picked up matching pendant lights for over the kitchen sink.  Those will go up shortly.  We need to figure out what to do with the bulkhead over the sink.  It’ll be some demolition, painting and wiring.  Hopefully we can get to that soon!