The Thin Line

According to B Mack, we had until August 12 to meet the deadline of posting again on this thing in under two months. Here I am, August 8! That's four days ahead of schedule. Love my time management skills. :) So I'm sure you've all heard the saying "There's a thin line between love and hate." I never really understood what it meant until this summer. However, this quip describes exactly how I feel about this house. On which side of the line I stand varies and depends on several factors: what the project is we're working on, how far away that damn light at the end of the tunnel really is, my mood, whether or not I've eaten, how sweaty I am from removing glue, how much plaster has chipped away, etc. etc. etc. The list could go on and on.

I should go ahead and put this out there. I'm not really a "do-it-yourself" type of gal. Even though I've always wanted an old house and I would never ever have a house built or live in a new house, I'm just really not into doing everything myself. Maybe I'm lazy and just don't like the work. Once the project is completed or near completion I do like being able to smile proudly and say: "Yes, it's true. We did it all ourselves. It took a long time but it was WORTH it." haha....However, during the project I'm not so friendly or happy about what is going on. When we bought the house, I mistakenly thought we would actually contract out some of these projects. I had no idea how many projects there would be. I had no idea that my husband actually likes to do every single thing himself. I had no idea how much projects cost. But I'm in it now and the only thing I can do is cringe, complain, and get to work. (I paint a pretty picture of myself, don't I?)

Anyways, I'm talking too much about me. On to the house and what the hell we've been up to and what side of the line I'm on now (uh, that's kinda still talking about me, huh?) We are actually back in the house after a month-long stay with Chad's dad and his wife. This was supposed to be a week-long stay. However, the project ended up taking longer than expected....but what can I say? It was WORTH it! During the month stay I'd have to say that I was on the "hate" side of the line. And not because I didn't enjoy staying with his dad and wife. In fact, I probably enjoyed it too much. (We can't thank them enough for letting us stay with them for so long). Their house is brand new and big. They have soft water. And cable. And a tub/shower that actually drains correctly. And a toilet that flushes correctly. And counter space in the kitchen. Hell - they have space in the kitchen. And a dishwasher. Oh and they had electricity. Which is exactly what we didn't have and why we were even staying with them.

The reason why I was on the hate side of the line is because everything in our house was/is unorganized and taking longer than expected. The house was a MESS, I was living out of my car. I almost wanted to put the damn thing up for sale. However, we're back. With new electricity. No more knob and tube. No more extension cords. No more power strips or searching for outlets. No more sparks and no more worries. Better yet, this means we're moving on. This project has sucked up over a year of our lives. Time to get to fixing those walls and ceilings so we can paint and get the floors re-finished. So right now, even though there is still about ten years worth of work to be done on this house, I'm on the love side of the line. Check back tomorrow, or in five minutes, and see where I am then.
The pic to the left is the before picture of the space where the old light switch in our bedroom used to be.









Below is the brand new switch. Nice, uh? Okay, maybe it doesn't seem like much to "normal house" people but to us this is a HUGE improvement. Are there any "normal house" people reading this anyways??





















This is an example of all the fixtures we put in the bedrooms, kitchen, and bathroom. Don't get crazy - these are totally temporary. We needed something very cheap but that would work. We are now moving on to fixing each room one by one - including ceilings, walls, etc. Once we finish that we will replace these ugly (but working!) fixtures with ceiling fans in the bedrooms. The kitchen and bath lights will stay this way until the remodel.








Below is our ceiling in the future office room. It didn't look like this two weeks ago. Actually, this part of the plaster ceiling was probably the worst in the whole house. It was loose and we knew it would come down once we got to it. However, it had different plans. We were finishing up a day's work when all of a sudden we heard a loud crash. Chad said: What was that? I looked down the hall and saw some dust flutering out of the room and said: I think it was the ceiling. It fell. It was all funny at the time. I guess since we knew it was bad, it just wasn't that big of a deal.