Last weekend's work and this one too.

Here's Max on the way up to my FIL's. It's about a 2 hour trip from our house.

We decided that he needed to have a bathroom redo. Since we have the Pig Roast there every year for a long weekend, it used to get a big workout. That was before we got the port-o-potty, but now it mostly gets used by a few for showers. The bath was over 30 years old and needed a big update. It's pretty small (5'x9') and was BLUE (blue toilet, blue bath tub, blue wall paper). I forgot to take before photos, so you'll just have to take my word for it! The whole demo took us probably only 4 hours.

Here is Carrick standing where the tub now sits.

The same shot without Carrick.

The opposite side where the sink cabinet goes. The missing drywall on the side wall was due to a leaky toilet and water damage. We'll replace with green board.

As it was late in the day on Sunday when we finished, I didn't take any final photos. We had completed installing the tub and changes to the plumbing (I did all the soldering!) and then the floor tile was installed so that I could grout ASAP when we return this weekend. We were all exhausted after all that work and the heat. Here's Cole and Cade on the way home.

In my next post next week I'll tell you about all my design choices. We pretty much did the whole bathroom for less than 3K!

Help!

We had a bit of a flood yesterday! We've had rain and storms pretty close to everyday for the past week. Yesterday it rained and poured. And this was the result. The little creek beside our house went over it's banks. That chair you see there is sitting on our bridge (hidden under the water) to the pasture on the other side.

Here's the shot up the creek. Normally this is maybe 3" deep and sometimes it even dries up in the summer.

Shot down the creek where it goes under the road. Normally there is a bank here that goes out about 4 feet from the bottom of the pines.

Here's where two parts of the creek come together.  Looks more like a pond!

Good thing our house was built was up on a hill away from this. But even though we are, our basement is quite damp due to the old stone basement and the fact that our dehumidifier just died. Anyone have a good suggestion for a new one?

Ballooning!

Memorial Day weekend we helped a friend of ours take his balloon out. We went out Saturday night after working on the garage all day. I always enjoy doing this. It was our 3rd or 4th time in his crew. It takes quite a bit of work to get him up and away.

Here's DH looking on while David and his wife get everything ready. David has to get so many hours in each year for certification, and this was one of those flights.

I don't have any photos of blowing up the balloon of it taking off because I was busy holding it open to fill it up (they use a really strong fan, and then the hot hot hot burners get turned on).

And here David and John are up in the balloon. 

Half of the fun is the chase. We follow them until they land (usually in someone's field) and then we help pack up. This time we had some trouble finding exactly where they landed. Even though we saw them, we couldn't find how to get there!

Hopefully the next time I will get to go for a flight! :)

A Story of a Garage

Ok, you can bring the dogs back in. I'm not lost! I've just been ...busy. Yeah, that's it!

Anyway, there has been progress here at the homestead. See this photo below? It's what the house and garage looked like in October of 2006. Nice, huh?See the garage in the background?

Here is the same garage a few weeks ago. This is what it looked like just before we sided it. You'd think that was a pretty straight forward job, right? Nah. Not here.

It turns out that when he started working on the garage, it started tipping sideways. It was due to years of the hillside beside it pushing on the side of the garage and poor construction. So we had to take off the siding we had already put on and rebuild the front corners of the garage. The roof was jacked up and secured so that the block could be taken down and reset plumb.

Here's a photo of the work on the opposite side. Fun, huh?

OK, so after finishing that fun side-track, we got back to work on the front and side. Looks a little better, no?

Here's the side. DH's pride and joy. The thing that may have added to the whole sliding garage.

The outside TV! Placed just so he can watch from the hot tub.

Anyhow, we still have more to do on this project. The back corner also needs to be rebuilt. Aluminum trim must be bent on the press and installed, gutters need installed, wood needs to be painted and the rest needs to be sided.

A little note about this guy. When we were doing the garage, this nest was in the eves on the roof. We took it apart and the nest fell out. Luckily, the two babies (pretty young) in the nest were not hurt, but I was afraid that the momma wouldn't come to get them. She did that night (I had put the nest in a box near where it was in the garage). Fast foward about 3 weeks later, we found this guy hopping around in the backyard. He'd follow us around the yard. We left him alone and later in the afternoon, momma came and got him and took him back to the nest in a huge tree. He was so funny hopping around in the grass and napping in the sun. We haven't seen him since, though.

Happy Easter!

I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Easter! I thought I'd share my spring mantle with you.

We plan on being outside most of the weekend since the weather is to be in the 70s and 80s. I have a ton of outside work to do, including weeding, cleaning up the old stuff, cleaning up huge (and I mean huge) branches that broke off trees when we had that 30" of snow, and the start of a outdoor project. DH wants to start siding the garage. We have most of the material, but some other jobs need to be finished up before that starts.

I got my new camera and I'm still trying it out. It seems good so far, but it does have it's limitations. I know it's not my DSLR, and I have liked it so far. I'll post some pictures when I get a chance!


I've also gotten out of my scrapbooking slump. I got 4 pages done this week.

Carrick's first year of football. I have two more of these to do for the twins.

Cade's crazy hair day at school.

Typical Carrick these days.

And the last one I did a few weeks ago of the twins and hockey.
All supplies are mostly from recent Studio Calico kits.

The fireplace mantle how-to

Here's the blank slate I started with. This was after I tore out part of the old mantle (brick) and then was drywalled. We added furring strips to the fireplace so that we'd have something to attach the drywall to. The hearth was also leveled and straightened with mortar and 2" concrete block. The original hearth was concrete and had sunk and cracked.

This was how it looked before attaching everything. Notice how the cast-iron surround looked before modification.

And here's how it looked after everything was attached. The mantle was a bit out of line and I had to take it apart partially so that I could reattach some of the loose trim. Wasn't too hard. It was attached to the wall with 2 1/2" trim nails from a Paslode cordless trim nailer. If you are doing a lot of trim work, I would highly recommend it. We found ours in eBay many years ago. As you can see the cast-iron surround was modified. Since it was too narrow for the electric fireplace insert, we cut off the sides with a metal cutting saw.

The top of the surround was attached with lots of Liquid Nail. That stuff holds anything! Then I painted the mantle because I didn't want to have to paint around the tile that I was adding next (it turned out I still did because the grout took some of the paint off).

After tiling and grouting the face and hearth, I was getting closer.
I wanted to change the surround to match the other finishes in our house. Most everything is nickle or silver. I decided to silver leaf instead of just painting. I started by sanding the surface to rough it up some.

This is the leafing I used. I got it at Michael's along with the sizing (used to stick the leafing) for less than $10.00 with my coupon.

I masked off the area I wanted to leaf since I didn't want to get it on the tile or the grout.

 The next step was to put on the sizing. Make sure to get it all over the area you plan to leaf. It just needs to dry a bit until it is no longer wet, just tacky.

After it is ready to go, just take the leafing and put it on the surface. The leafing that I bought was stuck to the paper. I'm not sure this was the best for this project, because it might have been easier with the detached sheet. Anyway, I just kept putting the sheet over the missing sections on the surround and rubbed with my finger until it was all covered.

To clean off the little bits that stuck up or were not attached, you simply run a soft brush over the surface until done.

After I was happy with the coverage, I had to seal the leafing to protect it and so that it won't tarnish. I used a non-water based sealer.

After that was done, I added trim to the hearth since it sits higher than the floor. We had to scribe it and fit it a couple of times to make sure it was flush. It was also attached with lots of Liquid Nail.

And here is the finished product. I am so happy with how it turned out.