New steps, and the basement remodel moves forward!

All has been quiet in the last while regarding home improvement projects here at Sparrow’s Nest, until this last couple of weeks. I’ve had trouble with my basement steps, as they were constructed poorly when they were put in.  My Dad was kind enough to come over, take them apart and put them back together correctly with new treads.  He also pounded out the drywall that line the steps, as it was on the wrong side of the wall, and put in a new light where my pantry will go. He’s got plans about how to put a wall in on the steps side of the wall, and is helping me think about how to construct a pantry on the other side and underneath the stairs. My Dad’s amazing…he can pretty much build or fix anything, and I am so grateful that he’s put his considerable skills to work in my house. He’s definitely helping me make my house more of a home. The best part is that Older and Younger Sons have both helped, which gives them a sense of accomplishment, as well as a stake in how their home is fixed.

Here’s what it looked like to start with:

  As you can see the risers were installed incorrectly by overlapping the treads of the steps. This caused uneven wear and splinters to form. You can see where there was drywall on the wrong side of the stair wall, causing several Black Holes of Doom between the studs where things would fall down from above and get lost under the stairs.

Dad came over to make all the measurements and then we went shopping for new 2×10 boards for the new treads. Since the risers aren’t so visible, we didn’t buy new plywood, but reused what was there. Not having done this before, Dad was a little afraid of how much time it would take and so he came over on Saturday around 11:30 so that we’d have Sunday too, if need be.  Younger helped with this part of the project and it took them a little bit to get started, but once they did it seemed to go really smoothly, and only took about three hours to get finished. They started from the bottom, and did one step at a time. Younger Son has been talking to me about putting a finish on the steps, which I think we will do, but it will have to wait until the Spring when we can keep the windows open all day.

Later on that week, Dad came back and Older Son helped him pound out and haul out the drywall, and then he installed a light in the back of what will be my new pantry.

Here are pictures of the results:

This may not seem like a big deal, but it’s a huge step forward…if you’ll forgive the pun. By Spring I’m hoping to have  my new pantry ready to go and on the way to being filled up. I’d like to have a year’s worth of supplies banked away eventually, and this little project has gotten me that much closer to making that plan into reality. I have some other thoughts on pantry building, and being prepared, but I’ll leave those for another post.

Hopefully soon I’ll have some more pictures to show you regarding the progress on my basement remodel!

Sleeping in and The To Do List

Today I got to sleep in.

What a glorious and wonderful thing.

This whole last year has been full of working every weekend day, but that’s all changed now. I’ve changed my schedule so that I get one weekend day off. I had to take on extra hours during the week to do that, but life is full of little trade offs, and this one was worth it.

Not only did I get to sleep until my eyes felt like popping open all by themselves, but now I get to sit in a quiet house and catch up on my blogs. And,  I get to write a post with no interruptions or the boys reading over my shoulder. Now there’s a treat. It’s a little easier to write what I really feel if I don’t have to worry about them walking by and sneaking a peak and making comments.

Aw shoot…I guess I spoke too soon…Older Son just got up, but he’s offering to make coffee, so I guess that’s another one of those little trade offs. Hmm… Coffeeeeee!

This morning is going to be all about The To Do List. Since I’ve taken on extra hours at the Big Box Store, and have stumbled upon my new found amazing social life, my house has really hit the skids. Time to take action, and here’s the plan for today:

Kitchen – (medium bad shape) clean off all flat surfaces of all things accumulated, scrub floors. If time, scrub fridge doors, inside and house, reorganize cupboards and drawers.

Living room -(horrifyingly bad shape) Burn and start again. Nope, too expensive. Dust everything, scrub walls, scrub floors, vacuum rugs, sort bills and papers, reorganize entire room. Hm…maybe it would just be better to burn and start again?

Bathroom – (pretty good shape) Light weekly scrubbing needed only

Entry way – (Not too bad) Sweep and mop floor, reorganize shoes and jackets

My room – (Run away, run away!) Get rid of the last of the things I brought up from the basement during the flood. Sweep floor and vacuum rugs, change sheets, dust everything, organize shelves, organize closet.

Basement (Good grief, what happened to my clean basement?!) Totes need organizing, floors need sweeping, laundry needs catching up with (my poor washer will be smoking and begging for mercy by the end of the day), items need to be put away in my new workspace cupboards.

Outdoors (Uff-da…) Need to have Younger Son finish pulling in the garden, and weed-whack anything that’s over grown. Solar lights need to be put away for the year, and the shed needs to be organized.

I’ve just read over this list, and know that I have my work cut out for me, but so do Older Son and Younger Son -I’ll be keeping them busy today. I’m also aware of this feeling in the pit of my stomach that I’m dying to send a text message to my new man friend. He needs a blog nick name….I’ll have to think on that. I’m seriously aware that we are only friends, but I’ve gotten rather attached to him. Could be that I need to reign that in a little bit…if he wants to be more than friends, I’ll let him let me know. Darned flirty man… makes me want things I shouldn’t want right now. For today, I need to pay attention to my house and spend some extra time with my kids.

I hope you all have much smaller To Do Lists, and a spectacularly restful Sunday.

Editors note: So what happens after I get this posted and get ready to start my day? My phone goes off…it’s The Flirt…texting just saying Good Morning. Life is good…

Of beer and home improvement projects

Something that I really enjoy is pizza. The best thing to have with pizza is a cold beer. Just one, and it has to be really cold.

I’m very blessed that my younger son has discovered the joy of cooking, and sometimes he makes supper.  Tonight he made calzones. They were just plain pepperoni and cheese, but they were really good. There’s extra yummy goodness in all things home-made. No lie.

So, what beer did I drink with my fabulous home-made calzone? Now, I am a huge Guinness fan. I like a beer with some backbone, and am not prone to drink light beer. I thought about getting some Guinness tonight, but chose to try something new today. I like to try new things all the time, and very often I will choose an adult beverage by the creativity of the label if I just can’t make a decision, but the name of this beer caught my eye. Tonight’s choice is Heavy Horse Scotch Ale, which is made by Big Sky Brewing Company in Missoula, MT. This is the amazing company who are the creators of Moose Drool, another good beer.

I can’t say enough good things about this beer. Not only is it not overly carbonated or hoppy, but it has a lovely smooth taste without being a light beer. Oh, it is a fabulously smooth beer. Hm!! Heavy Horse is a limited run beer, so I think I will go out and get another couple of six packs next pay-day.  Something I’d like to have in my new pantry is not only a wine cellar, but a beer cellar too.

Speaking of my new pantry. It appears that it won’t be built just yet. I still have a few boxes upstairs (left over from bringing everything up from the flood in June)  that need to be gone through and the contents to be kept will have to go in totes and returned to the basement. I have Christmas decorations still stored in my room, and they will have to go downstairs too. So, still having things that need storing in the basement, I’ll need to get those things pared down and squared away so I can get my upstairs finally squared away. Once the upstairs is back in shape, I can pay better attention to the basement. I have some before and after pictures of the organizational project I have going on down there, but I’m saving that for another post.

So, having gone on and on about the stuff I have to get done, I guess I’d better go get something done!

 

Flogging depression with gardening

Apparently, I’ve been depressed.

It sounds as though I make it out to be like it sneaked up on me, and caught me unawares. Well, that’s sometimes how it happens…at least for me. I realized recently, that I’d been falling into old patterns and having no feelings other than unhappy. Today I heard stories about two people I work with at The Big Box Store, who have decided to move away because they lost their homes, and most everything in the flood. There’s nothing holding them here, so they are moving to where they have family, and starting over. It really made me think about all the things that I have taken for granted, and how  fortunate I have been.

Do I have more bills than I can keep up with? Oh, yeah. Do I run like a chicken with my head cut off most days? Yep. Do I feel overwhelmed all the time? Most definitely. Has my ex-husband served me with a legal motion because he thinks he’s paying me too much, and wants a refund? Yes he did, that rotten so-and-so.  Has the heart of my city been destroyed, and so many people I know been displaced and won’t be able to get back into their homes before the snow flies? Yes, and it makes my heart ache.  Have I got more things around the house that need doing than I have time and energy for? Oh, man, do I. Did my engine light come on? Unfortunately, it did. Ugh.

I’ve been feeling really down because of all of this stuff on my plate, and didn’t realize how down I was until I realized I have been having a continual internal pity party for quite a while. Hearing about these two families who have had to make such a hard decision really jerked me out of my rut, and I was able to actually get up and do something. Feeling depressed is very much like wearing weights around your neck…it’s just so hard to get up and do anything. I wish I had realized I had sunk down so far before things got so out of whack.

The thing is, I have got so much to be grateful for, and that really should outweigh the bad stuff. Do I have a home to come home to at the end of a long day, that is dry and safe? Are my kids healthy? Am I gainfully employed? Do I have parents that have stuck by me and helped me every step of the way my whole life? Do I have good friends?  Did my garden produce food for me, even though I neglected it all summer? A resounding yes to all of these things and much more. I am so blessed, and it’s a huge bummer that I lost sight of that.

Before - ugh!

So, after I got home from working at The Big Box Store this morning, I took Older Son shopping. We came home, and then Younger Son and I spent three hours outside. He changed light bulbs over both doors and washed the van, and I spent my time cleaning up and organizing the rock beds that surround two sides of our house. The front one was especially bad, but it turns out that it didn’t take as long as I thought it would. Since I had extra time, and was on a roll, I weeded out my strawberry/herb garden and found some interesting things.

Rosemary on the right, Thyme on the left

I planted rosemary, thyme and oregano this spring, which grew fabulously. Now I have a nice bunch of fresh herbs to cook with. Actually, I like to just rub them in my hands and sniff them. There’s nothing that drops my blood pressure quick than smelling fresh thyme. Who needs drugs when you have a good kitchen herb garden!

After that was done, I took a look at my VERY over grown vegetable garden. We planted snow peas, corn, carrots and pumpkins. The only thing that did really well was the pumpkins. The vines and flowers are so pretty! Younger Son has been telling me for a couple of weeks about some really strange-looking pumpkins, and he thought the vines might be infected with something and the pumpkins were deformed. I finally made the effort to take a look tonight, and it turns out that not only do we have genuine baby pumpkins, but also spaghetti squash! I had a spaghetti squash that I ended up throwing in the compost heap this Spring, as it went bad before I could eat it. Apparently, they are very easy to grow!

We also have ground cherries and dill that re-seeded themselves from last year. The strawberries looked a little worse for the wear, but were holding their own and had sent out runners. We even had some carrots that survived all the rain we received. Even though Younger isn’t a veggie eater, I talked him into trying a carrot straight out of the garden, since he was the one that planted them. I was surprised that he actually ate it, but he did. I ate some too, and it was a little woody as it should have been picked earlier, but it was good anyway.

So, by 7:30 this evening, the rock beds had been cleared of all weeds, one garden had been weeded and watered, and the van had been scrubbed for the first time all summer (There wasn’t

Whoa! Now you can see the rocks in my rock bed!

much car washing going on with the city requesting water conservation during and after the flood, until just recently),  and I was able to sit down and eat supper with a genuine feeling of having accomplished something for the first time in a long, long time.

Tomorrow, I work on the inside of the house!

 

 

 

 

Blessed are mundane things

Today started out being not such a bad day. My house wasn’t considered to be in the flood zone, and we had made some progress on going through stuff in the basement that needed to be gotten rid of or brought upstairs. There was a sense of it needing to be done, but not that we had to kill ourselves to finish up.

My Sister calls this "Frog in a Blender"

Then we went out to run some errands. Older Son came with me and on the way home, I thought it would be nice to stop at Starbucks and get us some coffee. Or, in my case, a nice Green Tea Frappuccino.  We sat outside the drive through speaker for a long time, and then a girl came out and apologized, letting us know that they were closing due to the evacuation zones being expanded.

What?!

Yep…we came right home and turned on the tv. The big news is that someone just discovered that double the water was coming our way, and those close to the original evacuation zones were to evacuate as well. Well, that threw things into a tizzy. Later on we would find out that we weren’t in an expanded evacuation zone, but that someone had jumped the gun on that announcement. We are still getting double the water, though. It’s going to be what I come to call a Prairie Tsunami.

So, Older Son and I began to get things up from the basement, double time. Younger Son was at Driver’s Ed all afternoon, but got home early. We hauled stuff up and stashed it in bedrooms, we hauled crap out to the curb for garbage pickup, and we took some stuff to a friend who had use for them. It got to be about 9:30, and I walked across the road to see what’s going on closer to the river. I could see straight down one road to a main drag that runs over a bridge across the river. It was still dry, even though the West end of town is flooding. I’m hoping to get up tomorrow and still see a dry road. We’ll see what the new day brings. Until then, time to hit the rack.

Older Son’s bed is smack in the middle of the living room, so he’ll be comfortable enough until this whole thing is over and we can get him back into his bedroom in the basement. He suggested that we watch a movie, Battle: L.A. It’s an alien attack movie, just the kind of sci-fi thing we all like to watch. I sat here earlier flossing my teeth and catching up on the news on Facebook, and realized how nice it was to just do something as mundane as take care of my teeth. Watching a movie together is a nice mundane way to try to normalize after a long day of tearing up your house, and watching your community go under water via the television.  For now, we are just a family hanging out together, discussing the best way for the protagonists to kill the attacking aliens. Run of the mill stuff around these parts.

Good night all…

 

A blessing in strange packaging

I’ve lived in my crappy little fixer-upper of a house for the last eleven years, and I’ve never really liked it. It was supposed to be a starter house, on the way to something bigger and better. Well, here we are all these years later and there’s really no sign that we’ll be “moving on up” any time soon.  Some improvements have been made, but this little house is just tired. It’s old and definitely feeling its years. Who’d have thought that it would be a blessing in disguise?

My Dad always told me there are three things to consider when choosing a home: 1. Location, 2. Location, and 3. Location.

When we originally bought this house, its most outstanding feature was that it fit into the budget. It’s a tiny little house, and it came with a manageable monthly mortgage payment. The location didn’t appear to be that great because there is a busy highway in the front, and on the other side of that, not 100 ft from my front door, is a rail road track. It’s a loud, dusty place to live. But, it was what we could afford and as long as it keeps the rain and cold out that’s the most important thing.

I live in Minot, North Dakota, and my beautiful city is flooding. Due to more days of rain than we could deal with, and the ground already saturated with water, the Mouse River (a.k.a. Souris River) has risen past the flood stage of 1549 ft, and could possibly rise to 1558 ft, which will engulf much of the valley.  Almost everyone that lives in the portion of the city located in the valley has been ordered to evacuate immediately. People are having to move the contents of their homes, and are expected to have to stay away possibly for weeks.  Right now the City is building emergency secondary dikes to save infrastructure like lift stations, and schools, etc.  My heart goes out to them…I desperately hope that their homes are salvageable after all is said and done.

Here’s my good news. My crappy little fixer-upper is located very close to where the snow plows are kept, so we are always one of the first areas to have clean streets to drive on after a blizzard. Something else I didn’t realize when I signed on the mortgage dotted-line is that the train tracks across the road from my front door is what’s keeping our butts from getting flooded. That’s a pretty important feature of my location which may just cause me to learn to love the train.  The only thing we have to worry about is the possibility of the sewer backing up into our basement. I have all my basement drains plugged, but you never know. So far, so good…all we can do now is just wait. I’m feeling blessed by living in this little house. Fixer-upper it might be, but perhaps it’s not so crappy any more…turns out my location is pretty darned good as things stand today.

The Mouse River is supposed to crest by Thursday or Friday, and then start to go back down again this weekend. We are expecting good weather, with the exception of thunder storms projected for Thursday night. With any luck, that storm system will miss us all together, and then the river can get on with the business of shrinking back into its banks.

Below I’ve posted some useful links for those of you who might be from this area, or have relatives in this area:

City of Minot Website 

Minot Flood Evacuation Map

Ward County Website

KX13 News

Good luck to everyone who’s in the affected area…here’s hoping the Mouse River doesn’t get as high as the Army Corps of Engineers is predicting.

Where is Barbara Eden when you need her?

Holy cow…life has taken be for quite a ride these last two weeks. The end of the school year, combined with everything else that’s going on has left me with my head spinning and my house is a complete disaster. Here it is, Friday already this week, and I have company coming this weekend. Uff da.

I woke up today thinking how lovely it would be if I could have mad skills like Barbara Eden’s Jeannie. I would love it if I could clean my whole house with just a sharp bob of my head.  In my youth, when I spouted off about how I wished something could be different, my Dad would ask me if I had a pile of wish in one and a cow patty in another, what do you get when you rub your hands together? Better to get your hands dirty with work than to rub them together wishing things were different. Well, I’m unhappy to report that Dad was right. Wishing doesn’t quite fix the problem, so I guess I’ll stay up a little later tonight and get everything in order.

In other news, we’ve had a few gloriously sunshiny days. We deserved this nice weather, and I even got a little bit of a sunburn at the garage sale last weekend. Today we have 100% chance of rain, but I’m hoping that things will dry out enough this coming week that we’ll be able to put the garden in.

In North Dakota, we have a LOT of different Seasons, all of which overlap each other. For example, right now it is Spring, but it is also the beginning of Road Construction and Home Improvement Seasons. We have a lot of pot holes in the streets after a long hard Winter…axle-busting pot holes…and it could very well take most of the Spring and Summer for them all to get repaired. Home Improvement Season will be long too. There’s just no end to the work of art in progress that is my home. Thank goodness for my Dad, who has a handle on all things that have to do with home improvement.

Last year I had the roof replaced, the bathroom gutted and redone, and all of my windows were changed out. This will be the Summer of Small Projects. Lots of paint, lots of organizing and much getting rid of stuff that I don’t need anymore. I’m looking at doing some different things with my garden this year too, but more on that later.

Today it will rain and wash away the dust and dirt that covers everything, and make the air smell good. I have lunch with my Sister by Choice today, and work should be light….at least at the Cube Farm. It’s going to be a good day.

Confessions of a linens junkie

That’s right. I said it…I’m a linens junkie.

Over the years, I’ve developed a penchant for collecting sheet sets for the beds. Now that I’ve downsized to a smaller bed, I get to start aaaalll over again!! Hmm…I can’t wait for the White Sale at JC Penny’s this Spring!

As my ten faithful readers may remember, I sold the queen sized bed I previously shared with my ex-husband, and bought a brand new bed for myself. It’s been nice having a smaller bed. Not only do I have more space in my bedroom now, but I love the microfiber linens I bought for it. The afternoon that the bed arrived, I went out to Penny’s and stumbled into the most magnificent sale on bedding. Not only did I get two sets of microfiber sheets for the price of one, but I got a really great quilt. It wasn’t my first choice, but it was a close 2nd, and they had it in the size I needed. Oddly enough, the pattern is called “Wedding Ring”, but it was pretty enough that I didn’t mind. Next year when we get our tax refund, I’m looking forward to buying another quilt so I can change them out seasonally.

My lovely quilt.

I have just a few words to say about microfiber sheets. They feel so nice. The only problem I have with them is that they don’t stay on the bed very well. They are kind of slippery, and I am a rowdy sleeper, so very often I have to put my sheets back on in the morning.  If I had to do it all over again, I’d still buy them, though. Yeah, they feel that good.

I’m thinking about getting a set of flannel sheets for the winter. I had a set once, and they were nice and warm. The only problem I had with them is that they were fire-engine red and had large white snowflakes on them. They were on sale, and I figured I wouldn’t really be looking at them in the dark while I was sleeping, so it shouldn’t have been a big deal…right? Wrong. I’m apparently a linens snob, because I just couldn’t deal with the garishness of them.

I just did laundry and put fresh sheets on my bed, and they smell so good! I put a lot of fabric softener in when I wash sheets. I mean, A LOT.  Hmmmm…I’m going to sleep good tonight! Speaking of putting sheets on a bed, what is the deal with the bed feeling nicer to get into when the bed is made? I hate making my bed, and most days don’t bother much with it. I think I might have to try to get into the habit of it, because I’ve noticed that it is just nicer to slide into sheets that have been pressed flat all day.

Here’s wishing you all, a very good night’s sleep!

The joys of central air, and the lows of moldy carpet.

I was able to get someone in to fix my broken central air today. It’s been a rough couple of days with no air conditioning, and high temperatures and humidity. I think I could

Courtesy of mofoyo.com

handle the heat, but the humidity is what kills me.  Years ago, Ex-husband, in his infinite wisdom (and after I told him not to FOR THIS VERY REASON), insisted on painting the windows shut. Did I mention I was getting new windows soon? Anyway, I digress…I arrived home just after the fix-it guy left, but it’s working again, and the cold air is coming out with more force than it did before and my house is cooling off nicely.

Coping with a hot house is something I hate doing, but remember well from when I was a kid…we just laid there and sweated at night. Poor Younger Son slept with a small fan in his bed blowing right on him, as we couldn’t get our windows open. Older Son got off a little easier since his room is in the cool basement. I took a cold shower and didn’t dry off all the way. I just laid in bed with my long, wet hair dripping all over me and the sheets. It sounds messy, but it sure did the trick. I was actually able to get a decent nights sleep. (Note to self, put ceiling fans in the bedrooms)

So, the bad news is that there was some kind of a leak in the condensation tube and water has been seeping underneath a wall into Older Son’s room, as I described in my last post. Not only is his carpet moldy and ruined underneath, but the very bottom of that wall is moldy and eaten away. It’s one of those slow-growing hidden problems that you just don’t know about until something out of the ordinary happens, like the carpet being wet. There was no smell before, but now that I have pulled up the carpet there’s a pervasive stink in the house I can smell all the way up stairs, even after we dried everything out. So, the carpet is coming out and the wall board is being replaced. It’s a darned good thing that I sealed the cement in that bedroom before we laid the carpet down, or I might never get the stink out. Blech…Thank goodness for bleach!

Still, with all of the commotion this has caused, I can still find a blessing. Today’s blessing? It’s not snowing!

The Universe has a twisted way of making you move forward

I got a call from Older Son while I was at work today. Apparently, condensation from the air conditioner is dripping down through the furnace and all over the floor in a part of the basement we generally don’t pay much attention to.  It just so happens that this area butts up against Older Son’s room, and now his carpet is wet. Ugh…I will count my blessings that it isn’t a lot of water, just only enough to be a pain in our keesters.

Well, it just so happens that I have a lot of work that needs to be done in the basement, as you’ve read in many of my previous blog posts, and I have successfully avoided every single opportunity to get it done. It’s a particular skill of mine, avoidance. Do you know that I very craftily made my way through a four-year BA degree without ever once having to take a math course? I’m always on the look out, consciously and unconsciously,  for ways to avoid things that might be unpleasant, time-consuming, or might require tough decision-making (as is with my basement).

So, now I can avoid it no longer…the basement must be dealt with (cue Vincent Price’s evil, echoing laughter…we haven’t heard from him in a while!).  As with all large projects, I supposed a “to-do” list is in order, but I think I might have to take a more than cursory look at the issue before I drag out the dreaded “to-do” list.

The good news is that I have so much to gain by just diving in and getting it the heck done. I’ll keep you posted on the progress…