Sod

I guess I do have to tell you about the sod.

We got some sod, put in by a contractor, in the area between the two buildings that used to be an alley. The contractor did it for free because they screwed up a lot of our property. They put down some black dirt and some sod.

Now, that alley drains into the street. Basically all the units roofs are slanted toward the parking lot. They all drain down downspouts into either the parking lot or what was the alley. From the far end of the parking lot to the street it is downhill through the new sod.

This sod was put in a couple weeks ago.

I looked out the window, while it was raining and I saw that there was some standing water outside, but I was busy sopping up water.

I went outside to see if the water was still deep, it was.

At least 5 inches in the middle of the sod, and a river toward the street. It moved the sod a bit...




So, aside from my house being wet, I knew I had to put the sod back. With no one around to help, I just started doing it.

Well, wet sod is very heavy. It doesn't help when it is wet. It also doesn't help when you are trying to relay it on a freakin' river.

I did the best I could to get it back in place.



We lost quite a bit of that black dirt down the sewer.


I got pretty dirty too.

Let's Make This Clear

I'm sick of being home alone when the water is coming in through the windows. Why doesn't CJ have to deal with this crap.

Big Storm=Big Mess at TO(M)H.

We are calling for bids for new windows starting next week.

Check That Off

Well, one thing can be checked off the to do list: getting drunk with the neighbors. Nothing else was accomplished this weekend. Nothing.

Sweet.

The Plan

Okay, we need a plan for this house. The house must be in order and looking good by our wedding day, September 29th. I have not discussed this with CJ, but here is the plan. I've added the other stuff I know we have going on for each weekend.

This weekend (Going Away Party for a friend):
Get everything except books and CDs unpacked. Things do not need to be in their final places, we just need to get the boxes out of here.

Next weekend (Baseball Game, State Fair):
Get rid of stuff. We have way too many things. I've been reading the Apartment Therapy book and I realize that it isn't just CJ who has too many things. I have way too many books. We need to get rid of stuff. That means going through everything.

Labor Day Weekend (State Fair):
Clean. As in deep clean. As in wash the floors and walls and gross dirty blinds. Everything must be cleaned. Even the nasty, nasty basement.

2nd Weekend in September:
Figure out and do whatever we decide to do with the CDC. While the books will be pared down, and then we will have places for them, the CDC are not going to sold, except the duplicates. We have lots of CDC and something must be done about them.

3rd Weekend in September (Bachelorette Party):
Decorating, finishing touches, etc. We can spend that weekend trying to do the preliminary interior design stuff. We will have some of the furniture by then.

4th Weekend in September:
Freak Out.
Okay, the weekend before our wedding. I'm sure we will have nothing going on, right? I guess it will be final cleaning time.

While you read this, dear reader, keep in mind a few things.
1) CJ and I both have full time jobs, but we do not have the same days off. This makes it difficult to work on things together.
2) We are planning a damn wedding. That means some of the weekends have Bachelor/Bachelorette parties. That means gifts coming in, adding to all the stuff we already have to find places for. That means stress through the roof.
3) We will also have to be working on the yard, making some repairs, getting appraisals for the windows, etc. during this time. It isn't like the list is all inclusive.

Now, with that said, you are thinking one of two things.

If you know us, you are thinking, "Wow Kassie, that's a lot to do. Do you really think you can finish it all?" To which I answer, "Yeah, it will be hard, but we have to, I'm going crazy.

If you don't know us, you are thinking "What? You've lived there almost two months and you aren't unpacked? Who are you people? And you should be able to do this all in two weeks, not six weekends." To which I say, "Well, aside from the fact that we are lazy, the weather is nice and, honestly, we are easily distracted. We are good at making plans, but you know, we just started watching Carnivale and it is pretty darn good."

Plus, we are planning a wedding. We've got that excuse for at least another six weeks. And previously, we had the excuse that it was hot.

Honestly, while I do believe these things will get done, I also believe they will all be jammed into the last two weekends. I mean, really, here I am on weekend number one, and I'm blogging, thinking about going to buy some stationary, and I still haven't showered. I haven't started anything yet and it is 1:00. I've got dinner plans at 5:30 and I need to make a dish for a pot luck tomorrow. Lazy.

Lazy and easily distracted, that's us.

The Roof

I was at the bus stop Wednesday morning when I noticed the bus bench. It had an advertisement for the condos that are right behind our building.

And they had a picture of our roof!!!

We haven't seen our roof. The inspector didn't even go up there because it is very far off the ground, but standing at the bus stop at 7:00 am I got to see our roof. And it looks good.

If you go here, and scroll to the last picture in the picture section you can see it for yourself (for some reason it won't let me capture the picture.)

We have big plans for that roof someday. A rooftop garden and deck. We just need to find a good way to get up there. It will most likely be a hole in the ceiling and a pull down staircase.

****Update****

Here's the pic of the roof. Thanks John.

It is the roof in the lower right corner.

Errrr

So, every day I feel like we were lied to more and more.

Today we found out that the house isn't grounded. Not that the outlets aren't grounded, but the house isn't.

We don't have a ground rod. We also are not grounded to the water line. These are both supposed to be done.

Luckily it is a cheap fix.

Meanwhile, we are putting together a wedding. It has been hard balancing time and money for the wedding, for the house, and just being lazy and liking nice dinners.

Electricity, Electricity

So, we have 60 amp electric service currently.

Tomorrow it will be upgraded to 100!!! Woo-hoo. I think. All I know is that if it doesn't get done our homeowner's insurance will drop us, so we are getting it done.

We are also going to have the electrician look at our 6 or so ungrounded outlets. The two front bedrooms' outlets are ungrounded. This is also a concern. Hopefully that should be cheap.

Yeah, right.

somewhere to hang out...

We bought a vacuum today. Very exciting, I know. But I think it saved my lovely area rug that Kassie had taken to bad-mouthing, sure it would never look good again.

Our family room is presentable. It is by no means done, but we like it well enough for now.

We took the door to the room off. We haven't carried it downstairs yet. That would be too much work.


Ah, a view of the windows. And the things required to hold the windows up. Today, it's a fan and a planter. Two days ago, I used some kind of paint roller extension.


Here's a pretty decent look at that area rug I can't seem to shut up about. And we're going to be on the lookout for a shorter, much more interesting coffee table. One of my dreams that I'm going to go ahead and broadcast to the internets is that, since I'm in a house and not an apartment anymore, some day those speakers will be rear speakers.


This is where the chimney runs through the room. I'm not sure why there had to be a gap big enough to squeeze Oprah into, but there it is. Grease her up! We don't like that gap.


Look! The closet door is open! Oh. It's always open. That's something we'll need to fix. The stool is a temporary lamp-holder.


So there it is.

I saw another mouse last night, by the way. I yelled at it, but it didn't move. It just sat there- trying to blend in, I guess. I kicked a stool at it and it moved. I think I might try to find the pellets for my piece, but don't tell Kassie...

Bathroom

We've actually made some serious unpacking progress this week. A little too much progress as we lost track of time last night and missed a birthday party while we got the TV room in order (with pictures to come.)

We now have two, count them two, rooms that are livable and how we want them.

The bathroom is one. It is completely unpacked. It is completely set up. It is as done as it is going to be for quite awhile, but I hate it.

I HATE OUR BATHROOM!

It is ugly. It is small. It could be so nice, with enough time and money.

Pictures of small rooms are tough, but here we go.


It is very small. There are two closets, for the two bedrooms that flank the bathroom, behind it. Someday they will go away and we will be able to make the bathroom much deeper.


There is virtually no storage in the bathroom so we added this over the toilet, partial shelves under the sink and a large storage unit from Ikea.

CJ and I came from each our own places to this one. I had two bathrooms. CJ had one and a linen closet. We are trying to reduce this two one tiny little bathroom. We've done a good job I think.

The medicine cabinet is one of the only places that there was storage when we moved in. It is tiny and it is cheap. It follows all of the newish things in the house. Eventually we will replace it with a nicer, bigger one. One that is mounted higher than CJ is tall.



There are mixed reviews of the shower head in the TO(M)H household. I love it, CJ hates it.

The lights are newish and cheap.


Then, there are the things that must make me a little mad. When the previous owner left she, as instructed, took everything with her, even the towel racks. She left big holes and we've had to replace them.


She decided that painting the bathroom was a great idea. She chose an awful color, only painted one coat (though it clearly needed two,) and didn't tape anything off. There is paint on all the fixtures, tile, toilet, etc.


While it wasn't the previous owner's fault that we have parquet floors in the bathroom,

it is her fault that there is paint on them.


The only good things about the bathroom are a) that it works and b) like all the other rooms, it has the original woodwork.


While the timeline for the bathroom update is out there in the great unknown, this is what I hope for:
-extend the bathroom to the outside wall, where the closets for the bedrooms are.
-shower fixtures that we both can agree on
-a new, larger vanity and sink
-nice lighting
-a large mirror with medicine cabinet
-tile floors
-some nice built in storage
-pretty paint colors
-plastic insert in the shower instead of tile
-a dual flush toilet


I guess a girl can dream.

We've Been Found!!!

The neighbors have found us. They knew where we live, now they know where we blog.

So, an open invitation, if we are home, come on over*. We've always got beer. We will even give you a tour of all the totally wack things the previous owner did to the house to make our lives miserable. Don't be surprised if we haven't unpacked yet, we are like that.

*This only applies to the *good* neighbors, you know, not the ones we call the cops on.

Speaking of Stuff

We, by the way, just still are not unpacked. Here's a look at some of the bedrooms upstairs.







I promise more frequent updates once my computer is fixed. I have some great photos on there, hopefully they can be recovered (and hopefully the computer can be fixed.)

Storage Issues

With most old homes, we have a storage issue. There is one closet on the main floor and four tiny closets upstairs, one in each of the bedrooms.

This is causing us some issues, solved, we are finding, by Ikea and Kmart.

So far, we have bought a nice closet type cabinet for the bathroom from and an over the toilet thing from Kmart (that CJ is putting together right now) and a little cabinet for the kitchen for the canned goods.



We've considered lots of options to solve our problems with storage, and the answer we keep coming to is converting the upstairs into a three bedroom, from four. Most of the other townhomes in our association have had this done, and it is slick. Unfortunately, we just are not prepared to do that now.

In the meantime, we will be stuffing stuff wherever we can, and getting rid of lots of it. It seems the best answer.