We might be able to soon get more heart pine flooring like we put in our MBR 3 years ago.
It’s a very long time in coming and if it pans out I’ll be thrilled.
This is the 2nd post I’ve written (tho 1st on this blog) using Poster for WordPress, an App in the Palm Catalog for WebOS phone, like my Palm Pre.
My kitchen is partially better now. We moved the refridgerator to a new spot, close to where it was originally in the house, but down a few feet. It will be the anchor for the island someday. We’ll build it into a closet like structure, and that way put in a small pantry & also a media area for the network. The island will be next to that … hopefully the countertop will be made from at least Corian, or on the other end Granite.
We also put the stove where I had put it before, which is exactly opposite from it’s original position in the house. Well not thoroughly exactly, but opposite and in the configuration of cabinets it is over some inches to feet/foots, being somewhat centered on the 10 foot wall, which on the other side of the house, opposite, there is a door into the garage which hogs much space. Moving the kitchen down to the other end of the 20 foot long room enables 10 feet of kitchen space on one side, and 10-to-12 feet on the long side, with the island nestled into the area.
We had tried to come up with a double-L layout, but it was just a bit too tight in how it felt. We like the L with island much better now, but there is more work to do. We do have decent counters on the whole way around (didn’t for awhile) and it looks nicer. We still have to get the flooring that we want put in. It’s horrible vinyl tiles right now, and they are cracking and awful where the floor is uneven, it’s a mess to me, looks OK if you don’t look hard.
Once we install the wood flooring we can hook everything in completely and see about getting the final counters when $$$$$ allows. All in all though it’ll mean the cabinets are locked in, level, the floor level, the island ready to be finished, everything much better.
We do have a new sink/faucet installed, but no dishwasher for now. We were using a portable dishwasher, but can’t use it with the setup we have now … so it’s handwashing everything until we get a dishwasher in. But the sink is so enjoyable. It’s a Kohler white castiron smart divide “Langlade” style. The faucet is brushed nickel, very nice. We are having some water dripping down from the spray connection, and will have to figure that out soon. We have to keep a bowl under the faucet to catch that mess, it’s alot, but not much, if that makes any sense. It’s purely an annoyance at any rate since it’s part of the faucet that comes pre-connected, it’s not something we tightened on or anything. It’s not going to be easy figuring it out by getting under the sink, it’s really back there, up there …
So we have progress. We have more sitting in the garage. A very nice glass/stainless steel hood for the stove, and a sliding glass door. The door has been there for years now. The hood just for weeks. I wonder how long it’ll be for either at the end.
We moved the big TV down to the “family room” again finally. It’s more finished than before, but still needs some work but is live-able now.
It’s been a fight to figure out what to do with this house. Really the main floor is so small & it’s use-ability is pretty much decided from there. For a small family it might work, but not for a medium size one like ours. 4 children & 2 adults in a less than 10×10 area for all meals? No way. So the “living” part of the main floor as it’s “supposed to be” has been less than work-able for us as the years have gone on.
We moved here in November of 1997 with one child, 1 1/2 years old. By one year time in the house we had two children. By two years after that we had three children. We had different furniture then, and got different things here and there, but all in all it was that every couch or couch-like thing we got just felt too big, but wasn’t big enough for us.
We ended up getting a 2×2 corner couch from Ikea finally. It was pretty much large enough for us, but even it’s smaller feeling type of big couch furniture didn’t feel right in that space. We had that couch in that room and moved it to the “basement” and back up and down I don’t know how many times really. But all in all it was nice for awhile, but it got raggedgy eventually and we never got another slipcover set for it, and the arms broke down and one seat fell through nearly, so I took one of the sections and threw it out so now we have a very long couch with one flattened arm and the other side isn’t an arm, but the old corner’s back. We’ve lived with it in this “living” space for a few months & it always felt just too much. Everything has been just too much since baby #4 has come to be, & is getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger … while everyone else is getting bigger too.
So now that monstrosity is in a better ready for us basement family room, ugly as it is, it’s OK for now. There is another thing, an Ikea chair to move down there, and an end table, then the “living” area will be re-organized as more of our “dining room” –which I did do some time in the past once, the area is a glorified entry/sitting room, not suitable as a true living room or family space for TV, games, etc.
Our kitchen is STILL in transition, and eventually MAYBE we’ll have a small eating area on the side of the kitchen opposite where the old eating area was. We had a small 4-person seating table when we moved in here and it fit fine there, adding a larger table was uncomfortable and it’s only ever felt right since that purchase to have it in front of the fireplace. The entry for our house leads right into that space directly. There is no wonderful entry hall of any sort. So having a larger family is just too much for this house. I’ve known it for years, hubby has known it too, but I feel it more, no doubt, since I’m here a ton more than he is.
We need to build shelves and such next to the fireplace. We have a wonderful space on both sides to use to make a very classic built-in flanking thing and I’ve had many stylistic ideas and my non-natural-handyman husband struggles to see how easy it is to build nearly anything we want with just some good old fashioned work with the tools we already have and the wood & MDF and such we can get at Home Depot just a few miles away.
One of these days we’ll have the money for me to say, “this is what we’ll do this weekend,” and just do it.
Things are greening up massively outside, Spring is here. I feel so cooped up though, with little access to the back yard, only through the dark hole like downstairs, which I despise to go through. It was supposed to be our “family room” but has just become a place where I don’t go, it’s dirty and junkier than I can stand. The children go down there and watch TV and spend time there, and just make the couch all dirty and make a general mess. We have things boxed up there too, with no storage in the house to speak of, so it’s a cramped space at best, and there is little light, so it’s a dark hole to me. It’s a concrete floor as well, so I do not care to try to make it seem nice, it just wouldn’t be for me and the baby, no matter what, for now.
One of these days we’ll get a new deck built and the sliding doors in the kitchen, then I will have back yard access again. 
And sometime later hopefully we’ll have a patio by the deck, which the downstairs “hole” will open up out onto, and a new door there as well, to let in more light.
We have indoor projects to get done too though, getting a new floor laid for the main level and completing the floors upstairs (which are partially put in) and then all those floors will need sanded and finished (a true tung oil finish.)
Then getting the kitchen cabinets “installed” and countertops ordered and installed, and more …
There is so much inside that needs done, and outside, including the house needs painted in and out. All these things are big deals, take $$$$ and hard work together, which are not anything I can affect myself, so I feel cooped up. Living with the not yet.
Speaking of that, we are super watchful of the baby since he can crawl and cruise, he’ll be walking anytime now. We have to retrofit the stair areas so that we can install gates. It’s been so long since we had babies to baby proof for, and “back in the day” it was a nightmare getting the stairs “gated” and it just won’t work out this time to try without re-building parts of things.
Baby has to spend more time in his play yard now, which he just ain’t happy about. That’s the price he has to pay though, so he doesn’t tumble down any stairs. It really feels more like MY price to pay, since I have to listen to the wails of “let me out” for 70% of his play yard stays. He’s content to play on the safe floor for awhile, then remembers the stairs to up … and off he powercrawls and starts to climb, and after him I have to go to get him off the stairs. Then it’s play yard time, or sometimes baby swing time, or crib time.
Play yard time is wailing time, but crib time is wailing an screaming time, and oh boy that just never changes. He wants to be with me, free to hold onto me if he wants, not separated at all. He’s so active though, as well, and that makes holding him impossible, even when he seems to want to be held, so it all goes in cycles, hold, put down, play nice, then crawl to stairs, into my arms, too squirmy, into play yard, or swing or crib, cry, cry, cry, or add in screaming, stay there awhile, come out and start it all over again. Getting the stair areas gate-able will really help me out. So that, I think is the one thing we must tackle. It really should cost $ or at the most $$. It’s necessary, but we can’t do it until we have the money to do that, and we are going out of town when we next get paid, and so it’ll be us living with this for another week, then leaving for a few days, then coming back to this and hopefully having the money and energy to tackle the project.
Just that alone will be a reassuring thing, safety is important.
Goo … I feel miserable. My “normal” allergies have just been la, la, la all along this Spring, until about a week ago. They ramped up, but even moreso this week.
So here I am, 36+3 (wks+days) pregnant and it’s hard enough to get the energy I need to do stuff … forget it now. 
It’s my eyes, they feel big and swollen and red, just the rims look it though; my nose is goopey drippey stuffy, not dry, very, very wet; my throat is scratchy, it’s getting more sore on one side, as it does in heavy allergy times (like in my earlier years in Florida); my nose is itchy as well. I’m sneezing off and on and always, always dripping.
Hubby is coming home tonight and so I hope I can get some Benadryl soon. I have a small amount of liquid Benadryl that I have started to take itty bitty bits of here and there since yesterday. I only take small amounts of it in the first place, as a “usual dose” knocks me out or over. I take a child’s or even a half-child’s dose and it’s bad enough.
I need to get the house A/C filter changed out again. It’s an allergenic sort, with a high value for use, but this house is full of dusty dust blobs, so it needs to be changed out more often than it might in another house. It’s not as big a deal when allergies aren’t high, but when they are … it’s a huge deal to get a new filter sooner, way sooner than usual.
Today I’m getting all the bedding washed and changed, I hope. I need to. One problem I have is changing the bedding, it’s difficult for me usually, being smaller than most “Normal” folks, as well as now being bigger bellied Another one is that our bed is a Queen size. We had used this one for awhile, then got a King size, and over the years the Queen size was rarely used, and the King size wore out, so we are using the Queen this past year or so again … hoping to get an entirely new setup ASAP from IKEA. As well, we have King and Queen sheets, and the labels are all worn down and so it’s like “Which size is this one?” and if hubby puts the sheets on the bed, he puts whatever on. If it’s a King bottom sheet, it’s too loose width-wise and comes off easily, which I dispise entirely. I am also realizing that the most sheets we have purchased in the last 5-years or more are flannel King sheets for the previous King size mattress set we had.
The other thing is that there is one sheet set that I know is Queen. The bottom sheet I have on the foundation. So it’s unavailable (the foundation looks hideous and needs covered.) I don’t have a dust ruffle for a Queen either, and as well the foundation rests on the floor, we took the old H-frame out a few months ago, it was so rickety and I knew it’d be easier for me to get in and out of bed with it on the floor anyhow.
So yesterday I was in the hall closet looking for pillowcases & sheets, and found one ugly dark green sheet (which I had for a Queen futon “couch” that we don’t have a futon mattress for anymore) and one pillowcase for that, and another pillowcase from a nice white pair with a pretty eyelet thick edge but I have one covering a window.
I need more than that, and it comes down to looking and pondering and knowing that there must be more somewhere, but where. Ah, some are worn, ripped, or just hideous (as in “why did we ever buy that color, pattern, etc.”) and are probably in some of the stuff in the garage, or in the laundry room, buried.
Our master bedroom has no finished floor and is supposed to be quite the opposite by the end of this holiday (Memorial Day) weekend. This should aide somewhat in the dust and blech in the house. (The other thing is to get the basement ceiling finished!) We have 8″+ wide unfinished Heart Pine. It’s so pretty. We are going to do all 3 bedrooms eventually, as well as the hallway, but will just do our bedroom and the hallway for the time being. The children have Pergo currently and that is sufficient for the time being (though it’s not very nice IMO.)
That is that –for now.