Tag Archives: House

Welcome to the Animal house

We have a bit of a strange menagerie at our home…most of whom have made a spot here for themselves without Brian or I even realizing it until it was too late. Or so we like to tell ourselves.

When we first moved in to our house, there was just the four of us – Me, Brian, littleb and Gizmo. Not long after we moved in, we decided to get involved with a local cat rescue organization, Tails High, through whom we fostered kitties in our home. We fostered a number of cats through Tails High, all of whom eventually found their forever homes…until Georgia.

Georgia was one of a litter of kittens that was born at Tails High. We fostered her and another little black kitten for a week or so and decided that we needed to adopt Georgia before the week was out. According to the ladies at Tails High, Georgia was a bit of a spitfire from the moment she was born – which included her being the first kitten they had ever seen explode out of her birth sac before her mom could even begin to assist. She has not lost a single bit of this sassiness and 2 years later, she is still almost as tiny as she was when we first brought her home.

She’s our aloof cat – a much bigger fan of Brian (or when she’s hungry, whomever is near the Kitchen) and prone to sleeping in the sun beam that hits the top of our cat climb bookcase.

Then, of course, we have The Count. Sterling was another one of our foster cats who was actually living with us when my parents came to visit in 2011. Sterling was found in a parking lot and was covered in grease and oil. As such, he had to have his beautiful tail shaved. Not something he likes to talk about these days. He also, due to a nasty infection, had to have all of his teeth removed :( (here is the original story about Sterl, before he came to our foster house). Luckily the no-teeth thing hasn’t slowed him down one bit…in fact it probably assists his gobbling action when it comes to food time.

We call Sterling ‘Poppy-Jack’s cat’. More than likely we never would have let him go back to Tails High…but it’s always easier to blame someone else for the addition to our animal house.

Basically what this all boils down to, is that we FAIL as foster parents. But happily so ;)

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Last, but not least, we have Sir Digby. After Gizmo passed away, it was noticeably quiet in the house. The lack of a shorty puppy made for a huge hole in our barnyard and so we decided to start looking for a new addition. Thanks to some extra sluething by Mama Marr – we found Digby in VA Beach. We weren’t sure from the start how well he would get on with the cats, as he had never been around them before. Gizmo was always terrified of the cats and Sterling definitely used this to his advantage.

As of now, we have our good days and our bad, but mostly the zoo gets along okay. Digby is still pretty much convinced that all the toys in the house are his, Sterling is absolutely convinced that he still has all his teeth and Georgia…well Georgia just looks and acts like a bird.

Welcome to our nuthouse.

WOAH CATS!

When we first brought Sir Digby Chicken Caesar home, we knew that he had never been around cats much. It was a little concerning, but we figured with some immersion therapy, a baby gate and a lot of time we might be able to convince all animals involved that this was a good idea.

6 months later we tore down that wall. It was…interesting….to say the least. Little Georgia hid behind a chair before making a run for the cat wall and spending the rest of the day sleeping in peaceful comfort. Sterling (the bully) made sure that Digby knew EXACTLY who was in charge and corralled him around the house.

All in all we were pretty excited about how things went. There were only a couple of chasing incidents, most of which ended with Sterling being the clear winner. Naturally.

This was the result at the end of the day..

It’s tough being a bullied dog.

Naughty, naughty

Last week was just one of those weeks. It was stupid hot and our airconditioner was on the fritz. I had someone come out and look at the unit and in his words…’you have a very sick little compressor here’

Ahh….just what i want to here at 8am on a Wednesday morning. I mean seriously…i wasn’t even a full cup of coffee into the day yet!

So the dealio is such. The compressor is dead. I was advised i could do one of two things…replace the compressor and hope that it lasts for another 5 years (doubtful) or go the whole hog and replace the entire system, inside and out. After a bit of back and forth we decided to go ahead and replace the entire lot. We may be subsisting on a diet of gussied up Ramen for the next 5 years, but at least we will have cool air during summer and hopefully a slightly lower electric bill.

Photos forthcoming of our “hillbilly” air conditioner (the service guys words, not mine!)

This is how we do it

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This is how the story begins. Well almost, there were originally six bags of this junk…but at the time I took the photo, we had already mixed the first bag and the Wee-b was busy helping it find its home.

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We started off with a baby pour – about a third of the first bucket, as we were really not sure how quickly it would spread. Luckily for us and someone’s shoes…its quite a slow spread, hence the common suggestion to kind of help out  with a trowel.

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This is the first pour done and the second pour well under way. At this point we were basically just pouring the entire bucket along the length of the wall and the Wee-b was just helping it fall into all the edges.

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Big smile for the folks at home!

All told, it took us about 1.5 hours to get the compound mixed and poured over the entire area (275 sqft). The manufacturers instructions suggested that each 50lb bag could cover up to 50 sqft – we had 6 bags and it was *just* enough. Honestly, next time I would have played it safer and purchased a seventh bag.

It was a pain in the ass, lots of dust (masks HIGHLY recommended) and heavy lifting…but all in all i think it went pretty smoothly.

End result?

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These were taken this morning about 10 hours after we had finished pouring the last container. Its really quite interesting to see how the compound flowed and where the worst points in the floor were. We still have a few cracks and holes around the hell mouth, but the Wee-b and I plan to hit those with some silicon/spackle to cover them as they should cause no issues with the actual level of the floor.

So the countdown for the flooring is T-7 days…

A snails pace…

Boy howdy, I never knew that making a decision on some flooring would involve so much extra work :) I guess it became very obvious very, very quickly, as to why the previous owners had put down carpet.

The last couple of days have been filled with various trips to Home Depot (silicon, floor leveling compound, concrete chisel, stirring wand, big bucket, etc.!) lots of sweeping and prep work. Not to get overly TMI, but I’m pretty sure if I was into picking my nose I would be pulling out wads of concrete :-/

Today was go-day. The Wee-b had the day off work, so we were going to wake up early and get cracking on priming the floor and laying down the self-leveling compound. Of course nothing has gone exactly to plan so far with this project so I guess the universe decided, why start now? This morning I woke up with a lovely cold :-(

Gross.

But I shook my fist menacingly at the universe and decided to carry on (I’m an original member of Dad’s army ;-) ). A few cups of tea, some coffee and Tylenol and the Wee-b and I were on the job! We have been watching you-tube videos (D-siv) and reading blogs on how best to go about everything and this afternoon began with pouring and brushing out the primer that is suggested for the self-leveling compound. That takes two hours to dry before you can start pouring the compound down…so a quick break for lunch is on the cards.

To be continued…

Floor-nein

Yesterday I was prepared. It was the day I had planned to rip up the carpeting and all the tackboards so that i could bring the flooring in, let it acclimate and get ready to start laying.

Right.

Here’s what really happened.

I pulled up the carpet (gee this is kind of fun!)

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I kept pulling up the carpet (oh so that lump under the carpet was a pile of concrete….awesome…)

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I finished pulling up the carpet, all of the underlay and all of those stupid &^#*@!@& tackboards. My hands have seen better days – note to self next time i do this (hahahahha!) buy work gloves.

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Whats this? Two different areas of concrete? Oh and one of them was poured by a two-year old? Interesting. Here’s where my plan for the week went a little off the tracks. You can’t really see it from the picture, but there is a section of concrete near the doors that is like a little mountain….then we have the two different sections of concrete that were not done correctly, so there is a portal to hell that runs along the edge.

What does this mean? Well, thanks for asking! It means we now have to buy a globulous amount of floor leveling compound to mix and pour over the area. I was reading over the instructions again this morning and they said that you should wait a week after applying any floor leveling compound, to start laying the floor.

Awesome!

So it looks as though my vacation week project has stalled for the time being. Now it has been relegated to a weekend project instead :)

Floor-ing

The Wee-b and I had a very rare day to ourselves on Sunday due to one of our awesome friends taking the littleb out on a lunch and movie date. We decided to head out and run some errands and one of the stops was Home Depot to look for flooring options. We managed to come up with a couple  of samples that we both liked..

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Three of the samples (the two on the left and the last on the right) are Pergo laminate flooring and the second sample from the right is a really nice bamboo hardwood floor sample. After doing some hunting around online we found that while we could go with the hardwood, installation would be more involved and the end result isn’t something that a lot of people are happy with. The bamboo tends to be a bit softer and shows every nick and dent. We did a little experiment with the corner of my desk and the bamboo sample dented immediately, whereas the laminate flooring didn’t show anything…even after a few hard whacks.

So i think we are back to the Pergo. At the moment, both the Wee-b and i are strongly leaning towards the sample on the far right. Its got a really nice texture to it and the overall color has a lot less “orange” to it…which i think would be quite overwhelming in our large living room area. But its still nice and warm…and with a 25 year warranty, it fits our immediate needs perfectly.

In other news, you want to know what happens when a lucky puppy gets given a basket full of toys?

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Carnage.

He has a habit of grabbing the toy and whipping his head back and forth…this was my super-duper attempt at trying to photograph the devil-dawg.

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He’s a mess.

It’s Mabo, it’s justice, it’s law, it’s the vibe, and, uh … No, that’s it. It’s the vibe

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Yesterday was a bit of an adventure…poor Wee-b hurt his (already broken) back on Saturday night by trying to push the tv stand into position. Turns out that he actually did sprain his back and after waking me up at 3am in the morning screaming in pain, we called the ambulance and headed off to the local hospital. My poor love :( Fabulous drugs and less pain later we headed home to the heating pad and and book box unpacking, with some Twin Peaks for company.

We have the Den mostly together now, with the rest of the house following suit. We did manage to get out yesterday afternoon to run some errands – some neat grommet top panels for the master bedroom, CVS for the Wee-bs prescribed back medication and even to the post office to try and get our mailbox key. Unfortunately the post office had no power, so they were unable to take our (hard earned!) cashola for the mailbox, but we did get warmly welcomed to the area (almost everyone we encounter in Springfield is so damned friendly!) and we’ll head back on Saturday to pick up the key and get our mail delivered.

Papa – I apologize that I have missed EVERY SINGLE ONE of your calls. I keep smacking myself for not having my phone on me….I will have it on me 24-7 from now on! We still have no cable/internet at the house, but we’re hoping to sort that out soon. So I guess, all in all, we’re getting ourselves together and making our house purchase a home….we just need to figure out which room is going to be the pool room.

One more down

We had the home inspection today and by all accounts it went well! There were a few minor things that need to be fixed (electrical outlets in the Kitchen, the skylights need to be reflashed, sump pump to be replaced, etc.) but nothing too crazy and nothing that our realtor felt that the owners wouldn’t repair.

So…one more hurdle has been covered and we are still in the running to win the race :) I took a ton more photos with my camera today, i just need to grab my cables tomorrow and I can upload them for the viewing pleasure…

xox

-L.