ITS in the WORKS!

The weather has not co-operated lately last week snow, this past week rain, and more rain tomorrow and who knows how long it will rain...I dont like dreary weather...blahhhhhh

SO once again I've been working on the OLD HOUSE...

Ive got so many projects going on at ONCE...its not all ADHD, its partly the weather! I have only weekends to do anything I need to make a trip to Lowes with my trailer to buy supplies to complete some of my projects and with the rain I found an old leak that supposedly was fixed is BACK...SO I had to repair that first I spent the whole day Sunday on the roof...I HOPE my work pays off I will know soon enough since rain is forecasted..No photos of me on the roof, cause I was ON THE ROOF..ha!

But here is dang leak and the resulting damage...

Meanwhile I pulled out that old bookcase that used to be a window! A porch that was walled in to become a room had a window at one time, I made it into built in shelf,  but I think I would prefer more light so I took the shelf out. I may open up that whole SPACE...If its possible and add some BIG Beams shabby chic, rustic meets contemporary, cabin meets loft??? OR I may just close up the spot and put back a shelf unit only do it right this time!! That would certainly be the easiest Thing to do..or put in a glass door and get the benefit of the light. OR a shelf unit with some glass blocks behind it? NOW that may be cool..

I lost all my photos of this in progress so here is what I did do....

I put in a French Door

I also repaired the attic stairs 2 of the steps were missing...I needed to go up there so I fixed that....

and Ive been chipping away at WALL PAPER omg I will never ever ever get back together with Wall PAPER!

And in this house...4 rooms have wall paper!!

My Ebay sales are doing pretty good....Ive been surprised by it to be honest. BUT I need to move it faster so a flea market is in my future when the weather warms and gets more stable..IF the leak is stopped then I will go full steam ahead in the room Im now calling the library, that adjoins the dining room...a trip to LOWES is in my future!

PEACE

A story to share...

This is so cute I have to share...

My mom is a lovely lady 88 yrs old.  Each morning we sit at the kitchen table and have morning coffee and watch the activity at the bird feeder...

My mom drinks from a cup that is a souvenir from the state of PA. She decided to read aloud to me the facts that were written around the cup..so she read to me:

"The state tree is the Hemlock, and did you know its the Keystone State?"

"Yes I knew that, but I don't have a clue what that means."

She replies "me neither." then she continues...the state motto, and then...

"The state bird is the," here she pauses, then she continues ..."the ruffff..." another pause..

then.."the Ruffled Grouch."

I immediately broke into hysterical laughter and spurted coffee all over myself...she looked up and said
"WHAT?"

IT was just so funny and I laughed all day off and on, each time I recalled her saying Ruffled Grouch..instead of the Ruffed Grouse...she had it very close I think I ruffled her feathers by laughing but it was such a cool mistake, it was one of those moments..in the end we both laughed...and that brought to mind another story..

My sister and her husband traveled to Yellowstone park one yr, and they called to give us an update on their trip thus far, and I listened to my Mom's end of the conversation as they recited to her the list of animals they had seen on their day in the park...Mom recited each one out loud so I could hear what they were seeing so as my sister said "buffalo" my mom repeated toward me, nodding BUFFALO, then it was Coyote, she repeated, then Moose, she repeated, then it was Western Tanager, my eyebrows went up in approval, and then she said

"OH , an ALBATROSS."

and MY EYEBROWS went down as I recited back... 

"ALBATROSS, no way"!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(possibly only my bird-brain bloggers will get this as  a hilarious mis ID of some kind of gull, as the albatross lives its entire life out to sea)...

this  could be a ruffled grouch?

and this was Lunch!!!

PEACE

Found a P-nut, It was rotten!

I'm planning to finish the repair to this floor this weekend! Thats the plan, if my back holds out...I dont mind working on a ladder, but squatting and stooping OH My aching back..

Here is the stage the floor was at last time..to refresh your memory...under 2 layers of carpet, there was a layer of old tile and under that a layer of 1/4 inch underlayment...held on by one zillion nails...

MOST of my PHOTOS got lost thanks to Flickr and a Hard Drive that messed up so the photos disappeared from this post...

NOW once I pulled up the underlayment over in that right corner...

SURPRISE I found a major ROTTEN SPOT! I dont know IF it was termite or water damage, there does appear to be water damage on the wall under the window, so AN improperly caulked window on the outside may be the cause, I have caulk to fix that problem and I have ripped out most of the rot,

The are is On the far right corner under the window....so I did a screen shot to show you the area

You can see the damage below the window to the paneling.... the SUBFLOOR too!

SO I have a plan whether it will work or not, your guess is as good as MINE all I know is I am going to try and do this!! I imagine it wont be perfect when its done but it will be better than it is NOW!   I will replace the subfloor boards with 1 x 6 treated and I've purchased 48 ft of pine flooring, but its 4 inch wide and this old floor is 3.25 inch wide..SO the boards have to be ripped down to the right width...I think Ill rip the boards first then cut the various lengths...I know the joints have to be staggered in order to look right so I will cut every other one to different lengths so the joints dont match up and create a line, YES Ive been watching THIS OLD HOUSE on PBS for years! NOW If I just had all the tools they have...For some reason the power tools mysteriously disappeared from the tool shed the week my X moved out although those items were not on his list...hmm

And here is how it came out with my patching in of the flooring...And I found a piece of paneling to replace the bad piece with..

on the lower right

SO this is the other side of the room  its Great! Wish me luck and IF i can still move when its done Ill update with my progress!  I have also removed the carpet from the adjourning room beyond that glass door, its a small room that was used as a Home Office but I am thinking Library/Media Room! It had a built in window seat that I removed! I will try to remember to take photos i forgot the before's of that, its a blank slate right now.

The Ebay selling is going pretty good so far, IT will help to pay for some of the numerous repairs I have to do ....and the sweater man didnt contact me, so I guess he was pleased. 

PEACE

SweaTing Details!

DO YOU EBAY? I mean sell on ebay?

Well since I inherited all that STUFF as seen in my last few posts....I decided to ebay some of the stuff...and so far its been going really well....up until the SWEATER!

OKay I listed the Geoffry Beene sweater that I found in one closet.  Its black n cream in color ...hand made.  Well I listed it.

Much to my surprise someone purchased it! Then when I got it out in the day light I saw the collar was dirty! SO on the label it said hand wash lay flat to dry..

SO I did...but I didnt have time to take it out of the water so I let it sit and "soak" all day while I was at work..

WELL....

the black color ran on the cream color and now its black and dingy cream! WHY OH WHY didnt I just let the stain on the collar slide?

So I wrang it out well and now its BEEN 2 days and its NOT DRY YET...

THIS has become the sweater from HELL-0-

SO now I have placed it on a heat vent to dry...
NOW do I send it to the guy and if he wants his money back just refund the money and tell him to keep the sweater as my gift??

3 days of my life on Planet Earth have been consumed by worries over a $3 profit????Geeze thats just wrong.

Meanwhile the subfloor is GONE! It nearly did me in and I didnt get a photo...Ill snap one next time!

PEACE

Talk Sense to ME!

ITs quite possible I will never have a free weekend again... or not for a long time! Still in the very early stages of the "this old house makeover"!

   


SO today we (Mom has been helping out a little too) loaded up the yard debris we cleared up last week onto the trailer to take to the dump, we had 3 piles larger than this one pictured....but by the time we got it loaded the dump was closed! grrrr so now I will have to wait till next week to take it...I could get up super early before work one day this week and take it,,,,but I donnnnntttt know about that. That would be a days work before a days work!

Meanwhile I am taking one room and getting started on the "make better". This room has a couple of issues but the main one is the FLOOR! I was so busy I forgot to take a proper "before" but if you look at this photo Ive shown before and the room at the end with the double windows you see that tan carpet?

Underneath that is another carpet a brown shag from the 70's --Groovy right? WRONG-

I hate carpet..this was the LAST ROOM  that needed to have carpet removed well and that french glass door leads to a small room we called "the Office" it was where we kept a desk and all our paper work, it has carpet and that will be removed too...

ok it has 2 layers of carpet too..but the dining room has the 2 layers of carpet and A layer of TILE! And the tile is on a underlayment sheeting and trust me they used long nails every 6 inches square when they put this tile down back in probably the 50's?

You cant really see the tile this black stuff is the remains of black carpet padding that stuck to the old tile...

and under all that is the pretty pine wood floor that has never been finished! Once this old stuff is literally "peeled" off with Intensive back breaking labor, the wood floor will get sanded and varnished to hopefully match the other floor! IT took me an hour to remove this one section that's about 4 x 5 and it looks like there's about 4 more of the same! Probably take all day tomorrow to get it off!

LOOK AT ALL THESE NAILS..I dont think the fellow that put this down missed one single nail and these nails are 3 inches LONG!!  I mean really? Did they need this many? Holy Moly!

Im trying to not do too much damage to the floor underneath but Its not easy!

 

I'm half way thinking of doing the same in the kitchen, can you PLEASE talk me out of it?

PLEASE, enlighten me as to WHY I dont need to do that! It has Vinyl on it now and I know there are 2 layers of that and possibly a layer of linoleum under that and a layer of this horrible underlayment with nails every 6 inches!! AND yes the dated curtains are gonna go too!!

Footnote: to anyone reading this as of today, June 14, 2016 here is the finished room

PEACE

Got Junk?

... it just occured to me that some people may not realize they have word verification turned ON for comments...I didnt ...on my think-tank blog, Writtin's, until someone brought it to my attention! If you want to see if its on/off for your blog, go to your Dashboard, and for the blog you want to check go to the list by the Pencil symbol and when the drop down list opens go to settings, when that page opens up on the left margin about half way down look for posts and comments, click that and it will show you all the options you have for comments etc...and put word verification to off..

Just sayin...

Well the clean up has officially begun and is coming along slowwwwlllllyy now that work is back to full steam ahead.  I spent some time last evening checking ebay to see what may sell on there and out of all the stuff that might sell is VINTAGE Christmas decor! 

 THE attic has a lot of vintage Christmas decor....

BUT im not ready to tackle that attic just yet....but I have been busy!

I went through all the stuff and have separated it into "stacks". Like:

Fishing Rods n Reels

Boxes full of fishing tackle

bowling balls, bags, and PINS...

OK some of it is MY old junk, There must be another Chicken Basket Collector out there somewhere?

How bout a shot?

Everything I have is VINTAGE since we were together and collecting in the 70's, 80's, and 90's thats 3 decades....like old rock albums?

                                            soooo many Videos, I didnt find one single DVD

Cassette Tapes, I didnt find one single CD never mind an Ipod!

More stuff, Stuff, STUFF omg so much stuff..

All Stephen King! 

See anything you want??...well this is just the the tip of the ice burg but

IM making PROGRESS!

Today it was so warm I worked outside clearing up an overgrown area in the yard....

MORE to come!!! soooooo much more to come!  With all this work to do I havent been doing much else...Last week I had time off since my Boss was in mourning, now i will have only weekends.  We've had free HBO this weekend...and last night I got to see the movie The BIG YEAR, what a fun movie! If you havent seen it  I recommend it.

PEACE

Step ONE!

The work has begun for real, actually started last week while I had some time off at New Yrs...

Im referring to the BIG clean out of the house that I got in the divorce settlement...

Although the house was being lived in for 13 yrs he had closed off the rooms he no longer used and he was supposed to take stuff with him, it appears he piled it up to take but changed his mind, 

The house was NOT being taken care of or maintained.  Basically all the bedrooms had been closed off  and were being used as junk storage! I mean what do you do when you move out of the college dorm? Dump your junk in the parents old bedroom right?

                              

 There will be more on this mess LATER!!

actually all 3 of the bedrooms were in the same kind of mess..

                                                                                

                                                                                 

THIS is the second load of unwanted stuff that is ready to haul to the dump! AND trust me there will be MORE lots MORE...I want to go back to the bare necessities in this house, bed, nightstand, dresser, and a rug in each room..... And in the background is the old shed and potting shed that will be torn down EVENTUALLY!

               

   

The old Shed.  My X and I built this shed ourselves way back in 1977....so its amazing that its still standing!

                

The main living area is not  as bad, but a LOT of stuff in closets, drawers, etc. we must have loved to watch videos I took 6 large garbage bags full out of various cabinets, drawers, shelves, and every nook n crannie? Now-a-days my private collection of Videos is about 12, and DVD's about 20.  Trust me, I never liked clutter and kept this house spic n span, but for the past 13 yrs it has not been kept tidy...BUT Thats all gonna change for the better!

The old sectional couch is a motion sofa it has recliners on each end, and I recall its very comfy, it needs a good cleaning and the center cushion may need to be replaced...So I will take care of that..

This house was moved to this location 38 yrs ago....WE appreciated the view of our horses so much we had them locate the house with the FRONT facing the pasture and the BACK is facing the road...So the screen porch which is in back is really the front...does that make sense?  So you enter the house via the screen porch...it needs a lot of TLC even a squirrel has found a way to get into the porch attic! I found his little get away...

              

I've started a pile of what will go to the flea market with me one Saturday in the Future...even if I get a $1 per item...I will be happy....and there will be more added to this pile!

Don't you wish you were here to help me, boy we could have some fun, break for a nice sandwich and a beer and then back to work!!  I enjoy doing physical work, it makes me feel good!

A
Footnote:
ON a very sad note:
I worked only 8 hrs this week...my boss's grand daughter, 4 months old and who was cherished by her family, died suddenly on Thursday morning.  It was quite a shock to us all, we loved hearing about the baby and seeing her photos on facebook and hearing about her life via my boss...So my prayers go out to my boss's daughter & her entire family at this time, the funeral is tomorrow...I wont be attending as they live in another town from me, but my thoughts will be on them tomorrow as they go through this very hard time.

PEACE

A new Door Opens!

I know I should be doing a year end wrap up post, but dang what a bummer that would be. Instead of talking about what I did; I'm gonna talk about what Im gonna do.  I had a difficult year.  It did end well though and I just have to get my head around "what's next". 

So I ended up buying my x's share of the old place, its right next door to where I LIVE now.  We had already split the land up between us and my Mom and I had added to my Mom's house and am living here..but I just didnt want to let go of that land next door so I traded 4 acres of wooded land for some cash and added a bit to it and now I own the old place...its in bad shape but it can be made nice.  NOW The big question is WHAT TO DO WITH IT? I  could sell it and have it moved off the land....or tear it down and sell it for salvage,  or rent it out or just keep it for my son...

I showed you the house in snow in my last post, here it is in summer..

SO now the clean up will start, 13 yrs of neglect to erase and spruce up and on my beer budget that means a LOT OF DIY projects.  Im no stranger to hard work...but dang Im getting up there in age and although we all like to think we can keep right on doing what we did at 40 at 60 but the truth is WE CANT!!

So anyway....the first order is to tear down the old tool shed it had a potting shed on one end, and its all too rotten to replace so I plan to tear it down, salvage what I can of the timber and tin and use that to start roofing over the old barn.  The backside of the barn has a 3 ft x 24 ft area that was used to store feed and hay when we had horses, so that will become the new tool shed for the big stuff...I plan to add a lean-to shed at the back for the lawn equipment...and KEEP the barn stalls for critters that I plan to adopt!

NOW Ive made some progress, I tore the old roof off the barn a couple yrs ago, and Ive been keeping the pasture mowed so most of that brush is gone...

Before ....

after...

Now even the old rafters are gone, I took those off on a different weekend...so this old block barn is 24 x 18 feet it has 2 barn stalls with a wall separating the two stalls, and a wall separating the storage area from the stalls.. It will cost less to put a roof on this old barn than to start over building a new tool/storage shed.

I moved my martin houses back to the middle of the field and I am very hopeful I will get martins since the neighbors who used to house the colony sold their house and they took the martin houses with them! SO When that colony returns they will find their home is GONE..but mine is right across the road SO I hope to get all sorts of new life into this old house! 

I hope to include some of these projects in the blog, as time goes on... so stand by for more...

in 2013 !!

PEACE

DixxeLand Christmas Wish

We have no snow for Christmas, but here is some from times past to wish you a Happy Holiday from ME here in DixxeLand!!

For anyone who wonders where and what DixxeLand is, I shall explain!  DixxeLand is where I go inside my mind when I want peace and tranquility. It comes expressly from my imagination, and its  that comfort zone I turn to when I need solace and when my spirit needs to be refreshed.  ITS my special place to commune with my  friends real and imagined and its a place where ALL my Dreams DO COME TRUE! So wont you join me in DixxeLand? You can be anyone you want to be when you're there and you can enjoy doing anything--- you are only limited by what you can imagine!

IT is my virtual reality and my sanctuary when times are hard.

A bright spot that I can carry with me no matter what!

...cause whatever burns on the inside, shows on the outside...

hope you can find your way to DixxeLand when ever you feel the urge!

No matter who you are or what you're facing it can be made better, in DixxeLand!

Y'ALL COME 

PEACE