Flanges

Finally ordered!

Now we can fix the rest of the house like we fixed the garage corner. I also got quotes for butcher block. AND, I finally set up my 401K. Such a grown up today.

mr. prissy pants

So most of you know, we have a fancy cat. Let me rephrase. We have, the most fluffy, fancy pants wuss of a cat there is. Seriously, he's a wimp. And lately, he's decided that getting up and into the litter box is just beneath him. I mean, really, who wants to jump when you've gotta go. And so he's chosen to express his displeasure with his commode in one of the few ways he has to express himself. Mostly by pooping on the floor. Right next to the litter. I've spared you the picture.

But we love the little fluffer-nutter, so, like all good suckers, we improvised!

Now, there's a door so fluffy britches can waltz his way in, like the royal prince he is. (though you'll notice he has no problem jumping up on the shelf)

wub wub wub wub dub wub wub

It looks so innocent, sitting there next to the dryer. But our washer has a wild side. Yes, we own a musical washer and everytime we turn it on, it sounds like a dubstep concert is happening in our laundry room.

So its not glamorous, but today, I leveled it.
Side to side

And front to back

And even though it was a small change, I think, miraculously, it helped. Amazing when something you do actually produces a positive, tangible result. Lovely really.

More outside things

Today we continued our quest to tighten up the house. We decided to start with the easiest roof area to reach, above what used to be a porch

It's relatively low and there is a window to the bathroom up there that we could pass stuff back and forth into the house. However, we quickly realized that the ladder we have is slightly too short, even if you put it on the porch. So we went back to menards to buy some more supplies, including a ladder that folds all sorts of ways. Then, we got back up on the roof to take stock and quickly realize our work was cut out for us. One of the molding pieces under the roof had rotted out, so Matt took it down.

And our our trip to menards we got as good of a match as we could, and put it back up (caulking the entire thing, of course)

I'll have to post the pic tomorrow, because we forgot to take one, but trust me, it looks way better.

While he had the caulk out, matt also caulked around the bathroom window, down the corner, and up under the roof overhang. Then, we turned our attention to the windows in James's room. One of the things that turned up during our inspection was the fact that these windows have no flashing, and, in fact, have exposed foam jammed between the sill and the roof. Not pretty:

So, we bought some aluminum flashing, cut it to fit, and installed it around the window.

I'm proud to say, I cut the aluminum and it fit pretty darn tight if you ask me. Matt was very pleased. We used some special nails with rubber washers to tack it down, and then, of course, we caulked it (and by we, I mean Matt, he's the king of caulk). Also, fun fact, it started to get dark at this point, so poor Matt was finishing up on the roof in the dark. But it turned out great and now we don't have exposed foam and I'm pretty sure there's no way any water is getting in.

In fact, we used three different types of caulk today. We're getting to be real connoisseurs if you ask me. Kind of reminds me of our love for paintbrushes

Now we just need to do the same thing for the other window. Luckily, while I was cutting out the aluminum, I checked and the other window was pretty much identical, so I used the first one as a template. I know, I'm a genius. Ok, maybe that's pushing it a little, but I did at least save us some time and effort.

its the little (outside) things

Today, we did some focusing on the outside of the house. The old girl has a couple holes, gaps, etc that generally make her not super airtight and with the coming winter, we were anxious to shore things up In particular there are some holes near the porch, some gaps in the soffet, and some corner pieces for the siding that are coming loose. So today we went to menards and bought caulk, putty, new corner pieces and went to work (well, Matt did most of the work cause I got called into an issue for my day job, but I got to help some with the last bit)

He patched some holes (before and after)

Caulked the soffet:

And finally, fixed the corner pieces on one side of the garage (this is the part I got to help with)
The before here isn't pretty. We're totally missing the bottom piece and the others are just bent to silliness. Which means we were probably getting water in where it shouldn't be, definitely not good.

We were lucky enough to find almost exact replacement pieces at menards

So we stripped off the old ones

Cleaned out the gaps, and put the new ones on following some directions we found online. Not too difficult really and it came out pretty nice. Matts tickled pink about it.

Now all we need to do is paint! (oh, and do the other corners of the garage and the house, but hey, at least we got started)

new trim?

Matt had a brilliant idea today. As you probably know, we are replacing all our doors and in the process we have to strip off the trim and put it back up, resulting in trim that looks, well, a little worse for the wear.

See all those little holes, yeah, they all have to be spackled, sanded, painted etc. So, here's the awesome idea, we replace the trim. Now, you might be thinking, well, we'd have to put little holes in it and repair it anyway, but the awesome thing is, if do new trim, we could make it old timey and awesome, like this:

or this  

Which would be super cool. Matt pointed out we don't want to get too fancy or it will start to look Victorian, which isn't really what we are going for. I think we can make it work though. 

we're moving up in the world

or at least, our bed is. Thanks to Roy and Rayanne, we now have a bedframe!

Which means a couple things.

1. Leroy can hide under the bed. Very important cause if there's a loud noise, right now he has nowhere to go. And he gets scared easily.
2. We aren't sleeping on the floor. Mostly we didn't mind this, but now the blankets don't drag on the floor and we look just slightly more "normal", whatever good that does us.
3. We can buy just a headboard and attach it to the frame instead of having to also buy a frame or buy a full headboard/footboard set thinger.

In any case, they saved us a bundle and we're very thankful

Also, Matt suggested I record this for posterity:

He's been in this position for basically the past two weeks. Between Igem, the paper, and the grant, its been a fun time, especially since I was out of town all last week visiting a customer. I think the end might be in sight, wed maybe? Otherwise it might get a little slap-happy-tastic in our house as we both slowly go insane.