The wall is falling!

Ok, so it was less of a fall and more a painful dis-assembly one 2.5 inch screw at a time (can you get bruises on your hands? I think I have some), but its still down. That's right, we now have a combo wash room/closet!

As a reminder, here's some befores:

 

And now a during. I have to admit I was kinda intrigued by the idea of having a jungle gym in the middle of one of our rooms. I'm pretty sure Leroy would have dug it as well, but I got over that moment of whimsy and proceeded.

And here is the after:

Now, you might be saying to yourself, but Abbey, there was a ton of stuff in that closet! And indeed, you'd be right. The hanging clothes are currently piled on our bed. Not exactly sure what we are going to do with them tonight but we'll figure something out. The rest of the stuff I just shoved into other closets. We'll just keep moving things around I guess :)

Thanks to Matt for helping with the final pieces (which were over my head) and for removing all the wall board and 2x4s to the garage.

Ding dong the fridge is dead

Well, its official, we've had our first death in the family. Not to worry though, its just the fridge. I came home today and tried to open the freezer to find that it wouldn't open. Further investigation showed that a huge block of ice had formed. Once I had manhandled the freezer door open, I realized that the ice tray was dripping and we had a fair sized glaicer working its way down the freezer door. Also, I noticed things weren't quite as cold as they should be.

Suffice it to say, I don't have before picutures (what with the flurry of activity to empty the fridge/freezer) but on the upside, we have two fridges! And a freezer! So no harm, no foul. I did take some after pictures:

The dead fridge (with Leroy investigating): 

 

 

And the garage fridge, now full to the brim:

 

On the up side. we've finally settled the debate as to which fridge was larger (old fridge) AND now we have less incentive to snack, so that will be good for our waistlines :)

These things happen. No one's fault, of course. Roy, Rayanne, we love you.

so what do they fill the land with

As  you may know, we replaced our dishwasher. In our quest to find it a new home, we've been looking at trash removal. Problem is, it seems like you can't actually put much in a landfill these days. Matt did some research and here is a list of things you can't put in the trash here:

Grass	Fluorescent Bulbs	Brush
Recyclables	Cardboard or Boxes	Batteries
Appliances	55 Gallon Barrels/Drums	Paint
Computers	Fluorescent Fixtures	Oil
Leaves	Hazardous/Infectious Materials or their containers

which just begs the question, what can you throw away?

Turns out, there is a drop off site for electronics, so i think we'll be pursuing that. I just had to laugh a little at the list of restricted items.

Bathroom jewelry

We did a number of things today, including visiting a couple estate sales. We went looking for a headboard or maybe some chairs and came home with a new drill press instead...what can you do?

I also spent an hour or so working on organizing the bathroom while Matt was going through our mail (which had piled up from may, so really, it was time). Here's the before:

And the after (I swear, they are different. I spent a lot of time organizing!):

 

Notice the pretty new soap dish, soap dispenser, and little jar. Yeah, I bought them at Target today, on a whim. I also bought some for the upstairs:

Just for James (and anyone else that comes to visit/stay)

More holes in the floor

But this time, its for a good cause. Matt and Mark ran wire last night from the attic to the basement. Its the first step towards installing outlets in the upstairs bedrooms. They started by using a drill that bit that looks like this:

 To drill though the floor in the master bedroom closet into the wall (after taking off the peg board, of course) and then up through the ceiling and into the wall. They also had to take the baseboard off one of the walls in the little bedroom. Then Mark stayed in the attic, Matt went to the little bedroom, Dave was in the master closet, and I went to the basement and we played telephone to thread three wires from the attic to the basement. And it worked!

From the little bedroom

Into the closet

 

To the basement

 

Next steps include a junction box and connecting everything up in the attic. Then we have to decide if we want to put the outlets in the walls or run conduit around the baseboards. Outlets in the walls will look nicer, but with our old walls, it might also take a very long time. 

 

It almost looks like progress

I swear we are unpacking things, but you wouldn't really know it. The bedroom looks a little better:

Though with demon Leroy in the way, you can't tell that I did really make the bed better than that.

 

The family (living, great room? I still can't settle on a name) is also taking shape. Just ignore the ghetto on the table in the background, we're still getting to that. Oh, and the paint patches, I was trying out colors in a fit of ambitious vigor. 

 

But we did make some real progress today. Matt mowed the lawn! Yet another in our long line of firsts as home owners. Unfortunately, the mower quit partway through, which sucks cause we got it on craigslist and the guy swore it ran well. Ah well, perhaps it just wanted a break...

 

You can also see the truck cap, which James helped Matt retrieve from the apartment (thanks James!)

 

New bed and the dyson animal

Our new bed is here!

Don't mind the mess, we're still unpacking. I wanted to wait to take a pic with the sheets on, but Matt pointed out that its kinda pretty as is, what with the black trim and nice pattern. So naked bed it is. Can't wait to try it out tonight.

While we were out getting the bed, we also stopped by Target to get some food and an accordion folder so Matt can start keeping track of our receipts. As we were tracking that down, I got distracted by vacuums. Mom (rightly) pointed out that now that we have a larger place, we should maybe consider investing in a good vacuum, especially with the giant furball that lives with us. I did some looking online, but the only model target had that I had seen was this one:

The Dyson ball DC 41 Animal. Seems pretty innocuous when you look at the package, but check out the slogan on the front of the floor model

Well. My, my, dyson, that's quite the claim. I feel like I need a cold shower, or something...