Yet another ongoing job

On Saturday I decided (after a few minutes of feeling guilty in the hammock) that I would start to tackle a job we had been discussing for a while. Stripping!!!!! (not as naked as it sounds) The former owners left us with two exterior screen doors, for the front and kitchen doors. Both of which were covered with chipping,flaking dirty looking paint. We don't have much of a budget this year to fix up the outside so we want to get the most bang for our buck when it comes to the exterior. The plan is to sand and fix the two aging doors, staining them a nice dark colour which will add some punch to the outside. This will then be followed by a nice new house number and a less rust-bucket of a mailbox. (funny the things I am now most looking forward to in life!)





For once I am happy about the gross sandbox that got left behind because I got to use it as a table for my sanding. As it usually seems to happen when we try to fix things here we soon ran into trouble. The paint on the door had been applied over a layer of varnish and stain so it was taking forever to get down to the wood. That palm sander had my hand feeling numb for the rest of the day! With such little progress and minimal sense of accomplishment i was feeling frustrated. I then took a trip up to Lowes and got some paint stripper, a scraper and a face mask. By the time I got back it was getting too late to tackle further so this shall be a long weekend project. Nothing says I love Canada like scraping paint off a door right? At least I will feel productive as G and his Dad finish building the shed!

Briefly a scene this weekend....

Until I felt WAY to guilty watching G work. Although I thought the picture was pretty funny :

Sometimes small changes are good too

Yesterday I didn't have a lot of time but was feeling like crossing something off the to-do list. I decided to tackle pretty much our only closet (the downside of a century home: they must have had less stuff than we did and therefore less need for storage) I emptied the closet and threw out some of the random stuff that shouldn't have made it in the move. Then I reorganized the remainder into three snazzy matching baskets- and voila:





I probably should have taken a before picture to fully illustrate the difference. I was very proud of myself and showed G to minimal fanfare. Direct quote "oh did you clean the cupboard?" I think from now on I will always take before pics so I can force an "ooooh...ahhh" moment!

Reason #943 why I crazy love Garret

Here we are hanging out in our brand new hammock. Technically I should say "my new hammock" since G surprised me with it as an early birthday present (hence # 943 on the list of why i love him) I sense a lot of hangout time in that bad boy so hurray for our new hammock! The back yard is slowly but surely coming together...I will let G post about the shed part 2. Our next task is digging the horseshoe pit along the new fence (I haven't mentioned yet but the neighbours are building a fence which is awesome) More pics to come soon

Lil Marleen

Last week in memory of my father, Garret decided to forgo the normal route for "buy the lady some flowers" and he bought me a rose bush!  Its actually not much of a bush at the moment, but we have been assured if we take care of it it will become more bush like.

[caption id="attachment_79" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Patiently waiting on our porch for us to plant her"][/caption]

And for those of you who are questioning who "Lil Marleen" is....I should first explain that I have a bit of an obsession with naming things....this usually extends to naming things that we don't currently have, like dogs and children. But G and I (probably more so myself) take great joy in giving names to inanimate objects and this plant didn't escape that fate either.

The name was simple: She actually came with a name tag:

 

[caption id="attachment_80" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="we shortened it a bit....but it has a nice ring to it!"][/caption]

The Shed volume 1

There was a shed at the back of our property when we first moved in.  The original excitement turned to disappointment when we realized that it was about one good storm away from total collapse. (this will become a running theme as we talk about what we are fixing with the house---the previous owners were not really into property maintenance of any sort) We discussed for a while what our best option would be and after some serious number crunching on G's part, he came up with a plan and a budget to build us a new shed.  The first thing we had to do was get rid of the old shed....I forgot to take a photo while it was still standing however I did manage to halt the demolition long enough for me to grab a pic:

Garret and Wes had knocked out the one side at this point

The boys took a few hours to get it fully removed and then we waited a few weeks before we took the next step in shed building....I have to say that enjoying a nice clean looking back yard was enjoyable. However having the shed built and being able to do things like get G's drill press out of our dining room and into the backyard will be even MORE enjoyable.

Last night at Lowes...G in his fave store...it's how I feel at Chapters or Home Sense

The official "Before" picture of the shed this morning...leaning up against the back of the house

This weekend we have our friend Regan coming over to do some framing with G to get the shed started and then I think I am going to attempt to be a trusty helper on Sunday so we can get more done (although I am picturing my role being more like those girls on Tool Time...and not so much with the hammering my thumb and splinters...we shall see hahaha) I will be sure to post some after pics when our shed is more than just a pile of lumber.

Things went bump in the night....

....and we didn't hear a peep! The former owners had a few things screwed to the wall that they also calked in for good measure. Such as the downstairs bathroom mirror, and the crappy breakfast bar in the kitchen (that's what we were repairing earlier). So I detest the crappier-than-ikea mirror that's in the downstairs bathroom. It adds nothing to the room and we've been meaning to get around to replace it with a lovely mirror my mum gave us. Garret unscrewed it the other night and we then confirmed that previous owners had indeed glued it to the wall as well. I guess you can never be too sure that something is going to stay on the wall! We just left it stuck to the wall and figured that later this week we would scrape it off. I guess the past few warm days and no A/C did the work for us because when I came down this morning I was greeted with the following :

A lovely thing to come home to

We pulled in the driveway last night to an amazing site! Charlene got bored waiting for us to come home so she decided to clean my kitchen window (from the outside!!!!) I told her she now has an open invitation to come clean oops I mean visit!

Our backyard and he who mows it

A Bug's Life

When we got home yesterday from a night away, we found our kitchen all a buzz....not with activity but with the winged flapping of a pile of flies. GROSS! They were congregated in the window in the kitchen as well as the downstairs bathroom. In no time my grossed out cries had Garret ushering them into the after life! But I cant stop wondering how they got in?! We found ants last week so i bought some traps, but I dont want to use fly paper like we are living on a farm. Im hoping that G smushed the really fertile ones so they wont be leaving any fly babies behind...

New dress

Open for Business

The guest/dump everything we have yet to unpack and don't know where to put room now has a bed!! We had our first sleepover last night where we could offer someone something other than the couch. Look out world the ShWalsh family is getting classy! We now have the space so please come on over for a visit! We obviously won't be keeping this room as the junk room, but for now it will remain a space containing all odds and sods. It was really nice to be able to set up the bed that Nanny gave us though. Next trip to Meaford we will be bringing back the box spring and frame so by then we hope to have a few more things cleared out. We have three other storage spots that need to be sorted out as well, but many of the things on our to do list hinge on finishing something else on the list (this is making prioritizing difficult as sometimes it seems to be a list that ties itself up in a circle)Fortunately we are both keen to have more useable space so bit by bit we are getting there!

Our night in the kitchen

Sometimes we will be just hanging out and the Reno mood hits us...or else we get to the point where we can't stand something a moment longer! We got to that point last night around 930. The mess on the kitchen wall from where we removed the mini bar (we'll post a pic of what it used to look like was making us crazy. So we pulled the glue off and Garret thought we might as well do a layer of skim coat to smooth things out. (this was my first lesson in skim coating...which I keep referring to as drywalling) Not sure if the neighbour was happy to hear the shop vac going at 10:30pm to clean up all the dust and wall scrapings.

[caption id="attachment_48" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Step 1: Scrape-comment on surprise at G letting me handle such an important task (hahaha)"][/caption]

 

[caption id="attachment_58" align="aligncenter" width="224" caption="Step 2:Start to spackle. Mock J for commenting on the pretty pink layer."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_53" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Step 3: Teach your lady to spackle and then take a picture of her deep in concentrationStep 4: Wait for spackle to dry, have a beer in the meantime and take another photo"][/caption]

 

[caption id="attachment_56" align="aligncenter" width="224" caption="Step 4: Wait for coat to dry. In the meantime drink a beer and take more pictures"][/caption]

How it all began

Photo taken on  the day of our final walk through (Good Friday). This was also the first time we got to see the house without everything being buried under snow.  I think that this may have been when we realized just how much work we wanted to do to the place...however I think we both feel the same sense of wonder and glee that WEOWNOURHOME!