Archive for the ‘The House’ Category

Where oh where did the water go?

Monday, August 10th, 2009

While we were on vacation we had a problem, a problem we didn’t know about. The guest bedroom’s bathroom, where Kathleen likes to go potty or use to rather, was used before we left. I thought I had checked it before we left, but I was wrong, it ran from July 1 to July 20ish when we got home. It resulted in a 400 dollar water bill for a time where we should have no water consumption at all.

We bought the parts to fix the toilet and have had the bill adjusted to 200 dollars. While not what we usually do it’s better than 400. I can deal with 200 in a month versus 400, that is not a possibility. I thank the technician for telling us that we could adjust the bill because the lady in accounting sure didn’t tell me. But today when I went in to take care of they told me I could call and have the bill adjusted for next month’s bill as it was running for about 2 weeks during that time. So that’ll hopefully take care of any discrepancies there.

Shea was surprised that it wasted that much water. The tech said that he’d seen it happen where it had someone an 800 dollar bill. I can’t imagine that. I’m thankful we didn’t have that kinda bill.

AC is shot

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

It sucks two nights ago the AC ran all night set at 72 and it never got cool. So yesterday we turned it off to let it thaw out and cleaned the filters and when we turned it on about 5ish it didn’t cool. I’d been okay up to that point, but the girls were getting cranky and I was too. I took a cold shower and I never take cold showers. Kathleen joined me and Samantha played a little bit but didn’t get too wet, but more than I had expected.

At 7ish, we drove up to Hurley to the inlaws to get three window units. We’d used these after Katrina and had just a few months back taken them up to there for storage. Shea’s dad met us about 3/4s of the way up with them and we drove home, installed the units. We have two in our room and one in Samantha’s (which will end up being both of the girls room again here soon.)

At first the one in Sam’s room wasn’t cooling it wasn’t set right but at that time I had already started blowing up the air matress and the girls were set to sleep on it. So we let them stay in here with us. I’m not sure if they will sleep in Sam’s room alone, Kathleen isn’t big on the door being shut and it’ll have to be so we don’t kill the electric bill.

So today the big AC is off, and we’ll be spending all day in our room. Thankfully the room is nice and big and we can all be comfortable. I’ve got most of my stuff to work on for one of my clients set up on my laptop. It’ll be a bit difficult to do but it beats sitting at my desk in the heat.

I’ll be calling the AC guy today to get a price estimate on 2-3 pounds of freon and we hope that’ll get us through the rest of the summer. Hopefully by the end of the week we’ll have our AC back and things will get back to normal. But if I can stay cool but stay in one room most of the time I can manage it, we’ve done worse and I can move the PCs into the bedroom. We’ve plenty of room. We already have our queen bed, one small desk, a dresser drawer system with the TV on it, two smaller dressers with the girls clothes in it, and the queen blow up matress and still enough room to walk and pile clothes etc up in the corner lol. One more desk won’t take up any more room, we’ll just have to rearrange some of the “piles” to get it in here, but that won’t be an issue if we have to do it.

We will probably have to replace the AC in whole next summer so we pray that we’ll be able to save money to do so. Wish us luck cause we don’t currently have that kind of money to save up.

On a side note, it was much cooler outside last night than it was in the house, so we spent a hour or so cleaning up the back porch and if it is not to hot out today I’ll take the girls out on the porch to do some swimming. Unfortunately there will be no swinging or anything out in the grass. It’s not been dry enough to mow so the lawn is too high and the moment you step out into the grass you get eaten alive by whatever little bugs like to live in tall grass. But the pool will be more than enough for Kathleen and if it’s too warm Samantha as well.

While we were cleaning, one of the share was sporting a very dangerous friend. We were cleaning it off with the hose to get all the dirt and cob webs off, and as Shea set it down there was a huge spider on it. As we were in the process of getting it off to squish it we both noticed that it was a black widow. I was more concerned at that time to kill it before it got near the kids to realize that I’d just moved the chair and was paranoid the rest of the evening while cleaning and moving things around. I do not like spiders and I most definitely am afraid of black widows, I’m just glad it’s dead and hopefully didn’t lay any eggs. What’s funny is that Rae and I were discussing spiders and I had mentioned that I was pretty sure I could identify one (black widow), and yep I sure enough did. I am very thankful that I was tired enough last night that I didn’t have nightmares about them.

Kitchen Table

Sunday, July 26th, 2009

Since Shea and I have been together we have never owned a kitchen/dinning room table, ever. That’s 9 years of eating wherever. With Diamond gone, we now have a dilemma. The girls have become overly use to the dog cleaning up after them. Which I didn’t mind so much until Diamond stopped eating the cheerios that kept making it to the floor. I don’t blame her for not eating them as I’m sure it got real old real fast. But now with out our living vaccuum, we have a problem. The girls still throw their food on the floor.

So since getting another dog is pretty much out of the question at this moment, we bought a kitchen table. We’ve been using it as much as we possibly can and the girls are adapting well to it. I think the stint at my parents house with a family dinner helped out with that. Kathleen is pretty much a jabber jaw at the table, but it’s really nice to be a family even is Sammi isn’t quite so ready to sit down and eat with us. But she’s going through a phase anyway with her eating habits.

The table is in the middle of our living room right near the front door, it’s the only place we can really put it. It’s going to make cleaning a hassle since I use to push all the toys and stuff into that area, but hopefully that once I get things manageable after having been sick a week things will be better in both my kitchen and in my living room. Less food on the floor = less mess to clean up. And the more likely I won’t have to hunt anything more than sippie cups that have migrated around the house.

Only little things left

Monday, August 11th, 2008

This weekend has been a busy one. Friday morning Shea got up and started working on the shop roof. His dad came around 7am, and then his oldest brother came by and started showing them both how to start the roof. Shea never really got it, but the shop is just a simple peak roof so they did it all themselves.

It got too hot Friday afternoon so they called it quits and started at 7am Saturday morning. Shea’s little brother showed up to help on Saturday along with their father. They finished it.

So, now we only have to take down the sheet rock in the shop that is nasty and clean it up and it’ll be usable again. We’ve only got little things left in the house, molding, ceiling fans etc, but all little stuff.

It’s been what, 3 years since Katrina and we are just now finished with all the major projects. And it’s the middle of hurricane season again. Watch all the work we just did go to waste!

While they were working on the roof the girls and I spent most of that time outside in the backyard with them. The girls played with the bubbles, sidewalk chalk, the kiddie pool and their swings, and bothered their Pawpaw lol. But all in all it was a very gorgeous day outside. 90 degrees with low humidity and low dew poin, absolutely gorgeous!!! For all you northern friends, you’d still think it was hot, but really for this time of year it was beautiful for us. We loved it. If Shea hadn’t been so tired I would have wanted to take the girls to the park, but he was tired and sore.

Money yay!

Monday, August 28th, 2006

We didn’t nearly as much money as we hoped from the grant, however we did get enough money to finish the house off. So in 10 to 15 business days we will have the funds to finish the house. Hopefully we will have it done in a few months.

But now with the money I think our game time will diminish. We’ve been discussing this for several weeks. Come March I know I’m not going to have any time to play, what time I do have will be spend doing various other things online that I think are more important, not that I plan on having a lot of extra free time with two pre-twos running around the house.

I’m a bit scared about our financial resources and hope that things really don’t get any worse than they already are. We can appeal for more money for the grant, which we think we will do. Though it has to be over $10,000 more than we already received, we will have to work on the figures. We’ll see what we can do.

My dad starts his radiation this week. 5 days a week for 6 weeks. He’ll still be doing the take home chemo treatments as well. I hope that everything will be fine. I am eager to go home, but really wish I could be there now for Dad, but life is never convienent.

Dragon*Con is next weekend and we aren’t going. I’m a bit jealous but we do have other priorities.

AC is awesome!

Tuesday, April 4th, 2006

Well Shea attempted to fix the AC concensor but it didn’t work so he went out and bought two window units. So needless to say despite the fact that we have to take on AC unit back, we have AC in our bedroom! yay!

Last Night I slept in the House!

Sunday, December 11th, 2005

Last night I slept in the house for the first time since August. We got our bedroom done. Well not completely done, there is still a few things that need doing like touchups, caulking, curtains, etc. I will have pictures up soon of the room with out anything in it. I really like how it turned out.

I’m so happy, still not ready for the baby but we are one step closer.

Carpet is In!

Tuesday, December 6th, 2005

I can’t beleive it, we finally have carpet in the house. It feels sooooo wonderful to be able to walk on carpet again. The padding is lovely the color is great. It’s going to show dog hair but with the baby I hope to be better about keeping it up.

Shea’s gonna paint molding and doors this week, hopefully hang it all on Friday with help from a friend from work. Saturday/Sunday we’ll move into the house. If the weather doesn’t shape up soon I might as to have the bed put into the bedroom sooner cause it’s cold out here, not sleeping wise just during the day. I’m considering taking a chair and a folding table and my laptop into the office and staying in there, but we’ll see, it’s not exactly always warm inside either cause we’ve still got a few windows open we can’t exactly get to right now.

Granted the weather channel says its only 41 but it feels like 34. Not sure if I should be cold or not, but considering it’s been 60 to 80 for the past month or so 40 degrees is chilly. I might go get the space heater we bought for the bathroom to sit near me so I can stay out of my bed. I’ve already gone back to bed for a few hours cause I was chilly, and I wasn’t feeling well. Though I didn’t get nearly as nauceous as I did yesterday so hopefully my nerves are calming down now that we’ve got the carpet in.

I still can’t beleive we’ll be in the house by the weekend.

Baby & House News

Friday, December 2nd, 2005

Had a doctors appointment today. All is going well. Doctor told me that if I’m dialated around Christmas time he can induce. He said we didn’t have to, it didn’t matter to him. I told him as long as she’s not born on Christmas I don’t care. So we might have our little one with us on Christmas, how cool would that be. I will be seeing the doctor on a weekly basis now.

Earlier today, the guy who is installing our carpet stopped by with the padding and carpet. He will install it on Monday. Yay! Tuesday I will clean the desks and check for mold or anything and clean the crib, so we can get them all moved in over the course of the week and hopefully by next weekend we’ll be in the house again. Yay!

Roof and Carpet

Thursday, November 17th, 2005

We got the Roof on the house two days ago. Yay!

We have carpet people coming Monday or Tuesday to measure the house for carpet, then two to three weeks before it gets installed, but we are getting closer yay!

We are having a painting and tear out party on Saturday. Shea’s finishing the bedroom walls today and the bathroom walls too. Then it’ll be paint the panelling and get the living room, small bathroom and kitchen sheet rock cut and torn out and ready to be fixed up. Hopefully we’ll have a kitchen shortly after we get into the house… hopefully … maybe even before… that would rock!