I REALLY HATE DEMO!!!

I have to apologize for the horrible pictures. I took them with my new fancy-schmancy cell phone and then I E-Mailed them to myself.  Well it is hard to make them bigger without pix-elating them. I never claimed to be a compute genius. 

So I decided early in this project that I was going to replace all of the 2-wire electrical with Romex that is actually grounded.  I guess that was an easy decision when all of the wire was BEHIND the walls and I couldn't see it but when I started tearing into stuff it became quite obvious that this was going to be a bigger challenge than I had first anticipated. This house had been rewired at some time and upgraded up from knob and tube. 

In order to do the laundry room I had to tear out the living room wall which was the point of origin that the wiring had come from. So her is what you get when you tear out:

1 layer of ceiling tile

1 layer of 1 by boards

1 layer of 3/8 drywall

1 layer of lathe and plaster.

Yes, you read that right, there was 4 layers of material. And a million pounds of dust! It was horrible! 

Then I did something that might now have been the best decision. I decided that we do NOT need a dumpster and we could bag it up and take it to my work and put it into two 2-yard dumpsters. What a dumbass move on my part. I am going to leave it at that. 

I had my buddy come out and run the electricity up to the new laundry room and I am finishing putting in the outlets and switches. I should be hanging drywall this weekend. There is a God. 

I had a little side project that I must show off!

The heat wave is starting to break here in the Midwest and I am still diligently working on the laundry room. Without being overly optimistic I think I actually have everything demo'ed out of that area and I am actually starting to put  things back together. I did do a small side project that I forgot to share!!!  


I do live in a farm house THAT HAS NO FRONT PORCH....... yet! But I am mildly obsessed with porch swings. Well.....more that mildly obsessed. But what is a girl to do who wants a porch swing that has no porch??? First you find this gem on Craigslist:

Crappy pic I know! This was one of those glider thingy's. The kind of one that had a frame that it sat in. So when I called the nice lady that lived in a less than desirable neighborhood about her swing (wood seat), she said that she would take $15.00 dollars for it. WHAT?? I WILL BE RIGHT THERE!! 


Normally I L-O-V-E me some Craigslist! Love, Love, Love Craigslist!!! But I hate when you pull up to a house and wonder if this is your last day on earth.  Yes Craigslist can take you to creepy places.


I get there and buy the swing seat thingy and tell the nice lady in the bad end of town that I am leaving all the frame that is suppose to go with it. She didn't seem to mind but she wanted to know what I was going to do with the seat without the glider. So I explained to her, while watching for random gunfire, that I was going to paint it and hang it up. She just stared at me and said, "To each there own." Snagged the money and went back in the house. The whole thing was very strange.

So here is my swing that Big L and his buddy Cody hung up for me in a walnut tree on the other side of the driveway. I sit here all the time. It faces across the road where there is no work to be done. It is shady. It is comfy. I love it






The break down in cost is: Swing $15.00 Paint $10.00, Chains rated at 800 pounds $60.00. Watching Big L and Cody climb 20 feet up in the tree to place the chains..............PRICELESS!

~~~~~Heat Wave~~~~~~ and back to home improvement.

I live in the Midwest. I have lived here most of my life with the exception of a couple of rebellious years of living in California straight out of high school. I live in the same town that my parents lived when I was born and I am the 5th generation to this town so I guess I can say that I am a true "Midwesterner"

If you are not from here, well let me tell you that we are in the middle of a heat wave and a drought. It is hot...it is dry.......it is unbearable at best. But Midwesterners are stoic. Nobody complains. You go somewhere and you hear, "Sure is hot out there" or "Is it hot enough for you?" and when you leave there is the obligatory, "Stay cool"

I try to be stoic and I think I do a pretty good job for the most part but I haven't been doing much home improvement because all I have been doing is demo and no improvement, I know you got to do demo to be able to put stuff back together, but I am sick of it. I feel like if I was going to blog I would just end up bitching about more demo so I  decided that I wasn't going to write anything until I had something positive to say.

Then the heat wave happened. A perfect excuse to not do anything outside on the farm. I decided I was going to work 1 hour a day on my project and I was NOT going to start anything else until I get the laundry room done. Magically things are actually getting done this way! Seriously. I start working on it after work and I tell myself that I just need to tear stuff apart for 1 hour. Well I am actually starting to put stuff back together and I should be hanging sheetrock this weekend. Hallelujah!

I might mention that I picked one of the hardest rooms to do first. I tore out and rebuilt an exterior wall, (never  framed before), I put in new windows (never done that before), Laid blocks for a foundation (never done that before) Put in new floor joists (Never done that before), Installed subfloor (Do I really need to say it?) I haven't even covered electrical or plumbing yet.

So I am I think I had a pretty big learning curve but thank God I rarely stop and think before I do anything or else I would haven't accomplished half of everything I have done with in my life.