Please let me know what you really think.

Move your curson over the image, click the bar and answer the questions to modify my daemon. And if you haven't read the Golden Compass books that this comes from, get out there and do it!

Oh my GOD! The floors are beautiful, just beautiful. I've been waxing poetic for days about the beauty of our wood floors. To think, such beauty was hidden under all that grime and scratches. I'm sure there is a message about life in general in the transformation of our floors.

Yes! the house is begining to come together, but there is still quite a bit more to do. We begin the floor refinishing project tomorrow, and after that we can move in. Only another 2 weeks or so. Yay!

The kitchen wall has been repaired, the cabinets re-hung, and the walls in the living room, kitchen and hall have been painted. I am very fond of the colors, though they were controversial and seemed too active at first. But after a week the colors settled in and it looks great. I wonder if you can appreciate them here.




You can see the 3 shades of gold we worked with. The living room walls are Gold Buff, the Kitchen is Brown Mustard (the darker shade) and the ceillings are Spice something-or-other. I love the names they come up with.

And here is a picture of the living room wall and the fireplace, which we will be painting a lovely reddish brown color called "fragrant clove".

Ah, this is a wonderful card, reflecting my wonder-ful state of mind today

You scored as The World. You are The World. Reaching a state of complete happiness -- Rapturous joy -- Sheer happiness dancing through life Ultimate fulfilment, reaching your life's goal. These cards are from The Victorian Romantic Tarot. It's based on original Victorian engravings, some of which are now rare. </td> The World 92% The High Priestess 83% The Sun 83% Temperance 83% Star 67% The Lovers 67% The Devil 50% The Fool 50% The Empress 42% Which Victorian Romantic Tarot card are you? created with QuizFarm.com

We got the key to our new home on Friday. We finally saw the house empty, and what a mess, it was hard to gauge how much we would really need to do to make the house livable when it was full of furniture kids and dogs (4 dogs!). We were happy to find the house did not stink of dog, very happy. But then Alex opened the door to the one carpeted room in the house and announced he had found the dog stink. We pulled up that carpet on Saturday and now there is no smell. This is the family room, sans carpet, which will be the media/entertainment room.





The kitchen cabinets need to come down so we can fix the compromised load bearing wall. We are temporarily stimied as to how to get them all down. We got the glass doors off but it seems the 4 cabinets are connected somehow, so Tom will do something creative to get the one big unit down.




There are many half finished projects in this house. The surround sound system is one of them. Here is where I think the speaker controls were to go in the master bedroom.






Most of the electrical outlets lack covers, and the moulding is missing from many doors, windows and floors. But, in some rooms there is a lot of architectural detail, such as Alex's room.




Notice the crown moulding and the stripes below the moulding mid wall. The crown moulding has lots of detail which you can't see here, but the wood is all unfinished, and it shows. Again, projects started but never finished.

Another interesting room is the small bedroom, this will become my very own art/craft/retreat room. But we need to paint it. A little Pooh goes a long way.











Did I mention that there were 4 dogs? I'm not sure when the backyard was last cleaned up--but I started at the far side wall, and got as far as the bag near the back fence and gave up for the day. There seems to be one pile-o-poo per square foot.




With all those dogs, there is also dog hair, everywhere. I was cleaning the stove and found dog hair, cleaning the fridge, dog hair inside. So far, no sign of fleas. That's good.

And here is the fireplace, notice the soot. We'l be seeking the help of a mason and chimney sweep.



Ah, but look at this, the view out the master bedroom




We love this tree, and have set up our chairs in the shade for a retreat and rest from the work of remodeling and gardening. The garden in front is very nice, but full of weeds now. I was motivated to pull out most of them yesterday, especially the thistles which I wanted to get before they went to seed and spread throughout the neighborhood. There's few things worse than finding a thistle growing in your lawn. Usually it's discovered by a bare foot.

While I was driving home from our new home yesterday I noticed a strange feeling in my heart. What was it? Oh, happiness! Sheer happiness! What joy.

Hurray, the transaction finally closed and I am now deeply in debt. Will soon post a picture of us and the "sold" sign!

This is a GoogleEarth view of our neighborhood. You'll have to click on the picture above for a larger view. The pin is set near our house, we are very close to the elementary school, and the school is right up next to a 40 acre park.

Here is a picture of our new house. The sale does not close till June 30th, and I am so anxious to stop waiting, and start working. The house needs lots of work, and i'd like to move in by August. We'll save some work for later but will tackle the kitchen, floors and most painting before we move.

From left to right are the windows for the family room, which is up a few stairs from the front room and above the garage. The front room/living room, the front door, the small bedroom which will be my office/art room, and behind the tree our bedroom. We hope we can use this room for our bedroom, though the current tenants use the family room as the master bedroom. I'd like to have the extra general living space instead of a huge bedroom, though we may change our minds when we try to get our big bed in that room. I do like having that tree outside our bedroom window.




This is the most interesting, and daunting, repair. The previous owner decided to open the kitchen to the front room. Great idea, unfortunately he took down a load bearing wall to do that. We will remove the hanging cabinets, put in a beam which will bear the load, and replace the cabinets. Hopefully the cabinets will not hang down too low.

The kitchen floor looks nice in this photo, but it needs to be replaced too. Tom wants to put in a stone tile.




This is the living room. There are 4 dogs living in the house now, and they have scratched the floor so we will be refinishing it. We'll also pull up the carpet in the rest of the house (it smells of dog, hopefully that'll fix it) and if there is hardwood underneath we'll refinish that too. Otherwise new carpet in the bedrooms and family room.

The fireplace needs to be finished too. Not sure what happened to the stones on the hearth, but only half are there, and the platform in front of the fireplace itself is missing (not sure what this is called) so you see the sides of the raw bricks. The fireplace and chimney need some repair before we can use it. The bricks are all painted white, either we'll work with that color scheme or change it. We'll be repainting all the walls and want to do something besides white.




In this picture you can see the windows to the back bedroom, which Alex will use, the bathroom, the laundry room and second bath (back to back toilets--how handy) the kitchen (that would be the greenhouse window) and the back of the back of the living room. To the left, and not in the photo are the back door, which I hope to replace with a dutch door, we had one in our duplex and I really like them.

The kitchen is rather narrow, and in order to put in a deep refrigerator the owner cut a hole in the back of the house and added the tan colored bump you see here. I hope this is insulated well, and we will at the least put shingles on it to match the rest of the house. The back yard also shows that there are many dogs living there. Once we clean up all the poo we'll work on getting the lawn back in shape. Tom will be building his studio in the back to the far right in this photo. There is a nice flat space and the driveway comes right up to the back gate on this side so his gear load and unloads will be easier than now.

This house needs a lot of work, but we could not have afforded the neighborhood otherwise. And it is a great neighborhood, and will be a great house once we get the work done.

There is a large park nearby, and an even larger park beyond that. I'll post a picture of the neighborhood in the next entry.