Well, I woke up this morning and this is what I saw. It is just a dusting and not the 1-4 inches they said we might get. I am happy with this as I was more than ready for spring. It is going to be in the 40's today so this is melting as I write this.

Below you see the huge, old garage that came with this property. Between me and the garage you see a small sidewalk forming a square. Inside that square is where we are going to put our garden. We are going to set six 4x4 posts to start. Four corners and two for a gate in the foreground. I am going to put in a normal 48 inch chain link fence gate. At first we are going to fence it in with some wire fencing and steel posts where needed. Later it will get an all white picket fence. With all the stuff that I need to do in the house I can't justify doing more in the garden this season. At least we are going to have one so I can can vegetables this year. My sister has a mantis tiller but it is in the shop at the moment. Hopefully it will be fixed and I can till this up soon.

Waking up to heavy breathing

I didn't sleep well last night. I finally got to sleep around 1:oo. Around 6:30 this morning I wake up to the sound of heavy breathing. I roll over and this is what I see.

Of course this was taken in the past as I didn't have the camera in bed with me....but you get the idea. So I slowly and with some grumpiness get up. I know she needs to go out. By the time we take care of morning business I realize I might at well make some coffee and get up.

While the coffee is brewing I slowly turn on lights and hit the furnace for a little heat. I head into my bedroom and this is what I find.

She gets me up and then goes back to sleep in my bed!! Tim and I think this is our house....wrong....it belongs to Pepper, she just allows us to live here.

I need more coffee.......

Have a great Thursday,

Kim

A little of home.....

This is Kim posting for the first time to our new blog! So much as been going on in our lives and even though we are in the middle of some major remodeling, I think I am ready to start sharing my life again.

Tim has been posting about the shape the house is in.....I am not going to that dark corner of the world today....I'm kidding, I am falling in love with this little old cottage like home. I plan on taking some time this coming weekend to get a picture of Tim and I to share. I know when I visit my favorite blogs it is so much better to have a face to go with the stories.

This morning I realized that there are some small things around here that even though they are not much, they make me feel just little bit closer to getting my "home" back. One surprise is some flowers are blooming outside the front porch.

My sun catchers are up, even though the outside window is a hot mess....please excuse that for now. I am!

I have one window....one with actual blinds and a curtain! Can you tell I haven't been getting out much? LOL

I walk into my bedroom and see this. The Princess, Pepper is resting.

That is how I looked last night after a full day of cleaning, trying to organize some of the chaos and painting. I guess I better get back to work. Have a great day.

Kim

Water and sewer problems

Well we got lucky when we moved here and didn't have to many problems with this old house. Let me give you a short back story, This house has been shut up for about four years or more and we were nervous about turning on the gas and water. Everything seemed to be working OK, then I hooked up the washer. About the second load, water started filling up in the bathtub and the water in the toilet was getting sucked down. Not to mention that there was an access point at ground level at the back of the house that was not sealed and it was spewing sewage into the yard. One call to the local plumber and he had a machine over here grinding its way to the main sewer out under the street. The sewer runs fine now but I have a wet spot out in the yard near the garage.

At one time there was a mobile home behind this house. I guess it was rental property or something. There is a sewer pipe leading off that access point heading in that direction about six inches below ground. There is also a cable T.V. line running under the ground heading in that direction. So it is safe to assume that there are gas and water lines going out there too. The gas is not hooked up going out there because the meter it not hooked up for it. I don't smell sewage there so I am assuming that the water line that was for that trailer is still out there and leaking out under the ground. At the moment I can't afford to have it looked at as I haven't gotten my first pay check from work yet. I thought about finding someone with a metal detector to see where to dig but I don't know anyone that has one. If its PVC that wont work. I will more than likely have to crawl under the house and see where they hooked it up at. there is only one meter that I know of so I'm guessing that they hooked it up from the house line somewhere. I'll know how bad it is when I get the first water bill.

Wish me luck!

The Color Scheme

Here is an update on the work in progress that is our little house. We picked "The Crimson Kitchen" as a blog title for a couple of reasons. No matter where we live, we will always be Alabama Crimson Tide fans. The other reason is that we are painting the kitchen a combination of red apple crimson, White and grey. I don't have anything painted grey yet but here is how the kitchen cabinets are looking.

I have about a good two to three days work left to get the doors and drawers done and I still have to finish the back splash and window trim. We are getting there a little at a time. The red will continue onto the walls throughout the kitchen and dinning room. There will be bead board painted grey with a gloss white chair rail on top of that. A white baseboard, and the red will be above the chair rail painted on some embossed wallpaper. I think we are also going to put some white crown molding at the top. Last we are going to paint the insides of the cabinets and drawers the same grey that will be on the walls. topping all of this off will be a grey speckled counter top. We can't wait to get the kitchen and dinning room done as we are tired of doing dishes in a bathroom sink.

The Begining

Well, here we are. Where do you start? We decided that the lower kitchen counter that houses the sink and the three drawer one to the left of it had to go. We found out through a friend of my fathers that there was an Amish cabinet outlet about 2 hours north of here where you could buy cabinets around half price. So we headed up there and bought two to replace the ones that I mentioned. We only paid $75.00 a piece for them when they normally would be over $200.

The kitchen back splash was a nasty, out dated, sorta tile mosaic, so I knocked that down and had my carpenter buddy put up bead board there. We added a couple of outlets as the only outlet there was mounted under the cabinet and had an outlet bar plugged into it. There is a recessed light over the sink but we could not find the switch for it anywhere. My carpenter friend Sean found it mounted under the cabinet so he put in a new box on the wall and installed a new switch.

The Washer and dryer are in the kitchen and that was giving us grief, we thought about later building out the side patio into a sort of utility room but then we decided to just enclose it into a closet with a pair of bi fold doors. here it is waiting to be closed up.

Last for now, the range hood was a nasty green color. We looked into just replacing it but we found that the cheapest one we found was going to cost around $168.00 so I got this great idea to sand it and paint it. I went to the local auto parts store and bought a spray can of gloss black engine enamel. It worked like a charm.

It turned out great but there is one problem. I forgot to cover it up and tape it off when I started painting the cabinets above it. Yea, I gotta take it down and re-paint it. At least I know that my idea worked. I don't have a picture of it after I ruined it and I probably won't take one either. Why share my pain?

Peace!

We're Here!

Here we go folks, the start of the great adventure that I really have no name for yet. The money pit was already taken by a movie. I am behind in posts even as I start as the pictures in the first post are weeks old. Bear with us as we get this going.

Here we are unloading the truck at our little piece of heaven.

Here I am pulling up the For Sale sign.

OK now the fun part is over. Here is what we walked into. Before I put up pictures let me say this. We thank the Lord up above that we have a furnace and central air that works, electricity that needs just outlet and switch changes, running water that isn't running in too many places where we don't want it, and a NEW roof over our heads.

With all that said, we just stepped back into 1972. The entire house is done up in paneling and painted wallpaper from that era not to mention the half measures of a previous attempted remodel. We have our work cut out for us for sure. One of the main issues prior to us buying this house was that there had been a water line break in the kitchen and water damage from that break. Someone had fixed the break but the damage was already done. This house was an estate sale and one of the heirs made an attempt at repairs. I said attempt didn't I? Well he replaced the roof and it was done professionally, but that's where the professionalism started and stopped.

The sub floors in front of the kitchen counter were replaced with 3/4 inch plywood but it was not new wood. it will be OK but there are some places where floor leveler will have to be used to fill gaps. as you follow the repaired floor down the water damage you find sub floor replaced in the living room too. Here 3/4 inch was not used as they tried to keep the floor level for carpet installation. They used half inch chip board and it bends and dips as you walk on it. The whole thing sits on floor joists that he jacked up, none to the same height as the others, so it looks like a roller coaster ride in the living room.

Yea, we have our work cut out for us. here are some of the before pictures that I have uploaded.

That is mold from the water leak that you see on the sink cabinet. The doors were useless also as they had swollen and were warped. We went to Arthur Illinois to the Amish warehouse and bought a new sink cabinet and the one to the left of it for $75.00 a piece. A buddy of mine is a carpenter and he replaced them for us. You can get a whole kitchens worth of cabinets up there for about half price or less. What a deal!

That's about all I have for now but stay tuned because this is going to be a neat little house when we are done with it.

Finally! We moved!

Yea you heard me, we actually lost our minds and moved! This is also the home of our new blog as the old one expired and you have to pay now to use it. It was a company out of England anyway so the customer service left a good bit to be desired for the money spent.

Anyway, Welcome to our new home. I will start this out with a short explanation of the events that took place to get us where we are now. One day last summer my wife Kim came in from outside down in Alabama and said " My goodness its hot outside, lets move somewhere where it snows!" To which I replied, " I'm a truck driver, I can get a job anywhere, where do you want to move to?" She goes," how about Wisconsin or Minnesota?" "What?" I said. Then she says "Well it snows there don't it?" I said " Yea but after it snows there you can walk around on top of it at minus 18 degrees for three or four months!" So I talked here into moving to my home town in southern Illinois. That conversation took place way back in June of 2008 and we finally moved in mid February.

Let me say this about selling one house and buying another one three states away, that was one of the hardest and most stressful things that I have ever undertook. I don't foresee us doing that again in any near future. We sat there waiting for the buyers to get financed for three and a half months. The day finally came and I have some pictures of the house as we emptied everything we owned into a rental truck.

Not much left.

Pepper has had enough. Time to go.

I didn't take any pictures on the move and it was pretty much just a long boring ride. Stay tunes as we get going with fixing up out little house. Oh I didn't mention that did I?

We have to remodel the house we are moving into as soon as we get there. We are going to live in the back two bedrooms and remodel the front of the house. Later we will reverse it and remodel the back of the house. This is going to be great fun kids.