Phew, I hate to be that chick but I am glad the holidays are over. After the last seven months working on the house taking days off from my day job to NOT work on the house turned into a rather trying experience all in all. Not to mention the holidays are just exhausting so after the parties I wasn’t exactly springing to go work on the house, more like crawling my way to my bed. However, I have accomplished quite a lot in the house over the past month since my last entry. Many things are pretty basic “tying up loose ends” kinds of things. I have all of my outlets, switches and lights installed that I can install before we cover the ceilings with bead board (which is basically everything on all three floors! yay!). I have two more lines to run when it comes to the electrical – both I have been procrastinating on because one actually includes three enormous (and very expensive) lines for the on-demand-hot-water-heater that’s going to be a major pain in the ass and the other is finally hooking our well up and seeing if it works or else we have to have it replaced…. ugh. I’m tying up the plumbing as well, getting the showers installed, getting all the pex connected and getting the manifolds where the main water comes in installed and finished. We picked up ten sheets of beadboard (at $20 a sheet *facepalm*) from Menards two weekends ago and Joe started covering the master bedroom. It looks just wonderful!! In the picture the grain from the wood makes it hard to see, but it does actually look like real beadboard and I can’t wait to see it after we paint it! All of the ceilings throughout the house will be beadboard but I decided (because of the slant) to just take it all the way down the walls in the master bedroom/in the entire second floor.

Joe actually managed to stay up to midnight with me on new years eve but this is him every night with Diesel after supper by 8pm… They’re pretty cute actually and most of the time I don’t pout about him being asleep that early every night but I usually work on the house until 7 after my day job so it means I really only get an hour or two with him (when he’s conscious) every night – if I’m lucky. Meanwhile I also got the two electric heaters installed in the basement (sorry forgot to take pics of them) so the house is now ALWAYS above 30 degrees! And, considering its -11 out right now that’s pretty exciting! Next is getting the other three heaters installed throughout the house so we’re not so dependent on the wood stove. From there we can get the water running and any leaks taken care of and then the basement insulated. From there I actually can’t think of anything else besides drywall, trim and paint… wow, we’re actually almost there.

Do you see those pretty purple and pink flowers in the above picture? Those are called Morning Glories and they do not come back every year. In fact, they need to be planted every year or they won’t exist. My Grandma Charlotte and her daughter (my aunt Sharon) planted morning glories beside my grandma’s house for the last decade but, of course, last spring no Morning Glories were planted because we started gutting the house and Grandma was gone. I made a promise that some spring soon (maybe even next spring!) Sharon and I would plant Morning Glories for Grandma and then I put it completely out of mind as I was gutting the house kind of busy. And then I saw them beside the front step, rising out of the mess of demolition and house dirt as pretty as could be for no reason at all. And then I saw all of our drain pipes after it was dropped off with her name on every one of them and I knew Grandma was reminding me that she was looking out for us. Thanks Grandma 🙂