Fall is coming

Yikes, tomorrow is FALL!

That just means lots to do around the money pit! We have already had a fire in the furnace, so that is up to speed! We began the surprisingly simple task of switching to insulated ducting. It was also incredibly cheaper than we had expected it to be. We are 90% done with that project. We need to run two new lines (for some reason we have 2 rooms with no direct heat vent???) and then decide what to do with all the uninsulated duct we have now! The difference was noticeable immediately, decreased noise and it feels warmer coming out. That should help out with our coal and wood use!

We also have the siding to finish the window project. It takes us DIY-ers a while to COMPLETE things LOL! But we should start work on that this week. We ordered some extra because there are a few other places that look terrible, even painted.

I should point out that when I say WE, I really mean hubby!!! I am busy painting my Parents house. Trying to get as much done as possible. It is going to look fabulous, but needed a LOT more scraping than I realized! Now I see the lure of vinyl... It may fade, but there is NO SCRAPING!

I will be working on my garden spaces too, the pumpkins need to get picked & the rest needs to get put to bed for the winter!

Hope everyone has a happy first day of Fall!!!

Been a while

There are lots of things going on at the Money Pit lately.


Painting - Momma got a new toy! It's a Wagner Paint Crew Plus Paint Sprayer #515010. It's my early Christmas present. Plus a must have for the amount of painting I will be doing before the snow flies.

• As much of our house's exterior as possible with the paint I have on hand
• My parent's house's exterior (future "Our" house)
• A couple interior ceilings
• Finish the trim for the bathroom the easy way!
  

We created a very nice outdoor eating area on the side porch. I would love this to be a 3 season enclosed porch, but I don't think that's going to happen now. We will paint & re-screen before the white stuff & we are going to use corrugated plastic to cover the windy end to keep the snow & wind off the porch over winter. It may not be the prettiest option, but it's the cheapest/best option at this point. If we get the screen up we'll be able to use it for all the warm days!




More of that painting, but this we me using a paint brush on a very tall wobbly ladder. It needs touch-ups before we screen, but it's not bad!

Boy do we have ugly gutters. It's a next year project, we're going to go around the corner from here. It never made sense that they didn't.






The hot tub! It's not frugal, but it's fun! It was also FREE (so sort of frugal, definitely cheap), except for the wiring, circuits, chemicals, and replacement for broken part... But $160 is not bad for a 400 gallon hot tub (oh yeah & 3 beers for the guys who helped move it).

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Lumber Liquidators Overstock Sale

Bellawood Brazilian Cherry for $2.99 a square foot... nice.

Property Surveillance

My husband is very interested in surveillance cameras. He plans on installing a set as soon as our budget will allow. His reasons include keep an eye on the kids, keep an eye on our property, and make sure the obnoxious neighbors don't trespass. This type of surveillance is important to me because we moved our bedroom to a different floor and the baby monitor seems to be working, I'm a little nervous for what the future holds (teenagers)! This could possible earn us an insurance discount and increase our peace of mind.

The 4 camera home surveillance system seems to be perfect. This is supposedly the hottest selling system they supply, I can see why. The price seems decent enough, $279 for 4 indoor/ outdoor cameras, DVR PCI card, 4 cables, 4 power adapters and an installation CD (who needs that?!). You can even review the feed remotely, nanny cam anyone! This system has the ability to view 1 real time feed or 2 to 4 non real time feeds. I'd just have to find an open PC slot, hmm, interesting!

There are a variety of 4 camera security systems available. From professional, business, bullet or dome cameras, 30 FPS to 120 FPS. The systems can be expanded to meet your needs. Sun Security located in Florida, offers a 100% one year warranty against defective materials and workmanship. Or a full refund within 30 days if you aren't satisfied with their system.

Painting the Money Pit

We began with the front porch 2 years ago and that's where it had ended. I was going to get to the side porches but just didn't.

But in prep of getting the hot tub from my parents house I had to fill the cracks in the block foundation of the side porch and painted it. So I just kept going.

I am hoping to get the lower part done this year all the way around, including the 2 other porches, at least as far up as I can reach. Not sure if we'll get the paint sprayer I want or not, but either way I'll get to what I can.

I was the one up on the ladder! I had to scrape off the old nasty peeling paint under the gutters. Of course being on a ladder is why there is only a little patch done! As you can see we still haven't finished the siding from replacing the window. I just didn't want to put up what was there, but I think I'm going to have to give in.


This hole has been next to the basement door since who knows when, long before we bought the house. It looked like there had been several patch attempts but not with the right stuff, so we picked up a bag of morter mix & hubby spent an hour "doing it right." At least what we think is right & looks nice. The next step will be to build up the rest and paint! The hole went all the way through along the door

A room fit for a Princess

Downstairs Bedroom Before

Or after we moved all our bedroom stuff upstairs...

Cool sites for DIY Women !

How To:

Mrs. Fixit
Be Jane



Right tools for the job:

Barbara K

The prettiest toolbox ever!!!



Tom Boy Tools My kind of "party" based business!

DIY 2008 Inside the Home Builders Show

Wish I could find it on the website to link to it! There were so many cool new products discussed on the show! Like the flat wire you can use to hard wire a sconce in place with out having to rip up the wall, the twisted wrench so you could get more torque out of it, my fave was the cordless drill powered scaffold mover. Not sure what the weight limit was on it, but wouldn't that just be cool, no more up & down!

We picked up a pneumatic nailer kit & air compressor. I'll have pics to add later. Hubby was testing out the framing nailer & apparently it is quiet handy...

We also attended a local Home & garden show this weekend. It was OK. Most of the vendors were selling patio stones or cheap windows. We talked to a lot of the window guys, but I'm not sure we should have! The windows we need replaced all seem to be a hair larger than the ones they offer for their "show" price. Besides the fact that 75% of the draft comes in around the windows & not through them I'm not sure just going with replacements will help us in the long run. We did talk to some srpay foam insulators, we are looking to utilize that product in our crawl spaces, they are quiet drafty!

We picked up a bunch of seeds & some peat pots for the garden & set the planting dates, now I just need to prepare the pots & find an area that will be warm & safe! So far we have Beefsteak tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, jalapeno peppers, green peppers, sweet peppers, zucchini, pumpkin, lettuce, carrots, sunflowers, beans, peas, watermelon, pole beans, & corn. Not sure if I missed anything, but I'm sure I did!!!

Hubby started to insulate the duct work. We had started this project last year with the intention of buying a pack of insulation everytime we went to the Home store. But... I guess we forgot! We picked up 3 packages today & wrapped the ducts above the furnace & the long duct to our son's room. Next time we will wrap the duct to our room I think.

Now that we have the nailers & warmer weather may be just around the corner I am hoping to get the bathroom finished downstairs. We still need to finish installing the trim. I am prepainting it, so really we are waiting on me! And the cabinet hubby is going to build so I will have storage for stuff like towels, I know it's a novel idea for a bathroom!!!

That's about all that's going on in THIS old house!!!

Can't believe I'm writing this...

Not because I think there is anything wrong with these, but hey I'm a chick!

I guess if I were looking for such a thing I'd go to a site like Enlargement World Reviews.

The extender review was especially interesting. Again, chick here! So I won't be cliche & say it doesn't matter to us, ok so maybe a little, but a very little. I can think a a few products that wouldn't cost the $300 that could help greatly. Bottle of wine (or 2)...

I really have been amazed at the popularity of the "male enhancement" pill phenomenon. I'd check out sites like male enhancement reviews before I ingested something. But then I read somewhere that the Japanese have a "female" enhancing cookie. So to each his or her own!!!

Not too much going on

We have been watching a lot of "Holmes on Homes" on Discovery Home lately. Not sure if that is a good thing for a do it yourself-er, but we are getting a lot of ideas!!! And a lot of what to do when we have to hire a contractor!!!

Furniture Shopping

I have been shopping for ideas for setting up our bedroom upstairs. I'd love to buy new bedroom furniture but it is a little out of the budget. We really do need a bed though, and a new mattress. Maybe if we get this extra tax rebate... I'd love a canopy style, but we just don't have the ceiling height for it. Of course we could but that is another ceiling demo & repair.

While browsing this website I hopped over to dining room furniture. I am going to have a hard time deciding what to buy for the dining room, once it is finished. Right now we are using a lawn sale find that we painted black. It's style isn't anything that we would choose, but $5 is $5! I have looked at sets before & finding one in the showroom that I like all the pieces of is hard. The "Westminster" set appeals to me but then I'm not sure if leather is a good choice for us. It does have the feel of the wood panels that are in the living room, almost library-esq though.

I would love to pick up a convertible sofa so we would have an option for guests. The princess has requested the full size bed we picked up for the guest room to replace her twin bed. So I will have a twin bed for guests, but that is limiting (just a little!). All of the options at this site seem way too modern for our house. I'd really like something with recliners as well. We might as well go for total comfort.

Master Bedroom 2008 Goals

We are planning on moving upstairs by the spring, so hubby has decided we will turn our room into a TV Family room. The wall we have our closet on will make a nice back drop for the 65 inch flat panel he wishes he could have... Maybe some day before our children give us grandchildren! LOL!

So the To Dos in here are:

move everything out
Take out partition wall in closet, fix wall, paint
Remove closet shelving, install upstairs
New window treatments
overhead lighting
finish ceiling, drywall, paint

Upstairs:
Change hot water lines
Remove old washer lines
Remove old furnace
2 New windows
Electric Fireplace
Move Furniture that is upstairs around
Move Furniture upstairs

The great thing about this is that we are giving ourselves a HUGE master suite upstairs. My sewing stuff is going to be set up in half of the kitchen. The counter & sink area will make a perfect coffee center & wet bar area. The old dining room will be where we put our bed, tv & fireplace (electric with a mantel). The living room is where the desk is & the computer will go there too. The bedroom will get my closet shelving, house our extra bed & storage until we figure out where it will go permanently. We will have our own bathroom too.

All we really have to do besides move stuff is to run a duct line upstairs. There is already a duct we will use as a guide to run the new one. Figure it'll cost about $75.

Front Room 2008

The Front room of the house is unclear in it's purpose to us, it appears to be a very large foyer. Right now we are using it as a dinning room, mostly because the dinning room has our couch & TV in it. But since we are moving the Master Bedroom upstairs, we will be converting that to the TV/Family room. Then the Front Room goes back to entry & sitting room. We'd like to install an electric fireplace to add atmosphere, but I'm not sure that is a 2008 goal.

We already painted this room's walls.

So what we need to do this year:
Refinish Floor
Remove Dropped Ceiling
Run Electric for 2 ceiling fans
Tin Look Paper on ceiling
Paint Ceiling
Start working on Box panels for ceiling
Crown Molding
Re-build book shelves

Bathroom #4

We picked up the new vanity, faucet, light fixtures & floor tiles. It took 2 days but everything is installed. The hardest part was removing all the stuff to lay the floor. That & the 3 trips to the store to return stuff & get something we forgot, like floor leveler & return the 8" center set faucet (oops, but we liked it soooo much better, why did we think we could make it work??), and to buy a countersink drill bit (can't you just feel the eye roll!).

The faucet is a Pegasus Oil Rubbed Bronze 4" centerset.

The vanity was just a 30" value pack, I bought different hardware than what came with. The ones that came with were ok, but they are brushed nickel.

We changed the floor to a 12" slate. The coloration of the 18" was just too close to the color of the kitchen floor, too matchy matchy for me!

We also picked up a curved shower curtain rod. Nice! I took my first shower & was like WOW, this tub isn't as tiny anymore!!! It isn't oil rubbed bronze but the curtain rings are & you barely notice the rod.

I have to go pick out some wallpaper & paint sometime. I despise wallpaper but there is really no other way to cover all the flaws in the walls. I'll be looking for something that looks textured but is neutral. We'll do the ceiling too, different paper, so that the rooms look like one.

Kitchen 2008 Goals

Tis the season for resolutions & goals! So I'm going to do our room by room.

Finish stove wall cabinetry & counter, lighting under cabinet
Back splash
Paint wainscoting
Crown molding
Finish ceiling, figure out piecing over doorway
Replace 2 windows
Hardware for cabinets & drawers
Replace door
Level floor in basement
Paint walls
Paint ceiling

Bathroom #3

This area used to be a closet. I removed the paneling to turn it around to eliminate the ridges & found an old doorway. At least this door was removed & insulated. We have one in the back apartment that was just sided over from the outside, so the living room has a door to nowhere. Any ways this room makes more sense to me now, it was an entry. I just never understood why a 2400 square foot apartment had an 8 x 7 bathroom.

This is our floor choice it is an 18" peel & stick tile. I'd love to lay real tile but that will happen when we do the gut, mostly because we'll have to pull up the floor when we do the tub & toilet.

Before:


After:

Bathroom # 2

Bathroom after painting & replacing the old fixtures. We need to add crown. The light fixture, sink vanity & faucet are getting replaced this weekend. Out of necessity & desire. The old faucet is starting leak & the porcelain handles are junk. The sink is too small we are replacing it with a 30" cabinet & vanity. I'm not sure about the light fixture, I guess whatever I see & like.
The heat lamp/exhaust fan is now hard wired into the wall switch, instead of being a pull chain, woohoo!
There used to be a wall to the right of the door, now it's gone. I thought I wanted a half wall to block the toilet from the door but when we took out the upper part the lower was so wobbly it had to go. The walls were weird. This room was an addition, probably from the 50s when they converted to apartments. The wall was sideways studs, lathe, drywall, plaster, paneling, wallpaper... GOODNESS! As heavy as the pieces were you'd have thought the wall would be more sturdy.

We still need to redo the chair rail & base molding. The door trim was painted white & started to flake during our work. I'd love to take it back to wood, but that is a lot of paint stripping.

Minor Bathroom work

Before we ripped out a wall, took down the drop ceiling & fixed the electric:
After putting up some paneling. We tried to strip the wallpaper & smooth it out but there was no hope. We will eventually be doing a total gut job so good enough is fine for now.
Believe it or not the switch plate is level! Guess we should have been more concerned with plumb.
Another pic of the paneling
We primed & painted the paneling, good enough to get us through the holidays