Month: January 2012

Finally a productive weekend to share…

It’s been a while since I posted because we hadn’t done much around the house but this weekend we got a lot done.

First up on Saturday morning we went shopping.  We went over to AcMoore and got the antique maps my dad gave us framed (well we’ll get them in a few weeks – but we picked out frames and mats etc).  This was not cheap but we’re very excited to see how they look and they’ll be preserved now.  One is an old atlas (1905) of NH and the other is a survey map from 1892, it has our street before our house was built.  I’ll definitely show pictures when we get them back framed!

Then we headed over to babiesrus and bought a glider for the nursery (it has to be ordered) – so our first nursery purchase has been made!  We still haven’t picked out a crib set yet but since the nursery hasn’t even been demo’d yet we’re not in a rush 🙂  We had a 20% off coupon, hence the purchase of the glider!

Finally we finished up at home depot, buying the hardibacker for the master bathroom floor.  When we got home we got right to work, I moved all the oak flooring that was stacked in there and vacuumed, then Ryan put down the hardbacker.  Then I put up some plastic over the exposed part of the ceiling to keep insulation from dropping on anyone in there (1/2 of the ceiling hasn’t been demo’d at all yet).

hardibacker laid down ... we still have to remove the radiator when we really refinish this room so we just layed enough to make the room usable, on the right where it's still exposed is where I've now stacked all the oak floor we pulled up.
The ceiling covered
We'll probably put the head of the guest bed up against this wall. Very classy guest room 🙂

Once that was done we moved on to working on drawers for the built-ins (7 left to do).  This was quite a project, first we had to make the blocking for the hardware to hang on (so the drawers could slide out without hitting the doors), then we cut some of our poplar planks down to size and then planed it to 5/8″ (the hardware I bought only fits up to 5/8″ thick wood – oops).  This took a LONG time but once that was done we dado’d the boards (to slide the plywood bottoms in) and I got to work cutting the drawer pieces to length and pocket hole drilling them while Ryan installed the blocking and hardware slides in the cabinets themselves.

On Sunday we started making drawers, unfortunately they didn’t quite fit where they were planned to fit but they all fit someplace so 3 are done.  It’s possible we’ll have to cut the fronts and backs of one drawer fresh at the end from the one plank we have left.  Not sure why since the measurements aren’t different but something is off with one of them (the blank space).

3 more drawers done and installed (still need face frames but we're saving those for last)
4 more drawers ready to go!
The last cabinet, ready for the hardware to be hung!

The absolute worst part about all of this is that we have to hang the drawers to make sure they all fit properly etc.  However then we have to take off all the hardware so we can paint the built-ins – ugg!  But we’re getting close now, only 4 more drawers to make and the hard parts are done.

The rest of sunday we relaxed (ryan had work to do) so we put on some movies (ending the evening with Emma!) and I stitched.

Royalty ABC - I had previously finished the large queen stitched diamonds and backstitched row below it so Sunday I did the long arm row and then scrolled...
And this is the bulk of what I stitched on Sunday. The next part of the alphabet, a satin stitch design row and the start of the large flower. This is now page 3 of the design! More than halfway done!

I really love having some time to stitch again, it’s been so long and doing a piece like this where each row feels like a little ‘finish’ is really easy to pick up with just a little free time.

The only downside about this weekend was that poor Fitz got an eye infection (dogs can get pink eye evidently).  Luckily not contagious to humans, I felt bad for him and after a visit to the vet this morning he’s on antibiotic drops a couple times a day for a week.  It’s already clearing up and he’s definitely acting himself.  I’m undecided about daycare tomorrow (i need to call them and hear what they think) but might just postpone and do daycare on Thursday this week instead of Tuesday, give him more time to fight it off.  Even though he’s acting normal and definitely needs an energy outlet!

That was our weekend!  With 4 drawers left to build, face frames for all 10, then the doors to finish the built-ins are getting closer!  Let’s see what next weekend brings (besides the super bowl of course).

A day in the life (of Fitz)

Fitz is spoiled, he better enjoy it, i’m sure things will change once the baby comes!  But over the past 9 months that we’ve had Fitz he has been spoiled almost constantly.  The difference is that now he’s comfortable here and I think he’s starting to take advantage 🙂

Case in point: The couch.  At first there was a definite no couch rule.  Then occasionally Ryan would pull him up onto his lap for some petting.  Then it was my turn and I dragged him up once or twice when Ryan was working late and I wanted some company.  Finally last week after daycare he was whining (he wants to go up to his good bed when he’s tired) so I put his blanket (one of many) on the couch and ‘coaxed’ him up.  It didnt’ take long and now he’s comfortable jumping right up if invited (although he does sit for you first if you’re inviting him to make sure you want him).  So now he’s taking up 1/3 of the couch some nights between Ryan and I.  Oh boy!

Second point: Daycare.  It started to get him socialized (or keep him that way anyway) and he got agility class at the same place.  But I never knew how he was behaving at that daycare, couldn’t tell if he liked it (he just whined when we got there and when we left – I have no idea what that means).  So I found a nicer daycare (aka. more expensive) that he LOVEs (and I love because I can see how he is during the day – they send pictures) and I can spy on him when I drop him off/pick him up.  He is much less whiny (I told them when he whines he needs a break and I suspect they are giving him breaks to relax), and he still sleeps the whole next day without bothering me (bonus for me!).  Daycare once a week seems to be the key – again, once the baby comes this will stop (at least during my maternity leave – because the daycare is halfway to work).

Third point: Walks.  We’ve always taken long walks with him, but when we got him it was spring/summer.  As the weather got cooler (actually when I got pregnant) – walks got harder for me (I got sick after about a mile).  So he got shorter walks but almost every day he got to walk at least to the nearby park to mark all the trees.  There are days he doesn’t get to go and that happens more and more (freezing cold out/snowing/raining).  But even on days when I don’t want to walk far, I usually put him on the lead and we play ball for 10 minutes or so.  And lately I’ve resumed the walks even in the COLD weather because it’s good exercise for us both.  He loves the snow – so he got 20 minutes in the snow with his ball today which means I have to stay outside with him because if I go inside, he just sits and waits for me (and starts shaking if it’s cold out).  So again – spoiled.

That’s Fitz’s life.  I think it’s a drastic improvement over his life before he came to us as a stray.  We know we spoil him but he had 4+ years of who knows what so a year of spoiling is deserved – once the baby comes he’ll probably get a little less attention but hopefully he knows we love him (best dog in the world) 🙂

A little spackling

Last week (Thursday night) I managed to motivate myself to do a little spackling on the tvroom closet!  Got a skim coat on the left side plaster wall and taped the right wall.  The ‘corner’ has to be taped on the right and that’s going to be interesting with the curve but that’s for next time.  The ceiling also needs a lot of skim coats (the left wall needs a few skim coats as well).  This will be a slow project but at least progress was made!

Skim coat on the left hand wall
Taped the right hand wall

Fitz’s new daycare

Yes our dog goes to daycare – once a week to get his energy out and he loves it.  Well we decided in the new year to try out a new daycare – the Bark-o-lounge in Littleton.  Today is his first day and he’s already had a busy day playing with new friends.

Hey Fitzy boy
Meeting new friends 🙂
Getting introduced
And outside time
More friends
Actually pretty calm
And more friends

He is going to be exhausted tonight (and hopefully tomorrow when I’m working from home).  I really like this place, they send out emails with pictures during the day and have a facebook page to follow where they post some pics during the day as well.

Stomach bugs…

What a strange weekend we had.  Saturday I was feeling so much better from my cold finally so we worked on the house (knowing we had only one day this weekend since Ryan had a bunch of work work to do on sunday).  First we ran to the dump to drop off the final loads from last weekend, then over to pick up our new windows from Marvin.

Home again we decided to continue the demolition in the upstairs diningroom so we could put up the new wall for the hallway.  It was very messy demo due to the insulation in the ceiling and we only did half of the ceiling (just enough to put up the new wall), since the master bathroom will not be done for a long while and i’d rather get the floor down before we demo the rest (it’s not fun cleaning demo debri from the upstairs and downstairs due to cracks in the subfloor).  The demo went pretty quickly (poor Ryan had to do all of it) but I helped with bagging it all up and now we have another dump load for another weekend waiting outside (hopefully before it snows!).

With that completed I spent about an hour vacuuming up the exposed insulation and the debri.  Finally we started the new wall.  We left a few of the studs out so there’s a makeshift doorway to get through for now (since we’re not finishing the bathroom for a while we’ll use it as our ‘guest room’ while we work on the nursery – need to put the bed someplace!).

Finally with the wall in and secured to both the upper and lower joists it was time to remove the jacks to see if the floor had any less movement or not.  It has definitely improved, it still moves (the joists included) if you jump on it so we may need to take future measures but there was definite improvement over before.

Ceiling demolition

 

And the other side
New wall started (still needs 2 more studs and blocking but it's enough for now).

Unfortunately on Sunday, even though we knew Ryan wouldn’t be able to work on the house I still had hopes to get a few things done but I woke up with a sore throat and headache (cold really doesn’t want to go away).  The sore throat was probably due to not drinking enough water on saturday because staying hydrated sunday certainly helped.  So while Ryan worked I crashed on the couch with some Pride & Prejudice and stitched as well as napped.

Stitching Progress update. Making good progress on this piece.

Then the stomach bugs came to our house.  Kind of.  Fitz was the first to go down.  Sometime after dinner he got sick (right in his bed too), and it was horrible.  He continued to get sick 4 times total over the next few hours and we were on high alert for any sign he might need to rush outside.  I have a nice big load of dog blankets that need to be washed (waiting to see how today goes first).  Poor Fitzy.  I finally took away his water (since he was just throwing it back up) and he was okay through the night.

Of course then later in the evening I got a bit of a bug (or just an IBS attack).   I was up till 3am with uncontrollable shivers every 20 minutes or so.  Not fun.  Poor Fitz and I are quite the pair.  So I decided to work from home today due to my lack of sleep and wanting to be able to keep an eye on Fitz (who is acting fine but wants to eat grass now – can’t find any!  – which makes me think he’s not better yet).  He is allowed a little water (although he hasn’t touched it yet) and I gave him some yogurt with peanut butter  for breakfast so we’ll see how that goes.  If he doesn’t get sick he’ll get rice and chicken for dinner tonight.  Hopefully whatever it was has passed and he can go to his new daycare tomorrow.

I myself am feeling better, I feel like I always do after an IBS attack so that’s probably what it was (from eating too much yesterday?).  I’ll take it easy with what I eat today and stay hydrated.  I should be able to work most of the day (maybe a short nap at some point).  And poor Fitz is stuck in the room with me so I can keep an eye on him.

That was our weekend – so much fun 🙂  I am very excited about the house progress, we can now put down hardi-backer in the master bathroom area and make it into a temporary guest room with sheets for walls  and the bed moved in there.  Then the nursery clean out project begins and eventually we’ll demo that room and get it going!

It’s a Girl – coming in May

That’s right – as everyone who reads this blog already knows – Ryan and I are having a little baby girl come early May this year.

Meet Itty Bitty
It's a girl!

This morning we picked out a daycare for September and I had my gender check ultrasound (we knew in December at that ultrasound that it was most likely a girl – but this one verified it).  She’s very active and everything is on track.  Her head is measuring on the large size (thanks to her daddy) which may be a concern for me come May 🙂

Now we just need to build a nursery for our little Itty Bitty baby Girl!

Wednesday night stitching

I think being sick means I’m in the mood to stitch finally. I continued working on the Royalty ABC banner by Jeannette Douglas, getting the first page completely done (of 4).

Page one done

I’m only making minor modifications here and there.  The crowns for example, while they’re all different, I didn’t like that hte one on the right had a queen stitch on top and the left one didn’t so I had them both have queen stitches and made them the same color too.  I did keep the styling different but I’m not completely sold on that either.  I like symmetry.

And Fitz ripped the head off of his xmas snake stuffed animal – too funny.  He’s finally gotten to destroying some of his toys (including is favorite orange squeaky ball) so I bought him a tough chew squeaky ball instead and we’ll see how long the stuffed animals last.  It does take a while for him to rip them (the snake has been a favorite since he got it because it has LOTS of squeakies).

Sick of being sick

Well – it wasn’t allergies – I got another cold this winter!  No house progress yesterday, instead we went to the mall to get some quick shopping done.  Then we snuggled in to relax for the day re-watching season 1 of Downton Abbey (since it starts up again next week!).  I actually got some stitching done (that was as much as I could handle).

I decided to work from home today, I feel up to working (now anyway, we’ll see if a headache gets worse or not being on the computer all day), but I wasn’t up to the drive and I had to sleep in a bit since I got very little sleep last night (I hate sleeping sitting up but it had to be done to get any sleep at all).

As for stitching, I worked on my Royalty ABC pattern by Jeannette Douglas, a piece I did in a Celebrations class a few years ago, I haven’t touched it since the class but got 3 bands almost done (the basket is almost done).

Royalty ABC progress

Happy New Year

It’s a new year – and how did we spend New Year’s Eve?  Well working on the house of course!

We determined that the upstairs diningroom/master bathroom floor had way too much movement to hold a new bathroom at some point.  Just Fitz walking across made it sway (not good for grout).  So today we worked on the floor.  First Ryan and his dad took up the wood floor (we saved almost all of it).  We’ll re-lay it for the hallway but the bathroom will be tiled.  Then we de-nailed all the boards to save them and I cleaned up the subfloor.

Upstairs diningroom floor - gone! (see it piled on the right, that's most of it)
A farther back view - we still need to reframe what will be the entry to the hallway but at least there's a doorway.
A different view (toward the bathroom)
And back toward the stairway hallway
A view of the old chimney way - we're waiting to close off this hole in the floor until we know what we need to run to the attic through here.

Ryan and his dad then worked on supporting the floor joists from below – using 1/2″ plywood on each side of every joist after jacking up the floor a bit.  We have to wait 5 days for the adhesive to dry fully before we take down the jacks and see if the floor feels more secure (it feels very secure with the jacks under it) 🙂

Jacks holding up the floor joists for extra support temporarily
The supported floor joists - 1/2 inch plywood on each side, glued, nailed and screwed in
The other half of the room
And a different view

Suzanne made a potato, bacon soup for the guys for lunch that Ryan has been enjoying the leftovers from today as well.  We ended the evening with a night out at Chunky’s to see the new Sherlock Holmes – love sitting in comfy seats and getting to eat while watching a movie!  Unfortunately probably due to the dust, I was starting to feel like I was getting a cold/sinus infection by the evening and didn’t wake up feeling much better today.  But a day of relaxing certainly helped (as did tylenol for the headache).  I also think the high pressure system we had passed through which was not helping.  By tonight I was feeling much better and got the house vacuumed to remove the dust pretty thoroughly.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings … drawers maybe??