Room For Improvement

Of the home, personal, family and bloggy variety.

On the blog front, I'm going to try actually blogging more than once a week. I know its a radical idea but it just might work. And thanks to a brilliant idea by Kate from The Big Piece of Cake I'm going to be making some changes over at Juniper and Coffee.

On the family front, we have started our homestudy process for our second adoption. There is so much paperwork to do and hoops to jump through but I am thrilled that we are making progress to bring our little baby home.

And where do I begin on personal improvement. I'm going to be 40 soon. I thought it would be a good idea to enter my 40s in good shape, a shape I'm proud to be in. Right now my shape is a bit too round, a bit too muffin topish for my liking. So I'm doing something about it. You know exercise more than twice a month, eat right etc.

I've set a goal to lose 30 pound by my birthday in September. Its kind of a huge goal but that was the weight I was 5 years ago and that is the weight I'd like to be again. If I reach my goal I am going to buy myself some ridiculously expensive rock star jeans. So far I've lost 1.5 pounds in a week and 1/2 so that's not too bad. We'll see if I can stick with it.

And finally home improvement. This is the biggie. Our house, as you know, is a CrapShack. But we've started making it better one room at a time, starting with the basement rec room. The sump pump has been installed. The dry wall is up.

And now . . . we've started painting!



The walls used to be a dark burgandy color which was perfect for the previous incarnation of the basement as Scottowatomi Bingo, Casino and Dancehall. But now with one child and another one on the way, we need to make it a bit more family friendly so we chose a warm taupe color. I think it will be much nicer and much lighter down there.



Now we just need to work on the floor. The floor has tile on it but it was ugly and stained so we put carpet down. Big mistake (what with the water and all). We are going to put new tiles down but we need to get up all of the wood and glue they used for the carpeting. I'm afraid this might take a while. But baby steps, right?

Hallelujah Part 2

The work on the basement is done! Hallelujah!

Well before I get ahead of myself, the drywall work is done. But that is the first step in reclaiming our basement.

It took a little over two weeks to go from bare stone and studs, to this:




And finally to this:



Now we have to put down new flooring, re-do the bookcases, re-do the bar, paint the walls, move the furniture, move all the toys and tv from the living room and then we'll be back in business. Which should take about another 2(or 6) months.

Hallelujah!

I didn't want to jinx it. I was afraid if I said it aloud it wouldn't happen. But it did and now I can shout from the rooftops.

They have started the work on our basement!

For those of you who've been following for a while, you know I live in a stupid old CrapShack which keeps breaking down and may in fact kill me. So the fact that they have started drywalling the basement means that we may actually get back down there in 2009. Which means that my living room and dining room can go back to being used for their original purposes instead of being a complete and total disaster area.

I'm so happy I could jump for joy. You know what I think I will actually do that.

Mom its broken, mom its broken

Our house is broken. There is really no other way of putting it, its just flat out broken. We have an upstairs bathroom with a leaky shower and our basement leaks. See its really broken.

The shower has leaked for about 4 years. Everything else in th bathroom works but the shower. Luckily we had another tub and shower on the first floor so we were able to stop using it immediately. But we haven't been able to fix it because our roof leaked and was fixed first (See what I mean about broken - stupid old houses. Did I mention the new furnace and electrical work?). Then we needed to save up money for Bunny's adoption. (The choice between adoption and remodeling is really a no brainer.) It doesn't put too much strain on our day to day life, but it would be nice to have two working showers.

Well we decided to fix the bathroom this year. We figured between savings and our home equity loan we'd be able to completely redo the bathroom and still pursue our second adoption. We were excited about that.

But then it snowed almost 100 inches in Milwaukee this year and we started to get water in our basement when it melted. Now our basement was a finished family room. We had our TV down there and it was also Bunny's playroom. It had to be fixed right away, no question about it. So we tore up the carpet and got estimates for the work.

Everytime Bunny walks past the stairs to the basement, she looks down and says "Can't go down there, its broken. Daddy fix broken."

Hopefully the work will begin later this month or in early June. But then we will have to redo the basement once its done. So we will be without that room for a few months more. Now all of Bunny's toys are strewn about the living room and dining room. We've moved the TV up there too. Its not as comfortable as it was before but we can live with it for a few months. And apparently we can live another year without the new bathroom too.

Now you may ask why don't we do some of the remodel ourselves and save money. Maybe that way we can get both done. Well you see my beloved Bubs is not really handy at all. He can use a screwdriver, a hammer and nails and even a drill. He can assemble furniture. But that is really about it. Since I love him and all of his limbs, I would never ask him to touch a power tool nor would he ever offer too.

My mom keeps telling us to sell the house and buy a newer home with less problems. Because people like us should not own old homes. Well that's great in theory but you can't sell a broken house in this market. So here we sit with our stupid broken house and I've completely forgotten why I wanted to buy it in the first place.

So the moral of the story is don't buy an old house, unless you are handy with more than just a hammer and nails.