House Part I: As-is

My house before painting

Last weekend I was in the Twin Cities for my niece’s baptism. Chris’s mom and stepdad took me shopping at Lowes, as they are coming up this weekend to help us paint the house. We got outside and inside trim, 20 gallons of paint, 5 gallons of primer, and painting supplies.

And, of course, KSAX is predicting rain this weekend. Severe weather, even. So, we’ll see how that plays out. We still have the living room and kitchen painting to do, as well as window trim/painting trim inside. Backup plan, but I was really hoping to get the house (and garage…) done this weekend. We’ll see what happens.

Ready, Set, Go!

niko.jpg

I like the way this picture came out – especially the eyes. Niko is a good photography subject, and she’s always willing when I get in the mood to see what I can make my digital camera do. My favorite setting as of recent is profile, zoomed into 4x (maximum before digital), in Macro mode, forced flash. They don’t *all* turn out like this photo – but the backlighting caused the washout. I like.

Chris’s mom and stepdad came up today to measure. They are going to help us with painting the house – which we have scheduled for Memorial Day weekend (Helpers wanted! Free food and beer!). I am going to the cities next weekend for my niece’s baptism, and I’ll come back with their pressure washer. Chris’s stepdad seems to think that the pressure washer will take care of the outside – a quick once-over if needed with a power sander to smooth out the edges where the paint doesn’t come off. (Most of the paint will come off. It’s in bad shape.)

Apparently, we should be able to get done painting over the three-day weekend. And *maybe* even get to the outside window trim. Wow, that would be lovely.

So, before that – we have the bedroom to paint (tomorrow’s project). Living room and kitchen to paint; kitchen cupboards to clean. Trim around the base in the kitchen. Electricity upgrade. Cheap-o window treatments (I found blinds for $5 each at the dollar store, and $3 for the cheap rolling blinds – perfect!). Pack up/store stuff we don’t need. Have the Home Stager come through and give her opinions. Plant some shrubs in the front yard, fix up grass, plant pretty flowers. Call Realtor, have appraised, sell house.

Sell house.

Anyone wanna buy a house?

Happy Earth Day?

Here’s what my new neighbors are doing to celebrate Earth Day:

Let’s all cut down trees for Earth Day!

That was a nice, healthy tree. Maybe they’re just making room for all of the new trees they’re planning to plant today?

All-Purpose Citrus Cleaner

All-Purpose Citrus Cleaner

After running errands this morning, I discoverd our MediaCom Cable Internet was down. I was curious and called; a cable was cut and sorry No Internet For You.

That was OK, because I’d already planned on spending my day putting stuff in storage. Except that the two storage facilities in town don’t have any open spaces, and won’t until the end of the month. So, now we get to clean the garage (needs to be done anyway) and store stuff there until we can get a unit. The next closest storage units are 20 minutes away – that seems quite unnecessary.

So, I made this all-purpose cleaner with distilled water, coconut surfactants, and essential oils of sweet orange, lemon, and litsea. And it seems to work really well, but it’s a bit strong. Hopefully it will still clean well after being diluted. This is A LOT of cleaner, even diluted 50/50. I have no doubt we’ll use it all though, in this house and the next.

Space Clearing

Nigel & Kallie

“Oops, you spilled.”

I was super-motivated to start some house-selling work yesterday. I went to check out my stash of primer and paint in the basement, to see if I had enough on hand for the bedroom. But I have way too much crap in storage that when I finally moved enough stuff to get to the paint, my motivation changed to “get stuff out now.”

There are two storage facilities in town, and neither of them will call me back. I suppose because I called on Saturday – but you’d think Saturday would be the most popular day for renting out storage lockers, right? I mean – most normal people work during the week, and get around to storing their stuff and cleaning on the weekend. Maybe I’m way off.

So, I’m now in the mindset that I need to get stuff out of the house before I can start inside jobs. This is half-good: I have gone through a bunch of storage totes and have more things in the Salvation Army pile now than in the keep-me pile. But now the entire living room is full of totes and piles of stuff that’s been collecting dust for five years. And the Salvation Army isn’t open on Sundays so it’s stuck there until tomorrow. And the dust makes both me and Nigel sneeze.

Sigh. It’s kind of fun going through boxes and saying, “Why did I think I needed to save this in the first place?”