Seriously digustingly clean

Our house has two rooms with carpet, and that's it. The stairs also have carpet. I have always thought we needed to clean them but never really wanted to pay for the machines from the grocery store. Well, my wonderful honey borrowed one from some friends of ours. He even did the first bit of cleaning. Then we moved furniture and he cleaned the entire library. The next day I moved stuff out of the living room and he worked on that last night. Today I finished up the living room. Two comments: the carpet feels so much better; the water that we kept dumping out was like a muddy river. Each time we emptied the machine the water was filthy. Makes you almost sick that your kids roll around and crawl around and play on the floor. I'm so glad we got it done, but, really, I feel like I need to do it again just to get more gunk out. Even if no one else can tell, I can and it feels better.


Can you see the difference? We sure could!

Another visitor

Kevin's dad (a.k.a. Pepere) came out to visit us in the middle of August. I was really bad about taking pictures while any of our visitors were with us but I think his was the worst. Kevin didn't let him sit around the house because he had a really big project to get completed - installing a wood burning furnace for the house. We were able to get it into the basement - with the help of our newest neighbor - and Kevin bought most of the stuff they would need for the duct work and installation so that he would be ready when his dad arrived. One of the big jobs that the kids helped with before Pepere arrived was digging a hole in the ground in the basement so that the furnace would fit with enough clearance for the duct work. It wasn't dirt so much as it was clay so Kevin would break it up so the kids could then shovel it into buckets that Kevin would haul out when they were full. While they were doing that Kevin was able to work on other stuff.

Once Pepere arrive they set to work figuring things out, buying more stuff and it all went rather well. They got the duct work done, put the pipe in the chimney, and even fired it up to see if it all worked the way they thought it would. Here's the finished project because I don't have anything in between.

There's some of the new, insulated ductwork that takes the heat all over our house.

Here's the chimney. They put in a new black pipe for the wood furnace, which has a 6 inch pipe all the way up the chimney. The exhaust for the gas furnace is the top pipe and uses the extra space in the chimney. Nice masonry work.

Here's some of the wood we bought to fuel the furnace. You can see there is more in the background. The wood will encircle the garden except for a portion that will allow access so that we can let the chickens forage and clean it up, and add fertilizer for the garden to use next year. Kevin and the kids worked really hard to move the wood

We are glad that it is done because it was cold today so Kevin fired it up and the house has been toasty warm all day. It's "wicked awesome" according to Kevin.

In the new house...

And it's turning me for a loop. It's always hard to remember where exactly I put stuff (especially when half the stuff is still in boxes waiting to be put somewhere). I also have a hard time remember which wall the light switches are located in each room.

Last Tuesday, we closed just fine... we've done it 4 previous times for our own homes and 2 times for apartment buildings that we still own. (We still own two of the homes as well, ugh.) Anyway, it was an uneventful thing really but we were glad it was done. We went straight to the house to clean and work on a few things we knew needed to be fixed. The joys of owning a home. We didn't spend the night in the house for a few days so I made trips throughout the week moving boxes of things in my van. That helped out a lot when the big stuff got moved out on Saturday. We had help and that was so great!

Our first night was not picture perfect - I didn't sleep well, it was sort of cold, when I did sleep I had bad dreams, and I kept checking on the kids to make sure they had enough covers on. Luckily, the next night was better. Now we have vacuumed again, mopped the dining room and kitchen and put away most of the boxes that were in the library and living room so it actually looks great. (All the empty boxes and boxes with stuff I'm not sure what to do with yet are in my school room so we keep that door closed most of the time.) We have already rearranged the kids beds but I think we are set for a while. Kemiah moved into the bunk bed with the other girls and Ben's mattress is back on the floor. (That's where he started out back in Florida when he was not yet 2 years old.) He'll get a twin bunk bed when Kevin goes back to Massachusetts for the rest of our stuff - the bunk bed that Kevin shared with his older brother when they were boys. Anyway, we have figured out the heating issue so we are feeling good. The plumbing is almost done - just need to work on the shower upstairs. The electrical still needs to be tweaked but that might have to wait.

Kevin has done a fantastic job putting the food into the kitchen. He did joke about how I put things away because it's not quite as orderly. In my defense, it was completely different stuff - who can't put cans into a cupboard in an orderly way, but spices and things are a bit different. Anyway... I'm so thankful that my husband is so orderly, hard working and skilled in fixing things. He even fixed my vacuum today so it works every time I plug it in and I don't have to mess with it!

I just wanted to let you know that we are in the new house and things are going along just fine. Now I need to get that box of school stuff out of the garage and get ready to go back to school....... Maybe I should get rid of all those boxes in my school room before we try to have school in there. Anyone want to come and help?

So here we are at the signing. It's the only time I have taken a picture - Kevin laughed.

This is what the kids were doing while we were signing.

Our New Old Home

Kevin got the bug to look for a house to buy so we looked. We found one and we made an offer. They accepted the offer and fortunately they are giving us a land contract, so that means we don't have to worry about funds because no one would give a student without any income a loan. Go figure. They want to move quickly so we will actually be moving again in a week or two. I'm glad I didn't unload all those food boxes in the garage. We'll just take them to the new house. It will be a bit of a hassle to pack everything else back up but oh well. It's an older home but has lots of character, lots of room and seems to be in good shape so we are very excited.

Here's a picture of the front of the house. It needs to be cleaned in the spring, and we need to put in the front main steps.

Kevin made up these floor plans in PowerPoint. He's really good at that stuff. It is to scale, furniture and all. The front porch is bigger than shown in the slide because the slide wasn't big enough. I have labeled lots of things to help you know what is what. Some of the furniture we don't have yet but we will eventually. The house will probably feel very empty until Kevin goes back to Massachusetts to get the rest of our stuff but oh well.


The Arctic Entry has pegs on the wall ready for little kids coats and stuff. The Family Room has built in shelves on the east wall. We will add our book shelves on the west wall later. My room has a built in desk unit with shelves and drawers. In the kitchen, there is a bench that goes around the space in the empty southwest corner. We may take that out, or at least most of it.

Here's the second floor. The only issue is the leaking toilet so we'll have to take care of that, and we may redo the shower stall but we shall see.

The kids room has a built in desk in the southeast corner and a walk through closet in the northwest corner. Yes, there is an upright piano in the very west room but it needs to be tuned and probably fixed if it is going to work correctly.

Looking from the kitchen through the dinning room and living room. The arctic entry is the doorway on the left and the family room doorway is on the right.


Looking from the family room through the living room and dining room. The family room has a huge, beautiful pocket door. The closed white door at the other end is the bathroom.


One view of the kitchen. The stove will go in the spot on the left side of the picture.


Other view of the kitchen, coming from the dining room.

Small view of the play room/movie spot, and down the hallway past the bathroom and into the piano room. We didn't notice the low ceilings until we went back through the pictures. Then I remembered it feeling different when we were walking through it. I'm interested to know why they dropped the ceiling that low.

I could attach a zillion other pictures but it's really hard to get a good look at the rooms. I will probably repaint all of them anyway. I hope you enjoyed the look into our future home. We are excited, and we will enjoy all the projects we want to do (painting, floors, cabinets, etc.) as time passes and we take our time.

Our house, is a very fine house.

Here are some pictures to prove it. I took these a while ago but it has just taken me a while to get it all organized and ready to post. I know, there's not much to it but it took a long time to download all the pictures. Anyway, the only thing that is really missing are all the really neat icicles that are now hanging off the roof. You'll just have to add them in your imagination.

Here's the front door.


That white addition in the back is the laundry and furnace room.

Interior of the laundry room. I know, exciting stuff. Just so you know, that box is no longer there.

Looking into the dining room/kitchen from the laundry room. There are two steps up here.

From the same doorway looking to the right. You can see the bathroom doorway to the right of the table and a little storage room doorway to the left of the table. And that's cute Kemiah with her doll, Logan.


Looking down the short hallway to the living room. The front door is in front of you and the playroom door is the wood frame on the wall to the left.

Here's inside the playroom. The closet is full of toys and games. They have a table to draw at and a couch to sit on because it won't fit well in the living room.

View of the living room from the playroom. You can see the stairway that leads up to the other bedrooms.

Looking up the stairs. The bathroom is right at the top of the stairs. One bedroom is on either side. Nice set up really, but the stairs are a little different.

Kids room and bathroom. See the tiny mirror on the bathroom wall? I laughed when I first saw it but it does the job.

Our bedroom - with my workout center and Kevin's study center. We were mostly excited about how big the room is so we could fit our bed and all this other stuff in the same room. Yippee!

We brought the kids quad-bunk beds that Kevin made in Alaska. We had all the screws, boards, mattresses and sheets. The one thing we forgot was the drill gun! UGH! Kevin got a few screws in by hand and I got one in half way but gave up. Kevin went and bought a drill so we could put the beds together. What a bother - when we have at least 3 in MA! At least the kids have somewhere awesome to sleep (rather than having their mattresses all on the floor).

Oh, and sweet Kemiah is in the port-a-crib in the same room. She still fits and it will work until later and we have to move Ben to something else and then she'll go to the bunk bed. We did bring a crib but can't find the screws. Oh bother. That will become more important as we get closer to the arrival of the new baby, but we have time.

Happy New Year!

We found a house! I would like to say it's the Ramada Inn but we can't afford that. We are renting a house on the southwest side of town. It's out of the busy city and the house is set back from the street with woods in the backyard. The house was the cleanest we saw today and so we felt the best about it. It was also probably the smallest house that we looked at today and I'm starting to get a little worried about where we will put our stuff. It will all work out, I'm sure. So tonight is our last night in the hotel and tomorrow we will move in. We are so happy that the landlord was willing to let us move in so quickly and rent on a month to month basis. I haven't taken any pictures yet so you'll have to wait for those! Things are progressing so all is grand!