Projects

This morning I made a batch of oatmeal pancakes. I've been trying to perfect a recipe. These were pretty good, so I need to try it one more time just to make sure and then I can post it on my recipe blog. My mom got me started on using leftover cooked oatmeal in bread, so I thought I would try it in pancakes. Getting the thickness is difficult because cooked oatmeal is moist, so not as much milk is needed.

Last night we tore down the lath and plaster on the wall between the kitchen and dining/living room. My cabinets have been moving around for the last 1 1/2 years, the way they are today makes the kitchen feel big and open. I look forward to when it's done! Today I have a thin layer of dust all over the living room that I need to clean up.

Our Bedroom Floor

The other week I decided to tear out the carpet in the master bedroom. We found this really cool old linoleum. Our house was built in 1882, so I was really curious how old it was. It's 9'x12' and tacked down. I was able to get ahold of someone from Second Hand Rose, who believed it was from the 1950s. There isn't really a market for used linoleum, so sadly, no big chunk of $$. Brian is not exactly excited about having a circus on our floor. So I covered it back up, and in 10 years when we finally have our attic finished, we can put it up there. :-)

There are 6 repeating scenes- so here they are:

Warning- Gross out factor ahead

Ok, so depending on how light of a stomach you have, you might not want to look at the 3rd picture down.


After the toilet overflowed in the house we had to call in a plumber to snake the sewage line. We have a root problem. We don't have access to the line on the outside of the house, the time before we had it down it cost close to $700. Not something I wanted to repeat. So we had to dig outside the house and get the pipe exposed so they could put an outside cleanout on. I dug all day long. The palms of my hands were bruised and blistered.



Thankfully Brian's bosses let him go early so he finished the digging/supervising the plumber. We started digging under the smaller pipe and it had a huge crack in it and "liquid" started oozing out. Oh it smelled bad. I think it was finally fished about 6 pm that night. There was so many roots in the line I can't believe anything got through it!



This is a 6" pipe- I think that "space" is about 2". The roots were packed so tight they were actually dry.

Tearing up the Basement

In July we had the upstairs toilet overflow. The water ran down into the basement getting (thankfully) only a bunch of blankets and clothes wet. But the carpet was wet too. We have been planning on tearing it all out and putting in a bedroom. Which means we need to remove the subfloor, remove the concrete, dig out more dirt, lay down some kind of blocking material, pour new concrete... etc, etc.

The basement had been FULL of stuff. Just stuff. Stuff from grandparents that have passed away, stuff from parents that they feel guilty getting rid of so give to us, stuff from childhood, stuff from collage, misc. craft supplies, clothes kids have grown out of, clothes kids will grow into, clothes for winter, and the list goes on and on. I've been trying to get rid of stuff. So this was a great motivator.

I have a couple friend who are downright ruthless in getting rid of stuff. And I mean RUTHLESS. Everyone needs friends like these- seriously, they're the ones that really love you.

So here's the groovy carpet I had to take pictures of before I threw it out. I think it's pretty cool, and they were both in good shape. But there was some mold there under the carpet, so there is no way we could keep it.