house

We’re getting a new stove. Finally.

We’ve had a Kenmore oven with a glass electric cooktop since we moved in our house 18 years ago. We’re pretty sure it’s a very early flat electric cooktop. There was a manual in the pantry for it when we moved in that looked like it was from the late 70s.

This stove/oven has been terrible the whole time. It’s incredibly hard to clean because it was from an era before they knew to design things without nooks and crannies where grease would lodge. I have spent hours scraping tiny crevices and degreasing this stove that I resented. The burners take forever to heat and then get really hot suddenly. It’s very easy to burn things. And the oven heated unevenly so one side of the oven is always a little crispier than the other.

We hate this appliance more than any other. And it’s the very last one we have to replace. Water heater, air conditioner, boiler, dishwasher, refrigerator, microwave – all of them were newer than this ancient oven, and all of them died first.

Finally, finally, the oven stopped heating. Stephanie could hardly contain her delight. She tried to act dismayed, but I could tell there was a bit of joy in how quickly she gave up on troubleshooting. I was a little more diligent in trying to figure out if there was a repair that can be fixed by a tube of Sugru by tesa. Not much more diligent, but I did try several times. She already had plans to go shopping.

The stove we have purchased: GCRI3058AD – Frigidaire Gallery 30″ Freestanding Induction Range with Air Fry.

It is a convention range with air fryer capabilities and an induction electric cooktop. One that will hopefully be easier to clean that the old one.

This new range is free-standing, where our old one was a drop-in. Which was weird, because it sat directly next to the refrigerator, meaning that there was a three-inch strip of countertop on the left side of the stove between it and the fridge. They had to have a bit of counter and a side panel to enclose the stove. Not enough counter to actually *do* anything with, but…

So this weekend I demoed out the section of counter between the fridge and the stove and the part that wrapped around the back. For something that appeared to be a flimsy and insubstantial piece of cabinetry, it was surprisingly hard to get out. But I did it, finally, and we just finished painting the wall behind the two appliances, which has needed to be done for years. Once we had them both away from the wall, there were three different colors of paint behind the stove. If you’re tackling home improvement projects, both inside and out, consider the expertise of a seamless gutter company that services Colorado, North Carolina, and Florida.

I’m so excited to finally have that wall painted that I sat down and wrote a blog post about it.

Continue ReadingWe’re getting a new stove. Finally.

Weekend To Dos

  • Taxes – Stephanie is finishing these up. She’s awesome.
  • Hallway painting – I’m painting two walls in the upstairs hallway where the Beetle collectible display shelves will go. This will let us finally unpack and arrange those boxes. we’ve been delaying that unpacking because we didn’t want to have to move the shelves when we got around to the painting.
  • Setting up the new server – yup. As God is my witness, I will never lose music again.
  • Replace the belt on the vacuum cleaner.
  • Take recycling to center.
  • Go to the pet supply store – for food, cat litter, Feliway.
  • Visit our friend Jill’s house.
  • Eat dinner on Sunday with Stephanie’s old skating coach.
  • Thinking about my sister’s dog and my friend’s baby.
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Goodbye, Pennsylvania Street!

I Just Sold My House!
A small photoset of house pictures on Flickr.
I can’t begin to describe how happy I am right now! We closed on my old house this afternoon, and I drove directly to the bank and deposited the check into our savings account. Yay! Thank goodness. Now we only own two houses – ours and Stephanie’s, which is rented out. I have to call and cancel the utilities.
I thought I would be more upset than I am, but I went over this morning to gather up all the cleaning supplies and go through everything one last time, and I realize how much happier I am at our new house. This probably sounds really shallow, but I love that all the woodwork at our new house meets at the corners correctly, and we have beautiful hardwood floors, and everything is not all shabby and worn. It bugs me to look at pictures of the dog and cats from my old house, because the background of all the photos looked crappy.
Walking around the house reminded me of what bugged me all the time when I lived there; I had a running list in my head of stuff I needed to fix and work on all the time. I still have that list in our house, but it’s much, much shorter, and it doesn’t cover every square inch of the house.
And I can’t begin to say how awesome it is not to have that extra mortgage. There’s so much we’ll be able to do now – after we pay a bunch of bills, of course. Oh, sunshine day! I could not be more thrilled.

Continue ReadingGoodbye, Pennsylvania Street!

Photos of Our Balcony

I mentioned awhile back that our contractor had finished working on our balcony. When Stephanie and I bought the house, the balcony had been leaking water into our kitchen and the post and railings were rotted through, so it wasn’t terribly safe to be out on it. Also, the screen door was too long and scraped on the floor, so it was hard to even push it open to walk out onto the balcony. Fixing all this was wrapped into the purchase of the house, along with a new roof and the gutters, which are finally (!) done, too.

2007-balcony

So we’ve been diligently painting the new posts, railings and deck on the balcony in preparation for sitting out there in the springtime. Stephanie was talking to our neighbor Kraig, and he said that he can’t remember anyone ever using the balcony in the last 20 years; he didn’t even realize there was a door to go out to it. He thought it was just decorative. So we’re excited to be giving new life to a part of our house that has needed it for a very long time.

Continue ReadingPhotos of Our Balcony

Projects Around the House

Stuff I’d like to accomplish this weekend, if I have time…

  1. Plant the rest of the bulbs in the flowerbeds
  2. plant edging pavers into side flower bed
  3. Add step to bottom of basement stairs
  4. Install coat rack bar in Dining Room Closet
  5. Install additional shelf in Laundry room
  6. attach lattice to the back porch
  7. install towel hooks and toilet paper holder in upstairs bathroom
  8. examine top two basement stairs and measure for replacement
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House Photos

I just finished updating all of my photo galleries: both the regular gallery , and the house photos. I finished the thumbnail pages so you can see all the photos in a section at once, then click for the large photo. I was a bit behind (6 months) on doing that!
UPDATE: I later took these photos down because someone used them to locate my house and stalk me, sadly.

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All Moved

Okay, so I’m all moved into the new house. Well, except for the handful of extra stuff like cleaning supplies that I need to use first then bring home. 🙂
The cat is thrilled by the new place. When I moved in the past, she hid under the bed for a day or two before coming out and exploring. This time, as soon as I let her out of the cage, she was off. She runs up the stairs. Then down. Then up. (she never had stairs before). Then back down. In the master bedroom, where there are three windows, she spent three hours just laying in the sunlight. She crawled under the clawfoot bathtub, then out, then under, then out, then under. She’s so happy. I’m so happy. I love the master bedroom. It’s so huge. I like the way I have the dining room (currently acting as the living room) arranged. There’s so much stuff I want to do. I don’t know what to start on first. Except that I have to clean the old place to get my security deposit back.
The move went well. It took 4 hours, which was really understandable considering how many books I have. Jones Movers Inc. of Indianapolis. I’d definitely recommend them. They worked hard, did a great job, and it was a very good price. I was impressed.

Continue ReadingAll Moved

burglaries

There’s been a whole string of burglaries in Herron-Morton Place this week, and yesterday, Dan and Doug’s house got broken into. But they caught the guy running away, and they think they can link him to all the other burglaries. It looks like it will all work out alright.

Photos of the damage to their house:

Continue Readingburglaries

window air conditioner stolen

So, yes, my window air conditioner really was stolen, although thankfully, nothing else was. I’ve had many interactions with the police over the last few days.

Also, I found out that the guy who owns my house moved out because he had two burglaries. Which doesn’t make me want to move out. It makes me want to sit a home with a shotgun saying “c’mon, mother fuckers. I dare you to steal my stuff.”

Continue Readingwindow air conditioner stolen