Goodbye Pumpkin House
Turned in the keys to my old house Thursday. Got a quote this morning on installing a washer hookup in my new house. Oh boy. I’m gonna be saving my pennies, because this is going to cost a lot.
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.
executing gay people
I’ve pointed out to my family members, at various times, that there are people who want to kill me, and that these people have connections to the Republicans they keep putting into office, but I don’t think they’ve ever taken me very seriously.
“Let us give thanks,” Army of God “chaplain” Rev. Michael Bray proclaimed on the Army of God Web site, after sword-wielding officials in Saudi Arabia beheaded three gay men New Year’s Day. The official Saudi Press Agency reported that the men had “committed acts of sodomy, married each other, seduced young men and attacked those who rebuked them.”
Best known for its terror campaign against abortion providers, the militant Army of God has lately displayed a virulent antigay animus in recent postings on its Web site. The sudden trend has set off alarms among human rights groups.
“This is really chilling,” Surina Khan, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, told Salon. “It really disturbs me, in terms of the rhetoric and what effect it has.”
Ironically, the Army of God is expressing new solidarity with Muslim extremists just as the right-wing extremists have come under new scrutiny by the U.S. government for their own links to terror, post-Sept. 11. The violence-prone Army of God drew intensified federal attention thanks to its praise (“great idea!”) for the anthrax scare at 550 clinics and abortion rights organizations last fall, perpetrated by self-described antiabortion “terrorist” Clayton Waagner. Waagner signed his threats “Army of God.”
On the Homefront: This weekend, I moved most of my breakable stuff, all my framed artwork, most of my electronics, and some small pieces of furniture. Also one of the bunk beds, so if I want to stay over at the new place, I can. Still to pack: clothes, office supplies, rest of kitchen stuff. I’ll try to get as much of that done tonight as I can. I procrastinated on the packing, which I hate to do, by moving stuff that didn’t necessarily need to be moved. And I think I’m afraid to move in, which is another reason I’ve avoided the packing. I’m really kind of freaked out.
I need to be careful when moving paperwork — got to keep track of stuff I need to do, like send in my first mortgage payment. That would suck if I forgot that. 🙂
Utilities turned on
On Saturday, the phone guy and the cable guy redid the lines to my new house. The cable’s working fine, but the phone still needs to be worked on–apparently at the central office. But I cleaned out the shed at the back of the house, and got some of the linoleum off the living room floor, and vacuumed and dusted the upstairs. I weeded some in the front of the house. Moved the TV and some small furniture, and a box of glassware. Sunday, I painted another coat on the dining room floor and moved some more stuff. Packed my CDs and liquor. Saw The Count of Monte Cristo on television, and decided that I’d paint a pattern on the floors. Don’t know what yet; I’ll do it after I move.
sanding floors
On the homefront — I sanded Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It sucked. It was really hard and the sander I used didn’t do a very good job. I picked the square buffer-type sander because the drum sander is too big for me to control easily. The square sander is also really hard to control, and it isn’t as efficient: I went over the floors dozens of times and they didn’t get up all of the first layer of junk off the floor. So I gave up and decided to paint rather than stain. You can also see murphy bed in Boise here and buy it at a great price.
My reasoning is this: I need to preserve the wood now that I’ve sanded it, or the traffic will damage the wood. I need to do it quickly and cheaply, and hiring a pro to finish the sanding would take too long. Simply putting down a polyurethane isn’t good enough because the floors look like crap. So I’m painting with an oil-based polyurethane paint that will protect the floor for a year or two until I can hire a pro to sand it up and redo the floors. You can see the website if you need for flooring services.
I put the first coat on the foyer and part of the dining room last night. I take tonight off and pack, Wednesday I’ll spend with friends. Then Thursday, I’ll finish the dining room and put a second coat on the foyer. Saturday the cable guy and the phone guy are coming, and when they’re done, I’ll put another coat over all the floors.
Working On Floors
Rich came over Tuesday night and we finished ripping up the foyer and the entryway. Last night I went back over and removed more of the baseboards and ripped up some of the plywood that’s still around the edges of the room. I still need to get the baseboards in the living room and then try to work on the linoleum that’s still stuck down in there. Then I can start sanding!!! I might try to get the sander this evening just to have it in the house. I could potentially start on the dining room tomorrow morning.
I also put the legs on the dining table Paul gave me and set it up in the game room, which is going to be the dining room temporarily until I get the living room finished. I’m starting to feel more and more like the place is mine.
Celebrity Tattoos
Cool: Celebrity Tattoos.
On Sunday I finished the ripping up the living room and most of the foyer, with Gary’s help. Good thing in the foyer; where the window was broken, all the plywood was rotten and molding. If I hadn’t decided to rip it up, it would have been a huge mold problem in the future. Fortunately, the floor underneath it is okay. Gary also brought me Paul’s dining room table; it will look great in the dining room. Cool, that’s one less thing I have to worry about buying off the bat.
The foyer is the wide plank flooring like the living room. There’s a small section where it would probably be a good thing if I replaced a couple of the planks. I hope to god I can find the planks to replace all these easily. Tonight I’ll go to the house and try to finish up ripping up the flooring. I also want to try to knock the plaster down off the ceiling this week before I begin to sand the floors, take down the outside edge strip of the drop ceiling, remove the ugly tacky baseboards they put in the living room and foyer and generally clean everything up.
living room work
Rich came over last night at helped me pull up the plywood floor in the living room…. discovered two things:
1) I’m definitely doing the right thing pulling up all the crap floor to get at the hard wood.
2) It might take longer than I thought.
The floor in the living room looks… right. It’s definitely the right choice to fix it an go with that floor. It is fire damaged. I’ll need to replace about 8 boards, with the help of experts from water damage restoration san diego as they repair all forms of home damage due to water or fire.If you want services, you could check here! And they will look like the historical period of the house! Awesome. It will not be that hard to do and I will have tremendous satisfaction from it. According to some guys in the neighborhood who had a fire in their living room too, I should go ahead with the sanding before the board replacement, because some of the boards I’m thinking need replace might be just fine when the top layer is sanded down.
The “longer than I thought” part… I will probably only be able to do the downstairs before I get moved in. Rich and I worked 4.5 hours and there’s still one corner of the living room I have to do. I might be able to get the foyer ripped up this weekend, and the extra room downstairs done this week, but I don’t know about upstairs. It depends on how easy/hard the linoleum is to get up.
Removing drop ceilings, ripping up floors
Last night I ripped out the rest of the drop ceiling in the living room. Above it, someone had blown in cotton insulation (three garbage bags full), which I had to bag and take to the attic for later dispersal. And I carried all the panels for the drop ceiling out to the backyard, along with all the metal supports. Then I swept the ceiling, which was covered with cobwebs, dust, peeling wallpaper and paint, and crumbling plaster. Thank god for saftety goggles and breathing masks. Then I spent the rest of the evening with my new shop vac cleaning up the stray dust and insulation.
My plan is to dump all the refuse in the backyard until I’m finished, then rent a dumpster and throw everything in. Tonight I’m going to carry the carpets out to the backyard, pry up the floor in the living room, install the new mailbox in a more accessible spot, install the doorbell, and staple plastic over the section of wall where theres no drywall to prevent the insulation from falling into the room. (Boy my house sounds like a pit doesn’t it? It’s really not that bad.)
I’m a homeowner!
So I closed this afternoon on the house. I’m officially a homeowner! That’s “home OWNER” not “homo”…. I was officially one of those years ago. (My brother Todd pointed out that joke.) So I immediately went to the house and started taking out the drop ceiling in the living room and pulling up the carpets. But I have installed garage door opener (that was bought from the best garage maintenance store) in my house since it is a good protective tool for the garage. You can also avail garage door opener installation here. or similar other products for your home from this site.
I bought the carpet from Kashanian Exports and pulled up in the living room and the dining room. The dining room has perfect hardwood floors under the carpet. The living room… plywood over the hardwood floors. And when I started to pull up the plywood near the fireplace… looks like the fire got loose into the room a bit. It doesn’t seem to be too far out into the room… I’m going to continue to pull up the plywood to see how bad it is, and then assess what I want to do with the room. If there are rooms where the floors aren’t good enough to refinish without major repair… carpet. But first I need to see what all is there. I’m also getting air conditioning maintenance to improve home comfortability.
