A week or so ago, I woke up to scrambling and mewing from our hall bathroom. This is the bathroom that we remodeled about a year ago…
AND the one that let loose a torrent of water into our home interior about six months ago…
At least this the excuse for why I had never replaced the piece of plywood that allows access to the wet-wall and shower/tub cut off valves.
Unfortunately, mice discovered that this provides direct access into our linen closet. A warm, fuzzy, dark location that can not be reached by our cats. Not that our cats are such a great deterrent (more on this in a minute), but the mice don’t know they’re lousy hunters… so I’ve always assumed that the smell of the fearsome predators would keep the mice out of the living quarters. As a house in the relative country, the idea of keeping mice completely out of the house is pretty much too much to ask for (especially because the house was well infested when we moved in… there are just too many access points we don’t know about).
That said, we have maybe one incident a year where a stray field mouse gets lost in the interior and our ferocious felines chase it around the house. Often cornering, often swatting, but never catching, killing, eating or removing. Oh no. Apparently that’s my job.
So there I was at 3 AM armed with my usual mouse hunting gear (more…)
Archive for the ‘House’ Category
Mouse in the house.
Sunday, February 3rd, 2008Thunk-WHHHOOOOOSSSSHHHH!!
Tuesday, June 5th, 2007This was the sound I heard just after I returned home late this morning (about 11:30AM). I had run out to pick up some Star Wars stamps for our birth announcements. I came in through the garage and was just closing the door when (as the title says) I heard: “Thunk-WHHHOOOOOSSSSHHHH!!” come from upstairs, something like the sound you get when you suddenly release the tub drain… except the rush of water seemed to be under pressure and kept going strong. Afraid that perhaps K has fallen in the shower (she had not), I shouted out and quickly ran upstairs.
Meanwhile: “WHHHOOOOOSSSSHHHH!!”
I got to the top of the stairs and noticed the running water sound seemed to be coming from the hall bathroom (maybe K is in the tub?). I quickly looked in the tub… nothing… except for water gurgling out around the water control knob (we have one of those single knob shower controls) and from… get this… around the OUTSIDE of the tub faucet. “Oooh,” I thought, “that can’t be good.” So skipping most of the stairs on the way down, I sprinted to the basement.
Meanwhile: “WHHHOOOOOSSSSHHHH!!”
(more…)
Thanks Grand-dad!
Wednesday, May 9th, 2007Grand-dad Schierer made this fine changing table for the baby…
which converts into this beautiful dresser for the child to be (the top comes off):
This was actually delivered over the weekend, but for obvious (read below) reasons, I didn’t get this post up until now.
Last nursery update
Monday, April 23rd, 2007I sense the relief in some and the panic in others as this title is processed by their fleshy comparators. To those who seek the end, fear not, the construction is complete. TO those who want more, there will always be updates for the purpose of the room… if not the room itself. But enough stalling…
Doesn’t the floor look great! In the sun it just glows. I’m so glad that we didn’t settle for anything less. It’s a solid 3/4″ prefinished northern maple hardwood floor. We got the middle grade for some extra color variation. The tone varies a bit more than I anticipated, but the wood is so warm and rich with beautiful grain that I’m very pleased with the complete look.
This view is looking the opposite direction highlighting the paint pattern that K designed for the raised panel doors.
There are detailed descriptions and more pictures in the gallery.
Nursery Update 5 (+ family stuff)
Saturday, April 14th, 2007The flooring is officially going in! Dad (S) and I installed a threshold at the nursery doorway and hand nailed the first four courses. The plan is to rent the floor nailer next week and Eric and I will put in the remaining flooring on Saturday.
Meanwhile we’ve gone from one packed house to another. Last weekend we were at my parents’ house in PA with my sister, Bro-in-law (aka H&J) and their 2 kids. This weekend we had my parents and H&J in last night. H&J were picking up a puppy from a local breeder (you will probably be able to read about that on her blog shortly) so they left this morning. K’s folks and G-Pa arrived this afternoon and are now in house for the night. A local shower (really brunch) is scheduled for tomorrow after church.
Church is going to be fun, because the 2 (and a half) of us will have 6 family members joining us for church. In addition, a friend from work and his family (2+2) may be joining us for the first time at our church. So in all 10 adults and 2(.5) kids. We’ll need to get there early to reserve a big chunk of space.
Nursery Update 4
Thursday, April 5th, 2007The flooring has arrived. It’s going to look great. Here’s a very fake sneak preview:
Yes, I know, the floor is out of focus because I’m holding it in my hand, but it’s all about the colors. See!
We’ll be heading to my folks house for a shower on Saturday, then back here for Easter. The flooring needs to acclimate for 3-6 days (depending on who you ask). So I think I’ll be taking some time off late next week to get it installed. Hopefully with some help! (Eric!?)
Nursery Progress 3
Monday, March 19th, 2007We have finally finished with the paint in the nursery! And saturday we also got the chair rail up (except for one small piece, cause Home Depot didn’t have enough). Finally feels like we’ve accomplished something on it 
I’m thrilled with how it’s turning out. It’s going to look really nice with the crib bedding we’ve picked out.
Next on the list to finish the room up is:
- Install closet organizer
- Paint closet doors
- Remove carpet
- Install Hardwood floor
- Install Baseboard molding
When that’s done, I think the room will be ready for the furniture.
Nursery Progress 2
Sunday, March 11th, 2007Well the work continues in making a space for the soon-to-be-arrival. The walls are painted and now I’m working on some touch-up and the closet. I’m out of primer, so I’ll have to get more tomorrow. It’s amazing how much primer you can go through when the walls are as beat-up as these were.
I’m not sure what the previous household did in this room, but its pretty clear that some kind of ill behaved animal was kept in here against its will. The door shows significant claw marks, and there were various awkward looking stains and marks in various places on the walls. Well no more! (I suppose some of the deeper marks on the door can be seen through the paint.)
The trim has been primed and painted but will need another coat. The chair rail will probably go up in the next day or so, with the closet painting happening at the same time. After that the carpet comes up to make room for some kind of wood-like flooring. We haven’t decided exactly what we want yet, but it will probably be some kind of laminate-type snap-in floor boards. Its durable, looks nice and relatively inexpensive. I’ll be putting that in myself. I told K that either we pay somebody to put it in, or I’m getting the compound miter saw. Not that flooring needs miter joints (generally) but it does need a lot of precision chopping. The wall trim will need some miters, so the saw has been acquired.
On the rest of the preparing for baby front, we attended our first birthing class last week. I’m not sure it was particularly educational so far, but there are many more classes. K also has a checkup tomorrow.
Nursery Progress
Monday, February 26th, 2007Well, we have finally begun to make some progress on the nursery. The room has been emptied of everything, which mainly resulted in large piles of junk in other rooms in the house. Chris has begun priming the walls and woodwork in preparation for the painting. We still need to do some patching of nail holes, but the spackle we had was all dried out.
The Nursery will be done up in an underwater theme, with the walls painted green on the bottom and blue on top, with a white chair rail dividing them. Other plans include ripping out the carpet and putting in hardwood of some type, but we haven’t picked that out yet.
Knowing how long it normally take us to complete a home improvement project, let’s hope that this one is done by the time the baby arrives.
How time flies….
Tuesday, June 6th, 2006when you’re so busy that you don’t have time to sit down and rest.
Chris and I decided that this summer we needed to remodel the upstairs main bathroom. The tile was falling off the wall, and we were pretty sure that there was lots of mold growing underneath it. And there was that big hole in the wall. We found it when we ripped the nasty wall paper down shortly after moving in…it was strategically hidden behind the vinyl baseboard.
The plan is to have the bathroom put back together by our little summer shindig on July 8th. So we’ve been busy demo-ing the bathroom, reworking the plumbing for the new fixtures, re-tiling the area around the bathtub, and repairing/putting up new drywall on the rest of the walls.
On top of all that work, Chris’s parents came for a visit two weekends ago, (ok, they did come specifically to help with the plumbing, but spare time goes bye-bye when people are around), and my parents and brother were here last weekend. And there’s that whole job thing…I really don’t remember my last job occupying quite so much time.
So we’re at the point where the tile is up and grouted, the walls are almost ready for paint (they just need to be wet-sanded). Of course, we still haven’t decided on what color to paint yet. The plan is to have the painting done by this weekend. Then we’re just waiting on the vanity. Chris’s dad is building it for us, so we’ll have to drive out to their house and pick it up. But it’s so cool to have someone who can build custom furniture for you.
In other news, we’ve signed up to run the 5K on the 4th of July again this year. Just started really prepping for it in the last week or so. We’ve both been going to the gym pretty regularly, but we haven’t been running. Today was the first day of running outside instead of on the treadmill. At the moment I’m up to 1.2 miles (yay me!), and increasing a little bit each time. My goal for this year is to run the whole thing (I had to walk a little last year), and beat last years time. Assuming I can find the time to continue to post, I’ll keep you updated on my progress, cause I know you all are interested.
