something you haven't seen in a while

Me, with a screwdriver, working.  I'm back!  I'm dressed a little too nice for hard labor in this photo, but since we were just hanging curtains, I guess it's okay. 

We decided to undertake the project of moving the girls to the back room, which has been our den/library/office/spare room/catch-all since they were born.  It's a much bigger room than their old room and it's farther from the rest of the house, so it will be quieter for them when sleeping.  No more tip-toeing around to do the dishes or vacuum!  Yay!  Wait, that means I don't have any excuse for not doing the dishes or vacuuming.  Argh!

Here are some more photos of the chaos created by this move.  We've since gotten the girls moved in completely, and we do plan to repaint later.  But we haven't unpacked the office/library yet, so all those boxes you see in our bedroom are still FULL of books.  500+ books, actually (nerd librarian that I am, I scanned them all into LibraryThing as I packed them...here's our catalog if you care to take a look).

Our bedroom:

The dining room!

More dining room:

The new nursery.  We've removed the Batman print and the

scary mask on the left.  We hope to repaint soon!

May 9th photos

The office, sanded:

Who's that chubby girl standing on my granite countertops?!? Oh wait, that's me. :( The ladder wouldn't reach...not sure if you can stand on granite countertops or not...surely they are not designed for it, but they held up okay, thank goodness.

More patching...

The kitchen, now a pretty green. The yellow to the left is the old pantry, where apparently the refrigerator is now supposed to go, since they took down the doors and shelves, and installed a piece of copper tubing that I assume has something to do with the water line? Although, now that I think about it...there's no water cut off there. Argh. More superior craftsmanship...not.

Kitchen and "pantry" again:

That chubby girl on the countertops again. And all the mess that's being stored in the kitchen until we can put it where it really goes:

Master bedroom floor, sanded partially:

And more of the master bedroom, from the other angle:

Master bedroom photo, photo has bad coloring:

Patchwork by the front door. How many photos of this area do we need? Seems like we took one every day, although it didn't change a whole lot!

Hallway. I kinda like this photo, but I'm not really sure why.

Hallway. You can see the plywood, and the glue that was left behind once the plywood finally came up:

More hallway:

May 6th photos

Me in the basement (behind the brick support on the left), vacuuming up 80 years of dirt:

Another view of me and my tattoo vacuuming. We almost filled up the shop vac with debris:

This is the shed area underneath the back bedroom/den. It is visible in exterior photos of the house as being the little basement part under the upstairs addition. It's a tan color on the outside. We're going to use it to store our bikes and lawnmower, but first we had to clean, clean, clean. For some reason they had covered it in cardboard, and maybe even carpet? I can't remember now...even though they put brick down first. We're guessing the brick used to be the back wall of the house, which they tore down when they added on. We were hoping to be able to eventually expose the brick in the add-on room, enlarging it to make it a master suite. We can still do the master suite, but no brick wall!

Another view of the shed area, along with the lower part of the brick wall, which (obviously) still exists:

Brandon was very upset when he found this next to the driveway, because he thought at first that it was our original (and probably Craftsman) front door. We later realized that the three window panes were sort of diagonal, each one a little higher than the last. We're guessing now it was maybe from the 1950's or so, and probably not original to the house. If you believe otherwise, please don't tell us, because it's very sad. The door itself is sad, buried under it's black plastic in the side yard. No idea how long it's been there, since it's so crumbled. The bamboo shot up through the plastic, as you can see in the photo, so we guess it's been there for quite some time.

Top of door, with three side by side windows:

Long view of door, top to bottom:

Basement, in more of the crawlspace section, where the hvac stuff is located:

So, is this like where we put our canning? Basement, crawlspace:

The uh, "finished" part of the basement. See that little green dot in the middle, next to the floor support? Check out the next photo for details...

Close up of last photo. This would be a candle, resting on a shelf made out of a circular saw blade. Yes, you read that correctly. A SAW BLADE. My arm has healed, so I can't include the resulting boo-boo in the photos. Apparently they tried to saw through it to remove it, failed, beat on it with a hammer, still failed to remove it, and then said, "Hey, man! This would be a great place to put a candle!" I especially like how it's sea green, to match the walls. ;)



Basement view, from the entranceway:




Back upstairs...patching, patching, and more patching:

Den, maybe? Maybe Brandon can tell which room this is. It's sanded, at any rate:

Office, sanded:

Master bedroom, sanded: