What Were They Thinking?!

So, it's pretty much an established fact that no two people think exactly alike.  In general though, most people try to use common sense; that's why they call it 'common'.  In our new home there have been several times when I've been really confused as to what the previous owners were thinking.  Now some things, I'm sure, were simply a case of not having the means of taking care of things, ie. the screen door that was just leaning against the back deck with one of the panes of glass broken.  With others, it was likely a case of preparing for renovations that were never done, ie. the kitchen cupboard doors that were removed and put in the basement long enough to gather dust.  Some were, hopefully, a lack of knowledge that, thankfully, did not turn disastrous, ie, the wood stove hooked up to the old oil furnace chimney without ensuring that it was up to code (which it wasn't).

Another thing that I found very odd was the number of phone jacks in this house.  There's one in every bedroom, one in the dining room a whole bunch in the basement and what I thought were three in the living room.  What's that you say?  How could you think there were three and that not be the case.  Well, that brings me to another "What were they thinking?!".  When I was preparing the living room for painting I was taking the outlet covers and phone jacks off, pretty standard.  When I took it off I was so surprised that I put it back on so I could take a picture.  I didn't put the snap-on cover back for the picture just the part that  screws on.

And this is what I found behind the phone jack.  Now my big question is, where do those wires go?  It doesn't look like there was a light in the living room that would need a switch.  More importantly, what were they thinking?!

On a different note, we also learned of something else today that made us, once again, wonder what they were thinking.  DH was visiting our neighbour to check out what they're doing with their basement.  (That brings up a whole other topic craziness on the part of the previous owners here - yes, we can see that the subfloor wasn't really done correctly but that's no reason to just make random saw lines and leave it).  Anyway, the contractor doing the basement at our neighbour's said that there used to be a nice row of spruce trees along the back fence of our place, actually a few rows of spruce.  So when Hydro One came to trim them a bit so they didn't get in the way of the power lines, the previous owner had them cut them all down, apparently so she could use them as fire wood . . . in the not completely safe wood stove.  Did I mention that it was spruce?  In an area where hardwoods are plentiful and much preferred for burning. 

With the spruce trees gone this is what we get to see out of our living room window.  What the #### were they thinking?!!!!!!!!

Living Room Painted

When we moved into our house most of the main living areas were painted a light grey-blue. I felt like I was living on a naval vessel with all that grey around. Where it wasn't grey it was white patching - even better! These pictures were taken when we had just moved in before Christmas, hence the Christmas tree.

On Friday we painted the living room. We were fortunate to have two missionaries from our church come to help out. They arrived at our home in time for some lunch and then the painting began. I had washed the walls that morning to get rid of all the cobwebs and dirt. As I mentioned a previous post, we took inspiration from our puppies for the paint colours. I'm so pleased with how it turned out. We still have accents to do but the overall feeling is so much warmer. I wish we hadn't put the dark brown as high as we did. We had stopped at 3'4" but I think 3' might have been better. We'll be putting a border between the two colours though so I think it will all work out. I thought that I had taken some more pictures of the finished product but I guess I didn't. At the point in this picture the bottom needed one more coat of paint. I finished that on Saturday, as well as a few minor touch-ups.

Now I know that I'll be showing just how much of an amateur I am but I decided that I'd use a paint edger that I had in my tool box. I had used it a few years ago and figured I'd give it a try here. I really like it. Maybe my problem is that I don't use good enough quality paintbrushes but I find that the coverage with the brushes is never quite as even as I would like. The coverage with the edger is great.

My Handy Man

I finally uploaded pictures to the computer. I've put the moving pictures with teh "Unloaded" post from January 8. I didn't want to do a whole new post just for the pictures.

The pictures I'll be treating you to today are of my handy man setting up the dog kennel. You may remember me mentioning that our dogs broke their ties while we were out of town getting our belongings. We had been keeping them in our enclosed shed overnight and then tied up during the day since our return.

We had been planning on getting a kennel for them when the spring came so we just moved that purchase forward and bought one earlier. We ended up getting this Petsafe kennel from Petsmart. As the description suggests, it can be set up in a 10' by 10' configuration or a 5' by 15' configuration. I'll say first off that 15' is not as long as I imagined. Our original plan was to go with 5' by 15' so they could run more. When we realized how short 15' is, we decided to go with the 10' x 10' simply because that would give them the most area. In the picture is the base set up for the 5' by 15'.

Here we have our younger son watching his dad hard at work. We made sure that we put the doghouse in the kennel before putting the chain link around.

I like to call this "The Last Spike" even though there weren't really spikes involved and this wasn't exactly the last thing to be done before the kennel was ready for the dogs. It was done just in time. Just after I took this picture one of our dogs came to play with me. . . . trailing the bit of rope that had been tying her up. She had broken it. The kennel was finished enough that she could go in while the rest of the chain link was being secured - thank goodness. Now all I need is a picture of the dogs in their kennel. I'll have to take one tomorrow.

Good Eats

Tonight was date night. It was so nice to get out by ourselves (with the baby). It's so nice that our oldest child is old enough to babysit, she's quite happy to earn the money as well. We went to the Paudash Lake Motel and Restaurant just down the road. It was fantastic, I would highly recommend it. The food was great and the service was even better. They are wonderfully family friendly which is so important when you have four kids. An added bonus is that they do an all day breakfast, perfect for my husband. Wednesday is pancake night so we'll definitely be taking the whole family one of these days.

During the day I was able to get quite a few boxes out of the garage. Since we won't be painting our living room until January 28th, I'm leaving a lot of our decorative things boxed up. It's nice to get some of our other things out of boxes though. I'm also finding that as I'm some taking things out, I realize that I don't really want them in our new home and they go straight to the donation box. It feels so good!

Dan's the Man

Back on my January 5th post I mentioned our friend, Dan (and his sister, Denise). Now I'll give the details (and not because I just sent him a link to this blog). This takes a bit of history though. Before we moved here we lived in a remote community. To get there you need to drive a long way then take a train and then take a boat in the summer, ice-road in the winter or helicopter in between. We were fortunate when we moved there because my husband's employer provided furnished housing for us. What that meant, though, was that when we left, we had very little furniture. we had a couple of desks, chairs, bookcases and a sideboard. So to the rescue comes our friend Dan.

It just happened that Dan's sister was needing to find new homes for some furniture that belonged to their grandmother. Since nobody else in their family was interested, she thought that we might be able to use them. My response was an enthusiastic, "Of course!" We now have a wonderful dining room table with matching chairs and a china cabinet, two dressers and a make-up table and an old singer sewing machine. Dan also brought a tv stand and has a sewing table that he'll be bringing/sending later on. Dan has also given a lot of his time unloading the boxcar and packing the storage unit in October and then loading the moving truck a couple weeks ago. We have been so blessed with his generosity.

And speaking of generosity, we are so grateful for the bunk-beds/mattresses that my sister gave us (and for storing them for the past year till we moved). They fit perfectly in the girls' room. It was such a relief to not have to worry about getting a bunch of beds for everyone. Which reminds me of how grateful we are that my parents lent us their camp cots and air mattresses for when we first arrived.

I also cannot forget our friend's Steve and Heather. When we bought this house the bathroom sink was in a closet. The owners had taken the old one out but hadn't yet installed the new one. Steve worked his magic and installed it for us which was not as straightforward as we had hoped. And we love the faucet that Heather picked. They have also helped us in many ways while we were settling in and have given us many things to help us get our home set up - yay for them remodeling their kitchen and getting rid of cupboards.

It feels so good to be living here. We have been richly blessed, not just with the material possessions that make life easier, but with good friendship. Our neighbours are friendly and the people at church were ecstatic to see us. Life is good.

Puppies

Well, we didn't get paint but we got paint chips. We know some of the colours that we want so we'll pick them up tomorrow. This brings me to the story of our colour scheme. Before we moved we were thinking about what colour we wanted in our living room (which I had never seen - yes, I trust my husband).

Now for some history, at the end of November a stray puppy followed our older daughter and older son home from school. We sent away the one that followed our son home but broke down and kept the one that followed our daughter home. We decided to keep the puppy instead of sending it to a puppy adoption program. Since it's dark brown/black we agreed that Cocoa would be a good name. Well, a couple of weeks later the other puppy returned. By this time she was showing definite signs of starvation, she was all skin and bones. By this time we also decided that an indoor dog and a baby learning to crawl don't mix very well so Cocoa became a mostly outdoor dog. Of course it was easy to see that she needed a doggy friend and so we kept the second puppy too. The second puppy is blonde so we figured that it would be very fitting to call her Marzipan. I love marzipan, especially chocolate-coated marzipan and those little marzipan fruits. I have the Burt's Bees almond hand cream and I could sniff it all day, mmm. I also love brown, it's so warm and cosy and I look great in brown. So as we were talking about colour schemes for our living room we thought we could do dark brown on the bottom and a lighter colour on top. Then we joked about how we could take inspiration from the dogs, Cocoa and Marzipan. It's funny how jokes sometimes come back to haunt you. Have I ever mentioned that when we were on our way to visit friends this summer I kind of joked about perhaps moving to Cardiff? I didn't really expect to be here less than 6 months later but I'm enjoying it. Anyway, we know the colour's we'll be using and really, anything will be an improvement over grey-blue with white patches. We still need to work out what we want as accent colours and what would work well for the other main rooms but I feel good.

On non-paint fronts, I enrolled my older daughter in skating yesterday and she had a great time. We moved from a town where the only activity was hockey which didn't interest my very girly girl at all. Now, it's all about deciding what to do from the many options available. We had debated several different activities for when we moved. We almost enrolled her in gymnastics but for now it will be skating. She can always do gymnastics after the ice comes out of the arena.

New Territory

Last night as I was snuggling with my older daughter we were talking about her feelings about going to a new school and making all new friends. I told her that she was doing something that I had never done. I had never moved until I went away to university. In grade 7 and in grade 9 I went to new schools but all of my classmates went with me. As it turns out, the first day seems to have gone fairly well. Apparently our daughter has some admirers already - I am so not ready for this. Our son (who struggles with school in general) had a mostly okay day which is great! Our younger daughter starts school tomorrow. In her old school she went every morning but now she goes Tuesdays, Thursdays and some Fridays. It will be interesting to see how things go for her.

Today was very productive. I was able to get the old hot water hose for the washing machine off and put the new one on. I figured that since we had a brand new one, I might as well use it. Then I did laundry - yay! DH spent the day putting up the dog run. I will say that 10' x 10' is smaller than I imagined, at least they get to go for walks regularly. I'm very glad that it solves the whole issue with broken ties. It also makes it so that the dogs can share the doghouse again which we really wanted for the winter. When they were tied up they kept getting tangled together - not fun for them or us.

Tomorrow we're taking advantage of having only one child at home (the one who can't run away while shopping yet) and we're going to make use of the sale on paint at Canadian Tire. We need paint for our living room, dining room and hallway. We have a pretty good idea of what we want but we've never been able to have a calm trip to the store together. Tomorrow is our chance.

Unloaded

Just a quick update. On Thursday we unloaded the truck. We now have boxes in the basement and a garage full of boxes. We could have fit everything in the garage except there's a bunch of wood in there that the previous owner was burning in the stove in the basement (which we are not using because it is not up to code). I'm slowly emptying boxes and getting things put away.

January 19 - Adding a few pictures in here.

Here I am in our partially-filled U-Haul truck. We had our belongings in a 10' by 20' storage unit. The truck we rented was 26' long. There was a little bit of concern about whether we could get it all in. We were fortunate that many of our boxes were one of 2 sizes. We'd stack them up and then put odd boxes and other items on top. Our friend who was helping us was very experienced in packing trucks for moving so things worked very well.

And here's the truck fully loaded. We're so pleased that everything fit. We saved the furniture and bulky items for the last part. The idea is that they help to hold all the boxes in place. It worked, everything was in the same place when we opened the back as it was when we closed it.

Here's our garage before. Notice the wood piled nicely? When we moved in all the wood was piled up almost against the big garage door. DH got the kids working one day piling the wood farther in the garage so that we could actually move our things into the garage.

And here it is after everything was unloaded. It's so nice having the garage to house things till we get some more stuff done in the house. We still want to paint the living room and that will be much easier without all of our belongings in the way. Now we can take things out as we have a place to put them.

These boxes are in the basement, not everything fit in the garage. It would have if we hadn't had the wood in there. Notice how the boxes are pretty much all the same size? These boxes were amazing for moving. I love how they have the punch-in handles. The handles make them very easy to carry (as long as they're not overloaded). I did make sure to put my books in smaller boxes so they wouldn't be to heavy.

As I've been unpacking I've noticed a dilemma. There are some things that I can't put away because I have no shelves to put them on. At the same time, I don't want to get a whole bunch of shelves for things and then decide that I don't want those things anymore or that I don't like the style of shelves. So, a lot of things are staying in boxes until I figure that stuff out. I'm quite pleased with myself that as I'm unpacking I'm also putting things in a box to take to donate. It will be nice to no longer have so much clutter.

As for accomplishments today, we re-assembled our digital piano. The piano takes up way less space when it's assembled than when it's in the box. Assembling the piano also meant that I needed to find a place for my baby wraps/carriers since they were helping to cushion the piano. I had the genious idea to hang them on hangers, they look so neat.

We were also able to get a washing machine from Kijiji for $60. I'm quite pleased to be able to wash clothes at home now. Our awesome friends down the street were letting us do laundry at their home (with their super-cool washer and dryer). It's so much easier to just do it at home though.

The other thing we got today was a dog run for the dogs - remember how both of their ties broke? We were debating about buying one off Kijiji or from a pet store. The Kijiji guy hadn't gotten back to me by the time DH had to go to the city so DH just picked up one at the pet store. We may return it, I'm not sure. To be honest, at this point, I just don't care. I'll help set it up if I need to but other than that, I don't want to think about it. I have too many other things to think about - like the lesson I agreed to give in church tomorrow.

All's Well That Ends Well - I Think

Well I had a topic that I was going to do for yesterdays blog post. Of course yesterday's post never happened because I got to go on a trip with the family. I was going to talk about our friend Dan and the wonderful furniture that he and his sister gave us. I'll have to save that topic for another day. Today I'll talk about how grateful we are for Dan's help in loading our moving truck.

So, DH booked a cube van for Tuesday from our local car rental place. It turns out that it wasn't a cube van, it's a cargo van - big difference. Since there's nowhere else to rent anything here, the next option is to load everyone in the van and drive about 4 hours to where our stuff is. The plan is to stay overnight in a motel (with a pool and hot tub so the kids can have some fun). Then first thing in the morning DH and our friend Dan will get the truck and the kids and I will head home to take care of the dogs.

Well, the place we were going to get the truck from needed to make some repairs so we went with U-Haul instead. Now, U-Haul can be pretty hit-and-miss but we got a great deal today. Basically, the dealer where we live really needs trucks so we got a big discount and a great big truck.

I helped pack a little bit but then needed to get on my way with the kids. I left the packing in the capable hands of my husband and our good friend Dan. Before starting to pack the truck DH was convinced that there was no way they could get the contents of a full 10x20 storage unit in a 26 foot U-Haul. Thanks to some awesome packing, he was pleasantly surprised.

I got home to find that the tie for both of our dogs had snapped. Our wonderful neighbour had taken care of one dog and the other dog must have just stayed in the dog house till she heard us at the house. At least we have a shed where they can be safe and contained. It's so not what I needed though. I guess we'll be looking for something stronger tomorrow.

Painting Begins

I found the memory card so the pictures are now on the computer. I took a bunch of random pictures around the house. Later DH took pictures in a more methodical process. The unfortunate part is that the battery died as he reached the last two rooms. Of course, those are the first two rooms that we painted. Perhaps he wasn't so well planned after all. We've just painted the walls and the closets so far. We haven't done any trim, partly because I'm not sure what colours I want yet, partly because we'll be replacing the windows this summer anyway and partly because I'm lazy and I can overlook the trim for a while as long as the walls look decent.

We'll have to settle for my 'before' pictures.

This is the girls' room. Yes, it was like that when we moved in. I guess someone tried to get rid of the blue but didn't have much success. No, I don't get the blue square around the light.

This is after. We haven't done the ceiling yet but we'll get to it. The walls are the sky and grassy hills. My 11 year old will be painting horses in the field at some point. We may also do a tree and some flowers. At least it looks much better than it did. It will be neat to see when it's all done.

The other room that has been painted is our bedroom. Our bedroom was probably the best looking but I'm so tired of having a white bedroom. I want it my colour.

Orange!!!! I LOVE orange! It's so bright and cheery.

So, I learned some things with this painting experience. The major lesson is that if you decide to use leftover paint from the previous owner be very careful to check the label . . . and then check it again. I was sure that the paint that I used in the girls' closet said latex. I was wondering why it smelled so bad while I was putting it on . . . and why it didn't seem to want to come off my hands with just soap and water. I looked at the label again and saw the dreaded word "alkyd". So they got to camp out in their brother's room for a couple more days. Thankfully it was fairly mild so I opened their window (of course I had just put the plastic insulation on so that had to come off a bit). I also found out about getting rid of the smell with sliced onions in a bowl of water. Then I learned that rotting onions in a bowl of water smell a lot like alkyd paint. Fun stuff! But the girls are in their own room now in their own bed (a bunk-bed generously given to us by my sister - who has been storing it in her basement for a year, waiting for us to move).

Tomorrow DH goes to get our belongings out of the storage unit.