Travelling note

This really has nothing to do with home improvement or selling my house or anything like that.  But it has to do with image improvement.  Specifically kids on an airplane.  People prefer the snakes, I think because they are quieter.


So, remember how I said I was a flight attendant?  I take being a good passenger to another level, I'll admit.  I still get out my safety card when told to and watch the demos (even though I can, and still do them in my sleep).  I strictly follow all the rules, from the ticket counter to TSA to boarding, taxi, takeoff, cruise, decent, and deplaning.  I keep my ears open for gate changes.  I arrive at least two hours in advance.  I walk the line.  I pride myself on my abilty to do everything that is expected of me as a passenger.  And do you what I get in return? 

No drama. 

I have never had a problem I couldn't cope with, been compensated adequately for, or was caused by my own neglect.  This is not to say the airlines have never lost my luggage (Honeymoon in Dublin- who needs underwear) or rerouted me through a different city (Pittsburgh is close enough to Philadelphia, right?).  What I'm saying is I never allow their failures or mine to wreck my good time.  That being said, now that I have a child, I'm a little extra vigilant.  One of the things I come prepared for is the ever present noise situation.  I bring enough snacks, toys, activities, books, and videos loaded on both my iPad and my iPhone to keep an Airbus load of babies occupied.  But when that fails, I bring a little something for the passengers around me.  For someone who is truly being put out, (And when I say truly, I mean my daughter has not stopped kicking the seat since we closed the door- this, by the way, has not happened, nor do I ever imagine allowing this to occur) I will buy them lunch or a drink.


If you are thinking of traveling, and you have children, I would like to suggest this little idea.  It is hard for people to be mad at you with this.  It tells them, that you are aware of the problem and you are trying to deal with it.  Honestly, I have never seen anyone fuss after receiving one of these.

These couldn't be any easier to put together.  Some candy, earplugs, and a little apology note.


If you are a person who actively tries to distract your child from crying, and give out something like this, and someone STILL complains?  I'd say you have a right to tell them off with a hearty one finger salute.  It is a billion times worse for you than it is for them and kids will be kids.  Try as you might, it is sometimes something they just have to do, and my daughter (who is actually an awesome little traveller) is no different- she has no volume control, and talks at the top of her lungs. 

Do the best you can, and screw the rest.  Hope your summer travels are enjoyable, if not, painless.

Kitchen Re-dumb

So, a $2000 budget to get a new dishwasher, stove, sink, garbage disposal (That was broken too), and countertops.  Could it be done?  Yes.  It was done, and we did not DIY this one.

Look, someone else is going to have to live with our mistakes here.  I actually wanted to entice someone into considering our home versus seeing the loooong list of things that have to be done before it is considered livable.  This is maybe not the time to DIY how to install new counterops.

Thanks to the good people at Lowe's, we got something within our budget, and looks great!  You be the judge.

The old stove.  Note the countertops on each side are pieces of plywood meant to give the illusion someone cared enough to hide the top drawers.  My husband actually lamented how easy it used to be to just reach into the drawers through the top.  Hmmm....

My kitchen galley before.  I never felt homesick in the aft galley of an Airbus.

Kitchen before:  What you really can't tell from this picture is that the countertops are sink are vintage.  See?  Already using real estate jargon to say they are they original from when this place was built.  There are knife strikes in that counter older than me.  And I don't even want to discuss the sink.  It's too gross to photograph, and my friends will question my ability to do dishes.

I should say this was not something that was done in a week.  It took us about a month from the time of the fire to completion.  So, how did I live without a dishwasher or stove for a month?  We went on vacation for one week of it, and the rest....

Microwave meals.  I never want to eat another microwave meal again.

 DAY 1- The Electrician

The electrician came to our house because the old stove was wired in.  We wanted to get with the times and get a plug.  Your welcome, who ever buys my house.

 So here was the homeowner problem I faced.  The current wiring allows the stove to be flush against the wall.  The electrician gave me two options:
A. Attach the plug-in, but the new stove would not be flush- in fact, it would stick out 3 inches
B.  Hard wire the new stove.

I thought of option 3, for which I'm kind of proud.  C. Cut the drywall and move the plug- in into the wall.  Genius!

Plug installed.  He did go back and patch it up.

 

 

 

 Day 2- The new stove's arrival to much fanfare, because I thought I was also getting the dishwasher.

Yay!  Appliances that match!  (The refrigerator is white, so everything else follows suit)

 Day 3- New Countertops

Bye Bye Harvest Gold countertops!

Bye Bye Plywood!

Preventing gravity fail by holding the countertops down

PRETTY!

Day  3 Complete.  Next came the plumber and the only time in the whole mess I was disappointed in the level of service we received.

On Day 4, there was much confusion about who was to bring what.  And that we would need to go buy some drain kits, and other such stuff, I don't know, my brain started to melt so I passed it off to my darling husband, who is so much better at managing supply than me.

I didn't much care for our plumber.  He brought a trainee who complained the whole time.  They would tell jokes and make fun of past clients... with me right around the corner.  I'm kind of old fashion about customer service, but I always feel it is in bad form to make fun of your clients in front of other clients.  I was in customer service in one form or another for 22 years before I became a stay at home mom.  Sure, we have all had the idiot customer who doesn't know their left foot from their nose when it comes to whatever service industry you are in, but it is just rude.  Don't do it, is my advice to you.  Wait til you are at the bar or on lunch to talk about them behind their backs.  The illusion is pretty important to your customers that the people you work for aren't complete idiots who are lucky they can walk and chew gum at the same time.

That said, I expected from all their talk to have thsi crazy outstanding level of service never before matched.  What I got was someone who didn't know what some old tube running from the wall went to (neither do I- do I look like a plumber?) and someone who left a clear gummy sealant inside my brand stinking new sink.  But, after I scraped it off for three days with my fingernail, it was fabulous!

After

Beautiful new sink!  Awesome new dishwasher!

Beautiful, huh?  And if you think I'm going to wreck this kitchen by cooking in it, you have another thing coming!

Hello Again!

Again, it has been some time since I last wrote, but this time with good reason.  First, the fun reasons:

-We took a family vacation to Hawaii where I didn't access the internet, other than the occasional facebook post for friends living vicariously through us... ok, to make people incredibly jealous of our fabulous life (for one week anyway)

This is a tree I try to take a picture of every time we come here so we can see how she grows.  It's a lovely grassy park next to the hotel.

-Then we took another trip to Las Vegas just the two of us... and my parents, and my sister and brother in law.  My dad was playing in a World Series of Poker event where he did extremely well- no money win, but hey, I'm usually the first one out at any friendly tournament, so over 13 hours of play is pretty kick butt!  Plus, it was nice for the husband and I to connect with each other without L. I can't say enough how important I think it is to get away from your kids even if it is just for the evening.  I know there are some moms out there who are horrified that I would leave her for an entire weekend.  It's not like we locked her in a room covered with newspapers with bowls of food and various sippy cups of water.  (I thought about it- kidding!) She was left with my gracious in-laws who are either too polite to say what a little hellion we are raising or she charmed the pants off of them.

Not sure which.

In any case, it's important to remember that before anything else, there was the two of us.  If you can't remember what that was like, you need to book a vacation right now.

-In between all that, we attended 4 birthday parties, 2 baby showers, and a wedding.  Phew!  It doesn't look like this is going to let up any over the next year!

Now for the less than fun but far more practical.

So, remember in my last post I mentioned the dishwasher was not working.  Well, we had to forgo picking a room out of the bucket and skipped straight to the kitchen.  Because that wasn't the last thing to go in the kitchen.

We had a pretty dramatic situation in the kitchen and I'm not going to lay blame (mostly because this is my fault) but a plastic colander ended up in the oven, and unknowingly the oven was turned on to pre-heat it.  This is how it went down:

I was standing in the living room, well, between the living room and the kitchen watching L play while the oven heated up for dinner.  I hopped on my phone and started reading about the recipe I pinned on Pinterest that was to be the subject of dinner that night.  And like always, I got caught up in a Pin-cycle that got me looking at a billion other things.  That's when I smelled it.  You know, the smoky, chemically smell of charred plastic?

I yelled some obsenities which signalled my husband to come downstairs. 

On a side note, I would like to send big kudos to the team of instructors that taught me everything I know about being a flight attendant- Barb especially.  Her voice seven years after our initial training was still in my head, and allowed me to react quickly and calmly.

I saw the smoke pouring out of the oven, and saw the flames licking the glass door,  and turned off the power.  We got the fire extinguisher, cracked the door of the oven, unloaded the whole thing in a sweeping motion, and shut it back up.  I put the baby and the dog out on the patio so the smoke couldn't get them, and they were contained.  We pulled the circuit breaker.  After a while, we cracked the oven to be sure the flames had died down and this is what we saw:

My favorite colander/wedding present... gone.  Along with a wooden spoon and some silverware.

You can see the fire extinguisher powder on the floor, along with our anemic little fan trying to air what the room.

In our post mortem that night aka, lying in bed talking about what happened, our minds reeled over what went on, and what our next steps would have to be.  How to air out the house, would we have to hire a professional to come clean it, would we need to re-paint just to get the smell out?

Our smoke dectector failed, because of age.  SMOKE DETECTORS NEED TO BE CHANGED OUT EVERY 10 YEARS, NO MATTER HOW MANY BATTERIES YOU KNOW ARE GOOD GO INTO THOSE THINGS!!!  Just wanted to be sure you saw that- sorry for the shouting.
Lesson learned.

I was in denial, assuming we could try to clean it up and move on.  The husband threw his hands up and said, "let's just re-do the kitchen".
Talk about letting the rabbit out of the hat!
I have to contain my excitement a little at this because I have been chomping at the bit since the words, "Will you marry me?" were uttered by him to re-do this kitchen.  I have to be kept in check that this is not a home I am planning on living in for long, so don't go crazy.  Budget set at $2,000 to re-do the kitchen.  Could it be done?  Find out next post.

Plant Bombed, Knob Turners& Disapointing Dishwashers

My weekend did not go as planned.  Although we had a lot of plans...most of which involved hanging out with friends and eating.  And drinking.  THAT all happened.  But getting to L's closet...not so much.

I did her laundry, which, was insurmountable at one point, and I'm now in the process of putting it on hangers and actually putting it away, as opposed to using my tried and true college method of tossing it all in the closet on the floor.

My In-Laws surprised us with two additional plants for the front of the house, and a caddy for the hose.  I'll have to figure out how to fix it up.  I think I have now filled my quota of plants out front.

The other thing that did not go as plan is our dishwasher broke.  I mean, I hear water flowing, I hear it going through all it's cycles, but it is not cleaning anything.  I thought at first it might have something to do with our water's heat, which mysteriously also stopped working.  I sent my husband in to look at the water heater, because

A. I don't know where the pilot light is on it, and
B. I was scared he was going to tell me we need a new one.

What seems to have happened is that SOMEONE (And I'm not naming names) likely turned that very appealing black knob at eye level (if you are about 33 inches tall) all the way to low.  It seems when I cleaned the utility closet, I opened up a hidden world behind the mess.  So, the heat is back on, which is great for our showers.  (I wasn't sure I was going to last through another one), but did not solve the dishwasher problem.

My father in law looked at it, and asked when the last time we cleaned the trap in the dishwasher, to which I replied, there is a trap?  Going to need to locate information about taking care of dishwashers. 

See?  This is the problem when you rent most of your adult life.  And move frequently.  You never learn how to take care of things like dishwashers.  In fact, I hadn't had a dishwasher in a rental ever.  My parents have a dishwasher, but I guess it never occurred to me that they might be cleaning it.  I mean, who cleans a thing meant to do cleaning?  Apparently EVERYONE BUT ME!  I'll get a handle of this housefrau lifestyle yet...

Utility Closet....Check!

I realize that cleaning up the utility closet may not seem like a home improvement, but I think it makes a difference to the people looking at our place. 

"Is it clean and orderly?  Why, it must be easy to care for in a place like this."  It’s not, because it is small and we are outgrowing it by leaps and bounds, but I’m hoping we can fool the next set of people into thinking this place is a breeze to maintain.

So Here’s what I did:

Step 1.  Took two armfuls of stuff out.  Sat down and checked e-mail.  Remembered I was supposed to stay on task while L naps and continued to clear things out of the closet.

Step 2. Took note of what needed fixing.  The rule of the game is if it is in the house, it better do what it is suppose to do.  If it is a door, then it needs to open and close, if it is a light, it needs to turn on and off, etc. My mom/ realtor told us this.  So nothing major.

- There is some funky paint colors in here, perhaps the original yellow (it matches our harvest gold countertop.)



not sure if we need to paint it or not.  Going to have to defer to realtor on this one.

 -One tile is loose.  It is the original light aqua blue.  Kinda retro looking.  In someone else’s home I would probably think it is cool.




  Not here though.  We aren’t trying to be hip or ironic.

- I want to hang the grocery bag holder up on the door.  It is not pretty but it is utilitarian, and I want easy access to it while we are still here.

- Install hooks to hang the step ladder out of the way of L.  I know it sounds crazy, but it drives me crazy when she gets a hold of the step ladder and pushes it around the room, and occasionally climbs it.  Call me crazy but I like my babies on the floor or in my arms, where they belong.

Step 3.  Go through items I pulled out and see what I actually use.  Attachments to vaccums long since retired? Cleaning products not used in the last 6 years? Collection of paper bags? Yup.  We got them.  One bag of note, I thought was interesting- a cowboy hat bag…


Thanks Breck Lorman, who ever you are, for your gourmet western food cowboy hat bag.

I put the cleaning supplies I do use back on the shelves.  But this time, waaaay up on a shelf out of L’s reach.  Eventually I want to switch over to greener products, but for now, I have these, and they work, provided we take the precaution of not letting L drink them down.  The products I won't keep will either be given to people who can/will use them or properly recycled with the city of Tempe.  The cloth grocery bags in the back of my car, where I might actually remember to use them.  And put the cleaning rags and old t-shirts in the cleaning caddy.  Got the steamer, vacuum cleaner back into the closet.  Rearranged the placement a bit to accommodate our recycling bin.

Step 4.  Text the husband to tell him the list of things we need to do to the utility closet this weekend, omitting possible paint project- he hates to paint, which is why L’s room is the only one decorated in the whole house.  Text Mom/realtor to see what she thinks about the paint.  Wait….

Step 5.  The husband pretty much ignores the texts (he is at work, after all), but realtor/Mom gets back to me fast.  As long as the paint is clean and in good condition (ie not chipped, peeling, etc) then to leave well enough alone.  It’s a closet.

Step 6.  Husband gives me the go ahead to fix anything I want (clearly he is not interested in doing the fixes).  So I glued the tile back into place.  I was about to use Super Glue, but then it occurred to me someone may want to actually peel up this stuff, and who am I to make their lives harder?  It had to be something that would hold though…. I fancy myself a crafter, so I did what most crafters would do that have no clue about home repairs.  I hot glued it in place.  There.  I fixed it.  I don’t care if that’s wrong.  It worked, and I'm standing by it.

Step 7.  I have decided rather than hang the step stool in the utility closet, I'm going to hang it in the garage.  Mostly because of my fear of electricity- where I would have hung it is where the breaker box is.  It was giving me the stink eye, so I'm walking away.  I'll come back to hanging up the step stool when I do the garage.

Step 8. I hung up the bag holder.  Originally, I had sticky foam tape holding it up, so I was going to get more of that, but then I thought better of it.  After all, it hadn't worked well before, and I want the versatilty of removing the holder to take with me (grocery bags make good packing material, plus I'm guessing there will be a garage sale or two in the future).  So I used sticky sided velcro. 


I think it was rather genius of me.  I doubt I'm the first to do it, but I'm not a home repair type of person.  Except now I need to be. 


My friend Kelly told me to start small, aim low.  Well, velcro, hot glue, and I'm guessing there is a roll of duct tape out there with my name on it... It doesn't get much more low tech.  And if Velcro is good enough for NASA, then it's good enough for me.

So, it took me longer to post this than it did to take care of the utility closet.  One room to check off my list.  Quite a few more to go.

The Utility Closet

This is the door to the utility closet.  I hate this door.  The previous owner probably had a cat, hence, the small opening at the bottom.  It is just small enough for a quick toddler to slide through quietly to the riches inside...

It is a mess.  Let me just say it.  It's disorganized, and probably dangerous.

Good news is the AC unit is new and the furnace is newish-very efficient!

I'm back with a bucket of excuses

I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but shortly after I started this blog, I began using an app on my phone to blog on the go.  And I couldn't remember what e-mail account this was attached to, or what the password was.  I didn't have access simply because my mom brain kicked in and finding the information fell pretty far down my to do list.  Since my last update, we have not moved any further in any home repairs to sell this place.  Honestly, we are the laziest dreamers in the world.  I have continually pinned ideas for the next house to Pinterest (my obsession), and sought out neighborhoods and houses for sale on realtor.com (my other obsession).

In August, we went to more birthday parties than you can shake a stick at.  Also learned that shaking sticks at babies is heavily frowned upon in the baby community.  That and the heat. So we didn't tackle  any home improvement because we were hot and busy.

In September, we went on baby L's first road trip to my old stomping grounds in LA, where I realized you really can't go home again- I just felt like a tourist complaining about the road condition, sweating every time I had to get on the Freeway... But it was nice to see some old friends, meet another baby, and catch up on the on-going drama.  Also, most of September was spent at birthday parties, and getting ready for the next vacation.  again, too hot and too busy.

In October, we took a well deserved vacation to Hawaii.  It was a great way to kick off the month long celebration of all things Baby L.  She turned ONE!!!!  With some major mixed emotions from her parents, we held a "luau" in the park where it was supposed to be 82, but ended up 97 degrees.  It was a beautiful and fun party!  The day after she turned one, she began to walk and quickly proceeded to turn our home upside down.  So, again, October=too hot, too busy, too many birthdays, and oh.  Halloween.

In November, I needed a breather from the exhaustion of a vacation and birthdays galore.  But then Thanksgiving came and we had three separate Thanksgiving celebrations.  I made nine pies.  Anyone care to hazard a guess why I am quickly gaining weight?  So, no home improvements in November, unless you count the wafting smell of pumpkin, apple, or salted caramel pie wafting through the air.

December.... Christmas.  Need I say more?  Ok, how about I decided I was going to make Christmas presents this year.  Sound like a good idea?  By the end of December I was getting pretty sick of my excuses.  After all, millions of people have toddlers and can get their houses prepped to sell, AND manage to maintain a life.  So I made a plan, I put all my to-do's on a calendar and entered them into my new iPad (Thanks, Santa Honey!) and made it so Google calendars would alert me whenever I needed to do something... starting January 1st.  2012 was to be the year of fun AND productivity.

That lasted a week.  I injured my back, and have since found out I have arthritis and two bulging disks.  Happy birthday to me!  So January, February, and now half of March had been devoted to recovery.

I'm back now, baby!  And I have a new plan!

All excuses aside, I decided the only way I'm really going to tackle the major laundry list was to enter every room in the house into a bucket drawing and tackle them one by one.  Husband in agreement (mainly because I think I will be doing 90% of the stuff) I drew a name this morning.  First room of the house to get showcased will be.... *draws name out of little yellow bucket*

The Utility Closet!  So tomorrow I should have some kind of update about the condition of the Utility closet.

Dreamhouse on Hollyhock Street

There is a house in my neighborhood for sale. I'm in love with it because it
reminds me of the homes in my neighborhood growing up. It's a midwest looking house to me. It was even built in the 70's so definitely of the same era of the homes I grew up around. It's listed at $186,000. So I had realtor mom look it up. A short sale (duh- most of the houses around us sell for around 300-400k) with an offer on it. Oh well, I thought.

Then I got a phone call.

"There's a problem with the offer and it may not go through. The realtor said he is going to allow showings on it. Wanna see it?"

Oh, ask me twice!

Funny when you build up a fantasy in your head, how reality comes crashing in.
I'll say this: it has good bones. I love the layout. Formal living room, dining room, huge L- shaped kitchen, and a tiled family room screaming for playdates. It had a wet bar. Can you imagine those playdates??? A WETBAR! My margarita fueled playdate fantasies were still dancing through my head when I saw the first sign of trouble. My mom had been saying something about exposed wiring (I couldn't hear her over my imaginary blender whipping up some cool frothy drinks) when I stepped into the bathroom. Oh my. Now forget that it had not been redecorated since 1987, (something I can live with) there had obviously been some kind of horrible flood. I'm going to keep telling myself that was mud on the side of the toilet because it was certainly a layer of mud on the floor. It had a large, deep empty pool in the backyard, save for a few inches of green water with McDonalds cups floating in it- an oasis for the Mosquitos building their west Nile virus HQ in my pretend backyard. So, the pool would have to be covered up. Going up the stairs to the bedrooms I saw the aforementioned exposed wiring. And I could feel how the stairs were beginning to give way- a thought that frightened me as I held the baby a little tighter.

The 4 bedrooms upstairs were enormous. The right side of my brain was keeping track of the tally of fixes necessary to make this place livable & the left side of my brain was painting each room and deciding if you could put 2 kids in one room and have a playroom/ office AND a guestroom/office.
When all was said and done, I estimated there had to be another 75k worth of fixes to plumbing, carpentry, electric- all areas I'd be afraid to tackle as a first time buyer.
Replace a ceiling fan? Sure can do! Figure out what went wrong here? That's beyond my abilities.

I brought it up to my husband. He didn't say much. Of course, I didn't expect him to- we hadn't even listed our place yet. Did
I think he would want to move in and make an offer?
Later that evening, I sent him a text with the one item I took a picture of at that house:





This was in the family room where I pictured all the little guys playing.

He called me-
"is this the house you wanted?"

"well, yeah. Those lion heads do come down, you know."

"We can't move there."

"Because of the lion's head???"

"Yeah. You see, we are of the house of Stark and those are of the house of Lannister..."

Damned Game of Thrones coming back to bite me in the butt.

I'm glad I got to see this house. Even though as I live in my fantasy world & my husband lives in his, I would have always
Wondered about that house and why it was selling so cheap. Now I know.