House » THE FINTONS

30 before 30 – #18

No Responses » Tagged with: 30 Before 30, House

Nov 022011

On the scale of listening to a lecture on fungi to attending a screamo concert, the excitement of this achievement ranks around, well ….. around cleaning out clutter.

My desk has been a mess for years. This mess has moved from house to house with me. Each time I moved the entire drawer was pulled out and nothing in them touched because of the level of disaster they were. I acquired this desk about 9 years ago and with the exception of having a drawer full of Invisalign retainers that are no longer there, it’s been pretty much the same these 9 years. To prove just how bad it was, I honestly didn’t know what was in most of the drawers. The contents were never used. They looked like this:

(yes, that’s a baby mozart c.d. right there on top, and considering Erik is almost 5….)

So really, who knew what was in the bottom of those things. And my dear husband’s desk, with no drawers, looked like this:

Yea, my laptop was buried on Brandon’s desk because mine was just so bad. Because apparently I think buried is better than having to sit at my bomb of a desk.

Now, we all know Patti is anti clutter. We all know Patti is pretty much a neat freak and walks around after her family cleaning pretty much her entire day. You can always tell when Patti doesn’t feel good (why the third person??) because the house is inevitably messy.

So I think that living in this miniature house has prohibited my need for empty drawers and no clutter. I’m starting to feel bad about throwing things away. We have almost nothing left in this house! But…this is why cleaning out my desk was on this list. It had to happen. So I went to Wal-Mart (gack!) and purchased this:

Amazing concept right?

Now, who ever thought cleaning out a desk would be such a stressful process? Well, if you didn’t think it would, think again, because it was. Brandon and I kept snipping at each other and he got up and left a few times. It’s quite funny to think about it now. Funny now, not then.

Well we persevered and I accomplished my goal after many hours and a almost an entire weekend day used. It was worth it, because now my life is a little bit less stressful and cluttered. And, viola, I have a place to do my work. Such a concept.

And I even cleaned husband’s desk while I was at it.

My sanity surrounding my desk and working at it has been restored. And it’ll be a great thing to leave behind in this house when we leave since it is pretty beat up and I need a new one, anyway.

Or shall I say it’s now become a perfect place to fix wheels on tech decks….

Stairs

No Responses » Tagged with: House, Renovations

Oct 282009

So the next thing we did after the living room floor was the stairs. We actually had no plan to do the stairs, but our dog Logan decided to have an accident on the new living room floors. An accident so big that it ruined some part of the floor next to the stairs. We were on the floor trying to fix the floor, and when we were done, it still smelled like dog pee. We didn’t understand how that could be possible. So we were touching around and Brandon noticed that Logan had soaked the carpet by putting his hand behind the part of the carpet that was soaked. When he did this we noticed that behind the carpet the stairs were amazingly, finished. So we sat there and deliberated for a minute, and figured what the hell, and started tearing up the carpet on the stairs. And this is how they ended up.

Nice eh? This was one of our easier projects. Only took around a day. We just had to pull up the staples from the carpet and clean up a little. Next, Erik’s room.

Living room floor

No Responses » Tagged with: House, Renovations

Oct 262009

So the first part of the camp that we worked on was the living room floor. Undoubtedly, the worst part of the house (next to the “closet/bathroom/whatever” room that was off of Erik’s bedroom). The carpets were urine stained – our dogs kept peeing in the same spot because some other dog had peed there before as well.

Floor

This is the floor before. I had tried everything I could to get it clean. But alas, nothing worked. So we started pulling it up.

Floor2

As you can see, we found another carpet under the gray carpet that was there. When we pulled it back it was so moldy underneath that we all started to sneeze and feel sick. You can see the mold here, and this spot was actually one of the “better spots.”

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The carpet pad that was under the green carpet had disintegrated. Mostly it was dust, but in some spots it was still semi whole. All of it though was stuck down to the floor. Brandon and I had to scrape every inch of the floor to get the carpet pad off.

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We then ended up painting the floor with oil primer to seal in the smells, then latex primer so that we would be able to stick the tiles down, as you can’t stick them onto oil primer.

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And here it is done. We had to pull the tack strips that were around the pellet stove up as they were for carpet. Brandon put new trim around there though so it looks great now. Our only problem is that the kitchen floor, and the floor in Erik’s room is higher than this floor. We are trying to work around it, though.

This ended up taking us around a weekend to do. As with every project that we have done something happens that we didn’t expect, and we are tied up fixing it before we can move on. Nothing is easy with us. It was fun having our living room in our kitchen for a weekend. At least this time didn’t require us to relocate Erik upstairs into our bedroom. That’s always a joy.

Next up will be the stairs. I should be studying though. I reallllly should.

Burdock and Pricker Bushes

No Responses » Tagged with: House, Nothing at all, Work

Oct 252009

Caulking the house For those of you who have followed our lives at all over the past six months you probably know our house is home to more than just Patti, Erik, me and the dogs. We also get exciting visits from mice and, our favorite, bats. After a summer of being terrorized by the bats we decided it’s not going to happen again next year…

Our solution? More than a case of clear caulk, a couple cans of Great Stuff, and some excitement getting tangled in black berry (prickers) and burdock bushes. Today was a perfect day to do it. The sun was out, the temperature wasn’t too cold, and best of all the bats had moved out for the winter allowing us to seal all the cracks in the siding without fear of trapping them in the house (and giving them incentive to find their way INTO the house.

Undertaking this project should also help reduce the drafts we feel throughout the long cold winters! (Maybe it won’t feel so cold in here?)

So, only time will tell. Hopefully we reduce the drafts in here (we’re also winterizing where we can and adding insulation and such) and just as important, if not more, we’ll be rid of our bat problems!

Our next projects? Cleaning the shed and getting rid of the mice that seem to think our walls are going to make a good home!