bartering & budgeting

on younghouselove.com yesterday, they posted a tribute to their thrifty fathers...and they referenced a post (click here) they did recently on money management. i am just so excited to read all their awesome advice. it is always fun when you find a kindred soul out there...

we started 2 years ago remodeling our house. we estimated everything would cost about $6,000. we've more than doubled that now and are not done yet. but, over the last 2 years, we have learned countless lessons, not only about how to remodel but how to estimate and bargain shop, etc. dave & i discussed some of this just today.

here are some lessons we have learned:

• if you want to pay cash for everything (which we do) we need to have a very realistic estimation of the costs that will go into remodeling a room up front. (for example, we thought it would cost $800 to remodel our guest bath...then we determined there was extensive water damage and the entire room had to be gutted...we ended up spending $2500)
• we need to be sure that we both have the same expectations for a room...if one of us is thinking granite countertops and the other is thinking stock laminate that could result in a huge difference in price...
• it really pays to take our time deciding what materials to use. for example, right now we're choosing tile for the master bath floor and to surround the shower/tub. the first option we chose would be $160 just for the tile (not including adhesive, grout, etc.) i thought to myself "that's not good enough" a little phrase we picked up in FPU from Dave Ramsey. So i went to another store. still not good enough. i went back to the first store. found another ceramic tile option that would be about $130. dave liked it better but THEN we found marble on clearance. it would only be about $105 considering we have a tool that we can use to bullnose natural stone ourselves. seriously considering this now. so, we may end up with marble tile in the master bath for $105! we spent way more than that for the guest bath tile, and it's not as nice a material.
• another thing we've learned along the way is that you need to do 1 room at a time or you will become very discouraged and disgruntled. we're now in the process of trying to finish 5 rooms before our baby arrives in 2 months.
• another thing that dave has really mastered is the "art" of bartering. we have lots of very talented friends and family members and we've discovered that pretty much everyone is interested in bartering services and not spending money. for example, dave's been able to work on several peoples' cars in exchange for our entire kitchen being re-wired (and up to codes that we don't even know exist), a new furnace being installed, and floor joists and walls being replaced in 1/3 of our house. :) why shouldn't neighbors help out neighbors in the scope of our talents?

here's a pic of our bedroom. first coat of paint on walls and trim. disgusting green carpet out.

the seeds for our garden :)

exciting stuff

david painted the first coat on the walls of our bedroom last night. it looks amazing. neither of us ever thought that bedroom could look that good. but it does! we still have to put a second coat on the walls and the trim then we will be ready for CARPET! and moving in!!!

sunday night dave went outside. our neighbor was out planting potatoes in his garden. since he is traveling a lot this year, he said he's not going to bother planting as much in his garden as he usually does. honestly, we were bummed cuz he always shares with us (is that bad?)...but then he told dave that we are welcome to plant things in his garden if we want. he asked dave on the right night. sunday. when he was all relaxed and stress free. so, now, we are putting out a garden in our neighbor's yard. it's very close to our house, right next to our driveway. it's kind of cool. we were going to put out a garden in our yard this year, for the first time, but we were honestly intimidated, felt like we did not know what to do or how to do it, and our neighbor admitted to dave that he just "guesses" how to plant things, etc. and that gave dave all the confidence he needed to give it a try too. furthermore, we didn't really have  a way to prepare the soil in our yard (like with a tiller or something) but if we can just use our neighbor's already prepared plot, that will be awesome, and then there was the other thing about our baby being due july 29th...right when a lot of these vegetables might be getting ready. so we were using that as an excuse not to do it.

but...hhhhh...i guess we figured we might as well try it. we were just going to do some green beans and carrots. then we thought of about 50 other things to try too. i think we're going to plant it tonight. sunday night we spent 2 hours clearing out weeds in about 1/4th of the garden. there were a lot of weeds just in that area. 3 heaping wheel barrow loads of them. so...it looks kind of ready for seeds now. we'll see...learning as we go...

home remodeling progress

this is a picture of the conglomeration you might call our former breaker box. right in the middle of the kitchen. conveniently located over the stove (i'm sure that's some sort of code violation...). mice had built a nest all around it and chewed several of the wires. and when the electric company redid the wiring from our new meter base to the breaker box they found that the main wire coming into the house had been really hot at some point recently. so, in the words of one guy, "you could have had a house fire in 2 days...or in 10 years...you just don't know. but at least it's replaced now."

this is the former "auxiliary" breaker box in the laundry room.

this is what our kitchen looks like now. you can see the dens shield walls in the bathroom and the studs, and some insulation. perfect gateway for mice to get on the kitchen counters...oh how i hope the kitchen remodel can happen soon. patrick...how are those cabinets coming along?

this is our amazingly new and beautiful breaker box in the laundry room. far, far away from water and stoves.

we have been very fortunate in the fact that we've made a very awesome bartering deal. david was able to work on kirby's truck and it turns out kirby is an electrician, so he was able to re-wire our entire house, installing this new breaker box and installing 14 new outlets in the kitchen. a vast improvement over the 1 that we currently have!

this is the new wall in our master bedroom, leading into the new master bath. the wall used to be the opening to a 5 ft wide closet. now, there's a walk in closet off the bathroom. we are getting closer and closer to moving out of the guest room and back into our room so we can turn the guest room into the baby's nursery. :)

my latest passion!!! and bread making...

home decorating

so i never really realized that i love decorating until recently. through the process of remodeling/staging our home or whatever you want to call it, i've been forced to look at our belongings thru a new set of eyes. and what i saw was not at all appealing. we have junk everywhere. no storage. what storage we did have was a bunch of stuff from big lots, walmart (like chintzy bookshelves and plastic drawers) and hand me down pieces of furniture that we have not personalized...just moved right in and started using.

so i've been searching the web for ideas. i've found neat blogs like
thenester.com
chattingatthesky.com
knockoffwood.blogspot.com
younghouselove.com (my favorite!!)

i've been gathering so many amazing ideas. my mind is frantically jumping from one room to another, one idea to another, one color scheme to another. i'm trying to come up with ways to make our house into the home that i've always dreamed of but never realized that i could have...

some things that i've learned from these sites is:

• you shouldn't make excuses like "i don't have enough money or time or whatever" to decorate
• you can paint a deck / porch and make it look REALLY cute - i want to paint both our decks and paint our black shutters white.
• white crown mold in our front room would look really cool...i'm trying to come up with a way to have a small sitting area in the front room in addition to our new barstools at the new bar and our table and chairs. it's a tight fit because the room is like a giant hallway. but i think that i'm learning from these sites that i can do it, i'll just have to have smallish chairs for the sitting area. no overstuffed chairs.
• i love light colors in a house (all you have to do is look at the 3 rooms we have done and you can see that too). i'm so over dark things.
• you can build your own furniture that looks just like pottery barn furniture for WAY less with relatively few tools.
• wood or bamboo shades look really cool. i may put some in the bay window in the front room.
• you can take old pieces of furniture that you already have or find at garage sales or on craigslist and make them look really, really cute with a coat of paint and new hardware...so when we're done with our pantry cupboard in the kitchen i'm going to make it look cuter for storing...something...
• you can make no sew curtains pretty easily
• i really like the idea of using storage ottomans (leather or other upholstered material) for coffee tables, benches, end tables, etc. because they can be used to store things too! 2 in 1 furniture is so cool.
• i want to buy all new hangers that match for our closet when we get it done
• i "need" a dirt devil kurv!
• i "need" porch furniture...or maybe i can just spraypaint what we already have.
• we need to make our own artwork to decorate our walls with momentos and photos that we already have. i like photo collages on walls. with white frames. dave was already talking about doing something like this while we were on vacation, now i've got some more inspiration to run with.

i'm really focusing on how i'm going to decorate the front room and the great room when we get them done.

the great room is such a huge blank slate. i'm tired of our plaid couch. looking at slipcover options. also getting a leather loveseat from my mom's house. want a new rug for the floor. and some really sturdy bookshelves to display all our scrapbooks and other books. so, i plan on having a cream or white slipcover on the couch, a dark leather loveseat and our tan oversized chair and ottoman. i'm thinking that i want to get a new rug. i was thinking something with lots of color but then rethinking that...maybe i'll get a neutral rug as well, and paint the walls neutral and then i can change the "color scheme" of the room simply by changing out blankets, pillows, artwork, etc. i really think that would be a good idea because i tend to get tired of patterns, etc. and i don't want to spend a bunch of money on a rug or other furniture that i will hate in a year. pillows and artwork wouldn't cost as much to change.

on knockoffwood.blogspot.com we got plans for building the dresser/changing table for our baby's room. hoping we can get that done before july too.

bread making

so last thursday i tried a new bread recipe. i got it from dave's coworker's mom who told us where to buy the wheat (from the mormon storehouse in indy). so last thursday i ground the wheat into flour and made the bread. david loved it. and i loved it too because it took about half as long to make as our other bread recipe (from the esther shank cookbook) and it turned out absolutely amazing. normally things that take less time aren't as good, but this is one exception. anyways, this recipe is very light and fluffy. it says that it makes 4 loaves but my experience is that it only makes 2 small loaves. and i find this smaller batch is great for me since i don't have a kitchenaid mixer type thing...but i will have to make it every 1-2 weeks.

for those of you interested in trying it, here it is:

6 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup high gluten flour (i just used another 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour and added the specified amount of hodgson mill vital wheat gluten...)
2 Tbsp dry yeast (2 packets)
2 cups warm water (the recipe says 120 to 130 degrees, i kept it around 100 degrees because our experience is anything much higher than that kills the yeast)
2 Tbsp oil
2 Tbsp honey
2 eggs
2 tsp salt (I tried 3 this week because I thought it needed to taste saltier)

Mix 3 cups flour, gluten flour and yeast in mixer bowl equipped with kneading arm. Add hot water and mix 1 minute. Turn of fmixer, cover bowl and let dough sponge 10 minutes. Add oil, honey, eggs and salt. Turn on mixer. Add remaining whole wheat flour, 1 cup at a time, until dough forms a ball and cleans the sides of the bowl. Knead 5 to 6 minutes. (I kneaded it by hand until I didn't feel any more sticky spots, probably a little longer than 5-6 mins.) Let rise in bowl, covered for 20 minutes. Preheat oven to 150 degrees.

Lightly oil hands. Divide dough into equal portions. Shape into loaves. Place in lightly greased loaf pans. Turn off oven. Place bread in over, and let rise until double. Leave bread in over and heat to 350 degrees. Bake at 350 deg for 30-35 minutes. Remove from pans and let cool.

I think it took 2-3 hours all in all to do this.

So readers, let me know if you end up trying this recipe! If you have any questions, just leave a comment and I'll try to answer it.

a list of more random things that i just threw away

(if this title doesn't make sense, read my previous post)

• david's schedule of class for his 11th and 12th grade years
• a card from jud & sara thanking dave for being in their wedding about 10 years ago
• ticket stubs from the 2002 PMO christmas show
• a Target gift receipt from my cousin for a wedding gift she gave us
• an invitation to a ladies happy hour at my aunts that i have NO recollection of
• a map of the monon trail bikepath circa 2002
• a change of address card from Em from about 10 moves ago
• a receipt from when i had lunch with my friend Jen across the street from O'hare in 2003...yeah...like i need that!

things i saved:

• a 21st birthday card from emily to david that is shaped like a hawaiian shirt...on a miniature hanger...it was too cute to toss
• cards from my grandma....make me wanna cry!
• pics of dave as a little boy!
• some mother's day cards that we bought for our moms upteen years ago but never gave them for some reason. guess we're all set for this year! :)

nesting...or something....

the home office organization continues. i have a bunch of other stuff that really needs to be done. like finish some house plans for a friend's remodeing project, make dinner, sweep floors, put away laundry, make bread, etc. but i have an uncontrollable urge to clean and organize and i just can't help it! every chance i get, i'm in here purging.

last night we got some shelves at lowe's and put them in the office closet and tada! it's amazing. i was so excited, i stayed up till midnight last night (even though i had to be up at 5:30 today) just so i could clean and put stuff on my new shelves. i only went to bed when i started having painful abdominal cramps. i figured that was my body's / baby's way of telling me to GO TO BED. felt a lot better this morning, thankfully.

anyways, it's like all of a sudden late last week a veil was lifted from my eyes and i see what is wrong with the office, what is holding it back from being a really nice, relaxing, organized space. one thing that i've realized is that we have been hoarders. no offense to either of our families REALLY (please!! don't take offense) but i think that hoarding is a trait that we get honestly. it is really, really hard to not be that way. it is our natural tendency. i have to consciously decide on a daily basis whether i'm going to toss things immediately or hang onto them forever. in the past, i've not always been as discriminating in what i keep around. and as a result, i've spent hours and hours and hours the past few days sifting thru 5-15 year old paperwork.

here's an example of some stuff i've thrown away...not that it is not kind of fun to look at and not that there aren't sentimental things about each little thing, but the point is, neither of us knew we had any of this crammed in our office closet, we've been shifting it around this house for 7 years, and we just can't save everything...if we do, then our house will look like the peoples' homes on that new hoarding TV show.

• paystubs, lots and lots of paystubs...dating as far back as dave's first job in indy at UPS in 2000-2001, from my first job in indy at HNTB in 2001, from dave's internship at Voss Village in 2001 all the way up until my job at ASP ending last April and about 400 paystubs from dave's time thus far at dreyer. i consulted several legitimate online sources and we shouldn't have kept any of these paystubs past the end of their respective years when we got the W-2's and made sure they reconciled (hmmm...not that we ever did that...) so they are headed to the burn pile...
• Modern Language Association handbooks from high school english. threw mine away last week. threw dave's away when i found it in a folder today.
• Brad & Tamara's wedding invitation from June 2001...no offense guys, but i think that we have to let go of this...
• A thank you card from Mrs. Sparks for when I gave a speech my senior year of high school to little kids at the Breakfast of Champions
• A thank you card from Jessie from an unknown date for letting her use my Artistry hair repair masque, etc. so sweet, but i don't think i need to keep it...sorry...
• some sort of Women in Engineering Merit Award certificate for good grades at Purdue...can't recall really when or why I received it...
• notes from Urban Hydraulics and Transportation Engineering classes...who needs those!

so, i'm having lots and lots of fun organizing. i would have taken a before pic but still haven't located the camera. maybe someday, i'll take an after pic for all of you.

the cloth diaper demonstration was spectacular on Friday night. before the guy was even done, we both decided we want to use cloth diapers. we were already leaning that way, anyways, but seeing the options in real life just solidified the decision. and we set up a registry for them at toastybaby.com...there are so many options these days, and they are really not that much more complicated than disposable diapers. other than the laundry part of it...but, hey, i'm prepared for more laundry anyways, whether we use cloth diapers or not. i've received 100s of warnings on the subject... and for some reason, human waste really doesn't bother me that much. in my career and college years, i designed and toured wastewater treatment plants after all. and i've spent much time in the past year cleaning up other people's children's human waste. even when battling morning sickness...so i figure i'll be able to handle my own child's.

i have also all of a sudden started caring about decorating. and i'm eager to decorate our entire house and surround ourselves with things that i actually enjoy looking at. this is both good and bad. bad for our finances. good for our house. but...a lot of the decorating will have to wait until the house is done. and who knows...then maybe we will be moving. but anyways, i've been inspired by thenester.com....a website about decorating, etc. she talks about decorating on a budget and not making dumb excuses about why you don't make your house look nice. she also had a post about making slipcovers. which makes me think, if i get rid of enough stuff in the office, we might even have room for a chair...with a slipcover on it to read on. all i need is a chair...and a slipcover...i also found these interesting slipcovers on target.com that are stretchy. interesting idea i thought....so, do any of my awesome relatives have any chairs they want to get rid of? :) or how about any 2 drawer filing cabinets to trade for a 4 drawer filing cabinet? just another thing about the office re-organization...

and another awesome thing...a couple from our FPU small group gave us 2 giant bags of maternity clothing last night. what's so awesome is it is exactly my size and definitely all my style of clothing. wow!

random highlights of our life these past couple weeks

7 members of dave's family came to visit us last weekend. they arrived thursday night. i had to work friday, but dave had the day off. the guys spent the day drywalling and plumbing. we now have walls around our bathroom and master bedroom closet.and we have lights in there too!!

saturday the guys went on a bird hunt and killed a bunch of pheasants. we at them sunday for lunch. meanwhile, we ladies (me, shan, michelle, rose, renee, and rachael) went to a birthday party for the little boys that i nanny for. spiderman made an appearance. he made balloon animals and balloon swords, did face painting, and the girls received princess goody bags of bubbles and playdough on their way out the door. saturday night i had a piano recital. 4 of my students were in it. dave's mom went with me. i was glad that she did and i didn't have to go by myself. i think i get more nervous than my students about recitals!

i was exhausted by the time they all left sunday. 9 people in our house is pretty crazy considering it is being remodeled and we're down to 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom...i ended up breaking a platter that goes with our good china while cleaning up the kitchen sunday soon after they left. cried my eyes out and felt better after that.

tuesday night we attempted to shop for strollers and carseats. that ended in a giant argument.

yesterday and today i've had a grand time. the weather's been amazing. and i've gotten tons of laundry done (in my own home!!!) also went for a fun walk last night. walked 1.8 miles.

once again dave is able to save us a ton of money by repairing my car himself. it has an exhaust leak. the dealership quoted us $1060 for the part. i called around and found it at a junk yard for $25. picking it up tomorrow. :) i love my husband!

babysitting tomorrow and then tomorrow night we are having someone from toasty baby come over to do an in home demonstration of cloth diapers. yippee! should be very informative. it's been overwhelming looking at options online. i think seeing the diaper options in real life will be good for both of us.

i am also working on reorganizing the office. lately, i cringe when i walk in. it is a hodge-podge of cheap furniture and plastic containers. so, i moved everything from the plastic drawers into the wooden drawers that i bought for scrapbooking (but don't actually really use for scrapbooking). i threw out a bunch of random stuff like stickers that weren't really stickers and my MLA handbook from high school english classes. and pretty soon, we're going to move our new computer onto the white table and put it in place of the existing computer desk. and we're throwing the computer desk away. we got it free from one of my old coworkers about 5 years ago. it was sagging in the middle then. it's really bad now. makes me kind of nervous to look at the computer sitting on this flimsy piece of sauder furniture.  i'm also trying to eliminate the need for our $20 big lots white bookshelf by putting some shelving in the closet and putting things in there and throwing away a bunch of stuff that's in the closet. hhhhhhhh....that's going to be a big project. maybe when this is all done we can fit the treadmill into the office. anyways, it's fun. i've had the windows open while i've worked this week, listening to dave ramsey online, just trying to make room in the house for the baby!

today i went to target and everywhere i turned i saw pregnant women or women with adorable little babies. and i couldn't help but think about how very, very soon we will have our own adorable little baby. :)

busy but fun day ahead

just made dave some coco wheats for breakfast. got it right today. yesterday morning i woke up with him but i felt horrible...couldn't think...i made the coco wheats and used 3 tsp not 3 tbsp of coco wheat powder...so they were extremely runny, etc. oops! didn't realize my mistake until this morning when i looked at our little measuring cup...

i am also doing laundry in our laundry room!!!!!!!! this laundry mat spree has made me appreciate that so much more.

i also plan to make bread since all we have left is a heal.

and at 9, the guy will be here to set the propane tank and fire up the new furnace. we have a slight problem though. not exactly sure where we're going to put it. and i have to decide apparently...nice...we know where we want it but it may be too far from the road or too far from the house...so...if it doesn't work...i don't know...still contemplating this...probably need to go outside and take a bunch of measurements. would be easier with a wheel like surveyors have rather than a 25 ft tape operated by 1 person.

i also have 2 fun piano lessons today.

found out last night that i have some more tutoring work coming soon.

dave & duke did some more drywall in the laundry room last night. it's beautiful!

update

1. our friends finished installing our new furnace last night. the propane company sets the tank tomorrow and hooks it up. so...i am very excited. we will be able to stop using the kerosene heater and the other space heaters. we will have cleaner more efficient heating than ever before in this house, etc, etc. our new furnace is 95% efficient (so we will get 2 tax credits next year for it) and our old one was about 70% efficient :) 
2. also, we got a new thermostat which has some really cool features too. dave says when the home buyer walks in the door, they will see it, and want to buy the house only because of that :)
3. also last night dave drywalled the south wall in the laundry room. he had to shut off the water while drywalling the new closet where the water softener is. so we didn't have water for about 5 hours. just another normal occurrence in our home. :)
4. what was so funny is that there were 3 guys here working on the furnace, yelling back and forth at each other from the crawl space to inside the house, running power tools, etc. and dave was drywalling and i was trying to conduct a piano lesson at the same time. it was total chaos. i felt bad for my student. at one point the guys working outside came to the great room window and knocked so dave would unplug their extension cord. so dave had to unplug the light in there too. also dave was hammering and pounding away on the wall opposite the piano. poor piano student! not to mention the piano light hasn't worked for a couple months since that outlet is temporarily out of service...
5. i am doing a fairly good job of dealing with all the chaos that is our home right now. but it is hard. Saturday night i did reach a breaking point and just started bawling my eyes out. it was ugly. i'm not exactly sure what set me off. it was a combination of just having no privacy in my home anymore. having drywall laying on the kitchen floor being cut up into pieces while i'm trying to cook and do dishes, etc. having drywall being cut on my nice area rug in the front room. drywall dust ending up all over it. cooking a lot for all the guys working here. don't get me wrong. it's the least i can do for all the hard work they are doing here. but it is kind of exhausting always coming up with good meals that will feed a lot of people, etc. i'm not really used to that. and at the same time sticking to the same grocery budget.
6. which brings me to my little victory story of the day. we have budgeted $75 / week for groceries, toiletries, and any other little random thing that comes up. well, anyways, today i went to 2 grocery stores. i had scouted out the sale ads, gather coupons, etc. i had even inventoried my freezer (which was very helpful cuz i realized i was running out of stew meat but still have 40 lbs of ground meat, so i made some menu plans to use more of that). probably spent a couple hours figuring out my list. and i knew where i could get the best deals. after a grocery run yesterday, i had $63 left to spend. i knew i'd be cutting it close so i left my debit card in the car to avoid the temptation of using it. i went into krogers first and was already at $63 when i got done. (i added it up on my cell phone calculator right before checking out)...so i started the arduous process of putting things back. i had to stand there about 5 minutes deciding what we could do without. this is about the 3rd week in a row that i've done this. well, i put back some pecans that were on sale, 2% milk for me, eggs that we didn't absolutely have to have this week, spaghetti sauce i was stocking up on cuz it was on sale and i had a coupon...it bothers me more to miss out on buying the things that i can save money on because of sales and coupons that it does on actually not having the item in my possession...so i got my total down to $50.64. then i headed to marsh. i was mad and decided to use my debit card anyways. this budget is ridiculous i told myself. so halfway thru the store i realized i'd left the card out in the car again. so...basically that was awesome. i didn't want to walk back out to the car, so i was going to have to spend less than i had left in my little plastic baggie. the reason i had the baggies is that i had $7 in bills left and the other $5.36 was in quarters, mostly dimes, nickels and pennies...it was easier to keep all the change in a baggie. so...anyways...i told myself no to a few things and got out of there for $11.96. i had 40 cents to spare! i can't say that my face wasn't turning red as i struggled to count out my dimes with 2 or 3 ladies piling up in line behind me breathing fire down my neck for taking so long  in the only checkout aisle open...but oh well. i stuck to the budget. :) i texted dave to tell him my victory and he said "awesome...i guess" but i think it is awesome. i wish that i didn't have to cut it so close to my budget right now, but i do. it is hard to stick to that when feeding a bunch of people. and it is hard to do when you're used to swiping credit cards or debit cards for groceries but i'm proud of myself.
7. now i'm off to tutor a couple kids. then i can buy gas. this week is a little tight but we are getting a new furnace after all. and dave's turning a lot of hours at work so that should make next week a lot better :)

well, dave decided to go with my idea of the 1 piece fiberglass shower/tub. i'm so glad. now we can have a blue and white bathroom and he won't have to tile the whole surround. it will make his life so much easier!!

in celebration, i'm going to do a fun post....

my top 5 favorite restaurants and what i would get if i went there:
1. sparky's in urbana - taco pizza
2. house of szechwan in bellefontaine - sweet and sour chicken
3. der dutchman in plain city - broasted chicken breast, salad, rolls
4. el rodeo, here - shrimp taco salad
5. wendy's anywhere - jr. bacon cheeseburger, fries with extra salt and ketchup and pepsi

top 5 places i would like to visit someday:
1. florida
2. hawaii
3. grand canyon
4. glacier national park
5. texas

top 5 things about being at home part of the time:
1. i can sleep when i'm tired
2. i don't have to have a lot of different outfits
3. i can make whatever i want for lunch and not eat what i packed for myself 6 hours before
4. i can organize our house
5. i can plan our remodeling projects

bathtub decision

the guys are planning to frame in the new master bathroom / walk-in closet walls tonight. so...we have to decide today if we want a 1 piece fiberglass tub/shower insert (since it won't fit inside the bathroom thru the door later) or if we are going to just get a tub and tile the surround like in the guest bath (the tub alone would fit thru the door later).

tiling the shower surround is a lot of work (i think it took several weeks of solid work from dave, staying up till 2-3 a.m. every night last summer, if not more, to do the guest bath shower surround) and we already have the kitchen, bathroom and laundry room floors to tile as well the kitchen counters and backsplash. so...i'm leaning towards getting the 1 piece unit.

we went to lowe's at 6:45 this morning to look at it together. i looked at it last night while dave was at a meeting. the 1 piece unit's tub is narrower and shallower than the one that we put in the guest bath, but it's the only choice if you want a 1 piece unit. and the soap shelf is in kind of an awkward location. and if we tile, we can put in a huge wall niche to store soap/bottles, that won't even encroach on the shower space. and the tub would be deeper and wider. with it being the master bath, dave hates to put in a smaller tub than the guest bath...but...i don't know. i'm just trying to make his life easier. plus, i want a blue and white bathroom. if we tile, we'll have to introduce some other color scheme cuz dave doesn't want to do white tiles with white grout. he would choose a tile that can have a dark grout like in our other bathroom. i also think it would be easier to clean the 1 piece unit. tile is a monster that i'm not that familiar with.

and then there's the price issue as well...the 1 piece unit is $330.

the other tub is $240 and then if we do 12" tiles, we will have roughly $90 in tiles (actually more, because the bull nose tiles for the edges cost more) plus $30 backer board, plus grout and adhesive, etc. if we do 6" tiles, the tiles will cost more like $270.

I think the 1 piece unit would be more cost effective. Another reason I'm leaning that way. Dave's going to think about it today while he works and maybe he'll reach a decision. But let me know if any of you have an opinion.

the weekend

We had a great weekend. Friday night Seth and his boy, Justin, came over, as well as Nick, and his wife Sommer and their youngest girl, Grace. I fixed stromboli and salad and Sommer and I both provided some leftover cookies for dessert. I was absolutely exhausted at 5 before everyone came over. By 10 when they were all gone, I was ready to collapse.

Then Saturday morning they were back around 8:30. Dave fixed breakfast (hobo skillet with ham steak, deer sausage, bacon from mom, potatoes, scrambled eggs and we made our own sausage/ham/bacon gravy to put on top and we also had a sticky bun - Seth, Nick, Justin, Dave & I ate every bit of all of that food and were absolutely stuffed). Then I made Mexican meatloaf, mac n cheese and peas for lunch. No one even ate any when I got it ready cuz they were still full from breakfast. But oh well. I had some. :) And they ate a bit later. Trouble is, with all my eating, I've gained another 5 lbs in the last couple weeks, for a total of 9 lbs of weight gain. I know it's not all the baby or things related to the baby...I've been eating too much, most likely.

So, all in all, the guys got a TON of work done this weekend. We tore out the shower Friday night and realized that there was a lot of water damage from where it had been leaking. Not only was the subfloor damaged but also the bottom wall plates. So Sat a.m. they tore out all the walls for the master bath, master bedroom closet, laundry room closet, as well as part of the ceiling over the closets and old shower, which we guess was damaged and not repaired very well after a house fire (one of the previous owners told us about that). So, anyways, right now, the laundry room, bathroom and closets are one big open space. All that's left of the bathroom is a toilet. That looks out the door into the shed. Nice! Then they tore out a section about 12' x 8' of the subfloor. They reinforced some of the floor joists that had water damage or just seemed weak, and after the guys left, Dave & I worked on laying in some new subfloor.  We got that done about 9:30 Saturday night.

The guys are planning to come back Tuesday night to help Dave frame the new walls and replace the ceiling drywall. We are going to totally reconfigure the bathroom/closet area...we figure we might as well start over with a new layout considering the walls all had to be removed and everything has to be replaced. So, we are no longer going to have a door from the laundry room to the bathroom. The bathroom will only be entered from the master bedroom. And there will be a walk-in closet off the bathroom. We will also build another closet in the laundry room, next to the water softener. So the water softener will end up inside the new closet.

I'm very excited about all this new stuff. I'm planning out how we will decorate the new bathroom, etc. (And that really annoys Dave since he is like, "Katie, we don't even have walls yet!!"

I'm off work today because of MLK day, and totally enjoying it. I'm always so wound up after FPU on Sunday nights I have trouble going to sleep and then have to get up at 5-5:30. Well, not today!! Dave let me sleep in :)

Our homework this week for FPU was to do the full-blown budget. I was surprised when we got home and Dave, the free spirit, as Dave Ramsey refers to his type, suggested that we not play cards (like I mentioned) but that we sit down and do our written budget. Wow! So, that's exactly what we did. It was painful to look at on paper.

Where we are is that we've spent or are about to spend nearly all of our current emergency fund (on the house mostly, and partially on the midwife). It is very depressing to see how much money we've "blown" this year. But we do have to look at what we've gotten for that money. The house is going to be much nicer than it was. There is no way that at this point last year, and when I decided to quit my engineering job, could we have known how much repairing the house would truly cost. We had never done this type of work before. We had no clue. We thought it would cost maybe $6000 total. I think we've spent 3-4 times that so far. But we are fixing all the plumbing issues, and things that we would hate to pass onto another owner...and we've nearly paid for all our expected expenses associated with the birth of the baby. The other awesome thing is how much that we've both learned about home repair/maintenance/remodeling thru this process. That alone is priceless. Anyways, it is depressing for us to look at how far we've backslid on the "Baby Steps" this year, but we have to just take a deep breath and be willing to start over.

So, at this point, we want to get our emergency fund built back up (since we paused our retirement savings again recently to do just that) but we had to cut a lot of areas in our budget to be able to do that (home improvements - so how we will ever get the house back to normal I'm not sure..., tool money, blow money, vacation money, restaurant money, etc.). The good news is that by the time the baby comes, we can probably manage to save $4,200 by all our budget cutting. That will not even come close to a full 6 month emergency fund. But it's a start. And we have to be happy with that or both work harder...or something....

I think what is really good is that we BOTH want this budget to work this time. A lot of times we'll lay it out on paper then one or even both of us doesn't actually attempt to LIVE on the budget...so it's all theory that doesn't get put into practice. This time we want to actually LIVE on it. And what helps motivate us there is that we're at a desperate point that if we choose to ignore the budget again, soon we'll either have to borrow money again (which neither of us wants to do ever again in our lives), or we will not have enough money to buy groceries or something important like that because we spent it on new drywall (not that that's not important either...)

FPU last night was awesome too, by the way. We split up into 2 discussion groups. We absolutely LOVE our group. We had 14 people in there last night and we just talked and talked and talked. We were all laughing and encouraging each other, etc. I can see that one couple in particular is seeing the benefits of the written budget plan because they can decide on paper before the month begins what's important and they won't have to fight about it later on. They said it would help them get on the same page. Another couple is learning things that her father has always told her...but it's just nice to hear it from someone else. I'm just so happy thinking about our group. Awesome things are happening. And it is so encouraging to know we're not the only couple in a tight spot financially right now and we can all cheer each other on to better places.

And in the first 3 weeks, the 34 class members have already paid off over $14,000 and saved over $11,000 and avoided over $158,000 of credit offers. How awesome is that?!?!?

here are some pics of our messy house and a little bit of progress i made this week. i hope that some of you will be encouraged to see how messy my house is and if you suffer from some of the same probs, you'll know you're not the only one :)

Chaos

here are some christmas pics with dave's family.

Christmas 2009

here are some photos of our

Laundry Room Remodeling

that is well under way. the plumbing and electrical is done. this weekend dave and set and nick will be tearing out a warped floor joist, replacing sub floor and tearing out the master bath.

it looks like it is going to get worse before it gets better. i'm referring to the cleanliness of our house. it is a MESS. dave instructed me tonight that i need to empty the laundry room closet. i store a TON of stuff in that closet. and i still have all our first aid type stuff in the master bath and some cleaning supplies. so it's a good thing i just bought 4 more 18 gallon christmas tubs on sale at lowes. i just filled 2 and i'm not done yet.

i did 2 things today that are outside my comfort zone. 1- i went in the crawl space to help dave attach the PVC drain pipe for the washing machine. and 2- i went up in the attic to push the vent pipe over for dave so he could reach it in the laundry room. i hate ladders and i hate confined spaces. and i dealt with both today. how exciting!!

i really wish i could post a pic of this dump for y'all. you might feel better about whatever messes you have at your homes. at this point, we're learning to live in it. but just about an hour ago, i cried out, "will our house EVER get back to normal?"

i shared my newfound love of online tetris with dave on thursday night. surprisingly, he didn't accuse me of being lazy but he fell in love with it too. he beat my high score. he's up to 2600-something. my highest was 1800-something. we have to pull each other away from the game every now and again. we're also working on a 1,000 piece puzzle. we started it friday night in celebration of the fact that dave got home before 6. first time all week. every other night it was at least 8:30 or something. this puzzle is SO hard. i got all the edge pieces together this afternoon and then i found an extra edge piece. something is wrong.

well, i'm off to shift some junk around. hope you're having a good weekend like we are!

pics of closet offices i like

i started this post last night...

6 days into the year and now i'm really starting to reflect on 2009 and look ahead at 2010.

i am incredibly frustrated with how messy our house is right now. there is complete disorder in every room and every direction that i turn. along with filth too. i feel so incredibly overwhelmed by the mess. i thought a couple minutes ago...i will take pics and post them on the blog then when i get it cleaned up i can post clean ones and hold myself accountable to you avid readers out there. and then i realized i have absolutely no idea where the camera is so i can't even do that. i would have to clean for about 2 days probably just to find that. hmmmm....where is it???? this is really bugging me.

ok. whew. i'm back. found the camera. at the risk of completely embarrassing myself i'm going to go ahead and post pictures of our house. the grand tour of filth. maybe all of you out there will feel encouraged that you're not the only one. or maybe you will take pity on my husband for having to live in this mess with me and come rescue him. who knows.   maybe the embarrassment will be enough to spur me on to actually clean something.

and now this morning, i'm continuing this post. i didn't end up posting the pics because....the computer is so full of files that i can't upload any more photos onto it. so...they're still on the camera. the irony of this is that it fits in with my life right now. every flat surface is covered with stuff....so why shouldn't the computer be filled too?

so, anyways...i'm happy because for the first time in a couple months i'm actually feeling energetic. i want to clean. last night after taking a bath, i scrubbed down the whole bathroom. and then i went to bed and woke up just 6 hours later excited about getting up and making david breakfast and packing his lunch. and then i couldn't wait to get into the office and start cleaning frantically. that's the first room that i want to deal with. it's going to be the baby's room.

so last night i decided that instead of moving back over to the master bedroom when it's done, we are going to make the master bedroom into an office / workout room / scrapbook room / library / dave's gun storage area, etc. basically everything that we used to have in our two spare rooms will have to be condensed into that one room. we have to make room for our child, after all. and i don't want it to look real cluttered either.  david really likes this idea too so i'm very excited about that.

other reasoning for this idea is that the guest room where we are now is not that much smaller, we're already moved into it, we like having the east facing window that helps us wake up at sunrise, and then when the baby's here, we will be closer to its room. not to mention the guest bath is much, much nicer than the master bath will probably be when we finish it (since we have a tub/shower in there and the master bath will still have a small shower). 

the only concern is what do we do if we have another child (and the having more than one child is a big IF since only God knows, and I just want to try to have this one first...) while still living here (ok, seriously...as long as this remodeling is taking i'm not totally convinced that won't happen)...then we would probably want to move back into the master bedroom and then we would have to figure out what to do with all this miscellaneous stuff yet again. but oh well, i will cross that bridge when we get there.

so about the new misc. room. i saw a picture in a magazine where they turned a closet into an office. i'm all excited about doing that in our old bedroom. it will force me to declutter a bunch of paperwork and then when it's done, we will be able to close the door on our office/ computer, etc. i asked dave if he could put an outlet and a light in the closet. he laughed and said "i can do anything". so my job now is to plan out this awesome office space. yay! i'm excited.

another thing i have realized over the past couple days is that roundabout August I surmised that I needed to go back to work and make more money. so I began being really lazy with the housework because I just wanted to relax and enjoy myself before going back to work. I spent a lot of time reading and goofing off on the internet and basically not cleaning or doing anything productive. well, anyways, then i got pregnant and felt tired and vomit-y (is that a word?) a bunch and didn't really do anything then either. so the other day i was talking about trying to figure out how to make more money and all my ideas won't really amount to that much and dave bascially told me that i shouldn't worry about it. i should just keep the house clean and support him and he'll work really, really hard (which he is doing by the way...he's had a very busy week - 4 different side work jobs and a very busy week at work and putting snow tires on his own jeep...we're so blessed by God to get all this side work!). so, having dave say that was like the key to make me un-lazy again. apparently i'm only able to focus on one thing at a time or something. but now, instead of fretting over getting more money...i can just focus on my main "job" which is to try to keep our house clean. so now for the first time in months i actually want to clean. and i'm excited about it. 

other updates...i finished frontiersmen yesterday. and this week i learned that i like to play tetris online. so much so that when i fall asleep at night i dream about the game. it's enough to drive me crazy. this has got to stop.

and i broke dave's left contact lens last night. i always wash them for him. this began like before we were even engaged. he had me wash them during one of our dates in high school (why? i don't know) and he said that i can get them much cleaner than he can with my fingernails, so he always wants me to wash them. so, anyways, last night i picked up the bottle of soaking solution and dropped it right on his lens and it smashed into 5 pieces. i was so upset. we have had these for a very long time without incident and i was glad. i think they cost like $300 the last time he got a pair (they are hard ones). so when the eye dr. opens at 9:30 i am going to order him a replacement. hopefully we can just get the one.

fire hazards, gross animal stuff and FPU

headed off to FPU in about 10 minutes. i think we have about 18 people, including ourselves so it is a very nice-sized class. the church is providing dinner every sunday night before the classes start. so, lucky for us, we don't have to cook! we had bacon and bleu cheese burgers and fries and peas for lunch today after church. it was very good. i am freezing as i type this. it is only like 5 degrees outside so it feels cold everywhere. i am bundling up for church since it's always cold too.

yesterday dave tore out more of the laundry room cabinets and wall. he did that to do more plumbing work. since it used to be an outside wall, there was insulation in the wall. between 2 studs, mice had gotten in thru a hole in the wall near the floor and climbed all the way to the ceiling in the insulation. they had then tried to scratch their way thru the drywall into the great room. GROSS! how crazy would it have been to be sitting in the great room and all of a sudden see a mouse emerge from the wall....? so glad that never happened. we didn't find any mice or mice bones but did find a chicken bone that they apparently took into the wall with them...? they had also chewed thru some wiring going to outlets in the laundry room and exposed bare wires. david said it was just a matter of time before they rubbed 2 wires together and started a fire. that would have been so scary! i'm so glad he ended up pulling off that section of drywall and finding this so we can repair the wiring.

then later last night i was sitting on the couch reading frontiersmen while dave was working on plumbing and i heard the baseboard heater come on. though neither one of us turned it on and the knob on it was turned to "off". and we have all kinds of stuff stacked right up against us, a fire hazard. so david shut off the breaker so it can't turn itself on anymore. this happened once last winter when i was home alone and thought i was crazy...now at least i'm not the only one to witness this.

david shot a cat that has been harrassing our home for years on new years day. this cat used to wake us up in the middle of the night fighting with our cat bob. this cat also goes thru the trash like a raccoon. but no longer.

i am so thankful that we're headed off to FPU soon and that the evil cat is gone and that we found two potential fire hazards and averted them. just another fun weekend in the neer household.

having a busy day today. just babysat for 8.5 hours. luckily i was able to take a nap while all 3 kids were sleeping. that was a God thing that they all slept at the same time...came home for 30 minutes between babysitting and tutoring to tidy up the house for a piano lesson this evening. simply overwhelmed by all the messes leftover from the weekend of DIY projects and the dishes piled up from having no water.... the spice rack is in the middle of the kitchen floor. along with the vacuum and a sack of potatoes. there are about 300 (at least) brass alligator grip fittings on the countertops. the kitchen sink contains a bucket and a big bowl of brown water. 2 more bowls on the counter. the laundry room has tools scattered all over it. there's a counter top leaned up against the piano. a hose for the water softener is on the floor right next to that. and the piano bench is at the table in the front room. hhhhhhhh....there are canvas tarps on the front room floor. a dirty pair of jeans on the table inside the front door. 7up and crackers on the coffee table. things strewn about. and as i walk past the counter, brass fittings fall off and hit me. and all this after the house was relatively clean when dave's parents got here saturday morning. this is how it happens. almost weekly. maybe tomorrow little blake will help me clean :)

so i'm having a snack and blogging instead of cleaning right now. salad and a quickie pizza. mmmm....i probably couldn't get the house "presentable" if i had 5 hours to clean it, let alone 30 minutes!!!

The adventures continue...

• Friday night I came home to find we had no water. Thought the pipes must be frozen, as it has been very cold lately. Turns out the garden hose nozzle froze and the plastic broke and the garden hose was again running all day long in the yard. Same problem we had a couple weeks ago :) At least no pipes burst, huh? But we had brown water again.
  
• Then Dave's parents arrived Saturday morning. Phil & Dave promptly started tearing out the kitchen floor and then they laid down backer board and installed the first kitchen cabinet.
• I nicknamed Phil "Bam-Bam" because I was scrunched all up in the opposite corner of the kitchen attempting to make a corn casserole while he was pounding on the floor and it was giving me a headache. Oh well, just another adventure in the Neer household.
  
• Then they ripped out the laundry room floor and some of the walls in there (which was gross to say the least...found some mold from leaking pipes that we couldn't really see before, and also a mouse skeleton inside a mouse nest in the wall behind the washing machine). 
• This began the process of untangling a giant conglomeration of retarded plumbing decisions in the laundry room (none of which were made my us...)...we are relocating our pressure tank from the laundry room to the crawl space and relocating a bunch of pipes and wiring that were wound together like spaghetti next to the washing machine in the open into the walls.  When done, this is going to be awesome. For now, it's just another adventure.
• The best part of all this was when they cut a hole in the laundry room floor and David rose up out of the crawlspace in his coveralls like some sort of monster.
  
• Then the guys shut off the water. We made dinner with no running water (my second night in a row doing this). And washed dishes with no running water.....etc. Am I inventive or what?
  
• Shan and I countersunk some nails in the front room walls and patched holes with mud in there and a few remaining ones in the master bedroom. We were going to prime but figured it would be a little difficult to wash brushes/rollers without water, so we relaxed. 
• Then we made a run to Lowe's. For a couple hours. The best part was when Shan & I finally collapsed on our cart in the middle of the plumbing aisle while the guys galavanted off to the electrical section and the saleswoman walked past the end of the aisle. The same one who had seen us standing there a couple hours before.
  
• Another highlight was this morning when I was in the kitchen making a breakfast casserole before church and the guys decided to light the laundry room floor with a torch in order to cut the hole larger. It wreaked of melting vinyl floor. This is when I nicknamed Dave "flame thrower". 
• Then they used the jack from my car to bend a floor joist off to the side so we could lower the pressure tank into the crawl space. Very ingenious I must say!
  
• Then we headed to church ...Dave was nominated as a deacon. The children did a musical - it was amazing! And we had the FPU Preview. Some very sweet new ladies from the community are joining us. 
• We had lunch, we cleaned it up, and then I sat on the couch trying not to be sick. The afternoons really are the hardest for me right now. I'm going to start calling it afternoon sickness. 
• Shan was looking at our church cookbook and every once in a while she would read me some obscure recipe. The best one was "Onion Pie"...sweet vidalia onions and cheese in a ritz cracker crust. Or pineapple casserole with ritz crackers involved as well. That almost made me sick to think about. Still does a few hours later. Ew! She really wasn't trying to make me sick but I had to tease her about it!
  
• After they left, Dave & I made the 4th run to Lowes for the weekend. And I picked up the shrimp avocado salad that I've been craving from El Rodeo all weekend!
• The main water supply to the house is currently disconnected. The only water I have is a couple bowls of brown gunk in the kitchen. Well, and a couple bottles of water. And it's 7 pm on Sunday. I sure hope Dave can finish this tonight. Guess I better go make him a good coffee and keep him company. And try not to look at any gross things in there...