It's DONE!! backroom pictures

Phew, I guess I never posted finished pictures of our backroom. I got them on facebook, but neglected my blog. I wonder how many people check out my blog that are on my facebook?? I probably shouldn't assume everyone lol.

SO here are the finished pictures of our new and improved backroom. We got it done just days before family arrived for Thanksgiving. It was a GREAT week and than in December we had MORE family over. It was a great end to the year for us.






We have been enjoying it tons! The stove is great for keeping the backroom warm with the door opening to the cold air. Our cat finds it to be quite comfy too.. This is Max! I will post more pictures in another post.

Backroom remodeling con't (lots of pictures)

All this wood planking has come off and is the pile you see a few pictures down.
New stud walls are going up.
After the old walls came out, you could see the underside of the roof. You are looking at the ceiling and roof joyce, and yes some of the wiring. You can see some of the ceramic spindles to the old wires if you look close.


The mass of old wires we pulled from the ceiling and walls. Some that went to no where.

Resetting the driveway door. It was crooked from the house shifting. Marky was helping.


The last pieces of drywall is going UP!!
Abigail wanted to help SO bad. So Papa gave her a screwdriver to hold. She held it for a while waiting lol. Note, she got herself dressed lol,

Drywall is up and mudding has begun.
Through the week I helped get the ceiling ready for the cedar planking.



The beginning of the ceiling going up! And in case you wondered, this is the peel and stick kind. It's the glue each piece and nail kind.. It took us 5 hours, including breaking for supper and breaks to get it done. It was like a puzzle!

Recessed lights and attic access!
So this week, we are working on finishing the plaster on the walls, so maybe we can paint this weekend!! How exciting.. It will hopefully have paint and floors before family comes for Thanksgiving! Lots of work, but worth every bit of it.

The backroom has a REAL dryer vent!

Yes, you read that right.. We've been working on the backroom for the past few weeks, well a few months is more like it I guess. My hubby works too hard, I help when I can, but my expertise is not in home construction. I can help clean though.. So here's what we've gotten done. First we had to gut the whole room, just like the rest of the house, we gut as we go and start over. One of the exciting things about old homes is the stuff you find when you start remodeling. When we first moved in, we dug out the old cistern and found tons of dishes and bottles. Well gutting the backroom has uncovered some cool stuff too.. In the walls we found the old coal shoot.
Inside the coal shoot we found some parts to the old stove.. We had to ask around, but we've figured out that this large piece in the picture is from the top of the stove. There was another one just like it that clamped together, much like a mouth to crush the large pieces of coal.. It's really heavy and from end to end is 17" long.


We also found some other stuff too, here are a few of the really cool ones. A shoe... Note the patches tacked on with tacks, not glue. It appears to be a women's shoe, i'm guessing about a size 6.

This paper is one of my favorites.. The rolled up one was in the wall where the chimney used to be. It is a bit chard but it's dated and readable. Since it's rolled up and crumbly it's hard to take a good picture of it.

November 14, 1926

"ROWAN, 7063, between Green and Beard--Five rooms and bath, newly decorated, with garage; west side"

under the section for "SALE- BUNGALOWS
"Alter Road
Step to Jefferson, 6-room semi, oak finish,
decorated throughout, 3 large bedrooms,
garage; only $1,000 down."

We have found other papers, in the dining room and kitchen, but they are packed in a tote for now. They were used as lining under the tiles and were from when GM was first opening and hiring!

So back the the dryer vent.. This house has never had one. If you don't believe me, here's a picture of the laundry area when we moved in..

yes, that is lint all over the wall and coating the gas line. Safe eh?? We have been using a bucket of water contraption UNTIL today!!

I will post updated pictures on another post. It's hard getting pictures to the bottom of the page on here..

An update on the Geo-thermal...

If you live anywhere near the North east, you've experienced some of this extreme weather we've had lately. We have been in the negatives at least at night for the last week, at least. We were lucky to get above 20 today. Of course we aren't even the worst. Mark was in the Quad cities and it was in the -20's and the windchill in the -40's. That's COLD!! Well we of course had our geo-thermal running and thought I would give you all an update on how it worked....

We live in a very old house. We've been doing alot of work to it, since we bought it. New roof, siding, insulation, windows. We even had new duct work put it, since there wasn't any in the 2nd floor before. That said, it's still an old house and still has alot of leaky places. All along the foundation, along the floor you can feel the cold air. We have some floor boards missing that leak air. It's far better than it was. That said our gas furnace has a hard time keeping up when it gets below 0 degrees outside. Well the geo-thermal had a hard time under 10 degrees. Not because it froze or anything, but just because the house leaked so much it just dropped the temp to fast. You see the geo-thermal is more of a constant heat. It runs more often and takes longer to bring up a temp. The gas furnace you turn it on and it blast hot air and warms it up faster. That is why you have to have a back-up source of heat. Most units have an electric backup. It kicks on when the temp drops to fast and warms it up. The Geo takes over and keeps it there. Well we have a new gas furnace, we had to put one in when we moved here, so we opted to use that instead. All it means is, when it drops below 10 outside esp if the windchill is lower, we have to turn the gas on and the geo off to warm the house up. I mean it was dropping 5 degrees in an hour when it was REALLY cold out. So we did have to use some gas, but all in all, we're still happy with it. It saved us a bundle already. We only had to run it for probably 1 day total since we put it in. Mostly at night. A gas furnace would've been running constant with these temps.

So our next big project??? Well figure out how to fix the foundation so it doesn't leak so bad. Maybe we can put a basement in?? Who know at this point. We're still considering our options.

Stay warm!!!!

Our snow bank is heating our house!!

Well kind of lol. Actually our Geo-Thermal is now up and running. It's been running all day, and our house is warm, so IT'S WORKING YAY!!! That means, our home has stayed 70 degrees all day, and it's only been in the 20's outside. We haven't used ANY gas...

(Ok that was suppose to wave, but maybe it won't)

So now our home is all green. Well after I get a better washer machine, that's NEW and saves water and all. (It's making a strange noise, not sounding so healthy right now. I hope it makes it.) So as of Jan 1, 2009 we are running without gas to heat our home. Our range and water heater are gas, but that's it!! I want one of those sign for my front yard that say

"This home is heated and cooled by the EARTH"

I'll keep track of our bill and be sure to report the difference. I will also get some pictures up of our project. I have some sorting to do.. I took a TON..

Hope you all have a Happy New Year!!

Dec. 23,2008

Well a little update, Yes a sugar free day or two is possible and YES you feel like crap (thanks for the warning Mandi). But I feel much better now. After you get over the hump of the de-tox of sorts I feel much, much better. The fog in my brain went away. Now staying that way, isn't so easy. It's so hard to not grab a cookie or two as a quick snack. So we went shopping and stocked up on some fresh fruits and vegi's. When your on the run and need to grab on the go, even harder. Fast food just doesn't offer much in the way of healthy food, but we all knew that right???

The pancakes where awesome. I've made them a few times since, I'm getting some strawberries to try in them. The possibilities are endless. I think that's why I love cooking so much. The possibilities go as far as you can imagine. I never take a recipe and follow it exact, why be normal???

Have any of you been stuck in this snow? I measured a minute ago and we have 13" of snow on the ground, most of it came down in one day. It's been snowing daily for the last week and we are expecting another 5-10" in the next day.. We've already got over 3 times more snow by this date last year. WOW, it's going to be a white winter. I'm hoping hubby gets that Geo-Thermal done soon... He's almost there. It's been sooo cold outside, he was welding and cutting in my backroom. I had to put up a blanket so the smells didn't get not the rest of the house. Hopefully by the first of the year it will be up and running. Doing it in his spare time, really makes it take longer. Can't wait, when that's done we will have a "green home". Between the Low-E windows, blown insulation (made from newspaper) and the Geo-thermal we are there!! YAY..



Here's another "green" idea.

What are they you ask?? Well we come from a family of hunters. Although hubby wasn't able to hunt this year (he had time, but opted for family time instead..) Many Uncles hunt and when they have as many as they want in there freezer, they offer them to family to process. Soo this year we got a deer from his uncle, cut it up and froze as much of the meat as possible. We use it just like beef. It's healthier since it's free range. On top of the meat we got, i boiled the bones and hard to clean pieces for broth. I buy it all the time, why not make my own. So we brought home the bones, neck and ribs and put them in a pan with some onion, celery, garlic and salt and pepper. I put it in the oven on 350 for, oh I don't even know how long, all day.. Used some cloth to strain it and pick the bigger chunks of meat from it. I than froze the broth. Well aside from alllll of that, I also kept the suet from the deer as we cut it. The fat is what they make those nice square chunks with bird seed you can buy at the store (they usually use cow, but pig and deer work as well). So I made my own. They have alll kinds of varieties, the citrus one caught my eye. Since we have a box of grapefruit, we saved the skins from them. After I melted the suet in the oven, mixed birdseed in it, I stuffed the peelings with the mix. I set them outside and froze them. I now have home made bird feeders. We love watching the birds on our front porch. Now with the cold weather it's even more important to feed them. So Suet bird feeders.... I put the rest in my large rectangular pan and later cut them into squares, I store them in the freeze and fill my wire mesh holders as needed.

This post is getting quite long. I guess I should post more often. So I'll add some pictures to the next post.

Here's a link to a previous post I wrote about the Christmas Holiday. If you are interested in seeing our point of view, you can find the post here.

To check out my blog on living healthy and green click here. I am trying to post a new green tip weekly. I will try harder to keep up with it. I have all these ideas, but they are getting left in my head LOL.

TTYL, I'll post some winter pictures for you in my next post.

Our yard is backed up to some woods, this time of year we see deer and pheasants and turkeys in our yard. Yesterday we had 7 or 8. They came right up to our patio. I was actually able to get some pictures from the door. They are checking out my flowers in the first one and heading towards the neigbors.

Our Patio!

I just realized I never posted our patio pictures on here, so I thought (even though it's not as beautiful covered in leaves), I would. These are from earlier in the year after we finished it. I now need to drain the pond and bring the fish inside and button it up for winter.

2004

1/26/07

4/19/07

4/21/07

5/19/07


7/6/07

7/12/07 The final product

Progress

Ok, so it's not all done, but it's progress. Remember I have 4 kids ALL DAY ( I babysit a 2 yr old as well as my own 2 yr old.) And I am 5 months pregnant after all. But we're getting there.

Our new dining area (where the desk used to be)

I now have a great plant shelf and hutch.
Yes there are still boxes, but not as many. Ok, so these were there before we got started moving. Still working on that pile.
And the closet in the office, school shelf and sewing cabinet
Another bookshelf hiding behind the door

Look what we did!

We've been BUSY!!! We rearranged a few rooms. Not just moved stuff around, we actually moved the boys upstairs, and our office is now in it's own room. It used to take up half of our dining room. Here are a few pictures. YES, i still have alot of organizing to do, lots of boxes, but all the heavy stuff is done, so no worries, I won't be doing any heavy lifting!

I'll takes some more pictures when I get all the boxes empty (just can't guarantee when that will be!)

Our old "office" in our dining room!

Our new office in it's own room, see my new desk. I got it thru our local freecycle group

And here it has the computer and some of the stuff on it.

My sewing cabinet and dresser are now in the "office" and not in my bedroom

And some more boxes to empty!

Now I have a big dining room, here's the new cabinets we got. Well new to us, (thanks for storing them for us Aunt!)

And of course more boxes. Yes I know it's a mess, but you should've seen it before! It is progress!

Well it's to bed for me now, and back to work tomorrow. That's when the real organizing starts, as well as school and sorting baby clothes and .................................