So, I'm going to try to get back to blogging! Slowly but surely I'll get caught up to what's current...
I mentioned working on our house in Wichita Falls...
You can see more pictures of our house in previous posts, like this one: Pictures of our house.
I'll be posting a few of them here, anyways, but just in case! (I apparently don't do well with before and after pictures, or even actually have the pictures that I think I do! So, I apologize, I'll try to do better next time!)
Starting with the outside... when we bought it, it had a giant, huge, stinky in-the-way bush by the front door... it would prevent the door from opening, "knock" on the window in the wind, and be stinky!
So, we ripped it out. (Well, I cut it to bits and then the missionaries ripped it out for us, but... it was gone!)
I painted the overhang and part of the front of the house... it's not a great job, but it looks better! It might be more obvious in person, but I was proud! :)
When my brother, David, came down to help us with our house, he did the most amazing things!
This is what the bathroom looked like before...
He made my bathroom look oh, so pretty!
Granted, it's still (re-painted) white, but I've read houses sell better painted plain colors, like tan, white, off-white... And it just so happened, I had white paint! :)
He replaced the tub, tiled the floor, fixed the leaky toilet (which unfortunatly, sprung another leak later, so I took the tank off again and fixed it... hopefully for good!). And he removed the old sink & counter and put in a new one, and removed the old ugly mirror & lights, fixed the wall, and hung new ones! (Sorry, no before picture of this one!)
When we bought the house, the dining room had carpet, which I didn't really care for...
And the kitchen had this wall oven and counter top range, that we removed.
David also laid some flooring in my kitchen and dining room.
We were planning on just replacing the kitchen sink and counter, BUT the sink wouldn't fit into the existing cabinets, so we had to replace those too! Ugh! It looks mighty pretty if I do say so myself!
After Christmas, Hal came up from Houston with a friend from work, Anita and her husband Nino, for the weekend, and Nino trimmed (around the floor) in the dining room and kitchen, and they helped us pack up the house and drive it all to Houston! They were life savers!
One of the other things I did (after Christmas) was work on the half bath... which involved removing the tank from the existing toilet, removing the water-saver device that didn't work properly and prevented the toilet from flushing, re-assembling the toilet (my first one ever!). I did not remove the bowl from the floor, though! 'Cause there's no way I was going to mess with that if I didn't have to!
I replaced the faucet for the sink, and the valves that ran the water to it, because they leaked! And in the process of working under the sink, knocked it off the wall onto myself (we were both fine!) But I did have to re-attach the sink to the wall! Whew! And I re-attached it properly! Grrr!
This is the before/after shot of the half-bath... Everything you can see in it look exactly the same... sorry, I didn't take pictures of the faucet! (You're not missing much!)
I do like to tell stories!
Funny story about our old bathtub... One day in October or sometime right around there, I climbed into our bathtub to take a shower. And I'd swear, I felt it move! Well, it apparently DID move at some point, because it appeared to be sinking, in comparison to the floor and the wall... big cracks appeared around it, where the caulk around the tub had pulled away from the sheetrock surrounding it... Hmmm...
As scary as it is to have your tub drop an inch or two, I wasn't actually all that worried... it's not like it could go anywhere! Our house was built on a slab foundation, which just means it's sitting on a concrete floor. (Think of your garage or basement... imagine a tub sitting on the floor... not really anywhere to go, just a little obnoxious and scary when it moves!)
Anyways, when my brother removed the tub, he discovered why it had dropped. (And I'm really sorry to say I didn't take pictures of it!) We had a metal tub, probably the tub that was dropped in in 1961 when the house was built, anyways, there were bars running along the bottom of the tub to support it. And they had just rusted up and partially crumbled away! And the tub slowly dropped down... Tee hee... Not entirely certain HOW metal bars on the bottom of a bathtub rust off, but such is life! It amused me!
Stupid Dani story!
While David was laying tile in the bathroom, I was watching him smear the adhesive glop on the floor, before setting the tiles on it, and I decided that the gray goop looked a bit like clay! Okay, so it looks a LOT like clay! I wanted to play in it...
My brother, being the nice guy that he is told me that he didn't think it was such a good idea to play with it. It is cement after all... This "cement" word didn't scare me though! And I pestered and bugged him 'til he said "Look! Play with it if you want, but it's not a good idea!"
So, I proceded to smear it all over my hands and squish it and play with it... It was a blast! I had so much fun! Until it started drying and hurting... At which point I asked my brother what was going on, why it hurts...
He looked at me (in the typical you're being an idiot fashion) and informed me IT'S CEMENT!!! Cement has lye and sand in it. The lye was burning me and the sand was probably imbedding itself in my pores. Ummm... Oh...
So I went to wash, and lucky me, my hands hurt and itched for weeks! I had some really terrible looking red bumps all over my hands (I concerned the people at work. They thought maybe I'd gotten some horrible disease...)
Lesson learned: Cement is not a good idea to play with bare handed! Maybe next time I should wear gloves... ;) OK!! OK!! I won't play with it again!
Whew! So that was just lots of information! Sorry! I tend to get a little long winded! :)
I'll try to post again soon!
I mentioned working on our house in Wichita Falls...
You can see more pictures of our house in previous posts, like this one: Pictures of our house.
I'll be posting a few of them here, anyways, but just in case! (I apparently don't do well with before and after pictures, or even actually have the pictures that I think I do! So, I apologize, I'll try to do better next time!)
Starting with the outside... when we bought it, it had a giant, huge, stinky in-the-way bush by the front door... it would prevent the door from opening, "knock" on the window in the wind, and be stinky!
So, we ripped it out. (Well, I cut it to bits and then the missionaries ripped it out for us, but... it was gone!)I painted the overhang and part of the front of the house... it's not a great job, but it looks better! It might be more obvious in person, but I was proud! :)
When my brother, David, came down to help us with our house, he did the most amazing things!
This is what the bathroom looked like before...
He made my bathroom look oh, so pretty!Granted, it's still (re-painted) white, but I've read houses sell better painted plain colors, like tan, white, off-white... And it just so happened, I had white paint! :)
He replaced the tub, tiled the floor, fixed the leaky toilet (which unfortunatly, sprung another leak later, so I took the tank off again and fixed it... hopefully for good!). And he removed the old sink & counter and put in a new one, and removed the old ugly mirror & lights, fixed the wall, and hung new ones! (Sorry, no before picture of this one!)
When we bought the house, the dining room had carpet, which I didn't really care for...
And the kitchen had this wall oven and counter top range, that we removed. 
David also laid some flooring in my kitchen and dining room.
We were planning on just replacing the kitchen sink and counter, BUT the sink wouldn't fit into the existing cabinets, so we had to replace those too! Ugh! It looks mighty pretty if I do say so myself!
After Christmas, Hal came up from Houston with a friend from work, Anita and her husband Nino, for the weekend, and Nino trimmed (around the floor) in the dining room and kitchen, and they helped us pack up the house and drive it all to Houston! They were life savers!
One of the other things I did (after Christmas) was work on the half bath... which involved removing the tank from the existing toilet, removing the water-saver device that didn't work properly and prevented the toilet from flushing, re-assembling the toilet (my first one ever!). I did not remove the bowl from the floor, though! 'Cause there's no way I was going to mess with that if I didn't have to!
I replaced the faucet for the sink, and the valves that ran the water to it, because they leaked! And in the process of working under the sink, knocked it off the wall onto myself (we were both fine!) But I did have to re-attach the sink to the wall! Whew! And I re-attached it properly! Grrr!
This is the before/after shot of the half-bath... Everything you can see in it look exactly the same... sorry, I didn't take pictures of the faucet! (You're not missing much!)I do like to tell stories!
Funny story about our old bathtub... One day in October or sometime right around there, I climbed into our bathtub to take a shower. And I'd swear, I felt it move! Well, it apparently DID move at some point, because it appeared to be sinking, in comparison to the floor and the wall... big cracks appeared around it, where the caulk around the tub had pulled away from the sheetrock surrounding it... Hmmm...
As scary as it is to have your tub drop an inch or two, I wasn't actually all that worried... it's not like it could go anywhere! Our house was built on a slab foundation, which just means it's sitting on a concrete floor. (Think of your garage or basement... imagine a tub sitting on the floor... not really anywhere to go, just a little obnoxious and scary when it moves!)
Anyways, when my brother removed the tub, he discovered why it had dropped. (And I'm really sorry to say I didn't take pictures of it!) We had a metal tub, probably the tub that was dropped in in 1961 when the house was built, anyways, there were bars running along the bottom of the tub to support it. And they had just rusted up and partially crumbled away! And the tub slowly dropped down... Tee hee... Not entirely certain HOW metal bars on the bottom of a bathtub rust off, but such is life! It amused me!
Stupid Dani story!
While David was laying tile in the bathroom, I was watching him smear the adhesive glop on the floor, before setting the tiles on it, and I decided that the gray goop looked a bit like clay! Okay, so it looks a LOT like clay! I wanted to play in it...
My brother, being the nice guy that he is told me that he didn't think it was such a good idea to play with it. It is cement after all... This "cement" word didn't scare me though! And I pestered and bugged him 'til he said "Look! Play with it if you want, but it's not a good idea!"
So, I proceded to smear it all over my hands and squish it and play with it... It was a blast! I had so much fun! Until it started drying and hurting... At which point I asked my brother what was going on, why it hurts...
He looked at me (in the typical you're being an idiot fashion) and informed me IT'S CEMENT!!! Cement has lye and sand in it. The lye was burning me and the sand was probably imbedding itself in my pores. Ummm... Oh...
So I went to wash, and lucky me, my hands hurt and itched for weeks! I had some really terrible looking red bumps all over my hands (I concerned the people at work. They thought maybe I'd gotten some horrible disease...)
Lesson learned: Cement is not a good idea to play with bare handed! Maybe next time I should wear gloves... ;) OK!! OK!! I won't play with it again!
Whew! So that was just lots of information! Sorry! I tend to get a little long winded! :)
I'll try to post again soon!
1 comment:
OHmygoodness Dani! It looks WONDERFUL!! I bet it was hard to move after re-doing everything!! It looks great, and your brother is quite the handyman--we could've used him 10 months ago! :) I'm glad it all came together, and now I'm excited to see your new place...please, post more! :)
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