That's the question we can't seem to answer lately...I guess I used to go grocery shopping, cook dinner, Frank and I would just hang out and chat/run errands/etc., and then usually go to bed pretty early (because we're lame like that). Not anymore! We're having a hard time remembering life before the house!
We've been staying really busy lately...racing against time to try and get as much done as possible before Frank leaves for South Korea. We're already a little behind schedule, but we're getting there. The contractors for the big stuff should be out of the house by this Thursday and then we will be on our way with the few other contractors we have coming in (drywall repairman, carpenters, etc.). WOOHOO! Progress...
So this past weekend we had our first guest, Jason (a new pilot that works with Frank). He's in the process of buying a house here and was in between some training for a few days, so we offered him a room in our dusty house, luckily he doesn't mind! We set up a bed in one of the rooms and I cleaned the hall bath to the best of my abilities. It was fun having a roomie for a few days (mostly because he helped Frank move our extremely heavy refrigerator around the house, Thanks Jason!). Hopefully we will have better accommodations for our next guests at Casa de Prokops.
Here's a quick recap of our crazy busy weekend. We cleaned out the attic...which is humongous! It's so big that it reminds me of a barn, seriously. I wanted to post a picture of it, but I'll save that for another day. The previous owners had left some old boxes and trash up there so we carried it all out to be thrown away. We also found a few treasures like an old wooden twin bed headboard/footboard. I'm going to maybe spruce it up a bit and use it for one of the spare bedrooms, perhaps. Frank and I spent about 5 minutes imagining how cool it would be to put up walls and make the attic a huge family room with really tall ceilings...it would be super cool, but yeah, super expensive. So that idea was nixed pretty early....bummer. We (ok, ok...Frank) also tore out this strange stove/sink/cabinet assembly that was next to the master bathroom....weird.
On Saturday we made 3 packed-full truck load trips to the Saturday trash drop-off to get rid of all the trash in the attic/old baseboards, lots of wood from the cabinets we tore out of the master closet, crown moulding, a toilet, dishwasher...just to name just a few items. It was a LOT! Frank was overly amused by the trash compactor...especially when it literally squished the old dishwasher to a million pieces, and our baseboards into wood chips, in less than 2 seconds. In his words: "This is the coolest thing EVER! I could sit here and watch this trash compactor all day long!" Hahaha...such a boy. I will admit, I was rather amused as well. It was pretty cool!
After the trash runs we probably made 10 trips to Home Depot/Lowes/Harbor Freight. I seriously don't know how may times I have been to those store in the past few weeks, but I estimate about 2 times per day on average...yeah, we're pretty much on a first name basis with the employees now.
I really don't even know what else we did last weekend, but I feel like the house kicked my butt. After the trash compactor, the rest is a blur...I'm pretty sure we went through a time warp. I know we unstuck a bunch of windows, started cleaning the trim to paint, talked to a few paint "experts" to figure out a game plan for painting the whole house, cleaned the pool, made a few trips to the pool store to get our water tested and talk about converting to a salt pool, took the baseboards out of all the carpeted rooms, vacuumed...and vacuumed, and vacuumed some more, and knocked out the drywall on a few walls we're taking out (and the ones with termite damage...more about that later). That's only scratching the surface, but that's some of what we did.
About termites....we found out about 1 week before we closed that we had active termites in the house. Say what!? Yes, we were under contract for 3 months and didn't find out about termites until the last week, go figure. So anyway, the termites are dead now, but we are left with old termite damage to the drywall that was discovered when we took out the baseboards. We were lucky that the studs were not affected!
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| What started as this..... |
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| ...Turned into this! AHH!! |
Taking the drywall off the wall that we are knocking out was probably the most entertaining work we did. Here are some photos:
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| Ready, set, beer? Go! |
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| Punching out the drywall |
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| Yay! I can see from the dining room into the living room/kitchen! |
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| This can't be safe... |
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| On to the foyer |
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| And it's gone! |
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| Can't wait to see what it looks like in the end! |
As I was returning an extension cord to Target today I decided on a whim that I wanted to buy new book. This probably isn't the best time to be sitting around reading, but I figure a few minutes before bed won't hurt, right? Well, I wanted something light, a no-substance kind of book that was more for entertainment only. After spending like 15-20 minutes or so in the one small book aisle in Target (What? That's not normal?). I found myself on Amazon on my iPhone looking up reviews of the books to find the best one. Then I thought to myself...I'm one of THOSE people! My husband...as some of you know...likes to research things to the fullest extent before he buys it. There's nothing wrong with that, but sometimes it takes a lot of time, and I wonder if all that time spent is always worth it. I can understand large purchases...but not the small ones! I mean, all I wanted was a measly book, something easy to read before bed. Now here I am standing in Target forever and researching all the books that looked good...and I totally admit that I was judging each and every book by it's cover!
I blame Frank for becoming one of THOSE people that researches everything to the bitter end before deciding. I think I must have had it in me before, he just brought it out. Frank and I made two separate over one hour trips to Lowe's just to look at their refrigerators and compare each, and every one of them before we decided....and we drained both our phone batteries looking on consumer reports while we were there, just to make sure that we were choosing the right one. This was after spending probably 2 hours researching online at home. HAHA! Yeah, we are kinda weird. I'll totally admit it, though. I'm way past the acceptance phase now.
Anyway- what I was trying to get at...the book. So I spent about 20 minutes looking at Target and then decided that I didn't want any of those books....So I drove to Books-A-Million. And for those of you that know me well, I can't just spend a few minutes there, it's 1 hour minimum! I am very easily distracted by all the magazines and books and it's so hard to make the book store a "quick trip". I walked up and down every aisle and still couldn't find anything (yes, still searching reviews on Amazon, lol). I ended up on the history asile for about 10 minutes, ok...20, and ended up walking out of the store with this:
I've been telling myself that I want to spend more time studying American History, so I've made it my Late New Years Resolution. I don't know if I'll actually finish this book, but I'm gonna try!
Frank left for Vegas today and will be gone until Friday. I'm hoping I can hold down this fort and manage the contractors for the next few days...wish me luck!
P.S. My new favorite iPhone app is Logic Box, check it out, it's free :)
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