Giving credit where credit is due

After writing yesterday's post, I realized that I may have exaggerated ever so slightly about the fact that my husband claims he can build stuff and yet has only ever built me a mantel.  The mantel was part of a complete living room remodel.  I've got some pictures, but you're going to have to use your imagination for some of this story.  Unfortunately I wasn't so good about capturing this whole process on film.

This is what we started with.  A cute little house that we rented for three years before we purchased.  See those two floor to ceiling windows in the front.  Yeah, I hated them.  My couch backed up to them so I could never open the blinds without showing the neighborhood the back of my couch.  Plus they were drafty.  For three years I said, "If this were my house, I'd take those windows out and put in one (dual paned) window that doesn't go all the way to the floor"

Three days after we closed escrow on the house, the neighbors were invited over, beer was purchased and within a few hours those windows were gone, and in their place was a beautiful eight foot wide by four foot high dual paned window set inside brand new framing.

Now we needed to put up new drywall, texture, and paint,  

but we couldn't do that to just this wall,

 it wouldn't match with all the others in the room if we did.  

The entire room and adjoining hallway were re-textured and painted.  

By my hubby.

We said goodbye to the 1970's style popcorn ceiling too, courtesy of my hubby.

Then he brought the room into a more modern age by installing recessed lighting, 

a ceiling fan, and crown moulding.  You can kinda see part of the fan and one

 recessed light in the picture above.

He had never done stucco before, so he called a friend that had, and the outside got finished too.

Here's a picture I took before the final color coat of stucco went on.  

Somehow I never got a picture of the end result.

I found this picture from the following Halloween where you can see just a smidge of

 the decorative moulding and ledge that the hubby built around the new window.

Then there was that mantel that I referred to yesterday.  

Here is it's before picture.

This was the crappiest mantel ever, and another thing that I had said for three years 

I would fix if it were my house.  It was made out of 4 x 4's for the pieces that surround the 

brick and then sitting on top of that were two warped 1 x 4's.  Anything I tried to set on top

 would tip over either because of the warped condition of the boards or the gap between

 them that ran the length of the mantel.

Utterly useless.

I personally got to use a sledgehammer and a crowbar to remove this.  

Oh my was that fun.

I sketched out what I wanted the mantel to look like and my hubby built it for me.

It was perfect and looked just like my sketch.

Do you think I got a picture of it?

Sort of?

Here is a picture from the following Christmas.  You can see a corner of it.

The last step in the remodel was ripping out the old grey carpet and installing laminate

 flooring in the whole house.  As soon as the hubby did that, we decided to sell the house 

and move to Arizona.  I never got any pictures of the laminate floors.

Thinking about all this reminds me of how much more fun it is to live in an old house.  

I like to build stuff.  

And break stuff with sledgehammers. 

 I need another old house. 

And some wood.

And a new saw for the hubby.

When a piece is missing

My hubby just returned from a two week trip.  Originally he was only going to be gone for one.  I spent the first week being rather productive.  I did some blogging.  A quiet house is so conducive to blogging.   Plus I gave myself a project to complete so I wouldn't have time to be miserable.  My project, finish unpacking the boxes in my room.  Yeah, I know, we've been in this house since July, but since the hubby and I are the only ones to ever see my room, it's always the last to be cleaned, unpacked, etc.  This time however it's taken even longer than usual.  The first day I tried to tackle my room I discovered the problem.  The closet was all jacked up.  There were boxes shoved in it and the clothes were all mixed up, shirts, pants, hubby's stuff, my stuff.  I had to clean out and organize the closet before I could do the room.  By the end of the week it was done.  The room was beautiful and ready for my hubby to be home to enjoy it.

The weekend approached and I was giddy with anticipation, but then he called and asked me if I thought he should stay another week.  I wanted nothing in the world more than to have him home, but if he stayed, there would be work.  Work would mean a paycheck we wouldn't have otherwise.  Paychecks mean we can eat and pay bills and stupid stuff like that.  He wanted to come home too.  He hates Los Angeles, with it's smog, traffic, and rude people.  We both decided to do the smart thing and have him stay another week.  To say it was a painful decision would be an understatement.  This is when I started crumbling.
That second week he was gone he missed so much.

Our oldest went to Homecoming and he wasn't here too see how beautiful she was.

We had some rain and wind which made our scarecrows fall down.
I didn't have the requisite muscles to make them stand up again.

So they stayed like this, looking like zombie scarecrows.

I think the worst though was missing his birthday.  Other than a Facebook wall filled with birthday wishes, his special day passed like any other.  He got up, went to work, and returned to his brother's house to sleep on an air mattress.  Happy Birthday indeed.  So I was determined to do something special for him in honor of his birthday upon his  return.  I decided I needed to bake him a cake.  There's just one small problem.  His favorite cake, German Chocolate, and I'm allergic to coconut.  As much as it's his day and all, this is cake we are talking about.  I can't make it and then not be able to eat it.  He got birthday cupcakes instead.  Half had German Chocolate frosting and half had Cream Cheese frosting.  Compromise people.  It's all about the compromise.

Today he got up and made the scarecrows upright again.

Just when I had gotten used to having zombie scarecrows.

My Singing Dryer

When we moved to Michigan we brought all of our appliances.  Our side by side fridge that's been with us for 7 years and 3 states and has only needed to be fixed once, then our freezer that we bought about 4 years ago in Arizona which of course decided to stop working when we got here, and our washer and electric dryer.  Of course the new house has a gas hook up for the dryer.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm really happy that it has a gas hook up.  I much prefer a gas dryer to an electric one.  (I prefer gas stoves too, but couldn't get that lucky apparently.)  So of course I had to go out and buy a new one, and when I got to the store I kept being drawn to this one.

It was on sale even.  $669 the plain old style one was like $500.  I wanted it.  So I took this picture, sent it to the hubby and said "Can I?  Please????".  While I waited for his response, I tracked down a sales person and pumped her for information.  I need the stats.  Tell me why, other than the fact that it's all new fangled looking, I should get this one over the old school one.  Please tell me how to convince my husband that we need to have THIS one and not any other one.  Well for starters she told me, it's even cheaper than $669.  She pulls out her calculator and after making some calculations tells me that it will in fact be only $600 at the register.  Well, that's awesome, what else.  So she goes on to tell me that it is more energy efficient, and that it's smart, like it will stop when it senses the clothes are dry, or will keep going even when the time has run out if the clothes are still wet.  And, if you don't come unload it right away, it will intermittently tumble the clothes to keep them from getting all wrinkly. Now I REALLY REALLY want it, and am prepared to beg, when the hubby texts back and says "If that's the one you want.".  Well that was easy.

A few days later it was delivered, and a few days after that the hubby finally got it hooked up.  By then there was a mountain of laundry that needed to be done.  When we dried our first load in it we discovered it sings!. It wasn't cool enough with it's energy efficiency and what not, they had to make it even cooler, every little thing that it does is accompanied by a charming little tune.  Turn it on, you get a tune.  Select a cycle, you get a tune.  When it's done, no annoying buzzer here, you get a jaunty tune.  If you don't come unload it right away, not only is it intermittently tumbling the clothes to keep them from getting wrinkly, but it reminds you that it is still not unloaded with a little tune.  Of course I love it.

Except for today when I discovered that the sensor thingie doesn't work too well when there is just one comforter in there.  It keeps playing it's little tune and each time I go to unload it, the comforter is NOT DRY.  I wouldn't call it wet, but it's damp for sure.  I'm sure there is probably some fix for this, some kind of just one comforter setting on the thing.  It's so smart otherwise, I can't imagine it being dumb about drying comforters. It's probably operator error.  I should probably read the manual.  Except I don't know where it is.

Someday I'll get my freezer fixed too, but it's been on hold since I blew my extra money on the singing dryer.

Gotta Love Him

All day today I've been mostly lounging and goofing around on the internet. A little Facebook, a lot of blogs. I've been here for hours reading my faves and finding new faves. So it isn't surprising that my hubby would like some attention. I'm in the bedroom with my trusty laptop. He's in the living room on the couch. He invites me to come watch a movie with him. It goes a little like this.

Him: Honey, want to come watch Descent with me?
Me: What's that?
Him: Some movie about girls that go underground and get chased by some creature.
Me: Um.... I think I'll take a big passeroo on that one good buddy
Him: Ok fine (in that it's most definitely not fine and you are going to hear about your blogger addiction from me later voice)
Me: Well sorry, but I'm not big into the whole creature chasing girls in rat tunnels genre of movies
Him: But the chicks are supposed to be hot