The Harry Potter Project

So, it's been a while since I blogged. I could keep telling myself that so much has happened and I have to catch up, but that's overwhelming and only leads to me putting off updating. I've decided, instead, to just jump in now and post about today.

Our house is small for a family of our size. 1200square, and we can now say that we are definitely living in every inch of it. See, the boys have been chafing each other raw with living in the same room. It's not unheard of, and really not something I can blame them for. It's tight in there, and they have such different personalities. It's not easy!
But we only have 3 bedrooms...

John told me about how when he was a kid, and he and Dan were at each others throats, but they only had 3 bedrooms, his parents converted the dining room into a room for him until Ben moved out. We don't have a dining room, and we have a LONG time until Rowan goes to college, but it was a good idea - repurpose a spot for someone so that everyone has their own space.

One day, it hit me. We have a walk in closet in our master bedroom. That closet has a window. We don't actually USE the clothes in the closet most of the time. Most of the time, we use the clothes that are in our dressers. Half the time we can't even walk into our closet because of all the shoes on the floor. John's shoes are boats. Have you seen his feet?

I thought, and measured, and took everything out, and measured again. I thought some more, and climbed into the attic to measure the crib because it converted to a toddler bed and was smaller than the car bed. It would work if I took a shelf out and we figured out where to stash some clothes. John thought it was a pretty good idea, even though it looked like our closet had thrown up all over our bedroom.

I felt kind of bad about it. It seems very Dursley to stick a kid in your closet, even if it's the smallest kid in a good sized closet. But it has a window, right? Harry Potter didn't have a window.

We took out the shelf and spackled the holes. I found a mostly full can of purple paint, "Italian Fantasy," in the shed, so I painted it. I also had an extra vinyl Eleri that my friend made me when she made the one for the dress up station. The dress up station does not fit in her new room, but the spice racks I got from Ikea do, and they make nice little bookshelves.

She's spending her first night in there tonight. I just tucked her in, and she's smiling so big her face is about to crack. I wonder how long it will take her to fall asleep?

 

Looking in from our vanity area

 

I had to use the iPad to take pictures. I couldn't back up enough with my camera!

 

 

 

Take a picture of me sleeping!

 

 Take a picture of me building!

 

The fairy lamp isn't plugged in, but it's pretty.

 

The steps are from Mom, since Annabelle doesn't use them.

 

I think this is going to work out really well. Now we just have to get our room looking this good! 

Home improvement

The deck has never been a grand place to sit in the afternoon and evening, because it gets blasted by sun. It's much too hot out there for most of the summer, and very uncomfortable for people who refuse to wear shoes.
This week, they had offset umbrellas at Aldi. SCORE.
However, it came with a large X base, which wanted to be weighted with at least 150lbs. It was a big footprint for our little deck, but we came up with a solution for that.

 

Bolt it down and add braces. Problem solved.

I'm looking forward to enjoying it out there this summer. We may even eat out there some evening. Crazy!

Can I build it? Yes I can!

I've been wanting raised garden beds for ages. AGES. But they're expensive! The cheapest I've seen for a kit was $60, and that's for a 4x4 bed. Insane!

Last year I had the grand idea to use old pallets to build them. But then we had a tornado. It turned out to be a good thing, though, because I learned that pallets might not be such a hot idea. They have all those chemicals on the wood to keep it from rotting and getting eaten by bugs and such.

Then, I found Ana White. She's awesome. She's a lady in Alaska to decided to try building her own stuff, and it really works! So I decided to try it out for myself, and planned on building the raised cedar garden beds out of fence pickets.
In fact, the cedar pickets were on sale last week. WIN!

I took two of the pickets to John at work, and he used the table saw to rip them into the thin strips I needed. Then he brought the chop saw home and I measured while he cut the rest of the things that needed cutting. After all of that I was left with a pile of pieces of wood.

 

It would have been intimidating, but it kind of resembled what I would get out of the box from Ikea. And I've done that loads of times. So there.

I learned pretty quickly that the clamp we have is not adequate for the job. In fact, it was worse than useless because when I tried to use it, it made things worse. So I gave up on that and used a system of my own devising, where I used other boards to support things and just stood on the stuff while I drilled. I also figured out that it was much easier to move along doing things assembly line style.

 

Progress. Glue + screws = boards stuck together.

Eleri was not happy with this whole process. She's going through an afraid of everything time right now - in fact, she just had her first wake up crying nightmare last night - and the drill was a scary beast. So she didn't stay outside with me for long. That made things take much longer than I'd planned, because I'd drill a couple of holes, and then go in to check on her and see what she was up to. And it was HOT out there, so only my excitement of making something got me back out into that sun.

 

Looky though! The joins look just like they're supposed to!

I had one problem where I put the screw too close to the edge and the wood splintered, so I had to put a new screw in, but other than that, it went surprisingly well.  It's giving me confidence to tackle that window seat idea. 

I built one and then had to come in for good for today. It's HOT out there, did I say that? Cause it is. And I figure I should wait and have the boys help me put the other one together. The sides are all constructed - in fact that's it above in the picture of the join. The sides just aren't screwed together and the trim isn't on yet.

It could look better if I had used a counter sink bit so the screws would be hidden, and put putty over them, and all that jazz. But this is garden beds for outside. I'm okay with the screws showing. We don't have a counter sink bit anyway. 

But now I have all these ideas. Things I've wanted, like mudroom type storage lockers, that are way too expensive to buy - I could make them! Me and Ana White. 

Progress!

It's going to look great!
The front and left side is done. The right side and back are still yellow.
I got the green matched today. :D

It's like magic

Magic that is poundy and thumpy and not all that immediate.

 

Shazam! New house color.

What the adjuster said

John met with the USAA adjuster today to go over the house and property and see what needs doing. It will be easier to list this out in bullets, I think...

• The fence counts as property! That means they'll fix it. They won't replace the whole thing, but they will fix it where it got broken. Woo!
• Any trees that are affecting property (instead of just yard) is a tree that they will handle. That means the trees that are on the fence and the tree that moved the shed are ones that they will deal with. That leaves just 1 full tree and one large piece of tree for John to deal with.
• They will fix the shed and put it back where it started.
• They will completely replace the roof.
• They will replace the ceiling in the living room.
• They will possibly replace that entire wall that the fireplace was on.
• They will rebuild the chimney.
• They'll give us $$ toward any property that was damaged outside (clothesline, wheelbarrow, etc.)
• They will replace the siding. Does this mean all new siding or just patches? Don't know. We'll ask. If it's all new siding, I'm going to try to get a new color out of the deal.
• They'll replace the floor in the bathroom that the water restoration people removed.

I'm probably forgetting things. Frankly, it's all a little overwhelming still, but I feel a lot better having a plan in place. We'll have to go to one of those extended stay places while the work is being done. I have no idea when that will start. I'm hoping we have a timeline soon.

Tornado!

We had a close brush with Mother Nature on April 16, 2011.
John was watching out the back and I was watching out the front while we had the tv on showing the radar.
I could see that the storm's hook was going to go right over our area and was listening for that telltale wind hum,
but the thunder was constant so it was hard to hear.
I never saw a funnel, but did see the trees start moving in that way that anyone who has been through a storm will recognize, and my ears started popping and ringing, and the hair on my arms stood up, so that's when John and I went back to the bathroom with the kids and brought the dogs with us.
The house creaked and shuddered a bit, but we had the lights off so the light from our flashlight candle was steady.
The kids didn't really know how bad it was. We downplayed it big time.
It was over really quickly. I don't why people say they sound like freight trains. They sound nothing like freight trains to me. They sound like tornadoes.
That night we stayed at Jenn's house.

The next morning, we went back home to try to figure out what to do. 
The boys are on spring break, so we decided to pack them up and send them to Fannie camp. We drove and met Fran and Tommy in Concord and traded the boys for a chainsaw. Doing that took up most of the day.
We slept at home that night.

The 2nd day after the storm, (yesterday) the water damage and restoration people came out. At one point we had 2 large trucks and 3 smaller trucks crowding our driveway and cul de sac. They had guys on the roof putting up tarp and temporary shingles, a guy in the attic pulling out wet insulation, and a couple of guys figuring out how to anchor the chimney back to the house so a stiff wind wouldn't blow it down completely.
They put industrial fans all over the house to dry things out. They will be there for the next 3 or 4 days. There's a lock box on the door so the water guys can come check on it and make sure things are going as they should. There are also two very large dehumidifiers running. They have hoses to drain into our sinks. The floor in the vanity area of our master bathroom rated as very wet, and since it was parquet flooring the guy said it would swell and buckle, so they took it out so they could get the subfloor dry.
The bathroom is the wettest area, so they also brought in something that would heat the room to 120something degrees to bake it dry. I had to do a quick dump and dash to get all of our bathroom things that would be ruined by heat out of there. There is plastic up in the bathroom doorway to keep the heat and fan in there.
Once the fans are all on, it is very, very loud in there, so we took Jenn up on her offer to crash at her place. The dogs are going to go stay at Julianne's house and play with her kids and dog. I don't know what we'd do without friends! Well... I do know what we'd do. We'd have to put the dogs in a kennel and ourselves in a hotel. This is going to be a lot nicer than that. Life is better with good friends.

I have no idea what today will bring.

I'm taking pictures as I think of it. They'll all be included in the same set on flickr. You can find it here.