Dead animal, whiskey, and one hell of a day.

Okay folks. It has been a while since I have posted, honestly between Thanksgiving, and Christmas we haven't been doing to much work on the house. But today Preston and I decided to get crazy with it (seeing as we both had the day off) and on Preston's last day off he crawled under the house to work on the foundation and when he was finally feeling pretty good under the house all by him  self he turned his head and saw a half decomposed cat or something like it and had to get the hell out of dodge quick.  About two weeks later (today) his brothers came over for a little bit and we all went under the house to get the "thing" out.

Once we were all suited up for the job we went under, and the boys had devised a plan:

                                           1. get under the house
                     2. using a rake, get the opossum into the Home Depot bucket lined with a trash can liner
                                           3. get it out.
Well, the first two things worked out well, however moving the bucket while keeping the petrified opossum inside the bucket proved harder than they realized. Since I was already back inside the house and since there is a opening to the underneath of the house in a spot in the house I was watching them struggle for a minute. When the bucket (with the opossum dangling out of it) was about a foot away, I just grabbed it with my gloved hands and got the damn thing out. After throwing it in the nearby dumpster we all washed our hands and proceeded to our next venture, finishing the dining room. It is still not finished, we got a little worn out, and had perhaps one too many shots of whiskey to do the best painting job ever.


Since we decided to work on the dining room, and of course I had to rip out the ceiling. We are using the same color for the walls as the Mammaw room so we (I) decided the corny nailed in stupid looking cheap tiles had to go. So I started off by taking all of them out, which filled up one entire trash can. after taking the tiles out there were a few scary places in the wooden ceiling, not to worry! That's why they make big gap filler though right? Right. There was actually a big enough hole that we could fit my phone into it and take pictures of what is above the wooden ceiling. :

   Inside the ceiling gap

The room Before

                                                                                           More from inside the gap

Opossum! Happy New Year!

Black Friday=never again.

So my Preston's little brothers wanted to get a taste of the "Black Friday Fever" so naturally the only kind of strangers we would want to spend any extended amount of time with over night was Cabelas. So indeed, we (Preston, his brothers, their dad, and I)  got to Cabela's around 10:30 PM on Thanksgiving and began the wait. In the beginning it was fun, then we began wondering why on earth we had thought this was a good idea. Soon we realized that Yes- the first 600 people in line got a prize. What we failed to realize that there was only ONE rifle, ONE smoker, and pretty much the best after that was a hoodie. It was too late to turn back, at about 1:30am the folks from Cabela's had about a dozen heaters going, had s'mores that people could make, and hot dogs, all for free. That made it a little bit better. (luckily I had planned ahead and brought a flask. just saying) Soon the people around us got a little bit excited, as the 4:30 hour came close, that is the time when they started handing out the prizes, the crowd got excited and so did we! Maybe after all this we'll walk away with something good! So we pack up our sleeping bags, and chairs and wait. They start handing out the prizes (little things where you peel back a part of it and it shows what you won) they went down the line, and since we had gotten there so early we didn't have to wait too long. Right before the man got to us they said the rifle had already been won. Boo. When we got our prizes, $5 dollar gift cards and 1 $20 dollar card, we realized a few things. Black friday is not something I ever want to do again; My Grandma and Great Grandma loved doing this, I never really truely appreciated the things they went through for us, and also if there was a situation where we needed to bunker down for any extended time, It would be at Cabelas- after being outside and tired with them for about 7 hours I realized the people who shop there are the people I would want around me in the situation of the end of the world.

Anyways, not too much done on the house, but we are hoping to finish the guest bedroom by next weekend.

Home renovation heals the soul

"They" say that everyone grieves in their own way, and I think I have realized my kind home renovation soothes my soul. Yesterday my grandma (Mammaw) passed away, she was fighting for her life for seven months, between cancer, pneumonia,  staff infection, and countless other things she went to see Jesus on her 70th birthday.

With having the day off of work and no school I was faced with an empty day with the feeling of sadness to company me. I needed to do something, so when I woke up I realized one of the last rooms upstairs that needs work is the guest bedroom! So after Preston went to work, I began to work. Now, this room has been a pain in the butt for a little bit. Preston spent countless hours scraping the popcorn off the ceiling and mudding and sanding it all to realize it still looked like crap so then we painted half of the ceiling with a sand textured paint, still looked like crap. So today I started off by getting some  paint stripper, didn't work. So I took off the air vent and had a thought: What is the sheet rock covering? You guessed it, just like the kitchen floor I called Preston and asked what he thought about me ripping out the whole ceiling. He (being the most incredible man in the world) said go for it! One of the best things about Preston is he let's me do all my kookie crazy borderline insane ideas, and sometimes they actually work out perfectly!

So I began tearing down all the sheet rock, and tearing down the wallpaper with fabric backing. And under it all, yes, a beautiful wooden ceiling. So I painted it white, 2 coats, painted the walls, and most of the trim. (I would have painted all the trim but I ran out of paint)


       *Pictures*

             You can't see the color of the wall too well, but trust me, it's a beautiful light golden yellow. Thank you ass hole again for breaking into our home and stealing both of our digital cameras.

Kicking our office's butt

The office (that used to be a girls bedroom, and she apparently thought that putting gum all over the floor and on the trim work was a good thing to do) is now somewhere we would actually like to be!

We started off by scraping the pop corn off the ceiling, and of course mudding, sanding, and painting. Then we painted the walls, trim work and we were really starting to see major improvements! We were getting pretty excited and there was just one more thing that we needed to do- the light fixture.

Preston and I had seen some fan/lights at Home Depot and so we set off! After looking at those fans, we decided to look at Lowes, nothing. So we looked at a smaller store, and decided to go back to Home Depot. Picked out a beautiful fan and putting it in was a snap!!

While we were getting our fan, we saw THE COOLEST LIGHTBULBS EVER! Yes folks, the Edison Light bulb is now on the shelves of Home Depot. It was a splurge for us, at about $8 a bulb we could only afford one. Once we got home, we couldn't wait to see our new light bulb in action! As we marvled at it's beauty, Preston said to me: "If you had told me 10 years ago that I would be sitting in my kitchen, at 7pm on a Saturday night having the time of my life looking at an amazing light bulb, I would say you are crazy!" But since we are crazy, and pretty lame we were both extremely excited! Now we are just waiting to be able to afford more!

Got the first coat of polyurethane on the office floor, and it's looking AMAZING! Here are some before and after pictures and also a picture of our new cool lightbulb!

                                                           BEFORE

                                               BEFORE (YES THIS IS THE SAME ROOM)

                                     DO YOU SEE THE BEAUTIFUL POPCORN CEILING?

                                               NOW IT LOOKS LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE LIVE HERE!

                         AFTER (P.S THE GREEN PAINT WAS A 'OOPS' PAINT, WE GOT IT FOR $5)

                                             THE MOST INCREDIBLE LIGHT BULB EVER!

Thinking about becoming like Bonnie and Clyde.

Sometimes life hits you in the face and says "Ha! I'm going to just see how much you can take before you go crazy and start robbing banks and living the life like Bonnie and Clyde!"

This weekend was a crazy weekend, first: on Thursday Preston called me (I thought on his way home) but he said that his truck broke down 3 office buildings from his. So I got in my car and went to see what was going on with his truck,  2002 Dodge Ram. Well, after looking under the hood we see the belt is shredded. So we go to Autozone and get a new belt and replace it, in the dark, in the cold, and also as a bonus it was raining a little. When we go to start the truck- nothing. The battery was Dead. Yes with a capital D. The worst part? It was all just bad timing, pay day and mortgage on the same week=poor Preston and Bailey. So we get a battery and put it in, right after the battery was in we start the truck and the entire parking lot was filled with smoke and we soon found the belt-melted 1/2 way off the pulleys, and it was a horrible smell. We finally gave up for the night and rushed to the nearest liquor store for a little whiskey. Our thought= at least it's Saturday soon and we can fix it then. 

Preston's comment: Air Conditioning is the root of all evil in cars. 

Saturday: Since we are poor, we called all the salvage yards in the area and found the part we needed for $85! The part? The A/C compressor, yep, the pulley on it wasn't turning and that's why the second belt burned up. So we drive an hour round trip to save over $170 on the same part and replaced it, which took FOREVER because Dodges suck. That's why you should always buy a Ford or Chevy.

We finally get Preston's truck home Saturday night around 7pm.

Sunday we decided we needed to work on the house so the weekend wouldn't be completely lost. So what better thing to do than scrape off all the pop corn in what will become the office. When scraping pop corn always remember to cover the floor with plastic or something so clean up is easier! Now we are waiting for my parents and siblings to arrive to see all our hard work and have dinner!

Happy times renovating yall!

OH! Ps. Living in a home without insulation is really COLD! We walked outside today and it was warmer on the outside than the inside. Current temp outside= 58 degrees. Inside the house= 49 degrees.

 

Also as a bonus each wall is a different color sponged with a different color! So that translates into A). Really Ugly. and B). We have to prime it prior to painting it a normal color. 

Just a Rant

Okay, so on the day's when Preston and I don't go crazy re-doing our home we watch the HGTV and DIY network for giggles and inspiration.  I just have to vent for a moment and forgive me if I sound like a huge bitch.

Watching the Renovation Realities just makes me so angry sometimes. These women are so stupid and are just not cut out for any home improvement task they are taking on most of the time. These women actually think that blow drying your hair and curling it and putting on make up and lip gloss  is something that should happen BEFORE renovation. NO. Thats not how it happens in home renovation times. You wake up and you just freaking get to work, you don't complain that you are frustrated and tired and sore after 20 minutes of working on a simple task like ripping out a wall of sheet rock! Last time Preston and I were working on the kitchen floor we both got cut really badly and were bleeding before we even noticed that we were cut!  Just get it together and realize if you aren't cut out for it JUST DON'T DO IT! Save your husband, tv viewers, and me the trouble and just go get your nails done and leave the work to the real people.

As another side note, Big Tex burned down and that really made me and Preston sad. Not only is he a very important icon at the State Fair of Texas, he is dear to our hearts. That is where Preston asked me (last year) to marry him! Right in front of Big Tex. Well, today while the new season of Dallas was being filmed where I work, I walked into the room and Jessie Metcalf said "I'm glad Big Tex burned down" I was shocked and angry so I asked him to repeat that (because I thought I had miss-heard) and he repeated it just the same. My response: " You are an asshole." and then after talking for a few minutes I came to the conclusion that he is a half-way decent guy but still on my not-so-good-list. When I told Preston what I had said he text me back "babe, you gotta control your inner old man".

Another episode of Renovation Realities and the wife is already making me A) feel bad for her husband and B) makes me want to find her and punch her in the face and stop asking so many dumb questions like why is insulation pink? Who freaking cares?!@(@*$&#(#@! Just tear the stuff out and stop worrying about brown recluses. 

:-) Renovation :-)

WOAH NELLY! The kitchen is going A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!  I am so thrilled beyond pieces how the floor is going. I spent today cleaning and doing homework and had a great conversation with my mom!

Kitchen= My almost favorite room in the house. I'm scared still of the oven/stove combo-and in a dream land world Preston would surprise me one day with a new stainless steel oven/electric stove combo with a microwave/hood vent combo; but we are poor so that wont happen.

Here is a before of our crazy 4-layer laminate flooring and a bonus layer of plywood:

And the Stain drying part of the kitchen floor craziness: (well me staining it :-)   )

I just have to say, I am by far the luckiest girl in the world to have such an amazing husband who I can do home improvement projects with, without having any arguments. I just can't believe how lucky I am, we are just having the best time renovating our home together we just don't want to do anything else-like go to the movies, nah we would rather stain the kitchen floor. :-)

Why is there not a 24 hour sandpaper store?!?!?!

Part 2 of Preston and my crazy kitchen re do on a whim. Well, it's 10:22 and Preston and I both look like homeless people, we went to get Chioptle to go and eat it on our front porch because the rest of the house is crazy covered in dust from the kitchen floor that we sanded. 

To briefly recap the day that just happened would take another day, so I will summarize on parts and go into great detail on the funny bits.

To start the day we knew our task on hand: get the last layer off the kitchen floor. This was the 1930's vinyl floor adhesive backing that was stuck on the hardwood floors, PS the only good looking layer of flooring other than the wood floor was the third layer of laminate flooring, most likely from the 60's. Since we didn't have  a floor sander or any kind of sander for that matter we knew that we needed to get one ASAP. Since it is Sunday most of the pawn shops we frequent were closed, we searched all over the three nearest towns and found only one pawn shop open and he had a few sanders which were all overpriced, when he didn't go for my sweet southern charm to get the price lower I pulled a John Wayne move and walked out. We (about 2 hours later) ended up exactly where we started from- Home Depot- which as a side note I went to 6 times just today; and 4 out of those 6 times  I was in the return line returning the items that didn't work for sanding our floor. We became known with the return lady as "The newlywed home improvement couple).  We learned today many lessons, 1: Ryobi is our friend, since we are poor and we had to make the most out of Prestons most recent pay check we had to go with the cheaper tools. 2. It would be really nice if they made a "never dulling sandpaper" or atleast make it more freaking durable. 3. If they couldn't make a more durable sandpaper why cant there be a 24 hour sandpaper mart where Preston and I could buy some more and finish the little bit of sanding we needed to do. 

Altogether we ended up buying a whole lot of sandpaper, a orbital sander which is good for more detail work, a belt sander which has more balls and really gets after it without any fear like a WW2 Sherman Tank or a tiger ready for a nice dinner, more sandpaper, some big gap filler (because under the thresholds there are big gaping holes to the underneath of the house) and a really cool "bit" to our drill. It is a metal wire crazy thing and really is good for getting the top layer of crap off the last later of the wood floor.

Funny sayings for the day:

Preston: atleast if we ever ended up to be homeless people we would be happy!


Man at Chipotle: MAN! You are so dirty!
Preston: Yeah, we've been living on the side of the road for the last month.
Mr. Chipotle: Which road?
Preston: hahaha, naw, we've been sanding our kitchen floor, believe it or not we showered just this morning!

Also as a side note, Preston and I both ended up injuring ourselves; I got a gash in my shin from a piece of flooring that jabbed me. And Preston was going so crazy with his crowbar that he made a piece of flooring jam into his arm and slice him. Thank goodness for band-aids and neosporin.

PS. Just as another side note. The DIY folks on all those shows on DIY and HGTV completely bypass some of the most important things when renovating your home. First; Not any sanding job is a "quick sanding job" no, we realized (perhaps too late) that you really should cover your doorways with plastic and tape so your house doesn't begin to look like your Aunt Gertrude died and then her cats died and all the dust in the world came into your home and settled on EVERYTHING.  Second; it takes so much more effort than they let you see to do this stuff. Preston and I are walking around like 80 year old folks after 2 days of this kind of crazy labor and we are both under 30 and in decent shape. Thirdly, the last thing they don't ever share with you, sometimes you just need a shot of Whiskey to continue. After working yourself silly and sanding a kitchen floor with a 5 inch orbital sander and a belt sander and going through soooooooooo muchhhhhhhhh sandpaper, whiskey is almost the only things that keeps you going. Not to mention the laughter that Preston and I shared, sometimes you just reach the point that laughter is the only thing that keeps you going because if you start to cry it is just straight to hell for your home improvement project.

Preston and I need to shower up and get ready for tomorrow, since Preston works a real job we need to get some sleep.

SIDE NOTE: People are really crazy, they just tell you things like you can't use a belt sander to sand a floor and blah blah blah but honestly, have you tried it? Everyone has an opinion and not everyone has tried it, and not everyone opinion is a good opinion.  You have to sometimes try things for yourself to know if something really works or not. Just try something, because if you are right you will be completely happy and if you are wrong, big freaking deal and you can just figure something else out. If you are smart enough and don't just listen to everything everyone else says you can pull your own John Wayne move and just figure it out your self and not have to have your hand held like you are in 1st grade going to the bathroom or a spineless twit who can't think for them-self. This will save you a LOT OF MONEY.  Too many people go around asking Can I do this? and then they end up at Home Depot asking the workers "How can I do this?". LET ME REMIND YOU: They work at  Home Depot! Probably not the sharpest tool in the box. Insead just get after it, last time I checked I was able to potty by myself, hold a steady job, and re do a house with my husband and throw other peoples suggestions out the window because they just act like they know things.

Bed now, check out these pictures. Even our crowbars love eachother. 

                                         It looks like Preston has sleeves on, but really just dirt.


Floor after a day worth of sanding: 

a lot of different whims

Oh, as a side note, even though Preston and I have been sick we have been still killing ourselves making our home more livable :-)

One weekend we went completely nuts and painted the entry hall, stairwell, and upstairs landing the most beautiful blue. Also we re did the light fixtures on both floors and they look amazing! It just goes to show, if you have mildly good light fixures and are willing to take a chance with spray paint and new globes you can save $$$$$$!  We also caulked the entire upstairs, on a whim. Let me tell you, so many people take caulk for granted but Preston and I have become HUGE fans of caulk.

We also have finished the upstairs master bedroom and closet, which makes us feel really good about our home improvement skills.

We also had a whim and put in french doors. Who does that?! We do. We put in french doors from our dining room to the sun room. That was a crazy whim but completely worth it, they look beautiful and have really helped with our electric bill.

Also, the first cold snap that we had we went completely crazy and ripped out trees and bushes, and bricks, and all kinds of other crazy things out of the front yard. We worked literally all day and made a dent. The lady who lived here before us apparently loved the look of brick, broken up concrete and was a hoarder that spilled over to the yard. It took a whole day but it looks better. Just waiting on the electric company to cut the tree limbs that are laying down on the power line.

Kitchen Floor Redo on a whim...*pictures*

Holy Moly. My husband and I are possibly the craziest people in the world. Not in the creepy-im-going-to-kill-you-next-time-I-loose-a-poker-game-and-had-a-bad-day kinda way. Nope, we have a day off and while I'm cleaning, Preston and I begin wondering what exactly is under our kitchen floor. Well folks, since we had the whole day off and no where else to go we un did the threshold and realized that under three layers of linoleum, and layer of plywood there are original hard wood floors. WHY WOULD YOU COVER THAT UP?! I would like to go to who ever did that and slap them in the face with a wet sock.

So Preston and I decided why the heck not just on a whim tear up the whole entire kitchen floor? So at 10am we went and got some breakfast and then got two crow bars from the Home Depot and just pretty much when to town ripping up the whole floor, 3 layers of linoleum, plywood and all! It took us several hours, and a lot of craziness and the thing that creeped us out the most? Well, we took out the stove/oven combo and realized not only were the sides of that completely gross and covered up with what appeared to be left over grease from 15 years of fried chicken. There was a crazy hole in the wall leading to the laundry shoot. When I opened up the laundry shoot I was shocked, disgusted, and horrified at what I found. A pair of tighty-whiteys that looked like they had been worn by a homeless man, since Preston doesn't have those underpants we realized they belong to the man who broke into our home; we are contemplating hanging them on our front porch with a sign saying "Dear Person who broke into our house, if you ever break into our home again, we will hang you by your toe nails in the town square for all to see your atrocious acts." We're still thinking on that one. After that (at noonish) we had to take a shot of whiskey to make it not seem so bad, then back to work ripping out the flooring.

Now after all the layers are gone, we are just stuck with trying to figure out how to get the glue backing off the wood floor from the moister barrier. We'll most likely finish this up tomorrow if nothing goes wrong, we're thinking a good sanding is what it needs to be beautiful. Pizza for dinner because our oven/stove is too gross for us even to look at. We'll be cleaning that up with all kinds of cleaner and sell it in the garage sale.  YEEEEEEEHAWWWWWW!

                                                                      BEFORE

 

DURING

                                                                   AFTER

no cold air...again...:-(

Why is it every time we turn around, something falls apart? We almost have one room completely finished, and we are feeling amazing! After getting home from school, having dinner and watching the cowboys win, bedtime came and as soon as we were half way up the stairs the hot air hit my face and I knew something was wrong. The air conditioning unit outside was not turning on. :-( We were stuck, sleeping in either a 90 degree upstairs or a flea downstairs. What a choice. After Preston checked out the attic and made sure the wires hadn't been chewed we decided the coolest room downstairs and with the least amount of fleas was the entry hall. If you ever get a chance to sleep on the wooden floor of your entry hall with some fleas- PASS ON THAT! Man oh man, something good has to happen...it just has to...

Polyurethane changed my world! *Pictures*

We have the most beautiful hardwood floors in our 1910 house, I mean beautiful. The only problem? There are quiet a few splintered parts, and we couldn't figure out how to seal them without completely destroying the charm of the aged wood. Everywhere we turned, everyone was telling us we needed to sand and re-stain the floors. We really didn't have a problem with all the work, but we just didn't want to re stain the floors because the wood has aged to the most beautiful color and richness we just wanted to keep that but loose the splinters.

After a few weeks of debate, we finally just went for it. On Labor day we put polyurethane on the master bedroom floor, no sanding and we were so happy and over the moon at the results! The beauty of the floors show and every board is different and perfect. The both of us are just so excited about this we can't wait to do it to the rest of the house! As a bonus, finishing the master bedroom floor means that room is just about done! All we have to do is re-calk the room and add crown molding around the baseboards and around the ceiling. Life is good. :-)

Creepy Bathroom

You know what's sad? I will tell you; when you just miss your favorite movie, or when the power goes out while you are doing your hair for you wedding, or when you sit down in class after a bad day and realize you have a test that you totally forgot about. Those are all pretty sad, you know what else is sad? When your husband walks into the only bathroom in the house that works to take a shower for his birthday lunch, and starts singing "it's a creppy bathroom, so creepy" and then while showering I hear from the other room the mario brothers song, not the happy beginning song- nope-the one when mario is in the creepy underground.  Why is the bathroom so creepy you might be asking yourself? Not only does it slant, has a creepy window that only half way locks above the shower, has an open 'closet' that has the air conditioning compressor that is open to the under the house, and there is no calking anywhere in the bathroom. None, which lets all the creepy crawlers walk around and make more fleas. My goal: someday to have a completely calked bathroom where I can soak in the tub and relax. If anyone knows of someone who has money to burn and time on their hands, feel free to come overhaul our bathroom.

Home from the Honeymoon and got a welcome home party from...! and PICTURES!

Right after the I Do's <3

Just Married

Our Home

Preston getting ready to give the fleas hell

Bailey ready to give the fleas hell

"Shit-Mageddon:

Willie The Kitty

FLEAS. Yes sir-e-bob, our good friends the millions of fleas that have decided to torment us in our home welcoming us with open arms after our relaxing carnival cruise that was bug free, thank goodness. To catch up:

The wedding was amazing, I got to marry my best friend, ate some good cake from Market Street, and got showered with bird seed on our way out to Preston's truck to take to our honeymoon! The boys of the wedding party decorated Preston's truck amazingly (I'll post pictures, Preston figured it out!) and off to Galveston we went! The honeymoon was a lot of fun, we sang karaoke on the ship, out of the 129 newlywed couples we were nicknamed "the newlyweds" , got saranaded by a guy in Mexico who sang La Bamba and when Preston gave him a $1.00 tip, the Mexican said "no, it's five." and we didn't even ask him to play! But all and all we had a blast just getting away. We were ready to get home, had a great time talking with Ryan my brother who house sat while we were gone so we wouldn't get broken into again, (his house story to come) and then we enjoyed looking at our amazing wedding pictures that were taken by Kelly Lynch.

Preston then made the mistake of going to the bathroom....he was attacked by our welcome home committee!!! He had about 15-20 fleas on him after about 30 seconds and we just felt so dejected, so hopeless, so snookered. So we got our angry faces on and set out to get some killer- bug, flea, rat, opossum, anything with legs killer.  Came home, got our gear on and went under the house, set the bait, and sprayed, and seven dusted the hell out of the under of the house. Take that you son's of bitch fleas and whatever else is living under the house.

Now we are enjoying some pizza we ordered (because to crawl under the house we need about 3 or 5 shots of Tequila) and will wait for tomorrow for the light of day and PRESTONS BIRTHDAY!

Coming to the edge. Bacon?

1st Edition of Preston coming to the edge. ( I hope there will not be any more)

Ok so this is Preston. If you know my fiancee, then you know me. This is my time to speak. I want this to be her blog, but some times I need to be heard. We have tried to be nice, but we are coming to the edge. We live in this old house and are trying to make it a home. This is our dream, but it seems that people, PEOPLE, are trying to make it tough. We love people and I, for one, have a really trusting nature. With all of the craziness, we have unfortunately developed a general defensive nature toward people. I can't believe that some punk broke into our home and stole our stuff, not to mentioned tried to use old credit cards that are no longer valid. I called ATT, PS they suck, and they cant tell me what number called me. Then some drugged out B tries to steal stuff to make a drug run. I want to scream! We live in a decent area, or so we thought. If I catch someone trying to bust in here I will end their life and call the authorities well after they are dead. If you are reading this for humor or entertainment, I want to thank you. Thanks for caring and supporting us through our wonderful project that we call our life. We love this house and by GOD if I will let some low life people ruin what is so special and amazing to our life. I love our future and more importantly my future wife and want to make sure that she is safe. Thank you everyone for your support.

Another Rouge Day...

With less than a week until the wedding I took off my-little paying job-all week to finish all the details for the wedding and packing for the honeymoon. Monday, We had a wonderful Southfork Luncheon, we weren't able to invite everyone to the wedding so we were able to have a chicken-fried-lunch for our wonderful co-workers. So today rolls around, I have a long list to do- Sams for miscellaneous items for the wedding, lunch at somepoint, and washing the 200+  mason jars and also clear glass plates.  At around 3 pm today I notice out of the corner of my eye ( while watching toddler's in tiera's and learning about spray on tans and fake eye lashes)  a person walking up our driveway to our side door like they owned the place. This strikes me as very strange because we have a very prominent front door and only our family walks up to the side door and knows that's okay.  I walk over to the side door- ready to F somebody up because we already got broken  into once- and meet face to face with a woman who looks like she is on some crazy drugs with a black eye, and asks if she can rake the leaves.  NO YOU CAN'T RAKE THE 10 LEAVES WE HAVE IN OUR YARD YOU MORON. HOW ABOUT YOU TELL ME WHY YOU ARE REALLY HERE, LIKE I AM HERE TO STEAL SOMETHING OUT OF YOUR GARAGE (THAT IS OPEN) AND SELL IT TO MAKE SOME MONEY FOR COCAINE.

I tell her to pretty much "Get the hell out of Dodge" and watch her walk away.

Later on, after telling Preston what happened with the crazy drug lady, he gets a phone call from Bank of America, which was an "UNKNOWN NUMBER"which he cancelled his accounts when he found out they had given credit cards to a lot of illegals and arabs, that his debit card was not able to process. RED FLAG! He hasn't had a Bank of America card since 2009, and we find out this is a result from our break in that we had not more than a month and a half ago.

When will it calm down? When will everything be normal? I don't know, but I can tell you this much. Texas, thank God has the " you walk onto our property, I will shoot you and then call the cop's later" Law.  Just sayin.

Preston is getting jealous of my blog, and wants to make his own. The next post is all Preston's doing and I will not edit anything he types. :-)

Up to current times...and currently also needing a drink.

There has been a lot going on since "shit-mageddon" and to do a play by play will only bore anyone who reads this  to the point of going clothes shopping at the goodwill. As a side note on the goodwill- you can find some very cool things there for pennies on the dollar and they also sell used underpants. Not that anyone should ever purchase used underwear, but if your life goes that rouge, by all means.

So a fast-forwarded version of our lives is as follows:

As we stand currently with the house, and our upcoming nuptials  (in exactly 20 days!) here goes:

We had intended on starting on a room and finishing it completely before moving on to the next room, we got that advice from very wise people who have renovated their homes. We, however were not mentally capable of following their advice. We first started in the kitchen, because we had been eating out for literally over a month and we just needed a good home cooked meal, and I love to cook. Also I was getting fat because of all the take out and was afraid I wouldn't fit into my beautiful wedding dress- my mother made it by hand using fabric and lace from my grandmothers, my mothers, and Preston's mothers  wedding dresses and it is exquisite. So we started on the kitchen, it had the most horrible cabinets and I always loved having light colored cabinets, I also wanted a red kitchen. Preston, being the wonderful man he is let me do whatever made me happy. While painting the kitchen cabinets and walls we were horrified at the findings under one of the bottom drawers- a rat skeleton. Also other miscellaneous things. Preston got almost sick and we moved to another room for our sanity's sake.

After the rat skeleton and remembering the opossum and the half decomposed squirrel in the attic, we decided that having a cat around would make us feel safer! We went up to the PetsMart and fell in love with the cutest orange tabby kitten you've ever seen. We adopted him and named him Willie, after Willie Nelson. He loves his cat nip ball and the real Willie's music so we only thought it was fitting. Not long after bringing Willie the cat home, we realized the fleas never really left (from the spraying before we got the house) and poor Willie was covered, we were covered and it was just a mess. We were so worried about our poor kitty we went to Walmart at almost midnight to get some flea medicine for him. We quickly found out that going in a hurry to Walmart at almost midnight is not the thing to do. After waiting in the self check out line for about 20 minutes (it seemed) we were next and the Walmart employee closed it and said basically " sorry about your bad luck, but I have to work at Walmart so I am just going to be a B" this didn't set well with us. We were flea bitten, and worried about our kitten, so Preston (in a rage that is completely not like him) told the Walmart lady pretty much everything that was on his mind. After a few minutes of arguing we decided to walk out. We got to the door and remembered our poor kitty was in flea hell and went back for our items. The B at the self check out finally (and rudely might I add) rang us up and we thanked her and gave Willie the relief he had been waiting for. Less than a week later we took him to the vet because he had ringworm all over his little body which he obviously had before we adopted him. And he ended up giving it to me, on the middle of my neck, that is not the kind of thing any girl wants, especially one week before her bridal portraits. Luckily Preston's Aunt Sally is a miracle worker and got me some cream and it was gone in a jiffy! (damn not having insurance until we get married) 

Next on the list was the popcorn ceilings upstairs in the master bedroom and his man room. I fully believe both women and men need a place for all their treasures, such as collector lunch boxes that have gladiators and the ninja turtles to be displayed nicely. Popcorn, after scraping, mudding, sanding, mudding, sanding and finally painting doesn't seem so bad. In the master bedroom I thought for sure when we decided to put bead board on the ceiling after scraping the popcorn and mudding and so fourth Preston was going to throw his hammer into the wall. We learned fast that unless you have a nail gun and more than two people, bead board sheets are not a good call. Also, liquid nails sucks. So we painted the ceiling white, and hung a new light fixture. The knob and tube wiring made it difficult to change out the fixture, but we red-neck-rigged it to work great!

The laundry room was my own project, I would work on it on my days off and it would get done when it gets done, all I have left now is to find the perfect old looking cabinet knobs and fix the door frame. Why do we need to fix the door frame you might be asking? Well, the day before the fourth of July our house was broken into. It was weird more than anything, instead of taking the computer, tv and such, the person who broke in sat down and watched movies and stole my gun. It was un-nerving and scary and sad, but we filed a police report and tried to get over it. We were still emotionally riddled and weirded out. So Preston and I built a fence  where it had fallen/ been taken down, in the 100+ degree Texas Summer so we (mostly I) could have a chance of feeling safe again. Damn that extra unexpected expense, the fence looks good though, we are going to wait until finances and the weather cool off a little to replace the other parts of the existing fence.

We absolutely love our home with all our hearts, but every time we turn around it seems like everything is so much bigger of a deal than it should be, and more expensive, and takes longer. We have been living like construction workers inside our home and we just want to feel good walking around barefooted and shower without the worry of something crazy happening.

All and all, we are thrilled, we just wish we would win that $5000 prize from the home depot receipts, I can't even remember how many surveys I've filled out. Whew.

More to come, have to finish cleaning all the sanding debris off the wooden floors upstairs. 

Also, during this rouge time in our lives, in Texas, in the Summer, we found that someone maliciously cut the freon lines to not one, but both our air conditioning units. Which cost us lots, and lots and lots, but we are finally cool. It's probably a good thing that I don't know A) who cut the freon lines and B) who broke into our house. It's Texas after all. ;-)

Gone Buggy

Once we realized we would not want to live in the craft corner, our next mission was to find a room in the house that was somewhat livable. Since we had no air we started on the bottom floor (being in Texas, in the middle of the summer, we needed to stay on the bottom floor because heat rises.) The living room seemed like the best choice because it has a ceiling fan! It had carpet though, and for the first night we just didn't even care. The next morning though we felt very differently. We woke up with more bites than I had ever seen in my life! The reason: fleas. Yep we had no animals but our living room was covered in those little pests. So luckily it was the weekend and we ripped out the carpet in the living room at 5:30 am and threw it out on the lawn.

After setting off about 20 bug bombs throughout the house we felt a little bit better! Boy were we wrong, those fleas still are around and it has been 2 months.

The horrors of the Craft Corner...

The times we are able to laugh ourselves silly make up for the times we want to cry. Preston and I thought we would just "fix up" the garage apartment that is eventually going to be my craft corner and live in there because it has air conditioning until the rest of the house was livable. Well, fixing up ended up getting coined "Shit-mageddon" (sorry mom) sad but true, just when we were replacing all of the trim in the freshly painted room, walls, ceiling and even concrete floor! Preston knocked one of the outlet covers off and dirt and what we thought was rodent feces came pouring out like hillbilly's out of a wet t-shirt contest at Hooters during NASCAR. Holy moly we were disgusted and horrified and everything in-between. So me, being the true pioneer woman I am started ripping out the sheet rock and to our udder dismay we were showered with what we thought were rodent pellets and dirt and spiders, and all kinds of other things. We were prepared, I'm going to try to figure out how to add a picture soon!

After ripping off all the sheet-rock, and fiberglass insulation, and dirt and other miscellaneous items we were ready to put new insulation and sheet rock up! WELL, Here's a lesson for all you men out there- Don't EVER listen to your future wife about how to hang sheet rock like Preston did. He, (being the sweet man he is) humored me and put the sheet rock in how it made sense to me- of course this was the wrong way to put it in! and he managed to fix it and made it all work.TIP FROM PRESTON: ALWAYS PUT IT IN HORIZONTAL STARTING FROM THE CEILING FIRST. (trust him, he's serious as a heart attack.


We got the Craft corner decently okay and then the bug man came out and let us know what we thought was poop, was actually huge roach eggs! HOLY MOLY! Not cool. We were horrified all over again and thoroughly disgusted. We however got over it with a shot of whiskey, and agreed that at least we don't have a rodent problem? (trying to make the best of things) and moved on; or at least we thought so. Right after this news and figuring out that we had been showered in dirt and roach eggs we turned (discouraged) to walk inside our 90 degree+ house and then we were shocked at the appearance or an opossum walking into the craft corner like he owned the place! Preston got the gun and showed him who was boss. Thank you second amendment right.


Pictures are to come if I can manage how to put them on here!

The Beginning...

My Fiance and I bought a wonderful home built in 1910 near a historic downtown. We were drawn in by it's charm, and curb appeal; since signing the papers it has been a wild adventure. We are amazed how many times a week we are at Home Depot and Lowes, and every time it always ends up costing a hundred dollars! How it that even possible?

This has been an amazing experience so far, and it is far from over. It has been a time where our bond has been tested at times, but throughout this experience we have found that laughter is the key to not loosing your mind.

The first night we were the proud owners of our new home, we didn't get the key. Since the house was a foreclosure we didn't get the keys until some other parties signed- of course I was not aware of this and when we went to close on the home I had all of my cleaning supplies packed into my car. I will never forget the feeling of udder disappointment I felt when the real estate lady told us we would not be getting the keys- our thought on the matter: we spend more money than we ever have before in our LIFE and all we have are a stack of papers and a neat folder?!?!?! No.  You don't tell that to a strong minded southern woman with cleaning supplies in her car. So after signing, we went back to OUR HOME! 

After sitting and laughing on the porch, we were saddened at the thought that we owned this home and we can't go in. Again, this southern girl will not just take that. So we were trying to break into our home-sad but true. We found the way to get into the house-the crawl space under the home. After my fiance tried for 15 minutes to get the courage to crawl under the house, (he gets squeamish) I (in a sundress and flip flops) I said "move it" and did it myself. I crawled under the house, to the under stairs area where we remembered a door- BINGO!  I popped the floor open and busted the locked door open with my butt. Us southern women wont be stopped by a little locked door and creepy rodents/ bugs even if we're in a dress and pearls.

We spent about an hour just basking in the joy of home ownership and then left to my apartment to eat dinner. Little did we know the adventure was just beginning.