kitchen gut

Hey guys!

So last week we gutted the kitchen. And I'm not exaggerating when I say gutted. It's gone. Which makes me extremely excited but also nervous. There's no going back now!

First, I would like to state that I took these pictures with my nice. And I was also having a "Hey, maybe I can actually work this thing" moment, because these pictures look prettyyyyyy good. By that I mean that it makes the kitchen look like its in better shape than it is. When Leo first saw these pictures he was like, "You can't post these, people are going to think we are crazy!" But here they are anyway (I've also included a couple of the bathroom, which was also torn out):

And then there's the ceiling...we aren't exactly sure what happened there :)

So, it really doesn't look bad. I wish I had taken more detail shots of the damaged parts, but it's too late now! But I will enlighten you. First, several of the floor tiles were broken and cracked. Second, if you look to the top left hand of the ceiling, there is a whole. We weren't sure what was going on there, but assumed some kind of water damage. Fourth, another clue about water damage to the ceiling is the fact that the cabinets directly under that had water damage stains. Fifth, it was hard to open many of the doors and drawers, and often they would slam shut. Sixth, leaning against them caused your shirt to literally get stuck....a.k.a tons of yummy grease build up. 

Lastly, we really wanted a bigger kitchen. Not huge...just bigger. More open concept. Or semi-open concept. The kitchen will be open to the dining room and semi-open to the front of the house, but it won't be the first thing you see when you walk in the house. Which I am grateful for, because I can guarantee you that my kitchen will not be a dirty dish free zone at all times. But I also don't want that to be the first thing someone sees when they walk in my house :)

This is some of the first steps, taking out the cabinets.

The floor was AWFUL. The tile itself came up very easily. Probably more so than it should have been. Getting up the plywood/particle board subfloors was the awful part. It took hours. It had to be done though, to figure out what was going on under it all. Also, depending where you were standing in the kitchen/dining area, there was anywhere from 1-4 layers of different vinyl floors. In the concrete area, it was a little wet, which is never good. We even found a layer of burlap :)

These next pictures are slightly more drastic. The whole thing is gone. Floor, drywall, everything.

Tada! If only it were that simple in real life...actually (for me) it kind of was this time--we were out of town for the weekend and my Dad hired a couple of people to help him gut it. So when we came home, tada! I won't take credit for this part of it ;)

The only thing left is to build two temporary walls, remove those studs (they are supporting part of the house) and add the beam to provide the support after we remove the studs and the two temporary walls on either side. We bought the beam today at Menard's! Then it will be truly open! We are adding the bathroom back in another part of the house. We are being careful and saving all of the trim and doors that we take off and recycling them back into the house once we put the new walls and doors up.

I hope this all makes sense! We have spent the past two days gutting the upstairs bathroom (though not down to the studs), and patching part of the downstairs bedroom. I am soooo sore! I was so excited to gut, and while I'm glad we finally can, I'm a little over it now. I'm pretty sure it had something to do with disconnecting a moldy toilet from a 90 year old stack and then carrying down a flight of stairs to the back yard. That is something I could live without ever doing again. Ever, ever, ever. More on that next time :)

Thanks for reading!

-katie

uncovering floors

So the past couple of weeks have been pretty hectic, despite being on summer break. I still had a couple of graduate classes, but those are both finally over! I'm working DC's Migrant Camp, which I love. Also, the loan is officially permanent, despite a couple of slightly large and ridiculous roadblocks that popped up...As a 90s child, I would compare it to kind of like being on Rainbow Road in Mario Kart, slipping on those infuriating bananas, then barely escaping a turtle shell one of your friends threw at you, only to get eaten by one of the evil chomping bombs. Anyway.

 The loan finally did go through. It is done!

So our first project was nothing too drastic. We started uncovering all of the hardwood floors, which includes the side door entryway leading to the stairs, the hallway, and the upstairs bedroom that used to be the second kitchen when it was an apartment several years ago. We have also started on the kitchen floor, but I'm going to wait and include that in the post about the kitchen :)

So we started downstairs in that side entryway. I must preface with the fact that no one--Leo, my Dad, the hardwood floor refinisher, nor the interior designer we invited over for an hour---believed the floors would be worth saving at all. I would also like to point out that, for the most part, they were wrong. Which doesn't happen often!

This is the before of the side entryway. The tile really wasn't that bad, it was just broken. Plus I am quite partial to hardwood and as you can see there is some peeking out. Under the broken tile. And plywood subfloor. Oh, and it is blue. Gotta love the 50s (I'm sure someone will be saying the same thing one day..."geeze, what were those people from the 10s thinking??)

I convinced my Dad to take up the tile AND the sub flooring (instead of automatically laying down new tile) and he agreed since it is such a small space. Here is the after:

Again, it is blue. I get that. But that can also be sanded out :) The important part is that it is in pretty good shape. Besides a few nail holes. But that is all part of the character! And I'm all for character, as I'm sure Leo is tired of hearing...but hey, it will also save a lot if we can reuse it! He likes hearing that part. I'm learning.

All went pretty well. Then I decided to go to the house by myself to clean up and get one of the boards back down. We are trying to save on the utilities, so we haven't been turning on the air conditioning, instead electing to open windows. In this case, I opened the door. Like my Dad does ALL the time when he is there. Without anything happening. But of course, that's not possible with my luck.

So I'm working away, once again feeling quite proud of myself (I'm seeing a pattern here), and then I hear a loud banging noise. I really wasn't alarmed at first. Then I looked up and saw it. A bird. Banging itself against the window and flying around the entryway wildly. The same 3X3 space that I am in. Terrified and trying to escape. In turn, he terrified me and a running I went. Thankfully no neighbors were out to see my ridiculousness. 

Within seconds I'm out of the door, around the porch and on the front yard. Safe but wondering why the one time I open the door, a bird has to fly in. Hopefully my Dad isn't busy at work :)

Then I realize I have left my phone in the entryway. I stand there. And stand there. And then work up the courage to run, quite recklessly and waving my arms like an idiot, into the house grab my phone and run back out. I call my Dad, and he doesn't answer. My next idea is to text my friend Rachael who lives around the block and see if her fiancé is home (sometimes he works nights, so he is there during the days). He wasn't. She offered to call her mom to help, and its then that I realize I'm being ridiculous. I am (kind of) a grown woman! I can handle a little bird. I grab the broom and go inside. No bird in sight. I start hoping that he flew out as I was running out. 

I slowly walk up the stairs to check the second floor, and my Dad calls me back. Birds of course do not like the Lollipop song blaring loudly right next to them and it was quite clear within two seconds of my phone ringing that the bird had not exited earlier behind me like I hoped. Thanks, Dad.

I ran back out of the house. Like a chicken. 

I eventually went back in and found it cowering at the end of the hallway, behind a window screen that my Dad had taken out. I slowly laid down the broom. I went to open the window so that it could fly out and not stay in my house, pooping all over everything. And honestly, after it stopped hitting itself against the window and saw it cowering behind a screen, I felt sorry for it.

I still didn't trust it though. I didn't like opening the window because it meant that I had to turn my back on the bird. But I got it, and the screen open (actually, it fell out...turns out I'm not the most skilled at opening window screens--Dad not happy) and turned around victorious...and the bird just sat there. And sat there. And we just stared at each other. I went down the stairs to give it some space. Still nothing. 

This is ridiculous. Over 30 minutes has passed over this silly bird ordeal. I don't have time for this. Time is precious to me and taking it up for ridiculous things is one way to either anger me, or apparently get me to put my big girl panties on and fix the situation. I walked up the stairs and just started running down the hallway at the bird. Within two seconds it was coming at me. I ducked into the bedroom and it flew straight out of the window. 

Another "crisis" over. I closed the door and the window (which doesn't currently have a screen) and just worked miserably, sweating like a stubborn pig. But no more birds were getting into my house. Nope.

I went upstairs to work on the floor in the upstairs bedroom. We need to get this up, even though it isn't staying, because we need some extra wood to use in the master where the wood needs to be repaired. And they don't make this kind of flooring anymore.

I'm trying to get a head start for when my Dad and Leo got off work. There was one window that I could open up there. But it didn't help much. And my 100 pound frame didn't get much done. Except I'm now on my way to pro status in using a nail puller. Whooo hoooo. 

The real work of course happened when they got there. Here is the before and after:

It is in really could shape! I would even say better than the other bedrooms because it was preserved under all of that! Of course there is a lot of dust and dirt in this picture and I don't have an up close. I do have some up close pictures of some old newspaper we found! Most of it wouldn't come up in one piece. I thought these were cute, especially the "bellies" article! Maybe thats just my dorky love of linguistics coming out, but I wish they still wrote cute articles like this in the newspaper. I also didn't realize that it was okay to talk about menstrual cycles and cramps in public in 1963...maybe I placed an unfair stereotype of the early sixties in the Bible belt.

That's it for this super long blog! A big thanks if you made it this far and read the entire thing...but even if you just glanced, I still appreciate it! I hope you all have a great Monday! The kitchen is almost done being gutted, so I will be posting on that. It's already unrecognizable...which makes me nervous but definitely excited for the months ahead!

-katie

patio & trees

Hey guys! We finally finished the patio this past week! Finally! And no more hair loss :)

My Dad and Leo dug new footers for the extension. It is now a 10' X 14' deck, with inset stairs. My Dad had to dig a footer for the stairs and make the stair stringer from scratch because the pre-made ones at Lowe's didn't work with the height and the size of the stair inset of our deck.

He was pretty proud that he cut the stairs right the first time :)

Then we started on the railing! They also had pre-made railing. But of course I didn't like it, so I wanted to make ours from scratch. Naturally.

This part was very tedious, more than I thought it would be. The railings had to be evenly spaced throughout the rail and then also perfectly matched up in the middle. Then we attached everything with the nail gun and attached it to the deck. That first section of railing took over almost two hours. I was so proud. Finally we had a section of railing up!

I then I looked down. And I noticed the nails sticking out of the sides of the railings...this was me:

Seriously, I see the shows and see the frustration of home owners. I knew what to expect, but it's always different when you're there and everything is taking forever and nothing is going right. But we survived and moved on.

We unscrewed the railing and started over. It was a little disheartening but we started using screws instead of the nail gun, because it was hard to keep the nail at a perfectly straight angle so that it wouldn't stick out. It went pretty fast from there!

Finally, we put up lattice to cover the bottom and give it a more finished look. I went with "straight" lattice rather than the traditional diagonal lattice. I think it looks more modern, plus it is much studier than regular lattice.

We still have to add the caps and stain it. Which is a point of disagreement between my Dad and I. Who is surprised? Leo actually agrees with me, though. I like this look with the dark stain floor and white accents:

 

While he prefers the natural color (so we would apply a clear sealant)...

Honestly, I don't dislike the second. But the darker stain just grabs my attention! We have 30-60 days to decide, while the treated lumber seasons out.

On a side note, all of the trees in the backyard, besides the two huge ones to the side, are now gone. I didn't expect to be quite as sad as I was to see the redbud come down. It was rotting from the inside out, so it had to come down. But the yard looks so blank without it now! Bigger, but blank. Here is a before and after...

Another point of disagreement, this time with Leo, is to whether or not to plant a tree there to replace it. I want to plant a tree to provide shade to the yard and some interest. 'Cause right now it's looking pretty bare. And of course my Dad agrees with me on this one (will we ever all agree??). All Leo can think of is more leaves for us to pick up in the fall. 

He asked me to wait to plant another tree until next year so we can go through a fall and see how bad our current leaf situation is. And I have to help with the leaves. I guess he thinks that will deter me. I have never minded raking leaves. But maybe that's because I secretly want to be able to create huge piles of leaves so that our dog can do this...

No, we don't currently have a dog. But as any of my close friends will tell you, I'm definitely a planner. So it's never too early to plan an entire tree around a dog we don't currently have being able to play in the leaves, right?? :) 

-Katie

Second floor wrap-up...for now.

Hey guys!

So the second floor is pretty much done...except for painting and refinishing the floors...and gutting a bathroom and then adding another bathroom....but almost, right? :)

So I thought I would give a recap.

• We closed up the bathroom door out that connected the current bathroom and master.
• We tore down one of the closets in the master, put in a door to what will be a new master closet, and added a door that will lead to the new master bath.
• Closed the door to the hallway leading into the bedroom next to the master, which will be the new master bath/closet combo.
• Taped and skimmed all of the walls upstairs to repair holes and seal in the stubborn wallpaper that refused to budge.

These are some before pics of the master:

And after:

There is no door to the old bathroom and the second closet is gone and two doors have been added. Also, the three windows on the left have been repaired, have chain instead of rope, and have been painted. We will start the final two windows probably after the inspection.

Here are some pictures of one of the bedrooms with black paint over wallpaper before taping the seams and mudding the ENTIRE thing:

After:

We just added a $4 light fixture for the time being and to get the fan out. It doesn't look like it in the picture because of the time of day, but it is so much brighter!

Here is a before of the stairwell:

And after:

Depending on the person, this may not look like much. I probably wouldn't have thought it was. Before. How many buckets of mud do you think all of the work took?

Six buckets. And about 3 rolls of tape at about 250 feet each. This is not the first time, nor the last time, I will say this but I am so lucky to have a Dad that can do all of this. And that is also willing, that's important too :)

We have also finished the patio, but I will post about that in a couple of days, once we do some last minute details. Right now we are looking forward to the inspection that will start the process for the permanent loan...and then hopefully we can get into the big job of reworking the kitchen and bathroom downstairs! I can not wait to get my hands on a sledge hammer and demo. But carefully, and without the sawzall :)

-Katie

teacher realities

A post on Teacher Thought Bubble was recently brought to my attention by my friend (and fellow teacher) Caitlin. I can't get it out of my head, probably because it reflects exactly how I've been feeling lately.  It goes like this:

THE LIFE CYCLE OF THE (TEACHER) YEAR

September:

February:

May:

I love it. I still remember listening to "Vivir Mi Vida" by Marc Anthony every morning on the way to school those first couple of months, super pumped about everything. That September .gif describes me to a T. But it also perpetuates the "roses and daisies" view of life that social media tends to perpetuate. So then we arrive to February. Or in my case, November.

This particular section of the original post doesn't apply to me. I was never bored. I was always being challenged by my students and myself to be better, to do better. As my students would say, #thestruggleisreal. This would pretty much sum me up, starting in November.

Sometimes I felt like I was constantly trying and getting a running start, and then something would knock me down and I'd have to start over and pick myself back up. Probably daily! Most days feel like a constant struggle, especially being a traveling teacher. I left those copies here, my computer there, quizzes in that classroom, and my brain at home in my bed because the 3-4 hours of sleep it received the night before was not sufficient.

Then we get to May. Almost six months later with that gif happening daily.

Everything hurts and I'm dying. Seriously. It does. And it is starting to show, I know it is. Since December I have gotten engaged, bought a house (and a project), and taken 6 hours of grad classes, one of which involved putting together an entire health fair for Hispanics in Bowling Green. All while teaching and being responsible for 150 students aged 12-17.

For those of you who don't know, I am very passionate about my job. It is not something I leave at 3:30. And still most days it is not enough. I want to be it all--- a good lesson planner, a good implementer, a good grader, an encouraging colleague, a role model, and just plain on top of all the extra duties given to a teacher 100% of the time while also being organized, a good graduate student, fiancé, daughter, and friend. Who is renovating a house. I want it all!! Does such a teacher or person exist? To quote Elizabeth Bennet from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, "I never saw such a woman. She would certainly be a fearsome thing to behold." Okay, maybe Hermione. But she had a time turner.

I found myself asking a friend the other day, could I just have the hours that people waste laying on the couch, playing video games, and all around not really living life? Because I want to live life and I want it to be full. But I'm finding sometimes there just isn't enough hours in the day.  And I have to let myself be okay with that sometimes. I have to be okay with my bed not being made like I want it to be. I have to be okay with the fact that I left those copies at the other school and now I have 2 minutes to modify the lesson. I have to be okay with the fact that I did not respond to that student in the calm and completely mature way that I had meant to when he asked for the directions that I already explained twice. I have to be okay with the fact that I'm human and I'm not perfect.

But that doesn't mean I have given up. I will never give up trying to become that teacher and that person. Maybe one day I will cause someone to think "What a fearsome woman to behold!" (Side note-I really wish people still talked like this...)

Coming back to the original purpose of this blog, I have to discover apricity in everything I do. I may feel like everything hurts and I'm dying. But would I change any of that for the experiences I have had this year? No, not for a second. Through the craziness, I have loved it all. I have met beautiful and amazing people and lived beautiful and amazing experiences. Are there 10 million things I think I could have done better and should have done better as an educator and as a person? Definitely. Did I have a learning experience from every single one of those 10 million things?  Yes.

I recently went through something where I had to make an important decision. If you know me very well, I'm not great at making decisions. It's just getting worse with age. I want to make sure I have weighed every positive and negative, beat it with a hammer, and then beat it with a hammer again to make sure it's dead and there's no possibility I should have taken the other path. As it turns out, not everyone appreciates this thoroughness. And I get it...in the real world everything has a timetable. Right or wrong, it's reality.

So I ended up not getting what I had decided on. But you know what? I have given it over to God, like I should have done in the first place. I actually think he was leading me back to the path He originally wanted me to take. Even if it's not exactly what I thought I wanted, He knows me better than I know myself.

"'For I know the plans I have for you', declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'" 

-Jeremiah 29:11

-Katie

#fail

When it first happened, I thought "There is NO way I'm writing about this on my blog. In fact, no one needs to know at all." It took me a little while to get over my bruised pride and decide that I needed to keep good on the promise to myself to write about the good AND the bad of home renovation. And Sunday afternoon was the bad.

It started out great. I had been working on school work at home. I decided that I needed a break, so I headed over to the house where my Dad was working on the back deck. We are stripping the current deck and adding about 4 feet so that we can safely put a grill on it, as well as add some seating. Here is the picture before:

We are extending it out, switching the stairs to the front, and making them inset (built into the deck) so that they don't stick out and take up precious yard space. I admit it...an advantage of city living is not the huge yard space.

Anyway, we had to demo part of the existing deck. Which means rip everything out except for the framing and joists. The railing and posts were not in the best of shape, which I know you can't see in this picture. They built it really well--they screwed the railing in place and they screwed the screws quite deeply into the wood. And then our battery-powered drill died. So my Dad brought out the Sawzall (kind of like an electric saw), and I just started sawing the railing off in sections. It was going great. It really was. I was quite proud of myself for being a petite girl using a power tool and for not being afraid of it. And then God must have thought, "She needs to be humbled a little bit." And I surely was.

I was about to go home but I decided to get the stair railing off before I left. Easy. I have this.

Except I didn't. Some of you may see where this is going as soon as I start.

I had my hair in a bun. Key word here being had. I might lose some guys here but I have never quite mastered the seemingly simple art of the bun. My hair is long, so there is a lot, but it is also thin. I have a hard time getting it to stay in a bun that doesn't flop and eventually fall out. Today was one of those days. It kept flopping and falling out. It probably had something to do with the tiny hair thingy I grabbed on my way out of the door. So I took it down and put it half up, thinking "At least it will hold my front hair out of my face." If I could just go back and tell myself that no, this was not good enough. But I can't.

Like I said I was working on the stairs. I had gone down a couple of stairs so I could see the saw better and where I was cutting. This means that the saw was closer to my face than it had been previously. Really not that close to my face-actually it was closer to my long, long hair.

On the back of Sawzalls, and many other things, is an "air intake grill". Air intake. Any guesses as to what happened? Sucking air and long hair? Nothing pretty.

It sucked my hair. Into the motor. My head and the Sawzall became like two perfectly opposite north/south magnets. Within a second my head was jerked towards the Sawzall and within another second my dad had the Sawzall unplugged. I was screaming and crying quite dramatically. Imagine Katniss in Catching Fire during the Jabber Jay scene. I'm telling you, dramatic.

The pain in my neck was immediate and my scalp was tingling from being yanked. I mistook the tingling for blood, though I soon realized there was none.

Once I got past the pain in my neck and the reality that I wasn't bleeding, I continued to cry pretty dramatically. My hair had been eaten by a motor. That doesn't usually bode well for hair. Within the next few seconds my dad warned me he was cutting my hair out of the Sawzall. My thoughts went from one thing to the next. Would my hairdresser be willing to come in to fix this, not on just any Sunday, but the Sunday that also happens to be Mother's Day? Would I look decent with short hair? Oh God, it doesn't matter because I have engagement photos in less than 6 months and a wedding in a little over a year. My next thought was how much was I willing to spend on extensions? All of these things ran through my head in literally less than 15 seconds. Vain, I know.

My Dad convinced me to stand up and try to move my neck, though I was quite past worrying about my neck. While my dad was worrying about my health, I could still only think about my hair. I hadn't even touched it. I was scared to. I told him why I'm still crying and he actually started laughing. I was not amused.

Apparently that signaled to my Dad I was not seriously injured like my crying was leading him to believe. Instead, I was being vain. I slowly walked to the mirror. I still had hair. I still had a lot of hair, actually. I couldn't even find the missing hair. I walked back out onto the deck searching for my hair. This is what I found.

I personally think it looks like more than it is. I eventually found the two inches of hair left on my head from what he cut off. It is on the right side, towards the middle. Really, it happened in the best place possible. I tried to show it to someone today and it took quite a while to find it. I got pretty lucky in the grand scheme of things and with more than just my hair.

My neck hurt pretty bad at first. I couldn't really look to the left when it first happened. Now I can if I do so slowly. If I turn it quickly, it almost physically jerks back more than hurts. That afternoon I had a slight headache and felt pretty fatigued and out of it. Monday morning I felt a little out of it again, but not as bad and things have been improving ever since. I am taking ibuprofen and trying to practice moving it rather than keeping it still. It will just take a while! It could have been so much worse.

Anyway, that is my first home renovation fail. I'm sure there are more to come, but I hope (and I'm knocking on wood!) that was the worst. 

And here is the deck mid project. Hoping to have new flooring and the rails up by the end of the weekend! Those are the new posts and the supports are there to help keep them straight while the concrete dries.

This is a given and one of those things you know and are just like, "It will never happen to me, it'll be fine."  I'm telling you now, girls put your hair up in a bun when around any type of power tool! On the top of your head. As high as you can get it--Mulan style. 

Or learn the lesson the hard way :)

-Katie