A Work at Home Mom’s Blog

I’ve wanted to rearrange the living room for some time now. Hubby has said we would do it several times, but it never did happen. I thought it might actually get done this weekend, because he had some people here that could help. But I was wrong.

We had it all planned out. We were going to put the entertainment center along one wall, the couch along the opposite wall, and experiment with the chairs until we found the right places for them. The only thing holding us back was lack of a suitable electrical outlet where we wanted the entertainment center, and we came up with a couple of temporary fixes for that until we could install one.

But then Hubby’s brother pointed out that if we arranged things that way, there would be cords running across the floor in front of the front door when they played their precious video games. They don’t have wireless controllers for them, and it would cost more money than we could pay right now to get them. So I guess the whole plan is out of the question.

So I guess it’s back to the drawing board. One of these days I’m going to give the living room a complete makeover, with new paint on the walls, hardwood or laminate flooring, and maybe even some faux wood blinds on the windows. But for now, I would just like to find some other way to arrange the furniture so that things wouldn’t seem so cramped.

Copper is a useful material in many applications. I have some copper-bottomed pots that I adore, and if I ever remodel my kitchen, I’d love to have some of that pretty copper tile with designs on it. But I hate, hate, hate copper piping.

I’m not sure how the previous owners of my house managed to keep everything copper. If they had as much trouble as we have with the plumbing, they would have had to replace some things at some point. But every bit of the pipes that I’ve seen appear to have been there for eons. Copper pipes are pretty much impossible to find any more, so we’ve had to replace everything that’s had to be replaced so far with pex piping.

Every time we have a little trouble with the copper, we have to spend a lot more on fittings and such than we would with some other type of piping. And pex is flexible and durable, so you’re much less likely to have trouble out of it. Maybe one of these days we’ll be able to afford to get it all redone with it.

I have come to the conclusion that my kitchen faucet is possessed. When we first moved in, it acted more or less like a normal faucet. But it seemed like with each use, you had to turn the cold water handle a little further to turn it off. Then it started making this horrible thumping racket when I would try to just barely turn on the cold water.

Now it’s to the point where you have to turn the cold water on about halfway before it will quit making that awful noise. But if you turn it that far and then turn it back, you can usually turn it down and have a little water without the sound effects. That’s not all, though. I noticed a couple of days ago that it’s leaking around the base.

I haven’t had time to examine the problem yet, but I do know that it’s not leaking all the time. It may be just when the water is on, which isn’t that big of a deal seeing how it’s coming out on top of the sink rather than underneath. But I have a sinking feeling (pardon the pun) that the faucet isn’t going to last much longer.

I suppose I should go ahead and find some eFaucets coupons and have them ready for when replacement is no longer optional. Might as well make sure I get the best deal possible when that day comes. It’s not like a kitchen faucet is something that it’s easy to live without.

We’ve been in our new (to us) home for about nine months now. We had grand plans when we bought this place, but unfortunately we’ve hardly ventured out of the planning phase. We did manage to get the roof done, which was certainly top priority. And we took out the ancient furnace and its surrounding closet and put in a wood stove. I’ve got mixed feelings about that, but it has already saved us an insane amount of money, so I suppose I can’t really complain.

But there is a lot more I want to do to this place. Hubby and I both agree that the ceilings in the living room and my office need to be redone. I want to either cover or replace the paneling on the walls in the same rooms, and the floors could use some work too. But I’d also love to spruce the place up beyond the basic needs. It’s amazing how small details can make such a difference in a home.

Trouble is, I’m pretty clueless when it comes to things like that. I considered going into interior design when I was in my teens, but when we studied it in home ec, I just couldn’t get into it and figured it wasn’t for me. Hubby, on the other hand, has no interest whatsoever in such things. Such subtleties are completely lost on him.

Lucky for me, there’s Inviting Home It’s a website that sells all sorts of interior design products. From details such as cabinet knobs and molding to lighting and benches, they’ve got the things you need to turn your home from drab to fab without a great deal of effort.

Now, some companies would just put all their offerings on a web page and assume that their customers would know what they’re doing. But not Inviting Home. They have lots of resources to show us how to use their products and help us come up with ideas for our own homes. That’s a big comfort to someone like me, who wouldn’t know what to do with corbels if someone gave me a truckload of them. Here are some of the resources you’ll find on their website:

• Plenty of decorating ideas. Whether you’re a bachelor trying to give your home a stylish yet masculine look or you’ve got an awesome fireplace that you want to accentuate, they’ll tell you what you need for the job.
• A home improvement blog with articles categorized by topic. There’s lots of great stuff here about how to choose the right accents for your home.
• An inspiration gallery with photos of their products installed in various decorating schemes. This is a great place to start if you have no idea in what direction you want to go.

I spent a lot of time browsing the site, and I’ve come up with a few ideas. Some new molding to replace the cheap-looking, drab stuff that’s up now, some ornate knobs for the kitchen cabinets, a low-profile chandelier for the kitchen… I could go on and on. I’ve got it bookmarked for when the time comes that we can seriously think about sprucing up this old house.

We’ve discovered a very annoying lighting problem in our living room. Up until we put a wood stove in, we were just slightly irritated about the lack of a light on one side of the living room. But the stove is on that side, and when it’s dark out you can barely see to do anything over there.

We tore the closet that held the furnace and some shelves out so we could put the stove there. We didn’t think lighting would be a problem, because there was a light in the closet. But as it turns out, the socket doesn’t work. Nice.

There’s a shelf sitting a short distance from the stove, and I thought maybe we could put a table lamp there for some light. But there’s not an outlet close by, so we’d probably have to run an extension cord across the floor to plug it in. Then everybody would trip over it.

As soon as we get the money, I want to get an electrician in here to put some more outlets in, fix the light socket, and check everything out. But until then, I guess we’ll be using a flashlight if we need to see much of anything over there.

I knew we would have to do a lot of work on this house before we ever closed on it. But it’s turning out to need a lot more work than we thought.

We knew we would have to redo the roof, and that was first on our list of priorities. But Hubby decided that he must put shingles on it instead of tin, and that has ended up costing us a pretty penny. Not nearly as much as if we had paid professional roofers to do it, but plenty.

We also need to work on the plumbing, which is next on the list as far as I’m concerned. We need to find out why water pours out in the floor rather than going to the shower head when you turn it on, and we need to look at kitchen faucets. But Hubby is in a big hurry to extend the bathroom and do a bunch of other stuff. I hate the tiny bathroom, but I think we could live with it a while longer if we just got the necessities fixed. Try telling him that, though.

Painting the outside is another source of contention. I say it can wait, but he says he can get most of the materials for free and doesn’t want to wait. Sometimes I think he doesn’t comprehend the costs (money and time) of things, and sometimes I think he’s just trying to be argumentative.

There’s plenty more that needs to be done. I just hope I can make it through all of this with my sanity intact.

Our new house has a small concrete patio out back. But right now, you can barely even tell it’s there. It’s covered up with leaves and scraps of roofing materials.

There is a concrete table and two benches out there as well. They are usable, but they’re not in the best shape in the world. Sometime after we get done with the roof and get it all cleaned up out there, I’m thinking about chucking them and getting some nice new patio furniture. I don’t know how soon we’ll have the money though, so I guess I’ll just hang on to the concrete stuff for now. At least it’s somewhere to sit and enjoy the sunshine.

I was already thinking about what to get Hubby for Father’s Day this year. I had considered some nice men’s jewelry. He has wanted an eagle necklace for some time, so I thought that might be a good idea. But then I thought it might be best to get him some tools or something.

But now, I don’t have to worry about it. When he got started working on the roof, he asked his dad if he could borrow a circular saw. He said he had several of them, and to come get one. But when he got there, he found that every single one of them was missing the same piece. Probably a result of his brother’s incompetent tinkering, but whatever the reason, he was sawless.

He was all to pieces over it. Then the Light Bulb of Knowledge came on over my head. Knowing that he wouldn’t break down and spend his money to buy one, I offered to get him one as an early Father’s Day present. He instantly agreed, I went to town and got it, and all was well.

So now I don’t have to worry about Father’s Day. I probably will anyway, but it won’t be a necessity.

I’ve wracked my brain trying to think of ways to incorporate more storage into our bathroom without overcrowding it. It’s no easy task, for sure. You’d just have to see it to appreciate how impossible of a task it really is.

I found a shelf at the hardware store that I thought would work nicely. I took note of the dimensions of it, and came home and measured. I thought it would work, but then I thought about the wire shelf that was then in my bedroom. It’s one of those that you can take apart and reassemble in a number of ways, making it wide or tall. I measured the units of it, and they were actually a little smaller than the shelf at the store. So I decided to make it tall and give it a try in an attempt to save money.

I did, and I got it in the bathroom. At first I was proud of myself, because it seemed to fit nicely. I put a few things on it, because I wanted to see what Hubby thought. He was indifferent (which is much better than I expected), so I thought all was well. Ha.

That evening I went to give Pumpkin a bath, and I barely had room to move. Back to the drawing board. It’s still in there for the time being, but it’s gotta go. At least I didn’t waste our money on the shelf from the store, which would have definitely been too big.

I don’t want one of those over-the-toilet shelves, because the window is over the toilet and I don’t want it blocked. There’s just really no room for much of anything else, except if we switch out bathroom vanities. The one that’s in there is tiny, and we could maybe put in a slightly larger one. But that wouldn’t help much, unless we got one that was so tall I couldn’t use the sink without a stepladder.

I guess I’ll have to break down and store the towels (and probably some other stuff we’re accustomed to having in the bathroom) in our bedroom. Now I just have to find a workable way to do that.

I swear I think they could see our house from outer space. It’s the one that’s the hideous mustard yellow color.

On the occasions that I’ve had to give directions to our house, I’ve been telling people that it’s the bright yellow house in the curve. As long as they get on the right road, they don’t drive past it. There aren’t many houses around here (or, I hope, anywhere) that are the same color as ours.

As soon as we get everything else squared away, the yellow has got to go. I don’t mind a light, sunny yellow, but this color is just horrible. I think we’re going to go with nice, sensible white. Normally I’m not that conventional, but I want to leave the exterior shutters and porch railings the shade of green that they are. I love that color, and I can’t think of any other color that I would like better with it than white.