And it begins.

From the front going down the stairs.  All rotten, drain was "fixed" at one time with duct tape. 

From the basement view, new supports, getting it all level, mostly rotten.

View from the back yard, that wall is about the only thing that will not get revised in some way or another.

View from the north bedroom. All of the railing has been taken down and will be carefully put back. The new roofing/deck  material will be nice rubberized stuff.  We need a new outside door to the sun room.  And all of the window sashes etc on the north side are rotten because they leaked from day one; no protected the wood surrounding the windows.  If we want to keep the glass windows it will cost an extra 600 bucks. Wanna wall it up?

Lemme think....

Yeah, The West window will let in plenty of light and the heat bill will certainly not suffer. View was not much anyway.    Should be done in three weeks.

I made the guys some tuna salad sandwiches with albacore tuna, with chopped apples, chopped onions, chopped walnuts, mayo and put it on nice bread.

I hope they don't get food poisoning, if so I will get it also  as I just downed my own tuna salad sandwich.  Yum.

da weekend

This is a picture of the front of the house after bush removal and pre power wash and pre paint.
The roots are still there and will most assuredly grow back, this is Oregon where stuff grows very fast.  Oy.

I was invited to go home with my friend Sue, who lives in Roseburg.  She came to work Friday and we left at 3 a.m. drove to her house, unloaded suitcase, rested up a bit and we met her daughter at Sheri's. I loved the Lemon Meringue pie.  Yummy.

Then we drove to Seven Feather's Casino.  I spent 20 dollars on a kind of fun penny machine and whenever you hit a win it takes FOREVER to give you your winnings.  I puttered around and hit 25 dollar pay out and I swear it took a good 10 minutes to ceremoniously and excitedly pay me. 
I cashed out discovered I was 20 cents to the good and decided that was enough for me.

The next day we went to Costco, The Mall, The bookstore and a couple of other places,what fun,oh and gas was $3.69 at the cheap place.

Then watched season 4 of Eureka. I have never watched the thing at all.  I will look for it now and take pot luck on re-run.

Current events

Before the construction there is demolition and before that is the clearing out of junk so the contractor can get to the demo.

Nice young local Youth Minister came buy to recycle much of it into the local land fill or turn in bottles and cans a nickel per.  Thanks, Roy!

Husband called local trash company to hire a "dumpster"  It contains the old sink, the old toilet and old downstairs sink.  Plus lots and lots of cardboard boxes.  Surprisingly the cardboard boxes I mailed down from Barrow in 1999 had survived their sojourn in the basement pretty well.   Oh there are a couple of old wooden and glass doors as well.  This load will get topped of Sunday and probably hauled off Monday.   Lovely.



The lady above is Turinesh Dibaba running for Ethiopia.  She won the 10,000 meter run last night (6.something miles) Did it in a hair over 30 minutes.  She won gold and both 10,000 and 5,000 in Beijing.  She was injured and has recovered rather nicely. The amazing thing is that there was a field of 22 women starting out, three Japanese women jumped right out in front followed closely by an Irish running.  They kept it up for about half way through. Then the Kenyans went to the front and put a good 50 yards between them and the pack. Ethiopia followed.   They took turns leading and on the VERY last round the bell sounded and Turinesh Dibaba took off like there was a two for one sale at Nike's. She passed them on a curve and opened up about 500 yards.  She has a kick that won't quit.  She cruised through the end with a big old grin on her face. Very impressive.  The commentators kept talking about her nick name "Little Assassin" and her finishing kick. Holy Cow!!! PS;  She and the Kenyans had to fight they way through runners they lapped. 

Open ceremonies

My absolute favorite moment was where Daniel Craig being all James Bond escorts Queen Elizabeth to the games via helicopter with a very dashing fly through the Tower Bridge and then the parachute (whoops of giggles) into the stadium. Nicely done! I especially loved Mr. Bonds smirk at the Corgies anxious looks as the helicopter took off.

The rest of it was of course the usual symbolic portrayals of various bits of history in England.  To sort of quote Michelle Obama when asked if she thought England was prepared for the Olympics, "They pulled off a major wedding, a Diamond Jubilee, yes I think they have this."  Yep.

I do appreciate the speedy dash of the Athletes.  I love the costumes and the American uniforms looked very good even if they were made in China. I liked the hats.  I still remember when the Russians showed up in Sable. Ye Gods that was gorgeous.

We are going to have a few things done...

We are in the midst of  refinance from 7% to 3.5%,  the appraiser was here and I shudder to imagine what he may recommend we fix before the bank gives its blessing. 

In the meantime we asked one of Tim's sisters favorite contractors to come take a look.  He has offered to fix the sun room roof, paint the house, take down all the blackberry and Ivy as well as service the TRANE for X amount of dollars,all done in two weeks, half up front please. Okay break out one of the plastic check thingies.  

 Um,which brings me to my second financial project, withdrawing X amount of dollars from my retirement account from a former employer.  Now I have to fax these documents to another time zone, hope to get the correct signature in the correct spot and get them faxed back, fax them to the place in Texas and then hold my breath waiting for a phone call telling me I missed something and start all over.

Oh and to top it all off I pissed of an official at the bank where we are trying to refinance by going in to get someone to notarize husbands spousal agreement to the disbursement. The officious insincere little snot said that her training precluded notarizing anything unless the form was completely filled out.  WTF??

Wait, I CANNOT fill it all out because I have to FAX it to ANOTHER TIME ZONE so The plan administrator must sign the thing.  And they won't do that without a notarized spousal agreement.

Wait, I'll check with my supervisor.  Nope,sorry.

Thanks for the help, not.

Went to the Courthouse and explained the situation who then cheerfully notarized the spousal consent signature for FIVE BUCKS so there, take THAT, behotch.

So today I took a half day off, we went to Sherwin Williams and picked out Snow something (dirty creamy white) and Secure Blue (medium blue with enough gray to look kind of like slate on a bad day).  We were told Sherwin Williams can give us numbers that will translate to Home Depot where the contractors will order most of the supplies. Short explanation: I picked these colors because they resemble the current paint color and I am sticking with these choices for the reason that if I chose yellow for the trim it would not cover the blue very well.  Yeppers.

I am excited to see what the old girl looks like after a good power wash. I shall post nasty pictures.

And you know what they say about remodeling, there will be surprises.  I think we have mold.   Yeah......no breathing in the sun room.

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Disclaimer;  the opinions expressed on this blog do not necessarily reflect those opinions of the HUD financed health organization hereinfore specifically not addressed by formal nomenclature.

Yes, good swipe

No, bad swipe.

Been shopping

Husband picked me up Monday in the battle-ax rust-bucket etc Van.

"Um, what happened to the buggy?"

At this point I have taken over the narrative and substituted fifteen minutes of explanation, arm waving and plot exposition with the following:

"Had to take it to the Auto clinic to get the radiator flushed."

"Oh."

At this point I have taken over the narrative and substituted fifteen minutes of explanation, arm waving and plot exposition with the following:

"I stopped at Whoozit and they have an armoire, wanna go look?"

So we picked up the buggy, shopped the Armoire at Whoozit in the back of the van, and what followed loading, unloading, schlepping it upstairs was worthy of the best of Laurel and Hardy. No one actually hurt, you understand, but there was plenty of potential.

Fits in very snug next to the one hallway upstairs bookcase, also purchased from the fine people at Whoozit.

Small digression. For some reason the spellchecker does not reconize armoire.  I am not sure if it spelled correctely, but I cannot go Google without closing this page, so here goes,  saving and posting.