Another One Bites the Dust

Another vestige of The Disgustington's tenure in this house is now gone.  I won't go into all of the details, but I spent much of this weekend doing a serious spring cleaning and making some slight changes to the decor of the house.  One of the things that I did was replace all of the cabinet and drawer hardware in the kitchen and both bathrooms.  

Here is what was in the bathrooms before:

I really dislike things that are made to look like something they aren't--these handles are an example.  They appear to have a lock, but it is filled in.  Who thought of this?  Just make plain handles--you aren't fooling anyone.  I have a similar dislike for shirts that are made to look like two tops are layered and shoes that look like normal shoes from the front, but are backless and therefore not real shoes.  Anyway, I removed the old ones (and good God, I cannot describe the filth I found beneath that was certainly not my filth) and put on some new handles:

New glass knobs for the medicine cabinet:

The new handle design on the top and the old one on the bottom:

I also dislike handles that look like the ones that swing out when you pull on them, but are actually just stuck out permanently like the one that you see above.  I have a lot of opinions about seemingly insignificant things, but you probably already knew that.

Here is the downstairs bathroom vanity with new hardware:

Luckily for me, The Disgustingtons used the same hardware in both bathrooms, so I was dealing with the same measurements for all of the cabinets and drawers.  Here is the upstairs bathroom vanity with the old hardware (the kind with the fake locks and permanent swing-out):

New hardware:

The change in the kitchen is much more dramatic.  The old hardware was really too country for this house, so I replaced it with something more classic.  The filth beneath these was unimaginable--I had to pry several of the handles loose from the same dirt-covered grease that took Mother of Ken and me two days to remove from the stove when I moved in.  Here you see one of the new knobs on the left and one of the old ones on the right:

New drawer pull on the top, old ones on the bottom.  Kenna especially loves these because the design of the ends is called "paw."

The new hardware is heavier and nicer and it is shiny and new, so I'm hoping that will help us sell the house.  Here's what the kitchen looks like now:

In addition to the cabinetry update, I also cleaned all of the windows and window sills, dusted all of the logs and ceilings, washed all of the light fixtures and ceiling fan blades, and cleaned every room thoroughly.  Then, we did some work outside, deadheading some of the plants, cleaning the porches, etc.  I thought you gentle readers might enjoy some photos of the flowers in the front yard:

The world's largest volunteer viola below:

I tried to get Kenna to sit next to the viola to give you a sense of scale, but she wasn't cooperative.  She really just wanted to eat grass and then gag.  Fun times.

Doesn't she look exhausted from all of this work?

The Roof is Leaking, Part I

Yesterday morning, the phone rang at 6:45. This is not a time that I am coherent. I muted the phone and let it go to voicemail, noticing that it was the roofing company. They called again twenty minutes later, so I figured out that I wasn't going to be sleeping any longer. It turned out that they wanted to start working on my new roof. Thanks for the notice, guys.

So, they arrived a little after 8:00 and got to work:

Thankfully, they are just putting down another layer of shingles and nailing down some of the plywood, so this is relatively easy. Here, you can see the new shingles on the taller part of the house and the old roof on the shorter part. The color is fairly similar, but the new shingles look a lot nicer. Of course, Mr. Disgustington put his stamp on the roof as well as every other part of this house and he made some mistakes on the roof of the addition that have caused some leaky ceilings.


Close up of new roof vs. old roof:

These guys take A LOT of breaks, so this is taking a while. Today, they got most of the shingles on the original part of the house, but they still have to come back tomorrow to finish:

So far, I am fairly pleased with how it looks. I can't wait to see it when it is all finished, but anything would be an improvement over the Disgustingtons' roof.

Into the Groove

In my continuing efforts to class this place up, I spent yesterday afternoon rescreening four of my windows. The day that I moved into this house, Mother of Ken had a fit about how dirty the window screens on the living room windows were and she ripped them off and threw them in the bathtub to try to clean them. Unfortunately, twelve years of the Disgustingtons doesn't come off that easily.

So, four years later, I decided that replacing the window screens was my only option and that it couldn't be that difficult. I also had holes in the bathroom window screen and in one of the bedroom window screens.

Here's my set up with one of the living room screens--screening, splining, splining tool, utility knife, screw driver, and the home repair book that Father of Ken gave me so that I would stop calling him every time I needed to replace a shower head:

Kenna "helping:"

So, after you remove the old splining and screen from the frame, you cut a new piece of screen the same size as the outside of the frame:


The next step is to roll the splining into the groove on the frame. Here, I had to use two pieces of splining side by side because the grooves were wider than my splining and Home Depot is 20 minutes away.




Cut off the excess splining with a utility knife:



Trim excess screen with the utility knife (carefully, people--I learned this from bitter experience) and then you have a finished rescreened window:



The screens for the bathroom window and one of the guest room windows are finished and ready to be replaced:



New screen in place in the bathroom:

New screen in the bedroom:

New screen in the living room--see how clean it is now?

While I had everything taken apart, I decided to experiment with the curtains on the picture window. So, what do you think? I usually just use the valances, but I am trying the longer panels to see how I like them. Thoughts? Obviously, if I go with this, I will tie the longer panels back. I thought that the longer panels might help keep things warmer this winter and then I could go back to the valances alone for warmer weather.

Waiting for a Girl Like You

My phone rang at 7:00 on Saturday morning. No one calls me that early unless there is an emergency. Well, no one who knows me, that is. It was Lowe's, calling me to apologize for the trouble that they had given me yesterday (after I gave them the online feedback that they requested at the bottom of my receipt). They wanted to know if they could bring my new refrigerator between 9:00 and noon and, of course, I said that they could and thanked them for calling.

Then came the hard part. I had to drag myself out of bed at that ungodly hour of the day. McKenna refused to get up and stayed in bed for another hour, when she smelled bacon cooking. After making a yummy breakfast of strawberry muffins, bacon, and Puerto Rican coffee, I moved things out of the way in preparation for the arrival of the new refrigerator. And then I waited. And waited. And waited. Right at noon, the delivery guys pulled up to the house. The Offensive Beast had spent its last night in my house:

They brought the New Girl in and then began to work on removing the Offensive Beast. I wanted to die when they pulled it away from the wall. The Disgustingtons strike again. Imagine how much dirt is under the average refrigerator and then multiply that by about 100--that's how much crap was under this thing. Besides your basic dust and dirt, there were three pens, a Sharpie, a magnet, part of a phone book, some receipts, and a wadded up extension cord. So, I got to work with the shop vac and cleaned up as much as I could. I was going to just live with the rest of the dirt, but I was just too grossed out, so I told the guys that I wanted to mop quickly and started scrubbing. I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until my mop head was in shreds and by then it was reasonably clean.

Then, they rolled the New Girl into place:

While the New Girl cooled down, I ran into town to get a new mop head so that I could finish cleaning the floor and to pick up some other things. When I got home, I made myself a Lemon Drop before I started cleaning.

I washed the New Girl inside and out with a Magic Eraser and a mild detergent solution. Isn't she pretty?







By then, things were fairly cool, so I started moving things from the little refrigerator into the New Girl:

I cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom and put the magnets on the New Girl:

The tablecloth is new--Mother of Ken sent it to me this week and it is so pretty.

Finally, life is back to normal in the Ken and McKenna household. After a trip to the grocery store, the New Girl will be full of good food. McKenna has claimed the tiny refrigerator as her own. She plans to keep scraps and bacon grease in there.

Happy Easter to all of my gentle readers. McKenna and I are celebrating our 100th post with Lemon Drops chilled in the New Girl.

Believe It or Not

This picture of McKenna after we got back from taking a walk on Thursday pretty much sums up how I feel after two days of work on the house.

Friday was installation day for the new carpet in the bedrooms, so on Thursday night, I took everything out of the downstairs bedrooms.

I had stuff in the kitchen:

The laundry room:

The living room, but I forgot to take a picture of the queen size mattress and box spring that I shoved behind the wood stove.



The downstairs bathroom:

And I put a few odds and ends in my loft study. It took me about an hour per room and then I did the same thing in my bedroom on Friday morning, which you will see later in this post.

So, beginning with the larger of the two downstairs bedrooms, the Father and Mother of Ken suite, here's what I started with:

You may remember me writing before about how the carpet in the downstairs bedrooms was a hideous teal color and also smelled like cat urine when I moved in, so we removed the carpet and I just painted the sub floor. When the realtor came a few weeks ago, she said that we would get more for the house if the bedrooms were carpeted.

And now the new Mother and Father of Ken suite:

During all of this, McKenna found various places to make herself scarce:

The other downstairs bedroom, the Leah suite, looked like this before:

And now, with the new carpet:

McKenna found another place to hide:

Perhaps the greatest transformation took place in the "master suite." I have hated this carpet since the day I moved in, but really had no reason to change it because it was in good condition in a room that few people ever saw. The realtor took one look at it and encouraged us to put new carpet in that room as well.

The previous carpet:

And the new carpet:

None of the new carpet is something that I would choose for a home that I planned to live in longer than the year I have left here. However, we were able to purchase two remnants for the downstairs bedrooms that were half off and the carpet that went in my bedroom was clearance. The carpet installer told me that this was some of the thickest carpet he had ever put down. Apparently, we paid a quarter of the original cost per square foot for this carpet. As someone who prides herself on finding good sales, I feel pretty good about the deal we got on this carpet.

The thickness of the carpet in the upstairs bedroom:

I was informed that the carpet installer was not a morning person and would not arrive before 11:30, so I waited until Friday morning to clear things out of my bedroom. Here it is before:

I put as much as I could in the bathroom to get it out of the way:

I also had to dismantle the closet organizer so that they could put new carpet on the closet floor. In the process of taking it apart, I noticed that the brackets that support the lower shelf had been completely pulled out of the wall. Once again, thanks to Mr. Disgustington, I had a problem on my hands.

At first, I thought that I was just going to have to buy a new closet organizer because I didn't think that I could put this one back together in such a way as to ensure its stability and safety. By the time the carpet installers left, I had decided to take another look at that shelf and the brackets and see if I could somehow make it work. As I studied it, I realized that the brackets had built-in anchors and a little tab that you have to flip up to insert a screw and then flip down to lock the shelf in place. When I flipped the tabs up, there were no screws. So, the shelf pulled out of the wall because it wasn't screwed in to begin with! This moron just stuck the brackets into some holes he drilled and called it a day. Why am I surprised by this? Once I put the brackets back into the holes and inserted a screw into each of them, the whole closet organizer came back together in a snap and is much stronger that it ever was before.

All is right with the world when my clothes and shoes are in place and organized by sleeve length and color. Stop laughing.

After moving back into the closet, I put everything back in my bedroom:

New carpet!

All of the rooms are so much brighter and they look a lot bigger now with the new carpet, especially the master bedroom. It was a huge relief to see that ugly carpet being hauled away from the house.

I stayed up until almost 1:30 in the morning putting things back together and felt satisfied that the house was in good shape when I went to bed. Then I woke up and found that all hell had broken loose on the other side of the house in the kitchen. I had water all over the floor this morning because my refrigerator, the Offensive Beast, died.

After making some phone calls and looking at a few places, it became clear that it was going to take at least three days for me to get a "bisque" colored refrigerator delivered to match the rest of the appliances, so I ordered one that could arrive as early as Wednesday or as late as next Saturday.

Here is the Offensive Beast, which I have never liked because it is huge and ugly and ingrained with dirt from the Disgustingtons and if you put anything on the left side of the refrigerator, it freezes.

I can't exactly spend the next several days with no refrigeration unit, so I ended up purchasing a small refrigerator that I have installed in my laundry room. It is very tiny, but it holds the essentials and I suppose that once I get the new refrigerator, it can become a wine fridge or something fancy.

Here's the new tiny, energy efficient refrigerator. It runs on the same amount of power as a 60w light bulb--it's like the Easy Bake Oven version of a refrigerator. The important thing is that it works and I was able to move it easily on my own.

Isn't it cute?

You can see what is important to me--apparently all I need to survive is butter, butter, butter, cream cheese, a couple of other cheeses, potatoes, and garlic. I was able to salvage some of this from the Offensive Beast, so at least I didn't lose all of my food.