Satuday, July 28, 2012

Today was a momentous day. It's been another mildly busy week, but today was the tipping point. The splice still needs actual fixing, but the supplies were bought and are waiting to be used. There's a good reason we didn't get to that today, other than the triple-digit heat again. We had a buddy of Quentin's come help us out with the big stuff. I'm pretty tough and strong, but between being female (and thus less natural upper body strength) and having mild fibromyalgia, I wasn't really any help to Q to get the heavy stuff we dropped off last week up the drive and into the house. It required Q's work buddy Scott.

 This is the guys hauling the NEW fridge into the house! That's Scott from the back. They got it on the dolly and hauled it up the drive, up the stairs, and into the house. My newish Tappan 15.0 cubic foot fridge/freezer. Wheee!!!!

 This is Scott on the dolly with the fridge. You can see a smidge of the hubster on the right side of the door behind the fridge.

 It's in the house!!!

 Q and Scott in front of the fridge after they got it into the kitchen and off the dolly, congratulating each other on a job well done.

 Q on the first side of the entertainment center to come into the house. Scott's at the bottom of the deck, pushing it toward the door. They got it next to the deck, tilted it back to lean on it, and heaved it up on the deck. Heavy thing!

 Pulling it through the door, and it just fit through sliding in on the narrow side. Solid thing for being presswood.

 The entertainment center in all it's glory, such as it is. Considering it was free, I won't gripe that I really don't like it much, because it's a start till we get one we really like.

 The fridge in all it's glory. And behind it in the front bedroom, no, that is not garbage from the left-behind mess again. It's all our extra goodies that we don't need at the apartment, packed into plastic grocery sacks only because it's easier for me to carry them up the drive right now. That room is going to be my office/fiber room/library, since Q doesn't want his own man cave. Ok, it'll become my girl cave!

 And can you believe the look of the countertops now in the kitchen? SO clean now, and that's our tiny new-used $2 microwave. It'll do till we can get a bigger one, then it'll get freecycled to someone else who needs one and can use it.

 And the bathroom countertop and sink! That's not dirt in the sink, by the bye, it's spiders. I had put the bags of our towels on top of the counter, and moved them to take the photo, only to find these little lovelies in there. I don't like spiders in the house, and so called out the master bedroom window to Q to come take care of a little eight-legged problem in the bathroom sink for me. Daddy Longlegs I wouldn't have had a problem scooping up and sticking out the door or a window that has no screen or something. But these were short-legged spiders and considering how long the house has sat empty, I figured they could have been black widows or brown recluses. Later, Q and Scott found a brown recluse crawling around on the bedroom floor and squashed it. Ah, the joys of deep country living!

 And the tub looks good, too. Some stains that I can't scour off, but for the most part, you can see that a lot of the dirt and grime just scrubbed right off. So now we can save about $50 with not having to buy a solar shower stall to shower in (hanging it in the tub/shower at the trailer), just to keep our clean feet out of whatever it was on the floor of the tub. Turned out it was just a lot of crusty dirt, but still ... kind of looked pretty nasty!

 The other mattress and box springs coming in the door!

 And stacked all up in the bedroom. We took the bed frame apart for the moment and set the box springs and all right on the floor. They span that little bit of a soft spot in the floor there, plus will keep the kitties from going under the bed and possibly falling through the soft spot if it collapses under them. It sets up quite a bit off the floor but soooo comfy.

And the bed sits up close to the underside of the window, too, so the breezes will come over the bed through the window a lot easier. I nearly fell asleep on it testing the comfortableness of the bed!

So a not-sot busy week because work was hard and long days, but a solid work day put in today in just a couple of hours. Then it was off to the grocery store, get some stuff to take us through the week, and dinner for tonight and tomorrow because wekeends right now is when I have time and energy to cook. Tonight was a cheat in that we bought a rotisserie chicken at Wally-World. The heat just dragged my energy levels to zero so the photography was about all I was able to handle, and the heavy work the guys did just about wiped Q out. So it was cheat food tonight. Tomorrow, I'm making rotini pasta and meatballs with marinara sauce and cheese for dinner. Yummy. Only thing I could have made that might have been better was pizza pasta, which is a maybe for next week. (That one's just pepperoni slices mixed into cooked rotini, top with spaghetti sauce and shredded cheese, and eat the heck out of it.) Dinner tomorrow isn't much harder - you cook up pasta, add meatballs (cheated and bought them, since I have no way to make them myself right now), dump on spaghetti or marinara sauce and cheese and inhale. I can guarantee there won't be leftovers.

Oh, and we stopped at Lowe's for a few on the way to Wally-World. Q liked the flooring I picked out but his height allowed him to find one up higher on the wall that we both liked. It's a light maple, but it's special order, so once we get the new plywood down all through the house, we'll be ordering a box or two of it at a time. It'll cost about double the American Beech I liked, even though the boxes are cheaper, but they don't cover quite as much floor per box as the beech does. I'm okay with that, as we love the look of the hardwood, but real hardwood would take too much of a beating from us, the cats, and the eventual dogs. Hardwood-look laminate will look just as nice as real hardwood, and it will take the beating we'll put it through with all the paws and boots going all over the floors.

Lowe's also had a blessing for us financially. It'll be a while before we get it, but for around $150 less than Home Depot, Lowe's had a nice 20-inch electric range with the coils! Just over $300 for it, plus free delivery and setup, and the four-year warranty for repairs and parts and all isn't overly expensive, either, so if it has problems in the first few years, it won't cost us anything out of pocket for stuff. It's got three small coils and a larger coil in the front, so canning will be a breeze on it, and the oven, while not self-cleaning, is good-sized. Heck, I grew up with a range and oven that were electric, and the oven was NOT self-cleaning. I don't think we even had self-cleaning ovens 30 years ago that I know of. There may have been, but I don't remember and know we certainly didn't have one, because of all the times I had to scour out the oven in the house I grew up in! We have found my stove, and it's apartment-sized, so we know it will not only fit easily through the door, but into the spot for a stove in the kitchen, so I can make good meals on a proper stove again one of these days.

All in all, life is good, and we've finally passed the tipping point. Next week - we finally fix the blasted splice, then it's just the deposit to the electric company, turn it on along with the satellite TV for the hubster and the internet for me, and we are GONE to live the homestead dream. It's scary to be this close, but comforting, too. What a rush.