Cold weather

We're only in November and we've already had some snow. This is Scamp's opinion of the snow:

Yes ladies and gentleman, that is the U of M snuggie

A Splash of Orange

As many of you know, orange is my favorite color, which is why I decided to paint a room that color. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was really bright. So we decided to darken it up a shade, and with some curtains, I think it looks much better, don't you?

 

We've also added a new canvas photo over our bed, courtesy of my BFF over at Rearview Photography.

I'd say we're done with orange accents, but I think we're just beginning...

The Lawn Parts 3, 4, 5......and so on

It's been quiet on the blog front. You guys are aching for an update. What could possibly be going on at the Pitt? Well there's been a whole lot of nothing over the summer months. You may be sick about us posting about the lawn, and we're sick of writing about the lawn, but nevertheless, this is the news at the Pitt. We've been struggling with grass growth. We've had an unusually hot summer that makes growing grass nearly impossible and growing a weed field very dooable.

Apparently, September is the best time of year to grow grass so we are doing some patchwork. The pictures below are of us continuing to struggle with the lawn. September might be the best growing month, but it's still womp womp for us.

From a distance the lawn looks nice and green!

Up close, it's filled with a bunch of brown spots.

"Reluctantly crouched at the starting line..."

"...Engines pumping and thumping in time.
The green light flashes, the flags goes up,
Churning and burning, they yern for the cup."

I'm taking the hiatus from a home related posts to write about the triathlon I trained for and competed in today. I signed up a mini sprint triathlon in February, called the Tri Goddess Tri. A friend, who has completed Iron Man Competitions (yes plural), was key in encouraging me to sign up. This is a woman's only event where 50% of the woman were doing their first triathlons. So I paid the fee and started training. 

We drove out this morning at 5:15 am. I picked up my number, my chip, baby blue swim cap and stared amazed at the course.  From the beach to the transition area (where the bikes are) was about a 200 - 300 yard dash up hill on pavement. I picked my transition place and set up my bike, laid out my towel, shoes and number. I opted to wear tri pants, my sports bra and a tank top for the event. Some wore wet suits, but they weren't necessary. I went down to the water and waited for my wave to start. All I kept thinking is, buoys to the right and turtle to my left (my swim course) and of course, breathe.  

My wave started and we were off. There was so many arms hitting me, people swimming on their backs not going in a straight line, water getting splashed all up in my face. Needless to say, I wasn't as prepared for the swimming as I could have been. Really the best way to be prepared is to swim with a large crowd of people. With the arms flying left and right I kept my head mostly above water looking around to make sure I wasn't running into anyone. I came out of the water in 14 minutes (my best time for the swimming a quarter mile) and dashed (walked) to my transition area. I threw on my shoes, got on my bike and headed out to bike the 10.7 miles. This part was 'easy.' Biking takes me back to being a kid and riding around the neighborhood. However, when I was a kid I don't remember my ass hurting quite so much. Finally, after the biking came the dreaded run. It was only a mile and half run, but it felt like a lifetime. I also failed to prepare for a trail run (didn't read the directions carefully enough), so I tripped once, but I made it. I ran through the finish line, teared up a bit, hugged Adrienne and it was done. I had completed a triathlon in 1 hour and 40 minutes. Sure, it was a mini sprint, but, I finished and I didn't die. It was quite a rush to finish, and I feel like I accomplished something. I would definitely do this again next year and will recommend it for other first timers. 

Oh yeah - neither Bob nor I remembered to take the camera, so no pics until the official photo's come out.

Linen Closet and New Wall Color

You may remember from an earlier post that we were redoing Taqwa's room.Part of it became our new linen closet. A good friend and co-worker recommended that I have fun with my bedroom colors. And I thought, what could be more fun than orange, right? I'll let you be the judge of this one.

Linen closet, orange linen closet and orange bedroom.

Introducing Sheeba

Sheeba

 

 

We'd like to introduce the newest member of our family, Sheeba. No she wasn't wondering in the middle of the street half dead, she doesn't have a weird disease that costs a few thousand dollars to fix, no heartworm, no parvo, just a healthy 6.5 year old dog. Sheeba came from Friends of Michigan Animals Rescue. She had been there for over five years. She was first adopted as a puppy and returned to FMAR because she was jumping fences and became protective of her food. She was adopted again a second time and quickly returned because she continued to protect her food. Over the years, the volunteers grew close to her and we knew that someone special would have to adopt her, someone that would keep in touch and continue to let us know how she was doing. I started volunteering with FMAR five years ago and immediately fell in love Sheeba. She was loving, calm, playful, a great walker and a wonderful dog that I couldn't believe hadn't been adopted. Bob and I talked about taking her in all the time, but never took action. In May after lots of deliberation we decided to introduce her to the gang. If she didn't get along with our two then there was no reason for us to continue talking about taking her in. So introductions happened, and it worked. Sheeba is a great fit. She's not protective of her food in the house, she hasn't tried to jump the fence, she's just been wonderful.

The Lawn Part II

The lawn is finally finished today. It's been a long drawn out process with the rain, but it's signed, sealed and delivered. I'm posting phase II pics today and will show the completed lawn in a later post.

Real woman drive bulldozers. 

She was parked in the backyard for over a week waiting for the rain to stop.

You can see the magic begin to happen here. No topsoil yet, but smooth ground.

Final mound of dirt to be sorted out.

New Look

Some of you may notice a new background for the blog. It's official, we feel like, "The Money Pitt."

The Lawn Part I

Last year we took the plunge and installed a geothermal heating and cooling system into our house. They tore up our entire yard (heck just take a look at the header of this blog), left us with a gravel pitt and we knew that down the road we would have to invest in grass. We let the geo settle for a year, and now it's time to plant the grass.

But nothing is as easy as throwing down some grass seed. We had to bring in the dozer again to re level the entire back yard, grade away from the house, bury some gutters and the list goes on. Today was the first day of work, and half way through the day, they were rained out. We chose Todd's Services to do the work for us. They came out and did our driveway last year, and Tom has been great in listening to what we need and putting it into action. Although seeing all the heavy machinery out there again is scary, I know that they'll do a great job.

Gary on the Dozer

The backyard before the dozer and post geo

The left side of the house where there used to be an entrance.

This is what a train of dirt looks like,we've got  more coming.

Gary dug up some other houses foundation (or so we think)

The mud mound in the yard.

Dryer Vent

What? You don't vent your dryer through your open garage door?

Garage Door Entrance

When I came back from China about a week ago, the garage door entrance into my house was now in a different location.  The entrance used to be all the way on the right hand corner and entered directly into the house. We decided to move the entrance into the laundry/mud room. The old entrance will become my new pantry. (As huge as this house is, there is no pantry!)

You can still see the entrance door all the way to the right. That is now my pantry door. Where the framing ends on the left is where the new entrance is going to go.

 

The picture above shows the walls up and the new door. For the first couple of days, I kept trying to use the pantry door to get into the garage. But now it all seems pretty normal.

Garage Door Opener

What? You don't hold two wires together to open your garage door?

Shitastic!

Fart jokes and poop jokes are just always funny. I can't help myself but start laughing. So when the drain pipe incident came up, the whole situation was just ridiculously hilarious. As we were taking out the toilet from the drive through bathroom, dad realized that the drain pipe that's supposed to rinse away the poop, well it wasn't doing it's job correctly and we had a few years worth of shit hanging out in there.

It took careful planning to remove the pipe in such a way that any residual poop would drain into our A2 garbage bin (the only container we felt big enough to hold all the shit). It included me tilting the pipe in a certain way, Bob positioning the garbage can and dad trying to seal up the shit as it came out. This would have all worked out perfectly had I been able to stop laughing for even a moment. You see, the A2 garbage can, when opened, smelled like the most foul poop in the world. So Bob was holding it up, gagging, awaiting the river of shit to flow into it, and I was laughing and dad was looking disapprovingly upon us. Well it wasn't working out, so Bob got a smaller bucket and we let the pipe loose. It was pretty anti-climactic, only a small bit of brown pee like substance came out. Apparently, the poop had been in there for quite some time and had caked on.

The pipe I had to tilt

Bob sealing off any potential leak points

Dad sealing it up

The A2 garbage can in defeat

Taqwa's Room

We've also decided to take the renovation bedroom by bedroom. We have to redo all the drywall tape and fix the ceilings, so Taqwa's room (Taqwa spelled out in glow in the dark stars above the window), was the first to undergo a transformation. We don't have a linen closet, so we decided to take of part of this bedroom and convert it to a linen closet.

Too bad you can't see the glow in the dark stars.

In the picture below you can see where we started to rough in the new closet and the linen closet. On the right hand side to the left of the door, is where the linen closet is going to go. Next to that is the actual bedroom closet

The closets

And here you can see the linen closet and new doorway from the hallway.

And the walls drywalled in and the closet sort of finished.

Pink Panties

Between, Orlando, Vegas, DC, VA, Houston, Toronto and China, we've been busy traveling this first quarter. Our busy schedule has also included some major home improvement projects. Whereas 2010 was the year of outsourcing at the Pitt, in 2011 my dad is back in full force and that means that we are too. It seems like we don't have a spare moment in life, but well the renovation is back in full swing.


Some of you may remember our "drive through bathroom" (original pictures visible here all the way at the bottom), that was built on the part of the garage, that was always cold and where the pipes burst, that had a drive through window above the toilet - a very intimate place to do your business. Well we decided to redo this whole half of the house, which means tearing out all the walls and bathroom and re-designing the whole space.

Leave it to the Pitt to present us with surprises. As we tore down the walls, we found this within the walls:

Pink Panties

And we found this when we took up the carpeting:

Flintstones Doodles

All very exciting and exactly what we would expect from this place. As the walls came down and the floors came up the garbage just piled higher and higher so we've spent the majority of our time cleaning up the mess.

The bathtub is still in tact.

A view from inside the bathroom, sink still intact.

Pile of trash

Everything cleared out.

The lonesome toilet before we tore it out.