Not necessarily home rennovation related...

There are certain traits about my mother that make drive me insane.  Her and my dad came to Ann Arbor to pick up their farm fresh chickens and go to Ikea. (Side note: My mother didn't start visiting me in Ann Arbor until they built an Ikea in Canton.) So I accompanied them to Canton, and at the checkout line, Maria has to go to the food market. She bought every random thing imaginable. On our way out we had, stale bread, Swedish chips, and weird fruit cookies. She took one bite of everything, didn't like anything, and then left it all with me.  This makes me crazy. She can't leave the store without buying junk food, that she inevitably leaves with me.

What's worse? As we're walking of Ikea and I'm rolling my eyes, I realized, OMG, I do the exact same thing to Bob. Sigh. I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Electrical

Last year we got a really good deal on insulation, so we went ahead and bought enough to roll out another layer in the attic.We were able to roll it over the bedrooms, hallway and into the formal dining room (AKA baby grand piano room), but the living room, kitchen and weird back room were never done because the electrical was (is) a hot mess. It made more sense to figure out what to do with the wires first, and than roll out the insulation.

 Fast forward a year and we were still trying to decide what to do with the electrical. After a couple of big pow wow session, we've had success. I thought no big deal, Bob will climb into the attic, we'll get the wiring in, and bam, we're done.

And then pieces of the wall started to come down.

And the drywall dust came creeping back. As usual nothing is as it appears. There were live wires going to nowhere, dead wires everywhere and random lighting everywhere. Bob and dad were only able to put in the recessed lighting in the living room and sort out some of the wires in kitchen. So what should have been a weekend project, has turned into a couple of weeks projects.

Dad trying to figure out the hot mess.

Bob pretending he knows what he's doing.

Three of the 6 recessed lights in the living room.

Geothermal Finished!

These past two weeks, DTE has finally finished the electrical work outside. The lines are buried, and we have a brand new fancy electric meter! It's funny they didn't replace the old meter with an electric meter. So the geo is officially done and we should soon be getting charged for it.

The final, final step? Landscaping the backyard after this disaster. Stay tuned.

Fall!

Ode to my favorite season in pictures:

Dogs running around without heat exhaustion:

 

 

A day at the pumpkin patch:

Some fall decor at the Pitt:

Driveway

As you may remember from the master landscaping plan, Bob and I would really like to have our driveway paved. Not because we had a particular problem with the gravel drive, but because there was a huge dip from the driveway into the garage. The Cavalier's underside always hit the dip, and if I had more than 2 people in the Versa or a loaded car, than it would also hit the bottom. We thought that until we had the money, we were just going to have to suffer (well the cars suffer mostly). Another, less annoying problem, but still pretty annoying, was the bottom of our driveway. See our house seems to be at the bottom of a slight hill in our street. This means we get all the water, you guessed it, at the foot of the driveway. The original gravel was laid in such a way that the water just pooled up at the end. This meant a lot of muddy feet in and out of the house.

So we were talking to Tom over at Todd's Services, you may remember them from our master landscaping plan, about re-leveling the backyard, planting grass etc. for next year, when I off handedly asked if there was anything they could do about the driveway now with new gravel. Would that be a waste of money? or would it help us out in the long run (pavement)? Turned out it was a good idea and reasonably priced. We chose limestone gravel, which when it rains becomes almost cement like.

So in this first picture you can see where the dip is because it extends past the driveway and into the walkway a bit. I don't think the picture shows how bad the dip really was:

 

And the rest of the driveway:

I know the Versa is dirty. Try living on a dirt road - it's just not worth washing your car.

Introducing our new bed!

We always said that if we were to get a new bed, it would be a glorious king sized bed. It was one of those things that we talked about, but didn't really expect to get for another couple of years. We had gotten our queen size Sealy bed six years ago. At the time it was extraordinary. A plush pillow top was the selling point for us, but later on became the bane of our sleeping existence. You see we sleep in the middle of our bed and over time, that plush pillow top formed a big dip in the middle of the bed. It became so severe that every time I had to get out of bed, it felt like I was climbing out. Yet the bed was still comfy. Then, earlier this summer I began waking up with back pain. At first it was a night or two a week, but than it became every night. I couldn't sleep more than 5 hours without waking up in pain. X-rays and blood work showed nothing so I moved forward with physical therapy. I dreaded sleeping in the bed at night. So we finally bit the bullet and bought a new bed. I knew that I didn't want anything with coils, or a tempurpedic.  So we got a natural latex bed. I was also pretty set on getting a platform bed frame, which is incredibly hard to find. So after a couple of weeks of searching and not finding anything within our price range, we decided on the Ikea Malm bed frame. It's low to the ground, clean lines, and does the job. A king size bed also meant that we had to get new sheets, new comforter and new pillows.

Can you find Mr. Scamp?

Odds and Ends

Well the geothermal saga is not quite complete. We're still waiting anxiously for DTE to finish their portion of the work. We've still got a mini trench in the backyard waiting on electrical. Other than looking pretty ugly, everything is working. If you're considering geothermal, I cannot stress enough how much your backyard will suck once it's all said and done. I keep joking with Bob that the only reason they give you a 30% tax credit is so that you can do all the landscaping that's required. Haley's warned us about the yard, but you really don't believe it until you see it.

We're getting ready for a Europe trip to a cousin's wedding, so I feel like we're in a bit of a mad rush to get everything together before we leave. What is everything? You know the usual stuff like laundry, cleaning, yard work. With the size of this house, I feel like I start cleaning on Monday, finish by the following Sunday only to start all over again.

We've had a few visitors this past weekend and we headed over to the Big House for a game. Ladies and gentleman, this was my first football game since my freshman year of collage and I missed the one thing I really wanted to see; the half time show. How is it that after four solid years of playing in high school marching band I still have no idea what goes on, on the football field? And it's not for lack of trying (or rather my friends trying to teach me). I guess it just didn't stick. I've included the picture below as proof that I was at the game (and why didn't anyone tell me my underwear was out)?

We're also trying to price out a couple of outdoor projects before this year is over. Our driveway has this huge concrete ramp into it, that the Cavalier always bangs against on its way in and out. We thought our only solution was to tear everything out and re-cement it, but it looks like we may be able to throw some additional gravel down and make the ramp a little less steep.

Also, the lilies need to be replanted before real fall sets in. And the entire front walkway really needs to be weeded. These are both Orsi initiatives, because Bob has minimal interest in the garden.