where not to put metamucil

Don't think like that. This isn't that kind of blog.

So. In my first attempt at new homemaking, I decided to start with the pantry. Not a bad idea. It's one of the most-used areas of the house after the refrigerator, and it isn't organized in a way that really promotes organization. I made a pretty good go of it. Old food went down the disposal, other items found their way to the recycling or garbage. Down to the very last thing, the huge canister of Metamucil.

I have this pharmacist friend who insisted that I start taking it daily, but 3 years later and the darn thing was just standing sentry in the back of the pantry. I knew just the thing to do with it. I brought the 2+ lbs. of powdered mess over to the garbage disposal, dumped it in, ran some water, and took Ace outside to play with a neighbor girl while the water worked it's magic.

And this is what I returned to (if you have a queasy stomach, perhaps don't look too closely):

That is a 2-inch layer of almost solid---way more solid than old jello---Metamucil.

I tried the disposal, and it died. Yikes. So I started scraping it out. 2 hours later, I was still trying to scrape and dump. Check this pretty little thing:

I know, gross right? Thankfully, it smelled like orange popsicles. But I tried everything. Pouring hot water down (turns out this is not a good idea---it can thicken substances and cause more resistance against the blades). Trying to move the blades with a spoon -- probably not the smartest idea. Finally, I called Mom Hawk and she said, among other things, see what you can find on the web.

Good idea. Why didn't I think of that? I'd already looked to see how much a replacement cost (around $60) so I knew I had to fix this myself rather than call in professional help. Good. That means I can fix it myself. And after all, I'm a homemaker now. No better time like this moment.

I found a great site, but shux, I can't find it in my history so I can't post it here. If I do, I'll update this post. The guy was great. I learned two major things about disposals. First, there is a red button that acts as a safety switch, so when I heard mine die I was really hearing the switch power it off to save the motor. Second, if you have a hex wrench, you can turn the blades. I had no idea. None. So I found the right hex wrench and twisted the blades back and forth from this little hole in the bottom of the disposal. Soon I could feel them loosen. The next time I tried to run it, it worked!!! Everything drained right down and that nasty goo was finally out of sight.

So raise a pint to the first almost-slight-catastrophe remedied. I am one event closer to understanding our home and helping it coexist peacefully with humans.

Hope your week is off to a great start!

icj,
~j

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a year now

This past August 28th, we celebrated a year as homeowners. In honor of this first anniversary, we've compiled lists of the most important things we now know that, without looking for, buying, and caring for a home, we would never have known. Today's list covers the search, the jump, and the first few things we learned about home care.

1. Never by the first house you like. This one was very difficult for us because we fell for a home we still refer to as the Riverview House. Great house, great yard, great price--but because it was in a river plain, we would have had a mandated $2-3k on flood insurance bill each year. That would add up pretty fast in a way we would never recoup. We have a few friends who did take the plunge without looking around and comparing their investment, and now they're stressed out with either payments or home repair or both. And some will admit that there were better homes for the same price point that they should have considered.
2. See every home within your price range even if it doesn't have the outside "look" you're going for. We thought we wanted a bungalow or cape cod. We though Mickelsons were boxy and boring. After talking with friends who owned them and looking through a number of them in our 8+ month search, we were sold on their efficiency, open floor plan, and quality of craftsmanship. We love our Mickey! 
3. Take someone who is more experienced in home ownership, not emotionally attached to physical spaces, and knows how to work on a house with his or her own hands. We cannot say enough about the positive influence Mom Hawk had in our home-buying. She's a jack-of-all-trades and knows the ins-and-outs of house structure the way Tim Allen never could. She would walk us through each house and point out problems we would have to care for immediately or with great expense over time. While we started out misty-eyed at all the things we could do in each house, she planted our feet on the ground without being judgmental or too persuasive.
4. Know what you won't settle for, what you must have. We're not talking jacuzzis here. We think home-buying needs to stay more practical (and you can always put a jacuzzi in if that's your thing). We wanted hard-wood floors, but we would settle for ripping up carpet if there were quality hardwood floors beneath and if the present condition did not warrant health concerns (think old carpet, cat allergies, smoking residue, etc.). We knew we needed 3 bedrooms or more if we could afford it. We started out thinking that 2 would be fine, but now we know we can fit 4 kids into this Mickey before things get so crazy we have to either expand or move on. (Our neighbor grew up with her 5 siblings in the 3 BR Mickey she now owns, and she said they are happy, content, & close because of it). We knew the house couldn't require any major repairs from us for 10 years. While that can't be guaranteed of course, symptoms of chimney decay, basement issues, old windows, etc. are big triggers that more moola would be shelled out pretty fast.
5. Get the home inspection. Worth. Every. Penny.
6. Paint the rooms. Just paint them. At first, we were only going to paint one room, but we saw pretty quickly that although the house was very well-cared for, it would never feel like ours without a face lift, and as we began the lift, we realized how important it is to bring the whole house together. And the cheapest, most effective way to give a whole face lift is to paint. Our total paint cost for the entire house came under $300, and that includes primer and the 3 coats of paint we put on everything. For those of you with us the whole journey, you know we painted every inch of ceiling, trim, doors, walls and cabinets. If it was metal or under our feet, we let it be. Not to mention that working on the house almost every day for the first 3 months and every weekend for the first 5 really gave us a sense of pride, attention, and care for our investment and home. Blood, sweat, and tears all go a long way in ensuring our future care.
7. Take a month to make any decisions that will cost money and/or require time to undo. We did this for our window treatments (10 windows with new wood blinds), kitchen hardware, dining room buffets (more on that coming soon), and paint colors.
8. Take care of the front lawn. Hawk mows regularly. We trim the bushes along the driveway and under the front windows. We haven't added anything new because we don't know what we want yet, but these little trimmings go a long way in conveying care for our home. On the downside, we've just got to tell you about our yard soon. Don't let us forget!
9. Do anything yourself that you can--with appropriate guidance. Whenever possible, we repaired or replaced or maintain things ourselves. Saves money, teaches us about home care, and reinforces pride in and accountability to our home and each other. Not to mention it helps us figure out just how quickly we resort to cussing when things go downhill. 

We could keep going, but we think these are the most important thus far. 

Tune in tomorrow for Etsy Friday! We'll be back with more lists next week.

icj,

~j & Hawk

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Crack! (another one)

I can't actually read, write, or think of the word "crack" without thinking of Mikey Rauchenstein, my friend from Alaska's brother, and the way he rolled his R and made a sharp "ck" sound at the end that would have floored my ninth grade English teacher's heart. Onomatopoeia, baby.

So back to cracks. We discussed ceiling cracks and our choice to go with a professional repair here, so today, we're giving a brief tutorial of how we patched a few minor, inconsequential cracks.

We have a Mikkey (Mikkelson) and while it is very well constructed, it shifts and settles over time as all homes do. When you add years of painting on top of the shifting, you get something like this in the space where two trimmings meet:

No biggy, but if we're going to a solid look, we want that solid to be solid. 

Here is what we did. We took some dandy white wood filler (so it would blend with the future coats of primer and paint):

found here at amazon

and grabbed a dob on the forefinger:

And pressed it into the space:

Then, we went over it in the same direction until it conformed to the trim's definitions.

Let it dry for two hours (though I believe 30 minutes is more than enough time) before painting over it. Just before painting, I took at 120-220 grit cut of sandpaper and smoothed it out, making sure to pick up the gritty bits and leave the majority of the filler.

It worked so well upstairs that we actually went over dozens of other places in the house where previous knicks and knocks had destroyed the stream-line effect. We found that if we were patient and willing to put in a few extra coats, we could actually shape it into a soft edge. Thus far, it hasn't shown itself to tend toward the informant; no bumps or current knicks reveal that it is anything more than wood.

Here's one last before and after for you:

Not bad, eh?


Happy Monday!


icj,
~j & hawk

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crack!

Cracks. 

Every house has them (or so we hear), and our Mikkie has more than a handful. Thankfully, none are "bad." Cracks in the ceiling and walls are typical of plastered homes, and most Mikkies are riddled with 5 times as many and as deep. Over the years, previous owners attempted to fill them in with paste, sand them down, and paint over them. The problem is that over time, it begins to just look like a bunch of hills on the ceiling...think St. Andrew's in Scotland. Not pretty. Not dangerous either, but not aesthetically appealing.

In walks our hero. We heard about him through a house-savvy friend who doesn't throw "get this guy" statements around too often, contacted him for an estimate, and set a Saturday appointment for the work. We expected the estimate to be anywhere from $600-1200, and therefore, we planned on waiting to get the work done. But we couldn't paint until the cracks were sealed, or we'd simply end up repainting later.

The estimate was good enough to begin the work, so Ron literally dug his knuckles into the house. 

We couldn't believe how fast, efficient, and strong he was. Here he is wetting the ceiling with water and then cutting into the plaster with a razor that would make any barber shrink away:

Like the purple? Remember this when you see the green in the yellow light...

This newly created crevice is almost an inch deep!

bathroom

Ron cut out a long strip 8 feet long and 1.5" deep:

blue room

green room

Here's another in the blue room, underneath a window:

The close-up shows how rockin' our predecessors were in their color choices. Isn't that salmon-pink just lovely?

After carving out pieces of our ceilings and walls, Ron then went around and filled in each crevice with some opaque smudge stuff. Within minutes it was smooth and dry to the touch.

After his work was completed and he showed me around, we gabbed it up for about an hour in the "master bathroom" (which is what we call our only bathroom). We think he's the neatest guy. Luckily, he let me snap this photo. You can see the dust all over his face, but even more, what a happy, joyful man he is!

Hawk is very good at identifying projects we should tackle earlier than later. He makes good decisions for the long run which at first I'm nervous about, but conclude the decision successful by the end!


AND, the total bill for 8 hours of professional repair: $350!!!!  How great is that?!

{devote} We've been reflecting on how pertinent this is to marriage. The cracks were not such that would break the foundation of the home or jeoperdize anyone's safety, but they revealed a "band-aid approach" to homecare, and thus became an eyesore and gave the impression that things were shaky. We've been very conscious lately about how the little things that we know are just surface issues in our marriage, if not respected and attended to, may give others the impression that we don't care about each other. And if we truly love each other, then it is disrespectful and dishonest to not make that clear. Rather than wait for them to become true breaches, we want to spend the first few years of marriage sealing them, securing them, and refining them... So we deep-patch our house, and we deep-patch our marriage.

Thank you so much for staying with us! Happy Wednesday (or a somber one, if you know what I mean...)

icj,

~j

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