Thursday, March 26, 2009

Baseboards



We have baseboards! At least in the two bedrooms that needed them. Adam stained them and installed them after the carpet was installed. They're pretty plain but that is ok with me. Now we just need the living room to get baseboards and the upstairs might officially be finished!

I also thinned the seedlings last night. Once they got their third leaf I figured they would be ok. Lets hope they are!

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Plant update

My broccoli officially have their third leaf!



The rest of my plants are getting pretty big too!

Friday, March 13, 2009

Day 8

They're getting tall!



A little too tall I think but I moved them closer to the light so hopefully that will help.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Day 6 & 7 and Carpet

Day 6


Day 7


Not much change.

My wonderful, fabulous, fantastically talented husband also made me a better stand to hold the lighting.


I moved them upstairs because as cold it's been it's too cold in the basement for them I think. So, as you also may notice that there is something else new in this picture......What could it be? Hmmmm

Carpet!
Yes, after putting in new flooring when we moved in, we have already torn it out.


Don't buy engineered hardwood flooring. We didn't like it from the beginning. It was cheap looking/feeling, it made a sticking noise when we walked on it and then a piece already started to peel. Engineered hardwood is like a plywood with a veneer of oak or whatever on top and the veneer was already peeling off. So since it was on clearance when we got it and we didn't like it anyway, we didn't want to deal with the warranty and we just decided to tear it up, we'd use it in the basement and put in carpet.

We had a slight problem with the carpet. We special ordered it on sale from Menards and had a tracking email that said it was on time. But by the end of the day it hadn't said that it'd actually been delivered so Adam called and it was back ordered. So we had to go in and pick out a carpet they had in stock. I'm still pretty happy with this one too though. Not a big deal!

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Veggie Seedlings

I actually have enough room this year to plant a big garden and I will be doing just that! I'm so excited! But if you buy all those plants already started by someone else at the store or greenhouse, the cost can add up quickly. I need at least 30 tomato plants to make salsa and multiple plants of multiple types of peppers. Because of this, I have started tomatoes, peppers and broccoli from seed.

I got some pods to help start the seeds. They look like this:

and then you put water on them and they expand


I started the broccoli on Wed. and by Saturday they had sprouted. By day 4 this is what they look like.


Day 5:


I started them upstairs where it is warmer and once they were about 1/2 inch tall I moved them downstairs where there isn't natural light for them to try to grow toward and put a florescent light above them.


This isn't the ideal situation just yet because as you can see the plants on the sides of the tray are already trying to grow toward the light.


I have three treys full of seeds.


I planted broccoli, better boy tomatoes, roma tomatoes, banana peppers, jalapeno peppers and bell peppers. Just an fyi in case you didn't know like I didn't - roma tomatoes and the peppers have a ton of seeds in each packet. I had enough pods so I went ahead and planted as many seeds as I could otherwise they would have just gone to waste. I can give the extras to friends and family.

I'll keep you updated as they grow!

Monday, March 9, 2009

Basement Stairwell and Closet

One of the remaining major projects on the house was our basement stairwell and office closet. There had been a leak from the roof that had been left unattended so it caused a lot of mold and rotted wood. When we first moved in, we tore out the drywall in the closet to see how bad the situation really was and this is what it looked like:



It was even worse at the bottom because the water could pool there.

The stairwell had lots of mold on the ceiling and on the back wall.



It also had a 80's hunting paneling on the right side.

A week or so ago Adam decided to tackle this project. He tore out all the drywall in the stairwell and the rotted wood. In the process he also saw that the supports in the crawlspace (there is only a basement under 1/2 of the house) had rotted out a little and were barely hanging on so he reinforced these.

Here's the project during demo:


Here is where we stand now!


It doesn't necessarily look a ton different but it was something that definitely needed to be done.

The closet is fixed, drywalled and primed. I'll bring you more on that later once we get the shelving in and can call it finished.

Thursday, March 5, 2009