Crystal Groves

You can view updated deck pictures from today: http://picasaweb.google.com/acousticdryad/HouseAfter

And a few of getting the truck out and such: http://picasaweb.google.com/acousticdryad/AroundTheFarm

Well I recently found out.

Dad had outpatient surgery on Tuesday where they just put a skin graph on the ulcer on his leg to see if it’ll help heal it. Before they’ve used pig skin for this, but apparently they also save the skin from circumsized babies to use as skin graphs. So now my dad has baby penis skin on his leg. That takes not being “wasteful” to a whole new level folks.

I can see the jokes now…… “….waking up with a stiff leg.”

He has to rest and not bump it for a week or two, so I’ve had to take over some of his chores as well. Fortunately I have a three day weekend coming up where I can get a lot of things done around here.

I updated my pictures from yesterday with updated deck pictures from last night, as well.

Pictures from the starting of the deck yesterday:

House After

Some humming bird (and a crayfish) pictures from yesterday after work:

Around the Farm

And more Bastian pictures, cause I can’t help my damn self:

Bastian

Gonna do some more of the house later if I get time. Newest pictures are at the end of the album. Not really much to see, honestly. I’m still sanding the floor when I find time before I bring up a nice rug (yes I’m using an itty bitty sander, I’m that annal). I’m still sleeping on the tiny day bed while my uncle works on building me my new wooden queen size bed. And I still haven’t painted the ceiling or put up new trim Still trying to decide if I should paint the closet and cubby-hole doors or not too, and if so, what color. Ignore my mismatched bedding

House After

As noted on my Twitter and Facebook, the insurance company came back and approved our estimate for the porch, minus $250 for the tree. They are granted $3525, which is realistically $2525 due to my $1,000 deductible. The money will be in my account in 3-5 business days, so next week. Then we can get started on the new deck.

I’m not sure how much a new deck will raise the value of the house, but I’m hoping it’s considerable. I will have to do some research on what something like that does for the value of homes.

The most important part of this deck, is actually going to be a ramp at one end, that declines faintly onto the ground. The reason for this is because my dad’s legs hurt him a lot, and he often struggles with stairs. Should he ever be really sore, or hurt himself, then he can use the ramp instead of any stairs in the house at all, which I’m -very- happy about. It’ll be especially nice if I ever have to get him a golf cart or something to do things around our place on.

So I guess the tree is somewhat of a blessing in disguise. I need to take pictures of the carpenter ant damage at the base of the tree, and I plan to plant a maple in its place once I’ve destroyed the carpenter ant colony.

This entire insurance experience was ridiculously easy. I’m going to write a letter of praise to my claims agent and to the insurance company. Literally all I had to do was submit a claim through the website, talk to the agent for some details, submit pictures through their website, and submit a pdf of the estimate from a contractor of -my- choic through their website, and everything else was done for me. She even had my account number on file because I use it to pay off my dads loan, so she knew right where to put the money.

I thought dealing with insurance companies was supposed to be hard?

Tree Damage – May 2009

Approximately 1:20pm.

Once our debt is all paid off except for the mortgage, I plan to start not only putting more money away into savings, but starting up a “home improvement” fund. There are some big ticket things I want to do to the house, but also some smaller ones I can do in the mean time. The bigger ones I probably won’t be able to start for at least another year or two.

Big Items

• Completely renovate the upstairs bathroom, removing the shower stall and putting in a bath tub. Especially rip out the carpet in there. Who the hell puts carpet in a bathroom? I’ll probably hire my uncle to do this.
• Put on a new roof on the entire house. This is a biggie, and probably one I’ll need to do before most of the others. Good way to spend $10k.
• Rip out the ceilings in both rooms upstairs and extend them all the way to the roof, also put in ceiling fans if possible. Right now we have this…cubby hole of sorts above the upstairs bedrooms. I don’t know what’s there (if anything), but it’s wasted space. The ceilings are low in the bedrooms so this would open them up at least a little bit. This’ll have to come after the new roof.
• Eventually rebuild the walls in both bedrooms upstairs, after the new roof and after the ceilings are redone. This would include rebuilding and finishing off the side cubby spaces, as well as redoing the closets. Then I have to…..repaint them :/
• Build a greenhouse off of the basement
• Refinish the basement so that it can be used as either 1. Business, 2. Apartment, or 3. Room for rent for Gettysburg tourist season. I already have an area picked out which should work for a kitchen.
• New windows throughout the house, hopefully those eco-friendly ones that help keep things warm and cool at appropriate times. This needs to be done upstairs sooner than later, because these windows look like they are falling apart up here.
• New siding around the whole house. Maybe a cedar siding?
• Maybe eventually run heating/air ducts to the top two bedrooms. But I’ll have to keep the floor vents for the wood-stove.

Smaller Items

• Build a large back deck. I put this under small because we’ll be doing it ourselves, we’ll only need cost of materials.
• Put shelves in the root cellar
• Finish sanding the floor in my bedroom and put down a natural finish
• Put up shelves in the basement
• Tear up the messed up concrete in the basement and redo. This is a smaller item too cause it’ll only be cost of materials since my dad has been doing concrete all his life anyway.
• Lots of little things on the kitchen. Repaint, remove piping from old washer/dryer hook-up, fix the pipe under the dishwasher.
• Hire my cousin to redo some electrical work around the house. Move my bedroom switch inside the room, install lightning in the office, rewire the outside light pole to a switch in the house. Might wait and do this after the ceilings are done in the bedrooms.

No idea how much some of these upgrades will raise the house value, but I imagine some of it will be significant. I imagine if/when I ever decide to sell it, I may invest in new cabinets in the kitchen as well, but who knows.

We’ll save a lot of money on most of these projects because we’ll do them ourselves or hire family, since most of my family on my father’s side are laborers. Course if I can hire friends to come up too, that’d be awesome as well. Kinda…share the spending amongst people I care about.

The roof I may hire professionals to do though, as I don’t want either me or my dad playing around on the roof to be honest.

Ambitions, I haz dem.

Since I’ve been unable to find a bed frame that I like, I’ve decided to commission my uncle to make one for me. My dad said he is a very talented wood-worker so I am glad to be able to provide him with some money for his skill, especially since he’s been laid off.

I’ve been needing a “grown-up” bed since we moved. Prior to this I’ve had day-beds because that’s all that would fit in the old house.

I told my uncle I want pretty much exactly this style in hopefully a queen size (I have to measure my room to make sure it will fit, otherwise I will resort to a double). No finish, all natural light knotty wood, which will be a good contrast to the dark chocolate walls.

Then I have to go mattress shopping, which I’ve never done in my life and have no idea what to expect.

Dad’s doctor from his most recent visit to the Wound Care Center said that his leg should be healed completely within 2 months they think. This is good news. They are also pondering doing surgery on his leg again to remove some varicose veins which might relieve some of the pressure and improve the circulation to help prevent some of these ulcers. While I am not opposed to the idea, it always scares me when my dad goes into surgery. It hurts even worse when I see him waking up from anesthesia and he’s weak and disoriented. I think I cried last time.

House is doing well. I’ve got some razor blades so I can start tearing up this carpet in my room today and see what the entire floor looks like. If the whole thing is in decent shape, I’ll put down a natural finish and start moving furniture in my room finally.

The water softener acts up now and again. We’ve never had one of these before so we’re learning about them and how to maintain them.

Today is the first day it’s rained since our settlement. It’s usually a dry season around here in September/October though. I’m just glad to see the rain.

An semi-amusing story… dad was doing laundry and hanging clothes up outside on the clothesline. When they dried and he took them down, he laid the basket on the ground to go do something else before going inside. Our dog decided it was the perfect place to do his business. Dad was pissed. He had to wash them all over again and hang them up to dry. We don’t have a dryer hooked up yet because we need my cousin to come over and move the electrical hook-up downstairs. Right now it’s still in the kitchen. We have clotheslines inside the basement and outside between two trees though, so we’ll be alright without one for a while.

My uncle was supposed to come over to dig the footing for the chimney today, but can’t because of the rain. Thus the house is still cold, but I have an electrical heater for my room upstairs (where there is no heat at all) and it works perfectly. Actually it works too well because it woke me up from a dead sleep from being too hot.

My cousin Steph came over this week and brought over some old videos of my dad and I during Christmas that I need to get copies of. She also brought over a lot of old photographs of family that I have to figure out who they are. I’m working on scanning all of those in, but she wasn’t allowed to leave the videos, so I will have to borrow them again when I can figure out how to copy them. They amuse me because my dad looks like a big grizzly bear with his dark dark hair and full beard. I think I’m like 8 years old or so in them. I have to be 8 years old or younger because my parents are still together in them.

Dad and I went and had breakfast at another old country restraurant called “The Country Kitchen” in Taneytown today. It was very small, much like the Book and Table we went to for his birthday. Service was faster and the food was good (though my cinnamon bun must have been heated up in the microwave because half of it was hard as a rock).

These country restaurants crack me up. I really do love them because you see all the old farmers sitting outside chatting and gossiping. One of them was talking to my dad for a bit about diabetes. I just want to sit with them all day and listen to stories.

Afterwards we went to Lowes to buy paint, where I also promptly forgot to use my coupon. I’m sure we’ll be going there again. I bought Olympic paint because it’s one of the more eco-friendly paints, and I have a caramel/beige color for the living room, and a dark chocolate brown for my bedroom. I also bought a can of primer for the bedroom since the walls are fairly light right now and I don’t want to have to put on tons of color.

The local town here, Fairfield, is having their annual Pippinfest festival this weekend. We may be walking through there tomorrow, I don’t know yet. But apparently it’s like a huge flea market and is a big deal around here. I saw some furniture I wouldn’t mind looking at.

My uncle has also invited us over for breakfast tomorrow morning, but I’m still deciding whether or not to drive down to the Grove or start packing things up here for the move on Wednesday.