Keepin’ it Clean

 

One of our Field of Despair finds

 

Around the time we were having Dead Tree taken down, we built our laundry room.
My mom and dad gave me a wonderful washer and dryer for christmas, and we had our work cut out for us before they could be anything but art!
They’re quite lovely – front loading, stacked and, well, awesome!  I can’t say thank you to them enough (mom and dad – I’m not sure the machines are sentient. They do sing though. Nothing too complex, but they’re young)

Have I mentioned that part of the reason I’ve not been updating this often is that I’ve been working. . .a lot? I think it’s made me even more giddy than normal.

Ok, so. . .Easterwood and Thomas put in the plumbing for our washer and a utility sink. Thomas and his dad moved a pole that was in the middle of the room, put in a tile floor and scooted our water heater further into the corner.
Then we put up sheetrock on one wall and painted the entire room.
Then it was time to put in the washer and dryer!

oh, wait. Then we moved the water heater back in place and found that it didn’t care for that and died. So off to Home Depot for a new one.

Then it’s time to put in the washer and dryer.

Oh, wait – I forgot about putting in the plug for the dryer. More Home Depot trips for that.

Now! Putting in the washer and dryer. I think that was it.
We’ll, except that the dryer didn’t work. But eventually we got Sears to bring us a new one and take away the defective one. After many, many phone calls, a few visits, and a bunch of parts. But they did bring that new one at 8am on a Sunday morning. . .And it works like a dream.

It’s getting nicer and nicer to do the laundry too, the further we get with the work downstairs. The warmer weather helps too. We got the new(er) dryer about a week after the new year. 

I threw in some shots of the wood chipper the tree guys brought with them – it’s still there now. Thomas spoke to a couple who are supposed to be closing on the house next door, but we’ll see. I wonder if they’ve noticed the big red monster in the back yard. . .

One of our Field of Despair finds

Our New Neighbor

Mr. Chipper

just, wow.

Happy Wall and Plumbing

Mud, Mud, Mud

Our Utility Sink

Faucet!

Merry Christmas!

Doing our first load of laundry

Small space, tons of cleaning potential!

Happy New Year!

My christmas wish was answered!
We have ceilings and walls. I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am about this. Dance around the room, howl at the moon happy.
(way happier than some tiny cup of yogurt could make me – but, still a good ad campaign)

did you get that?

WE HAVE CEILINGS AND WALLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have pictures of everything and stories to tell, but my cameras downstairs at Butters and I’m at Kelli’s house about to go to bed. But it’s been so long since I’ve posted anything that I just couldn’t hold it in any longer.

WALLS!!!!

There’s still a lot of work to do – little bits of sheetrock here and there and ever more mudding and sanding – but we’re getting there.
We even bought our paint today – Lemon Soufflé for the kitchen walls (see my post about our test kitchen) and Parmesan for the walls in our living room and dining room.
Is it really that surprising that we picked food colors? And we weren’t even hungry!
We almost went all desserts, with crème brulée, but that was a bit dark, and, not illogically, didn’t go well with the soufflé.

See why it’s time for me to go to bed?
I’m a bit giddy. That, and it’s time for me to take some more Emergen-C and slather on more and more lotion on my hands. Sheet rock dust is turning my hands into corn husks. ick.

I promise I’ll post more this week – pictures and pictures and stories. We have a new friend that’s made this all possible and I don’t think I can give him a proper introduction without a photo. Not to worry – I have the perfect one already.

Lake Santeetlah

 

The View From Our Tent

After all that crappy hard work, we needed a break. From Butters and our real jobs. Thankfully, so did some of our friends!
Last year on Labor Day, we went up to North Carolina for an amazing camping trip that involved kayaking and inner tubing on a lake, taking a stroll through an old growth forest and white water rafting.
It was quite a weekend.
This year, we couldn’t make it happen for the holiday weekend, so we made our own.

That picture up there? That really was the view from our tent. If you stood outside the door and took 13 steps (my steps), you were in the lake.
It’s just stunning up there; might be my favorite camping locale ever (thus far?).

This year we were short one day and part of our group met up with us on Saturday morning after a generator problem with a VW Bus stranded them in the local WalMart parking lot overnight. Turns out it’s quite the hopping place!
So, since we had sleepy friends and one less day, we decided to float around the lake all day (with Greg’s dogs!) and hang out around the campfire all night. Can I go back now?
Plus we got to stop at Colonel Poole’s on the way back home for BBQ – seriously, it’s really good. And I didn’t grow up with BBQ, not BBQ in the southern sense.

The View From Our Tent

Thomas and I in the Mountains

Self Portrait

Thomas and the Nearest Bathroom

Greg and his Traveling Caravan

Murray and Mandy in the Lake

Thomas in the Hammock

Palmer on the Wind Surfer

See Why I Want to Go Back?

The Vine That Ate Butters

 

Our Kudzu Field - Two Months Ago

Or at least Butters’ neighbor.

Anyone who has ever spent time in the south or driven south, knows about kudzu (I refuse to capitalize it’s name – proper nouns be darned).

It’s icky.
It’s insidious.
Oh, heck, it’s downright evil.
And it’s in our backyard.

Thomas and I received a call from a (very friendly) city official giving us a warning about the removal of our kudzu. Basically, we needed to get rid of it or we’d be in trouble. ’nuff said.
Besides, I’ve had nightmares about the stuff, and I swear it was trying to eat Thomas’ ‘68 VW Bus, Melvin.
You scoff, but you didn’t see it. I was too horrified to take a picture, just started pulling the vines out from under the bus until I realized that some had grown up around the clutch cable! (yes, I know what a clutch cable is. I’ve even helped put a new one in :-p 

For those of you who are a little unclear on just what it is that I’m railing on about, kudzu is a vine. A very fast growing vine that was brought to the US from Japan by some well-meaning person, I’m sure.
It grows like a normal plant in Japan, but in the southern US, well gosh. It’s just so happy.
Here’s a quote from Wikipedia:

Kudzu (クズ or 葛 Kuzu^?), Pueraria lobata (syn. P. montana, P. thunbergiana), (sometimes known as foot a night vine,mile a minute vine, Gat Gun, Ge Gan^[1] and The vine that ate the South) is one of about 20 species in the genusPueraria in the pea family Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae. It is native to southern Japan and southeast China in eastern Asia. The name comes from the Japanese word for this plant, kuzu. The other species of Pueraria occur in southeast Asia, further south.

See the common names? I’m not the only one with a chip on her shoulder.
But there are some really good hearted people who try to look at the bright side of kudzu.
Check out this site about kudzu gazing – sorry, make that kudZOO.

But I digress. Thomas and I didn’t have the luxury to see the bright side. We needed to see the uprooted side, and soon.
Once again I was truly and deeply grateful, touched and humbled by the generosity of our friends.

Greg and Chris, two of Thomas’ long time roomates, came over and spent an entire Saturday helping us remove the kudzo from our property (and our neighbors – we’re betting on karma. Karma and common sense; it’ll come back quicker if we leave it just next door).
Anyway, they came over and worked their butts off – remember that it’s still summer here in Atlanta.
Greg brought his SUV with 4-wheel drive along with some heavy chains. We (mostly they) rolled a bunch of k into a bale, wrapped the chains around them, hooked them to the trailer hitch, and we (mostly me) drove the truck out, pulling the k up. It pulled the truck sideways on several occasions – that’s just freaky.
Freakier still was the fact that we found an old structure hidden in the kudzu!!!

There was a, a what? A house? Garage? Shed? Who knows – but it was about 14′x50′ and straddled the property lines of both of our properties. Cleaning up some of the trash the next day I got to pull on some of my archaeology days from college to work out a time frame.
There was a good bit of red “DO NOT ENTER” tape buried in there, so I’m assuming it was condemned, and around the mid-to-late1980s since there was a styrofoam Burger King container. I don’t remember seeing those since I was fairly young – anyone know when they quit using styrofoam boxes?

There were also toys, a christmas tree stand, broken chairs, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ball (still inflated – Chris had fun with that), an old tin double decker bus toy (I’m so keeping that), broken dishes, some old (but not old/cool, more like old/crappy) tools, a flat tire (with wheel) and way more soda bottles and cans than I like to think of (oh, and beer, malt beverages, that sort of thing)

Thomas has named the spot where the kudzu was the “Field of Despair”.

Really, it looks way worse than it did before!
But maybe I’ll have fewer nightmares – about that, at least. 

I meant to go to sleep a while ago, so I’m going to cut this short.

Hopefully I’ll have a cool panorama of before kudzu to post in here soon – our friend Jarrett’s on the case (he’s our climb happy friend who cleaned our gutters – another amazing friend)
Yeah, I need to pause before I get all teary about all the love. It’s really just wonderful.

Our Kudzu Field – Two Months Ago

Greg and His Rake

Some time in the middle of the day

Mandy Helping Greg

Random Weird Beetle

A Much Deserved Break

Chris and Chain

My Heroes

Mandy and Murry – Our Mascots for the Day

Our Good Luck Praying Mantis – it landed on Greg’s car and hung with us for a couple hours. Even while I was driving!

More of the Afters

Under the kudzu – the Mystery Building

goodnight!