It’s been in the 90s here, and tensions were running VERY high the past few days.  The heat pump wasn’t working. I feared the worst. It was past the 30 days we had to discover anything wrong for the people we were buying it from to fix it.  Finally I decided we could wait no longer, and I called the guy that had been out to install the thermostat before we moved in.

He was very nice, and I got an honest vibe from him (like the people who wear the gold capes in that phone book commercial).  After looking at it for a while and only coming in to fiddle with the breaker once, he came in to talk to me.  He explained how the coils needed cleaning badly and to use Grease Lightning on it and how to clean them.  He said we needed a new filter (duh- we’re so not used to having central heat and air!),  and then said whoever had worked on the heatpump last had wired it all wrong, and he knows it wasn’t him. After he explained the wiring issue, I even asked how the previous occupants could possibly have had air conditioning.  We were both at a loss. It’s just one more mystery about this place (like the stuff on the bedroom wall that looks a LOT like blood splatter on CSI.)

So, I was like, “So it’s working now?” and he said, “Feel the vents.”   Ahhhhhh I think I can hear angels singing.  I have air conditioning!!   Since there were no parts involved and he got it done in one visit, it just cost $75 – that’s less than the price of a window AC unit.  WOOHOO!!  OMG I am so happy y’all, you just don’t know.

I’m gonna go do laundry and house cleaning and stuff, cause it feels so nice in here.  Ahhhhhh!  here’s hoping everyone has a nice cool home this summer too.

Friend (Old Flame) was supposed to come over today to help dig up the flowers from the yard at the old place. My Mom gave me those flowers and I want to keep them all, but I don’t want to kill them, and I’m bad with plants.  There are irises that have managed to survive all these years at the old place but never bloomed.  I know in his flower beds, they’ll thrive and bloom.   He was one of Mom’s biggest fans – of her flower beds and cooking alike.  So, since he was coming over, it gave me more incentive to get my house cleaned up a little and get rid of some boxes that we just got used to stepping over.  Well, he didn’t come over afterall since it was too muddy from the rain last night and this morning, and he had to take his daughter to a friend’s papaw’s funeral.  So, since the house was cleaned up, I figured whynot take pics now and finally get them posted! This is my “Before” post.

Living room

Taken from front door (Sorry it's blurry)

The big old kitchen table in the dining room we carved out of the living room. That's 16 filling out a McDonalds' application.

Front wall of dining area and front door. (I can't wait til we get around to painting)

My new (to me) china cabinet. It was my housewarming gift to myself when we moved. It protects Mom's moss rose china and my stuff too.

The buffet that belonged to DH's grandparents. We rescued it from the filth of my MIL's basement. Old English works wonders!

The buffet holds my collection of serving pieces. The hanging plates were from Mom. The bookshelf holds our fav books and knickknacks.

One side of my huge new bedroom. This is my fav room

The bed. It was DH's idea to put it in diagonally. I'm glad he did, I love it. We need to center it a little better, and we're getting a bamboo plant in the corner between the Japanese prints.

My desk. It's still a mess. I tend to collect shoes under it. Still have boxes stacked in the corner. I love my new chair!

My master bathroom. I love having it right here in my master suite. YAY!

My fabulous bathtub!

Well, that’s it.  The girls’ rooms are ok, but still need a lot of work. The older girls have a HUGE room and have their beds separated, so no more bunks. They also have a chest of drawers, a tall standing guinea pig cage, and a computer desk and the brown loveseat from the old house.  My MIL has a coffee table she’s getting rid of, so she’s bringing it over tomorrow. I’m sure it’ll also need a ton of cleaning, and then we’ll put it in their room with their love seat. They can do their homework there.  I originally wanted to get like a bar height table and stools for them to sit at and do homework or play board games, cards whatever, but a free couch and coffee table work just as well.  Besides 16 likes to snuggle with her boyfriend on the couch.  If they’re here, then we can keep an eye on them at least.  Originally, the girls wanted their room to be apple green and bright pink. I got them a shaggy green carpet and pink sheer panels for their window.  However, the dog shredded the rug.  Apparently she thought it was grass?  Then they broke the blinds on their window, so we had to put up some curtains to keep the whole street from being able to see into their room.  So… for now, it’s not really decorated at all really.  Their beds are never made, there’s nothing on the walls but one Indiana Jones poster 16 got for free and a frog shaped bulleting board.  I remember when I was 12, my walls were covered in posters and pinups from Tiger Beat, and by the time I was 16, I had horse photos and paintings all over the walls, and I kept it clean and decorated.  SIGH.  I can only imagine how their own homes will look when they move out.

Now the younger girls’ room is FULL of stuff.  Their bunk beds are red and they have long blue sheer curtains. 6’s favorite color is blue and 11’s favorite color is red or dark pink, so it’s not hard to decorate their room… or wouldn’t be if they didn’t have stuff stacked up on every wall.  It’s too bad they didn’t get the bigger room, but 16 refuses to give up having a regular bed (without a bunk over her), and I don’t blame her.  When she moves out, we’ll move 12 (who will be 14+ by then to the smaller room by herself, and we’ll move 6 and 11 (who’ll be 8 and 13 ) into the bigger room.

When it stops being so darned wet outside and I can get the backporch and back yard all straightened up and looking the way I want it to, I’ll get pics of it and post them.  Hope you like the ones I put up today.

]]> http://chaospersonified.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/finally-pics-of-the-new-house/feed/ 3 Admin living-room from-front-door dining-table dining-area china-cabinet buffet buffet2 bedroom bed desk bathroom11 bathtub http://chaospersonified.wordpress.com/2009/03/27/view-from-my-window/ http://chaospersonified.wordpress.com/2009/03/27/view-from-my-window/#comments Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:17:58 +0000 Chaos http://chaospersonified.wordpress.com/?p=441 ]]>

I knew the first time I ever walked into this room when the property manager first let me see it, that my desk would sit right in front of the rear window of the bedroom.  When sitting here, off to the right you can see the mountains.  It’s not a clear and perfect view of them, but the only thing blocking it is more nature – trees, shrubs etc.  Of course we moved in during the winter so the view was unobstructed.  But the view I have enjoyed even more while sitting at my desk and gazing out my window is the day to day activity surrounding my bird feeder.  Now, we had this bird feeder at the other house, but it wasn’t where you could sit and watch it.  I would occasionally walk by a window and notice a cardinal at the feeder, and then later notice how he sat on a post nearby it lamenting how it was empty – and think I need to fill that – but never did -It was gone from my mind immediately.  So the birds left.  Well, when we moved here, the kids filled it up and hung it on a branch they could reach, and I’ve had to refill it once and now it needs it again.

The first visitor was a male cardinal, so that was a lovely splash of color as Spring arrived. Then I noticed Mrs Cardinal was also coming to the feeder.  A few days later, I noticed a bird along the ground under it, eating the stuff that spilled out.  I didn’t recognize it at all, so I looked at birds using Google and found it, a baltimore oriole. heh and I thought they were just a ball team, haha.  Then another pair kept coming around that I’ve never seen before.  After looking it up, I decided it is a pair of redbolls.  never heard of them before. I’ve lived in TN my whole life and spent most of my childhood outside, but had never seen these two new birds.  That intrigued me.   Oh, I’ve also seen a bluejay once and there’s one dove who comes along and pecks the ground under the feeder.  I am now determined to see if I can get more birds to come.  I want to get a birdhouse I can attach to the trunk of the evergreen where I can see it. I don’t know if anything would move into it, but I can hope. I do have a functioning birdhouse I got at the fall festival last year, but I prefer to have it sitting on my deck to look at.  We have a hummingbird feeder, but the only good place to hang that is not where I can view it.  So, I think I’m going to see about buying a trumpet vine and planting it along the fencerow and letting it climb over the scrub brush there where I can see it.  If they’ll come for the feeder, they might flit over to the vine too. I hope.  The branch the feeder is hanging from could hold at least one more feeder, so I’ll get one that can hold suet.  Suzanne on Chickens in the Road blog (it’s in my blogroll, check it out) has an easy recipe for suet and her feeders are always full of birds. I never used to care for birds, even the brightly colored ones, but seeing them every day brightens my day.  I can’t wait to see how the population grows or changes as summer gets closer.

So, here’s some pics of the birds I’ve managed to take.  Unfortunately I have to take them through my bedroom window, and the zoom plus them moving a lot makes them a little fuzzy.  I’m working on getting better at that.

Mr. Cardinal

Mrs. Cardinal

Baltimore Oriole

Mr. Redpoll

There is however one thing that worries me about the birds…  I don’t want to find one that I’ve gotten to know, half eaten on my back porch….

Pepper likes the birds too.

The hummingbird feeder is in this shot, but as the leaves have come in, I realize the area is much too shaded for them. I’m going to hang it on one of the corner hooks of my gazebo -which was finally moved here and set up by DH yay!

I don’t have pics of the dove or other birds yet, but I keep my camera at hand. I do know they don’t like the rain, as I’ve not seen any today but Mr Cardinal.  He’s a pig.

I am trying to deal with waiting for the tax refund to come so we can put the down payment down and get moved in eventually. I want to be moved in by March 1st!

Anyway, since even before I decided to get this place, I have been worried about what to do with my kitchen table.  It’s an old farmtable that my mother and step father built for their kitchen.  After it was done and in place, she decided it was too big and put it in their basement.  She refused to let me have it while she was living saying it was too big for our trailer.  Well, I have wanted it forever, and after she passed away, I asked my step dad if I could have it and he said Sure!   So, in order for Mom’s memory not to be smudged, I have to make sure there is room for the table and it’s used often…   Well, unfortunately in this house it’s been very difficult. The table is almost 6 ft long and nearly 4 ft wide.  We’ve never been able to just set it somewhere and leave it there and still be able to get at the chairs all the way around it.  We usually have the chairs pushed in, and the table shoved against a wall.  I do NOT want to do that in the new place.

Here is a pic of the new trailer and the space they have designated for the kitchen table…

Dining area as seen from living room.

So you can see there’s definitely not room for it on the tile.  I’m OK with it coming into the living room area, but with the bar there, I am afraid it’s basically the same issue as we have here.  The table would get pushed against the wall so we would have room to walk around it.   So, something I’ve been considering is putting it in front of the bar.  The kids liked that idea.  It would create a dining room area in the living room (which is good sized.)

So it would more than likely run with the longside parallel to the bar so the short end is by the wall.  I think it’s going to end up sticking out past the bar though and really make the living room feel crowded.  If we ran it the other way, the long side would run along the wall and end up coming closer to the front door.  It wouldn’t jut out into the room as far though.

You can kind of see the length from bar to front door where table might go.

Here’s a shot of the kitchen and hallway taken from the back corner of the living room (across the room from the front door and possible the table)

Gives an idea how much space is in the living room.

I know this is silly, but truly it’s making me nuttier than normal!   Oh I found an old pic of the table. This was taken Christmas 05, a month after my mother died.  I didn’t realize how quickly I got the table. I really wanted to have as much of her around me as I could.

Table my Mom made, we found the set of 8 chairs in a used furniture store, like it was meant to be.

That china on the shelf is the Moss Rose pattern she collected after us kids left home. She always said she couldn’t have nice things while we were at home haha.  I got the china when she passed because I gave her the most pieces for the collection as birthday and Christmas gifts. She was fun to shop for.  ANYWAY… that’s the table.   It’s pushed up against the wall there as far as it will go with the chairs there.  You can see the chair nearest the couch was never used, it couldn’t actually pull out.    I dunno, maybe it’ll fit along the wall,  it would be in front of the window looking out on the backyard and mountain view whaich is wonderful.  Great place to sit and pay bills or do homework or just eat dinner.  I’d have to get a big rectangular rug to go under it to kind of define the space as they say on HGTV. haha.  And I think it would be good to hang a swag light over it as a chandelier.  We have one in the living room now that’s kind of modern and shiney.  It’s never gone with anything we have, but I like it anyway, and I’m eclectic.  I think it would be great.

And the space in the kitchen it leaves open will make it brighter first of all with the window there, and also it’ll give me room for a kitchen island! YAY!

See, now talking to you all (I think 3 people actually read this,  HI GUYS!!)  has gotten it out of my system and made me think that hey it might work afterall.  Filling in all this wait time with planning and arranging things in my head is a lot of fun   I’m still impatient and want it NOW, but I’ll keep thinking.. it’ll be here soon,.. soon…soon…