Change is good.
Did you see these lovely flowers in the background of Feline Friday today? My lovely boyfriend gave them to me because I’ve been a little stressed lately.
I am lucky to have a lot of great people in my life to help me through times like this. In the end, it all worked out and I was given a great opportunity.
I accepted a new job!
It’s going to move my career in an exciting new direction, but it also means leaving my current job that I have had for over nine years. My co-workers are like family and I wish I could take them with me. Needless to say, this emotional transition has kind-of wiped me out.
The blog will be back in full force very soon.
Until then, I am going to enjoy some of this beautiful Autumn weather. I hope you do too.
Feline Friday: Sleeping siblings
Photos of them sleeping together never get old.
Posted in Feline Friday, Loki, Pixel Leave a comment
Wow! We are blushing.
What a wonderful surprise! Our little blog has been selected as
Blog of the Month by HouseBlogging.com – a really cool community of Home Improvement/DIY/Decorating enthusiasts and bloggers.
I am so thrilled and absolutely flattered by their kind write up. If you have never visited HouseBlogging I urge you to do so. It’s a great resource to find some other kindred spirits in the DIY/home improvement blogosphere.
We currently are working through a backlog of posts of projects so stay tuned for more mayhem due to our roof woes, some kick-ass raised bed planters and of course many photos of the cats.
And if you are new to our blog, here’s some of our favorite posts for you to check out.
My retro surf dining table
From the Archive: Air Conditioning Cover
King of Fruits? Things I learned about the Avocado Tree.
Lessons Learned – Dinner for Thirty
Boo! Learning from our mistakes
The Hybrid
I’d rather be outside
Behind the scenes of Bath Crashers
Cheers,
Andrea & Nate
Half of the Ceiling Removal
We had high aspirations a few weekends ago. We planned two big projects – 1) take out our part of our great room’s ceiling and 2) build a couple raised beds for our side yard. Unfortunately, the ceiling removal was quite a time hog. Took us about five hours to remove half the ceiling panels, dispose of all the rubble and clean. Looking back now, it actually went quickly given what we had to do. Of course going into it, we were slightly unprepared for the mess.
The Situation
A couple of months ago, bubbles started to form in the particle board ceiling in our great room. It’s hard to capture the bubbles on the white ceiling, but here you can see them with the light reflecting off the ceiling.
A month later, the bubbles got bigger. Then cracks formed. Since these symptoms were growing so fast, we wanted to investigate the problem before winter. Our plan was simple, remove the damaged boards and see what was causing the water damage.
Prep
Having no idea what we would find – Nate and I cleaned the furniture out of the room and put up plastic drop cloth along all the passageways to keep the mess contained.
We even covered the back part of the great room just to keep the dust and debris off our furniture. Glad we did that extra step because we had no idea how much stuff would come down with the ceiling.
Make a hole
Next, Nate broke through one of our problem areas with a crowbar and hammer. We had to be really careful because we had no idea where anything was above the ceiling. Once he broke through and made a decent size hole, he was able to look and see the lay of the land.
What we found
Roughly two feet separated our ceiling from the roof boards. Rafters ran the length of this section of the room.
Between the rafters was old insulation. Some of it was still intact, but most was moist and rather icky. It got everywhere. With the insulation was also a lot of gravel from the roof. Guess the gravel must have found its way down through the roof boards, but the great amount of it was a little troubling.
All of our electrical wiring in our house runs in the ceiling (remember there’s concrete everywhere else!), so Nate had to be really carefully as he removed panels. Luckily we only found our telephone line. No electrical on this side of the room.
Once we got all the boards and debris out, we are happy to report there is minimal damage to the roof boards and rafters. The insulation all had to be thrown out, but we intent to replace it with a better and more eco-friendly product anyhow.
Assess
We have one white moldy patch, but little else to show for all the moisture. So the good news is we don’t have a major catastrophe on our hands, but the bad news is we still don’t know where the leak is.
Our plan is to keep the ceiling open for a couple of weeks and get some advice on short-term solutions. Maybe we get this portion of the roof patched or try to pin point exactly where the leak is and just patch that small area.
We know we are eventually going to have to replace the whole roof, but we don’t have the vision yet of what we want to do, nor the funds to make it happen.
So now we wait and watch for a sign.
