Basement, part 2

Big huge thanks to my mother-in-law who has agreed to host Thanksgiving this year! Wahoo, we got a reprieve on Project Eat-Off-The-Basement-Floor!

It’s a temporary reprieve… we are still holding our office Christmas party down here next month. So we are still working our butts off to get this thing finished.

Since there were a few parts of the floor that had never been painted, and we were never going to get all the dirt off the floor, we decided to paint the whole dang thing. We moved the freezers away from the wall, scrubbed the entire thing (with a major floor scrubber!), painted where the freezers were supposed to go, and then moved them back.

Cleaning the basement

This is not your run-of-the-mill “we need to sweep the floors and knock down the cobwebs once a year” sort of basement cleaning. This is serious basement cleaning.

One of the drawbacks of doing some of the work for our home remodel ourselves is that, well, the construction guys didn’t do everything. Including the post-construction clean up. And, frankly, we haven’t gotten to the basement yet.

But it is time. (Okay, it’s well past time.)

There are sort of three parts to our basement now. The part under the new house (we’ll deal with that later…), the main part under the old house, and the smaller part under the old house (we put up a wall to separate these two sections).

We’ve been dealing with the smallest part of the basement so far. Here’s half of it… with a bunch of junk.

Remodel Mondays – Work in progress

We’ve been moved in for three weeks, and we’re still in the process of getting cleaned up, unpacked, and settled in. I almost wish we had waited another week to move in so the little projects could really get finished, and I had some time to get the construction mess cleaned up. I have vacuumed and mopped these floors a million times since we moved in, and there’s always more mess to clean up!

So… still in progress… and quite a bit cluttered, for now… The eat-in kitchen with the china cabinet and the breakfast bar.

EuroScrubby

I have found the next best thing since sliced bread. Seriously. My new favorite thing in all the world. The EuroScrubby rocks!

Okay, maybe I’m a little over the top. But you have to see this to believe it!

Not too long ago, I made a batch of The Pioneer Woman’s comfort food meatballs. (Coincidentally, these were just featured on her Food Network show last weekend!)

I was left with a Pampered Chef Stoneware Rectangular Baker to clean out. And, I am not ashamed to admit, I did not clean it that night. I left it out. And the sauce dried to a hard sticky mess. Ick. So I soaked it for a few hours, and was left with this:


Pretty seriously gross.

Uh oh…

Martin stole my chair ages ago.
There was no sitting on this chair until I cleaned it off.
Today, I decided to reclaim my chair.  So I busted out the vacuum and went to work.

While I was vacuuming, I noticed this.

Oh yeah, there’s a “water” stain on the cushions.
Anyone who has a cat in the house, specifically a male cat in the house, specifically four cats in the house, knows what I thought this stain was at first.

Looking carefully, there are at least 3 different overlapping stains.  Even a worse omen for the furry boys.

But, it didn’t smell like male cat pee. Or old cat pee. Or cat pee in general.

So I looked up.

Damn.  Oh yes. A wet spot on the ceiling.
Not cat pee. Roof pee.
Water, leaking through our roof.

It’s an area about 7 feet by 2 feet. And yes, it’s still damp.

Good thing it’s snowing instead of raining today! Honey, please come home soon!

New Fall Resolutions

I can make these, right?  They’re my New Year’s Resolutions, except it’s the end of September.  Not exactly the start of a new year, but it is the start of a new season, so here I go!

This was sparked by a few realizations I had Wednesday morning. 

Tuesday, I dashed around the house doing a “crisis clean.”  We had someone coming over to take some video on our farm for the Indiana Farm Bureau, and I wanted to be able to invite them inside without being embarrassed.  (Things have gotten a little out of hand, what with 12 hours of thesis writing a day.)  Then that night, I actually washed all the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen after dinner.  It was so nice waking up to a clean kitchen this morning!

Resolution #1, I am back on the FlyLady bandwagon.

Wednesday morning, I got on the bathroom scale.  Let’s just say, it wasn’t pretty.  You know where I’m going with this one.

Resolution #2, I am back on the Weight Watchers bandwagon.

Wednesday afternoon I noticed my Norfolk Island Pine, which sits on top of my filing cabinet in my office, is looking very sad, and not just a little brown.  I swear, I can kill a cactus.

Resolution #3, water indoor plants twice a week.

(Side question, does anyone know if I can eventually move the Norfolk Pine outside in southern Indiana?  It sounds like the winters might get too cold for it here.)

Anyone else up for making some New Fall Resolutions along with me?