Hayley and Kevin

People told us to start a blog because it would be a good way to document our unique life.  I thought we were normal until I started writing down the weird things we have dealt with the last four to five months living in the Indiana house.  Some examples are: Coffee Morning coffee consisted of generic instant coffee and hose water.  Try doing that for a couple months.  It's amazing what one can get used to. A/C During summer, we went without A/C for a while.  Inside the house got up to 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 Celsius) on a few of the hot days.  Luckily, a friend had a spare window A/C unit we could use. Shower Our shower is literally 5.4 square feet (this is about one small step left/right and front/back) and the shower head sits 5.5 feet high.  Basically, we have to squat to wash our hair but we have to be careful because if we touch the cold tile, the reaction usually means bumping to the other side of the shower.  Imagine pinball but in a sho...

Blind Chicken died today. It was likely a wild animal that got her in the back yard and hopefully it was quick  We doubt she saw it coming. She was the last from a flock of six we raised since March of 2016.  She had difficulty seeing since birth and was mostly blind the last years of her life relying on sound and feel (scratching with claws and using her face) to navigate the world.  She was friends with the squirrels, cats, Annie, pigeons, and was secretly the mob boss of the neighborhood. R.I.P., chicky. -K

Hello again.   As promised from the June post, here is everything we have dealt with electrically (so far, at least).  I wanted to make a separate post because it is a unique task compared to everything else in this house.  Electrical was one project where we had the help of a contractor; sadly, this turned out to be the second time dealing with a slimy bastard so we will be doing the remaining work ourselves with the help from some friends.  It will take longer but that is the way it is.  To start off, I will show some pictures of what was: This is the original outside panel connected to the transformer.  It is a 100 amp fuse and likely original to the house from 1956.  Give it a good yank and as long as the fuses are not sticking, it will shut off power to the house. The inside panel.  The big fuse on top is the main and the littler ones below are 15 amp screw-in fuses.  They make a fun arcing noise when removing them. The panel to the...

  Kevin has been digging around some for a water leak. He was able to determine that the leak is somewhere in the slab and not from our leaking faucets or toilets. Ugh. By chance, when working on another project, he heard water running by the kitchen sink.  The pipe that is leaking is the one circled. We have no idea where it goes under the slab but the valve we replaced a couple months ago shuts off water to the leak. So we won't be losing 11,000 gallons into the slab anymore at least. We will do a bit more investigating to determine if this is even a line we need anymore. If not, we don't have to figure out a solution to the busted pipe and can keep moving along with plans to install our kitchen. On a brighter note, I have been working on the bathroom. When they remodeled our guest bathroom, they put the bath tub in and poured about an inch of liquid level onto the slab. They then laid the tile onto of the liquid level making the bathroom floor about an inch and a half highe...

 We escaped our house disaster for a little while to visit Colorado. We did not get a chance to visit everyone we wanted to visit and I (Hayley) failed at taking photos of everyone we did see.  We drove almost straight through getting there so Friday was mostly a sleeping day. We then went to watch a friend of ours play ACDC music at the bowling alley.  Saturday was a fun-filled, but busy, day going to Silat (Kevin's martial arts class), a baby shower, and a wedding! We spent Sunday seeing some of our old neighbors in Johnstown! I ditched Kevin on Monday to visit some friends in Denver.  We learned on Tuesday that the water department came out to check out meter and determined that we were losing 9,000 gallons a month of water somewhere on our side. We thought about leaving Colorado early to go back home but decided to stay. We went to see Wendy Woo in concert at MoBetta Gumbo in Loveland with some friends that night.  We went to breakfast with a friend on Wedne...

  We have fans and functional lights in all three bedrooms! We also have lights in all four bedroom closets (two are in the master bedroom)!! Our new electrical panel is in a sketch spot but this will eventually become part of the utility room. BUT we finally have breakers instead of fuses.... :D

Hayley got a smartphone!  It's a wild sight. -K

Before   After Summit Roofing completed the roof, facia, and gutters in five days time. We went with brown to give the house a bit more color. It looks awesome and they did such a wonderful job. They are new friends for sure! Oh...and we officially got our Purdue flag hanging on the light post!!

  Our lovely friends, Jeremy, Wendy and Ray, came to visit Indiana. They helped take out two walls to expand the kitchen. Our house is looking larger now, but we still have a long way to go. We got our new carpet in yesterday. I also spent 6 hours the other day scraping wallpaper off the blue wall. Our house is a little closer to feeling like a home. Annie and I are testing out the new carpet!

June 18th is when we arrived at the Indiana house.  We stayed in a hotel the first two nights until the living area was stripped of everything because it was SO disgusting.  We unloaded the U-Haul and made the living room the only livable space until we can work on the rest of the house.  Here are some pictures of the first couple days: We do not have a functional kitchen.  The appliances are all likely original to the house (1956) and the refrigerator is the only thing working but it smells so bad, it's basically useless. For a kitchen, we are living out of two mini-fridges and a microwave (thanks to our great neighbor, Alicia) in the living room.  We have a hot plate and a grill for cooking food.  We have one functional shower, a semi-functional toilet, and no working faucets.  The kitchen sink was leaking when we turned on the water (photo below) so that was sealed up and we are using a hose-filled 7-gallon camping jug for washing dishes, washing ha...