if you build it

some of the latest construction going on around the house. nothing like a baby to get you motivated to get stuff done. above is a flagstone staircase being installed. it's currently getting rocked and i'll have finished photos next week.

below is a bump-out to our deck. we decided since we can't use much of the back yard anyways, we'll make our own flat land via more decking. it's amazing how increasing it a few feet gives you a ton more space. eventually i plan on staining it black or a dark walnut so it's not so mismatch.

got to finish packing for our trek up to maryland for my sister-in-law's baby shower. we've got a jam-packed weekend but i thought i'd update the blog while i had a minute.

weekend work

the house is slowly getting painted. this past weekend i decided to do a small project and painted the foyer area. i needed a color that would somewhat compliment the green so we went with this blue. i can't believe how much the molding and wood are popping with the addition of color. we got our chairs last week and are waiting on the couch. the next room to conquer will be the living room. i have absolutely no clue what i'm going to do in there.

busted

friday afternoon i heard a big bang that shook the entire house around 12:30p. i stood there and listened intently, nothing. i shrugged it off thinking it was a gust of wind. a few hours later i grab a picture frame and head down to the basement. when i hit the bottom step i hear a buzzing noise. sounds like a generator pumping. i look towards the noise and then down. WTF!! it's water! i step down and i'm standing in half an inch of water. i turn to my left, my right, where the hell is this water coming from? i run upstairs and call aaron's office. "this is dr. westphal's wife, i have an emergency, i need to talk to him!" he answers and i start talking non-stop.

"the basement is flooding, i have no idea where the water is coming from, what do i do?!"
"did a pipe burst?" he asks.
"i don't know, i hear a gushing/buzzing noise, i guess that could be water." holding the phone up to the noise. "hear it?"
"yeah, turn off the water line."

i turn off the water and the noise starts to dissipate. thank goodness. i tell him i tried calling todd and jerome and can't get a hold of either one. i ask him if i should go to their job site, since maybe they're not getting phone reception. that's probably a good idea he tells me, he'll be home as soon as he's done seeing his patients.

i corral the dogs into the car and head over the job site. i get there and it's empty. i start to panic. i head back home and call my brother. "who do i call about a busted water line?" a plumber he tells me. i get home and thumb through all my basement construction papers, looking for the plumber todd hired to do all the plumbing in the basement. my phone rings. it's jerome. "i'm on my way." he tells me. a wave of relief gushes over me.

he gets there and i show him where the noise was coming from. he tells me it looks like's it could be the line to the outside spicket. he cuts a 10x12 hole into the drywall and sure enough there's a crack running down the length of the pipe. he said he'll cap off the line for now, so we can have water to the rest of the house but we'll have to replace the line in the upcoming weeks. i ask him if the carpet is ruined. he tells me as long as we get all the water out, it should be fine.

so we've spent a majority of the weekend sucking the water out of the carpet using a shopvac and my "pee-pee" vac. luckily the carpet pad we opted for is supposed to be moisture resistant. and so far the carpet is still damp but no longer squishes when you walk on it. i think the only damage done is to some of the molding which is easily replaceable. thank god! most of the storage boxes we have are those five gallon plastic tubs. all-in-all the damage has been minimized.

i'm so glad and thankful we have todd and jerome when it comes to home "problems." having someone we can trust and is so knowledgeable when it comes to home repair is such a blessing. i'm almost positive if i'd have called someone else the whole wall would be ripped out right now.

the first pic is what my pants looked like after working for two hours. damn, those knee holes are a lot larger than i realized. i think the end is near for them.

walls of pain

i started wallpapering yesterday. what was i thinking? it's a lot harder than i anticipated. i thought by starting somewhat small, the master bathroom, i'd be able to get my feet wet and be hanging like a pro in no time. apparently our bathroom is the definition of "wallpapering around the tricky spots," (a brochure i picked up before starting). and our bathroom is a lot bigger then the lady at lowes thought. i had measured before i went in to order the paper. i then forgot to bring in said measurements. but i thought i could wing it and told the lady what i was papering. "two should be enough," she told me. and when i picked up the order i thought the same thing. "what am i going to do with all this extra paper?" ding. once i started, i knew i was gonna be in trouble. i'll have to go back this afternoon and order at least two more rolls. i'll be posting before and after pics once i finish with the two rolls i have. it may be a few more weeks before it's completely done. i do have to say, i am getting better with each strip and it does look good. i should have started with a room that didn't have so many in-corners, out-corners, fixtures, tight spots, etc. another lesson learned.

on another note. i rarely encounter a rude person in boone. at least not one of a local persuasion. when i went to pick up the wallpaper, the interior electronic doors at lowes wouldn't open. they were open just a crack. i stood there waving my arms, stepping here and there in front of the sensor. nothing. i walked over to the service department and told the girl they wouldn't open. "it's the wind."

okay. so i walked back to the doors and tried to get the doors to open again. she walked over, pulled the doors open and again said "it's the wind." and turned and walked off. i don't know why this bothered me so much. perhaps it was the "it's the wind, moron." look she had on her face. that i was supposed to know it was okay pry open the doors myself. AND that there was no freaking wind blowing.

it's the first time i've ever had the desire to report someone. man, i'm getting old!

love lights

one thing i LOVE about christmas are the lights. the twinkle, the glow--there's just something about them that make me feel all giddy and childlike inside. disney feels the same way. and even though the weather didn't scream christmas the light displays did.

if i could get away with having them up year round i would. i just love seeing them on houses, especially way up on the mountainsides. aaron and i debate if we'd ever go crazy with yard art and inflatables. if there was a tactful way of doing it, i'd be all on it. but being a designer i think the idea is pretty much squashed. i'm just too anal when it comes to decor, and most light displays fall on the cheesy side. (no offense to those who have them) we've got our old-school lights up and even though they suck up tons of energy--i love em!

go bold, go home

seriously considering going bold with wallpaper this time around. where? still pondering that one. i know it's going to be too much for an entire room. but as an accent wall, i'm sure it won't be too overwhelming. only thing i'm worried about, applying the wallpaper. it'd be a first for me...and i can already anticipate frustration. it'd be a challenge but if i start fairly small, i think i can pull it off.

take the tour

per request, here are photos of the interior of the house. it's still a work in progress.

record highs

still no internet/cable, hopefully the problem will be remedied tomorrow. the cable company keeps sending installers before they’ve laid-the-line. and since the local office doesn’t have a phone number, at least one available to the public, we’ve had to physically go down there and make arrangements three or four times. so they finally laid-the-line wednesday, which was scheduled for friday, and we’re supposed to have everything (phone/internet/cable) installed tomorrow. i’ll be quite surprised if everything goes according to plan. i guess it was a good thing they didn’t come friday, they would have been vying for a parking spot in our driveway. we had the invisible fence installed, the plumbers working, and both our real estate agent and builder all here that morning.

even when you purchase a new home, you’re still going to have a few kinks that haven’t been completely worked out beforehand. ours was no different. luckily it’s still under warranty and all the problems are being fixed at someone else’s expense. the main culprit seems to be sediment from our well clogging screens and building up in our toilets causing them to continuously run. we noticed a wet spot on the ceiling in the living room after one toilet ran all night and immediately shut that water off. then the toilet in the master bedroom started to run, so i shut it off as well. (didn’t want to have a bigger problem than a few running toilets.) this was about a week after we moved in. we called the builder and informed him about the problem. he said he’d send a plumber to fix the problem, we hadn’t heard from him or a plumber since. jill and jerome suggested we call vivian, our real estate agent, and sic her on him. plumber was here two days later. we now have functioning toilets upstairs. thank goodness, i was getting tired of running up and down stairs to relieve myself. jerome with the help of aaron installed a filter on our water pipes and it has made a huge difference. i don’t have to fill the washer with buckets of water anymore. it was much easier to do that then to unscrew the hose, clean out the screen and reattach the hose again.

then a few weeks ago i was reading the Mountain Times, which is the equivalent to the Illinois Times, and i couldn’t believe how bad ‘design wise’ it looked. i ran upstairs to grab a copy of the IT to do a side-by-side comparison and when i walked into the guest bedroom i noticed a shard of glass on the carpet. i walked into the bathroom and the plate-glass mirror had fallen off the wall and shattered into a million pieces. it must have happened while we were bike riding that day and luckily we had closed the room off so the dogs were unaffected by the crashing glass. it looked like it was only held up with double-stick tape, which i found quite disturbing. we ran out and bought brackets for the other mirrors and replacing the mirror has been added to the list of things for the builder.

i did start painting some rooms this past week, the mudroom, my sewing room and two bathrooms. i didn’t have any problems till i reached the second downstairs bathroom. i decided i wanted to paint it yellow along with the other bathroom downstairs. so i bought a gallon of “pale butter” paint. i put on one coat and decided the color was too yellow, almost florescent for my taste. i only used a quarter of the paint so when i went back to lowes i bought a quart of the “sunglow” color. i was quite happy with this choice but it ended up taking me five coats and two quarts to cover up the other original yellow. i couldn’t figure out what was going on. i knew that i was covering up another color but it shouldn’t take me 5 coats to do so. i finally figured out the new paint roller i was using was spooging out some type of gray color along with my yellow and that was why i wasn’t making any progress. i switched rollers and problem was solved. i felt like i was in a steven king story and the room refused to be painted. after that ordeal, i’ve taken a short break from painting, mainly to give the blisters on my hand a rest. later this evening i’ll start painting the computer nook/craft room gray and red. i’m starting small and will eventually move up to the bigger rooms, but that might be a while.

tomorrow will be a busy day for all. aaron finally starts working. bosco and marley will get their first taste of the “correction” (shock) from the invisible fence, and i’ll be painting and waiting around for the cable people to install everything. it’ll be easier to update once we have everything in-house. i’ve only been going up to use internet every other day. it’s too much of a chore to make a special trip just to check email and browse. yeah, i’m lazy like that. i’ll post our movie listings tomorrow. we’ve watched an abundance of them the last month, probably more than we have in the last year. a lot rented and many from our own stash. we’re on a coen brothers kick. new favorite movie for me…the big lebowski.

till tomorrow.

oh, the reason for the title. apparently they’ve set record highs in temperature this summer, highs in the upper 80s. the humidity is what’s killing everyone, every single person i talk to says it’s never been this bad. i guess we brought the midwest weather with us. although i’ve heard it’s reached over 100 in springfield, so i really can’t complain.

holy cannoli

Keeping busy, if it's not with the house then it's with activities in and around boone.

First, the food. we've pretty much eaten out every meal. We checked out some local digs and hit up a few standbys. Had my first cannoli after visiting a local Italian eatery (joe's). It's the first time I'd ever "save room for dessert." (what the sign said). When the waitress told me it had ricotta cheese I was a little stand-offish. But the picture looked so delish, I just had to try it. It was better than I expected, who knew cheese could taste like ice cream. Mmmmm. We also ate at black cat's (burritos), capone's (pizza), hunan's (Chinese buffet) and last night we went to the mellow mushroom. We originally went there for pizza but it was crowded and we would have had to wait 45 minutes for it to cook. So we ended up getting hoagies instead. Tonight we cooked a meal at home, a welcome change of pace.

After the mellow mushroom we went to Appalachian State (App. state) with jill and Jerome and watched old crow medicine show play to a sold out crowd. (I'll post a more detailed description about the show later, very worthy of it's own post). Came home afterwards, had a few drinks and turned in by midnight. I couldn't keep my eyes open, even when reading a short steven king story. Not typical for me. Today we were up by 7:30, at the farmer's market by 8, dog park at 11:30, art in the park in blowing rock at 2:30. Home at 5. Unpacking and crafting the rest of the evening. Yes, a very, very busy day. I'm waiting for things to slow down.

Unfortunately, I signed up for a swap before we moved and I have to get everything done in the next 2 weeks. It's the sweat shop swap, where I have to make 10 crafted items for 10 different people. Now was probably not the best time to participate, but I'm sure I'll be able to pull through. I've got half done, so it is looking promising.

Now to get some sleep and finish the story I started last night.

and i'm officially licensed in the state of north carolina to operate a motor vehicle. yeah!

handy sue

we finally see floor, at least upstairs. the basement, that's another story. everything that once was up is now down. i may try and freecycle the boxes. seems like a waste to dispose of so many useable ones, specially since we paid for them. hopefully someone in the area is moving soon and we'll clear out the house and be ecofriendly at the same time.

in a better attempt to keep organized we raided lowes and walmart looking for anything and everything that will keep things nice and tidy. might as well start off clean, how long it lasts that's another story. i installed an in-the-cabinet trashcan and a pot/pan lid organizer. aaron attempted to fix the lawn mower, had the manual out and everything. apparently the movers had disconnected the hand brake and he couldn't figure out how to reconnect it. lucky he has me, i took a look and bada-bing it's working. one thing aaron lacks is patience that and handyman skills. good thing he has me! he did put together some shelves in the garage and a tool organizer. so props to awes.

jerome came over today and switched out our dryer outlet. i guess newer dryers have 4 prongs and ours only has 3. i'm glad he's around to help with the little things, well I guess that's kinda big since neither of us would have known what to do. he was in and out in 5 minutes.

another run to walmart to get a dresser to replace the one we gave baby baima and to lowes to replace the battery to our cordless drill. we've pretty much got a beeline to both places. i'm sure we'll be visiting often in the upcoming weeks. if you can't find us here, we're probably there.

welcome to the high country

It’s official, we’ve left the Midwest and are slowly becoming residents of boone. We left Carbondale Saturday morning and made it here in about 9 ½ hours. (Had to make a few pit stops with the dogs.) It’s the first time I’ve had to drive the last hour of the trip and let me tell you that I’m not a fan. Just don’t like those windy roads. Guess I better get used to it, it’s now my life. At least we live really close to town and I won’t be driving them on a daily basis.

All our loot arrived yesterday, all 8500 lbs of it. Aaron had to go pick up our truck driver at 6:30 a.m. cause the driver drove by the night before and didn’t think he would be able to make it with his semi. There was a possibility they would have to get a smaller trunk, unload our stuff in a parking lot, load it onto the small truck and then drive over here to unload again. Luckily, in the light of day it wasn’t a problem. I was amazed how the driver was able to maneuver that big rig. He was able to back it up on an incline and turn completely around in a small cul-de-sac. Crazy. I also learned it costs about $1000 to fill up a semi truck that has a 300 gallon tank. And they get between 5-8 miles a gallon. Insane. We ended up helping the guys unload the truck. They didn’t get a local crew to help so there was just 2 guys including the driver to unload. We called in Jerome and the five of us got everything unloaded in about 5 hours.

Anyways our stuff made it safely, at least all the boxes we’ve unpacked thus far. We’ve mainly plowed through the kitchen boxes and not a single glass broken, chipped or scarred. Impressive. I remember when I was younger how excited I was about unpacking boxes every time we moved. (Which was once ever 3 to 4 years.) It’d be 3-4 months before you got your stuff so you’d semi-forget what was packed. How quickly that changes when you’re unpacking a whole house of stuff you just saw last week. I guess I really can’t complain. At least I didn’t have to pack, load and transport everything.

It may be a few weeks before we get internet and cable. I think they have to lay a line out to the house before we can have everything up and running. We’ve been heading to panera and aaron’s office to get on the internet. You don’t realize how much you use something til it’s gone. I think I could live without tv, but the internet that’s a different story. We google everything. How do you make sushi rolls? Who’s the actor in that one movie? How do you spell…? The list goes on. Plus it feels like a slight disconnect when I can’t check my email or other sites. Plus none of you all know how we are if I don’t give you an update every once in a while.

Just to let you know, I did fail the written portion of my nc drivers license test. Don’t worry, I missed the most obscure questions that have nothing to do with my driving abilities. How am supposed to know the percentage of people killed by drunk drivers every year or that you have to downshift when going down a steep incline instead of breaking? (who drives a stick anymore?) it would have helped if I would have glanced at the book, but I didn’t think I would have to take the actual test since I’m licensed in Illinois. Now I know the laws backwards and forwards. Ask me anything!! (Courtesy of not having tv or internet or anything else for that matter.) The funny thing is that I do have a license number already in the system from when I lived here 15 years ago. I remember taking driver’s ed in Fayetteville my sophomore year of high school. I don’t remember actually getting a license but my permit must have acted somewhat like a license. Weird, I almost don’t associate living at ft. bragg as living in north Carolina. And we lived there twice while I was growing up. Maybe boone was more than a cowinky-dink. Hmmmm.

Back to unpacking…ugh!