This Girl's House

Garage Passes Final Inspection

ThisGirl — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 01:43:20 +0000

So our garage that we’ve been working on passed final inspection on Friday. Yay! We still have painting and site development work to finish but the hard work has been done.

Billy Hanging The Last Shingle

ThisGirl — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 04:42:34 +0000

Billy hanging the last shingle up on the top of the garage. He took a deep breath and climbed the top of the scaffolding and finished the part the part that was just out of reach.

The Tile Job

ThisGirl — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 04:28:54 +0000

Here’s a sample of the tile job in the greatroom. Great job Mattie.

Switching to DishNetwork

ThisGirl — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 16:59:09 +0000

We switched to dish this weekend. We had too. Directtv was sucking us dry and it was either do that or rabbit ears. Not that rabbit ears is totally out of the question, but we really couldn’t enjoy the experience with the technology the way it is today. Maybe in 2 years with google tv and hulu, etc. Getting exactly what we get now, we will save $270 the first three months, $540 the next 9 months and $600 the next 12 after that. I don’t know about you but in my household that is some serious money.

It’s rediculous how much money we spend on utilities and with retirement in sight, I’m going to be seriously taking a look at how we spend our money.

In the next year I’m going to be experimenting with antennas in the next few years and we will see what we can do.

Painting the Great Room

ThisGirl — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 18:26:21 +0000

We finally decided on a behr selections of brown. Simple Silhouette for the wall behind the television, and the wall opposite the television. Puddle for the large wall that starts at the entranceway doorway and extends around the greatroom and down the hall to the master bedroom. It was a safe selection and the colorway sheet also included Bitter Chocolate, the same color that we used to paint the kitchen cabinets.

Finishing The Garage

ThisGirl — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 06:22:30 +0000

We have a few more details to complete before we can say that we have finally finished the new garage. The most challenging will be putting up the shingles on the front gable. I made the mistake of believing that it is cheaper to get bundles of shingles and stain them myself than it was to put up pre-stained shingles. I’ve since learned my lesson, although it’s too late. For a really good seal, you need to do a triple deal of stain on each shingle. We’ve spent $70 on 2 1 gallon cans of stain, and we’ve only applied one coat to 3 of 7 bundles of shingles Stevie says that the first coat will soak up the most. Then we need to climb up on the scaffolding and staple the shingles onto the gable. I’ll take pictures.

Wood Look Tile

ThisGirl — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:51:31 +0000

We’ve been shopping a while for flooring. We looked at wood, laminate, cork, slate, and ceramic and porcealan tile. It’s important for me to have an easy care floor that doesn’t show a lot of dog hair and dirt since right now I spend a lot of time cleaning floors and carpet. We live on a lake, have two large dogs, and our lot is still a “construction zone” according to one of our neighbors. We still have years left of site development work to do. I had finally settled on a teak wood and a raja slate, but I discounted both for solid reasons. One of my neighbors owned a dog kennel and she told me that eventually with two large dogs, they’d wear a path in the hardwood. Stevie found the raja slate to be too rough for his feet. That left me back to square one again until I saw this add on Craig’s list. I had always been attracted to the wood look tile. We had hoped for something darker, but what we found was not that light, and at 62 cents a square foot delivered, it seemed like quite a deal. We bought enough to do the whole house if we feel like it.

Painting the Kitchen Graceful Gray

ThisGirl — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 23:22:08 +0000

I’m just taking a break in the middle of painting the last wall in the kitchen.Â Graceful Gray is the color of choice.Â I just love how the color contrasts with the new expresso color of the kitceh cabinet.Â But painting is a lot of work.Â The kitchen has 3 walls and I had already painted 2 of the walls.Â The last wall was the longest wall.Â All 35 feet of it.Â With taping off cabinets, trim and windows and cutting in, the first coat took almost 5 hours.Â I’m almost tempted to save the second coat for tomorrow, but I want to get the job over with.Â Anyway, while I was cleaning the walls and then painting, I noticed a little cracking of the sheetrock around the windows.Â It’s been almost 6 years since I built the house so it’s not unexpected.Â I didn’t bother to slow down.Â I figured it would be a waste of time.Â I plan to change out the trim around the windows, perhaps even replace the windows further down the road.Â it would have have been a waste of time.Â I really like the color.Â It echoes the gray skies of typical Washington weather out the windows, and the grey of the Bay Lake beyond the walls.Â Interesting contrasts.

Here’s a sample of the paint colors that I looked at.

Painting Your Kitchen Cabinets

ThisGirl — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:20:06 +0000

Tonight, This Old House had an episode about painting Kitchen Cabinets.Â They went into detail about the process.Â Geeze, I wished I had seen this episode sometime last summer before I started painting my kitchen cabinets.Â It wouldÂ have saved me some time and money.Â On the other hand, in the end, I pretty much did what they did, but I used a different kind of paint, and I’m satisfied with the job.Â However, if you’re going to be painting your kitchen cabinets, this episode is a must see.Â They recommended 5 coats (1 primer, 2 coats of acrylic and 2 coats of water based polyurethane), the home owner ended up doing 6 coats (1 primer, 3 coats of acrylic and 2 coats of water based polyurethane).Â The home owner also used foam rollers, just as I did.Â

Saving on Fabric Softener

ThisGirl — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:32:10 +0000

With 7 to 10 loads of laundry a week, we go through a lot of fabric softener.Â I have an older washer and dryer, so that means that I do a wash, and then after the wash has been completed, I run a rinse with fabric softener.Â So basically the wash runs 1.5 times.Â And then last November, I saw the Bounce Fabric Softener bar.Â Just attach it to the inside of your dryer, and it lasts between 2 to 4 months.Â I bought the bar at my local grocery store for $8 and figured why not, it was worth a try.Â I fastened the bar to the inside of my dryer and saidÂ ”sayonara” to the liquid fabric softener that I loaded into the washing machine and theÂ fabric softener sheets I placed in my dryer.Â Sure enough, it was still going strong in January.Â Â I was still smelling the fresh smell of fabric softener every time I opened my dryer, and my clothes felt good and smelled fresh.Â So I figuredÂ this was the way to go.Â You don’t know how much time and waterÂ has been saved with the fabric softener bar.Â And then when I went looking for replacement bars, I found out that they don’t sell replacement bars.Â You have to buy the whole kit.Â That was a little disappointing.Â I hate the idea of having to purchase a kit again and again, but then once I realized that the the adhesive container isn’t really that much plastic, and when I compared that little piece of plastic to the amount of time,Â money and water that the bar saved, I thought it hands down worth it.Â There are a variety of opinions on this product however.Â Here, read some.Â http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2557111/bounce_dryer_bar_review_fabric_softener.html?image=902987&cat=46.Â I also found a great deal on this bar at Amazon.Â With prime shipping, the replacement bars costs me only $6.07 a piece.Â However, a few days later found a better price at Amazon for $2.78 a piece with Amazon Prime, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002BH4TTI/ref=cm_cr_mts_prod_img.Â Â

Â The used up bar looks like a used up bar of soap.Â One reviewer stated that she puts the bars in her glove box to keep her car smelling fresh.Â That sounded like a good idea to me.