For our anniversary, Jen had found a wine making kit for me, but I still needed to pick out what wine we wanted to start with…so we went with a simple california cabernet. We started our first batch at the end of April.

Funny story and the beginning of my newest hobby.  When mom was in the nursing home, and nearing the end, there were still some fun moments and some great memories.  Me, Jen, Shelly, Sandy and SG were all there and one of the nurses came in to give mom her pain meds…she walked towards her and said “down the hatch”, and every one of us, including mom laughed, but the nurse didn’t put it together…Barbara Hatch, Down the Hatch. We decided at that moment to name our first wine after that moment.

And our second batch was also a ‘select california cabernet’ and sticking with the Hatch theme, we came up with Hatchback…there were a couple others, but these were the 2 we decided on.

After these 2 cabernet’s, I decided to make a “white merlot”…this wine turned out very nice and Jen came up with the name of this one, Really Jones’n…we both got really emotional…almost like we didn’t get the chance to mourn Aunt San. I would not be the person I am today if she wasn’t in my life. Sandra Jones!

And our last wine for the year was an Australia Cabernet…this turned out to be the one I liked the most (but not because of the name, but the wine itself). We decided after it was completed the this wine is our last “memorial wine” name.  Holiday Magic…our babies that we lost in the last year!

Our next few wines will have fun names! I have started a French Cabernet…any suggestions?

My last post was in April of 2015…with the building of the frame building of the ‘screened in porch’. Well, a million things happened that made it difficult for me to want to put it out there publicly…so I kinda shyed away from my blog.

For the last few weeks, I have wanted to start blogging again, and at the same time, there were technical difficulties that were fixed over the holidays (the site was down for a few weeks).

My “catching up” posts may or maynot happen in order, but I will get pictures up of some of the changes in ourhouse!

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I decided that when the Lemon Law case was finished, I would take any money from it and get a pickup.  So when the lawyer called me yesterday to talk about a settlement, I did very little negotiating…I stood firm for the first call, but they came back with a counter-offer and since i really didnt want to have to go to court for this and it was more than the first offer, I took it!

I kinda knew what I wanted…I liked the Nissan Frontier because it’s a 6 cylinder and I think that’s all the power I will ever really need, got rave reviews from Kevin and Bradford (how can I go wrong?).  So I called my cousin, John (he knows more about cars than anyone I know). He told me that the Frontier had had a transmission issue from 2005 to 2008, but nothing since then…so I was sold!  He also told me to go to carmax and get a written appraisal, either carmax would buy my car or I could use the appraisal to negotiate…which is exactly what I did.

This is now my newest toy…I hope to be driving this truck way past 300k miles!

Now I have to go buy something that you can only move in a truck!

You ain’t gonna believe this shit!

We went to Lowe’s to buy something that we could put in the back of the truck…you know, something that wouldn’t easily be moved in a car, so we bought a toilet.

For years the old toilet was faithful, but sometimes didn’t want to finish it’s job…so it was time to retire it!

I pulled the old toilet up when I gutted the bathroom, but since it was an old reliable toilet, I just rebuilt it…all new gaskets, brass screws, wax ring, new seat…all of it!

I have done this job before which means I know I will probably need a second pair of hands, so I figured I would do it on the day Scott was supposed to come over and if I needed help, he would be close by.

Removing the old toilet was quick and clean…it really helped that the brass screws weren’t so completely rusted.  The cast iron closet flange wasn’t as pretty as it could be so I ran down to home depot and got one of these

I took my time putting the new toilet in, and even though Jen was a little skeeved by the job, she was ok with helping me lining it up so that the wax ring didn’t go askew, got it bolted down, added the tank, connected the plumbing and flushed it. Haven’t seen a leak yet (and I have been checking), it doesn’t rock, feels pretty solid….now we just need 30 golf balls to test it.  OK, so no golf balls, but that’s how they advertised this particular toilet!

The drywall hung on the ceiling first

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April 6-8

I started in the corner…1st layer was paneling, 2nd layer was spackled drywall underneath and the 3rd layer was very flaky insulation that didn’t come out very easily. Don’t forget about the ceiling tiles through the whole house…

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April 9-11

We needed to be careful ripping out the interior walls because of the electric cables…it’s an old house so you never know how they were ran until you got it open…

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April 12-19

The walls in the hallway were the most complicated…lots of studs to pry tiny pieces of drywall out…

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The only room that we didn’t gut was the Master Bedroom (and the kitchen…because we already did that)

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After a fantastic Anniversary weekend at Rocky Gap Resort, it is time to get this project rolling!  Scott came over last Thursday and we went over just about everything we want to dig in to. This is the order for getting the porch done…electric, insulation, and then drywall.

The first thing that really needs to be done is the wired doorbell so I can move my office down stairs and not have to run upstairs every time the dogs feel the need to bark (they do this at least 10x’s a day…one barks and the other two start (not even knowing why)) So the idea is to do what needs to be done to get there…

The first thing I need to do is gut the inside front wall so we can put some outlets on the front porch and the ceiling fan

There are alot of things going on around here, but I have fallen behind on every post.  I decided that I will start with today and then go back and fill in the blanks, hopefully I wont miss anything in the process.

refinanced the mortgage and home equity loan into 1 payment, as well as having an advance on the new loan to do some work around here.  Closed all my accounts at the big bank, Lemon Law case is done, bought a pickup and a cover (that I need to pick up today)…all in the last 2 weeks!  My head is spinning a little.

The reasons I promised Jen that I wouldn’t start with the demo until after our Anniversary weekend…

• we are gutting anything that has paneling (and the drywall underneath), still trying to figure out if we’ll be tearing out the ceiling tiles.
• Mom is house/dog sitting while we are gone, so we don’t want to kill her with the dust…and
• I really don’t want to be thinking of all of this while we are away.

Scott will be here tomorrow to go over what’s on the agenda, he will have plenty to do…we have to decide on when he will start and what he wants us to have done for him to start. We picked out a doorbell so that I will be able to move my office to the basement until things are done (or maybe permanently…) after that, we can start with the demo

I’ll post a few before pictures in the next few days