Whoosh!

That sound you just heard was me, whooshing by to give a quick update on the remodel before I shut down the computer and pick up crowbar.  The siding and insulation to the exterior walls of the kitchen and laundry rooms are now gone.  So are the windows.  We've had over a week of glorious weather, with more glorious weather predicted, so now seemed a good time to start the demolition.  As Murphy's Law and Mother Nature would have it, we had unexpected (and unpredicted!) rain last night.  Isn't that the way it always is!  No big.  We'll be grateful for the cooler weather and make sure the plastic over the windows keeps the rain out.  Onward and upward!

Yet More Madness

The demolition of the exterior walls of the kitchen and laundry room has been postponed, but I've been busy anyway, drawing up design after design for the revamp of both rooms.  I've been meeting with the kitchen cabinet designer at Lowes, and he's put my designs into computer renderings, giving me a 3-D view of my concepts.  After many iterations, I've settled on a final design for the kitchen, and it's one I'm so excited about.  I get my breakfast nook and my island.  I'm very excited!

So today we gear up for the Big Push.  The carpenter is going to live in the basement in order to put in more hours on this project, and to save money on his long commute to and from my house.  So the project moves forward, and beginning today, it goes into high gear.

More Madness

The remodeling continues.  Slowly but steadily.  My carpenter-friend cannot make it every day, so I usually get him 2-4 days of the week, with 4 being rare.  And he's usually here for only 4 or 5 hours each day, so you can see why this is taking so long.  Plus, I'm doing a lot of the work myself, and I'm slow.  I do all the tedious stuff--painting, varnishing, sanding, etc. 

Next week we begin tearing down the exterior walls to the kitchen and laundry room. I'm the main tearing-down person.  Tove, the carpenter, will mark the items for demolition, and he'll cut the deck in half so that I can dismantle it.  I'll be saving as much useable wood as I can, to be used for rebuilding the new deck and for use in the enlargement of both the laundry room and kitchen.  I have a large bottle of aspirin set aside, and the pain pills for my back/leg are on prescription, so my crowbar and I are ready to roll!

The Madness Continues

Remodel woes.  Everyone told me I'd be tearing out my hair.  Actually, now that most of the lumber and construction debris have been removed from my hall and kitchen, I'm breathing easier.  I love the new white beaded board wainscoting in the hall with the pristine new mottled beige paneling above the wainscoting.  That's a picture of the hall, on the left.  I'm sorting through my artwork, trying to decide which pictures I'll be hanging on the walls above the wainscoting.  The hall will be my informal art gallery, since I have so much wall space.

I have painted or varnished miles and miles of trim and molding, and last night I stained and varnished (6 coats of varnish!) the oak that will be used as windowsills for the new windows in the Craft Room and the Rose Room.  (Okay, so they're spare bedrooms turned into a craft room and a sewing room!)

And next week we begin the expansion of the laundry room and the kitchen.  I'm excited and scared.  The exterior walls of both rooms will be demolished (that's my job!), so we'll have to make sure the weather will be nice, since I'll be exposed to the Great Outdoors.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Greetings From the Hinterlands

The reason I've been so quiet on this blog is that I'm deep in the throes of remodeling.  As in up to my armpits.  This has been going on since November of 2010, with a simple transformation of a spare room from a library to a craft room. The job just kept expanding and expanding, partly because of the usual old house woes needing to be fixed, but also because of opportune treasure finds, such windows. 
I have old, wavy-glass, single pane windows in this 100-year-old house, and I'm slowly replacing them with new, energy-efficient windows, one window at at time.  I have discovered that if you are very patient and check your sources diligently, you can find brand new windows for up to 50% off.  I made this discovery by accident when I was pricing windows at Home Depot.  They have a small, out of the way spot in the store where they place unclaimed or rejected new windows that were custom-ordered.  These windows are deeply discounted and they're sort of an insider secret, so unless you happen upon them (as I did) you won't know about them. Kind of like the table of discounted "oops" paint in the paint department.

I needed a long, skinny window for my bedroom, and found one at Home Depot that was only one inch shorter than what I'd wanted, but was way cheaper than ordering a custom window to fit into the non-standard opening.  I ended up paying $100 for my "custom" window!  So I haunt Home Depot and Lowe's, checking out their oops windows for my next replacements.

In the meantime, I am currently having wainscoting and paneling installed in the hallway, and I'm painting and varnishing molding and wood trim, while trying to come up withdecent reconfiguations for my kitchen and laundry room expansions.  If I survice, I'll eventually post pictures.

My New Craft Room

Ever go to the grocery store to pick up one item, and when you leave the store you have a shopping cart full of groceries?  That's how the renovation of my library-cum-craft-room started.  All I wanted to do was remove the tacky old carpet and replace it with linoleum/vinyl, and get rid of the sofa and desk to make room for my craft table and rubber stamps.  Famous last words.  This simple project has turned into a major renovation.

The gloomy dark brown carpeting has been removed and I have a gorgeous new vinyl floor that is beige and white.  I got rid of the desk and sofa and moved the old craft table from my bedroom to the new craft room.  Ugh.  The old table with cabinets beneath it just wasn't going to work--the table was too small and not the right shape.  So I determined to build a new table, using recycled materials as much as possible.  I kept the cabinets that were under the old table, and used them for the new table.  Had to buy a few more cabinets because the new table is twice the size as the old one.

Then I hung the rest of the cabinets on the wall above the table, and installed a new window.  I gutted the closet and installed shelving for all my art/craft/rubber stamping supplies.  And I'm having a small sink installed so that I can easily wash glue and ink off my hands and my rubber stamps.

Progress on the craft room is slow.  The guy I hired to do the stuff I can't do, can only work a day here and a day there.  In the meantime, there's all kinds of construction debris lining my hallway--lumber, nails, boxes of craft stuff waiting to be emptied into the new cabinets and closet shelves, etc.  The house is in utter chaos, and it's driving me bonkers, because I like things neat and tidy.  Had I been able to do all this stuff myself, it would have been done long ago.  But this bum leg and back prevent me from doing stuff I normally do.  And when you rely on others, the work progresses at their speed, not yours. 

Don't get me wrong--I am very grateful to Tove, the guy who's helping me.  He's reasonably priced, and an easy-going guy.  Fun to talk to, and a down-to-earth person.  I enjoy working side-by-side with him.  And in the 2 months we've been working on the craft room, it has seen major progress.  I'm very excited, and can't wait to see the finished product. 

I've kept costs down by using recycled materials as much as possible.  I make weekly trips to Goodwill and have found a treasure trove of things I can use, from a brand new faucet for my sink, to nifty receptacles for the myriad pens, pencils, X-acto knives, rulers, artist's brushes, etc.  Yesterday I found 3 stunning glass vases with really heavy bottoms.  They're square shaped and staggered in size, and because they are base-heavy, they're perfect for my tabletop craft supplies, which tend to tip over if put in lightweight containers.

As soon as I finish the room, I'll post pictures.  I know you're all just dying to see them.  In the meantime, here is a "before" picture.  I stitched 3 pictures together in Photoshop, so the alignment is off on the window and a few other areas.   

I've already ditched the sofa, but the upright sofa cushion behind the maroon chair was saved for the dogs to lie on.  The old carpet is rolled up on the right, ready for disposal. It was the same color as the ugly brown floor now exposed. Bookshelves line the entire wall on the right, on the left, and inside the closet to the far left of the picture.  The old window in this picture has been replaced with a smaller one, and the cabinets are now hung on the left side of the window.  The craft table and floor cabinets will stretch from the wall on the left to the edge of the window on the right.

What's New for 2011?

Sherrie, here, checking in with my hordes of blog readers who've been waiting with bated breath for news from ye old Holmestead.  (Insert smiley face)

I've been thinking about the things I hope to accomplish in 2011.  I even made a list of goals for the year.  I do this every January, and it's so rewarding to cross something off the list when it's been accomplished.  I have lists dating back some 35 years, and some of the things on those older lists weren't crossed off until 10-15 years later.  And some things dropped off the list because they were no longer important or relevant.  Case in point:  For several years my lists included tearing out the old disgusting carpet in my library (a sort of den with floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall books).  Well, last November (2010) I crossed it off the list as no longer being relevant.  I did tear out the old carpet, but by then I had decided to turn the library into a full-fledged craft room, turning it into a major renovation.

This year's list is smaller than normal, probably due to my current physical limitations.  (Can you spell "bum leg" boys and girls?)  However, even though my 2011 list is slightly smaller, it has some dauntingly huge items on it.  Such as finishing work on the library-cum-craft-room.  And gutting the laundry room to replace the floor and subfloor.  Then tear up the old flooring in the spare bedroom and replacing it with linoleum/vinyl.  Installing new windows, a room at a time, as funds permit.

So there you have it.  a glimpse into some of my plans for 2011.  Am I the only one who does New Year's resolutions, or are there a few relics out there who still do it?

When the Going Gets Tough . . .

. . . the tough Feng Shui.  Yes, I'm going to Feng Shui my house, because as a friend said, there's a lot of bad juju going on here.  I've looked into Feng Shui, and decided my preconceived ideas about it were all wrong.  I thought it was a yuppie New Age thing, but it is a centuries old belief in harmony, energy, etc.  And what I like about it is that most of it is basically just good old-fashioned common horse sense--nothing woo-woo about that!

The hardest thing I'm having to deal with right now is keeping the lid down on the toilet and keeping the bathroom door closed.  I hate closed doors.  They depress me. They cut off light coming in through windows.  They box me in.  But according to Feng Shui, the bathroom sucks energy, luck, and money down the drain.  So you shut the door. I'm new to all this, but I can kind of see how the bathroom can have some negative effects on your life.  For one thing, I've read the horrifying studies about all the nasty things that burst out of your toilet every time you flush it.  Things you can't see, but they're there.  They float around and deposit microscopic bits of sewer gas and fecal matter on your towels and toothbrushes (thank God my toilet is around the corner from the medicine chests and sinks!). 

So okay, I'm keeping the toilet lid down and the door closed.  We'll see how it goes the next time I go screaming down the hall, pulling down my jeans as I head for the bathroom, forgetting that the door is closed and the lid down.

Another thing that totally dismayed me is that you aren't supposed to have books in your bedroom.  Bad energy there.  A book on the nightstand is okay, but bookshelves aren't.  Sharp edges on the shelves, the murmur of millions of words filling the night air, the dust they collect (dust mites! Eeeekkk!) . . .   I guess books are too stimulating for the bedroom.  Which puts me in a dilemma, as I have over 5,000 books, and every room but the bathroom has bookshelves.  I consider books beautiful.  They cozy up any room they're in.  They are a fashion statement.  They are friendly and homey.  But not in the bedroom.  So I have to figure out what to do with the hundreds and hundreds of books in my bedroom.

Then I'm going to move my bed, because it's in a bad position.  Luckily, the spare bedroom that I'm converting into my craft room is in the "Creativity" section of my house, according to Feng Shui.  I hope that means I'll soon be making dynamite cards with my rubber stamps and bits of ribbon and lace.  It also turns out that the Financial part of my house is in my bedroom, so I'm reading up on what I can do to bring more money into my life.  The Career part of my house just happens to be where I set up my office.   I find that a lot of the decorating and arranging I've done with my house actually followed Feng Shui principals, and creates calmness and happiness in me because of the aesthetics.

So we'll see how this Feng Shui business goes.  I've been watching Feng Shui tips on YouTube and I have a client who knows a lot about Feng Shui, and she's helping me too.  I'm even going to aim for improving the Health section of my house, to see if I can get rid of this blasted leg problem!

A Leg Report

By now I'm sure all 3 of my blog readers are sick of nothing but reports on my bum leg, but hey, it's the most exciting thing in my life right now!  Last week I called the doc to tell him that the two pain shots in the butt and the 3 pain meds he has me on are doing zilch for the pain.  If anything, I'm worse.  Today the doc's office finally returned my call.  They are referring me to an orthopedist and tripling the dose on one of my pain meds.  (I hope it's not the one that gives me a dry mouth!  I have to carry water with me because I get so dry that I choke when trying to talk.)

So that's the latest.  Once they process the referral, I'll call the orthopedist for an appointment.  I'm dreading how much this will cost, as I have no medical insurance.  On the other hand, I really want to get this thing fixed! 

At Last! A Diagnosis!

Saw the doctor yesterday and finally (FINALLY!) have a diagnosis for the cause of my leg and back pain:  herniated disk, sciatica, and a pinched nerve in my hip (meralgia paresthetica).  I have a list of back exercises to do, three prescriptions for (1) pain, (2) inflammation, and (3) spasms, and a couple of shots in the butt for immediate pain relief.  (Though I have to admit that 13 hours later I'm still not feeling much pain relief.)
However, I did get a good pun out of the butt shots.  The nurse had just given me the first shot in the left cheek when I asked her if she wanted me to "turn the other cheek."  It made her laugh.  This was one of the few times I actually thought of a pun right away instead of an hour later. 

Anyway, the doc discussed options with me.  He wanted to order an MRI, but I haven't any medical insurance and can't afford the $4,000 for the MRI, so that is not an option.  He also wanted to refer me to a bone specialist, but again, the new doc will want an MRI. So I'll do my back exercises, continue to lose weight, take my meds, including increased amounts of B-6, B-12, and Folic Acid (all of which I'm already taking).  And in another year I'll be 65 and on Medicare, so if things haven't improved by then, at least I'll have Medicare.

I'm just glad I finally have a diagnosis and a list of things I can do to help me get better.

One More Leg Update

Getting tired of me talking about my leg all the time?  Well, me too.  As I write this, I am in considerable pain.  The leg is really bad today.  So bad that even using crutches is painful.  Both my feet are swollen.  And the right leg aches like a seriously bad toothache, only ten times worse.   The pain pills and aspirin only take the edge off, but don't knock out the pain.  Despite the fact the doc didn't find anything wrong when I had the ultrasound, I'm going to make another appointment.  We simply HAVE to get to the bottom of this!  I can't continue like this.  Standing alleviates the pain as long as I put my weight on the other leg, but after awhile, the good leg starts to ache from the constant strain.  Sitting is downright painful.  Lying down helps, but I can't live my life flat on my back.  Driving is excruciating. 

Today I am hobbling around like a cripple.  I've been doing leg stretching exercises and they only seem to make it worse.  I'm not overdoing the exercises, but yesterday I did some mild hamstring stretches and today I can barely walk.  So I'm going to make yet another appointment with the doc and ask for X-rays.  Maybe that will show something that the ultrasound didn't.  In the meantime, I've become extremely grumpy from the pain.

But there's good news.  I've now lost 13 pounds.  I've lots more to lose, but at least I'm losing!

Leg Update #3

Break out the Band-Aids!  I spoke too soon.  My leg pain is coming back.  It is just the most bizarre thing!  Now the entire leg is involved, from buttock/hip to foot.  Sitting for longer than 5 minutes is painful, and driving a car is excruciating (it's my right leg, so pressing on the brakes or gas pedal makes things worse.)  I now drive with my body twisted so that my weight is on my left hip and butt, to relieve pressure on the bad leg.  I look weird, but hey, it works!  Sort of.

I've lost 12 pounds, and have tons more to lose, but I'm sure that losing weight will help.  Or at least keep things from getting worse.  Now I have to get up and walk around some more.  Sayonara!

Leg Update #2

Well, the results are in.  It is not a blood clot.  It is not deep vein thrombosis.  That's what it isn't.  They do NOT know what it is.  Nor, apparently, do they care, especially since the leg is getting better on its own.  I love the medical system.  They called to tell me no blood clots and no thrombosis, and got ready to hang up. 

I went, "Whoa, wait a minute here.  We aren't done.  I've been in intense pain for over two months, been on crutches and painkillers, been incapacitated.  Shouldn't we dig a little deeper to find out WHAT is causing all this pain, so that I can keep it from happening again?  And what exercises or therapy should I be doing?"  The nurse was nonplused.  After all, I was getting better.  The problem was going away on its own.

It was my turn to be nonplused.  Just because I'm getting better doesn't mean we can now ignore the previous months of pain, or the fact that for the past two years I've had more and more bouts of intermittent pain.  I guess these questions will remain unanswered.  Wonderful medical system we have, eh?

So I'm going to lose weight, as I'm sure that's a factor.  I'm being careful about the leg, trying to avoid doing anything that will cause a flare-up.  I sleep with a pillow between my knees (have for years).  I'm taking aspirin when the pain flares up.  I'm not overdoing things--no more long hours on my feet doing spring housecleaning or house painting beyond the pain threshhold. Without a diagnosis, that's all I can do.  Plus, I'm staying away from banana peels.

Leg Update

I saw the doc last week regarding my bum leg, and yesterday I went in for ultrasound to "rule out a blood clot."  Of course, they won't tell you the results of the ultrasound.  You have to get that from your own doc.  The ultrasound lady told me that my doc would have the results of the ultrasound in a couple of days, so I'm expecting a phone call by the end of the week.

In the meantime, the doc gave me some pain pills, so I'm off crutches for now, thank goodness.

Bum Leg

The past 45 days have been interesting.  For some reason, I ended up with a bum right leg.  I suspect part of the reasonn is my persistent meralgia paresthetica (pinched nerve) in my thigh, but that doesn't explain the knee and calf pain. Sitting is painful.  Walking is painful.  Standing is painful.  Driving is excruciating because of the pressure on the back of the thigh from sitting.  Lyng down does help a little.

When you live alone, there's nobody to fetch and carry for you.  Nobody to bring you a glass of water or cook your dinner or drive to the grocery store.  So resting the leg is difficult--thus the borrowed crutches and the standing saddle stool (more on the stool, below).

Never one to rush into things, I thought I'd take a wait and see attitude and let Mother Nature do some healing.  Apparently Mother Nature was on vacation, because she totally ignored me, and the pain got so bad that I'm now on crutches.  I also bought one of those standing saddle stools, and I zoom all around the house in it, which has helped take the weight off my bad leg. These stools are designed with a seat that looks like an English saddle, so that when you sit in them, your legs hang down from the hips, not from the knees.  This takes pressure off the back of the thighs and keeps the hips in a more open position.

I have an appointment with the doc in a few days to get a diagnosis and to see if they can get me back to normal.  In the meantime, just call me "gimp."