3: too many projects

The kids were all going to update their names (which hang in various places in their rooms) when they saw I was going to finish Zayda's so we could put it up in her new (somewhat nearly) put together bedroom. Of course none of them could find everything they thought they needed so none of them got done but now I have all sorts of letters and fabric and paper and paint and different glue supplies all over the front room and the kids have moved on to other projects. This approach to things is why my whole house seems to be under construction. . .

245: painting

We need to switch the bedrooms around and since we were taking all the furniture out to figure out how to get two beds in here inside of one, I wanted clean new paint. This was supposed to happen months ago, and the boys and I had cool designs figured out for the walls. And then like all of the other things I hoped to get done this summer it didn't happen. Since we desperately need to get our house functional so people have places to sleep and put clothes away, we decided to use leftover paint we had here and keep the same basic stripe and just get it done. We're just moving from grey walls to white and from a maroon stripe to a red one-- but basically the room won't look too new or excitingly different. Still, I've convinced the boys it will look cool and it really cuts down quite a lot on the time we need to get it painted with less priming and no outlining new designs and those sorts of things. Since I have too many other projects I'm trying to get done simultaneously, I just left this crew in charge of getting it painted. It sort of worked. Azia's attention to detail (or lack thereof) was really quite hard on my latent OCD, and I probably won't be able to look at the corners and trim and all the spots where the wrong color ended up on the ceiling, but at least it's getting done. I don't venture into the boys' end of the hall much anyway.

359: snowflakes and mustaches

Those were pretty much the highlights of our day.

261: the newest excuse for why my family hasn't had a decent meal in two weeks

I have gathered every type of sanding device and finish removing liquid I could locate that could possibly lessen the amount of hours I needed to spend sanding.  None of them are effective enough to keep me from pretty much totally losing my mind. Also, my cupboards still look sort of awful.

I've now determined that rather than getting my kitchen back into some sort of functional state it would probably be quicker to begin solving the mystery of time travel, go back a few decades and advise my younger self to choose a different profession, one where I could just afford to pay a professional to build me some functional, decent looking cabinets. While they're already in my kitchen, they could also patch all the holes in my sheetrock and paint the walls. And make dinner. I can't seem to find time to get that done very often lately either.

252: just another project in progress

We have them going on everywhere.

It's like a chaotic countdown: how much will we finish before the snow falls?!

And in a related note, my children think I'm a slave driver. (Azia's right behind me planting bulbs and spreading bark.)

I'm just annoyed that  between school and football and soccer and cross country and homework, I can barely squeeze an hour of work out of them a day.  This back to school things really interferes with my work force.

247: another project I don't have time for

So this is what my kitchen looks like. . . three days after I started the project. I seriously need to stop starting projects. I just had so much I wanted to do before school started but we were SO busy all summer, so busy we didn't even have 2-3 days in a row where someone (or many people) weren't working, at camps, or fulling other obligations, so we couldn't even fit in a mini-family weekend trip let along my home improvement projects. So, now the new deadline is before it snows. Unfortunately, this back to school stuff has hampered productivity so now I just have chaos and disorder everywhere in my house, and yard, and starting this week. . . my professional life, too.

224: projects and more projects

I just keep starting projects rather than finishing them.  All my closet contents are all over the floors and rather than putting things away I just keep finding something else that needs to be painted or sanded or assembled. I'm running out of days before I have to go back to focusing on school stuff. At least Israel works for milkshakes. Too bad he has even fewer days before school than I do.

223: working into the night. . .

or maybe we just don't get around to the working until the night.  (The first option sounds more industrious and productive though so we'll go with that.)

And, on a related note, staining your deck in pretty much total darkness except for a porch light didn't turn out nearly as bad as I thought it might.

Day 344: Clean up

Dev and I both spent all day cleaning up our disgusting yard and outside area. Loads to the dump, repainted doors and trim (weather, dogs, and Lex with spray paint have been rough on them) and even planted a few flowers.

The million life jackets are still hanging on the fence. We still have scraggly, tall weeds lining the driveway fence line and side of the house a motorized scooter with a dead battery and a weight bench in the carport, but we are making progress. It was slightly less embarrassing when the FedEx guy delivered a package and could actually make it to the door.

Cleaning with all sorts of help

I have this goal to have my house organized by the time I start teaching again next month. It seems like a fairly impossible goal since I can't even keep my kitchen floor swept, but we'll see how it goes.

Last week I decided to start with the worst closet first. Since I can't get anything done in the evening since I seem to be gone so often I told the kids they could design and paint the closet if they helped me clean it out. I was aware of what an awful plan this was even before we began but I was trying to figure out some way to actually work on it during the day with kids while still keeping them entertained and out of trouble.

They actually really liked the idea.

 Azia and Addison got to work right away coming up with design possibilities for all the kids to choose from. And the boys were ready to start hauling things out and putting my piles into the appropriate places.

 We needed to go through everything so we could actually get to all the paint to begin touch up (and in some cases more major) work once on the other rooms in the house once we got things organized.

 So this is what we started with.

 Okay I'm lying. This is the great organization system that was in place.

I wonder why I couldn't find anything?

Once we had it cleaned out and the kids had decided on a plan, I got them some paint and they got to work.

 Again. . . unwise. . . look at all those children with paint.

And then after every once left for the day I left Lex with access to the paint.  He was sort of following the kids' design plan, but he got a little out of control with it.

 Luckily Azia & I got most of it scrubbed off their newly painted wall and the couch.

We will not discussed the side of the house. No one will notice once we repaint there. It's on the list.


Anyway, now we have a new closet play room! (There were also big circles on the ceiling in their plan which we will add later. I ran out of patience and also didn't want to buy more paint! )

This is largely a toy storage area because we don't have a play room but do have a half dozen ride on toys and giant trunks of costumes that have no homes in any kid's room. Some time in the near future we will probably cut much of this little kid play equipment & use this space for something more practical, but for now I need somewhere to lock all this kid stuff so it isn't overtaking the house when kids aren't using it.

But as a lovely side feature, the kids do think they now have a play room. Who cares if it's only like 3x6 or something and there isn't actually any room to play once more than one person is in it.

 It's still exciting and somewhere new to hang out.

Also,  it serves as a guest room:

Bryce & Iyezk: I found these two like this at about 2:00 am when I got home from an ambulance call. I was worried they had enough of the sleepover and went home in the middle of the night but then I noticed them in the closet!


Anyway, one huge headache of disorganization under control, about a dozen more to tackle.

September 30, 2010: New Carpet!

How else would you celebrate besides escaping from the bath and running naked through the warm sunshine on the brand new flooring?

September 29, 2010: Disarray

Yes that is my bed (in various pieces) with bedding all over the living room. I figured since all of my children would prefer to sleep in this room together every night, I might as well just move on in too. Also, we're ripping out all the carpet in our bedroom because it is so gross I'm pretty sure it's a health hazard. And on top of all that I am apparently trying to see how many unfinished house projects I can simultaneously not get finished. I'm sure I'm at least to a dozen by now. If I didn't have all this work people expected me to get down or show up to or there weren't so many children everywhere that always seem to need food or baths or rides somewhere maybe, for a few hours at least, I could have a house not in a constant state of disarray.

September 16, 2010: Fireplace in Progress. Still.

I had big plans to finally finish this today (since I've been working on it since March) but I grouted my bathroom floor first and ran out of grout before I got the fireplace done. Mainly I made a huge mess, but I got the front all done so I'm putting up the faceplate tomorrow! The rest may never be finished now....it's moving to near the bottom of my to-do list. And that is one long list.

September 15, 2010: Ready to Ride

We got all the gross carpet out & fresh paint on the walls. Lex isn't too upset that we don't have things moved back in because he thinks the whole room is a bike track.

September 11, 2010: Staining the Deck

Photo courtesy of Lex. He kept bringing my camera out and taking photos while we were working. But, he is very short so I have about 150 pictures of the floorboards of the deck. Also, about 20 of the back of me from the waist down...really not that flattering. I guess if he's going to be stealing my camera I should at least teach him to look at what he's photographing.

September 6, 2010: Getting ready for new flooring

April 1, 2010: Helping Hands

No time for April Fools pranks today, but we got so much done!

The main part of our fireplace is all finished--no grout, but all the rock work is done. The bottom would be too if we didn't run out of rock. I think our salespeople charged us for more square footage than they actually put in the truck! Dev and Dan did the main front part this morning-- they had to borrow some of the boys to hold the heavy pieces in place while they set. I'm still a little amazed that the mortar held some of these giant, heavy rocks.  After I got back from teaching in Pablo this afternoon Dev went on a large rock finding expedition this afternoon to get some huge, flat slabs for the hearth. Just a few more steps...hopefully we can get it all put together in the next few days. It already looks so much better!

Michael also got all the tile set this evening. After class at the fitness center he came back and helped me grout the whole thing. I scrubbed it all a few times and I think it should be set/ dry enough to seal it tomorrow night. It looks better too. Now I just want my kitchen put back together! And right at this moment I need a shower. I just realized it's already midnight...

March 29, 2010: under construction

We are using Spring Break to tear up (and hopefully put back together) our house.

If only these two were half as much help as they think they are.

March 9, 2010: So we are still in Montana after all

We've had almost 60˚ weather for the past week. Then, this morning, we woke up to piles of snow and snow still falling from the sky.  And cold (or colder) weather once again.

It is quickly warming up again. It doesn't seem like this snow will stick around long, but we didn't really have much of a winter anyway so it's not bad for a few days.

As an added bonus, the snow is really pretty and it covers up how gross our yard looks!

February 1, 2010: What a way to start the month

Yes, leaky plumbing yet again. This is the 3rd of 4 valves in the new part of my house that has now failed in about the span of one year. I thought I could just stick this pot under there and do a couple loads of laundry before completely turning off the water. No such luck. It seemed to be dripping at a rapidly accelerating rate. I swear it was just dripping when I discovered it even though it obviously had been dripping for many days and the entire inside of this cupboard was drenched, warped and may be rotten. I'm hoping the bottom hold when I put stuff back. I think the wall behind it where water was accumulating has spots of mold. I just hope it didn't get under my tile, too. My wood floor is already warped from last time. Anyway, I walked away for a few hours & it was actually spraying under there and everything I'd just mopped up was flooded again. So, no water in that half of the house now--until I figure out a solution. I really wish my house wasn't continously falling apart from every direction.