Sadness is a big ass billboard.

Our "new" old house is almost an hour away from where we currently live and the job that I love. People around here aren't really commuters-- after all, the state of Arkansas has only 3 million people, and there are only a few metro areas scattered around the state. They look at me, shocked, and shake their heads that I would be insane enough to move further away from work.

I have several reasons for finding this situation preferable to living within the growing Northwest Arkansas metro sprawl. For one thing, I've said before, houses are about 1/4-1/3 the cost if we move southward. Another major factor is the traffic-- if we'd moved only a few miles north, my commute would have been easily 30-45 minutes in heavy traffic; 50 minutes south is pretty low traffic, therefore low stress. I can listen to NPR, drink my coffee, and have Me Time to unwind at day's end. (I'm not being completely naive, here, I swear-- I did this commute the opposite way when I first moved and before I went back to school. I know what I'm getting into).

But what I always say, and something they always agree with me on, is that at least it's a pretty drive. The highway runs through the Boston Mountains, which are Ozark Mountains foothills. It's one of the most beautiful valleys in this country, certainly in this part of the world. Ozarks are like miniature Appalachians-- soft, rolling, ancient mountains covered in oak, maple, dogwood and redbud trees that turn beautiful shades of red and yellow in the autumn, with humongous expanses of horizon. Acres-- miles-- of sky and hills and dales. Only a handful of small towns along the highway, most of which are literally, one intersection, no traffic light, gas station/grocery/car wash/bill-pay all in one kinds of towns. Place is rural.


And that, my friends, is why I'M SO PISSED about the 3 GIGANTIC BILLBOARDS that went up sometime since Wednesday. They are ugly beyond belief. I hate them. And if that is what is going to happen to my morning commute-- to a stunning piece of the country not overly manhandled by the world at large-- if that is the result of the not yet open lake resort on Lake Fort Smith...well...

do. not. want.

Such a shitty beginning to a Monday morning.

Thanks, POs, for at least this one thing!

A post this morning by Nate over at Nate's Fargo Fixer-Upper reminded me that I do have a few things to be grateful for from my POs. Nate made an awesome find of a slew of doorknobs on eBay (BTW-- has this been super-fabulous-deals-deals-deals January in blogland or what?) and it reminded me that pretty much every doorknob and hinge in our house is period. They may not all be original, but they're antique and mostly suited to the age of the house. Some are really plain brass (these are mostly on the retrofitted closets), but most of them are a mixture of crystal knobs on art deco plates and stamped brass on rectangular stamped plates.

Some of my favorites:


But it's not just the fact that they are still in the house. I don't think I've mentioned this before, but there was some panic during the bidding process. It's a small town and we do happen to know one of the previous owners (2 owners ago). The family was interested in buying back the house and they looked at it during the bidding period. They didn't end up bidding. But I did find out that while they installed some of my least favorite things in the house-- like the Berber carpet-- they took the time to remove all the doorknobs and hinges, strip them of their paint and polish and restore them. They also installed the brick patio in the backyard-- bricks that came from the street when the city tore it up ~15 years ago to put in modern paving. That was a feature that almost sold us on the house all by itself.

So thanks Previous Owners.

Sometimes, ok, a lot of the time, I bitch and moan about all the shitty things you've done to this house. But you're not one big blob of a PO-- some of you did some really nice things that I am ever so grateful for.

We owe you one. But just this one-- 'cause that carpeting was a bitch to get up.

My biggest deal yet and other tales of the Home Depot

So I've mentioned the bathroom wall cabinet at 30% off...the Moen shower head at 80% off...the stainless steel trashcan duo for $10...our labor day sale granite tile and appliances...our Overstock.com faucet...the chandelier on clearance...We've found some pretty good deals. Well, folks, my bestest bargain so far came along over the weekend.

I almost never shop at Home Depot-- they're a little too expensive for poor little me. But they happen to be the only people we've found that carry our base shoe in the lengths we need. So we trucked on out there Saturday night to stock up on base shoe and grab a few other odds and ends we needed for our tiling project (which will get its own very special post, ugh.) and happened upon...



That's 92 square feet of Rajah slate bought at the reasonable price of $0.49/ft2. And it doesn't stop there. Remember I got a little tip that Lowes would be putting a lot of stock on 50% off clearance? After we got that information, we decided to put the search for laundry room flooring on hold for a while, at least until we had a chance to view the upcoming bargains. But when I saw this big stack of tile, I counted it and found that there was much more than the 77 ft2 that I need. I am NOT an impulse shopper, so I had to "sleep on it." Except that sleeping on it meant that before we even got to the car I decided I'd come back the next morning. So I did. And the flooring guy who loaded it up for me said that there 90 tiles, plus 2 broken ones (there were a few more broken tiles than that, but I can use them for edges if I have to) so he only charged me for 84 tiles. I can't even get nice ceramic tiles for that, and I certainly can't get half decent sticky tile at that price. It'll be more work, but I'm so happy.

Now, on the not so nice side of our trip to the depot...We needed about 20 lengths of base shoe. We see the station with a big sign that says, "CUT IT YOURSELF," in all caps, just like that. We think, "Great, we don't have to find someone to do this for us." Well, let me say that the sign should read, "Cut it your DAMN self." It is a tiny ass little hand saw. That kind of ridiculousness gets old after 5 boards, much less 20.

But the slate made it all ok. And the tiling guy was actually very helpful and seemed knowledgeable-ish. Overall, a good shopping weekend. The actual tiling project, however, is another story entirely.

Yuck!

This stuff is gross...



But it's also miraculous.

See, we have a lot of baseboards that look something like this:



Somebody took off the baseboards and didn't really get everything quite straight when they put them back. This created a number of gaps, up to 1 1/4" between the baseboards and the floor. When there was carpet, it wasn't so much of a problem. Now without it, I can see grass outside through some of these cracks. I like to wave and say hi to the outside when I walk by.

Now. A smart person would simply remove the baseboards and lower them to match the floor and square up with the corners. However, a smart PO wouldn't have done this:



(Excuse the sloppy paint-- we're not done with the trim, yet) So...they didn't bother to remove the baseboards to do the drywall, they just went up to the tops of the boards and stopped. Sigh.

Anyway, just one of the things that has to be added to the list of stuff we can't control. I simply don't have the energy or time to REdrywall the whole house. So we used 5 cans of the expandable spongy goo to fill the gaps. When it dries, we'll trim it and install a base shoe-- actually, a door casing that has a profile mimicking that of the primary baseboards.

I've begun reminding myself that we are the POs for all future owners; they'll be shaking their heads about all kinds of things that we've done out of frustration, exhaustion, and as a consequence of everything that's come before us.

At least now we won't be bleeding money through the floors by running the heat pump with one giant crack running around the entire perimeter of the house.