Running in place

Just the other day I said to Adam, "This year, on my winter break, I should be able to get a lot done on the house. Last year I was so focused on training and keeping Luna from freaking out over the other dogs getting too close to HER things and HER food and HER people that I didn't have time for anything else. She's so much better now. I'll be able to do things."

You may have already guessed: famous last words. 

Adam sent me a picture a couple of weeks ago of a cute, cute, cute puppy in the liquor store. Customers bring their dogs in sometimes. "Who does that cutie belong to?" I asked. 

"Don't know." Don't know. Uh oh. 

"What are you doing with him?" I asked. 

"Playing, mostly."

Not good. Not good, not good, not good. 

I have looked for an owner, I have tried to find a new home. I don't know if we'll find that home for him, but for now, he is here. After coming to us, he threw up 2 corn cobs and had to have surgery to remove a third that was lodged in his small intestines. On Christmas Eve. So now that we have spent some serious time worrying over him, it'll have to be a pretty damned perfect home. He's a good boy, but I am spending yet another winter break wrangling dogs. :\

That said, hopefully you will be seeing us tackle some of the list. 

• Refinish the floors. Again. (One, then two, then three, then two, then three, then four dogs will wreak havoc on pine floors)
• Put down new flooring in the kitchen
• New kitchen cabinet doors
• Wrap up the painting, in and out
• Seed the yard
• Patch a hole in the ceiling

Here's hoping. There may be some other somewhat unrelated projects in the works. Just have to see how everything goes...

And we trudge forward.

Well, the last couple of days were long and I'm sore all over. Adam had more shop business yesterday, so it was me and pups again...and as usual, they were no help at all. They spent most of the day basking in the sun and trading places on the bed.


Stinkers. Meanwhile, I was able to get started even earlier with the nice weather, but then I immediately lost my keys in this mess while I was tromping down the flowers.


I was a little afraid I'd be stuck sifting through lilies all day, but I found them without too much trouble.

Considering it was just me, I think I did ok. I was able to get all the brick rollered by about 2 or 3 in the afternoon; I started using the sprayer again to get into the mortar, but I was just chasing drips and not getting great coverage, so I went back to my trusting 3" Wooster and a trim cup. It'll be slow-going, but we'll get there eventually. The biggest hurdle has been crossed. I think. At least my arms will be a fully painted, lovely shade of gray before it's over.


All I know is that I don't think I could have worked on it one more day. I've never been so happy to go back to work in my life.

More than I bargained for

I'm tired. I hurt all over.

The pibs is pooped, too.

While I painted the house, Robin ran around after squirrels; River sat next to me and stared at the paint roller; Simon slept. We're all pretty worn out.

I took the day off of work to keep up the painting. Yesterday, Adam and I were rollering the brick, while the kiddo and our friend Jessica cam behind us with brushes to fill in the mortar and other spots we missed. I was using a regular roller with a 1 1/4" nap roller cover; Adam was using a Wagner Paint Mate Plus with a 3/4" nap. The Paint Mate Plus is one of the ones where you fill the handle with paint, and pull a trigger to pump the paint into the roller. This all worked pretty well with 4 sets of hands.

Today, it was just me. Adam had shop stuff to do, and the kiddo went back to her mom's and to school. Just me and the pups-- and let's be honest: their lack of opposable thumbs really worked against us.

I used the Wagner roller for a while, and things went fine. When my arm started to get tired, I switched to the brush. Filling in all the mortar...took foreeeeeeever. It went sooooo slooooow. By about 1:45, I'd finally had it. I looked down the wall, and it was just freakin' miles of mortar to paint.

Luckily, I remembered that Harbor Freight had a 20% off coupon in the paper yesterday, so off I went to buy a cheap, shitty paint sprayer. (I also got a free flashlight! Bonus!!)

I got it home and started playing with it. I have to thin the paint so much, and the container is so small, that I don't want to use it for the majority of the brick, but it was definitely a turning point in my productivity for the day. Here's what I do. I paint with the roller, and then use the sprayer to put a quick, thin coat onto the mortar. Lastly, I take the brush and backbrush the paint into the mortar and splotchy areas. It goes so, so, so much faster. So I'm taking off tomorrow to try and get the rest of the house body finished. I know the trim won't happen immediately, but we will be so very close.

So very, very close.

April Update

Wow. We've really been slacking.

It's been awfully hard to want to do much; the weather finally got nice, and while we should be taking advantage of it to do house work, I don't think anyone believes it's really here and just wants to take advantage of it to have fun while we can!

We did manage to finally decide on a paint color. We ended up going with the darker color on the right and the darker, browner red.

The green/taupe/khaki color for the brick; the cream color for wood trim; the red for the eaves and prob frint door; maybe also windows. Haven't totally decided on that.

I'll have to post a pic later of the column that we mocked up to make the final decision. We wanted to try to claim the last of the depreciation, so we had to go ahead and buy the paint, even though the weather isn't quite paint worthy yet.

We were going to use the Lowe's Valspar Duramax when we planned to paint during cold weather since it goes down to 35º. But now that it looks like we can wait until summer, we decided to go with regular Valspar Ultra Premium. It still gets great reviews from Consumer Reports, and we've certainly had good luck with it so far. And it's about $50 per 5gal bucket cheaper. Bonus.

So anyway, we went ahead to try and get it before our depreciation deadline and to take advantage of what we thought was a rebate offer; it was actually only for indoor paint. But no matter-- we got a great deal anyway...

See, when we got there, the paint dude told us he was out of the stuff he needed to do 5gal buckets of one of our colors in the ultra premium and that he could do Duramax for $50 more. Well, we discussed it, and decided to just get single gallons instead; we really didn't need the Duramax. While we were shopping for other stuff, the paint guy found us and told us he'd given the paint to us for the same price as 5gals. Awesome!

We go to pick up our paint and...uh oh. There's been a misunderstanding. He thought we wanted single gallons of Duramax (which kind of defeats the purpose, but we did get fewer gallons, 8 instead of 10, and I think he must have thought we were saving money by getting less...I dunno.). They are all labeled at $29 each, which is the 5gal price, but still more than we wanted to pay. We tell him there's been a misunderstanding and without blinking, the guy says, "Oh. Ok, No problem. I'll just give it to you for the cheaper price."

And not only does he give it to us for the price of Ultra Premium, he gives us the Ultra Premium 5gal price-- $17.90 per gallon. Holy CRAP.

Did we get a wicked deal or what?!? We kept apologizing to the guy, but at that point, his alternative was to put it on the mistint table for $5, so I guess this was better all the way round.

I hope we can get to this in the next few weeks. Honestly, all my time is being sucked up by animals; the new puppy is quite a handful. I'm actually thinking about starting another blog to track her training progress. We found her wandering around our neighborhood for several days and finally took her in as the sleet started coming down, the beginning of a mega snow storm. We looked for an owner, checked for a microchip, left a description and our phone number with the Humane society. Nothing. She was underweight and had worms. She's finally settling in, but we have a long way to go with her...


She is scared of everything. She barks at people and things that are unfamiliar, and cowers and gets stock still if she's scared and thinks someone's going to handle her (the vet). She was spayed and then had a bad reaction at the suture site, so the increased vet visits and handling didn't help matters. She also doesn't really know how to share her things with us-- she gaurds her toys and balls and bones (in fact NO MORE BONES for a while-- yikes!). Thing is, I already have a fear aggressive dog, and do not want another one! So most of my time is spent with her at the park, clicker and treats in hand, teaching her to be calm around unfamiliar stuff, or playing games of trade with her toys. She's super smart and sweet, and warms up to new people pretty quickly (treats help!), so I'm optimistic.

And that's the news around here! If I do start another blog, I'll post a link to it here, for any of you dog enthusiasts. It's sort of taken over my life-- I'm reading animal behavior books and scouring training forums and researching holistic remedies for any and all problems. I never thought it would be so fascinating to me, but there you have it!

It's crunch time

Well, it's been almost 2 years since the hail storm. That's how long the insurance company gave us to get things finished. We're still not done, so that means a whirlwind of work should be gearing up!

During the last couple of weekends, Adam has been working on a few things. I did my part today. First of all, Adam cut a threshold for the entrance between the kitchen and laundry rooms. I cannot believe I neglected to get a before picture. The closest thing I can find is this--a blurry crop from an even blurrier photo of the oven:


So Adam built a threshold out of pine:


Simon decided to pose with the wood...

Today, I shellacked it.

It's nothing special, but it'll get the job done until we have the time and money to replace the laundry room floor.

Next, we dealt with the broom closet. Before, it was too short and didn't reach the ceiling.



On one side, we added a little strip of wood:

And Adam put the crown trim back up...however, it doesn't really fit. the ceiling slopes, the closet slopes more, and to top it off, the cabinet also bows out.






It was my job to do a little creative caulking:




The splotches are due to wood filler-- I still have to paint pretty much all the trim in the house, starting with that ugly green door in the threshold pic above.

I also worked on cleaning up the patio in anticipation of nice weather to come. I'm ready to be done with the snow, to be honest. Our last big bout of snow and ice was certainly pretty and gave Adam a chance to use his new camera...



...and the puppies definitely had a great time romping in it.




You may be wondering who the little black and white piebald pup is. Meet Robin:


It's a long story; however, the long and short is, we weren't seeking out another dog, but she is a sweetie and is sticking around. Unfortunately, she went into heat pretty much immediately, so she's been a diaper dog and Simon has been a hot mess. She's only about a year old, and I'd guess this was her first heat. We'll be taking care of that ASAP.

And that's about it. Not much else to report around here. It's a long post, but I'm hopeful that the future holds lots of shorter posts with lots and lots of progress. In the next day or so, I'll post some new ideas for painting the house and soon thereafter, my trials and tribulations trying to match the texture on our ceiling.

Good times.

Our Plus-One

Last night we welcomed our new member of the family. Meet River.


But please ignore the dust bunnies and muddy paw prints ;-)

River was an owner-surrender at the shelter. The day they were going to euthanize her, one of the foster moms took her. She's 4 years old, but still seems like a gangly puppy. She's got a great personality, and thanks to her foster mom, she has excellent manners. She is housebroken (though we won't be surprised if there are accidents; it's a new home, after all) and knows most of the basic commands, including S-P-E-A-K. I'm afraid to even write it because she unfortunately doesn't know "shut-up" yet. We've got a ways to go on leash skills and re-crate training, but she seems super smart. She was in a crate in foster care, but this a slightly different size and different bedding, home, etc. She has a lot to get used to!

The cats are still under the beds, though River is wholly uninterested in them. And Simon is in love. He's always liked dogs more than people; people make him anxious, but dogs usually know how to communicate. We all woke up to roaring thunderstorms at 4 am. This morning, Simon was upset for a while, but after a little time with River, who is totally unaffected by the noise, and a valium, he calmed down more than I've seen him do in ages. It was great to see.



Did I mention she has the longest tongue in the world? And beautiful brown eyes that a camera flash simply doesn't do justice to.

Yay

Simon appears to be using his bed-- we found a big, warm, dog-sized crater in the middle and a pile of bedding outside the box. At least it's easier to sweep up than the flower bed dirt, not to mention the fact that it doesn't cake onto the brick or create a fine haze over everything.

All the storms that came through yesterday never actually culminated in much. Adam was off work, and he tells me that there were a few rumbles of thunder, but Simon handled it all well. No need for the meds and the house was intact when I got home, as was the yard. Of course, more is supposedly on its way tonight and for the next several days, so I continue to hold my breath.

On another note, our neighbors have the sweetest brindle boxer and another small dog. The two of them bark and bark and bark. I don't really mind, but it's a bummer since we just got Simon trained to understand that barking at nothing is not cool-- one bark plus lying down facing the house = get to come inside. Now they're talking at each other pretty constantly. But it's so cute when they're both up at the fence. They lick through the cracks and love and love and love on each other. Simon's just a lady's pup, apparently. When he was at my mom's, we used to come home frequently to find other lady dogs from the neighborhood who had climbed INTO our backyard to hang out with him. He's just that irresistable.

More progress

It's a real flurry of work at the house. Apparently, this is only when I'm not at home. No complaints from me!

I came home last night to see that Adam had mowed and installed the last of the kitchen counter trim. The place is too big of a mess to take pictures of that, and my camera needs batteries anyway; at this point, I am dampening the battery connections every time I need to take a picture. Just rest assured: we're getting there.

The dog, on the other hand, is getting better and worse. I tried melatonin and it definitely helped-- he's not shivering or panicking quite so hard, but he is still scrabbling at the floor-- and now it doesn't take much of a storm at all, sometimes no storm whatsoever (no storm elicits more of a "fluffing"; it's less panicked and he will stop on command). I fear that the TERRIBLE storms we had last weekend have made him extra anxious at night and with storms-- it had already been a traumatic day with 2 trips to the vet and a bad med reaction. I wish we'd never seen those pills. I still haven't given it to him again, and I am going to continue with the melatonin and perhaps add Rescue Remedy or one of the pheromone diffusers. I've also heard good things about valerian-- any thoughts? We will also go with a new bigger bed (it's time anyway) with lots of blankets and sheets to dig at and fluff-- the vet also suggested some counter-conditioning with thunder CDs. Finally, we'll try this:


Even at 2 am I thought this was a photo worth licking the batteries for. Those are just socks and velcro cable ties. His nails are pretty short and smooth (thanks, concrete!) but they still poke through a little; those are, after all, my old holey threadbare shitty socks. But they got me a few peaceful moments. I will invest in real dog booties or make some out of a canvass or something more heavy duty. Then he can just dig himself silly. It seems to either soothe him or be something he cannot control. Punishing him (ie-- putting him out or scolding or shaking coke cans with pennies), therefore, seems like the wrong response.

Anyway, I haven't slept now in about a week and it's killing me. Maybe we can get something working soon.

And just like that...

Summer is creeping up on us. And I'm ready. Yesterday, I came home to another great summer surprise:


Yep. Our porch swing that we got a year ago is finally up... Normally, I think swings should face the rest of the porch, but in our case, we use the side entrance to the porch a lot and didn't want to block it.

Now we have perfect push-off abilities with the porch ledge. It swings slightly off center, since we had to stagger the hooks up top (hanging it on an incline), but I don't really care. It's perfect.

Adam also wanted to try out the new compressor, so he fixed the front door. Since the DAY we closed on the house and we changed the locks, it has looked like this:

See there on the left? We had to pull that piece of trim off to change part of the lock. Well. As of yesterday? It looks like this:



I can't tell you how much it changes the entire room. Obviously still needs caulking and all the inside trim needs to be painted this spring when I can open the windows and confine the cats in the laundry room for a while. We want to wait until the base shoe is there so I can blend it in a bit more seamlessly. If you recall, we had to buy baseshoe quite a bit larger than regular quarter round because of the way the house has settled combined with that assy job the POs did sheetrocking AROUND the trim, rather than removing the trim, sheetrocking, and THEN reinstalling the trim. Grrrr.... Anyway. All in the past. No need to get worked up over it again.

As for the pup, he tried to dig the floor last night again-- 2nd time now that he's tried to dig when there's no thunderstorm, both times have been since taking the meds. I'm going to try the melatonin this week. Though, honestly, he may just want out-- the weather's been perfect and he's barely wanted to come inside at all...

So yeah. Things are chugging along at the ol' bungalow.

No, really! Housework!

So, full disclosure. A while back I posted pictures of the new gable vent. We had not installed it really. We propped it up there, made sure it fit, then went back to having a gaping hole into the attic. We tried keeping it covered with plastic, but these spring storms have made keeping it covered impossible.

But by the time I got home on Friday, Adam has secretly painted and installed the vent. TaDa!


I think I'd like to trim around it, but I must say I am very pleased with how it turned out. I also think I mentioned before that we recycled even more of the garage door wood to make this and I couldn't be happier.

We also got a new Porter Cable compressor. It's got two valves, so you can have 2 tools hooked up at once. It certainly wasn't the cheapest one, but we looked at Craftsman compressors at Sears, and they seemed so flimsily built compared to the PC. And the PC one is almost identical to my father's, which is what we had been using. Since we liked the older one, we went with the newer version of the same model. At least it was on sale. At any rate, I look forward to installing our base shoe, screening the porch, airing up our tires, and filling in the ghost door, among many other projects, I'm sure.

We had hoped to get the porch swing up this weekend, but had a doggie emergency. The puppy has developed terrible storm anxiety over the last year and it's reached a breaking point. If he's outside he digs up the yard until it starts raining, then he curls up-- not in his dog house-- but under the eaves. However, he has a serious double coat, so no matter how wet and soaked he looks, his skin is dry; I check every time, and am amazed still, every time.

But if he's in the house, he pants, paces, shivers, and tries to dig up the floor boards. I worry for the house and mostly I worry for his blood pressure. So I took him to the vet to see if there was something we could do or give him to quell his anxiety. They gave me some pills to try out and, since there was a storm rolling in that afternoon, I went ahead and tried them out. Unfortunately, the storm took longer getting here than was expected, and puppy wanted to go outside. Mind you, this is 2 or 2 1/2 hours after taking the pills, so I was less concerned about having my eyes on him at all times. He curled up in the flower bed and went to sleep. When I went to check on him, he was twitching like he was running in a dream. But then he couldn't stand up, couldn't really open his eyes, his third lid was up and he was shivering. So we had to rush him to the emergency vet. The vet techs looked at us like we were at least a little stupid when we showed them the pills. One said, "You know these are a sedative...?" The other just let us know that while the third eyelid makes things look a lot scarier than they are, it's pretty normal. All his vitals were good-- temp, heart, breathing. He was just out of it. Apparently, this was a fairly usual reaction to this med, a tranquilizer; however, it was a bit much for him-- or more like a bit much for me and especially the kiddo! We sort of expected drowsy and loopy. The vet did warn me that it was a tranquilizer, so it shouldn't have been a surprise. I think his 2 hours of totally normal were just deceiving.

He's ok now. He managed to get back to normal in time to dig his way to China, via the bedroom floor when the storms did get to Fort Smith, but he was still a little anxious last night. Apparently we can give him 1/2 or 1/4 the dose next time, but I don't know. Being outside where he at least calms down during the storm, if not in its run-up, might be preferable. That whole experience was terrifying. The second vet also suggested we try some storm CDs on sunny nice days to decondition him...

So that was the weekend. A little bit of home improvement, some spring cleaning, and a very sick puppy.

Here's hoping next weekend is better.

Just a lazy afternoon

This is pretty much how we spent the entirety of last week:


Fayetteville, where I work, got the brunt of that mega ice storm-- so much so that the university closed for 4 straight days, and the day before saw a lot of people heading home early to avoid getting caught in the ice. Fort Smith on the other hand, got 4 inches of rain in 24 hours. Which then turned to ice. So we stayed at home inside all week. The puppy decided that maybe this inside thing isn't so bad after all...

Accepting defeat

So I went to Little Rock this weekend, and when I got back, Simon had torn out most of the remaining four o'clocks. Before I could do anything else about it, he dug another 3 or 4 feet into the bed. Adam and I are going to try to devise some sort of "permanent" barrier. He's old enough that he won't want to jump over something, so as long as he can't pull or push it out, it should work. For next year, at least. As for this year, I've admitted defeat. (Update: Mom says seeds might still have time to take hold!!) I had a picture, but I couldn't bring myself to post it. I already threw a crazy childish tantrum over the issue. I'd like to forget the whole thing ever happened. The good news is, the bed just on the other side of the fence is going gangbusters:


These lantanas and four o'clocks should be blooming any day now. That bed is only actually a couple of feet wide and maybe three feet long, but the plants really overflow. It's sort of wild and secret gardenish.

Now, what was I doing in Little Rock? I think I mentioned before that my best friend bought a house. I wanted to see it in person and spend a little quality time with a bottle of wine on her front porch. We did all that and ate some yummy food, too. We also rearranged her dining room and talked shop-- colors and walkways and passthroughs. At the end of the weekend I made a special request. Could I please PLEASE post pictures of the ugly, nay-- heinous-- lights in her house. Pretty PRETTY please? She's a good friend. She said yes.

So I'll start you off with an easy one. This is inconspicuous, located inthe stairwell:

Next, we have the entryway.


Now it gets harder: The dining room-- shiny brass...


And the coup, lighting the breakfast nook--


But just so I don't leave you with a bad impression of her house, here's a quick pic of my favorite thing-- the dining room table that belonged to her grandmother. The table is stained dark, and the leaf is left a light honey oak. It's the best runner ever; no kitties pulling it off the table.


And meanwhile, back in our dining room...

Somebody's enjoying the fountain.

On the eve of destruction

Exhibit A: The Destroyer.


Exhibit B: The crime scenes.

This is the edge of the patio. Granted, the bricks were kind of falling off there in the first place, but this is after I've filled it back in. As you can see on the right, he's gone well below the paint line on the brick. And sometimes he kicks the bricks out into the yard.

A spot I haven't had to fill in a few days.

Can't see where the patio ends and the dirt begins? Not surprised. Another favorite makeshift bed.

Sigh. The infamous four-o'clock bed. The lawnchair propped up against the wall-- that's where he dug further into the bed killing the plants that were there. I'm rather hoping for a come-back.

And then there's the monkey grass, which he used to lay on. We have to keep the chairs on it:
So he occasionally does this:
Thankfully, this morning I found him sleeping here with the cat:
Between the tree and the bench. That is a location I can live with.

I also noticed a couple of blooms on the four-o'clocks across the patio. This means the plants in the bed aren't far behind.


I'll take what I can get.