The epic journey of our basement part 1

Want to see a picture of what our family room looks like right now? I bet you do! well here it is...be prepared that it's very frightening!
I'm not sure why all our home projects mean tear out the ceiling but they do, so we did. Another hole. This one will be filled again but not finished. Eventually the whole ceiling will be torn out to replace the crappy lights, awful texture and put in surround sound. This will hopefully be next year but we have to save our pennies for a good surround sound system so until then we'll get to look at unfinished sheetrock. How luxurious.

So I think my true calling in life is to be an electrician. I really do enjoy running wires and putting in outlets, it's like a puzzle but I know where all the pieces go. The one thing I do hate though is pig tailing, if you dont know what pig tailing is all you need to know is that it's of the devil. You have to twist multiple wires together and then stick a wire nut on them. Easier said than done.
It took me a good while to get the stupid black wires pig tailed and once I did John came over and yanked on one of the wires, pulled it out of the wire nut and then starred at me. With lips pursed together and eyes glaring I said, "Well if you didn't Incredible Hulk it out it would still be in there!"
See the wires are suppose to STAY in the wire nut and that one would have it John hadn't super human strengthed it out!
He then left to let me fix his super power moment while I mumbled to myself about how stupid pig tailing is and how it might have only caused a little house fire. Did I also mention that I stuck my tongue out at him? Well I did.

After the pig tailing adventure (I told John that we should have left the socket out of the wall so I could show everyone how wonderful I am, he didn't agree) We ran wires from where the light for the "dry" bar is going to be (top left corner in above picture) to the old light socket.

This is the new wiring and new special light switches with glider dimmer things, please ignore the fact that they are hanging out of the wall. They don't fit in the box we bought so it's off to Lowe's again.
I'm not particularly in love with the placement of the light boxes but after John's battle with the old box and mutilating the wall, I wasn't about to say, "So about the box placement..." and have his wrath rain down upon me. I just kept my mouth shut and let him stick it where ever the crap he wanted it.

And now the journey of Sophi in front of a pile of crap. You might have to click on it to actually see whats going on. Notice how she stops to investigate something on the wall. She's always a big help with our projects, carrying off screws and lying on top of what we need.

In other news I want to say a big congrats to my high school bestie who had her baby early yesterday morning. If I believed in procreating I'd want a baby as cute as her little son. *insert picture of cutest baby you've ever seen here, I dont want to put his picture up here without her permission*
Her and her hubby will make great parents and of course I'll make a great auntie :)

I promise we're smart

Just to prove that John and I aren't as dumb as a can of SPAM I'm letting you know that when digging up our basement we didn't just say, "Now that looks like a good place for a sewer line!" and hammer away. We went to the water company and got our plumbing plan. They just lied to us and probably gave us our neighbors plan...or maybe we dont have a sewer line and our waste just magically disappears....

Any who, many people have asked and I promise John and I do think our plans through on occasion.

new blogs to stock...i mean read

This may be news to most but I love to laugh. I know, shocking! In fact I have a really hard time being serious (thanks Father) so of course I like blogs that make me chuckle. Here are a couple:

Sadly I have never perfected my haiku writing, a very valid life skill, but Winona has. Her blog is mostly about fashion but she's very witty. In fact some of her posts had me laughing (read as snorting) uncontrollably at work causing people to glance awkwardly at me while worrying about my sanity.
In fact if her About Me thing doesn't have you in hysterics than something is wrong with you (seriously).

Next is this little gem.She adds Paint drawings to her posts to nararate her meaning. Let me tell you, there's some talent right there! I can barely manage filling in a square let alone making art. It pretty much has me rolling on the floor in a fit of glee.

Have fun "working" now :)

So many trips to Lowe's

Well the weekend got better. We tried not to dwell on the fact that we cant have a sink and continued work.
The design will change now to just going straight across the wall instead of L shaped meaning we can save some of the granite we bought for the vanity counter top remodel that's in the distant future.
Electrical design also changed but that's not very exciting to talk about.

When John cut out the sheetrock to run electrical we found black mold on the sheetrock in the adjoining room. Not really sure how it got there since it's not by any water, we're thinking that it's from the previous owners. I've heard some weird stories about them from my neighbors and we're coming across their escapades.
I knew they kept a giant boa constrictor in the room that is now our family room and we found where the tank was when we pulled up the carpet. It was a huge cage, we're talking 4 feet by 5 feet and it looks like it was nailed into the cement. They also had the heating lamp hard wired into the ceiling and left the light boxes for us right in the middle of the room. How nice. Good thing that whole ceiling is being ripped out (not all of it right now, just sometime in the future)and those can be tossed.
So back to the mold, we have to tear out the mold infested sheetrock in the bedroom and replace it. We dont want to die from some random disease now, do we?

After 6 trips to Lowe's and 4 to Home Depot (oh I'm not exaggerating, I promise) we should have returned everything we dont need and have everything we do. John somewhat started electrical last night but by 7:30 he was hungry for dinner and we decided to call our weekend quits. At least the dirt is back in the trying-to-find-sewer-line hole and cemented.

We did buy our first fish related thing this weekend though, dont get too excited, it's nothing you'd even see.
It's a Reverse Osmosis filter for the top off mechanism (that we dont have yet) for the sump (which we also dont have yet).
John needed it to do the plumbing while the sheetrock is cut out so we're a 1/16th of the way there on the fish! Woot!

Tonight is going to be a long night, I'm wishing I would have put meatloaf in the crock pot...

Yeah that didn't work....

11 hours of work + not finding the buried treasure AKA the sewer line = no sink

I wouldn't talk to John about it any time soon, he is a very unhappy boy.

more on the wet bar

So we may not have to rip up the hallway floor! YAY! *throws confetti*
A guy John works with said that we probably have a sewer drain REALLY close to where the wet bar is now. Most homes plumb the water and sewer lines really close to each other and the water line is in the room right behind the wet bar.
An easy way to see where the sewer line is is to have Bluestake come out and spray the yard so in the next couple of days our front yard should look like a pre-schooler's art project.

This 3 day weekend we'll be busting our butt with electrical and running pipe so we can have the cabinets installed so the counter top can be templated. If my hallway floor doesn't have to be torn up than I'll be one happy camper!

Crock pot meat loaf

This is a delicious meat loaf recipe that is just sooooo easy! John says this is the best meat loaf he's ever had and that's saying something because he likes everything.

Ingredients
2 eggs
3/4 cup milk
2/3 cup seasoned bread crumbs
2 teaspoons dried minced onion
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teasoon garlic salt
1/2 teaspoon rubbed sage (I didn't have sage so I used an Italian seasoning mix)
1 1/2 pounds ground beef
1 to 2 cups ketchup
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground mustard
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

Directions
1.In a large bowl, combine the first nine ingredients and 1/2 cup ketchup. Shape into a round loaf; place in a 5-qt. slow cooker (to help it keep it's loaf shape I rolled up tubes of tinfoil and put them on the sides of the loaf). Cover and cook on low for 5-6 hours or until a meat thermometer reads 160 degrees F.
2.In a small bowl, whisk the remaining ketchup, brown sugar, mustard and Worcestershire sauce. Spoon over the meat loaf. Cook 15 minutes longer or until heated through.
*When I got home and looked at the meat loaf I thought it had burned and was going to be really dry. It was a little crispy around the edges but was really moist and delicious so dont be alarmed if it doesn't look that great!*

makes 6 servings

Cant get any easier! If you use crock pot bags it's a breeze to clean up too.
The night before I raised and baked some rolls and when I got home from work the next day I nuked some baking potatoes in the microwave and heated the rolls. Dinner was ready in 20 minutes, just as John was walking in the door.

As we speak I have BBQ beef brisket in the crock pot for dinner tonight, hopefully it turns out just as tasty!