Mmmm... butter

Yum!!

May Showers lead to Baby shower

This weekend was more relaxing than most. Did lots of work but also spent time on both houses. The work on William St. is boring so i always post here. I am currently busting up the old floor over there and getting it removed so I can paint the basement and get things presentable for a sale.

At the Ronalds house, I had to work on getting things cleaned up for the baby shower this coming weekend so there wasn't as much tangible progress as normal. But the house is cleaner and does look better. Sue is moving in this weekend so hopefully it's presentable.

Going into the weekend, the contractor finally poured the floor for the garage. It's not unlevel (i checked it with my inspectoring skills) but appears that way due to the alley slope. They did a nice job on it, and cut it the next morning which is what I wanted. It then proceeded to rain on it all weekend which gave it the proper water cure... perfect.

In the downstairs bath, I finished 90% of the painting, put some of the molding back on (we have to have a bit made as well), installed the shower rod and did a bunch of cleaning.

In the kitchen, I got things cleaned up. It was becoming a storage area and was getting quite messy. I hooked up the gas/electric for the new stove and pushed it into place.

I cleaned the bazillion tools off of the kitchen counter and scrubbed it down along with the sink.

Cleaned up the "storage" corner as well. The dishwasher is still stored in the box because it can't be installed under the current counter without some cutting and the counters might be getting replaced. You can also see the new green which we put on the wall to check out some color samples. It similar but softer than the old chartreuse color.

Here's a view of the bath after I took the floor coverings up and cleaned up.

And here's a view of the nearly completed shower.

more posts about knitting and food

hi...remember me?
this is my first post in a looong time and it's nice to be back. now that my first year of teaching full-time is over, i feel like i have a lot more time to be a well-rounded person, doing the things i always used to post about (cooking, crafting, gardening, etc.). before i get on to those things, though, i should mention my big news--yesterday i was officially offered a position as a tenure-track, assistant professor of anthropology at augustana and i accepted! maybe you're thinking, "carrie, isn't that the job you interviewed for back in january and didn't get?" if so, you're right, but since then one of my colleagues took a job elsewhere and because the department had already done a national search for a tenure-track anthropologist this year, they decided to ask the runner-up (me!) to come on board and replace him. this kind of thing rarely happens in academia, so i feel extremely lucky and blessed.
so now, on to the photos...



i've been back on the needles a bit, making baby hats for our own little one and the spring babies born to friends at work. my parents bought me itty bitty hats by susan b. anderson for christmas and i'm finally putting it to good use. it has cute project ideas and also gives great technique directions, so it's been a good all-in-one book to use when trying out new things. i've broadened my knitting horizons to include working in the round on circular needles, switching to double-pointed needles, and making i-cord (to produce the "top knot" on these caps).

a few weeks back, i made my first trip to naomi's kitchen (make it, take it, bake it) in north liberty to fill up our freezer with entrees. i'm counting on our cache of frozen stuff to cut back on shopping and prep time for dinner when the baby arrives. you leave with 24, 2-person portions of each meal you choose, which takes up pretty much all of your freezer space, as you can see (the drawer is completely filled, plus all of those aluminum pans above). we've eaten a few things already (the chicken enchilada bake was a big hit), but are saving most of them till they're really needed. i have to mention that their most popular dish is ham balls. i have never eaten a ham ball, but i felt oddly compelled to try them ("most popular!"). last summer, while waiting my turn at fareway's butcher counter, at least four people ahead of me ordered ham balls. i thought this might be an iowan delicacy i'd yet to be introduced to, but rob (my go-to native iowan) claims ignorance of the ham ball phenomenon. hmmm...

lest you think our diets have been reduced to frozen meat products alone, check out our first week's produce delivery from the sass family farm. we're splitting a share of the farm's summer bounty with our friend john. this week we were delivered a half-dozen eggs, a half-loaf of chocolate chip banana bread, some asparagus, rhubarb, green onions, radishes (any good ideas for radishes, aside from slicing into a salad?), a bag of mixed lettuces and a bag of spinach. fresh, local foods are a wonderful thing!

in pregnancy/baby news, all is well as we rapidly approach week 37 (full-term!). the little one holds his/her own dance party in my belly every evening around 8:30 with lots of movement all over the place. i've had to bump myself up a size in maternity tops as none of my clothes were really fitting over my belly anymore...the other day, bill brought over his grandmother's glider, which we'll be using in the baby's room. many thanks to bill and kathie for letting us borrow this family heirloom!

Winding down... sort of

The weekend started with me discovering this sweet bottle that the garage contractor laid aside. I'm sure he unearthed it while removing the old garage foundation. For those of you who can't read it, it says: "Graf Bros, Iowa City, Iowa." Very cool.

I currently have the bottle soaking to get rid of the residual dirt inside it.

Here is the dining room when we bought the house.

This is the final version of the dining room floor after the third coat of polyurethane. It looks even better in person.

Final floor in the living room.

Here is the way the foyer looked when we bought the house.

Here is the new foyer floor and staircase - Oscar is checking things out.

Here is the new floor in the master bedroom - believe us, the pink won't be around much longer.

This is the NEW wood flooring in the upstairs hall where the floor was unfinished. This previously had white vinyl tile and tar paper underlayment. No longer. This is an engineered wood floor and it looks sweet.

Here is the new wood flooring in the nursery. This room had white vinyl tile with an awesome pebble pattern. Oh yeah, that was covered with cherry red carpet.

Here is the new floor in the guest bedroom.

This was a big week and we got a YES vote at the historical review on Thursday. Friday morning and Saturday afternoon, the contractor removed the old garage foundation and began grading for the new footprint/foundation with road stone. They should be pouring the foundation/floor this week.

Today I put in our new aluminum hose reel. It's done in a decorative style and I really like it. It's anchored to the brick. Installing this sucked. I thought it would be easy but the uneven brick face proved hard to line up hammer-drill holes in.

When we bought the house, this was the only bath. There was a vinyl floor and an acrylic tub/shower on the right overlapping part of the window. It took up the whole room.

Lastly, I installed the new bathroom mirror and sconces for the downstairs bathroom. This also took WAY longer than it should have. The anchoring system that came with it failed, then my second shot failed and finally I went with 4 wingnuts locked in behind the drywall. This mirror weighs a lot - I hope they hold. It looks really good. The brackets to the sides match the light brackets. The soft yellow light looks really good in here. I also did some more painting. Carrie described this Aqua today as Tiffany blue, which is pretty close to what it looks like. This room is getting close to completion.

I also put in our new yellow pine thresholds for the tile to wood floor transitions and lots of other odds and ends. Soon this place will be habitable for Sue and the baby shower!

Fancy!

Look what I did this weekend!

Smooth!

Damn... so smooth. This is what i'm listening to right now.

Get in my belly!

For those of you requesting it... here it is... The Belly!

Too much to keep in

Normally I post Sunday nights but some people have been requesting more pics! You know who you are. Basically the fun stuff is happening now and it's cool to look at so here are some weekly happenings so far:


Yesterday the back yard was regraded with 64 tons of black dirt, fully seeded and mulched. It looks so much better than the lumpy drainage pit that it was. Now everything has a good flow and things should work better for fence installation and garage construction next week. The neighbor's drain is surrounded with an erosion sock.

Here's a view of it from the deck.

Here is our new Frigidaire stove.

Here is our new Kenmore fridge.

Here is the inside of it.

Here is the drywalled soffit that I built around the plumbing for the upstairs toilet.

Here is the painting I did in the "toilet nook" and pedestal sink areas so I can install them this weekend. The color is Fling Green. It matches the floor tile detailing.

Here is another view of the bathroom today. The shower is almost fully tiled. We have a couple bullnose tiles on order to finish up. Then it can be fully grouted and i'll put the fixtures in.

Here is the green subway tiling upstairs. The tub deck is nearly completed. You can see the access panel tiled at the end of the framing. The drain stack still needs to be furred out and then everything will be grouted.

Here is the stepover curb for the shower stall.

Here is a closeup of one of the shower walls.

Here is the shower stall with the biscuit tile detail band.

And there you go!

Yo G!

Carrie and I have purchased some gDiapers (at the recommendation of our good friend John Downing.) We have 4 of them and like them so far - not having used them for poop yet obviously. They have a flushable, bio-degradable insert that you remove from the outside cover. You can check them out HERE. I think we're leaning towards them, but we'll try some pocket diapers too, at least to start. Check them out!

Soooooooooooooo cute!

April showers bring May showers

Well, it's raining here again - more on that later. Only worked at the house Sunday this weekend because there was much to do at William St. It started pouring this afternoon at 2pm and rain began entering the basement again. I moved a lot of things and started working on that but that's kinda boring so i'll update what's done at Ronalds:

Here is a view of the new downstairs bathroom floor. It's pretty much complete as is the shower floor. You can see Carrie's concept in full-effect. It looks even better in person. The paint color for the walls will be similar to the blue you see in the detail squares. There will be a yellow band around the shower that matches the center of those squares.

Here is a closeup of the detail square.

Here's what the upstairs bathroom looks like at the moment. The floor is in and grouted and the shower base is completed. The denshield backing has been placed on the tub and the tiling for that and the shower will begin tomorrow. They also have to tidy up the drywall in here tomorrow but it's getting very close.

Here is a closeup of the pebble-tile shower floor upstairs. This is also a Carrie idea that turned out really nicely. The pebbles match the gray tile flooring in the main room.

Here is a cast-iron grate that I purchased for the air diffuser in the kitchen. Now that the floor is complete, I put the grate in.

Here is what the kitchen floor now looks like - much better than the green vinyl flooring of yesteryear.

Today I finally got off my Duff and installed the brown aluminum storm door I purchased to replace the total crap one that was on the back door to the stairs. It took a long time (getting storm doors nice and tight in 1913 houses can be tricky) but it's pretty well good to go now and looks a zillion times better.

Here is the fancy lockset I installed on the door and will put on the other 2 storm doors. These are lockable with a keyed outdoor entry which is nice for locking up but not using the main door.

I have to take a bunch of stuff to the recyclers now. I'll try to do a basement update at some point.

We also got new appliances this week. The stove is in the house and the fridge and the dishwasher will be this week. Also coming up this week:

Black Dirt, Regrading and Seeding the backyard.

Tiling the showers in both bathrooms.

Drywall finishing up for the upstairs hall, bathroom and the downstairs bathroom ceiling.

The week after this: hardwood floor refinishing completion, installation of new wood flooring upstairs and beginning of the garage construction.