Hauntingly Funny

Remember the rat skeletons? They weren't the only skeletons hanging around our house...

I went to check the mail earlier this week and was distracted by something white I saw in a bush:

I convinced myself it was a bird skeleton. I saw it in the day--saw the little ribs poking up and thought I saw a jaw. Of course I grabbed the mail and went back inside immediately. A few days later I remembered to tell Andrew about it while we were having dinner with our friend Sarah. We like to call her Aunt Sarah because she often takes care of Sherpa when we're gone. As does our friend Kurt---Uncle Kurt. But I digress...

Already creeped out by the rats we found, I'm pretty sure coming over to our house was dropping on Sarah's list of places to visit. I commented that it could have been string, but I couldn't be sure and didn't want to touch it. We dropped the subject, finished dinner and moved on.

Later that night, Sarah was bringing me home from house church. I remembered the skeleton and drug everyone outside to see it.

I think Andrew was even a little spooked because he didn't get too close. We took some pictures and that was going to be that, but I insisted we move it. My theory? A bird (or squirrel, or chipmunk--basically any small animal) got in our bush, five feet of snow came and he suffocated. Andrew put on a glove and grabbed some wire cutters to remove it.

The closer we got the more interesting things became. It started to look less like a bird and more like a human. Remember...we're a little creeped out-- we did just find two perfectly intact rat skeletons in our wall. Crazy thoughts ran through my head, but Sarah and Andrew, the practical, mathematical kids they are put a stop to that. Sarah mentioned Halloween, but I immediately disregarded that because we didn't decorate for Halloween. Nor did I ever see this white boney thing in our bush before. And I do check the mail pretty regularly.

But like it does 99.9% of the time in my life, logic won out over my paranoid brain. You may have even seen it from the start. Here are some pictures to document our discovery:

What I thought was a jaw is now starting to look like a human skull.

Definitely a human skull...still creepy though.

Yep. It was a little rubber guy wrapped around the bush.

We all had a pretty good laugh after that. I am still suspicious though. I've never, ever seen it before, and we've lived here a year. It was pretty dirty, which means it should have been there for awhile. Even if it was there when we moved in, the thought of the previous owner--an elderly woman with Alzheimer's--having decorated with tiny rubber skeletons is a little over the top. My new theory? There are quite a few pranksters we hang around...only time will tell.

Picking up the green thumb

If you knew my mom, you probably knew that she liked gardening. Faithful (and often youngest) member of the Fort Payne Garden Club, mom loved loved loved her gardens. We had several in our yard--all plants--and I often joined her, putting in new pansies or petunias, weeding or picking roses for vases.

My brother also has a history with gardening--he worked for a landscaper in high school and helped out an elderly neighbor with his yard. I don't know if he loves it, but he was always pretty good at it, and I think he still does a good bit for his own home.

Then we get to me. I don't think I have the same green thumb my mom and brother do, but I'm certainly making an effort to spruce up our yard...with lots of advice, sketches and phone calls from our friend Kristin. (shameless plug: need a landscape designer in Western Mass? Kristin is awesome!)

During the winter I posted about the plants she and I got at 50% off in late fall. We healed them in for the long winter, and I was told to dig them up after the last frost, which is generally late May. I got sidetracked and didn't get to this project until last Wednesday, but we now officially have our first landscaped area in our yard!

Here are some before pics:

these were the four plants we put in the ground in pots just before winter

before...yep, we have a sink right there. we're just bringing a little bit of the South to the North :)

The goal was to plant two evergreens, one boxwood and one hydrangea. I chose a pretty hot day to work on this, and it took me nearly all day, but I finished! I first had to dig up the plants, water them and cut back the dead spots. There were quite a few on my evergreens, mainly because I waited too long to care for them. The most time-consuming part of the project was taking out all the grass, but I had a little help...sort of:

I wasn't really sure if I should encourage or distract this behavior, but Sherpa really wanted to help dig, so I let him for a little bit. 

After digging up the grass, I mixed in compost I got FREE from our town compost area. Then I dug the holes, added fertilizer, a little more compost and voila!

I finished by putting mulch around the plants and reworking our path. To do the path I first graded the area, trying to make it even. It's still not perfect, but we'll straighten it out soon enough. I added stone dust or patio build, raking it with a grading rake. We had several flagstones in the garage from the previous owner, so I just used those to save money. I filled in around the stones with more dust, then wet the entire area. 

Looks pretty good I think! And yes, the sink will be gone soon, along with the pile of grass and weeds I removed (you can see a bit in the bottom left of the last picture). We're also going to try and put in a border between the walk and the driveway--suggestions appreciated!

Out with the rotten, in with the new!

So a couple of months ago I wrote about how Andrew made a lovely discovery underneath the ocean blue carpet in our kitchen. We found green carpet, then the black padding/glue stuff (yes, that is the technical term...) and then sticky tile, also a technical term.

Anywho, after demolition day we were left with the black padding. We bought heavy-duty scrapers to remove it to prep the floor for our new flooring. After a couple of days spent scraping and peeling, we determined it would be better to just remove the subfloor. If we didn't have such a hard time removing the padding, we probably would have been able to put new flooring over the tile.

Andrew had also discovered an old water leak near the sink plumbing, so he had already cut out the two layers of subfloor there. We removed the top layer from the rest of the kitchen, so we just had to place one layer of plywood back down.

Thanks to our fabulous neighbor Vinnie and his staple gun, we laid all but two odd-shaped pieces last night. I would also like to add that last night's work included one of my favorite construction activities: snapping a chalk line. It's true, I am a fabulous chalk-line-snapper. I also got to use the staple gun and hole saw :)

two layers of water-damaged subfloor removed

first layer put back in!

we removed some old, nasty, maybe mold-infested insulation while waiting for Vinnie and his gun...makes you wanna hire us, doesn't it?

Vinnie, the professional, cutting out some of our hardwood floor 

making it flush...

new top layer of subfloor!

what will be the new floor--dura ceramic tile...sort of like fake tile. it's warmer, saving us money on radiant heating

Stay tuned...I did some gardening on Wednesday, just me and Sherpa!

Say hello to my little friends...

This was just too good to hide within my post yesterday about our first day of demolition. Sometime before lunch that Saturday, I was kicking out and pulling down drywall from the wall we plan to take completely down. I got it all cleared away and then looked down. And then jumped back and grabbed Andrew. I'll first show you a picture of what I found...

Yep, that's a rat. Or it was a rat. Or maybe a mouse...yes, rodent lovers, there is a difference; however, I'm not a rodent lover so I'm going with rat. That is indeed a skeleton curled up there in the framing. I screamed and got the jitters, then took a closer look. And found...

...this guy. I like to think he held out the fight longer than his buddy (or brother?) next door. He isn't fully decomposed like the first one, but still gross. And still dead long ago. While I don't like rats, it's sort of sad to think these little guys died next to each other in such a sad spot, forgotten. Until now. 

I asked Andrew if he could just suck them up in the Shop-Vac, but he said absolutely not. So then I asked, "Well what are you going to do about them? Throw them out in the yard?" He smiled, somewhat mischievously and said, "No, you're going to pick them up while I take pictures." 

Of course. That makes sense, right? I would be the logical choice for this job. Yippee. Not one to back down from a challenge I dove in. But I am grossed out by skeletons so I used wire cutters to take them one at a time to the trash can.

Safety goggles are a must for this type of job...

The one with fur grossed me out a bit more...

I was surprised their bodies stayed fully intact for the entire process. And yes, I did a little shudder "eww, gross" dance after putting them in the trash. I also tried to show Aaron the rats in the can, but he refused and just looked at the pictures on my camera. I think maybe he and Andrew were both a little scared... :)

Demolition Day

This is what the kitchen looked like Saturday morning, May 28. Andrew had been getting a little restless at different times (usually when I was late getting in from work or covering an event at night) so he had removed some of the wood paneling and dry wall.

   

These are a couple other before pictures that day. Andrew had already removed the cabinets on the living room side, so we just had to take out the other half, plus the one with the exhaust fan. 

We didn't get fully started until about 11 that day. We're living in Amherst right now--our good friends Brett and Jenna knew we would need a house, so they happily decided to donate theirs and move out to Cali for about a month. That's not exactly how it happened, but we were more than happy to take on the task of house sitting so they could take an adventure worry-free and we could have a place to cook meals. Since we pass Atkins on the way to our house from theirs, we stopped in for pastries for breakfast. 

Once at the house, Andrew got started on removing the remaining cabinets while I pulled off paneling and dry wall. I think I can now add "professional yanker" to my resume because yanking and nearly hanging on some of the paneling and the pantry cabinet was what it took to remove them.

I'm sure there was some sort of professional way to remove that delightful yellow countertop, but Andrew wasn't having it. He LOVES to use his saw-zaw anytime he gets the chance, and the counter provided him with yet another opportunity. So did some of the walls. And the floor. 

After several hours, a few trips to the dump in our neighbor's truck and some help from our friend Aaron, this is what our kitchen looked like. The black on the floor is the padding under the second layer of carpet. We spent a few days after this scrapping it to get down to the sticky tile before deciding to just cut out the top layer of subflooring. We finished at about 6:30 that night. I'll leave you with a couple more after pictures. We're going to try our best to leave the drywall intact on the mural wall and cover it with paint. Most of it will be covered by our refrigerator and new pantry cabinets anyway.