Room Mates

Our room mate, my niece, sucks. Actually, all roomies suck. But she's real sucky because she thinks its OK to not pay us rent. She's paid a whopping $1300 these last 10 months. She's living in our home, using a bedroom (2 when her son was here), our electricity, our internet, our heat, our kitchen & dishes. She comes into and out of our gate and takes up a parking spot in our yard.

Last summer while her son was here for 2.5 months & she was working, I babysat if I was home. Even if she was home, I was babysitting because she would be too lazy to care for him. She didn't do shit with him except took him to the zoo twice, one of those times for only 1 hour and she knew it would be closing soon.  Her idea of playing is to put him in his room & her in her other room & they play an online video game together. We live 6 miles from an excellent swimming lake but she never took him, not once. She didn't fill his pool for him & she didn't ride bikes with him even though we had given her a nice mtn bike & I bought him a kids bike.

I've been telling her repeatedly that she needs to move out & I've told her that we're going to need that room when we begin remodeling the bathroom & adding the new one. I was trying to get an idea if there could be damage to the wall that's inside her room when we demo the cabinet & she thinks I was spying on her. There's no reason to spy on her, I know she's not hiding anything.

At least she isn't a drunk, isn't on drugs and isn't having parties when we're not home.

Last month she got turned down for a rental house & I had given a great referral. Two days ago she told me she had given my name again for another house & today the gal called & I told her, "don't rent to her". A house is for someone who will pay their rent, in full, before the due date. She's got NO intention of doing that. A house is for people who have done their time in crappy apartments, saved up money and are ready to move up to the next level, whether it be a nicer apartment, a house or buying their first home.

She's at the bottom of renting & all she's fit to get into is Mariners Glen apartments but when I told her to go there she said she doesn't want to live somewhere horrible. OK then. I'll give that apartment a GLOWING referral for her but no place else.

But she's not staying here, either. Her boyfriend can shit or get off the pot or she can move to Florida to live with him & his sisters. But come February, she's better get her ass out of here. She said she's got $750 saved up towards a house so if she's not moved out I'll tell her to go stay at a hotel.

Its time to have the internet/wifi password changed and the power to her room cut off. I bought her a heated throw blanket & she still has the small heater on all the fucking time, on MY pocketbook.

We had snow this morning.

Promises Broken

I promised to write about England after France, then I didn't do it. I've been so busy, with work, holidays, shopping, more work. Seems every time I turn around I get called in for another shift.

We had a bid in early December for our winter season ( January 5th - March 15th) and I got a 36 hour selling shift. Sue & Lisa decided to go to Bainbridge and Joe made a bonehead mistake & faxed his bid upside down so I lucked out. Don't know how lucky I really am, since the first two days of each week will suck:
Sunday 8:05am-2:05pm
Monday 1:00pm-6:00pm
Tuesday & Wednesday OFF
Thursday midnight-9am
Friday midnight-9am
Saturday 8:25am-3:25pm
Beginning my work week with 2 graves sucks because I'll have to go to bed early on my days off in order to get up at 11:10pm but its guaranteed hours and winter schedule sucks for on-calls.

I HATE graveyards but getting a nice guaranteed paycheck every month for 3 months will be worth it.

We're planning on another home renovation which will include:
Septic Design upgrade from 2 bedroom to 4 bedrooms
Add another bathroom upstairs
Redo master bath upstairs, currently Jack & Jill bath.

This is into the bathroom from the other room, our current bedroom is on the other side of the far door. 

We will AT LEAST replace this dated cabinet, countertop & sinks with something pretty, maybe rustic. I'll be looking for a good used one and hope to find a good quartz countertop with 2 sinks. I'm sure I'll have to buy that new. We can add a nice back splash since we know how now.

I'd like a vanity like this, plain & simple

From our current room into the other bedroom, sinks on the right of this photo

We won't do anything to upgrade the tub/shower enclosure because its practically brand new. It needs a new fan as the old one is original to the house & has a red bulb meant to warm a person and the fan is LOUD. The sky light is awesome.

The floor is vinyl & we're going to get a plastic/rubber click in floating floor & just put it in right over the top of this. 

The new bathroom would be added beside this one, just reversed and instead of a tub we'll put in a standing shower. 

A new toilet is about $200 and I'd like to have a new one in each bathroom. 

I'd like a single pedestal sink in the new bathroom. We do have to figure out either a fan or small window & right now there will be enough room for a window beside the shower.

But I'll totally settle for a single vanity sink.

Our bedroom currently measures 14.5 x 13.5 feet, the new bathroom would take up 5.5 feet, leaving the bedroom 9.5 x 13.5, still plenty big enough for a kids bedroom. A doorway would be put in the wall where a closet is at, the closet would be removed. There is still another large closet in that room. The door that goes from the hallway to our room now would become the new bathroom door.

I don't think the carpet would have to be replaced, just cut down to size and the extra added to the new doorway. 

We would have to move into the other bedroom as we can't  use that room for the bathroom because of hallway doors & permanent walls. The door from our room into the jack & jill would be moved to the closet area so we wouldn't even have to purchase another door.

Its not going to be cheap, I'm figuring upwards of $10k. And while we're at it, we're going to get the septic tank upgraded to a 4 bedroom (currently 2 br) which could run an additional $10k if it all goes well. We can  only hope for that BUT doing these things will increase our homes value and make it a heck of a lot more sellable.

HGTV Shows

I was on FB last week and LIKED a post about a TV show

 selling homes in our area & they called me last week. 

This morning the realtor, Courtney McClasky called & set up a time for her to come out & see our farm and possibly film it for the show. 

She want's to film this week.

Um...

We aren't ready to film anything, the house is full of our junk.

The kitchen countertops are being tore out this week and new quarts being installed Friday and most of the house is dusty from this. 

The wall mount stove exhaust fan is in the box, needs to go up.

Plus just our junk, everywhere. I'd need a POD right this MINUTE to full with the crap.  

I don't even have boxes yet!

The outside is looking good because I had a gardener come over & weed the flowerbeds & put down beauty bark. Lans been working his ass off to get all the junk gotten rid of & burnt a huge pile of brush. He removed one wall of the old barn & its now an equipment shed. 

I do have a few new plant pots I borrowed from friends that I'm going to put plants in & use as curb appeal. Once the house sells I'm going to give the pots back with the flowers inside. 

IN OTHER NEWS: 

We put in an offer on the Montana farm but haven't heard back yet. I doubt the owner will accept it; he was asking $475, dropped it to $350k and we offered $320k, 

contingent on the inspection and our farm selling.

Butcher Block Attempt

We are attempting to make a butcher block countertop out of some maple lumber we purchased last year. It started out as 2x4's in various lengths.

We had to purchase a few items, I wanted to have EVERYTHING we would need before we began. One of them was four 60 inch clamps, we got the nicer ones on sale for $10.99 each.

We had my dad cut the boards down to thirds

This is the area we are first attempting to cover, 25.50 inches x 15 inches,

its above where the cutting board is, beside the stove.

We had to attach the ends together first

Using Titebond III, it is food safe. Lots of glue was used. Lots.

And a lot of small clamps. We did a few boards at a time, 

& once they are all dry we will put them all together.

So this is where we are with it right now. It needs to be planed. Plained? and sanded.