8/5/2014,
The Next Blog
I was
sending these blogs to my dad as letters but he died on July 24th so I
obviously will not be doing that anymore. He was a good guy; I do, and will
continue to, miss him.
10/19/2014
The New Room
I included
the failed attempt I made at a blog after my dad died. It didn't get far. And
then other things came up, such as my just turned 15 year old running away. We
are still not through that mess but that is not what I want to write about
right now, I want to write about my new room. I include the little blurb about my dad because it seemed fitting.
My dad
left my siblings and I some life insurance money. One of the things I am doing
with that money is home improvement. The first step in this is a new room on
the back/side of the house just off the kitchen. This room is 12 x 14 outside
dimensions. It will hold the washer and dryer and hot water heater, all of
which is on the other side of the house in a small utility room that isn't well
insulated or easy to move around in. The hot water will no longer take forever
to get to the kitchen and we will not have to worry as much about it freezing
up in the winter. The room will also hold our upright deep freeze and possibly
our chest freezer but I am not sure about that at the moment. I will have room
for all the odd kitchen stuff I have and don't use every day or every week but
do not want to get rid of, like my canners, food dehydrator, extra large stock
pots, empty canning jars even, all sorts of stuff; I'll even have a place to
put the vacuum cleaner.
Wow, a
little off topic here, I just looked at the TV and saw the nighttime skyline of
Denver because of the Bronco game -- I am sure glad I don't live there anymore.
The room
will be open to the house, via the kitchen door and the window over the sink
during the winter so it can stay warm. But we will close the door and window in
the summer so we don't have to cool it. The room will have good insulation
(better than the rest of the house has) and will have good summer ventilation
(which this house also lacks in general) to keep it cooler without making the
AC do it. I figure I will be doing some summer cooking out there too.
Getting
this room done and set up will allow us to finish the kitchen floor a lot
easier than we had been looking at. We need to pull the last of the carpet up,
which is only along part of two walls and under stuff, like the refrigerator.
Then pull up the layer of old tiles followed by the layer of even older tiles
until we are at the subfloor. We are to the subfloor in about half of the
kitchen, another part is down to just one layer of tile. Unfortunately, we
started this a couple years ago but Ron can't get down to scrape the tile
because of his back and I was doing it until it put me into so much pain I just
quit. We have had bare subfloor in part of the kitchen for quite some time. But
my hernia has been fixed and I think I can scrape again, especially if I can
actually get to the floor without having to move a bunch of stuff every few
feet.
Probably
next spring we will start on the other part of the home improvement, a big
part. We will tear down the den and old utility room, the den being a carport
that has tin walls and a wooden door, enough to keep the weather off you when
taking a cigarette, and the small utility room that is at the back of the den
is barely more substantial. Anyway, that will be torn off and we will use the
cement slab for the foundation of a two story add-on of approx. 12 x 20. That
we are going to do that is pretty solid but what we are doing with the add-on
is still up in the air. Two large rooms or four medium rooms or one large and
two medium, two down, one up, or two up and one down, what exactly the rooms
will be -- still a bit fuzzy there.
I failed
to take a real "before" picture but I did get a couple real early
ones. You can see the frame of the old awning we had over the back step; it did
have brown tin on top of it.
It looks a
bit small with the awning frame. This was day one.
Here is
day two.
Notice no
awning frame and the freezer is gone.
The window
to the left of the door, and the door, will go into the room. The other window
is on the outside of the room.
You can
see that better in this last picture. There will be a new back door facing the
actual back of the house whereas this door is on the side.
Well, that
is the end of day two.
I'll try
to keep you updated.
6 comments:
Nice. You seem to be making good time. Looks good so far.
Sometimes slow, sometimes good time. One of our helpers could not show up today because his girlfriend had a baby last week and she needs to stay off her feet, she went to the ER for bleeding yesterday; so he stayed home to take care of her--as he should. Still got the other two walls up and the rafters cut to be put together and set tomorrow. the windows and door should go in tomorrow too a well as putting sheeting on the walls.
That looks great so far! Are you going to keep the siding or maybe cover it with sheet rock?
And I am glad you decided to blog, even without your most important reader. May he rest in peace. ♡
We are taking the siding off where the room is and it will be sheet rocked. Rocking over the siding will just make it easier for bugs to live in the walls.
Thank you for the kind words for my dad, I have trouble seeing him resting in the afterlife, he is more apt to be keeping busy. That was the worst thing for him aging, he still wanted to keep busy but his body wouldn't allow it.
Looks very nice Tana. I'm sorry for your loss. I lost my Dad almost a year ago. We know he's staying busy wherever he is as my siblings and I hear from him frequently.
Lynn
Thank you Lynn.
Yeah, I just can't imagine my dad sitting still if he doesn't have to. I wouldn't doubt if he is hanging out here at our construction keeping an eye on things.
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