Wednesday, December 12, 2012

And Part II, The Great Indoors.

Be warned - this is an astonishingly complete tour.


Our tour starts on the porch, of course.


Behold, the entry! To the left there is the living room. Straight ahead we have a coat closet, the dining room, and the stairs. To the right is a hallway leading to the downstairs bathroom and the kitchen, and to the FAR right (like 180 degrees right) is the other living room.


The living room! We have cleaned up the broken glass AND put light fixtures in place of those wires poking out of the wall, so it looks better already.


And the view from the other side, with Jim and his Aunt Emmy for scale.


From the living room we go to the dining room. TWO linen closets, count 'em.


And the dining room. Remind me to tell you about the ceiling sometime.


Here's one end of the kitchen. Haven't decided what I'm going to do with it yet, but I think this is going to be our big project next year.


And the other end of the kitchen. Don't you love the built-in radio thingy? You can't really see in the previous picture, but there's also a built-in can opener and a built-in food processor in the cabinet. This place is 1970s state-of-the-art.


Jim checks out the view from the awesome kitchen window.


Yeeech. Previous ownder wasn't much for cleaning the windows, apparently. Or maybe that's just what happens when nobody lives in a house for two years.


Jim does quality control. (and oh yeah, there are the can opener and food processor, see?)


Here's the hallway, with Jim helping with the cleaning. Bathroom is on the left, pantry is on the right (but Noah's planning on turning the pantry into his under-the-stairs computer hidey-hole.


Looks like a bathroom, yes?


Aaaand the OTHER living room. Probably going to make this one into a library. That fireplace is my favorite thing ever, right alongside the built-in gun rack (which we're probably going to convert to a book and/or liquor shelf).


The other side of the room.


And the ceiling. Isn't that a little alarming? We just had that fixed, fortunately.


This is part of the ex-garage. Noah's probably going to turn it into his workshop.


This is the scary dark room on the left of the garage, complete with scarier darker room inside it. Nesting creepy torture rooms, seriously. This house has it all.


Less-scary room on the right of the garage. At least it has windows, yes?


And the other side of the less-scary room. It has a bathroom. I think somebody used to actually live in this place.


And just a quick glance at the laundry area before we go upstairs. I think it'll be a lot less grim once we replace the solid door with one that has a big window for light.


So, up we go! The stairs are Jim's favorite feature. Rest assured we do have an actual banister now...


At the top of the stairs, we've got the master bedroom on the left with an attached nursery, then this hallway on the right. The room at the end is Jim's bedroom.


Half the master bedroom. The whole upstairs needs new flooring and a coat of paint but it's all otherwise in good shape.


Other angle of master bedroom. The left door leads to the adjoining nursery and the right door leads to the hall.


Part A of the two-part master bathroom.


One of the two master bathroom closets on the left.


And separate toilet/shower room on the right.


And here's the adjoining nursery, which is nursery-like.

And here I'm skipping the huge linen closet (with a laundry chute right down to the laundry room closet!). Moving on.


Upstairs hall bathroom. This one also has the separate toilet/bathtub room attached too it, if you make a sharp left when you walk in.


Next thing down the hall, Jim's room! See, it's even already blue.


Jim admires his view.


And last but not least, the Dog Room (so-called because of the mysterious claw marks covering the inside of the door).


Two closets, you see. We're using this room for a combination computer/sewing room. I'm sitting in the corner typing this very post, actually.

And there you have it, folks (assuming anyone made it to the end of this). That's where we live. Rest assured I'll be tormenting you with plenty of updated pictures as we do stuff to it.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

So, this is where we live now, part I: The Great Outdoors.


It's a LOT bigger than our old place - 3500 square feet as opposed to around 1800.


The driveway. You can barely see the house from the road, if you're looking hard.


Front 'yard,' which is really about an acre and a half of woods. Note old pig shed (since removed) and ancient broken satellite dish, which we haven't yet figured out how to remove.


Toward the back yard/pasture/etc.


Windows - note messed up woodwork and icky roof.


Porch. That's not so bad, right? Except for the hornet nests, I mean...


Left side of house, with bonus brother-in-law. Note more messed-up windows, non-functioning air conditioner just sitting there (since removed), huge furnace that turned out not to work (since replaced).


Back of house. Note 2x4 rail and wrecked back door.


And the back again, so you can see our classy back yard fence with the broken gate and fallen-down tree.


Right side of house. Note back-door-that-used-to-be-garage-door and weird Door To Nowhere above it.


Now on to the back 40*, with your tour guide, Jim!


The pasture! Note dilapidated fence and old dirt road.


Chicken coop and rabbit shed, both to be removed soon and replaced with a nice big chicken run in the barn.


Said barn. Actually in better shape than it looks.


Ignore the busted up roof. And the wasp infestation.


But do note the overgrown door-way (practically need a machete to get in) and the kick-ass loft.


Inside the barn. Note: leftover horse poop, invading vines.


Left side of pasture. Not much to see here.


Jim has found a leaf (the first of many).


Posing by the tree.


Angry faces! Angry faces everywhere!

Stay tuned tomorrow for: The Great Indoors.

*Back 5, actually. We don't have 40 acres. :(

Monday, December 10, 2012

Random funny pictures of Jim from before we moved.


"You better not try to take this away."


"Oh good, you're not trying to take it away!"


"HaHA, stock pot is mine FOREVER!"

Friday, December 7, 2012

And now we have pictures!

But I have a zillion of them to go through, so you're not getting many yet. To tide you over, here's a picture of Jim double-fisting chili Wednesday night in our new kitchen:

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Jim's 18-month doctor visit + vague update.

First, the vague update. I finally found what I need to post pictures, so we should have some up soon. I'll try to do it after Jim goes to bed tonight, or otherwise during his nap tomorrow. We're all doing well. We've got some work done, and we should have a new furnace by this weekend so we can be warm again. Although, that said, it's been in the 70s in Georgia this week, so we're pretty warm regardless...

Now, Jim's doctor visit! It was uneventful. He's 32" long (30th percentile) and 24lb 14.5oz (also 30th percentile) and he's finally grown into his head (still 19"). He looks and acts like a perfectly-normal, highly-intelligent, very-sociable, extremely-active 18-month-old boy. He still isn't talking, so I finally asked the doctor to hook me up with their speech pathologist just to rule out any physical problems. The doctor agrees with Noah and me that he's just a normal kid who is going to talk a little late, but I think it's still probably a good idea to double-check that he doesn't have any physical issues with his hearing/speaking apparatus, since letting those go unfixed could cause a permanent speech impediment or something. So I'll let you all know when that happens and if we find out anything interesting.

Okay, that is all. Expect pictures tonight or tomorrow afternoon.