Progress, slow but sure!

The basement carpeting is officially done! They came back on Monday to finish it!! The installer that has been working on our house is too much fun! He is easy to get along with, likes to joke around and is quick with a smart remark, and does fabulous work. But just don't call him Sir... he said that just doesn't work LOL We also found out yesterday that our vinyl for the kitchen has been ordered and will be here in about a week or so. We are tentatively scheduled to have the kitchen floor taken care of the Thursday after Labor Day! That will take a few days and then they will be able to do the living room carpet.

Guess that means that we need to think about getting out new washer and dryer ordered so that it will be here shortly after the flooring is done in the kitchen/laundry room!

In the meantime, after we finished painting the bathroom, I guess we didn't have enough... we decided to paint the living room! We think we have paint figured out, but just to be sure we picked up a sampler of the paint and tested it in a few spots around the living room. If all goes well, we will pick up the paint right away so that we can start painting next week.

So there has been progress. Seems like it had been crawling along but now it seems like things are moving right along and before long we will have a "mostly" new house! Guess the only think left to consider is pulling the wallpaper from the kitchen, but that is another discussion for another day! Let's just get through one project at at time... oh wait, we are already in the middle of 15 bazillion projects! LOL

Update

I figured that it was time for an update on our home repair adventures.

Going to the laundromat is for the birds! Last night was laundry night... granted it took me less than an hour and a half to get everything washed and dried, but the whole idea of having to HAUL it to the laundromat and back home again is no fun!

Last week Wednesday, the Dehu's left (no more extreme heat!) and on Monday the last of the fans were finally taken out (everything is quiet again!) We are also missing a bunch of the flooring in the kitchen as they needed to pull that out to get the floors completely dried. The last week has been spend talking to several different companies and getting estimates from them on the repairs. We are still waiting on the one form the restoration company that was originally sent out to do the initial cleanup/drying. We should have that by the end of the week. We have also been going through endless samples of ccarpeting and tile to figure out what we are going to have put in! We had foudn some vinyl that we really liked and kept going back to as our favorite (in photo to left). However in our last trip to one of the flooring companies, we found another one that is from the same company and same line that we like better. Will have to get a photo of that one posted as soon as we have time to get them uploaded.

We have also decided that, since our house is going to be torn apart to get everything fixed, we are also going to redo the carpeting in the living room as well as the wallpaper in the downstairs bathroom. So, we have spend the last 4 days moving everything that would could out. When you are redoing floors in the 3 largest area's of the house, it gets hard to figure out where to put everything! We have a garage full of stuff and the spare bedroom is getting close to being full! Jim is going to take the toilet out for us this weekend when he is in town so that we can start pulling wallpaper and get everything repainted right away.

The pool table was also moved yesterday. We had a crew come in, disassemble the table and haul it out to the garage. Once the flooring is done in the basement, they will come back and haul it back into the basement, put it all back together and then replace the felt on the table and rails. So glad that we didn't have to do that ourselves, and that insurance is covering the cost of all the moving of it, reassembly and felt replacement!

It seems like we are getting no closer to the end of this project! But in the end, we are practically going to have a new house!

Day 4 and still counting

Met with the guy that was coming to check out the furnace this morning. He was also going to check out the Dishwasher and move that so that it was out of the way when they do the flooring. We could open a used appliance store in our garage with all the stuff out here now!!

The dishwasher and furnace look fine. He is going to recommend that they replace the vent in the laundry room and well as the pipe going up to it. You can see where the water got into it and he would rather have it replaced as a precaution. No complaints by me!

When he left he told me that we just have to let him know when the floor is done and he will come back and put the dishwasher back and take care of the vent.

I was finally able to talk to our Ins Adjuster and go through the list of stuff so far that has been damaged or may have been damaged and what we need to do to have this added to the claim. This could be a long process! oh well She did say that when we call to get an estimate on replacing the felt on the pool table that we can have them add in the cost of having them come and disassemble the pool table and move it out of the way so they can replace the carpeting, then come back and put it back together and replace the felt. Works for me! I don't want to have to try and figure out how to move that!!

Day 3 and it continues to get warmer!

Tonight after work, I met Jerry from the restoration company at the house so that he could check on things and assess how everything was drying.

The carpeting in the living room and basement steps is dry! However the basement still has some damp spots especially at the bottom of the walls where it soaked into the drywall. In the bathroom off the kitchen, the floor is still damp under the vinyl and he pulled some of this back (so I guess we will get new vinyl in here too). We also discovered that it did get into the the floor in the hot tub room. The floor is wet and he asked if we still have any of the vinyl left from when that flooring was done... guess we will have to check on that. There is also damage to the wood on the door frame and baseboards. Didn't realize that one before. Bummer.

He has someone coming tomorrow morning to check out the furnace and dishwasher to make sure that nothing shorted out with them and check a few other things associated with each of those.

When Darrin stopped at the house when he got home this morning, he called me and it was 94.2 degrees according to the thermostat in the kitchen. By the time I got home at 3:15, it was 96.4. It was quite warm waiting at the house while Jerry worked! We decided that it was time to find something to do with the cats as it was getting too warm for them in the house too.

I figured that while I was sitting there, I would call the Ins adjuster to ask a few questions. The claims adjuster assigned to our claim was not in the office anymore so I was going to be transferred to someone on her team. After being on hold for 20 minutes and 3 different attempts at being transferred I FINALLY got to talk to a human! WooHoo! This was the first time through this whole adventure that we came across someone with the ins company that was difficult to deal with.

They will not cover anything associated with pet so if we bring the cats to be boarded we have to cover that ourselves. We did however get the approval for a hotel stay for us for 2 nights. When I first asked about the hotel, she questioned why it was now, 3 days after the incident, that we are finally asking about housing allowance. It was like she was questioning if we really needed it since we didn't ask before. We just didn't call to ask about that since Dan offered his place for us and we thought it was only going to be for a few day - and that would have been more comfortable than a hotel! In reality we saved the insurance company the $$ they would have spend reimbursing us for hotels. But I guess she didn't see it that way. She then asked if I knew what hotel we were going to stay at. I explained that I would have to call around and see what I could find since EAA started in Oshkosh. When EAA rolls into the area, there are usually a shortage of hotel rooms! She proceeded to "tell" me that it "had to be a reasonable hotel with a reasonable rate and if we were that close to Oshkosh, what would I find that was at a decent price?" Well, I know that it needs to be a reasonably hotel and rate, but I can't tell you where it will be until I get off the phone and make some phone calls!

She finally did approve the hotel stay for 2 nights for us. Wow, that was a painful conversation! lol Since we already were planning on going back to Dan's we will save those for the next few nights since it sounds like the Duhu's and fans will be here for at least another few days.

With all the difficulty she gave me, I will wait until tomorrow to call back and talk to our Claims adjuster!

When Darrin got home, I told him that he could stay at Jacob's tonight that way he could get to summer school tomorrow. Yeah, he was really disappointed about that! LOL NOT! I jokingly asked Jacob if he wanted a few extra cats for a night. His eye's lit up and got excited, so he called him mom. As he asked his mom, I yelled in the background that she could say no! But she said that was fine as long as we brought an extra litter box. Yippee! The cats no longer have to be miserable in the house! Poor Fozzy was laying on the cement floor in the basement trying to keep cool!

Cats and Darrin at a friends, we are back at Dan's. It's been another fun filled day in this adventure. Wonder what tomorrow will bring!

The saga continues

48 hours later and the adventure continues.

Yesterday morning when we stopped at the house to check on everything, it was 70 in the basement and 82 in the kitchen. Not very pleasant to start working on any more cleanup and going through stuff to see what was damaged. We stayed about an hour and that was it!

Today, it was 75 in the basement and 90 in the kitchen! We did get a few more photo's of various things around the house that we will have to post later. Again, we stayed long enough to get what we needed for work tomorrow and left. It seems like the carpeting in the living room is dry but the carpeting on the basement steps is still wet.

Dan has been gracious enough to let us hang out at his place while our house is miserably hot as they try to dry everything. We will find out tomorrow just how long the equipment will have to be in the house when Jerry comes back to check on things.

Strawberry Fields Forver

Ok, maybe not forever, but it is strawberry time again! Blasers opened for picking this morning and we were there! It was not well known that they were open yet as they did not really know when they were opening for sure until this morning! We had actually decided to head out to the zoo this morning and when we saw that they were open, we decided to stop and pick a few. The zoo could wait.

It was a great morning for picking too - warm, but not too hot and there was a nice breeze. There were probably only about a dozen people out in the fields so we had our pick of rows.

The berries looked great this year! Plenty of them ripe, but even more still waiting to ripen for picking later. It did not take long for us to pick 2 full flats of berries. in all... 25 pounds of berries picked in less than an hour!

Sicne we still wanted to stop at the zoo really quick, the berries were going ot have a short wait in the car - at least it was not too warm out yet!

The zucchini is growing strong! Two shoots have popped up in the last few days and are looking strong!

We also have also added another 12 Pole Beans in the last few days. I was doing some browsing on Craigslist and found a posting from a lady here in Green Bay that had planted too many beans and was giving them away to anyone that wanted them! I sent her an email on Wednesday and she told me that I could stop and pick them up after work. When I got to her house, I found a ziploc baggie taped to her front door with several small bean plants! It's always great to find stuff for free, and this way we also saved her from just wasting these great little plants! There was 13 plants in the bag and we planted 12 of them (the last one looked pretty small and it probably was not going to make it) These are now taking up the 3 boxes in the back corner of the garden so that we can utilize the fencing to help give them something to climb as the grow.

The broccoli that we planted is really starting to grow and look great. We have realized that next year, we need to plant the broccoli in the outside boxes, closest to the fence as it is going to get a lot taller than Darrin's pepper plants! Lesson learned...

We have Beans!

Overnight, the beans have popped up! So far there are only 2 of the 8, but I am figuring that the other 6 are not far behind!

Garden Update, week 1

One week after planting...

We have green! A few of the plants have started shoots already! WooHoo! The Cucumbers have popped up, as well as the zucchini, lettuce and beans.

The plants that were added last week as quickly taking to their new homes and have appeared to get bigger already. We have had fun checking each day to see what new green is arriving in the boxes. So far so good!

We have about half of the garden planted so far and next weekend we will add more carrots, lettuce, cucumbers and zucchini. No point in having it ALL ready at the same time! We have also realized that we forgot to get any peas for this year... guess those will have to wait until next year. We have enough going so far this year.

At present count, we have:
4 tomato plants (3 in the garden and on on the deck)
4 banana peppers
2 hungarian Sweet peppers
3 red peppers,
6 broccoli
9 carrots
1 bib lettuce
8 beans
1 cucumber
1 zucchini

I an sure that the counts will grow as we add more over the next few weeks.
Just not sure exactly what else we are going to plant in the remaining squares...

Dear Menards, Can I please have 2+ hours of my life back?!

On Thursday, as we were getting in the car to head up north, John told me that part of my Birthday present was on the seat of the car. Now keep in mind that my birthday is still about 3 weeks away. So of course I was curious...

It was the newest edition of the "Square Foot Gardening" book. I have been talking about wanting to plant a garden for a few years but with all the deer around here all the time, we were hesitant. The neighbors tried a few years back (before I moved into the neighborhood) to have a garden, but gave up because they just ended up feeding the deer, rabbits, squirrels and whatever other 4 legged plant eating varmints that happened to be within smelling distance of the house. And this was all with a fence around it!!

After seeing the success that my uncle has had with his garden over the last year, keeping in mind that he had a deer feeder not even 30 yards from his fenced in garden, I wanted to try. John remembered his mom watching this guy's show on TV as he was growing up about Square Foot Gardening... and come to find out, he had a new book out!

So for my birthday this year, I was getting a garden! We spent the weekend going through the book, reading up on the "directions" for a proper square foot garden... grow everything in 1/3 the space of a traditional "row" garden. Sounds good to me! I figured out who big I wanted my garden, leaving the option to "grow" in the future if the need or desire arises. An 8x8 ft garden sounded like it would give us what we wanted in the space we wanted to use.

Tonight we spent 2+ hours at Menards and Steins picking up part of what we needed. I am convinced that Menards has some weird force-field or something that automatically takes away 2+ hours of your life just by walking in the door. We were at Menards from 3:45 until just after 6pm! I know that we left Menards to go to Steins for a bit (basically right across the street), but we were only there long enough to find out that they didn't have much of what we needed for the "magic" mix that we needed for the garden. (apparently only a few places in town carry Vermiculite, and everyone was out of stock so we had to order it) So we went to Menards to but most of what we needed. It was not until I got back into my car that I realized it was after 6pm! Granted there was the time spent looking for my lost keys at Menards, but that's a whole different story!

There was still a few more "ingredients" that we would need, but we at least had everything we needed to build the boxes. We called Darrin on the way home and told asked him to throw a frozen pizza in the oven since neither of us felt like making dinner!

Starting on the construction part tonight was a thought, but that was as far as it got! Guess we start tomorrow instead!

Too much to try and catch up on everything...

so I'm not even going to try! It's been a crazy, busy few months. Between work, Boys Scouts and everything else, it is amazing that I can still (mostly) sane!

Today was the 10th annual Cellcom Marathon. With record registration, we knew it was going to be an awesome day! With over 10,000 people registered in one of the 3 events, there were people everywhere! This year they did something a little different and started the 5k race at 7am and then the Full and Half Marathons at 7:30. They were trying to cut down on the congestion at the start of the race. So Darrin and I had to be there a little early... but wanted to get there early enough so that we could actually find a parking spot semi- close so that we would not have to walk a mile to get to the start of our 5k.

It was a cold morning (38 when we left the house) so we opted for nylon pants and t-shirts instead of shorts. I am sure that if we would have gone with the shorts, we would have been fine once we got moving, but I didn't want to take the change with the wind - that was REALLY cold!

We left the house at 6:10 and arrived at Lambeau Field by 6:20. After getting a lucky parking spot right by the greenhouse in KMart's parking lot, we headed across the street to the stadium. After making a loop through the atrium and seeing the mile long line for the restroom, which I was not in the mood to stand in forever, I was on a mission. Back out of the stadium to find the restrooms.

After a quick wait in line, it was time to head to the starting corral for the start of the 5k. They were already lining up the faster pace runners (definitely NOT us!). We were completely content to stick toward the back of the pack... let the congestion head out in front of us!

Formality's completed (race statistics, thank you's to all the marathon volunteers, national anthem) we were off! When you are moving with such a large group of people, it is really hard to NOT let yourself get caught up in the hype and just go at their pace. Darrin did head out ahead of me, and I just let him go. He has been training at school for the Bellin run, so I know he has an idea of what his pace should be. Shortly after we rounded the corner heading away from the stadium, I did catch up to him. Over the next few blocks were running within a few hundred yards of each other., but once we were about 1/2 mile into the race, he was left behind me in the crowd.

Last year I stayed back with him to push him along. This year I decided that I was going to let him go it on his own. He knew what his time was that he wanted to beat (40 minutes was his ultimate, but he wanted to at least better his time from last year of 44:38) and I wanted to let him accomplish that on his own. We decided that if we were able to keep ourselves to the pace that we wanted, to achieve our personal goals, we should be IN the stadium by the time the Marathon started at 7:30

It started out as a very chilly morning but it was the perfect morning for a run. Once I was finally able to focus and block out everyone else around me, I found myself enjoying the gorgeous morning that it turned out to be. This year I did have the advantage of knowing the course so I could use that to help pace myself. From time to time, I found myself checking behind me to see if I could see Darrin back in the crowd. But he was never there.

Before I knew it, I was less that a block away from the stadium! Not really sure where my running partner was, I made sure that my focus remained on getting to that finish line. With the stadium in view, I found myself thinking about how my pace was... was I going to be able to beat my time from last year (42:48)?? As I rounded the corner, heading into the Lambeau Field parking lot, I saw that the marathon had started... and I was not in the stadium yet...


but I was not going to let that discourage me. I still could beat last year's time.

I kept pushing on.

Running through the tunnel and out on the the field in the stadium this year was just as exhilarating as last year. Granted, last year was the first time that I was actually IN the stadium but this year I was actually able to really take a look around and see some of the details that I missed last year. It still amazes me on how big it is once you get into the field. As you are running around the perimeter of the field, you can't help but feel like a mouse in a vast space!

As I was leaving the field and running through the tunnel, I found Darrin! He came around the corner and as soon as he saw me, he had a HUGE smile on his face. I could tell right away that he was very proud of what he was accomplishing on his own. He was determined to reach his goal. and this gave me motivation so see is I could do the same.

As I was heading out of the tunnel, I saw a clock up on the wall that said 7:38am. If I wanted to bean my time from last year, I was going to have to put it in gear. My ultimate goal for today was to not only beat my time from last year, but to do it in less that 40 minutes. I know that the time on the clock only gave me 2 minutes to finish, but I also know that I the time that I actually crossed the start line was later than 7am. But I was going to see where I could get!

As soon as I left the stadium, heading out through the loading dock, I kicked in the final push. I found myself passing anyone I could reach. When I can around the final turn, and the time clock at the finish line came in to sight, all I could see what 39:xx. I never really saw what came after the 39. All I knew was that I wanted to cross that finish line before it hit 40.

And that is exactly what I did!

Granted, bu the time I got past the finish line, I was exhausted. I pushed myself and my body pushed back, but I did not let it get the best of me!

Once I crossed the finish line, caught my breath and found some water, it was time to see if I could find Darrin crossing the finish line. I grabbed a spot along the gates as waited (still trying to catch my breath!). Before too long, I spotted him! Still wearing that same grin from earlier.

He did it on his own this year! No matter what his time, I am very proud of my little man for what he did this morning!

Instead of hitting the food tents for brats and rootbeer (I sorry, can't do brats before 8am!) we decided to head for the results tent to find out our official time.

The results....

Darrin 43:4. Not only did he beat his time from last year, but he did it by nearly 2 minutes!
Myself 38:42 - about 3 minutes off last years time!

After a job well done.... we celebrated by going out for breakfast! (and then went grocery shopping!)

Next month.... the Bellin 10k...

1st year for me, 2nd for Darrin. We WILL beat his time from last year!