The Great Room Resolution
We've started making New Year's resolutions early this year, because no one seems to stick to their resolutions anyway, so why not make them a little more realistic. My wife and I were sitting with her Mom in the "great room" (no really, that's what it's called on the deed!) staring up at all the holes in the ancient plaster, and we resolved that this winter would be the winter that we rennovate the great room.
The first step is to finish the wiring. I need to split the great room onto it's own breaker, because it shares a breaker with the kitchen, so if you were to plug a space heater in there (which we don't do any more, but I am not comfortable not having the option), and someone is using the Microwave, and the fridge compressor cuts on, you lose all power. This is, honestly, about the only thing that causes charmander.fwaggle.org to ever lose uptime.
We also need to run the ceiling wiring for the second fan. The room is quite long (it's probably pushing 30 feet?) so we decided that one light fixture wouldn't be enough, so we're going to have two ceiling fans with modest lights, and then four sconces on the walls. That's the first priority, because it's a whole lot easier to do wiring when you can smash holes in the plaster willy nilly because it's going to be replaced.
After that, I need to tear out the arch way to the original shape. That won't be much work, and actually sounds like a whole lot of fun provided I can sucker one of the kids into doing the cleaning up when I'm done.
Next up will be doing sheetrock, which is going to be expensive, time consuming, and tiring. Lifting sheets of sheetrock up to "ten foot" (quoted because at that time they were never exactly ten feet) ceilings sounds like hard work, this will likely be where my motivation will be tested.
Then comes taping, mudding, and painting. We still haven't decided on the color, but I'm sure that will prove to be fun. I enjoy arguing. No really.
After that, it's time to move onto lighting. We want two ceiling fans, because in the summer it's quite a warm room, and in the winter the fans will help circulate the warmth from the stove. However, we want the room to be a "period" room, so we're looking for some fans that will match some sconces, and that all look that "old style", sort of like the stuff that maxim lighting makes.
My eventual goal is to get a projector, and then hide all the home theater equipment in an old tube radio cabinet, so that when the system is off it is barely noticeable and everything looks like it's from about 50 or more years ago. I think it's gonna look great.
For pictures of the current progress, look at the photos tagged Great Room on my flickr.
The Grumpy Blue House
We never seem to make ground with regards this damn house. Don't get me wrong - I love it, it's huge, it's old and it's comfortable, everyone has more than enough room to spread out. But man I'd just like to for once have it so that it didn't look derelict if someone were to come visit.
The entire house needs resided, and probably re-roofed - that can wait though, I've been patching the holes up. But it seems like birds keep busting more holes through the decrepit wood that sits over the last foot or so under the eves - the asbestos only goes up to that point, it doesn't cover the entire house (I haven't figured out if that's a good thing or not yet).
As a result of countless small holes, the house is drafty. Try as I might, I can't stop all the drafts... It's getting better each year, but when you reach a certain point in an otherwise warmish room and there's a huge breeze and chill, you kind of wonder what you've wasted all year doing.
Another issue is the fence - or lack thereof. In Indiana, it would appear as though they don't believe in fences or something, because there's maybe 1% of houses will actually have one. Well we're residential segregationists, we want our privacy, and plus I'd like to be able to let my dogs out the back door and not have to worry about them running out in the street.
My wife likes the look of those pvc fence installation kits, but not the price. Personally what I'm leaning towards is just putting up some horse fence around the property (the large square cyclone variety), and then letting a hedge or some other kind of bush grow up in front of it for looks.
If you've been following my home improvement photos on Flickr, you'd know we'd done some work on the driveway - but it still needs more gravel, and it could do with some kind of an edge as well. The garden (what little parts of it I've done) are coming along, but again it just seems overwhelming.
The dining room is almost completed, and it looks fantastic, but the living room (directly adjacent) looks awful with holes in the plaster and everything, and it's the first room you see when you walk in. It's our goal to get that room completed over the winter, but we'll see.
At least I got the chimney swept before we needed the fireplace, but man I would like to feel like I'm getting somewhere. 
... and the "Carolina Denim" has still got to go.
Downstairs Bathroom - Day #2
Yesterday we decided to trek out to Bluffton for some lunch, to get some stuff from walmart (Sabs made cupcakes!), and I decided to stop in at Lowes' and get the things necessary for the floor of the bathroom.
So this morning Entrecard was acting up so I thought "bah, I'll just work on the bathroom". I tore up all the rotten flooring, which I smashed through effortlessly with a sledgehammer - the three adjacent layers of linoleum put up the most resistance. We put down some new plywood flooring, cut the holes for the toilet flange and the floor drain, and then started on plumbing.
The plumbing took far longer than expected. It was the first time in about 2 years I'd crawled around in that particular part of the crawlspace, and now I remembered why I'd been putting off this stuff. Dead spiders everywhere (we bug-bomb the basement every couple of months to keep things down there dead), and enough cob webs I probably could have stuffed a pillow with what I'd gathered up on a stick.
After several hours with Sabs helping me though, I managed to get it all hooked up and the 4" pipe graded all the right way (which was tricky because it had to make a U-turn around part of the foundation to reach the drain). The reason the original bathroom failed was that the three-inch pipe was graded backwards and so the water backed up and froze in winter.
Larry (Sabriena's grandfather) can't make it up the stairs when he's got to go, so we needed a bathroom for him downstairs, so I got a wax ring and just sat the old toilet on the floor. It's a disgusting mess, I tried cleaning it but I don't think that scum is going to come off. If I had a pressure washer I would have just taken the thing outside and sprayed it, but alas I don't.
Our plan is to buy a new elongated bowl toilet for upstairs, and bring that toilet downstairs. Then eventually, we'll buy an elongated bowl raised toilet for Larry to use.
The linoleum's glued and rolled, but I let it go up the walls a little bit because I'm really not sure what to do with it. My plan is to make it easier for Larry to bathe (at the moment he has to trek upstairs with assistance, and step over the tub into the shower up there) by just having a shower stall with a drain in the floor. The floor is graded to the back left corner, where there's a drain (which isn't shown, it's hidden by an extra sheet of plywood). I'm going to hook up a shower fixture on the wall and just suspend a shower curtain around that corner.
I'm not sure if I can put linoleum on the wall or not (heck, I'm not even sure if I want to, I think it'll look tacky) or I might just tile the wall with the cement sheeting over the linoleum, then grout or caulk it to the floor to make the entire room waterproof to the drain. I also have to do under the sink too. All we really needed at the moment was a toilet though, and that's what we have. 
