Happy New Year! (or A Post I Wish I Didn't Have to Write)

Hope everyone is having a good start to 2013! We have been enjoying the winter in the house with our wood stove that keeps us warm and toasty. For someone like me (Ann) that grew up in houses with central heat, this is a new experience and I have gotten many splinters from the task of keeping the stove filled up. I still regularly mess up and the fire gets too low and my better half has to rebuild it!

Here's our lovely $75 wood stove that Kevin refinished.

In the process of being refinished:

Done!

Looking at these photos reminds me that repainting the porch is #1 on the agenda for spring!

Here it is installed.

And now for the part of the post I wish I didn't have to write......sigh....

First, a few photos.

It may not be obvious, except in the first photo of the three, but we've got some gapping going on, which is disturbing to me. We assume it is because this floor has not be refinished in decades, and since the house was unoccupied for about 7 years, it is drying out. Also, I wasn't able to capture it, but near the wood stove, there is some settling happening.

What you have likely guessed by now is that this floor, which I really, really, really wanted to just be able to paint....is going to have to come up. boo hoo hoo :-(   And while we are at it, we are going to re do the office floor as well. SIGH......  Since we need the stove for heat, this work will happen this summer. 

On the bright side, we have some 'issues' with the floor that we will be able to fix - namely, bigger gaps near the front of the house.

On a literal bright note, we've been installing lighting in the kitchen and upstairs.  The kitchen is still not finished but is coming along.

Here is the back wall currently:

As you can see, we still have some work to do but it is workable for now. We will install more cabinetry on both sides of the current cabinetry and wrap it around on the left, under the new (reclaimed!) shelves on the wall. The stove will be moved to where the frig is on the right and the frig will be to the right of the camera view.

Also, Kevin determined there is wood under the drywall on the ceiling after all, so the old drywall will come down and we will paint the wood underneath white.

Well, that's all for now. We realize we aren't blogging quite enough to keep up with everything we've got going on, so our New Year's resolution is to get better about it!

Until next time, be well!

~Ann