Archive for April, 2006
April 28th, 2006 - CNN.com - ‘Green roofs’
CNN.com - ‘Green roofs’ growing more popular - Apr 28, 2006 I wonder if homeowners can do this too? Our “new” house actually does have a flat roof over the front porch. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a garden up there?
April 27th, 2006 - Reason for no posts
On April 10th, my father in law died (after a very extended illness) and we ended up being out of state for nearly 2 weeks. I’ve been swamped at work and home (hoping to have the house ready in one more week!). I hope that after a lot of work this week and through the weekend, I’ll have some time to write more next week!
April 7th, 2006 - Bought the vac
Decided to go ahead and spend some of my money on the Dyson vacuum cleaner I’ve been dreaming of. Split the cost 50/50 with household funds, so I still have a good deal of savings! I LOVE this vac. It is amazing. It’s wonderful. It’s easy to use. It’s quiet.
The only problem is that last Sunday, it made a funny loud noise as I started it up. I checked it all over and can’t find anything that might have been stuck. The noice mostly went away, but it was so quiet before that i think there’s still a problem as I can hear something that wasn’t there before. So I haven’t used it and need to call the Dyson support line. I hope it’s okay. I really want to use it this weekend. And I’ve giving away our current vac today!
April 5th, 2006 - Updates
I’ve been quiet because I’ve been so busy both at home and at work. So some quick updates so you aren’t afraid I fell off the face of the earth.
* We are definitely moving. The house inspection showed only a few more minor items and that the furnace needs replacing (we’d figured, but hoped it wasn’t true). We waffle on being excited and totally overwhelmed.
* My bathtub has never been so shiny. I cleaned it with a paste of 1 c baking soda and 1/2c vinegar (don’t pour in all at once!). It hasn’t been scrubbed in over a year and we have hard water. Oddly, the tub part is ultra shiny, but the upper part isn’t as shiny–has lots of water spots. Not sure what the difference is, although I did them on different days.
* Since my experiement with the flashlight, I haven’t had to recharge it much to use each day. I do about 5 shakes to get it back up to full brightness each morning. However, now that the light switch on the back entry is working again (we had to have it fixed before putting the house up for sale!), I may be tempted to use the switch again. Hopefully, I will stick with the flashlight. Although, as spring moves towards summer, it will be light enough in the morning to not need a flashlight to let the dogs out. WOOHOO!
* We had a lot of beautiful dark woodwork on the first floor. Our agent rec’d polishing it up. So I researched natural polishers. They didn’t work. At all. (Variations on vinegar, salt, and olive oil.) So we bought Old English polish which he’d rec’d. The natrual ones did nothing; OE turned the wood milky white! AAck. And I’d foolishly done in an obvious place because we were trying to see whether things got shiny. Eric recalled a product his Mom had adored, Solid Gold. We found it and our woodwork is now amazing! The same company that I bought carpet cleaner from the week before we decided to buy the house does have a wood polish, but we were hesitant to spend $12 (incl shipping) on another product that might not work. If we refinish any of the wood in the new house–or maybe for the unpainted kitchen cabinets–I will indeed try it. We’re realizing we have far more natural woodwork that we tended to notice on a daily basis. ::whew::
* We tried out the new carpet cleaner. The carpet looks good, but almost no cleaner left the machine. I don’t know if it’s the machine (clogged?) or the cleaner (doesn’t go through?) I figure that just the hot water cleaning will do the carpet good so am not worried at this time about what’s going on. (Thanks to Frugal Veggie Mama for the rec’d on the cleaner. We haven’t cleaned our carpets since Maggie arrived because I couldn’t stand the thought of the chemicals she’d come in contact with all day long. I feel so much better already.) We plan at least one more cleaning before the house goes up for sale.
* A handyman is going to do some minor repairs next week. Mabye he’ll remodel the bath in the new house, too.
* We’ve gotten nowhere except a really high estimate on getting the paint/wallpaper done. I’m hoping the handyman can do it as well–for less than the painter’s estimate. We could afford it, but it would eat up all of the money I’d planned to spend on readying the house. (The hallway/stairwell alone was $2000, not counting the actual wallpaper. The other two rooms were $800-900 apiece. I think it didn’t sink in that we wanted fast and cheap, not expensive and last-forever at this point.) This is the biggest sticking point. The house could go up next Wed except for the painting. The hall/stairs really look bad so we don’t want to show it in the current condition. :(