aquarijen's blog

I sold the other house! And progress on porch columns...

I finally sold the other house!

Lye Soap

16 oz olive oil
37 oz tallow or lard
1.5 oz coconut oil
1/2 tsp oregano oil or pepermint oil or almond oil
7 oz lye
20 oz cold water

All measures are by weight.
You can get lye at Ace Hardware. Red Devin Lye is no longer Lye - do not use it! It is something else!

In glass, measure cold water. In glass, measure lye. add lye to cold
water and stir with bakelite, stainless or plastic spoon until
dissolved. It will steam - don't put your face over it. (I do this
part outside) Set aside.

In stainless (not aluminum), combine the tallow/lard, olive oil, coconut

What is under that ceiling?

In the living room? It's 5.5" below the original one. I can tell because I can just make out the original one from around the light fixture where they did not trim the drywall very well. Molding is peaking out from around the edges of the room by 2 inches. I know the original colunades were removed because I saw where the flooring stopped between the living and dining room areas. If it had colunades, I wonder if it had boxed beam ceilings... The plan is to drill a small hole large enough to fit a camera in to take pictures of the space between the two ceilings. I'll post findings!

Moved in! Adventure starts now, or a few weeks ago, actually.

We moved in officially on February 1st. Over a weekend. Insane did not quite cover it. Here's the story:
------
HARK!!!
WE HATH MOVE-ED!

Plumbing is in and 50% done.

We regrounded the house to where the copper water pipe comes in from under the street. We cut the copper pipe disconnecting the house plumping. That was that - no turning back. We installed the whole house shut-off valve and installed the pex to where the pex manifold will go on the concrete wall. I painted the wall with drylock. I installed a T and more pex to a brand new 50 gallon electric water heater - which I moved to a convenient spot *for me*. Since all the plumbing is new, I don't have to put the water heater where it was - I can put it where I want it, so it went in the corner.

First coat of varnish on the floors

I haven't done a lot of updating, but that doesn't mean I haven't done a lot of working. It could be said I have been working too much to bother with the updating...
I have the floors nailed, leveled, sanded, filled, screened, cleaned and the first coat of varnish is applied.
The above three sentences represent about 300 hours of work. Pictures coming soon.

Tired and still nailing flooring.

Will it ever end??? Is my livingroom some sort of weird vortex of stretchiwalliness? Do the floors actually stretch longer as I nail more wood to them? Or is that my imagination? I think the former.

Busy busy days

It was fantastic.

A little election night home improvement

I went and voted. Then I felt a lot of pent up energy. I tried to ignore it, but that didn't really work. I tried to just sit and plan and daydream my way out of it. But that didn't work either.
So I installed the granite vanity top in the hall bathroom at the Tallahassee house that has to be rented before I can move into my bungalow. Yeah, I have a lot on my plate.

Rain in laundry room and Back porch finished - almost

So Vincent calls from downstairs: "MOM!

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