Three Layers? Really?!

These pictures are somewhat out of order. Just a few more little things about our ongoing kitchen renovation.

When we pulled up the linoleum to replace that section of subfloor a few weeks ago, we had found a bit of water damage. In order to make sure we didn't have any water damage anywhere else in the kitchen, we pulled up the rest of the linoleum and took a peek behind and under cabinets and appliances.

We found this:

It looks pretty bad, yes?

Well, it wasn't! It turned out to be just a surface stain, so we didn't have to replace any more subfloor. I call that a win!

When we pulled out the hood over the stove we were surprised to find it wired into the wall instead of plugged into an outlet, but the most surprising part was that instead of cutting a nice hole in the drywall, they had just knocked a little hole in the wall and yanked the wires out:

We continue to realize that our house was built by Special People.

Here's Scott attaching corner bead (I told you these were out of order...):

And here's the back door, looking more and more like a door instead of just a hole in the house where we stuffed a door. This has since been mudded over and the boys are, in fact, almost done so I can jump in and start painting:

And a picture of the pulling up of the linoleum:

They had put a new layer of linoleum over the old one, and in a few places we actually found a third layer of linoleum... Oh well, it's all gone now. We just have subfloor now, so we pulled a few carpet scraps we had lying around in the basement and spread them over the kitchen floor so we wouldn't be walking on bare wood.

Oh, and P.S. We ordered the countertops, and we were lucky that we went in when we did because they had a special: free edging upgrade, so we saved about $500!

Potions Class Would ROCK

So, it's no secret that I'm not much of a cook. I can make basic things, like pasta and sandwiches and almost anything pre-packaged that you just have to microwave, or throw in the oven, or throw in a skillet and simmer over medium-high heat for 7-9 minutes, or until cooked thoroughly (I make Bird's Eye Garlic Chicken enough to have it memorized, oh yes). I have, however, messed up these sorts of things. And I can't for the life of me boil a freaking egg.

You'd think that because cooking is following recipes and chemistry is following recipes (sometimes) that I would be totally awesomely awesome at cooking, but for whatever reason, I'm not (although I'm convinced that in Harry Potter's world, I would be AMAZING with Potions).

So here, I give you some of the reasons I don't cook.

Enjoy.

1. I don't enjoy doing dishes. Something about food residue sitting on dishes, getting gummy in the soapy water...blergh. It gets slimy on my fingers. Shoot me now.

2. The logical thing to do would be to use the dishwasher, right? Well, Utah has hard water. The hardest water I've ever encountered. And the dishwasher is really really good at coating all of our dishes with a crust of minerals. Yum. I mean, they're still clean. We eat off of them. It's just...well, we don't need to take extra mineral supplements is all I'm saying. After the kitchen cabinets and countertops are done, we're going to invest in a water softener. Expect a post about how happy that makes me.

3. I have plenty of time. I go to work for 8 hours, the gym for an hour, add in an hour for travel time and showering and such, and 8-9 hours for sleep, and VOILA! I have 5-6 hours each weekday for NOTHING. And even more on weekends! However, I just can't see spending much time making food in the crappy half-kitchen while there's so much YARN to be dealt with (and my new complete BSG series to watch...). So spending ten minutes making sandwiches? Absolutely.

4. Half-kitchen. HALF-KITCHEN. There's almost no counter space. All of our dishes are crammed in and stacked as tight as they will go into our little baby cabinets (they're going to be gone soon, WOO). All it takes is like one dirty bowl and spoon and then I'm out of counter space and there's nowhere to work any more and it's really frustrating, even when I'm just making sandwiches! Our new kitchen layout adds like eight more feet of countertops! Joy!

5. Since there are only two of us (well, three for now, if you count Jon), we don't need to make such large portions as recipes call for. If I did cook, there would always be tons of leftovers. WAIT. Then I might not have to cook the next day. Ok, maybe this isn't such a bad thing... But when I bake things, the baked things get eaten. Quickly. And in large quantities. And then my hips get bigger. I don't need that.

6. Lastly, my Scott is happy to cook, so why should I bother? Ha, just kidding Scottie!

This Post Is So Boring I Couldn't Think Of A Title

This morning I tried to redeem a Free Mountain Dew cap that I won from my last one, but Maverik doesn't redeem them, so I had to buy one instead. Fail. I have no idea where I can redeem it.

Last night I joined a crochet group run by a lady in my town in her home. I had been on Ravelry for a few weeks trying to get something together and she found me and  invited me to come to her group, so I did. It was pretty fun! There were only four people, but I got to show off a bit, and they were all working on Tunisian crochet (which is basically a hybrid of crocheting and knitting), which I think I might like to learn. I have instructions for it in my Harmony Guides, but I've never actually tried it. I think I really need to finish some of my current projects first, though. I have a baby blanket (for nobody in particular - just thought it might be wise to have a spare, just in case someone gets babied) that's almost finished. In fact, I think it's big enough now and I could be done any time I want, and then I just have to put an edging on it.

Mercury has been giving me issues this week. They're not major, but if it happens again I'll need someone to come out and take a look at it. For now she's running just fine, so I'll just cross my fingers.

I'm still working back up to where I was at the gym. It's slow going, and I hate it, but there's nothing I can do to speed up the process, since I still get pain. It's less pain, though, so at least I'm making progress.

We're inching toward being able to paint in the kitchen.

And that's all I can think of today. I'm getting boring.

Thoughts on Pride And Prejudice

So while I was watching Pride And Prejudice (BBC version) with Li during my vacation, I just kept noticing things more and more that are just so very radically different than how things are today. It's so interesting how time can alter customs and etiquette so much.

1. I love how they're supposedly "poor", but they have a maid (and/or a cook; I don't know if Hill functions as both). I know compared to other Gentlemen Mr. Bennet has little money, but obviously there are a lot of people WAY worse off than they are. I remember when my family was poor, and that meant no food sometimes. BIG difference.

2. I know that Mrs. Bennet is very obviously lacking in social graces, but even the very worst sorts of people don't talk about someone else's salary, especially loudly, in the middle of a party, while making it seem as if she wants her daughters to marry for money. Oh wait, she does. The only people who know how much money I make are me, Scott, Mim, Kwiddens, and my boss. Oh, and the woman who does payroll.

3. Etiquette played a much larger part in society then, so how is it all right for the rich to snub the poor (if they can be called "poor") when nowadays people would think you a tremendous ass for doing the same? So and so lives in Cheapside! Who cares?

4. When Mr. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth and she cites his previous "bad behavior", wouldn't it have been simpler for Mr. Darcy to, right then and there, say "Oh, Miss Bennet, you are quite mistaken! Here is the real story..." But then I suppose there wouldn't be occasion for the lovely letter he then writes to her, or for the rest of the novel. I think this sort of thing often, and I have to remind myself that if things went the way that seems logical to me, the movie/book/show/whatever would be far less interesting and quite a bit shorter.

5. Mr. Wickham "must have something to live on". Um, whatever happened to getting a job? If you need more money, go find work. A lot of people back then seemed to think they were entitled to a living without any effort on their part.

6. A seeming contradiction: the five Miss Bennets are not allowed to own property, so Longbourne estate is entailed upon Mr. Collins, but Miss Darcy has a fortune of 30,000 pounds (or something like that). So how is owning property and owning a large sum of money any different? I'm not really a  feminist, but that just doesn't seem to make sense.

7. Pedophilia! Colonel Forster must be something like 40 years old, and his new bride is 14ish. Gross. Think of the difference in maturity, especially considering Mrs. Forster's closest friend is Lydia, who is only 15 and more than a little silly for her age! Also, what happens when her husband dies eventually and she still has years and years left to live? Apparently, she's not allowed to own property, so how will she live?

8. Mary Bennet and Mr. Collins would be a perfect couple, don't you think (once you got past the cousins marrying thing...)? Mr. Collins, however, seems to feel like he deserves someone more beautiful because, oh look, he's a pompous jerk.

9. Mrs. Bennet is the most obnoxious human being every to grace the earth, either in fiction or real life. When things aren't going her way, her poor nerves! And when things are going her way, will she please just shut up already?! No wonder most of her progeny are ridiculous.

10. I'm in love with Colin Firth. Also, the guy who plays Mr. Bingley, although quite amiable, is not attractive at all. He has bug eyes.

The end.

I think I read into things too much. I do, however, and always will, enjoy watching this movie.

It's About Time...

...For more Nyah pictures!

I haven't seen her in a while...I'm thinking it's about time for a trip down to Kwiddens's house!

There Was Makeup EVERYWHERE

I am a total klutz. You'd think that as a knitter and a chemist, you know, someone who works with her hands, that I would have very agile little fingers. Think again.

This is why I'm not allowed to use the super glue any more:

Yes. I glued my thumb to the glue. And seconds after that, I glued the Q-tip soaked in acetone I was using to try and pry it off to my fingers on my other hand.

This weekend has been...crazyish. Em and three of her friends were planning on attending the Anime Banzai in the Davis Conference Center this weekend, and I'm super nice so I offered to let them stay at my house instead of having to get a hotel room for three nights. We pulled out all of our extra pillows and blankets and sleeping bags and let them crash on the living room floor.

Scott and I generally go to bed rather early, but we needed to stay up late enough to let the girls in each night...LATE. Also, between their regular stuff and their costumes (like 3 different costumes each) my living room and bathroom were CHAOS. There was makeup everywhere. HURGH. I got home and hurried to clean up as much of it as I could before Scott saw it and had a conniption. Ha!

They're over at the convention right now, and later today they will gather all their things and head back down home and then my house will be SILENT again. So nice.

They were gone during the day though, so on the plus side, we got all the ugly linoleum in the kitchen ripped up, and we were happy to find that there wasn't any more water damage under the dishwasher, so we don't have to replace any more subfloor. Happy!

Sunday Spackling!

So Sunday we picked up where we left off. The floor was done (where we needed it to be; we still need to pull up the rest of the linoleum but that can wait) so we needed to build the new half-wall, do the electrical wiring, drywall, and mud.

Our kitchen was already messy just from moving things out of the way so we could pull sub floor up, but it was only going to get messier.

We needed to pull out some of the cabinets so we could patch some holes in the drywall and move electrical outlets.

Here's the beginning of the new wall (which, funnily enough, ended up only a few inches from where the old wall was...) (but we still would have had to demo the old wall anyway to get it to the right height and get the electrical stuff in the right places).

Scott did all the wiring himself, saving us hundreds of dollars compared to having an electrician do it. Scott never ceases to amaze me with the amount of things he can do around the house!

We started drywalling over the old back door:

Screwing dry wall on to the new wall:

The ceremonial last piece of drywall (well, on the new wall, anyway):

Putting on the first layer of mud:

Here's the end product (well, not really end, but the end for Sunday):

We got a ton more done on Sunday than we did on Saturday. Saturday everything just seemed to get messed up a bit here and there, and it made everything SO. SLOW. But Sunday we had only planned on building the wall and getting the electrical outlets wired. We didn't plan to get drywall and mud done, but we did and it is starting to look AMAZING!

My kitchen is going to be fabulous.

Sub Floor Saturday!

This past weekend we got a lot of work done in the kitchen in preparation for the new cabinets that will arrive next month. I briefly mentioned it before, but now you get to see the pictures!

This is the section of floor where the pantry closet used to be.

There was an air return in the other side of the wall behind it, and there are several holes where electrical wires had been threaded. When we put the new flooring down we are going to need as perfect a sub floor as we can get, so we decided to replace a section of it. It's a good thing, too, because there was a bit of water damage we didn't even know about!

The first step was to rip up the old linoleum (yuck!) and what do you know, there was more, even uglier linoleum underneath it!

After that we started pulling up sub floor. When we're ripping the guts out of this house, we always come across something weird the builders did that makes us think they didn't get it inspected...here's Scott, with an incredulous look on his face because OH LOOK, THEY USED PEGBOARD INSTEAD OF SUB FLOOR. Idiots.

Once we got the giant hole torn out of our floor (and Scott was being goofy and stuck his head up through from the basement), we were able to start putting in new sub floor.

Scott is enjoying a well-needed break.

And, tada, the finished sub floor:

The end. Well, not really. But that's all we got done on Saturday.

And by we I mean Scott and Jon. I wasn't very useful most of the time.

Text Time 10

Me: I just said "3/4 of our parents suck!" and Scott said "But the other 1/4 makes up for it!"
Mim: Thank you! I love you guys.

Me: Hungry! Making some dinners.
Kwiddens: Grood. What are you making?
Me: Garlic chicken. Premade, frozen...so I can't screw it up!
Kwiddens: Haha
Me: I am truly rotten at cooking. I made muffins the other day and they ended up gross. Scott liked them though...weirdie.
Kwiddens: What did you do?? And how were they wrong?
Me: I don't know what I did. They just tasted kinda odd. Not muffiny but more bready.
Kwiddens: Haha you messed up boxed macaroni once too didn't you?
Me: Shhhhhhhhh.

Me: Okie. I feel like a jerk but I messed up dinner so I'm feeling like I want to cry...it's so stupid...
Kwiddens: How did you mess up dinner? I think sometime you and I should cook together.
Me: Gravy didn't thicken. Gravy soup!
Kwiddens: What did you use to thicken?
Me: It was a mix...
Me: I just...suck at cooking. You'd think I would be great at it, since chemistry is basically following recipes!

Kwiddens: I need to learn how to apparate.

Me: YEAH!

Kwiddens: Mim and I decided we would do it with hulahoops and wands and sparkles.

Kwiddens: Right now I'm eating Oreos and throwing the cream away

Me: I need to be there!

Kwiddens: We need to have a tube that goes from wherever I am to wherever you are and we can pass notes or pills or ice creams or whatever.

Kitchen, Gym, Gym, Kitchen

This past weekend we started getting the kitchen ready for cabinet installation. BIG JOB! There's so much that needs to be totally finished. This past weekend we got a large section of water-damaged sub floor replaced, then got the half-wall that will be behind the stove built. We filled in the old back door with insulation and drywall and got the first layer of mud on. It was quite a bit for one weekend! Don't worry, I lots of pictures of it all. I just need to get them onto the blog... We still need to do a few more layers of mud (with sanding in between), primer, drywall and mud and sand around the new back door, prime all the walls for painting, and pull up all the old linoleum in the kitchen. THEN I can paint. THEN we can put the cabinets in. So all this needs to be done rather quickly (the cabinets are being delivered on November 3).

I finally got back to the gym yesterday. The doctor had told me to stay off of my ankle for two to three weeks, so I decided two was good. I have to take it easy for a while, though. Yesterday I got up to the same speed I was doing before I got hurt but I didn't add any incline. I felt like I only got half a workout, but my ankle was hurting so I wasn't willing to push it any farther. At least I burned off the triple chocolate cookie I ate yesterday.

I've been at the exact same weight for months but I still feel like I'm getting fatter. I think it's a depression thing, since I haven't been exercising for a while and that made the happy endorphins go away. As soon as I get back into the groove and go to the gym every day again, I'm sure I'll feel fine.

Later today:

I was able to do a little bit more on the treadmill today. A little. I should just be grateful I'm allowed back on it. I do love the exercise (and I never thought I would say that!)!

Scott just went to Home Depot to get more supplies for the kitchen, and while he was there he talked to the guys at the pro desk. When we built the deck, Home Depot had us order WAY more Trex than we needed, and that stuff is EXPENSIVE, so we were kinda mad. It was special order, so we thought we were just stuck with it. It turns out, for a restocking fee, we could sell it all back and get $660 credited onto our Home Depot card! That means we just got $660 closer to affording some counter tops! Woo!