My parents will be here Tuesday night. I still haven't finished the second bedroom. My kitchen floor is sub-floor. My sink is held to the wall with 3 nails and hope. No counter for me. The fridge is in the fucking living room. The cabinet base sits unfinished and alone. All because I smashed my left thumb with a hammer and now it's blue and painful.
I never knew life could be so hard with only one functioning thumb. Pulling pants up and buttoning them is really difficult. As is getting dressed in general. Grabbing things, typing, writing. All of this causes me pain. All I want is a useable thumb, a finished cabinet, and more time till my mother gets here.

Oh and world peace. Because everyone wants world peace. Unless you're an asshole. Then maybe you don't.

I saw a dead nutria this morning and was reminded of my first post. Most likely because I almost crashed again. Fricking nutria was in the road. Then I noticed it was dead so I didn't need to worry about it jumping on my car and trying to murder me. Then I wondered if maybe it was playing dead to lull me into a false sense of security. Or maybe it was a zombie nutria wanting my bwainz. It's entirely possible that I need to be medicated. Perhaps I just have way to active of an imagination.

Wow, I'm really bad at updating this. Things that have happened since last update:

- Made a raised bed out of the ugly red bookshelf the previous owners left. Also planted said bed. I have a garden, YAY!

- Started work on the 2nd bedroom. My goodness the walls are in horrible shape. 60 year old wallpaper with cardboard backing, badly installed, against wood slats, on a house that has settled, in a humid area. Oh and they painted over it. Sigh, I'm just ripping off what I can and plastering over the rest. When that dies in a few years I'll have the money to sheet rock it.

-2 sides of the house have been resided! Thank you Conan for that. No more falling shakes. I miss the shakes and the color but cedar shakes are f-ing expensive. T1-11 for now. It will last long enough that I can reside it the way I want to in a few years. That whole lack of funds thing again.

-Got my darling neighbors help and ripped out part of my fence. Planted wisteria, jasmine and a grape at the remaining corners to cover the chain link eventually. I have cleaned out and replanted the entire front planter box as well. I've had many of my neighbors jokingly complain that I will be raising the tax value of the homes. I just retort that I left two sides the old siding and old color.

-I have begun ripping out the old cabinets, if you can call them that. Thanks to my new Pinterest.com addiction I know exactly how I want my kitchen to look: unconventional mix-and-match rustic.

Pictures to follow when I'm less lazy (and busy).

Floor Update and an AWESOME Find

Finally, after living in my house a month and a half, one horrible cold, and countless bouts of "i'm just too damn lazy today", I have finished my living room floor. This entailed ripping out the old carpet (and carpet pad, tack strips, and lots of staples), washing accumulated crap both literal and figurative off, sanding the crap out of it (again sometimes literally, PEEYEW), staining it, and finally sealing it.

Original:

 No carpet:

 DONE!:

And, as an aside, I stopped in a local Antique / Herbal shop today (don't ask, I really don't know how they got that combo) and found something I've been looking for: a cast iron corn bread tin. I saw one in a book years ago and have been looking since, about 4 years now. I may have squealed when I found it which scared the poor shop girl. It was only $10 which is awesome as well. It's the simple things in life that make you happy.

Why checking for local restaurants before you move is important.

I had a panic moment today. This was spurred by the state of my kitchen, or more specifically my lack of kitchen. Here's what it looks like before I discovered the floor under the water heater was rotting out:

 And after:

Notice the excellent cat proofing barrier in from of the floor hole!

No matter how you swing it I have no cabinet space. I can't use much of the upper cabinets as the shelves are quite shallow and only about 8 inches tall. The bottom is hopeless until I have time to sand them clean. Also they don't open very well and I would rather use my makeshift pantry shelves then wrestly with those few drawers. They will be removed to fix the floor and i'm still not sure if I will attemp to refinish them or just tear them apart and repurpose the wood.

But back to my adventure. I was almost home after a long day and the very idea of cooking was....it just was not going to happen. I love to cook but to even hunt up a pan, much less a full meal of food, takes far longer and far more effort than it should. A mile from home I decided I wanted Chinese. Then it hit me: DOES VERNONIA EVEN HAVE A CHINESE PLACE?!?! The panic set in. We really don't have much up here in the way of food. The closest fast food joint, a Dairy Queen, is 17 miles south. I took the main road through town ticking off places:

• (tiny) grocery store
• mini mart
• coffee place
• Mediterranian theme place
• pizza and burger joint
• 2 bars

This isn't good. I arrive at the other end of town and turn down a side street to turn around. Then I see it: on a residential looking side street, in an unremarkable building not at all resembling a restaurant I notice a sign. It has Chinese symbols on it. VICTORY!!! I got my crab puffs, orange beef, and fried rice. Oh sweet greasy delights! Good thing to because I was seriously considering selling and moving back to Portland. On the way back I noticed a Mexican place is about to open. Pizza, Chinese, and Mexican food in town. I guess I don't need to sell after all.

PSA to you kids out there. Checking your spelling is very important. Because if you don't one day you might end up with such gems on a menu you write:

• Human Beef
• Shrimp and Chicken Human style
• (my personal favorite) one of the dishes is served in a Spicy Human Sauce

My Little Red Hovel

Last month, on 2/24/12, I bought a house in the tiny town of Vernonia, Oregon. It's more a hovel than a house and needs more work than I care to think about. The shake siding is dying and falling off in bits, I have a 3'x3' section of floor rotting out in my kitchen, the electric is out dated and bits of the previous owners DIY wiring is so dismal it can't be saved. The 3rd day in while pulling down faux wainscotting so horrific it is barely a stop above cardboard I almost electrocuted myself when I uncovered the remains of a wall heater. All that was left was the metal casing (a 2'x1' metal box) and bare live wires sticking out of the wall. That was an adventure. It took me hours to rip up the wall to wall carpet that reeked of animal urine and looked had stains in the most disturbing hues.

The beauty is that I uncovered beautiful hardwood floors that I am currently refinishing. I'm doing this by myself, a hour a two a day after work with an old Craftsman belt sander. If you ever get the urge to try it this way DON'T! It takes forever. It is a necessity for me as I:

1. Don't want to spend the money to have a professional do it when I am quite capable of doing it myself.
2. Using one of the rented 'proper' refinishing sanders from Home Depot would no doubt be much faster but the floor has uneven spots and little bits that I have to concentrate on which is much easier and more effective with a belt sander.

It's still a gigantic pain in the ass. Here's hoping the floor will be worth it.

An Inauspicious Beginning

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coypu
You know you live in the country when you almost hit a nutria on your morning drive. The sight alone is more powerful than the best cup of coffee. Suddenly in the head lights looms a shape, like a giant beaver with a rat's tail. In the middle of the farking road! Thank goodness for a wide shoulder for I would have happily crashed to avoid hitting the animal. Not because of cuteness factor mind you, but because the immediate reaction when you see the equivalent of a giant rat front of you is to AVOID!
This happened a week ago and along with a few other experiences have convinced me it's time to start a blog. I'm really a DIY and craft freak who feels the urge to share my strange and unusal ideas and creations. So why a near nutria experience finally convinced me to get my butt in gear and create this blog I don't know. Perhaps future posts will explain? Maybe it's a mystery of the human mind we will never fully understand? Or maybe i'm just weird and random.