Meet Budy!

CB2 tells me that Budy will herd books and relieve stress. I have wanted Budy for a while now...and after receiving an e-mail alerting me to a sale in which Budy is included I decided to splurge. Yay Budy! I can't wait for you to arrive!

(Yes, I do know that Budy does not currently have a finished home to move into. I don't think he will mind waiting.)

And We're Back!

This is where I've been for the past two weeks. Ok, so maybe we got back to Boston last Saturday. For seven wonderful days (minus a few that I had to go back to the city and work, boooo) we staying in this cute little cottage steps from the beach, and it can all be yours for a modest $485,000. It was great. The cape is everything every local tells you it will be, cute, quiet, peaceful, expensive. Haha, ok, I added that last part. It was a trip full of family (mine and others), seeing new places, eating good food, and driving all over the state...literally. I am so glad my mom was able to come up here for such a long stay, I wish our families lived 30 minutes away instead of 1200 miles away. But no matter how much I tried convincing my mom this would be a great idea...it just didn't work. It was a great 10 days, sadly ending with mom coming down with the ick and spending her whole birthday laying in a Courtyard Marriott bed. Booooo. I can only hope that the next visit will be much more fun for her and will also include more hanging out at the Dog House...possibly with a kitchen to make yum yums in?!? Fingers crossed!

ps. Sorry for the lack of pictures...I managed to leave my camera in the car on every outing...major fail. I hereby vow to get better about this. For now, please enjoy these lovely pictures borrowed from the real estate listing of our vacation spot.

pps. Time to get back to some serious work on the Dog House!

Can't hardly wait

Not a whole lot has happened on the house since last weekend's festivities. My hands are almost back to normal (the pinky is still a little sore, why, I do not know). Other than a failed attempt at fixing the slowly draining shower (thank goodness it will be gone soon!) no house work was done. We did attend a wonderful birthday dinner for a friend with many of the ingredients from their very own urban garden! So impressive (and delicious). We also have spent a lot of time trying to get all of our IDP hours logged before they expire. yikes! For those of you who know what I am talking about, it sucks, right? If you don't know what I am talking about...you are soo soo lucky.

Hopefully we can wrap up the IDP stuff tonight because my mom gets here tomorrow!!! I am so excited! We are going to go down to the Cape for one week...well I only get to go for four days, but then I am going to "commute" back and forth to work for the rest of the time. It is going to be great. Along with my mom my godmother and her entire family will be there. Even though I haven't been working particularly hard lately (minus last weekend, which totally was hard work) I feel like I need this break. Get some fresh air and relax...just in time for real construction to begin on the house. Perfect timing right? Plus, this will be my first time on the Cape...so excited. T-minus 31 hours until we kick off over one week of fun with this!

In other news, I must have slept all bunched up last night because I totally feel like The Princess and the Pea this morning. Did anyone else love that story when they were little? I remember LOVING it. Reading it again now, it's kind of silly. Oh well.

A new old floor and the Tool of the Year Award.

We picked up work on the gross linoleum flooring this weekend. Despite many hours of back breaking work over the past two weeks, by this past Saturday the floor still looked like this:


After meeting with one of the contractors on Friday we gave in and decided to try the heat gun method. What could it hurt? I was going to try and find a rental, but he suggested just purchasing one since it might end up being roughly the same cost. After a quick trip to the evil HD we came home with this:

One word. Amazing. Work then started moving at a much quicker pace. I started thinking "wow, I may not even be sore after this like I have been over the past week". Wrong. While the heat gun sped things up considerably I still had to spend a lot of time bent over in knee pads. Very sore. Complaints about my sad achy fingers and toes (that's right, fingers and toes) aside this little tool performed like a champ. If anyone out there ever needs to remove a layer (or 2) of liloleum from wood flooring, and I am sorry if you do, then this is the way to go. We were previously sponging on adhesive remover and prying each tile up. Effective, but slow, and required a lot of muscle. The heat gun warmed the adhesive under each tile so that we could then slowly peel it up. After the heat gun worked it's magic we then had to go back over the floor with the adhesive remover and then mop...which we still probably need to do again, cause it's still a wee bit sticky. To whoever decided to put not one, but two layers of this crap on top of perfectly fine wood floors I DO NOT like you. Hmpf.

Progress shots:

Yay! No more linoleum (downstairs). We got all of the tiles up, but are still dealing with some kind of weird paper backing in the front hall. So gross. It will be up before the end of the week so I can show it off to my mom and godmother who are coming up for a week at the Cape!!! So excited.

Lucky girl.

I got to go back to Alabama a couple of weeks ago for my little sister's graduation from high school (can't believe it!). It was a great time spent relaxing and going to the lake! I love the time I am able to spend there and can't wait until we have a nice house here for everyone to come visit! Although, the lack of "nice house" sure didn't stop us at Christmas. :)

Thanks Mom and Dad for such a great time! I'm a lucky girl.

Projects and Puppies!

Over the past week:

We decided it was time to tear up some linoleum after getting the asbestos test back negative (yay!).

So I put on my sweet knee pads and tore some shit up.

Then P tore some shit up, he was too cool for knee pads so I stole his (they were better).

Ok, I promise we have done more than this...but not much. Ripping up will resume tomorrow. Ugh.

I decided for some reason it was time to strip the mini door that leads down to the basement. Over the years it has been blessed with I don't know how many layers of paint and one layer of super awesome wall paper.

I am thinking one more coat of stripper and some more elbow grease and we might actually get down to the wood (you can see it peeking through in some spots!).

And of course, lots of puppy lounging! So cute.

Come he'ah*!

We have now lived in the doghouse for almost 6 months! The move to South Boston has been quite the cultural experience. Many of the people on our street are in their 70s and 80s and have been living there for the last 50 years. One of these people in particular is Elaine. She lives two doors down and has been very nice to us “kids” thus far, that being said, I hope we stay on her good side. Elaine is very friendly, but has very strong opinions (which I am finding is a common Southie trait). Last Friday I was lucky enough to witness Elaine perform some of her very best "in your face Irish handiwork". The houses on our small street back up to the houses on the very small street behind it...so being not 25' away from 5 or more neighbors, you can pretty much hear everything going on. I don't mind this so much until one of the neighbors decides that they can be obnoxious. One such neighbor on the previously mentioned street behind my house owns a bulldog who loves to go outside and bark at nothing. Simultaneously this very same neighbor has been gifted with one of the strongest and most obnoxious South Boston accents that I have heard to date. So, for the past couple of months the morning routine has gone something like this:

7am: Let the bulldog out

7:05 am: Bulldog decides to bark

7:10 am: Neighbor decides to yell at barking dog (and for some reason the dialogue usually consists of “Come he'ah! He'ah! He'ah!” over and over with no success)

This pattern continues for the next hour.

Elaine had been mentioning to us how much this annoyed her and last Friday I guess she had finally had enough. I was outside cleaning up the yard for trash day and that dog was barking away. All of the sudden Elaine stomped out onto her roof deck/porch and started yelling at Mrs. He'ah. It was awesome. I grabbed the dogs and froze while silently pleading with them not to bark themselves (they seriously thought about it). Mrs. He'ah claimed that there were four other dogs on the block and that it is not always her dog (I resent that) and then Elaine shut her down with “then why is it always your dog I'm hearin'?”. You tell her Elaine. It was all very entertaining...here is hoping my dogs keep quiet and I stay on Elaine's good side!

Post from last weekend's events to come...including: a visit from friends, more flea market fun and some very exciting progress on ripping up flooring!!!

*He'ah=Here for those of you who haven't had the privilege of witnessing the beautiful Boston accent.