I never knew I could juggle

     In elementary P.E. we had a juggling section where we started with two scarves, moved onto three and then attempted it with real balls.  I practiced at home with WalMart bags, and after totally dominating the scarves section, I was prepared to be an awesome juggler.  I mean if I was that awesome with scarves that floated in the air giving me years-worth of time to grab them, then how hard could non air-resistant balls be when gravity got a hold of them? (give me a break, my logic skills were still developing in the third grade) And then reality set in, and all of the balls ended up hitting the floor and rolling around all over the gym.  So rather than practicing, I gave up all of my juggling aspirations; who likes to practice things that they are bad at anyway? However, while I still cannot juggle round objects, since about March, I would say I have become quite a juggling expert.
     It has been awhile since I have posted any updates, and let me tell you why.  Since my last update I have: gotten married, gone on a honeymoon, lived in the basement of my in-laws, moved into our house (and by that I mean our unfinished bedroom), started school, started a new job, visited the license branch and the social security office and license branch 3 more times in order to change my name, done a lot of homework and taken some quizzes and exams, attempted to get internet and failed, and drank a whole lot of coffee. On a brighter note our house is coming along, and I have had experiences that I never would have thought of.
     I will begin with the house updates.  We not only have drywall, paint, running water, electricity, lights, air conditioning, a mattress on the floor on a tarp, a mini fridge, microwave and toaster, and card table with 2 chairs, we also have a kitchen floor, hardwood floors practically finished downstairs and started upstairs, a mattress on the floor (finally no tarp because the hardwood doesn't soak up dirt the way the luan did), a coffee maker (in the bathroom), and hopefully soon-to-be cabinets, and appliances ordered.  Let me tell you that I have never been so excited about floors in my life! They look awesome, and you can walk without turning your feet or socks black.

Here is a shot of the hardwood and kitchen tile!

   

      Life in our house has been kind of like an adventure though.  For instance, nothing is eaten that a)will not fit in a mini fridge or piled on the card-table, b)is not microwavable or from a package, or c)was not prepared by someone else (aka our parents, friends or neighbors).  This is not all bad, and I know that Ryan never gets tired of Pizza, but he drinks a LOT of milk.  I think if I would let him, he would drink a gallon a day.  Try keeping up with that when you can only fit one gallon in the fridge at a time, maybe 2 if you have nothing else in there.  I also only associate coffee makers in the bathroom with hotels, and doing dishes in the bathroom sink with dorm-life; both are realities in our world.  We have not been making our bi-weekly trips to Menard's though; I wonder if that means that we have been dethroned from our positions of home improvement store royalty?  Strangely I kind of miss those trips; they always made for good stories.  So life has been pretty crazy, I am still learning a lot, and I am excited about all of the progress.  Here are some pictures, and I will try to keep this updated.

All of the necessities for water.

Part of the Kitchen.

Part 2 of the kitchen.

The mostly finished, fully functional bathroom.

Our bed in our room.  Notice the tarp beneath and the wonderful ceiling fan.

"You make a better... window than a door?"

A couple of weeks ago, Ryan's brother-in-law Jeff came over after a day of work to help... (DUH, duh, DUH)...install windows! I had to work until 8 that night but had made my first apple pie, crust and all, that morning as a thank you for driving the hour here after a full day of work right before you go camping and despite having a wife and baby to help us with our crazy project because we would be lost without you gift. How domestic of me by the way. And when I got to the house I was greeted with...WINDOWS! They were cruising through them; our sliding glass door, and crank kitchen window, and front bathroom window that replaced the old front door window were already in, plus some, and the only thing slowing them down was that we didn't have the whole house wrapped yet and of course daylight running out.



Our new bathroom window pre-window, post door.

So after inspecting all of the windows, I helped Josiah roll out the tyvek and hold it in place while he nailed it, which is really difficult when your front yard seems to be a breeding ground for mosquitoes and the bug spray that you just doused yourself with seems to be sweet nectar attracting them to your flesh, but we got it nailed, and nearly half of the windows were installed that night. As I walked around admiring the fact that there was no longer 5/8" plywood covering the holes in our walls in order to keep the elements and marauders out- instead there were real, highly efficient glass, fully sealed, fully opening WINDOWS- Jeff with his wit said something to the extent of making a better window than a door. And while that is not how the saying goes, it was relatively fitting for our situation of replacing plywood with glass, and it was nice that the opposite was not being said to me by my dad due to my being in the way of his eyes and the sci fi movie on the television screen because quite frankly that is the only context that I have ever heard that saying in the past. But we have windows and doors now, and I am thrilled with them all, except for one, which comes with a story.



Sliding glass door with Tyvek in place.

That same night while I was inspecting the windows (quality control people), I noticed a problem in the room off of the garage. The problem, you ask- I know you are all at the edges of your seats with this story- was that when I went to open the sliding window in this room, the lock appeared to be on the outside and the screen on the inside. Double checking with the identical window in the garage to make sure that I was not just an idiot, I determined that indeed this window was backwards. However, upon telling Jeff of my discovery, he seemed a bit confused. "What do you mean- backwards?" he asked (which was my first clue that he was confused). I told him that I meant that the lock was on the outside and the screen on the inside. Still confused, or just struck with disbelief that he, a professional would do such a thing, he went to check out the scene for himself. And I believe I remember his ego-demolished tone laughing out loud and saying, "That is too funny. I can't believe we did that." I think he handled it quite well, and it is now the only window that we have to fix-the rest are in correctly, and even if it was in right it would have to be fixed because our floor slopes down which would make for headaches and asymmetry with the siding. What a funny anecdote to add to our house-building experience; I am convinced that Jeff just wanted to add to the charm and hilarity of our project, so thanks a billion Jeff!



How it is supposed to look!



How it does look- so if you want to break in here is your best bet!


So speaking of camping,(since that is where Jeff was headed for the fourth of July weekend after installing windows)after a Saturday trip with my dad to Bailey's only 79 miles away to order cabinets and buy bathroom stuff, and see my old roommate Korie who met us there, Ryan and I took the day off to visit his family at Shakamak where they were camping for the weekend. Leaving early and getting back late, we enjoyed three delicious meals, swimming, playing catch, hanging up and goofing around, a campfire, and the luxury of air conditioning? Yes the new Noerenberg camper is more equipped for living currently than our house, with air conditioning, a bathroom and kitchenette, and 3 beds, and while it was not the roughing it sort of camping that you might think of, it was a nice escape from the bugs and the heat. We had an incredible day with the whole family and some fun times with the little ones, and Luke rode his bike without training wheels that day, the fourth of July with the encouragement of his new friend Brighton, who was also five and riding like a pro on two wheels; he was a proud friend though, telling everyone that he new friend Luke was riding for the first time without his trainers and doing great. We also got some free marriage counseling from Ryan's sister Megan and her husband Kyle- "marriage is like washing dishes," he said as we scrubbed the dinner dishes. "They will have a dishwasher," Megan cut it. Kyle thought, rewound and started over, "Marriage when it is good is like a dishwasher, but what do you do when it breaks?" Megan's solution "You fix it." The moral of the story, when marriage breaks, you fix it with money! Oh the things you can learn while building a house (or rather rebuilding it), camping, and doing dishes. What a great day!

However, Monday was back to the drawing board, as we worked all week on the casa (Just trying to put my Spanish minor to use here). Then Friday, Jeff came back to finish the windows and doors after camping that weekend, and then he stayed to help run wire, which we have almost completely roughed in upstairs aside from the homeruns, and the fiberglass insulation is nearly completely in place up there as well. (You can all go ahead and be impressed with all of my skill, knowledge and legit terms including homeruns and pig tails-who knew electrical terms were so much fun) Jeff showed me how to drill the holes in the studs for the wires and then I ran them through, leaving enough room for a loop above the electrical boxes in case any get destroyed during the rest of the construction process (I am telling you, I could build a house on my own now- haha). We are getting closer and closer to the dry walling every day- how exciting!

On top of all of the hard work, we recently got ourselves a new kitten who showed up a couple days ago, scrawny and mangy as she is, which Josiah was correct in his feeling that it is a female feline, and while she would probably burst if she tried to eat a whole mouse now due to her under-nourished state, I have full plans to fatten her up and make her a mouser, and that is her name- Mouser. I am banking on power of suggestion here- hopefully she gets it.

From The Beginning...

So let me catch you up a bit...

On Friday, March 27, 2010, after searching for many and looking at two houses, my fiance Ryan and I sealed the deal on a real beauty! Let me tell you, she came fully loaded with wood paneling, puke green carpet, and a beautiful shade of teal in the kitchen-walls and ceiling. Here's a couple of photos so you can try to picture it yourself.



Note the paneling and ceiling tile.

And the beautiful paint in the kitchen.


So anyway, after closing on Friday, we tore into her on Sunday, ripping up floors and tearing off ceiling tile (which was located on the ceiling and the walls in the upstairs), pulling out billions of nails, and leaving nothing in there but the studs and the nasty carpet padding that was plastered to the floor of the living room. After a few weeks of dust masks and dirt, we were ready to start the roofing, and after a three hour trip to Menards (little did I know that it would be the first of many lengthy trips), the shingles were ordered and soon-to-be delivered to our work site. This is said nasty carpet padding.

The re-roofing was a bit depressing, as it took a bit longer than I expected, but after ripping off shingles, shake shingles, adding overhangs around the entire house, working around the charming but annoying-to-roof "A", and then beginning the re-roofing portion of the project, we found ourselves a bit discouraged and a bit further into the project than we expected. Did I mention we got engaged in January and have an August deadline (aka. the wedding)? But alas, we could work inside without the fear of rain...and so the project continued.
New roof! Notice the over hangs!

We moved on to putting up the frames for the new walls, which was completed at a much more encouraging speed than the roof. However, we did have to add more supports to the ceiling so that our future bedroom didn't fall through on us, and move a couple of walls. We also had to tear out the upstairs window to get the shower in so that we could build the walls around it (no worries though; we were going to replace that window anyway). Soon windows and doors were being framed in, and siding was being torn off (all million layers of siding mind you). In fact that became a couple Saturdays project for the women-folk (me, my future mother-in-law and one of my future sister-in-laws), and I truly wish we had been in the state of mind to take pictures of how disgusting we were after working in the hot sun all day being coated by bugs, dirt, more bugs, and more dirt. The amount of bugs underneath our siding (and I am sure your siding too-makes you feel really good, huh?) was incredible, and by that I mean disgusting! Those stupid little orange lady bugs that stink when you touch them- completely coating our house underneath our siding, and they weren't just underneath the vinyl, but also underneath the foam that came next, the shake siding that came after that, and the tar paper that came after that. Needless to say, millions of shakes and trillions of nails and bugs later, the siding was off, and the foil-faced foam insulation was ready to take its place on our house. Newly de-sided.


Just a few of our little friends.

What way does foil-faced foam go- foil side up or white side up- you might ask. As that is what we pondered as well, and a couple of phone calls to friends and family later, we were stuck at the same dilemma. So we called our dear friend Brett and Menards and ended up with foil out (hope you were right Brett- we placed our trust in him after he shaved off some dollars for us in the siding order, the next agonizingly long trip to our favorite store). So on went the insulation and the tyvek (although we did resort to the menards wrap which was a free gift, so to all of the tyvek snobs out there don't think I don't know the difference). A glimpse of Josiah's graphing skills put in place for our curved A roof.

TaDa!!

So while our house was being sealed up from the outside, Ryan's dad has been diligently working on heat, air, and electric, and after adding concrete block around our utility room whose wood formerly sat in direct contact with our forest of a yard, my dad was looking into the beginnings of plumbing.

Maybe tomorrow (or the next time I have time to write because I am not at the pool lifeguarding, working at the house, or staying up far later than I should be to blog) I will fill you in up to current and include some more fun anecdotes, but for now, I think this should be enough for your reading pleasure. Enjoy, look at the photo albums on Facebook, and take notes on what not to do, like buy a house in order to completely renovate it only five months before your wedding. After all, despite having confidence in the fact that we will have a wonderful home when this is all done, one of Ryan's new favorite quotes is "remind me never to do this again, ever."