Derecho

So the kitchen is finished and I was going to take the weekend off and begin working on the dining room on Monday, until a Derecho hit us.
We had never heard that word before, apparently it has been used to describe "land hurricanes" since 1888.  It translates into tornado in spanish.  About 8pm on Friday June 29th, the winds began, serious winds.  They were clocked at 81mph in Clifton Forge.  The power went out at 9pm and then it rained and blew for several hours.  Oh by the way it was also about 100 degrees that day.  Cliff and I had just installed our window a/c unit in the bedroom and were looking forward to a nice cool nights rest.  Yea that wasn't going to happen for almost 5 long nights!


The electricity did not come back on until tuesday night at 9pm.    Those we the longest and hottest 4 days we have ever experienced.  Every night was in the 80's and days were up towards 100 with high humidity.  Almost everyone in Alleghany County was without power.  No one from Beckley WV to Covington had power, but Clifton Forge did.  So everyone who needed gas, food, ice or anything, came to Clifton Forge. Several gas stations ran out of gas!  I was coming home from Kroger, which was left with empty shelves, no ice and only the expensive waters left.  At least I was able to get some things to tide us over until we would get power back.
Here is the Exxon a few miles up the road from us.  This went on for at least 2 days.

The sugar maples in the front yard didn't do too well.  So we spent those hot and humid days cleaning up what we could...oh our chainsaw is electric! Ha, just great!!!  This is what we woke up to on Saturday morning....

On sunday one of Cliff's friends came over with his antique brushwacker 

and helped us clean up even more of the mess.  

Thank god for wonderful in-laws, Cliff's dad came up with a generator, a cooler with sodas, food and beer!!!  So we got the fridge going with the generator, and had an extension cord so we could charge our phones,  use the a/c in the kitchen and anything else we could use with the cord.  That evening we had a campfire with a few friends, roasted the hot dogs we got, made smores and drank some beer.

There will be no shortage of kindling or fire wood this winter!  

This is just the first haul from the front yard.  Much more to come!!!

Kitchen is done!

We finally finished the kitchen flooring.  My father in law came up and helped us get started... I didn't realize we also had to take out the 1940's ? floor.  Cliff came home from work for lunch to aslo give a quick hand.
                   

         

We put everything removable from the kitchen in to the dining room and built a fort to keep the animals out of the kitchen until all the tiles and glue were dry.    So this also meant taking the dogs outside using the front door, which meant leashes and annoyance!

We tiled the whole kitchen, except in front of the sink.  Our sink faucet was leaking, causing the water damage in the previous post.  We easily repaired it, bought a new faucet and Cliff did a great job as he installed the new faucet.

Once the sink was finished we were able to tile the rest of the floor and wa la!!  The kitchen is finished!!!!  The cans and stuff in the first picture were to help press down the tiles on the glue , since some were popping up.

It has been forever....for flooring too.

I know it has been forever since a post.  Well we haven't don't much with the house!  It was a very mild winter, so we had no stories of freezing pipes or snow.  We have been shopping though for future plans.  One of these plans was/is to replace the flooring in the kitchen and dinning room.  Both have linoleum from probably the 60's.  Frankly it wasn't really too ugly, considering how old it is.  But, it was breaking apart leaving holes in the floor. So for years we have covered the holes with rugs.

Then we found sticky back tile, for 22 cents a sq. ft. at Lowe's this past winter...needless to say, we bought almost every box!

It is hard to see what it looks like so here is another picture with a few tiles on the kitchen floor.

So now that it is warm, and we can take the wood stove out of the house, and 

I am out of school, work can begin. Hooray!!! With the tile picked out, let the work begin!

                 

     

Look what I found behind the gas stove, which hasn't been moved in about 6 years!  Our cat, Cashton, was delighted to have his balls back.  Sorry dogs, your rawhides got trashed.

Here we have the hot and cold turn off valves/pipes for the washer and kitchen sink.  The last few months the kitchen has smelled musty, I think this is why.  There is a small leak here and the floor probably has some water damage.

 yep, definitely water damage as part of the sub floor comes up.  Oops!!!  We may need some help regarding this issue.  so Help!!!  I will leave it alone and continue on....

A few hours later, with not too much difficulty I got it all up, vacuumed and cleaned. There are a few spots of glue I couldn't get up so it will need to be sanded.   But for now, it is almost ready for the new flooring...which will be done in a week or so when we are able to have Cliff's father come and help us.  Yay!!

We had the ancient oil heater from the kitchen removed.  This left a big empty space, which if we had the money we would install some new cabinets....but that will be another day... My mom had this old bakers unit in the basement and she gave it to us.  It fits perfectly, and gives us much more storage which we desperately needed!!!  We had to move the pots to another wall, but we are very pleased!

 

Painting!

Now that the contractors are gone we can  finally begin to put the new bathroom back together.  Our local paper had a coupon for 50% off one item.  So we bought paint and primer and only paid $30.   I had a snow day yesterday so I spent it painting.  The color is called extinction, it is a green gray color.  Cliff picked it, since he designed the shower curtain and is awesome at picking colors.  The photos don't do it justice!!   We love the color and the way it has come out.

Bacova had a sale a month or so ago and for $30 we bought an entire bathroom accessories kit, which included the shower curtain by Cliff.  Here are the accessories.

And while in Baltimore last weekend I got a few shower rods at Ikea, including this one which rotates and can hang flat on the wall.  Which works perfectly since the door is right there!

And here is the shower curtain and bath mat from the kit.

So now we just have a few other towel rods and some shelving to install.  As well as painting the doors for the water heater and  towels.  We just haven't decided on what color.  Hmmm.

Finally, the contractor has finished!

We can now say the contractors part of this whole ordeal is over!!!  

They moved the vanity, it is close to the toilet, but it is functional.

He also cut the door to the water heater.   

Now the bottom door is for the heater and the top door is for towels.

So now all we have left is to paint and put up new towel racks.   I decided to start unpacking some of the boxes and put things into the vanity and mirror.  Cashton decided he would help.