Snow pictures!

Sorry this has taken so long to post these. I've been quite busy until now.

So, we got about 5 inches of snow!! It was so Beautiful outside! The trees looked like something out of a movie. every branch, every twig, was outlined by snow. These pictures don't do it justice.

His back yard.

That's how much snow we got. All in one night!

It's really cold too. At the time I took this photo, I think it was about 16º outside.

This build up is pretty standard out here. Just about all the cars have it. It's pretty weird.

Leaf Removal

Ok, so the leaves have been gone for almost two weeks now (or at least, that's when the city pick-up service ended), but I just realized that I never told all you how the people in the city deal with all  they're lawn "refuse". After raking all the leaves into piles, the city has told them that they aren't allowed to burn them, so, using tax dollars, they supply a lawn "refuse" removal service. So after getting the leaves into piles, they aren't allowed to strike a match (I can here my fellow county boys gasping), they have to get them all into paper bags and line them up by the road. I was assuming that this would be no big deal, but have you ever tried to shovel leaves with a snow shovel into a bag that has about an 18" diameter opening. Now, add onto that all those nasty little twigs that make it very hard to pick up a shovel sized load of leaves, instead you get about three, and then the weight of all the extra hanging off the sides makes them all fall off! Arrg! But despite all these obstacles, and the feeling of defeat, I prevailed!!! Here is a picture of my triumph:

I know, it doesn't look much like some majestic sward or lance, but hey, could you imagine trying to move leaves with a lance? Have to run them through, and then wipe them off into the bag? That would take forever!

Hay Ride!

October 31st just happened to be on a Sunday, so that evening Ross and I went to home group as usual, which was meeting in the basement, as not quite as usual. The reason was that the house we were meeting at was in a neighborhood that persecutes christians on October 31st by sending little people dressed in nasty costumes begging for candy. In other words, we met in the basement so that we could leave all the lights upstairs turned off so that trick or treaters wouldn't come knocking. 

After we left there, we headed to Ann Arbor Baptist church to see some old friends who had congregated there for the harvest party. After playing a really long game of capture the flag, we went for a hay ride. That was pretty fun, and probably would have been more so if I had been able to feel the tips of my fingers.

The Photographer strikes back!

Projects, Projects, Projects.

There's so much to do, and I took so many photos, that I'm just going to post them by project, rather then in the order that I did them.

Here we have the range that Ross got off Craigslist. It was set up to use propane so we ( I ) had to convert it for Natural Gas (Also known as LP) There was a little valve on the back that needed to be flipped, and the nozzles on each burner needed to be swapped out with the LP one's that were in a bracket on the back of the Range.

This is what it took to get the nozzles in there. The screwdriver has a drill attachment in it that has a magnet in it with an adapter for the nozzle.  

Here's the whole thing.

I wonder how many volts are coursing through that little piece of metal.

It's... It's... Alive!!!! And I didn't even brake it!

The first usage made it well worth the work.

More House quirkiness

Here's an array of photos from random places around the house, some of which exhibit a fair amount of quirkiness, others, the lack of attention this house has had in the last few years, and still others, just flat out weirdness.

The safety board probably wouldn't approve.

Say, "yuk"!

Isn't our pantry lovely?

TV cable sticking out of the wall, with out a box. I'll probably take it out.

This is in the 1/4 bath (It's not a half because it doesn't have a sink) It's another light fixture that he didn't hook up, so the wires (which are hot by the way) are just capped off.

The wall is has a weird board on it that they put up to cover up the wall, probably because it was damaged and they didn't want to bother fixing it.

So THAT's why our phone doesn't work.

The door to our lovely pantry.

That thing on the wall is the old well pump. The house is now on city water, but they didn't bother to take the pump out.

We're still unsure what this area is. Ross dubbed it "The cat burial ground". It's like they forgot to excavate this section of the basement, so they just left it.

"One Beggar", free with your new house.

Humble beginnings

Howdy from Michigan!
Just in case I didn't tell all of you (Which I probably didn't, Oops) I'm in Michigan helping my big brother Ross fix up the 'fixer-upper' that he bought on the 18th. It's 1080 sq ft, and is very... quirky, shall we say. It is definitely a good house for "My first Fixer-Upper". it has a basement with a rather low celling, and all the wires, pipes and everything else are easy to get to, so I don't have to go crawling around in a crawlspace!
Here are a few photos:

Notice that beautiful color on the front door. Yep, It's gonna go, along with the door itself, it's fairly hard to open due to the fact that it's coming apart at the seams, and the paint job isn't all that great. Ok, It's TERRIBLE! They dripped paint on the light, the door, and the trim! The side that you can't see is by far the worst.

This photo doesn't do the paint justice.  It is WAY worse then it looks in the photo. He put one coat of a rather dark color on top of white, which means you see white streaks throughout. And, as you can see, there's a little green on the trim that's around it. Definitely going to be repainted.

This is the old fuse box. It's not hooked up anymore, but it was left in the wall. As you can see, it's not very attractive. It's also been painted about 10 times. Oh yeah, and it's in the living room.

This is the stairway down to the basement. It's a little narrow, but manageable.

This is the main room in the basement. it's a little old fashioned, ok, it's just nasty. It's going to get a new floor, new wrapping around the support posts (blue things) and a lot of paint. The celling is also a bit low. Under the ducts, I can almost touch with my head.

Note that I've been making making fun of the house, but Ross said that's okay because these are the "before pictures". You should hear what he has to say about it. Now before you go questioning Ross's judgment, it is very structurally sound, except for the sagging celling in the living room. More on that later.