Cannot get Mike to leave Owensville!

OK...this is getting serious now! Mike went down there with a load and I cannot get him to come home! Seriously! First he was to come home on Wed...then on Thursday....and when I talked to him tonight...he said he would TRY to head out tomorrow! Secretly I am glad though....cause really I was the one pushing to buy this house and he was reluctant. Now he truly is seeing it's potential and loving it there. I need him here though cause I killed the second biggest spider I have ever seen (they grow BIG spiders up here in Michigan!!) in my closet tonight! That is HIS job. But I should not complain cause he has done some painting and bought and moved in a dresser and a chest on chest and a computer desk. AND unloaded all the stuff he brought...fixed the wobbly downstairs toilet and some other things too. Not having a DISH and getting not many channels does make you work...otherwise you are bored! I really AM very happy that he is liking it there. The town is delightful and the house is getting that way! In 2 weeks I will head down there with a load. My last day of work is May 14th. Went out tonight with some of my coworkers and we had such fun! Are going to do it one more time before I leave for good. They are the best people and I will really, really miss my job! AND all our other friends too! But need to get my husband home so that we can pack up all the boxes I have packed and get moving again! Will keep you updated! Judy

Starting the moving process....

Well...Mike is on his way with the first load. He did a great job of fitting lots into the van and together he and I loaded a small trailer we borrowed from a friend up here. We have lots of books! Wow! You just do not realize as things are spread out over this whole house and in the bunkhouse room also. He packed both the futons in the bunkhouse and on the screened in porch, the wicker furniture on the porch, the bookcase and some tables from the bunkhouse room, some lamps, lots of boxes of books, a lawnmower, some tools, some linens....and a few Christmas decs. I really am not sure what else...but a nice load. He will stay down there for a week or so while I pack and work up here. I have a realtor coming out next Thursday also.....so don't want to tear this house up too much before then.

We are going to price out renting a Uhaul trailer and/or a truck too. BUT we have a friend who has a very large, nice covered trailer. If he would be willing to lend it to us, we could get most of the large furniture items in it. Around May 15th, I am going down with a load and Mike's good buddies are coming up here to help him load lots of stuff either in that borrowed trailer...or one we rent. Time will tell.

I am working my last days at a job I love...so sad to leave! And we are spending time going out with our friends up here, who we will NOT loose contact with...ever! Sad to be leaving...but exciting too. The weather has been very, very chilly with some snow (not sticking, thankfully) but is to warm up now, they say. In Missouri it is much better! Spring takes a very long time to come here! That is another reason we are moving! Love you all...will keep you updated. Check us out from time to time. Judy

Our yard in Owensville

We are back in Michigan now....looking at all the "stuff" we have to move! Quite overwhelming but we will give ourselves as much time as we need. By the end of the summer we will have most everything down there. We will leave some things here until it sells so that we can come back and enjoy the lovely summer days here. And enjoy our wonderful Michigan friends. We will never lose contact with our dear friends we have found up here! We hope they all will come and visit us in Missouri!

Here are some pictures of our yard on the last day we were in Owensville....a rainy spring day...
A big lilac bush in the corner of our front yard.... The front flower beds.....

Our fountain area after Mike got it cleaned up....think we will put a small stone bench out there some day.....

That snowball bush/tree which is not fully blooming yet...off the side of the front porch...

A nice blooming tree in the back yard near where we have stored our travel trailer...

Our back patio

This is for Luke! The treehouse/playhouse. Some neighborhood kids have been playing in it...but it needs some work and to be made cuter!

Our back sunporch...now being used as a catch all place for boxes etc. But we will replace those windows and put wicker and plants back there someday.....

FINALLY SOME PICTURES.....

I am sooo proud of what we have done here in this short time. This house was filthy when we got here and we cleaned it. The yard had not been tended to in some time and Mike worked his magic on cleaning up the gardens. And we have way more neat plants then we thought. If it is not pouring rain tomorrow I will get out and take some garden pictures. We will do some landscaping...but that will be down the line. Lots will be down the line. This house will be a work in progress for a long time...but will be worth it! It will be easier when we are actually living here...and that is our next goal. To leave Friday AM and get to Michigan and start packing...and figure out how to move....some by ourselves...but we may do pods too.

Here is a picture of Pam and Stevie when they came to see us on Saturday. Note the colors of the room in back of them (which will be our living/family room).....and note the red under the stairs....THAT was the color of the kitchen. The kitchen opens off of the entrance room which is tiled and which will be our Victorian sittingroom/foyer. The livingroom comes off of the left..and the dining room off the right. Anyway...the two rooms we painted were the kitchen and the living/family room. The others we got paint matched at Walmart and we did touch ups.

This is the view out our front door on to our porch....we have a great tree out there....if anyone knows...let us know what it is. It is like a snowball bush but is more of a tree...lots of interesting things like that!
Here is the kitchen...now light yellow. It looks white in the pics...but IS yellow! Painting it was one of the hardest things I have ever done! The ceilings are way high! And there are angles galore. I started out with brushes and did that with taping it the whole first day. The second day I tried the roller. Well duh!! Roller is the way to go! It went sooo much faster. Near the very end, I stepped off the ladder wrong (thought I was on the first step and I was on the 2nd) and fell back...hit my head HARD on our new stove! Luckily no damage was done to the stove...and no paint was spilled. I got an egg sized lump on the head which is better...but still there and sore. I was afraid after what happened to poor Natasha Richardson...but, thank God, I am still here and am OK! See we got our curtains up! Another goal we wanted to achieve before we left here this time.

A view of our new stove and fridge! And the pitcher on the shelf is from Texas....we have a small pitcher collection which we will put up there...and add to over time.

Here are the stairs going up with the kitchen in the background

This room will be used as our living/family room...with the TV in it and stuff. I painted it in one afternoon after I found out about using a roller for the walls and a foam edger for the edging. It turned out great! Weird color...but the rest of the house is pretty much that color and Walmart did a great job of matching. There is a half bath off of it. You can see the tree house out the window....in the back yard to the side.

This room will be our dining room....we will get rid of the fan and get a chandelier. This room and the sitting room will be getting crown molding eventually.

Mike enjoying the first meal I cooked for us in our new house. We ate fast food a LOT!

Me cooking in our new YELLOW kitchen...yesterday....

Here is the settee we bought at the auction place in Rosebud. The kitty likes it!

The sitting room from the stairs. Can you visualize how it will be? A small coffee table in front of the settee....some side chair (which are not lawn chairs)....an oriental rug on the floor...some palms by the windows.....

Here is the @#%& shower curtain. You cannot imagine what I have tried with this thing! I have bought and taken back at least 3 shower curtains! I tried tying it back...which is what it looked like when we saw the house furnished....nothing really looked good to me. I finally came up with this....and this is it for now. It does have to be functional after all..... I love the palms. I got this a Big Lots for really, really cheap and do want to use it if I can!

Another view....the bathroom is pretty big actually but is long and narrow with a very cool dormer window in it...to the left of the little table....

The upstairs hallway.... Our room is to the right....your room when you come and visit is either straight ahead or to the left.

Our room. Each room upstairs has a long window and a dormer window...lots of slanting walls which I love. Pretty good sized closets too! And lots of outlets....thank goodness for rewiring!

The middle guest room.....

The east guest bedroom..... More curtains are coming. I did not order enough. Bought them online and love them. I wanted, at least the front the house to have all identical curtains on it.

The view out the back porch of our back yard. You can see the back of the trailer on the right. We have a nice big lot...lots of space between us and any neighbors and lots of privacy.

That is it for now. Will try to put some more pics on tomorrow. We will be traveling back to Michigan on Friday and Saturday. Will continue this blog through the packing process and everything. It is therapeutic for me! Happy Easter everyone! Love from us both!!

Some fun....and lots of hard work!

Hi everyone....we are doing great! Working hard and really loving living in Owensville! Today...Sunday...heard church bells chime several times. Nice! One plus....I seem to be able to eat anything and not gain weight....so much more active. We can't get very many TV stations....so hardly ever watch TV....and instead work! Like the pioneers but with electricity, a dishwasher and a garbage disposal!

Have had good moments and very bad ones too. Lots of things wrong....Murphy is with us. On Friday our friends came to help us....and at the time the guys ( our friends and Mike) arrived with our big king sized bed...the other guys arrived with our new stove and fridge....well they brought the wrong stove! So our stove will come tomorrow. But the fridge is gorgeous! Pic will follow (maybe tomorrow). They had to practically take it apart....and the house apart to get it in here!! But it is in! Same with the bed. The guys had to take it apart to get it upstairs....but it is there...and we are sleeping (when we are able to sleep) on it...and it is great!

After all that stress......after the day was over....we all just relaxed with wine and beer and Chinese food. They all can see what this house will be like when we are done with it. It just needs little things mostly....but lots of them! But to relax with our longtime friends like we did that night was one of the reasons why we moved back here! Thanks to you all Ron, Jan, Barb and Charlie!

The next day...Saturday...my wonderful brother and his sweet Pam came up from Springfield to see us...and the house. They helped us unload the trailer so that we can settle in here for the next days... And for the months ahead when we go back and forth. We had a nice time with them. I am too tired to do pics tonight...but one of these days will get them on..including one of Pam and Stevie. They too are why we moved back here...to see them more often...grill and chill...and have some holidays together! Love you guys!!

Today I painted the kitchen...the first coat .....to change from a deep red (which no one who had seen it liked) to a yellow...so that I can continue my lemon theme! Tomorrow I will complete that (2nd coat) and then do the first coat on the living room. The rest of the house just needs touch ups for now....and Walmart has done an awesome job or matching the paints.....and they are good thick paints they have too....Kilz paints. I wanted, and intended, to do a "before" of the kitchen in red and then an after...but forgot. So will have to do with an "after". It will look great...even better when I get all of my lemon stuff down here!

Mike got some of the curtain rods up tonight until his drill died and needed to be charged. So that will happen tomorrow. He worked in the yard today and got it cleaned up pretty well....some yet to do. We have nice flower beds and blooming trees and it really is a nice yard. The owner before the last one did some nice things and took care of this place. The guy we bought it from did nothing much...and whatever he did do...did half ass. And then there were the renters....who were slobs! Never cleaned as far as I can tell! But anyway...that is all gone now except for an occasional cobweb I find when I am painting.

The people we have met here have been soooo friendly...we love being able to walk to the bank, the post office, the library, the deli and to shops and restaurants...and parks and, if Mike wanted to, the golf course!

Today we had a cold front pull in. The neighbors covered their plants. It may snow flurry tomorrow. Has been nice...but this is early April and things change. We leave for Michigan on Friday...and will keep working until then. Will get some pics up when I have time. Love to all......Judy

We are staying in our new home tonight!!!

AND it is clean!! That is all can write tonight.....so tired and a bit inebriated! Fun day on the whole. But as usual things went wrong...more tomorrow and I promise interior pictures!

Getting used to being tired!

Today dawned cloudy and the rain started around noon and only stopped about an hour ago. Mike went over to the house at 9AM to meet our next door neighbor, who has a carpet and tile cleaning business. The guy did a great job and is really, really nice to boot. Will be a great neighbor. Everyone we have met has been super nice...the handyman, the locksmith, the appliance guy and our neighbor. He told us some good gossip about the guy who we bought the house from and the renters....both kind of low life scumbags...but that is what we thought by what we see in the house. Every time we touch something, it is lose, or dirty, or not installed properly, or done sloppily. There have been so many times that we have wondered what we were thinking to buy an house like this at our ages! My breaking point was trying to put up a shower curtain on a bathtub installed under an eve! They had one up when we looked at the house, but it took me forever to figure out how to do it!! It will take 2 shower curtains.......AND a liner! Yikes. When it is done I will put on a picture. Then I had to finish cleaning the tub..which had layers and layers of soap scum on it! Everything is filthy! We could not do much while he was cleaning the carpet and the tile...so shopped...bought a new hot water heater. Something we did not know that we would need right away....but were advised to get...so did! Good price...and bought some other stuff.

I was feeling that I needed more stuff as starting tomorrow we are going to be staying in the house.....and will on trips to here as we bring loads down. There are certain things we need...like shower curtains, toaster, towels, dishes, etc. So Mike came back here to the trailer and hung out with Cali and I went to Washington....which I thought was about a half hour away...but is every bit of 50 minutes away. There is a big Walmart there (just a small one here..but lucky to have it!), a Target, a Big Lots, a Lowe's and some other cool stores. I bought lots of stuff...mostly at Big Lots...which I have learned to LOVE!! Thanks Barb!! Anyway...by the time I got back was 5-ish and still raining. I wanted to do some more stuff at the house....put up that %&*# shower curtain, spray my wood kitchen cabs with wood cleaner, and make some lists etc, etc. Mikey went to a bar for dinner...and then picked me up and now we are back at the trailer. I don't think I am quite as tired as I was last night...but pretty tired! Right before I left, I was using the downstairs bathroom and pulled off some toilet paper and the friggin' holder is lose on the wall! Just one more thing!!!.......

And maybe it will always be like this!!

OMYGOODNESS...ARE WE TIRED!!!

I need to let you know that we did have our walk through this AM at 11 and since then until 8PM have been over there working! We are both sore and exhausted. This sort of thing was way easier to do when we both were 20 years younger...which was the last time we worked this hard on a house!

Some highlights....finding a wonderful handyman...who will be very important in our lives in the next months. Low lights...finding that a lot of the remodeling they did was done carelessly and haphazardly. OK at first glance, but problems when you really look at things....stuff like a loose toilet, a loose sink, a vanity where you can't close the bottom drawer cause the pipes interfere, badly done painting, sloppily done painting, etc, etc. The washer and dryer both have issues...but are usable for now. Most likely the dishwasher and disposal do too! Thank goodness we have our new stove and fridge coming Friday!

The whole downstairs really does need to be repainted....it is sloppy and the renters left nail holes etc, etc. I can do that...not crazy about it but once I get started will get into it. Upstairs is done better and will have to wait...it is OK.

What we did today.....Mike cleaned out the garage and storage building...a big job.... and raked, pruned and cleaned up the yard. I did a load of laundry, scrubbed both bathrooms good....and the kitchen, and went to Walmart for tons of cleaning things....and a new vacuum...which I love! Then I vacuumed after I cleaned all the ceiling fans which I don't think had been cleaned in years! Everything was dirty and unkempt. But it looks a hell of a lot better now then it did when we got there...and will look even better.

We found that our new fridge would not fit under the cabinets! We could not get in there to measure cause of the renters. The new handyman came and took that cabinet out! YES!! And will work on the other issues I mentioned before...oh...and he cut our grass too!

Tomorrow Mike is going to work on cleaning up the basement. I am going to clean out all the high kitchen cabinets...the lower ones I vacuumed with my new vacuum cleaner. Then I am going to take off all the switch plates in prep for taping and painting. One thing...this old house has tons of outlets! All the carpet and ceramic tile is getting cleaned professionally tomorrow. Then the next day our stove and fridge come and they haul off the old dirty ones....thank goodness!!

Every day will see improvement....and has already. I told Mike...we need to pace ourselves. What does not get done while we are here now, will get done when we get back...but still we have our goals..and we both are kind of perfectionists when it comes to our house. Hard....tiring....sore muscles...sore feet! But we will survive. The house has good bones and we will make it nice. It is very old though and those are some of the issues...old doors...uneven floors...thank goodness for new windows! Love you all....keep us in your thoughts and prayers!! Will do some pictures tomorrow!