In June we adopted a Siamese cat from the Humane Society. Brendan loves cats! We named him Toby and he was Brendan’s best buddy. After a while we noticed Brendan’s eczema was getting worse than normal. We ended up having him tested for allergies and sadly, he was positive for cats. Toby was adopted out to a great couple last month. Brendan has done a great job adjusting.

Last week Shane and I started looking at dogs. We knew we didn’t want a puppy, but rather an adult. We went back and forth a lot on breeds, but in the end it was mutually decided we wanted a Doberman. Shane managed to find a breeder 30 minutes from his parent’s cabin. Like I said, we weren’t interested in puppies, but the adults they were getting rid of. I was all set to go and check them out, however, they come at a high price. A price tag of $2,000+ to be exact. OUCH!

So we headed back to our humane society and spent some time with a terrier mix and two boxers. The boxers had a sad story. The female boxer you could see had puppies, but there was no puppies there. The pair was found wandering and it was thought they had been bred together and then dropped off once the puppies were old enough to make it. The lady also said that the mating pair were longing for each other. They were of course separated and put in two different kennels.

On Saturday Shane mentioned going to the humane society and taking the dogs out for a walk. We got there and the boxers were being quarantined and treated for something (can’t remember the name). I headed to the small/medium dog room and that is when I saw him! A 1 yr old, male, Miniature Pinscher. We took him out and he was perfect! An hour later and we were taking him home.

Today is day three of having our min. pin. He really has the greatest personality. He loves to play, be outside, snuggle, and best of all…he is great with Brendan.  He is also very social. He greets new people nicely and likes other animals. He is getting along great with our neighbor’s dog.

I am really bad at coming up with names. When we named our two Siamese cats, George and Toby, we just knew the names fit! So far I haven’t found our little doggy a name. We tend to like actual “human” names. I’m asking for every ones help for name suggestions. We’ll let you know what we end up naming him! Thanks!

As of late I have no motivation to do any thing! My to do list is a mile long, but I can’t seem to start working again. Maybe the reason for this is, because I managed to meet my self created deadline for Brendan’s woodwork. I have every thing except the door frames and bottom board of the window done! I just finished picking out the paint in the door frames today and my plan is to have them sanded and stained tomorrow. In all honesty I could have the last board on the window done as well. However, I’m getting lazier with picking out paint and I want make sure I do a good job. I’m hoping that I can convince Shane, who has the patience I don’t, to work on it this weekend if he can find time.

The next step in redoing Brendan’s room is having the walls skim coated, some spots fixed, textured, and painted. The reason I boogied on the woodwork was so the painter could come and do all of this. He was suppose to be here 3 weeks ago. I tried to get a hold of him a couple days ago, but so far I have yet to hear back. I think quite highly of our painter so to say that I’m disappointed is an understatement.

There use to be a small door here to get to the "attic" space. Shane took it out and patched it up.

Thanks to every one who voted and commented on our carpet vs. wood floor poll. We ended up deciding to go with the wood floor. We had a few different tips from other house bloggers who have dealt with linoleum and the tar. I tried them all. The one technique that came the closest to working was putting a towel down and soaking it in boiling water. I do believe it would have worked, except for the fact that our floor is a soft wood, douglas fir. The wood ended up gouging pretty bad. Shane has since tried using a floor blade we bought at Lowes. So far it seems this will work. We are waiting to officially start the floor until I get every thing out of Brendan’s room.

On a different note some other small things we have done with the house is touching up paint in the kitchen and bathroom. I figured I was quite capable of doing this! We also had the house sprayed for bugs inside and outside. Yay for this! I was pretty excited as it only cost us $75 and it is guaranteed for 2 months. I HATE bugs.  Shane has been working on Brendan’s windows, but I’ll let him blog about that. Um, what else?! With the nice weather the last couple of days I’ve been outside working on landscaping. I took out a tree yesterday! Now I need to figure out what to do with it!

This last week I’ve been focused on getting Brendan’s room finished and ready for the painter. So in light of that I took a look at his closet. The closet ceiling had been sheet rocked at some point in the past, right over the plaster. The job looked horrible and you could tell it was done by an amateur. I knew the dry wall had been put up to cover something; why else would it be up there?! But never the less, I decided it needed to come down and be redone so it looked decent.

Once the first few pieces of dry wall was off I discovered the plaster was in bad condition. As I continued to take off the remaining dry wall the plaster caved in, er fell off, exposing the lathe.

It was at this point you could see there had been a leak and the previous owners cut a hole in the lathe, fixed the leak, and put in insulation. Oops, wait a second. How did  know there had been a leak?! I figured that out, because the lathe to the left of the hole was completely rotted and covered in the “m” word. What’s the “m” word?! Yup, you guess it, MOLD! My little project of taking down the dry wall turned into a big project that took us two days to complete. Two days doesn’t sound so bad but when you look at how many hours we put in you realize it was in fact a big, long project.

Since this was my project it was up to me to rip out all of the lath, deal with the nasty insulation that rains down, and of course clean it all up. As of day two I was so frustrated and crabby I decided to take it out by hitting the remaining plaster with my pry bar as hard as I could. All that did was knock off a few little chunks and put insulation down my shirt. At that point I had it. I went to Shane and whined. I wanted him to finish ripping it out and I would clean the mess. My whining worked and he finished the demo stage, as well as doctoring up a rotted out joist.

Once the closet was all cleaned out, Shane put up new insulation. I have to admit that while this was an unexpected project I’m glad we did it. I’m sure I seem crazy since this was a closet and I could have just tried to make the existing dry wall work, but there is a reason for my madness. While it may just be a closet, the right side of the closet is used as a small play room for Brendan. There are shelves full of his books and toys all over the floor. Brendan loves to go in there, shut the door, and play. I’m sure to small child it seems like a fort. Now with this in mind, Shane came up with an idea that we might as well change out the closet lighting  and get it up to code since we’re down to the rafters/joists. It currently has a single incandescent, exposed bulb literally an inch away from the angled ceiling. In our closet the electricians had to put in a florescent pull light to replace the existing one to get it up to code since they worked on wiring in there.

While I like the original lights it does scare me because it gets super hot and its butted up to the ceiling. Shane came up with putting in a light on either side of the door and instead of a pull chain, wiring in a light switch. I love this idea, because the light switch will be low enough for Brendan to control, yet high enough so it doesn’t seem off if we ever do sell this house. Now that I have written a small book  it’s time to get ready for church. Happy Sunday every one!

I am struggling with what I should do in Brendan’s bedroom. I ripped out the carpet with the intent of refinishing the hardwood floors underneath. However, the black tar paper is not wanting to come off. Shane and I have tried using boiling water,  scraping, and the heat gun. None of these methods worked very well. I have gotten a total of 6 tiles done and they aren’t that clean.

So after getting frustrated I decided I would just put new carpet in. I picked it out and about died when I tallied up how much it would cost me. I went to Lowes and I’m looking at $600 for the carpet, premium carpet pad, tacks, and installation. After talking to my mother-in-law she had me rethinking the carpet. She’s voting for hardwood.

I love our hardwood floors in the house, but I’m still unsure about having them in the bedrooms (especially in Brendan’s room). Brendan loves to play on the floors. He is all boy; crawling around on the floor, wrestling etc. I like the idea of carpet just for the fact that it would be easier to play on. But I could do the hardwood and find a nice 8×10 rug that is thick. I’ve looked at a few rugs and it looks like it would cost me around $200-$300.

To sum it up I need to make a decision and I could use some help! Shane helped me create a poll.  Your answers and comments would be greatly appreciated!

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Hello. It has been a long time since I posted last. I’ve been busy trying to wrap up my many projects and starting some more! Last week I decided it was time to get off my butt and get moving. In other words: I was finally motivated.

The first thing I did was putty the wood work in the bathroom with some help from Shane. From there I stained and applied the first coat of poly. It looks amazing. Crazy how having it all stained can make such a big difference.

Next I started sanding the hallway and the newel post. I’ve got some more to do, but I am making progress. I hope to have this done in the next two weeks.

The new project I started was Brendan’s room. I called our painter, Andy from Exquisite Painting, to come work on Brendan’s room at the end of July. He will be fixing a few of the major cracks in the plaster, skim coating the walls and doing an orange peel, and then painting. For paint I have a light blue that will go on all of the walls except the window wall. On that side it will be a light tan that will also go up on to the ceiling. My mother-in-law suggested that since I have navy curtain panels on the window.

With Andy coming to paint I realized I needed to have the top of the woodwork stripped and stained before he comes. I made the mistake in our hallway of doing this after he had painted and it made such a mess. Eventually I’ll have to go back and touch up the paint and have Andy edge it on the woodwork so we have a straight line. I am rather proud of myself, because in two days time I have heat gunned the tops and sanded them. They are ready to be stained, but I am going to wait until a few days before he comes to finish it. The reason for that is, because I have put myself on a deadline for all of the woodwork! My goal is to have all of Brendan’s woodwork sanded and ready to be stained in two weeks. If Andy is behind schedule and can’t start until the beginning of August I will extend my deadline to 3 weeks. Tomorrow my plan is to strip and sand the window.

Now today after talking with my mother-in-law I went ahead and ripped out the carpet in Brendan’s room. I debated about doing this, but it was stained with urine from the previous owners dogs (nasty) and in order to finish the wood work it had to come out as I couldn’t get to the bottom of the baseboard. Underneath the carpet is linoleum and then tar on top of the wood floors. Eventually we will have to scrape and heat gun it off and redo the floors like we did in the bathroom. This linoleum is different than the stuff in there and hopefully will be easier to remove.

Before I end this I’d like to thank every one who gave me some encouragement when I was feeling overwhelmed with every thing! Also, thanks to Liz for the rug we won!

As I mentioned in our last post, we won a rug from Liz over at A Constructed Life in conjunction with CSN Rugs. We received the rug just a few days later. With this gorgeous weather we’ve been enjoying, our posting has almost been non-existent. We’ve got a few things to catch up on, but for now, I leave you pictures of a rug we won that looks like it was meant to be in our house:

Brendan approves:

Like I said, it was meant for our house! I couldn’t have picked out a better color, size, or style myself.

Thanks again Liz! If I can ever get back into posting regularly, we’ll have to do our own little giveaway.

I’m not used to winning many things in life. Once in high school, I talked a friend of mine who worked at a gas station into giving me the code to get a free car wash. After getting my ’91 Chevy all shined up, I went back inside and bought a lotto ticket. Scratched it off, and sure enough, I won $5. So I gave it to him as a “thank-you.” Technically, I should have given it to the owners for stealing a car wash, but what can you expect from a 16 year old?

Anyways, on Monday, Liz over at A Constructed Life in conjunction with csnrugs held a contest for a free rug. Normally I don’t enter these, but I decided to live life on the wild side and put in a comment for the rug. Sipping my Sobe this morning, checking out a few of the blogs I normally visit, I saw that we won the rug! I’ve been a little out of it this morning and had to re-read it to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind.  I might read it again later to make sure, but as of now, it looks like we won. Wahoo!

Thanks Liz and csnrugs!

I feel like I just got my house some what in order after having it pulled apart for 5 months  and now the mess starts again! Our basement is unfinished except for the bathroom down there.  It’s been in our “house to do list” to eventually finish it. The plan is to make an office/bedroom, storage, furnace area, and family room. Shane decided last week to pick up the sub-floor while we had a vehicle to do so. This last weekend and week he has been staying busy putting the floor in and framing the bedroom/office. He’s almost done except for framing the last wall. We apparently have two old knob and tubes there that Shane thinks goes to the upstairs bedrooms. The problem is they are too far down the wall so we will have to move them. Shane’s Dad is an electrician so the plan is to have him come and help and possibly rewire.

Once the last wall is framed in we will have the room foam insulated like we did the bathroom when it was demoed out. I am very excited to have this room done. My goal is to see it done by August as that is when our son’s birthday is. Brendan turns 2 and my grandparents are planning on making the trip for his party! Of course, it’s not me doing the work, it’s Shane! I’ll let him add the finer details of what all he’s doing in the basement at the moment. I will say this though. I hope he hurries, because the basement is trashed and I can’t even stand to look down there!

On an update with the rest of the house, its trashed! I love to have an organized and clean house and ours is any thing but that. Every room has unfinished woodwork that needs to be completed and windows that need to be cleaned. When my mother-in-law was here she confided that just looking at all the work we had left made her head spin or something to that effect!  (I can’t remember exactly what she said) Basically it’s overwhelming. My game plan is to pick a room and finish that room before moving on the next. I came up with this about two weeks ago and have yet to start! Shane and I have both super busy with work and Brendan. I also think it’s harder to want to work on it when the weather is gorgeous.

As for outside I have never really talked about the outside of our house. The actual house needs to be repainted We were planning on doing this next Summer, however, we will be building a new garage (hopefully). I also find it overwhelming when thinking about having to paint the entire house all at once. I am trying to convince Shane we should start now on one side and see how much we can get done this Summer, without feeling rushed. The yard itself isn’t too bad. We’ve planted some peonies and other plans around the house’s foundation. I’ve also taken out 3 trees that were planted in odd spots. I’d like to take out one more in the front, but I have yet to do it. I’ll try and get some pictures of the yard taken and posted!

Now that I’ve written this my head is spinning and I’m overwhelmed with how much we have to do! Of course we could stop starting new projects and finish the other ones first! But who wants to be inside when it’s Summer and nice out?! Well that’s it for now.  I hope every one has a great weekend!

Today I’ve managed to keep myself busy ripping apart the upstairs kitchen. I don’t remember off hand if we posted any thing on this room.  It’s a small room upstairs that was converted into a small kitchen. Shane and I used this when we lived in the upstairs during college. This was way before we bought the house! Here’s a before picture.

Last week we sold the cabinets and counter tops so Shane took all of them down last night.Last night Shane took down all of the cabinets. It looks so empty not having any thing in there any more.

This morning I decided to be destructive  *cough cough* I mean productive and continue taking apart the room. It took me approximately half an hour to rip down all of the wainscoting. When I was done I had a huge mess on the floor.

I was dreading having to carry it all down the stairs and then outside. Before I could start I was given the idea of throwing it out the window and from there loading it into the truck! I was a little nervous at first, but once I got into the swing of things I was chucking boards super fast out the window. I did manage to get a small board stuck in the gutter. Sorry honey!

The top window that is open is the window I used to throw out my mess.

My mess!

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I’ve been looking for a clean solution to having a dynamic connection string for a LINQ to SQL data context. My primary desire for this is developing/debugging an application on a test database. Sure, you can always go change your connection string in the app.config file, but I tend to forget to revert it back before deployment.

After doing a bit of research today, I realized that if you open up the project’s property pages, click on the settings tab, and then click on ‘View Code’ on the top, you’ll access the “base” partial Settings class. In the constructor, add an event handler for the SettingsLoaded event handler:

this.SettingsLoaded += new System.Configuration.SettingsLoadedEventHandler(Settings_SettingsLoaded);

Then you can set up the event handler in a similar manner:

///
/// Dynamically update settings for development when a debugger is attached
///
void Settings_SettingsLoaded(object sender, System.Configuration.SettingsLoadedEventArgs e)
{
    if (System.Diagnostics.Debugger.IsAttached)
    {
        // Adjust the connection string as you see fit
        this["yourConnectionStringName"] = "Data Source=yourDevHost;Initial Catalog=yourDevDatabase;Persist Security Info=True;User ID=yourDevUser;Password=yourDevPassword";
    }
}