Awww Chute!!!

So lots of pictures on this post....I'll just apologize ahead of time! I either got carried away on the picture taking or this project was a big deal. It actually was a bigger deal than we thought it would be.

I guess it started awhile back when I mentioned to Dustin what a total pain it is for the kids to lug down big piles of laundry THREE flights of stairs. Well, actually 2 flights of stairs most of the time and then they end up flinging it all down to the basement where I have to step over the big pile, collect, and sort it all in the laundry room.

While daydreaming one day (something both Dustin and I do a lot - I catch him staring at some part of the house and ask him what he's thinking about - he's mentally got some project all planned out in his head) I thought it might be possible to turn the old chimney shaft into a laundry chute. It goes from Ethan's room to the kitchen area, and then under the kitchen area is the laundry room....PERFECT! Right?

Well, last weekend Dustin thought it would be a fun, cheap, doable weekend project. He asked if that would be okay to start it and I said, "Sure, go for it!"

To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, I'll show this picture that was taken before we even moved in. The old chimney is the long, rectangular box right in the middle of the picture....

This is how we used the space up until this last weekend....a temporary seating area to hang out and watch TV. You can see the plaster was chipping off and they put some funky paneling under it instead of drywall. I thought there would be some hidden compartment behind the panel.....or maybe some more treasures. Nope, just the old lathe and plaster. Oh, and an old hammer head....if you can call that a treasure!


Here's Dustin "prepping" the area for a possible messing job ahead. I saw some holes in between the staples but I didn't say anything because I thought it couldn't possibly make that much of a difference, right?......




Here he starts the demolition. The old lathe and plaster being revealed. This is where I happily leave him to his project while I run some errands....



Yes, this picture is in focus.....it's just the DUST making it very unclear!!! I'm still gone so Dustin took this picture still unaware of what is happening in the rest of the house.....remember all those gaps in the plastic??........



I come home to bricks and rubble.....along with lots of dust and SOOT everywhere!........


This is the hole that is left in the ceiling up to the 3rd floor. You can still see the little shaft of black soot.....


This is Saturday now and I decide to get into the action. These bricks are easily taken down by chipping away at the plaster. It's nothing like cement....more like chalk. I was surprised at how easy it was to knock these bricks out. They were barely held together.....




Now I'm up in Ethan's room chipping away more brick. Dustin caught most of the bricks below but some just started crashing down into the wheelbarrow below........





A closeup of the bricks. I know I'm going to have comments about not covering the floor....the clean up was easy and no floors were harmed during the project. :-)

This is as far as we decided to go.....

A look down to the kitchen......

Dustin, still all dirty, working on the hole down to the basement laundry room.....

I just had to post some pictures of the aftermath. Had I known my desk area was going to be in jeopardy, I would have put some kind of covering over it.....




I learned a lot about soot this week. It doesn't just wipe up....it smears! This is the kitchen floor and it took a few hours on hands and knees scrubbing with elbow grease and baking soda (the best thing that seemed to work) to finally clean it all up!




You can't really tell in this picture, but our new kitty has dark gray paws and chest where it is usually perfectly white. She sure had a good time watching the whole process though.....




The lovely dining room. Every inch needed to be vacuumed and wiped. Right about now I was wondering if this whole thing was even worth it.......



Here's the new laundry chute in the kitchen area. We are going to leave this wall open for future electric and plumbing projects coming up real soon. I'll be posting that next.......

Here's a side view......

So, here's the finished product up in Ethan's room. I suppose the reactions and appreciation from the kids alone was worth the project. Time heals all wounds. This week has gone by fast and I'm already forgetting how hard it was to clean up the mess......



Thought you might be curious what it looks like down the shaft. It's so full right now, it reaches up to OUR room on the main floor (on the other side of the kitchen area) where there is also a hole to put our clothes down too! I'd consider this project a success! May we enjoy years of laundry ease!

This Old "Sloping" House

It's a known fact that a lot of older homes and buildings (especially ones pushing 100 years and older) are going to have issues with being level. I'm not sure if it's because of the foundations settling over time or maybe simply the construction standards back then.

Well, the upstairs of our home has a noticeably "non-horizontal" feeling to it. Below is a picture of the stairs going up to the kids' rooms. It's a little hard to tell in this picture as I think I was tilting my camera to be even with the stairs but if you look close, you can see they slant to the right.....

You can also see how scuffed and worn they are. It's one of the kids' chores to wipe down the stairs but it's so hard to really get the built up dust down in those old grooves.....

I thought a quick, new coat of paint would freshen things up a bit. Looks a lot cleaner now. Here, you see the slant is more noticeable.....

Maybe we should have put the next couple of pictures up as videos but I think you'll get the idea. We have a great ol' time putting a marble down at the side of the room and then watching it immediately take off, building up speed to go clear across the room. Here, the kids demonstrate for the camera after their showers and before going to bed last night.....

Ellie adds the face for dramatic effect....very unlike her. :-)

So, are we going to fix the issue? Heck no. Dustin brought up the possibility one time and we talked about it......... for about 3 1/2 seconds. We quickly came to the conclusion that there would be no reason to fix except for aesthetics. Besides, it's part of the charm of living in a 100 year old home, right?

Christmas at The Church House

In the beginning of December, we were ready to bring in the Christmas spirit and break out our beloved Christmas chest. This big, antique chest holds everything of ours that has to do with Christmas....lights, ornaments, candles, decorations, etc. Well, everything except for our imitation Christmas tree that is tucked way up in the attic.

We had such a great time last year picking out a real tree that we decided to do it again this year. So, first things first, we went up to my brother's land in beautiful Garden Valley and picked ourselves out a great big tree......

It was so big with such a large girth that we had to get a running start to shove it through the front door! Ellie got to put on the star.....

I decided to go with the color theme of golds, whites, and red. I came up with the idea of using these old handkerchiefs (that used to hang in the guest room of our previous home) to make little angels for the tree. I just stuck a cotton ball in the middle and tied some yarn around and poked out the corners to make wings. I didn't know what I was doing, I just "winged" it....but thought they turned out pretty well. And so quick and easy..........

I added fabric I had on hand to make garlands and some old decorations that matched the color theme I was going for........

......along with doilies that looked like our paper snowflakes.....

On the 9th of December we had a big program for our woman's church group. Here, 45 chairs were set out (the most people we've had in our home since we moved in!), and the Christmas tree and stage were ready for the program................

During the program......

The program was great. It seemed like the perfect setup with piano, stage, pew for the performers, and enough room for all the chairs.

Here's what the house looked like at night. Dustin hung the wreath on the bell tower and I put out some strings of lights all the way up the stairs and along the path to the door. This helped with people being able to see coming up the stairs on such a dark night.......

Our staircase......

My mom painted this tree a year or so ago and I loved it here above a doorway with a splash of red berries........

Last Sunday night we had our much anticipated "Christmas Music Soiree". A few weeks ago, Dustin threw out the idea during a church choir practice of having a night of talented musical performances. He immediately got some enthusiastic responses so we decided to go for it.

We made and gave out some nice invitations but also told people, word of mouth, so we were not really sure how many people would actually come. When Dustin and I sat down to figure out a possible number of people we started thinking, "Uh oh". Was there going to be enough room? We have lots of chairs but still had to borrow from friends and the church. 76 chairs were set up and we had plan B and C if more than that showed up.

Well, over 90 people showed up! Even during a snow storm! You can see below there were lots of kids sitting on the carpet in front and there were also a few people standing in the back too......
The program was fantastic. I think it exceeded my expectation. Here are a few pictures......

The Pinder family performing some bluegrass Christmas tunes....awesome!.......

Sis-in-law, Sara Simpson, performing the song Breath of Heaven. Beautiful, goosebump producing performance. The acoustics made her voice sound amazing.......

Loved this quartet of talented young men in our ward. They sang Angels We Have Heard on High.......

Dustin did this great song called Christmas in The Trenches with Randy Pinder on guitar and Spencer Madsen on the cello. It's a true story from World War I about how the fighting and bombs stopped on Christmas Day and the opposing troops ended up spending the day together. It was very moving and more than a few in the audience were drying their eyes afterward......

There were about ten other great performances.....a fun piano duet, a poem reading, and even a couple of rapped Christmas tunes. Very fun night! Thanks to all the performers! It was so fun to see friends we haven't seen in a long time too. I think we had so much fun we just might make this an annual tradition! We'll be sure and figure out how to set up more chairs! :-)

So, I forgot to take pictures of the food and drink tables last night so here's the aftermath this morning......

We set the dining room table up in the kitchen and it was FULL of yummy goodies that everyone brought last night!........

Good times!

The Skeletons in Our Closet

One of the biggest issues of living here is not the lack of SPACE.....it's the lack of closet, cupboard and shelf space. I love organization and order so this has been a challenge for me but this is how a handy hubby meets the challenge.

The room next to the living room is being used as an office/ guest bedroom / "junk room". It's the only place we've been able to stick extra furniture and boxes that we haven't been able to unpack....boxes of sewing supplies, wrapping paper, pictures, scrapbook materials, photo albums, etc.

We decided that a closet would be the best way to tuck everything away. Here's a picture of Dustin getting started. Note all the boxes and junk everywhere....that whole back wall was stacked boxes with no place to go!...........



Luckily, we had a lot of leftover materials to do the job.........




Here is Dustin painting the inside of the closet......


After a hard day's labor, Dustin finally came out of the closet....(I just had to fit that in somewhere). And then my work of organizing began.

This is what it looks like today. It still needs to be painted and closet doors put on, but that's going to have to wait until AFTER the holidays. YEA! A place for everything and everything in its place! You can't tell, but there's even another shelf way above, and hooks in the front corners to hang things too!.........

So, the closet organizing shelves came from where else???? Craigslist!! Brand new, never opened, way cheap!

Ahhh, love going right to that needed Christmas paper now instead of the writing on the side of a box that is of course at the bottom of two other boxes! hee hee. Thanks again, Babe!