How Many Photos Does It Take To Install A Doorbell?

Uhh...22.

But don't worry, I won't spare you with all of them. (Some of them didn't turn out very well.)

Let's just say I was quite excited about our Sunday afternoon project. Our doorbell.

Now it's only been sitting in the box for over a month. Right by the front door. So I guess if you imagined really hard, we had a doorbell. But no, not really.

I full admit a doorbell is not a necessity. We all have hands. We can knock.  The first doorbell was not invented until 1881.

But you have to admit, a doorbell is quite nice.

I mean, look at that skinny little white box to the left of my front door!

And yes, we still have our Christmas swag up. 

Don't judge.

Our blue icicle lights are up too, if you must know. The Farmer says he's waiting until it snows so he can take a picture. 

Did you know we live in Washington? Yeah...we don't really get snowy winters. These lights may be up until our White Dress Party, Part Two in May. Then I'll make him take them down. By force.

Back to the doorbell. Doesn't it look nice? I think so.

And yes, I took 22 photos of the installation.

The Farmer was not pleased. 

I think he swore at this point. And not because he drilled a hole in his thumb or anything. It might have been directed at the camera. Might have.

Our doorbell is faannnnnccccy. You can choose between two different chimes. We chose the Winchester eight-tone, which means it sounds nice when you ring it. (OK, it's a little pretentious, but whatever.) It also means you have to take our all these teency tiny little pins to create the tones.

The Farmer had to use tweezers.

Of course he didn't tell me about this part of the install (I might have been busy taking photos) when I could have helped. Have you seen The Farmer's hands? Yeah. My thumb is smaller than his pinky.

I'm not kidding.

The chime pins went into a ziplock baggie to be added to our "House Parts" bin. No severed arms or legs in there, just chime pins and the drain piece for the freezer and...

And while The Farmer was doing minor surgery with the tweezers I was picking out the location of the doorbell box.

The Farmer first suggested to put the box in the middle of the front door wall.

And I mean the middle.

Yeah. No. I think he was kidding.

I hope he was kidding.

So...blogging fans...where do you think we put it?

Option #1: Above the hall closet?

Option #2: In the far corner of the entry, above the secretary?

Option #3: In the corner of the dining room, above the doorframe to the hall?

Option #4: Above the same doorframe but from the other side, looking into the dining room?

Option #5: In the corner of the dining room/entry beams?

Yeah. The Farmer thought up that last one. It made no sense to me either.

The winner?

Option #3! Above the doorframe of the dining room!

Doesn't it look nice? It sounds nice too.

And yes, The Farmer used a level.

Be still my heart.

Of course, he loses points every time he has "rung and dashed" in the past two days.

And yes, I am keeping count.

The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man (or How I Glued All My Fingers Together)

You know that scene from Ghost Busters when the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man attacks the city? Well, he - on a much smaller scale - has attacked The Jungle House.

He has squeezed through every crevice of our fireplace.

What? Why?

It was a perfectly nice fireplace.

OK, that last photo was a "before" image. It wasn't so perfectly nice then.

So why would The Farmer seem to have so much fun with the Stay-Puft can?

 Well, the fireplace was a little drafty. 

OK, a lot drafty.

We knew it needed to be fixed, but we just hadn't gotten around to it yet. As in we'd never opened the fireplace front door until yesterday. We didn't want to know what we'd find.

Ignorance is bliss.

But yesterday The Farmer sat in the chair directly in front of the fireplace for the first time. And it was 37 degrees out. He froze all through lunch with my aunt and uncle. And after they left he was determined to fix the fireplace.

He was very thorough.

As luck would have it we only found a plastic cup, a cardboard box, a few leaves, the handle for the fireplace(!), and a lot of soot inside. 

Thank goodness The Farmer had his Shop-Vac. It's getting a lot of use these days.

So we now have six feet of insulation up the chimney flue, insulation in the stove, and an entire can of Stay-Puft (I'm sure there is an official name for this stuff, but Stay Puft seems appropriate and descriptive) squeezed into the crevices. 

The stuff expands and hardens before your eyes!

Oh, and notice all the pretty marbles embedded into the hearth. Yeah...we discovered them after about two months in the house. 

The Farmer assures me the Stay-Puft can be cut and shaped with a knife and then painted to look like mortar. 

I hope this is true.

And despite a lack of photos, the other excitement around the Stay-Puft is that it is very very very very very very very sticky. Is that enough stickies?

I know this because, well, I had to take off my glove at one point and I forgot to put it back on. I then accidentally touched the Stay-Puft and realized how sticky it was. I then couldn't put my glove back on as I had all this stickiness on my hand. So I kept helping The Farmer.

And by the end I had essentially glued all my fingers together.

The Farmer thought this was quite funny.

Four industrial-strength disenfectant wipes, Borax, nail polish remover and over an hour later, I had fingers that looked like I had dipped them in sap. But they weren't sticky any longer.

Just tacky.

And 24 hours later I still have glue residue on my fingers and nails.

Lovely.

But the fireplace is draft-free!

Why The Farmer Doesn't Fish

When the neighbors give you things like this when you drive your tractor down the road...

why bother?

Then again, we give them all the manure they want for putting up with us.

Three Strikes

In a house there are all sorts of sounds and creaks and oddities that you have to get used to. And since everything is practically new around these parts, we're discovering all sorts of sounds.

Interestingly, some of the noises bother me. The Farmer ignores these. Others drive him crazy and I tell him not to worry. I guess this is what happens when you are married. And if we both were obsessed about everything...well, there'd be a lot of tears from one of us. Instead, we sort of balance each other out.

One said noise came from our new fridge.

Isn't it pretty? (And yes, we actually moved it back into the wall. Unlike the set-up before us, when the fridge was practically in the same spot as it is in the photo above. The middle of the room. 

See?

I didn't hear it at first, but then The Farmer mentioned it.

And went about his merry way.

"Oh, we'll get to it." "It's not that bad."

Of course he's not the one home all day, listening to the rattling sound of a ball or something caught behind the fridge. At one point I was convinced it must be a mouse making all the noise in between the walls. Chewing up important wires, of course.

But since the fridge was full I couldn't move it by myself. 

So I waited until The Farmer was annoyed enough as I now was.

It didn't happen. 

So in the middle of lunch I got up and started pulling things out of the fridge in an effort to move the dang thing myself.

The Farmer then realized I was serious.

We pulled the thing back and found...

One of those "do not remove" stickers fastened to the electrical cord. 

It was flapping in the fan behind the appliance.

The Farmer handed me the scissors and I broke the law.

At least that's what those stickers make you think you are doing when you cut them off.

So...

When we finally moved our freezer into it's new location...

...that sticker went too. The Farmer didn't ask any questions and just handed me the scissors.

And in case you were wondering, no, the "new location" for the freezer is not depicted in the photo above. We were still laying the flooring in the pantry and thus it looked like I had an appliance showroom for a while. 

Strike two. 

And just yesterday, after The Farmer convinced me that the rattling in the heat vent above the kitchen peninsula was a duct issue and we shouldn't touch it, I had had enough.

I pulled out the stool.

Pulled out my Phillips screwdriver.

Took apart the heat vent.

And found...

A dang sticker.

This one wasn't a warning label about how not to use your freezer in the water or let a small child climb up the fridge for fear of it toppling over, but still...

The irony.

So, as you can see, The Farmer had this mystery question sitting on the table when he came home for dinner.

And my life, for the moment, is quiet.

Until, of course, the cops arrive and haul me off. Because, yes...I believe that is three stickers. Three removals. Three strikes.

I'm in trouble.

New Year's Resolutions (No Wonder We Are Tired)

The Farmer and I are coming up a bit blank on this annual question of New Year's Resolutions. Or rather, our goals for the year, as resolutions seems to be a recipe for disaster. I know they'll be broken by Sunday - tops - and so let's instead think of the things we want to accomplish this year. And yes, some sound an awful lot like a resolution. Potato...Potahto.

We are coming up blank because...well...we are tired.

Because this is what happened with our resolutions last year.

We bought a house.

We renovated said house.

We eloped.

And then we have our day jobs.

One of us farmed.

The other one recruited and traveled.

Oh, how'd that photo get in there?!?!??!?!!!

Don't tell The Farmer this was the day he was doing some big dirty icky job in the sleeting rain. 

Instead remind him I'm usually driving from high school to high school, seeking out Starbucks along the way, answering questions about how The College went co-ed in the late 1960s, so yes, we have boys. 

But as I look back on this past year, when I'm tired I try to remember...

We bought a house.

View from the road.

We renovated said house.

The original front entry. Inviting, yes?

The "new" front door.

Staining the doors was quite a project. Good thing The Farmer loves me.

Prepping for the new front porch.

Moving in the door!

Don't notice that it's not yet stained. We had to take it down right after we put it up.

The end result (OK, not really...we're going to wrap the porch to the side door next spring.)

The view from the old master bedroom (now the new front entrance).

This would have been the view from the entrance if we had only moved the front door. Thank goodness we decided the open plan bathroom was a bit much for a first impression.

The view from the entrance...a work in progress.

Drywall!

The new view from the new entrance (aka the old master bedroom). The beams denote the former walls.

Everyone wants carpet in the kitchen. And the refrigerator in the middle of the room. 

Down came the refrigerator wall.

We decided the carpet had to go too. Along with the pink/gray fan wallpaper.

Mummified in preparation for the messy drywallers.

The new kitchen!

Complete with all new appliances (that was a fun day at Home Depot).

The old view from the dining room. The yellow/green wall through the doorway is location of the new front door. 

That carpet had to go too (along with a few walls).

More drywall.

And the new (messy...someone should have moved that blanket before taking this photo) view from the same location (sorta) as the first photo.

The fireplace in the dining room. Before.

The in-progress view of the dining room from another angle. I'm standing where a wall used to be.

Flooring...because the old cork floor under the carpet just wouldn't cut it.

Note the new window frames too.

The old formal dining room, complete with pink carpet. And nowhere near the kitchen.

If anyone wants some pink carpet, we still have a remnant available. The Farmer will deliver.

My new office and craft room.

I've already removed the stickers from the floor mats. 

The left bookcase holds all my genealogy stuff...for my two other blogs.

A second fireplace in the massive living room. (It went away.)

The old front entrance is in the upper right corner.

We didn't like that carpet either.

We added a wall. The window through the doorway is my new office.

We painted. A lot.

Floors make the room.

And all new furniture to round things out. (More on the GDP of the window curtains later.)

The old master bath. This is a relative term, as you can see.  It was located behind the glass block half-wall you can see in the entry "before" photos.

Note the new front door behind the wall frame. The bathroom is in approximately the same location, merely "flipped".

The Farmer insisted on the jacuzzi.

I didn't argue.

Fun with tile.

The end result. 

Don't ask about the shower doors either. That was another GDP story for another time.

We saved two of the blue tiles from the upstairs bath. Why? I'm not sure. 

This bathroom is actually to scale. It is as small as it looks.

Fun with power tools. 

Yes, the tiny bathroom had a false wall. We had to keep the wall (plumbing ran along the base of the wall) but added a nook for storage. 

Still small, but much better. 

I don't miss the blue tile. At all.

One of us farmed.

We recruited and traveled.

(Photo deleted to protect the innocent.)

And most importantly...

We eloped.

What more could you ask for?

Well, if you have to ask...

A closet.

And these tiles in the middle of my bedroom floor to move.

And a finished laundry room.

It's a "choose your favorite color" laundry room!

Still in progress, but toned WAAAAAAY down.

I guess those are my New Year's Resolutions for 2013.

Pretty simple, I guess.

Oh.

And to have a successful one year anniversary party with family and friends.

Because we did elope. And a few people want to celebrate. 

And see the house we bought. And renovated.

Come see us soon!