Jen's Soap

16 oz olive oil
37 oz tallow or lard
1.5 oz coconut oil
1/2 tsp oregano oil or pepermint oil or almond oil
7 oz lye
20 oz cold water

All measures are by weight.
You can get lye at Ace Hardware. Red Devin Lye is no longer Lye - do not use it! It is something else!

In glass, measure cold water. In glass, measure lye. add lye to cold
water and stir with bakelite, stainless or plastic spoon until
dissolved. It will steam - don't put your face over it. (I do this
part outside) Set aside.

In stainless (not aluminum), combine the tallow/lard, olive oil, coconut
oil and oregano/pepermint/almond oil and heat until clear - mixing. (I do this until
around 200 degrees)

Wait until both the lye mixture and the oil mixture are both about 100
degrees. (This takes about an hour and a half)

Pour the lye mixture into the oil mixture and stir until trace. (This
takes another hour and a half - looked like pudding)

Pour into mold and let set 24 to 48 hours. (I use a plastic storage
container I have, but you can use a wooden mold lined with plastic or wax paper)

Cut into bars and wrap in wax paper. Let soap sit for at least three weeks before use.

What's above the ceiling?

In the living room? It's 5.5" below the original one. I can tell because I can just make out the original one from around the light fixture where they did not trim the drywall very well. Molding is peaking out from around the edges of the room by 2 inches. I know the original colunades were removed because I saw where the flooring stopped between the living and dining room areas. If it had colunades, I wonder if it had boxed beam ceilings... The plan is to drill a small hole large enough to fit a camera in to take pictures of the space between the two ceilings. I'll post findings!

Moved in! Adventure starts now, or a few weeks ago, actually.

We moved in officially on February 1st. Over a weekend. Insane did not quite cover it. Here's the story:
------
HARK!!!
WE HATH MOVE-ED!

Yeah, this past Thursday, we were livin' in Gulf Park, dirty clothes in the corner of the bathroom floor and all - no concrete intentions of actually moving. Oh, sure, it was all in the back of our minds that it would eventually happen and stuff, but among the fur-tumbleweeds and the mountains of stuff for the Good Will, well, it made this all seem a very remote reality - steeped in the mists of the far flung future. Maybe March, maybe April, oh put it off till May... What's another month in the grand scheme of life?

But then.

The Wicked Realtor of the West called. Realtor Mac had been plotting and scheming about how to get the Lazy Aquarian and her son to "get a move on with it". The Wicked Realtor took PICTURES of the front of the Tallahassee House and published them in the February HOMES magazine! The Lazy Aquarian was somehow under the impression that the magazine would come out in March, even though now she seems to remember something about February after all - huh, funny thing, that... Then the Wicked Realtor, scheming and plotting as always, called the Lazy Aquarian on Thursday and said,

"Hark! I hath a cash buyer for your Domicile!" "GET OUTETH! They want to tour it tomorrow-eth at 3pm-ith!"
The Lazy Aquarian said:
"AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!" And started shouting things to the Oppressed Teenager:
"Pack, Don't think! Pack, Don't think! Swab the deck!!! Carry that Box!!!"

Then the Knight with Shining Leafblower came through and banished all the fur-tumbleweeds to the farthest reaches of the yard.

The Lazy Aquarian cast aside her former life of sloth and leisure and toiled endlessly. She drywalled a ceiling, installed a lightfixture, affixed crown molding, painted the laundry room and freshened the paint in other parts of the house. The Knight with Shining Leafblower painted the deck and back steps. The Oppressed Teenager packed and carried 250,000 boxes, installed baseboards and vent covers and touched up paint around the domicile. Miscellaneous odd jobs were divided among the three allies. All livestock was herded across town to the new pastures.

The cash buyers did not like the floor plan nor the orange kitchen. Humph.
There has already been another showing! Bad market, ha! Call me for a tour - you will never see the west Knox house more clean. It's actually kinda creepy.

Without further adieu, our new address:

Jennifer and Vincent
XXXX Woodlawn Pike

and phone number: XXXXXXXX - but it won't be turned on till later this week because they had to install a box or something.

Latergaters,
Jen (Lazy Aquarian) and Vincent (Oppressed Teenager, but a good sport!)
----

And now we live on blow up mattresses and still only have half the plumbing done and no real kitchen. The big house, though, is absolutely picture perfect and we've moved about 90% of our possessions into the little house. We're getting there!

Plumbing is in and 50% done

We regrounded the house to where the copper water pipe comes in from under the street. We cut the copper pipe disconnecting the house plumping. That was that - no turning back. We installed the whole house shut-off valve and installed the pex to where the pex manifold will go on the concrete wall. I painted the wall with drylock. I installed a T and more pex to a brand new 50 gallon electric water heater - which I moved to a convenient spot *for me*. Since all the plumbing is new, I don't have to put the water heater where it was - I can put it where I want it, so it went in the corner. The connections are purchased, the special orders have arrived and now I am just going to wait for the second coat of varnish on the floors to finish the plumbing.
Really getting there!
I LOVE the Pexcaliber crimping tool. Absolutely LOVE it. I also love the name. I'm cheesy like that.

First Coat of Varnish on the Floors

I haven't done a lot of updating, but that doesn't mean I haven't done a lot of working. It could be said I have been working too much to bother with the updating...
I have the floors nailed, leveled, sanded, filled, screened, cleaned and the first coat of varnish is applied.
The above three sentences represent about 300 hours of work. Pictures coming soon.

Tired and still nailing flooring.

Will it ever end??? Is my livingroom some sort of weird vortex of stretchiwalliness? Do the floors actually stretch longer as I nail more wood to them? Or is that my imagination? I think the former.

Today was amnesty day at the transfer station. That means, today was the one day per month the transfer station (dump, for all intents and purposes) lets people make deposits for free. We took three truckloads of the cat urine saturated and nailfilled old flooring. Also the soffits and some other mushroom nurseries from the removal of the asbestos a few weeks ago. We perfected our route to the transfer station and while we were there, we exchanged empathetic glances with a couple who were dumping truckloads of stuff that looked suspiciously similar to our own...

It snowed today, too. So, Vincent and I ducked in for a bite to eat at Wendys. Yeah, I know. We aren't Fast Food people, so this was strange, but expedient. It snowed! How cool is that? Yeah, about 32 degrees (snort, chortle).

I nailed wood past the cable. I nailed wood past the heat vent! I nailed wood past the disturbing hole in the subfloor! I nailed wood almost all the way past the hall entryway. But not quite. Vincent was a big help culling wood, cutting wood and sorting wood. He also cleaned a few things and the bathroom cabinet. He also removed some remaining old wood that we were waiting to remove until we had a little more flooring down for stabilization. This is a structural floor... He then pulled nails, vacuumed and Odo-banned the sub-floor. We left and went home, being sufficiently broken and hurting. :)

Busy, Busy Days

It was fantastic.
I got up and took the teen to school and took the trash to the transfer station and got rid of it and I was travelling back and I thought, HEY, places that sell brick are always closed when I am off of work, I'll stop in. So I stopped in to Knox Brick. Nice, nice folk. They showed me what they had and I hemmed and hawed. It was expensive and I didn;t really know how many I needed. I was just getting a feel for the prices, etc. The brick, you see, is to repair the tops of the chimneys (evident in the pictures). Turns out that old bricks are made a different size than new bricks. Also old bricks are solid and new bricks can be solid or hollow. Solids are more pricey. Bummer. So I started to go home and I saw another brick place. I don't know why the sudden and unplanned obsession with brick. This place looked closed, but they had a few pallets of brick and a couple people. They were going out of business. :( Too bad for them. Good for me - but I felt bad for them. They happened to have a very good match for my old brick in hollows and solids. They sold me a pallet (!) of hollows for $85 (that's 575 bricks) and GAVE me the 85 solids for free and I also bought four bags of morter for $5 each. I figure I can fix the chimneys and then instead of making the columns in front out of wood as originally planned, I can make them out of brick, too. I can make a brick mailbox. Maybe even a bread oven? Beyond that, I'm taking suggestions. ;)
OH - and they solved the transportation problem as well! They will deliver the pallet of brick for free on Monday! The place is Brickstone on Middlebrook Pike and they still have more brick if you are in Knoxville and need any.

I also looked into the metal roofing carried by 84 Lumber - it is manufactured by Metal Sales. I am looking at the "Classic Rib" in acrylic coated galvalume. It is exposed fastener. It is a project for another day, but I was curious on the pricing. It is $2.70 per linear foot (36" wide). Not including tax or delivery of course. Nor fasteners or closures, etc. I still don't know if this is the best price out there.

Vince and I ate out at Gondalier Restaurant. It was nice, though a lot of cheese. We are not used to that. But we needed our strength for...

The floor at the tiny bungalow!

We have since removed 90% of the livingroom floor. It needed it. We purchased a pallet of #3 common oak last weekend. I know we will have to cull out a lot, but with what is left over, we will floor the attic. Vincent and I got everything going - all set up and the tar paper down and the compressor set up and the flooring nailer adjusted, etc. Vincent and I then started nailing down the new floor, joining in with the old floor! He was a quick study. He's really smart! I like this age - 16 is a great age. Vincent has gotten to be really helpful. I'm proud of him. He and I managed to lay about 30 square feet of floor. It was a good feeling to finally leave the house in better shape than when we got there!

Now we hurt in places we didn't know we had.

Update on the other house... I have sealed the grout in the hall bathroom completely. All of it - with a tiny paintbrush... I also installed the backsplash and sidesplash. I also installed all new molding and shoe molding and the air vent. Then I caulked it all in. I cut the threshhold but still need to install it. That bathroom is looking like a million bucks! That's good since I decided to sell this house. ;) Yesterday I started mudding the drywall joints in the laundry room. I'll finish that tomorrow.