Why I have no kitchen cabinets

I have yet to tell the story about my kitchen cabinets. The short of it is... they fell on my head. The full story goes like this:

Those kitchen cabinets didn't seem so bad from the outside. I knew they'd need a good cleaning before I put dishes in them so one of the first things I did after I moved in was to remove the shelves and get rid of the coat of grease that had accumulated inside the cabinets. It took a lot of clorox and scrubbing to get them clean so I was relieved when i had finished. A day or two after I cleaned them one of my friends came over for dinner and to check out my new place so I had her help me to put contact paper on the newly cleaned shelves. Once we had finished covering one, I climbed up on the step ladder to put the shelf back in place. When I maneuvered the shelf into place the 10 screws that held the cabinet into place (not in the studs of the wall, mind you) decided they'd had enough and let gravity pull that cabinet right on my head. It sounds drastic, but really it only fell a foot or two. The TRUE drastic part was that the dead bug infestation had reached the top of the cabinet - the part that I was unable to clean b/c it was only an inch from the ceiling - and it was GROSS. My friend helped me take the cabinet outside and remove the other two because I wasn't about to put dishes in them and I wanted the bug grossness out of my house anyway. All my hard work cleaning the shelves was for naught. I ended up buying some temporary cabinets for storage, but they live in my dining room. My kitchen is pretty laughable, but it's a huge project so I am waiting to redo it until I figure out how I should remodel it... or until I can get HGTV to help me :-P

*no cabinets*

Attic Reinsulation - muscle building, but dirty job

I researched attic reinsulation and found that foam insulation is the most energy efficient because it creates an air seal that blow-in and batting insulation do not. Although in order to do foam insulation in an attic, you have to create a clean surface. I spent my first weekend in my home being very itchy because I had to remove the old fiberglass insulation and a large nest. The insulation had obviously been there for a long time and the squirrel skeleton indicated that the nest had been too! I don't think I could have handled a recently dead squirrel and am extremely glad there were no live ones either! So there's looking on the bright side.

If you do choose to remove old insulation, make sure you wear long sleeves/gloves/mask and don't pack the bags full like I made the mistake of doing. Its too hard to get them out of the attic, and they're more likely to split and then you have to double bag them anyway. Just fill them 1/2 to 3/4 full and tie them tight.

The following Monday I realized that squatting in an attic for a weekend makes for a really good glut workout.

Here's a picture of my cleaned out attic


Using the spray foam insulation was actually pretty easy. I was lucky to have the perfect temperature day to do it (70 degrees) and my attic now looks like this:

How has owning a home changed your life?

I was asked this question less than a month after going to settlement and a week & a half after moving my stuff in. However, I still had an answer:

1. I've gotten less sleep. I spent a lot of late nights trying to get the house fixed enough to move in... mainly because of refinishing the floors, which will be a series of blog posts in the future.
2. And I've spent a lot more time at Lowe's and Home Depot.
3. I also could have added that I will learn a lot about home improvement in the next year, so I decided to become a blogger and share that knowledge.
4. Finally, I've already learned that my fingernails will be shot since I'm going to be doing a lot of sanding and cleaning... hence the name of the blog. Until my fixer-upper is repaired, I will be breaking fingernails and undoubtedly more fastener nails just as I did when I removed the shoe molding. (first helpful hint - invest in a pair of work gloves and a good pair of rubber gloves)

Welcome to my blog. I hope you will find it useful.