You ever have that situation that completely takes you off guard and then puts you in the awkward feeling stage? Yeah I had that happen & normally I can take it and simply move forward, but for some reason this time it knocked me clearly on my arse. The worst part is I had “that” feeling going into the night that something was off. I just felt the overwhelming sense of weird and I believe it’s probably just a combination of things going on in my life.
I have been enjoying being back in the kitchen cooking dinner. During the renovations and here recently it’s been so busy (plus I don’t have everything that I owned prior to the fire…and I had built my kitchen up so that I had everything I needed which included every spice possible). So I haven’t cooked like I use to or the way I like to cook. I love finding new recipes & tweaking them to our style. I always come up with recipes on my own & my family is my guinea pig…happily so most of the time. I love cooking and baking and one thing Kacey said is I get to pick out a really nice oven/stove….oh I’ve got my eyes on a few that make me drool like a baby cutting a new tooth. The other night I made steak and twice baked potato casserole along with a green salad. It is one of my parent’s favorite meals. We don’t eat much red meat. It’s not that we don’t like it we just prefer chicken, pork and fish, but mom & dad both love steak. The steak I made was NY Strip steak restaurant style and it turned out so yummy & tender. The potato dish is one of our favorites that the girls gobble up. The girls also love salad so that is pretty much a staple for dinner. Last night I made beer can chicken linguine in the crock pot with garlic toast. It really was so very yummy.
I stopped by the house yesterday morning and then again in the afternoon. I was amazed at the progress from the morning to the afternoon that the masons had completed. We found out that the house at one time had a bad termite problem. We had an inspection prior to buying the house, but we are not clear if there was still an issue. There was also evidence of ants being inside the structure of the house. One thing we noticed right after the fire was some of the wood under the slab going into the front door and around the bottom of the door frame was rotten from a water issue. We knew at one point there had been water issues because of the way the house sits, but the previous owner had put in drains and had remedied the drainage issue. Of course you wouldn’t have seen the wood because it was inside the structure. They also busted out the slab of the garage and we found that the previous mentioned water issue had created problems in there as well. The first portion that they tore out took no time..about an hour. Then they moved over and it took them for just right side from 11 am to 4 pm to remove the cement. When removing the foundation below we found no metal (rebar) in the slab of the house. I mentioned this in a previous post. But in the right side of the garage they found rebar. It appears it had been drilled in and more cement had been poured over the top of the original slab…what a mess. Luckily we decided to redo the slab in the garage since we realized that one day we might walk out and see our car sitting several feet down. The underneath had settled so much that the floor was cracking. The fire has exposed a lot of bad things on the inside that otherwise we would’ve never known. I guess this is where I can say here is one of the biggest positives of the fire. No fault of anyone but the house was going to end up costing us so much more money to remedy some deep underlying issues. So just maybe as much I hate what we did lose, we are in true form gaining something so much more. As I have said so many times…I loved my house & the charm. I love older homes, but with that you are going in pretty much blind. Unless you are gutting the house and tearing into walls you never know what lies beneath. My heart was set to be in Cornwall summer of 2012, but a few months delay with a brand new house is obviously the road we were meant to be on.
My mom & dad will be moving into their new apartment this weekend. We went over there this morning and it is just beautiful. It is cozy and warm feeling. I am looking forward to helping my mom decorate it. I can see how happy they are so it makes me giddy with happiness for them.
Shea had her first ballet class this morning. She loved it and really surprised me at how well she did. In fact for the first time ever she was not shy about going right up to her teacher. It is just her and one other little girl….so the recital is going to be so stinking cute. She misses having her sister her during the days, but she loves having mommy all to herself. We go grocery shopping together and she loves to help pick out what we are making for dinner that night. I took her to Marshalls to get her and sissy new boots. I had a hard time getting her to take her new sparkly pink boots off. She truly is mommy’s little sidekick and I love it!!
They delivered 7500 lbs of stone to the house today. This is to help with setting up the proper drainage in the front and to put out back for what will be our patio area. As I mentioned above about needing proper drainage around the house, there is a wooded hilly area across the street and the house sits & is built into a ridge. The house was originally built in the 1940s so drainage & codes were quite different back then. The great thing is we can ensure that this time the house structure is built to handle being built into the ridge without the foundation wall bowing & will have a great system for water to drain away from the house. Have I mentioned that I love our builder? Well I do! He’s awesome & really makes every effort possible to educate me on what is going on. Boy have I learned a lot about structures, engineering and water drainage….can’t wait to see what more I can learn in the next few months.
Ahhh this view...can't wait to be sitting on the deck enjoying :)
Enjoy your day! Remember to love freely and without conditions… Peace, love & happiness!
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