A new pet!

Hey I got a new pet a few days ago. He's got his own little cage. He's not very cute but he's pretty low maintenance.



Hee hee. He's been there a few days now. Actually I'm pretty grossed out about it.

Seriously though, I did get a couple of kittens at the Humane Society a few weeks ago. They were little mates and they are just the cutest little things.



This is the first day I got them. Mixie is on top and Trixie is on the bottom. They were 8 weeks old in that picture. They have already grown so much! Here they are now:


Trixie is on the left, Mixie on the right.

Cherries cherries cherries

The theme of my kitchen is cherries. Here are close ups of some of my cherry items. You can click on them for a larger picture. These are all pictures from the last month or two. I am too lazy to reset the camera after I charge the battery.

Cherry potholders:



A cherry container:



Cherry hand towels:



I have some other ones, as well as a 50's style apron in the same cherry print as the potholder underneath the other in that picture up there.

Once in a while I get crafty... I embroidered this. Yay!



My mom made me these cool cherry curtains. And I have a little cherry thing that hangs on the window.



My mom also made me a toaster cozy. My toaster is pretty cool though, so it's a toss up whether I should keep it covered or not.

Kitchen Before and After

First of all, I want to thank everyone so much for the support here in the comments and in email. Right now things are well. I am still on oxygen. My employer dropped my medical insurance, but I have already got that figured out. I am going to get a second opinion on the advice of my home care nurse. I've never done that before, but I guess this is the time if any.

Alright, back to he house. I am starting a new "series" where I am going to post the pictures from the original internet listing and try and take the same picture with what it looks like now. I'm starting off with the kitchen. I will have more specific kitchen pictures shortly, so you can see some of the details.



Basically, I took down the wallpaper and painted, took down the drop ceiling, replaced the light fixture, added curtains and removed the can opener under the counter. This was actually the room that probably needed the least amount of work.

More health problems...

I know I am the queen of empty promises on this here blog, and I really plan on having those before/after kitchen pics up soon. Unfortunately this hasn't been a great health (right after I buy a house... I've always had great timing) or personal year for me.

So here's the good and the bad news. The bad news is I had lung cancer. The good news is that it was caught very very early, the malignancy was self contained in the tumor, which means it was all removed by surgery. The possibly bad additional news is that I have "innumeral" other nodules which are what these things start as. As of right now, only one was malignant and the rest are all too small to do anything about. They will be monitored and dealt with as needed. As for now I have a little oxygen thing I get to use, I guess it's a given after having a lung surgery, and will be doing some physical therapy to get me back in working order.

I've been out from work for over 3 months because of this. My disability leave is in danger of not being approved and as you can imagine I have been under a lot of stress!! I could even lose the house over this. So know that I am not promising these things and just being a lazy ass (that's only part of the problem), and I really am trying to keep things updated here. Thanks for reading!

Is this how a gutter is supposed to work?

Hmmm... I don't think so.


(yes I still have my Christmas lights up, come on, it's only April)

Perhaps it was sabotage (but you have to say it like Shatner).

Kitchen Done

I finally have everything done in the kitchen that is going to be done for now. Eventually, when I get some other stuff paid off I want to redo the cupboards and stuff in here, but I like how it is. I am still working on before and after pictures, but here is a preview. I posted this picture of the retro clock that hangs above my kitchen sink:



And here is what that area looked like before. Basically it was a nightmare. The first layer of wallpaper came off easily, but then there was another layer under that. I have had no luck removing the first layer of wallpaper in this house. So I went ahead and sanded it down as much as I could, sealed it and skim coated it, primed it, and painted it. You'd never know that there was paper still under there.


more to come... soon (i promise!)

Permits Department surprise

Argh!! I am so disorganized! I have no idea what I did with the papers I printed out when I went down to the city office. They were only $.25 a piece, so I will just have to go reprint them at some point.

When I got to the office the lady working there showed me where the computer I wanted was. I went and put in my address. The oldest permit I could find was from 1951.. all my paperwork says that my house was built in 1930. I thought maybe the records only went back to 1950 or something, so I decided to look up the other houses on my street. Some of them had permits going back to 1924!

I was very discouraged, thinking that for some reason my permits were just missing. There is a drop down menu on the computer lookup, so I changed it to blank (rather than on building permits) hoping more things might come up, and clicked on something called an index card. That was basically a compilation of all permits issued for my address. The first line on there was an entry about moving the house from 2715 Longfellow Ave!! My house was moved about 10 blocks to my lot in 1951!! I then looked up that address on the computer and was able to find the original permit from when the house was built. Very cool!!

This discovery definitely answers some questions. When I was looking at homes, I noticed how many homes that were older like this one (pre-50s) had crappy basements. The floors were very uneven, they were dark and dreary. Every person (inspectors, plumbers, contractors, etc...) who has seen my basement has commented on how nice it is. The city inspector asked what year it was built and told me that the concrete floor must have been re-poured because it was so flat and even. When my friend was over he was looking and noticed that the walls in the stairway to the basement were sheetrock, and all the walls on the main level are plaster. We thought it was odd, but now we know why.

It's just so weird that someone moved this house! I would love to have seen that! I went to drive by the original location and found that the whole east side of Longfellow is now part of the Warehouse Depot property. It cost $900 to move my house. I'm glad they did, because even though it's only about 10 blocks away, I like the house's current location much better.

Next up, I'm going to go over my abstract, which dates back to 1850 or so, and try and find out about some of the previous land owners.

If you own a home in the city of Minneapolis...

you have to check this out. I read on another blog that you could get copies of old permits from the city of Minneapolis. I did a little research and found out that to do that you go to the Minneapolis Development Review department. They are located downtown and they do have free parking, as long as you go in the correct lot. I didn't, I ended up in a lot across the street, and ended up paying like $3. No big deal. So, you go up to their office, and they have some computers set up in the middle, where you can search by address. I will post more details about what I found with my property as soon as I get some of the papers I printed out together. It was very interesting. I hope to post this in the next couple of days!