Mat & Amie Levine

Yep, spring is really here. Our lawn is green and growing like crazy. I mowed it last Wednesday and it’s all ready time to mow again. I love spring, but I’m not sure how I feel about all the yardwork. Time to really start thinking about how to get rid of some of our grass.

This past weekend, we rented an “e-z trencher” to put in Maddy’s electric fence again at our house and Mat’s parents. I’m not so certain I would deem it an “e-z trencher!” It was still a lot of work. Hopefully, the electric fence stays underground now and doesn’t get mowed this summer so we don’t have to do any repairs ever again. That would make us happy!

So, my allergies have been going ballistic. Or I am just fed up with them and always having to take allergy medicine and going through a box of tissues a week.  One of the ways I’m trying to take down the level of allergens in our house is I have know kicked Maddy off the bed. It’s been about a week. She doesn’t really know what’s going on because she’s always been allowed on the bed.

This is to help us all remember that she’s not allowed on the bed.  Every so often, we find her crammed into a little spot and we have to tell her to get “Off” the bed.  And she just gives us a confused look (or what I interpret as a confused look) not understanding what she did wrong.  Hopefully, it will all make sense soon.

It doesn’t help that the room that has the futon she sleeps on at night is in repair mode.  We are taking the acoustic tile down in the back bedroom.  We did this is in our kitchen and living room last January and looking to complete the project now.

One morning I woke up and decided that we should paint our kitchen cabinets all the same color.  We’ve been talking about it for awhile, but I haven’t really wanted to have white cabinets because they show dirt.  I changed my mind.  This after we’d been discussing how we need to finish our ceiling project.  We did the living room and kitchen last year about this time and we need to do the bedrooms.  But in my mind, in that moment, I decided that we should do the kitchen cabinets first.  One reason being I thought it would be a quick project.  Little did I know that it would require 4 coats of primer and 2 coats of the actual paint!

The fun begins…I’ve been priming for a day and it’s still not over.  There is lots of dry time between coats that I didn’t think of when I thought that this project would just take a day or two!

Finally, the project comes to an end 5 days later!  Not the greatest photo, but it shows the end product.  I am excited to have knobs on the doors and drawers.  Hopefully, that will help so we won’t have lots of dirt/grease smudges where we open the doors and drawers.  We are still recuperating from the project, but soon we will begin our ceiling project.

On Thursday we were planning to go either backpacking with some friends, canoe down a river, or to go mountain biking on both Friday and Saturday and then check out our co-worker’s band play at the Barnardsville community celebration. That sounds like a good time, right?

Somehow, between Thursday and Friday morning we decided that maybe we should just quick fix the leak on our back porch, which we knew required taking the old shingles off and putting on a new roof.

Good times, eh?  How do you like the 1×4’s underneath the roof?

By the time we finished pulling off all of the shingles and getting all the nails out, it was time to call it a day.  We had Mat’s family over to grill out to help reduce the amount of zuchini and yellow squash that we’ve picked from our garden.

Definitely one of the highlights of the weekend!

The next day we were at it bright and early…but not too early, since we do have neighbors.  We started at 8 a.m. and by mid-afternoon when our neighbor Brian & Kim called, we were only too grateful that they came over and brought us fruit bars and cold drinks!  They supplied us with a much needed break and entertainment.  AND then Brian stayed and helped with the roofing project!  We owe them big time!  Especially since his wife went into labor Sunday morning.  Mat’s dad came over too and really helped us out.  (All on the 4th of July).   Aren’t you glad that you don’t live near us?

About 7:30 p.m. we were finished and we were able to make it out to Barnardsville to hear our co-worker’s band play at their 4th of July celebration and then watch the fireworks.   Which were actually pretty amazing!

I don’t think I would recommend to anyone getting into a roofing project on a holiday weekend.  It wasn’t really the most festive way to spend the weekend!  But it is done now and we don’t have to worry about that project any longer.  Phew.

Mat is really excited to start taking the acoustic tile down from the living room ceiling.  Yay! Note in the background our new kitchen ceiling and new lighting over our bar area.  That is what makes me happy.  Being  able to see what I am chopping or stirring while at the counter!

Ahhh…lovely boards that we had to pull down.  Note the cracks in the plaster ceiling.  We figure that is why the previous owners put up the ugly acoustic tiles.

Not to worry though.  Mat is fixing the cracks.  I did my fair share of labor too…

Since Mat was working on putting in light switches on the walls in the rooms that still had pull switches on the light, we decided that we should put in lighting over the counter/bar area that is a little dark because the light is behind us when working at the counter.

Mat drilled a couple holes up into the ceiling to be able to place the light mount and as he drilled down to make the holes larger, I yelled up to him to stop because the acoustic tile ceiling was pushing out.

We’ve always disliked our acoustic tiles that are our ceiling, but have thought that they were glued to the sheet rock/plaster layer above. We had always talked how we could change our ceiling, but it was always a bigger endeavor than we wanted to get into.

But when the tile was pushed out by the drill Mat was really excited to see that it wasn’t glued just stapled to a board above. So, we have taken out all the tile ceiling and are now going to be fixing all the cracks and and finishing the ceiling and then we’ll go back to placing the light fixture in above the counter.

Funny, how a little task is now going to be our adventure for the next week or so.