Good-bye Guestbook, Hello New House

Sadly, there are mean people in the world who just wouldn't let a fun little business alone - they had to spam my guestbook with all of their drug and weight-loss links and fill my in-box up in the process. So I've removed that feature, even though I loved hearing from people all over the world. Perhaps one day I will try again and hope that the spammers have forgotten my site by then.

In other news, things are moving along at the new house - though I'm not sure what direction we are heading in there. It turns out our new house is more shabby than chic - in fact, it's missing most of it's chic right now. The shower has been leaking into the wall for years and it's all rotted - Frank has torn all that out. In the process he discovered that there were layers and layers of white paint over the beautiful blue ceramic tiles in the bathroom. No wonder the tiles looked so dingy. Honestly, I had not looked that close - figured a good cleaning was all they needed. Worse, the house is infested with rats - there is a huge rat's nest in the attic and the exterminators are having a heck of a time pulling out all the contaminated insulation there and in the crawl-spaces. What a mess. Just gross. They said they've been up there for at least 10 years. The first day we got the keys, we walked into the kitchen to find a rat had left us a mess on the counter - welcome to the new house! Even the mailbox is wobbly and ready to fall over. I just keep trying to remind myself of all the possibilities I saw in it before I realized how much actual work it was going to take. More than just a good coat of paint and a little shopping for accessories...

Here is the rat's nest. Frank said I wouldn't want to show it on my journal... but how often do you get a chance to see what a real rat's nest looks like? I hope this is my last one, and yours too. I imagine the exterminators removed some of it - I'm sure it was more 'cozy' a few days ago.



And here is the master bath demo. Frank is very proud of himself - he did a good job not destroying the whole bath and bedroom. Now we *just* have design the new master bath.