The Magic of an Ordinary Day

One Thing

I have recently started reading the good human and once a week he writes about doing one thing every week to improve the environment and live a greener lifestyle.  I like that. It breaks things down into manageable chunks and makes any task less overwhelming.

Although I've always been a recycler, I compost, grow my own vegetables and try to do things as environmentally consciously as possible, we realized as we continued to remodel the house that we could take that further and try to green things up there as well.

So here is my one thing: the laundry. 

When we rebuilt the laundry room we bought a new energy-star front loading washer.  Yes, it was pricey at the onset but front-loading washers use 40-75% less water and 30-85% less energy than typical top-loaders (15 gallons vs. up to 40 gallons, and 120-560 kWh/yr. vs 800 kWh/yr.). 

Front loaders are also:

•  gentler to your clothes, causing them to last longer (savings)
• the capacity is larger because there is no central agitator so you do less loads (a time and energy saver)
• they clean better and enable you to use cold water instead of heating your water (a whopping 95% of the energy used by a washing machine could be going just to heat the water!) 
• they spin at faster rpm's so the clothes dry faster if you dry them in a dryer (savings)

And speaking of drying, since I live in beautiful, sunny and low-humidity New Mexico I have gone to line drying everything that I can.  Honestly, it dries much faster on the line than it did in my old dryer anyway.

 

Notice the cute clothespin hanger?  My Grandma used to have one like it, and I remember hanging laundry with her on the lines in that big yard in Bruce, Wisconsin so many years ago.  I found it at this cool Etsy shop .  I also have a retractable clothes line (you can see it mounted on the tree) so the line is up and strung between my trees on laundry days and hidden from sight the rest of the time.  

I use my dryer for perhaps an 45 minutes a week, for towels that I really prefer to be fluffed up. It's an awesome system that works for me.  Our utility bill has gone down 34% last month which was when I implemented the "all line drying all the time" system.  Some of that may be from our furnace being off , so I can't ignore that variable but that's a pretty  sizable drop and I'm very pleased.

Now if we could only afford that solar system for our electricity we would be sitting pretty!

laundry room

Dwayne finished this awhile ago, but I haven't posted any photos of it yet. The lighting is kind of funky as there is no natural light but here goes.

 

We had to rip out a bit of that wall behind the washer and dryer to put in the venting for the dryer and the plumbing for the sink.  Dwayne then did his first attempt at drywall, and he did a fantastic job.  The floor is just vinyl peel and stick -- I mean, this room is in an unheated garage, after all. 

 

We decided to get the tricked out steam washer and dryers on the pedestals and they are just wonderful!  Honestly, between the beautiful clean room and the new machines we have been fighting each other (Mom, too, when she was here!) to do the laundry. 

 

There's a nice organized place for a hamper, storage and for hanging clothes.

 

I've wanted a utility sink since I moved in, especially with the ongoing construction projects we always have going on here.  And with the super strong walls we have here, it's wall-mounted, making it very sleek and making the floor easy to clean.  (Like I clean floors, that's funny.)

With all the changes, though, there was one thing that we had to leave the same.  The wall.  We have been having Hannah stand against the door frame of the laundry room to measure her since first moving here, and if for any reason we move, we are taking that piece of wood with us!

catch up

It's time to play catch-up.  With life, with work, with home.

Work has just been bursting at the seams.  So all the projects that are on my desk at the start of the day are still there at the end of the day since I spent all day launching flights and putting out the associated fires that go with that.  Handling personnel issues, professional and personal.  Trying to hire up in certain positions and cut dead weight in others.  The usual, I guess.

I've been using the East meets West approach to my migraine problems and have done two weeks of acupuncture and craniosacral therapy, which has left me with lots more energy and a reduction in my migraines.  I'm not ready to throw away my meds yet but it's a start.

The acupuncture is just fascinating!  It doesn't hurt at all and is a completely relaxing experience.  I look forward to my treatments.  It's a total leap of faith for me to accept a completely different view on health and wellness so it's a huge challenge not to demand objective data and statistics on outcomes and just try to go with the flow.  So far so good.  I'm really pleased with it.

Our next home project is the laundry room.  I'm sure y'all have heard my previous homeowner vents and here goes another one:  this house has been here for almost 40 years with no outside vent to the laundry room.  Yes, you heard that right. When we got here they were venting it to a sock to the garage which looked like this dirty condom hanging from the vent pipe.  We found this water trap thing to use until we could get a HVAC guy in here to run some venting through our roof (since we have 18 inch concrete walls) but that doesn't work so well.  The result is dust and fluff throughout the room, hanging in scary cobweb-like configurations.  I hate to go in there.  (It's a room off the garage because I would never allow something like that to go on inside my house--yuck!)  So we have our plans, turns out our plumber does  HVAC stuff as well, our washer/dryer are on sale and with Dwayne's flyboy money we are on our way to a new laundry room. 

I think Dwayne knows it's the only way he could get me to do laundry again.

Dwayne is loving being a flight nurse.  He's been flying all over --- California, Texas, Canada, Arizona, Wyoming, and several places in New Mexico.  Of course, he's doing great!   He can't believe he's getting paid to do it.  I'm glad 1) we have such a experienced and competent nurse on our staff and that 2) he is getting such a thrill and intellectual kick from doing something new.  It's a good deal all around. 

Well, my crepe batter has rested long enough... time to start on brunch!

Welcome to our new bathroom!

I purposely haven't revealed bits and pieces of our new bathroom because I like the impact of a brand new room.  So here it is...

It's kind of hard to get the color just right on the photos... it's a light caramel color.

 

We kind of built our bathroom around this onyx bowl.  It's a beautiful varigated piece of solid onyx in rich tones of caramel, sage with ribbons of red.  It's truly stunning.

 

 

The shower and floor are an Italian porcelain tile with some glass tile accents in the shower.

 

 

 

The toilet is tucked into a little alcove behind the shower. 

 

We are still waiting on some hardware for hanging towels and I need to buy linens but it's mostly done.  Dwayne put in so much hard work!  We are very happy with it.

NEXT....

Next project, that is.

While I was having one of the rare extremely crappy days at work yesterday, Dwayne was getting plumbing quotes and starting to demo our bathroom.  Besides the usual slipshod and amateurishly dangerous electric job, there were no surprises,  And no dead rodents yet, but the wall isn't completely down yet so I personally have high hopes.

The wall, you see, had a layer of Sheetrock, a layer of plywood and then the 1 by 8 plank boards on it. No easy job taking that down. 

Here's our progress so far (and I say "we" and "our" I really mean my hubby):

note the mold or whatever it is where the former medicine cabinet is.  There used to be a water heater in this corner (that had to be charming) so I wonder if that is the source of it.

And of course, there is the obligatory two layers of vinyl flooring to deal with.

Dwayne's got the electric, plumbing and tile guys set up so we're good to go on that end.  We just need to get the walls stripped and all the tile taken out.  If I get home before 9 pm this week, I'll help so he doesn't get stuck with all the work.  I'd like to hit something with a hammer.

   

the dining room floor re-do

One more project down on our dream home/money pit!

My dear hubby replaced the dining room floor just in time for Thanksgiving dinner.  And by just in time I mean by four hours. 

Here's the comparison of the nice golden teak we have in our kitchen next to that nasty old oak floor...

Out with the old...

There were several layers of nasty vinyl flooring just like in the kitchen.  Yuck. 

In with the new...

Dwayne and his Dad loading the room...

I didn't get lots of photos at the time, since I was in the middle of cooking dinner.  It's beautiful, though. 

We're starting our bathroom renovation as soon as the Grandparents leave to get it done before my Mom comes to spend the winter.  Good thing Dwayne likes to demo things.

where did the week go?

Man, the older you get the quicker the weeks go by! 

So what have we been doing this week?  I had my first full week as a manager type.  I was busy learning lots of new things, none of which have to do with being a nurse, which is weird for me.  Learning about the dispatch portion of the air ambulance company works, working on some marketing strategies (the photo session we did this week being part of it), learning to do flight coordinating, helping with an interview, etc. etc.  Wow.  I never thought I would be dealing with these sorts of things when I became a nurse. 

So tomorrow will be my first day in "my" office.  The Program Director moved back to Las Vegas this weekend and now the big white office with the ugly carpet is all mine.  I've got some work to do in there so I can get it to a point where it is a comfortable space for me.  Not that I'm a snob about things but Gerry is a bachelor, and has the standard "if there's a picture of my helicopter and dogs I'm done!" approach to personalizing an office. 

I started on Hannah's room today.  I got a wild hair that I had to start her room right now at about 10 a.m. so I sent Dwayne to the store for the paint and I moved all her stuff into the spare bedroom.  I sorted through all her clothes and set aside the ones that were too small.  I pulled out the Pack N Play to give to my friend Tim whose wife is having a baby.  We're giving them our crib, highchair and stroller, too. 

And then I got sort of overcome by the finality of it all.  We don't need this stuff.  We're not having another child.  It was kind of tough.

Anyway, we picked out a beautiful pink color for Hannah's room --- it's a super light, frothy color, like saltwater taffy or cotton candy, without a touch of that Pepto Bismol pink color that is so icky.  We are going to have a white chair rail height border of white with butterfly decals, and a lavender and stem green striped bottom.  It sounds garish, I know, but the colors are so pretty and soft I think it will be perfect.

So I've got to try and get all this primer off my arms and hands.  The paint is easy but the primer...not so much.  There's a meeting every Monday morning and I don't want to look like the hick who didn't take a shower.   

getting out

We are having our usual spring/winter dance here in the mountains.  Wintry last weekend.  Spring-ish yesterday.  And today it's snowing again.  Uuhhhgg!

We took advantage of the 60+ degree day yesterday and did a ton of yard work.  Mostly we pruned the apple, peach and apricot trees that are totally out of control (and probably haven't been pruned in 10 years, if ever).  We also trimmed down the huge lilac bushes, roses, oaks and cedars.  And because I never get to my end of the year tear-down of my vegetable garden I did that, too. 

It was a great day.  Hannah was out with us all day, and we even had a picnic lunch outside complete instead of going inside to eat.  It was so nice to have a little sun on our faces, do some physical work outside and just get out of the house. 

Hannah had fun climbing the peach tree.  I don't think she's ever climbed a tree before, and this one is perfect -- not too high up, but plenty of branches to hold on to. 

And here's my hardworking hubby, who is actually quite cute, too:

In honor of Halloween

Our neighborhood spider has decided to set up residence on our new window.  I haven't decided what to do about him yet--it's been so windy that his web is blown away every night.  One one hand it's pretty and educational for Hannah (and hopefully she won't have the creeps about spiders that I do) but on the other hand...the web is huge and so is the spider!  Here's a (blurry, sorry) picture of him, and he's about as big as Hannah's head!  Yuck.

home improvements, part one million

We got our new energy-efficient windows installed on Friday, and -- man, what a difference!!!  We have this great pop out window in the living room that looks over the yard and the mountains beyond that, and it had this window style that broke it up into little pieces.  Circa the 1970's.  It was U-G-L-Y and drafty.  So while we got the rest of the drafty, single glass ugly windows with busted up screens replaced, we redid the livingroom window, too. 

Dwayne is now working hard at pulling out the ugly light fixture that was hanging in there, repairing the ceiling, insulating around the window (now there's a thought to whoever built this bump out!), texturing, painting and finishing the sash.  He's been a busy boy this weekend.

Here is the new window (the ceiling/sash, etc is all tore up in the photo)...

And here is the old window (this photo was taken when we did the walk-through before closing on our house)...

And can I just say "Holy Cow!!!!!"  Look how much Hannah has grown!  She looked so cute in that little coat and the chukka boots, though, didn't she?