He told us the two things he loves about the weather “It’s never boring and it’s always changing.” So very true! Just as we were there a tornado watch appeared in Indianapolis. We were able to see the storm up close on radar.

He is showing them to look for the hook on the radar screen because that could be a tornado.  Jym then showed us the tornado machine he built in college to show the things you need to have for a tornado happen.

warm, moist air, tall clouds, heat and a chimney effect.

Look—it worked!!!

We also learned about volcanoes.

and ash!!

We were told not to look directly at the light—but I think we all did!! shhhh

The kids got to see just what it’s like to report the weather–backwards sort of. You look at the tv screen in front of you and point to the green wall behind you. The viewers see you pointing at the map–so it is sort of a mirrored effect.

Ginger tried her hand at reporting “breaking news!”

We had a great time and learned so much! Thanks again Jym and NBC4i!!

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Post tags: chimney effect, class, field trip, Ganahl, jym ganahl, meteorologist, radar screen, tornado, tornado watch, warm moist air, weather, weather station

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Today the baseboards in Molly’s room are being installed. All she needs is her rod in her closet and remove the tape from her ceiling and she is good start moving in!

Our bedroom is just about finished too. That carpet is like a terry cloth towel under my bare feet!! Apparently carpet on trucks involved in a wreck are super cheap—-awesome!! Really expensive, really soft carpet for super cheap–I like!!!

Here is my closet/dressing room. I am excited to make this my girly spot! ( Note the rosewater colored walls with the green carpet. Makes me think 70′s girls room!) I ordered a clothes rack and my Mom has a vanity for me too. My mind is spinning with possibilities for my very own space!

Teetery construction steps are gone and replaced with safe and sturdy stairway!

Here are the heartpine floors we ordered off of ebay! Another great deal!! I love them! So much grain!!

We have been painting our arms off! Here is a shot of the appliance wall just waiting for the cupboards that will be arriving this week–finally!!!

The painting has really sucked! It is so hard to pick out paint in a totally new, wide open space that has nothing in it!! Some walls have been painted several times because of last minute color changes (sorry honey!) I am still not totally satisfied but don’t think I will be able  to really choose the right colors until we are actually living and using this space. It was just way easier to paint pre floors and trim.

I do still love this color–but it needs a third coat—ughhhh

This weekend Joe and Jake tore out the walls between the kitchen and the family room.

It was a huge, dusty mess!! Now that it is all cleaned up and the plastic has been removed…Helloooooo long, open house!!!

Here is were the walls used to be–steps and electric to be removed next.

We were really hoping taking that wall out was going to make our family room bigger–but right now it just seems longer! I am hoping to find a lower sitting couch to put under the window seat wall. When we have some money to buy furniture that is!

So as you can see things are moving along. So many details take so much time!!

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Post tags: back door, bedroom, ceiling, closet, color, colored walls, construction, construction steps, dressing room, entryway, family, floor, furniture, girls room, girly, hallway, heartpine, house, Kitchen, Paint, Painting, soft carpet, stairway, wide open space

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Well the first coat of paint is up and let me tell you I am IN LOVE with the color on the dinning room walls!!! It was so hard to pick colors for this open space with nothing in it! I have so many paint chips and samples. In the end I ended up picking some colors that I never even tested on the walls.

This was taken in the morning and the second photo was taken at night. It’s warm and bright and almost coral like. I think it will just get better with the second and possibly/probably third coat.

Joe left to get pizza on Saturday night and came back with this table! He found it in the trash. We are planning on painting it and using it on the screen porch.

This is a shot from the old kitchen looking into the new dinning room.

Tons of light and fresh air pouring in.

Here you can see the mess that is my current kitchen.

This is taken standing in the new dinning room, looking into the old kitchen and past that wall O’ Crap is our family room.

Soon the wall that holds those counters full of crap will come down and the whole house will be open from the family room all the way to the new dinning room.

This is the back wall of that cupboard/counter top wall that will be coming down (along with the stairs in between). I will be sad to lose that pretty arch but not this awkward door way or dark stairwell!! We may recreate that arch and leave a header but I am afraid it will make a sort of room boundary in the same place so that the family room won’t really be any larger just open.  I think I will have to keep the couch at the arch or after it. Does that make sense? Will it seem like the couch is in another room if it’s on the other side of the arch?

See how the door blocks the whole entrance when you open it? Your choice is to go down the steps or step on the person opening the door or talk through the window to our guests–I can’t wait to open this up!

We are really looking forward to a larger family room too.  I am envisioning a huge sectional couch someday when we have money to buy new furniture! Just need to decide about that arch!

The old kitchen will become our art studio. I have so many ideas for that creative space. It will be really nice to be able to work on projects and still be part of what is going on–TV, food etc… We won’t have to clean stuff up everyday nor will I have to be away in another part of the house if I want to work on something. We will be leaving the sink but I think I am going to get rid of most of the cupboards and use other pieces of furniture for supply storage. Plus we will still have our old pantry for storage too. I don’t want it to look like a converted kitchen.

OK–back to the new space!!

So all along the window wall will be the same red color as the dinning room. I had picked out a darker red for the opposite long wall and let’s just describe the color as Victorian death. It was so dark and blood like once I saw it on the walls. Luckily Joe had only done part of the cutting in before I had a change of heart. It was hard to pick a color that was not going to compete with the red. We used a yellowish tan color on the ceiling in the den that I really liked so we decided to stick with that color. (Instead of introducing color #312 to this open space!)

You can see here where the two colors will meet and I think that look ok together.

This half wall is the peninsula wall that faces the yellowish tan wall of the room we have yet to name–sitting room? long room? sun room?  The area behind it -where my new, huge,” fridge in the box” taunts me daily, is the kitchen.  The orange wall is our new stair way. Do I love this color as much as I love the red? Not so much. Joe does–or does he? I think he likes that the first coat is up and the paint is paid for.  I want a green that is as bold, bright and warm as the red. We will be discussing this more!! Plus I am not too crazy about the orange and blue stairway walls looking at each other!

You can see the ceiling color that matches the walls–I really like it. White looked too stark next to the wood ceiling. And how about those wood ceilings? Gorgeous or what???? Our builders did such a great job on them! Today they are filling the nail holes and putting the final coat of poly on them. That way we can get the final coats of paint on all the walls soon.

The kitchen–which has yet to be installed–will be smack dab in the middle of the action and yellow. Our island will be an anjou pear yellow and you can see a similar yellow around the pantry doorway. The other cabinets are wood–so not all yellow. So far I really like the yellow on the walls. yeah!! I love when I pick the right color!!

Hard to tell from this fuzzy picture but the inside of the pantry is a brighter, buttery yellow. We haven’t decided what color to paint the peek wall. It will depend if there is too much yellow in the room or too much red. It will be one of those 2 colors I think. I don’t think I should introduce another color into the room.

Ok now we are going down stairs. This is our entry way. This door took sooooo long to come in but I think it was worth the wait!!

And I do love this color too!! Win! Not sure what color to paint that white door into the garage–possibly the same as the walls although I am not really sure yet. I don’t really want to accent it or have it compete with the main entry door either.

I also love, love, love our bedroom walls!!

The walls are green and the accent wall and soffet are a bluish green. The ceiling has a blue tint to it also. It is very serene and botanical. We also lucked out and found some beautiful, soft, green carpet at a great price!

This is Molly’s ceiling she is working on. Rainbow!

We had our new garage doors installed also.

We are so excited to “move in” to this space!! The cabinets should arrive in early April -then floors. We still have the deck and porch to finish and the other walls to take down, siding, the yard….sigh still so much to do!! It is getting harder and harder to wait!!

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The show was great. We have been to the Lincoln Theater several times. It was closed for thirty years before being restored to it’s current beautiful state of Egyptian Revival Decor.

The scarabs on the seats at the ends of the aisles are just beautiful. (forgot my camera so these are all phone photos!)

We also toured The American Whistle Factory.

When I think about a factory I picture a big place that Mr Rogers may have featured on his show. This place is small but very interesting!  I wasn’t allowed to take photos of the machines or the making of the whistles but we were told that The American Whistle Factory was featured on The Discovery Channels, How It’s Made but I wasn’t able to find it to link here.

They are the ONLY producers of American made whistles. Pretty cool for being just few miles away from our house! They make whistles for all kinds of important events such as The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, The Superbowl, and the NYPD.

Even closer to our house is The Flag Lady Store.

They are the official flag makers for Ohio State as well as many local communities that hang flags along their main streets.

Mary, (the flag lady), is well versed in everything American flag and loves to share her patriotism with everyone! Unfortunately, she has also been in the news for other reasons as well.

They sell flags from all over the world!

They showed us  how they make flags. They were also in the process of tea dying flags for a group in California.

The kids enjoyed a spur of the moment parade!

If you are local or close to Columbus, Ohio, these are just a few of the great field trip opportunities near by. We have a couple of trips to The Wexner Center and trash dump to look forward to in the near future.— Now the dump is a destination I can visit over and over again. I find it fascinating!!

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Post tags: american flag, blagg, Columbus, discovery channels, egyptian revival, field trip, field trip opportunities, field trips, flag makers, lincoln theater, Ohio, scarabs, wexner center, whistles

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We now have insulation and drywall!!

And we have dust–holy cow do we have dust! My lungs can attest to that too cough, cough, cough!! Even with plastic up the dust is everywhere! They don’t show that on TV either!!

Ginger’s room (the diagonal flooring) really looks small with it opened up!

I love the wood we picked out for the ceiling! With all it’s grain and knots it looks even better than we thought!

Here is a bedroom shot.

The metal roof on the screen porch has also been installed. It’s hard to tell from the photos but it is a copper color and looks so pretty in the sun. That is, when the sun actually shines around here!

Slowly but surely we are moving along. Hopefully sometime this Spring we will be able to “move in”!!

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Post tags: Building, ceiling, copper, copper color, drywall, flooring, Holmes, holmes on homes, insulation, metal roof, photo, screen porch, wood

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Today they finished framing the screen porch.

It’s got me dreaming of summer time!!!!!

The screen porch will eventually have screens(!) and french doors leading into the house (where the paper with the green writing is) and  double screen doors opening onto the deck . (the large opening on the left) The area to the right of the screen porch is the deck (minus the railing and decking at this point!)

From the back yard

From the driveway

This is coming in through the new garage into our new expansive and bright hall way! We picked out really awesome tile for this space. I am really excited about all the possibilities of this new entrance way! We mainly use our back door to enter and exit the house several times a day. I always hated walking into the house through that blue door into our tiny dank hall way. It was so depressing. So I wanted to make this new entrance like a front door. We ordered a really nice wood door with a full glass view. I might  paint this space orange or yellow or some other bright color!

Eventually we are going to have a really nice back yard too……I swear! In the mean time we might need to call for another dumpster!

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Post tags: addition, back yard, driveway, dumpster, entrance, french doors, garage, house, screen, screen doors, screen porch, screens

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There was a back porch removed

There was lots of digging and hauling of dirt!!! Jake told me he felt like Mike Mulligan!

They dug for days!

Then there was pouring of gravel and concrete and building the foundation with stone blocks. And then came the framing and sheeting.

And then the trusses (this was truly beautiful!) I have a new love of architecture and hardware stores.

From there it was more framing and sheeting

Here is Ginger standing on our new pantry. This will eventually have railings and be a loft above the kitchen.

We have windows now too! And heat as of today–thank goodness!

Daytime view and night time view:

Sorry for the blurry photos–my auto focus is broken and according to my eyes with out glasses this WAS in focus! This is a shot of Ginger’s old bedroom (the green walls and carpet) now open to the new part. That was a small bedroom but now it looks even smaller!

New steps-horray!! Anyone who ever came to my door and tried to enter while carrying anything or happened to be greeted by the dogs or kids (which is everyone, always!) knows how awkward our old steps were and how awesome these will be!

Here we are at the bottom of the stairs, standing in the new super wide hall way looking at my old back door. To the left is my bedroom and to the right is another bedroom.

This is our new bedroom and below is a lucky kids new bedroom (luck is in the eye of the beholder because there is a war going on for my current bedroom)

We have hard wood floors and tile picked out and new appliances purchased. All I have to say is thank god for Pinterest and google!! I love you both beyond words! And more empty promises to update more often! Sorry!

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Post tags: addition, architect, architecture, Building, demo, google, house, Kitchen, loft, lucky kids, mike mulligan, Mulligan, pantry, PepperPaints, Pinterest, trusses, window, Windows

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Unschooling Co Op is back in session so that means I will have something to post other than updates on our remodel! We talked about the paintings of Dale Chihuly for our first class.

Chihuly is well know for his glass works but his paintings and his painting style is also impressive. Here is a link to a few google images of his paintings

http://www.google.com/search?q=chihuly+paintings&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=Xlq&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvns&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=QuZxTuPUCKffsQKKvOXICQ&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&ved=0CBMQ_AUoAQ&biw=1035&bih=465

To mimic Chihuly’s style of painting we layered paint on to canvas through several steps. We used sheets from a canvas pad. Be sure to paint on the correct side so the edges don’t roll. We used acrylic paint.

The first layer of paint when on with a brayer

The second layer went on with a broom-allowing the first layer to show through

Next layer was splatter painting

And then we used “puffy paint” for the final layer  DIY puffy paint recipe here

Each one ended up so different and the kids really enjoyed applying each different layer. I did choose specific colors for each layer so that the darker colors went on first and and then in small amounts last, hoping to keep the layers visually separate.

This collage is made up of all the kids paintings

I can see why Chihuly is also well known for his splatter painted shoes after this class!! I loved both the process as well as the product of this project!

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Post tags: acrylic paint, art, art class, brayer, broom, canvas, class, collage, dale chihuly, DIY, google images, Kids, layer, Paint, painted shoes, Painting, paintings, process, project, puffy, puffy paint, splatter, unschool, unschooling

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One of the things I have been excited about is the possibility of finding treasures when we dug up the yard for the foundation. I have been told our house once held the original farm house for this area. Most of the existing house was built in the 4o’s so there could be old stuff as well as newer “trash.” I have found some broken dishes and marbles out back.

Over the weekend my husband found our first treasure! An Oneida lmtd Silversmiths  Triple cocktail or olive fork.

I think it is railway or cruise ship flatware. I can’t wait to see what we dig up next!!

Here is the video of our garage demo–in case the photos weren’t enough for you! You can view it in live action. I’m pretty sure Siskel and Ebert would give it 2 thumbs up!

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We invited neighbors over for coffee and donuts before the show .It’s the least we can do for them for putting up with our dust and wild homeschooled children and all their friends and barking dogs and loud stereos and a weedy garden…….I am confident donuts take care of everything!

First the boys tried the Amish way…

Hahahahaha They realized that wasn’t going to work and they needed to return to 2011 technology…The Jeep Wrangler.

How’s that donut Bryan?

Well, that didn’t budge it–maybe that should have been our first clue that the old girl was more sturdy than she looked. Much discussion ensued between boys er,  I mean the men. Let me tell you it was like they were all 10 years old again. Giddy with excitement of donuts and demolishing a building and big trucks! Yes, big trucks!!!

–EEk don’t hit the refreshment table! Wouldn’t want to upset the  neighbors!

They finally strapped her on to the Big Daddy truck.

Look at ‘em–boys and their toys!

The following photos need no commentary other than to say…this is not what the boys expected to happen!

Ready………….Go Joe……….

And there she sat

Now scroll through that series again quickly–it’s like a flip book!

Luckily she didn’t continue to tumble or the peanut gallery with bellies full of donuts weighing them down never would have gotten out of the way!

Now the boys were crapping their pants!

And everyone had an idea of what to do next. For me the excitement was really turning to anxiety. The longer the speculation of the next move went on the the more we were afraid the wall closest to the house would buckle and the structure would twist on it’s way down and hit the house or worse yet someone was going to get hurt.

The boys devised a plan to anchor one side and pull it towards the backyard. Well, just when you need your controls that run the bucket in the bucket truck to work-they fail. So we put caution tape around our entire yard  and my husband drove back  to work to get a different bucket truck. At this point the crowd dispersed and I was left stressed with all the donuts. sigh

My husband and I decided via cell phone that we should call a Demolition Specialist that his company has used in the past…. but of course the office was closed on a Sunday. So, we did what any desperate non Amish person would do-we googled the owners name and got his home phone number and called him on his day of rest.

When” The Specialist” showed up he was amazed at our ‘pickle’.  “Well, I’ve never seen this happen before”

But to the boys credit he agreed with their anchoring idea. Having him confirm that was the best plan of action allowed them to put down the donuts and get back to work.

The guy in the yellow is “the Specialist” the other guy is our neighbor and Boy Scout extraordinaire! ( Who never shook his head in disgust at our home disrepair.Thanks good neighbor! I bet it was the donuts!)

They ran a strap down the center and attached it to the jeep and hit the gas (in reverse).

Even “The Specialist” is getting excited!

That cookie crumbled just the way it was supposed to. Thank Buddah! No one was hurt and the drama was almost over.

We kissed “the Specialist” feet for driving 45 minutes and leaving his wife to wash all the windows by herself just to come to our rescue. If you ever need a demo company YOU SHOULD CALL PROCON!

The steps that led to the upper part of the garage were still standing and holding up a portion of the rubble. It took more work to get that little bit down than the rest of the whole garage!

And through it all, a strong old door that we had stored in the upper part of the garage made a graceful landing, unscathed.

We decided to keep that door and use it somewhere in our house. Something to remind us of the good luck the sun shinned on us during this demo gone wrong. Things really could have gone a different way. We are so lucky no one was hurt and the corner of our house wasn’t damaged.

Thank you neighbors and friends for all the help and support!! I owe you many more donuts…… because next week we are knocking off the side of our house!!! I can’t promise it will be as exciting as this weeks adventure!

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Post tags: Building, community, demo, demolition, donuts, friend, friends, garage, Home, homeschool, homeschooled children, house, husband, jeep, jeep wrangler, neighbors, photo, photos, structure, Wrangler, yard

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