I found "Love" on CraigsList

This made me laugh a little.

I did a quick read of Craigs List Rants and Raves and found the following:

"Ok so here is my rant for the day. I am a 42 year old male and it seems that I cannot meet a woman (no matter the age) that wants to commit to anything more then either friends or friends with benefits. I cannot find a woman that does not just want sex or does not want more then friendship. I am looking for a woman who is down to earth and easy going. someone who has some morals and values that is not a game player and is not materialistic. A good old fashioned country girl. Who wants a man who wants to share his hopes and dreams and deepest parts of his life with her. That likes the old fashioned chivalrous hardworking type that is also a southern man that believes in respecting women.

Someone who is not just a friend of a friend with benefits but someone who is more physiologically and emotionally intimate then that. A good woman and I am wondering where they all have gone. A woman that likes a man who looks at a woman as a human and looks at the inside and not the outside. One who is not 420 not a druggie not a drinker not one to sit on the computer.
where have all the good women gone? "

It struck me enough that I did something I rarely do... I responded: 

"Oh... we are out here. I have been on my own for the past 10 years, take care of my own mortgage and bills, spend my 'extra' money fixing up my rental and the 4-acre 'farm' I own. I mow my own yard, built my own kitchen cabinets, raise/dye/spin/knit my own yarn. I cook, I do keep my house clean (if not necessarily tidy). I can use a table saw, router and power driver. I can food from my garden and just build a grape arbor. And I am not a lesbian.

But in 10 years, I have found a lot of men who are willing to be 'friends'... even friends with benefits, but who are not interested in anything else. Why? They fall into three categories. They are either intimidated by the fact that I do all of the above, they do not like the fact that I can not just STOP attending to my responsibilities to focus 100 percent on them or they are turned off by the fact that I carry 20-40 pounds more than what they think I should. 

Fortunately for me, I like my life and really don't care about 'looking' for the right man. If one that will fit into my life comes along, terrific. If not, the simple fact is that I don't NEED one.

Maybe that is the problem you are having... what you are looking for is a woman who does not NEED a man. Which means they probably are not hanging around waiting for one... they are too busy off living their lives. "

What I found interesting was the responses to both of the posts.  The other responses to the first post were ALL (so far) comments on how he would not find what he was looking for because ALL woman in their 40's are materialistic/only interested in young men/trying too look 20/fat/etc.  The responses to MY post were ALL (so far) comments about how I was full of myself/lying/blind to my own faults/etc.  Oh... and several lovely ones about how I am a fat, ugly cow... one even suggested I should just kill myself to end my miserable experience.  Taking the fact that this IS from R&R, I think I can ignore all that, but I did find the difference in how the two posts were addressed mildly interesting.  If it were NOT R&R, I might have even found it fascinating  but since all the responses were probably from the same woman hating troll in his mothers basement, it gets downgraded to mildly interesting.

Electricity - It's Alive!

The electricity has been run!

And ohboy, what a run it was.


R climbed up into the rafters to pull wire and cut the hole in the roof for the vent fan.  What a trooper!

Floors - The beginning

I have started working on the floors.  We decided that it was a good idea to get a good couple of coats on the floor under the shower, so I went ahead and sanded the back side of the room (where the shower and toilet will sit). 

The pictures do not really show a huge difference between the un-sanded floor (from in front of the cabinet to the left) and the sanded part (right of the cabinet), but IRL, there was some difference.

 

I did not get a picture of the floor after the first Gym-Seal application, but it is still a little visible in the last picture.  I re-sanded and reapplied the Gym-Seal, but not completely to the edge.  The edge is the first coat after a light sanding.  The nice pretty shiny part is the second coat, still wet.

 

The floors are still a bit rough... good enough for under the shower and toilet to protect the floor, but I think we will get the sander with attitude (aka belt sander) to take the rest of the floor down  little more.  Not surprising since the wood has been there for at least 50 years and looks like it was probably reclaimed at that time.

What Phase are we on? We will just call this one "The Door"

 It is just incredible what you find when  you cut open your walls... the house is apparently make of wood paneling over plank siding with cedar siding on top of that.  No wonder it is so solid... and hard to cut through  :)

This is the beginning of the 'door' phase.  Dad cut through the paneling to find... well.. this:

Testing

 Once that was done, we got started on cutting through the outside.  It was fun.  Dad drilled holes in the corners from the inside so we knew what to cut on the outside... pretty smart!

My main job was to manage the cord and to try to keep him from tipping over as the ladder sank in the mud... highly technical work, but I was able to handle it.  I did, for a brief moment, woman the saber saw when he was up the ladder and handed it down to me.  I think he just meant for me to hold it while he climbed down, but I decided to be a rebel. 

 

 

And.... tada!~

Not much to say ... just wanted to share the pictures of our new yarn babies  :)

I helped one be birthed today... I will post pictures of her later.

Operation "Dad's come for a visit" - Phase II

And so began Phase II.  I offered to be the one crawling under the house to start work on running the plumbing, but being the gentleman he is, he would no let me.  Apparently, the stick he used to clear out the cobwebs ahead of his crawl ended up looking like a dirty cotton candy stick.

Of course, every job requires a supervisor:

The view from the other side... it was interesting to find out that the plumbing coming out of the house is actually terra cotta.  You can see the part of the pipe we cut out in the second picture off to the right.

The supervisor, taking a well deserved break after a hard day of 'helping'

Operation "Dad's here for a visit" - Phase 1

 So Dad has come to visit... yay!

I had to bribe him to come by telling him I wanted to install a new bathroom. So now that he is here... I have to install a new bathroom  :)

This house is a Frankenstein.  The original house was one bedroom farmhouse that was built in the 1930's.  Sometime after that, they made part of the front entry into a bathroom.  Sometime after THAT, they put some old decomissioned military housing on the back, enlarging the house.  That piece came with a porch, which they enclosed to make a utility room (canning kitchen, back in the day) with a storage room.  It is this storage room that I decided would make a good second bathroom.

Phase 1 of the project was to remove the shelves from the room.  I forgot to take a 'before' picture, but it is pretty easy to see from the paint marks what it was like:

Standing in the door, looking left

Standing in the doorway, looking right.

For a second part of 'Phase 1' , Dad used the some of the shelves he took out of the storage room to make storage shelves in the utility room, including two nice shelves over the dye station.    They are great!  The unfortunate pastel green and blue is a result of 8 gallons of paint leftover from a project that never got started (is it still a leftover, if the project never happened?) .  And yes... waiting for paint to dry is as exciting as they say.  :P

New shelves... blue to the right, green to the left.