Drywall Free Interior Walls

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I was driving into work today while day dreaming about the house in Rincon.  I was thinking about what to do with the wood house and specifically about what to do about the interior walls.

The wall cavity between the outer siding and the inner panels/drywall seems to make a great place for bees, rats and bats to live.  This is a problem, because while I don’t have anything against any of those things in general, I don’t want them to live with me.

We know we are going to paint the inside of the house white to brighten it up.  The inside has never been painted and is all a natural wood color so it tends to be pretty dark.  I thought…”well who the hell needs drywall?  Or wood paneling?”.  Here in Colorado we need that space to insulate us from the outside which gets pretty darn cold.  The only purpose it really serves in our Rincon house is to cover up the studs and apparently make nice nests for  pests.

It is fairly hard to locate pictures of what I have in mind but I did find a few.  no drywall
Here is the idea

Basically remove the existing panels and drywall, clean everything out and paint.  Done.   It also provides shelf space.

Now, I am not sure we would do this in every room, but we don’t have to.  Some of the wood paneling can just be painted white and some can removed and the empty cavity painted.

Wall 2
Another example grabbed from Google images.

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Back to Work -A Comparison

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Work
Building Where I Work

Well it has been close to 2 weeks now since I’ve been back to work.  I surprisingly picked right up where I had left off 2 months before.  Not much, if anything had changed.  It was kind of unexpected but at the same time not surprising.

In this building I work in a similarly drab cubicle. I think that is one of the descriptions of a cube dweller.  A lot of your life takes place in a well….a cube.  The cubes are almost exactly the same with very little variation as with the inhabitants of the cubicles…. And the roads leading to and fro.

As you can probably guess by the way the building looks, we don’t do art.  Nope, just data.  Lots of computers.  It isn’t too terribly exciting, but it is complicated and sometimes challenging. And almost always the same.

Having some time off has given me a lot of perspective.

Tall Yard 2
The building where I want to be…and even there I will be mostly outside

I am glad I have employment and I did realize by coming back that I have learned my System Administration job fairly well.  I put a lot of effort into it and it shows.  Being able to just pick up and sail freely along is cool just due to the sheer amount of information that I have to know in order to do it.  I like to learn and grow and I feel that I have accomplished my goal of being an Application System Administrator.  I knew I could do it; and I have.

I want to be a tropical farmer, innkeeper and a surfer too.  I am sure I’ll look back at some point and be able to say that I’ve also accomplished those goals. I am ready to live where there is more green every day than grey. More plants than computer screens. More sensations to experience than sitting on my behind.

In the mean time, I will go back to the stark, dull building that shields me from the harshness of the outdoor world of Colorado… and plan my escape.

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New Carpet for our Greeley House

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This weekend we had our new carpet installed in our house in Greeley. When we first bought our house in 2003, it was a foreclosure and the carpet was badly stained in the living room. At the time, however, we did not have the money to install new carpet, so we just got it professionally cleaned. It really brightened it up and the dark stains were less noticeable, but it wasn’t perfect. The rest of the house’s carpet was in fine shape as the house had only just been built in 2001 and so the carpet had been new at that time.

Hallway spot
This was the worst spot in the house. Britton and I had made a small stain worse by trying to clean it with Oxy-clean and it had bleached the carpet

Over the years, the carpet, especially in the living room, only got worse and worse. Old Schnood had had accidents on it, both Callie and Kitty had taken their claws to it and it was the main thoroughfare to the kitchen, basement, and upstairs bedrooms. As you may remember, we had covered it up with a nice new throw rug and that helped a lot, but we still knew the carpet was on its last legs. Since we are moving this year, we want the house to be ready to rent and figured that now was as good a time as ever and we’d at least get to enjoy it a little first too.

So this weekend we moved all of our upstairs furniture into the basement, kitchen or bathrooms.

IMG_2787
Britton with most of our earthly belongings moved to the kitchen

The carpet installers arrived around 9am on Saturday and got right to work. Britton was also excited to finally fix a squeaky spot in the hallway that always creaked when we walked by. It’s nice not to have that creak but we no longer have our wonderful alarm system anymore either 🙂

Britton and squeaky spot
Britton and the carpet installer fixing the creak in the hall

Living room with blue carpet pad
It looked really weird with just the blue pad installed

Hauled out carpet
The “used” carpet

Here are some before and afters. It looks even better in person and feels good under bare feet. We love it!

Bedroom before
Bedroom before

bedroom after
Bedroom after

Hallway before
Hallway before

Hallway after
Hallway after

It’s amazing what a little surface detailing -and money- can do. We’ve seen it before in our (other) rentals, but it’s so true: paint and flooring can make a place feel new again.

Carpet close up
Close up of the new carpet (living room)

 

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