noir was waiting for the bedding to finish being washed, so she hugged onto one of my scarves until fresh linens were ready.

and how was the dryer fixed? with steven and his dad taking it apart and figuring it out. in all honesty though, the dryer was kind of falling apart when the previous owners left the house (oh… those previous owners make me so angry) so it was no loss to them, but then it seems like they never tried to repair anything or do regular maintenance.  the dryer was already missing one of it’s tumble bars, and another one was loose, and the third seemed okay. it turns out it was the third one that was the problem. a screw that holds it in place had snaked it’s way back  from it’s place and was knocking around on the outer rim of the drum, making that horrible noise and the force was making it rock. they had to totally take out the loose tumbler, but they fixed that one. we are now drying with just one tumbler.  seems to work okay yay for steven and his dad!

so while they were doing that, the goblin was nice enough to get an extension cord out and hook up electric the weed whacker i bought at a yard sale for 5$ and give some of the yard a go. steven then tried to give the lawnmower a go but it kept dying and when the goblin looked in the house, it seems the extension cord was drawing too much power and the breaker needed to be flipped. this happened twice before he gave up and steven cursed at the lawnmower (now working because he’s mowing the yard today on his day off).

at the end of the day, steven and i went to go take a nice refreshing shower together only to find the hot water was quickly becoming cold. the next day steven checks it all out with his father and it seems the hot water heater is working just fine. the goblin had no problems when he took a shower.

but last night, man oh man, it lost it’s scalding hotness again.

like Roseanne Rosannadanna used to say “it’s always something.” oddly enough, my hair looks like hers currently just not as poofy. he he he.

tomorrow will be about the laundry room cabinet i scored from steel rod’s grandmother and how the install went. have a good monday!

fencing, it turns out, is crazy expensive. we really wanted nice metal gates, but holy goodness… there is no way we could ever afford to drop that kind of cash. so we looked into loads of different options and man, the majority of those options are just ball sucking lame.

plastic fence? please!  that stuff cracks and breaks like geriatric hip on concrete. vinyl? can you say totally bogus? yeah it’s easy to clean and wipe off but not all that sturdy nor is it’s appearance anything noteworthy. chain link? pah-lease. i may be broke and living on the cheap, but i ain’t that ghetto. there is no way you can make chain link look pretty. anything you can do to pretty it up makes it look even more sad. picket fence? as american as a flat top hair do on a blond dude with a giant gun. we’re so there.

looking at styles, we rather like the look of the french gothic, nice point and shape and the spacing isn’t large enough for our tiny dogs to run out through.

knowing what we want,  we started to attempt to closely find and compare prices. home depot and lowes are the options for pre-made sections and their price difference is a buck, can’t you believe that? also, can you believe that NEITHER ONE has fricking gates? that makes NO sense to me! none! what-so-ever! who wants to fence in a yard and have no option of leaving besides a running jump like a hurdle in the olympics? seriously.

so, we picked the style, figured what is cheaper (lowes is a dollar cheaper and 20 minutes closer), narrowed down the stain options (guess what! it’s grey! fancy that. man, he’s so predictable at times) now how much of the yard do we want to fence off? oh that’s a tricky question there. we can’t afford the footage to fence in the whole she-bang, so we have to be kind of selective of where. seeing as we’re not exactly sure just yet, here is a proposed  sketch of our yard and what i’m thinking:

this is the Der Fraken Haus yard.

• red: estimated yard lines
• white: where the picket fence could possibly lie
• blue line: handmade fencing or wall on the back patio
• thicker lines: gates
• light blue box w/lines: my studio
• blue boxes with x’s: where i might build raised beds.

flower beds inside the yard will be with flowers and foliage. flowerbeds outside the picket fence will be food (so the dogs don’t get into them).

maybe when i get home today i will go out and measure how much we might possibly need and figure out how to  block off the treeline so the dogs don’t get stuck in it (loads of poison oak back there i must kill as well).

more tomorrow on what else we’ll be doing with our measly stimulus check and cross your fingers w can stretch the finds as far as we hope!

i love wooden shipping pallets. like, i’m crazy about them. i think they are just amazing and they come in so many crazy shapes and sizes. when i see one, i see a million things i can do with them. it starts some tingling in places, some places it’s not polite to discuss in most company so we’ll leave it at that.

i was pursuing some home decorating site (currently i can’t find, remember, or remember where i found it) a idea of turning a pallet into a plate holder in the kitchen. my mind went crazy with “yes! OTHER PEOPLE are using pallets for things!” and my pallet love grew.

i decided then i wish i had my own set of legal wheels and i would go store to store to turn pallets into household objects (baring Steel Rod wouldn’t complain), but mostly yard objects!

i wanted to turn wooden pallets into a sort of patio wall around our side patio so that once we put a fence up around the yard for the dogs to run around in, then won’t go over the side of the patio and out of the fenced in area. i drew up ideas and was ready to go, but had to wheels to go obtain said little wooden gems… so i kept thinking of what else to turn pallets into; so many things came to mind and one of them was even the fencing! but that would be a lot of pallets as we have a fairly large yard and i don’t know just how readily available pallets are and just how many places would actually let me nab them for cheap.

found @backwoodshome.com/articles2/sawyer69.html

because we bought the house this year, the year our president decided to stimulate our economy in various ways, steven and i are supposed to get a stimulus incentive for purchasing a house in this horrible housing market. we know we need a fence, it is of the utmost importance to use and people with two small dogs and also people who want some semblance of privacy. not to mention, some fencing is just adorable! we were going to use our stimulus check to buy fencing but oh how much it costs is insane. if i can convince steven to have us make fencing out of pallets that are being tossed out and are still in good condition, then not only are we sparing the landfills, but being able to use the cash we will be getting in other much needed ares of the house.

above all, we agreed the money being given to us for buying the house is going right back towards the house.

but i got off on a tangent! back to pallets! i want to make a nice wall around the side patio and that will be so wonderfully easy and cheap and we can stain it to match whatever and then seal it to have it last even longer.

this bad boy says it's for composting but i have other plans!

i called my buddy Sarah Meloncon on saturday while i was attempting to paint the interior of my shed studio in 97 degree heat and failing miserably. telling her of my excitement about my ideas and being a horribly resourceful yet gifted artist with a wicked cool imagination, she reminded me of Instructables website. i gave up on painting in the humidity and heat, went inside and looked up the site to see if they did anything with pallets. i found amazing rosalie porn. pallet ideas at every angle!

this badboy [found at Instructables: here] is supposed to be for composting, i have other plans! i want to make it and make it into something more attractive than just our trash can outside, a nice place to put the trashcan in and sort of “hide” it and making it blend more into the rest of the outside pallet use! even if we don’t make a fence out of pallets, we are looking at wooden fencing anyways and staining it. we’ll just stain it all to match. i can even make one for the lawn mower. Instructables has many tutorials on pallet inspired things including planters i had an idea for before seeing them on the site, but now i can alter other people’s ideas using them as a basis. there are plans for different planters and some furniture there as well on that site.

this beautiful bench was made over Holy Scrap Hot Springs and got my hands itching to replicate it so i can sit under one of my many trees in my yard. i’m totally stealing this idea and putting it in my yard. so cheap to make and so lovely to see!

i can keep going on and on, but my lunch hour is almost up. oh, believe me… this won’t be the end of hearing about my pallet love. a co-worker of mine (hi, Nicole!) said she would love to help in me working on stuff for the house this week due to the fact her cute little daughter is spending time at grandma’s and mom wants to create. thank goodness for friends who want to get their hands dirty and make things beautiful!

this building is being turned into my painting and art studio! (this was done before we finalized buying the house in february.)

because it was on the far corner of the property (on the side we actually have a neighbor) and facing away, we had it moved behind the house to another cement slab that was left behind and actually facing towards the house. this was done this past weekend by an amazing old friend i know from my theater days, Greg Carswell. because of many health problems, he wasn’t able to do it sooner but eventually said “you know, i don’t have to get off the tractor!” so he just drove his big old tractor from his farm over to our yard, and with the help of strapping young lad by the name of Alex, they moved my shed for me! not only that, but while he waited for me to make sure nothing inside the shed would break while he moved it, he mowed my lawn. bad.ass.

here is the view from the spot the building was moved to, you can see how far it had to travel. (this was done before we finalized buying the house in february.)

steel rod’s dad knows a good number of people, some of whom are electricians. being one who wants to help out and make the home a better place for his son to live, my not-quite-my-dad-in-law broke the news to me on sunday that he is going to come over and dig in the yard, bury me a line, connect my studio to power, put in some outlets, and even hang up some lighting! go, not-quite-my-dad-in-law! how awesome is that? i can be painting as early as the fourth of july!

i have to go in and paint the inside and a friend of mine gave me two giant boxes of tile she’s not going to use. at first i thought i would tile the floor with that, but now i’m thinking “if it’s going to be MY studio, why don’t i go whole hog?” so i am going to go on freecycle and ask for any and all tile, broken and not and maybe even mirror pieces and make my floor a tiles mosaic! no set pattern or picture, just loads of broken tile and maybe broken plates….. ooo i keep getting ideas. i think that could be beautiful since everything else will be primed white as to not interfere with me seeing paint colors for what they are when i’m working.

off of freecycle i got some windows and i want to put them into the side of the shed to get some natural lighting but am unsure of how to go about that and not mess up the shed. honestly, though… natural lighting just makes all that much more differance when painting and just feeling good about life. hrm. maybe i can find somebody to help me with that one. i did borrow a jigsaw from somebody!

i’m so excited. i may live in a shithole, but it’s our shithole and we’re very very very slowly but surely making it nonshitholey. and now i have my own painting and art studio! holy crap!

don’t EVER let anybody tell you that money gets in the way of things. if everybody pitches in and helps each other out, everything works out for everyone. i am so proud of the way my life has turned out and who it’s led me to.

and i got an art studio. HA HA HA.

pics of the haul!