Wednesday, July 29, 2015

around the house

I am feeling very Susie Homemaker, I made my own laundry washing powder. Some blog recipes call for 3 ingredients, but I followed this blog post. I'm not sure what my motivation was. This gal says the cost gets down to $0.04 a load, but she is comparing to Tide. I love the smell of Tide, but it is very expensive so I've used cheaper stuff for years now. Anyway, it is free of a lot of the dyes and chemical stuff, so that's probably good.
all the ingredients
the soap was jamming up my blend tec so I had to hand grate, that was the hardest part!
And then I mixed it all with my rubber gloves in a trash bag lined bucket and then I was done
And I just use the scoop that was in the oxi-clean. It doesn't suds, at all, but the clothes seem to be coming out clean and fresh smelling. So that's good. I'm going to try those plastic dryer balls next as soon as my box of dryer sheets runs out. We don't have any skin issues or allergies, but less chemicals can't be a bad thing!
my sunflower has grown! Maybe not the best pic for an illustration, but I'm standing pointing up and it was still taller than my fingers! I remember planting it and seeing it would grow 10-12 feet and not believing it. But no lie!
Doug and Dad put up 2 walls of the shower liner, and then we did the last wall:
Doug pretends to shave his pits with the tile edger for some reason...
putting up a couple quarts of adhesive
looking good, hang in there tape!
new shower head
This bathroom, oh my gosh, so many things going wrong. Little annoying things. Doug said he and Dad spent 5 hours just figuring out a leak problem. The pipe sticking out of the wall doesn't stick out far enough to attach to our new faucet thing. Now there is the old caulk all around the rim of the tub that needs to be scraped off and it's been glued on there for like 20 years. He's off at Lowes buying razor blades right now. The next step (for the tub) is caulking it. Hopefully that will go ok. We still have to finish hanging the drywall, tile and grout the floor, install the new toilet, mud & sand the drywall, then paint, build an "addition" onto the upper cabinet, paint both cabinets, switch out the sink faucet, get a new light fixture, paint the walls, install the hardware, put up new trim, and find a less cheap looking door on CraigsList. How can people do this in those 3 day makeover shows!?!
Anyway.
The other home thing I'm happy about is we can finally use the treadmill we bought in June! We got a Nordic Track incline hiker in June, new on ebay, and it gets here and there was a clanking. After several phone calls we find out it's a common issue and there is a kit you can get to fix it and have a technician install. So we're talking to the ebay guy who ordered the part for us, and reimbursed us for the technician. But it was back ordered forever, and we're wondering if the ebay guy was lying, and anyway, finally it got here, and the technician came yesterday. The lady I used to babysit for had one and I always liked it and wanted one. But you can't even buy that old school model anymore, this one has all these bells and whistles, but then right out of the box was broken!? We were pretty disappointed in Nordic Track. The tech also told me I was going to have to buy some lube kit and do that every couple months and to expect to replace the belt in 2 years. The gift that keeps on giving! I was surprised, but maybe the lady I babysat for was doing all this stuff too and I just never knew. Anyway, I'm hoping that we will have no further problems and it will be worth the investment.
the lube part was easy
one thing I also liked about her treadmill was it was just so easy to use and user friendly. This thing has a built in computer screen (read= more to go wrong), and the worst part is that Jillian Micheals is the spokesperson now so I have to hear her voice everytime I go on there. I just wished I could have bought a new- old model! I don't like when people "improve" and then it's worse than before. But alas, that wasn't an option, so this one will have to do!

1 comment:

  1. The bathroom remodel is really coming along, great job! And I'm super impressed with your homemaking skills making laundry detergent!

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