Getting Ready for Winter

I am attempting to get this place as ready for winter as possible. The heat bills here, with the gas furnace, are extreme. It's not insulated. At least wasn't. I have been getting insulation, either used, or now and then, when I have ten bucks, I get a roll at Home Depot and install it. I've got the room off the kitchen now fully insulated, walls and ceiling. I want to insulate the underneath of the house, but that'd be expensive. I do a lot of caulking of open cracks and holes, that sort of thing.

This is the living room area behind a bookcase/entertainment center shelf. I'd not been able to move that heavy shelving to remove the carpet beneath it, when I did remove the carpet from this place about a year and a half ago.

The carpet was extremely old and filthy. The pad beneath the carpet was also filthy and beneath the pad, dirt and even liquid had sifted through and pooled. Also, the wood flooring was blotched, like this flooring is, with black glue or something.

At first I had tried removing all the gunk from the entire floor, intent on restoring the floor, but I couldn't do it. Not financially and not physically, because of neck problems with that sort of action. So I'd painted the floor instead, a beautiful sea blue. I'd never thought of painting a floor.

I had not been able to remove the carpet from beneath this piece of furniture until today. It revealed a gap at floor level, with breeze flowing through. So I used fix-all, to fill the biggest gaps, but I only had a little bit left. I then just blocked the airflow with stick on window/door foam insulation.

I've done a lot of work over the years. I even replaced the toilet, at my own expense, although it was a used toilet from the Habitat store I bought. I love that store.

The old toilet was tottery and took many flushes to actually flush. The innards were worn out and someone at some point had broken the porcelain tank top. The bowl of the toilet also had cracked and so it leaked continually onto and into the bathroom floor. Someone had fashioned a board to sit atop the tank, long before I moved in, but it didn't fit and was moldy.

I also pulled up three layers of vinyl flooring in the bathroom, all of them trapping moisture and mold between them. The floor is rather rotted in places beneath the vinyl flooring I installed, but I can't replace everything. You'd have to tear it all out. But at least there's not the three layers of moldy flooring now.

I replaced the bathroom doorknob. The bathroom doorknob froze once, locking me out of the bathroom. It was really really old and just froze in the locked up position. So I replaced that. I replaced the front doorknob, too, for same reason and installed a deadbolt. I also installed a door peep hole.

My brother and I installed a new outlet in the bedroom a few years ago, because only one outlet in the bedroom worked. We ran an electric line from it under the house to the circuit box, so it would be directly grounded.

I installed a new bathroom faucet and hoses, when I first moved in, because the bathroom faucet was clogged, maybe with silt, something. The hoses up to the hot and cold knobs were too short, so they were leaking. I replaced those.

I replaced a piece of pipe beneath the kitchen sink also, because it leaked under there. It leaked because the pipe had a "Y" I guess once when someone had a dishwasher in here. Instead of capping that, it had been broken off and to stop leakage, a piece of plastic had been stuffed into that short "Y", but it leaked, constantly. So I removed and replaced that piece of pipe and no more leaking.

The screen door was hanging when I moved in and not square. My brother squared it, when he came, just as I was trying to move in and get it HUD passed four years ago. He wasn't happy about me living in such a run down place at that time and was also angry because I was doing so much labor and spending so much money, just before moving in, to make the place functional. He had to square the front door also, because it wouldn't close or lock. HUD attempted to pass it four times. The fifth time was a charm and it passed. But it took a whole lot of work.

So it's been a long haul here. It's not like renting a place really, because I've done so much work here to make it liveable. I have enjoyed fixing it up, although it's been difficult and expensive. I have very little money to work with. It is vastly improved over when I moved in. And I can do my cat thing here and have my cats.