Clogged drains.

When we moved into our house one of the first things we discovered was that every drain in the house was clogged. Both sides of the kitchen sink, both bathroom sinks, and the upstairs bathtub....all of them clogged. Thankfully our landlord took care of most of them. The upstairs bathtub, however, never got snaked. Evidently, that drain uses PVC pipe and the landlord didn't want to risk damaging the pipe. Um....thank you? So after a little research for some safe plastic pipe declogging ideas, I have decided to try baking soda and vinegar.  Yes, what every child uses to create a volcano... this is what I decided to try on my clogged drain.  The research I did said 1/4 cup baking soda followed by a 1/4 cup vinegar. Let stand for awhile and chase with boiling water. So far, it seems to drain a little better. We'll see how long it lasts.

I might try it again, and if that doesn't help things - I'll do a bit more research and try again. 

My next question for the internet is: Why does my husband's beard turn from blonde to red after a certain length?

Patio chairs.

It turns out that going to school, working full time, getting married and moving into a big old house can be a little overwhelming for a girl. Matt and I found this awesome bungalow in Westport, KC. Its way more than I could have asked for... in lots of ways. First off, its in a perfect location. We are in the same block as two houses of some of our female friends and within another block of a house of our guy friends. Its within walking distance of our church, local shops and a grocery store. Secondly, it is huge. Its a two story, three bedroom, two bath ginormous house. Thirdly, it is in need of a lot of love. The previous tenants left a ton of furniture on the porch and patio and a basement full of odds and ends. They also weren't the cleanest people and left every square inch grimy. I'm excited about the possibilities I see in this house and  am trying to not feel overwhelmed. So, I'm breaking it up into manageable projects.  Thankfully, we have amazing friends who did most of the cleaning for us while we were on our honeymoon. Our friend Megan gave our upstairs bathroom a much needed make over and fixed the shower head for us. So now we get to jump into the fun stuff.

We don't have a lot of money to put into fixing up the place so I'm trying to reuse a lot of the junk that was left here. First step: patio furniture.

The table is mine, but all of these lovely chairs came with the house. There were four chairs, one table and a torn up wicker bench on our porch. On the patio, there were four white chairs, four metal folding chairs, three camp chairs and a hula hoop. 

Its amazing how much spray paint was required. I used five cans for the red chairs and four cans for the blue. 

We still have a long way to go in adding plants and lighting, but at least our guests will have enough chairs to sit on. 

Well thats all for now, I'll continue to post all of our exciting home repair stories.  Maybe I'll eventually let you see the horror that is our basement.  Tomorrow's project: unclog the bathtub drain of our primary bathroom.  Get pumped!