Pieces of a puzzle...aka flooring in an old house

First things first, we noticed that we have a little visitor...who seems to like my pillow.
little kitty feet!
There is a group of kittens who hang out across the street--and in our house, apparently. We just might pull an Urban Vegan and see if we can catch and spay/neuter them. Her story of Buttons is inspiring! I don't want a house full of kittens, though. Do any of you have experience with this? Suggestions?

So, onto the house. In order to do the finish plumbing, we needed to work on a few key things such as laying the subfloor and tile. And after working on this for a few days--we can tell you that NOT ONE wall in our house is straight or square. Everything is crooked! Here is the puzzle master, Tavo, contemplating kitchen subfloor.
Good job, babe!
ahh, bathroom is ready for some cement backer!
Spreading mortar on the plywood


Tavo ensuring the cement backer will stick.
checking and taping the seams
mortar and tile--11 pm on a school night, yet I'm ecstatic! We decided to stick to the classic tile look instead of trendy. It was difficult, though--there are some EXCELLENT tiles on the market.
and we're done for the evening. Grouting fun will occur tonight.


AD LIB
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Okay, so we have been tossing around the idea of doing the kitchen in solid black and white linoleum tiles. Kitch or poor taste? Please give opinions, as we will be purchasing tiles and laying them on Saturday. Also, take into account our already black and white bathroom tiles that can either be contained or continued...

This video seems relevant to our black and white tile argument, as beautiful people are dancing on a plain checkered floor.

We have been blasting the Manu Chao recently--so many good songs from this band! Check out 'Clandestino' before they yank it from every youtube site...

the rain broke.

Finally.

Shrimp Etouffee

This recipe is based on Katherine's Crawfish Etoufee recipe from her blog, Smoky Mountain Cafe Basically, I followed her recipe and substituted 2 lbs of shrimp for the crawfish. Additionally, I used a can of unsalted tomatoes instead of tomato sauce. The shrimp was added during last 5 minutes of cooking.

This etouffee has a TON of shrimp--the dish recieved 2 thumbs up from Tavo!
I swear, there is rice under there somewhere...
Happy kids, chock full of etouffee. Yep, I'm drinking pink lemonade out of a wine glass. Why not?



Dirty Dozen Brass Band--kind of a random youtube video. I remember dancing to these guys when I went to Mardi Gras in '98 (jeeze--that was a minute ago!)

more house! (I promise to get back to cooking eventually)

I have always had an irrational fear of basements. I really, really don't like to be underground. Even if there is a window, I still would rather be upstairs if at all possible. When I had a basement bedroom, I slept on the top bunk, right next to the window--as close as I could get to ground level.

This is why Georgia houses and their crawl spaces greatly appeal to me! While it would be unlikely for me to just hang out in a crawl space--it doesn't bother me to go on down and poke around. So here we are--hanging out in the crawl space, insulating our beautiful new pipes!

Tavo is reinforcing parts of the floor in the back room.
He also hung a screen door for the kitchen--a definite necessity!
Door in the evening light.
I have hardly been cooking at all. In fact, we never even ate dinner last night. We did eat breakfast however--thank you hotel for your fantastic breakfast buffet!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Caribbean food and some good news!

Yesterday, we went to Taste Of Tropical Caribbean Restaurant (couldn't find a website) on Lee Street in Atlanta's West End and it was FANTASTIC!! I ordered the Curry Tofu with yellow rice, broccoli, and plantains. Tavo wanted some macaroni and cheese, so we got that too. Wow! Really excellent, portions were huge and the price was right. This is the first time EVER that I have seen Tavo scarfing down tofu, saying, "This is delicious!" Very vegetarian and vegan friendly, and there is also a good selection of seafood, chicken, oxtails, goat, coco bread, stew, jerk etc.

Curry Tofu with broccoli, mac and cheese
Plantains


So--did we eat our delicious food at the hotel? Nooooo--we have been working on our little fixer upper house. And it is coming along! Nothing like a fire to get focused on finishing up the house!

Here's Tavo, watering our plants


The plumbing has been roughed in, so we're going to work on insulating and replacing the floors over the weekend.

This is the other biggie--we put down hardwoods!! If you are in Atlanta and need an contractor for hardwoods, our guy is excellent! He and his partner put this down in one day.


Lo and behold, we have a bedroom.

Such a difference from before!

the rest of our stuff is still waiting to be put away, but we're working on it. We're so excited to have a home!

One more of the fire, then we're dropping the subject!!

So--here's our house.




and the inside.

and here is the culprit behind the fire....
neighbor's house


So, you see, it really could be MUCH worse!! We decide to make the most of it.

And the view from our hotel. Westin is still waiting for windows that were blown out by the tornado last St. Patrick's day.


Not too shabby, eh?
We're getting more than our fix of HGTV! (It's actually kind of ridiculous to watch this much HGTV)
and I get to cook again :) Pasta with every vegetable we had and some cheese, too.

...so...a cook is staying in a weekly hotel, when...

..it's got a hot plate, a fridge, and here are some blurry pics of us moving in. We will upload clear pics upon attaining a cord for the whole camera to computer situation ;)

Is it weird that my biggest issue was not being able to cook? I felt so...incapacitated.

The blurry...

clearer...

and the fridge.


Can you believe we've been here for less than 48 hours?

This seems fitting. "Road to Nowhere" Talking Heads