Thursday Thirteen

1. We have been watching the home remodeling shows (because there is little else on). We are fashionably in style with the "open floor" concept of what we called a great room in 1987. If my kitchen had white cabinets instead of dark ones, we'd look like a modern reinvention of a home.



If these were white, I'd be in style.

 

Central Vacuum

2. However, our house is not overly smart. No automatic vacuum cleaners or things like that. We do have a central vacuum, which was a big deal at the time we installed it (again, 1987).

3. We will need to do some basic home updating in the next few years. New flooring, for one. Our carpet is now 12 years old and showing some wear.

12 year old carpet.

Parquet flooring, also installed
in 1987.

4. However, the last time we installed carpet, it sickened me terribly. We are not installing carpet again. We will go with some kind of hardwood or laminate floor.


5. We last painted the entire house in 2005. We have since painted the kitchen, living room, and bathroom, but the bedroom and the two rooms we've converted into "offices" need painting.

6. One room in this house was last painted when we built it, 1987. That would be the laundry room, which also still has the original peel 'n' stick tile flooring on it.

Not painted since 1987.

7. In 2013, we updated the two bathrooms and installed a walk-in shower. This has turned out to be one of the smarter moves we have made in recent years.

Laundry room tile needs replaced. This was also in the
one of the bathrooms.

8. In 2015, we removed the outside deck and poured cement. Also a good move.

9. Over the years we've gone through about 5 dishwashers. We don't use a water softener and have lime water. It eats up things like dishwashers and washing machines. It is especially hard on coffee pots, electric tea kettles, and warm mist humidifiers.

10. In the winter time, we buy a lot of distilled water to use in warm mist humidifiers to keep the machines from "liming up."

11. My husband also uses bottled water in his coffee pot.

12. I filter the water I drink from the sink twice - once with a Pur filter at the spigot and again with a Britta filter in a pitcher. Unfortunately, this doesn't help with the lime issue.

13. Our house, including the garage, is 1,560 square feet. We built it ourselves, with our own two hands, using a house-building kit similar to what Sears sold way back in the 1920s. Ours came from a company called TimberTruss, which is no longer in business. 

Home Sweet Home (in 2010). A few changes since then.

_______

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 535th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.