septic debacle pt. 1 - the problem

one of the biggest issues we've faced at mckinky manor is the septic tank. it failed on us about a month after we moved in, and started backing up into the basement. we hired a company to come out and pump it and see if they could fix it. long story short, we paid $1400 for the to pump it and tell us we'd have to get a permit and do a complete rework of our septic system. awesome.

so we went to get the $250 permit, and they told us to get a $300 soil test. for those of you keeping score at home, at this point we're up to almost $2000 and still haven't started work on the actual solution. to make matters worse, the soil test came back with the equivalent of straight f's on our land's report card. they say that none of our land is any good for septic. why they built here in the first place with no usable soil is another story for another day and doesn't help us out one bit today.

so...the soil test guy gave us a few options to send around to septic contractors to get quotes on. we did so, and the lowest price we got was $11,400. that's before disposal fees, and electrician costs. so, we're looking at 13,350 total. fast forward three months and the gwinnett county environmental health department has denied every single plan our contractors have submitted for one reason or another, so even if we had the time and money to devote to this thing, we'd still be held up by them. to top it all off, they had the audacity to suggest that we get another $300 soil test just in case the ground changed significantly during the 3 months worth of foot dragging and lolly gagging they were doing.

on top of all that, we have major drainage issues in our yard. the soil is constantly soaked because of the heavy rainfall we've had lately, and the water from the entire neighborhood flows to a retention pond adjacent to our property which is fed directly by a creek running along our property line. the pond and creek have overflowed and crept up several feet, which of course, raises the water table in our yard (one of the obstacles to getting work approved.)

drainage issues in our yard...

1.) the beginning of that glorious creek. that pipe is never supposed to have standing water in it...it's about 3 feet deep at this point.

2.) this is supposed to be more or less dry, at most a trickle. notice the trees growing out of the water? ya, they're actually not supposed to be in the water at all.



3.) one of the many sources of groundwater moving (and i use the term lightly...) directly across our property
4.) and here you see the water moving across our driveway. this is after a relatively light rain. it's a few feet wide when it pours, which it has been doing a lot lately.5.) as you can see...

to be continued...(cue tense music)

A Curtain for the Kitchen

Here was last night's crafting fun! A Roman-style curtain for our one Kitchen window. This project took a little longer than I expected, but the end result didn't turn out too bad. Here are the supplies I needed:

I used red burlap fabric (1 yard, which was more than enough), a white grosgrain ribbon (wide, and an entire spool), my iron and ironing board, scissors, a curtain rod (of the suspension variety, since the window area is a little too tight to hang a real curtain rod), measuring tape, and a roll of Heat N' Bond.

The window is 31 1/2 inches wide, and we didn't need to measure for the full length of the window, since the curtain is decorative, not functional. I figured that I wanted it to go down no more than 12 inches, but because I was doing a Roman-style curtain, I needed to go cut the fabric longer (to compensate for the folds of fabric). The Heat N' Bond is just an easy, no-sew option -- the roll is 3/4 of an inch wide, so because I was hemming the sides of the fabric to hide the raw edges (see below), I doubled that to make 1 1/2 inches on either side. So, if you follow that, the width of the fabric was 34 1/2 inches (window width + left and right sides).

Here, I hemmed around three of the sides of the fabric. For the fourth edge, I estimated how wide the loop needed to be to slide the curtain rod through, and folded that edge over, creating a sort of pocket. Next, I attached two strips of ribbon vertically to the front of the curtains, each about 8 inches from the edges. The Heat N' Bond didn't work out so well here, because when the goop melted to bond the fabrics together, you could see a dark spot under the white ribbon. So, to keep the ribbon from flopping around, I stitched little X's along the ribbon that could easily be hidden when I did the folds. Unfortunately, I'm not so good with remembering to take pictures for each step, so this might sound a little confusing! Next, I loosely folded the fabric in a sort of layered fold to do the "Roman" part of the curtain (see final picture for what this looks like!) and pinned the folds down (because my curtain was so short, it was only 2 folds). I Heat N' Bonded those folds to each other, and stitched along the edges, so they would be secured. Then, with the extra ribbon, I made little bows:

These were stitched onto the ends of the white ribbon that goes vertically along the fabric. And that was it! I slipped the curtain rod into the pocket I'd made earlier, and asked D to pop it into the window frame (I couldn't reach, and at 6'6," he's perfect for reaching things that are too high. He has no problem asking me to get things that are "too low" to make up for it). Here it is:

There are a couple of minor things I'll need to fix on it to make it look better, simply because if I don't I will go crazy, but hurray! We have a curtain in our kitchen now!

Sips n' Strokes

I had a pretty awesome time at Sips N' Strokes with some of the girls the other night. I think this might become a frequent activity -- I'm no artist by any means, even though I love to do artsy type things. But it was a really relaxed, fun environment, and the instructor did a great job showing us how to paint step-by-step. Our paintings turned out pretty well -- we did an "Abstract Guitar," and enjoyed a bit of wine along the way (this was after a dinner full of Margaritas over at El Azteca!).

Here's the bestie and I mid-painting:

My final painting:

I LOVED Christina's...she went against the norm and used a palette that matched her bedroom colors (pinks and grays):

And here were a few of the other girls' paintings:

Pretty cool...I think we're going to go back soon -- and yet another "masterpiece" will fill our bare walls at home! Or maybe even a Birthday or Christmas gift one day...

Turtle Power!

We cooked some homemade pizza last night and watched TMNT II: Secret of the Ooze (brought back so many memories!). Here's the recipe we used (although we mostly just winged it!). I'm still looking for a good pizza crust recipe, so I just got a store-bought crust for last night. You can use any toppings you'd like, here's what ours consisted of:

Margherita Pizza

1 can Pillsbury Pizza Dough (Thick Crust style, found near the biscuits)
Olive Oil (3-4 Tbsp)
Shredded Mozzarella cheese (as much as you like, we used about 1-2ish cups)
2 Vine Tomatoes
Half a cup of mushrooms, sliced (more or less, depending on your preference)
1 Avocado, sliced
3-4 leaves fresh basil, chopped

Preheat oven to 425*. Pop open can of dough, and unroll -- it should be in a rectangular shape. If it keeps shrinking, let it set to room temperature -- that should reduce shrinkage. Spread Olive Oil from the center, all the way to the edges (it'll make the crust crisp). Scatter cheese (NOT to the edges). Slice tomatoes to desired thickness (ours were pretty thick) and arrange on pizza. Sprinkle with mushrooms, avocado and basil. Bake 20-25 minutes, until crust is golden brown. You may need to eat this with a fork and a knife, depending on how heavy your toppings are!

Basement Staining Hell

One of our many projects before we moved in included replacing all the flooring in the house. We found really great deals, either through Thomas Paz or where I work, it was within our budget, and frankly, I'm not a big fan of breathing in other people's dead skin.



The house had been mainly carpet, with lino in the bathrooms and part of basement, and Pergo (fake hardwood) on the main floor. The carpet was disgusting -- filthy and old. When we pulled up the carpet and padding (we did this ourselves to save money), there was so much dirt and grime, it made us seriously reconsider ever having carpeting again. Buuuuut, we prefer to have it in the bedrooms (I hate cold floors at night, and I'm not a big fan of rugs). SO, we had Alberto Navarrete come and install hardwood (oak, with a cherry stain) on the main floor and stairs, as well as the upstairs hallway. Foster Enterprises came in to do the carpeting in the three bedrooms (we did a Frieze carpet -- sort of a shag -- in a multi-color). Dave Grashorn came and tiled all three bathrooms, the shower and tub surround in the master bathroom, and our laundry room. The only thing left for us to do flooring-wise was the basement. It was suggested that we refrain from installing hardwood or carpet in the basement (just in case it flooded -- with the laundry room & water heater down there, you never know!). I'm not a huge fan of tile in a big room like that, so we started looking into other options. We found out about concrete staining (http://www.concretenetwork.com/stained-concrete/sawing_and_patterning.htm). This is a really cool look, and we figured it'd stand up really well if the basement ever decided to flood. Through a friend of a friend, we received instructions on how to DIY the staining. Thus began the nightmare that is our basement floor.



When we pulled up the carpet and lino from the basement floor, the concrete was extremely damaged. The people who laid in the carpet previously nailed the tack strip (this runs along the edge of the wall to hold the carpet down) into the concrete. So when we pulled up the nails, each nail popped out a little hole of concrete. Then we pulled up the lino, which was apparently superglued to the floor. It left behind most of the papery backing of the lino, or just squiggles of yellowed glue. There were also cracks, paint stains, and bits of pine straw that had been laid in with the concrete. Here is the before picture with all the carpeting removed:













Well, we had two options. Option #1 was to pour a self-levelling concrete onto the floor to resurface it -- easiest option, however we would have had to wait 30 days to stain the floor (had to wait for the concrete to completely cure). Well, we didn't want to wait 30 days -- we, the all-knowing homeowners, thought we could get EVERYTHING done within a month and be all set. If only we'd known then! Option #2 was to clean the floor, fill in the cracks and pockmarks from the tack strip, grind the concrete to make it smooth, clean it about 4 more times (with NO chemicals -- just water), and THEN stain it. So we decided to do that. Well. We poured Quikrete into the holes and cracks. The grinding was horrible. It was extremely dusty, so D & Thomas came up with the idea of using it as a wet grinder (one person grinds while the other uses a hose to spray the dust down). We had to stop every few minutes to suck up all the water with a shop vac, and empty the vac every so often. Quikrete apparently doesn't bond properly with real cement, so it popped straight back out of the holes. 6 hours later, the floor was grinded (ground?). We found the right kind of concrete to use, and applied that to the holes. Filling them using a putty knife wasn't working out so well, so we tore up our hands mashing it into the holes. Piece of cake, right? So we did the next step, scrubbing away. D went to a specialty store in Duluth to get stain and sealant and applied both to the floor. Here is how it looks now:







Amazing, right? Not. You can't really tell from the picture, but the places where the holes and cracks were filled are super dark -- it looks like a row of misshapen polka dots around the perimeter of the room and around the doorways (there were squares of lino in front of the back and garage doors, so the carpet tack strip ran around those squares). There are some places where the holes weren't filled in 100%, so it looks uneven. Some of the grinding marks showed up. All in all, we weren't too happy about the final result.



As it stands we're considering a few options. The first is to resurface the floor, wait 30 days, and restain it and see how it looks (although I'm not too impressed with the way the stain turned out). Secondly, we can resurface and use concrete paint to paint the floor. Third, we can refrain from the resurfacing and just paint the floor. I think we're going to start off with the third option for now, and test some spots to see how it looks (if the unevenness shows up, we'll move on the resurfacing the floor!). We'll do another post to show the final results as soon as we get to it!

Brie en Croute

Here is an appetizer recipe that seems to be a hit. It's from a recipe that I found online and modified quite a bit. Enjoy!

(We haven't forgotten about housewarming pics...we've just been otherwise preoccupied! Stay tuned!)

Brie en Croute

1 small Brie Round
1 puff pastry sheet
1/2c Apricot Jelly
1/2c slivered or sliced Almonds
1 egg white

Preheat oven to 350*. Defrost pastry sheet and unfold until flat. Lay Brie round in center of sheet (rind can be left on cheese). Spread apricot jelly on Brie, top with almonds. Bring up edges of pastry sheet around Brie and seal together. Brush egg white on pastry. Bake 25-30 mins, or until pastry is golden brown. Let sit 15-20 mins. Serve with crackers.

Bagel Sandwiches

Well, it's been quite some time since we last posted! We were so busy trying to get the house ready for the housewarming (pictures to come soon!), the blog was put on the back burner. This post today is going to be a recipe for another breakfast item that is super easy and can be made in bulk for the week: Bagel Sandwiches.

Bagel Sandwiches
Serves 2 for one 5-day work week

10 bagels (we prefer plain or multigrain)
10 eggs
10 slices of your favorite cheese (Swiss for the McKinkys)
Mayo
10 rashers of bacon or sausage patties (optional)

Slice and toast bagel halves. Spread mayonnaise on each half. Cook eggs separately from each other, over-medium or over-hard style (the sandwiches aren't very appetizing if the yolk is runny several days later). Flip egg onto one half of the bagel, add bacon or sausage (or not), and slap some cheese on top. Put the other half of your bagel on top, and put each sandwich into individual baggies. As you are running late to work(inevitably), all you have to do is grab one and heat it up for ~30 seconds (until the cheese is melted). YUM.

One big change we made at McKinky Manor about a year ago was to raw feed our dogs. I first heard about it through some other raw-feeders on a website I frequent. It is something I strongly suggest to people who are up for it. Why raw feed? Well, for one, kibble is probably one of the worse things you can feed your dog (especially brands like Purina or Beneful). It's made up of bone meal, and grains and vegetables. Take a look at your dog's teeth and compare it to ours. We have flat molars for chewing vegetables, but also canines for tearing into meat...we are omnivorous. Dogs have NO flat teeth -- their teeth are designed for ripping and tearing...carnivores. So basically any grains and veggies they eat will go straight through them and they get little to no nutrients from kibble. That being said, we've been known to feed the girls pumpkin or squash if they seem to be a little...ahem...backed up. The fiber is great for moving things along. We have found that with raw feeding, the dogs rarely need to be bathed, they don't smell like "dog," they are much more energetic, and raw feeding is even said to extend the lifespan of the dog. Best of all, we never have to brush their teeth. As kibble-fed dogs get older, their teeth become brown and start rotting and falling out. They get gum disease. Marley and Abby's teeth are SO white now it's unbelievable. The bones that they eat scrape all the gunk off of their teeth and are natural teeth cleaners.

Marley and Abby are fed about 2% of their weight (they are each about 50 lbs, so we feed them each approximately 1lb of meat each day). The recommended amount is 2-4% of their body weight, but after a few weeks, you get a better idea of what amount is best for them (ie. if they start getting chunky around the hips, you cut back on the food).

At first, I was really grossed out by handling raw meat, but you really get used to it. And we've found that it's about the same cost as buying good quality brand food, it just doesn't get a lot of marketing. We get it in bulk at the Farmer's Market and freeze it, and the great thing about that is they will cut it up at the market for us, so that takes out a lot of the handling of the meat. If you freeze it after you get home, there is far less juice (juicier meats usually = not as fresh). When we get home, we separate the meat into baggies for each day for our 2 dogs, that way we just grab a bag for the day, and dump the meat out rather than handling it then as well. They eat chicken, eggs, turkey, beef, bison, sardines, tilapia, goat, lamb...whatever is on sale! They must have all of the nutrients from the animal (if they were in the wild, they would eat the whole thing), so we give them all the different parts -- meat, bone, liver, kidney, heart, etc. They eat their fish whole (guts and all). RAW chicken bones are prefectly fine for dogs to eat -- they are very rubbery. Cooked chicken bones are NOT okay -- they are dry and can splinter off in the digestive system, causing damage.

Our dogs don't keep food in the bowl either, so we feed them outside (they don't care about dirt or leaves on the meat). They LOVE it, although it took them a little while to get used to it (raw meat doesn't smell as strong as kibble). Here are a couple of really good websites:
http://www.rawlearning.com/
http://www.rawfeddogs.net/

Baby Ella

Well, this is a couple of weeks late, but welcome to the world Ella Grace Deegan! She was born January 29, 2010 - 20.5 inches, 8.10 pounds!

Sean and Callie are so happy to be parents, and they love their little girl so much! I made Ella a quilt, which was a surprise to them. Unfortunately, my sewing machine is in a box somewhere, so I wound up hand-sewing the quilt...took a little longer, but it was a lot of fun! And this was my first time doing a ruffle on anything, so that was interesting -- didn't turn out too bad, eh?

Even though Callie wasn't going for the "pink" theme with the baby, she knows it is Aunt E's favorite color and of course anything Ella gets from Aunt E is going to be pink! The toile fabric has little nursery rhyme designs on it, matching the nursery rhyme themed Baby Shower Callie's mom threw for her a few months ago. And the backing on the quilt is a soft flannel:

Happy Place!

I just had to write a quick post on my new happy place: organize.com. Even though everything at the house is a messy construction zone right now, I love to find things I can use to organize everything. Check out this ADORABLE cookie jar:
http://www.organize.com/cupcake-cookie-jar.html

Or how awesome would this be in the kitchen to organize bills and hang aprons from?
http://www.organize.com/cubby-wall-mount-organizer-espresso-umbra.html


D might have to drag me away from the computer now that I've found this website...

super cheap headboard in a day project

We tried to fix our amateur DIY headboard recently and promptly broke it, so we got some inspiration and decided to start from scratch.



We picked up this door at an antique store for $25

It was majorly dirty so mrs. mckinky fell into her gender role real nice by cleaning it up for us.

We also got this antique doorknob at the same store for $12

Really dirty

Next we attached the doorknob. Not as easy as it sounds. The hardware on the knob didn't line up with the holes on the door. Fortunately, we only wanted it for cosmetic reasons, so we just took the hardware out and glued the thing down.

Liquid nails didn't work at all (go figure) so we went with a 2 part epoxy and it stuck like crazy.

The door is 22" wider than the bed, so we measured 11" in on each side to make sure the legs wouldn't show.

We used scrap 2x4's that we had laying around leftover from another project, cut them down so they would be 2" below the top of the bed, and attached L-brackets to either side.

Then mr. mckinky took up his gender role and screwed them onto the bottom of the door (much measuring, marking and pre-drilling went on before this picture was taken.)

Our wood (being scraps) wasn't all the same color, so we put the odd colored one in the middle to make sure it never peeked out from behind the bed and ruined the effect.

We then attached loops to sit in frame hooks we were attaching to the wall, to keep the thing from wobbling forward.

We bought these stair rails to act as cosmetic legs, thinking they would match

Massive holes had to be drilled for the pegs on the end of the legs to fit in. It took forever and it started pouring at about this time.

Finished product:

Mounted up...the cosmetic legs didn't look right and didn't wanna stay in place, so we scrapped them. Maybe later we'll paint them a better matching white and secure them better, but for now...

And made up...

Total cost including all materials (used and unused): around $60 (real rough estimate)

cheap-as-free compost bin

So, we're both pretty inexperienced with composting (and some of us don't like to get dirty...) so we found this very easy, very cheap compost bin project and went for it. Basically the only material investment required is a big plastic bin ($7 or so at the hardware store, or free if you dumpster dive, we went the store route this time.) Here goes.

1.) Drill 8-10 holes in the bottom of the bin (for aeration purposes)

2.) Fill it up about 1/4 full with either newspaper scraps or leaves (we have a lot of both, so I did about half & half.)

3.) Pile dirt on top of that to about 1/2 full.

(Optional): We found this cookie jar at hobby lobby so we could have something presentable to hold the food scraps before we took it out to the bin.

Slapped a carbon filter in the lid to keep the stink to a minimum...

And now whenever something goes bad or we have scraps, we can just throw them in here until it gets full and we take it out to the real heap.

4.) Put your scraps in and mix so they're completely covered. At this point you're supposed to spray the mix down with a little water to aid in the breakdown, but since our yard has been swamped for the past 3 months, our dirt was plenty juicy already.

5.) Attach the lid and drill 8-10 holes in that as well.

6.) Lug the bin somewhere out of the way, preferably out of direct sunlight, as too much heat will dry the compost out. I put it next to all the other trash & recycling things so we can take everything out to the same place at the same time.

Lesson learned: If you're gonna use mud like I did, maybe move the bin first. Thing was heavy.

Idea basically stolen from: http://www.younghouselove.com/2008/08/younghouselovedotcompost/

List of compostable/noncompostable items:

http://compostinstructions.com/what-you-can-and-cannot-compost/