Remember that old commercial? I think for some kind of quick dinner-making item, where the husband marvels that *this* is the dining room? That’s how I was feeling last night, because for the last three years, my dining room has looked like this:
Nothing says “fine dining” like a dining room full of litter boxes
Now, this wasn’t the long term plan for my house or my cats. One of the main reasons I bought this house was that it had a nicely placed enclosed porch on the south.
“Enclosed” is open to interpretation
And by enclosed I mean it had walls and a roof. It was by no means weather-proof nor cat-proof with gappy old windows and screen door that popped open in the lightest breeze.
So the first step was to hire a guy to reframe the walls and install my fancy new windows. (New to me, bought at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore for very cheap.)
First came the demolition
Then windows and walls.
That all got wrapped up back in April. And then… ducks
And more ducks
I spent a lot of weekends away from home addressing the duck issue. So it wasn’t until late July that I got serious about the porch again. Sheetrocking, then building a cupboard to store things and keep the cats away from the electrical box. Then a little cubbie/platform to cover the new heating vent and provide a spot for the cat drinking fountain. Then painting, more painting, and more painting.
Just like on the DIY shows where they don’t actually show the work being done, let’s do a time-lapse slide show.
Until finally, the cat palace was ready to be occupied. On Saturday, it was rainy and gray and the cats were completely unimpressed. They were annoyed to have been evicted from the dining room and not thrilled to have a new space to negotiate around dogs. When the sun came out Sunday, they began to appreciate what I’d been telling them all along–a sun porch is an ideal place for a naked cat.
A chicken in every pot, a sunbeam for every nekkid kitteh
And at last, I got my dining room back.
So this is the dining room?
A creepy aside for Halloween. See this before picture of the porch floor?
A permanent fixture
When I first looked at the house before buying, there was an ancient chest freezer sitting there. It had been sitting there long enough that the floor had been painted around it on multiple occasions. The seller said it had been there when he bought the house and started renting it out. My real estate agent tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. He tried to recruit me to help open it, to which I said, “Are you fucking nuts, Tom? There’s a dead body in there. Maybe more than one. I wanna buy this house, not turn it into a crime scene.”
When I made my low-ball offer on the house, that was among my requirements. The chest freezer had to be removed prior to closing. It was and I did not ask whether anyone succeeded in opening it.
That’s gorgeous — sun porch and dining room! I love the yellow walls in both. And they have a window shlef like LT’s cats! Is that Biggie playing home inspector?
Did I miss a post — what was the duck issue? Good call on the freezer, too.
Oh, it was just the ducks at my sister’s school. She had like 7 batches of ducklings this spring. So when I would have been working on the cat porch, I was herding ducklings many weekends.
And yes, Bigs is pretty sad that the cat porch is off limits to her now. She was enjoying that nice window right at eye level.
WOW!! Congrats on the remodel, sun room, and seeing your dining room!
The awful part was mucking out the dining room. You know the cumulative effects of having litter boxes in a narrow space for 3 years. That corner hadn’t been really and truly mucked out in that long. Blech. Clean and sweet smelling now.
Yeah… I’m still battling with the after-effects of using my carpet cleaner in an area which had ground in cat litter. Now the litter has formed a solid mass inside part of the cleaner. Not an essential area (in fact, it reveals a major design flaw) so I could easily leave it – but I don’t want to. It’s been soaking for about a week and not a bit of litter seems to have softened.
Ugh. That sounds pretty nightmarish. I just spent a lot of time crawling around coaxing litter out of little gaps in the floor and then scrubbing dried patches of cat vomit and other … things.
lol… I’ve become quite adept at not seeing vomit or “things” till after they’re well dried and easy to pick up!
This was less about not seeing and more about not being able to get to. I had such a dog barricade around the cat zone, I couldn’t even get to places to clean.
Wow that looks amazing! Did you just paint the floor? I am having a hell of a time finding kitchen flooring and I like that color. I have some leads though.
Anyway, sunbeams can lure nearly any animal to the spot. Good job!!
and ooooo duckies! I had a few hours of duckies.
Yes, the floor was a good wood plank floor with minimal gaps, so I just put a few new coats of deck paint on it. It comes pretty close to matching the kitchen marmoleum.
Wow, confetties all around! what a fantastic kitteh room (and the dining room is not bad either)… All I need is a hammock and I could live in that kitteh room with all the lovely light and fancy cupboards and stuff… if the nekkid ladies would let me in of course.
Are you keeping beast and kittehs separated all the time or just when you are not there?
They’re only as separated as the cats want to be. That is, there’s a doggy gate to the sun porch, but it has a cat door in it. So cats can go in and out, but dogs can’t go in.
I love the yellow. We have it in a few areas of our house, and I always feel warm and cheery.
Yes, having the sun porch yellow basically converts it into a photographic light box for the kitchen. Very nice.
Now I’m sure they think it’s no more than their due.
It all looks fabulous. I’m glad it works for everyone. Will the nekkid kittehs allow you to be out there with them on sunny winter days? Obviously they get all the sunbeams.
Oh I’m sure I’ll be permitted petting privileges. After all, I’m allowed out there to scoop the poop boxes. :/
Nobody opened the chest freezer? Not even out of curiosity? Though I will agree with you, when I think about ancient chest freezers I think about Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Jeffrey Dahmer.
Sheetrock is hella hard to put up, so I give you props for doing it yourself. I also love the cupboard. And you got it all up just in time for cold weather, which I hope you will have little of this year. Snow might make the sunroom feel extra cozy, however.
The word is we’re gonna get walloped this winter. We had almost nothing resembling winter last year, and then we had a summer of record highs. Now we’re being warned this winter will be a brute.
I used to know a guy whose great-aunt was actually found in a chest freezer. She was on one of those true crime TV shows. He said the family’s reaction was surprise that it took someone that long to murder her, and that it was over money. Not a nice woman, which is why it took so long to find her — she’d pissed off so much of the family that they didn’t check up on her very often.
WOW. I mean, one assumes that recurring theme is based on actual incidents, but to actually know someone who ended up in a chest freezer is pretty freaky. And that’s an important thing to think about in one’s dealings with family. Who will come and find your body?
I think it was the mailman, noticing the post had piled up. And then the townsfolk noticed she hadn’t been around cackling evilly and making dogs into coats for a while, so the cops went in. Then they had to haul the freezer to Dallas for an autopsy, from Podunk Texas.
It was the gay couple from church who got her to change her will, of course.
Truth really is stranger than fiction. He said the true crime show left some stuff out b/c it was too cliche, and they understated what a beeyotch she was.
I hope nobody ever tries to understate a beeyotch I am after I’m dead. That would be a bummer.
Well, the TV people had to fit it into the formula, lest the audience cheer on the killer. They did have interviews with some of the family/townsfolk who made it pretty clear that nobody was surprised or heartbroken. Mostly the show was about the freezer part — not just an urban legend!
Sort of like the dead hooker under the hotel bed, which turns out to happen often enough that one ought to check under the bed at the lower end hotels…
A lot of lower-end hotels are going with no space under the bed. Mostly to save on cleaning, but it keeps down the dead hooker discovery as well.
Nnice job…..how could you not look inside? Hoffa baby that would triple the value of the house on the spot.
I am totally resistant to that sort of thinking. I was never tempted to look in the freezer. I do wonder if the people who hauled it away as junk looked. I mean, did they haul it away planning to use it? After all, it was still plugged in and still ostensibly worked. Or did they just haul it away to the dump?
You had a national treasure in your house…If it were Hoffa you could have put see through glass on the top and charge $20 a head to walk through…lol
Wanted to tell you…about a month ago, I sneaked into The Duchess’ room and started searching. FOUND YOUR BOOK! I began reading it and I absolutely love (about 1/2 finished) the way it’s laid out (with topics…subjects…scene titles?) and, of course, the 1st person perspectives. I’ve been laid up (or working between procedures) a lot or I’d be finished. Good job, Redz.
Thanks, glad you’re enjoying it. (And honestly, one of my favorite things about that book are the snarky little chapter titles.)
First – yes, I remember that ad.
You did a really good job on the porch and dining room. Do you hire out? lol
When we bought this house it had a chest freezer in it. No problems with it, it opened fine and worked great … my five-foot-tall just didn’t want it and was afraid she’d fall in it one day, so we sold it.
And, speaking of which, did you hear about the woman in the Tulsa area who hid in her chest freezer during a storm? She was in there over a day and was only found because someone went looking for her. She was lucky that the electricity stayed on so that she could breath … but she did have to go to the hospital for treatment for frostbite.
I DID hear about that woman. She got very lucky. My grandmother had one of those huge chest freezers, like the size of a coffin. I remember as a child being uneasy about going to chisel bags of frozen corn out of the tundra in there.
I work with three HUGE minus 80 C chest freezers… there is a kind of latch-thingy to close them… so if the lid falls down it locks shut… my nightmare is to have dropped something on the bottom of one (as I do now and then), be hanging over the side to fish it out and fall over and have the lid close on me… whohohohooooo.
Both rooms look fantastic! What a great feeling that must be to have that done!
It’s a huge relief, not least of which is that I cleaned my kitchen last night. First time in a long time, because cleaning when you’re in the middle of making a mess is…
I was mesmerized by the crypt in your old dining room. Until I figured out it was a wooden chest with a kiddy condo at one end of it. LOL!
It looks fabulous! I hope the nekkid girls appreciate all your hard work to make them their own personal sun room.
I don’t think they’re familiar with the concept of “appreciate.” They are relieved that I’ve finally provided them with a habitat fitted to their lofty position. Yeah, the old barricade was a necessary cluster fuck pile of furniture I had no room for.
Yeah, cats and appreciation are sorta like cats and shame. They don’t has it.
I meant “kitty” condo, of course. My typing lately has sucked, between typing a different word than I’m thinking to dropping words altogether.
They look like really nice chests. Perfect for kitty-bed pedestal/sun bathing decks!
LOL at the body in the floor.
The porch looks amazing! I love their window ledge. The dining room looks great, too, for that matter. Congrats!