Mark and I have been incredibly busy the last couple days.  We’ve been driving to Sturgeon Bay to get things for the house, and then coming home to try to get things set up until we’re too tired to continue.

You have to remember that we are very nearly starting from scratch.  We had a few pieces of furniture when we arrived, but yesterday I bought cleaning supplies and I did a bunch of laundry that we accumulated on our trip.  Today I bought a couple waste baskets, shelf paper, and a paper towel holder.  Mark bought a long lighter so he could light the pilot light on the water heater.  We haven’t had hot water until now.  A nice shower will feel good!  In fact, I got a haircut today and had her wash my hair too.

This evening I started putting shelf paper up.  I got a kind that was supposed to be slightly tacky but it didn’t really stick and it looks awful.  Any suggestions on what I should do?

In the process of trying to put shelf paper up, Mark and I made some discoveries about the kitchen cabinets.  From the outside they look like beautiful, old-fashioned cabinets, but we discovered that they are poorly constructed.  In fact, the face of the under-sink cabinet started falling backward and we had to try to pull it forward again.  The bottom shelf of the upper cabinets is about the thickness of laminate.  There was a really hokey, homemade extension that the former owner’s son must have put up for her that caused the refrigerator to be pushed out from the end of the cabinets, so Mark moved the refrigerator out of the way to take that off.  When he pushed the refrigerator aside, part of the baseboard went with it.  Behind the baseboard we could see that the wall and the floor aren’t connected.  As we got looking around, it looks like there are other places around the house with the same problem.  On the floor under the refrigerator, we found mouse droppings.

Mark and I are beginning to call this house our “fixer-upper”.  We aren’t discouraged.  We’ll get it all fixed up, but it’s just a bit surprising to find that beauty is only skin deep!