(A)nother House Blog

House at Half!

2010-11-22T09:01:00.000-08:00

While I've been running around NY, E's been arranging for the installation of the kitchen counters and the final inspection on the house. There was a bit of a monkey wrench thrown into the counter-top situation when the guy we hired told us several weeks into the project that he didn't have enough of the granite to do the full project. With our final inspection approaching E went and took at look (along with many pictures) at some of the other options at the stone shop. Thankfully I'd seen several of the slabs before. The slab that has become our island was once a contender for the bathroom vanity. I rightfully decided that it was a bit too bold for the bathroom but it has a second life in our kitchen!

I'm still somewhat sad that the granite I'd grown to love wasn't going to work out, but in the end, we have what was in the original plan. Not too shabby if you ask me.

With all the extra light we created in the room, I didn't need to worry about dark counter-tops. Opening the doorway from the laundry room by widening it and lifting the header into the ceiling was so much more significant that I expected.

The back half of the house is complete - almost. There are still a few details to shake out in the kitchen. Basically, I need to tile the back splash and put the mirror up behind the"built-in" and E has some molding to put up above the cabinets. But, still, really, it's pretty much done. Mostly.

Appliances

2010-10-31T15:27:00.000-07:00

In they go!

See them and weep with joy:

The counter tops are still plywood. It's uncertain how long it will take to get the counter tops installed. I'm out of town and E is working on his music so as long as everything is all ready in time for the final inspection, we're golden.

Floored

2010-10-17T21:24:00.000-07:00

Here we have the old kitchen flooring, rotted laminate over rotted particle board over rotted fir flooring. Behold, the power of dog urine:After ripping back the laminate, chiseling off chunks of particle board 2" at a time, prying the fir off with a crow bar then pulling each and every stinkin' nail out of the sub-floor, matching white strip oak was laid and seamlessly integrated into the existing dining room floor.

The wood floors in whole house (minus the master bedroom) got a sanding and were refinished. I was surprised to see the floors were in pretty good shape so we were able to go with a natural finish.

Here's a look back at the original state of the floors.

New floor laid down and old floor sanded:

Looking the other way:And finished!The dark hall of doom along with broken and corroded floor heater:Patched up and lighter:This photo is my favorite. We have mahogany inlay, even in the little entry!

Exterior Ta-Da

2010-10-17T21:03:00.000-07:00

Just in case you forgot how pretty the house was before, here's a shot. I do notice that the lawn was alive at this point, but taking that out of the equation, I think we made a significant improvement with the final paint job.Here's the pretty lady now. Please note, we did not paint the steps the powder blue. They were painted by the previous owner or real estate agent after they took the "buy me" photo:
I'm thinking of painting the front steps a light charcoal color. Something to hopefully ground them and diminish their gargantuan size. I'm sure once some foundation plants go in, it'll help the situation as well.

Here we have the front door in the "before" state. Yes, the wood was scraped raw and left to weather on the face and painted pink around the window panes.
E did a bang up job building steps for three of the doors to the outside.

We have a new back porch light as well.

Grandma's Visit

2010-09-28T23:10:00.000-07:00

You're thinking to your self, "Three posts in one night? Doesn't this lady have a life?" What can I say, I've either been slacking in the posting department, really slaving away on the house in the recent week with no time to blog, or a combination of the two.

What do you do when your grandma comes to visit? Me, I get up at the crack of dawn and paint the house, and so does my grandma. We coated the house with GALLONS of paint. Two coats of tinted primer went on the new stucco which I swear consisted of half the house. One coat of primer went on the whole house. Using tinted primer was the key. The new stucco sucked the paint up. We added the top coat and there are still a few patches here and there that we (we, meaning me, now that my grandma has left town, and E if he is unlucky) need to touch up. We moved onto the trim and made it about half way around the house. I'll work my way around the other half in the next week.

The following photos are very misleading. I warn you, none of what you are about to see is the truth, except for the photo of the dog. The truth is, Grandma was the task master around here, I just posed for the picture.

Grandma was working away. She was unstoppable. Yes, she is on a ladder. No, I did not sanction such action. Come to think of it, I have no idea where she got the ladder. Seriously, I don't recognize that ladder, I don't even believe it exists. Truly, this whole this is a mirage caused by the uncharacteristic heat we've been having. (Painting in the heat is the pits)

Sophie supervising. All of what you're seeing below is the unadulterated truth.

Me supervising. In stark contrast to the previous picture, there's a great deal of embellishment happening below.

Again I say, lies, lies, all lies.

Here's a little peak at the finished product. I'll of course post full photos once it truly is finished.

MASTER BATH BEFORE & AFTER

2010-09-28T22:19:00.000-07:00

Yes, I did mean to type the title of this post, in all caps. I am SHOUTING if you care to know.

The tour, BEFORE:

AFTER:

Blog by E

2010-09-28T21:11:00.000-07:00

This has been an exciting/exhausting last few weeks. Everything we are doing now makes a huge difference in the appearance and is quite gratifying.

Painting continues... here's a rare picture of my lovely wife painting the closet doors.

This picture might be a bit out of chronological sequence with respect to the other blog posts, but since the painting never seems to stop it works.

The master bathroom is finished! I installed the towel bars, the vanity, the toilet, and the shower fixtures over the course of several days. Unlike the apartment plumbing, which I did about a year ago... everything went smoothly and I haven't detected any leaks so far.

Here's a picture of the installed vanity.

And then a closeup of the plumbing underneath.

Notice the little angle brackets that secure the vanity to the wall for when the next big earthquake hits. My dad helped me cut and glue the wood base for under the marble countertop, and then our friendly neighbor helped set it down on the cabinet. I'm sure K will put up a picture of the completed bathroom in an upcoming post, but I'll mention now that the consensus between the contractor, the neighbors, and the family is the bathroom is a timeless beauty.

What to do after finishing the bathroom? Throw in the kitchen cabinets! Our contractor kept his word and offered up 2 of his guys (for free!) on a Saturday to help me get started. While I'd say putting in cabinets isn't rocket science, having a few experienced hands helping certainly cut out most of the learning curve.

This is a picture of all the cabinets in place. I still need to do the island but that will happen after we have a floor. Again, smooth sailing and I'd say that overall, this project took about 1/2 the time I though it would.

Here's 1 of 6 under-cabinet LED light fixtures.

The microwave...

The dog...

Finally, no post would be complete without a solar or heating system update... The solar water collector is increasing in efficiency as the solar elevation angle aligns more closely with my near vertical mounting, and the system is overheating. Water temperatures in the tank are over 180-deg and with very little hot water usage, the pump is shutting off, causing stagnation in the collector. I need to finish my heat-dump loop and add the underground circuit to dissipate this excessive heat.

Flibitydjibbits

2010-09-10T16:59:00.001-07:00

Paint. Paint the white paint whiter. Remove the old paint just to paint. I find paint under my nails, on my elbow, in my hair, on my lips. It's everywhere - insidious. Just when I think I'm done, there's more; a spot here, a drop there, a newly drilled hole waiting to be filled and painted over. MORE, MORE, MORE.

The paint. It'll be my end.

Yet, the end is in sight for the back portion of the house. I can see it. I can smell it. I can taste it - thanks to the paint previously found on my lip.

Preparations have begun on the outside of the house for my grandma's visit. Ah, you say, "How fun, your grandmother is coming into town for a visit. You'll take a break from the house, show her the town and eat some lovely meals." Ah-ha friend, this is where you're wrong. She, like all the others before her, comes to WORK! No one leaves unscathed. Actually, I think she's rather excited to help. I'm sure glad to have her on her way. We're planning to paint as much of the exterior as is possible for the two of us in a week's time.

Thus, E and I have been prepping the exterior so that when Grandma arrives, painting can commence. This means stripping the trim, digging out any dry-rot, filling the holes, sanding and priming.

These are my three new best friends:

The first window E went at with a blowtorch and scraper. We received a handy tip from my brother in-law to about a fancy window stripping tool.

I, a bit nervous about burning the house down, used the traditional scrapper and the new age scraper and think it turned out quite nicely.

I've rounded the corner on the house and while E is in San Diego working his tail off, I'll be trying to finish scraping the window trim. As I said before, pain, paint, removing paint, paint.

On a prettier note - the closet is done in the master bedroom. Door handles cleaned and re-installed with an added washer so they don't dangle lifelessly from the doors like in the former days. If you look really, really, really, really closely you can see the new washer in the photo below. Don't see it? Good. See it? Don't tell me.

Here's an action shot of the closet installation. Some left over trim boards were put to work for the top shelf and as added support strips for both the upper and lower clothes rods.

With the completion of the closet, the master bedroom is officially done! We're nearing completion of the master bath as well. We tried to pick up the vanity top from the stone cutters but the owner tried to haggle us up on the price over the phone as we were trying to pay for it. E had a plane to catch but managed to stay calm as he dealt with the matter. It probably didn't help that I was screeching in the background, "HE TOLD ME $700, HOW DARE HE! DOESN'T HE REALIZE HE'S TRYING TO GOUGE US FOR $100 WHEN HE HAS ANOTHER POTENTIAL JOB FROM US WITH THE KITCHEN!"

That being said, we're picking up the bathroom counter in several days, for the initially agreed upon price and I'll still get a bid from this guy plus from several others for the kitchen. Here's the stone I'm eyeing at the moment.

There are more pronounced flecks of white in it that I can't seem to capture with my camera. All we have to do is install the cabinets and they can come measure for the counter.

I'm waiting patiently for our contractor to get back to us with a date to come help with the install. He's generously donating his time to us. I think I'll write him an e-mail right now...

The Big and the small

2010-08-31T17:21:00.000-07:00

The Small

Closet door knobs covered in paint:

Closet door knobs with paint removed. Caution. Don't handle shortly after removing paint. It tends to smart. Now to finish painting the doors, closet and do the touch-ups.

The BIG...

The bathroom is nearing completion. The floor tile is awesome. I chose a mid tone grey grout for the floor to match the existing tiling job in the front bathroom. My hope is that it keeps it looking cleaner too.

E installed the shower fixtures and toilet.

Yes, that is a double shower you spy. There's a slide bar on the left and a shower head on the right. Both have their own thermostatic valves. We'll be using a classy tension rod and shower curtain for the next few years due to the fancy pants upgrade made in the shower plumbing and fixture department, but I think it is worth it.

We're waiting to plumb the sinks until we get a counter top. I'll be hunting around salvage yards and stone bone yards this week in hopes of finding something reasonably priced.

Camp House Blog

2010-08-28T17:59:00.000-07:00

What do you do when your in-laws come to visit? I put them to work. They are great cleaners and organizers and the house can always use more of both. Our contractor that did the seismic retrofit and dry rot repair, volunteered a day of his time to help us hang cabinets. He asked we unpack all the cabinets, remove the doors and drawers before he gets there so that he can spend the maximum amount of time helping. My in-laws did a great job:

We can see the floor in the dining room and living room again!

The kitchen is sitting and waiting for the install. The walls are painted and the lights are installed. E even installed the washer and dryer; we'll have to move it for the floor installation, but it has been worth it! We've used most of our neighbor's and friend's washers in the past year.

The master bathroom tile was well underway last week. In fact, it is finished but since I'm behind on posting - no surprise there - I only have the "in progress" shots to share.

Here's the two-inch hex tile going down on the floor and the one-inch hex in the shower pan.

Here we see the floor is down, including the matte liner. The wall tiles are in progress.

Here we have the shower walls going up.

I'll share the finished photos once I get around to taking them. This week we plan on installing the fixtures in the bathroom. My grandma is planning a visit to help paint the exterior of the house mid-September and I'm sure she would prefer an indoor bathroom for her stay.

I also flexed my electrician's muscles by installing one of the lights in the laundry room and both of the bedroom lights:

So far, I'm quite pleased with the results.

Back in the Saddle

2010-08-13T21:57:00.000-07:00

My traumatizing experience as an artistic administrator is over and I've earned enough cash in 6 weeks of work to pay a tile setter for 9 days of work - almost. What this means is that I now get to split my time between continuing to drive it home (sorry, but not really), substitute teaching, and auditions.

Some serious progress on the house has been made in the last week, in addition to the hard labor E has been putting in under the house installing the radiant heating. Unfortunately, there are no pictures of this process to share with you. The photographer was unavailable, missing, running and screaming, and was not available to document the process. Fear not, there are many more hours of labor for the photographer to observe.

So instead may I present my mother's summer vacation from law-school:

E's ingenious invention for painting the grooves in the siding of the back house/garage:

If you've painted a bit before, you may have giggled. If the previous image didn't elicit a chuckle, may I now present to you a visual tutorial of why painting grooves sucks:

I am a firm believer that it may take us the same amount of cumulative labor hours to paint the main house as it did the back house simply due to the pesky grooves which had to be painted with a brush.

Not to mention, the first paint color that we put up on turned out to be very cool and minty. The front and a side and a half got painted before it hit me. More honestly, before we ran out of green paint and I stepped back and looked at it all. Even though it provided a lovely contrast to the bubble gum pink color lurking on the back corners of the building, it had to go.

Deciding that the paint was a bit too refreshing, we opted for a softer mushroom sort of green. Some may even say taupe, maybe grey? Honestly, I'm not even sure. I can say that I LOVE the trim color.Since taking this picture I've painted the front door a darker moss color and plan on using it as the accent color for the inset arches on the front of the main house. It's looking rather snappy if I do say so myself.

Today we painted the kitchen and tiling is underway in the master bathroom. I'll have an update posted soon. Tomorrow my in-laws will be attending Camp HouseBlog, so I hope to have an even larger back log of news.

Visual Gratification

2010-08-01T17:03:00.000-07:00

The back of the house is starting to look like a house. The drywall has been textured in all three rooms (master bedroom, master bathroom, kitchen/laundry/mudroom). Painting has begun in the mbath and mbed. I'm a bit overjoyed with the colors and currently believe it is because they are AMAZING and not that I'm simply giddy at the thought of something being close to completed. It is a bit tough to capture with my stellar photographic skills but if you squint hard you can see the bedroom is what I like to call a "light silver sage" while the bathroom is a "light and dusty robin's egg blue".

Trim work is almost finished in both rooms and tile has been ordered for the bath. I am sad that in the end we couldn't salvage the curved trim work originally found in the room. It turns out that again, previous modifications were made to it so that when we went to remove and salvage it, it simply fell apart in our hands. I'm not kidding, it was held up with paint and wood putty. A 4''x4'' corner piece fell off the wall in 6 strips of broken wood. The pieces had been taken down by the previous fellow, which he then rehung with some mystical system in mind; they were never the same. Fortunately, we were able to recreate a similar baseboard to that found in the rest of the house. The only difference is that this one is 6" high vs. the 8" high found elsewhere. The reason behind this madness is that the previous owner/genius wired the room with outlets that cut into the baseboard. The wiring was all too short to raise the outlets and we opted to obtain some shred of our crumbling sanity by installing shorter baseboards since we had to replace them anyhow. The option of recreating the curved molding is a bit out of our budget at the moment and E isn't too fond of it to begin with. We will be adding picture molding around the room to mimic the real stuff in the rest of the house.

E also hung the medicine cabinets and light fixtures in the bathroom, I think hoping for some visual gratification. The lights are upside down but that's a detail, and we're not at the detail phase yet.

He's been spending an awful lot of time under the house painstakingly installing radiant heating tubes. I can't blame him for wanting to see something looking livable. The bedroom and bathroom now even have a fully functional heating set up. A nice neighbor fellow of ours informed me that since I was unavailable for the unveiling of the heating system, he went and experienced the sweat lodge in my stead. For this, I am grateful. I hope to keep all future gatherings in the house at a more respectable temperature.

A list of demands

2010-06-07T17:10:00.000-07:00

I was recently informed by a reader, aka friend, that she needs more house blog. She is distressed that my posts are not as rapid and numerous as she'd like. Well, demands being my specialty, I give you: THE WALLS!

Our tour begins at the entry door into the mudroom/laundry room. Please notice the niche left for the laundry board.

A turn to the left reveals the laundry room.

Walking into the kitchen, turning around this is the view of the mud/laundry room.

Turning our attention back to the kitchen you'll notice the huge stack of plastering mud in the room.

Now we're looking to the right.

Now we've run across the room, literally, and are turned back looking into the master bedroom.

Again, running break neck speed into the master bedroom, you can see the patch job on the wall where the old wall heater used to be plus the interior of the master bath.

Just around the corner is the rest of the master bath.

This concludes our tour for today.

Let there be WALLS

2010-06-07T08:28:00.000-07:00

This is what the kitchen looked like before the sheet rock crew descended upon it just 30 min ago. The first sheet of drywall just went up. I can hear the them working at epic speed as I type. I'm sure later today the kitchen, mud room/laundry room, mstr. bathroom, mstr. bedroom will be covered and we will have WALLS!The master bathroom prep was competed last week. The Wonder Board went in the shower and on the walls. The shower pan passed inspection and we have a smooth mortar bed for floor tile installation.
Today's fun fact refers to the bathroom. Can anyone guess how far out of square the room was? I'll give you a hint: The previous owner who did such splendid work elsewhere definitely had his hand in constructing the small section of wall next to the door - between the bedroom and bathroom. Remember folks, the bathroom was once half the size it is today, then the previous owner put up a wall doubling the length but kept the original wall dividing the space in two. We removed the partition wall (original bathroom wall) leaving his section. You can see the offending wall portion in the image bellow. If you look really carefully you can see the wall furred out.

Anyone notice the 2x4 in the far corner. Yes. The wall was off by 2" inches. Considering the room is only about 11' long, that's quite a large variant.

Now that I've got that out of my system; moving along to something way cooler. We've been looking at exterior paint colors!

I admit, the two small squares on either side of the door are 1) pretty darned subtle in this picture 2) look pretty much alike. I can guarantee that they look very different. I swear it. My neighbor would attest to it as well. She'd swear it in front of a grand jury. She'd swear it threatened by a pit of vipers. She'd swear it, but don't tell her I told you so. Plus, she's an artist.

Here's the official color pallet as of 6/7/2010:

The two sage colors are for the body of the house and accents in the arches over the windows. The trim is a dark eggplant (color didn't translate to the computer very well). The windows which are already installed are the coconut cream. At the moment, I'm toying with the red umber for the front door.

I suppose with the drywall scheduled to be finished and textured by Friday, I need to get cracking on paint for the interior. The forerunner for the mstr. bedroom is the looser for the exterior. It has more green in the color and the paint swatch looks gorgeous in the room. Speaking of the paint swatches, after doing some great reading and chatting with my artiste neighbor, I picked up 2x2 squares of drywall and painted them with sample paint. They are great for moving around the house and checking various lighting situations.

I suppose I should be typing less and doing more. I'm off to Home Depot to rent a power washer and get some exterior paint to test out on the cottage.

Back in the saddle again

2010-05-20T21:09:00.000-07:00

I'm back from my life on the road.

While I was gone E progressed on the house. We had an inspection on the insulation (pass) solar (pass) final stucco (pass) final seismic (pass).

The current project is the master bathroom. I had the tile prep folks over this morning. Our floor is almost prepped for me to tile it. We are having a mortar bed poured since I'll be using small 1" hex tiles for the majority of the floor. The shower pan was pre-sloped and the walls are being furred out. I've come to the conclusion that I stand the best chance at getting a professional looking tile job if I pay the professionals to prep the area. If the area is flat, flush, smooth and plumb, my chances are significantly better. I'll take those odds.

The small bathroom is currently prepped and ready for me to tile. There are a few small areas that I need to patch in the wall where the plumbing was updated but other than that, all systems are go.

Solar - post dated, April 2

2010-04-30T01:18:00.000-07:00

Today I did some plumbing for the solar loop. In the picture you can see the delta-T pump (at the top), the air separator, the expansion tank, the pressure relief valve, the fill and drain valves, a ball valve, one of two temperature gauges, and a bunch of fittings and pipe to connect everything. I feel good about everything except one solder joint... the connection to the air separator. My propane torch was a little too wimpy to heat up such a mass of metal so I'm not entirely sure I got a good connection.

I still am waiting for a 3-way valve, but that is the last thing before the solar will be fully plumbed. The 3-way valve is a safety measure: when the temperature of the tank exceeds a threshold, say 180F, the valve will open and send the hot water through an underground loop to dissipate excess heat.

Tomorrow my dad and I will fill up the attic with the 2nd layer of insulation. We've got the whole attic covered with R13, so tomorrow with the addition of R30 (perpendicular to the first layer) we'll be up to R43.

Window and Trees - a pictoral post

2010-03-25T09:26:00.000-07:00

The two Chinese Pistache were planted yesterday. They are taller than I expected but a little spindly. In 3-5 years they should be beauties. If you intend to see the trees in the two following pictures, look closely. The second picture is a bit of an optical illusion with a much larger tree helping to fill out the Pistache's canopy. I've been trying to get a shot of the trees from across the street but work trucks are always parked out in front of our house obscuring the view. I'll take the work trucks thank you.

Those large trucks have been unloading our windows! We have all but one in as of this morning.

Front office window looking out West

Living room looking out

Kitchen looking out

Looking into the mudroom

Front of house with one set of new windows and one set of old.

I love this shot of the house. Our front lawn reminds me of a very zealous political enthusiast's. At the urging of E, I took down two of the older signs. It still makes me giggle, just not as much.

Once the house is insulated and sealed up, I expect E will wander around from room to room taking measurements of sound with the new windows open, and closed.

Three Doors and a Window

2010-03-18T23:38:00.000-07:00

Two new Marvin doors went in today. One big set of horrific double doors came out, if you could even call our master bedroom doors that much. I prefer to think of them more as a glass sieve that water, wind and dirt came through but kept the really big chunks (such as raccoons) out. Although, I never really tested their limits on keeping raccoons out. I always assumed they could keep a raccoon out, which was probably a good assumption since after every rain, I had to throw my whole body weight against the doors in order to open them. Let me add to the list of things they were good at; not opening and closing.

The back of the house is prepped for tomorrow's door installation.

Can you spot the small dog?

The side yard with our spiffy new kitchen door.

The mud-room door.

I have it on good authority that a window showed up at the house as well so with any luck, the first of 17! windows will go in tomorrow as well. I am of course counting each of the large front windows as three in total, a center picture window flanked on either side by a tall narrow casement window. Count it as 13, count it as 17, either way the windows are going in.

I can't wait to get home on Sunday and see it all!

Reflections and Good News

2010-03-15T13:17:00.000-07:00

After a month of opera, I feel creatively revived and ready to tackle some more projects on the house. I have next week back at home, then I hit the road again for another 6 weeks. I've had the luxury of dreaming about the house again, much like when we first put the offer on the house. I've had several "brilliant" ideas.

The first of my brilliant ideas was inspired by a post on apartment therapy.

Not to fear cleanly folks. There won't be any grease spatter besmearing the chef's image in my kitchen. However, while fixing a delicious espresso drink, there might be a little something extra to reflect upon. The built-in residing in the dining room has a mirror above the center portion. I want to create a similar built-in feel with the coffee/wine buffet in the kitchen.

The buffet in the kitchen consists of 2-24" upper cabinets (12" deep) hung over 2-24" base cabinets (12" deep). The unit will be placed in the corner of the kitchen on the wall closest to the dining room and opposite the dining room built-in. It is flanked on the other side by a pantry. The upper doors are glass with divided lights that, bare with me, mirror the dining room built-in.

We already have two huge mirrored closet doors that we removed from the cottage apartment. With a few measurements, a glass cutter and pair of pliers, I'll have a cool and free mirror detail. An added bonus is that the buffet will go in directly across from the glass kitchen door - reflecting sunlight!

Good News - The issue with the hole in the ceiling of the small bedroom, mentioned in this post, has been taken care of. It is only a matter of when I can get the ceiling and wall work scheduled.

Indeed the walls need quite a bit of work as well. What started out as a room with four complete walls and an intact ceiling as turned into a larger project than anticipated. I admit, my penchant for well done details and gung-ho demolition attitude turned the lower half of the room into the unstable environment it is today. When I tore down the wood paneling masquerading as wainscot, I left behind exposed lathe and crumbling plaster in my wake. But that was only the beginning. When the exterior dry-rot work was going on, something not so surprising occurred, an interior wall began to migrate south. Below is a picture of such a corner in the small bedroom. The upper corner sports a hairline crack which has since turned into a 3" gap with the plaster slowly sliding down the wall.

Sink Hole

2010-03-04T22:17:00.001-08:00

Yet another mystery has been solved. Ever wonder where the run off from the roof goes? We have. There are two drains, now two triple sized drains since our new roof, with downspouts attached to subterranean pipes. We previously discovered that the downspout on the western side of the house drains out to the street. The piping is intact and fully functional which is a HUGE surprise. We'd previously noticed the eastern drain seemed to be directed towards the front of the house along the East side of the house, but had until last week, been unable to find the outlet.

E and I were on our way out for a run when he decided to disconnect the drain from the exposed piping and run the garden hose down the opening for 10 minutes. Still at a loss after walking along the curb, I noticed a damp spot on the sidewalk in front of the house. Logically following the damp spot to the lawn (o.k., weed garden) I noticed something of a bulge in the yard. Yes, I said there was a bulge in the yard. It was something like a potbelly. When E tapped it with his foot, the belly gurgled and squished. The 3' patch jiggled a bit and then stopped. Again, "tap, tap" followed by a "jiggle, jiggle". Our yard was either growing boils or we had very own underground aquifer just under the surface. The weed garden was tightly knit enough to keep the water from rising to the surface, instead, 10 minutes worth of hose water lay trapped under the yard, jiggling and generally creeping me out.

Yet we do have an almost fully functional drain system. We know where the water goes to at least. It is away from the house. Suppose we'll have to do something out how it plumps up in the yard, but that is a detail. I'm a big picture person at the moment. It is easy to be a big picture person when sitting 100s of miles away in a different city.

Since I am sitting 100s of miles away, I'd like to include a gratuitous pet photo, because, I can.

I have left Sophie in charge of things while away.

She has informed me that she enjoys her new position of power.

Trees(s)

2010-02-26T13:20:00.000-08:00

We passed our first general inspection on the inside of the house. The electrical, plumbing, tankless water heater, gas, framing and sub-floor were all under scrutiny. There were several things he asked the plumber to take care of but we have a signature and can now start insulating. The funniest thing that came from it all is that the inspector told E, he trusts E is doing things right because he knows me and that E is accountable to me. I love it. Thankfully E found it funny as well.

We also received word that our windows should show up in several weeks. We know this because they've asked if they could use our house to film a training/marketing video on window installation. We are guaranteed our windows will be installed right. We'll have proof if anything goes awry too. I'm crossing my fingers that Marvin will throw in a free window with the deal. I don't have high hopes though, but a girl can dream.

We've come to a close on the major construction projects. Our moat has been filled and our yard shouldn't see too much more heavy traffic. This means we've started planning tree plantings. First up is getting trees planted into the easement through our city urban forestry program.

Chinese Pistachio: I've seen it described as the new urban darling. It grows to a mature height of 30' with a width of 25'. Growth is up to 3' per year. It is a drought tolerant and super hearty plant, resisting winds and infestations. The fall colors are gorgeous. Female trees produces pretty berries and flower. The males create pollen which might induce allergies and I'm not sure I want to subject myself to that. Bring on the mess making berries! The best part is that given we have a double lot, I think we can easily get the city to plant two trees, one to each side of the house.

Look at the pretty tree here: click me...click me!

Guest Blog by E

2010-02-23T10:44:00.001-08:00

Since the boss is gone for a couple of months attending to her singing career, I've taken over the general contractor position temporarily. The electrical sub-contractor finally did the under-cabinet lights (what a pain!) and the porch light and we are now finished with rough electrical. I've scheduled our rough inspection (plumbing, electrical, and framing) for this upcoming Wednesday. Roof final will happen as well. Hopefully we pass, and we can move along to insulation.

Speaking of insulation, there are many options as to how to do the ceiling. I investigated the new high tech spray foam... but the company wasn't interested in our house. Blow in cellulose seems like a good option to me, but K doesn't like it. (not exactly sure why...) So we're going to do good ol' fiberglass rolls.

If one looks at the energy department guidelines for insulation, one would see that the recommended R value in our region is between 30 and 60. I did a little recon at Home Depot and priced out the various form factors of Owens Corning Insulation and determined, to my surprise, the doing a double layer of R19 and then R30 is actually cheaper than doing a single layer of R30! How is this? R30 faced (required on the 1st layer or if only doing 1 layer for a vapor barrier) only comes in batts, which is significantly more expensive than rolls. R19 comes in faced rolls, and R30 unfaced (for a 2nd layer) also comes in rolls... so it looks like we'll have R49, which seems pretty high to me. A benefit to doing 2 layers is that we can place them perpendicular to each other, and therefor reduce the possibility of leaks around seams and such. Of course, before we insulate we'll need to go around and carefully seal all the holes with caulk or foam sealant. Every hole drilled for electrical and plumbing is a potential energy leak, and needs to be sealed for the most efficiency.

At this point in the project, doing electrical work is boring and tedious and my mind has started to shift towards the solar water system. The solar sub-system, which will work with both the domestic hot water and the radiant heat, is a closed loop system. A pump moves fluid around in a loop and transfers heat from the roof-mounted collectors to a big storage tank via an internal heat exchanger. I picked an evacuated tube collector because they are more efficient than the cheaper flat panel collectors with higher water temperatures... a necessity when using the system to help with the radiant heat in the winter. It better work!

Evacuated Tube Solar Collector

Yesterday I put the 82 gallon storage tank (with a double heat exchanger) in the drain pan. The tank weighs about 400lbs empty, a good 320 lbs more than I care to lift. Luckily for us, the previous roof leaked, which caused me to cut a hole in the ceiling of the utility closet, which in turn provided a perfect spot to suspend the tank with 2 tie-downs. Each tie-down claimed it had a 340lb working load rating... but they seemed pretty strained at only 200lbs each. Whatever though... they did the job and I was able to hoist the tank up a few inches and slide in the drain pan.

The next step is to strap the storage tank to the walls for seismic events, and plumb 2 fiberglass-insulated copper pipes to the roof mounted collector. Then I'll attach the delta-T circulator pump (pumps only when the temperature of the water in the collectors is higher than the water in the storage tank), the pressure relief valve, the expansion tank, the air eliminator valve, the temperature sensors, and a few other things and the solar water plumbing will be finished. Too bad we don't have any need for hot water yet (we don't have any fixtures installed!), as we'll be ready to collect the sun's energy quite soon!

Above: TACO Delta-T Solar Pump

Above: Expansion Tank

Above: Air Eliminator

Finally, PG&E stopped by a couple of days ago and gave me an earful as to how our electric meter is just kind of dangling off of the house. The PG&E guy asked me to add a couple of temporary straps to secure the meter, which I did. I'm not that enthusiastic about working around the power wires coming in from the power company... there are no breakers if something goes wrong. I'll be quite pleased when our stucco is done and the meter is firmly secured back to the house.

While the cat is away

2010-02-19T12:39:00.000-08:00

E has not been at play. He has been working hard while I've been out of town.

Last update I received:

E wired the last circuits in the kitchen: microwave, dishwasher, sockets. The utility room electrical has been done. The GFCI circuit in the front bathroom has been hooked up. Several outlet boxes have been replaced and secured. Several of them were done before the dry rot demo on the outside of our house, but since they were on the walls that were removed, they ended up dangling. The only wiring left to take care of is the outlet in the laundry room, under cabinet lighting, and living room sockets.

We are also in desperate need of a label maker. Yes, it is a need. Who doesn't need a label maker? With the whole house basically rewired, we've been keeping track of all the circuits in the fuse box. Once we are final, I'd like to make it more permanent with shiny new, legible, labels. Legibility being the key.

Before I left however, we had a sad bit of news. There was one more corner of the house that had some possible dry rot. The contractor and his crew working on the project opened up a test hole on the back corner of our house, on the exterior of the master bedroom. The hole grew, and grew, and grew.

At this point, we should be free and clear of rot and termite damage. Should.

I've finally gotten around to removing some serious hazards from the property. So far, I've carted over 30 gallons of toxic materials to the household hazardous waste drop off facility. When we purchased the property, there was a mess of grand proportions outside. Remember? Part of the mess included buckets of old paint, stain, oil, chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, and mysterious unmarked containers.

Here's a shot of one of our two waste piles before my two trips to the dump site.

Here is an after shot. Notice, I still have another trunk load to go.

Fixer Up Fashion

2010-02-18T15:51:00.000-08:00

My DIY mentality has made me fashionable. Here I was lamenting the fact that my wardrobe has consisted of paint stained, concrete encrusted, cut up and semi-destroyed pants. In fact, I have been leading the way. I am a fashion icon, a trend setter. Don't believe me?

Feast your eyes on the J.Crew Vintage slim jean in painter wash

When will it rain?

2010-02-09T17:57:00.001-08:00

Of all things, E is now checking the weather to see when it will rain again, in eager anticipation! Yes, that means we are the proud new owners of a fully functional and non-leaking roof.

I've been dreaming of details far in the future. Let us take a moment to indulge my fantasies.

Towels.

You really have to cast your mind for this picture. Sure, the floor is covered in miscellaneous construction dirt and grime, the wall is missing behind the tub, but we do have a toilet seat, a towel bar and two lovely towels.

At E's urging, we are playing it safe and going with both towels in the blue. I'm toying with painting the walls the green color from the other bird towel. Now, I'm not completely jumping the gun here, a few weeks ago I visited my mother and helped her pick out paint, towels, etc. I must have had way too much fun since she then sent me a gift card to Pottery Barn so that I too could bring home the darling bird towels. Someday soon we will have a bathroom to hang them in. Thanks Mom!

More future dreams and musings in the form of house numbers.

These are the forerunners at the moment. Mission house numbers from Rejuvenation in oil rubbed bronze or antiqued brass, which ever is closest to the final restored patina on our door hardware.

Lighting. I'm currently drooling over these fixtures at a local salvage yard. I am plotting their (or something similar) ascent to the dining room and living room ceiling, respectively.

Since I'm sure E will read this post and think "old lady", I'm asking, "Any other suggestions?"

That's all the dreaming I can handle for now, back to reality for me. Tomorrow I get a massage.

Men at Work

2010-02-08T21:04:00.001-08:00

Under the house, over the house, in the house - crawling with men. These are some of the over the house variety providing us with a fancy schmancy modified bitumen roof, new flashing, larger drains and more vents. The company, Collins Roofing, is run by three Irish brothers. It is pretty spectacular.

The roof came off, the light came in. Our skylight opened up and it's even better than I was hoping. My initial hope was to help bring a bit of light into the dining room as well. Mission accomplished.

Perhaps we'll even keep the open airy, outdoor room feel too. Who needs a full roof, I kind of like the slips of light peaking between the boards. The picture below however was not a planned skylight, simply more of the ever so present dry rot. Not to fear gentle readers, all was replaced with spiffy new boards. This is of course at the lowest point in the roof, right in front of the teeny-tiny drain. Funnily, as with most of the house, the old portion (pre-back addition) had a great slope to the roof and lasted many many years. The new roof has at best a 2" slope for a 20' run of roof. The roofers are also trying to fix that little oversight.

Here we have more men at work. Go men, go.The process went something like this: Roofers showed up at 7:30am, prepped and began removing old roof. They cut out rot, expanded drains in exterior parapets, expanded drain between old house and newer addition, rolled on tar paper, and began nailing down tar paper for the next several hours. Continued nailing. Nail. Nail. Owners of new roof, aka me, receive messages from neighbors that the nailing can be heard from miles away. Walk miles away, hear nailing. The flame throwers came out. E commented that it was like our own mini Burningman on our roof. Unfortunately, the rain put an end to all the fun, but neighbors if you're reading, tomorrow is full blown flame torch day!

The men under the house continued to fortify our house against future earthquakes. And the men in and around the house began to fill the walls that were opened due to the dry rot with insulation. It's so pretty and pink.

I had another ebay success today after yesterday's bitter disappointment. After deciding on a coordinating light fixture to our newly purchased porch light, I found that several, un-restored but very restoreable versions were available on ebay. Since I had success with my last beginner light wiring project, I thought I'd take it a few steps further.

These are destined for the mud room door and the kitchen door. Both will get sand blasted and powder coated black. I'll then wire and buy matching shades for them. Voila, two vintage cast iron sconces for less than the price of a single new one. I'm sensing some hesitation and disbelief on your part. Don't worry, I think E has a bit of that going on as well.

Now, going back to yesterday -

E had some more quality under house time.

I got to stay above ground and wire the kitchen outlets while he drilled the holes and ran the wire. We got a total of four of these outlets hooked up last night and I'd never have guessed it, but every single one of them was in use today. I even caught one worker searching the house for a free outlet.

E also installed all the duct work, both bathroom fans and our microwave range hood, making today's roofing a reality. Now we've come full circle.

Friday Night

2010-02-05T22:15:00.000-08:00

Here it is, late on a Friday night, and we're all tucked in bed. It has been a party of a week and it has taken a toll on E. He has been spending a good portion of his time crawling around in the crawl space. Perhaps crawl is a bit of an exaggeration. Due to his efforts, a huge portion of our electrical work has been completed to date. Just last night, E ran and hooked up the stove circuit, the garbage disposal, the refrigerator circuit and 2 kitchen outlets.

Notice the pretty earthquake bracket attaching our sill to the foundation. Also, see the handsome plywood shear-wall. Then there is the hole E is looking out of, that is what is kindly referred to as a passage. Yes, he somehow manages to maneuver through that generous opening.

On the construction front, the house has been rid of dry rot and termite damage. The earthquake retrofit and dry rot repair inspection is scheduled for early next week. We are then looking at insulation and plywood the same day. Wednesday another inspection and hopefully the weather will cooperate and we'll have the wire and paper for the stucco go up on Thursday. Monday the roof work starts and our skylight goes in which I picked up today. The other windows made the most recent delivery truck and are currently en-route. They should arrive at their new home sometime before the end of February.

We have been enjoying some lovely weather this week. The house has been humming with activity and Sophie has been able to get some sun bathing in.

But as for this weekend, we expect some showers and our house has its raincoat on in anticipation.

I haven't been soaking up the rays, no, I've gone popcorn happy. I did get around to tackling the hallway and here it is sporting its new look:

I also coated the master bedroom with several miles of plastic sheeting and painter's tape. I also encased our refrigerator and stove in a very artistic yet functional fashion.

I was planning on actually getting down to work on Sunday sometime but inspiration hit and my Friday evening was full of spraying and scraping. The good news is that it came down pretty cleanly and easily. The room is still a royal mess since I'm letting the now sticky popcorn goo dry a bit before I clean it up. The best news though is that our house is officially a popcorn free zone! This deserves a celebration, maybe next year when we're rested and up for partying.

Window Order

2010-02-03T09:37:00.001-08:00

I just finalized our window & door order. There were quite a few numbers on the total line - enough to make me hesitate.

We keep hearing that the cost will be worth it. E is on board 100%. Even having experienced the difference of laminated glass for sound reduction, I had heart palpitations. The showroom is next to a railroad track and of course, all the exterior windows are laminated. It was amazing.

I feel confident in the windows, Marvin Ultimate Double Hung, Ultimate Replacement and Marvin Tilt Pac. All are Coconut Cream aluminum clad, primed pine interior. All of the original divided lites are being retained. All the doors, kitchen, mudroom, master bedroom double door are three point locking with one large glass pane.

We went with a double pane on all the windows, glass interior and laminated exterior for sound reduction (we do live on a busy street and next to the BART tracks) and energy efficiency. An added bonus is that they are security glass. After 2 robberies at our last house and a possible 3rd attempt, anything to make it harder to gain access into our house is a good thing.

I'm quietly reassuring myself as I type this.

We've seen the windows around town on some houses and unless you were walking up close to the house and specifically trying to pick them out, they look like the traditional wood windows I love. The reasoning behind the aluminum clad is two fold. One, once we have completed the renovation, our energy level for home upkeep will be on the low side. We are aiming at low maintenance. Secondly, our last house had brand new wood windows in several spots and even after priming and painting, it only took 2yrs for paint to bubble and peel. It could be the paints today it could be the direct light that they were receiving or the ocean air. Any way you slice it, we're giving this a go. You have to make a decision at some point and we're the king and queen of over research.

I did have a moment several minutes before submitting the order. After looking closely and noticing that the hardware on the tilt pack costs me money, and a bit more than a more traditional lock and pull would, I almost had them take it off the order so that I could order my own elsewhere and install them all myself after the windows were in. Like I don't have enough to do. Again, it would have been one more decision - or several more if I could manage to make it so.

Breathe. There, now I feel better.

Rewiring the Light

2010-02-02T19:17:00.000-08:00

Before I get to the light, I have to share that the kitchen cabinets arrived at 7:30am this morning. We emptied out the living room the night before in anticipation. The two largest cabinets are sitting in other rooms of the house since they were too big to bring in the front door. Still, I think the loot is pretty impressive.

Now, for the snappy re-wiring of the light.

Step 1. Remove old socket, replace with new socket.

Step 2. Remember to thread ball & chain through fixture on second try.

Step 3. Screw socket in and admire handy work.

Step 4. Assemble new mounting hardware into one place,

arrange and take picture.

Step 5. Install new mounting hardware and prep wires for socket installation with a flashlight as the main light source. Remove previously installed socket from light fixture. Search garage for nut to fit onto back of grounding screw. Drop screw into box of Styrofoam peanuts. Abandon screw and attach ground wire to mounting hardware. Install socket and proceed to drop another screw into box of Styrofoam peanuts. Fish out screw. Remember to thread ball and chain the first time. Think to self, remember to move box of Styrofoam peanuts out of the way next time.

Step 6. Step back, turn on switch and admire.

Other happenings around the house:

E wired the three way switch for the mud room lights and started on the disposal outlet. We made a Depot run. I put the second coat of paint on the ironing board cabinet door. I picked up a humongous drain pan for the water storage tank at Moran Plumbing. I absolutely love that place. More stucco came off of our house, but I can see the end is near, for that side of the house at least. Last but not least, I prepped the hall for popcorn removal which is to commence tomorrow. Now that it's nearly midnight and I've put in my 16.5hrs for the day, I'm off to bed.

Where to start?

2010-02-01T20:12:00.000-08:00

I'll begin with the good and work my way up to the ugly.

The e-bay bathroom light arrived in the mail today and it looks every bit as cute in person. We do need to re-wire it but that should be a snap. The porch light is also on its way. I opted for the lengthier, curvier model.

I have the fabric for the ironing board. I also have fabric for napkins, the yellow lemons I'd previously considered for the ironing board. I'm not sure in what century I'll get to sew them but they sure will be cute.

-ironing board fabric-

The house has seen some major work the past several days. In the hours before I left town for the weekend the windows were measured one final time. I'll complete the order tomorrow or Wednesday. I have several questions I need answered before we fork over large wads of cash. I'm was quite excited to learn from our installer that lead time for the windows is about half what I expected.

E met with the roofer and we are second in line for a roof in the next two weeks, weather permitting. We have to wait a week or so because our house is undergoing what I think of as Phase I termite/dry-rot repair. This was what the house looked like as I left for St. Louis:

-back corner by little bedroom, before-

While I was away, even more of the house was opened up. The good news is that they are working fast and new lumber is going in:

-back corner by little bedroom, after-

-front corner by office-

Notice E's handy work in the foreground; what a lovely trench.

-West wall along office and little bedroom-

-West wall along office-

We were expecting some dry rot/termite damage. We were not expecting this much. Our contractor has even apologized, that sort of worried me. We have so much damage that our contractor feels bad? Ouch. The silver lining in all of this is that the wall insulation we'd been pining for is a reality. I estimate we'll be able to insulate 75% of the small bedroom, and with the way stucco was flying off of our walls today, 50% of the second bathroom, and 50% of the office. E contacted a company that does spray in foam, they didn't want anything to do with our little house. I guess old homes are not worth the effort on their part. We toyed with the idea of pulling off plaster and lathe but in the end, that wasn't worth the effort and cost on our part. So in short, the adage of being careful what you wish for, does indeed have some truth behind it.

Lighting Take Two, or Three

2010-01-26T18:09:00.000-08:00

Lighting has been the name of the game around here. I've been trying to rustle up some antique replacement fixtures and E has been hard at work rewiring all of the lights in the house with

good ol' romex.

In the antique lighting department, I had success today with finding a replacement for our badly corroded and spotted bathroom light. My first attempt at finding a replacement was through a super mega sale at Restoration Hardware. Once the light showed up at our house and we got around to holding it up in the bathroom, E and I came to the same conclusion. "No". Back went the light and onward went my search.

I spent a few days trying to find just the fixture sans glass shade but sadly, the cheapest fitter that was the correct size ran $30 and was just that, cheap. I'm all for a good deal but knowing what the $30 fitter was made out of, it was likely to rust up on us again in 3-years. Armed with this knowledge, I went to e-bay. Ta-da!

Isn't she cute. I shall call her Minnie. Minnie came in under $17. Go Minnie!

On a more technical level, E installed our super-duper-amazing-tech recessed lights in the kitchen. They are lit up like a frat boy on New Year's Eve. I am feeling a bit cocky about the placement and number of lights in the room. After hours of deliberation and fretting, it seems we do indeed have enough light, and, for those circumstances when it is too much light, we have a multi-location dimmer. "Oooooh". "Aaaaah".

Next up, I am on the hunt for a fixture to go with our porch shade. The original was an unlucky casualty, but it did have to sacrifice itself for the better good. The fixture's screws were rusted and painted into an impenetrable barrier that necessitated the use of a fancy power tool by my handy Schwiegervater (father-in-law). I've convinced E to keep the original shade which has turned purple through sun exposure. I am holding out that I'll find something on eBay again but if I don't these are the two possibilities from Rejuvenation:

After starting this post, at 6:45pm, E and I went for a mocha around 7pm then went to work on wiring the remaining lighting. It is now 11:20pm. Time flies. We made a nice little discovery in the living-room. We had been thinking about adding sconces to either side of the fireplace having lucked out in our last house by finding sconce boxes already tucked into the wall hidden behind a mirror. No such luck this time, but we did find a lighting box in the center of the ceiling which means we are going to shake things up a bit and go with the original lighting scheme for the house. Now to find yet another light. Ideas?

E hard at work uncovering the hidden light box.

Still raining

2010-01-21T22:44:00.001-08:00

I learned to lay old school linoleum, general contractor style. I began my hunt for linoleum glue two days ago. The true linoleum glue comes in 4-gallon and 1-gallon cans. I, not wanting to spend $40 on 1-gallon of glue for 12-square feet of flooring soon to be under a behemoth of a water storage tank, went the road less traveled. Getting my information from a paid general contractor, I lowered my sights and went hunting for 1-quart of sub-floor construction adhesive. Not able to find it in 1-quart form, only in tubes, I trotted out of the hardware store feeling plucky and creative. I was going to use a caulking gun to lay the adhesive out, then use the flat side of a trowel to spread it, then the 1/8" grooved side. Once I got home, I gathered all of my tools, measured twice, cut once using a shiny new utility blade. I used a square to get nice straight lines, scored the heavy duty linoleum several times, snapped it on the line and set

about installing it.

I did a dry run, everything fit. I thoroughly cleaned the area, swept, vacuumed, swept. Then I cut open my first tube of sub-floor adhesive. It all started well. My lines were small, close together and evenly spaced. Then the caulking gun broke. It would only squeeze on one side of the tube. I had to rotate the tube and squeeze at the same time. Nothing was coming out so I increased the size of the tube opening...blam! I had adhesive and lots of it. There was no stopping now. Not even the leak in the ceiling that started up again could stop me now. This stuff is not water soluble and I dry time is pretty quick. It was do it now or have a royal mess on my hands. And a royal mess it was.

I didn't realize until after I took the picture and looked back on it that the ceiling had leaked just enough to prevent the adhesive from sticking in that area. Charging ahead with my project, I quickly smoothed, sort of, then troweled, sort of. Using a 2x4 to flatten the backing of the linoleum to the floor, I ended up with a pretty decent approximation of installed flooring. (In my defense, the mess on the hardwood in the photo is not from my adventure).The pros have been at work on the house as well. Our tankless water heater is in along with most of the kitchen plumbing.E is in the midst of updating the electrical and tidying things up. Outside, he removed two old conduit, increased the size of the one left and then had me thread, one by one, each wire through under the house. When they tell you a conduit can only carry a certain number of wires in it, they aren't exaggerating. I even think they were begin a bit generous. They eventually all fit and things are moving right along.Several days ago, E dug the ditch from the house to the street for our new water-main. Not deterred by the gallons of water dumping from the sky, E made his $200/hr. (We opted out of having the plumbing company call in their trench digger for $350). The trench has since filled and spilled over with water. We have our very own tributary complete with a custom mud dam to keep the water running down to the driveway.

Tonight E hooked up several circuits under the house, braving the crawl-space for two hours. I stayed above ground and hooked up the light in the utility closet, removed the heinous old fan in the hall and began installing new outlets in the dining room.

RIP dirty, dirty fan.

RAIN. Not rain. RAIN.

2010-01-18T16:45:00.000-08:00

Monday: rain

Tuesday: rain

Wednesday: rain

Thursday: rain

Friday: rain

Monday: rain

Tuesday: rain

Wednesday: rain

...

I'll spare you the saga about how we woke up this morning to pouring rain. Ran to the house to check the water levels in various buckets about the house. I won't tell you how our new drywall in the utility room began to stain from a new leak, or how E cut a large infant sized hole into the ceiling of the utility room to find the source of the leak, not having any luck climbing into the attic. I won't include the bit about running to the neighbors again to borrow stacks of towels to lay down in the master bedroom windows and doors to prevent a small pond from forming. I will tell you that I am more than anxious for our plumber to finish poking holes in the roof so that we can get the roofer out here.

My in-laws came by again this past weekend to help out. My father-in-law helped run wires in the wall to update the electrical. Those two came up with some pretty ingenious ways of avoiding cutting into the plaster. My personal favorite was how E went about re-routing new wire in the wall for the dining room light switch. It started out by tying a bolt to a long piece of thin rope, then E climbed into the attic, army crawl style on his stomach, then attempted to thread the bolt on a string through a hole the diameter of my middle finger near the switch box from 6' above. It worked, three times. After the first success, E came to a sad conclusion that having chosen the smaller of two holes above to begin the process, he could not thread the three pieces of wire through it. So he had to test his coordination and fine motor skills once again by starting all over though the larger of the two holes. Then as luck would have it, the whole thing came sliding down through the wall. An hour later, success.

While de-popcorning the small bedroom I came to fully understand the enormity of a seemingly small situation. It goes something like this: One evening while socializing with our new next door neighbors, we learn that the attic access in the bedroom wasn't all it appeared to be. In fact, the "attic access" came to be mid sale of the house. Upon entering the first open house, our neighbor was aghast that the home would be on the market with a gaping hole in the ceiling. The second open house the same neighbor was even more distraught to see that the hole was disguised to look like an access door to the attic. The hole wasn't fixed but cheaply disguised in gaudy makeup and fake pearls.

The poor dupes that purchased the house went about their business and decided to try and remove the door from the attic access while taking down the popcorn ceiling in the room. Much to my mother-in-law's horror, the 2'x2' piece of plywood along with several sticks of trim, a few chunks of plaster and a bit of lathe and a lot of dust came pouring down. We have a hole. Not a big hole in the sense that we could put an attic access if we wanted to, but a hole that consists of 3'x3' of missing plaster with a surrounding area of roughly the whole ceiling threatening to come down as well. Good news. The popcorn ceiling in the small bedroom is no more. The bad news, the ceiling is pretty much no more as well.

The electrical work is moving along swimmingly. All of the outlet boxes are in and the lights are ready for wiring. The plumber only has several days left of work. Tomorrow E and I take turns digging trench for our new water main and the plumber will install our tankless water heater. Onward.

Procrastination

2010-01-13T15:31:00.000-08:00

In an attempt to delay the inevitable, de-popcorning of the living room, I have delved into the world of design blogs. These are the ones that make money or if they don't the people writing them make money designing things. Unlike this blog which spins the sordid tale of a crazy couple, dog and cat who knowingly took on a renovation and are simply providing updates for family, friends and the neighbors (What could they possibly be doing over there at 11pm?).

Today's find is from www.apartmenttherapy.com (a daily favorite of mine). The image is of designer Miriam Dillon's work whom I know solely through the post, sorry Ms. Dillon:The point of all this being, the paint colors. The blue in the bathroom looks quite similar to a color I have picked out for our bathroom. Low and behold, the green shown in the bedroom is close to a color I've recently landed on for our master bedroom.

My mom and I laid out a rough color chart on the kitchen table when she was here visiting. It took several days of fiddling and several paint store visits (two of which were to stores that no longer existed). But throughout it all, she was infinitely patient with me, but she is an old pro at it. I suppose years of hours spent while I was a child being patient have finally paid off, right mom?

Anyhow. The color chart was helpful but this picture has all but sealed the deal.

O.k. Enough procrastination. Hi-ho-hi-ho.

Unexpected

2010-01-12T22:53:00.000-08:00

Opening the box with our smoke detectors from Amazon seemed such an innocuous task. It seems someone made an accidental addition to the order. A copy of "Daily Wisdom, 365 Buddhist Inspirations" lay right on top. It was daring me to return it. Well, $12 being $12 and a tiny bit closer to a new roof, I returned it, but not before reading today's bit of wisdom, you know, just in case.

"The present moment is changing so fast that we often do not notice its existence at all"...etc. Be mindful.

In the spirit of noticing the present moment, I give you:

built-in ironing board, current state 1/12/10

(May8 - 1945 Germany Surrenders)

P.S. It rains in our house. Not on our house. In our house. I am so noticing the present moment.

Messy Me

2010-01-11T17:30:00.000-08:00

More popcorn bit the dust, rather, made dust.

Step 1: Cover the floor and any non movable items with a thin plastic disposable drop cloth. Tape edges well.

Step 2: Wet ceiling with water, I used a weed sprayer. Scrape, wet, scrape, wet, shake out muscles, scrape, cuss, wet, stand around, wet,

scrape.

Step 3: Take pictures of the mess and newly discovered ceiling while regaining feeling in arms.

Step 4: Let mess dry a bit.

Step 5: Remove drop cloth, sweep, vacuum, sweep, wipe down walls.

Step 6: Take a 2 day break then return to vacuum, vacuum, vacuum around the picture molding and window sills.

Stucco went up to patch where the chimney went down.

Back in September when we signed on the dotted line, we received as part of our "buyers package" a Home Warranty. This is pretty standard practice. In our real estate agent's infinite wisdom, he negotiated an additional coverage option - the roof. While we were made aware that our roof was not in prime condition in our home inspection, it has become more and more apparently that the roof had its final hurrah 10 years ago, maybe even 15.

The Warranty Company agrees with the assessment that the roof is dead and gone. They sent out a repair technician to fix the two newly sprung leaks and after receiving his report, they offered us a nice sum of cash. No repair is possible. New roof. We are now on track to get a new roof up as soon as we are done purposefully poking holes in the old one (plumbing, skylight, etc). Hope sprang eternal for 1 week when we thought we could put off a new roof until the summer but a toffee colored stain seeping down the new drywall in the utility room proved us wrong. This was even after E's heroic efforts to glue the roof back together with sticky black goo in a squeeze container.

I'm trying to convince E to guest blog again since he has been working like mad on the electrical. Most of which is located under the house and since my mad cat incident, I haven't been very willing to crawl down there. I'll leave it for him to explain. It is all very fancy stuff, or so I'm told.

Tomorrow the rest of the electrical boxes and perhaps lighting goes into the kitchen. I may even get to cleaning up my mess from the dining room popcorn removal.

A Room

2010-01-08T19:33:00.000-08:00

We have a room, a real room. We have a roof, walls, and a floor to boot. It is beyond amazing. granted the walls and the ceiling are merely studded out and lack drywall. We have a humble sub-floor, a level sub-floor though. The door and window have plywood over them and are studded out shadows of their futures selves but I love them just the same. Since I last wrote we have had a litany of problems and solutions. Work has been done.

1) Mud-room floor leveled to kitchen floor,

2) Wall between kitchen and mud-room moved back 1' and studded out,

3) Doorway between kitchen and dining room studded out,

4) Kitchen door and window roughed out,

5) Kitchen skylight roughed in and purchased,

6) Office electrical outlets increased in number and in the process of becoming grounded circuits thanks to E,

6a) Discovered dry-rot between Office and Bathroom during electrical work,

6b) Dry-rot wood removed and replaced,

7) Laundry room appliance electrical boxes placed. It was a late night. The work light was clamped to the ceiling rafters and tools were no where to be found. My mom was in town and helped measure and re-measure and re-measure. I'm a bit neurotic with details.

8) Entry way popcorn ceiling removed via my personal brawn and brain,

9) Office popcorn ceiling removed again via my brawn and this time my mom's brains, things were a bit tidier this go around.

10) Utility room received final coat of mud,

11) E installed a super quiet fan in the front bathroom (no wiring yet) and put a hole in the ceiling above the tub for a can light.

12) I hunted and gathered a salvaged built-in ironing board. Needs work. Needs new fabric. Two contenders:

13) A great paint color hunt has begun. Zeroing in on colors. Office (graphite), Front Bath (deep eggplant), Back Bedroom (dusty lavender), Dining Room (indigo), Kitchen/Mud/Laundry (glacier blue), Living Room (TBD latte perhaps), Master Bedroom (TBD green of sorts), Master Bath (soft mint). All colors are approximate and names are pure figments of my imagination.

Safety First

2009-12-31T18:35:00.000-08:00

We are two switches shy of a finished bedroom electrical. This is not a comment on our mental stability. We are moving the switch to the closet light in between the two closets but will wait until the roof is off since it will make the change immensely easier. We also added a dimmer to the over head lights and took out a double wide electrical box on the outside wall by the french doors and replaced it with a single wide box. It was housing two switches, one for the back yard and one for the bedroom. The switch plate was also stuck under the door and window trim. We are keeping the two switches but are mounting them vertically so as to avoid that "we almost got it right" look.

The same goes for the electrical sockets in the house. Most of them are upside down or cracked or missing a bit here and there. In the master bedroom, most were unable to be mounted to the electrical boxes due to a double layer of drywall on most of the walls in the room which is a great little bonus for sound proofing. The silly part is that there is a 4' section of a longer wall that only has one sheet deep of drywall, thus it slants inwards lending a lovely fun house feel to the place. We'll fix that along with re-trimming out the doors and windows so that you no longer can see drywall sticking out in the door jambs and window frames.

I tackled removing the old dryer outlet and with it an unused dryer vent. I found some of the infamous dry rot in the process. My first discovery of the stuff - although our pest report before buying the house notated its existence in MANY locations.

E added a GFCI outlet to the outside power, along with a new cover and rewired it to be up to code. Safety first!

All in all it was a very productive day. We even made a run to the Depot and had time to eat out at Barney's Burgers and grab a Boba tea.

In planning land: Kitchen Cabinet Knobs and Pulls (www.Rejuvenation.com)

1 1/4"

Clear Glass Knob - used on 4 glass doors on upper cabinets of buffet

1 1/4"

Oil Rubbed Bronze Mushroom Knob - used on all other cabinet doors

Oil Rubbed Bronze Bin Pull - drawers

It has taken me a ridiculously long time to come to this conclusion. I've tried every possible combination of these and several others. (Thanks Robin for your help!) E isn't in love with the glass (I was aiming for them on all the cabinets). They are reproductions of the original knobs on the built-in in the dining room. I hope this detail along with several others helps make the buffet in the kitchen look more like a built in than a shallow piece of kitchen cabinetry. We don't have the budget to recreate the cabinetry as it possibly would have been in 1929 so I'm aiming for visually similar.

Yes, I've also changed my mind a bit about the kitchen lighting but more on that later. I'm almost certain that the current plan will stick because it was my first impulse but we'll see. I don't have to order the lights anytime soon.

Ready, Set ...

2009-12-30T18:17:00.001-08:00

The great race has begun. It is a race to the bitter end. In the lead is "money" not far behind but loosing steam is "work". At this point in the renovation money is flying out fast, big ticket items like foundation, seismic retrofit, plumbing, sewer, windows, cabinets, are on the books and we are quickly realizing the cash drain is faster than the cash flow. Our new strategy is to finish off the back portion of the house, fix the leaks in the roof then move in half way. We will then rent the back cottage which we are currently living in and put a new roof on before next winter. All the while, cash flow picks up in order to make up for our love of soundproof super windows and we are back in business.

It is a double edged sword. The faster the work gets done, the quicker the money disappears. Boy oh boy is the work getting done quickly. I woke up this morning and found dry wall up and sub floor repaired in the utility room, a wall in the kitchen removed and the ceiling framing all sparkling new and shored up. We met to discuss the framing for the outside kitchen wall today which was well underway by quitting time this evening.

The great flooring conundrum of 2009 has also been solved. No longer will we be subject to a 3/4" - 1" difference between the kitchen and mud room's sub floor. By removing the original but irreparable doug fir in the kitchen we corrected the gap between the dining and kitchen. The new gap appeared when the previous 70s addition of a mud room and master bedroom occurred. Instead of putting the floor joists at the same level as the rest of the house, they decided it would be neat to raise them up just a bit. It truly was laziness and nothing else. So with a fancy slight of hand, the mud room will now be level to the rest of the house. We are not removing the oak flooring in the bedroom to mess with that though. A nice piece of transitional threshold will have to make do.

Below, E and Sophie check out the new floorless mud room. Note that this picture was made possible by a missing wall. Silly me, I thought things were going to start going IN the house not out of it.

E and I finished wiring the master bathroom, sans fan. E is at this very moment in an e-mail struggle for an exchange method that doesn't sound like a complete scam. Upon realizing that not only was the metal housing box for the fan bent, but the fan itself was mounted crookedly, we asked for an exchange (damage seems to have been done in shipping). The response we received consisted of

"I am sorry to hear that u r having a problem. Please tell me if what I am proposing is acceptable to u. I won't make u send back the unit that u have there. U can use parts or get rid of it. And I will ask u to just pay us for the amount it cost us to ship u the new one. If that is ok with u ( I think its fair ) just email us and we will ship it out and let u know the exact amount that usps charged us last time. And u can send us a check made out to cash please."

It is me or is business casual really getting out of control? Plus, cash, I think not. So the battle continues.

Thank You This Old House

2009-12-23T14:51:00.000-08:00

This changes everything! Well, perhaps that is an exaggeration but it does make some decisions much easier and the final product will look worlds better and more cohesive, in my humble opinion. We learned that the exposed wood trim in the living room and dining room was never intended to be left thus. It is was originally installed as a paint grate wood, always intended to be kept as such. I was planning on toiling over the wood (baseboards, picture rail, doors, mantle, built in) in an attempt to make it look uniform and polished. What a struggle that would have been! For the most part it is all fir with random pieces of other paint grade wood tossed in for good measure. I still wasn't convinced that it was always intended for a life of paint so I did some research. Imagine that. This is what I found and what I shall do:

1) What would be authentic to the era? (referring to a 1920s bungalow style home)

During this era trim made of fir was meant to be painted. Hardwood trim was meant to be stained and varnished.

The fir wood isn't particularly nice looking - it's coarse-grained and doesn't take stain very well, so would it have originally meant to be painted?
Yes - I tell my clients that fir was "born to be painted". It wasn't considered a fine finish wood. But since they didn't finger joint it that clue isn't there. During the last part of the 20th Century many many people stripped painted pine/fir trim, stained it and covered the stain with polyurethane. That is another clue you picked up on.

The trim seems to have a polyurethane finish on it, so it may not be authentic.
I had a client that was making himself just crazy because he stripped all the trim in his 1910 home and sanded, sanded, sanded...he just couldn't "get all the trim to match". When he showed me I found that the trim was actually a couple of different kinds of wood - gum, pine, fir, etc. I asked him to sit down before I delivered the bad news: The trim was "born to be painted". The good news (and yours is the same) is that since he stripped it and sanded it the painted finish would be beautiful - no alligatoring, no chipped paint in the final coat just a beautiful painted finish!

2) Would it be terrible to paint only the crown molding to match the ceiling colour? Even though the ceilings are about 9 feet high, the dark band of trim really accentuates the line between wall and ceiling.
Consider painting the ceiling above the crown molding the same color(s) as the walls in the room. If you paint all the molding in the rooms (probably some shade of white) and leave the ceiling white the moldings will disappear. Consider showing off the moldings by painting all the plaster areas on the walls and ceilings. The colors need not be dramatic, though they could be if that is how you are inclined.

3) Is this an all-or-nothing proposition? Could we paint some rooms (i.e. the living/dining room) for a more refined look and leave the more informal areas (kitchen/family room) as wood for a warmer more informal look? Or, is this just a bad idea?
I would vote for painting all the trim - and painting it all one single color. It is usually best to not use bright white - that color is too modern and too stark. It also reflects the most light possible and the nuances of the milled trim can be lost.

Most of the top paint manufacturers have standard white ranges that can be used to coordinate with your final colors for the plaster walls and ceilings. Don't forget the ceilings - they are a large part of the overall room decor and when you have moldings to set them off they can really show off the craftsmanship in your home.

Painting all the trim throughout the building will provide a consistent background, place the look in its proper historical perspective and allow for each room to be customized, decoration-wise in its own way according to your desires.

(http://advice.thisoldhouse.com/showthread.php?t=3210)

We received a quote for sheet rocking and texture in the bathroom/kitchen/MBed and tying the sheet rock into the old plaster where necessary. We also learned that the walls in the front of the house were skim coated (plaster covered over with a bumpy layer to hide cracks). Fortunately, it seems that when we remove the popcorn we can also take most of the ugly skim coat off. I'm not sure what we will find but ultimately it will be a much more polished look more authentic than what someone called the "Sesame Street Walls". If I were to guess, I think it refers to the fact that our walls look like a Muppets shaggy fir. It is just a guess.

Up Next -

Kitchen wall framing Monday & Tuesday (Rick Hoffman Services)

Electrical placement (K begins tomorrow)

Utility room sheet rock (E next week)

Remove wall heater in MBed (K next week)

Dumpster Overload - almost

2009-12-21T20:26:00.001-08:00

Another dumpster was filled and carted away. It took several days of work, my father in-law helped for a day and E helped out at the tail end in order to get the heavy cumbersome items. I now know that if my singing career doesn't work out, I can always find respect in the dumpster and trash hauling community. The truck drivers were very impressed with my loading skills (it was perfectly over weight, just enough so that they could still haul it) and with the weight distribution of the materials inside.

Saturday something magical happened - we left the house and returned to a newly framed door, re-studded wall and fixed sub-floor in the master bath. How novel to leave the house while work is being done by others. Our contractor was wonderful enough on Friday afternoon to send a few guys over on Saturday to get the master bath ready for the final plumbing to go in. It worked! The master bath is plumbed. So far we have the guest bath, master bath, and laundry taken care of. I'm waiting on a schedule for the kitchen and water main. Prepping for the

tankless and heating system is up to us.

I'm itching to start putting stuff back into the house. I'm still on the fence (ok, overwhelmed) with tile options for the guest bath. The floor is a 1" white hex with cornflower blue accents

here and there. I'm thinking of putting a wood wainscot up around and behind the pedestal sink and the toilet, using a white subway tile for the tub/shower. I would like some other accent tile in the tub/shower surround but can't find what I want or decide on what I want. I like the idea of a multi color liner as in the photo from www.missiontilewest.com

I don't think I can commit to a bold overall subway tile, although I love the look. I plan on using paint as my major color. Since I'm already wed to a cornflower blue, the task is to find some other colors to broaden the pallet a bit.

Friday (Sunday) Guest Blog

2009-12-20T21:49:00.000-08:00

Please welcome E, blogging for the first time. Well, he technically didn't blog but obediently responded to my request for a blurb on the radiant/solar water heat system via e-mail.

This is my first pass at the radiant heat/domestic hot water/solar assist design. I'm relieved that it all fits in our utility closet, although I'm still unsure as to how the city inspectors are going to feel about it.

Since our house had a broken floor furnace, we had a great opportunity to install a radiant heat system, as we had to install some sort of heater. The word on the street is that radiant heat is best... so I've been studying the various ways to do it. I suppose hiring someone to install it would have been the easiest, but threading thousands of feet of pex tubing under the floors is a labor intensive process so it's quite expensive to have done. We work for free, so there is much money to be saved by doing ourselves. Also, something with this many tubes and pumps and valves is just too tempting for me to just hand over to someone else.

In addition to the radiant heat, I plan on installing a solar water heater. Some of the plumbing in the picture is for the solar heating loop. The solar water heater is sized larger than a typical domestic hot water only panel, as it can contribute to the house heating because of the storage tank.

Next year when we're (hopefully) living in our new warm house, please ask me how the system works because if it actually does I'm going to be quite eager to explain!

Kitchen

2009-12-15T21:12:00.000-08:00

Appliances arrived yesterday. Cabinet order set and standing by . Checking with contractor and City Permitting on small changes.

Tile Idea: Subway with herringbone pattern behind range.

Colors: Black, White, Grey, Orange, Lime, Robin's Egg

Courtesy of http://bit.ly/5VQ1kA

Counter:

Black, Honed Granite for Cabinets, White for Island

Cabinets:

Dove White, Huntington Kraftmaid, (similar to those in image). Island Honey Maple

Lights: SchoolHouse Electric, Colors TBD, Lime or Aqua

Eco-Dumpster arrived yesterday but the day was spent in the cabinet shop. Today I filled out rebate forms and got them in the mail. I was able to put in 4 or so hours loading the dumpster and burnt out before sunset. The dog got her second walk of the day thanks to piles of crumbled particle board and tiles. I just couldn't face them any longer. Tomorrow more dumpster diving.

A Strong Foundation

2009-12-08T10:26:00.000-08:00

Check.

Curve Ball

2009-12-07T20:16:00.000-08:00

Our exterior wall in the kitchen came out today. The walls between the kitchen and dining room similarly disappeared. Then the ceiling joists went *poof*. This was all before 9am.

Once I was up and conscious, we met with the cabinet lady who, along with our contractor, had some great ideas for how we could utilize the space better. This of course meant taking out

yet another 5' section of wall, moving the header for the opening between the mud room and kitchen above the ceiling line and replacing the wall support with a stud in the wall so that the mud room and kitchen effectively become one room. Go figure, more demo. All that being said and done, I was very lucky that our contractor was there and such a help. He on the other hand thought that his 'helpful suggestions' of demo and destruction would cause him to receive a crowbar to the brow from E. I assured him that if something like that were to happen, E was far to calm to deliver the blow, he'd most likely distract him while I took a swing. Of course, we are thrilled with the outcome of the meeting and our new plans are in the works. I go take a look at them this Wednesday. I'll be in NY over the weekend then we'll order our cabinets on Monday! I'll submit new plans to the permit department as well, "yay." (I truly hope you caught the sarcasm)

The past few days have been filled with visions of tiles and mosaics dancing in my heads. Literally, I've been dreaming of bathroom tile - not kidding. I went a hunting and came up with all the tile in one lovely store, again, at the suggestion of our contractor. Before calling him I did spent several hours (o.k. 4) missing the mark. He's truly indispensable.

Here is the inspiration for the Master Bath:

I found a flat 2" large hex tile with a matte finish along with a matching white 4" square and a matte 1/2" matte black liner to replicate the floor in the above bathroom. Let me tell you, matching white to white is no picnic.

I am taking a cue from this bathroom tile job and using the same tile pattern on the shower floor as on the rest of the floor. I'm just crazy enough to add the 1" black and white square pattern around the lower portion of the shower. Our shower is a 60" by 32" rather than the corner unit pictured above. It's pretty standard.

This is the picture that started it all. I fell in love with the double black liner around the top of the subway tile wainscoting. Needless to say, that too will be in our bathroom. When the lines approach the shower, the top line will make a 90-degree turn up and over the shower while the lower line will remain at the same level crossing the shower much like the liner in the previous image.

Of course the color inspiration is important too - fresh minty blue walls with rich red accents. We have two pretty stained glass windows in the bathroom that have a touch of this blue and red in them. I hope that this helps them stand out. The previous color scheme of glossy black walls and ceiling with half white and blue linoleum and half dark cracked slate didn't quite win me over.

My father-in-law was over again this past weekend lending a hand. The old insulation came out in the kitchen ceiling, the old plaster got opened up in the utility room allowing for the world's largest water storage tank to fit in it. The remaining header separating the mud-room from the laundry room came down. Similarly, the header dividing the master bath in two had it's last hurrah. Meanwhile, I tore down the rest of the tile from the front bath shower, revealing some pretty black spots, aka nasty mold. Not to fear blog followers, it was contained in the sheet rock under the tile and has been safely removed from the property.

And not to be outdone, Sophie caused a bit of destruction and mayhem of her own. Although her master plan on not getting caught went out the window the moment E found her sitting calmly in her bed.

"What do you mean I ate my way into the trash? Foolish human, it was the fat cat, I swear it." Please note stylish new brown paper bag handle collar Sophie inadvertently acquired.

Black Friday

2009-11-27T21:18:00.000-08:00

Kitchen appliances? Check!

After many months of consumer report research, "see it, feel it" shopping, and comparison shopping we have a schload of appliances ordered and on their merry way to our abode. May I introduce the newest members of our household.

Jenn-Air Counter Depth Refrigerator

Ge Cafe Microwave/Hood

Ge Cafe Dual Fuel 5 Burner Range (The bottom drawer is an oven. Mmmm, pie)

Ge Front Load Washer & Dryer

Kenmore Dishwasher

Oh yeah. My neighbors and I were definitely among the throngs of crazed shoppers braving the outlet sales today. Let us all pause for a silent victory dance in honor of non-housey things like purses, dresses and sweaters.

That aside, I'm sure E would like me to tell you about the demolition and work going on in the utility closet - aka command central. Yup, there's demo going on in there. E is working hard to prepare the facility for technology installation.

Have we talked windows? Oh, I know WE've talked windows over here. We talk in code using R values and STC Ratings. I finalized the silly decisions on Wednesday - hardware color, style, aluminum clad color, etc. E and I also decided on the tough stuff, using code and much forehead slapping (codes are confusing and costly). In short, we are getting dual pane -one pane glass, one pane laminate - offering a STC rating of 35 vs. your average dual pane which clocks in at 28. So, with insulation and information age windows, we'll soon be blissfully tucked into our cocoon, the husband, the wife, the dog, the cat and the appliances.

Free Gym Membership!

2009-11-24T12:27:00.001-08:00

For a limited time only, I'm offering a free trial gym membership. This once in a lifetime offer includes access to one convenient location open from sun up to sun set. You will have unrestricted access to a facility offering weights, cardio, resistance training, and your own personal trainer by your side, motivating and supporting your daily work outs.

Learn to wield a sledgehammer in a body friendly manner. Free pent up stress and frustration with a crowbar as you rip 3/4" wood from 3" nails. Increase your cardiovascular fitness as you schlep 10' lengths of wood and bins of tile and drywall around the facility property. Perhaps, "schlep" isn't the best word. How about: Sign up for our truly unique cardiovascular and strength circuit training program designed to provide a total-body workout involving a series of different exercises in a short 30-minute period. Benefits include total-body strength training increasing lean body mass and muscle tone while aiding balance and a sense of mental well being.

Do I have any takers? Did I mention it is free?

Shift in Focus

2009-11-21T18:24:00.001-08:00

Now that the insulation went in the roof of the Cottage and the Cottage bathroom fan is vented, my mental and physical energy will be devoted almost exclusively to the Main House. E and his dad worked on the insulation and fan vent today. My mom-in-law and I worked on pulling up more flooring layers in the kitchen and were later joined by dad-in-law.

The kitchen demo has been an interesting undertaking.

Dad-in-law and I removed cabinets, a very sturdily tiled counter and wall tiles this past week. Everything was very solidly attached to the walls and floor. The 1970s remodel was constructed to stand the tests of time; if not designed to withstand a shift in tastes. I do have to say the old plaid wallpaper we found under the range hood would have added some fun to the room. The brown and orange cabinets and counter wouldn't have looked so out of place. I'm kind of digging it. But we've decided to go a different route all together. The plans are drawn, approved and permitted. I'm super excited about the new lay out. Yes, super excited, one could even say super duper excited.

The kitchen flooring demo has been a bit of a thorn in my side

though. Who knew so many layers could exist on one floor, and well attached layers to boot. What is it with this house and the in-exhaustive number of flooring layers. The linoleum has come up relatively easy. Certain patches were glued down quite well. After scraping them off we had to remove the particle board, yes particle board which I'm sure you can imagine didn't come up in large pieces but rather in smaller particles as the name would imply. Two half days worth of 2-3 people working on the linoleum and particle board, henceforth known as p-board. Next came the 3/4" douglas fir. I started on that later this afternoon and lost my strength and energy only 4 rows into the removal. It was interesting to piece together what the original kitchen must have looked like from the marks and discolorations on the fir floor. What is the kitchen today was once both the kitchen and the laundry/mud-room. You can see in the floor where the old walls were. Then there is the spot under the window where the sink used to be, flanked on both sides by counter. It is great to know we are moving back towards the original floor plan for the room. It won't be exact but I feel nice knowing the plan preserves the feel of the house and some of the historic integrity. I in no way am claiming that we are doing a completely historical restoration, but we are bridging the gap.

I love this old house. I love the work that is going into to it to make it ours. I love that it is something our families are participating in too. It feels warmer and more loved each and every day. This house knew we would take care of it and here we are. Not just E and I, but E, our families, our neighbors, and our great sub contractors all building something great together.

OK. I'm done with the mush. BRING ON THE REST OF THE DEMO!

Oh yeah, and paint colors...oooo.

Cottage

2009-11-17T18:04:00.000-08:00

~WELCOME TO OUR LITTLE COTTAGE~

KITCHEN & KITCHEN SINK THAT DOESN'T LEAK

DINING AREA & BATHROOM

BEDROOM/LIVING AREA

I accomplished very little in demolition today. I finished removing type 1 flooring (slate) from the MBath. I succeeded in removing 40% of type 2 flooring, the linoleum and with it the small square tiles it was covering (type 3). It is a shame the tiles were covered in the first place, they seemed to be in super condition but with the linoleum glue on it and only spanning half the space, not worth saving. Plus half of them came up with the linoleum, the ones that weren't super cemented to the sub-floor.

The wood refinisher/repair/do-it-all man came by today. He can match the hardwood in the rest of the house and put it in the kitchen/mud room! It will all be the same height as well. We do have Doug Fir under the kitchen but decided that for the work it would take to refinish it, we'd still be left without a continuous floor in the mud-room, chopping up the space visually. I do have to pick some sort of flooring for the laundry nook. I was thinking of wood all the way but reality has set in and a laundry machine on top of wood doesn't seem to be the best idea I've had. I've called upon my in-laws for tile inspiration.

I ordered the lights for the Master Bdrm today. I've been mulling it over since we moved in. The previous owner of the property absconded with most of the fixtures and anything that was cool and not nailed down, well, even those things nailed down. This leaves us with a serious lack of lighting in the house. Today, I added these two to the collection:

Now, I am off to cook diner. You have no idea how exciting this is. I have a kitchen again - small but mighty.

Moved In

2009-11-16T21:20:00.000-08:00

We are officially moved into the cottage in back. We are unpacked and only have a few minor things to do before it is home sweet home for the next 6 months to a year. It didn't come too soon as we aren't very far ahead of the plumber and need to begin demoing in earnest. I'll post photos of our new digs once the pictures are hung by the bedside with care.

Our sewer is legal! We ended up having to

replace the whole thing, the portion that was not clay either leaked or was 3" rather than the required 4". Paul Croxton and his team did a great job and they didn't even mind me taking pictures of them digging in the mud. E and I too took our turns ditch digging but the camera didn't come anywhere close to that activity.

Today the gas fireplace insert went in without a hitch. The plumber ran the gas line and E installed the electrical for the blower. We are already much happier with this one that with the one in our previous house. For starters, the insert is flush with the front of the fireplace. E will make a nice metal surround, designed by me of course. It is a bit funny to me that we moved out of the MHouse (where there was no heat) into the cottage that is a bit chilly (on a concrete slab) only to install a nice heating unit the day after our big move. Ha-ha. (ha ha) sigh. Oh well. It will be there for us when we move back in.

We did begin the dirty-dirty demo on the master bath today. It is amazing how back breaking and time consuming demo can be. I successfully mastered the art of removing a sink and toilet. The door trim has been salvaged and I was able to remove a large portion of the dry wall myself but called in the special forces for the high up areas. E took over from there while I took to hauling out debris and started removing the tile. The pièce de résistance was getting the horrid fiberglass tub/shower unit out of there. E charged at it with a hammer, a crow bar then the Sawzall. The dividing wall and door is also out turning the two black boxes into one continuous room.

BEFORE

AFTER

I made a few more purchases today. I've been eyeing these for months now and just stumbled across a 20% off sale just pushing me over the edge from thinking to acting. Plus we are at the point where we need the products in order to continue the project.

Inset Medicine Cabinet for MstrBth

Vanity for MstrBth

The fixtures are all picked out and I'm getting ready to order those as well but I have to figure out the whole "which valve goes with which trim" thing first. This is what we're aiming for: Kohler Bancroft.

Faster Go Demo

2009-11-09T22:15:00.000-08:00

"What a whirlwind of a weekend", typed K at 8 am fully intending to post something before starting for the day. It is now 10:30 pm and E is still working on plumbing. I however have hit a wall and am lounging on the air-mattress.

The foundation work commenced at 9 am this morning. The team jack hammered up half the driveway. We've added to our moat, intending to forgo the traditional fence. Note the strategically placed bridge in the background allowing safe passage over the sewage trench.

I am patiently waiting for city work permits to come through for the MHouse plumbing/ electrical/ kitchen/ bath. It has been quite a process and I'm sure it will continue to be so.

In the meantime the Cottage is moving right along. We have power, and organization! The electricity was upgraded from a 30amp romex cable running in a non-water tight conduit under ground to a 60amp 6-gauge wire laid to code. I managed to salvage a light for the eating area: aka cleaned off 40yrs of grime.

The Cottage bathroom is close to completion. We have tile; I'm not a fan of the non-sanded grout after my experience setting the floor and baseboard. We have textured and painted walls, sconces, a tub yet to be plumbed and a plumbed toilet.

The kitchenette is installed and fully functional as well. As E put it, "The sink doesn't even leak." I'll post pictures later.

The MHouse experienced its first bout of true demo this weekend. Some of the kitchen cabinets came out and were re-purposed in the garage. My father in-law helped with the transformation. Welcome to command central:

E started on demoing the guest bathroom last night while I was at an audition. In the rubble, we found some of the previous renters' belongings. Since we live right next door to them we were able to get them back to their rightful owner. I got the feeling that these particular items weren't exactly missed.

Please note the child's pink toothbrush in the center. Above it and to the left, laying perpendicular you can just make out another toothbrush. Below the pink one you'll see the man's black comb. If only were were as fortunate as one of our friends to find $60,000 worth of gold stashed away in the wall when demoing. There is still time. We have until Friday to complete demo of both baths and the kitchen. Demo a go-go!

Tile

2009-11-04T17:48:00.001-08:00

I was wrong. I thought I loved tiling. It seems that what I liked was when someone else cut the tile and I got to play with it making it look pretty. Today I began to tackle the floor tile in the GHouse bathroom. It went something like this: (Step 1) Clear out room, sweep, vacuum, sweep, vacuum, spray with chemicals, let sit, wipe off. (Step 2) Open new tile cutter, find directions, put together, look up on internet info missing from directions, call E frustrated. (Step 3) Lay out teeny-tiny tiles on floor, try to get lines straight, re-lay out teeny-tiny tiles on floor, try to get lines straight, give up on getting lines straight start to cut. (Step 4) Cut, tiny tiles don't cut so well on gigantic saw, cut, lay, cut, now measure. (Step 5) Call E frustrated again. (Step 6) Deal with it, measure, cut, measure, cut. (Step 7) Call it a night without laying a single tile.

In other news, after 3 trips to the permit office I got all the papers filled out in good order and submitted the permits for the bath/kitchen/general electric/plumbing/windows. Now I wait and cross my fingers that work can begin on Monday as planned.

I ordered a gas fireplace insert today as well. That will go in next Thursday if everything goes as planned which means I'm golden if two weeks go by before it is in. This is the current state of affairs. A bit sooty and dulled out.

It seems that along with installing an insert, I have some tile/concrete restoration to take care of. The three tiles embedded in the facade are really quite lovely, and valuable. Of course, they need a little love too. I only hope I can get them to look half this pretty:

OK. I admit it. I love tile, still.

Looking up

2009-10-27T19:17:00.000-07:00

The GHouse, or now called the Cottage by the plumbers (snort), is starting to look not only livable but really darned cute. I can remember dreaming of finding a little "carriage house" to rent while in school. I'm looking forward to moving in for a bit while we work on the MHouse. I don't think we'll have any trouble finding a quiet student to rent the place eventually. The plan is to price it a bit under market so that we can be a bit more selective in our tenant. Mostly I am looking forward to living in a clean place that smells good with a functional kitchen and a bathroom where nothing is falling apart or tipping over. I can see the light.

We finished installing the flooring today. It took us two good solid days of labor to lay the 6mil vapor barrier, lay another 'quiet underlay vapor barrier' the install the floor. We went with a floating floor and ended up having to glue all the joints. That was the most time consuming part - aside from the self leveling concrete and grinding. Getting the first wall flush and shimmed up right took quite a while too but was worth the effort since the last row ended up perfectly straight! It seems that the two opposing walls are indeed parallel. Not to mention that the two hired hands were bragging about our work on the floor to our real estate agent and he called and will be stopping by tomorrow.

The tub was delivered today and it looks good. We also met with the sewer lateral gentleman and his bit came in way under budget but that's o.k., we more than made up for it with the rest of the plumbing bid.

MHouse news: The plumbers, sewer lateral, foundation/structural dude + crew are starting Nov. 9. We have a tentative start date for the roofer the following Monday. We ordered our kitchen sink and faucet as well. Once again, I'm feeling a bit odd about my excitement for a kitchen faucet since the major selling point (aside from appearance) was how easy it would make cleaning up the sink. Do you see the wonderful pull down sprayer faucet with three different spray functions like aerated stream and power spray!? Sigh. At least I wasn't the one (E) totally in love with the soap dispenser.

As for tomorrow I will be M.I.A. I have an audition in the city for a Young Artist Program. It will be a nice change of pace. I'm feeling like one lean-mean-general-contractor/opera-singing-machine.

Yippie Skippie

2009-10-24T20:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday started out wonderfully. We received our tub filler for the GHouse and it is prettier than in the picture. Our washer and dryer do indeed work! I piked up some more Mrs Meyer*s (no I am not sponsored by them, but should be). And for the first time since moving here, we used something that worked 100% without a glitch and made the house smell delicious! I also, scored an audition with Central City Opera YAP. Then some other good stuff I can't remember. Then the craziness began. Erik totaled 3 trips to the Depot, one of them included a cashier and a manager refusing to sell him two sticks of crown moulding because they were marked "contractor pack" and thus couldn't be sold separately, even though they were clearly the only two around, available, and unattached to a 10-pack. I'm not bitter.

The other trip to the Depot that I was a part of is a bit of a blur to be quite frank. I think the

third trip resulted in several bags of self leveling concrete. Speaking of which, I believe we have the GHouse floor adequately leveled so that we can start to install the flooring tomorrow!

Today was pure fun. My gift card from Lowe's showed up and we went shopping. The loot:

FUN STUFF -

Pedestal Sink

Faucet

Shower/Tub Faucet

NOT SO FUN STUFF-

Three thermostats for the heating system

Smoke Detector

We met with and hired the plumber this morning, his crew will start in several weeks, giving us almost enough time to get our act together by demoing both baths and the kitchen, getting permits, ordering all of the required parts/fixtures/appliances/sinks/etc.

Triumph

2009-10-22T17:34:00.000-07:00

Another e-bay triumph! I'll save you from the nail biting details and simply present to you our completely and utterly non-necessary but oh-so-lovely EXTENSION MIRROR:

This beauty retails for $249 on RestorationHardware.com. Not to fear budget minded followers, I scooped this baby up for roughly 80% off. It is "new in box" I might add.

Other successes today have been harder to come by. Our trusty helpers that are working on the GHouse had a 50% successful day. The crown moulding defeated one of them with a staggering blow to the ego. In 3 hours he successfully put up one 4' section. E and I will be putting up the rest of the crown this evening as their hourly labor rate just shot through the roof with that one. I'll let you know if we are likewise defeated or if we have just a smidgen more success having put up crown in our last old house.

The range for the GHouse was delivered and they hauled away the range from the MHouse (for free). I'm missing a working cook-top already but seeing as how the oven didn't work, it had to go eventually.

And how could I forget the most important news of the day -I was sent on a mission to purchase a chop saw and ended up returning with Mrs. Meyer*s Cleaning products instead. I blame my upbringing. I couldn't resist. I'm hooked. I would have brought home the laundry detergent and dish washing liquid as well but alas, our washer and dryer are non-functional and we are short one dishwasher. In my defense, it is the best smelling thing in the house.

What was that?

2009-10-22T11:55:00.000-07:00

E: Did you see that?

K: Holy!

E: Was that really a raccoon?

K: I think so, and it just went under our house. Just how big do you think it is?

E: Big.

K: Is it as big as a small Labrador?

E: No.

K: Is it as big as a bull dog?

E: Maybe.

K: I think it is the biggest raccoon I've ever seen! It had to be a 30lb coon!

Further research reveals:

"Adult raccoons may be anywhere from 24 to 40 inches in length (including 8-12 inches for tail) and weigh 14 to 40 pounds depending upon locale (larger raccoons in the north) and sex (males are larger than females). Average is about 3 feet and 25-30 pounds. Captive raccoons can weigh considerably more than their wild neighbors and they have a tendency to obesity."

More Rain

2009-10-19T15:10:00.001-07:00

Today has felt largely unproductive. We have a trench in the back yard gathering rain water where we should have plumbing for the GHouse. We made the last minute decision to move the kitchenette around a bit and with it the plumbing for the sink. By paying a little more upfront we ended up saving ourselves bigger bucks later on as when the trench was dug, we discovered the pipe was leaking 2' under the foundation possibly adding to the slightly cracked/skewed concrete pad. Not much else happened in the way of physical labor. We shopped some more - drywall/self leveling concrete, electrical wire, plumbing - you get the picture. Over the last several days we have ordered the following for the bathtub and kitchenette (plus a rectangular curtain rod for the tub not shown below):

We scored some pretty sweet deals. The fridge was a closeout in stock for 30% off and the tub faucet/shower was another e-bay find which E plans to modify by building a wall mount for the shower handle.

In other news, the walls are painted! We have falsies for window casings that look pretty darned cute if I do say so myself, just don't squeeze and they look real.

Other than that, I'm meeting with the window installer to measure for our new windows this afternoon and I'm measuring for cellular shades in the GHouse once the rain stops. I'll also be sending off a signed contract to the roofer and E and I are gathering more info in order to decide on plumbing bids. Plus, the cat bite is healing up quite well. I haven't seen the cat around since "the incident" but hope I'll see his HEALTHY mug around to stop the rumors of rabies from swirling about.*

* Don't worry mom, I don't have rabies, as I said, a filthy-filthy rumor.

Cat Scratch Fever

2009-10-14T18:31:00.000-07:00

It was a dark and stormy night. The dog was nestled on the air-mattress next to me, the cat was prowling the house and E was out of town. The rain was gently tapping on the window, then blowing against the window with gales of 40mph, then horizontal sheets of water were thrust directly through the window and door and onto the bedroom floor while gently, no, violently spraying my face with cascades of water. Well, it isn't too far from the truth.

The Neighbors were terrific, lending me a huge bag of beach towels to stop the water from infiltrating the house. Here I was, all worried about leaks in the roof. I had buckets, pots and pans all ready to go. I didn't expect to be wrenching the door open with a hammer the following day with visible veins of water in the wood.

That isn't even the fun part. The best was when the tiger cat presumably fed and left by the previous owner yowled from 3am-10am when I lured it out from under the house with food. The animal shelter/animal control didn't have any units available due to the vast quantities of rain that landed in my room the previous night and was still seeping in. They suggested luring it into a box and bringing it into the shelter. Thus it began. The cat came, purred, rubbed, licked, then BIT. It latched it's komodo dragon of a mouth onto my hand. To the ER I went, thankfully I had my father-in-law's automatic truck. The sparkle in the sky part about this story is that the ER is awesome. The wait time was nil (I'm sure a blood soaked paper towel helped) and of all the ERs I've known before, and there have been many, this was the best.

Now I could go on about how the parking garage only accepted cash/check and I of course left the house thinking "I better make sure I have my check book at more than $5 in cash on me". I could tell you that the hospital's ATM was broken and I was directed down the street which I dutifully started walking to in the pouring rain. I also realized after 6 blocks it was crazy and went back, tried asking the parking lot attendant to let me out, hold onto a credit card, and I'd be back with cash. Nope. I could then tell you how I then walked in the rain again to another 'closer' place to get cash. You see, I could tell you that, but that would have nothing to do with the theme of this blog, but if I did, it would be extremely therapeutic.

Back at the ranch the rain continued to come down and towels continued to get soaked. In the past 48hrs I've learned:

The roof doesn't leak

The windows/doors leak

The clothes dryer doesn't work

The oven doesn't work

The fire alarm Does work.

And on a last note, I withheld pictures pertaining to today's post owing to the fact that I am way too tempted to take a picture of the puncture, blood, and puss on my hand. Instead, meet Betsy the neighbor:

No -> Go Motivation

2009-10-12T14:06:00.000-07:00

It is cold. The dog and cat are huddled around the space heater in the master bedroom and I can't quite get it together enough to go out and buy the paint for the back house and start painting.

The water heater was installed in the GHouse this morning. I spent my time running errands and going to the Depot.

A final decision has been reached on the great tub/shower debate of the past few weeks. And the winner is:

The cast iron clawfoot tub is a 54" Randolph Morris Near Perfect unit with chrome feet. I was lucky enough to see a 48" version of a RM slightly blemished model in a store recently. There was nary a nick or a scratch to be seen. At -$200 to -$500 the going price for a new one and only +$100 more than the elusive vintage/used models, I opted for the shiny new version delivered free of charge to the front door. Plus, we don't have to dig up concrete and re-plumb!

I still have the plumbing fixtures to pick out and order but I've found a few good deals on shower units that I'll run by E when he gets back from his exotic trip to Newark, NJ.

Now that I'm typing away I guess I have made a bit more progress than I thought when starting this post. My mom-in-law and I picked out the cellular shade colors for the GHouse and MHouse yesterday. I've narrowed it down to three possible models for the gas-insert fireplace in the living-room. To top it all off, I won a pair of Restoration Hardware lights on ebay for the master bedroom for the awesome price of $90 total (retail $249ea/on sale now for $125ea).

Workin' it

2009-10-08T16:57:00.000-07:00

Things got done today. 'DNA Chimney' came by and made the fire box structurally sound. They added metal flashing to the top and buttoned it up tight against moisture. Our two hired guns worked on insulating the wall in the GHouse and added the first coat of top coat to the new drywall. There's a door for the closet as well.

I spent my day learning a thing or two about drywall and then the other 4 hours were spent priming the siding on the house. Yesterday was a rip roarin' good time with the caulk gun. I somewhat enjoyed it. I've honed my skills for when it comes time to caulk the tub in the MHouse, the new shower in the MasterBath, the GHouse Bath/Shower and the backsplash in the MHouse kitchen. It is hitting me right now just how much tiling I have ahead of me. This may influence some of the designs I choose. The last thing I want is to be certified nutty based on weeks on end laying and grouting 3x6 subway tile - as pretty as it is.

There are some design decisions that are pending. Here is the kitchen spread for the GHouse so far:

I'm deciding on flooring and paint. I think we'll be able to easily install engineered wood on the concrete slab. I'm getting some bids from the pros on Monday. The two floors in the running are as follows:

Paint colors I'm looking at. I'm thinking about the first three as an accent wall behind the kitchenette and either Dolphin Fin or Hazelnut Cream for all the other walls (minus the bathroom):

The bathroom tub/shower situation is still a situation. The space is still too small (4'11) for a standard tub and the plumbing is still sitting in a bed of concrete and ready for a claw-foot tub. This avenue although awesome and cute looks to be pretty expensive. I've been toying with the idea of custom building a mortar bed for a tile shower and re-routing the plumbing up the wall. To be continued...

I'm a Winner

2009-10-06T14:21:00.000-07:00

I'm a winner. Really. I won a $500 gift card to Lowes because of the San Diego kitchen paint remodel that I did! Looking at these pictures makes me miss having a kitchen. Actually, looking at our decrepit kitchen here at the new house makes me miss having a kitchen.

The pieces for the guest house kitchen continue to pile up in the dining room but there is hope on the horizon. We hired two general construction/electrician guys that our real estate agent

recommended. They finished the siding project and are going to

frame out the garage wall/closet tomorrow. They are great with

letting me watch, help and learn. I got to fire a concrete gun with a 22-caliber blank for the base of the new wall in the guest house. They laughed when I ran into the house to get ear plugs but these ears are worth "some" money!

Yesterday was a research and gather day. We looked at and decided on a gas fireplace insert, decided on windows, went to a

salvage yard for granite (to be repeated several more times), I

found a lumber yard for birch 1"x12" for kitchen shelving and researched stainless shelf brackets for the GHouse, went to a lamp store for GHouse bathroom sconces and decided on master bedroom lighting as we're sick of squinting at the empty electrical boxes in the cottage cheese ceiling when we could be looking at each other.

Tomorrow I caulk, prime and learn more about wall framing. Really, I'm excited! It is a way better job than trying to pry the old walls of granny curtains down in the MHouse (Which was today's project). I can guarantee that in the 50+ years they were up they were never washed - EVER!

Belated Guest Blog

2009-10-04T13:43:00.001-07:00

I was asked to guest blog on Friday but I've been very, very busy. Sometimes I just like to do my own thing. So far I like the house. It smells funny in the kitchen - I think an old dog liked to pee on the floor by the doors a lot. The big bedroom is sunny all day long and is a great place to take naps. My days have been occupied monitoring the activity around the house. I like to monitor.

Highlights of the past week include:

1. herding Stan the cat back into the house when he got out - he really should just do as I say,

2. going on a walk with the new neighbors - one growls at me a lot and the other just runs away but I like them,

3. inspecting the new kitchen cabinets brought home for the guest house.

The best thing ever happened today when the neighbor guy made me a new window to look through. The small neighbors still growl and run but I am beyond happy!

Kept it simple

2009-10-01T19:39:00.000-07:00

We're working on the guest house. The plan is to move into it in two weeks time so that when the major work begins on the main house we'll have a bit of a sanctuary. Bids are coming in from foundation, structural repair folks and plumbers.

Today U, my father in-law, and I spent an hour in the Depot gathering materials to frame a wall and closet in the guest house. U remove the rotted plywood on the exterior of the guest house and we replaced it with non-rotted wood. It was a fun feeling to put something new on the property today as everything up until now has been "crappen" removal.

If you would notice in the image above, a tiny PINK rectangle in the lower right corner shows the previous color of the building. At least the previous owner, whom I am assuming re-painted it, got one thing right.

Tomorrow is Friday and the first of our guest blogs (I just thought of that).

Rats Take II & Danger Demo

2009-09-30T21:44:00.001-07:00

Yesterday = Rats. The absolutely worst job E has ever done. It wasn't a picnic for me either. The bright side is that I will no longer look at a pint sized pile of rat poo and shriek. No, not me. I am an official member of the 3-gallon club. The 3-gallons was just what the world's most abused vacuum cleaner picked up. The rest was either embedded in the insulation as it was tossed down from the attic or rained down upon me as I scrambled to pick up the insulation. The "ha-ha" funny was that when E finally descended from the rat den he asked what all the screeching was about. Mmmm. You'll never guess what song was stuck in his head either... "It's raining (poo)". Sigh. The process took all day. E suited up in a full body suit, respirator, goggles and bike helmet. He sprayed a bleach/water solution on all the attic surfaces. He used a shop vac with a long extension taped to a pole to vacuum up most of the poo on the surface. He then jimmied a hoe onto a pole and my ice-scraper onto another pole. He used these to separate the stapled down insulation from the bottom and then hoed the insulation to the attic access hole of doom. I, likewise suited up (sans bike helmet) and piled the insulation into drawstring bags. Guess what ma, I even found a dead rat embedded in the insulation! It wasn't a pretty death either. E then took another pass with the vacuum and voila!

Yesterday we also finished demoing the decks with a hand from a laborer, loaded the big dumpster, E's dad U sanded the carpet glue off the concrete slab and took apart a free standing closet.

Today consisted of danger demo. The laborer and I were left to our own devices. I opened up the drywall around the back house kitchen sink, using a sawzall - not the dangerous part. The laborer dude, henceforth known as dude, did stuff and I did more stuff. Then the fun began, when dude couldn't work the circular saw, dude attempted to cut off rotted siding using the sawzall. NO BAD. Saw blade was a wiggling, jagged lines were being formed on the building's surface. I had mental flashes of a saw gone wild. That was when I decided it would be a good idea to set him to demoing a chimney on the main house, cuz I'm smart. Well, it's done and the end result is that no one was hurt and we saved $1000.

Tomorrow I'm looking forward to working with U the father-in-law.

Rats Take I

2009-09-28T19:48:00.000-07:00

K&E: Wait for dumpster to be delivered at 10am, meet with craigslist folk for spa removal.

K: Back house cabinet/counter removal (learned rats like to nest below cabinets)

E: Back house bathroom demo (learned to flush toilet before removing toilet).

K&E: "Calmly" wait for dumpster to be delivered at 1pm, meet with more craigslist folk for lumber.

K: Back porch demo top

E: Go "lumberjack" on the redwoods and 3 large trees in side yard.

K: Meet with plumber.

K&E: "Not so calmly" wait for dumpster to be delivered at 3pm

E: Cut trees into logs for more craigslist folk.

K&E: Get really hungry and dumpster arrives at 4:30pm

K: Retrieve piece of rat poo from small dog's mouth.

K&E: Discuss removal of rat infested insulation in Back House attic. Chicken out and go eat dinner.

It Begins

2009-09-27T21:18:00.001-07:00

The last few days have been filled with documenting the current state of the house and yard work. I never thought yard work would be the first thing we'd tackle but it seems it is the first item to take care of when you have rats. Yes, large, juicy, squirrel sized rats. E is counting on the small dachshund to catch a few - I'd prefer if they just left. The yard work on the other hand has gone a long way to make good neighbors. I'm sure we'll hear some great stories in the near future.

This weekend my in-laws came armed with a chain saw, multiple pruning sheers and a shovel and a few saws. We dug out black berry bushes and they took out a dead tree,

two trees in the front that were right up next to the house. The bonus discovery was that we have a pear tree that produces good sized fruit.

I managed to transfer most of the junk from the yard onto the driveway where we'll load it up tomorrow when the dumpster arrives. The list of yard trash includes but is not limited to the following: mud engorged teddy bear, propane tank, gas can, 5 broken chairs, computer printer, table, piles of cigaret butts, random household hardware, a sink, a pallet of fire wood (craigslisted), a spa (craigslisted), 7 - 5 gallon buckets of half used spackel, 23 gallons of paint/stain/unknowns, a trash can full of expired canned goods, 2 boxes of hazardous waste, a half gallon of black pickle relish, Christmas ornaments and decorations, broken glass, more mud and mold engorged fabric / pet beds / heating pads / inflatable mattresses. Pretty much you name it, I probably found it.

The kitchen cabinets were filled with expired half used food and the fridge is 'to be duct taped shut'. When showing a few friends around this evening we discovered that the awful smell in the kitchen was from a previous dog urinating on the exposed subfloor - yum. Go-go gadget kitchen remodel.

Cash for Clunkers

2009-09-22T16:47:00.000-07:00

It is official - we are the proud owners of a bouncing bundle of joy. The 1,392sqft renovation challenge course is all set and bids are underway. Of course it wouldn't be much fun unless we were trying to tackle most of it ourselves. I have dubbed myself General Contractor and I am subcontracting the electrical, HVAC and finish carpentry to the husband (henceforth known as E aka e-man).

I say "bouncing bundle of joy" because the lot - as lovely and full of furniture, household combustibles, rats and plagues as it is - lies close to a fault. The foundation is the first order of business and here's hoping that the next Big One doesn't decide to show up until after everything is reinforced and seismically retrofitted.

Of course there is joy in the new house as well. There are some beautiful details that need a little love and elbow grease to bring to life. My favorites are the inlaid hardwood floors and the fireplace with three Claycraft tiles. E-man personally loves the utility closet and has been drooling over websites depicting lurid sketches of solar water/radiant heating systems.

A note to the reader: The provided sketch was created by an imaginative artist on the mls listing for the property. Photographic images of the 'actual' property are forthcoming.