Rather than recap the last two weeks (two? wait, what? when did that happen?) in infinite detail, I will instead give you the glossy highlights. Mostly because even with photos, I'm not sure I could tell you what happened yesterday, much less last weekend.
First, and foremost, has been my big project, the....
First, and foremost, has been my big project, the....
Doors
I have expensive taste. We all know this. I am also very set on getting my way. Combine this with two years' dreaming about the perfect house and almost no budget, you have a recipe for frustration. We need a garage door. (As my sister pointed out, the blue tarp-door-monstrosity - while thus far effective - is not really the armored car of doors.) A cheap aluminum door starts at $800. The lovely carriage doors I want start at $5000 and just go up from there.
We did not buy an aluminum door. Instead, we, erm, liberated a good portion of my dad's power tools (we brought pizza!), and then spent an entire Saturday driving around three counties (yep, count 'em: Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington) collecting building supplies.
Figuring no one knows carriage door hinges like the people who sell horse tack, we first went to Coastal Farm and Ranch to check out their hardware. They had a small selection, but it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. (Neither was I looking for the baby rabbits they were offering. SO FLUFFY. Unfortunately - or fortunately - Gently Practical Guy prevailed. ) Onward to Building Materials Recycling LLC, which is my new favorite store, despite being about a thousand miles away from our house. If we ever need windows or trim or old wooden ladders (yes, yes and yes!) this is definitely the place.
We bought a lot of things, but not as many things as I wanted. Sighhhh.
Sunday, being the traditional day of rest, was spent hanging out with friends and watching them scrub the gunk off our floor. Thanks guys!
Heated construction started bright and early on Memorial Day. In order to make the new doors, I wanted to either salvage the old frame or use it as a template, which meant that when the tarp door monstrosity came down, the garage and its contents were completely unsecured and open to the alley (albeit behind our chain link rolling gate). Even though we weren't really storing anything valuable in the garage, once it was open, I didn't want to leave until we could lock things back up.
When I saw those prices, I'm pretty sure I Hulked out into the Incredible Builder Girl right there in the aisle at Home Depot. As Incredible Builder Girl, I am thoroughly convinced I can do anything, and do it perfectly, for almost no money. (Incredible Builder Girl has some issues with reality. Luckily, she is married to Gently Practical Guy, who specializes in saying, "Are you sure that's a good idea?") We were THIS close to settling on aluminum.
But then Incredible Builder Girl surged back, and remembered the wisdom of Incredible Builder Parents: it's just a stick. It's just several sticks, put together in a specific pattern. And Incredible Builder Girl has an engineering degree, so she knows where the stresses occur on the pattern, and how to mitigate them. And Incredible Builder Girl has been salivating for an opportunity like this for her entire life, a chance to prove she's really worthy of the title.
The inspiration
(source: Pinterest)
The reality
(source: our back yard. Go ahead, be depressed.)
We did not buy an aluminum door. Instead, we, erm, liberated a good portion of my dad's power tools (we brought pizza!), and then spent an entire Saturday driving around three counties (yep, count 'em: Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington) collecting building supplies.
Figuring no one knows carriage door hinges like the people who sell horse tack, we first went to Coastal Farm and Ranch to check out their hardware. They had a small selection, but it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. (Neither was I looking for the baby rabbits they were offering. SO FLUFFY. Unfortunately - or fortunately - Gently Practical Guy prevailed. ) Onward to Building Materials Recycling LLC, which is my new favorite store, despite being about a thousand miles away from our house. If we ever need windows or trim or old wooden ladders (yes, yes and yes!) this is definitely the place.
God, I love a good warehouse.
We bought a lot of things, but not as many things as I wanted. Sighhhh.
Sunday, being the traditional day of rest, was spent hanging out with friends and watching them scrub the gunk off our floor. Thanks guys!
Heated construction started bright and early on Memorial Day. In order to make the new doors, I wanted to either salvage the old frame or use it as a template, which meant that when the tarp door monstrosity came down, the garage and its contents were completely unsecured and open to the alley (albeit behind our chain link rolling gate). Even though we weren't really storing anything valuable in the garage, once it was open, I didn't want to leave until we could lock things back up.
Timberrrrrrr! And good riddance.
This definitely wins the award for Best Use of Spray Foam
Insulation as a Structural Adhesive.
This is my new impact driver. (God, I love my impact driver.)
My lovely framing assistants, Jesse and Faith!
Putting on the plywood backing, and starting to strip the paint from the old windows.
Lesson two: old buildings. We were SO GOOD about making sure the doors were square. We even took apart one of the frames and redid it from scratch when it didn't perfectly meet my L square. Those doors? Not a degree off 90, on any corner. They were PERFECT, and yet every time we held them up against the garage, the frames were flush to the bottom and gapped at the top. The hinges just wouldn't line up. Did it occur to us that the garage was crooked? Nope. Around 7:30 we eloquently and profanely called it a night, and screwed the damn things together and then directly to the garage.
The only way they're getting in is if they have my sawzall. And they can't ever have my sawzall.
Still not ideal in terms of daily storage, but a much more effective burglar deterrent.
Later that week, someone asked us if our indeterminately-aged garage was square itself. Oops. Upon further investigation, it is most definitely not, and neither is the concrete beneath it. Most plansets have "Adjust to field conditions" on them. Our whole house is apparently becoming a field condition.
After another weekend of work, the doors are now up, and even function as doors. There was less swearing, and more sawzall. (I love my sawzall.) We ended up getting new hinges, since the hinges we got at the warehouse, while definitely strong enough, required too large a gap between the door frame and the garage. I even got some of the fancy hardware at Home Depot to spruce it up a bit.
After much scraping and the welcome infusion of a heat gun (I love my heat gun) I finished stripping one of the windows, and got it in place. Yes, it doesn't have any glass. Apparently the temperatures required to boil paint off of wood are also the temperatures at which glass easily shatters when gently touched with a paint scraper. (And let's face it, I'm...not gentle.) We will be adding opaque acrylic later. I'll continue the cedar panels around the the window, but right now, the floors take priority, and the garage will have to wait.
Almost done!
After much scraping and the welcome infusion of a heat gun (I love my heat gun) I finished stripping one of the windows, and got it in place. Yes, it doesn't have any glass. Apparently the temperatures required to boil paint off of wood are also the temperatures at which glass easily shatters when gently touched with a paint scraper. (And let's face it, I'm...not gentle.) We will be adding opaque acrylic later. I'll continue the cedar panels around the the window, but right now, the floors take priority, and the garage will have to wait.
Whew. Now it's on to....
Floors
After letting it marinate in the garage for a couple of weeks - we specialize in avoidance around here - we finally took the carpet, padding and all the, ah, feline-anointed baseboard to the dump. SEVEN HUNDRED POUNDS OF CARPET AND WOOD. And now it's gone. Woo-hoo!
Proof that the carpet really is almost as old as I am. And not in a good way.
Tada dump tada dump tada dump dump dump...
We discovered there is at least one place in this world that smells worse than these carpets. Yikes.
Git 'er dun!
And buh-bye.
Since the west end of the living room was still a little funky - and not in a musical way - we liberally sprinkled baking soda on the subfloor and let it sit for a couple of days - more avoidance, there - and then scrubbed it with vinegar. Remember when I said pulling up the carpet padding was the most disgusting thing I've ever done? I lied. This was gross and wet. Mud, made from twenty-five years of sifted dirt and sloughed-off skin cells. Yecccch.
The cable installation guy didn't even blink at all the white powder coating the floors.
I worry for his health.
Floor goo is icky. That's why we made our friends help clean it up. Thanks, Jonny!
Once the mud was scraped up, things looked much much better. So much better, in fact, that we called our flooring contractor and asked if he could just refinish the wood, instead of replacing it. He's incredibly wary about the whole thing - his previous work seems to have been in high-end condos, so he keeps saying, "You know it won't be perfect, right? It's going to have scratches and dings and stains I can't get out, right? It's not going to be perfect." And we're okay with that. We know it won't be perfect - it will have character. People pay big bucks for character. And at this point, we'll be thrilled just to move in.
There's still a bit of a funk to the room, so I'm liberally dousing the floors with enzymatic cleaner as a final resort. We're pretty sure the cat urine is gone, and any residual odors will go away when the floors are sanded and sealed, but...better safe than sorry. Half of the funk could actually be the kitchen linoleum that's also being torn up, too.
Ahh, the kitchen floors. The previous owner had laid down cheap wood-look laminate over the original 80s linoleum, probably just to spruce things up for the market. Jesse pulled up all the laminate, and it joined the carpet during the dump run. We looked around. None of the building material reclamation places would take anything other than new, unopened boxes of laminate.
So now, we're pulling up the linoleum, and trying to get it done in time to put tile down this weekend. The new wood for the upstairs floors is being delivered next Monday, where it needs to sit for a week acclimating to the house's ambient temperature and humidity, and then our contractor will be back in the following week to install the new flooring and refinish the existing. Our goal is to have the tile done this weekend, so the adhesive and grout can cure before getting stomped on. (We are nothing if not ambitious.)
Since we decided rather abruptly that we wanted the tile done before the wood floors were started, we needed to actually FIND tile. Our requirements:
- Available immediately
- Available in a large quantity, since our kitchen is ~225 sq ft
- A design or pattern that fits the era of the house
- As cheap as possible. Borderline free. Preferably something the store pays us to take.
Originally, we'd been thinking wood, but since we're not redoing the entire downstairs, tile is much much cheaper, and I'd started daydreaming about something like a classy slate-gray herringbone:
Unfortunately, with our timeline (tile must be available immediately), and since all the dedicated tile stores close before I get home from work, our only store option was...Home Depot. And Home Depot does not carry gray slate rectangles as part of its open stock. They did have large gray porcelain rectangles, but they were way too modern for the look I wanted.
In the end, we decided on this:
We are by no stretch of the imagination restoring this house to be historically accurate - we want it to be our home, not a museum - but this tile is still appropriate for a house built in 1923, and plus, it's going to be super cute. Yes, this is what I do now, making baby noises at tile.
Since neither Jesse nor I have ever tiled before, we're enlisting the help of a master tiler: Incredible Builder Mom. When I called to ask her if she'd be willing to help us this weekend, she squealed. God, I love my mother. The last time I heard her make that noise was when I called to tell her we'd gotten engaged. (This gives you an idea of how important renovation is in my family culture.)
So, there's our weekend. Sound like we've been busy? Well, we've also been up to...
Chores
Everyone's continually told us that owning a home keeps you busy. Oh lordy, yes it does. But luckily, we have the most amazing social network to help us. In addition to our out-of-town friends Jonny and January, who stepped in to scrape vinegar and baking soda goo off the floors, we also have a Guardian Lawn Angel:
Janet is fierce about edging. We had no idea. And our new yard represents a vast, untrimmed paradise for the edging-obsessed.
Two weeks ago, our dear friends Faith and Janet showed up and proceeded to beautify our front yard. Tragically, Janet's beloved electric edger ran out of juice, and she was forced to abandon the project halfway through. This past Sunday, we woke up to a frantic text: Can we finish edging your yard???? And by the time we got to the house, our Fairy Yard Mothers were already hard at work. I do not have a picture of them working because Janet was kicking up rocks and dust with the edger, and I decided my time was much better spent working on the garage doors than playing paparazzi.
Meanwhile, earlier in the week we'd discovered that in one of the upstairs bathrooms, the sink was leaking around the drain. (We'd hoped to make it at least a month without any plumbing issues. No such luck.)
Whew. Is that everything? I'm sure I've forgotten something. I'll try to be a little better about posting on a regular basis but...we're constructing. And sometimes that takes precedence to taking pictures and then writing about said construction.
Cheers!
Only the bravest of men vacuums that goop in khaki pants.
Once the mud was scraped up, things looked much much better. So much better, in fact, that we called our flooring contractor and asked if he could just refinish the wood, instead of replacing it. He's incredibly wary about the whole thing - his previous work seems to have been in high-end condos, so he keeps saying, "You know it won't be perfect, right? It's going to have scratches and dings and stains I can't get out, right? It's not going to be perfect." And we're okay with that. We know it won't be perfect - it will have character. People pay big bucks for character. And at this point, we'll be thrilled just to move in.
What you can't see is how it doesn't smell like cat.
There's still a bit of a funk to the room, so I'm liberally dousing the floors with enzymatic cleaner as a final resort. We're pretty sure the cat urine is gone, and any residual odors will go away when the floors are sanded and sealed, but...better safe than sorry. Half of the funk could actually be the kitchen linoleum that's also being torn up, too.
Ahh, the kitchen floors. The previous owner had laid down cheap wood-look laminate over the original 80s linoleum, probably just to spruce things up for the market. Jesse pulled up all the laminate, and it joined the carpet during the dump run. We looked around. None of the building material reclamation places would take anything other than new, unopened boxes of laminate.
How it looked before we took possession.
Jesse taking a well-earned break from scraping.
So now, we're pulling up the linoleum, and trying to get it done in time to put tile down this weekend. The new wood for the upstairs floors is being delivered next Monday, where it needs to sit for a week acclimating to the house's ambient temperature and humidity, and then our contractor will be back in the following week to install the new flooring and refinish the existing. Our goal is to have the tile done this weekend, so the adhesive and grout can cure before getting stomped on. (We are nothing if not ambitious.)
Since we decided rather abruptly that we wanted the tile done before the wood floors were started, we needed to actually FIND tile. Our requirements:
- Available immediately
- Available in a large quantity, since our kitchen is ~225 sq ft
- A design or pattern that fits the era of the house
- As cheap as possible. Borderline free. Preferably something the store pays us to take.
Originally, we'd been thinking wood, but since we're not redoing the entire downstairs, tile is much much cheaper, and I'd started daydreaming about something like a classy slate-gray herringbone:
Guh. So pretty. (Source: Pinterest)
Unfortunately, with our timeline (tile must be available immediately), and since all the dedicated tile stores close before I get home from work, our only store option was...Home Depot. And Home Depot does not carry gray slate rectangles as part of its open stock. They did have large gray porcelain rectangles, but they were way too modern for the look I wanted.
In the end, we decided on this:
Mom recommended we avoid white tile, small tile and mosaics.
Naturally, we went for all three. (Source: Home Depot)
225 sq ft doesn't seem like a lot, until you realize it's 25 boxes of tile.
Then, you become those people asking to buy ALL THE TILE. YES, ALL OF IT.
625 lbs of tile in the back of a truck. Thank the fluffy baby Jesus for trucks.
We are by no stretch of the imagination restoring this house to be historically accurate - we want it to be our home, not a museum - but this tile is still appropriate for a house built in 1923, and plus, it's going to be super cute. Yes, this is what I do now, making baby noises at tile.
Since neither Jesse nor I have ever tiled before, we're enlisting the help of a master tiler: Incredible Builder Mom. When I called to ask her if she'd be willing to help us this weekend, she squealed. God, I love my mother. The last time I heard her make that noise was when I called to tell her we'd gotten engaged. (This gives you an idea of how important renovation is in my family culture.)
So, there's our weekend. Sound like we've been busy? Well, we've also been up to...
Chores
Everyone's continually told us that owning a home keeps you busy. Oh lordy, yes it does. But luckily, we have the most amazing social network to help us. In addition to our out-of-town friends Jonny and January, who stepped in to scrape vinegar and baking soda goo off the floors, we also have a Guardian Lawn Angel:
Is it inappropriate to say that my gay friend is an
absolute expert at making straight lines?
Janet is fierce about edging. We had no idea. And our new yard represents a vast, untrimmed paradise for the edging-obsessed.
Faith, Jesse and I are much less yardwork-inclined.
Two weeks ago, our dear friends Faith and Janet showed up and proceeded to beautify our front yard. Tragically, Janet's beloved electric edger ran out of juice, and she was forced to abandon the project halfway through. This past Sunday, we woke up to a frantic text: Can we finish edging your yard???? And by the time we got to the house, our Fairy Yard Mothers were already hard at work. I do not have a picture of them working because Janet was kicking up rocks and dust with the edger, and I decided my time was much better spent working on the garage doors than playing paparazzi.
We have the tidiest lawn on the block!, and the best friends in the world.
Thanks, my lovelies!
Meanwhile, earlier in the week we'd discovered that in one of the upstairs bathrooms, the sink was leaking around the drain. (We'd hoped to make it at least a month without any plumbing issues. No such luck.)
What's the issue? Well, for starters, the gray pipe was connected to
the black pipe with duct tape (which we promptly removed).
I'm no plumber, but even I know that's not up to code.
So we took a picture of the whole apparatus, drove it to Home Depot, and handed it to the nearest orange apron and said HELP. And the orange apron pointed us in the right direction, and four dollars and change later, we had some parts and a general idea. Jesse did the install, and there was NO MORE LEAKING. Voila!
Think that's all? HA. We are crazy, busy, industrious people. We are also dearly in need of a nap. But there's still...
MORE
But not much more.
We took a break from renovation to see X-Men: Days of Future Past, which was awesome.
Just not as awesome as the Transformers dinosaur in the lobby, though.
Here, we model the latest in home renovation fashion.
I bought a pair of overalls. Jesse is right - they are incredibly comfortable.
(But he's always right.)
Whew. Is that everything? I'm sure I've forgotten something. I'll try to be a little better about posting on a regular basis but...we're constructing. And sometimes that takes precedence to taking pictures and then writing about said construction.
Cheers!
Amazing!!!! I love it and I keep my eyes out for cheap airfare battle tickets to spend a weekend helping to fix up the house. Jonathan and I would love to come back and spend a weekend schlepping things around. And, yes, Jesse is always right.
ReplyDelete