Plants vs. Zombies

In this story, the plants are...plants, and the zombies are us. (Zombies R Us? Special discount on braaaaains...)

Ahem. 

Mired as we have been in the onslaught of family medical drama (thankfully mostly resolved), the craziness of work (not at all resolved), and a sudden spring cold that's put us out for almost two weeks (working on resolution, dammit), I have been a bad blogger. I have not been as bad a home improver, but it's been close. 

We had a few sunny days in March and April that kicked my spring fever (not the congestive kind) into high gear. By the time we'd gotten the floors mostly done and actually moved in last year, we'd missed the planting window, and I didn't get the garden I've coveted. This year, I'm NOT missing out on fresh tomatoes. 

Oh yes, by August we will be swimming in three different varieties of heirloom tomato sauce. 

Sunflowers gingerly peeking out of the dirt.

I was having issues with germination until I bought a heating pad (yes, I am that person) and within 24 hours, the sprouts fairly leaped out of the dirt. Best ridiculous purchase ever. 

Carefully exposing my baby tomatoes to the harsh elements.

Oh yes. Amid concerns that the tomato seeds I planted wouldn't properly germinate, I overplanted, and every. single. seed appears to have germinated. And grown. We are overrun with tomato babies.

We acquired several loads of free bricks and concrete chunks from Craigslist, and proceeded to dig up the front half of the yard. Some people struggle to have a lush, verdant lawn. We want no lawn at all, and we have the thickest, most densely-rooted carpet of grass in the entire world. Digging up the sod has been a workout. But it's for a good cause, right? Tomatoes!

Garden beds all staked out.

It turns out that a yard of good potting soil is just about the big truck's weight limit. Our neighbor recommended this planting mix, and so far, we haven't been disappointed.

Herb starts! And geraniums, because why not. 

Filled with dirt, the garden beds look less like graves, but Jesse is still referring to them as "the cairns". Come Halloween, I may put skeletons in them. 

It's just now getting warm enough that I've planted some of my starts, but so far, I love how the gardens are turning out. 

Also, if anyone wants a tomato start, let me know. I have way too many. (So many tomatoes!)

In a related project, I am subject to occasional lapses into obsessiveness, so all the coverage about California running out of water has really launched me into freakout mode. I was already planning on building some sort of rainwater harvesting facilities because I'd like to get the water bill as low as possible, and I'd love to augment it with something that falls out of the sky for free 80% of the year. 

So. Rain barrels. I scored six 55-gallon barrels off Craigslist (where else) for $5 a piece, which is a steal in Portland, since rainwater harvesting is very much en vogue, and food-grade barrels can often fetch a premium, even in the classifieds. Mine previously held coconut and canola oil. (Like, a lot of coconut and canola oil. I hefted one of them up and promptly got the dregs all over my shirt. There's really nothing more unsettling than being drenched in lukewarm oil.)

Since a full barrel of water weighs almost 500 lbs, I had to do make sure my barrel tower would be robust enough to handle the weight. 

I'm still wrestling with the connection between the gutters themselves and the barrels, since our gutters are a non-standard size (go figure) and I'm having to get very creative about piping. Home Depot doesn't stock 2.5" diameter pipes (such as our downspout), nor do they stock connectors. The internet would like $12 for a single PVC connector, and I would need at least two. My current approach is to investigate, shall we say, alternate hosing:

This is a 2.5" diameter 10 ft long Shop Vac hose. It's on its way.

If the hose doesn't work out, I've at least gained a spare Shop Vac hose which might work well in the garage dust-collection system I haven't yet built. It's not quite in the budget to replace the gutters at this point, but it might become necessary. 

Although realistically, we're going to have to deal with this issue this summer:

That's a starling nest in the woodpecker hole in our siding. On the one hand, I love baby birds, and I'm so excited that these babies have finally hatched, and that their insistent shrilling is driving the cats insane. On the other hand...there are birds. In our siding. So as soon as the babies fledge, we'd probably better replace the siding. (And the windows. And the back deck. And the garage roof. And the plumbing. It never ends.)

In the meantime, it's spring and my garden is growing. What could be better? 

Giving Thanks

One of my New Year's resolution for 2015 is to set up a regular blogging schedule and stick to it. Fortunately for me, it's still 2014, and I can therefore be forgiven for not posting often. 

I feel like I say this every time, but holy cowcats, we've been busy. 

When was the last time I posted? Almost a month ago. WELL THEN. 

So, first of all, our very beloved friends Faith and Janet got married - they've been together 27 years, it's definitely time they tied the knot - and it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. Their fantastic son Riley officiated, and it was an epic amount of perfect. Guh. 

THEN it was suddenly Thanksgiving, and we HOSTED, and aside from flooding the kitchen with two gallons of turkey brine* and then almost setting the table on fire** it turned out pretty much perfect. 

Mom, Dad, Grandma and Grandpa arrived much earlier than I was expecting, and then Mom and Grandma took over the kitchen, so despite being the supposed host, I really didn't have to do much beside stand around and look good. (Well, sort of good. I'd carefully curled my hair earlier in the day and then promptly flattened my fancy 'do with my rain hood during a last-minute coffee run. EW.)

The turkey, despite having been abruptly de-brined* and then flash-cooked - wow, electric roasters take SO MUCH LESS TIME than ovens! - was delicious. Especially when carved up by Incredible Builder Dad.

Does that bird look done? Yes, yes it does. 

Jesse and I managed to get the house into some semblance of a reasonable living space, which included my last-minute projects: the window seat in the kitchen and reupholstering the extra dining room chairs. 

I only post pictures of chaos like this because Pinterest makes everything look pretty and easy. Nothing is pretty until it's done, and maybe it won't be pretty even then. (I mean, I'm still picking bits of upholstery foam off my sweaters and out of the cats' tails.)

Ta daaa! Window bench! (Still needs trim. Snd paint. And curtains. Martha Stewart, avert your gaze.)

I would like to point out that only one of these projects was hard. The chairs were so easy - just unscrew the seat, wrap the new fabric around and staple into place. In fact, I did all four chairs while also deep-frying an experimental batch of hush puppies for our office chili contest. All things considered, the hush puppies were the more difficult (if markedly more delicious). 

It was kind of strange to see our place all dressed up for the holiday. I randomly threw together a bunch of decorations I'd already had on hand, and I think it turned out really well.

 

And I made a chandelier-thing! Version 1.0 was held up with those temporary peel-and-stick command hooks, two of which fell down the next day and the additional four of which took the paint right off the ceiling. Version 2.0 is held up with actual, official hooks. We'll see if I can handle dusting it. (haha, like I dust...)

Aww, the living room almost looks finished. 

We even turned on our cheesy fake fireplace. 

And then we feasted!

This photo was taken immediately after the leaf incident** that very narrowly ended up with the table not on fire. 

Predictably, Sass spent the entire day hiding upstairs, but Pecan managed to charm pets and table scraps out of almost everyone.
  

It's been a very material-oriented year, necessarily so with the house purchase, because materials are required for remodeling, and remodeling itself is a very appearance-oriented activity. It's easy to get caught up in the swirl of decision-making, and with Pinterest available 24/7, it's even easier to feel inadequate about design choices I've made or the amount of money I make. 

Above everything else, I am incredibly grateful to have a roof over our heads, and to have enough space to host the ones I love. I am grateful to be building a home with the man I love, and I am constantly humbled by his love and support of me and my occasionally harebrained ideas. I'm grateful to be in a financial position that allows us to transform a blank slate into a beautiful home, and I'm grateful for the patience of my friends and family who have to hear my endless rambling about my latest obsession project. I am incredibly lucky, and I am grateful for all of it.

****


Once the family had dispersed, it was time to spend the rest of the long weekend trying to finish Dragon Age: Origins because Inquisition came out last week and aaaaalll my coworkers are playing it decorating for Christmas! Which naturally meant buying a ladder, since the only one we have is a rickety four-foot stepladder that I'm okay with but makes Jesse very nervous. So we braved the Black Saturday crowds at Home Depot to come back with a 24-ft extension ladder and what felt like an inadequate amount of lights.

Gung-ho to channel my inner Tim Allen, I rapidly discovered the reason that some people leave their roof lights up all year long: heights are freaking terrifying and the roofline is MUCH higher than it looks from the ground. 

Being the practical human being he is, Jesse drove us back to Home Depot for a stabilizer, which made things fractionally less terrifying. 

Jesse groomed our lawn, and I commenced decking the halls. As Dad pointed out, we're one golden retriever away from suburban bliss. (DON'T TEMPT ME, DAD.)

Also, it started snowing. 

And it was ridiculously cold and windy.

But the end result was worth it. 

Onward to Christmas!

* Let's not talk about this. Suffice to say that if one is brining in a bag, the bag should be sufficiently sealed before trying to stuff it into an already-crowded refrigerator. Words of wisdom, right there. 

**We're definitely not talking about this. 

Doors, Floors, Chores and More!

Okay, first of all, when I decided to start a renovation blog, that decision occurred when we were not actually renovating. Now that we're right in the grimy thick of it, I am exhausted. I don't remember the last meal we've had that wasn't takeout. I don't want to remember the last time I vacuumed the apartment. Finding my USB cord to download photos from my phone? Just...hasn't happened. I told Mom last week I have no idea how she and Dad managed to build a house, work their jobs, and raise two stubborn kids. "That's why it took twenty years," she said. Touche, Mom, touche. 

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....

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. 

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.

During construction I learned two lessons. First of all: kerf. This is the bit of wood that's taken off by the saw. I have always been advised to measure twice and cut once. By midafternoon on Monday, I was ready to scream. I was measuring things four and five times, making the cut, and then finding I was an eighth of an inch off in one direction or another. Apparently, depending on which side of your measurement mark you cut, the kerf can make your piece of wood larger or smaller, leading to bouts of frustrated swearing and mildly alarmed husbands. So. There's that. 

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. 

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!

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!