Coming out of the closet

With the kitchen mostly done, other areas of the house have started to seem in urgent need of assistance. For instance, our bedroom, and in particular, the phenomenal mess that is our closet. 

As you may recall, I fixed the light in August, which was fantastic, but it didn't really help the fact that it's more of a squeeze-in closet than an actual walk-in. Plus, the ceiling is mostly sheets of MDF that are so thin, they almost qualify as wrapping paper. 

Also, the previous occupants left some awkward teenage graffiti:

I realize gang violence is hardly a laughing matter, but I get the feeling that if you're the sort of person who writes "Krip Killer Bloodz" in your closet with sharpie, you're probably not the sort of person who's killing anything larger than spiders on a regular basis. (Just my guess.)

So the closet obviously needs a facelift, and our huge pile of clothes needs an organization strategy. After much mental rearranging with little success, the solution hit me: this is our house, and if I wanted to move a wall, by golly, I can move a wall. 

By moving the wall 36 inches out into the room and rotating the door, I claim valuable floor space (previously reserved for the closet spillover) for actual organization. 

Plus, it wasn't a load-bearing wall, there weren't any mechanicals, and half the drywall from the back side was cracked anyway. 

Things came to a head on a Thursday night. Jesse was out with friends, and I had a crowbar. Only later did I realize that a) moving the bed and removing a wall was perhaps not a brilliant idea on a night when my beloved was likely to come home at least slightly inebriated and b) just because we'd talked about it once or twice didn't mean it had solidified as A Thing That Is Happening. We talk frequently about things (and by we I mean me) and 90% of these things are merely passing fancies. This had suddenly become A Thing. 

Luckily, it all worked out.

On Friday, I took half a day off work and finished demolition. Saturday was supposed to be all about framing, but my original plan to reuse the existing studs was abruptly derailed when all four of them split during removal. Oops. So we had to go acquire more building materials. 

Also, I accidentally found a load of brick. In my defense, it was illegally dumped in the public right-of-way. It was my civic duty to clean it up. If I happen to reuse it, well, that's recycling, right?

Despite the mishaps and distractions, by Sunday I had successfully framed up the new wall, and despite the angle of the picture, it's actually evenly spaced and square. 

By Monday night I had the drywall up and successfully mudded. BUT CAN ANYONE TELL ME WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

Answer: I have four corners coming together. I shouldn't have done that. (What I REALLY shouldn't have done is buy a drywall book at Mr. Plywood two days AFTER finishing the drywall. Research first!)

Because I didn't want to paint right before going to bed (and thus marinating in a lovely cloud of VOCs all night) I had to wait until the following Saturday to paint the walls. And THEN, when I did get the first coat of paint on, my drywall tape promptly absorbed all the moisture and started peeling off. NOT COOL. Cue several hours of frustrated snarling, one phone call to Mom, and several re-mudded seams. 

But it all worked out, and I got the black bedroom wall I've been craving. I'd originally painted half of the bedroom in Metro's Storm Cloud, but much like the Misty I had tried out downstairs, it wasn't so much a gray as a very neutral blue. I still had most of a can of the mismixed Benjamin Moore black I used in the kitchen, and it's exactly what I wanted. 

This is the contents of the closet. It's blurred because...well, it's blurred for no good reason, other than it's a hideous mess and I didn't want to burn your eyes. 

It was unseasonably warm here this weekend. (59 degrees in February???? What is that???) I think Jesse may have even mowed the lawn. 

The ceiling of the closet posed a particular challenge. Part of it was covered with the tongue-and-groove decking that comprised most of the bedroom (our fabulous cabin atmosphere). Part of it was covered in thin MDF sheeting, and part of it was bare insulation. There parts that were bare insulation didn't seem to have any visible rafters, and I certainly wasn't about to go digging through the insulation to find them. The easiest solution was to acquire several 4ft x 8ft MDF beadboard panels from Mr Plywood and put as many nails as possible in the available rafters. It's certainly not perfect, but it works, and there isn't insulation lurking over our heads anymore. (At least, not visibly so.) 

My original goal, once the closet was framed/painted etc, was to make a closet organization system out of metal pipe like this one:

Source: Pinterest

HOWEVER. The thing about Pinterest - stupid, beloved timesuck that it is - is that there are never any price tags, just gorgeous pictures of things that inevitably make my budget look laughably small. I'm quickly learning that the more I like something, the more money it will cost. (I have expensive tastes. Sigh.)

Pipes were definitely one of these. A wooden closet rod? Like, $10 at Home Depot, and in our case, literally free, because the previous owners used them as curtain rods. But I figured since I built the freaking wall myself, I deserved something nice, so I drew up my plans and bought $150 worth of greasy black pipe. (Had I used non-greasy galvanized pipe, it would have been more like $250, but I have paint thinner and dish soap, and the grease washed right off, leaving a cool antique-looking finish.) 

Vacuum up all the drywall dust, slap on two coats of Metro Mountain Snow, add a $9 rug from Ross and some random basement shelves, and voila! We have a walk-in closet!

I am so pleased I can hardly stand it, and Jesse can actually stand, period. 

The other side looks pretty good, too:

Not bad for two weekends' work. (The next ten days will be spent putting the monstrous clothing pile in order. Yikes.) 

In which I see the light at the end of the tunnel

One of my New Year's resolutions was to set a blogging schedule for myself, and so far...oops. Christmas was exceedingly busy with non-home-improvement-related activities, and Jesse thoughtfully gifted me with the new XBox and a game I've been breathlessly waiting to play, so there's been quite a bit more digital adventuring than building. 

HOWEVER. Our kitchen has been a complete disaster since just after Thanksgiving, when I started in on the cabinets. 

Ah yes, the early stages of chaos. I remember it fondly.

Once I got the upper cabinets and the cabinet by the refrigerator built, it was time to paint. Naturally, this meant everything IN the cabinets had to come out, and so far...nothing has been put back. Needless to say, we've been eating a lot of takeout. (But we did find a fantastic new-to-us Thai place and a new Mexican place within walking distance. Good thing none of my resolutions involve dieting.)

Painting has been a rather slow process. I've been using Benjamin Moore's Advance in Super White (which is apparently the color one gets when one asks the guys behind the counter for "white, just white, the whitest white you've got") and it's my first experience using an alkyd paint. It's ridiculously expensive, but worth every penny. It's so low in VOCs that I barely needed to open any windows (awesome, since it was around 15 degrees here for a week or so) and dries to a hard, glossy finish that is much more resistant to scratches than the Metro Mountain Snow I've used everywhere else.

Speaking of cold temperatures, it was well below freezing around New Year's, and the gray cat next door decided he'd rather live with us, and kept trying to sneak into the house whenever anyone opened the door. Since he's not our cat but still a step above being a stray, I made him a fancy warm cat igloo that he has shunned in favor of a pile of paint rags I had in a box on the porch. Cats.

  Sad, empty cat igloo.

 Ungrateful gray cat. I did tape some cardboard over his box of rags to mitigate the wind somewhat.

Last week was the first week I really felt like I'd made any progress. I FINALLY got around to painting the awful beige ceiling and walls. Everything is a clean, crisp white (Metro Mountain Snow) except for the south and west walls, which are a fantastic leathery black I found in at the Powell Paint Center mis-mixed section. 

Once the ceiling was done, I could replace the light fixtures. It warms my heart to see the horrible track lighting and faux-Victorian flushmount sitting out on the back deck, just waiting to be taken to the dump. SO LONG, EIGHTIES MONTSTROSITIES! In their place are two schoolhouse semi-flushmounts I got on sale from Home Depot and spray-painted oil-rubbed bronze. (There were actual oil-rubbed bronze ones there, but they were $50 instead of $22, and the spray paint I like is like $4 a can...yeah, even I can do the math on that one.) I finally got around to spray-painting the pendant light over the sink a glossy black, and it looks so much better. When it was white, it sank into the background of the tile. Not anymore!

I also painted and installed the two salvage cabinet doors I got at the Rebuilding Store ages ago. They look perfect, and make a classy display case for all my milk glass.

Today, I put up trim. It still needs to be painted, but it already feels so much more functional. I love my kitchen! It's starting to look exactly like I'd pictured. 

Still on the docket:

- Patch and paint trim

- Make doors for upper cabinets

- Re-stain and seal lower cabinets

- Strip, stain, seal and laundry room and basement doors

- Paint window bench

- Install hardware

- Install pot rack (but where, that's the question we're still trying to answer)

- Clean like whoa because seriously, there is so much sawdust (also I accidentally knocked a liter of ginger ale off the top of the fridge today, which exploded and turned the floor into a slick of gingery sawdust sludge)

One of these days, we may even cook in the kitchen. In the meantime, I have leftover pineapple fried rice and Dragon Age Inquisition to keep me happy.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We are not inherently religious people - in fact, quite the opposite - but I love Christmas. I don't identify as a Christian, and it's been a dog's age since I set foot in a church, but I am deeply enamored of the cultural and historical significance of the holiday. (Plus I get to redecorate and give presents, and who doesn't love that?)

I'd love to go all out, but we are still largely a construction zone, so there's less mistletoe and more sawdust. But at least we have our tree!

Jesse and I have a longstanding tradition of getting the absolute largest tree that will fit in the space. In the apartment, one had to squeeze around the tree to get to the couch. That suited us just fine. This year is no exception. We have nine-foot ceilings, and I had to saw a good 8 inches off the bottom of the tree to get it upright. And then, we had to run out and buy a bigger tree stand, because it wouldn't fit in our old one. Three stores later, we found a suitably large one at Home Depot, proving once again that even if you don't think Home Depot is the answer, Home Depot is always the answer. 

And then I put 1200 lights on it, and it still has dark spots. (Good thing I had help putting up the lights.)

I also put up a couple of garlands, but that's the extent of our decorating. 

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There are 8 shopping days before Christmas, and while I'm usually way ahead of the game in my holiday preparations, this year I am falling behind. I usually start compiling a gift list in August or so, but I'd gotten completely absorbed in the kitchen remodel, and forgotten about the list until...last week. Thank god for Amazon Prime. So now I have all of my gifts purchased, but not assembled. I really should have done that yesterday on my day off, but the cabinet uppers were a much more exciting pressing project.

It took two days of materials gathering (mostly because I didn't realize I'd bought the wrong sawblade, and thus ended up back at Home Depot, and then I needed lunch, and then we went to the grocery store, etc etc) but after a full day of construction, the cabinet boxes are UP, and MOSTLY STURDY and I LOVE THEM.

Coincidentally, my table saw is perhaps the best $300 I've ever spent. (Thank you, Black Friday.) I could NEVER have gotten these done - not as fast, and certainly not as square - without it. Also, it's incredibly satisfying to suck up seventeen pounds of sawdust with the Shop Vac.

So the boxes are done. I thought maybe I'd get around to priming and painting last night, but that was nixed in favor of eating pizza and playing video games. I did pick up a gallon of Benjamin Moore Advance in Super White, which I'm very excited to use. It's a new formulation of paint known as alkyd - it has a lot of the durable, slow-drying properties of oil-based paints, but it's a water-based latex so it's much easier to clean up - and it's supposed to be excellent for cabinets. Normally I'd use whatever mis-mixed paint I'd gleaned from the clearance section, but since cabinets and kitchen cabinets especially are high-traffic and high-impact, I wasn't about to skimp on coating. We'll see how it turns out.

One roadblock I've been working through is the cabinet door design. In a perfect world, I'd have a single, flush-mount full-length vertical door for each section, with an old-fashioned latch.

via Pinterest

While I could have modified my cabinets this way, I feel like I've pushed the structural envelope of the original cabinets enough just by putting in the uppers. Would they be fine if I cut away some of the horizontal fronts? Probably. Do I feel like risking it? Nope, not really.

So that means I either give up latches or give up full-length doors (since the latches need the doors to be flush), or come up with a third solution. And since I hate compromising, I've been brainstorming like crazy, and I think I've finally found the answer:

Source: Pinterest

It's a little hard to see with this picture, but it looks like the doors are latched to each other (removing the need to be flush). This is totally doable in our kitchen; doors without "latch buddies" will get simple knob handles. 

The other thing I need to decide is which doors get glass fronts. Apparently you can just buy glass panes for $1-$5 a piece at (where else) Home Depot, which blew my mind. There's also a glass-cutting shop just up the road, which could also facilitate window-doors. Making the cabinet doors themselves is no problem - or at least, it won't be if I want them, because there's no way I'm buying custom-made windowed cabinet doors at $100 a pop. I just need to do some hard thinking about whether or not my spices stay organized enough to display. There's also the option of some DIY faux leaded or stained glass, which I'm also considering.

Something like this will suit me just fine:

The kitchen is THIS CLOSE to being done, which is both awesome and daunting. I am salivating at the prospect of well-organized cabinets, but will it be done in time for a massive batch of Christmas gingerbread? We'll see.

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And if Santa is reading this, I really want a living footstool Great Pyrenees for Christmas. (Even though I need another giant furry animal in my life like a moose needs a hat rack...)

Source: Pinterest

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.

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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.