Getting to work...

...on the "new" house... I hope.

http://4squarefunnyfarm.blogspot.com/2014/12/time-flies-when-youre.html

A new life

Last night I got to hang out in the bungalow with its new resident, an old friend of mine. She and her family have moved in and begun making themselves at home.

I was a little afraid it would be weird-- remembering that it's not mine (I mean, it is, but it's not, ya know?), seeing all their stuff in there, arranged differently...

But it wasn't. It was awesome. I had such a good time and loved every minute of seeing the house settling into its new life with a new family.

I still don't understand how people can live in new construction.

A long, long, LONG time coming

The kitchen. This kitchen.

This was the kitchen we bought.

Then it was a big pile of plaster and lathe. And over the years we added and subtracted things. The cabinet doors were falling apart and falling on my head. They weren't usable or safe anymore.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been putting a lovely coat of satin water-based poly on the new doors from RefaceDepot.com.

Then I took our old drawers, sanded the faces, and polyed them with the same finish.

Lower left is original; lower right is sanded; top is one coat of poly.

And today, we put it all together. Be still my heart.

Ok. Yes, there's still painter's tape on the window, and we still have some backsplash work to do. But damn. I think they turned out beautifully.

We also finally, FINALLY, had the last inspection on the insurance settlement from 2008. We may take a while to get where we're going, but we get there eventually.

The big push

This week is really this summer's big push on the house.

We've managed to make a lot of headway, but there is more to do...

Adam put in more of the base shoe. I finished the floors. Actually, I have one or two more coats of poly left to go on the kitchen, but that shouldn't take long. 

I put 3 coats of poly on the kitchen cabinets. And then theses came today. Oooooooh...

They'll get a few coats of poly and maybe some hardware. Haven't decided yet if they need knobs or not. For the drawer fronts, I'm currently just sanding and poly-ing them, but they may need replacing as well on down the line

I spent a good part of Saturday painting trim on the front of the house. I got started on the white/ivory and I think you can already see an improvement. 

I also painted a few more backsplash panels to complete that side of the kitchen. 

Garage roof repair happened today; hopefully garage window repair will happen tomorrow.

We have been very, very busy. 

It's been interesting to fall in love with the house all over again. The renters are moving in things while we finish up, and I thought it might be weird, but I really am enjoying seeing their curtains and furniture and hear their ideas. I truly do think houses have their own lives and it's nice seeing this one getting some new attention from this next phase in its existence. 

Falling in love all over again

I chose one bedroom and the hallway to do first, sort of as a test to make sure the floors weren't going to look horrible with a coat of SealCoat.

Nope. They reminded me why I love shellac, why I love antique heart pine, why I love that house, and why I loved doing this work way back when.

We burned out trying to live in the house and finish the remodel at the same time. And the new house is great. But a lot of it is not our style and we still have boxes and clutter and trash all over the place. The bungalow is cozy and comfortable and warm.

Five more rooms to go and a couple coats of poly. I really do hope the bungalow's next family is able to enjoy it.

Floors all over again...

Well, not ALL over again.

It's been almost 6 1/2 years since we sanded them down to bare wood and refinished them completely.

To rehash a picture from the previous post, you can see where furniture was and wasn't:

And there are going to be areas where things like the feet of the bed wore away the top coat.

I'm going to do one bedroom and the hallway as a test case for adding a coat of SealCoat and more poly since they are not "public" areas of the house and the bedroom will have plenty of furniture, I'm guessing.

Today I swept, vacuumed, and mopped with a mild vinegar solution.

You can already see that when wet, the difference is not so high contrast (obviously this is a bit blotchy with uneven drying, but you get my drift).

There are some trouble spots where grain is raised and a bit of dirt has settled. I'm going to try sanding those areas a bit more than just a scuff.

I'll let this dry overnight and get back to it in the morning. I'm feeling better about it over all.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a chicken to put on the grill...

The Saga of Shellac

We were so hell bent on shellac for the floors. And they really were gorgeous, were they not?

Five years of 5 big dogs and a bunch of clumsy people has taken its toll on them. Nothing horrible, just wear and tear. 

(Can you guess where the bed was?)

As you can see, there's still all that rich heart, but the luster is gone. So since we've worn some of the poly down to shellac, we decided we'd do best to put down a coat of dewaxed SealCoat as a bonding agent (remember, most shellac has wax in it, and poly and wax do not get along). However now, no one carries SealCoat anymore. Like no one. It has to be ordered online. And the online reviews all complain about this, so it's not an Arkansas problem. Adam's response was, "So what the hell are people supposed to do?"

Not do the ridiculous shit we did in the first place.

Regardless, I ordered 6 quarts of it on Amazon. It was supposed to arrive today, but was damaged in shipping, so we'll see when it gets here.

And then I'm thinking three (?) coats of water-based poly. Maybe Varathane's heavy traffic version.

If only we could have just done this like everyone else...

The kitchen I'll never have

All these many months that I've been promising more work on the house... and now that we're under a deadline it's getting done. I'm sad that I won't get to personally enjoy some of these endeavors, but I'm happy that someone will. Or maybe they won't. Who knows.

Today, I worked on moving things and working on the kitchen.

The counter trim was never caulked. You can see the shims in place:

I vacuumed out all the crumbs and used black latex DAP. It was a wide enough and deep enough gap that I ran the caulk gun over it twice. It might stand to use a third run, but not today.

And that under-cabinet lighting we did a few years back? It lasted approximately a few days. The next inhabitants will enjoy some decent under-cabinet illumination. These are small florescent, battery powered strips. No need for wiring.

There is a third strip on the right side, but I didn't have enough batteries for it today.

We are also placing an order for unfinished oak, shaker style cabinet doors. I think we decided to go with refacedepot.com. I've seen good reviews and they are in Dallas, so the shipping shouldn't take too long. We also looked at ordering from Cabinet Door Depot, as our old favorites 10K Kitchen Remodel did. Both companies are about the same price for basically the same thing. All said, they will run about $550, plus we will spend a couple of days coating them in water-based poly to match what's on the counter trim. I'll also sand and refinish the drawer fronts since they're pretty basic. These are what we're ordering, but in red oak (maple pictured). I think they'll parallel the the backsplash nicely:

And speaking of backsplashes... The right side panels are just primed. I'm going to put the bronze and copper coats on and fit them in. I'm on the fence over the left side, and if I do put it there, should it go to the end of the upper cabinets, or the counter...

With:

Without:

Thoughts?

There's more with the rest of the house, but I'll save it for another post...

We're still here...

Well. Not HERE here. But still kicking around... :)

Finally started that dog blog I've been talking about all these years.

The digestive tract belonging to our most recent addition is an enigma wrapped in a mystery, so I decided to start journaling everything we are doing for him. I've also had a lot of people asking me lately for more information about raw feeding, so I just thought I'd put it all in one place that I can point to.

Without further ado:

Materially Raw. 

Thoughts?

Any thoughts on what these floors are?

http://4squarefunnyfarm.blogspot.com/2013/01/our-first-cry-for-help.html

??

Presenting...

The Foursquare Funny Farm.

We closed today.

It was quite a fiasco, but it's done, and it's ours. And I love it already. :)

Moving on

That's hard to type. It really is.

It looks like we will be moving sometime soon. We're buying a 1901 neo-Colonial foursquare in the same neighborhood-- a few blocks down. My mother will be moving in with us. It needs a few updating/cosmetic-type things... at least as we see it now. It's certainly not the fixer-upper that this house was, but there are definitely things I want to change. Hopefully nothing that HAS to be changed.

Once we get into that house, we'll turn our attention back to the bungalow. We'll need to finish up some of the projects we started and never completed, and we'll need to freshen up some of the things we did when we first moved in.

My mother will be leaving the house we lived in from the time I was 11 years old. It's the only permanent home my sister has known. It's where my mother lived when my father passed away. It's nearly 23 years of memories. No one ever loved that house really, but that's not the point. My mother and I both loved the house we were in before that one, a turn-of-the-century folk Victorian. So in a way, it will be a homecoming for us.

Then we'll sell or rent the houses once they're up to speed.

I have started working on a blog for the new house. I'll link to it when I'm ready; I'm waiting until we've closed before I start talking too publicly and specifically about it. At a certain point, there will be a flurry of updates here for this house and probably for my mother's mid-century cottage, as well.

The new house is on a lot 3 times the size of this one; the house is 2 1/2 times the size of this one, and has a gallery/studio/guest house the same size as the bungalow. The "kiddo" is a fully-fledged teenager now, and 1 bathroom isn't really cutting it for us. We're up to 4 dogs larger than 45lbs. And cats. We've finally outgrown this house, perhaps a bit quicker than we expected.

I love the bungalow. It's become another member of the family and I am a bit heartbroken to leave it. But we're excited, too.

And at least we won't be immediately parting ways; just taking a break.

I promise, Bungalow. It's not you; it's me.

Running in place

Just the other day I said to Adam, "This year, on my winter break, I should be able to get a lot done on the house. Last year I was so focused on training and keeping Luna from freaking out over the other dogs getting too close to HER things and HER food and HER people that I didn't have time for anything else. She's so much better now. I'll be able to do things."

You may have already guessed: famous last words. 

Adam sent me a picture a couple of weeks ago of a cute, cute, cute puppy in the liquor store. Customers bring their dogs in sometimes. "Who does that cutie belong to?" I asked. 

"Don't know." Don't know. Uh oh. 

"What are you doing with him?" I asked. 

"Playing, mostly."

Not good. Not good, not good, not good. 

I have looked for an owner, I have tried to find a new home. I don't know if we'll find that home for him, but for now, he is here. After coming to us, he threw up 2 corn cobs and had to have surgery to remove a third that was lodged in his small intestines. On Christmas Eve. So now that we have spent some serious time worrying over him, it'll have to be a pretty damned perfect home. He's a good boy, but I am spending yet another winter break wrangling dogs. :\

That said, hopefully you will be seeing us tackle some of the list. 

• Refinish the floors. Again. (One, then two, then three, then two, then three, then four dogs will wreak havoc on pine floors)
• Put down new flooring in the kitchen
• New kitchen cabinet doors
• Wrap up the painting, in and out
• Seed the yard
• Patch a hole in the ceiling

Here's hoping. There may be some other somewhat unrelated projects in the works. Just have to see how everything goes...

Updates and a garden gnome

It has been a long time. A very, very long time. There is a reason for this...

Nothing's been happening on the house front. And there's also a reason for THAT...

Animals.

Yep. Animals. Pets. Dogs 'n' cats.

Last time I left off, we had adopted a stray pit bull-- Robin-- who has some fear issues. In March last year, we had to let our sweet Simon go. His arthritis and dementia had got the best of him, but he was happy until the end. We had him cremated, and he still watches over us from the mantle.

Our porch kitty contracted histoplasmosis and had to be put on a feeding tube for 4 months.

Adam also bought a liquor store, and so we've been pretty involved in getting that moved to its new location and off the ground.

I started working on the fear issues (clicker training) with Robin, which took up a lot of time.

Then I started competing with River in rally obedience. She has her novice title and we're one leg away from Advanced.

Then around July, we found another dumped pup-- only a few months old. We took her in, too, under a full moon, and named her Luna.

I really did not want another dog. At all. Certainly not a puppy. But she stayed. And to help me develop a better bond with her and to work on her resource guarding tendencies, I started training pretty vigilantly with her, as well as competing. She now has her rally novice title. And she and Robin have mastered the art of tandem snuggling.



We feed raw now, so I spend a good chunk of time prepping and portioning raw chicken, beef, pork, and organs for the pups.

Somewhere in all this, the trainer we work with asked me to start assisting in her classes, which was super exciting for me! So I've been assisting in puppy classes, going to conferences and workshops, training my own dogs, and learning as much as I possibly can about what I'm doing. I love it so much. Even on the days that I'm tired and would rather stay home, I'm always glad I went, always come away feeling good about what I do. I just love it.

However, this weekend, I learned something. I've been in a rut (that is *not* what I learned), and part of that is the fact that I'd become so singularly focused. I needed to focus on something not dog related. And I had no motivation-- so I had to just DO it. Just get up, put on my big girl pants and DO IT. The motivation came once I got started.

And boy did it ever.

While I was driving by Home Depot Sunday morning, I got a wild hair to plant things. By the end of the day, I had planted 3 planters or coleus, caladiums, and Persian Shield; a hanging basket of petunias and one of pink mandevilla; red and orange bell peppers; basil; and bought a mature tomato plant (hey-- I'm lazy and impatient, what can I say). The heat of the last 2 summers has wreaked havoc on the gold dust plants that aren't heavily shaded, so they are mostly dead. I pulled out and cut away all of the dead parts (and was reminded that I still had paint to touch up behind the bushes, not to mention all the trim). I mulched under the bushes and weeded and mulched around my hostas. And I cleaned the porch. Luna tangled herself in her line; River supervised.

Monday I tackled my back patio and did some deep-cleaning type things in our kitchen. All in all, it was a good weekend. I feel more motivated to get some housework done. We still have a lot of work to do, but I feel refreshed, if a bit achy. And happy, despite the straggly bushes and the long list of crap left to do.

Our Garden Gnome is happy, too. he'd been hidden under leaves and ivy for far too long.

And we trudge forward.

Well, the last couple of days were long and I'm sore all over. Adam had more shop business yesterday, so it was me and pups again...and as usual, they were no help at all. They spent most of the day basking in the sun and trading places on the bed.


Stinkers. Meanwhile, I was able to get started even earlier with the nice weather, but then I immediately lost my keys in this mess while I was tromping down the flowers.


I was a little afraid I'd be stuck sifting through lilies all day, but I found them without too much trouble.

Considering it was just me, I think I did ok. I was able to get all the brick rollered by about 2 or 3 in the afternoon; I started using the sprayer again to get into the mortar, but I was just chasing drips and not getting great coverage, so I went back to my trusting 3" Wooster and a trim cup. It'll be slow-going, but we'll get there eventually. The biggest hurdle has been crossed. I think. At least my arms will be a fully painted, lovely shade of gray before it's over.


All I know is that I don't think I could have worked on it one more day. I've never been so happy to go back to work in my life.

Next time around...

I keep thinking, "Next time I have to paint a brick house, I'm paying someone to do it."

And then I remember, that if I have one personality trait that trumps "lazy," it's "cheap."

True fact.

More than I bargained for

I'm tired. I hurt all over.

The pibs is pooped, too.

While I painted the house, Robin ran around after squirrels; River sat next to me and stared at the paint roller; Simon slept. We're all pretty worn out.

I took the day off of work to keep up the painting. Yesterday, Adam and I were rollering the brick, while the kiddo and our friend Jessica cam behind us with brushes to fill in the mortar and other spots we missed. I was using a regular roller with a 1 1/4" nap roller cover; Adam was using a Wagner Paint Mate Plus with a 3/4" nap. The Paint Mate Plus is one of the ones where you fill the handle with paint, and pull a trigger to pump the paint into the roller. This all worked pretty well with 4 sets of hands.

Today, it was just me. Adam had shop stuff to do, and the kiddo went back to her mom's and to school. Just me and the pups-- and let's be honest: their lack of opposable thumbs really worked against us.

I used the Wagner roller for a while, and things went fine. When my arm started to get tired, I switched to the brush. Filling in all the mortar...took foreeeeeeever. It went sooooo slooooow. By about 1:45, I'd finally had it. I looked down the wall, and it was just freakin' miles of mortar to paint.

Luckily, I remembered that Harbor Freight had a 20% off coupon in the paper yesterday, so off I went to buy a cheap, shitty paint sprayer. (I also got a free flashlight! Bonus!!)

I got it home and started playing with it. I have to thin the paint so much, and the container is so small, that I don't want to use it for the majority of the brick, but it was definitely a turning point in my productivity for the day. Here's what I do. I paint with the roller, and then use the sprayer to put a quick, thin coat onto the mortar. Lastly, I take the brush and backbrush the paint into the mortar and splotchy areas. It goes so, so, so much faster. So I'm taking off tomorrow to try and get the rest of the house body finished. I know the trim won't happen immediately, but we will be so very close.

So very, very close.

Long Time Coming

A VERY long time.

Life, as we all know, gets in the way of pretty much everything. We've been immersed in puppy dogs-- training and socializing and snuggling. I haven't had a chance to start the dog blog that I've been wanting to. Adam has been in the throes of buying, moving and reopening a liquor store for the last several months, so that's been sucking a lot of time away from the house.

We've been busy...just not busy on the house.

Well that all changed this weekend. We have a few days in a row of great weather, and we decided to just dive in and take advantage of it. I sprayed down the house yesterday, scraped a bit, and today we started the actual painting. There's no going back now.

As it was:

And at the end of the day (sorry for the camera-phone pic):

It looks impressively like our photoshopped idea.

So far so good.

The colors

Here's the column that we painted as it will be...


We'll see... ;-)

April Update

Wow. We've really been slacking.

It's been awfully hard to want to do much; the weather finally got nice, and while we should be taking advantage of it to do house work, I don't think anyone believes it's really here and just wants to take advantage of it to have fun while we can!

We did manage to finally decide on a paint color. We ended up going with the darker color on the right and the darker, browner red.

The green/taupe/khaki color for the brick; the cream color for wood trim; the red for the eaves and prob frint door; maybe also windows. Haven't totally decided on that.

I'll have to post a pic later of the column that we mocked up to make the final decision. We wanted to try to claim the last of the depreciation, so we had to go ahead and buy the paint, even though the weather isn't quite paint worthy yet.

We were going to use the Lowe's Valspar Duramax when we planned to paint during cold weather since it goes down to 35º. But now that it looks like we can wait until summer, we decided to go with regular Valspar Ultra Premium. It still gets great reviews from Consumer Reports, and we've certainly had good luck with it so far. And it's about $50 per 5gal bucket cheaper. Bonus.

So anyway, we went ahead to try and get it before our depreciation deadline and to take advantage of what we thought was a rebate offer; it was actually only for indoor paint. But no matter-- we got a great deal anyway...

See, when we got there, the paint dude told us he was out of the stuff he needed to do 5gal buckets of one of our colors in the ultra premium and that he could do Duramax for $50 more. Well, we discussed it, and decided to just get single gallons instead; we really didn't need the Duramax. While we were shopping for other stuff, the paint guy found us and told us he'd given the paint to us for the same price as 5gals. Awesome!

We go to pick up our paint and...uh oh. There's been a misunderstanding. He thought we wanted single gallons of Duramax (which kind of defeats the purpose, but we did get fewer gallons, 8 instead of 10, and I think he must have thought we were saving money by getting less...I dunno.). They are all labeled at $29 each, which is the 5gal price, but still more than we wanted to pay. We tell him there's been a misunderstanding and without blinking, the guy says, "Oh. Ok, No problem. I'll just give it to you for the cheaper price."

And not only does he give it to us for the price of Ultra Premium, he gives us the Ultra Premium 5gal price-- $17.90 per gallon. Holy CRAP.

Did we get a wicked deal or what?!? We kept apologizing to the guy, but at that point, his alternative was to put it on the mistint table for $5, so I guess this was better all the way round.

I hope we can get to this in the next few weeks. Honestly, all my time is being sucked up by animals; the new puppy is quite a handful. I'm actually thinking about starting another blog to track her training progress. We found her wandering around our neighborhood for several days and finally took her in as the sleet started coming down, the beginning of a mega snow storm. We looked for an owner, checked for a microchip, left a description and our phone number with the Humane society. Nothing. She was underweight and had worms. She's finally settling in, but we have a long way to go with her...


She is scared of everything. She barks at people and things that are unfamiliar, and cowers and gets stock still if she's scared and thinks someone's going to handle her (the vet). She was spayed and then had a bad reaction at the suture site, so the increased vet visits and handling didn't help matters. She also doesn't really know how to share her things with us-- she gaurds her toys and balls and bones (in fact NO MORE BONES for a while-- yikes!). Thing is, I already have a fear aggressive dog, and do not want another one! So most of my time is spent with her at the park, clicker and treats in hand, teaching her to be calm around unfamiliar stuff, or playing games of trade with her toys. She's super smart and sweet, and warms up to new people pretty quickly (treats help!), so I'm optimistic.

And that's the news around here! If I do start another blog, I'll post a link to it here, for any of you dog enthusiasts. It's sort of taken over my life-- I'm reading animal behavior books and scouring training forums and researching holistic remedies for any and all problems. I never thought it would be so fascinating to me, but there you have it!