Let's play catch-up

Last you heard from me, I was preparing to fork over a few good holiday recipes and get a little housework done. And then my hard drive crashed. Fatal, nothing spinning, dead as a doornail hard drive crash. So yeah. It's up and running now, and I took lots of pictures in the meantime...

Baking Day
I had such high hopes for delivering these great recipes with step by step pictures. And I started out in the right vein.

Here's the sifted flour and butter/sugar for pecan butter balls-- those melt in your mouth powdered sugar covered cookies:



Here's the butter for 4 recipes worth of almond English toffee:


And the melting sugar and milk for candied pecans:


But then, before I knew it...Oops! All done!

Bagged, canned and ready to go.

But I will still give you one recipe...

Orange-Candied Pecans and Cranberries

1 cup packed brown sugar
3 Tbs condensed milk
1 Tbs butter
1 tsp orange zest
2 cups of pecans
1 cup dried cranberries

Combine brown sugar and condensed milk in saucepan over medium-high heat (see pic above). Bring to 234ºF (softball stage).


Once you've reached 234, turn off heat and stir in butter and orange zest. Add pecans and cranberries until coated. Pour out on wax paper.


Once cooled, break pecan halves apart and bag. I ended up adding a little more than 2 cups of pecans and however many cranberries looked good. You can see that the above is more than one recipe. That's maybe 4? Anyway, easiest thing in the world and magical.

Holiday Business
The kiddo finally got to paint the ornaments I mentioned in the last post:


We hosted Christmas Eve dinner and munched on ham for several days of leftovers. For Christmas, Adam's folks got us a new toaster/convection oven. I'm loving it so far. And my mother got us an espresso machine. It's a much nicer one than I'd have ever bought for myself, and being a former Starbucks employee/Kool-Aid drinker, I've been having a great time fiddling with it and making fancy beverages. It's a wonder that with the DAILY whole milk lattes since Christmas morning I haven't gained 20 pounds. It was lovely.

For New Year we went to friend's house. She has a passel of kids so there was much Rock Band being played and much rum punch being imbibed. By the grownups, of course. Fizzy grape juice for the little ones and ummy yummy Ro-tel dip.

House Business
We did actually get a little done. I got a couple of coats of poly on the countertop trim and made a little progress on the remaining kitchen crown (one little fussy corner is giving me hell). I also started painting that hellish green window in the kitchen, at which point we made some decisions. The kitchen is being finished in alkyd paint. If we lived in a perfect world, I would do the trim throughout the house the same way. But there's circumstances beyond my control. First, I was told by two POs ago that they stripped most of the trim. It now only has one or two layers of paint on it. This was less than ten years ago, and they were living in the house. It's not a high gloss. I'm betting it's latex to begin with. Also, WE live in the house and alkyd is stinky and toxic. And finally, I would have to confine the cats for DAYS depending on the weather and I'm just not interested. We've already given the baseshoe a thin coat of alkyd, so I'll probably want to sand and prime with Zinsser 123 to make sure the latex will stick. Eh. I'm ok with it.

Adam got the garage cleaned and fairly organized, which was a feat of mega proportions and we got the basic box of the gable vent built:



The slats are one more recycling of the garage door boards. And the 2X4s were salvaged from another project. We'll get it permanently set and then trim around it. First I want to paint it. This thing was a monster-- 42" across, and nobody makes a stock size that's horizontal like that.

That's the main stuff. Mostly, we sat on our butts or cleaned or baked. And going back to work is tough now. Really tough.

Summertime, Southern style

As in, on the front porch. We got our patio furniture put together and arranged on the screen porch in time to have coffee and the Sunday paper out there this morning. Granted, no screen or ceiling fan, yet, but soon enough.



And yes, these were taken with the new wide-angle Nikon. I love it. This is basically on auto, with minor brightness/contrast adjustments. It's picking up some pretty bad hotspots at this setting, but I'm just glad the shots are in focus-- it's a major improvement. It does soooo many things, and I need to learn how to find and use them all. I'm having a great time playing with my new toy.

The first pic shows our new fancy furniture-- from Wal-Mart, of all places. It went down so much in price that I couldn't say no. The second shot shows our tragic little pea green couch that was "destroyed" in the storm; it had previously been "destroyed" by the cats, and "destroyed" by a lot of flopping down on it. But cover it with some old sheets, and it's perfect for this space.

Porch swing also came in--



Once we get it hung up, it's going to be great. Ugh. Note to self. Save down the pictures from 8 Mp before loading into Blogger-- they take forever! The old camera maxed out at 4 Mp, so I'll have to remember to do some adjusting.

We've done some more unpacking and cleaning this weekend, and finally reinstalled the French doors between office and living room. They look great, but I'm not going to post anymore about them right now; I'm actually on the front porch, where it is, no lie, 105º, and any more time on this computer will heat up my lap too far beyond the boiling point.

So more tomorrow. Time now to lay back and enjoy this fragment of a breeze.

A day late and a dollar short...

I've been a bit behind this week, what with work and all. It seems that I've failed to report on something important.

Yesterday marked one year since we closed on the house. Of course we're not anywhere near where I naively thought we would be by this point, but knowing what I know now, I think we've done pretty well for ourselves.

We've:

• Rewired the house
• Added CH/A, including the ductwork
• Built 2 fences
• Took the kitchen down to studs, including 7 layers of stubborn flooring and plaster out the wazoo
• Drywalled said kitchen and installed cabinets
• Installed new granite counters and tin backsplash
• Added all new appliances
• Refinished the floors and began new base shoe
• Painted 5 rooms so far
• Started work on the screen porch-- new coat of paint and the beginnings of a new ceiling
• Got a new roof
• Sealed the gaping holes in the floors that lead to the outside world
• Built trap doors to attic and crawl space
• MOVED
• And did all the other sundry crap that goes along with these things-- tested out 18 different methods for doing each project, fixed all the mistakes we made as we went, made a minimum of 4 trips to the hardware store for each project, and added some of the decorative details like new light fixtures and repurposed furniture

Doesn't seem like quite enough until I remember that we learned everything as we went along-- and for months it was a weekends-only event; then once we moved in, we had to keep up with all the other things that go along with, you know, actually living somewhere-- leaks and yards and feeding ourselves. Not to mention the fact that we fought with the city for a while, and only hired out the AC and the electrical (oh yeah, forgot about the roof. hired out the roof, too)-- and we even helped with some of the electrical to speed things along. We did most of this by ourselves.

I think we've come a long way, learned a lot, and I'm pleased to say that we have a shit ton left to do.

There's painting the interior trim, and screening the porch, and painting the house, and replacing the window AC with an actual window, and repairing the hail-damaged ceilings and carport, and finishing the kitchen trim, and lining the chimney, and unpacking, and...

Negative Nancy strikes again

Yesterday was Adam's birthday, and I made him build a fence.



I helped, too. Mostly I threw a tantrum that we weren't getting anything done on the house because we are lazy. I like to call this "motivation." This fence sections off a portion of the yard exclusively for the dog on days when the meter is being read and other sundry events. Considering we put it together from scratch, I'm extremely pleased. This fence also hopefully marks our return to home improvement from weeks in exile.

I should briefly note that I had my first planned gathering on the patio Friday night. We've had my mother or the odd friend here and there stop by to have a beer. But I actually invited my girlfriends over, we made daiquiris (girly. I know.), played cards, drank beer, and ate lovely snacky things to go with my tomato with fresh mozzarella and fresh basil sandwiches. It was simply all-around great.

But now, because it wouldn't be a Monday without something painfully annoying...emphasis on the "pain"-- I burned my elbow. Badly. On the iron this morning. It was one of those cartoon delayed reaction moments where my arm sort of sizzled on the cotton setting for a second before I realized what was happening. And I'm leaving tomorrow morning for Daytona to work for a week, so I'm now really looking forward to the SALT water. Here's hoping it's curative and not hurtful.

And just to make this an even more Good Old Fashioned Monday, it piss-poured rain a good portion of my way in. Still, I couldn't help snapping a few blind, hold-the-camera-up-and-hope- it-catches-what-I-want shots of the journey into the storm.




And that makes the drive completely worthwhile :-)

Never thought I'd have to weed the patio

It was a good weekend, but I can't say the things I accomplished warrant pictures, really. Doing regular house things like, oh say, cleaning. Laundry. Weeding the patio. Filling in the dog-dug holes in the backyard. Potting cat grass. Dishes. Cooking. Grocery shopping. These are things people are supposed to do all the time-- whether they're renovating or not-- right? I wouldn't really know. Spending every weekend on this little "project" meant we let our other house go to shit on a regular basis. I'm trying to keep up with things at this place now, while unpacking (still) and preparing for the final inspection. Sigh. Never enough time or money. I'm pretty sure that an abundance of one or the other of those things would solve the above dilemma.

The good news? The roofer stopped by yesterday and told us they had already pulled the permit for our house. YAY! But then again, this only brings us one step closer to making a trim decision. I'm starting to think perhaps a nice warm, deep gray? Or a gray/olive green-- Something like Sherwin Williams Ruskin Pewter or Green Bronze. I really wanted to do red-- like the picture a few posts below, but leaving all the vertical slats white-- but I'm getting a lot of negative feedback, albeit, some of it's from people like my mother who says, "I HATE all light colored houses with dark trim. So I won't like anything you show me. It looks country." She's a designer, who is perhaps a wee bit colorblind, but maybe I should rethink the red. I'm wondering if my overwhelming desire for a balance of color (as in, not all white) has led me a bit astray. I don't know. It's all a moot point until we get a roof, so. Hm.

Meanwhile, I tried some organic "no dig" granules in the yard and seeded over some of the bare spots. The granules were white pepper, thyme and peppermint oil. I also added some cayenne to the mix. First thing Simon did? He ate it. Apparently, unlike most dogs, he loves him some pepper. Next step is the designated digging area. Beyond that, I just keep sweeping the dirt back to its proper location every morning. Oh well.

Not just watching the grass grow

Besides enjoying the lovely out of doors this weekend, we did get a little bit done on the inside.

Saturday, we created the attic trap door. We'll add trim around the hole, and paint white. This is the plywood that was there. Adam added hinges so it'll open up.



This is the real coup, though. Remember this pantry?


Well, now it looks like this:


We got most of the kitchen door trim up-- a short in the extension cord burned out the table saw plug, so we couldn't finish the shims we needed for some of the pieces. And we have to build new baseboards. But everyday, it looks less and less like a construction zone.

We got more patio furniture from my grandmother's and we found some seriously cool shit there too-- like my great grandmother's butter churn from 1909 and a cane that came from someone special...? It's pretty fancy. Pictures to come.

And I got the bathroom cleaned and unpacked. That ALONE makes the house feel better:


And I mowed. Not too bad for sleeping in both days ;-).

Watching from the sidelines

I feel so left out. Everything is happening without me these days at the house. Very little was accomplished beyond putting away some clothes this weekend; the kiddo had a horseback riding thing (Sounds very swish, doesn't it? It was with the Girl Scouts-- I think they earned 2 badges. My Girl Scout troop didn't do anything that cool.). So we spent all day Saturday with Adam's folks while she did her Girl Scout stuff.

Anyway! I have begun the daily commute and Adam has been able to stay home and make progress toward "completion" so we can get the city off of our backs. To wit:

Lights. First, we have the easy one-- a 1950s (60s? 70s? clueless) shade to replace the crazy $4.97 shades we installed:


I'm looking at this pic and realizing now that wiping it with a dry cloth as I did isn't really cutting it. So I'll scrub it down a bit more with something more aggressive. ANYWAY. This is in the kiddo's room, and when it lights up, you can see through some of the unglazed dots so it looks like galaxies behind those big starbursts. We have a different one with metal edging and sweet little brass details that we'll put in our bedroom later. (Update: Yes, I am aware that it is a somewhat tacky shade. Whatever. I remain charmed.)

More lights. Adam had to pull out the old boxes, install newer and straighter ones and buy a new lightbulb to replace the one crushed in shipping. But the end result, is bathroom sconces that weren't Photoshopped:


Though maybe they should've been. It's still dark outside, so I'm taking this pic in the dark with the flash-- taking it with the lights on just creates glare. We may even put in lower wattage bulbs. Mind, the bathroom is still a bit of a construction zone. And the wall looks too red in that pic. Sigh. At any rate, I love them. Perfect size, and the chrome and white is marvelous. We still have to hang the wall cabinet and the shower curtain rod-- which, by the way, went even lower in price. We waited so long that by the time we got around to it, it only cost $3.

(Also, should I consider changing out the white outlets and covers on the wall with black ones? Black outlets and paint the covers to match the wall? They don't bother me a LOT...Just a little...)

Note to self: buy towel rods and vinyl film window covering to mimic old-fashioned bathroom/privacy glass TODAY.

(Yes, that is painter's tape and paper towels. Our bathroom window looks directly into the neighbor's kitchen window above their sink.)

Apparently Adam has also prepared all the trim for this sad little kitchen window:

as well as the trim for the backside of a doorway that was closed up long ago between kitchen and laundry. We drywalled completely over the hole on the kitchen side, but it's still there on the laundry side, complete with all the door trim. We'll just fill in the middle. I personally like the ghost door. It's a slight nod to the old butler's pantry that was sacrificed to the laundry/mud room.

And everyday, there's a little more walking room available within the house. He's put together the futon and desk for the office/guest room. He's set up dressers, cleaned out the pantry, set up our wireless internet, rehung most of our doors.

And this is all in addition to the plumbing. Me, I've done some laundry. Some dishes. I've cooked a few times. Maybe I'll mow this weekend.

Hey, I ordered the backsplash. I'm doing something.

Success.

Finally, things are lighting up, firing up, running and scrubbing as they are meant to. Which is a good thing, because we are a mere 3 days from M-day.

Adam's folks were awesome enough to drive their van down Saturday loaded with stuff...And it's finally not just nameless, faceless boxes-- it's personal.


It's making it feel so much more like a home. Well, that and the fact that I've been staying down there for almost a week nursing my mom and my sister through the flu.

And while the folks were here, they helped us get some final coats of paint on the walls, and Adam's dad coached him through the last of the appliance installations, thus, the lighting and firing, etc.:



When they turned on the dishwasher, and told us it was on, Adam's mom and I went literally running into the kitchen to see-- 'cause we sure weren't believing what we heard. Which was nothing-- that thing is soooo quiet. Unlike the icemaker, which tumps a load of still black ice (black from all the "pipes-sitting-unused" crud) and then loudly hisses water into the tray every so often. But I'll get used to it. Been a long time since I had such a convenience, so I'm not bitching. Just acclimating myself to new sounds.

Sunday, we got our base shoe cut and painted. We'll get these nailed up and then tackle painting the rest of the trim one room at a time during the spring when we can open windows and get some fresh air-- in case you missed it, our POs screwed us over a few ways with the baseboards, as in, they didn't remove them to drywall. Hence, baseboard and other trim painting will be done in situ. In place. On the wall. In the house. It's oil paint, so it's pretty stinky. We'll need a good solid spring breeze to keep us from passing out in the fumes.


Lots left to do, but at least we'll be in the house soon.

Oh-- and I got to try out the new shower curtain, bath rug, and shower head, and they were simply wonderful.

We're that much closer...

As I mentioned, lots of little accomplishments this weekend, and a few really big ones.

For one thing, my $70 shower head purchased for $12 was installed:


7 different settings! It's so exciting.

We also put our first housewarming present together. Our realtor gave this to us on the day we closed, but we were afraid we'd ruin it, so we hadn't put it together until now:


This location, beside the pantry, will likely be its long term home, hopefully to house an espresso machine. Eventually. Until then, we're going to use it as an island to try out how we like the size and arrangement before we build a permanent island.

The kiddo got some raking and bagging done...I did a little sunlight scouting in the backyard so we can choose a place for a vegetable garden. And I spied a robin-- I don't care what some groundhog in Penn says; a robin and some 65 degree weather says spring. Period.

Now for the big stuff.

Ta-da!!!
Da-dum!
Woohoo!


And hallelujah. It's about time.


Ok. So full disclosure. Not everything is entirely hooked up. Sink and faucet are in-- it was a many, many hours long fiasco, though we finally got it done. I put a bead of caulk around the edge and I'll deal with shaping it up using my fingernail, a caulk scraper, a razor and some solvent. We cut one little piece of PVC too short, so we'll have to redo that one length. But the garbage disposal is otherwise together. Fridge is in and connected to the icemaker line. Dishwasher is hooked up, though not screwed in yet. And the stove is just sitting there, attached to nothing.

We may have a slight placement issue with the stove and dishwasher. We measured many times, but eh. We still got it wrong. We have a few ideas and solutions up our sleeves and we'll deal with it later.

But it's shaping up!!

Oh yeah! And Adam did most of the gruntwork here, and the kiddo was a huge help on the yard and island. I just pointed out when someone was doing something wrong.

Deals, deals, deals

Looks like progress, right?

Well, I think the bargain shoppers out there will know what I'm talking about here...You know when you're shopping at places like TJ Maxx a lot, and you get some really great deals...after a while, you realize you have a totally skewed view of the appropriate pricing for anything. $10 for a shirt starts to sound like waaaay too much. You could get one on the clearance rack at TJ for $2.

Maybe I'm stretching it here, but after several weeks of what seemed like steadily moving progress, this weekend felt like a $10 shirt. In reality, I know we got a lot done; but relative to the last few weeks, it didn't seem like much of a deal. We only got done about 1/4 of what we wanted (plywood and hardibacker installed and base shoe cut and installed), and about 1/2 of what we deemed our bare minimum (plywood and hardibacker). I think we had some delusions of DIY grandeur.

Anyway, while waiting for Adam to get to the house on Saturday, I managed to get one coat of paint on the bathroom walls; the second coat was finished on Sunday after he left to get the kiddo back to her mom's house. At first, it went on very, very red, and all I could do was say, "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit." Don't really know why it worried me-- it's just paint. But it turned out to be a very nice color match. I love it.



Then we made the trip to Lowe's for all our countertop supplies. We left with some great inside info, so take note if you've got a tile project on the horizon: the girl at the counter said she overheard the guys in flooring say that they'd be putting a lot of tile on sale soon-- 50% OFF!!-- to make room for new product. I'd resigned myself to sticky vinyl in the laundry room in the interests of money and time. But now that I know I could get a good deal if I just wait, I'll probably keep an eye on the tiles.

The countertops were a nightmare that I'm not going to detail too much-- basically, the cabinets and the plywood and the floors were all uneven in their own special ways. Lots of shimming, screwing, unscrewing and the addition of a support beam in the far corner, finally got us to a point where we feel at least ok with the levelness and evenness of the plywood underlayment. But that, including cutting out the sink and adding supports for the sink clamps and supports for the plywood to screw into, took a long time. We didn't really have time left to install the Hardibacker. Hopefully, we'll get to it later this week.

This morning, I really had no energy for major work. So I went shopping! For house things, of course. Sales everywhere, people, I'm telling you: every place I went had great bargains. The best was the stainless steel step trash can I bought for $10! It was dented, but it took me 5 minutes to even find the ding; and it included a mini can for the bathroom.

Then I spent some time filling nail holes in our trim. They look diseased now.

So that's the progress. Looking back at it, it seems like we actually got a lot done. We're just back to projects where we don't know what the hell we're doing. Guess we just got a little spoiled.

Then again, the best laid plans...

I had a little delay getting started yesterday. Once I got going, I decided to strip the remaining block of wallpaper above the toilet, then I could paint the bathroom, paint the kitchen, and slap one more coat of poly on the kitchen floor on my way out.

Those are small rooms. Simple plan, right?

I should know better.

The wallpaper peeled right off, at first. About 15 minutes into my project, I decided to document this ugly stuff for posterity:



2 1/2 hours, one spray bottle of water, 3 different paint scrapers, one box cutter, one smearing of joint compound, a half a roll of paper towels, and an overuse of the f-word later...



Ta-da!



So I didn't end up having time to paint the bathroom...But on a more productive note, I got one more coat of poly on the kitchen floor, and a coat of Yellow Frost on the kitchen walls:





Now we begin work on removing the particle board countertop, installing plywood, and finally installing the granite tile...Any tips here will be especially welcome, particularly involving laying out the 12" squares!!!

I love it when a plan comes together.

This jetlag business has its benefits; I was up, showered and dressed by 7 this Saturday morning. And our early start yielded a lot of good results.

We chose our base shoe and found the cheapest price.

We picked a red paint for the bathroom: Spanish Tile from Lowe's Valspar red tinted base colors. Also narrowed it down to 2 yellows for the kitchen. We got quarts of each and tested them. I've been left to make the final decision, which I believe will be Yellow Frost from the Waverly Home series at Lowe's. Perhaps tomorrow will yield pics of some painted rooms...

We got the remaining top kitchen cabinets hung:



There's still A LOT that we couldn't solve here...one cabinet simply has to hang a bit lower than the others. Hopefully, we can hang one set of doors a bit lower and one set a bit higher so there's not a huge discrepancy in the door heights.

We got the floor gaps filled; we investigated the kitchen floor crack and it is not NEARLY as bad as I expected. It seems to expand and contract with the weather and isn't something we really need to worry about. Knock on wood.

Then, while wandering around Home Depot pricing base shoe, we found a wall cabinet for the bathroom on clearance (!!!) and I ran across two $35 wall sconces at Lowe's that I like almost as much as the $85 ones from Rejuvenation. Well, with the $100 difference taken into account. I'm still talking myself into needing them in the first place. I just have a completely irrational hatred of the existing bathroom lights.

And last but certainly not least, we MOVED the first van load of our crap.



Now we're getting somewhere.

At a steady clip

First of all...drumroll....The electrical inspector signed off!!!!

That doesn't mean we're done with the city-- we still have to have the mechanical inspection (for the newly installed HVAC) and then the final...but that's one MAJOR step!!!!!

Other things are moving along as well. This last weekend saw the painting of the walls-- a sandy, adobe sort of color in the living room and office-- Caramel, from Lowe's Eddie Bauer Craftsman Collecction-- and green in the dining room-- Ruskin Room Green from the Sherwin Williams Arts & Crafts collection. We painted all the rooms with Valspar primer, which didn't coat very consistently, but it did the trick of toning down the dark colors that were already there. Luckily, the actual colored Valspar paint went on very thick and smooth; the Sherwin Williams Classic 99 paint, however, went on very streaky. The dining room will therefore likely need a second coat. In other words, I highly recommend the Valspar Signature stuff. And with a mail-in rebate (and a 10% off coupon), it was cheaper than the SW, even though the SW was already on sale AND I had a 5% off coupon. Still, the Ruskin green was just what we wanted, so I'm not too disappointed. Here's before and after of the living room (sorry-- camera phone again):

We finally gave up on getting the chair rail paint line eliminated. I simply reached a point where I couldn't stand the thought of wasting any more precious time futzing with something that probably wasn't going to be noticeable to anyone but us and would be deal-withable later. Screw it.

And the dining room was also a lovely success:


I know that the actual colors don't translate well, having gone through the camera and different computer monitors...But you can see how much lighter we went and what a difference it makes. It was a little like getting a haircut, though-- you know how the minute you decide to cut your hair, people start complimenting you on it? Yeah, that's how it went with the paint. Everyone who came into the house looooved the colors it was already painted. And while I could have totally lived with them, I really thought that it made the rooms feel a little cave-like.

I swear, though, the POs did some weird painting-- like painting the side of the trim the same color as the wall, and the casement windows in the dining room are also the same color as the wall, even though the trim surrounding them is the color of the rest of the trim. Who knows. Much shaking of my head.

Next painting step will be to paint the trim an antique white semi-gloss. And we have great brushes for it! I now know why my father always painted rooms with a brush and never with a roller-- he bought $40 brushes and they're worth every penny. We only used them this time for getting close to the trim. But while Adam and I complained of brush strokes in the green paint with our cheap $7 brushes, my mother had no problems because she used what she was calling the Magic Brush. And it was magical.

All trim work from here on out is to be done with a Magic Brush.

And stupid me, I forgot to take pictures of one of our biggest accomplishments-- the upper cabinets are mostly installed. Because we replaced the plaster with sheetrock, they don't fit into the space in quite the same way. I believe much shimming will be needed.

I will have pics of the cabinets soon-- hopefully with them totally in place. We also sanded the cabinet facings. The wood is really pretty-- hard maple, maybe?-- so we thought we might just put a clear-coat on them. I've also found a company that would make doors for something like $500 total, so we may just opt for new doors altogether, rather than sand the ones we have and don't like.

Adam spent today at the house edging the kitchen floor-- he says it's coming out pretty well, so hopefully there'll be pics of that coming soon.

We've decided to make the end of January our final goal of getting completely out of the rental. I was a little upset about it, but as long as things are moving steadily, I'm happy with whatever.