It's crunch time

Well, it's been almost 2 years since the hail storm. That's how long the insurance company gave us to get things finished. We're still not done, so that means a whirlwind of work should be gearing up!

During the last couple of weekends, Adam has been working on a few things. I did my part today. First of all, Adam cut a threshold for the entrance between the kitchen and laundry rooms. I cannot believe I neglected to get a before picture. The closest thing I can find is this--a blurry crop from an even blurrier photo of the oven:


So Adam built a threshold out of pine:


Simon decided to pose with the wood...

Today, I shellacked it.

It's nothing special, but it'll get the job done until we have the time and money to replace the laundry room floor.

Next, we dealt with the broom closet. Before, it was too short and didn't reach the ceiling.



On one side, we added a little strip of wood:

And Adam put the crown trim back up...however, it doesn't really fit. the ceiling slopes, the closet slopes more, and to top it off, the cabinet also bows out.






It was my job to do a little creative caulking:




The splotches are due to wood filler-- I still have to paint pretty much all the trim in the house, starting with that ugly green door in the threshold pic above.

I also worked on cleaning up the patio in anticipation of nice weather to come. I'm ready to be done with the snow, to be honest. Our last big bout of snow and ice was certainly pretty and gave Adam a chance to use his new camera...



...and the puppies definitely had a great time romping in it.




You may be wondering who the little black and white piebald pup is. Meet Robin:


It's a long story; however, the long and short is, we weren't seeking out another dog, but she is a sweetie and is sticking around. Unfortunately, she went into heat pretty much immediately, so she's been a diaper dog and Simon has been a hot mess. She's only about a year old, and I'd guess this was her first heat. We'll be taking care of that ASAP.

And that's about it. Not much else to report around here. It's a long post, but I'm hopeful that the future holds lots of shorter posts with lots and lots of progress. In the next day or so, I'll post some new ideas for painting the house and soon thereafter, my trials and tribulations trying to match the texture on our ceiling.

Good times.

More progress

It's a real flurry of work at the house. Apparently, this is only when I'm not at home. No complaints from me!

I came home last night to see that Adam had mowed and installed the last of the kitchen counter trim. The place is too big of a mess to take pictures of that, and my camera needs batteries anyway; at this point, I am dampening the battery connections every time I need to take a picture. Just rest assured: we're getting there.

The dog, on the other hand, is getting better and worse. I tried melatonin and it definitely helped-- he's not shivering or panicking quite so hard, but he is still scrabbling at the floor-- and now it doesn't take much of a storm at all, sometimes no storm whatsoever (no storm elicits more of a "fluffing"; it's less panicked and he will stop on command). I fear that the TERRIBLE storms we had last weekend have made him extra anxious at night and with storms-- it had already been a traumatic day with 2 trips to the vet and a bad med reaction. I wish we'd never seen those pills. I still haven't given it to him again, and I am going to continue with the melatonin and perhaps add Rescue Remedy or one of the pheromone diffusers. I've also heard good things about valerian-- any thoughts? We will also go with a new bigger bed (it's time anyway) with lots of blankets and sheets to dig at and fluff-- the vet also suggested some counter-conditioning with thunder CDs. Finally, we'll try this:


Even at 2 am I thought this was a photo worth licking the batteries for. Those are just socks and velcro cable ties. His nails are pretty short and smooth (thanks, concrete!) but they still poke through a little; those are, after all, my old holey threadbare shitty socks. But they got me a few peaceful moments. I will invest in real dog booties or make some out of a canvass or something more heavy duty. Then he can just dig himself silly. It seems to either soothe him or be something he cannot control. Punishing him (ie-- putting him out or scolding or shaking coke cans with pennies), therefore, seems like the wrong response.

Anyway, I haven't slept now in about a week and it's killing me. Maybe we can get something working soon.

And just like that...

Summer is creeping up on us. And I'm ready. Yesterday, I came home to another great summer surprise:


Yep. Our porch swing that we got a year ago is finally up... Normally, I think swings should face the rest of the porch, but in our case, we use the side entrance to the porch a lot and didn't want to block it.

Now we have perfect push-off abilities with the porch ledge. It swings slightly off center, since we had to stagger the hooks up top (hanging it on an incline), but I don't really care. It's perfect.

Adam also wanted to try out the new compressor, so he fixed the front door. Since the DAY we closed on the house and we changed the locks, it has looked like this:

See there on the left? We had to pull that piece of trim off to change part of the lock. Well. As of yesterday? It looks like this:



I can't tell you how much it changes the entire room. Obviously still needs caulking and all the inside trim needs to be painted this spring when I can open the windows and confine the cats in the laundry room for a while. We want to wait until the base shoe is there so I can blend it in a bit more seamlessly. If you recall, we had to buy baseshoe quite a bit larger than regular quarter round because of the way the house has settled combined with that assy job the POs did sheetrocking AROUND the trim, rather than removing the trim, sheetrocking, and THEN reinstalling the trim. Grrrr.... Anyway. All in the past. No need to get worked up over it again.

As for the pup, he tried to dig the floor last night again-- 2nd time now that he's tried to dig when there's no thunderstorm, both times have been since taking the meds. I'm going to try the melatonin this week. Though, honestly, he may just want out-- the weather's been perfect and he's barely wanted to come inside at all...

So yeah. Things are chugging along at the ol' bungalow.

All trimmed out

Another moderately productive weekend, I'd say. And a few lessons learned, of course. I can already see this is going to be a long post, but hey-- at least there's pictures!

I know I mentioned our newly purchased and primed crown for the kitchen-- "crown" is really stretching it; it's a large cove molding. Anyway, Adam and I spent Saturday cutting and installing it.

I don't know if you've ever done crown, but it's a little insane. We knew that the bottom of the molding had to be against the fence of the miter saw if we were going to get consistent corners. But somehow we missed the fact that cove has a top and bottom-- one side's thicker than the other-- and we were trying to flip the pieces over rather than move the to the other side of the saw or just move the saw. We were being lazy and stupid. But Adam finally got in a groove, and things moved right along.

Once we realized that there had to be a better, easier, less stress-inducing way to do this, we ended up using DeWalt's tutorial for cutting crown, and I found this one pretty helpful, too.

To install, we used our handy-dandy Harbor Freight stapler/brad-nailer twofer that we got for $18 with One Project Closer's coupon. It's been a GREAT addition to the tool arsenal; we have a larger Porter-Cable finish nailer, but it's 15ga, it's so heavy and cumbersome and provides such a kick. For these little projects, the 18ga brad nailer is lightweight and easy to handle when you have to hold your arms up and crick your neck to see, and the tiny brads don't tend to split the wood. It is awesome.

Anyway, we got it up there and I spent yesterday caulking and putty-ing the nail holes.

It looks like it has the pox. This (the caulking, not the pox!) brings me the newest addition to the tool box-- a new caulk gun. The one we had was the 99¢ blue one that everyone has in their kitchen tool/junk drawer. In fact, ours either came from Adam's dad or my dad, making it probably a minimum of 15 years old and a maximum of 30. When I used it on the porch, caulk was constantly oozing out and I didn't feel like I had a lot of control over the bead. Ok, ok. I suppose this might have something to do with the fact that I had no clue what I was doing.

But caulk guns are inexpensive even at the top end, and if there's one thing I've learned from this house, it's that the right hands can make cheap tool work; but a cheap tool in the wrong hands is a fucking disaster. So I splashed out on a $5 model that advertises "no-drip technology."

I couldn't see any difference; I stood in Lowe's for a while with a cheapo model and this one in each hand, pulling the triggers and watching them work and...I don't know. But whatever the difference, it's a good one. It absolutely did the trick. My beads were smaller and smoother and the tip stayed pretty mess-free. (I'd like to also point out that caulking is just about the most important part of finish work-- I cannot BELIEVE the difference it makes between looking halfway legitimate and looking like a monkey did the work.)

One bit of a disaster, however, is the space above the broom closet. This closet was a modular afterthought.

As you see, the gaps are too big for the crown to attch to anything on one side, and there's a gaping hole below it on the other side. The side in the first pic is also severely bowed. My solution? Liquid Nail, baby. The bowed side will be more difficult, but I started by gluing a scrap piece of poplar in the other side's gap:
I'll wait for the glue to cure and then glue these two piece of crown together and then to the ceiling and closet. Then I'm sure there will be creative caulking and puttying. We'll see.

Another little kitchen miracle...drum roll...Baseboards!
Not having ragged bottoms and ragged tops has made a world of difference. For this project, we did have to bust out the big finish nailer. These baords were just too much for the little guy.

We also tested some countertop trim profiles on a scrap piece of oak (no decision yet), and I primed the laundry room. Or well, I started to prime the laundry room.

That paneling is a bitch! Or, again, wrong tool wrong hands...I was using a regular roller with a regular nap, and this left nothing in the grooves between "panels." So the whole room turned into one giant "cutting in." I gave up at this point and will buy a thicker napped roller and see where that takes me.

And we changed the battery in my mom's car...OH! One other weird thing. The kiddo was at camp all weekend. But when I woke up this morning, the stuffed teddy bear that she won at the fair last week was laying splayed out in the middle of the bathroom floor. I'm sure the most likely answer is that one of the cats dragged it in there; it's as big as they are, but lightweight. Still, there was no evidence of claws or teeth on it...I like to believe that our little girl ghost who goes from the kitchen to the bathroom at night has taken a shine to it :-)

I need help

No really.

I didn't take any pictures of the problem, so I will describe for you, as best I can, the nature of this beast.

Umm...Some tape peeled the paint off my trim.

I think that sums it up pretty well.

What's happened is, during the course of taping off our kitchen to work on drywall, floor, etc, the masking tape-- and even blue painters' tape-- has peeled bits of paint off of the doorway trim. I blame part of this on a certain someone's reckless ripping off of the tape. But mostly, I think this might mean that some PO painted latex over oil without proper prep. Or that the oil is so old that its doing its whole crumble and FAIL routine.

It's not terrible, and it's only on a few pieces, but I'm trying to decide how best to alleviate this crap. I want to paint this trim soon. I will be using a low-VOC alkyd. It seems to last much longer than latex; I know that latex has come a long way, but I was sitting in my mother's house the other day when I realized that we painted her trim almost 20 years ago. A good scrub with a magic eraser, and it'll be like new. That shit's like a candy shell.

Anyway, I cannot take the trim off of the walls for a variety of reasons, namely due to the fact that the house was drywalled around the trim. I fear I would be opening the most giganticest can of worms ever.

I also considered priming with a serious business primer and succumbing to latex, but we've already painted the yet to be installed base shoe with oil.

So, I'm not sure how to proceed here. The trim is a variety of shades of white throughout the house-- so I think some is oil and some is latex (and the bathroom's is, whatever the base, FLAT FINISH. grrrr. That irritates me so much. It looks sooooo dirty. It IS so dirty). Considering the age of the house, and the many colors that we have see on the trim, I know that whatever's under the possibly-latex layer is oil.

My questions are these: If I prime with something like Kilz2 and paint with oil, am I, somewhere down the line, going to see a problem wherein the maybe-latex layer and surrounding oil/primer lose adhesion? Or will the oil, with its hard candy shell, be ok once it's cured?

Also, how should I handle the pieces with peeling paint-- should I use a stripper (heh.) to get the top layer or two off? Since we're not taking these pieces off the wall, they'll have to be stripped in situ, so I'd probably want to use something like a citrus or soy based remover. I'd prefer to sand as little as possible, due to the lead content.

Should I just wet scrape and prime-- then paint? I'm using a semi-gloss finish, so I don't want too much bumpiness...Scrape, "fill," sand, prime, paint?

Ugh.

I guess I'm leaning toward first trying to scrape. If that's bad, then chemically (or citrus-ally or soy-ally) stripping the face of the trim, then doing some serious priming and painting; and then simply priming and painting the un-peeled trim.

Suggestions?

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.

I spoke too soon

I guess the quarter sized hail we had the other day actually did cause a little more damage. The HVAC inspector noticed some daylight coming through the roof yesterday. So I made Adam get up there and take care of it for me. I get vertigo, nausea. I can't get on and off the ladder at the top. Can't help but look down, and then it's all over for me. It's embarrassing.

But no worries-- we're supposed to be on the list to get our roof within the next week or two. The decking was plank, rather than plywood sheet, and some of the pieces that were broken by the hail have started to buckle, so whenever it happens, it needs to be soon.

And then we can get started on our new color scheme. I went to Lowe's last night and picked out, seriously, hundreds and hundreds of paint chips-- all the reds, greyish or olivey greens, and grays. I know they must hate me there, taking so many, but color corrected booths are the stupidest things I've ever seen. At any rate, I think we're now looking at a deep red with a very mid-tone gray (bordering on taupe, but more neutral) in addition to the existing white to accent the architectural features of the trim.

Can't decide much until the roof is on, but isn't it fun to dream?

or this?

The color keeps looking all wrong once I get it into blogger. It's a deep plummy red-- not purple, not brown, not burgundy. And not washed out grayish looking.

Regardless, the house just shouldn't be white. I just don't know if I'm mentally prepared to paint it another color.

40,000 Roofs

That's the number of new roofs being installed in Fort Smith. At least, that's what I overheard at Lowe's. Man. That's a lotta shingles.

We have picked out what we're going with. We decided on gray-- Owens Corning Oakridge Architectural shingles, to be exact, in Estate Grey. Well, we thought gray, as opposed to our current green 3-tab roof, would give us some more options in terms of trim color. Green basically left us with variations on green and red-- festive at Christmas, but I'd like something a little less seasonal all year-round, I think.

So of course, I couldn't resist some Photoshop time. I've done the trim with a gray/blue and with a plummy color...Next question will be, do we paint the rest of the trim one of these colors, too? And do we leave the house white? I think we leave it white but, I don't know!



That's a gable vent-- I just drew in a quick one; I start to lose my patience.

ALSO! I will gladly accept any other suggestions for trim colors and combinations-- all the help we can get!!!

HAha!*

Yesterday I called the city's building safety office and asked them if my file had "PROBLEM CHILD" stamped across the top in big red letters. He said that it didn't. But he laughed. I think maybe it does.

Remember back last fall when we got the CH/A installed? Yeah? You don't? Me neither. It was a long time ago. Well we finally got that attic trap door finished and were ready to get the mechanical inspection done. I called the inspector and he told me that the contractor who installed the thing has to call and schedule the appointment. I SWEAR TO something that I could not remember the name of the people who did it. They are so far out of the equation. So I'll have to call them to get that taken care of, wrap up the rest of the "repairs" and get the final. Then we have to get ANOTHER permit for the roof. Sigh. I was so ready to have the monkey off my back.

We've made a few more strides in the push toward a final inspection: tada! baseboards.


Adam rounded over the tops with the router. Easy peasey. Easy for me to say. Adam also primed all the backsplash panels and we started gluing them together this weekend with good old liquid nail and PL construction adhesive. He also painted the door jambs and the pantry door and got all the wet insulation out of the attic. Damn! He gets all the good jobs.

Meanwhile, still no word from the insurance people, but there's a lot of ground for them to cover. Everybody on the north end of town is gonna need a new roof. Everybody. My mom only lost one window, but they told her that her 10 year old roof is bruised-- not punctured, just bruised-- and she needs a new one. Everybody needs a new roof. We thought we had everything patched enough for last week's rain...


Hmmm. So we had to suck it up and do this (where "we"= Adam):


I know you can see that little blue spot. It's supposed to rain all week. Here's to hoping...

*(said in the voice of Nelson, of course)

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 ;-).

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.

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.