Update Tour: Dining Room

Like all of our rooms, this room has seen a few different stages of completion since our last update. Here's the room as it was right before Christmas. The walls in these two views are the original plaster, with a new drywall ceiling. 

I'm pleased with all the paint choices in my house (which is essentially painted) but I especially love this color. Sprinkle by Valspar is the most lovely and well behaved turquoise. In some light its blue, in some light its green, but its always lovely and restful and elegant.

This is a pretty accurate depiction of the color right now, in early afternoon. The crown molding went back up yesterday, and it makes me swoony. 

Lunch by Wendy's. Because we still keep it classy like that (although dramatically less often. I swear.)

Just for comparison's sake, here it is from the listing:

And from the summer:

Behold, the Bucket Flush is BACK!

The big day has finally arrived - the day when we can go to the bathroom in our own house!!! I contemplated taking a video of it flushing, but I opted against it. If you haven't been without a toilet for months, you probably wouldn't have appreciated it in the same way. 

The Mr. is to be highly commended for his hard work, dedication, and new found skills. We're a little ways away from having running water yet, but the supply lines are connected through the bathroom. The tile came down for the water supply business, and he's already put it back. So getting running water to the toilet will be a basement project, not a bathroom project. 

Daddy's little helper helped for about 10 minutes before there was yelling and water all over the floor. Fortunately, our neighborhood block party was taking place so I walked while the Kid rode his bike around the corner and we hung out with our neighbors.

While we were at the block party, I got a text saying the Mr. needed another pair of hands. Clearly bringing the Kid back to the house would a) impede progress significantly and b) take a long time, since he had teamed up with the neighbor kids and was having the time of his life. I happened to mention this to one of our neighbors, and he stepped away from the grill, handed me the tongs,  picked up an extra beer for the Mr. and headed down to our house to help install the toilet. One of the many reasons that we can't wait to move in to this house!

The toilet is now installed, does not leak, and the tiles have been reattached to the wall. Hopefully they'll be out of the way enough that they won't pop back off. We have some grouting to do, but what else is new?

The Mr. headed back to our old house, took a shower and got cleaned up and came back for the end of the block party. It was a great afternoon, with lots of great people to hang out with, delicious food, and a pack of kids gleefully playing in the (barricaded) street. We came back for the cars and the guys had to test out the new toilet. Buckets of water obtained from our own hose! (The white bucket is actually empty, but he really wanted to carry a bucket. And a flashlight.)

The sun sets over the park, lighting up our whole cluttered porch. We can't wait to live here. 

The Great Wall

The wall that has been holding everything up for weeks is actually finished. In the end, it was one of the cheaper and faster projects we've done. In one day, the crew had widened the original opening, replaced the studs, and sistered the joists running through the bathroom. Pretty sweet, really. 

Not the greatest picture, but I think it's funny how well you can see the window in the master bathroom from the kitchen right now.

So the joists that were beveled and notched and just cut to pieces have been sistered across the bathroom floor. The really rotted nasty one in the kitchen has also been sistered, but that sister joist runs all the way across the ceiling of the kitchen (on the left in this picture).

A nice visual of how much wider the door opening is. It's about doubled in size. We had hoped to be able to take it out one stud further, but to do that we would have had to re-engineer the basement, because of the load distribution over the lintel of the doorway downstairs. This is one where a) getting what we wanted would have been impractical in terms of the amount of work and money and b) we chose to work with the house and not force it to do things that didn't make sense. 

So then this afternoon the Mr. moved the doors around. This is the door to the mudroom, which we moved a few inches to the left. This is to accommodate a utility sink in the mudroom and a full size counter/cabinet in the kitchen. 

If you'll recall, our original plan was to bump this wall out into the little closet to get a full depth refrigerator on this wall. Because of the brick column, which is supporting a steel beam which is supporting all the masonry on the second floor, we aren't able to do that. We've decided to go with a counter depth commercial fridge/freezer instead, and leave the wall alone. 

The doorway from the office to the kitchen is framed out now, to give us more counter/cabinet space. You can see the brick column just to the right. 

Next up: plumbing, electrical, dry wall, paint, world peace and moving. 

Mud room demo

This demo has really been a group effort, with just about everyone having pitched in at some point. (Except me. But I took pictures!) 

We found an actual birds nest in the wall. The mason is going to plug up the whole on the exterior. 

When the ceiling came down, there was a rain of black coal dust. It's still layering the boards and drifting around, but you can really see the handprints on the light, I think. There was no insulation above the ceiling. We'll fix that. 

The whole shebang. This door wasn't functional when this picture was taken, so it wasn't really a door. But it fit the hole! Which is more than we can say for our current solution. Grrrrrrrrr.

The armadillo has left the building

The armadillo has left us, and no one seems to know when or how. Given the current state of the project, I can't really blame him at all. Via con Dios, Senor Armadillo. 

I tried to take pictures but it was kind of hard to understand the overall effect of cabinets piled in every room and dust all over. So I made a little video for you. 

Check out our sweet rotted floor joists that were hiding behind the grody kitchen ceiling. Wait - are you not supposed to let sewage sit on those for years? Really?

So, new plan. We need decent floor joists. Then we can have plumbing and electric. Then we can have a bathroom, then we can have paint and floors and all of that. Maybe, sometime before we pay off the mortgage, we can live here. In the meantime, I'm trying to convince the Mr. that we should just put in a glass floor tub/shower. So people in the kitchen can enjoy the light and the... view. It'll be a feature. 

He's not yet convinced on that bathroom design, but he did 'rough in' the new sink and faucet in the half bath for me. I like the pedestal sink and I think the size is just right... except for the part where I now have this tile problem. The holes in the tile (and wall) were from prior sinks, sinks which were apparently taller. I liked the faucet on the sink in person but in the picture it seems a lot taller. Hmmmm. 

Please to note how our wall is not 90 degrees. It's not too bad in this picture but the gap is pretty noticeable in person. No idea on what to do about it yet. Maybe I can replace the damaged tiles with black? Is that too weird? I'd love to take out some of the accessories. Two soap holders and a toothbrush holder and a towel bar is an awful lot of stuff on the wall for a tiny half bath. I think they are 70's era so I don't think I'd be destroying history. 

When googling possible sources for vintage peachy pink tile, I happened across this site: Save the Pink Bathrooms. I haven't taken the pledge, but I'm doing my best. Truly.

The big day

Well our big day has been very big indeed. We finally decided on the paint color for the kids room! Tada!

Just kidding. We did decide on his paint color but that certainly wasn't the biggest action of the day. It's hard to say what the biggest accomplishment was today. Maybe we should have them fight it out. In fact I think we should have a cage match: new gutters vs. no kitchen!

First up, the interior contender, our former kitchen!:

Surprise! We found a chimney!

We have a lot of kitchen cabinets in strange places right now. Like, they are three times bigger in the middle of the room than they seem on the wall. You can still swing if you don't mind getting up close and personal with an ancient mouse nest we discovered in one of them. 

Technical foul! What happens when you have guys coming to destroy stuff and the dumpster doesn't show up until 5:04 (ten minutes after the guys had to leave?) This. This is what happens. It's all gone now, no big deal, and totally on the dumpster people (and perhaps the people ordering the dumpster). 

The challenger: new gutters!

I am sad to see the copper gone. It was so lovely and added such character, but it was literally destroying our house with its complete failure to direct water in appropriate directions. So I will use as much copper as I can reasonably and stylishly afford on the inside. Sorry, house. 

I said a lot of prayers for these guys. At one point the Kid was shaking their ladder. (!) 

I hustled him off to school. 

Our aluminum/copper combo is now all aluminum. Sad face. But a dryer basement! Preserved masonry! 

I hear these are worth big bucks. I also love them and would like to use them for something, but I'm not sure what that would be without causing undue damage. Like, a planter? That I could cut a bigger hole for?

Also, I like money. See: no kitchen or bathrooms

The Kid is the winner! "Hey look at my muscles! I'm a super hero!"

In other news, the electrician is scheduled for next week, the guys are coming to take down ceilings on Friday, and I have a big dilemma in front of me for next week: refinishing floors or painting cabinets? Stay tuned!

Green kitchen

This past Saturday the Mr. and our dear friend Andrew (who is becoming infinitely more dear with every offer to lift heavy objects and destroy things) were able to take down all the upper cabinets and all the ceiling tile in the kitchen. And it was green! So green! 

How the armadillo has made it this long, no one can say. 

He is at least partially shattered glass. It won't last forever. 

The piece of plastic to your left in this picture is the piece of plastic keeping the ceiling up. You can sort of see where the bathroom damage peters out there in the middle of the ceiling. Fortunately (or not?) for Andrew, his back met its limit before the ceiling started to come down and so our kitchen is like this. Just sort of... hanging out. Which delighted the Kid no end when we stopped by a few days later. I managed to resist the urge to immediately douse him in a vat of  hand sanitizer. 

Barely. 

Thank you so much for your help, Andrew!

Today we hired some guys to take down the copper and put up aluminum gutters, which is sad and yet also the only practical option. So hopefully that will happen in the next few weeks. The masons continue to hammer and chip and mortar away, and we've been getting bids back on the electrical and plumbing. Sadly they seem to think that they are in a contest to be the most expensive bid ever, so we're grappling with the budget and if and where we might economize. Still no offers on our other house, which is good in the sense that we have a place to live and aren't in the middle of filthy chaos (see above), bad in the sense that our dollars are limited and we have no idea how much we can put off on the expectation of selling. Also bad in the sense that the Kid and I have been sick for the past week with fevers and coughs, I took (and passed!) my boards which was straight up psychological trauma, and then on top of those things we have to rearrange our schedules and frantically clean for showings... I've had more pleasant summers, is what I'm saying. 

The Kid has a big birthday party this weekend and then I will be focused on the house full time until I start work on July 15. It sounded like it was going to be plenty of time, but now seems like nearly no time at all. Then again, until we get the plumbers and electricians in, there isn't a whole lot I can do inside. I'm pretty short so the kitchen ceiling isn't very realistic for me to tackle by myself. I'm getting my hands on a paint sprayer this week and I will probably set up cabinet painting central inside the garage next week. We've ordered a dehumidifier for the basement but right now it's way too humid to make painting work down there. It would be a lot cooler, though... 

This Week, Next Week, We Need, Pending...

In my past endeavors, I have accomplished some fairly impressive feats of organization with some large groups of people. Last week I thought, how did I do that? How did we keep everyone on the same page? And part of the answer was: white boards. I love a white board. It fills my little planning heart with joy. And now we have one, complete with some smiley faces and an extremely grumpy face. I'm calling it 'the job board' so that I can deflect responsibility on to it. We have to do it, the job board said. Also, under "To Buy/We Need": $1,000,000. Guess who added that. 

This week's major project is cleaning all the windows and scraping and painting the trim on the front porch. Just cleaning off the porch helped me feel like we were moving on to the next phase, having bagged up the gajillion pairs of work gloves and safety masks from our demo party and thrown out a bunch of napkins and debris from our recent fast food lifestyle. The major MAJOR difference comes from the clean glass. It's amazing. So much brighter and cleaner. It's like you're not sitting in a dirty aquarium anymore! Priming will take place on Friday, and hopefully we'll get the top coat on soon after. This will eliminate the primary area of concern for lead paint, although we are pretty sure that the paint that could even possibly maybe be lead is under at least one layer of latex already.

Of course, 100% lead is still readily accessible, and when scraping started on this window it was discovered that someone had painted over a fair amount of the lead cames already (that is what they are called I know because I googled it). So we're going to prime and paint all the other trim and come back to this window when we have a better idea of how to handle it. We think some stripper and steel wool will get the paint off the lead, and then we can reglaze this and some of the other original window glazing that came off. The windows here are otherwise in very good shape.

Inside we have been busy as well. This is the current view from the kitchen to the dining room. Notice a few things missing? Unfortunately we're going to be wall-less for quite a while, I'm afraid. Which is fine, since I'm struggling with the wall color in here. The sample that's up now reads much greener in the photo than it does in real life, where it feels too blue. I have a second sample up on the other side that feels too green. ARGH.

This small patch of pine flooring between the pantry and the basement represents four hours of hot, sweaty, frustrating work, and a full day of recovery (at least!) for my neck and shoulder. I am not built for this job. And yet.

I had two guys come through to quote refinishing the floors, so I can make some educated decisions on what to do and when and who will do it. One of them told me that this is the original heart pine floor. I had kind of been hoping that it was circa 1975, although when we got to the part where it joins the oak hardwoods the craftsmanship was a little too good to be seventies era. Believing it's a recent addition makes it less stressful when a sliver comes up with the glue or something gets gouged, so I may choose to believe the 1975 story for awhile.

Speaking of 1975, peace the spork out, grody range. Enjoy your trip to the big metal recycler in the sky. The Mr. took all the pipes and vents in to be recycled today and made a whopping $27 for all the plumbing, venting and chuting we could remove ourselves. We're rich! The stove was hoisted into a truck by some scrappers, who drive around picking up metal to recycle. They were thrilled to get it and we feel happy to have helped them, and thrilled that we didn't have to lift the stove into the van. I had thought we would scrap the dishwasher as well, but when we were trying to get the linoleum out from underneath it, we discovered that it was brand new and had never been used. Whoops. We don't love it still, but the question of it's fate can be decided much farther down the line.

Nasty. 

Lastly, the wet and moldy vanity in the pink and black bathroom got taken out late last week and this is the situation that got left behind. I've had a corner pedestal sink picked out for months (actual, real months) and have been waiting to get a plumber on board before I order it. The last plumber I talked to didn't think it was going to work because of where the plumbing is located in the wall and the sink pedestal is only partially open. So I have a second choice sink picked out in case we have to go flat against the wall, in which case I'm worried that the pipes are too close to the corner. So when we have a plumber I guess we'll see what they say. The Mr. has his spec sheets put together now and we're hoping to have some movement in that direction soon.

Anniversary present

Today marks our one month anniversary of double home ownership. We celebrated by taking out the master bathroom side of the plumbing wall, most of the 'mud' from the floor of the upstairs bathroom, and about 50% of the linoleum in the kitchen and mudroom. Grandpa T did the bathroom and then we both worked on the wall while the Mr. walked through with the estimator working on specs for the electrical and plumbing bids. Then the guys went home and I worked on the linoleum. Grandpa hung around long enough to see what I was uncovering - by golly, it's pine!

After an hour of scraping and after most of the functionality of my right arm was gone, this is what I ended up with. I think it's beautiful but it is very soft. I have no idea how old it is, as the linoleum from 1975 just had a pad underneath it. I haven't gotten into the mudroom yet but I'm assuming that it runs to the back door. Tonight I will be googling for ideas on what to do with it. Paint? Poly? Waterlox? 

In psychology when we're talking about families and why people don't expose their helpless infants on the hillside, we talk about something called 'attachment promoting behaviors'. This is basically what your baby does to convince you that it is lovable, adorable, and worth all of your sleepless nights, your freedom, your money and your body. Cooing, smiling, snuggling, etc. I feel like this house has got this down. When things are looking super hopeless and overwhelming and frustrating, the house manages to turn up something unexpected and promising. I realize wood floors in the House of 1000 Woods isn't that surprising, but I really wasn't expecting them. We've been joking that these people must have owned a lumberyard. The listing agent told us that the original builders actually owned a furniture store, but close enough, I guess. 

The mason is hard at work, which pleases the Mr. greatly. As the mason and the Mr. were walking around pointing at stuff the mason's wife, who works as his assistant, commented "they're a perfect match. Picky, picky, picky." Indeed, they are a pair made in OCD heaven. Works out fine for me, since I'm going to have a beautiful house when they're done.