Let the sun shine in

If you know me, then you probably know that's a 40 Year Old Virgin reference, and that Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen and Romany Malco are bare chested singing and dancing inside my head right now. (Hopefully inside your head now too). Because NOT ONLY do we have a toilet that flushes without buckets (!!!!!!!!) we also have an amazing new window!

Guys hard at work. It's hard to remember how high off the ground the window really is...

Like, standing on scaffolding high. 

There was no way I could get the picture to balance on my iphone. The window is so bright!! But you can see the Mr.'s recent plumbing progress under the window. 

So I took another picture to show much light we're getting in the dining room these days. 

Now that the center section is gone, we can see so much further into the park (over our neighbor's shed), but there's a lit path that's visible into the park, and I think it will be really lovely in the evening. 

In less exciting progress, after much vacuuming and mopping, the Kid has a place to play and actually has indoor toys on site! We're still waiting on the new electrical wiring before we can paint, but we'll be painting like gangbusters in a few weeks. Tentative plan is to reseal the hardwoods, move in, and have them refinished professionally later. Yes, it would be better to do this before we move. It would also be better to be millionaires. 

So we're not millionaires, but we do have giant dancing light up fountains on 'our grounds'. 

So here's a gratuitous fountain shot from our morning walk with the wagon. 

Next time I am going to ride and he can pull me. 

P.S. I thought that I might take a video of the Viper flushing, but then I thought, no, that's weird. People who read blogs on the internet probably know what flushing toilets look like. Rest assured we are BEYOND THRILLED about the flushing of the toilet. RIDICULOUSLY GRATEFUL to be able to use the bathroom in our home without having to go outside! (Giant bottle of hand sanitizer outside the door.)

Celebrating functional commodes with steak and sushi (and water that comes with umbrellas)

This is the internet. Therefore, CATS

We've set up the garage as a painting studio for the various cabinets that are in the process of getting cleaned up. We open both the garage doors for ventilation, and we usually have a number of 'visitors' waiting for us in the alley. The other day we had four kittens. They love the plastic on the floor and frequently end up with paint drips on their fur. Gah. 

The Kid looooooooves cats. He really does. Which is unfortunate, since neither of his parents can tolerate them. We keep tempting him with promises of puppies that play games. He keeps insisting that we can just keep these kittens and he will feed them sticks. (They eat the bark, or something? Clearly missing some of the finer points of feline biology.)

He sits very patiently and waits for the cats to come to him. Then he pets them!

Success!

In other news, I have selected and even purchased paint for the exterior doors. 

The masons are officially finished, although there are some cosmetic items that we will have them come back to finish. They rebuilt this wall at the south side of the porch, which was much easier to photograph than the chimney. Sorry. 

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. 

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... 

Accentuate the positive

We're having the kind of day where everything is going wrong and nothing is going right and costs are spiraling wildly out of control while our quality of life diminishes rapidly... so, here. Here are some 'after' pictures. Sort of. This is the basement sprayed with Kilz!

Leftover pile of debris from laundry chute removal. It's all gone now. 

We got $40 for this pile of wire. We would have gotten more money if we had stripped all the insulation off the wire. Yeah right.

So here is the 'big bad' of the day. We're trying to get rid of the dumpster, as it is becoming mattress and box spring central. (None of us have ever put a mattress or box spring in our dumpster. Strange how that happens.) So I thought, we should take down the ceiling tiles in the kitchen and get that in the dumpster. That's about all the demo left to do in this phase.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

This is the original plaster ceiling of the kitchen, completely in shambles and full of water and god knows what else, being supported by some flimsy boards and a sheet of plastic. The box for the kitchen light was completely rusted out. Super safe, I'm sure. If I had a couple of big guys, we could have taken down all the upper cabinets and let it rain down upon us. Alas, I have no big guys lounging around my house waiting for orders. There doesn't seem to be a way to take down the ceiling without taking down and/or potentially damaging the cabinets, which I do not have the funds to replace. While the removal of the upstairs bathroom floor may have helped this destruction along, we still can't clean this out from above and if we could it would only go halfway across before the upstairs bedroom covered it up again. Not to mention that next week we lose our helper and I am supposed to be studying for boards. We have no idea when we will have the money to tackle the kitchen since it's tied up in our current house so it appears that this is going to be here for a bit. Until something miraculous happens, or whatever. 

In case you're wondering, I do give up on this house. I give up on it all the time. Sometimes several times a day. I just usually get over it pretty quickly. 

This time... we've been broken up for about four hours. I'm still not speaking to it. 

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.