Four Days Later

We made it!  The trim is up and most of the doors are hung.  It's great to see what the place looks like with proper trim, and the best part is seeing things getting closer to finished.  We decided to paint the trim ourselves, so we've spent a few hours this weekend filling nail holes and caulking, two rooms down, six to go.  I foresee this part of the project taking awhile since not only do we need to patch and paint the new trim, we have to patch and paint windows that were never painted by the previous owner.  While we're at it we need to patch and paint drywall where it got nicked up over the past couple months.

Max is trying to understand why we keep scurrying around, but so far he seems to appreciate the new trim.

 New doors on the first floor, painting these doors are on the to do list as well.  The door knobs are in the mail, I promise.

 We only made it about 50% of the way here.  The door needs to be stained and it needs a new door knob, but there's a bigger problem.   See that pesky duct in the upper left hand corner?

It's preventing a door from being properly trimmed, the door fits in the opening just fine, but we wouldn't be able to cover up the space between the door jamb and the drywall.  So we called out an HVAC company to see if we could move it or put in a smaller one.  After a crew of four people ran around for 15 minutes, up and down ladders, in and out of the attic, and had the thing ripped open it turns out it can't be moved and a smaller duct won't work.  Bummer.  

We're considering all kinds of options to get around it: 1. move the door into the bathroom, to where the bulkhead ends, 2. put the door up at a 45 degree angle under the duct, or 3. even moving the whole wall out about three feet so we can get three more feet of space into the bathroom.  Lots to think about there.

Meanwhile we'll be plenty busy with patching and painting about 1300 feet of trim in the rest of the house.

Our next big project if we don't figure out the bathroom first will be replacing the windows and the front door.  We put our application in for the City to consider and we have to go through the hearing process again in a few weeks.  Hopefully it will be less painful than last time.

Adventures in Trim and Doors

Day 1 of 3*

(*the contractor says 3, I say 5, we'll see)

All the furniture gets moved to the middle of the room so the carpenters get to the baseboards; some doors arrive; trim gets removed; the wrong door gets taken down; an HVAC company gets called; and the new baseboards and trim arrive 4 hours later.

Before, door down and everything pushed around.

The baseboards arrived

Spring, the second season.

The weather turned nice really early this year so we headed outdoors.  We took out the remnants of the kitchen vent, patched both the drywall and the siding.  We ripped out the last piece of chain link fence and extended the rock wall in the front yard.  We got rid of all the grass in the front yard and planted a bunch of things, some were more successful than others, but I blame the abnormal early spring for that.  

In the back we made the vegetable garden bigger and discovered a crazy amount of "wild" tomato plants that just popped up.  We started seeds in the spring for tomatoes, peppers, basil and flowers.  What Dexter didn't eat made it into the garden and we now have a bumper crop of tomatoes and basil.

The biggest outdoor project was adding the patio in the back.  Not a DIY project. We hemmed and hawed over doing it ourselves, got a few quotes and then realized we should just pay someone.  Nobody wants to get divorced over an amateur ability to level concrete.  Instead it took a crew of three guys four days to level the yard, pour concrete, lay flagstone and clean up.  Two parties later we can say it's one of our favorite investments.  In fact, the backyard cat has really taken to the patio.  More often than not we come home to find him sprawled out on it and if he's really comfy, upside down.

This is before, the backyard cat is lounging in a mud pit where we used to have pavers under the grill.

After the cement was poured.

The view today

We swapped out the light fixtures too.

This is Fred's corner, he even has a little garden.

This is our contribution to the patio scene.  1200 lbs of rocks, loaded into our car and unloaded here.  

Semi-annual Update

It's time for your semi-annual update!  Otherwise known as, I'm on vacation this week, but at home so I have time to post.

This week we finally got all the pieces in place to have trim and some interior doors installed, so not only will I update you on what we did over the past 8 months, I'll almost be up to date on posting the latest project!

In somewhat chronological order, here's the first thing we did in 2012:  New Railings!

This is one of the coolest things we've had done.  The railings were custom made and arrived in big pieces and were welded together in place.  There's a shot of the previous railings in the post below, it's clear this  is an upgrade.

Second Act 2012: the laundry room.  What was supposed to be a one weekend project turned into a two weekend project, and two weekends without laundry.  But a totally DIY project that only took two weekends isn't bad around here.

Before:  bare lightbulb, really ugly green walls and gym mats on the floor.

In the middle:  we put down a layer of Durock over the sub floor, patched drywall, painted the room turquoise, installed charcoal tile on the floor, moved everything back into the room, installed new outlet and switch covers and a new light fixture.  Whew.  The most difficult part was actually getting the dryer hooked back up to the vent.

At the end we had this.  Still no doors, but definitely an improvement.  It looks much better in person, it's a hard room to photograph.

2011 Wrap Up

Since we've neglected the blog the past couple months, below is quick round up of our end of 2011. Come 2012 we're trying to accomplish more, like finally get trim installed and put more furniture in our bedroom. Hopefully we'll be better at keeping up to date!

August to December 2011:

1. Installed gutters, clearly, not picture worthy, although you might be able to see the difference in the paint pictures.

2. Painted the outside of the addition, master bedroom, bath & upstairs hallway

Old Green House

New Grey House! Much classier.

New Color in Master Bedroom

3. Took down the ugly railings

4. Waited months for new railings, in fact it was 2012 before we managed to see any progress (after dealing with 3 contractors).

5. Hung some art

6. Painted a wall in the kitchen green just because it's fun

7. Hung a cabinet in the dining room

8. Replaced the ugly dining room chandelier with this slick piece of art

Come 2012 we're resolving to working a ton on the backyard, a patio is on the wish list. But since it's cold for the next couple months, we'll probably focus on getting trim installed EVERYWHERE!

Two Pallets of Rocks

Two pallets of rocks is enough to build a path, some stone walls, and then some.

In just a weekend, we replaced my plastic knife stake out with a lovely flagstone path and created a short stone wall between the sidewalk and our garden, and built the beginning of a corner garden.

It poured about an hour after we finished this project, so the rocks are now shiny instead of dusty. We still have quite a bit of rock leftover, so it will find its way towards edging some gardens in the backyard and maybe replacing the mud pit where we keep the garbage cans.

July: Cats, Carpets & Concrete

Everyone meet Fred. Fred showed up in March and endured a misguided stay in our living room for a night and decided he liked the outside better. Recently he's been spending hours a day in our backyard and has become quite friendly. Tentatively he's the fourth member of our little pack, as long as he decides to stick around. Dexter likes to sit in the window and watch for him and they bat at each other through the window.

This is probably Dexter's favorite spot in the house. With or without his buddy in the backyard.

Onto carpets, we scored our second great deal on a carpet at the Crate & Barrel outlet. I neglected to take a picture of this room when we got the new couch this spring, but it used to have a beige carpet, which didn't really do it for this room. The pattern brings a little needed life to the room. We have some art on order and plans for a DIY art project to further spruce up the cool palette. The beige carpet found a new happy home in the guest bedroom. It's doing a great job covering up the crappy floor.

The fence is down! Our curb appeal used to be negative. We're slowly working our way towards positive. We put in a couple gardens, did some serious work to thin out the day lilies, and finally the chain link fence came down! (*mostly) We're pilot testing not having a fence in the front, but we decided to leave a small portion up on the side of the yard between us and the apartment building. There's a can of spray paint just waiting to spruce that portion of the chain link up until we decide what to do. About the concrete, the City won't pick up the fence pieces unless it's free of concrete. Don't mess with a man holding a Sawzall removing concrete from fence posts. We now have more lumps of concrete in a pile in our backyard. I feel a "rock" sculpture coming on.

Negative curb appeal.

We're looking more respectable!

The result of an hour of yanking it out of the front yard and then Henry hacking it into appropriate sizes for trash pick up.

Random updates: Our garden can't handle the summer heat, plastic knives are decent stakes for setting out the path in the front yard, and our living room is slightly uncluttered for the first time in awhile.