About Grout

Just a quick update to show the progress we made the day after Christmas.

The tile had been down for a week or more waiting for the right time to grout. With family in town for Christmas, I knew it would be difficult to find a time to make any progress on the house. My uncle, being the damn decent man he is, volunteered to help us grout seeing as he has had some recent experience in that department.

Coming into the laundry from the garage. Kitchen and dining room, beyond.

The grout was pretty self explanatory, but I had the added bonus of talking it over with the salespeople at the Tile Shop. I really appreciated the guidance and actual customer service I received there – I recommend them!

The grout I bought was a modified sanded grout – this means, in addition to the sand and cement-ish mixture standard in this type of grout, this one had a polymer component that would help stabilize the floor and help keep the grout from becoming brittle and cracking over time. In addition to this, I bought a liquid latex additive that further stabilizes and adds flexibility..though flexibility isn’t the right word..

View from "the bathub" looking out into the kitchen.

Directions call for mixing the grout to the consistency of toothpaste, though I’ve heard pudding, peanut butter, etc. all work well. We went a little wetter because we felt it would seep into the cracks better than a stiffer mix. Actually, the bathroom is a little stiffer than the laundry, which is stiffer than the kitchen. I’ll let you know if I have trouble and where.

After filling the voids and smoothing out the cracks (with our fingers..no fancy tools, there), we wiped down the floor several times making sure to clean and refill our buckets frequently to avoid leaving a streaky haze over the tile. I’ve been told that the additives in the grout could make that haze a pain to remove if you don’t get it while it’s fresh, so be diligent.

Kitchen floor grouted! Bathroom, beyond.

48-72 hours from grouting, we'll be able to wipe the stone/grout sealer over the entire area. This will darken everything slightly, but, more importantly, it will help protect both the tile and the grout from staining as they're both pretty porous. Any time after that dries, we can set the fixtures in the bathroom!

I hope everyone is having a happy holiday season..wherever you are!

Long time, no see!

Since the last post, drywall man has finished everything up and everyone who has seen the house has been very impressed with his work. I would recommend him a hundred times over..very nice, professional guy and he does amazing work.

The initial thought with the drywall was that I’d like to have a smooth finish. With a smooth finish, it would look like plaster and feel like an old house. From the beginning, I got a bunch of crap about smooth walls, “Oh, it’s going to be hard to paint,” “Oy, it’s going to show everything.” Yadda, yadda, yadda. “Oh, and it’s going to be more expensive.” Now you’re speaking my language. I decided we should do a very, very light orange peel texture over the walls and ceiling, and I think that worked well.

The longer the project has lasted, the more we have done. The more we do, the more the budget gets pinched. Now – between you and me – I went over the planned $50,000 budget quite a while ago. When you’ve got a debit card and there’s money in your account, it’s just easier than going to the bank and making a transfer or withdrawing the cash. I’m not horribly over budget, I just wanted to get that off my chest…full disclosure. By the time it’s all said and done, I think $60,000 would be a reasonable number. (Think about it, though…I’ll basically have a new house! For $60K!)

Anyway, drywall man has finished up, and the roommates have done the bulk of the priming throughout the house. We’re doing two coats of primer on all the ceilings (because I won’t be buying flat white ceiling paint to go over top of the flat white primer) and one coat on all of the walls which will be painted later, anyway. It looks really good. I’d show pictures, but all you see is a bright white glow J

We cleaned the hardwood floors with mineral spirits (on the advice of a neighbor) but haven’t gotten past that. I think a nice little Saturday project will be sanding floors. Maybe this Saturday?

The big development the last few nights has been the tile. We have finished tiling the kitchen, bathroom, and laundry room with some tile I bought last week. I had the other tile all picked out, bought, and unloaded in the house. Did that six months ago. Since then, the tile has been in the way everywhere we’ve put it, and everyone has moved it 19 times. To tell people I was returning the tile they’ve moved 19 times was difficult, but doable. When they saw the new tile, they liked it better, too J

This was the best of both worlds for me.. New shape, old look.

The new tile is, again, travertine, but it’s a little rougher around the edges and has the pitting where the other had been filled with a resin and super polished to perfection. Every time I moved the super polished perfect tile, I thought “This isn’t going to look right in this house. This is Donald Trump’s tile, not mine.” I wanted something that would look OK if the floor wasn’t perfectly level or the rooms weren’t square. That would look great even if I got a grout line a little crooked. Bottom line, I wanted a tile that would look perfectly fine even though I’m not perfect and neither is my little house. And I got it J

My boss (the Jack of all trades…and master of most, actually) came over and got us started. The first night was all preparation: vacuuming the floor, finding square in an unsquare old house, and chalking out a grid that would be our guide throughout the project. Because there may have been a beer involved, our measurements didn’t come out as perfectly the first time (or second, or third) as they could have. But they came out eventually, and that’s what matters. We did a little dry fitting in the bathroom that night, but night one was mostly prep.

Lines and lines and lines. And tile.

Dry fit tile in the bathroom.

More dry fit. The threshold I write about later is to the left, here.

Night two, Bossman came back to show me some of the basics of thinset, using a trowel, and laying out the tiles in a way that won’t make you dizzy as you’re going to the bathroom. Within about an hour, he was gone, my mom/roommate was there, and I was in charge. Yikes! His best tip: take your time. The prep work (read: hard work) was done..as long as we stuck fairly close to the lines, we should be fine. Take a step back every few tiles and check your work. If a line looks off, fix it while you can and make sure everything looks good as you go.

Bathroom tile: stuck!

With that, we tiled most of the bathroom and about 2/3 of the kitchen. Not bad for a couple amateurs!

Kitchen and Bathroom tile mostly down!

Night three was mom and I again. We finished up the bulk of the kitchen and a majority of the laundry room before I had myself nearly tiled into a corner.

Night four. Ugh, night four. Dad was off work that day and had spent a majority of his time off at my place finishing up a few projects, and priming here and there. By the time I got off work, it was decided we were going to finish the freaking tile. Dad hunkered down in the garage with the wet saw and grinder, and I crawled around on the floor laying random bits of tile that had been neglected. Lots of measuring, lots of cutting..a few broken tiles, but nothing horrible. We got everything but the bathroom/closet threshold done before deciding to call it a night.

And then I looked at my clock.

11:45p.. and I still have to make something to take to the office Christmas party tomorrow. For someone who got awfully used to going to bed at 9p in the middle of being sick, staying up until 12:30a on a Monday was not my favorite thing. But I got everything put together, and people even seemed to like it. Mission Accomplished.

We went back over last night to look at this threshold. There was an area between the bathroom and the closet that leads to the second bedroom/office that needed cut out otherwise there would be a 2” chunk of wood floor in the bathroom sticking out from under the closet door. When we cut the little bit of wood floor out, the subfloor came with it. Remember, the bathroom was an addition, and I guess that part never got totally tied together. Anyway, we worked it out, set some Durock in place for the tile, and mixed a small batch of thinset for the area. (At that point we only needed to put down three tiles) Once this project was finished, I called it a night for both of us and we made our way across town to grab dinner and go to bed early.

In the next day or two, we could grout the tile and see what that looks like.. and truck along to the next project. Stay tuned!

Fast times..

What a weekend!

Not only do we have power restored to the house (LIGHTS!!), but we have more or less finished hanging sheetrock throughout the house, have trimmed out the exterior of the new windows, removed the remainder of the west chimney, had a new furnace/AC/water heater installed, restarted soffit work, and laid the groundwork for hanging siding. Oh! I also bought more cement board for the kitchen and laundry areas as well as decided on exterior lights and a bathroom sink and faucet.

As I said, the drywall is hung (with the exception of the living room ceiling), but we’re waiting on the contractor to come mud, tape, and texture. Timeline on that is another 2 - 2.5 weeks, so, in the meantime, we’re working on the outside before the weather turns nasty. On rainy days, we’ll rip up the carpet, sand the hardwood floors, and plop the carpet back down again to protect the floor from drywall splatters and stilts. I can refinish those later..I'm just hoping to get the dusty projects out of the way all once!

Also in the meantime, we can lay the cement board in the kitchen and laundry room – this acts as a sturdy base for the tile. We’ve already done this in the bathroom, but hadn’t done the rest because we weren’t totally sure what the footprint of the rooms would be. Now that the major demolition is done and we’re putting things back together, we can feel confident knowing where this stuff will go!

The exterior trim was pretty exciting for me.. it’s another reminder that I might actually get to live here one day! That, and the fact that I’m excited about the product itself: the trim around the windows and doors is a PVC product just like the pipes you might use when plumbing your house. This stuff comes in a variety of profiles and designs, and the real beauty of it is that there should be minimal maintenance going forward. Because it’s plastic, it can’t rot and it looks like the old trim might have – double win!

The west chimney has been coming down for the last two weeks or so. As we find the motivation, we go around back and smack at the bricks for a while. Well, over the weekend, dad and I took the sledge and a wheel barrow and finished her off J I have saved the old bricks because there is repair work to be done on the front steps, but I’d also like to use them in something else. Maybe next year..

I was able to pull the chimney down instead of tuck pointing it because the insulated pipe inside was no longer needed. My 1980’s furnace has been replaced with a new, high efficiency model and I’ve installed an electric water heater so there’s no need for a vent. Not to mention, I get more rebates now J

A side project I’ve been working on is the interior doors. When I bought the house, none of the doors matched each other. I don’t know if you know this about me, but I’m just obsessive-compulsive enough that this would bother me. Well, I was lucky enough to be able to sweet talk the neighbors into letting us salvage the old doors from their house before it gets demolished. Now every interior door in the house is the same..and my OCD remains fully intact.

After taking measurements and deciding which doors we could use, I set about sanding, priming, and painting them. I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen lots of magazines and blogs lately featuring people with these glossy black doors. I don’t know what it is about them, but I just think they look kind of…sexy? So, I thought I’d give it a try. If it works, I’ll have the sexiest doors in town..if it doesn’t, I’ll repaint them another color and life will go on. The only issue I anticipate would be the bathroom: it’s a smaller space without windows, and the dark doors might overwhelm it. Otherwise, everything else should be bright enough that they work just fine. Stay tuned!

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/dc/inspiration-black-doors--089693?image_id=211671

I’ll post pictures of all of this very soon. At this point in time, I don’t even have any – pretty lame, right?

Happy Tuesday!

New (Old) Development!

So, remember how I wrote about not having “before” pictures in an earlier post? Well, that’s true. I didn’t…but the appraiser did. Stuffed into all of my loan information were a few pictures snapped by the woman who did a walk-through on the bank’s behalf. She also included a rough floor plan, which is helpful when you’re not familiar with the place but trying to piece my pictures together. I’ve included little signals so you can see exactly where the pictures were taken from so you can gain a little more insight.

From a design standpoint, the floor plan will stay almost exactly the same. We have moved a door here or there (not to mention added a garage), but the square footage of the living space remains.

1. Entry - new wiring, insulation, and drywall completed.

2. Living room - new electrical/audio wiring, insulation, and drywall completed.

3. Dining room - removed the partial chimney and corner hutch in addition to wiring, insulation, and drywall. 

4. Bedroom/Office - new wiring, insulation, and drywall in addition to the reconfigured closet layout and bookshelf addition.

5. Bathroom - removed paneling and massive amounts of unexplainable concrete, updated plumbing/electrical, and replaced the subfloor and wallboard. 

6. Bathroom - Pt. 2

7. Kitchen (facing Dining Room) - currently demo-ed. Planning for new cabinets and countertops.

8. Kitchen - Pt. 2

9. Laundry - a new door to the garage will take the place of the windows seen here.

10. Master Bedroom - moving the door and closet to improve the room's function. More to come!

Progress!

It’s official! I have a new key on my key ring and a dumpster in my driveway – all the issues pertaining to the easement have been cleared up, and demolition has begun. Hardcore.

The first order of business was showing the place off. In my excitement, I didn’t actually take interior pictures of the house before we started…duh. In my defense, we started tearing wallpaper off the wall during a tour (enthusiastic participants) – it left very little time to grab my phone and start recording.

Dining Room

Master Bedroom

Since removing all the wallpaper (From all the walls. In all the rooms.), the next most pressing interior issue was the bathroom. The walls were covered in a minty green paneling fastened to the wall with metal nail strips. I’ve never really seen anything like it..so I knew it had to go. Along with the paneling were an older vanity, and a tub/shower unit that had been custom-made into a handicap accessible shower stall. I really should have taken pictures of that – they did a great job on the retrofit. Alas, it’s all gone and the smell of new lumber now permeates the space.

New lumber, you say? Why yes! Because the bathroom – like the rest of the house – is small, the fact that there were two doors to the space left very little room for traffic flow of any other kind. My solution: pocket doors. We removed the existing door jambs, beefed up the wall structure as needed, and installed two pocket door kits. Not including the doors, the kits cost $55 each. Considering the space these new door systems will buy me, I consider that time and money well spent.

Ta-da!

The real story in the bathroom was the floor. Not only were there two layers of linoleum and a layer of  small hexagonal green tile, there was also a 5 inch layer of solid concrete.  …sorry, what?

After the main portion of the house was built in the late 1860’s, there were several smaller additions: the kitchen first, bathroom second, what is now the master bedroom, and the laundry area which was originally a porch. It is thought that the bathroom space was originally used as a porch as well – then possibly a pantry for the adjoining kitchen. Which would partially explain the concrete. They may have also done it to thumb their nose at future owners of the house..who knows?

In any event, we removed the layers of flooring, broke up the concrete, and decided that it would actually be way easier to re-plumb and wire the room if the entire floor system was gone. Because the “new additions” are all over a crawl space and I don’t get along with spiders, the subfloor was removed and most all of the work was done from above rather than in the dark, scary recesses of the unknown. Once the subfloor had been removed, we were able to cut out the old copper pipes for scrap and replace them with PEX tubing.

Concrete taken from the bathroom floor. Newspaper: Des Moines Register - May 4, 1930

Results of the bathroom demolition.

For those of you not familiar with PEX, it is glorious. Think PVC, but flexible. It takes a lot of the time, effort, and frustration out of plumbing. While the material itself may be more expensive, people love it because it takes no time at all to install. We had my old pipes cut out and replaced in an afternoon. Throughout the entire house. Crawlspace be damned. You will have to buy a couple special tools: one to cut the pipe and another to crimp the little rings that seal any joints you have in your lines. Otherwise, with a couple dollars worth of T’s, elbows, couplings and the like, you’ve got yourself some fancy new plumbing without burrowing through a crawlspace with a torch.

OK, I guess sometimes you still have to burrow through a crawlspace. No torch necessary, though!

Once the major work below the floor was done, we sistered new boards to the existing floor joists to bring them up to grade with where the adjoining floors will be once tiled/refinished. Had the floor joists been in poor shape, this would have been impossible, so that was a lucky break! With the new joist system in place, we laid a sturdy layer of ¾” plywood down to stiffen things up, followed by a half inch layer of Durock cement board which will eventually receive the travertine tile I picked up on sale.

There are other projects in the works, but to list them all here would be overwhelming. We’re finding –as everyone does – that once we tear into one thing it leads to tearing into something else, and something else, and round and round we go. I’ll update again very soon as there are a lot of exciting changes happening!

Have a great weekend!

Homework

I hate homework - most everything about it, actually. I hated homework so much while in college mostly because I hated what I was doing in college. (I graduated with degrees in Financial Management and Economics...needless to say, this guy was the life of the party.)

I did that to myself because I didn't want to be the guy who was 30 years old, who still wore sweatpants everyday, and referred to passers-by as "Bro" on his way to Personal Wellness. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with sweatpants (I am writing a blog, after all..). I'm just saying the seven year college track wasn't for me. College was fun. A blast. For me, though, moving on was always the purpose. I stuck with a major I disliked because deep down I knew I could pursue whatever it was I truly wanted once I had a degree, and I didn't want to spend any more time getting from 'Point A' to 'Point B' than I had to.
However, there was one thing I learned more than anything while in college: if there was something I didn't want to do, I wouldn't do it. Not in a 'kicking-and-screaming-on-the-floor-of-a-department-store" sort of way. I would do what needed done, but I definitely didn't put my heart into it. And I wanted desperately to put my heart into something.

It took some time before I put it together.

Why was I always more willing to finish my homework when I knew there was a copy of "Cottage Living" waiting for me? Why was 'This Old House' always more entertaining than 'Jersey Shore'? And why do I have this odd fascination with reading Martha Stewart's blog every day hoping for more musings from the vegetable gardens and butler's pantries of Bedford?

I now have a theory. Anytime I have a serious (read: wine-induced) conversation with a really good friend, I find that all any of us are really looking for is simplicity. We don't need to be media moguls, billionaires, or Super Bowl victors. We just need to be happy. We just want to live a life that is full and somehow rewarding - and if we leave the world a better place than it was? Bonus!
I want a house. Not a big house, but one with character and a story. Something I can restore and make even better. A place to call my own and to open up to everyone. I want to have dinner in my too-small dining room using vegetables I grew in my too-small yard. I want something simple. I want a home.

So now I begin the rest of my life - the life after school. The life of my own choosing. The kind of life that gets me involved in my small community. The kind of life where I take my own bags to the grocery store, and save food scraps in a bowl on the kitchen counter for the compost pile. My simple life.