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!

Drywall pictures!



We'll start in the front of the house - the living room! The bay window is looking nice.

The fireplace area has been touched up. This also shows both arches, which has been difficult to capture. The arch on the left leads to the office/second bedroom; the arch on the right leads to the dining room.

Looking through the arch to the progress in the dining room. Kitchen and laundry beyond.

This guy is good. I probably shouldn't, but I was rubbing everything...it's all so smooth :)



The office/second bedroom is coming together. The bookshelf looks awesome!

I can't believe I thought about taking these out. What an idiot I can be..

The north wall of the kitchen after all our updates! Master bedroom door, fridge hole, and laundry room.

A picture of the big, tall ceilings in the master bedroom now. Looking very smooth and nearly finished. I'll tell ya', once I've got this running water thing figured out, I'm moving in!

I'm so happy, I'm sick.

My personal definition of sickness is not eating on Thanksgiving. It’s my holiday. One I still get legitimately excited about. And this year – like last year – I spent it curled up on the living room floor, sleeping the day away. Not that I’m complaining about sleeping all day…that was nice. The food thing still irks me a little though.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a version of the same thing everyone has lately. Cough, sore throat, running nose, achy, hot/cold, sweaty/clammy, tired, dehydrated, no appetite..Basically worthless. There for a while, I legitimately thought it was the Mesothelioma catching up with me from ripping out the old insulation. I stopped short of calling the Law Offices of So-and-So for my free consultation because my dad ripped out way more than I did and he seems Meso-symptom free.

So, I’ve been drinking plenty of water, eating lots of oranges (thank you FFA fundraiser!), and sleeping almost constantly. This includes while riding in cars with friends. In addition to my newfound narcolepsy, I seem to have also found a drywaller! My local guy came through! Disclaimer: he was a little slower getting started than he let on…but I also called him last minute after he had sworn off new jobs for the year and persuaded him to take me back.

The last two days have been mostly prep-work – fixing screw heads, putting the corner strips on (including the cool flexible ones for the arches), and getting set for the real deal. In our conversation last night, he thought he might be done a day before he initially planned, and that he would have the entire house taped by tonight! That fancy equipment makes things easy!

Pictures to follow – I’ll sneak in after he’s gone tonight and check progress. It’s coming together, gang!

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!

Detail: Front Half of the House

As promised, I’ll use this opportunity to give greater detail to the work progressing in the front half of the house: wiring, insulation, structural changes, and drywall.

Given the fact that we have since decided to remove much of the plaster and lathe in the house, the time we spent peeling wallpaper seems a bit wasted.. But, hindsight is 20-20. The original intent was to hang sheetrock over the wooden slats in the ceiling that the acoustical tiles had hung from. I went around with a screw gun and a ladder reinforcing the slats so they actually stay put once the drywall was fastened in place – after all, none of this is really any good if it falls in your mashed potatoes during dinner. Again, much of this has been for nothing because almost EVERYTHING came out anyway!

We started the gut job in the ‘front porch’ area of the house. When the house was built it was an open porch, a short time later it was screened in, and eventually enclosed with windows all around. The sellers referred to it – at that point – as the solarium.

They would sit there and drink tea with their grandparents and watch the activity on the street below. From that point, there have been windows taken out and changes to the roofline.

While I do plan to rebuild the latticework around the front door, I think it’s going to be too expensive to bring back the old windows and upper railing right now. Someday, though!

Anyway, in the entryway, we found the insulation and electrical work to be pretty spotty – both were replaced. I’m no electrician, but when your stereo turns on and off mysteriously, that’s an issue! Also, the large opening between the entry and the living room was sagging a bit, so we knew something would have to be done. What we didn’t know before the plaster came down was that it was severely under structured given the span it crossed and that it bore much of the weight of the gable above it.

With new headers and jack studs in place, we were squared up and ready for action!

The dining room was fairly straightforward. We’re adding three-way switches on either end so I can control the lights easier. Previously, there weren’t light switches in the front half of the house – only pull chains.

Partial chimney in the dining room.

Dining room facing the Kitchen/New Garage.

Dad and I removed the old partial chimney from the west wall of the dining room. This was originally the kitchen, and this chimney would have served the cooking aparatus at the time. I toyed with the idea of saving it, exposing and sealing the bricks, and building some cool bracket to support it. Once the plaster came down, we found large holes in two sides and failing mortar throughout. All for the best, though – this visually opens the space and leaves lots of room for hanging things on the wall.

There was a door between the dining room and the entryway – I assume – from the days when the entry was a porch and before the large opening existed between the entry and the living room. With the other openings present, it didn’t make sense from a traffic or visual standpoint to have this opening in place anymore. Studs + drywall = no more door!

The second bedroom/office room proved to be the biggest mental challenge of all the rooms thus far. Because we wanted to maintain the circular flow through the house, it was important that we find a way to accommodate that while also including storage options for the bedroom/office and adjacent bathroom while also providing privacy for those who might use it as a true bedroom someday.
Our solution – after much debating, head-scratching, and hand gesturing – was essentially to leave the space as is. We did make a few tweaks: we removed the cluster of tiny doors in the closet area and added another pocket door to the bedroom side of the bedroom/bathroom pass-through. We are also batting around the idea of hanging a larger barn-type door over the archway leading from the bedroom to the living room. This way, there will be privacy when needed and a wicked cool architectural feature when not in use.

My dad, the saint.

The reason we'll all probably have Mesothelioma.



Notice the partial chimney - as seen from the second bedroom/office. Also notice the Perfect 10 dismount off the ladder. 



As seen from INSIDE the bookshelf :)

Bedroom/Bathroom pass-through with bookshelf above.

Perhaps the coolest part – and by far the piece I’m most excited about – is the built-in bookcase over the closet. We’ve framed this in to accommodate books up to 15” tall, so it will be a nice space for stacks of books, artwork, and other fun stuff.

The COOLEST part of the coolest part: a library ladder that I'll have to track down and install later. (My friend Melanie asks excitedly, “Like in ‘Beauty and the Beast!?”  Not *exactly* my inspiration, but yes! J )

The living room is another room that will be left fairly untouched. Because of my concerns about keeping the bay window area and fireplace surround intact, we’ll be leaving the plaster in place. The west wall of the living room, however, is a fix that needs fixing. At one point there was another window on this wall and – like many places throughout the house – when they were done with the window it was covered up. In this case with wallboard of some kind. So, we’ll take that board down while we're at it.

The only other major update in the living room has been the wiring. Like everywhere else in the house, the wiring was a mix of new and old: knob and tube meets something else, spliced in with something else, blah blah blah. We’ve removed all of that and replaced it with modern, grounded wiring including wiring for a speaker system to be mounted around the room and TV above the fireplace. Nevermind that I don't OWN a TV that will fit on the fireplace..

With all of these changes taking place, it’s getting easier and easier to see the light at the end of the tunnel. While we’re still QUITE a way from completion, the new shape of the house is coming through and I feel great about knowing we’re leaving a positive, lasting impression on something that has meant so much to so many people.

That’s all for now – thanks again for stopping by!