Bryan and Christina - Learning as we go

We're Baaaaaaaack!

2011-03-15T20:21:00.011-04:00

Well hello interweb friends and admirers. Yes, this is a blog post, and yes it's been ages since the world has been updated on our comings and going here on 13th st. We probably broke Google's algorithm with our lack of traffic, and for that I apologize.

Real quick update on our house since the last post: we've done nothing. Oh, we bought a new stove. But yeah, I think that's about it. I won't get into the life stuff that we are up to but suffice to say we've stayed busy and the house has been an after thought.

That has changed. Part of us getting busy was, um well, we're having another kid. This little bundle of screaming and not sleeping joy is slated to arrive in July. A - we're pumped. Parker loves babies and is really excited for a 2 year old which is fun to watch. B - it's time to get on to the final chapter of the house (that doesn't involve the words "kitchen", "bathroom" or "dig the basement out and pour a new concrete pad").

So we decided to gut the final bedroom and totally overhaul it with twin closets, (finally) fully insulated walls and ceiling and new windows. Oh, AND I'M NOT DOING IT! That's right, we hired a contractor. Now, I expect that you're a good reader of this amazing blog, so you already know about the nonsense we had with a previous contractor that we poured our hopes and dreams into. It went to shit. Messy shit. So after that shit (it really was shit) we did pretty much all of the work ourselves, and by that I mean I (Bryan) did it all. Well I don't hang or mud drywall and I hired a painter for the last room, but hey I had a spa day or something.

So Merlin (A+ on the name) showed with a couple dudes in a late 80's Ford F-350 quad cab with the name "Le Beaste" stenciled on the side. All vehicles the size of small boats need names. Anyway, the room being gutted has been in the past (in order): my office, our bedroom, our living room, a storage room, my workshop, and a guest room. It's had a life, and it had the scars to prove it. Aside from pulling up the old carpet and painting the floor, we hadn't touched this room since we bought the house. Pictures of the room before and after are scattered throughout this post, but I hope you figured that out already.

The room had a 1960's paneled (then painted) closet that was haphazardly added and added poorly as well. There was a special notch cut out that allowed someone to stick their hand through the hole in to adjust the radiator valve......But we never once complained because it was one of our 2.5 closets in the house, and the biggest, for the first 4 years we've been here. That was function over fashion in a major way. The other walls are covered in layers of wallpaper, newspaper, and then paint. The back window was so bad that in driving rain the kitchen below it would pour water, which happened just the other day. It was time for this room to GO. So in the end we're getting three custom windows, I'm insulating the walls and ceiling, Merlin is supplying proper electrical in there, and a great sense of this being the "last" thing we have to do to make the house really feel like we're in every room.

Before the baby arrives in July, which means this is Parker's room in October-ish, my mother-in-law will probably be residing in it for a few weeks. So it'll be a good chance to break it all in and see if we need to tweak anything before Parker takes over. Right away there's talk about building a bench that spans the closets which will be on either side of the back window. We'll see.

Dudes were off today so I snagged some pics. Tomorrow is framing and electrical, Thursday is something and Friday something else. Honestly, I wasn't paying attention to what Merlin said, that's why Christina is great.

We'll post pictures every couple of days for this few that want to see what is up. And I WILL get a picture of "Le Beaste", I assure you.

Sigh...for those "non-technical" readers in my family....click on the pictures for larger ones.

Bryan

D-O-N-E. What's that's spell?

2010-06-21T09:08:00.021-04:00

DONE.

Before I get into showing any pictures or crafting some witty banter about the week I just went through, let me give you a Reader's Digest snippet of what life has been like since October with the playroom:

Emptied the front second floor bedroom which was PACKED (i.e. inaccessible past 3 feet) into random parts of the house.
Started demo in the room in mid October with the idea of everything being done for drywall in November.
In reality, the room sat for months while I had one hour per week of time to work on it.
Framed in the new closet a couple of times
Installed new electrical in the room...over the course of 6 weeks
Parker got bigger and accumulated more "stuff" that crowded our living room.
I got older, grayer and more desperate

So that's about it. Last week I decided that enough was enough and pulled the ultimate DIY reno card: the "I'm taking the week off" card. It's a card that you can play from time to time, but must be used very sparingly and for the appropriate reasons. Well this was the time.

But since I do have a job with responsibilities I went to the office mid week for some meetings, so I got to write three days off as working. GO ME!

But I digress. So the week had to have a project plan and priorities...oh, and I had both. Check how it went down:

Monday - install all remaining door casing, first coat of paint on the playroom floor
Tuesday - caulk, install all baseboards, prime and paint (first coat) three of the doorways, second coat on paint on the floor
Wed - stuck at work
Thurs - create little railing thing for the bathroom, install all trim around closet, caulk
Fri - second coat on the three doorways
Sat - prime all playroom trim (including the nurse
Sun - both top coats on all playroom trim, prime radiator, install the railing thing, third coat of floor paint plus paint hallway floor.

Right now I have to say that Christina took on an extra job over the past few days to paint the stairs leading up to the third floor. While she always thought that was in the current plan, I did not. But in the end the stairs look awesome. The risers are the same white as our trim in the house, and the treads have the same floor paint which really makes them look nice. Too bad we'll be ripping those stairs down in a year or so, but hey, in the meantime they look great.

So that's what happened this week. The playroom needs some outlet covers (which I just realized I forgot to pick up) and the doors hung. In the pictures I have it looks like the base cap white is lapping up the wall, but I assure you that is some Nikon trickery, and not true. I just have to say that for the record or my head will explode.

We're giving the floors a week to fully dry then it's moving time. It'll be nice to get things like our spare TV, couch and entertainment center out of the way and into a proper room. Plus Parker keeps accumulating "stuff" that just needs to get out of the living room. I mean what 16 month old doesn't want the same square feet as a Chelsea condo?

Posh living on 13th St.

- Bryan

Hello....is this thing on?

2010-05-30T12:56:00.011-04:00

Greeting fellow DIY folks, parents, friends and wealthy admirers. It's been some time since I've done a proper blog post and since I actually get people asking what we've been up to (I know...I'm shocked too) I decided to just put it all out there. Online. To strangers. Like Chatroulette.

Ever since Parker came into the fold here on 13th street, projects have slowed to say the least. What would have been 2 weekends of 8 hours days now takes 6+ months, as evidenced by our work on Parker's playroom/guest bedroom/bass gear storage. In my previous post I laid out what was going to happen, and since then work kept going at a snail's pace, but like the Ice Age...slow movement is still pretty big.

In the past 2 months I completed the electrical (with an eye popping SEVEN outlets in there) as well as the rest of the framing and general to-dos. Our drywall guy and his crew squeezed us in between some actually profitable jobs just about 10 days ago, and they wrapped up the painting last week. I've included some progress pics of the the drywalling as well as the final closet I built along with the look of the bays since we decided to cover up (NOT REMOVE) the old wood trim at the bottom for a cleaner look. IF we don't like it I can remove the three pieces of drywall and all is well.

Note the "H" design of the closet with the left and right "flairs": the top is for a TV and whatnot with power and cable, and the bottom is a traditional closet space. The left side is square in the closet but hide the radiator pipes, while the right side is open in the closet for shelves and additional storage. We LOVE symmetry around here.

The pic to the left here shows how this front room connects to the rest of the house via the main hallway on the second floor, but also to Parker's current nursery, thus creating a 200 sq ft suite for a 15 month old. ....Yeah. This is about 48 hours old now, and the door on the right is gone and undergoing some TLC and I have created and installed the jambs for both this doorway and the lower closet.

View of the bay with the filthy screens.

What I'm doing right now is wrapping up the rest of the trim which I hope will b done net weekend if I can get a hold of Tague Lumber and get a delivery of some door casing. We'll see about that. In any case, I'm sanding/priming/painting the door between this room and Parker's room and Christina is taking care of the old bay window trim. I'm running baseboards tomorrow in between racks of ribs and beers.

Parker Approved!

Pondering Parker's Playroom

2010-01-24T21:24:00.007-05:00

After what has essentially been something like 7 months off from construction, we're back at it. And man, getting back on that horse was a tough one! Granted I’d much rather dabble in framing, electrical and the major items instead of trim and paint (ugh), there is an essential factor that you must have for any major work: time. That is far and away our greatest challenge right now.

With our daughter Parker now at a whopping 11 months old, she officially needs her own space to do what little kids do. So we decided to take this as our chance to redo the front bedroom on the second floor into a playroom that will eventually be her bedroom when she’s ready. As it happens, her nursery has an adjoining door to this front bedroom, so in the end it’s like she is getting her own suite at the Bellagio or something. It has a bay window that I'm already itching to make into a window seat!

(I’m banking on that move meaning that her nursery room can be taken over by me. What man doesn’t want his own cave with a mini fridge and HD cable?)

The room had been packed to the gills as a storage room for 18 months, so once that clutter was jettisoned I had to tackle the closet. Now, we’re pretty sure that the closet was original to the house, and it was built like a brick s#$%house for sure. The kicker is that I could barely ever use it. See, in the olden days, people must have had REALLY small feet or didn’t wear shoes. Because the original closet (you might be able to tell by the pictures) is a nice like 36 inches wide, but a mere 10 inches deep. I wear size 12 shoes, and putting my shoes in there was a pain in the butt. Not only that, but any shirts that hung we on one of three rods that ran perpendicular to the closet opening which made it weird to look for that long lost Cosby sweater in the back.

So I got to smash it apart and throw the whole thing away. As usual this meant a huge mess and since I’m paranoid about that level of dirt in the air, I had both doors sealed up like a bio medical lab. So getting bags of trash in and out plus ladders, compressor, etc was a chore. But you have to do what you have to do right?

Anyway, the original closet has been replaced by one of Christina’s design that I had the pleasure of constructing. If you can’t picture it with the framing, there will be an upper and lower closet with little “wings” off the side (you can see the header of the bottom closet, but you can’t see the studs running to the back wall to make the separate between the two boxes). The left side boxes in the radiator pipes for the third floor, and the right side will be open inside for shelves, TV equipment…whatever. Pretty decent use of symmetry and space if you ask me….

The other task for this room is getting more than the current number of working receptacles since keeping only ONE for a room this day and ages is not only against code, it’s pretty lame. The challenge was in the party wall opposite the closet, since there was no way I was going to grind into brick again for two boxes and the channel needed. Not going to happen in the room next to my daughter’s crib, and since brick dust goes EVERYWHERE and takes eons to get rid of; I elected to just frame a wall against the brick/plaster that’s there.

So in the end I got to build a closet and a wall plus add four new recessed lights and relocate the existing overhead fixture (still to do because I keep forgetting). I hope to get the new receptacles in next weekend, and then hopefully get our man Jose to sheetrock and paint the room by the later half of Feb. Like I said before, it’s just time…and when you get about 4 hours over the entire weekend to get anything done between naptime, and bedtime, it’s all a shell game.

Misson Accomplished

2009-05-25T18:13:00.014-04:00

Happy Memorial Day! I hope this finds you reflective on the reason for the holiday and not too sun burnt. We here are the Grimes casa are busy living life with a 3 month old and trying to trod along with the work on the house, the goal is to have it done enough she can't snack on lead paint or step on nails when she starts crawling. Picking up from the last blog post, my work for the past few weeks has been trying to focus on the door jambs/casing, and installing the baseboards in the first and second floors.

Just like our previous President, I can also say "Mission Accomplished". Ok, so just like Bush needed to clarify the misleading headline 6 years ago, I have some 'splainin to do. 6 of the 7 doorways have new jambs, 3 have doors and only one has a door that latches. The baseboards are pretty close to done, but I am in need of a nice transition piece to help with the difference in the height of the baseboards we've been installing throughout and the stair trim that we left in place. So in all, good enough for government work!

In this post are some picture from the past week or so. The top one is the trim we used for the two doors on the first floor since they are tight on a wall and the profiled casing would just look odd since the mitre would be off. The rest of the pics are some doors on the second floor as well as some baseboard. Not quite as riveting as a picture of the shooter on the grassy knoll, but it's a holiday and I'm dog tired.

(OK, here's where I walked away and Christina finished the post. Enjoy)

We also have finally hung art work on a couple of walls, and have some empty frames just waiting for adorable baby pictures that will go up shortly. This really means that I have to commit to the locations, and that might take quite some time of placing, and rearranging. I did dig out my UPenn diploma from the depths of our junk room, it should be good for something other than collecting dust right? We also put some of the white wall stickers up in Parker's room today too, but those are also going to take a little more rearranging before the big reveal!

All in all it we do have some outstanding big projects, but those are going to be a ways off. It is really just nice bite sized afternoon projects for awhile, and wrapping up the big ones that we started over the past year. Bryan and I joke about who is going to paint the base board that are recently installed, and the general consensus is that it will be Parker! That or any unsuspecting house guests over the summer.....

Any takers!?!?!

Hello blog, It's me Bryan

2009-04-19T20:43:00.019-04:00

It's spring time. It's the time of the year where the bleary eyed DIY home renovator brushes off the pitifuly small winter projects for the glory of full on renovations!!! I mean it's time to say NO to painting trim (that's ok in December). NO to weekend projects seeming huge when they involve lowly drywall anchors. NO to your table saw being used as an actual table in the basement.

Wow, that felt good to type! But I have to confess something to the internet Gods...I'm taking the spring and summer off.

I think I know what you're telling yourself right now...."But Bryan, in the past year you've done a lot, why stop now?". Ah yes, that question. I get that question a lot actually. Well I have a pretty good reason, and her name is Parker. In my last post (two months ago almost!!!!!) I posted some pictures of her. Well she's just about two months now and while the diplomatic answer to this question should be "I just can't bear spending time away from work and NOT with Parker" or something like that. Well honestly, that's very true, but not 100% of the story. The main reason is that by Saturday morning I'm tired. I mean dead to the world, need a coffee IV all day....tired.

Who wants to demo a room or hang sheetrock like that? Not I says the bearded man.

Anyway, on to the house blogging. Since Parker and Christina came home on March 4th, things have been pretty chill. Above are a few pictures of Parker's room.

We had the baseboard material delivered at the end of Feb and with the help of my visiting father, managed to install a bit of it in the dining room, and her room, and then promptly store the rest in the basement. Sometime we will actually get the rest of it in place, but maybe that will be a fall project. Who really needs trim in the house anyway? Wouldn't modernism dictate that trim is just unnecessary decoration? Our home inspector might disagree, but I think we can make a case for sure!

What's on the plate right now is fixing the door casings after the drywall was hung. The pictures above show the problem. You can't just trim out the door when the current casing is not wide enough to cover the existing plaster and the new sheetrock. No good. So I've removed the casings from the two doors downstairs since the back sides of them are not important (one is to the basement, and the other into a closet). It is always better to try something first in the least noticeable spot.

In the end I ripped a 1 x 8 down to fit the "unique" and "charming" characteristics of each opening. I did shim the pieces to finally make the opening square. Speaking of square in a house this old, check out the pic to the upper right of the front bedroom on the second floor. Notice anything a little Tim Burton-esque about it?

Yeah, that's most of the doors here. Not the fault of the fellers who hung the sheetrock, but that's just how the house has settled for these 100+ years. What can you do. I'm going to fix all of that when I install that doorway's casing next weekend. Might be some work.

Up and to the left is a quick shot of the basement doorway after I removed the old casing. In the end it was pretty easy, I was just careful to not mess-up any of the surrounding drywall. Like I mentioned before, these two doorways were done first as there is no back to them really. The doorway into Parker's room is on the right above, and that will be the good one as the hallway and her room have the top coats of paint on them. As much as I hate painting, I REALLY HATE repainting anything.

In all that's about it. The casing needs to be fixed so I can rehang the doors and then install the both the door trim, and the baseboards. Bleh.

I've also included some pictures of Parker's room in it's 90% completed state. It wouldn't be a DIY project if there weren't "little" "3 hour" projects left to do. But since Parker is sleeping in a cradle in our room, I'm chalking up my procrastination to "out of sight, out of mind". But time is ticking....

I'd like to introduce everyone to Parker!!

2009-02-27T10:39:00.018-05:00

So on Monday Feb 23rd at 5:22 AM Christina gave birth to our daughter (and future weekend home remodeler) Parker. In just 2.5 hours of labor Parker was born and that was that. Parker was born at 34 weeks, which is a bit early, so she's been in the ICN at Pennsylvania Hospital and is tentatively coming home this Monday or Tuesday. Good stuff.

In the meantime Christina came home on Tuesday, and so we started to wrap up Parker's room. Luckily we have an extra week while she's being taken care of, and it's time that I desperately needed. The list for Parker's room was:

Paint the back wall magenta
Trim out behind the radiator and piping in the corner
Paint the old sub floors
Hook up all of the electrical and install the recessed baffles
Get the furniture and put it together

Not a bad list, but since I hate painting it took all of my effort to get at least that part done. Right now the magenta is up, the electrical is 90% done (just need to connect two receptacles and find plates for the 2 square boxes (not an easy find).

Scattered throughout are some pictures of the room. As for the floors, note in the first room picture that the floors are just the old sub floors. They were deemed not really salvageable by our flooring guy, and after flirting with installing carpet, we opted to just use a dark grey floor paint. Admittedly I was kind of apprehensive about the process and the potential outcome, but Christina was right...the floor looks good.

Up next is painting the second floor hallway the same color as Parker's room, and picking up the baby furniture tomorrow. I need to run at least the baseboard trim in there, so I'm hoping that I can squeeze that in tomorrow AM before the furniture arrives. But man, who knows. Do babies care that the baseboard and the base caps is not installed? Maybe she'll notice at 4 months...but probably not at 9 days.

So yeah, that's that. Parker's IV and feeding tube (used as a back up only) were removed yesterday, and she's already back to her birth weight and nursing like a full term baby.

In summary, Parker has made all of the months of blood, sweat, and expletives worth it in every sense.

P.S. - Since I drafted this post like 8 hours ago, the second floor hallway has been painted the same color. Also, Parker has all tubes removed from her but is unfortunately under Billi lights for the next day or so. What's a "Billi" light you say? Use Google. But in the meantime I'll say that the lights are used to cure any signs of jaundice, to which Parker has just a hint of. They say maybe 2 days with the blue lights. We'll see I guess.

- Bryan

Knowing when to just walk away

2009-02-21T19:34:00.013-05:00

So it's Saturday night, and I left the hospital early to try and pick up the house tonight/tomorrow morning in time to get back to the hospital for Christina to be induced. Yep, it's here. 2 weeks ago we looked like we saw Bigfoot walking into a Wawa after we got the news, and now we're apparently ready to be parents? Life is insane sometimes.

On the kid front real fast: everything is great and like I said Monday is GO TIME! We had a tour of the NICU this evening which was actually not terrifying in the least bit. Well besides finally having it all hit me like a ton of bricks...we're actually going to have a kid in the next 48 hours. Damn.

On the house front, it's been a looooooong week. In between trying to balance work and entertaining Christina at the hospital, I was responsible for priming and painting just about 65% of the surfaces in the house. It was a long week (but thanks to Cat, Joey and Rich for the help!). I'm posting some pictures that are small, so click on them to see the full size.

Oh, and you'll note that the picture quality looks vastly superior than the usual drab ones that we have. Well that's from my father-to-be/weekend house warrior present, a new Nikon D40 camera. It's nothing too fancy, but it'll be sweet in the upcoming months with the baby, and it helps with the house shots a bit too. Some shots are with the flash and some are without. I was playing around a little.

The pizza boxes really make the place feel like home I think. That, and if you look really closely at the living room blinds, those should be white. Not the shade of beige they appear. I guess that is what 12 solid months of dust will do........

At this point, the priming is done (all 8 gallons of it) as are all of the ceilings. I did manage to get the nursery walls painted, minus the soon to be magenta one. My goal today was to work on the main colors throughout which is an MAB color called "Lemon Ice". It makes me want pie when I see it. I hope that feeling doesn't last forever. Anyway, when the realization of the fact that I will be a father before the next Flyers game hit me, we decided that he rest of the wall paint and the floor paint can wait a bit. I needed some time to decompress.

I wasn't going to argue. I'm tired, sore and really lacking decent sleep.

So the plan is that after the fun with the kid subsides a bit, as she'll be in the NICU for 1-2 weeks, I'll work on her room to complete it which includes wrapping up the electrical items. Not a big deal. We did decide to paint the floor of the nursery and the second floor hallway to speed up this process to be able to then get the baby furniture in and set up. There is apparently no rest in any of this.

On a totally more random note, I was playing with the new camera today in the hospital and I realized something that must be pretty obvious to everyone else in our daily lives. While Christina is working to keep our kid healthy by being in the hospital room for 2 weeks, being stuck with needles over and over each day and braving hospital food, to the left is how she looks at this point. A portrait of beauty and grace as usual.

To the right was me this afternoon. I am way out of my league, and badly need a haircut.

That's really it right now for us here on South 13th Street. I mean aside from needing to finish painting the walls and floor and trimming out the nursery, assembling the furniture, cleaning the place up, buying diapers and even premi clothes...it's like sitting on a beach.

A beach next to the great Sea of What Have We Gotten Ourselves Into. It's a beautiful view.

- Bryan

Huffing fumes

2009-02-12T19:35:00.011-05:00

So we're at a pretty decent spot with the house. The drywall is done and today the hardwood floors were wrapped up today with an extra coat after some uneven drying overnight, and our cats. But I'll get to that crime shortly.

First off, Christina and the (not yet born) baby are doing great. She's been in the hospital for just about a week now, and at this point she can shower unsupervised, has no IVs and can even take a 20 minute wheel chair ride around the joint once a day. It's just a wait and see and if she doesn't go into labor by the 23rd, the docs will induce. It'll be at week 34, but that's ok.

So because of all of this I've been playing a pretty hard-assed GC trying to to get everything done right after one another. Case in point, the drywall wrapped up on Tues, and Wed the floors were going to be refinished. I had to finish some electrical stuff to get some lights on, as well as haul out a couple hundred pounds of trash created by the sheetrocking. But whatever, it's managed fine so far and my work is being great about my hours. I'm trying not to press anything, but at the same time things need to get done around here. Pretty fast.

The floors we have on the first floor came with the house and spent most of the past 40 years covered by rugs. When we removed all of the rugs a few months ago, you could really see that the floors were dirty and had never been sealed, and the same was true for the stair treds. Odd, but whatever. I'm sure you can traverse into the past blog entries and see the floors before. The pictures here are obviously the floors refinished. These were taken this morning and since then some spot sanding was done and another coat was applied.

A quick story: So last night it was really windy here in Philly and I had a committee meeting of just myself, and decided to leave the bathroom windows open in our suite, but close the bedroom ones. Well in hindsight that was a HUGE MISTAKE. At 1:45AM I woke up basically hallucinating and gasping for air. I opened both bedroom windows and quickly pressed my face to the screen to get fresh air. Dumb dumb dumb. Once the windows were opened the cross breeze was great, especially when we had gusts of 50 mph here in the city. But still, why did I do that? Nothing like huge amounts of VOCs in your lungs for 2.5 hours. This is why I'm not in Mensa.

So yesterday when the guys were in between coats I was running around the house trying to find the cats. The guys started so quickly after arriving that the cats had already hid and that was that. So in the end I just closed the applicable doors, and wished upon a unicorn's pot o' gold that all would be well when I got back in 8 hours. Well, the cats wound up being in the basement, and that posed two distinct problems.

Problem one is that the flooring extends under the basement door about 1 foot so that means the door would be opening and closing as they worked. Hmm...well that wound up not being an issue since the cats are terrified of anyone in work boots.

Problem two is that our genius cats can open doors. Bing has been able to open doors that open out (away from you) since we brought him home. And that skill seemed to have been on display last evening as well. Great, now let's book him on Letterman.

The pics here show the that once the cats opened the door and wondered into the stinky and sticky new world, that they left behind their Neal Armstrong-esc footprints. You can see Marco returning this morning to the scene of the crime...what a little s*&t.

Our guy Van was cool about it and spot sanded a lot of of the marks before slopping on the last coat. So I'm here in the hospital room hiding for a bit before I can walk from the front door to the first step of the stairs.

So that's that. I'd like to tell my mother that it was BING that opened the door, so that both of the cats are guilty here. Marco might be in the picture to the left, but he's there for demonstration only.

It's always the darkest before dawn

2009-02-08T08:54:00.010-05:00

I'm blogging about our house progress from Pennsylvania Hospital here in Philly. Why? Well on Friday Christina had a bit of fluid leakage and the docs said her water broke (only slightly but it's all or nothing there) and she's been admitted until delivery. She's fine and the baby's heart rate, size, and fluids look great. Christina is 32 weeks along (if you don't know what that means for this situation I'd suggest Google) which means she needs to hang here so that everyone can help the baby not come out for a couple more weeks at minimum.

In summary: while she's going to be here 24/7 watching tv and keeping the home fires burning in utero, the house HAS TO BE FINISHED. I'm also blogging about the house to help show our family and friends that we're doing fine and that when this baby comes home (albeit not in the way that we had planned) the house is going to look amazing.

With that being typed, to what I'll assume are complete strangers, it's time to blog about the house. Because I'm sitting here in the hospital I didn't have the patience to resize the pics in Photoshop. So apologies to those 4 people that are still on dial up.

After months of toiling on the house doing things like removing the old wiring, reinforcing joists and making huge messes, I think I see the proverbial light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. As our last post mentioned, the drywall is in full effect at the house which still makes me smile.

Since drywall posts are so fun for other people to read, I'll cut to the chase. Everything has been hung and two coats of mud have been applied. Sanding will be today (Sunday) and hopefully wrapping up tomorrow. I think I shed a dusty tear thinking about that. As usual I'm including some pictures so that you can see what we're up to.

The next piece to this puzzle are the floors which are ready in the wings. I've lined up the guy we used for sanding and sealing the red birch on the third floor that I installed. He's ready to roll on one day's notice, and I'm thinking Wednesday to start with the final two coats going down Friday will work out just fine. That'll keep the last of dusty and annoying tasks back to back which is A-OK with me.

The goal here is that while Christina is in the hospital I want the floors done and the place cleaned up. I have offers from some friends to help me prime and paint the new drywall which will help out tremendously and for which I'm grateful. If Christina does deliver in two weeks our kid will be here in the NICU for a couple weeks, so I'm hoping that those two weeks will mean that in the evenings we can head home and all Christina has to worry about is what outfit goes into what drawer, or where the wipes should go ease of use. That's it. Period. I don't want her worrying about when the paint will be done, or when the baby's room will be put together. I'm really going to work on getting that done so it's a non issue. In my perfect world she'll worry about what painting to pick for the room from our stash, or if the rug should be centered in the room or not...but nothing about the trim in the room or the second coat of paint.

So that's what is going on here on 13th street nowadays. I don't know how to properly manage work, hospital and being a part time G.C., but I'll find out tomorrow.

It's finally gotten pretty crazy around here, but I see dawn breaking on the horizon.

These are just two of my favorite things...

2009-02-04T18:41:00.014-05:00

*da da dada ... da da dada*

Today I could have been Bryan Von Trap, as I swear as two of my most favorite things happened to us here in the City of Brotherly Love: SNOW and DRYWALL. My pulse is racing, my palms are sweaty, I think I've found my personal "field of dreams".

First, the snow. While our family and friends back in Indianapolis have been living in the white gold for weeks now, we only get a promise of 4 inches and then wind up with rain. For about 3 years this has been the case, and I've been in a serious snow drought. Well imagine my surprise when I got up today and our neighborhood looked like the pictures you see. Score! In 5 years here this is probably the third real snow we've witnessed. It's nice to get back to what you know.

The other major win today was that our drywall guys started. After our previous dealings with a contractor for something this big inside our house, we were both a bit apprehensive on what was going to happen. Was he going to show up? Was he going to take the first half of the money and split when we went to the office? Was I going to catch them riffling through my boxer drawer?

The answers: Nope, No, and I have no clue but won't ask.

There were four guys here today and hung sheet rock at a pace that would make our previous subs blush. I mean we left here at 8 AM with them here and got back from work at 5:30 and they were still here. And still working! And in the dark!

I almost caught the vapors.

I'm posting some shots of the drywall as it is today. Yeah it's not very exciting, and yeah it's just day one. But for the first time in months I didn't have to do it, and it's being done when we're at work. Not in the evenings or the weekends...but real progress when we're away. *swoon*

As with any project that happens in this d%#m house, it made a terrible mess. We actually underestimated the amount of debris there would be today as they're just hanging the stuff, but what can you do. I'm not going to argue with the chef about egg shells when he's creating something delicious (and when we have an obvious language barrier).

The last two pictures of the drywall are demonstrations of the debris just from today. I swept most of the house and used my shop vac as well just the other day. But what can you do. I was in my socks in our make shift "living room" where the door was closed all day. Not too bad in here, but the rest of the house is done for. Needless to say, our cats were PISSED when we got home. We also had to hunt for them a little and found poor Bing locked in the front room, while Marco had the run of the 3rd floor for the day. At least they were both safe, albeit a little dirty. They have given up tonight and started laying in the dirt piles. What can you do?

As usual, I celebrated our latest round of progress and Christina captured it for all to see. Of course I have no shame and the internets were made for nonsense, so the last image is my celebration dance tonight. You know the red eyes and obvious dance moves are getting you excited for more drywall!

4 Years in the Making

2009-02-01T16:44:00.006-05:00

So 4 years ago we were newly engaged, bright eyed, and started out on our house hunt! Saw some that were finished but small and not to our tastes, a few "crack dens" and then our "old lady special". That great big house that just needs some updating. I fell in love immediately, Bryan I think has always been hesitant, but trusting and encouraged by all of our visitors comments of "this house will be amazing when you guys are done!"

So for the last year we have been working pretty much constantly on the house. Bryan much more so than me in the last few months, the bigger my belly gets the less good I am on the ladder! I think also his speed and determination has also grown exponentially along with the size of my belly. All of this leads to a VERY special milestone in the house progress. DRYWALL! I had grand plans of learning to plaster and fixing all the walls ourselves, but a year ago and 3 incredible estimates later decided that drywall was the way to go. So the last 6 months since we finished most of the 3rd floor has been a mad dash of work so that we can close up the walls and make the house look a whole lot less like a construction site.

The first image shows our living room with all the glory of the old lady wall paper, new lights in the ceiling and perfectly empty for the crew of guys to show up tomorrow. You can see the dust bunnies rolling through like tumble weeds at the moment. However, to get that room, 3 other rooms and hallway empty, you end up a basement that looks like this. It is actually moderately organized, into baby pile, tool pile, and storage pile. But, this is the path to the cellar in the back as well. Like Bryan said in another post, a year of construction really does distort your idea of normal.

It is really incredible to think that in a few short days the wall paper will be replaced by drywall, and with some primer, paint and trim we can actually use 90% of our house again. Don't get me wrong, there is still a lot to do in the next month or so, but this is a milestone that we have been talking about for 4 years. A bit scary also to not be able to poke holes all over the house just to see what might be under there! At the same time fantastic to see things finally come together and instead of demolition, see the end in sight. I also don't think Bryan can take many more days of the demo. This last picture was the end of the work day today, and I think it will be really good for Bryan's sanity to have some progress happen while he is blissfully at work for a few days!

Lights, camera, 2 months until the kid arrives...

2009-01-25T18:12:00.015-05:00

So here we are in the last week of January, and it's really starting to feel like things are coming together with the house. I have officially rewired the entire place with just the finishing touches left on a couple outlets. All of this is good since I'm so sick and tired of putting holes in surfaces and the dirt that is created. It's funny how you can get used to something like living in a dust bowl. There should be no reason that it's ever normal for you to automatically know to wear shoes when you walk around, or to not drag any bare feet on the floors lest you desire splinters or nails. I mean really...this renovation thing alters your brain.

I'm including a couple shots I took last weekend of my work in the last two rooms on the first floor (the dining room and the "pink" room). Mainly what you see is a trench I created in both ceilings to allow for pulling out the old knob and tube, and to then to reuse those holes in the joists for the new wire. Not rocket science, but it's still pulling down dirty plaster and lath above your head.

The pink room got two new cans (*snicker*) and that was that. The picture on the right shows the pink room and the top of what I've created as a door to the kitchen. There's a larger picture of that creation to the left. In all of the months of renovation the house, there is one place that dirt and construction debris is not acceptable. *drum roll*........yeah, the kitchen. Big climax to the post right?!?!?!?!?! If you decide to live through this, keep your bedroom debris free, one room to lounge in that is moderately free of crap, but the kitchen should be clean like you're not walking through it with dirty boots. That's one key to having your marriage survive at the end of this. End of debate.

I've also added a little picture of what my left arm looked like after just that little demo in the dining room ceiling. Please keep in mind that it was only a small trench where I broke the plaster with a wallbaord saw and pulled off the lath. Nothing even close to the demo of the entire third floor back in May. I'm totally becoming compulsive about pulling down anymore plaster. Ugh.....

At this point we feel confident enough about where we're at that we have our dude Jose the drywaller on call to start in the next week or so. He estimated that it'll take about 90 sheets of sheetrock, so this isn't some small job. But at the same time he thinks it'll take two days to hang it all and three more to tape and mud. Man, we hope so! Given the fact that Christina is something like 31 weeks pregnant at this point, we have to get the sheetrock up, all of it primed (two coats), the ceilings painted, and at least the kid's room painted with the trim in place. We also need to get the floors refinished on the first floor, but honestly, I'm not sure there's time. We'd like to get all of this done by March 1st to allow a max of one month before the kid arrives to get her room ready and some feeling of being situated.

But to this point what is being "situated" in this house?

If anyone in the Philly area wants to help out with the painting, I have all the pizza and beer you might require. For real. Just let me know when you all want to stop by!

Flipping the switch - My tribute to electricity and Young Frankenstein

2009-01-06T13:04:00.006-05:00

So today I threw the switch, and got over the electrical hump (lolz).

The recessed lights that I hung on New Years day were wired up yesterday afternoon upon returning from our drive from Indianapolis. It was a long day....

Today I roughed in the 4 gang box for 2 of the switches, and went ahead and threw two switches (temporary of course) in there for the pods.

For me pulling wire and wiring up most things is calming. There is something so simple as leg 1 connects to leg 2 and then splits here and there, it just makes sense to my organized software developer mind. I think there is a possibility to me keeping my 2009 "zen resolution" as long as there are more electrical rewiring projects in the house. But just like oil and Mel Brooks films, it's finite. *sigh* What can you do.

I've included a couple pictures that Christina happened to catch of my celebrating when the lights actually worked. I decided to test the circuits and lights before the drywall was hung, because really who needs the headache of finding out one of them wasn't properly connected AFTER all of the drywall is up? I may be working on being more even keeled, but there would be sleepless nights in horror if I didn't hook it all up today.

So yeah, that's that. The last picture here is, again, Christina catching me doing my usual Igor (pronounced "Eye-gor"!!) face when I've finished one project and my master can give me treats.

We have a weird life together I think.

What is a "holiday" from house renovation?

2009-01-01T20:19:00.011-05:00

So 2009 is here and didn't seem to care that we were totally unprepared for the harsh reality that this new year brings. But as any good soldier, we keep on marching.

With the baby scheduled to make her appearance the first week of April, my pace around here has been "brisk" to say the least. The fact is that when I come home from the office every night, I go right upstairs and throw on my jeans and clock in here. The pay is horrible, and the working conditions are cramped, but my boss is cool. So that's a plus I suppose. In fact, Christina's mom was out here for Christmas, and I decided to take that day off. By the end of the afternoon I had organized most of my tools, swept up the workshop/living room and was chomping at the bit to get cracking on the remainder of the electrical I had to pull.

Being me is complicated to say the least.

Oh before I forget, I want to mention my resolution for this year. I'm putting it on here so that the people in my daily life will hopefully hold me accountable for the inevitable lapses that will happen. 2009 is the year that I'm learning to just chill out and relax. What do I mean? Well, as my parents will comment about, I was born pretty high strung (bright red due to high hemoglobin, hair straight up, and screaming). Pretty bad. Since that November day in 1977, I've lived my life pretty tense about just about everything. Ever seen a guy freak out at the coffee shop because someone cut in line? Ever heard the neighbor screaming four letter words 150 decibels? How about if you've ever seen a grown man throw items down in disgust about something? Yeah, well that's me.

In fact that was me....today. I'm off to a really rough start in my resolution this year. Christina has taken up saying "Bryan, that's not very zen". Well, I'm thinking about this being a marathon, not a sprint. It's one day at a time. You have to learn from your lapses. Pick your favorite phrase, I'm TOTALLY OK WITH IT!!!!!!

Anyway, I need to work on this for the sanity of our new baby (who needs a kid being born with that kind of bad around), my coworkers at the office, and my wife. Maybe I need to take up bonsai trees or something?

This being a house blog, let's get to the blogging!

For about XXX months/weeks/days (I have no clue) we've noticed a sagging spot of plaster in our living room ceiling. So in preparation for our drywall contractor to stop over for a final walkthrough before the work hopefully starts in a month, I decided to investigate. Well sometimes you shouldn't poke around when you're not prepared to deal with what is hidden in the dark. The cause of the sag? A split joist.

DOH! If you look at the pic on the right you'll see the culprit. This is also one of the points in home repair when you realize that you have been at this before......and you don't mind making a mess and tearing holes in any surface.

Since our house is pretty old, the joists are mortise and tenon instead of any fancy-smancy space age joist hangers. Well this one split right at the tenon which was causing the sag. I had looked for any real sign of the joist failing or being really springy from the top, so I decided to pull back the plaster a bit and lag bolt the joist in three spots. I then added a joist hanger to the thing to help spread the load from the mortise and tenon to the hanger.

After cinching up the bolts the joist came back together and the bottom was lifted about an inch. Not too bad. To help it out I'd like to sister the thing for a few feet, but I'm not 100% sure how to do it in that spot versus like mid span, but that's what Google is for.

As Christina has mentioned before, I've been replacing all of the electrical wiring that was here when be bought the house. At this point I've added tons of new circuits with properly grounded and SAFE outlets as well as lighting throughout the house. On Tuesday we went to the Depot to buy some recessed housings for the living room ceiling. Christina and I went back and forth for a good two weeks on what housing size to use up there. 4 inches? 6 inches? It was pretty serious up in here for sure. The winning size? 5 inches. See what we did? We pulled switcheroo on you all.

Today (being a "holiday" for some people, but not those of us with a kid on the way) I went ahead and installed the lights. nothing is wired up yet, but the feeds have been pulled and are in place for a simple junction and then BAM! we'll have that roughed in.

As usual I had to cut into the plaster which as usual made a horrible mess. The worst part of any work with the plaster walls and ceilings is what is does to your sinuses and throat. That is some serious dust that just hangs in the air. Ugh....I really hope I'm about done with that.

Anyway, the layout of the lighting is that we're creating two "pods" or sets of 4 lights that are on either side of our fireplace. Each pod will be on its own dimmer to create that romantic feeling I guess. I'm just the labor guys.

So that's it for now. I'm about 90% done with the electrical right now. After roughing in the cans, I need to power up the ceilings in the other three first floor rooms, but that's it. Every other outlet, switch and feed has been replaced and is safe at this point. That's why you see all of the gopher holes in the ceiling from removing and pulling the new wiring. Not too shabby for a software developer who has a hankering for beer on occasions.

Cheers!

- Bryan

Christmas Lights

2008-12-20T11:18:00.006-05:00

So normally this time of year I try to get out the festive garland, tree, ornaments, and most importantly the lights on the tree. This year due to our compressed time schedule and imminent baby deadline, Christmas lights have a taken a new turn. My mom coming to visit in 5 days has also made Bryan hurry a little bit more, since the guest bedroom and bath are currently without any power.

Bryan has been working diligently on some of the electrical work in the house. We have as part of the last few projects had the main line to the house upgraded, new 200 amp box, new outlets on the 1st floor, and all new electrical on the 3rd floor. So really a good portion of the work is complete. Just the second floor and the ceiling in the first floor remain as remnants of the old work. This nice pretty yellow wire, is how all the new stuff is supposed to look.

The picture to the right shows some of this old work. For those who haven't experienced the wonders of knob and tube wiring this may seem even stranger, but this is a weird combination. This is actually a junction between the old knob and tube, and conventional, but old, wiring that also existed in the house. We are pretty close to getting all of the old wiring out of the house, but when you do see some of this old stuff, it is still surprising that the lights have actually worked for the last 100 years, and that we haven't burned the place down yet.

So the last couple of weekends have focused on new lights, and new outlets. As with all projects sometimes they take an unexpected turn. This one is no exception. They do create some unexpected results, that can also be kind of funny in a sort of sad way. This next picture falls into this category. It is kind of hard to tell, but this is a look into our old bathroom, which for the last week hasn't had power to the lights. So there is an extension cord from another room with a table lamp on the toilet. I should say it does create a nice ambiance in the room at least. With Bryan's extreme diligence it does seem that this situation will be remedied by Thursday when my mom shows up. While we can deal with bizarre situations in the house, it isn't nice to subject guests to our chaos. I did tell her to bring slippers, and a thick robe, as there is no real way to clean most of the areas under construction, but in theory she won't have to trip over the saws-all and table lamp in the bathroom for Christmas!

Third floor walkthrough video

2008-12-09T12:29:00.003-05:00

As an appendix to my "Epilogue" post, I'm attempting to upload a video tour I created this morning. We used some crappy digital recorder that Angie's List gave us for complaining a lot or something. The point is that the lighting is suspect and the volume might be low, so please forgive me.

Next time I'll create one in a Bollywood style or something. The video is like 3 mins, unedited and about 13MB. Enjoy.

Epilogue | Reveal | Pictures

2008-12-09T10:21:00.033-05:00

It's kind of weird to type this, but as of last night (December 8th 2008 to be accurate) Christina and I slept in our third floor suite. Not only that, but the rooms are done* and life can move on to the other 3 months of projects waiting for us.

I won't use this post to rehash the months and months of events that have gone int creating our third floor suite**, that's what all of the links are for to the right. But I am going to post some pictures of the final product along with just a couple shots of what it was like back in late April when we started really getting down and dirty with this project. So right before the demo was done we had something like this on the right.

Which was promptly wrapped up to create one big space that had no more plaster walls, no dropped plaster ceilings, and no closet. Like the picture on the left.

So you get the point. These pics are from previous posts, but it's fun to look back at them from time to time to really remember what kind of rabbit hole we really decided to jump down.

I'm posting pictures of the finished spaces below without much commentary. I think over the past posts we've beat that horse so if you want to know what is what then by all means post a comment. Plus Christina LOVES COMMENTS! Again, sorry for the spotty lens...

Over the past 4 months we've had various paid "professionals" come and go along with me finding out that not only can I create software pretty well, but I think I prefer to create things with my hands even more. I have to say that being forced to learn on the fly various skill sets that you didn't know you could muster up was awesome and something that in the end I'm grateful for.

All of that reminds of Ferris Bueller's Day Off and the great exchange between Cameron and the parking garage attendant:
>You guys got nothing to worry about, I'm a professional.
>A professional what?

Of course there's another side to that coin, and that would be that when I took over most of the work, it meant more money in tools, days off of work, material (cause you know you need to learn how to make that mitre cut at least twice) and sanity. We also quickly realized that while Christina's day job as "Senior Designer" means that she's great at thinking up cool looking ideas, someone in the conversation needs to be the practical person saying "yeah, but how to you expect that to work?".

Also, on at least 3 occasions, we really screwed up the order of things which we'll never do again I hope.

A partial list of dont's when doing something like this:

Don't paint before the hardwoods are in. Just resist. That's why drop cloths were invented, and touching up paint will never happen.
Don't assume that anyone knows what they are doing. This sounds both cynical and obvious, but whatever. Just because you pay a "professional" to do something doesn't mean it's not a clusterf*$k when they leave. It ALWAYS will be. Check on the work before they "professional" leaves the house, and be straight if it's not up to par. It's your money.
Don't install plumbing fixtures before you're truly ready. We installed the tub before the window trim was done as well as the baseboards and getting those in was a nightmare.
Don't freak out if something isn't installing like you might see on TOH or similar tv show. This is the real world, and you have to be crafty A LOT.
Don't make a trip to the ER part of your project. That sucked.

The list of dos are obvious, but the big ones that I'm going to use for every project:

If you have to hire out and you're blessed (like we are now with our cement guy) to have that ONE contractor that is great and knows people...go with the guys he knows. We've saved a ton of money, time, and aggravation after we started talking to Joe's various trade guys. All of them have been great.
Use Angie's list or something similar for reference only. They tended to be pricey for what we were wanting, but they were a good baseline for prices on that higher end.
Get yourself a decent workshop space that you don't care how much mess is created. We just don't have a lot of room being in a rowhouse, but when I did create my shop space it was a lifesaver.
If you're completely gun shy about doing something yourself, then don't press the issue. It's OK to hire out. Like I was terrified to refinish the floor I laid down, and instead spent $400 on a pro and it was great. The peace of mind was worth the money without a doubt.
Right tool, for the right job. Period, end of story. If you are needing to do something that requires some special tool, or have to nail in hundreds of feet of trim, rent of buy what you need. Done.

So yeah, that's really it pretty much. In all the process was ridiculous, stressful, and tiring. But I'd do it again any day of the week. The pay off was incredible and in the end we have a space that Christina designed and that is ours.

I couldn't sleep last night at all, but I wasn't sure if it was because of the "moment" or if it was due to our new bedroom feeling foreign and like a hotel room at first. I mean new surroundings, new bed...even new sheets and duvet cover. It was a lot to process.

I'll say that I'm ready for at least one weekend away from house work. But then again, I'm addicted to the stuff and at this point I' don't know what to do with my time that isn't either at the Depot or working on the house. Is there anything else left in life!?!

Now for the disclaimers:
* The tub is going to require a "professional" (great) to get the feet fixed so I can hook it back up to the plumbing. The banister is obviously missing spindles still, but that is part of the first floor/second floor renovation slated to be completed by March 2009**.

** I don't call this a "Master Suite" and I won't. I find that term hearkening back to the plantation slave era and I'm not into that. I don't get how and why that term was ever popularized, but it's a pretty crap term if you ask me.

*** That March 2009 date is hard because well...we're having a baby (girl supposedly) on or near April 6th. Yeah us! I tried to find an ultrasound picture to Photoshop with a little tool belt and hard hat, but what we have look like Rorschach tests instead. What can you do.

We have to thank the following friends for their help with this project: Niko, Jen, Graham, Andrea (and Logan!), Cat, Anna (the roman shades and duvet are awesome!) and everyone else who gave an opinion or encouragement. Seriously, it meant a lot to us and we owe you all big time.

So yeah, I guess now we start the next chapter of our house. That's the wrap up of the ongoing electrical chapter, with a hopeful tale of fresh drywall in 75% of the remaining spaces, and even the introduction of a new character to the plot.

It's about to get VERY interesting around here for sure. Cheers!!!

- Bryan

Friday Night Fun

2008-12-08T21:42:00.008-05:00

So you know that you have reach a ripe old age, when it suddenly becomes not a only a good idea, but fun to stay in and put together furniture. This first image is just one of the bags necessary to create an heirloom quality dresser from IKEA. The first dresser took us about an hour and a half, which was a bit discouraging......but we plodded along, and did the second one in half that time. I joked with Bryan that if the economy continues to go south, I would hire him out to all the other poor suckers in the IKEA parking lot, and send him home to put together their furniture for a nominal fee. He was not keen on this idea, and the fact that we still had a bed to get together I decided not to poke the bear too much!

The bed actually isn't from IKEA, and it has 2 drawers for off season storage underneath, which is great. Between the 2 dressers, the bed, and 5 closets, I am going to have to go shopping in order to actually fill all the space. There are worse things I suppose.

(sorry for the spotty camera lens, we're having technical difficulties)

Sorry to the avid readers, but going back to Indy for T-Day did dampen our speed a bit on getting this place together. As you can see from this last picture we did get pretty close last weekend to moving up there. The mirror finally got on the wall, another purchase from June. I think it has been in every room of the house on its journey upstairs. It even went upstairs and then back down in the same day at least 1 time. Now it is in its final home, and we are close to making this room look not so much like a construction site an more like a livable room. We promise to not go so long next time!

Out with the Fire Meany!

2008-11-13T19:01:00.011-05:00

It's me Christina! Bryan's hand isn't fighting the good fight that well, so I have a story to tell you ....

So for the last few weeks we have been battling random plumbers to get the heat actually on in this house. We had plans with 4 different guys to actually do the work. Started with 2 guys who seemed interested, then never returned phone calls (I was beginning to feel like a girl without a date to the prom). Then came the company who showed up twice, never to do what they said, and then to tell us the work we had done by our old plumber was wrong, and that we would have to pay for all of it to be ripped out and redone, at a super low price of $1400. Mind you it was 45 degrees outside for the high that day, and being a blonde woman at home alone, obviously I was going to get out my check book and pay him immediately. Needless to say, later that day I was on the phone with a 4th plumber, Kevin!

Kevin over last week and got here a bit late, as he has a day job and this was side work. He and another guy got the 2 new Runtal radiators installed on the third floor, with minor installation issues (like Bryan having to pry off the apron of a window for the radiator to fit) along the way. But still, they began to fill and bleed the system about 9:45pm which worked for us.

There is apparently a pressure reducing valve on the system, with an adjustable screw. Of course this comes loose, water sprays out, and all the water drains into the basement. Due to our previous experiences my response is, "At least it is the basement". So the guys takes off for the night before he collapses from starvation and exhaustion, and a bit defeated by the house. It was then 10:30 PM.

They return on Tuesday to try again. Filling the system, bleeding radiators, then our pressure release valve decides to release; water sprays out, and all the water drains into the basement. The guys replace the valve, fill the system, bleed the radiators, and try to light the boiler. Alas, it won't fire.......the guys take off after a late night as neither of them know much about boiler controls. What can you do?

So Kevin promises to find someone who knows controls to come over, I think he was more upset that the heat wasn't on than me. The hitch: yesterday, we get home go down to the basement, and find all the water has drained out of the system; for those playing at home this is 3 full systems of water in the basement. Apparently the problem was that the pressure reducing value (that reduces water pressure from the street pressure of 60 psi to a "boiler friendly" 30 psi) was stuck on. I'm sure you're all saying "well what does that mean?" at this moment. Well I'll tell you: It means that the system doesn't know it's full and KEEPS TRYING TO FILL FOR HOURS AT 60 PSI. For those who aren't plumbers and who haven't lived through this, it means that you get water shooting out of a little valve deal. And it won't stop until your husband has Kevin on the phone and figures out how to shut the valve. Super.

So today, Kevin and a "control friend" show up, and replace what I think is the only remaining old piece of our boiler and promptly re-fill the system. They bled the radiators, and miraculously CREATED HEATED!!! It has only been 6 weeks since we tried to schedule the first guy...don't forget that. Only 6 weeks.

I am not sure if we need both a water idol and a fire idol at this point to bury in the backyard? I guess all this plays into the fact that we are about to go back to Indiana for T-Day, and the last few trips right before we left something water related has decided to crap out. First the water heater exploded, then the washing machine, and now the boiler has all new parts! We did replace the dishwasher, check out our first ever blog for the highlights, so we hope we're covered there.

So we are almost ready for our trip! As long as Bryan's hand is healed enough to drive.....

Which is a whole different (and expanding) story....

"I'm Back in the Saddle Again"

2008-11-02T17:57:00.016-05:00

So it's officially been 1 week and 1 hour since I had my "incident" with the chop saw, and I'm 80% back in action. First, off many thanks for the nice messages and emails from family, friends, and stranger in the interwebs, it helped out immensely.

I won't rehash all of what Christina wrote last week. On a side note, when we got back from the ER she ran upstairs to document what happened before I even know what was going on. I mean she had her post started within 30 minutes of walking back in the door and helping me get situated. Part of me secretly thinks that her and the chop saw conspired to get more blog hits for 3 days. I wouldn't put it past her...but I digress.

So I cut my hand with the saw. I preformed the "wiggle your finger and pray hard they're there" thing in the car to the ER a couple times to myself as to not panic Christina any more than she was. 5 fingers to start with, and 5 in the end. The ER folks said I was FRIGGING (I'm trying to keep this post PG) lucky that I missed my thumb and forefinger tendons. They did tests before stitching me up to make sure that I had full movement. That was a huge relief as I'm a software development manager by day, and I need my fingers. That's 2 for 2 baby! Without posting any of the gory pictures I've been keeping I have one of where my cut was with a little (bad) photoshopping to illustrate where I did the damage.

The small line on the top is where I got my finger, and the one on the bottom is where I got my thumb knuckle. Think the start and end of the saw blade...without getting too graphic.

So that's that. I would say my hand is healing really well, but then I'd be pretending to be a doctor. So...I'll say that it doesn't hurt anymore, but the stitches are TIGHT since the cut was wide and really jagged. So I feel a "pulling" sensation when I make a fist or something equally stupid.

On Saturday I had the idea to work/finish the baseboards this weekend so that it was all out of my life for good. Needless to say I was a bit gun shy yesterday morning with the first few cuts, but I just went slow and really made safely the priority over "gittin' er done". Of course that's how it should be EACH AND EVERY TIME anyone uses any saw, but after so many times it's just white noise.

Anyway, I wrapped up the base caps yesterday and I bit today (I couldn't work more than a couple hours without a break since my hand would ache a bit). I took a couple pictures tonight of the baseboards just for a bit of reference. They ended up blurry for some reason, so I apologize. (note to the Boss: time for that new SLR right?!?!).

The base caps proved to be hard to cope for me. I think with the limited range of motion I have in my left hand right now and my utter lack of patience this weekend, it just didn't work out. So I reasoned that since there are only approx 5 inside corners that aren't in a closet, and the real work are the 14 some outside corners...that I'd just miter the base caps and pray for the best. Well Jeebus was listening to my sinful self because the insides worked out perfectly for the most part. The two that have small gaps were fixed when I caulked the baseboards today. VIOLA! The picture on the right shows a span of baseboard with the base cap and the caulk applied to hide the curvy walls. I'll touch up the wall paint after the trim is all painted. In like 2 years I'm sure.

The picture on the right shows one of my lingering buckets of joint compound. I actually used that today to fill in some unsightly gaps in the window trim. It's really hard to explain, but rest assured that none of it was my doing. It was a combination of how the ex-contractor installed "the box" for each window and that the Boss wanted the curved part of the window trim to be flush with the bowed edge of the boxes (thanks to the install...meh).

Well that means there's a gap. My solution: lightweight joint compound. The pictures below show the windows with the first coat joint compound applied just a bit ago. I'll sand them tomorrow after work and apply the second coat. Hopefully it all looks seemless, but who knows.

I have no clue why that last pic on the right (two windows) has "spots" on the walls. Part of me wants to race up there to see if they are in fact mysteriously on the walls or not. The other part of me says "why on EARTH does it matter at this point, plus you have chips and french onion dip". I think the second part of has the sound reasoning at this moment.

I guess that's it for now. Christina is at a baby shower far away, so I'm settling in to watch the Colts play tonight. So if you're the church going type, light a candle for them. They need it. Oh, also I celebrated the Phillies being WORLD F*#KING CHAMPIONS (my homage to Chase "I'm druuuuunk at the parade" Utley) for a few days last week which was great. I missed the parade because of you know...having a job...but since we live a block off of the parade route, the party was all night Friday.

Good stuff. Thanks again to everyone for the messages last week.

- Bryan

The Fire Meany says: "DIY"

2008-10-28T13:53:00.005-04:00

So we have been progressing on the house, but why is it so difficult to actually find someone, other than my now handy husband/contractor, to do any actual work? Particularly with plumbers, what is so difficult to do?

Let me back up a little bit. In May, on the hottest day of the summer, we started our new construction project giddy with delight at the daily work of our contractor. Slowly this fell apart, and we started to see some flaws in the general work quality and accuracy, which ultimate led to him walking off the job. Fine. Great.

Now the coldest day of the year rolls around, and we still don't have heat. 2 new radiators were to be installed as part of the plumbers contract. They have been floating around the house since June waiting for their new home. Tried to get 2 different guys out over the last 2 weeks to no avail. Bryan stayed home on Friday waiting for guy #3 only to have a guy show up and say, "I was just here to fix a leak, I can't do an install". Great. Today I come home at noon to wait for the same company to come again and do the install. Too bad they weren't actually planning to install the radiators, but just to look around and estimate. Great. Now in addition to no heat, he tells me that we have 1/2" rough in work tied into the 3/4" system, which won't get enough water to the 3rd floor to properly heat. Also, Bryan looked at the install sheet for the radiators, and they in fact REQUIRE the 3/4" supply. Great.

What part of this wasn't clear to the first plumber, who we paid specifically for this work? Was the store out of 3/4" copper that day? Did they just not want to spend the extra money? What would possibly make that seem like a good idea?

With any luck, a friend from work will save the day with his relatives who are plumbers, but if not I might just try to conjure the Fire Meany to live in the living room until Spring. I think that would be easier than finding a plumber to show up, do what you expect, and not have thoroughly empty pockets at the end. Great.

Blood, Sweat, and Tears

2008-10-26T19:09:00.011-04:00

First off your friendly blogger has been sidelined due to a run-in with a not so friendly chop saw, so you are stuck with me at least for a bit. NOTE TO PARENTS: We are back from the ER with all the appropriate fingers, tendons, and critical parts; just minus a little blood. Actually all the people that saw Bryan said that he was quite lucky and should be just fine in 7-10 days when the 8 stitches come out. Now for the gory details.....

I was downstairs poking around on Angie's List just about to put a nasty rating up for a our long gone contractor when I hear Bryan running down the stairs and he yells, "Its time to go, get the keys!" Immediately realizing what this means and in a bit of a panic I grab the important things: car keys, Bryan's wallet with his insurance card and manage to get flip-flops instead of slippers on my feet just as he meets me at the bottom of the 2 flights of stairs he has come down. Off we go! At least I was somewhat clean and dressed, which is negotiable on a sunday afternoon.....

In the car he begins to explain that he didn't chop his hand off, but instead had just finished a cut with the chop saw and as the blade was beginning to slow down he reached to move the moulding cap a bit to early and scraped his hand across the still slightly spinning blade. Now another NOTE FOR PARENTS: He can move all his fingers with no tendon damage, and nothing was cut off. He did manage to turn the web between his thumb and first finger a bit closer to hamburger, but the doctor was able to stitch it up nicely.

Now Bryan has a recent tetanus shot, eventually a scar to show his hard work, and a healthy fear of all moving metal saw blades. This last picture shows the beginnings of the base cap mouldings that he was working on before "the incident", everyone should comment on how great they look, and how impressive it is that he has actually now shed blood for the project. I think he wins on the blood and sweat portions of this game, and I still win on the tears portion.

A pocket door and baseboards. It's getting serious around here!

2008-10-25T19:09:00.014-04:00

Hello interwebs people. LOLZ. So Friday and Saturday were both baseboard 101 for me. After reading another Tom "my Lord and Savior" Silva step by step baseboard install, I felt sufficiently ready for the task. Plus there's no way that it was going to be more difficult that the window sill and the window trim. I opted to not go crazy with biscuit joints and all of that highfalutin' stuff that Tom recommends since I have not used a biscuit joiner since the 8th grade and I'm lazy.

In designing the third floor space, I'm convinced that my wife went with the designed part of her brain, and not the practical construction side. Because a sqaure(ish) room is perfect for a first time baseboard installer. Not the mish-mash of closets and intertwining walls. Because, damn....there were TONS of cuts needed. (The design part won out, because the whole house had 2 legitimate closets in 11 rooms prior to the renovation, I admit adding 5 closets in 2 rooms might be a bit lopsided the other way, but you can never have too many closets right? - C)

Anyway, I've added a couple of shots of the baseboards that the boss took. Note that the artsy picture that has my knee pads (EVERYONE needs knee pads when doing baseboards, hardwood install, and tile...PERIOD) I had just placed the two pieces together. So that unsightly gap in the joint isn't really there. I just think that needs to be said for the record.

Really the hard part of the baseboards ended up being the outer mitered joints...obviously. Most of them weren't perfect 45 degrees which is normal. But it's just the shaving off material and trying over and over gets old.

Anyway, tomorrow I'll be adding the base cap to the top of what I've done so far. Honestly, I think that since the main pieces were added and the base cap follows that...it can't be too bad right? I think I totally jinxed everything just with that thought.

I also trimmed out the pocket door frame today and hung the door. The trimming part is about 95% complete with just the "jam" (a ripped 1x8) opposite of the door opening to nail in. Not a big deal. I'll end up priming and painting all of the new door trim when I do the same for the windows and baseboards.

The door has been in our living room SINCE MAY as we had a great thought of using a glass paneled door as our pocket door. It's a full sized door which proved to be a slight issue when actually installing the darn thing. I ended up enlisting the help of the boss and ripping the bottom of the door on the table saw. That made the height perfect, and then just pryed off a 3/8th inch piece added to the side for whatever reason. Totally worked.

I've gotten the thing mounted and now I have to figure out how to get the door to stop swaying back and forth. Of course I have no faith in what our former contractor did, and I can't find the installation instructions to save my life. So it looks like it'll be trial and error. Gee, imagine that.

Funny thing I finally noticed tonight. In the picture above with the door closed, you see three switches next to it in the bedroom. Those are actually the lights for the bathroom...in the bed room space. When I realized this I asked the boss and of course she knew it would be like that. Now, I'm not worried about it, but it's funny that I didn't really think of something like that between the two spaces until there was a door there. Not the wood to tile transition, the door frame...nothing else. Anyway, I found it interesting that I JUST NOW noticed it.

So I guess that's it for today. Not too bad for like 10 hours of work.

The subtle art of window trim

2008-10-12T21:40:00.010-04:00

Today was my part 2 of the window trim work that was long overdue. After creating and installing the sills yesterday, I start out this morning AGAIN watching Tom Silva's trim video. I referred to that in my previous post, so if you haven't seen it and need to do any window trim then you need to watch it. I truly think that if he were to walking into your flooding basement, that he would be able to walk on the water to shut off your water at the meter. He's my Mr. Miyagi.

What I realized about trim today is that all you really need is a fresh 60t blade on your compound saw (especially when your old blade was really used for cutting up demo debris and hardwood flooring), and tons and tons and tons and tons of patience. I was good on the former all day, but the latter started to fade on me after about 5.5 hours of the work today. I won't go into the details, but I'm pretty sure I could be heard yelling some choice words down the block.

In the end I got in the casing trim and installed all of the aprons as well. That's really all there is to it. The tricky parts were in measuring the side pieces to be at least even with each other, and to nails those as straight and flush to the wall as possible. If the nailing isn't flush, then the mitered joint will leave a gap that you will try to work with for ever just to give up anyway with a sigh and that sad feeling of being bested by poplar.

A couple of the windows had that problem from bad drywall, curvy walls, or casing that I had to previously hand plane down (making some high spots along the length). I was able to make the best out of most of those areas, which was a win.

Whatever, this isn't a how to post, because I'm the last person that should be dishing that out in the area of...well...anything. In the end I still need to go back to each window and fill the nail holes.

Side note: I am also on the hunt for a product that I can use to fill 1/8th inch gaps in the trim on some joints. The standard wood fill (at least the Minwax kind I have) is too gritty. I need to find something that is more like a putty. If anyone who read this knows of such a product please don't be shy.

On Tuesday we're getting our baseboard moulding pieces delivered and so I guess next weekend I get to miter for another 12 hours. Only this time on my knees.

After proof-reading this post, I realize it lacks my usual flare for the random thoughts. I think the trim and the dragon slaying yesterday have sapped my strength. Lord knows the celebratory beers at the dragon feast last night didn't help matters. Ugh....

Oh, last thing. Once reason we made our sills so deep is so that the cats can lounge in the windows. It's really the one thing that they seem to enjoy that doesn't involve using clothes or piles of contractor bags as a toilet. So we've encouraged them to lounge and not pee randomly.(I don't think his peeing is random thing myself, I think he knows exactly that contractor bags= loud noises and dirt. Both of which harsh his mellow, so he just wants to make his wishes known- Christina) You'll se my man Marco test driving one of the windows this evening.

Good man. Now learn to use the litter box ALL OF THE TIME!

Finally slaying the window sill dragon

2008-10-11T18:00:00.011-04:00

Hello interwebs people, today was a water shed day for us here in the Grimes house. The "window sill" dragon is now a stinking rotting pile of sawdust. The dragon put up a valiant fight, but in the end it was no match for my measuring tape that was bestowed upon me by the lady of the tool section at the Depot.

Our former contractor walked off of the job after we had a pretty big brewhaha about the window sills. What they installed had structural issues (you could rock them back and forth and they'd bend) as well as a small issue that the two sills in the bedroom did not match the three in the bathroom. I mean the router profiles was totally different and even different materials.

So about 6 weeks ago I tried my first pass at making the sills out of 1x4 and 1x8s (the bedroom windows are fairly shallow whereas the bathroom ones are really deep). I'll refrain for elaborating, but after about 5 tense hours I had failed my mission. And thus the dragon was born.

Fast forward to today, and the fact that we HAVE to get that trim done so painting can wrap up and we can finally move in to the new bedroom. So I have been watching a trim 101 on thisoldhouse.com literally 3-4 times a week for over a month. The link is here, and since Tom Silva can walk on water in any house, his 101 is the trim gospel.

To show you how poorly our new windows were installed, the image on the right is of one of the 5 and it's pretty much what they all looked like. Now, I had pulled out the bad sills and the loose "blocking" but that's it.

After I followed Tom's sage like wisdom, I created all 5 sills in just about 4 hours. 2 are from 1x4 and 3 are 1x8, and since this is a really old house nothing is square. Just because we've gutted and rebuilt this floor doesn't mean that exterior and party walls are magically straight.

The first piece to the install puzzle was to get the sills to be CLOSE to where they needed to be. That meant that I had to basically add blocking or framing where needed to build up the height. the next two pics give you and idea on what I did.

I wound up ripping some 1/2 inch plywood to fit each window's "unique" sizing (in the case of the window in the picture, I had to try and create a level plane on HORRIBLE WINDOW FRAMING). I then added either a ripped 2x3 or a ripped 2x6 fit exactly for each window. That gave me the lower stability that was badly missing from the contractor's attempt at this.

The picture to the left here is what each window ended up looking like when the plywood, 2 by and the sill were finally nailed in (sounds faster than it was). And ignore the horrible look of the drywall around that window, it's another gift from our contractor that I have to fix once the last of the window trim is up.

The next pictures are just of a couple finished windows...one in the bedroom and one in the bathroom. One of the images shows a piece of the trim that we have laying in our living room. It's 4 inches wide so our sills look really long right now.

And lastly Christina took a wide shot coming up the stairs of the bedroom. The banister is still missing the spindles from our floor install, but I'll probably fix that in the next couple of weeks now that I can sleep at night after feasting on the dragon tonight.

(That means beers for the first Flyers game of the season!)

For our second wedding anniversary I give you...

2008-10-07T19:26:00.010-04:00

...finished hardwood floors. You're welcome. It was nothing, just a token of my affection for smooth floors that look friggin SWEET.

So I'll recap real fast to keep this post short (there is a "debate" tonight after all). After we installed the floors I got total stage fright about finishing them. I mean if you mess up framing a wall or mitering window casing then you just buy more right? Well what if you sand and seal a floor and screw any of that up? You have to strip and refinish the floors all over again. There really are no do overs. Seeing as how I tend to learn a new project by screwing up a couple of times...I couldn't take that chance.

So we hired out, which is just about the last third party to work on our house in the near future. "So I got that goin' for me, which is nice." ---->

Anyway we had a great guy named Van (http://www.vanshardwoodfloors.com) show up on Thursday for a quote and did the job today. Below are some pictures of the floor as it is right now. In the end we elected to not stain the floors and just have then sanded a bit with 3 coats of poly. The floors are really wet right now and you can see that in the pictures...hey it's a messy job. And also let it be said that the fumes from the job are crazy. Don't underestimate how much the poly smells, and you can even taste it.

The floors will be dry enough to walk on tomorrow, but we'll probably not get up there until the weekend. Then it'll be putting the new bed together up there to get those damn boxes out of my workshop, and the mattress/box spring out of our living room.

It'll be a magical moment. We still need to install the window stools and all of the trim (casing and baseboards) but I think we can start that next week-ish.

On another note, months ago I ripped apart the electrical for the third floor and half of the second. This was in late May before the demo was 100% done. Anyway, over the past weekend I ran new lines up to the second floor and rewired the office/workshop. It was a pain in the butt having to use flashlights at night and not being able to work in there after like 5:00. The picture on the right doesn't look like much, but there was a lot of wiring up there to even get the lights to work. I've added one new outlet right now, and I'll be adding 3 more in the next couple of weeks.

The wire sticking out of the box is for the (to be delivered and installed) recessed lights that are going in the soffit. I'll split the feeder line and that's it.

So yeah, that's about it right now. Today is in fact our second anniversary, and with the house stuff and life things, we both half spaced it until last evening. We're hoping that it's not a harbinger of things to come for the next 70 years.

So you know, my anniversary gift to Christina was completely cleaning out our dump living room and the basement. Things are finally where they need to be and we don't have piles of lumber in the living room. For her part, Christina paid Van for the floor job...so I didn't have to do it. That's a gift I'll take any time. (I was really hoping that wood was the 2nd anniversary gift, turns out that is the 5th, so maybe we got to that one early. Too bad this year was cotton-Christina)

Aint love grand?

And we thought drywall was a MIRACLE!

2008-09-29T20:53:00.012-04:00

So, when the drywall (well the first day...not the results or the work we had to put in ourselves) went up we were so happy to see the great progress. Well, that has been bested! We now have working lights, and working plumbing. Definitely a huge milestone, and one that I honestly wasn't sure would ever happen!

This picture should help explain the tub location at the stair landing, also we did have a casualty today, the marble ledge in the picture didn't make it through the days activities. The feet of our blogged about tub might be a little wacky, and thus gravity took it's toll. What can you do? If that's all that came out of having people working on our house today and not (for once) royal screwing us...it's a TOTAL win.

So for the recap: on Friday we paid the extortionists their money to finish the electrical, which was done 90% right, but I can actually turn the lights on to close the windows at night, and not feel like I was going to step on a saw, nail, or weird metal item. (btw we got our green sticker for a pass on our FINAL electrical inspection today) Then we spent the weekend working on the floors, which look really good, and also solved another previous problem, of being able to see into the bedroom below through the subfloor gaps, especially in the dark while closing the windows. Kind of unsettling at times.

Then today we had a new set of handymen/plumbers install the plumbing. The sink, toilet, tub filler, tub, and shower are now all in place. Notice the water filling up the bathtub (ignore the lack of window trim, that's on the list)?

The picture on the right is the shower fixture we created. And before any eye rolling begins, yes this is another shot of the shower, but at least it's something new. Anyway, the main part of the fixture was purchased at an architectural salvage place here in Philly. We fashioned the connections up from chrome pieces and threw on a rain head just to make the thing even more antique/industrial/modern.

We should wear black framed glasses and refer to ourselves in the third person. It looks that good. Believe it.

So yeah, I suppose that's it for now. the bathroom is ready to roll with just some misc things left like window trim, the missing marble and new radiators. But hey, it's not winter, trim is overrated and marble?!?! Whatever. All will be solved in the next month or so we hope.

Hardwood floors and an instant love of being done.

2008-09-29T19:55:00.013-04:00

Done*. There, it's nice to type that: D O N E*. The hardwoods have been successfully installed in the third floor bedroom. Now, as usual I have a caveat to my declarations, and this time it's that the floors we bought are unfinished red birch.

Whatever, those are the details that the devil resides in.

Right now I'm savoring the sweet smell of hardwoods being laid over 2 days this weekend, with a little extra help. My past experiences with hardwoods involved mainly walking on them and Swiffering as needed. But hey, everyone has to learn to live on the edge at some point.

Our friend Graham helped us (THANKS GRAHAM!) on Saturday to get the ball rolling. Luckily we own all of the tools needed like a chop saw, jig saw, air compressor, and even a table saw (which came in really handy for ripping boards). The only thing we needed was a floor nailer which we rented at the Depot.

Well in the end we rented three as the third time was a charm:

The first had a crazy "nozzle"/"adapter"/whatever. It's like someone took the real one off to use some industrial size air hose
The second looked the part, and we were excited to see that the thing would at least hook up to the compressor. Well, after hooking up the hose our hopes were dashed. Someone, it seems, decided to do some field repair on the rental and neglected to replace the main gasket. So air was just passing right through the thing. We soldiered on with a stiff upper lip, but all of the wads of duct tape couldn't help. It was a trip back to the Depot.
The third, it was just right! This time I made the guy at the Depot hook the nailer up and I even decided to try it on some flooring sample right there.

At this point we were like 2+ hours behind schedule and time moves for no man.

Once we got back everything went pretty darn well. Considering the weekend was like living in a Swamp around here (thanks hurricane Kyle), the floor went down with just minimal pools of sweat on the unfinished floors. (Christina chased me around with a bandanna for most of the weekend) What can you do?

Sunday saw me finishing the main part of the bedroom and then dealing with all of the cuts needed to wrap around the 4 closets in there. That was "fun" and "I can't wait until I can do that again". Yeah, that's it.

*crickets*

Whatever, after some total mental lapses involving tapes measures and being able to, well, actually measure, the floor went down. The last (and craziest) part of the install was at the third floor landing near the bathroom and along the stairs. There were 100+ year old spindles nailed into the original pine subfloor that we were going to obviously cover. Our solution? Use scraps of the floor as spacers of sort. Then I just stood on the stairs and reached up to cut them with my reciprocating saw. And it totally worked. The cuts aren't 100% flush with the flooring but they're close enough to make a HUGE difference.

The old bullnose was removed and some spiffy new stuff picked up by the Boss today. She does have a good eye I must say.

Anyway, the floors were run and cut to the end of the subfloor and the new bullnose tacked in. The only "problem" with the bullnose is that the edge curves gently 90 degrees and they didn't have that piece. So until we decide to lose our minds and pay $200 for a custom milled 90 degree curved piece that's like 4 inches long...there's going to be a gap. Sue us.

You basically see the final product in the picture to the left, but probably better on the right. See? Ok, so some spindles didn't make it though the flooring install, but they're in a nice little stack waiting to join their friends once again.

Just wait until we post the pictures of the plumbing fixtures now that they've been installed....and WORK!

Electricity (that was Friday) + floors (you know, unfinished) + plumbing = A happy house. Or at least until the stress of staining the floors happens...

Long time no typing at you!

2008-09-21T13:42:00.013-04:00

So fall is here and of course the project that had no end in sight...has an end in sight! I'll wait until you recover from fainting..................................OK, let's soldier on with the blabbering blogging.

So we've been busy over the past 3 or so weeks with finishing the grouting in the bathroom, some light framing/construction, and some (more) painting. The third floor is ACTUALLY slated to be done(ish) by Monday. "What are you talking about Bryan...we know about the contractor drama, so how can you be about done(ish) on Monday?

Note: done(ish) means that all I have left is the window trim. Can do.

Well, glad you asked. In the end (and tons of phone calls and conversations) we decided to pay the electrical subs to come back and finish the job. Yes this means that we'll be paying them essentially AGAIN for the work. Yes that sucks. And yes, we fully plan to recoup our money in the end. I can assume you know what drama that will mean in a few months. But I digress....

So the sub is coming back Friday and we're finally going to have power and lights up there. Big win. We spoke to the plumbing sub a couple of times 2+ weeks ago, but then he stopped calling us back. After we called ever.single.day.for.two.weeks. Needless to say, he hasn't convinced us that he is worth paying. This still leaves open the nonsense about our contractor never paying them, but we'll deal with that when we come to it....but whatever. Honestly, and not to be too gross....I need to make #2 in our new bathroom after all of the checks I've heaved out of my wallet. There I said it. Sorry everyone. (that last thought will FOR SURE be deleted by Christina in the next 18 hours I just know it)

We did let the plumbing sub know our intentions to use someone else with "if you don't call us back by end of day...yeah yeah..." you get it. But Monday our replacement guys will be here bright and early to finish the work. Damn straight.

In the meantime, I will be attempting to install the hardwoods in our bedroom with our friend Graham. This will be on Saturday, so hopefully that adventure ends like "Return of the Jedi" and not "Empire Strikes Back" by Sat night. At this point only the magic 8 ball knows.

Anyway, how about some pictures?!?! How about THE LAST PICTURE I WILL EVER POST of our shower? (you're welcome for the "last...ever" realization). Note the fantastic grout work, and matching marble ledge and curb?

If you work through previous posts, or have a memory that I can't even pretend to possess, you'll know that under the new bathroom is our old office (now workshop). Well I had a couple of decent days and worked on the soffit that will house the plumbing and recessed lights. We're so fancy I feel like I should be wearing a suit all of the time. Pin stripes.

Here's the result of my effort. To be truthful, this actually took me two weekends. One Sat to start building it the way I thought it would work the best...with me ripping almost all of it down the next day. Then this past weekend I got my head out of my proverbial #2 and did it right. The product is to your left.

Hey family and close friends...want to come over and stay for the weekend? (a few of you have braved our work cave in the past) AWESOME! Here's what our living room looks like right now. So come on over!!!

And yes that's a mattress and box spring in our living room. We ordered them in June thinking that (HAHAHA) we'd be using them upstairs by now. I got a little antsy over the past couple of weeks since we paid for them and they weren't in the house. And given how well our recent track record of paying people to do or deliver things has been going...I wanted them in our house. So add in the 120 or so feet of window casing we have lying around, and the place is like cat hide and seek heaven.

I guess to wrap this latest update up I'll give you a picture that we find kind of funny. What do you get when you cross someone grouting and needing bucket after bucket of water, with another person who spent 30 minutes mopping the kitchen floors?

.
.
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<--- That. New uses for those silly grocery bags.

Dreaming in paint colors

2008-09-01T19:30:00.010-04:00

We hope everyone had a relaxing holiday weekend. Christina and I both skipped work on Friday, so that gave me 4 days to be covered in paint and really experience Labor Day weekend. I spent the first two days putting the second and third coats of red on the wall, as well as the second coats of green and the "blue" (again with the quotes). All I have left is some patch work and a second coat of white in the bedroom. I really was on the fence about the second coat of white, but I think that's just being lazy. Two coats are minimum in my book. For those playing along, 8 gallons of primer and 9 gallons of paint.....

We decided to go with low VOC paint that we purchased from Duron. I have to say that I was really surprised how well it covered given that I had read a few reviews/opinions that low VOC paints don't cover. Now granted, I primed every wall twice and for the red and green walls I also primed them grey....but still the low VOC stuff is nice. Plus since it hardly smells, you can paint all day without any headaches or feeling ill from the fumes, just maybe like a little play-doh. The red had to be a traditional base since the low VOC bases are for light and pastel colors. That's an FYI if anyone wants to go the low VOC route.

Everything else is wrapping up. Niko put in some long hours after work last week and finished laying all of the tile in the shower before the weekend. I'm hoping that he'll decide to come back and grout this week, unlike our contractor. I need the tile and paint to be done, and I think it's about there.

I'm including a few pictures of the completed shower for those who might be interested. The shampoo bottle on the recessed shelf was a test for my sanity. I had a moment of panic today thinking that the shelf we created wasn't big enough for a standard shampoo bottle. Needless to say, our architect won't be yelled at today, because it fits. Whew.

The items that are left for this floor are:

grout
install the plumbing fixtures
install the electrical items
lay the hardwoods in the bedroom
put in the correct sills that we ripped out
trim

The problem for us is that #2-6 were supposed to be done (correctly) by our former contractor. As we're still trying to figure out what the next step with that mess is, we might be waiting a few weeks to wrap it up. UUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Anyway, hopefully we'll make that final decision after we talk to his bonding company and get some legal advice. It's getting ugly around here for sure.

To round out the posting, I took a couple pictures of the space. This first is where the tub (that's being used for tool storage right now) will go overlooking the stairs. The little unfinished lip you see has a marble top and it's bathroom side will have the baseboards wrapping on it. Fancy-schmancy I guess.

The last picture is of the niche that was created on the outer wall of the shower in the hallway. There were some adventures getting that niche there, framed properly and the tile on it....but there it is. Man, it's crazy seeing it and thinking about ALL of the work that damn thing was. But hey, I'm just the hired help right, and the architect seemed to be really attached to it?

So I guess that's it. if we do wait a few weeks to finish the third floor as I mentioned, then the next project is framing in the soffit in the office on the second floor. It's currently my workshop, but getting that soffit built with new electrical run to the room is infinitely more fun than painting. Any day of the week. It's not like we are going to run out of projects anytime soon!

"It ain't easy bein' green" - Kermit the Frog 1970

2008-08-24T18:39:00.014-04:00

So after the last downer post we decided to lighten the place up a bit with some humor and a shout out to our childhood. (Bryan also claims that I have some relation to Dr. Seuss due to my color choices - Christina)

Behold what the inner most desires of Christina's color palate have unleashed on the citizens of 13th Street --->

The bathroom is now part lime green, part (primer for now) white, and a faint "blue". I've only had time this weekend to get the first coats of paint up as I have to re-prime the non white and "blue" walls grey. That's something that I wasn't aware of, but what can you do. I'll keep calling the "blue" used up there in quotes because it's barely blue. The actual color is "subtle blue" and it's pretty darn subtle. It looks really cool, but most people won't ever know that it's not white.

The bedroom now has the first (of what I can assume will be three) coats of "radish" red as well as the "blue" on most of the closets and in the shot to the left. The red is kind of scary I admit, but I'm just the hired gun around these parts. I'll trust the designer on this one. (I actually gave Bryan a choice between the radish and a deep blue, I was actually shocked that he picked the radish, but I do think it will be great! - Christina)

So that's the paint stuff. I am going to wrap up the colored walls over the next couple of nights after work, then do the ceiling. It's backwards to do that, but that's how I roll. After seeing white primer up for about 2 weeks, I really wanted to see some colors up there. And I'm in charge of the work now, so that's that.

Our tiling project has been on hold for the past 10 days or so with our friend Niko out of town. He's back this week, and the shower will be done soon and then it's just the grouting. When the tiling started Christina took a picture of the wet saw in our bathtub. I think it's fitting since that's how DIY projects work. Meaning do anything you can to get the job done...and quickly. Also notice it is one of the few times you get to plug something electrical into an outlet, then put it in the bathtub and add water.

Yeah, our current (and only operating) bathroom was remodeled by the previous owner. In approx 1962. At least it is a complete set with matching toilet and sink. Hey, we'll get to that eventually.

Besides the tile wrapping up in the next week and the painting being done by the end of the upcoming holiday weekend, we're just getting things done. We're going to work with a guy for the plumbing install, since the contractor bailed on that part, and some great friends have offered up services for the hardwood install and helping me finish the electrical. Our contractor story was just pitiful enough to have everyone want to help, but it's TOTALLY APPRECIATED!!!!

Oh, on a side note I mentioned in the last post that I was getting a table saw. Well I got it last week and used it to try my hand at window sills. While the sills didn't quite work out (but it was a good learning experience right?) the saw is great. Of course this weekend we had a friend in town from NYC and my workshop was converted into a bedroom complete with putting down a rug....man we're on top of it.

I guess table saws make great bedroom tables?

Anyway, that's it for right now. While we're still having some back and forth with our former contractor on his nonsense, we've moved on. We're hoping that upcoming Labor Day weekend means the end of painting, tiling...and the start of trim and installing the electrical pieces. And turning on the power!!!

We need a vacation.

Breaking up is NOT hard to do....

2008-08-18T19:47:00.009-04:00

So it's been a couple of weeks since I've last vented on the interwebs. Where to start....hmmm...oh yeah, our contractor has officially QUIT. Left. Took his tools. Good riddance if you ask us.

It all started so well. The guy was nice, showed up on time, and really started off well. It was pretty exciting as you can see in our early June entries. But like a ball of yarn with rusty nails in it, things slowly unraveled and became a dangerous pain in the ass. First off, in his quote there was only one sub listed, and that was the plumber. Christina in fact met the plumber, but that was the owner...not the guys that did the work (again, this is in a previous rant I posted so I'll refrain from rehashing). So then the weirdest thing happened; more and more subs showed up! They multiplied, like little late to work, throwing trash everywhere, moody Tribbles. Where was Captain Kirk when we needed him!?!?!

The electric subs screwed up half of the lines and lights by not following the plans Christina made. Again, this is in a previous rant, so I'll move on.

Oh, a footnote to all of that. We got a bill from the contractor for a combined $4,250 for OVERAGES from the plumbers and electricians. I'll say that in the line items, about $600 from the electricians that were from increased scope, and that close to $1,000 from the plumbers was because what we wanted was more than the "standard" bathrooms that they do. What?

So in early July I got this bill and called our contractor to hear a great defense of the overages. In so many words, I was told that the subs probably billed us for overages because we (Christina and I) are a pain to work with. That we change scope (like I said, it was for one thing...an extra outlet for a window AC) and that the subs had to redo work the entire time. Note that last part, it's a running theme.

After talking with him and looking at the work I took up the position that we'll just pay the money and move on. Christina was pretty pissed about the entire thing and REALLY pissed that our contractor wasn't keeping overages under control from HIS subs. I blindly argued a slightly different position...I was wrong now. I see that.

Anyway, next up were the drywall subs. Ok...whatever. The guys took almost 6 days to hang the drywall, and then brought in ANOTHER guy to tape ans mud the entire space. Not only did that guy take 4 days to do his thing, but he only applied 1 coat of mud (and sanded) to the entire space. Crap work. But hey, no overages!!!!

The drywall ended in the middle of July. After that Christina and I were now seeing some issues with the place. First off, all of the framing that our contractor ACTUALLY did, was off. Our main closet was finished to a length of 5'11" (speced to be 6'), and two linen closets finished to 22" (speced to be 2' even). What this means is that we cannot get any standard out of the box closet system as they come in 24" spans. Our fault I guess, we should have put the dimensions on the plans. Oh wait...that's right they were on the drawings, all of them.

The windows that were ordered for us were in fact NOT the custom Andersen windows that we had specified and that were in the contract. They are stock Andersen 400 series and so we waited close to 6 weeks for standard windows that can be ordered and delivered in less than 2 weeks. They were also ordered without hardware. We were quoted for custom Andersen 400 windows with hardware. We were ripped off. But by the time we had waited 6 weeks, endured torrential in the bathroom downstairs, and the hallway, and dining room, any windows were an improvement

Anyway, as I write this I'm getting tired of the nonsense. I'll boil it down to the fact that we created an "Action Item" list for our contractor that included items still left to be done (per our quote), items that are in progress, and what I called "items of concern". The last set of things included the closet dimensions as well as the lack of adequate framing around the windows that were put in. This resulted in an additional $650 during the stucco work to put the brick back in the wall. Totally unacceptable items.

Also in that last list was our stack plumbing that has been incorrect and a point of drama since the plumbers did it wrong to start with. Refusal to do anything about it was raining down like...well...I don't know. I was going to say my fists to this guy's face, but this is a family friendly blog.

Anyway, with this "Action Item" list we wanted just to talk and do a walk through with our contractor about the items. But the funniest thing happened during this; he stopped answering our calls! He must have been thanking God for caller ID on cell phones, because it helped him avoid acting like a professional and talking to his clients. After about 2 weeks of trying to get ahold of him (and I did once where we scheduled a date and time to do the walk through, where I think he lied about a family emergency to not have to show up) I got an email.

It was THE email. The "I can't work on your house...I'm losing money when I go there...I can't keep redoing work" whine-fest. It was all crap. He just decided that he didn't want to deal with us and do the work that we expected and that he PROMISED us. Sounds like a contractor in Philly alright.

The best part to all of this is that the guy has the cajones to tell us that he has not paid the plumber or electrician and that we are responsible for amount due to them. The amount he owes them is like $5,500 while the last payment to him was to be $4,600. See a problem there? But if you're paying attention there are a few problems here.

We have only the final payment to make to him (obviously that isn't happening) and the amount he owes those subs are more than we owe.
That he is saying we in essence have to pay 110% for 80% of the work. Not happening
That we have to pay the subs to finish the work and in effect we'd be paying them TWICE
That he paid himself before his subs.

Homey don't play that. At all. Not happening. He has threatened that if we don't settle up with the subs that we'll get a mechanic's lein on the house. I'm going to skip the legal stuff, but if he isn't smart to pay them himself we're not going to pay a dime.

At this point we've done a little back and forth with Christina using her great friends in the architecture and commercial contracting world to really do a number on all of this. I'm playing the bad guy and I'm fine with it. In fact, with this stuff I'm loving it.

Don't even get me started on the upside down mismatched window sills that were installed. I think that was the breaking point, both for us with the contractor and for the contractor when we requested they all come out. But at least I was able to buy a new table saw over the weekend to do the sills! SILVER LINING INDEED!!!

The sky's did seem to part a bit today, and we have a stucco contractor that has been great and sent over a friend of his that might just be able to help us out of this pickle. Stay tuned, hopefully for more pictures of complete work and less rants, but then again it would not be called "working on your house" if it was all easy........

We're getting too good at writing checks...

2008-08-04T08:51:00.006-04:00

So if you read my post from last night, you already know that our stucco contractor was sending over a roofer today to fix an issue with the roofing and the new stucco. Whatever, not a big deal.

Well as of 6:50 this morning, we're getting a new rubber roof. For the shingled house dwellers, a rubber roof is what it sounds like: it's a membrane of rubber that is placed on the roof and is sealed. It creates a water tight roof for us folks with flat roofs where it's possible water can just sit and hang out if things aren't done right.

It's funny how you can make pretty good size decisions after being awake for 20 minutes and before even thinking about a cup of coffee.

But the reality is that we knew we were going to need a new roof come winter. After walking around a couple of the levels over the past few months, we've noticed some cracking of the silver coat, and even had to get one area patched. Jimmy the roofer confirmed this with a couple of demonstrations as to just how close we were to having some BIG issues. :(

It's just who wants to wake up on a Monday to have that level of reality hit you? Between the new stucco and the roof, all we have left is to replace the rest of the windows and this damn house is ready to roll I guess. That's the positive side of it I suppose.

But it's still early on a Monday, so we'll see what else is in store for today.

- Bryan

Between stucco and a hard place

2008-08-03T21:05:00.014-04:00

Between having a cement crew here all week putting stucco on the back of our house, the various leaks that facilitated, and the cats deciding to be daredevils....we had a week around here.

I'll start slow. Our house was (as I type this) all brick in the back and side. After moving in to the house 3 years ago it became very apparent that the brick was an issue. Sections were turning black and there was obvious moisture seeping through the wall and really causing problems with some plastered rooms. Anyway, so after years of saying "you know, we really need to take care of this" we had the guys come out and well...take care of it.

The timing was planned to be after windows for the third floor were in with the exterior trim in place. Done. And the other factor was making sure that we could pay the guys in U.S. currency. Done. Three days later, the back of the house looks something like first the picture on the right.

And for some weird close up of the stucco work, for those who are not that familiar, I guess you can enjoy the picture on the left. Do with it what you must.

Anyway as I eluded to at the top of this number, some of this work created some issues for us in the water department. The byproduct of the guys peeling some of the rubber roof off of the existing wall was that when the stucco doesn't meet the roof...water goes RIGHT INTO that seam and floods the floor below. Great stuff!! A+++++++

Whatever. Our cement contractor is really nice and felt bad the guys left the area like that. He's coming over tomorrow with a roofer to fix it all no charge. There are still some decent contractors out there as hard as it is to believe.

So the last fun thing happened yesterday morning. I never mentioned this previously (in spite of Christina's insistence I admit) but our cat Bing had an escape a few days ago. He decided to hop out of the front windows on the top floor onto the top of the bay windows. I found this out after closing the windows, and a few minutes later wondering what "that f#$%ing cat" noise was. Yeah...I felt kind of bad seeing the little dude out on the window still 30+ feet over the street. With a very large tail he made a B-Line for the inside of the house.....

But our other cat Marco took the prize Saturday morning. At around 8:30 AM Christina was milling about the house and heard a noise coming from outside. She looked out a window and saw my man Marco staring up at her. Outside. From the roof of the first floor closet. Marco, upon seeing her shining face, started to wail in that way cats do when they're about to be run over or something. Long (and winding) story short, I threw some clothes on and ran outside with a ladder to rescue the dude.

I have created a little something to illustrate HOW he managed to end up outside (click on the image for the full effect). Please, no requests to jazz up other pictures, this one was a SEVERE waste of time tonight. In the end we realized that he went out of the small bathroom window on the third floor and DOWN to the closet roof. 20+ feet. Cats really commit to something.

So anyway that was way too much excitement for first thing in the morning. Now we're double checking that all of the new windows are closed, at least until the screens are in.

Our friend Graham has asked a few times to finally see a picture of Christina working on the house. Now she's normally the shutterbug and not myself, but I did find one that I took that is proof the Bear has put in some time on this mess that we live in. It's old but it still counts.

That's it for now. Tile will be done this week, and my parents are dropping by for a couple of days on their way to a wedding in DE. Good stuff!

- Bryan

A 4 day crash course in tile appreciation

2008-07-27T19:00:00.009-04:00

It's a little after 7:00 PM on Sunday here in the great city of Philadelphia, and I can barely move. In fact, Christina basically had to shovel food into my mouth tonight because my arms are barely functioning, not to mention my inability to walk. I know EVERYONE is saying to them selves "but Bryan, you're an Adonis and are as tough as the Terminator...how can you be sore? One Word.

Tile.

With that out there, let me back up just a few days. As a previous blog post mentioned, our friend (and weekend tile master) Niko had a date this weekend to lay some porcelain with me. Uh, what? Anyway, on Wednesday Niko shows up and between then and today I've learned the following items about myself, tiling, and the world:

Cement board is heavy.
Hardiebacker is heavy.
Quickrete is heavy.
3.5 gal buckets of thin set are heavy
Wet saws are heavy (see#6). They suck, they are hard to work with, are loud and don't cut straight lines (for me I guess)
ALL of the above weight can be summed up with the following formula: final weight of an item = (listed gross weight x linear feet to be carried) x each stair step ³

It is also important to note that no weekend is complete without multiple trips to a hardware store of some kind. This weekend was no exception, with 10+ trips to Lowes, Home Depot, our local 1540 Hardware, and a new one just for kicks, C&R (Admittedly Christina made 75% of those trips). The fun part about all these trips to the hardware store is: you got it.......purchasing more heavy items that need to make their way up to the third floor.

At least we made some progress and there is some white tile on the walls, all the porcelain on the main part of the floor. So I guess most of the trips up the stairs were worth it. There is still one extra 60 LBS bag of quickrete that needs to make it back down three flights of stairs to the hardware store, but that is just not happening right now...or in the next few days.

Anyway, to the tile stuff. Niko handled laying the tile as well as letting me know when I was about to screw something up. Besides carrying up 10 cements boards and 10 hardiebackers up the third floor, my job was to lay all of the board. :) Honestly, it was pretty fun and easy to do. I did managed to almost break my foot with a cement board, I have a blistered right hand from the 800 + screws I drilled in, but it was sort of fun.

I'm weird.

Anyway, you can see some "moment in time" pictures that Christina took of the action. She was the General this weekend. She made sure that we knew what we were doing, and if there were any design questions, to defer to her (the project architect). Life can be good sometimes....

The status right now is that we're maybe 65% done. All of the hardiebacker is down, and the floor tile is done (no grout yet, that's last). I'm going to finish the last 1/5 of the cement board in the shower on Tuesday as I'm taking tomorrow off hopefully. Niko's tile cutter had some "problems" today, so you'll note that no cute tiles are on the walls. That's going to be later this week. What can you do.

I'm going to just sit now. Sit and stare off into the distance before treading up the damn stairs yet again.....why are we making our bedroom on the third floor again?

A view from the top, and Netflix tips

2008-07-25T08:18:00.009-04:00

Often people have come to our house over past couple of years, and immediately they say "hey, have you ever seen the Money Pit"? Cue our eye rolling and then say "yeah, it's pretty funny, that Tom Hanks sure can act". But the real question I have after this occurs, is why do people think that buying an old house and fixing it up means you bought a "money pit"?

Sure old houses need some TLC, and in some cases (like ours) they need some pretty major surgery. So they can leak in bad storms, but chasing down that leak is morbidly fun at times in my sick mind. McMansions, in my opinion, are even worse than buying a "money pit" nowadays.

When you buy some Toll Bros monstrosity, do you have any clue what is in the walls, or for that matter what the walls are made out of? Christina and I have driven past many a track development and seen that in lieu of wood 2x4s many developers use the metal studs. Not for nothing, but what's wrong with good ole' lumber? I know what my house is made of. Yes, it's probably because at this point I've lost any trepidation in knocking a hole somewhere and seeings what is up. But I think that's part of the fun of an old house...you GET to knock holes in things and really get a feel for the bones of a house. New construction has lost that. The time was when people built their houses by hand and knew every square inch. That's why I own a "money pit".

Plus I get to buy LOADS of tools, and unlike confused suburbanites with thin interior walls, I know how to PROPERLY use them. They're dirty, they sometimes cough and wheeze, but that's the point.

Anyway, if you haven't seen the movie for whatever reason, rent it. It's great. And the "two weeks" line repeated throughout it is the best...and most accurate part of it.

Enough of that soapbox preaching, on to the show! Family and friend status on the house:

The third floor drywall is 90% complete, and the final taping will be today. Our friend Niko will start tiling the bathroom floor and shower in earnest tonight, with it taking at least this weekend. I'm going to "help" by staying out of the way and priming the bedroom walls.

We're STILL WAITING (thanks Sonia and company) for our wall mounted sink. That means the half wall of tile might have to wait another week or so, but let's have a drink tonight and hope not.

Christina took some artsy fartsy pictures last evening, and I'm willing to share these artistic endeavors with everyone. The picture on the right is a shot of the space on the landing to the third floor. Good stuff. The hole you see in the left part of the picture is a niche that will be there for...I guess a hanging picture as it's pretty damn narrow. Maybe I can squeeze some Star Wars figures on there for good measure as well.

On the left is a decent shot from the bedroom into the bathroom. It's pretty self explanatory now that I'm looking at it this morning. Eh...

The second one on the right here is just a shot of the closet where you can sort of see the stair railing and the little side closet poking out. We liked this one because you can really get a sense of the angles in the room with the ceiling slope after I pulled down all of the dropped plaster ceiling that was there before. BAM! Not to be some prick, but dropped ceilings are NOT the way to go in a house (I'll give you the basement if you want).

And lastly, but surely not least...I made a decision in the whole compressor/nailer debate I was having with myself (and my wife). In the end I bought a Bostitch "3 pack" that had a pancake compressor and three finish nailers in it. After research and seeing all of the various projects that we are discussing over the next 6 months, it just made sense. As a compromise, I didn't get a framing nailer and instead I'll be stealing my friend's for the time being (he has a new 4 week old daughter...I think he's out of the framing jobs for now).

Anyway, here's yours truly getting oh so gangsta, as the kids call it nowadays, with the nailers last night. Christina insisted on the picture, and since I don't mind being embarrassed on the interwebs, here you go:

Some thoughts from a troubled home improvement mind...

2008-07-22T15:17:00.002-04:00

So we all see the news on the economy. I mean if you're reading this then you have eyes and can at least see the (-) next to the Dow every week. The two of us have been pretty lucky so far in that we have jobs that relate (in some way) to the health care/insurance industries. It’s not that we feel insulated from the doomsday upon us; it's just that I try to think of puppies and ice cream instead.

Also a lucky deal so far has been that 3 years ago we decided to buy our house in an awesome neighborhood here in Philadelphia. So far it means that while the national housing numbers are down, our neighborhood is selling fairly well and still for some eye popping numbers. It's crazy really.

But at the same time we're shelling out money every few weeks as our third floor suite is in its last stages. So I have to ask myself...

When do you just hold on for the ride and not rock the boat?

For example: I'm a guy. I have a beard. I drink beer. I want a framing nailer. But to get to that point it's the nailer ($200), the compressor ($250), hoses ($50?), and nails ($50)...and that's without the needed finish nailer for most projects around the house. So if you’re like my wife, right then you just rolled your eyes and said "Yeah...OK".

Why? Because when the contractor leaves in a couple of weeks (after his last payment of course) I'm going to have a room that has plumbing just hanging out along two walls (we've posted various pictures before). I have to build a soffit there to hide that stuff. On top of that the boss and I have decided that we are going to forgo any more contractors for the foreseeable future and go DIY. We weren't capable of putting in a brand new bathroom ourselves, so we hired out. Super. But hanging drywall? Cake. Make a standard door a French door? Pfft, easy. Create the 60" plasma TV built for the man room? Not - A - Problem. But I need a nailer. I actually justify it by thinking that in the end it will save us tons of time and money.

But am I just being delusional? I mean of course I want one, but is it a smart move financially?

When the markets are volatile, banks are crashing, and debt is the ruin of man…does it make sense to keep working on your house and shelling out money? Granted we went nuts with this current project, and the rest are going to be much more low key. I get that 100%. But still it’s like I have check writing fatigue that no amount of red bull can fix.

Is it just that I’m crazy at this point? I think the jury is still out on that one…

- Bryan

Our Circus Tent

2008-07-17T18:47:00.004-04:00

A few weeks ago we went to see Cirque De Soiel under a giant blue and yellow tent on broad street. Which was an amazing experience. There were a few acts of insane balance and some contortionist. I never really expected to associate that with our house. However, this week we came home from work the first day to see how the drywall guys used old floor boards to suspend themselves above our stairs to get the drywall onto the ceiling. The first picture is their upgraded system with some additional supports on the landing and an extra 2x6 to extend the reach. I have to admit I can't imagine hanging heavy sheets of drywall above my head on a floating barely nailed down platform.......but hey, that is the point of having a contractor....The second picture also shows the same boards floating over the railing in their precarious position. You can also see most of the drywall is up and you can really see the closet and how the space is going to look.

Since the pictures yesterday didn't turn out so well due to the super bright sun, this is a better shot looking towards the front of the house. Both of the windows are the same size one just has some extra drywall leaning in front of it.

So in general the last few days have been pretty good, and we are starting to see the light and maybe see the end of all this albeit for a brief, brief moment before the next project starts! Part of every home sale/closing packet really should be a copy of "The Money Pit" movie.......

I think I can see New Jersey from here...

2008-07-16T11:35:00.001-04:00

It's Bryan.

Well well...here we are. It's week 6 into our 4 week schedule, and we're just moving along. The picture on the left is from our new bathroom "picture" window that was installed today (you might have seen the hole in a previous post). In the past few days, there has been more drywall added, and drywall removed, and some tense moments over window sizes. But seeing as how I've turned into the complete optimist in the house, we soldier on.

Today the guys (sans drywall crew) finished the install of all five windows in the third floor. As you can see here the this picture, the back of the floor is really just three windows which really makes the space full of light...and neighbors staring at you in the john. It looks like I'll finally be excited for curtain shopping. Huh. Weird. We included a shot of the tub so you might get a feel for how that part of the bathroom is going to be laid out opposite the sink and angled from the toilet.

We've also captured the relaxing ambiance that only our current bathroom work can give you. I call it "East Coast Tornado Chic" and will be consulting on the weekends for anyone else that is interested in this look. Our services are for hire, as we have to pay for all this somehow! Here is a view of the tub on the ledge/open wall that will be there as well as the picture window, as you walk up the stairs. The tub isn't quite in the right spot, but if you squint really hard, you can get the idea (the far right window in the previous picture is in that little bump out you see).

Did you spot Waldo?

With the new picture window in you can sort of get a better view of how the bathroom will look from the bedroom. The 2x4 you see in the shot is the framing for the pocket door that we'll get around to actually installing around Thanksgiving...in time for the family visits. I mean we do own the door already, but that's besides the point right?

Lastly we've included a shot of the windows in the bedroom. I guess it's included as a moral victory for us in that all 5 windows are in!!! Sorry for the dark picture, the stupid sun was stupidly shining into the room. It looks dark, but in reality the whole floor is full of light with all the new windows.

That's it for now. We're officially really off schedule as the drywall crew hit some snags and so they'll take longer than planned. Unheard of! We're hoping the stucco can start in about a week in the back of the house once the windows are finished. And lastly I get to rent a PAINT SPRAYER and paint the entire third floor in the next couple of weeks. Unless we sucker our out of town guests into painting. Hopefully before the hardwoods are finished, but at this point who knows.

Cheers!

I've been to a revival...a drywall revival!!!!

2008-07-10T17:35:00.013-04:00

HALLELUJAH!!!! Christina there has been a miracle!!!!

So the drywall guys showed up today to perform an exorcism as well as fix the brakes on our car. Ok, maybe not the brakes part, but I can hope right?

So all horrible attempts at bad jokes aside, you can see the beginnings of drywall is up on the ceiling in the main parts of both the bathroom and the bedroom. I'll refrain from overstating (more then 3 times) how big of a deal this is to us. After a year working up there doing various things, there is DRYWALL!!! THE END IS NEAR (says the crazy guy on the couch with a cat on his lap)!!!

We also had our birch hardwood floors delivered today, and I will skip the nonsense that was. Anyway, I'm going to take this chance to show off our workshop/living room as it was not but 25 minutes ago.

It's turned into a convenient storage space for 175 sq feet of our old hardwood floors, the endless boxes of tile, my random tools, and the new bundles of hardwoods. You get the luxurious experience at night of walking bare foot through the space with the plaster and bricks bits scattered everywhere. It's really how every living room was meant to be used, Martha Stewart be damned.

Yesterday our contractor created the hole in the back wall for the new (and surprisingly large) window that will be next to the tub. You can see it in it's current state in the two pics (click on them for the larger image).

Tomorrow most of the drywall should be completed, with the windows going in Mon/Tues next week and the hardwoods Wed/Thurs. After that the back 4/5 of the house is getting stuccoed and we'll be doing the tile work as well. It's all coming down the stretch now!

HALLELUJAH!!!!!!

- Bryan

Windows and Insulation and Drywall OH MY!

2008-07-08T20:29:00.008-04:00

So after a week in Indianapolis over the July 4th weekend, I've returned to the hot and humid Delaware Valley. This post is as much for our friends and family as it is for Christina to see what has happened while she's still in Indy nursing her mom back to health.

Progress while in Indy:

Supply lines were run for the bathroom
The tub was hauled from the first to the third floor
The electrical was wrapped up and passed inspection (who would have guessed!)

Our contractor Jon has really ramped up this week now that there is power and plumbing (even if none of it is hooked up), and all of our non-fixture purchases are arriving this week. I picked up half of the bathroom tile today, and it was a breeze. Who doesn't want to pick up 400 lbs of tile in 8 little boxes in business casual dress when it's 93 degrees out? It really makes sense, and I recommend it to everyone. Anyway, the other half of the tile is showing up tomorrow evening.

We've also ordered our hardwood floors for the bedroom. I'm hoping it gets here on Thursday, and is just 15 crates of flooring weighing a combined 600 lbs. GREAT. I"m looking forward to that workout.

Our windows were brought over today which we've been waiting on for over a month. ----------------->

The insulation in the ceiling was put up today, which had to be fun for the guys. Everyone has been just asking over and over to show some terribly exciting pictures of the insulation...so here you go!!!

The next item on the agenda is the drywall which is to start tomorrow. If all goes well the dry walling should be done by Friday, which the leads to the windows being installed (as well as the new one being created) early next week. I think at this point I need to see some drywall, tape and mud up there. It'll be like some religious experience or something. Or at least I'm hoping so...I'm bored with Christina being gone.

Besides that I wanted to post a picture of the new shutters that were loving passed to us from my parents. They are from my grandparents house in Indianapolis, and we think they'll make a cool element to cover the block walls in the back yard. But I'll let the boss handle that when she gets back.

Pictures of random things, and some updates.

2008-06-29T14:17:00.012-04:00

Ok, well since my last couple of rants things have turned around here on beautiful 13th street. Our contractor Jon has been over every day and is pretty much on top of things right now. The electrical is ready for the city inspection tomorrow, and things are looking good to have the drywall up after my return from Indianapolis next week.

Because some people like the random shots of rough in work, here is one of the electrical in the bathroom and a little diagram of how the plumbing is going. First the wires...

The plumbing hasn't gone far in the past few days. The guys were supposed to be here on Thurs/Friday to finish the returns, and to start on the supply (the copper is here at least). Well they were a no-show both days which even had our contractor saying "what in the hell are we doing with this guys?". I feel the same way. There is a slight chance that the plumbing will be done when I return from Indy next Sunday, but I'm not a fish so I'll pass on holding my breath.

What is done I have taken some pictures of and made handy labels...because I'm bored. Here is the view of the return plumbing as it looks from the ceiling of the second floor office. The entire thing snakes around and then goes out of the wall to out stack which is outside of the house. Our place is old. Anyway....

This week we had some friends in town and they were great sports. Our house is filthy, smells very odd at times, and is HOT. It's been 90+ degrees here all week with about 75% humidity. Philly is apparently a swamp, but Christina and I don't seem to notice it anymore.

Anyway, I cleared out a landing zone for the Susan and Steve Tuesday night in our second floor front bedroom. It had been a storage room and where I threw random power tools, but after a little real life Tetris and some trips to the basement the room looked something like the picture on the right.

The last picture for this hot-as-hell Sunday is one for my mom. The cats are getting too used to utter chaos around them at all hours, which is evident when Bing is Ok with playing in the tub...in the living room...precariously on it's side. Eh, at least he found his Binky I guess. That on it's own is hard to do sometimes in this place. I couldn't get a picture without Bing looking like some demon, but it's fitting in various ways.

The first 'punch' list: the anti-DIY part 2

2008-06-25T08:53:00.005-04:00

In keeping with my theme from yesterday, I have attached the first punch list my wife has created.

(On a side note: I've asked her a couple of times why it's called a 'punch list' instead of something like 'Stuff to get right' list, or 'We are paying for this?' list. Never got a straight answer on this one. I think it's because you feel like punching something quite often).

Anyway here's the list right now. Again, I'll say that Christina (more so that myself) is very accurate and exact in what she wants done. While that's a great mentality for all of this, it creates a list like:
According to Wikipedia (because it's always 100% accurate):
The phrase takes its name from the historical process of punching a hole in the margin of the document, next to one of the items on the list. This indicated that the work was completed for that particular construction task. Two copies of the list were punched at the same time to provide an identical record for the architect and contractor.

The stark reality of NOT doing it yourself

2008-06-24T08:33:00.006-04:00

It's Bryan. So, in the past 2 weeks we've had the framing in the bathroom start, the electrical get roughed in, and as of yesterday most of the return plumbing installed. And it's about 65% correct. that means that for the most part Christina and I walk in the door now, not excited to see what's new, but rather expecting something to be incorrect.

Now, a little history here. In my day job I coordinate various software development endeavors between what my bosses think they want, and the developers that will be grinding the code. It's usually a dance, but my job is to make sure that when the developers start work...they have every possible piece of info to make the application close to 100% as requested, (virtually) bug free, and on time. So I take the requirements from the business units, translate them to 'tech speak' and lay out the technical architecture for everyone to look at and understand that the knee bone is going to be connected to the thigh bone, and it's going to use REST web services and the like.

I'm basically a contractor...only a nerdy one.

Now, what I don't understand about the shenanigans we are seeing, is that there is no communication (or very little) going on between all of the parties involved. The contractor walks the plumber and electrician through the house, and even with my wife (an architect) there to explain the plans. Great! But the funny thing is that when the plumbers showed up on Friday to start, they weren't the same guy(s) that had toured the house. They had been 'briefed' on the project, and had 'an idea' on what is going on.

Come again? You mean that for our third floor OASIS that we've been planning and saving to do for years...you have an 'idea' about where the entire BATHROOM is going to be? It's the general passing the orders down the ranks, and somewhere in there I'm watching and wearing my life jacket...because I know this ship might sink. Quickly.

The electricians have run almost an entire wall of lines (carved into the brick party wall) that are...oh...about 5 feet too low. There are switches where a pocket door will slam into them upon closing. I know what you might be saying..."details, details". Well that's me. The devil is in the details all right.

Let me be very clear here: Our contractor is great. Seriously, he's been great, and pretty much available at all times when we freak out and call him. I know he trusts his subs, and that's one of the reasons that we went with him. The problem might be that my mother thinks I'm type-A, and I would argue that my mother-in-law says the same about my wife. I mean our jobs for years have been to herd cats day in and day out, to prepare for the best and worst and to make s@#t happen. I feel handcuffed.

I can't frame a bathroom, knock a hole in a wall for a new window, or lay tile everywhere. I know that. But I think my mind says "you know Bryan...it's not that hard to do...plus you can control every last detail". My mind is a dangerous place to be in right now.

Anyway, we're really hoping that some of the plumbing things are fixed today (I won't get into the stack connection right now...that'll be tonight probably), and the electricians are coming back tomorrow I think.

In the mean time we have friends in town this weekend, and I guess they'll be sleeping on an air mattress in the living room. Sorry Susan and Steve, you’ve entered the Danger Zone. Time to listen to the Top Gun soundtrack and get pumped for plumbing!

Let There Be Light!

2008-06-21T17:04:00.008-04:00

Well, almost.....last week was a bit slow as our contractor decided he needed to go see wild horses in Delaware for his family vacation. Who gets a vacation?

Anyway, the electricians came on Thursday and started to layout some of the recessed lighting, and switch locations to actually get electricity back into the 3rd floor. There are still a few more things to add, and a few things that did not land in quite the right spot, but those should get fixed next week. The plumbers also came on Friday and started to mark the ceiling on the 2nd floor for the plumbing runs, and the one line out to the existing stack on the OUTSIDE of the house.

Yes, one of the exciting things about a house built without plumbing or electricity, was the exhaust stack is on the exterior of the house. The old knob and tube wiring is also amazing to find. It is quite scary really to realize that a small ceramic tube was part of the power for an air conditioning unit......so far only a couple minor electrical fires, but that is why we are renovating, right?

The other great accomplishment of the weekend is the tub is almost done. I think Bryan is refinishing the tub for me to earn brownie points for the rest of the Baseball season (meaning he can watch some games at the corner bar). I think his plan is to get the tub set up so I can soak in the tub while he watches the never ending, constant all the time Phillies games......in the end it will probably work out for him!

Shopping

2008-06-15T18:37:00.010-04:00

So now that there is magical progress everyday, it is time for me to quit changing my mind and actually order all the fixtures, new mirror, and Bryan's toilet! There were 2 requests he made for this whole remodel, first that the shower have an "old time" feel with an exposed connection from the handles to the faucet, and second that the toilet have a dual flush button on the top, not a lever.

The picture above is the toilet we have ordered, and you can see the sink (just the sink, not the storage or faucet) as well.

We have all the pieces on the way and they should start arriving this week to Bryan's office. I think that he is going to have to bribe the guys in his mail room, since these boxes are not going to be small!

Day Three

2008-06-11T19:17:00.012-04:00

For once, it's me...Bryan. So I have been telling people, 'Yeah, I mean I'm sure we'll take pictures everyday, but really I'm sure we'll just update weekly'. Right. So it seems that Christina and I enjoy racing home after work and running up stairs to see what has happened during our torment at our respective offices. This has lead to Christina's blog addiction becoming ever so fun to watch.

Anyway, today the fellas tweaked some things that we found last night and framed the closet. This new closet will make THREE for the entire house. The guys also framed in all of our built in storage spaces, but that's too much fun to show.

Also, Christina wants to show off the edge that makes the bathroom (tub) open to the stairs. In time that will be a wall of some sort, but I haven't been told yet, so I don't need to know at this point.

Also in the post are just a few elevation drawings for the contractor and because I don't understand 'archi-speak' and need pretty pictures. I poo-pooed posting then entire drawing set, because I know EVERYONE is going to STEAL our ideas. You're all sneaky. For all you architects out there if you are curious about the plans, let us know and we can email them. There are also some 3D renderings that will probably make their way onto the blog when there aren't as many fun new pictures to post! (Ed: That was the boss, not me)

And They Returned!

2008-06-10T19:39:00.004-04:00

So they came back, even with the heat! This picture shows the new framing for the bathroom, the shower is the square in the middle. I think they plan to get the framing done this week, and the electrical and plumbing done next week. The new windows should show up the end of next week as well. The other picture starts to show the slope of the ceiling with the new joists. It is absolutely amazing to have stuff magically get done while we are at work!

Day One

2008-06-10T19:34:00.003-04:00

So I realize the picture isn't terribly exciting, but it was the first days progress, and it needed to be celebrated! This just shows the small area where there is new sub-floor for the bathroom, and a pile of tools in the corner. I should also mention that without any power on the 3rd floor, and record heat temperatures, I think the actual temp was 99 today, I was surprised they showed up at all. We did have a few extra Gatorade bottles throughout the house....but check back often now that we aren't the only ones doing the work!

Blog revamping

2008-06-05T17:01:00.006-04:00

So we're currently in the process of sprucing up the blog. I (Bryan) have added a handy little project progress thing purely for personal motivation reasons. The carrot and stick don't mean much if you can't see the finish line through the lead paint dust. In the coming days I would like to add some other blog sections that will be used for some general non house related entries. I guess that's it.

If you (our dear friends and family) would like something specific on the blog just drop us an email.

Cheers!
Bryan

Stoop Fun

2008-06-01T20:23:00.006-04:00

So we have been doing small projects lately. This one was a bit of procrastination from tub scraping, but an improvement none the less! I had found some numbers I loved at Design Within Reach a couple of years ago, but like most of their products, at $65 a number always thought against it. So we found these copies at a much better price. These are a great improvement to the original ones you can see in the first picture stuck on above the door (like the duct tape and vegetable can as a pipe stopper, the previous owners always seemed to use anything with adhesives) Any good weekend project isn't complete on its own and this one has now spawned 2 or 3 additional projects. First painting the door and frame now that the unsightly numbers left a mark on the white aluminum, adding a light outside the door that we have wanted for awhile, and finally the foxglove addition to the front. 2 down 2 to go!

The last picture is a view down the street and that is our little "Charlie Brown Tree" in the foreground. Bryan makes fun of its sprout at the top. I admit it does grow in a strange way, but it is now almost up to the 3rd floor and just starting to fill in a little for shade in living room.

Memorial Day Adventures

2008-05-26T19:57:00.005-04:00

Since we had an extra day off this weekend, we got a truck from Philly Car Share, and headed down to Baltimore to an architectural salvage store. With 5 warehouses of stuff we came back with a 15 panel door, a claw foot tub, slab of marble and few other small items for the house. The salvage place was well worth the drive. We are making progress, and you can see Bryan working on getting the tub all clean! The tub also has really ornate feet, which was one of my criteria. They are different on the front and the back so that the tub drains properly they are shorter in the front. You can also see Bryan's golf clubs sitting longingly in the living room. He has made it a few times to the driving range, but mine are still in the basement. Maybe next weekend.....

Household Finds

2008-05-22T19:39:00.002-04:00

So we are now officially on our contractors schedule for June 8th which leaves us 2 more weeks for little projects and gathering new things for the house. Since we haven't had much true progress, the top picture shows our new china cabinet, which I was not really looking for, but was being sold at a price I couldn't pass up from a dealer willing to deliver! Now we just have to make it through construction without breaking the 3 panes of curved glass......The bottom picture shows another piece that we bought at an architectural salvage store here in Philly and is a brass shower head, which Marco seems to be quite interested in lately. We hope to use this in our new bathroom. We are off this weekend to another architectural salvage place this time in Baltimore. It has 5 warehouses of glorious items (which I am sure Bryan will love as much as I do) we hope to find a claw foot tub, and pedestal sink for the bathroom.

Opening Day

2008-05-22T19:29:00.005-04:00

For the last 18 months or so I have been working on a project in Reading PA that is a new Pediatrics Unit for the hospital. I started this project with early client meetings and followed it through to the end with construction administration, so this is my first true project of my own. There was a party at the hospital to open the unit on Wednesday, and the unit officially opens to patients on Friday. These aren't the super fancy professional photos, but I will post those eventually, these do give a sense to the space. So far it has been well received by the staff, and the one child to visit for our photo shoot really enjoyed the playroom and seemed to think the red crush acrylic had goldfish in it! The top picture is the nurses station with the playroom in the back, and the lower photo shows one of 2 color schemes for the foot wall of the room and the white piece on the wall holds the 32" plasma TV that is connected to the playstation 3 with Blue Ray in each room. Quite nice amenities for sure.....

GO FLYERS!!!!!

2008-05-11T20:12:00.001-04:00

It's Bryan....

I know that Pittsburgh is closer to Indy than Philly....I get that. But just this one time, say LET'S GO FLYERS!!!!

Thanks. They/I need it I think.
Bryan

Bing the Electrician

2008-05-10T14:00:00.004-04:00

Even though he doesn't have his hard hat on, Bing decided today was his day to be a helper for some electric work! Bryan has been working on removing ALL the knob and tube wiring throughout the house. It is hard to tell from the picture, but Bing is on the 3rd floor looking through a hole in the floor to the hallway on the second! We are trying to do a few more things around the house before our contractor starts. The tentative schedule is for the contractor to start the week of May 19th, but we have to find a claw foot tub before he starts so it might move a little bit. So check back for updates!

Star date 2008-05-03 - Bryan's log

2008-05-03T17:54:00.006-04:00

This one will be short as we're about to head out for dinner in the burbs. We have OFFICIALLY finished the demo portion of our mission, as there is a mountain of debris in the living room as the final proof. We're getting it picked up tomorrow by "The Hunk of Junk" (yeah...we hope they are really hunky too, I guess) and then our contractor will be starting in a couple of weeks...finally. I've included a picture of our trash mountain (it is hard to tell that it 4' high) as well as a shot of the cleaned up third floor.

Now it's hard to see the space as it was before: two bedrooms, a hallway, a framed in closet, and a plastered drop ceiling throughout. I mean seriously...anyone who complains to me about demolishing a room with drywall needs to whine elsewhere. We've lived the plaster and lath nightmare for too long.

On the bright side, I am now a master at the reciprocating saw, and will be showing it off when I use it to carve our turkey this Thanksgiving. Just email me for details. It'll be a show!!!!

...And Then There Were None!

2008-04-26T17:34:00.007-04:00

So after many weekends of sledgehammers, pry bars, contractor bags (roughly 200 so far), and dirt, we finally finished the demo for the 3rd floor! It's hard to understand sometimes how much dirt and dust a house can hold in it's walls after 100 years. I mean it's astounding.

We haven't quite finished taking all the bags of debris down to the living room, but all the walls, framing, and ceiling supports are gone. It is a momentous day for us to have all the walls down and finally see the space as one big room. I think Bryan would like to keep the whole floor open as one room, but that would eliminate the bathroom. (it's Bryan...I'm thinking a bar, pool table, plasma and two couches. PLEASE help me make this happen with the boss!!!)

I however do hold onto the idea of the vaulted ceiling bedroom with wonderful evening sunlight, and the spa like bathroom, with claw foot soaking tub, and one of those book holder things that goes across the tub......

somehow we have to compromise, or at least find room somewhere for the plasma TV!

...and the Wall Came Down

2008-04-20T20:32:00.005-04:00

So after our great accomplishment of actually building something yesterday, it was back to demolition today. The largest of the remaining walls came down today, and as shown in the picture we figured out how to get it down in one piece (thank the Maker for reciprocating saws).

I think now that we are about done, we finally figured out how to make a bit less of a mess. We now have 35+ bags of rubble in the living room, but the 3rd floor is almost empty!

Some might just call it a door....

2008-04-19T18:34:00.005-04:00

But I call it VICTORY!

It's Bryan. Today I completed my 2 week project of creating a new gate/door for our back wall. I started it 2 weeks ago by cutting all of the wood to length and creating the frame (I think Christina posted some pictures). Over the past week after work, I've been sealing the pine, and Christina helped me with the last of that on Thursday.

Anyway, today was the day to assemble, and after about 8 hours in the awesome weather (for once) we now have a gate/door for our back yard into the alley.

Take a look at the pictures, and comment back on how "Great" and "Wonderful" the door is, and even maybe "A feat of engineering and carpentry unmatched since the pyramids". I know....it's true.

Now it's time for a beer!

Cat Wonderland

2008-04-17T18:12:00.006-04:00

So the weather has finally cooperated a bit, and with a little spring fever we both left work early today. I put the final coat of polyurethane on the boards for the door, and Bryan did a bit more demo on the 3rd floor. The wall between the rooms is totally down, the doors are off, and a good chunk of the wall in the hall is down as well. Now that there are no doors to the 3rd floor the poor cats have permanently dirty paws. We hope to get the door together and hung this weekend along with the rest of the demo so that we can get on the contractors schedule for sometime soon to frame the new walls!

Successful Stairs

2008-04-14T18:08:00.002-04:00

So after many somewhat fearful trips up and down our top flight of stairs they have successfully been jacked back into place and secured. Bryan also met with the License and Inspections officer on Friday and we officially have a demolition permit to post in our front window. Now that we are legal and the stairs no longer bounce as you walk down them we are off at much a quicker pace! If only the weather would cooperate so that we could finish the door......

Demolition and Wisdom Teeth

2008-04-13T21:52:00.006-04:00

Last Thursday Bryan had 2 of his wisdom teeth taken out, and came through with flying colors. We then spent Saturday at Lowe's getting flowers and a few odds and ends to try and finish the back door for the fence. The weather didn't really cooperate much, and we managed to get 1 coat of finish on the boards before the rains came. Undaunted Bryan did some more demo to check the areas of the ceiling around the stairs since our contractor is showing up this week to re-support them from the 2nd floor up to the 3rd floor. We also finally rolled up the rug in the living room, which makes the room feel quite large. It is good to see progress though, and we will keep posting pictures as we move along! So check back for more.....

Backyard Fun

2008-04-06T21:45:00.002-04:00

To get ready for spring we got a tree in December from a local guy who picked it up for us as part of a fund raiser for Columbus Square Park which is just a block from us. The city and local groups helped fund a major renovation with a new dog run, playground, community building, and new baseball field. Our little Magnolia Grandiflora should bloom sometime this Spring. We also got a new block wall in February before our old one ended up in the neighbors kitchen! It had been leaning a bit and seemed to get much worse this winter, since there was no foundation under the block! Bryan also got to play with some power tools this last weekend building a new wooden door to replace the sheet of plywood, which was our temporary fix. I planted some more flowers and tried to weed our slightly rock filled patch of yard! Since it was all concrete just 2 summers ago, I feel like we have made great progress!

Demolition!

2008-04-06T21:35:00.001-04:00

We took down most of the wall between the two 3rd floor bedrooms to open up the space, and also took down some of the larger supports for the plaster ceiling. We are also trying to sell the rug and runner that came with the house, so we had to clean up dirt under the runner on the stairs that was easily 50+ years old. Not a particularly fun job, but it is great to see progress! Bryan is much better at the heavy lifting, and I do better with the photography of the action....

New Dishwasher!

2008-04-06T21:24:00.001-04:00

Many thanks to everyone who helped us with the Lowe's gift cards at Christmas. Christina waited patiently until FREE installation (she's very good at that) and then pounced. I received a C- on the stainless steel in our fifties kitchen, but what can you do.

- Bryan