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

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:

1. Emptied the front second floor bedroom which was PACKED (i.e. inaccessible past 3 feet) into random parts of the house.
2. Started demo in the room in mid October with the idea of everything being done for drywall in November.
3. In reality, the room sat for months while I had one hour per week of time to work on it.
4. Framed in the new closet a couple of times
5. Installed new electrical in the room...over the course of 6 weeks
6. Parker got bigger and accumulated more "stuff" that crowded our living room.
7. 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:

1. Monday - install all remaining door casing, first coat of paint on the playroom floor
2. Tuesday - caulk, install all baseboards, prime and paint (first coat) three of the doorways, second coat on paint on the floor
3. Wed - stuck at work
4. Thurs - create little railing thing for the bathroom, install all trim around closet, caulk
5. Fri - second coat on the three doorways
6. Sat - prime all playroom trim (including the nurse
7. 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 blog, It's me Bryan

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!!

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

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

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

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!

Dreaming in paint colors

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:

1. grout
2. install the plumbing fixtures
3. install the electrical items
4. lay the hardwoods in the bedroom
5. put in the correct sills that we ripped out
6. 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!