Bangor Bungalow

Thing of beauty

2012-01-08T16:36:00.000-08:00

We were going to label just the smoke alarms' breaker, but I have a label maker and a slight case of OCD, so Ken let me label everything in the panel, from his new schematic and COMPLETED wiring job for the entire house + garage.

That's a lot of wirin', cowboy! Well done.

In hot water now

2012-01-01T18:40:00.000-08:00

We are DONE - officially, completely done - with all of the electrical re-wiring in this house. That means the whole house has been 100% re-wired. Nice going, Ken! The cellar is done and wired and all set for the rest of the remodel. We even did fancy (code) stuff like putting the furnace emergency shutoff where it belongs (top of the stairs). We did a little dance when we put the panel cover back on the breaker box - it's been sitting on the floor for literally years, since we've been constantly upgrading the box.

Speaking of the furnace, we've been steadily making improvements to infrastructure that are allowing us to (1) quit using oil, and as a bonus, (2) have redundant systems for everything. Our heat is from a pellet stove, with pellets made in Maine and emissions that are very low. Our insulation, closing the flue, making all the doors and windows actually close, and other basic projects (like storm windows) cut oil usage in half, even before the pellet stove.

As of Friday, we got our hot water off the oil-fired furnace! This means no running the furnace in the summer (which always seemed ridiculous), and massively reduced oil use in winter. We went with a simple, basic - though well-insulated - electric water heater. It was cheap, easy to install, and based on the energy label, should cost about $40/month to run. A big savings over a couple hundred in oil! And, our electric is primarily from hydropower generated from the river we can basically see from a couple of blocks away - nice to be more renewable and much more local in our energy use. We'll see what happens - but again, Ken did a great job installing this and hot showers after a hike today were just perfect.

Up next - more insulating (we started and need to find more discount foam).

Tore it up

2011-12-22T14:53:00.000-08:00

Finally got a day with:

No work
Puppy at daycare
Both of us home
Nowhere to be!

So we worked on electrical in the basement - part 1 of the second installment of basement finishing. We actually got just about all of the new wires pulled (= all of the frightening old wiring out!) and just have a couple of last bits to do before flipping the breakers and moving on to other things like insulating!

However, all it looks like is that we ripped the hell out of the place! Especially in the stairway/hall, which involved all closed in old plaster walls, so everything was fishing wire and demolition. Looks worse than when we started, but it will be awesome to have a light in the stairs (it has been treacherous!) and outdoor lights to de-creep the driveway.

More soon - yahoo for vacation time!

Well, hello there!

2011-12-04T17:10:00.001-08:00

We've had a hiatus. Not without small jobs getting done - trimming hedges, putting up vent covers, finishing details in the basement (including calling in an expert - the third and hopefully final time we will call for help - to root out the drain in the basement because the new toilet wasn't flushing).

For the past month, we've been totally unable to focus on anything but this guy...

We got a new puppy (7 months, a rescue) named Frankie, and puppies take a lot more time than we remember (it's been a while). He is settling in fantastically and is a great little dog. Today he got pretty worn out with lots of walks and a fundraiser/dog party for the future dog park, so during his nap, we did a few things.

The most awesome thing was installing this new old can opener. We have one of these in the camper - it's a Dazey Senior. After camping with it all summer and then coming in the house to an absolutely horrible new handheld thing that SUCKS, I found another Dazey on ebay and installed it. Super sweet!

Next month - during puppy naps - we will be back in business working on the basement. We have some time over vacation and are looking forward to getting dirty again!

p.s. - the new blogger is taking some getting used to! Nice changes but my photos aren't showing up as cleanly as I'd like. Begging your pardon until I learn...

Famous Pink Bathroom

2011-10-02T15:03:00.000-07:00

I finally saw "The Help" last night - great movie! And the set design was just awesome.

My jaw dropped when I saw Hilly's bathroom - an important part of the plot. (thanks to Vignette Design for posting set photos).

Umm, that's OUR Pepto-pink bathroom, thank you very much! Observe, from our reno photos:

Note: actual Pepto in basket!

Good news...and bad measuring

2011-09-22T17:53:00.000-07:00

Good news: we got the fixed glass panel in for the shower. Phew! We picked up a set of 2 Kohler doors at the ReStore for $35, and one of them became this fixed panel. The other one is extra - in case we broke the first, we had a backup! And now we can sell the other one, having not broken the first. (Anyone want to buy a piece of tempered glass?) The wood is our favorite, hinoki (Port Orford Cedar), the stuff we used in the upstairs bath. It's waterproof (the stuff they make Japanese soaking tubs from) and makes it so you can pretty much use any old piece of glass for a shower wall or door.

A shower curtain will close off the front.

Other good news - I got 2 doors installed - one that closes off the back storage room from the bedroom,

and one that closes off the bedroom from the future living room. Need to finish painting that one (thus, the blue tape).

The not so good news - the damn toilet doesn't fit! We are off to get an offset flange tomorrow and we'll see how that goes. Irritating - but we spaced on measuring. Not that we could help it - the flange is in the concrete and we're not moving it!

And we're done.

2011-09-16T11:57:00.000-07:00

Well, almost. Well, with the bedroom, anyways.

August was a blur - we were in Canada, then crazy catching-up-at-work-stuff, then my parents' 50th anniversary party which was a big fiesta and required a good bit of planning/coordination/travel time, then we just had a totally cool vintage trailer rally at Acadia.

In between, we've been squeezing in that big ol' punch list, and the bedroom is 99% done which means we call it done! This weekend I will install the door to the back room, thus making the bedroom not have any sort of view of the creepy back room.

We will also install the shower glass wall (managed to order and received the retaining channel from Wilson Glass in the midst of the chaos). And then the toilet, Ken says we'll do that this weekend too, and then the bathroom is like 95% done! At least it will be 100% functional!

Photos:

Corner by the bathroom door. A nice resting spot.

CableTV attachments on the bureau - one of the last punch list items.

Bed was in the upstairs guestroom but is so much better here! Haven't yet put the new quilt on - we're still too messy.

Sneak preview below: some bathroom elements are done, like the sink!

And a silly pic - as I was installing a closet bar, I noticed how the bar end support looks like a goofy little guy. Which reminded me of the movie "My Own Private Idaho" (which was great) - "it looks like a f***ed up face". Love(d) River Phoenix.

Supersize punch list?

2011-08-12T19:20:00.000-07:00

We snuck off for a two-week camping sojourn through eastern Canada just after that last post. Part work, part fun. Well, all fun - it was a great work meeting. We got back raring to go on the basement, and summer is getting away.

First, we picked up our unusual ceiling covering for the bathroom which had arrived while we were away. We were a bit stumped - what could we use that would be moisture resistant, kind of modern/loft-ish, thin (can't lose headroom!), robust as a shower ceiling (they had used pegboard before. Pegboard, that's right!), and easy to install - oh, and inexpensive. Inexpensive is a key - this is a basement, it was basically a dungeon before so we can't really make it worse, and we are doing this with what little pocket cash we can scare up. So, inspired by the thin, narrow-ribbed corrugated metal they use all over places like Boulder as snazzy house siding, we inquired at the big box and Shazaam! They ordered us a bunch of 1" galvanized roofing like this (different brand, I think) to use as the ceiling sheathing. It cost about $70 for all of it, and they cut it to length (I gave measurements to 1/8" and they did OK), which rocks. We were able to make the rest of the cuts we needed - for light fixtures, etc., with my handy Jig saw. We strapped the joists and got the ceiling installed inside a single day!

There was a good bit of hilarity installing the first one - picture a 2 foot piece of sharp metal, about 7 feet long, that we're trying to fit perfectly around all sorts of obstacles in a space exactly as long as the metal. It's not as flexible as we thought, and we banged up the walls a lot on the first one - but they were a snap to repaint, so no harm. I hope it works, but hey, I think it looks cool. The slight reflectivity helps keep a little sense of height, even though it's a low ceiling. I'm not sure this photo is doing it justice, and the vent fan is not covered here. More later.

Definitely better than what was there before, which was a maze of pipes, wires, etc. Blech.

Then Ken was on a rampage to get the washer and dryer installed, which needed to move in before we could do much else. Good thing too - there was a hose malfunction - which took a half day or engineering to sort out - and water went, um, everywhere. We sat and watched the entire first load run to make sure there wasn't a repeat gusher - all good now.

The cabinet above is a leftover from our kitchen - I totally rebuilt the boxes with surplus-store plywood and repainted the doors and frame. The machines don't match - they were second-hand gifts from family and are in pristine condition, so we're keeping them. Ultimately there will be a curtain in front to camouflage them. (On the punch list).

Ken used this handy washing machine wall box thingy to handily make all the attachments. Neat!

Finally, I've just tonight finished sanding and whitewashing the window surround in the bathroom, a job I was avoiding (the plywood was crappy and needed a lot of work - and we should have sanded BEFORE installing - duh!). Done now and it came out better than I anticipated. Oh, and we tiled the windowsills - seemed to be the only sensible thing since they're just above grade, plus the ReStore gave us a box of earthy brown tile for $3!

And so, we are now at the point of what I am calling the Supersize Punch List. It's not all tiny jobs, but most of them are. Other jobs are pretty much ready to go and shouldn't (famous last words) be too much trouble. Cross your fingers for the rest of the plumbing installs.

This weekend I plan to be the Punchy Queen and get a lot of the irritating trim and touch up work done, and maybe we can wrap this thing up by the end of summer.

Garden success!

2011-07-27T12:51:00.001-07:00

We just love it when the garden is our grocery store. Good shopping this week - beans are in full swing!

Design coming together...

2011-07-22T12:59:00.000-07:00

The basement is sort of a modern look, and the furniture is going to be all of my mid-century modern collection. I've always loved mid-century, and we've had my pieces stashed all around the house. Now they're going to come together - soon - in the basement.

One thing I didn't already have was a mid-century dresser, so I began looking around a couple of months ago and found this beauty, from the 60s by Bassett. Love the pulls! It was missing one pull and two knobs. Through an odd stroke of luck, I saw a crapped-out dresser on the side of the road that had perfect replacement knobs, and found two coordinating pulls, so it's now all bejeweled again.

I then stumbled upon a matching (slightly different style, but also Bassett) bedside table at the thrift shop, so viola! Instant Bedroom!

Both have been cleaned up and I'll post after pix when we move everything in...soon...Wait, I already said soon. But soon. Really, we'll get there.

Thanks, Mrs. Wheat (wherever you are)

2011-07-17T11:03:00.000-07:00

We picked up 5 boxes of octagonal white tiles at the Restore last year, thinking we'd use them in the basement bathroom. They're thick (1/2") and appear handmade. A bunch were broken, but we have just enough for the lower half of the walls.

Each box was carefully marked "Mrs. Wheat's Bath". The image of Mrs. Wheat that immediately popped into my head is a proper little old lady at tea - I think my grandmother knew someone with a name like that - and the "Mrs.", the proper salutation, on each box just seems so perfectly old fashioned. I felt so fancy finally installing it this week.

So I began installing Mrs. Wheat's tile on Friday. After grinding my knee into the floor and thinset a bunch, I was pleased to find these knee pads at a yard sale on Saturday - Saturday's tiling was much more pleasant.

We've been waiting to tile until we got the shower panels in - so we would know where to stop tiling, of course. So, here's the shower, and the beginning of tiling from Friday night.

The shower is a homemade, found objects deal. We found two end walls from a fiberglass shower at the big box store for $17 (for both!). We got a couple of pieces of Hinoki wood - our go-to miracle material - to fill in the edges and make a surface we can screw a glass panel (still to come) and shower curtain rod to. More details once the shower is totally done...

And here's the largest of the three walls that needed tile - I've now got all three walls done, just waiting for the few tiles that need special cuts, etc. We're installing leftover 2x2 off-white tiles from the upstairs bath in the spaces, plus an occasional dark teal accent tile that we specially ordered. Luckily our local tile shop was able to order us a single sheet of them, so it was only $9 for the accents.

Hopefully we'll finish up the rest of the tile shortly - then we can install the toilet and washer-dryer!!! Oh, and more trimwork...it's never-ending, isn't it? Getting so close to functional.

You've come a long way, tapey

2011-07-09T19:01:00.000-07:00

Remember the creepy taped-up skin quilt door? Well, it's re-done. We just need to add hardware.

We planned to frost the glass since it will be a bathroom door; I wanted to leave a little non-frosted frame around the edge. Luckily they make stuff called artist's tape in all different widths, so I didn't have to painstakingly slice masking tape into thinner strips. This was 1/2" tape.

We originally wanted to use that cool vinyl window stuff that looks like frosted glass, but it's kind of ridiculously priced (and this basement is meant to be super-inexpensive), so we're using the spray paint frosted glass stuff, which I happened to find for only $3 at the overstock store in town. Looks pretty good, we think.

During the past couple of weeks, we've really been cruising on the trim and other major parts of the bedroom in the basement - it's now really close to done! Here's what the door looks like leaned in the jamb:

I'm so behind on the blog, we didn't get to tell you about the flall (that's "floor-wall") yet - we made the bottom half of the walls from laminate flooring in a whitewash, bamboo-esque pattern. It was cheaper and quicker than drywall and we think it will be more durable. It was great to install and we like the look - what do you think? (Yes, we know it's not bungalow - we're going modern in the basement).

And here's a corner of the room - just needing paint on the chair rail and some touch up. Note that Ken has finished all the wiring and lighting in this and in the bathroom - it's awesome to have light and power down there again!

And here's the view from the bathroom into the bedroom. We had a piece of granite left over from the upstairs bath, and it just happened to fit perfectly on the half wall.

Tomorrow we hope to start figuring out how to make a shower stall from a random bunch of glass and shower wall panels we've accumulated. Wish us luck!

Putting a silk hat on a pig f***er

2011-06-19T16:54:00.000-07:00

#1. Sorry for the title, Mom and others. There's a story, of course.

#2. We have been doing loads of work on the basement, it's just been boring (tales of joint compound = uninteresting blog), or we haven't been writing about it. Catching up now.

#3. This past weekend/week was all about fixing up really crappy stuff. Exhibit A: we finally painted (waterborne epoxy) the back 2 rooms of the basement. A dirty job involving lots of cleaning, scraping, acid-etching, etc. It is not perfect, but it's clean, waterproof, and a nice neutral base. Love it so far! Can't walk on it for a couple of days.

Before, in the bath area. Can't show you the after yet - we can't get to it!

Before...and after (below).

But I digress. What's this thing about a pig f***er? Would you believe, it is the story of our new bathroom vanity.

See, it all began with a bigger vanity top that Susie gave us, a leftover from her remodel. We planned to use it in the bathroom, but even with more space in the reconfigured bathroom, it was just going to stick out too far. So we sent it along to another remodeler looking for a sink, and I found a teeny tiny Corian vanity top at the ReStore for $11.

I had been thinking all along that we would build or repurpose some kind of modernish piece of furniture to serve as the vanity. But, no luck finding one.

Then I saw one I really liked in the pages of This Old House. It was a simple, squarish modern table with shelf below. I suddenly thought: that shape looks awfully familiar. Don't we have a table like that?

See it there, under the TV in the before picture of the basement 'living room'? That's the famed "Pig F***er table". Or at least, that's what we've always called it.

See, the place I work was getting rid of a bunch of old desk-tables many years ago. They had loads of these maple desks from the 1960s (it turns out they are 1963 vintage.

Everyone at work got a table or two - I think they were charging a couple of dollars each. We have one out in the garage as part of a workbench, and have done all sorts of things with this one - work table, painting bench, TV stand, you name it.

Sturdy little buggers - and covered with gum:

and of course, graffiti that tends to express hatred for (a) the course in which one was sitting,

or (b) some unknown enemy, perhaps a mean professor. This latter, we think, was the inspiration for the very expressive "Pig F***er!" scrawled in deep pencil across one of the tables. All the tables were really profane, so it was kind of a big joke that everyone had these horribly rude tables kicking around. So we've always called ours the Pig F***er table. I mean, isn't that just the dirtiest phrase you've heard lately, or what?

That table is now almost completely revamped, sans graffiti, as a new bathroom vanity for the basement. We removed the top, completely disassembled the table and put every piece through the planer (after scraping off literally scores of piece of gum - blech!). Sanding was not going to be an option with profanities this deeply incised.

We then cut down the table top to make a shelf and some aprons, and voila! The vanity is now almost done, just waiting for a couple of more coats of spar varnish. Pig f***er no more! The vanity is actually kind of exactly what I would have picked in a fancy store if we had the cash, but we're thrilled to have re-used an old piece and spent about $2 on it instead!

A Grape Weekend

2011-05-08T17:20:00.000-07:00

Well, the weather was too nice to hunker in the basement, so we worked on some outdoor projects.

We came home one day last fall to see our grape arbor - which we had made by weaving and tying saplings about 5 years ago - fallen down in the back yard. We trashily propped it up with a bunch of 2x2s we had hanging around. Last weekend when we started cleaning up for spring, we realized it looked pretty damn sad - so I got some 10 foot rebar and we planned a new arbor (loosely based on one Ken made for a friend).

It's simple and it's meant to show the grapes, not the arbor itself. Here it is after he welded it together in the driveway (although I should say he then welded some little step-feet things that made installation really easy and sturdy):

And here it is with the grapes carefully draped over - after it leafs out and is less brittle, we'll mess with the canes some more. Nonetheless, it is decidedly less ghetto than the mess we've had all winter.

Because it's rebar and and arbor, and both words are just fabulous to say in a Maine accent, we're calling it the "Rebarbor" - phonetically, that's "Re-bah-baah".

And elsewhere in the garden, my rhubarb is in Year 3, which means I can basically pick all I want!

And I have always wanted a Magnolia, and saved up a bit so I could go get one - this is the variety "Elizabeth" (creamy yellow flowers), so we put her in the front corner where the big tree was taken out last year. The corner is a bunch of tilled-up soil because we need to mix it up and re-grade the old tree spot a bit. With any luck, grass will come in soon.

I love this tree! I will post pix when the blooms open up - it looks like they might be getting ready to burst!

70¢

2011-04-24T05:59:00.000-07:00

Making real progress, and it's been cheap! Our goal for the cellar is our usual budget of $0, so we've been trying to use minimal materials, free stuff, and cheap used materials. So far, doing OK.

Our latest project has been the ceiling in the basement bedroom. It has a horrible dropped paper tile ceiling - which we immediately removed. And then a zillion nails, screws, staples, etc. Also gone.

The goal was to not reduce the total height of the room any more than necessary, because it's only about 6'6" from the floor to the bottom of the joists anyways. So, we decided not to add a ceiling but to create one by cleaning the joists and whitewashing the underside of the subfloor.

Love that vintage wiring job, eh?

Cleaning: $0. Whitewashing: $0 (we had leftover off-white paint from an upstairs project and just added water!). Beams: we bit the bullet and bought Minwax's water based Polycrylic. First time using it and I loved it. Not for floors, but this is a ceiling, so hey! They also had a rebate this week, so we saved a little dough.

And the 70¢ item - we ended up with these awkward places at the top of the walls, where the joists punch through onto the sill but where there's no wall framing. Kind of little bumpouts. After insulating, we weren't quite sure what to do about them - then - eureka! - we should make it look like another beam! So, off to the local ReStore to get a vintage couple of joists. They gave us a couple of great ones for 70¢ (they are moving - closer to us! - and want to clear inventory). Yesterday we cut them to length, installed, and Polycrylic-ed - and the ceiling is officially done!

Next - walls. Getting there! It's so nice to see a finished surface!

Lest you think we're slacking...

2011-04-03T14:25:00.001-07:00

We've actually got almost the entire bathroom and bedroom (2 of 4 planned basement rooms) ready for stuff like floor covering, wall JC, tile, and wall covering. Somehow, this is all coming together quickly, despite our having really limited time due to crazy work schedules.

Oh, I remember - it's that it was basic gutted space, and we don't need to work around zillions of bits of historic trim, etc.

Here's where we are:

View of one bedroom wall, looking into bath. The dryer vent was a real pain to install. Especially since we don't use the dryer! But, have to have it for future owners. The opening at the top left will have glass blocks. We're trying to maximize light throughout the space.

Looking into the 'laundry nook' in the bathroom, glass block area at the top right.

Inside the bathroom, where the old sink and truncated wall used to be. See that old work table? Stay tuned for next post - it's been turned into a cool modern vanity.

From the bathroom, looking out toward the bedroom.

A built-in shelf unit (no shelves yet) that uses the brick chimney as the back wall. We are using the exposed brick when we can - love that loft look!

We've done lots of other things as well - look for more updates soon.

Psycho Killer.

2011-03-01T14:14:00.001-08:00

Qu'est-ce que c'est?
Why, it's tape.

Flashback: there was a house next door to our old apartment, where they never opened the shades or doors, and we never saw the people. For, like, 7 years. (Though they once stole our recycling bin). Our old roommate used to say they were "making skin quilts in there". So we called them the Skin Quilt People.

Fast forward: last year we drove past this lonely door on the side of the road, kind of near the new neighborhood. I've always had a thing for these old, classic storm-door style things, so we grabbed it. Turns out, it will be perfect down cellar where we need as many windows and mirrors as possible to move light around.

But first - the tape. What kind of crazy, Skin Quilt person did this? In case you can't see, there is masking tape on both sides of every single window pane in this door. What's more, the tape on one side is oriented horizontally, whereas on the other side it's vertical. And perfect. Someone spent some time on this thing - perfectly overlapping each piece of tape.

I can think of only three explanations (feel free to add!):

Paranoid.
Drug dealer.
Skin quilt-making psycho killer.

We don't really have hurricanes around here, so that's not a possibility. There's over $20 of masking tape on this damn thing. Seriously - never heard of a CURTAIN? Or SPRAY PAINT?

But then again, I must be nuts too because I peeled it all off. (Hint: hot water, dish soap, razor scraper. That's all it takes).

It's a freaking awesome door, though. I'm currently stripping the crappy paint off and we'll do it up nicely as a bathroom door for the cellar. Thanks, Psycho Killer.

Two out of three ain't bad

2011-02-17T16:20:00.001-08:00

The cellar has been progressing well. We got to the point last weekend, though, where we realized we'd better hurry up and figure out what's up with the chimney. This is because we'll be covering part of it up with some walls.

We don't know much about masonry work. But, when you start seeing pieces of brick fall out on the floor, it's kind of worrisome and elicits the general logical conclusion that "this is probably bad". We have a center chimney, and our wonderful pellet stove is inserted into the first floor fireplace, so we were doubly concerned:
1. That the chimney would totally collapse or,
2. In order to avoid such collapse, they would have to replace the whole damn chimney, wrecking all our finished walls and messing up the stove. Oh, and it would be expensive.

So, I finally got my act together and called four masons. First, I called one who was highly recommended but who failed to show up or call with an excuse. Grr. So, I got re-energized and called three different ones - all of whom were recommended or reviewed somewhere - and ALL THREE showed up, on time, today to provide estimates.

Perhaps more amazing than all of them showing up was that two of them agreed on a course of action. And the shocking finale - that course of action was the cheapest, easiest, quickest one - and means we don't need a mason at all. They pretty much told us we don't need them. Go DIY!

The one who didn't agree had a lot of good ideas. He did concur with the others that there's no structural problem with out chimney (phew!). But, he did a very thorough inspection and recommended a whole bunch of other items for the chimney - like having a white-glove chimney sweeping done, pimping out our chimney cap, and installing all sorts of liners and fancy cleanout doors. All good ideas, but sort of the Cadillac treatment for the chimney. And virtually all can be done later, if we so choose, without needing to tear into the basement or any other room. So, duly noted and on the Long Term, We Should Maybe Do That list.

The deal is that our brick is spalling, which is quite common and can be a sign of serious problems. Ours isn't - it's just that we need a larger chimney cap. There's no real damage at this point. The cap we'll do in summer - no one is up on anyone's roof this time of year anyways. So, to be sure to stabilize and minimize any future spalling, we can either put on a breathable masonry sealer or something called parging. Either way, we can do it ourselves with about $40 of materials.

And that's it! All that worrying for nothing.
So, here we go again. We'll give it a shot and let you know what happens!

Nailed it.

2011-02-13T16:31:00.000-08:00

We started re-building today. We're starting in the back, on the bathroom. We are adding a wall that makes the bathroom large enough that the door doesn't hit the toilet! Yay! And, the washer & dryer will be in a laundry nook in the bathroom.

Plus, half of this wall was framed in the usual way, whereas the other half was shallow, with the 2x4s laid flat - so we had to add framing to bring it out to the same depth. Luckily we used some salvaged lumber, so it didn't feel like a total waste of materials.

The wall also has a little L part outside the bathroom that will encompass a lolly column - nothing says "cellar" more than random metal poles dotted all about. So, we're hiding them all.

Framing went really well - and we're looking forward to more next weekend.

As a bonus, Ken also pulled off the metal frame for the shower base. We need to figure out what we need to do to make the pan a little more permanent, but that metal had to go.

No guts, no glory

2011-01-18T17:25:00.000-08:00

All right, sports fans, another big project has begun. Kiss those filler blog posts about punch list items good bye - we're off on another renovation bender. Drum roll...the CELLAR. Soon to be a fabulous guest suite/apartment/non-creepy gross place.

When we bought the house, the basement had a bathroom (3/4), bedroom, and large front room. All in paneling and with brown carpeting. It appeared to have been pimped-out as a Greg Brady-like teen boys' residence. And then it promptly flooded (sump pump issue). So we tore out most of the paneling and all the icky carpeting. And proceeded to fix the rest of the house.

We're back now - it's time to fix up the cellar. So, this past weekend we completed the tear-out. It will be a big, varied, and action-packed project. And CHEAP. We've been saving up parts for a while and will be doing this whole project for as little cash as possible.

Here are some highlights from the before and after demo reel:

The shower: it's great that it had one, especially when the other shower was torn out, but it was creepy. I called it the "Dr. Who Shower" due to its phone-booth-esque quality.

Bathroom ceiling. The ceiling in the bathroom was pegboard, painted white. And, when we removed that, there were all sorts of electrical naughtinesses right over the shower. Bad.

The toilet, which was kind of a neat, Art-decoish one. Granted, the pink seat was a bit over the top, but the commode was cool. But it constantly ran (despite many attempts to fix it), it was a big water guzzler, and the door hit it when you opened the door. Awkward.

And here's the toilet, out. We would have donated it to the ReStore but it refused to come out without severe breakage. Perhaps the only phrase grosser than "cellar bathroom" is "draining the toilet in the shower". Do you have the creepy crawlies now? I do.

The sink. Nothing overly insulting about its appearance, but it did not drain anymore and the porcelain was all cracking. Time to go. Note the obligatory razor blade collection - all stuck to the insulation - behind the former medicine cabinet - 3 types! It's like the American Razor Blade Museum back there. Note that some jackass had insulated all the interior walls of the bathroom, and even worse, put the vapor barrier exactly the wrong way so all the moisture was trapped inside the bathroom. Super-duper!

Backing up, this is what the bathroom looked like from outside (note unneccessarily angled wall, which made the door hit the toilet. But why?)

And here it is by Monday morning, a gorgeous blank canvas:

There are three other rooms to be (re?)constructed down there, though the bathroom will be probably the most time consuming:

A bedroom in this corner,

A living room will arise from this mess,

And a kitchenette will be at the other end of the living room.

And we're off...

Tea and company (well, we were!)

2011-01-10T17:19:00.000-08:00

We snuck off for the holidays - literally. We surprised my parents at their winter abode in sunny Arizona, after paying a nice visit to Ken's sister, brother in law, and visiting parents in Colorado. Only someone from Maine would consider Colorado to be "on the way" to Arizona, right? But once we head south on the highway, we might as well go everywhere.

We went to one of the fabulous tea shops in Boulder and I picked up some lovely Oolong (magnolia type - it's softer than regular oolong). I was out of oolong altogether, and I'm obsessed with drinking it on rainy days. Don't know why. Anyways, I then thought that I'd like to see about some neat tea canisters because all my various teas are in a mis-matched mess of jars and tins, one with (gasp!) just plastic wrap for a lid, and some in bags. Perish the thought!

At any rate, the cool, stackable, tidy, classic, space-saving tea canister search turned up nothing (there are cool tins at $15 each!!, or too-big square containers, or simple tins from industrial suppliers with ridiculous shipping), so we went to the old standby: jar lids screwed to a board. Seriously. Cheap and it actually looks and works just fine.

While in AZ we also visited some great spots of architectural and historic note - we will fill you in later. Still adjusting to the time change and the whole going-back-to-work thing. Too...lazy...to...blog....

Winter: window-mania!

2010-11-26T13:58:00.000-08:00

Still thinking about the basement. In the meantime, we've realized that we've been overlooking a pretty major project that spans many upstairs rooms: finishing all the windows. Ugh.

As we've done a variety of rooms, we've called many of them done when we still had one last project left - usually stripping the window sashes, and doing miscellaneous window-repair tasks. A pile of window stops found during the last cellar cleaning reminded us, then when we realized we can't put the interior storms in without the stops around our bedroom windows, it suddenly became fairly important to get some work done on this front.

So, I'm declaring this the Winter Project of 2010-2011. I've begun stripping the stops for our bedroom. Hopefully we can get them back in by the end of the weekend. Snow on the ground is a good motivator for getting drafts sealed up...then I'll chip away at the rest of them all winter, and leave the stinky painting and staining for spring. The stripping really is the worst part.

I need checklists for morale, so here's the one that will live on the fridge till I'm done.
What's bad for morale is remembering that each sash above is really a pair of sashes, so I have twice as much work to do as it looks like. Let's repress that thought for a while.

Here we go...

So this is how the other half lives?

2010-11-21T12:37:00.000-08:00

Ken very kindly helped a friend do some electrical work on his cabin. In exchange, the guy wanted to do something for us - so we jumped at the chance to have some 'free' help.

We chose...the rocks! We got another (last!) pallet of rocks back in May, and laid them out to complete the stepping stone path around the front and side yards. We then dug in about 10 of them. Then summer got a hold of us and we were involved in loads of other projects. So most of the rocks have been sitting on top of the ground - perfectly positioned - since then. The good news is that they killed the grass underneath, which makes the soil infinitely easier to dig out.

The better news is that the friend thought that digging in our rocks would be a great trade for Ken's help. So he's been here several days on and off setting them down in the ground. He's got almost all of the largest section done - and it's looking fantastic. It's super-cool to come home and find someone doing your project for you! Very weird, and such a nice treat.

So, here they are - hopefully the oil delivery guy won't spend all winter tripping on them now.

Ta-dah!

2010-10-25T17:21:00.000-07:00

Chairs are done. Here's an enhanced view of the label from the other day:

And here they are in progress (the one on the right is post-refinishing):

And after:

This time I took the easy way out and used and antique furniture refinisher - just cleaned up the chairs, lightly sanded off the paint and other goo, and then applied. Then, beeswax. For the chair that didn't need all the new parts made, I'd say it was only about an hour's worth of work - super cinch! It seems to be perfect for projects like this - when the original finish is pretty good but there are some imperfections, and it would just look a little better brightened up. Two thumbs up!

Crawford chairs, part I

2010-10-23T06:45:00.000-07:00

Today I'm working on a bunch of projects that have been languishing in the cellar or garage. This is part of the ongoing project: Cleaning up the Cellar and Garage So We Can Eventually Start Fixing Them Up 2010.

I got this pair of oak, unpainted chairs at an antique store last year for $20 (for BOTH, thank you!) I thought I'd quickly tidy them up and reupholster, and have a nice study pair of chairs that we can put - somewhere. I don't know where. I have this strange chair addiction and I just can't control myself - so we'll find a corner in which to shove them when done.

Last night I started assessing them. One is in very good condition. There are a few places where some A-hole apparently bumped them with a roller full of white paint (what, could you not move them out of the room you were painting, lazy ass?). And the upholstery is just so tacky. Easy fixes, both. A few dings give it nice character. And I think someone once replaced one stretcher - even though they appear to have maybe used maple, they did a nice job so I'm not messing around with it.

Note that the UNDERSIDE of the seat frame is made from gorgeous 5/4 quartersawn oak. Damn, they had nice scraps back then!

The other one is in not so great shape, but it's not terrible.

Someone screwed right into the face of 3 of the 4 legs to 'fix' it.

Also, there's no seat. And, it's missing a stretcher.

And missing a seat support.

But look at the back:

Overall, not such hard things to fix. But a bit more work.

This second chair still had much of its label, which indicates it's from the Crawford Chair Company. Here's more info on that company (thanks, Internet!). So I think these are actually some decent chairs with interesting history.

The label - what's left of it - says: "Crawford Chair...Grand Ledge...High Grade...".
And did I mention they're sturdy as hell? I love oak!

Step on it, Batman!

2010-10-13T16:28:00.000-07:00

Now that we're thinking about some new projects, a good garage cleaning was way overdue. So, we spent part of Monday (well, Ken spent it all - I had meetings all morning) diving in and clearing it out. He emptied absolutely everything from the very, very cluttered garage/workshop.

I got home to a driveway that was completely packed with more stuff than we imagined. So we put together a very large pile of scrap wood for Freecycle (gone as of this evening!) and re-arranged and re-organized the keeper tools and materials.

I'm pleased to say it was a big success - you'd hardly even recognize the space, and you can actually move around in there. We really had let it go - like we always do - toward the end of the trailer project.

Tuesday, I had the day off for real. So, at the end of Monday, I left myself a few piles in the driveway, promising to deal with them on Tuesday. One: Shed Step. Two: Bat Houses. Yes, I said bat houses. Three: Sort out all the fasteners/hardware.

I won't bore you with #3, but I'm just about done. Finally. Sorting. Zillions. Of. Screws. And. Nails. Yikes.

#1 - Shed Step: Since we had stupidly fashioned a quick, temporary step after building the shed, the step dropped way down the list. Key mistake: don't make a temporary fix if you really want to do a permanent fix sometime in the near future. It took us, oh, about 40 minutes - 18 months later! - to build the 'real' shed step: 4 or 5 chopsaw cuts on the treads, 3 skilsaw cuts to make the supports and then angle cuts for the decorative edge, and then about 5 minutes of nailing. Ridiculous. But - I LOVE the step! It's so much nicer than the wobbly, non-cedar temporary fix.

#2 - Bat houses. For some reason, once we realized (again, last year) that we had a bunch of leftover cedar from the deck and shed projects, I became obsessed with the idea that we should use it to build bat houses. We do have a bat that flies around the house at dusk in summer, and I dislike mosquitos intensely, so supporting the bat would be cool. So I plowed through the cedar pile and put together all the parts for a Bat House design I found from Mammoth Caves. I ended up with five 'kits', then after a quick bike ride to the hardware store for $1.50 of screen and $1.00 of galvanized nails, had them all together. I felt a bit like I was doing a shop class or girl scout project - it was a bit silly.

Now, We just have to give away a few bat houses - I really only wanted one!

Gearing up again

2010-10-10T17:32:00.000-07:00

So we're bad, bad bloggers. Although our trailer blog is pretty up to date... that's what's been taking up so much time. Now, though, the trailer is just about done and we're refreshed and renewed to begin again on big house projects.

On deck: the cellar. When we bought the house, the dingy, brown carpeted, 70's paneled cellar was considered 'finished' (a questionable designation), with a main 'great room', a bedroom, and a 3/4 bath. Pretty good stuff overall.

Then it flooded. We've since fixed the problem, between getting the sump pump fixed, re-grading the yard, and generally fixing the drainage. Oh, and we pulled out all the carpeting, paneling, walls, hung ceiling, etc. What's left is a lovely, stud-walled cellar with a grimy 3/4 bath.

The plan is to totally re- do it. Luckily, this will mostly mean re-surfacing everything. We want to put in a little kitchenette so it will be a totally pimped-out guest suite/in law apartment, expand the bathroom so the door doesn't hit the toilet (!) and add the laundry room to the new bath. Currently, laundry is done in the back-back of the basement, which has a raised floor, the oil tank, and no redeeming features - and is going to become just a storage room.

Floor will be something like epoxy paint on the concrete, and a couple of indoor-outdoor throw rugs. Walls will be plastic beadboard or tile halfway up, then probably paperless drywall to the top. Ceiling - we're going to leave the exposed beams, and then paint or whitewash the bays (underside of subfloor). I've seen this in a This Old House cottage, and it looked totally cool.

And, of course, a tiled shower in place of what now resembles the creepy phone booth in which Dr. Who flew around.

A trip to the ReStore yesterday galvanized this shower plan - we happened upon these beautiful white hex tiles, which are almost a half inch thick and look hand-cut! Right after the manager told me he'd loooove to get some tiles out of there. Loud and clear - and 5 boxes of these came home with us ($60, by the way - score!). Each box says "Mrs. Wheat's Bath". Mrs. Wheat apparently had good taste and too many tiles (or changed plans). Her loss, our gain. We'll need accent tiles (2x2, like the green one I'm auditioning here), but otherwise Operation Assemble Basement Parts is rockin'. We almost have everything we need, and will be sketching and prepping to hopefully work on it this winter.

Thanks for checking back in - hopefully the next post won't be so long.

Outdoor kitchen

2010-08-08T15:56:00.000-07:00

I used to work on a farm, and make pickles, jam, and relish most of the day. It was probably the best job ever. So, every year I make a couple of batches of pickles & jam or jelly. Our garden was pretty bountiful this week, so pickles it was. I hunted down a recipe for something - anything! - that used zucchini and summer squash, and I did a batch of these zucchini dills (they're not bad - kind of sweet & sour - and used all of the zucchini and summer squash we had!). Dilly beans and big batches of cucumber dill pickles with my trusty old recipes were a must-do. Had to go to the farmer's market to get all the pickling cukes - we didn't happen to grow 15 pounds of them!

Canning has been a bit of a challenge - our glass-top range isn't recommended for it. But - we have one of those big propane-powered burners that we can set up outside (usually for lobster), so we made a temporary outdoor kitchen for me today. The furniture was all about function (no form!) and was 2 sawhorses with a piece of plywood on top next to the 'stove'.

It worked great! We got about 40 jars of the different pickles, and cleaned out the garden a bit. No more creative zucchini dinners for a couple of days, at least!

While we were outside, our neighbor gave us a few extra tomatoes. Ours are just about to turn red, but she had loads already. We had already pawned off zucchini on her last week, so it was our turn to take the surplus. No complaints here!

Amazing non-bungalow

2010-08-01T06:12:00.000-07:00

This week I was in Woodstock, Vermont for work, and got a chance to tour the Mansion at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park. Also got to do some hiking, which was equally fantastic. Here are a couple of photos from outside the house (no cameras allowed inside):

Detail at the top of the porch - I love this Aesthetic style, even though it can be a bit much. It looks so great on summer 'cottages'.

View from the back/side of the house. The house originally had a mansard roof, but on the other side, it was remodeled (By the Billings family, if I'm remembering the tour properly) to have a peaked roof. They left the mansard on this wing, and I love the pleasing visual of the vine leading up to the chimney on this side.

And from the front. Pretty awesome, and they had a huge Dutchman's Pipe vine that I'm totally jealous of creeping all across the side of the porch.

Totally worth the trip up to VT if you're in New England, and the tour was a great value - something like $8 and it was about 90 minutes! I'm told they also have some tours focusing on the great art collection in the house (a Thomas Cole and some Bierstadts, among others), and the architecture. I'll have to go back for those...

Outdoor grocery store

2010-07-20T19:37:00.001-07:00

This time of year is so great - everything just really started to produce in the garden. Snap peas are just ending; zucchini, cauliflower, and my lovely French filet beans are kicking in. Lettuce is going strong; herbs threaten to take over the entire back yard. Peppers are starting, and we're on our third cuke. No need to go indoors to shop any more...

Excuse the blurry photo at dusk - but it's sooo lush out there I had to snap a shot (and the weeds are somewhat in control).

And today, I found another person who has agreed to take zucchini. Things are good in gardenville.

Fateful doorstop

2010-07-11T17:58:00.000-07:00

So I bought a doweling jig (which is soooo simple and totally cool) at a yard sale for $5 a couple weeks ago, and we've been using it for our trailer project. At the yard sale, the guy threw in this awesome, super-heavy brass (plated, but hey), gigantic antique door stop. I love old doorstops, and I figured I'd throw it in the "cool stuff for later" jar since every door has a stop right now and we really didn't need it.

Well, 2 days ago we opened the door too hard for the flimsy, crappy, lazy person's hinge pin doorstop we had installed on the back door. Fate! We had the new beefcake one ready to go - and because it was so cool, we were OK with screwing it into the nice re-finished baseboard. Fab!

A bit of winter in the midst of summer

2010-07-03T18:54:00.001-07:00

Not much happening in the house this summer - we're doing a bit more landscaping, growing some food in the garden, and working on this other project.

But - today I happened by the ReStore in the vain hope they would have a bit of rigid foam insulation for the other project mentioned above. After several prods and a lot of patience, the one guy got the other guy, who asked the boss about a supposed stash of rigid foam in the trailer, that no one apparently thought was for sale, but that the boss decided just then to let go.

And the trailer doors creaked open, and behold! There was insulation! I only wanted the one piece (a complete 4x8 sheet, mind you!) of 1/2" stuff, but then Guy #2 said, "well, I'd really like to get this all out of here now that we can sell it - don't you want some more?". And we eventually arrived at a deal - $55 for all the insulation in there (plus he threw in a big ol' sheet of plexiglas I had picked up).

This is what we got:

The 1/2" I originally went for, plus 2 sheets of 1" (2x8 T&G)

4 sheets of 2" (4x8 sheets! Score!)

Two packets of the thin stuff in Green certified energy star, exterior grade, etc., etc. AND a packet plus scraps of the pink thin stuff.

As we loaded it all onto the truck*, the Guy #2 says, "I think you got a pretty good deal, young lady". I told him I was quite sure I got a fabulous deal. And the cellar will be a heck of a lot more comfy when we insulate the walls - next summer's big project.

* which was a ridiculous procedure, because Guy #1 did not believe any of it would fit, and then he proceeded to comment about every step of me strapping it in (it fit fine). But then, I had to drive home with the wind whipping the whole way - it was quite breezy and our ReStore is in a big open area. I'm amazed we didn't float away...

Got your new issue of This Old House?

2010-06-18T12:18:00.001-07:00

The July/August reader created one?

Crack it open and turn to page 22. There we are, on the Plant Tags story! (In the middle, the stamped concrete marker stones).

Funny thing is, this is probably the ONE thing we've done at the house that has been a kit, not an insane custom, handbuilt thing. Ha!

There are other cool plant tag ideas on the 'bonus' page online - I LOVE the license plate one.

You call that a score? THIS is a score!

2010-05-29T18:28:00.000-07:00

So if that blanket from the last post was a great deal, today I got a tremendous deal. The yard sale gods were smiling.

That's right, that's a box of un-used electrical supplies - enough for a whole basement, we think. The yard sale proprietors had bought it all to re-do a cottage then didn't do the work.

All sorted out, this is what we got for $7.50 (thanks to my hard and fast rule that one simply MUST haggle - it was originally $10, which was just as great a price).

With this find and the sink and three boxes of tile Susie (over at Bangor Foursquare) traded us, the basement project (probably slated for next summer) is coming together well, all by itself.

A blanket on a hot day

2010-05-24T13:15:00.000-07:00

Score! I just stopped by the antique/vintage store in downtown Bangor for an iced coffee and a browse after getting out of a meeting, and I found this little FLW treasure for $27! Looking forward to a cool winter day to use it - but not yet.

It's in *pristine* condition (though we'll gently wash it anyways).

Almost as cool as the never-opened Scrabble game we got at a yard sale this weekend for $1...but not quite.

Since it won't be this tidy ever again...

2010-05-12T17:34:00.000-07:00

OK, so we never posted any "afters" of the bedroom. We still have about 3 tiny punch list jobs to do (Ken is doing one this very moment - sweet!), and I didn't have my camera for a while, but we actually did take some photos before I loaned it out that I never posted.

We never posted because we thought we'd do another round of fully-staged "afters", but this is a tough one: because we live (messily) in it, I'm not sure it'll ever be much tidier than in these first excited "It's almost done!" shots. So without further ado...

Before:

After-ish:

Yeah, that's an IKEA bed in a bungalow. The room is a bit more modern, but we didn't destroy any of the vintage stuff. Just sassed it up.

Go Bangor!

2010-05-03T05:59:00.001-07:00

Still cleaning gardens and mulching. Still waiting for my camera back.

But - I was pleased to find that our little metropolis of Bangor was just listed in the Top 100 places to Live by RelocateAmerica.com.

They didn't include "has awesome bungalows" as one of the criteria, but we do! Of about 5,000 single-unit detached homes, some 285 or more are bungalows. And a whole bunch more are foursquares - so ubiquitous they call them Bangor Boxes. So - we've got character!

And a giant 1950s fiberglass statue of Paul Bunyan. Wow.

Greening up

2010-04-29T13:29:00.000-07:00

Spring fever has set in. We've been totally busy at work and spending every sunny moment we can trying to whip the yard into shape. The goal was to get an early start this year - and we're doing OK. There's a big pile of mulch in the driveway, and about half the beds have been cleaned, pruned, and mulched. Now we're just waiting for these babies to really fill in...

Lady's mantle (geranium-looking guys) in front, snowberry hedge, white astilbes (left front), white dome hydrangea along the porch wall, and a variety of bulbs, daisies, and artemisia in front of the fence. Everything's basically supposed to be green and white. More importantly, they all made it through the winter!

And from the front, the two wraparound beds (the left one was in the other photo; it's mirrored on the right). Our baby snowberries (future hedge across the front of the porch) are doing very well - they'll just take a while to fill in. Not bad for bareroot starts (or as Ken said, we bought some dead twigs and they came in the mail?!).

Great friends, old wood, summer projects

2010-04-04T14:10:00.000-07:00

We visited great friends this weekend down on the coast. Got to audition a new cocktail with Caribbean rum, and had a fantastic time in general.

And there was a bonus for all of us - as we stood on their newly-enlarged deck, they noted that some old deck railings were needing to go to the dump. Glancing over, Ken & I saw that they were actually in great shape and were pretty new treated lumber. Light bulb! Our first project this summer is going to be building piers on both sides of the front steps, and we need to start amassing some supplies (cheap!), so we loaded it into the truck (yay truck!) and hauled it on home.

A win-win, for sure. Not to mention the fabulous weather this weekend!

From doorway to shoe rack

2010-03-29T17:12:00.000-07:00

So - the long-awaited shoe rack. You might recall that Ken, during demo phase, found an old, covered-up doorway hiding under wallboard on the right wall of our closet. Since our closet is small (by modern standards, but large for an old house), we were thrilled to find about 7" more depth on that wall. We had planned to install some IKEA shoe bins on that wall; they would have stuck out into the closet but would have worked fine.

Instead, Ken had a brainstorm - why not put in a kind of louvered shelf system that could be a recessed shoe rack? Brilliant, says I. And I got to work planning and scrounging wood to build it out.

First, we clad the back wall with cedar planks - they are thin (only about 1/4", so they take up less depth than drywall and they smell pretty too!), inexpensive, and easy to install. Because the studs for the wall of the abutting room were laid flat, we could liquid nails & solid nail the panels right on and not lose much depth. First we ripped out a useless stud that was just a nailer, running down the center of the doorway. If you wanted to, you could simply tear a hole in a wall and leave the studs, and just have 16" wide bays to store shoes.

This was an easy project (for a change!) - simply think of framing a door. Instead of putting solid 5/4 lumber to case the two tall sides (inside the jamb), we cut 45 degree, 3/4" grooves every 10-12" (wider spacing at the bottom for boots). Cutting the angled grooves was the hardest part of the project. We used the dado blade and it was a bit scary on the old Shopsmith.

We then trimmed out the doorway just like every other door in the house - 1-bys for the side trim, and a thicker board (we actually used a scrap old piece of window jamb that came with the house) for the header. Painted it and we were ready for Ken's louvers.

We planned to use some scrap flooring that we had in the garage, but after I goofed cutting the first piece, and then realized that we didn't have enough anyway, I took a trip to the handy-dandy ReStore to find 'anything 1 by'. And House Karma was with me - I found scraps of some Brazilian flooring out front - pre-finished even! - and then scrounged around to find more of it until I had 16 pieces that were 31" long, what I needed.

At home, we simply cut them all to length and popped them in - 2 per shelf, with the beads butting together and with a screw as a stop to keep them spaced off the back wall about 1-1/2". They are not attached, so they can be removed for cleaning or any other thing you might want to remove them for.

And voila - storage for about 30 pair of shoes! We were able to get rid of a horrid back-of-the-door shoe rack and a big box-cubby thing. And I still have more room for shoes - time for a shopping trip!

We DO have something to wear!

2010-03-24T06:40:00.000-07:00

We've had a tough time finding things to wear lately, because our clothes have been crammed in a variety of nooks and hung on backs of doors all over the house (and in bags, and baskets, and on floors...you get the picture). Last night, the paint was dry and all the parts were together in the closet - so we were able to move clothes back in! And today I'm wearing a shirt I haven't worn a hundred times over the last few weeks.

A shout-out to Ken, who successfully hung all the new hardware and fittings. It's an irritating job and he tackled it with gusto.

Before, the shrimpy (my) end of the closet:

After (note that, unlike previous - dare I say, lazy - painters, we actually painted all the baseboard and didn't just quit when we got to the part you can't see from the bedroom):

Before, view into the closet from the room (it all looks so grubby now, ick):

And after. Stay tuned to see how the newly-discovered door jamb, now cedar-clad, will become a shoe rack, next weekend...

And the middle part of the closet:

By the way, if you live in the Bangor area and plan to re-do a closet anytime soon, get thee to Marden's - they have a gigantic assortment of ClosetMaid stuff right now (all the fixtures & fittings you see here cost us a whopping $32, which is a total steal). It's all a bit dirty - like it sat in a wet warehouse too long - but it's brand new and cleans up easily. The corner shelf piece was about $10, and normally is $20 or more if not from a salvage store!

Not our own guests anymore

2010-03-22T05:15:00.000-07:00

We've been sleeping in the guest room (and making a giant mess of it with our piles of dirty clothes and junk, by the way) while we re-do the master bedroom. We're happy to report that we slept in our own room last night! Yes, the bedroom is done enough to inhabit. Just a hundred punch list jobs and it'll be done-done. Oh, and finishing out the closet so we can get our clothes back in there - I'm getting tired of the 5 shirts I can find.

More & photos later...

Blue-green or green-blue?

2010-03-12T17:17:00.000-08:00

Remember all those crazy multi-color names in the crayola box? Our bedroom is now one of them. It's blue-green, for sure - more green than blue. Even though I kept thinking about it as more blue all year.

Anyways, we love the color so far, despite the first-coat second guessing that happens every single time. The finish on these Sherwin Williams colors (eggshell, Harmony paint) turns out like old leather, and it really makes the color work, no matter what crayon you picked.

So - our painting fiesta is almost complete - we primed yesterday and did the ceiling and one coat of color today. One more coat on Sunday (I have a silly meeting all day tomorrow), then trim later next week and we're almost done!

Oh, by the way, we were lying when we said we went on hiatus to work for a couple of days - we actually snuck off to a secret vacation at Sugarloaf and didn't want to tell y'all we were gone. If you came over and stole my blue-green, I'd be pissed. The weather and snow were absolutely PERFECT, by the way. Divine.

That's a wrap

2010-03-08T18:04:00.000-08:00

Today's goal was to finish all the JC, sand everything, clean EVERYTHING, and paint the radiator. Oh, but first the disgusting job of 'flossing' the radiator to rid 40 years of dust bunnies and goo. I have a few super-long bottle brushes and a spray bottle of water to do this. It's still a totally nasty job.

Anyways, everything is done for today:

And now, we need to take a couple of days to do work stuff, so we'll be priming the (now perfectly clean!) room then. In the home stretch!

Wonder twin powers, activate!

2010-03-07T18:28:00.000-08:00

It's so great to have Ken working with me this week - his break started Saturday and we went all-out on the bedroom project. First, I finished wet sanding all the trim (ugh, but I finished on Sat. as the sun went down), and he stripped a bunch of wallpaper. Most was easy; some not so much. Progress by Sat. night:

And by tonight - all holes fixed and ready for final JC:

As he began wallpaper stripping in the closet, he noticed a shiny skimcoat on one wall, and it was coming off with the paper. Always the inquisitive one, he decided to poke a hole through (luckily it didn't go through the finished wall of the adjacent sitting room) - and he made perhaps the coolest find yet in the house - an old, closed-off doorway.

We knew the upstairs had been reconfigured (evidence: circa 1940s drywall), but weren't sure how. Anyways, it seems that the closet used to pass directly into the study. Regardless of the configuration, this find in the closet gives us about 8 inches (8 inches!) of extra depth on the wall where we were planning some sort of shoe storage. Now, we just have to do a bit of finish carpentry to have a HUGE shoe storage rack.

Shape of: a shoe cabinet! Form of: a cold beer (goodnight).

Send me dead flowers

2010-03-04T09:45:00.001-08:00

I'm back. (Had to run to the office to use a piece of software - screwed up my sanding schedule!)

Anyways, yesterday was pretty productive - I'm about halfway done with wet sanding the master bedroom trim. That's not very visually exciting, so here's something that is.

After cleaning up from trim and having dinner, I was itching to do a little more work. So we went on a wallpaper archaeology expedition. Based on the wallpaper we'd accidentally/on purpose torn off before, we expected 1 layer (the top) that was paper and easy to pull. That's true - for most of the room - 1 layer of cheapo thin-paper, crappy glue stuff right over the plaster. Super easy to get off.

But - in one corner, I had forgotten that the bumped-out wall was old drywall. I should have remembered this from the room next door. This was good and bad news: the good news is that the older 2 layers of paper are super-cool. Here they are:

The big, peony-looking flowers are the oldest, probably from the 40s when we think the second owners did a bunch of work.

The bad (but not terrible) news: These 2 additional layers strip off pretty easily, but it's never easy to do a good job of not gouging the hell out of the old drywall. Oh well, we have to skim coat it anyways to make it look plaster-y. And - drum roll please - this is the last room in which we need to strip wallpaper!!!

Interestingly, based on the green & flowered paper, it seems to us that there may well have been a period in time when EVERY room in the house was this color green. We've found it literally in EVERY room. Also interestingly, it's startlingly close to the color we'll paint the room. We keep finding that the colors we pick eerily match at least one of the oldest/original colors in each room. I think the house is sending us a color vibe...

Back to wet sanding - no more fun expeditions until that tedious task gets done. Oh, except that I'm going to buy paint later today :)

Jessie threw down the gauntlet

2010-03-02T12:17:00.000-08:00

Jessie, a long-time reader and first-time commenter, just wrote that our blog is "occasionally hilarious". Hmmm - sounds like it's time for me to get funnier :) By the way, Jessie seems to also be here in the great state of Maine and has her own blog here. Nice kitchen re-do - those before photos were definitely hilarious.

Anyways, today's progress was good so far - I began my most hated task of wet sanding all the trim to prep for paint. As you all know, I'm totally allergic to painting wood trim, but the upstairs rooms originally had painted trim and they look really nice when done.

So, no cool photos to show (things frankly look just the damn same as when I started this morning). So I thought I'd up my hilariousness factor with a brief overview of the Levels of Crappy Work Clothes That are Worn on Staycation.

My day, complete with wardrobe details*:

Wake up, shower (maybe), and on go the PJ pants and probably whatever shirt I was wearing before we went to bed. Coffee, breakfast, email, a bit of catching up on work that can't wait during vacation.
If I think I might be seen outdoors (getting mail, running to garage for supplies), or if I need to feel motivated to do more job-work, on goes something comfy, yet reasonable. This week, it's the old, too-big jeans with holes all in them that I found when cleaning out our room. Total joy! From a distance, no one can see the holes and they're not totally disgusting so I can wear them, for example, to the bank or a hardware store run.
Time to work on our bedroom. On go the crusty, gross, 5 year old fleece pants that won't die, and an equally gross shirt. Key characteristics of said pants: they have pockets (for my Blistex, I'm an addict) and they can be washed in HOT water repeatedly with no damage. Not that any of that washing gets any of the paint or goo off. That fleece is indestructible! On a rare occasion, they can be worn to the corner store for a beer run at the end of a long painting day (though that's what I was wearing last time I ran into Steven King at the store, so not the best idea).
Clean up time - post work, the crusty crappy pants go in a special designated spot on the floor so I can pull them back on the next day for more adventures in gross-ness. Then, shower and back into the moderately crappy outfit (holey jeans) or PJs (if late enough).

* note that ALL Staycation outfits include the wearing of a comfortable, non-steel-reinforced bra. Now that's really a vacation!

The good news: when you keep changing from one fairly icky set of clothes to another a zillion times a day, you don't really have to do laundry very often. And at the end of the project, there's always the option to throw out the gross ones with the last bag of garbage. It's almost time on those fleece pants...

Day 3: Before (denuded)

2010-03-01T08:00:00.000-08:00

It's day 3 of my 'break'. That's always in quotes because there's no such thing as a real break for me - I actually have a meeting later today and need to get a document submitted to someone by the morning. Nevertheless, I am indeed sitting around unshowered in front of the Today Show, still finishing my coffee.

And - it's go time in the bedroom!

Ken still has work this week (our 'breaks' are staggered this year, annoyingly), so I'm doing the boring prep work so we can work together and do the fun stuff next week.

Here's the bedroom, with everything out (almost) and ready to go. Ick, it looks worse than we thought. This was the one room in the house deemed livable and not too bad when we moved in. Ready to move it to the "love it!" category...

Closet too (we added all this organization stuff after a frustrated year with the horrible, miniature poles the previous owner had installed. We'll probably keep it, but will think if there's anything more efficient we can do in here).

I also have to give a shout-out to Susie at Bangor Foursquare - during her break, she's doing a project that took us 3 years - her bathroom! After her day 2, she's way kicking our butts. Nice!

Preview

2010-02-26T16:03:00.001-08:00

So we're finally planning to get a project started - and done! It's the master bedroom. This will be the last room in the house that needs re-doing - above ground. We still have to do the basement and lots of outdoor projects - so don't worry, plenty more blog posts to come.

Anyways, this *should be* a simple one. We've already re-wired the room, and there's very little plaster damage, plus only 1 layer of paper (as compared to vinyl) wallpaper, that peels off pretty easily, based on our tests. Also, we are painting trim in the upstairs bedrooms, as painful as that feels.

AND - no one painted any of the doors in the room! Woo hoo!

So, the plan is to paint it this color - Sherwin Williams Studio Blue-Green. We picked the color when we did the guest and sitting rooms last year, so the palette won't look like someone randomly picked a bunch of crayon-colors.

Also, we plan to accent the top of one wall (a freize) with this stencil - it's a Frank Lloyd Wright oak leaf design - that I picked up when I was at Taliesin at 2006. In dark brown, we think.Stay tuned - the fun (if you want to call moving furniture and clothes around fun!) starts tomorrow...

Push.

2010-02-08T15:29:00.001-08:00

Work has been crazy lately. Nevertheless, we stole an hour last week to install two new old finds: mismatched (but coordinated) push plates for the swinging door between the kitchen and dining room.

Of course, we had to go ebay on this - new push plates (or old matched sets) are expensive for us right now (we're in a cheap phase, as usual).

First, I found this small, plain one - great style and it fits perfectly. The push plates that were on the door when we moved in (and until last week) were too wide, so they stuck out over the moulding and you could reach in behind. Silly.

Then Ken thought we should see if we could find one that said "PUSH" - there were some cool ones we had seen and we got fixated on those. So, we searched, and success! I found an old used one, same style as the first one but a tad bigger. But, since no one will be looking at both sides of the door at the same time, they're perfectly fine together.

I also think it's neat that the door either (a) wasn't always a swinging door, or (b) was a stock door that someone made into a swinger by filling the mortise (very nicely, I must say). Option b would be more consistent with a kit house, I think. Cool either way, though.

Is there an FA?

2010-01-30T16:16:00.000-08:00

Furniture Anonymous. I need it.

I'm apparently on my mid-winter furniture bender. I go months without doing any ebay or craigslist searches for "mission oak", and manage to stick to "just looking" at the antique stores, and then - bam! - I'm off the wagon. I just can't help it - maybe it's the whole cabin fever thing, looking at the same old stuff all the time. What is my epitaph going to say, "Here lies Sarah, who had way too many chairs"? Eek.

I think it started, this year, when we decided to move some things around to freshen up the living room. Then Ken thought we needed a side table (we lost one in the move). Enter this $16 beauty - solid oak. It needs refinishing - I can put that off till summer. We plan to get a round tile to fill in where an ashtray probably originally was.

Then I had to reupholster the footstool (last post). Here it is, with the right fabric on it, finally.

The rocking chair is next - we've had it for a long time, but I'm finally getting off my butt and writing in to American Bungalow's "Perspective on Antiques" column - which I've been meaning to do since 2006, when I saw a very similar chair in their pages. Procrastinator!

And now tonight - after an all-day meeting, I had to decompress with some shopping, so I went to one of my favorite shops and found this (mostly) solid oak mini-desk (I'm not entirely convinced that the top is solid, but the legs certainly are):

It folds, somehow, but the back stretcher is a bit confusing to me. How do I fold the legs when the stretcher connects them? Weird. A question for later, when I certainly end up stripping the paint off. Ahh - paint stripping - now that's a summer obsession.

Anyways, the more I look at this table, the more I like it - which is always a good sign. And, of course, it was not expensive - so I can justify my addiction, right? You agree with me, right?

Giving the people what they want

2010-01-24T11:43:00.000-08:00

Last weekend my brother and his partner were up visiting. Brave souls, coming to Maine in winter. And they were punished for it - with a snowstorm on their way home. We had a great time nonetheless - us girls drank plenty of wine and the company was great!

You know how when people come over you suddenly realize all the inadequacies of all your home furnishings? Well, I noticed (and noted, aloud) that the old footstool was really needing some work.

I wondered (again, aloud) whether I should re-cane it or re-upholster. "It needs some cushion", my bro noted. So, re-upholsery it is. Sorry about the tender calves, Dave!

Today we took it mostly apart, gingerly pulled out the no-longer needed cane supports, and began the re-assembly. The problem was, Henry was extremely put out all day about it - you see, this is HIS fireside stool most of the time. And he was not happy about its disassembly. He kept checking on it and sitting on all the various parts as we worked. Oh, Henry.

We got it glued back up and added a plywood top, then I upholstered it with a bunch of remnant stuffings and battings from other chair projects. Sweet! I didn't have the right finish fabric, so here it's just a burlap liner fabric until I get to the fabric store.

Good enough for Henry for now, though. The world is right again!

Of note...

2010-01-17T05:03:00.000-08:00

From the folks at Modern Bungalow:

Author and columnist Bruce Johnson, who is also the Director of the National Arts & Crafts conference at the Grove Park Inn (Asheville, NC), has launched a brand new web site. The site is new, but it's off to a great start and will contain a ton of useful info and references for collectors and fans of the Arts & Crafts era. Check it out at: www.artsandcraftscollector.com

Most annoying project EVER!

2010-01-13T16:49:00.001-08:00

Where to begin.

We finished the upstairs bathroom a couple of years ago. It's fabulous and we love it. But we didn't like the look of the cover over the vent fan and it didn't fit properly. After a couple of feeble attempts to find a nice, antique-looking register cover or something, we gave up. And we made the fatal mistake of saying, "someday we'll do something better up there. This (sawed-off plastic hideous thing) is good enough for now".

As you might remember, we've been hacking away at our punch list, and the time came to replace the cover. Also, Ken innocently noted one day that there seemed to be a draft coming in when the fan was off - despite there being an external hood, it gets damn cold here and there is, indeed, a tiny draft.

So he temporarily binder-clipped a piece of (not color-coordinated, by the way) fabric over the sawed-off plastic hideous cover.

Mind you, I am about 8" shorter than he is, so anytime I wanted to take a shower and he wasn't home, I had to jam all kinds of headbands and random items in there on my tippie-toes to try to tent the fabric so I could turn the fan (and light!) on.

Yup, enough of that.

Finding no local source of teak*, I ordered (online) a nice piece of teak plywood and strips of 1/2"x2" teak from which to fashion a little door that we thought we could put over the sawed-off hideous cover when not in use. The teak arrived last week, and I got to work. (We're using teak because the floor and other accessories are teak or teak-esque, plus it's insanely weatherproof.)

I mustered all the skill from a couple of DIY picture framing sessions at the frame shop (and called on Ken to help with cutting a groove in the rails), and put together the lovely little door. Got some stainless hinges and headed upstairs (with the new scaffold - it's great!) to install it.

Not so fast. So, the thing didn't fit over the sawed-off hideous plastic cover. One late-night trip to the store later, I had a brand new round, smaller metal cover. We sawed (cleanly) the very top off, to make it fit the ceiling, and the teak cover still didn't fit. Sawed more off - now it fit, but wouldn't open. Argh.

Two days later - back to the store and I found a compact, flat rectangular vent cover and - it fit! Except the hole that attaches it in the center needed to move a little bit. So I drilled that out.

And - half an hour ago and three vent covers

(plus a lot of lost patience) later, voila! A teak cover with a handy-dandy handle that short people can reach, that opens up when you're ready to take a shower and closes to prevent drafts in between.

Now that was a challenging punch list item. Glad the freakin' list is almost done (for now - it's never really done, is it?).

* The funny teak story - so I went to a big box store - I'll let you guess which one - and after looking around the hardwoods section and not finding any teak (not that I expected any), I headed to the flooring department. My thought was that if they were going to have any teak whatsoever, it might be a strip of floor I could snag.

Me: "Do you have any teak flooring?"
Associate: "Any what?"
Me: "Teak wood, you know, teak?"
Associate: "Never heard of it."
Me: "What!? Teak, T-E-A-K, you know, like they use on boats? And floors? Teak?"
Associate: "No, I've never heard of it."
Me: "Wow. Thanks...(mumbles as she walks out of the store, bewildered)".

Sale item alert: could have used this before!

2010-01-03T16:58:00.000-08:00

I was shopping the post-holiday online sales and happened across this little bit of heaven - it's a scaffold with a tray for just a shade over $23. The extra shipping stinks, but it's still CHEAP.

And it's perfect because we cleaned the basement (again) yesterday, and I began to get some good visualization going about what we're going to do down there. And it involves painting the underside of the sub-floorboards, which would be a very, very sucky job without a scaffold like this.

That's what we consider a sign - we're on the right track with the basement plans. Now we just need to accumulate all the parts...

Getting punchy again

2009-12-27T16:36:00.000-08:00

It's been a crazy couple of weeks - I was in San Francisco for work, and got stuck there an extra two days because of giant snowstorm #1, which shut down the east coast airports. Luckily, I got home just as giant snowstorm #2 pummeled the middle of the country.

So, we've been laying pretty low. Our goal for holiday break is to work on the old punch list again, and after catching up on sleep after the jet-lagged, red-eye-flight, airport-dwelling beginning of the week, we started on a couple of those tasks.

Sorry readers, it's going to be a while still till our next big project - our bedroom. We pushed it back to March break - it'll just work better. Anyways, Item 1 on the punch list was to finally put a surround around our pellet stove. See, when we bought the stove, there were two different sets of dimensions for our model, depending on which piece of literature you had in your hand. We knew that it would either just barely or not quite fit all the way back in the firebox. Turns out, it doesn't quite fit in the firebox - the back of the 'finished' part of the stove sticks out about an inch from the brick surround.

We wanted to avoid any giant, tacky surround piece (like the big brass or black frame sold by the stove shop), so we've been just waiting for a solution to pop up. We decided to figure something out just before I left, and went to the big box with the idea of finding something metal we could tuck behind the stove and paint black to make it fade away.

Then, Ken happened upon a random piece of someone's roof flashing, in a custom reddish-copper color. We thought it would closely match the brickwork, and we snapped it up (it was marked down from $18 to $5.25, and the woman rang it up for $4.71, so the price was right).

Using the existing lengthwise bend to fit it against the stove back's 'lip', we cut it to size with tin snips...

...and brought in some clamps and wood to make a break for bending the metal to fit in the firebox, but were one piece short & too lazy to go back to the garage, so we used a copy of "Swan's Way" as the final piece of the metal brake. Thanks, Proust!

Though we planned to use liquid nails to tack it to the brick, it 'sticks' just fine with no adhesive so far, so it ended up being a really simple, easy, tidy, quick project.

And, now we won't have escaping pellets falling down behind the stove anymore - finally!

Click: 1929 to 2009

2009-12-12T14:30:00.000-08:00

I was buying a vintage item on Etsy for someone for the holidays, and I happened to notice that the seller was also selling this little oddity for $8:

...and, always a sucker for a deal on combined shipping, I nabbed it. It's a Brownie (box camera) Model 2-F, probably from around the late 1920s to early 1930s.

We got it in the mail a couple of weeks ago, got some film, and just started messing with it on the night of the snowstorm. We cleaned it, found the old manual (which is entertaining in itself), then we shot a roll of film. We were kind of just seeing if it worked at all - so we didn't pay much attention to the exposure time or subjects.

Today we walked down to the camera shop to pick up the prints (if it worked at all). We were thrilled to see a huge roll of negatives with things that looked pretty recognizable on it - but the camera shop folks (the best ones in town, so they should know) said they can't develop that size negative - it's like 2x3". Hmmm.

Then we thought, Photoshop can make things look like negatives, so maybe it can make things double negative (=positive). So we scanned in the negatives and messed around with the results.

From inside the dining room, through windows, stained glass panel, and plastic (not bad!)

Just after the snowstorm, the garage.

We actually took the photos 'blind' - all the silver had flaked off the viewfinder mirrors and I didn't want to open it up to replace them with film in; now you can actually see something with new mirrors so the next photos should be better composed! Our scans were not at the best resolution and we can play more with contrast - but it was totally an amazing process:

to use a camera with absolutely no electronics, batteries, buttons, beeps, etc.
to see the giant negatives (when was the last time you saw film negatives?)
to realize the camera worked
to take something from 1929 or so, snap a totally mechanical photo, then 'develop' it on a computer in 2009.

I feel like we just came out of a time machine. Weird...

Yellow snow

2009-12-06T17:08:00.000-08:00

Not really. But we did work on something related to pee and something related to snow this weekend.

First, while I was at Lowe's the other day buying a replacement part for the upstairs toilet, I realized that with only $15.95 I could finally replace the el-cheapo toilet seat that came with the downstairs toilet (2 years+ ago). That gross thing was thin molded plastic and had these little concave areas underneath that were atrocious to clean. Plus the yucky plastic hinges - ew.

So before:

And, 10 minutes later, solid seat with chrome hinges:

I know, it really doesn't look much different. But it is!

Then it snowed. Which is great - we love the snow. So we put up some decorations outside.

Then, as the mudroom descended into a chaotic pile of mittens, boots, and hats, I went on a hunt for a mudroom bench. Someday we'll build one from our stash of oak lumber, but one more winter with a big ol' mess was sounding like a bad option.

So I scouted all the usual haunts - thrift store, online, various horrid big box stores, etc. Found nothing good that was a reasonable price for a somewhat temporary solution. Then, at KMart, I found a Martha Stewart buffet table from the Mission Bungalow collection.
It was on clearance and the dimensions were perfect for a mudroom bench - it was just too tall. So, I lugged it home, we did some measuring, and we immediately set to work destroying it. We cut a foot off each leg, left off the plate rack & second shelf (which goes on the cut-off part of the legs), and voila! A better shot at mudroom organization. Thanks Martha!

p.s., this table seems to actually be wood and is quite solid. So maybe someday it'll be re-purposed into a coffee table or something else.

Take that, overprotective parents!

2009-11-28T11:12:00.000-08:00

Hah! Our nemesis, the stupid little plastic stick-figure child cutout with a little flag that was put out in the road all summer long to tell everyone that someone's oh-so-special kids might be playing in the road like idiots, has fallen over! Thanks to the wind. Thanks, wind!

I don't know why we've developed such a hatred for the stupid thing, but it's completely obnoxious and I can't wait for them to finally decide it's too cold and bring the dumb thing in. Once they put a large rock behind this thing - and put it in the middle of one lane of the road - which would have inflicted major damage on someone's car had they hit it. And I don't know about you, but seeing these types of idiotic things just makes me want to drive faster.

People - if you think the speed limit is too high in your neighborhood, go to a town meeting or get a petition started to commission a traffic study! Don't just put out a passive-aggressive fluorescent green creepy plastic kid imported from China, resulting in air and, eventually, water pollution that will be much more harmful to your kids than the occasional speeding motorist.

There, I've said my piece. Happy Thanksgiving! We're giving thanks for the smiting of our enemy, Traffic Child.

Diamonds: not a girl's best friend

2009-11-24T13:33:00.000-08:00

Before everyone goes out holiday shopping, I wanted to point out this statistic published in this month's This Old House magazine: 85% of women would rather get $5,000 in home renovations than a set of equally valuable diamond earrings. I'm definitely in that majority!

So guys, if you buy your girl some jewels, don't be surprised if she hawks them to get a new deck, or have the floors refinished, or start a kitchen re-do. That is, unless you bought her a diamond-encrusted tile saw so she can do her tile project...

Our first bungalow DIY

2009-11-22T13:39:00.000-08:00

All right, in between raking leaves all weekend, here's an entry to another contest (we could really use the $ for upcoming bedroom renovation slated for this winter).

The question is, what is the first thing we did as soon as we got the keys to our house? Well, after we had the lawyer kick out the grown son of the previous owner (who had broken in because his plane got in late and he didn't have keys, and needed to get a few last things from the house! Surprise! as he came up freshly showered from the basement bathroom when we arrived for our pre-closing walk-through!), we lugged over our sleeping bags, some champagne, and some snacks and we all planned to sack out in front of the fireplace - our favorite pigpile with cats & dog seemed in order.

Settling in by the fireplace with a desk lamp and extension cord (there were no lights in the living room), I realized there was no way I could sleep in front of the hideous 1970's-era brass fireplace screen. Ugh, I can hardly even look at this photo:

"Can we just rip this off right now?" Ken knew that it was kind of a rhetorical question. So, off it came (with all the wrong tools and a lot of swearing). Then we sat in the fireplace like Cinderella, scrubbing ages of crummy soot off until it looked reasonable. Here it is now, after lots more work:

Then, sleep. It's amazing we were able to wait another 48 hours before we tore the horrible green brain carpet off the stairs!

This post was written for Houseblogs.net as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by True Value.

I want this vacuum!

2009-11-14T04:45:00.000-08:00

In our city, they come by and vacuum up the leaves in the fall & spring. Such service! Actually, it happens quite a lot in this neighborhood; when we lived in the ghetto section of town, I don't remember it at all. Hmmm. Maybe it was just that no one bothered to pile up their leaves.

At any rate, we got a bunch of leaves down to the curb in time for one of their passes, and I snapped a photo of the most awesome vacuum ever. Yes, that hose is big enough to engulf that guy. Can you imagine the dust bunnies you could suck up with this thing?

If the weekend's not a total washout, we hope to get the rest of the leaves to the curb for the next pass. This year they're paying special attention to the leaf removal because trees in our area had leaf Tar Spot, a fungus that was widespread because of our wet summer. Apparently if we compost the leaves or keep them around, it's more likely we'll get it again next year. So, removal it is this time.

Turn up the heat!

2009-11-07T17:39:00.000-08:00

Apparently it's time to crank up the pellet stove, or so say these two heat-seekers:

Tomorrow is supposed to be pretty warm (in the 50s!), and it's a day we have to hike for work. Even though we really should be raking the yard, etc. instead. Hopefully we'll get that pesky raking done before it snows - again!

Getting ready for winter

2009-10-28T17:11:00.001-07:00

The storm windows are in, the stove is fired up, and it's getting cold.

This guy feasted on all Ken's remaining sunflower heads. While doing amazing acrobatics. Who'd have thought that he could perch atop sunflowers taller than us, hopping around like he was walking on clouds. With a full belly, hopefully he's ready for winter.

Hey, Moe!

2009-10-11T17:02:00.000-07:00

If you've read this one before - sorry you have to look at my legs again. (Ick). The story's back for a contest - and we could use some financial help now! So, bear with us! More (new) material soon.

This post was written for Houseblogs.net as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by True Value. http://www.startrightstarthere.com/

A friend recently commented that the projects we post on the blog are all so nice and inspirational. But behind the scenes, our projects are much more like a Three Stooges episode.

Take tonight for example.

I spent all day finishing sanding all the little annoying cracks and crevices on a dresser I recently bought for Ken's birthday (it's not a surprise, obviously). After dinner, I did the final sand and began staining it.

As I walked around from one side to another, the stain can slipped from my hand and splattered all over the garage floor, several tools, a big tool box, the chop saw, and me.

At that very moment, Ken came walking out of the house - he had answered the phone and was bringing it out to me. Barefoot. As I hollered about having a stain emergency and I couldn't talk, and he began trying to explain it to my mom on the phone, he stepped on a weirdly-shaped wood scrap in the driveway (leftover from the other day's fence-capade) and shouted as he hurt his foot.

He hustled my mom off the phone (I called back), and came over to laugh at my leopard-print self (and grump about the tools, which I later cleaned).

Of course, I was in the middle of staining the dresser so I couldn't stop - so I threw an old pair of pajama pants on the mess (they were in the rag pile) and kept going. I ran out of stain - it being all over the floor - and had to use the stain-soaked pajama-pants rag from the floor to squeeze out the last little bit of coverage. Happy Freakin' Birthday, honey.

Once I finished, I wiped off all the tools off and went in to shower. Yuck. After ruining a loofah, a nail brush, and giving up, I stepped out of the shower only to have a huge moth fly right into my wet hair. Superb.

So, here I sit in my pajamas, ready for bed at 8:10, as soon as I finish this margarita while keeping my stainy feet off anything important.

Tomorrow we'll start over in a (hopefully) less Stooge-y way, and attempt to finish the back fence. That is, if we can keep from clunking our heads together long enough.

Good night!

Privacy, please!

2009-10-03T16:05:00.000-07:00

Every time we have guests over, we remember that the guest room door doesn't close all the way, and we add it to the list of things to do. Somehow, it never actually gets written down on the actual list of things to do - and we forget. Then, guests are over again, and doh! we forgot to fix the door. So they have limited privacy, and run the risk of having cats but in & wake them up, or the dog breaking into the room while we're out and eating their belongings (e.g., a clean (thankfully) baby diaper - sorry Daniel!).

We've had guests the last couple of weekends - the last of the summer season before we button up the house - and somehow I remembered to fix the door before they arrived (ok, so it was like 3 hours before they arrived, but still before!

I did a bad, bad thing and planed the top down until it fit. I always feel guilty doing that after swearing about other people doing it - but we had tried everything else in this case. So I planed and made a huge mess (in the room I'd just cleaned) for about 45 minutes. The door closed!

But it didn't latch. It was going to be one of those projects. Ugh. I noticed that the little latch was not going into the strikeplate - a common problem, and it usually is rectified by shimming out the strikeplate. After we removed about 8 metric tons of paint from the trim, things tend be a bit slimmer. So I got to try out an idea we had.

Last year, we were thinking about shimming out strikeplates, and we thought it might be a clever thing to use a piece of leather as the shim - it's easier to cut, we could get brown (and not have to stain it), and you could easily add multiple thicknesses. Plus, if you make a mistake, you can easily trim it or make a new one.

So we bought this hideous (leather) purse at the thrift store for like 25 cents*. And then it sat around in the closet for a long time (carefully stashed lest someone think I would own this thing). Here was the opportunity to try it out. I cut a piece out of the flap, traced the strikeplate, and reinstalled it with the leather shim behind it - which worked out perfectly.

Unfortunately, though I think the shim was necessary in the end, it turned out that the strikeplate was too low on the jamb and the latch still wouldn't grab! So, back to the garage for the chisels, I re-cut the mortise, then reinstalled the strikeplate and leather shim - and it stayed shut! Finally, some privacy for guests. And it only took about 2 hours - 1:55 more than I estimated. As per usual.

* There's no cents sign on a keyboard? Huh.

And the list goes on...

2009-09-21T15:57:00.001-07:00

Still working on the punch list here. Sorry, folks who are hoping for a big new project to start - check back in November or December to see us tear up our bedroom.

This weekend, we worked our fingers to the bone - or, more appropriately, wore the fingers off our gloves - tidying up the garden/yard. We're not quite done, but we:

weeded all the beds
mowed the lawn
changed over annual planters to mums (yuck)
turned all the compost
raked leaves
watered every dang plant in the yard
pruned & deadheaded everything
Ken finished the grape trellis extension, then he
finished nailing the last few fence slats, then he
cut the large corner fence post down one level (the aesthetics weren't working), then
I built and installed a fence cap on it (made from scrap cedar + the lid of a cast lantern I got at a yard sale for $3 - which saved my life because I was sucking at cutting double miters to make a little cupola-type thingy).

This is me on my tiptoes, trying to get a photo of the little roof.

You gotta love these Autum Joy sedum - even though everyone else has them (usually I have to be different), they're still such a superstar.

Tidier!

Did I forget anything? I'm tired again, thinking about it. So the punch list is getting shorter. Here's what it looks like now, all in priority order & by category (at great risk to myself I post this, knowing that CAB is rolling her eyes and thinking, "You nerd").

Nerd or not, sh*t's getting done.

A lot done, not much finished

2009-09-13T17:42:00.000-07:00

Today was one of those days when everything on your long list gets stuck somewhere - either it takes much longer than you thought, or a series of bizarre other things need to get done before your thing can get done, or things just keep screwing up.

Regardless, we managed to get the kitchen door sanded - thanks to Ken's awesome technique and moral support (I stripped it last weekend), stained, and up. It still needs tung oil, but I can do that in situ. It has totally changed the character of the kitchen - it's so much better than a cracked, chippy old white door. It has presence.

So, even though only really one thing got finished this weekend, the stuff that did get done was pretty good.

A little less inadequate

2009-09-08T07:04:00.000-07:00

Often, on Saturdays, we watch the home improvement shows on PBS (we don't have 'real' cable so no HGTV here!). You know, things like This Old House, The Woodwright's Shop, the New Yankee Workshop. Good stuff, all.

But - especially with the New Yankee - we always feel a little inadequate. I mean, Norm's shop is UNREAL. And all his tools are all properly maintained. And he is organized, and has a special table/storage unit for everything. Oh, and he has every tool, ever.

One tool he's always using and that we've needed for a long, long time is a stacked dado blade. You know, so you don't have to make a million passes with the table saw to put a groove in something? Well - I found one the other day at the antique shop that has old tools down cellar - it's DeWalt and it was $10.

Now we can groove like Norm.

The last dresser

2009-09-04T07:51:00.000-07:00

We've been replacing dressers in our bedroom so we'll be all ready to go when we finally re-do our room later this year. So - I found the final one yesterday. Picked it up from a person who does one of those perpetual yard sale things (pretty common around here). You know, there are always tables of stuff with tarps on them in the yard, like year-round? The neighbors must LOVE that.

They had already sanded some parts of it, saving me work, but we still have a bit to do.

And - most importantly -we MUST change out the hardware. Before the dresser even touched the ground here in the bungalow, these pulls were OFF.

I know, they sort of make you throw up a little, don't they? Bleagh.

The frightening thing is that I bet they'll sell right away in next year's yard sale!

Hedging...a bit

2009-08-26T16:51:00.000-07:00

So, things have been slow. End of summer stuff, plus the scorchingly hot, sticky humidity was not particularly conducive to a lot of physical labor-type stuff.

This morning was cool enough to rip out the last dead hedge piece and replace it with two small new guys that will (someday) fill in. We got these guys at the less-expensive good nursery, on sale. And they were still a bit pricey. But a steal compared to what they charge for 5-6', balled and burlapped cedars for hedges. Since the non-dead section of hedge is in great shape, over 60 feet long and over 6' tall, we figure the existing hedge is probably worth more than the house! Crazy!

Grow little guys, grow!

Success - from the brink of disaster

2009-08-16T15:53:00.001-07:00

So, we managed to make it through the rest of the weekend without any additional Three Stoogieness. Well, a couple of small things, but nothing as completely chaotic as Friday.

Fence?

Check.

Dresser*?

Check.

Homemade mini-pedi?

Check.

* Scored the dresser in unrestored - but never painted - condition for $37.50. Escutcheons (in the correct size and finish) were hard to find, but I got some great ones from Horton Brasses - the company seems great and prices are quite good.

Fencing, part two

2009-08-09T17:19:00.000-07:00

Don't say it too loudly, but the weather has been fine lately. Our fencepost holes dried out (well, enough) for us to pour concrete on Thursday, then we started making and assembling our back corner fence. There will be four sections total - here are two of them.

The other two will be on the left side, in an L. This is the back corner of our yard, where the dead hedge grew (and where trash blew in through said dead hedge from the main road out that way).

The corner post looks odd now, but it should look good once we put a copper roof on it. It is pressure treated (everything else is cedar) because we wanted to sink it, so to make it look cedariffic, we clad it with leftover shakes. Kind of an architectural-type flavor to it.

A couple of more sunny days and we'll be done. If we can stand the cedar splinters in the eyes, that is! Even with saftey goggles on, they somehow always manage to get in there. Nasty!

Total liquidation sale

2009-08-03T07:29:00.000-07:00

While we're waiting (still!) for the holes for the back corner fence to dry out, we're started on another of our planned summer projects: sorting out and selling all the house parts and hardware we're not using. If we get to the basement re-do in the next year or two, we figure, it will behoove us to start clearing out all the excess stuff now.

Oh boy, this is a task. We had accumulated all manner of hardware, lighting parts, planters, heating grates, etc. that are now on the Island of Misfit Toys and need to find a home where they'll be loved. There's nothing wrong with them - they just didn't end up working stylistically, or in the case of the awsome grille covers, we didn't need them. Bummer because it was really, really hard to find mission-style grilles, and I love these!

So, if you're in the market for house parts, feel free to check out our stuff and place a bid! (Shameless plug).

Wish we were sitting here today

2009-07-30T07:32:00.000-07:00

It's raining again. We've finished some details of the shed and are ready to start on the fence, maybe this weekend if things dry out. In the meantime, here's a photo of where we'd like to be hanging out - in the side yard, in the sun.

We found these chairs at Marshall's (we live dangerously close to one), and then found the small iron tray stand and tray at an antique shop when I was in NH. I painted the tray and stenciled the same design in the center as is on the chairs. Sadly, you'd have a wet bum if you sat out there today. Go away, rain!

Hole-y water table, Batman!

2009-07-26T16:56:00.000-07:00

We rented the hole digger and dug the last 5 holes in the yard, for the back corner fence. It went quite well, for a job that generally sucks - especially where there are roots.

However, it looks like it will be a while 'till we can construct said fence. The water table is only about 18" belowground, as illustrated here:
We are having the coolest and wettest summer since the Little Ice Age (mid-1800s), and it's totally messing up the schedule.

So, on to other projects while we wait for the ground to dry...and wait...and wait...

At least they're screening the original Batman movie downtown this coming week - if it doesn't rain (yeah, right) it will be outdoors.

Dining room light is finished - 2.5 years later

2009-07-24T13:08:00.000-07:00

Back in February 2007 we bought this old thing from ebay.

This was before we remodeled the kitchen, and we were looking for an old light to hang over the little breakfast table. I think it cost something like $30, and we figured it was worth snagging to see if we could make something of it. It turned out to be solid brass, after all.

It was missing the canopy and we wanted longer chains - so we found some square old brass chain on ebay (again) and we asked Rejuvenation to fabricate a simple canopy for us. They worked from the photos of the fixture and did a perfect job getting the scale and style right. In the meantime, we decided it wasn't the right scale for the kitchen, so we got a different (vintage) light for that spot.

Then I found a painted light shade I liked, and went on a mission for the next year or so to find a mate - similar, but not too matchy. After a while, I found one that's a great sister to the first.

Over the next 2+ years, I've been occasionally pulling this thing out, polishing a few links of chain at a time, and otherwise making extremely slow progress. With all the rain we've had this summer, polishing chain became a nightly activity (3 links per night!) and I finished the whole thing about last week.

Ken then helped me wire the fixture (I've done it before but this was complex - for me - with the two sockets). We used Sundial Wire again - good stuff. After some tribulations having to re-drill the old connectors to make the wire fit comfortably and an early-morning installation-fest, we installed the light this morning, stopped at the store to pick up two dimmable CFLs (the old light had one bulb so we needed another - but the old one was first-generation dimmable and not great; the new ones are much better, FYI) on our way home from a mid-morning meeting, and viola! We have a new, period appropriate dining room light.

And now we're selling our leftover light restoration parts on ebay. Need any square chain, anyone? It's a total bitch to polish, but it looks cool!

The coolest car in the neighborhood

2009-07-20T07:07:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday we did some planned stuff in the morning, then somehow got onto a new task we weren't planning on starting just yet - the back fence. All we really wanted to do was do a little measuring and figure out the general spacing, so we could start thinking about it and figure out if we had all the right lengths of wood, etc.

Which quickly morphed into, "well, this would all be easier if the hedge weren't here".

Which quickly turned into, "let's just take down the hedge* now".

Which quickly became, "the hedge is down, let's clean up all the leaves and garbage and make a run to public works".

We're very lucky that our city Public Works yard - which is less than a mile away - lets you bring all your yard junk over for free. Stumps, shrubs, leaves, grass - whatever. And they're open all the time - sunrise to sunset in the summer. Which is super.

So we piled everything onto and into the Suby and took a run over there. It looked quite a lot like the Grinch's sleigh, or something. We did get a thumbs up and 'not bad!' raised eyebrow from a guy in a big ol' pickup truck on the way. People are always amazed how much crap you can haul in a Suby.

I digress. So we drove to public works and found out...the only day they're NOT open till sunset is Sunday! They closed at 3:00 and we got there at 4:00! So we had to drive back home with our unwieldy load and park it in the driveway all night. We were quite sure the neighbors had a laugh.

The real bummer was that we were going to go get iced coffees at Dunkin Donuts after we dropped the load, but we weren't going to make the extra detour down a busy road with all that crap on the roof. Anyways, we dropped it off first thing this morning then got coffee - so it worked out fine in the end. Just silly, as usual.

* By the way, we're not tree-killers. This part of the hedge - about 12 of 100 total feet - was pretty well dead from shading by overstory trees when we moved in. We rescued what we could back then, but the plan was that it would need to eventually be removed or replaced - it was really ratty. When we pulled it out yesterday, we could just pull these huge stems out of the ground - they were basically standing deadwood. A fence section will replace this hedge section.

Reaping the rewards

2009-07-18T12:11:00.000-07:00

This is the time of year that the gardens start to earn their keep. Not only have we put up a bunch of snap peas for winter, but the flowers are starting to really do their thing. Eddy and I just ran between the raindrops to collect this bunch.

Now if the rain would quit again for a couple of days we could get started on our last fence project.

We solemnly swear

2009-07-17T11:25:00.000-07:00

...to put tools back where they belong. To put them back clean, dry, and happy.

We will occasionally even sharpen the pruners and clippers. We promise to avoid, at all costs, having the garden tools become a huge tangle from which no tool can later be extracted without major bouts of cursing.

We pledge to put the lids back on things, and put them on their shelves, not on the floor. We intend to keep the twine, ties, and other expendables restocked. We won't create tripping hazards by leaving everything strewn about.

We will always sweep up after a big potting mess, and will wipe up big spills. We'll avoid making loads of big cuts in the bench - though it is a workbench - and will make sure it's always presentable. We will do our best to stack the empty pots and fit them in their places. We will remember to occasionally see if there are un-used items that can go to the yard sale pile.

Do you think we can do it? You might have your doubts if you ever saw the garage in the pre-shed days. Only time will tell...

By the way, here's where you can get the totally cool tool hangers.

And, thanks to all our friends who brought over vintage shelf brackets to add to the collection. The shelves were salvaged from our own kitchen - they were the original pieces to which the wainscoting would have been attached if it had survived - sub-baseboards, if you will. We kept them and were thrilled to repurpose them in the shed.

Postcard from the edge

2009-07-14T13:14:00.000-07:00

I'm away at a supernerd - I mean, work - conference this week, so I don't have any house photos to share. But - I visited a pottery gallery near this conference venue - the conference happens every two years and I like to check out their new work each time I'm here.

Although the glaze is glossy - typically not my fave - I love (LOVE!) the celadon color and the really quite organic and lighthearted design.

See that thing in the right front corner of the photo? It's a garden ornament, and I got one - though mine has dragonflies & frogs and other creepy crawlies on it. The artist even threw in a heavy duty bamboo stake! You just set the ornament on top. The thing was so cool that I had to pick one up to tuck in next to the shed and bench (more on that when I get back) despite a long-standing dislike of yard art. I think since this is truly art, it transcends our self-imposed yard art ban. We'll see if Ken agrees.

At any rate, we did finish the interior shed organization and the last garden bed (frantically) before I left. The sun obediently appeared the day after my bitchy post about the rain, so I guess that worked? I'll have to try controlling the weather more often. More details when I'm reunited with the camera...

A reminder to support your local artists, artisans, and farmers this summer - get out to those galleries and festivals and keep the local businesses thriving.

Another complainer

2009-07-08T15:19:00.000-07:00

And that complainer would be me. Now, I like the rain in general, but COME ON. Can we please (please, please) get some sun!?! That last photo was taken during the one millisecond of sun we've had since about June 1.

As I was standing in the yard with Eddy at 4 pm today - JULY 8th - and eating a bowl of hot oatmeal as I grumbled to myself about the peas getting knocked over by the rain again...I realized that I've officially hit the point of being completely fed up with the weather.

Let's go, sun. And that's an order.

Put on your happy fascia!

2009-07-05T17:26:00.000-07:00

Not only was the sun shining - all day - but we got the fascia boards on the shed. These are the last part of 'major construction', so we crossed the shed off the priority list(!). We have a couple small trim jobs to do, and need to fill it with perfectly organized garden tools & supplies, but it's essentially done!

The light was gorgeous as we finished cleaning up this afternoon. We put a row of cinnamon ferns in and they're so fab, we'll get some more to put along the fenceline at the nursery sale next week.

View from the sidewalk now. Wahoo!

Three times a day

2009-07-04T04:36:00.001-07:00

Morning.

Noon.

Night.

Phew! Almost done...

Doh! A door!

2009-06-29T17:54:00.000-07:00

Adelaide asks: "What kind of door will the garden shed have?"

And of course there's a story there. The door was free - $0. And it came with a complete jamb - including threshold. And the jamb was in great shape.

So, I was riding the bus home from work one day, and as it drove by our old neighborhood, I happened to catch a glimpse of this big door (with jamb) leaned up against a garbage can on a side street. In our city, stuff on the curb is fair game, and frequently raided.

Completely spazzing out, I called Ken from the bus. "There's a door on the side of the road. We just have to go back and look at it. Someday if we build a shed we could maybe use it. And anyways, it's free!"

Always open to my wacky adventures in dumpster-diving, Ken immediately sensed the urgency and we raced back up the hill in the little Suby, parked by the door - which thankfully no one had snagged yet - and declared it a superb find. And on the roof rack it went.

This was, oh, over a year ago. Since then, it's sat out in the garage, often in the way and totally neglected. The plan was to slap on some fresh paint and use it on the shed. Easy, right?

Wrong. The minute I began feather-sanding a chipped spot, I saw that it was fir - like all our other doors in the house. And out came the stripper. Several goopy days and three coats of spar varnish later, here it is. The glass was completely intact and the door had no condition problems whatsoever. Definitely a find! And the jamb was just the icing on the cake - talk about an easy installation!

This week (if it ever stops raining) we will install it. We're very close to 40 days of rain, so perhaps we should just turn the shed into an ark. Cedar floats well, right?

You put your backside in...

2009-06-26T18:02:00.000-07:00

..and you shake it all about. Here's the only picture that didn't have my horribly white, non-tan legs in it as I sat enjoying my end-of-day beverage (thanks Ken, today's photographer of legs-that-haven't-seen-the-sun-at-all).

The shake master did the back side (which faces the street, so it's sort of a front side too) of the shake today. I love it!

I finished painting the nail holes in the trim and pulled about three metric tons of weeds from the gardens in between running back & forth to help with shake-o-rama. Once it stopped raining so we could see what was going on out there, we realized we'd better get the gardens tidied up or we'd look pretty foolish if we have this awesome garden shed and the gardens are all a wreck!

This weekend we'll hopefully shake some more (you put your left side in...) and I will hopefully cut and paint the fascia boards, plus get some spar varnish on the door (painfully slow door progress, that).

On a dark & stormy night...

2009-06-23T18:01:00.000-07:00

I realized we haven't updated folks on the shed. Friends are starting to email (How is the shed going? Any progress on the shed? etc., etc.). So here you go.

We have been kicking ass on the shed, EXCEPT that it won't freakin' stop raining. Hello, we're wet enough already.

The good news: I can HEAR the broccoli plants growing - they're so enjoying the soaking.

The bad news: crappy weather for cedar shake siding (what's the verb for that? Cedar shaking? Cedar shake siding? I guess "applying cedar shake" but it sounds so snooty).

But, progress has occurred. Ken shingled the whole roof (shingles courtesy of the ReStore, $15!), did a lovely job with drip edge, flashed all the corners where the posts stick out, and tarpapered the sheeting.

While Mr. Roof did his thang, I cut and put on sheeting all over the sides of the shed (before the tarpaper), painted, cut, and installed all the trim, and otherwise got in the way of the shingling process. Oh, and I built an entire window jamb from scratch, using scrap wood in the garage. I had to first go to the Big Box and sketch out window jamb construction - they have a cutaway display window that was perfect. Though I got lots of odd looks with my pencil & sketchpad in the middle of the store. Joke's on them - our window was a $6 salvage jobby and the jamb was free!

Then we hunted down and watched several videos of people cedar shaking (there it is again! grr!) houses. We particularly liked this one with Tom Silva (my personal hero). What a date night activity. :)

Then Ken bravely charged ahead with a whole lotta shakin'. Neither one of us has ever worked with cedar shake so the shed was a great, small project to start with. It took all day to do one side - but we feel like the rest will be much quicker. Also, I found out that broken bundles of shake can be considered cull lumber at the Big Box, and therefore half off. The shakes aren't broken - it's just that the cable that's supposed to tie them neatly together is broken, so they look messy and there's no guarantee you have a full bundle. Sweet, though!

And finally, I looked more closely at the free door we found on the side of the road - jamb completely intact! - last year, and realized that it's totally awesome fir. So instead of quick & dirty painting, I'm in the throes of paint stripping - again - but it's turning out to be gorgeous. So Susie - maybe you feel better knowing that someone else is elbow-deep in the goo this week.

Anyways, here's where she stands, sopping wet in the dark and with only one side clad. (I'm not even going to try it - shaken? Shaked? Ugh. I give up.)

Shameless plug

2009-06-16T11:53:00.000-07:00

Eddy's in a calendar contest (with about a hundred other adorable beagles). You can vote for him online (or the beagle of your choice) at: http://www.bonesbeagles.org/calendar/bonesCalendarVote.php

Ed's # P033, P097, and P117.

It costs $2/vote, but it's tax deductible and for a good cause.

Also, you can always donate old blankets, towels, pillows, etc. to your local animal shelter - perfect for when you finish that bedroom or bath remodel and decide to spring for some new linens.

Il pleut.

2009-06-12T08:16:00.000-07:00

Oui. It is raining. Story of this week. We were totally cruising on the shed then it decided to be positively dreary all week.

Yesterday, the rain stopped and things dried out - so Ken heroically decided to press on, installing enough of the roof that it would be OK if (who are we kidding -- when) it started raining again last night.

We got the rafters up, sheeting on, and tarpaper down - and still had an hour of sunlight left to enjoy a beverage and admire the shed - now really taking shape.

There's a rumor that tomorrow that big, bright, shiny nuclear reactor in the sky will come out - and we can shingle and get going on the siding.

Now we're getting somewhere...

2009-06-08T15:21:00.000-07:00

After several trips to the lumber yard (thankfully only about a half mile away) due to slightly enlarging the shed (concrete snafu), we have the whole damn thing framed. And it's pretty awesome, if we can toot our own horn a sec.

Here's Ken up top, hammering. Daredevil, you.

Here's the view from up top. We used the leftover pieces of decking that were too short to be fence panels. So, cedar floor = freebie!

Here's the framing, all in place & ready for sheeting (rafters are not attached in this one).

And, the rafter tails - which took inspiration from the house.

In order to cut the rafter tails, I had to make an emergency run to Sears (in my sweaty work clothes), slap my dead Craftsman one on the counter (15+ yr old, 1/4 hp, and burnt out) and ask for a saw with MORE POWER! We absolutely love the new one. It's the beefier, better quality Craftsman (without being a Pro version) and worth every penny. Should have gotten it years ago.

Shouldn't have joked...

2009-06-06T15:48:00.000-07:00

We had a shed setback today. It will turn out fine, but progress has been very slow. We used some concrete that apparently was old? Had already activated? And didn't set. Poured the last 2 footers for the shed on Weds. and when they still were green today, we smashed them up and will start over tomorrow.

Grrr.

We sprung for the super-quick set concrete, so tomorrow we'll either have good, solid piers or have made ANOTHER total mess. Anyone care to place a wager?

The good news is that we framed the back wall and cleaned, prepped, and painted the little window we got for the shed. And then Ken took me out for a stroll to the store for a Slush Puppy, in our crummy work clothes. I got blue, of course.

Shed's done!

2009-06-03T11:07:00.001-07:00

Kidding, kidding. This is just a Photoshop mockup, so we could see how it might look before we build it.

We did manage to get the concrete piers poured and the weather is supposed to be lovely for several days, so we're hoping to get the shed looking somewhat like the photo fairly soon.

Do fence me in

2009-06-01T04:06:00.000-07:00

With the assistance of aforementioned Nick, who was happy to help finish the fence with us (or was a good faker), we finished the fence portion of the fence-pergola-shed complex in the side yard.

It's awesome. Let us count the ways:

No more gawkers judging our choice of cheapo 'working outside today' beer.

We're more confident about wearing our holey, ill-fitting, completely out-of-style work wear (fortunately, nothing with shoulder pads, acid washing, or fringe, but close) and not being seen by the style police.

Bending over in the garden is now A-OK, and no one will wonder if it's a horrible plywood cutout or the real thing.

Only those who make it past the fence will realize the rest of the lawn is nothing but weeds! The front yard's reasonable looking grass is the perfect camoflage. And finally...

We can now peep at THEM through the fence slats, virtually unnoticed.

Oh, how the tables have turned.

Next up: the garden shed. Still finalizing plans and translating Ken's verbal description into my visual one (and vice versa). Maybe next weekend...

Cavatappi

2009-05-31T17:28:00.000-07:00

Corkscrew. In Italian. To answer a question from a party last night. I was half-right - I thought that 'open' must factor into the definition of that pasta type, but I was wrong about that part. It simply means 'corkscrew'. Duh. What the hell would an 'open corkscrew' be anyways? My Latin has really gone downhill since high school.

Further, the Italian translator notes that it is a noun, and "Masculine", "Invariable". Really fitting for this weekend, oddly enough.

Old (yes, we're officially getting old), dear friend Nick visited on his latest adventure route that ranges far enough north to bring him to the Bungalow. And, old, dear friend Dave sent along bagels from Nick's stop in the greater NY area - a reminder of the days when we all had NY bagels at our fingertips anytime, everywhere. [Little wistful smile]. And as always, time spent with old, dear friends seems like picking up right where you left off, despite the wide-ranging paths we've all taken.

"Masculine, invariable" - you guys rock! Grazie mille!

Sadly, it's dark & rainy already or I'd include a photo of the fence - completed! - which Nick helped us finish this morning. Tomorrow the weather will be fine...perfect for his first solo day in the great state of Maine.

Half-private

2009-05-28T06:00:00.001-07:00

We made a lot of progress on the fence-pergola complex that will give us some privacy from the street, stretching from just behind the porch to the hedge. If and when it stops raining, we will finish the other section of fence for the hedge side. It's slow work - our first fence and we're using the antique Shopsmith for most of it - or doing things by hand. Then, a garden shed will fill one of the pergola sections, and the other will remain open. Better get to work on the shed design, soon...

Before: view from street. Anyone walking by can peep at us in the hammock, in the garden, watch Eddy do his business, etc.

After: one side is private, now. Take that, Google Maps street view!

Look up: love that oversized construction. Waiting for more blue sky to finish.

Plagues?

2009-05-22T17:29:00.000-07:00

What are those ten plagues again? Locusts and frogs and boils and slaying of the first born? We've got a couple of 'em going on!

I was out spreading mulch and suddenly something jumped - I grabbed him and ran to the door to call Ken, who is so cool to come see all the stupid, kooky things I find. He took photos of this little peeper.

Plague 1 wasn't so bad - I happen to really dig frogs, and spring peepers rock. Though this one picked a pretty urban spot to hang out in, silly guy. I hope he makes it.

Our neighbors found ants (carpenter ants, grr) in their woodpile, and at 10 pm last night, we were outside with a flashlight smushing ants as they tried to lay a pheromone trail to the house. Today we had a preventative treatment (very green natural stuff they used) and the guy said they didn't infest, so we caught it in time.

Plague 2 averted, fingers crossed.

We should also note that our neighbor pointed out a dug-out hole into our garage (Mr. Squirrel!) which covers the "wild animals" plague, and we definitely were swatting no-see-ums all dar (gnats). Plus Ken swears it was a locust crashing into the bathroom screen last night, not a June bug. So that's five plagues? Eek.

Our next task is the parting of the Green Lawn. We started on the fence-pergola combo that will give us some privacy and help define our outdoor rooms, in designer-y lingo. We laid out all the cedar today (we got it all last year in a lot with the deck wood), remembered the design, labeled everything, and got set to start pouring footings tomorrow.

We're hoping to get a bunch of it done over the long weekend. Hopefully without much blood, pestilence, or hail.

Spring fever

2009-05-18T16:17:00.000-07:00

We're gearing up for bigger summer projects, but for now, we've been catching up on sleep, catching up with the family, and hanging out with Eddy (who's hanging in there despite some chronic issues).

Luckily, he's a great lawnmower.

Otherwise, just a bunch of weeding and mulching to report. We did get a delivery of quikrete today (paid the extra buck to have it delivered by the local guys rather than wrecking our new alignment & making several big box trips) - so we'll be starting on the fence SOON. This week? The landscaping books are strewn all over the dining room table, so something's definitely happening soon...

Getting all Roy about it

2009-05-09T08:25:00.000-07:00

I found a pair of old oak folding chairs for a good price, and they needed just a little work. They're really small, so I grabbed them thinking they would be good for the re-finished desk. You know, so I wouldn't become an A-hole smacking my chair into the Kneehole and doing it more damage. The chairs are tapered in front and fit beautifully.

Neither needed refinishing (thank goodness), just a quick polish with beeswax. One needed a new rung - simple enough. So I bought an oak dowel (the guy at the hardware store had no clue what the dowels were made of, so I poked through the racks till I recognized the grain). I picked out the remnants of the old dowel, and cut the new one to length. Now, I just needed to make the ends into tenons by removing some material.

Despite the fact that we have two perfectly-functional wood lathes, I decided to go all Roy Underhill on it, rather than use power tools. You know Roy, right? The guy on PBS who makes everything - EVERYTHING - by hand? Who has the world's sharpest tools and the world's greatest patience? I figured it would be quick to just make a shoulder by running the chisel around, then cut out extra material, then rasp & sand to finish it up. Yeah, right. An hour later, I had two mortises - they worked out just fine but it's always amazing how long it takes to do things the old-fashioned way. [CAB - thanks for the bowl - it's in the background. It's great in the dining room!]

It made me think of this article, which I saw earlier in the week, about how renewing old homes is a green practice. After a Roy experience, you also realize just how much went into every single little bit of a house, a piece of furniture, any little old thing. Does that realization also make you less likely to throw things away or discard old, broken stuff? I wonder...

Vote for Pedro!

2009-05-06T06:02:00.000-07:00

We entered the Rejuvenation Make Your Home Your Own contest. The prize? $1000 gift certificate. Oooh, Harmon Mailbox, could we be so decadent? Or we could get cabinet hardware forever with that kind of cash. Not to mention the lighting...yummy.

Anyways, all the entries are great - but we encourage you, our readers, to go vote for the underdog. You know, the people with no budget, no contractors, no professional, staged photographs (I mean, who has time for that? Note that there's crumpled up packing material in our dining room photo - oops!), and the little, neglected house-that-could.

If you want, we'll even do the Napoleon-Jamiroquai dance (we're not posting video, you'll just have to use your imagination). Or, we can make you little gimp keychains. No, just kidding, none of that. Just vote! Here's the link to our entry: http://www.rejuvenation.com/advice_ideas/contest/entrant.html?id=83

Paper Ceilings

2009-05-04T09:54:00.001-07:00

Ken got this email from a co-worker. It helps explain why we had (past tense!!!) all the paper ceilings in the house:

Are you, by chance, one of the people renovating the Bangor Bungalow?

If so, if you didn’t know, here’s the scoop on paper ceilings: when Dow AFB [Air Force Base] was active, the vibration from the flight activity cracked plaster ceilings and chimneys. I live on [nearby street name deleted] where most of the houses were built in the 50s, and you’ll see that most houses over there have central, and fairly squat, chimneys. And we ALL have paper ceilings. Now that the AFB is an ANG [Air National Guard] base, and BGR has just a handful of commercial flights a day, it’s probably not as big an issue.

BGR is our local international airport, perhaps most famous now as being the one where they take unruly passengers just before crossing the pond - we're the easternmost airport with a really big runway, so if you misbehave like these folks, or these, or these, you'll end up down the street in our jail.