We're Back in the 21st Century!

Since the end of July, we've had no power in the back half of our house. It's felt like a lot longer than that. For about a month we didn't use our downstairs bathroom, until R decided to run an extension cord to a lamp that's sitting on a pile of boxes. We had to use flashlights to get up the backstairs at night. There's a long exterior-use extension cord running from the Guest Bedroom through my Office and into the Twilight Room to power either R's computer or the air conditioner. Vacuuming was not easy. You had to duck walking down the stairs (well, duck even more than you had to before) so you wouldn't hit your head on the wires coming out of the ceiling (don't worry.. it's not like they were live or anything). Summer '11 was a crazy one for us and if we were home for an entire weekend, R's time was taken up by things that were a little bit more pressing, such as cutting the grass (pretty much an all day job) or building the coop or preparing and then cleaning up after the hurricane.

But... we have a goal now. R's birthday is smack dab in the middle of October and we always have a family party (his family lives in a different state and we try to do as many things as we can down here so both families can be together because as uncharacteristic as this is, they actually like each other). My mom brought up a good point when I mentioned the party to her. "You can't have everyone (mostly extended family, aunts, uncles, cousins) over here with it looking exactly the same way it did in January for your birthday party!" *sigh* Once again, mom's right. While it's not like we've sat around doing nothing for the past 8 months, the things we've done wouldn't really be noticeable to "normal" people. "Oh, you added another coat of paint in here? Looks the same to me!" "You updated this outlet? Woww....." "Is that a new chimney cap I see? Impressive!" "A garden? A chicken coop? Is that all you've done this year?" (Sense the sarcasm?) The main thing people will notice is that the Kitchen basically looks exactly the same. Yeah, I've unpacked more boxes, organized the cabinets, painted the fireplace, did patching/etc on the walls. But the overall picture is exactly the same. I can't have that!! So the point of this story is... by the end of October, that Kitchen needs to be done. Done as in floor: installed. Walls: painted. Trim: installed and painted. Fireplace: painted and decorated. New light fixtures: installed. With that huge room done it'll make a huge difference! Plus it'll be a nice room to sit in and eat/talk with our relatives, as opposed to a half finished, dirty room.

The old light switch at the bottom of the stairs. It was only 34 cents! Look at that scary wiring!

The first step was to get all of the drywall up, taped and sanded. However, a couple months ago R took down some of the drywall under the window (while I was crying "now we're going backwards! :'( ). He had good reason. When I was in the Kitchen cooking, every once in awhile I'd hear crackling sounds. We traced the sounds back to the outlets under the windows. This scared the pyrophobiac (is this a word?) in me. R immediately turned off that breaker and a month later took down the drywall and tried to fix it. Long story short, he wasn't able to easily fix it. And then the Crazy Summer happened and it got put off until this weekend. I asked him to put up the drywall around the posts near the windows and he said that he would do that when he put the drywall back under the windows. So he fixed the outlets first. He had thoroughly researched it and knew exactly what to do this time. Piece of cake. Finished in about 2 hours. Then he was on an electrical roll. He moved on to the hall light (the point of this post. Finally). This wasn't as easy...
I'll admit, I wasn't there while he was fixing it, so I'm not 100% sure of exactly what he did or in what order. (Pyrophobia, remember?) All I know is that apparently what is in our walls is a mess. He cleaned it up where he could, adding new wire where he could. I flipped breakers when he told me to. He had blown-in insulation fall all over him when the plaster ceiling broke a little while he was drilling through it. He installed two (well, three really because he replaced the one in our bedroom while he was up there) new light switches and two new temporary light fixtures. This hall/staircase isn't at the top of our to-do list, it's maybe 4th after the Kitchen. But it will be re-done in the near future. And when that time comes, new nicer light fixtures will be installed. For now, it's just nice to finally have light fixtures in the steep, scary staircase we the most. And it's a little easier to sleep at night knowing that the wiring is a little safer. Someday... in the far future... we'll replace all of the wiring. But that's a huge job that we couldn't do ourselves, which means it'll have to wait :)

Floor: On It's Way!

Looking back at my posts so far this month, it feels really good to have a post where I actually can say I did something! We made progress!!

We ordered our Kitchen floor this morning!!!! YAY!! It should be here in about a week. We'll be busy with work-work next weekend, so we'll be losing a house-working weekend. So R will be tackling the plywood removal the following weekend (while I finish up the Living Room!!). Hopefully he'll get most of it done that weekend because the following weekend I'll be antsy to start putting some flooring down! I'm getting excited just  typing this!! And the thing I'm most excited for? A floor means that I finally get to install my dishwasher!!! (Ah, the joys of homeownership/married life...)

Sidewalk Progress

The sidewalk project is becoming the Office project of 2010. It just never seems to end!

My dad came over yesterday after work to help me dig out some more of the sidewalk. We got to the garage and the turned the corner between the lean-to and garage. That's where we literally hit a snag. A HUGE rock, which might be partly acting as a primitive footing for the lean-to, was in our way. The distance between the two buildings is only 3' so I already had to make my sidewalk narrower in this area. Now I have a huge rock sticking out about 6" into that. The lean-to is going to be our main project next summer (if it makes it through the winter!) and I was already planning on pushing it away from the garage another 2 feet or so. Plus we'll be pouring a concrete foundation, so the rocks will be gone. So I decided to just work around the large rock for now, save the bricks that will go there and install them next summer after the lean-to is re-built. I found a LOT of broken china by that rock though.. so I can't wait to see what we find next summer when we excavate for the frost walls!

After my dad left, I decided to work on the sidewalk until R came home from work. That way I'd have more time today to devote to the Kitchen. I got pretty far in that hour and a half! Between that and a couple hours this morning I made it around the corner!! I'm running really low on bricks though. I ended up making the sidewalk about 8" wider than I had originally planned, so we'll have to make another trip to Lowe's for more bricks soon. I'll get pretty close to the end though. I also put sand between the joints almost to where I ended, so we could walk on the sidewalk for most of the way to the garage (it's at a point now where it would be almost impossible to not step on it). I've gotten so many compliments on it so far!! The chimney guys... three neighbors! Everyone thinks it looks great and is shocked when they hear I did it myself!

I Changed My Mind... Again!

First I was indecisive with the sidewalk, now it has moved on to the Kitchen floor. In July we finally made a decision on the floor. As I've said before, we were having a hard time for two main reasons. All of the other rooms in the house have original, 18-24" wide wood floors. The Kitchen touches two rooms so we needed a new floor that didn't look too new, wasn't too narrow, and wasn't too expensive. Also adding to this was the fact that the floor was raised up so much from the adjacent rooms, so "real" hardwood (which we'd be able to get really wide) wouldn't work. It was too thick.

The main problem here is the current floor situation. We have the existing sub-floor (which unfortunately isn't in good shape, so we can't re-use it) and then 3/4" plywood (with a couple layers of laminate on top). We went back and forth trying to figure out what to do. I contacted a contractor I work with to see how much it would cost to have his guys remove our plywood floor, then remove the original floor, then put the plywood back where the original floor was. Then when we put down the new floor, it would be level with where the old plywood used to be. In the end, it ended up being too expensive. And R and my dad felt like it was a job that was way over our heads, so doing it ourselves was out.

Last weekend we had a very long conversation about this. R agreed to tear up the existing plywood and replace it (this would get rid of all the uneven laminate, plus the asbestos adhesive underneath it). This got my brain working.. What we're planning on doing now is removing the old plywood and then putting down 1/4" plywood in it's place. That plus the 3/8" new flooring and the pad will make the top of the new floor level with the old plywood. Everyone wins!

So last Sunday we set out to finally order the floor! I wasn't positive on the lead time (the sample board said it was "Special Order") or price. Let me tell you... don't ever go to a Home Depot on a Sunday night. You won't find anyone to help you! No one could answer my questions, and I kept getting bounced around between departments. Finally, someone in Appliances told me the lead time is about 2 weeks, but wasn't sure on the price. R was poking around the flooring department and found it on their sample boards (we were in a different HD than the one I got my sample board). And the price/sq.ft. was almost twice as much as we remember it being when we got the sample 2 months ago. Ick. My dad is paying for a majority of the floor, as a housewarming gift, and thought that this was too much. He asked if I could shop around and try to find it somewhere else for a better price. I emailed 5 places that carried that brand and only heard back from one. Dalene Flooring in Southington. Turns out it's a HD exclusive line (ugh), but the rep said that if I brought in the sample we could find something similar.

So yesterday afternoon I went to Dalene to check out their options. I left with 4 sample boards. As soon as I brought them in the house, I narrowed it down. I didn't even look at 3 of them. As soon as I brought one in (ironically, the last one I looked at in the store... I saw it as we were leaving), I knew this was it. I carried it around the Kitchen... putting it in the corner by the cabinets...

then by the fireplace...

and lastly, by the Dining Room...

I love it! It looked really good next to everything, but it doesn't look like we're trying to match. And it doesn't have a super shiny, nice finish like most wood floors (crazy people and their wanting nice, pretty floors!) so it doesn't seem out of place. It also helps that the wood in the Dining Room is narrower than the rest of the house..

Rustic River Hardwood Flooring
5" wide, 3/8" thick hickory

Me and My Indecisive Brain..

Is it that I'm indecisive, or am I a perfectionist? Either way, I ripped up everything I did last Monday. The whole sidewalk.

Let's start this at the beginning. This morning I went outside to work on the sidewalk. I gathered my bricks and tools and got to work. As I was working, I realized that if I pushed the bricks up closer to each other, the joints were smaller and looked better. Long story short, when the bricks were more level, the joints were smaller. So I ran inside and got the level. Now that I was able to make them 100% level, I realized that my bricks from Labor Day were slightly off. So after doing about 4' of new brick, I went back and started working backwards, leveling the sidewalk. This actually worked out well because I had run out of weed paper and was too lazy to go to Lowe's and I didn't want to put down any more brick without weed paper underneath.

Anyways.... by the time I got back to the beginning, I was off by more than a brick height. The level bricks were about 3" higher than the original ones. I was disgusted with myself! Staring down at it, my dad and I realized what I had done. Last weekend, my main concern was keeping the first row of bricks level with the bottom stone step. From there, I was trying to keep the last row of bricks level with the grass. And the result was a sloping sidewalk. So I sat there and thought about it... A level sidewalk won. I could always build up the grass along the sidewalk and slope it down to the existing grass level. The yard slopes down in that direction anyways, so it wouldn't look weird.

This picture shows just how un-level I was!

Once I was done, I realized that it being level made it look a million times better! It looked more professional. In fact, I commented to R that it looked too nice for our house :) Especially next to the lean-to, which would probably collapse if you breathed near it. (Can you say Project: Summer 2012?)

Hangs Head in Shame...

This post embarrasses me even before I write it.. I'm so ashamed... I should have my house taken away from me.. bad bad renovator...

Remember this post? It's from Memorial Day. We went to Lowe's and bought bricks for our back sidewalk because they were on sale. Also because I was sick of walking in wet grass every time it rained. I don't like wet shoes.

Remember this post? Also from Memorial Day weekend? I dug up the asphalt in our backyard in preparation for the new sidewalk.

Well.. here we are. Labor Day weekend. An entire season (and 3 months) have gone by with not one bit of work happening. So so incredibly pathetic! I complain and complain about the bad asphalt sidewalk, then dig it up and would apparently rather walk through mud and grass for three months. So ashamed...

Wanna see what 3 months do to a dug up sidewalk?

I think my blogging rights should  be revoked... You can't even tell where I labored in the heat for 2 full days! It was all a waste! The bricks that I laid on top of the grass (only a month ago) to test out that pattern (I had two other patterns there that also each lasted a month) are covered in grass.

There's a third rock step under there that we had honestly forgotten we even had. That's how long it has been unseen! Here's my excuse (there's always an excuse in situations like this, right??). It was too hot (in the summer. Whaaaat?!? That's craziness!) The area where the sidewalk is in direct sun all day until about 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon. On super hot, humid days, that's when we're close to calling it quits. I'm not going to start a new project then when I've spent all day doing something else! Ok, and there were a bunch of weekend vacations/trips in there too.

One of the other brick pattern options..

A couple weeks ago I made my dad promise me that on Labor Day he was all mine. We were tackling that sidewalk... rain or shine... humidity or nice day. Sunday night we're watching the news and they're forecasting rain all day on Labor Day. No. It's not going to stop me! I told my dad we were still going to do something! I didn't care what, or how much, just as long as we made some sort of progress!

My dad came over early in the morning and we immediately got to work! I cleaned up weeds around the rocks while he dug and pulled all of the grass out of the dirt ditch I had made back in May (which, by the way, turned into a nice muddy river during rain storms..). Then I started leveling the dirt as best I could. My non-existent ADD came to visit for awhile while I was digging. I found a bunch of broken china, some really old nails and a toy monkey (or Baloo from Jungle Book... we can't decide what it is). Plus some garbage. And a million rocks.

While I was waiting for my dad to finish so we could start putting down sand, I stared at the bottom rock step that I had just rediscovered. To the right of the second step was a smaller stone. It's off in the grass and kind of pointless. I realized that if we moved it and put it to the right of the bottom step it would almost even out the steps (the third step is almost half the width of the other two). Turns out it fit perfectly. So perfectly in fact that I'm convinced that it once belonged there. We filled around it with some of the extra red rock from between the other two steps, but we need to buy some more to complete it.

We first put down about a half inch of sand. On top of that went some organic weed paper. Then about another inch or so of sand, to make it level. I decided that I wanted the bricks to be level with the bottom rock step. This means we'll have to raise the grass on the other side of the sidewalk about an inch once we're done.

I didn't get to finish, but I got about 25% of the sidewalk done. Unfortunately, it's going to rain all week so I won't be able to get any work done, but now that it's started, it'll be easy to do a couple rows of brick on a weeknight for an hour or two.

The Old Chimney Cap

Our handy, dandy chimney guy came this morning. On Labor Day. At 8:30 in the morning. Now that's service! (Well, except that a certain husband "forgot" to tell me he was coming and I was in my pajamas reading in the living room and got surprised when a big truck drove in our driveway.)
Jim and his worker went up on the roof to take down our old cap, assess the damage (if we'd need any new brick work) and to take measurements for the new cap. He said that while he was up there he was able to see all the way down into our kitchen. That's cool enough to ALMOST get me and R (the big height scaredy cats that we are) up on the roof! How cool would that be?!?!

We thought that they'd throw the old cap down, but they actually put together this little pulley system and lowered it down in one piece (well, relatively). The top of the cap was blue stone, just like I had guessed. We kept it, even though it's covered in tar and other gunk. Who knows.. maybe we could clean it up and re-use it for the front steps.. The cap showed areas of repair over the years. Someone had gone up there and tried to repair cracks and holes with none other than drywall tape. ............. There's just no words for that.

I just cannot get over how large the cap is... It's insane! I mean, it's obvious how wide our chimney is seeing that it takes up a 1/4 of the interior of our house, but I think I just assumed it got a lot smaller as it went up. It does, but not by much.

We won't have our new cap for a week or so, so hopefully it doesn't rain too much this week, now that we basically have a 5'x5' opening in the top of our house. But once the new one is up there... no more buckets!

Here's the old pieces of blue stone. You can see in this picture how the metal supports have just wasted away. One of the vertical supports was very close to collapsing, so we actually had very good timing.

Hurricane Damage

Two days before Hurricane Irene's arrival, we were directly in the path of the storm (as in, on a map, the eye of the storm was shown directly going over us). Ugh. Luckily, the night before the storm, it got pushed west, so while we'd still get impacted, it wouldn't be as bad as initially thought.

We woke up this morning to a loud noise outside our windows. Turns out the huge tree directly across the street from us fell (luckily, into their yard, not onto our mailbox or the road).

As I was looking out the window at this, R went to all of the other windows. While looking out the Twilight Room back window, he saw this fall on our shed/coop!

Luckily, these two trees were the main problems of the day. We were two of the only people in the state with power. It flickered out for about 2 minutes around 8:30 AM and was fine for the rest of the day. We did lose internet/cable/phone around 3:30 PM, which wasn't cool... internet and cable were all that were keeping us busy! So much for our Game of Thrones marathon..

Around 6:00, we joined all of our neighbors outside to assess the damage. It appeared that our yard was hit the worst. No one had any damage to their houses, and the only trees to come down were across the street from us and in our backyard (we had a couple fall down in the woods, in addition to the one on the shed).

Our next door neighbor had some huge branches fall down and into the road (the town came during the storm and moved them out of the road for her). We cannot figure out how they didn't hit the power lines because they were over the lines, but some how managed to fall under them and into the street..

I lost three tomato plants.. and a couple tomatoes which fell on the ground.

Tomato-killing branch..

Shed killer..

Here, Irene did some good. She was kind enough to knock down most of the dead branches off of the huge trees by the well. We were going to have to have someone come to cut them off (they were up really high), but now all we had to do was drag them into the woods.

While I was walking around taking pictures and picking up sticks and branches, Ryan was trying to figure out how to get the tree off the shed. Our neighbor from across the street was helping out our next door neighbor and saw Ryan and the tree. He offered to help out, and showed up a couple minutes later with his chainsaw, another neighbor and his chainsaw!

They didn't take the tree completely off, but got a lot done. We offered the wood to them and one neighbor offered to turn a bowl out of it for us :)

No Chimney Cap?

Starting this spring, we've had some major fireplace problems, especially in the Kitchen. With the amount of snow we had this winter, it was only expected that we'd have a very wet spring when it all melted. Every time it has rained since then, we've had to put buckets in the kitchen fireplace to catch all of the water (and once, a mouse, but that's another story..).

The water that comes dripping down our massive chimney is not pretty... By the time it makes it to the kitchen, it is covered in 240 years of grime and soot. The water in the buckets is black and nasty. Oh, and doesn't smell so good either. Just what you want in your kitchen while you're trying to eat.. Days after a rainstorm, the kitchen still smells because now all of the bricks are saturated. A couple weeks ago, we've started to notice leakage in all of the other fireplaces as well.. and no, really strong plug-in air fresheners PLUS all the windows open don't completely get rid of the smell, in case you were wondering.

About a month ago R realized that we had a HUGE hole in our chimney cap, and that's why the water has just been rushing into our kitchen's indoor water feature. His guess was that with all of the snow piled up on there this winter, the cap just gave out. Last weekend he was in the attic putting some boxes away and realized that all of the water had washed away some of the mortar in the chimney and we can now see straight through it. We knew that eventually the chimney would have to be rebuilt at least in the attic, but it was something we were hoping could wait until we were ready to finish off the attic.

With the impending Hurricane Irene, R had had enough. He called a local chimney company, A to Z Chimney Sweep, and Jim came out the next day. He said that he had been to our house a couple years ago to look at the cap (great... so it's something that has been in bad shape for a long time.. not a good sign). The previous owner decided not to spend the money to fix it, seeing as he'd be selling the house soon. So, now it's up to us. Jim went up on the roof and took a look around. Turns out that hole in the cap was a lot bigger than I had imagined (I was thinking like 1'x2'). Turns out it's 5'x5'. No wonder we have so much water! I'm surprised we haven't been flooded out of the house! Jim also thought that the fact that we have oil heat aided in the demise of our cap. He said that so many years of oil heat coming up through there have just eaten away at the metal.. then the heavy snow was the last straw and it just collapsed. Because of the size of the chimney, we have to get a new cap custom made. We've decided to go with stainless steel, which comes with a lifetime warranty (will it still be there in another 240 years?), with screens around the sides to keep out birds and other animals. Our bedroom fireplace has evidence of mud nests built by swallows. This takes time though, so it wouldn't be ready before the hurricane, so Jim put up a temporary piece of sheet metal, to get us through the storm.

He tied it on with strapping and it did a great job! It survived the 70+mph winds and 24 hours of heavy rain. It did keep us entertained, flapping around up there, making noises that sounded like thunder (we had neighbors asking us if we heard the strange noises during the storm, which we had to admit was us...). But most importantly, it kept us mainly dry. We did get a couple drips in the kitchen toward the end of the storm, but it definitely performed beyond our expectations!

Operation Tomato: A Success

We did it! We grew tomatoes!! We've been trying for 3 years to grow tomatoes. Granted, 2 of those years were on a deck with tomato plants that were too big for a pot, and last year, when we actually had "deck" tomato plants, we moved them halfway through the summer and they died.

We've also been getting a lot of string beans and cherry tomatoes, both of which don't usually make it into the house very often.... oops :)

Bedroom Closet Before/After

Total Cost:

$0 - Everything we already had... paint, hooks, shelves, hangers, boxes... I like this kind of project :)

Bedroom Closet

Our Master Bedroom has two closets, which is two more than most houses the age of ours. One is original, one was added probably in the 50's. The original one is located between the chimney and stairs and is about 7' deep and 30" wide. Before we even moved in, I told R this would be his closet. The other closet is a more "normal" size, about 30" deep and 6' wide. I hang most of my clothes up, plus need a lot of storage, so that closet became mine. I painted/cleaned my closet in October of last year, because I couldn't stand living out of boxes (I'm one of those people who need to see all their clothes in order to choose one). R, however, was perfectly content with his clothes in boxes. Because he didn't care, cleaning and painting his closet kept moving farther and farther down on my list of things to-do. In July I had finally had enough. We were about to go on vacation and I hate leaving the house messy when we're away (it's one of those things my mom ingrained in my head when I was little... you never want to go away and come home to a messy house). I had finally had enough of the boxes of clothes piled up in our bedroom.

It ended up not being as bad as I originally though. Only 1 dead spider and no huge cracks in the walls that needed repairing. All in all, I finished in two days (and I didn't spend all day working.. basically just the afternoons). The first day I spent cleaning out everything we had accumulated in there (boxes, suitcases, misc. stuff we weren't using and didn't have another place for), patching holes in the walls, and painting some of the trim. The second day I painted the door, ceiling, shelves and walls.

Luckily it was a very dry day, so the paint dried incredibly fast and I was even able to organize all of R's stuff in the closet before he came home!

The closet has 2 shelves in the back (about 24" deep). One these I put some long-term storage, pillows, and some of Ryan's stuff that he rarely uses. Underneath the bottom shelf (which is about 3' off the floor) I put our large suitcase and filled it with all of our dufflebags, backpacks, etc., so now when we're packing to go somewhere everything is in one place. On top of that I put our big, thick winter comforter in it's bag. (That's another thing I'm very excited to have a place for... It's white and light blue, and when it's too hot we've just been kicking it onto the floor. It basically spent the whole summer on the floor which means it got dirty from the floor and from the dog that decided that it was a new big huge bed we bought for her). Along the walls are old hooks which I was originally going to replace, but then decided just to paint them. I hung R's belts and ties on them.

Because the closet is so incredibly deep, there are 2 hanging rods. This would not have worked for me because I need to see all of my clothes. For R though, perfection! On the back rod I hung all of his winter clothes and on the front rod, all of his summer clothes! So now when he's looking for something, they're organized so he's not looking through sweatshirts for a polo shirt, but also if we have a cold early fall day, he still has the option to grab a long sleeved shirt if he wants. It also means that season-changing will be easier because rather than spending a whole day unpacking and packing clothes (like I do for my clothes), all I have to do is switch which rod they're hanging on.

The floor in front is open for laundry baskets and other misc. items like our large bed pillows if we're not using them. And yes, every single item from that first picture (in the closet and surrounding it) is all in here... I fit it all :-D

The Finished Coop

 

We finally finished up the coop this weekend. Well, enough so that the chicks can move in. We still need to build the shelving for the other side of the shed and build the outdoor space. But my patience had run out on having indoor chickens.

The finished interior coop takes up half of the shed. Nugget and Gladys love it! They love being able to run back and forth and fly up (they actually fly up to the top of the wall and sit up there and we have to rescue them..). Their new space is more than 4 times as wide as the playpen. Plus they get to play in the hay, which they love!