Building a Modern Mountain Life

Cabin Cliche

2013-06-17T13:00:00.002-06:00

After this weekend, I think we can say we officially own a cabin. We hung a deer head on the wall. A big white fake deer head! I'm not opposed to real antlers, but was not looking to hang a real deer head on the wall for a few reasons. One, it offends some people (surely the huge population of vegetarians in Colorado). Two, my dogs would probably go beserk over a real animal anything in their midst. Three, we don't have a real deer head laying around anyway. Thankfully the internet is rife with trendy fake deer heads and I jumped on the bandwagon. I did not get one covered in glitter, or with pink or green or purple or gold antlers, though those do exist.

We ordered this guy from eBay a few weeks ago in hopes that it might be hollowed out in the back. There is a cluster of wires over the fireplace in our bedroom that needed to be hidden, and we didn't want to hang a tv there just yet, though that's what the wires are for. I thought maybe this would stick out far enough from the wall to hide the wires, because normal art and paintings that we looked at were too shallow. But when the deer head arrived, it was solid and flat on the back with a very small hole that would only fit the screw we hung it on. We knew, in traditional cabin fashion, that we could hang this thing somewhere else if that didn't work out, so hang it we did.

We have a pair of black rocking chairs that were a wedding gift from my mom, and they have moved around to a few houses both indoors and out. It was Curt's idea to put them in this spot previously occupied by our Christmas tree, which was up from October through May, mostly because I was just happy to have something on that wall. At least I took down the ornaments...in March.

I put sheepskins on them - fake - to go with the fake antlers of course! $20 at IKEA well-spent. Also, the reason I know my dogs go beserk over animal-smelling things is because they chewed up the real sheepskin I brought home last year. Hopefully these smell a lot less interesting to the pups, and will also appease the vegetarians.

Look, it's a real cabin now!

When sitting in these chairs, you look directly out the wall of nine huge windows into the yard and surrounding forest. Curt wanted to put a couch on this wall just for that reason, which I thought was a bad idea. He was right though, that this is the best view in the house. Curt wants to make a stump table to put in the middle of the chairs from the fallen trees we've been repurposing all over the house. I agreed with him that it would look very cool.

As for the cords over our fireplace, we covered those too. $15 at IKEA well-spent.

Ugly wires, but a nice chair we just scored from CL for $175

$15 wall hanging from IKEA that was extra deep for some reason

This view helps visualize how off center we (Curt) hung it

And this view helps visualize that our reclaimed wood scrap mantel we (Curt) hung is also off center and about a half inch longer on the right side. Oh, the details...

Shhh, that is a real sheepskin, with the hole chewed by my dogs slightly hidden

I'd hoped for something a little (or a lot) bigger since the wall is so large, and debated buying three of those wall-hangings from IKEA to fill up the space. We ended up with just one since it's probably a temporary, small (off-center) solution anyway. We really don't need another tv, especially without cable or internet, not to mention that it will have to be a pretty big tv since it's so far from the bed on the opposite wall. But anyway. Two blank walls crossed off the list!

Adventures in VRBO

2013-06-14T12:18:00.001-06:00

We're heading up to Breck tomorrow morning after a few weekends away to tie up some loose ends around the house. I have a huge amount of tile and grout sealing to do, we have some art to hang, some linens to wash, some garage junk to stow away and other little things on the never-ending punch list. Curt is going to have a ditch dug in our driveway so we can re-bury the power line running from our well to our house, since it was previously buried too shallow and was tripped or cut by our snowplower and caused us to unexpectedly lose water last fall.

We're prepping and readying our house for our first VRBO renters who arrive next weekend! Our goal all along was to somehow subsidize this house - our 3rd mortgage - by getting some cash flow going. Getting a return on real estate investments was the best and really only part of the book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" that I liked - but it IS smart. We're a long way from having our assets produce enough income to not only provide our salary, cover our expenses AND be reinvested in future income-generating assets, but we have to start somewhere. Seeing this graphic in the book in the first few years after my college graduation played a big role in my continued attempts to keep very low expenses - especially car and credit card debt - because it was so clear what a financial burden they are compared to what else I could be doing with my money, and how my money could be earning me more money.

While we talked about doing a rental earlier this year, we never really bit the bullet. We weren't quite ready and our house was only listed on CL. We had many, many people contact us right off the bat but it never went anywhere. Plus, we wanted to ski, and ski we did. The timing wasn't right, and the people contacting us via CL got weirder and weirder. Plenty of people made extremely low offers per night, when it's already listed below market. We're not trying to become millionaires with this whole situation, and our ad is quite reasonable. But lowballers weren't the only odd types out there. Consider this email Curt received:

"Great Rental! There's a Guardian Angel for everyone you know. This rental is Heaven on Earth. Best Regards, XXXXX"

So, immediately thereafter, we pulled our ad off CL and paid $350 for our first year on www.vrbo.com. The inquiries came in fast and furious starting the very first day, and they were much more legit compared to CL, but it took a month or so for someone to actually pay a deposit and secure their dates (we had a guy change his mind on renting our place because we did not have enough furniture or art on the walls, the nerve! I was amused). But not only did the bookings finally happen, they've been happening more and more and we have 6 or 7 or 8 people lined up this summer. I'm not keeping track but luckily the VRBO site has a calendar and Curt's been handling all of it so far, because he's not busy enough as it is (thanks Curt!). We've had to turn down plenty of other requests due to conflicts with my own summer plans and events in the mountains, as well as quite a few people who were looking for a full month or full summer season rental. We know neighbors who rent their places every weekend, and though that probably earns them a pretty penny, I still want to enjoy our first real summer in the house we slaved away on the last two summers. So we have turned people down...as hard as that is for Curt and his pocketbook to do!

One part of the rental experience is having a cleaning lady lined up. We have used one person a couple of times recently as sort of a trial run, and she has been great. Other owners in our neighborhood have lots of referrals for housekeepers because everyone needs that service when renting their houses out. What will be interesting is how everything works out on the few dates we have that bump up against each other - meaning one party is checking out on the same day as someone else is checking in. I think we only have two of those scheduled at the moment, so hopefully it works out! Curt reminded me that we need to have a back-up house cleaner also. Probably a good idea, not that either of us have even met the lady we're using currently! People are very trusting in the mountains and we're trying to adapt. Throwing our house into this rental whirlwind has upfront costs of its own.

Hopefully we survive next weekend and there are no disasters. Our pantry and wine room both lock, as well as the closet in our master bedroom. We have an extra, empty walk-in closet in the master (this was the sauna in the architectural plans that we never built) with a big clothing rack for guests. The door at the bottom of the stairs to the basement also locks, as that area is currently mostly unfinished. We've stocked up on copious amounts of linens, pillows, towels and more kitchen gear than any size group could ever need. I've taken up almost all of our books, games, DVDs and other entertainment from Denver to Breck. We have a list of House Guidelines and Instructions. I'm sure we haven't thought of everything yet, but it will be a learning experience for sure. Everything about this house has been a learning experience, and clearly we are not done yet :)

Moved In

2013-06-04T09:24:00.001-06:00

After a few unpredictable days, we're all moved in to our new house. It didn't actually happen until Saturday evening due to a combination of our close-call closings on Friday and mover issues. The closing on our townhouse sale seemed like it would never happen, the date and time changed so often. From the very beginning, we were supposed to close last Tuesday, then Wednesday, then Friday at 8am, then noon... It was finally rescheduled to Friday at 2pm. During that closing, it was mentioned to us that our wire with the proceeds from the sale might not make it to our next closing on our purchase, and we were planning to use those funds toward our downpayment. Slight panic attack. Luckily, by the time we made it to our second closing at 4pm, our wire had made it and we closed without issue. In fact in only took about 20 minutes total since everyone was in a hurry at the end of the day on a Friday on the last day of the month. Also, as Curt likes to say, this was not our first rodeo.

Curt wrangling an entirely different real estate deal at our closing

But our plans to move Friday afternoon didn't happen, due to our late closings and also because movers did not show up at our new house so the previous owners had not moved out yet. We rescheduled our movers to 2pm Saturday but when Curt called again to confirm, they said they now couldn't come until 6pm. Then on Saturday afternoon when he called again out of nervousness over their dependability, the movers said they couldn't find a truck. Well, neither could we, that was why we hired movers in the first place. The end and beginning of each month is always packed with people moving, not to mention schools had just let out for the summer. Curt scrambled to borrow a truck from a friend and rent an extra trailer so at least we had two trailers when the movers did show up at 6pm. And the movers were TERRIBLE. They were obviously inexperienced and brought no equipment, and were already tired from probably a full day of moving other people. And one was a woman, which I can now fairly say after the fact is not something I will pursue for future movers. With only a few days notice though, they were the best or basically only option we had.

After taking over an hour to load both small trailers, and with them dropping and denting a file cabinet and pushing dirty boxes on the floor instead of carrying them, and then breaking off a doorknob, denting a wall and scuffing our leather couch at our new house, Curt decided to just have them put everything we owned into our new garage rather than putting things in the house or going upstairs and doing more damage. I was nervous about about them moving our clothes washer and dryer and stove down the stairs at our townhouse and into our new house (we included those appliances in our contract), so we left those there and by some miracle, Curt managed to find different movers who met us Sunday morning to tackle those, along with moving everything else in our new house inside from the garage. It took another four hours for them to wrap that up, so combined with the four hours from the night before, it was a lot of moving. And here I thought we had been downsizing...

Unpacking madness!

On the bright side, on Saturday night, since the first load the movers moved happened to be all boxes and no furniture, I was able to spend the whole evening unpacking and I unpacked about 90% of the boxes that first night. We got a bunch more unboxed the next morning and all of the sudden by Sunday afternoon, our furniture was in place, closets unpacked, kitchen stuff put away, pantry and fridge refilled with food, and we were pretty well set up. There are only a few unpacked boxes of kitchen and office stuff to deal with. We even filled up another couple of bags for Goodwill donation. Sunday night, we watched a movie in our decently set up living room, and Monday morning we woke up to get ready for work in a very non-chaotic house, which had not been the case for many weeks. It was great.

The funny thing is, as crazy and stressful and annoying and messy as this move was, and all moves are, my thoughts were not of the "I will never do this again, what were we thinking, I am going to kill my husband, I hate all of my belongings, why do we move all the damn time??" variety. At least, they were not ALL of that variety ;) They were more along the lines of "next time I'd do this part differently, if we had done X then Y would have been easier, etc." I love new houses and reorganizing and purging and the opportunity to change up routines and get a new start and a fresh look at all of the crap we own. It was good to rid ourselves of some of it before we moved, and some more of it afterward. And whenever I'm in a new house, I'm less tempted to fill it with more stuff - at least in the beginning. Hopefully writing it down will make it more true in the future, ha ha.

Goodbye Townhouse!

2013-05-30T20:18:00.003-06:00

Today is our last day and night at our townhouse. Our moving/closing day has changed multiple times in the last week, mostly due to a ridiculous number of errors on our appraisal. It's a small miracle that it's even happening tomorrow at all, much less that we are going to be able to close on both places and move from one to the other on the same day. Curt has worked his ass off to make that happen and it's a relief tomorrow is finally THE day. We're extremely lucky that the people we're buying from don't also have a deal in the works on a house for themselves, or we would have been in a real mess. Luckily they've been patient and that side of the deal has been smooth. I'm looking forward to a break from talking about banks, inspections and appraisals for at least a few months.

We started packing a few weeks ago and are ready to hightail it outta here. We spent Memorial Day weekend in the mountains and it was nice to get away from the piles of boxes. It's never enjoyable living in limbo for weeks at a time, but we have lived in much worse over the last two years so it didn't seem nearly as stressful as it has been in the past. We have heat, water, a fridge, real beds - life is good!

We did a few things to improve our townhouse, and there were also some things I wanted to do but never got around to. What we did:

- painted the office, dining area, hallway and master bathroom
- installed hardware on the kitchen cabinets
- updated most of the lighting
- replaced the appliances with stainless
- replaced the carpet with pergo and added quarter round to the baseboard trim
- added drawers in both bathroom cabinets
- added storage shelves and rods in both bedroom closets, laundry room and water heater closet
- repaired the AC unit and sink disposal
- replaced the wooden brackets under our bar with steel
- filled the back wall of our garage with floor-to-ceiling shelving

The only thing I really wanted that we did not do was to fix up the kitchen (install new counters, a sink, faucet and backsplash). I survived.

Things I loved about our townhouse:

- my bus stop was less than two blocks away
- I could walk across the street to the grocery store
- my yoga studio was exactly one mile away
- our favorite brunch spot was next door to my yoga studio
- a farmer's market was held on Wednesday evenings outside my yoga studio during the summer
- our closest friends lived one mile away from us until recently, which made for fun cruising on the rare times in the last two years when we all had time to get on our bike at the same time
- Sloan's Lake park was across the street and made for a perfect 5k walk or jog with the ups
- $5 burger night at The Cooler on Mondays!

Thankfully, since we are only moving one mile around Sloan's Lake, most of those things will still be close to us.

There are also some things I won't miss:

- smelling McDonald's hashbrowns every morning and french fries (or worse, the fish sandwich) every evening while walking to and from my bus stop
- bums asking for money on the street corner while walking to and from my bus stop (or bums getting into fights, which luckily only happened twice that I saw)
- helicopters circling overhead many nights (I missed the police banging down the door last fall because I was out of town, but needless to say our neighborhood was not perfect)
- the trailer park almost directly behind us
- our downstairs neighbor's tv on Saturday and Sunday mornings starting at around 6am (luckily we were not in town most weekends to hear this)
- the dog owners in our complex who never picked up after their pets
- our stairs and deck being covered in ice melt/salt after a heavy snow, which got tracked everywhere, mucked up our floors and irritated our dogs' paws
- visitor parking, or lack thereof, or just parking spots in general
- walking up and down the stairs every time our dogs needed to go outside
- hearing the street sweeper clean the parking lot at the grocery store across the street every night at 10:30pm (I heard this the very first night we moved in and wondered if we had made a terrible mistake)
- recently I've even been able to hear the beeps from the gas station across the street as people fill their tanks, arghh
- the smokers who leave their cigarette butts all over the sidewalks for the dogs to find

We've lived here for two years and almost one full month on the dot. I've already gotten my dogs their new tags so we're officially ready to move.

Moms!

2013-05-12T07:24:00.001-06:00

I'm lucky to have a bunch of fabulous and inspiring moms in my life and I'm sure missing them and thinking of them all today! Not sure what I would do without these women. They spoil me in spades.

The Next?

2013-05-10T13:46:00.000-06:00

Tuesday, we went under contract on another house we are trying to buy. As Curt always tells me, that is only step 1 of 4 (mutual acceptance, inspection, appraisal, closing) in the house-buying process, and no cause for early excitement, and I should know because we have lost houses at each of those steps. It has been an interesting few months with the ups and downs of looking at houses, making offers, not making offers in time and losing offers for various reasons. Though we started hunting 2-3 months ago, with what seemed like plenty of time before our now-looming condo closing, last week we had to start looking into apartments and short-term rentals since we were going to be moving out and homeless (at least in Denver) in less than a month.

Then we saw a cute house on Monday evening. It was not a bungalow, victorian, ranch, farm house or otherwise in any state a fixer upper like everything else we'd been looking for. It's a lot more like the house we still own in Washington, though it doesn't share any walls and it's about twice the size. It doesn't have a big yard nor the space for the chicken coop I'd been dreaming about building. It is however in a great neighborhood with high asking prices and a new mixed use development almost underway nearby, not to mention directly across the lake we currently live next to, just a mile around it on the other side. We'd both be a little bit closer to work and I would even stay on my same bus route. So we put in an offer and negotiated until it was accepted. The house already had a full price offer on the table but luckily for us, those people had another house they wanted too so they backed off this one. For anyone who knows Curt, you know it would kill him to pay full price, so we were lucky to shave even a little bit off list price - it's hard to do in this market.

While this house is newer and not a fixer-upper, it still has an unfinished basement to play around with as well as a kitchen and bathroom that need updates. Well, need is a relative term. We would change them because we can and enjoy doing it and to personalize the house. But that's about it. Am I sad to have no garden? Yes, but I will keep up the containers I've used the last two summers. Am I upset to have no yard maintenance? No, we are gone most weekends anyway and I'd be content to enjoy the limited time we spend in Denver doing what we want. I have been torn on the big yard versus small yard thing for the last few months. I was completely won over by the big yard (10,000+ sq ft) on the brick ranch we lost. I envisioned a chicken coop, garden beds, firepit, happy pups...and when we lost that house I wondered if my search parameters were wrong because I had originally wanted to be closer to downtown not farther away (where the bigger yards are). I wanted us both to spend less time commuting and more time closer to the things we do in the city, since we now spend a lot of our time in the mountains.

So it took awhile, but now I can admit that location trumps yard and I'd rather be near everything I want to do than attempt to raise chickens and be farther away from our jobs and our friends, who we already don't see enough of. The house we recently lost was only two miles further into the burbs than where we currently live, but it was not really that ideal of a location, the neighborhood was not that appealing and it was not bikeable at all. In reality, our dogs have never been good yard dogs even when we had a small yard in our previous house. They are the type to dig holes, destroy grass, attempt to escape, eat twigs and leaves and bugs, chase birds, maul my garden plants and generally be a pain in the ass if left unmonitored for more than 30 seconds. Plus, they ARE bird dogs, so I don't know how good of an idea the chickens really were in the first place...I just like eggs. They get the big yard benefits on the weekends in the mountains anyway.

Is this a long-winded way for me to come to terms with this unexpected house purchase we're in the midst of? Kind of. My first thought after seeing this house, even though I liked it and I knew Curt really liked it, was of defeat. And maybe even a little bit of guilt for taking the easier route. As if, because we just built a house, I have to make excuses to myself about not embarking on another difficult, stressful, lengthy and expensive challenge. I didn't think we'd be moving into a 17-yr-old house with current paint colors and stainless steel appliances in an HOA-maintained neighborhood where someone else cuts the grass in the front yard and trims the plants. It has been frustrating being unable to buy the houses we have wanted over the last few months, which was exactly what happened two years ago, and led to us living in a townhouse. In retrospect, that worked out perfectly and allowed us all the time and money we had to spend in Breck. Maybe it was overly ambitious to try to dive into another big house project so soon after finishing our mountain house. We didn't think so, or at least we did not admit that to each other, but the banks called the shots on that and here we are. I do know that when we're ready to buy another house after this one (the two-year timer is about to start ticking again), we will have probably sold at least one or both of our other houses so we have some real cash to work with, and can buy exactly what we want when we want. That's flexibility we don't have right now, but has been a goal and hopefully a benefit of the work we put into our mountain house. Flexibility!

So I'm going to attempt to go with the flow and be relaxed and try to enjoy the bright side of this whole roller-coaster journey, which first of all is a real summer for the first time in two years! No huge projects. No working all day every weekend day. Sleeping in, seeing our friends, riding our bikes, camping, going to concerts/parks/breweries/farmer's markets. Living in a decently cute and comfortable house not even a mile from our nearest and dearest Denver friends that won't fall apart if we don't immediately attend to its issues. I want Curt to take a break (not his strong suit). And just BE, as my friend Cara says.

Of course, that is unless this deal goes haywire, ha ha. Hopefully within a week, we will 100% know for sure that we will be getting the keys to this house. You just never know, but I am not one to pretend I'm not excited even if I'm not supposed to be quite yet. And that's why I'm posting pictures, again, on aother house that is not completely a sure thing. Sue me! :)

Not exactly the brick bungalow we had been searching for!

Living room on the front of the house

Open living/dining/kitchen off the front door

Two sided gas fireplace - needs new tile and that weird mantel removed

Kitchen - ready for a remodel

Sliding door to backyard deck

Loft/office area at the top of the stairs

Master bedroom big enough for our king bed, nightstands and two dressers

Three closets - two full size and one walk-in (mine, duh!)

Spare room (don't get excited by the CURRENT owner's cribs)

Powder room on main floor

Unfinished basement where we'd add a bedroom, bathroom and family room

Back patio

Tiny yard, but no grass to maintain (or for my dogs to eat and then barf up on my carpet, let's be honest)

Laundry closet

On To The Next Next!

2013-04-18T14:36:00.000-06:00

Our bank-owned buying dreams crashed to a halt Monday morning when our bank would not lend on the home we were trying to buy. They requested that multiple items from our way overblown inspection report be resolved before closing on our loan. But bank-owned properties are sold as is and the seller is not obligated to make any repairs, so there went that. Even if we had not done an inspection, some of these items would have been brought to the bank's attention during the appraisal, so we were facing an uphill battle. It was disappointing - especially because I loved the style of the house, the huuuuuuge yard and the inexpensive and easy (to us) repairs - but it was still fun to brainstorm all of the ideas we had for the house so it was not a total waste.

On the bright side, we both knew the odds were not hugely in our favor so it wasn't a shock and at least we only waited two weeks on this house - not four months like the last time this happened. On the even brighter side, they thankfully did not tell us this news last Friday afternoon and waited until Monday, which means we enjoyed a ridiculously awesome weekend snowboarding in a foot of fresh powder and listening to free concerts with our friends, with no inkling of the bad news coming. Well, maybe a small inkling. Nonetheless, I woke up Tuesday morning completely over it and eager to see what else is out there.

We're back on our hunt all over town. This hilarious map made the rounds a few months ago. We're currently over by Casa Bonita and the house we were trying to buy was slightly to the west of Tiny Chinatown (pretty sweet, I thought) and Little Mexico (we love our taco shops). I'm really hoping to end up in the vicinity of Cruiser Bikes or Ravers while Curt is shooting for Mustaches, Flannel and PBR (no surprise). The Most Dangerous Place in Denver is also high on my neighborhood list. We looked at at house there the other day that had about 15 couples our age pass through in less than an hour. Dangerous is in!

On To The Next!

2013-04-12T10:48:00.001-06:00

We are in the middle of the fun adventure of trying to purchase a bank-owned home. Two weeks ago, we put an offer on a Fannie Mae HomePath property. HomePath typically favors owner-occupants and discourages investors, which was good news for us since investors are snatching everything else up with full price cash offers. This house had been on the market for 70 days already. They responded to our offer later that day, saying they had received multiple offers and that we needed to submit our highest and best. Hmm. After over three months? Funny, the same thing happened when we tried to buy our Breck house. Multiple offers on a bank-owned home after over three years on the market? What are the odds? Apparently for us, pretty damn good.

Still, since the house was such a great bargain and had recently dropped their already depressed price by $40k, we raised our offer and then waited anxiously...definitely me more than Curt. We didn't hear a peep back until the following Wednesday, after I had already lost a few nights of sleep, when they countered. Even though we accepted their counter and reached mutual acceptance last Wednesday, we did not get our signed contract until over a week later. It has been a slow process and completely unlike everything else that is happening in the ridiculously fast-moving and competitive real estate market in Denver. However, this was a faster process than the last house we tried to buy two years ago. Short sales are much more complicated than regular foreclosures, so at least this time around, we didn't have to wait multiple months to have our offer accepted in the first place.

Last Friday, we had our inspection and it mostly turned up issues Curt had already identified before we placed our offer. We need to replace the water heater and the furnace. Actually, there are two furnaces due to a previous expansion/remodel, and we will probably replace one and re-duct to combine both systems. Those were the two most expensive items. In comparison to the other houses we've looked at, this house actually needs very little renovation and repair. We would clean up the three bathrooms, tear out carpet and replace with hardwoods and tile, update lighting, paint, refinish doors, replace windows, remove the swamp cooler and install AC along with the new furnace - all minor things. No rooms need to be entirely reworked or walls moved. The original (and gorgeous) wood kitchen cabinets can stay. The electrical and plumbing systems are mostly in decent shape as is the roof. The exterior brick looks perfect. All in all, it was a much cheaper house than we had been looking at, with far fewer changes needed. A win win!

But, just like the house we tried to buy two years ago and lost, the bank giving us our loan has to sign off on us purchasing the house while knowing the extent of the repairs needed. Thankfully we don't have the structural issues like we did on the last house, which is why we lost it after four months and two banks with two different types of loans. Our inspector didn't do us any favors though, and way overstated needed repairs in his report compared to what he told me in person. Boo. I'm optimistic, but could use some fingers crossed! :)

A 1954 brick ranch - my midcentury modern dream

DIWine Storage

2013-04-01T10:24:00.000-06:00

Long before we had a closet, mudroom or wine room ready in our house - but definitely back when I was dreaming of alcohol during the dark days of our ice cold, manual labor-filled months - I saw the two pictures below on Pinterest. The first is a wine rack made out of terracotta pipes from This Old House. The second is PVC plumbing cut and arranged in a honeycomb shape for shoe storage. I thought one or both ideas would be cool to use in our mudroom for things like goggles, hats, gloves, scarves, turtle furs and other ski gear that can be annoying to dig through a basket for. After I showed the photos to Curt, he had the idea to turn our scrap PVC pipes into a wine rack of sorts in our wine room.

Many, many months went by before Curt finally had some free time and got tired of the pile of PVC pipes taking up space in our basement. They had been moved from one room to another multiple times and were now laying in the garage. Curt used a saw to cut them all down to pieces about 10 inches long. There were different widths of pipe, and unfortunately when he brought his first cut piece upstairs to test it on a bottle of wine, the pipe was too narrow for the bottle. He also decided to test it using an open bottle, not the many sealed bottles sitting right to the open bottle, and spilled the red wine...oh Curt.

So, as you can see in the photos below, there are about four different thicknesses and four different colors of pipe. He cut and I carried upstairs and started randomly building my rows. We both liked the idea of the varying sizes, even knowing that they can't all fit a bottle of wine. Only the two largest sizes can hold normal sized bottles, but I did manage to fit a skinny bottle of fruit wine (port would work too) into one of the narrower pieces.

I didn't use much of the wall, not even half, and I'm wondering if we should add more pipe to go taller? Or build a shelf over the top? Hang wine glass racks over it? Decide on some sort of organizing or labeling system so I don't have to pull out every single bottle trying to find something?

The best part - everything was recycled! And therefore free.

We talked about somehow affixing them together, maybe with glue, and even painting them, but for now I want to see how they work as they are. The nice thing about not being stuck together is that we can still move parts around but they don't actually shift or slide around themselves unless I remove a piece of pipe. It feels quite stable and solid. The nice thing about being unpainted is that the white, off-white, gray and black pipes already coordinate with the other colors in the house especially the kitchen.

Looks like bubbles to me!

With a few bottles...can't wait to add more.

Happy Hooks

2013-03-27T11:42:00.000-06:00

I received this beautiful set of five wooden twig-like hooks as a Christmas gift from my mom and I was ridiculously excited because they are exactly the type of thing I had envisioned for our mountain house ever since we started this project. We finally hung them about a month ago. After a lot of stewing over my options and the many expanses of huge empty wall space, I decided on the wall near the front door because I wanted to show them off, even though I wasn't sure it was the most useful spot since they are right next to the mudroom which has plenty of space for jackets and gear and bags already. You can see the front door to the right and the mudroom door to the left in the photo below. So we hung the hooks and they proceeded to go unused like I feared. Nonetheless, I was in love with them.

But a few weeks ago, we brought up a bench that Curt built over a year ago. It was meant to go with our dining table but we have been using it as a coffee table in Denver. Since we had 10 people in our house a few weekends ago, I wanted to make sure we had enough spots for people to sit and put on or take off boots and shed all the outdoor layers. After we put the bench under the hooks, all of the sudden people started using them! I love how the color of the bench is similar to the hooks and it adds some wood and warmth to our cold gray tiled entryway. We also miraculously eyeballed the spacing pretty well, at least in my book. I could not believe that when we put the bench there, it lined up with the hooks perfectly, especially since the bench was more of an afterthought and we used very little rhyme or reason when putting the hooks up in the first place. A small victory in my entire lifetime of poor measuring, not to mention the inevitable husband-wife discord over nailing things into the wall!

I have yet to hang art or anything else to personalize our space, but this is a somewhat practical and still pretty start :)

Finally!

2013-03-20T10:34:00.001-06:00

Finally our house is being used as it was intended - full of friends! And skiing and snowboarding and cooking and eating and drinking and board games and dogs and sleeping in. We've had the best month, with multiple friends flying in from Seattle and driving up from Denver. With crockpots and tacos and frittatas and lasagna and coffee and whiskey and a big bonfire dug out of the drifts in our backyard. The snow has been great, the frigid temps have eased a bit, no one broke any limbs while staying at our house and there was only one trip to the ER. Altitude sickness...boo. We have one month of ski season left, the last two weekends of which are full of free concerts so we'll be taking advantage of those in Breck and Vail.

I've hit over 100,000 vertical feet this season (our ski pass includes a free iPhone app that tracks this, as well as posts photos like those below from professional photographers at all resorts) and I wish I could double it before our mountains close on April 14th but I doubt I will. We got a very late start due to our well-below-average snowfall. I'm still trying to catch up to Curt who has about 30,000 more feet than I do, but he also skiied more days than I have this season. We have a friend who works on Beaver Creek who had nearly 500,000 vertical feet over a month ago so I can't imagine how many he has now. Jealous! I've gotten a lot faster on my snowboard, but not THAT fast. So, our next month is going to look a lot like the last month and that makes me happy. We're both hoping our family members follow our friends' lead and come visit us soon :)

Then, once we put our snowboards away, we will get back to tackling a few odds and ends around our Breck house and maybe start finishing the basement. In addition to that, we're about to start a new project - still TBD - but our townhouse is under contract and we are in full house hunting mode in Denver. We aren't making money on our sale but we aren't losing any either. Our neighbor was interested and the timing just worked out because we'd been thinking about moving and either renting or selling anyway. Avoiding the hassle of constantly cleaning and showing to potential buyers (while dealing with our dogs) was a huge bonus.

It's a terrible time to buy because the market here is so hot, and houses are getting snatched up the first day they're listed, often with multiple full price offers. Luckily we don't close on our townhouse until the end of May, so we have some time and we'll need it. We aren't getting to houses quite fast enough, and there aren't enough houses out there to meet the demand from buyers, but it's a fun, exciting challenge and we're both ready to go back to living in a house with a yard in a new neighborhood. Probably a small, old, crumbly house that needs renovations in the kitchen and bathrooms but nothing too major. We have the time now to devote to those types of projects not to mention a little bit more experience, more patience with each other and some money saved in the bank, at last.

Moving will be much less of a pain because we've already moved so many of our belongings to Breck. Part of the goal was to be able to downsize and be more nomadic in Denver, or maybe to eventually not live in Denver at all, but at least for now to able to easily move every couple of years which I think we both just like to do and, looking back, have done the entire time we've been together. I guess that makes us both a little crazy. Where our last move was stressed and rushed and full of anxiety waiting on a short sale house we didn't end up being able to purchase at the very last minute, this move is more relaxed and our parameters are wider. We are both more open-minded about the area of town and style of house and types of projects we will undertake. There aren't even many short sales or foreclosures on the market for us to try to buy and stress over.

Best of all, even if we have to temporarily rent again before we close on a new house, we still have our other house to escape to every weekend, with most of our belongings there and plenty of space. That was the worst part about renting two years ago - being crammed into a tiny townhouse with none of our belongings and nowhere else to go. Even though looking at lots of houses and then watching them go under contract is frustrating, house hunting is still an adventure because we get to day dream and brainstorm and talk about different ideas and projects and eventually, we will find our next (9th) one!

Fall Down 7 Times, Get Up 8

2013-02-15T19:56:00.000-07:00

One of my yoga teachers started off an early morning class a few months ago with this Japanese proverb. It has been stuck in my head ever since. Coming from a tennis-playing and tennis-loving family, it immediately reminded me of one of my all-time favorite quotes in tennis:

After losing to Jimmy Connors in 16 consecutive matches and then doing the unthinkable by winning, Vitas Gerulaitis commented: “And let that be a lesson to you all. Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis 17 times in a row!”


Vitas finally beat McEnroe, but I don't think he ever got around to beating that guy in the middle (Bjorn)

I also recently saw the photo below on Olympic ski-racer Lindsey Vonn's Instagram feed. Ignore the Redbull ad. It was her caption that I liked. "When you fall, get back up!!" I will spare myself (and you) the rewatching of her horrific ski-racing fall a few weeks ago by not posting the YouTube link, but what she did to her knee, and at the speeds it happened, are the things I imagine in my worst nightmares.

I'm going to make an effort to keep thoughts like these in my head all year. I am not always the most confident or fastest learner, and a frequent physical faller - while snowboarding, biking, walking my dogs or even just getting out of bed - thanks to general clumsiness, laziness, not paying attention or not even trying. But I can fall mentally just as easily, and the reasons are probably exactly the same. There's no reason to talk myself out of my ability to learn things (something I do maybe not all the time, but too many times).

Vitas again, after falling in the bushes (it's not just me)

A different yoga teacher said in class two nights ago that most of our obstacles are put in front of us BY us. She talked about the Hindu "Lord of Obstacles" called Ganesh. From Wikipedia, he is popularly worshipped as a remover of obstacles. My yoga teacher's point though was that we can remove our own obstacles. Or maybe it would be more efficient to not put them there in the first place. I'm writing this down, here, so I don't forget.

I am surrounded by people who do amazing things in spite of hurdles. Some are big hurdles, some are small. They're all hard. Some examples: My husband, who has never taken no for an answer or listened to a naysayer in his ENTIRE life. My mom, who just received a masters degree and turned 60 in the same year (it's not too late for me, eh?). My dad, who just took a scary leap into retirement - something that sounds easy, but I doubt is, in a lot of ways, after spending 38 years as a civil servant. My other mom, who somehow survived being the same house as me and my dad while I grew up, not to mention my little brother - none of us made that a walk in the park. And she still loves and supports us anyway! As freely and generously as one ever could. That has been one of my most important lessons in life. My little brother, who is planning his third trip to Europe with his band while slaving away at two jobs 7 days a week. My husband's littlest brother, who is raising a three-year-old girl as a single dad. My friend Wanda, who is learning to swim and training for her first triathalon at age 40. My friend Meaghan, who is about to have hip surgery - something that seems unfair to me for a strong, healthy athlete at her young age of 30, but will probably not stop her from doing another Ironman. Because why wouldn't she?

I won't list more family and friends, though I could go on and ON. I learn a lot from and am inspired by all y'all, even if you don't know it or I don't say it! It makes me a very lucky girl every single day, but I especially appreciate it today, the day after my 34th birthday :)

The World's Most Interesting Marketplace

2013-02-13T22:36:00.002-07:00

My mom sent me this article and I found it interesting and inspiring. It was also a little reassuring to read, because it mirrors our own experience so much.

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/02/11/2470224/the-house-that-craigslist-built.html#emlnl=__Home_and_Garden

For starters, my own boss calls my husband "Craig" as a joke because he is well-known for being a Craigslist junkie. Before we started our house project, we were already fairly heavy CL users, having bought and sold numerous cars, furniture, tools, building materials, sports equipment, a boat and my favorite - firewood from the Free section for our wood-burning fireplace in our last house in Seattle. But Curt's time on the site, or more often the free iPhone app, went up considerably when we really got started working in Breck. Many an evening, Curt would arrive at home with some weird purchase he picked up from CL that I did not like, understand or see a need for. Most of the time, I would eventually realize why he bought what he did and how it would help us. Certainly not ALL the time though, since plenty of our CL buys have been duds - both services and materials.

While we have lucked out with many great short- and long-term workers/contractors using the Gigs section, we've also had no-shows and less than desirable folks give us bids we didn't like or start work that we didn't want them to finish. We have had great success buying and selling appliances over the years, though we recently bought a dishwasher that didn't clean our dishes. It happens. We took it out and bought a new one from a real store, not wanting to press our luck. I still have no complaints about how the law of averages has favored us over time. My two favorite things in our house - the bowling lane countertop from Celebrity Lanes in Denver and the bright green tile in our powder room - both came from CL and were steals.

Countertop and tile from CL, lights and towel ring from Amazon, sink and faucet from eBay, mirror from IKEA

Cabinets, shelf, oven and lamp from IKEA. Fridge, bowling lane countertop, microwave and range hood from CL. Tile from Floor & Decor Outlet. Quite a few thrift, Ross and TJ Maxx finds in this photo too!

As the home builder in the article noted, selling materials and tools no longer needed was also a huge bonus to us. Curt has many times bought a specific tool he needed for a very specific use, and then sold it soon after. He bought things on eBay like our PEX spooler and plumbing, and then sold the little bits and pieces and extras we didn't use. We've sold scraps of tile, and bought tiny lots of scraps of others' tile from projects already completed. He bought portable heaters for when we slept in our house last winter in well-below-freezing temps, and then sold them to others who were embarking on a similar difficult winter project. He sold the concrete forms and floor joists that were leftover in our house before we even starting working on it ourselves. He bought a wood chipper to clean up our yard and we're about to resell that. He bought a pedestal sink for a bathroom, put it in and we decided we didn't like it, so we just bought a different sink and will resell the pedestal.

And I'll be honest, he often makes a profit or at least breaks even. Hey! Buyer beware. It pays to do your research before buying or selling anything in a marketplace like CL. He has also given plenty of things away for free or loaned them to people. Karma works both ways. The point of using CL is not just to be cheap. Like Freecycle, it is more about taking, using and giving things back to someone who needs them, when they need them, at prices that are mutually agreed upon, negotiated and mutually beneficial.

We have friends who make fun of Curt, who is always recommending that people check CL for almost any question or advice they ask of him. However, we also have plenty of friends that use CL like we do, and have found labor, tools, materials, appliances and more while they plow through their own house projects. We have built a unique house and spent probably a third of what our neighbor spent building his just down the street (he's still not finished!). We have eBay, CL, IKEA (mostly the discounted As Is section), Floor & Decor tile outlet, Habitat for Humanity Restore, The Lumber Guy, Appliance Factory Warehouse, a few pawn shops and dozens of thrift store visits to thank. You probably wouldn't know it by walking through the house, but even if you did, I wouldn't mind. I'm not embarrassed. Not everything on CL is even used. Not everything is junk. Not all the people looking for work are meth heads (though some will be!). Not everyone is trying to rip someone else off. By using so many used and recycled and affordable materials, and putting back into the marketplace the things we no longer need, while taking advantage of the local labor resources, I hope we have made as positive an impact on the environment and the community as our bank accounts.

Using Up More Scraps

2013-01-29T21:33:00.002-07:00

A few weekends ago, Curt built us some shelves in our previously empty and unused pantry, and then I painted eveything the same color as the walls. He did order the flat boards that made the shelves, but everything else was built out of scraps we had laying around our garage. I had been using a single cupboard to hold our food items in the kitchen and it was nice to move everything into a bigger area so it wasn't so crowded. I can't imagine how we will ever fill up this pantry. Never say never. This room has a locked door in case we ever rent out our house to vacationers (so do our master bedroom closets and wine room - though two of those three rooms are currently completely empty).

It only took a couple of hours to build these shelves and it's the same process he used in all of our bedroom closets and the mudroom, which now have rods and a shelf on top in each. He used some additional scraps as braces to support the shelves here, though I'm not sure it was needed. They look good though. It's not anything like the "dream pantry" photos I see all over Pinterest, but it's definitely roomy and functional and that's enough for me.

Right before Christmas, we finally hooked up our washer and dryer. We bought the washer back in August and the dryer in November - both from CL for $150 and $350 respectively. The washer was only a year old and I think the dryer is about the same age, and a steam dryer at that. It's red - fancy! I saw some tutorials online for building a wooden stand that sits underneath the appliances so you can slide laundry baskets underneath, which seemed genius to me. So, Curt ignored the instructions and used more scraps to build something to the size we needed. We couldn't put a shelf on top because they are different heights so storage underneath seemed smart. The stand was not pretty at first due to the bad shape the wood scraps were in, but after we put a few coats of paint on it, it didn't look half bad. Three $5 IKEA laundry baskets slide underneath. Being able to do laundry has made our car trips a lot lighter because we were carrying our clothes back and forth, towels, bedding and and rags - lots of rags. There is always something to be cleaned and many messes to be mopped up. And now we don't have to fill up our car every weekend with dirty rags.

Lemonade Out of Lemons

2013-01-23T21:05:00.001-07:00

Otherwise known as how we came to have two awesome beds made out of recycled and/or reclaimed wood. Back in August of 2011 when we had just started working on our house, we had a guy helping us build the deck. One Saturday morning, we arrived at the house to see some huge posts already concreted into our yard. They were all the same height. Curt was not happy. Two of the posts had been delivered at 20 feet long, but our contractor cut them to match the 12-foot posts, in spite of our plans showing the taller posts and the short posts combined to make our deck. The long posts were meant for the little roof over our front door. Not only were the bigger posts $300 apiece but they took awhile to get in, so then we had to wait for another delivery of them. Not to mention, the contractor had to dig up the posts he'd already concreted into the ground. It was not a great start, but we kept the posts and hoped we'd be able to use them for something else.

You can see the two tallest posts supporting the roof over our front door in this old photo, as well as the shorter posts in the back supporting the deck itself

I found two photos of beds I really liked on Pinterest, and Curt and I talked and talked about how to make these beds using our beams. Many napkin sketches were drawn. We argued a little bit too, because what I wanted was very simple and plain, though sometimes the reality of construction (even in furniture) is that more is required than meets the eye. What looked like a few beams laying across each other did not jive with Curt and what he knew would be needed to build either bed that I liked. But finally we hit our limit of sleeping on the floor (not that I was keeping track of the year+ or anything...) and Curt went for it.

A few posts down are the photos of the huge reclaimed wood beams we bought back in September at The Lumber Guy, with the intention of building the first big bed to fill up our ginormous, empty master bedroom in Breck. Things just got too busy and we didn't end up building the bed until a few days before Christmas. I cleaned and sanded and smoothed the beams and then Curt cut them to the sizes he wanted before bringing them up from the garage into our bedroom. The bed came together in less than an hour after that point. It was much faster than the other beds he's built, because with those he had to actually build the parts and then build the bed. Here, the beams were so big, they WERE the parts, they needed nothing else.

Everything was arranged in the room and measurements were checked before he started drilling and adding bolts. We used a $10 metal piece from IKEA in the center of the bed to support the slats (pine beetle scraps from our floor!).

I gave the bed another scrubdown and then stained it with natural Minwax wood stain - the same thing we used on our window trim and ceiling beams.

Then, my favorite part! Curt was going to have the guy who made our railing create two metal poles to support the headboard which we had resting on the back of the bed. But he found two scraps leftover from that railing project in the garage and just drilled holes into the back piece of the bed and used them to prop up the headoard. It's exactly what I wanted - simple, rustic, chunky and with some metal detail from the bolts, washers and headboard posts. I am in love with it!

Shamesless brag for my $300 Michael Kors duvet and shams purchased for $29 on clearance (more than two years ago - I knew I'd need them someday!)

For the other bed, we finally got around to those annoying, expensive, too-short posts. To get them out of our way while we finished the house for over a year, they had been lugged around to every room inside, outside on our patio, back in their room and then finally downstairs to the garage where Curt cut them to size. Again we washed and sanded them and brought them back upstairs. For these, Curt used some leftover black metal brackets from our deck along with the bolts and washers, and they look amazing! Again, it was exactly what I wanted. Again, it barely took over an hour.

After it was assembled, using another $10 IKEA piece and more recycled pine beetle kill wood from our flooring, I stained it. We haven't build the headboard for that one yet, but we're thinking about doing something fabric covered, maybe twill, to soften the sort of industrial feel of the bed. That's Curt's preference - I like how it looks now!

So now we have two completely cool, handmade, recycled (every part and piece - all scraps except the metal IKEA center slat supports) huge beds that only cost a few hundred dollars in solid wood TOTAL and I couldn't be happier. These beds will be staying in this house forever. When we sell, they will stay. There is no way to get them out! Ha ha. I was pretty impressed with my husband's ability to achieve my vision on these two beds - in fact, far better than my vision - and with nothing to go on other than two pictures I had saved and my stubborn insistence that my beds look similar. Some days he can work miracles and then some days, like Sunday, he can't figure out how to install a $30 IKEA towel bar and he throws it on the living floor. From upstairs. And then has to drive all the way back to IKEA and buy a new one ;) And that's how I know he is human. I was appreciating that while I was on my hands and knees regrouting a bathroom floor that I had mistakenly done in two different shades of white. Whoops.

And while I had the stain out, I stained the ledge we just built as well as our mantel. It really brought out the grain though it doesn't look like it got that much darker in this photo.

Raw

2013-01-16T18:10:00.001-07:00

That refers to my nose (I'm getting over a cold), our weather over the weekend AND the new shelf on our half wall in the living room. It is exactly what I wanted, and I took a bunch of pictures of it! Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of how the shelf was made. A wide, square notch had to be cut into the bottom of the wood plank. It wraps over the ledge and overhangs on both sides. When we had our fallen tree cut into planks and made a mantel out of one of them, I knew I wanted to use the same wood on our half wall. Maybe not for symmetry, but because I just love how it looks. Last Sunday, it finally was put in place. We still need to stain or somehow treat the surface, but I think we'll leave the raw bark edge, well, raw.

before

after!

matching mantel

That's a Wrap, 2012

2012-12-27T12:05:00.001-07:00

I'm very behind here and have many updates to post - mostly for me to remember them before too much more time passes! I wanted to enjoy the break we had from house projects without trying to document anything, though that didn't last too long (the no projects thing, at least). We've been busy working on both our townhouse in Denver and up in Breck over the last few months and though some of the work was just WORK, some of the projects were smaller, more fun and more interesting (to me!). So I need to put them on electronic paper before I forget.

I'm a little bit relieved - and a little bit sad - that 2012 is almost over. It was fun, hard, rewarding, exhausting, educational, exciting, unsettling, eye-opening and probably more celebratory than any other year has been for me. But unlike last year, when we entered 2012 with a lot of uncertainty at work and a huge amount of manual labor ahead of us, we are both going into 2013 in a good place with our jobs and a dwindling list of house projects in our future. That means we're both a little more well-rested, a bit less stressed, with more money in our bank accounts and ready to find something new to do! Possibly a new (old) house in Denver that will bring us some more fun projects to play with.

We still have a few small loose ends to tie up in Breck but we are mere weeks away from tying a bow on that house (until we tackle finishing the basement next summer) and just enjoying it for ourselves, as well as listing it on VRBO to see if we can recoup any of our spending on it. Curt's punch list gets shorter and shorter each weekend. We have had our share of new and continuing headaches - losing water (again - and just a few days before hosting a houseful at Thanksgiving!), losing heat (when temps outside plummeted to well below zero), pipes freezing/leaking (causing some panic and unfortunate drywall/insulation destruction after finding a flooded room in our basement just last weekend when we thought our water woes were far behind us), issues with our snowplower and plenty of other things we are learning about life at high altitude in our first real winter - but we've also gotten to enjoy two amazing holidays, one with a bunch of friends and my little brother, and one with just the two of us and our pups. Both were perfect in their own way.

On New Year's Eve, I'll be toasting with friends and to friends and especially to my family, many of whom I got to spend time with this year on some of my favorite vacations I've ever taken. I'll be smooching my two favorite red-headed monsters and also my husband who I am absolutely positive will be providing me with many new adventures in the coming year ;)

Curt carving his smoked 15-lb turkey

Our Thanksgiving dinner table

This year's tree

Snowshoeing on Christmas Eve

Nesting

2012-09-28T18:33:00.001-06:00

After finally getting our house to a comfortable point that could be enjoyed, Curt and I spent two of the last three weekends in Denver. This was partially because we have both been traveling for work every week since Labor Day, and early Monday morning flights are tough after getting back home from Breck late on Sunday nights. It was also because we had a bunch of errands to attend to. The first weekend, we went to The Lumber Guy to buy some huge pieces of reclaimed lumber to build a rustic king sized bed for our ginormous bedroom. Our king mattress looks puny in our room and Curt has a vision to build something larger to take up hopefully a lot of the space.

Unfortunately, our bed-making weekend didn’t get too far. Curt called every rental shop in Denver to try to find a large saw to cut the pieces of wood to size before hauling up to Breck. He only found two shops with the band saw, and one was broken. We picked up the other saw, took it home, tried to make our cuts and found that the blade was dull. Lame! We also took a trip to the dump to pay $50 and drop off some construction debris that had piled up at our house – lots of plywood and other junk that we couldn’t reuse. I’m pretty sure it was my first trip to a dump and it stunk. I saw so many recyclable items piled up, it made me sick. Someone paid to drop off recyclable items that could have been recycled for free. Why?

The second weekend, we had a ball driving around to thrift shops taking advantage of a Goodwill 50% off sale. We also hit up every garage sale we passed on our travels. It had been a LONG time since we’ve done anything like that but it was an adventure. At the very first garage sale, Curt bought a router for $80 and I bought a deluxe camping stove plus three bottles of propane for just $10. Pretty sweet.

After stopping at three Goodwills and an ARC, we had a decent haul. My favorite purchase of the day was a Reidel crystal stemless wine glass for 39 cents. It’s a viogner/chardonnay glass that happens to fit a set I already have – a set of four but down a glass that someone (Curt) broke a few years ago. I didn’t even see the Reidel label until taking it home and ripping off the tag. Score. My second favorite purchase was an apple green teapot for $2. It was filthy and disgusting and I wasn’t sure I could clean it up, but a $1 can of Barkeep’s Friend made all of the burnt-looking spots disappear and look almost new. We used it for heating up water for making coffee last weekend and it worked like a charm! Curt found a pair of suede military boots that were in good condition, along with a North Face fleece and a brand new Oregon Ducks Prefontaine Edition Nike track jacket, both for $3.50.

Later that day, we drove down to a distant Denver suburb to pick up some box springs from Craigslist for our bed project, but they were the wrong size (who doesn’t know the different between king and California king?). Since we were in the area, we stopped in IKEA about an hour before they closed. We found a rug for the living room for half off ($99) in the As Is section and I bought the hooks I’ve wanted to hang on our metal Grundtal shelves in the kitchen. We finally hung the shelves last weekend, along with my hooks and some other things – green coffee mugs I recently found at Ross and a vintage measuring cup set that I found at Goodwill about a year ago. We also found a big black pot for boiling pasta at Goodwill last weekend which I put on the top shelf. I also put up a gorgeous wooden salad bowl set that was recently handed down to me from my grandparents – they came from Coos Bay, Oregon which makes them even cooler.

We finally spent a weekend in Breck this last weekend, and it was so much more relaxing than our two weekends in Denver that were spent running around all day, each day. Though it was relaxing, we still got a lot done – Curt painted and hung some baseboard and door trim, I stained some PBK window trim, we sanded and stained both sets of stairs inside, he stained our deck to prepare for the winter, hung a tv and a bunch of towel bars, mirrors and toilet paper holders in the bathrooms and hung all the hardware on the remaining kitchen cabinets. Lots of little details that just take time due to the sheer size of the house. This weekend we’re bringing up a wood chipper to tackle the numerous trees that fell down in the last year from wind. Most of them are laying across our neighborhood’s yard and she’s anxious for us to clean them up, even though technically they fell from her yard into her yard. But it’s probably the last weekend before we get enough snow to make yardwork miserable. The inside can wait!

42" tv looks ridiculous

Found two more green chairs on CL so now there are six!

Rod and shelf in the master closet

Snowwwwww

2012-09-12T18:27:00.001-06:00

It's coming down right now! Not in Denver, but all over the mountains including in Breck. Probably just a dusting today, but awesome nonetheless. It's that time of year when a snowy morning or afternoon may appear out of the blue. While this is not ideal for all of the grass seed we have spread four times now around our property to help prevent erosion, it's ideal for ME because I recently bought a new pair of snowboarding boots from REI. They are truly hideous looking (day-glo leopard print...why? hence their ridiculous price), but were on super clearance for $55 down from $220 from REI. They have fancy easy-pull laces unlike my other boots which are impossible to tighten. Breck opens in just 57 days. By then, I hope to have mastered putting on the dang boots due to their fancy (but confusing) lacing system.

I had a sneaking suspicion it might snow when I checked the forecast this morning and it looked like this:

I could not be more ready or more excited for this ski season to start.

Sitting and Slowing

2012-09-09T11:45:00.001-06:00

I did just say I don’t care about furniture. It’s true that it was a much lower priority than our kitchen. Not to mention, we moved out of a 4-bedroom house last year and into a small townhouse, so we do have some extra furniture sitting around. However, we had our eye on a specific couch that was planned to be our first (and pretty much only) real furniture purchase. I even managed to find the couch, two of them actually, on Craigslist and talked the sellers down in price by a couple hundred dollars before we even saw them. But they were fabric, sort of a cross hatch/linen-type material and while the light gray color fit into my Nordic lodge vision, the fabric was not dog friendly. Not only do both our dogs run, climb and jump all over our couch, but they lay on top of it like cats, and Greta likes to claw the cushions like crazy when she gets excited, which is every two to three minutes. Our Natuzzi is a super soft uncoated glove leather and her scratches wipe away pretty well with leather conditioner. So it was either leather or something heavy like twill or canvas.

Long story short, after some more CL searching, this couch landed in our living room last Friday. Originally around $3k (seller even had the receipt!), we paid $750. We didn't even bargain with her because she had so many other interested parties lined up. It was in practically brand new condition from being unused in someone's basement game room. It's not the type of Natuzzi leather that won't scratch at all, but hopefully it'll hold up better than an IKEA couch, which was probably never a great idea. It was not easy to find real leather (and a chaise on the correct side plus a storage ottoman), not bonded leather, which doesn't fare any better than fabric if you have rowdy pets. So even though I also just said we were at the end of our budget rope, we are also no longer shelling out thousands of dollars on a weekly basis, and we have the luxury of seeing our paychecks sit in our bank accounts for more than 24 hours. It had been a long time since either of us had $750 in cash laying around.

And thus begins the season of our slowing down. We have spent over a year working in our house with no chairs, nothing to sit on, nothing to relax on, because we did not sit and we did not relax. We couldn’t, literally and figuratively. But last Friday night, we sat on the couch in front of the fire and sipped whiskey. On Monday afternoon, we napped on it with the pups while taking a break from Labor Day I-70 traffic. There will be a LOT more of that to come! We will probably hang our tv over the fireplace next weekend, and while we won't be getting cable anytime soon, we may restart our Netflix subscription or at least be visiting the Redbox again.

This was not the concert-going, kick-balling, camping, cruiser-riding summer that I had envisioned for us (maybe somewhat optimistically, less realistically)...but we're about to have the fall and winter that we missed last year, when everyone we knew was sleeping in, skiing, going to brunch, traveling, cooking, cleaning their houses, having holiday parties and doing the stuff I would have rather been doing. No more sawdust sandwiches, fireplace-warmed burritos, stinky jet engine gas heater, sleeping bags, porta-potty full of snow, early mornings, late nights, wearing ski clothes inside the house and feeling terrible watching my shivering pups huddle together on their dog bed. Now those are just memories, and if I didn't have the photos to prove it, I'd hardly believe it happened.

In the Wise Words of Michael Franti

2012-09-05T21:46:00.003-06:00

"Don’t let nobody ever tell you that it couldn’t be done"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf-l8I3tWiU

Last Friday, we passed our final inspections and were signed off to be cleared for Certificate of Occupancy!

OK FOR CO!

Kitchen Progress Part II

2012-08-28T21:05:00.002-06:00

Things are looking good in our kitchen! That’s an understatement. I’m beyond excited about the current state of our kitchen. I’m cooking inside the house on real pots and pans. We’re drinking out of real glasses. I’m making toast and tea and eggs and biscuits. This is what I have been waiting for. Many months of waiting! The most common question I have gotten in the last year from any of our friends and family who know about our project is: “How are you going to furnish this place?” Well, the truth is, I don’t care! I’m not interested in furniture. I have spent all of my spare time, efforts and extra dollars on outfitting the kitchen. I have combed the aisles of TJ Maxx, Ross and Goodwill to make sure I have what I want to use when I am in my kitchen, on the off chance I ever need to feed and entertain an army. I have enough plates and silverware to make sure I can feed eight people dinner and breakfast the next morning without doing a load of dishes in between, in case I forget to turn on a load (like Saturday! It was only six people, but still, we emptied the cupboards between two meals). I’ve been slowly acquiring a couple more pots and pans of the extra large variety, as well as some basic utensils. Still looking for the perfect can opener and salt and pepper grinders, but our camping can opener and shakers are working for now, haha.

The appliances started getting put in a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, the only non “scratch and dent” appliance – our fridge, a CL purchase that was brand new – was of course scratched AND dented on the front during its move into our kitchen. Sigh… Not only that, but when I moved everything from our tiny borrowed dorm-sized fridge into our new big one, I put two paint brushes that were used for varnish into the new freezer. They were wrapped in plastic bags, but apparently not tightly enough, because that varnish smell and taste seeped into everything I initially stocked the fridge with. Luckily, not the beer.

The oven and range hood are in, though the range hood isn’t vented outside yet. We hung two pendant lights over our peninsula and Curt happened to find another matching one for $10 in IKEA’s As Is section so we hung that over the sink. It’s too bad we extended the bowling lane a little further than we expected, and didn’t hang another electrical box over it, because the space is just perfect for three lights. And we have three matching lights. Bummer. Our peninsula is looking pretty cool now that it’s paneled in PBK. Our stair rail guy also welded a small steel beam to support the bowling lane at the very corner, since it’s somewhat flexible if you push really hard on it (people do that, I don’t know why). The beam matches the other steel beams in the room which is very cool. We still have plans to build a kitchen island using some leftover bowling lane, and I’d like Geoff to weld four legs for us. Or we might get cheapie metal legs from IKEA. I guess that depends on how patient I am.

I love our black stools ($60ish for both from overstock when I ordered – what a steal) and I’d like to order a couple more. We still need to do a backsplash but I can’t find the white glass subway tile I want at the price I want, so we will sit on that for awhile until the bank accounts are replenished. We have undermount lighting to put in under a few cabinets and we need to paint and install our toe kick plates. We have two open metal shelves to hang to the right of the range hood. We also have some trim pieces to put on the edges of the upper cabinets. We have to paint and install trim around our windows. Not to mention, we haven’t even put hardware on every door and drawer. So, it’s still a work in progress. But it’s a working kitchen and it's huge and I’ve been dreaming about it for a long time. You may not be able to sit, sleep or watch tv in my house…but you can eat.

If At First You Don't Succeed

2012-08-27T21:09:00.000-06:00

We had decided a few weeks ago to schedule our final inspections for this Friday, August 24th, but we actually got a little ahead of ourselves with finishing the items left on our list, so we had our first attempt last Thursday, August 16th instead. Curt called in 7 of the 8 inspections required for our Certificate of Occupancy – the 8thbeing related to landscaping and we were waiting on some dirt to be delivered - so we held off on that. We easily passed our first two – the septic tank system/leach field and the fire mitigation inspections. Off to a good start. And then Jeff showed up. He started writing things down in his notebook practically the minute he got out of his car. His notes were not good. He ticked off errors while walking all the way around our house and continued once inside. It was daunting and depressing and not a great end to the day.

Just a sampling from his walk around outside: the steps leading up to the front door needed a hand rail, as well as a tiny guard rail opposite the main guard rail. We needed to put blocking in between each step so a child could not crawl through them. We needed to finish/seal the walls around the entire perimeter of the house – parts were exposed, just a few inches, which we thought we could put gravel and dirt up against. But for the fire code, we had to add siding and/or rocks leftover from the front garage wall everywhere. Our concrete deck steps were not the right rise or run or had too many steps, I can’t remember. Probably all of the above. Our outdoor lights had to have motion detectors or sensors or timers for the sustainability code. Our outdoor outlets had to be replaced with weather resistant outlets even though they are enclosed in plastic covers.

Curt built an exact match on the left to the right

Handrail

$300+ wasted on this dumb deck! It looks pretty good though

We put up leftover stone veneer along the patio walls

More stone along the base of the house

Then, inside. A few of our hundred-plus outlets (that's a wild ass guess) didn’t work or were reversed. Two outlets on the garage ceiling didn’t have faceplates. Our indoor lights also had to have a few motion detectors. We were supposed to already have bought a washing machine (high efficiency and front loading) and we also needed to have a clothes line or drying rack. One of our CO2 detectors needed to be hard-wired rather than plugged in. We needed one more smoke alarm. Our steps up and down all needed to be made just a hair longer because they weren’t all long enough – we had measured them out before adding the pine beetle kill, so they were off by less than a quarter inch.

Hard to see the super-thin strips glued and nailed to the edge of each stair

We had to wrap some of our plumbing in the boiler room in foam as well as brace some pipes for extra support (Jeff called our boiler room "messy" while I've all along been absolutely amazed that some how all of the pipes and wires in our entire house end up connected in this little room, all functioning). Curt had to pull out a bunch of PEX and replace it with a different kind that included an oxygen barrier (luckily nothing in the flooring/ceiling, just the PEX that was visible and easily accessible in the boiler room). A few sinks needed their plumbing modified. We needed signs made for our “recycling center” in the garage. All of the breakers had to be labeled and a few needed to be replaced.

There were things I’m forgetting, but a lot of the items seemed extremely detailed and nitpicky and mostly related to the sustainability code buried within our plans. Of course I would think that, though…I’m no expert! Jeff is probably the toughest inspector at the Summit County Building Department and he ran us through the ringer. He even mentioned to Curt that he could have walked off the inspection due to the number of corrections needed. He seemed to have a little bit of a chip on his shoulder about Curt being the home-owner builder. I commented to Curt, right as Jeff was getting ready to leave, that we “almost passed 50% of our inspections today!” and Jeff kind of mocked me for being optimistic.

I was so impressed that Curt took it all in stride. We spent the last two weekends attacking the list of corrections so we could schedule our re-inspections as soon as possible. A lot of the items caught us unprepared for the sole fact that they were expensive. While we haven’t gone over our total budget too much (maybe by a few grand, we think), we are still basically at the end of our budget rope. Things like purchasing a clothes washer (new enough to be HE and front loading), multiple $50 weather proof outlets and $50 motion detectors, $300+ of redwood to build a deck over our back patio stairs as well as complete the guard rail and hand rail out front, hundreds of dollars of additional dirt/grass seed/hay, a septic tank alarm, new PEX tubing and various parts…all added up to a big list of things to purchase in a very short amount of time. So, I found a $250 washer on CL (less than a year old!), Curt bought some things on eBay, we reused siding and stone veneer that had been saved in our basement (I cursed Curt for keeping all of the leftover siding sitting around in "junk" piles in our basement, but we used every last board including some pulled from the wood pile in the backyard meant for the fire pit and every last piece of stone, I couldn't believe it!), and somehow we cobbled it all together.

What amazed me the most is that Curt finished most of the items listed on just the first day, two Saturdays ago. We probably could have gotten it all done that first weekend if we didn’t have to wait for some things to arrive from eBay. And when Curt said he planned to have the re-inspections scheduled for the week of the 27th, Jeff said "October?" Eat that, Jeff!

Saturday night after our first day tackling the list of corrections

Our friends commented this weekend that our house is built entirely from CL and eBay purchases. It’s not that far of a stretch…but that’s how it has to go when you have a set amount of money to spend and someone like Curt managing the job, who is 110% motivated and dedicated to accomplishing it for that amount. No bank believed we could build our house for the amount he estimated himself, and here we are: almost done, and very close to our budget. And pretty darn close to our original schedule, too, in spite of many delays both anticipated and unanticipated. It has been hard as hell. While I don’t count myself out of this equation entirely, it is purely because of Curt – his personality, his attitude, his experience and his sheer tenacity – that we have survived. He has left me in awe many times in the last year throughout this process. He has also left me frustrated, pissed off, exhausted, angered to complete silence, near tears and wanting to yell (okay, I did yell), tear down walls, quit and walk away. There were also times when Curt yelled, tore down walls and wanted to walk away (just twice), and I was able to talk him down or we were able to work through it together. But as a testament to how much freaking fun we’ve had during the last year, we’ve also talked non-stop from day one through day 400 about our next house, our next project. I can’t wait for that!

Curt actually went back up today for the inspections – hoping to do five re-inspections plus the landscaping – but he found out that the electrical inspector was off today (as Curt was already half way up to the house - awesome!) and that fellow impacts the whole list of items, so we will have to go back on Friday. Another delay and another wasted day off for Curt, who has far fewer days of PTO to burn than I do. Fingers and toes (and eyes) are crossed for Friday.

Finishing the Flooring

2012-08-03T17:27:00.004-06:00

Last weekend, we sanded and oiled our pine beetle kill wood floors. We used both a small hand sander on small rough spots and a rental sanding machine on everything. I only did one room with the large sander because it was so heavy, it only wanted to go toward the right and I had a hard time keeping it from doing anything but that or moving in any other direction. So, I sanded our big bedroom by walking in circles, to the right, until I got to the very center of the room. And that was the last room I sanded ;) We used tung oil to finish them, which we also used on the dining table and coffee table Curt built last year. It should protect the wood a bit (not quite as effective as a poly sealant but hopefully better than nothing and a lot more environmentally friendly) but it also brought out the blue colors pretty intensely. More tung oil was delivered today so we can do a second coat this weekend.

I feel a little bit like it’s Christmas Eve because when we drive to our house tonight, our tile floors will be done! We bit the bullet and paid someone to finish the tile floors in the entry, kitchen and adjoining pantry, mudroom and wine room. My last tile job in the basement bathroom wasn’t instilling any extra confidence in my tiling abilities, not to mention the layout was going to be pretty tricky. There was also a high spot where the backerboard didn’t get drilled down far enough and I was worried about tiling over it and making things as even and flat as possible. So we had the guy who just finished a few of our showers go up there this week to finish the rest of the tile floors (and our master tub). He sent us a few photos but tonight we get to see it in person.

This means we can hang our range hood and hook up our oven and fridge! It means our kitchen is mostly complete (backsplash and DIY island to come later). It means I might get to cook a meal on something other than our grill, which we tested with a frozen lasagna last weekend to mixed results (we were just sick of hot dogs, burgers and grilled chicken breasts). I can’t wait! But if I have learned anything, it’s not to assume everything will go as smoothly as it seems in my head. After our well snafu last weekend that unexpectedly left us without running water again, I will just be thankful if we can flush our toilets. The person who put in our well and pump came to our house yesterday and found rocks inside the lines to the well, which caused our tank to drain and empty completely multiple times, the fuse to blow and the water to stop running. So hopefully since that’s fixed, we will be in business. Cooking, cleaning, flushing, washing business.

The last areas of our flooring that need to be finished are the stairs (more pine beetle) and the two upstairs bedrooms (carpet has been bought, we just need to put it in). Then we will start putting in what seems like miles and miles of baseboard trim. I've started painting the trim but have a long way to go with that. Luckily it's not required for COO :)

Heavy Metal

2012-07-30T21:20:00.002-06:00

Our railing fabricator Geoff came to our house Saturday morning to start work on our custom steel railing. I have wanted a metal railing like this forEVER and was excited to see it take shape. It adds a little bit of a rough, hard, cold, industrial element to all of the light colors and natural wood we've already got in the house, and it also ties into the steel beams in the kitchen and hallway. I'm already in love with it.

He started at the very top and first added a metal rim to the edge of the loft area which finished off the pine beetle wood flooring that was put down last weekend. It just so happened that we were all three standing in the living room looking at that area at the top of the stairs, and I asked Curt how he was going to finish the side where you could see the edges of the PBK above drywall. Geoff happened to have an extra piece of metal that was just the right length to make a cool edge that was bolted down. Then he built the railing for that top part in two different pieces, attached them, and started on the longest part. That also had to be built in two pieces and attached before he started in the lower rail. A few times, he actually took apart pieces he'd finished to tweak them or fix an angle, so his attention to detail should result in a pretty perfect and up-to-code railing. He did a bunch of work in the garage and then brought some of his tools inside to use in place. That was probably a lot easier because he had to go up and down two flights of stairs all day both days. No easy feat a mile high in Denver, but even worse at 11,500 feet.

He was almost finished when we left last night but still needed to do the lowest part of the railing as well as add the handrail to the stairs going to the basement.

Geoff was another craigslist find and not only was his estimate less than half of the others we received - which were between $4000 and $5000 and nowhere near in our paltry budget - but he even sent us a sample of his work which totally won us over. It was exactly what we were looking for! If he has time, he is going to add a towel bar to the bottom of the concrete countertop in our master bathroom. I also want him to add small metal posts at either end of our bowling lane counter because it overhangs so far from the cabinets that it needs some extra support that even brackets or corbels wouldn't provide. He may have to come up another time to do that though. We promised him hot water and a shower because he spent Saturday night with us, but unfortunately on Saturday, the pump in our well had some issues and we didn't get water back until Sunday afternoon. No water and definitely no hot water. He went to bed coated in a layer of black grime. Hopefully it wasn't too terrible, and we weren't much cleaner. We go to bed every weekend coated in layers of dirt. No big deal!