Over Do-It-Yourself

Cabinets and flooring and paint!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 03 Apr 2016 06:20:00 +0000

I think I mentioned last time that as part of our fridge screw-up, we were getting an extra 7" wide cabinet. It arrived! Snazzy, right?

After that was in, Devon (and J) went ahead with install of the giant refrigerator panels and massive upper cabinet. I installed the doors and found them to be super wonky. I tried adjusting the hinges, but as fancy as they are, they wouldn't adjust enough to fix the doors. We finally determined that the cabinet was racked and needed to be fixed. Boo!

To fix it, we took out all the screws in the side, then used the car jack and a 2x4 to hold the front corner in the right spot. Devon gets all of the cleverness points for that idea!

Here it is! The doors are only minimally wonky now.

That photo also shows another thing Devon finished - the floor! I love it, even more than I expected to. It's a cork laminate floating floor. We went with this type of cork because we read that the glue-down tiles will show imperfections in the subfloor. We knew we had plenty of those, and we had no great desire to fix them. Devon laid the whole floor himself, so I can't say how it went. He did mention that the setting kit we got from HD was pretty key. It had spacers, a setting block, and a bar that you use at the edges. The seams are very smooth and hardly visible at all.

We read some conflicting information about whether or not we needed to seal the floor. The planks are presealed, but since we got a kind of cheap floor and because we were worried about spills and swelling at the seams, we decided to seal it. We used a water-based polyurethane specifically for flooring and applied it with foam rollers. By "we", I obviously mean Devon. This blog post was really helpful!

Close-up so you can see the pattern. So pretty!

We've officially finished the cabinets! We haven't finished trimming them out, so don't get too excited. Anyway, here's the dishwasher space. We thought it would be a 3-sided actual cabinet, but it's not. We still don't know why. Anyway, after much leveling and shimming and such, we screwed the panel to the wall and the floor. We installed a strut across the top front to make sure it stays nice and stable. We've gotten pretty used to the wide open space in the kitchen, so we're reasonably sure we'll smack into it sometime before all is said and done.

And we used our Kreg Jig to make pocket holes! This way we can remove the strut from below after we install the countertops. We used it on the refrigerator panel, too. It's a little terrifying since you use the world's largest drill bit, but it works like a charm.

Here's the official last cabinet - our spice cabinet! Awesome, right? I'm honestly not sure if all of our spices will actually fit. I have a problem.

And here's an overview of that bright yellow paint! We realized it's the only colored wall in the house. The current plan is to paint the dining room the same color. We also have orange backsplash tile in hand now, so the kitchen will soon be even more colorful.

Partly just because I'm lazy, I haven't written about the countertops. I'll post a full update when they're done! Right now they're in the driveway with the slurry coat (to fill in small voids and pinholes) drying.

We're slowly getting some of the rest of the house back to normal. We spent an evening this week cleaning the living room and moving the furniture out from the middle of the room. It feels nice to regain some small bit of normalcy.

The Kitchen Looks Kind of Like a Kitchen!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 05:19:00 +0000

Dad left a week ago Friday and we've been on our own since. Gulp. Things are going okay, we've just been too busy for updates!

Before Dad left, he made one last astute observation: The space for the fridge was not anywhere near large enough for the fridge. Um, oops? I'm still not 100% sure where we went wrong and I'm not entirely sure I want to know (because it's probably my fault...). Basically I think we made two disconnected decisions: one was to just leave however much wall we needed between the door and new opening; the other was to make the corner between the living room wall and the kitchen wall a nice tidy 90 degree corner. Turns out that decision two didn't play so nice with decision one.

Anyway, we fixed it! We pulled the trim from the kitchen/hallway door and framed it a bit smaller so that the wall is large enough for the fridge and cabinet. Here the fridge's home as of today. The drywall around the door is primed but not yet painted to match the kitchen.

Part two of the fix is an extra little 7" wide cabinet that our cabinet guy is finishing up now. Upside: more storage space? We went through just about every possible solution, and this seemed best overall. Hopefully when it's done it will all be lovely and it won't seem like we screwed up then tried to fix it. Stay tuned...

Before Dad left, he and Devon finished the kitchen drywall, painted the ceiling, and did a first coat of the gray paint. Doesn't it look great?!

The cabinets were delivered Monday after Dad left. They look so so good. Here are a couple of pre-installation pictures:

I was bad about taking cabinet install photos, but I can ramble about the process a little bit. In the photo just above, you can see a base cabinet and also a toe kick/base piece. Those base pieces were installed first and leveled. Next were the uppers. Devon put a support piece on the wall at the bottom of each and then measured the studs and pre-drilled the cabinets. The ever fabulous J+K came over and helped us install them. Luckily there were only two, but one was massive, and one went over kind of a wonky bit of drywall. The cabinet install isn't done because we're waiting on our new cabinet and on one fridge panel that had some issues.

Here are the cabinets today! The blue striped bit is the panel for the end, next to the dishwasher. The little lid piece (no idea what that's actually called) isn't really installed here - we still need to trim those down. Yesterday I put in the drawers and doors, mostly because we were worried about ruining them with them stacked all over the house and garage. They definitely make it look more finished!

Here's the other side. The range is super heavy and hard to move (luckily Dad and Devon brought it in before Dad left!), so that's why we've left it stylishly located in the middle of the room for now.

Here are some cabinet glamour shots. They're so nice!

Devon has also been working away on pantry drywall and other drywall patches. For some areas, we need to attempt to match the texture of the old drywall, but the inside of the pantry is all done and primed.

Today we got a start on the concrete countertop molds! We made two so far, both for the sink side of the kitchen. We're basically doing whatever Fu-Tung Cheng tells us to in his awesome book. I mean, except where we're blatantly cutting corners. Here's the bottom of the big mold in place for final measurements. We wrote all over the bottom to make sure we wouldn't screw up which side was inside versus outside of the mold.

And here's the finished mold! Before it's ready for concrete, we need to seal the inside corners and put in the rebar. I made a trek to Berkeley to buy admixtures, slurry mix, sealer, wax, and polish from Cheng's shop. Yesterday we got the concrete itself. Poor Devon had to move 5 80-lb bags 3 different times while I stood around and watched.

And one last random project - I made some charming templates for the cabinet hardware. I started drilling the holes earlier, then I got hungry. Now I'm on the couch and fairly unwilling to get up. More pictures to come when I find my motivation.

On Almost Dying in a Fire and/or Earthquake

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 07 Mar 2016 03:04:00 +0000

Hysteria first, backstory later:

OMG, WTF:

What you see are the charred remains of the inside face of the drywall and the charred top plate where the in-wall furnace used to be. The drywall is just white in that one spot because it crumbles and falls apart when touched. This is all very bad and very scary, but we are all fine.

Okay, backstory:

Today Dad and Devon finished with the drywall sanding and mudding at 4:00ish, so they decided to start in on the pantry framing. The pantry was on the "nice to have" list in terms of things to do while Dad is here, but since nothing much can happen while the mud is drying in the kitchen, there's a little time to work on it.

There was an old boxed-in chase in the hall just outside the kitchen. Long ago there was a furnace in the crawl space, plus the kitchen stove vented into this chase at some point, plus maybe something else. Anyway, nothing in there is in use anymore, so it was just taking up space. The grand plan was to take out the vent pipes, take out the in-wall furnace, build a pantry, and install another form of heat (something hydronic, possibly underfloor). We had the demo guys remove the actual vent pipes (one was transite - not something we wanted to touch), but we still had the heater and the framing from the chase. We don't have a full plan in place for the new heat system yet, but since it's not that cold and the old heater wasn't that good anyway, we decided we can get by with electric mattress pads and maybe some electric space heaters for awhile.

After much cursing and muttering, Dad and Devon got the furnace out.

We discovered a pretty shocking number of horrible things upon removing it. First of all, the vent pipe wasn't insulated and/or wasn't placed/braced properly. It was obviously getting way too hot, hot enough to char the drywall and the framing.

Next, the framing is a total disaster. This is the most major bearing wall in the house, and both top plates are completely missing.

It looks like they were removed by chewing, or perhaps with a dull butter knife. Super shoddy.

The bottom plate is also completely missing. There was no need to remove it! Just put the heater on top of it! As Devon was cutting a clean line in the drywall (to make patching easier), the stud he was cutting down the middle of fell out of the wall. It wasn't continuous, but instead there was some random cross member and then a little cripple stud that just went to the subfloor since the plate is missing. And it was obviously not nailed to any of the other framing. Here's the random cross member and cripple after the stud fell out:

Ugh, such a mes.

So that's where we're at. We have no heat, we have an extra little doorway to the hallway, and we have some framing to patch up, but we did not die in a fire or an earthquake. Upside!

Milestones

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 06 Mar 2016 05:09:00 +0000

The project is coming along at a pretty good pace. Even though we have a ways to go until it's complete, we've ticked off some important milestones lately.

On Thursday we had a fully functional bathroom!

There's a fair amount of finish work to do, but it's all working and not leaking (as far as we know).

It was also our first night back in the house. We were all a little cold (the heat is off since it would all just go through the gaping holes and into the attic), but we've since plugged in the heated mattress pads.

Tonight we had our first meal back in the house. I think we did alright with a grill and a microwave:

The living room is still a bit of a war zone, but I cleared off the couch and vacuumed a little no-shoes zone:

In actual work progress, the kitchen is fully drywalled! This is after taping and mudding. There's a lot of sanding and mudding left to do still.

We've also been plugging away at installation of outlets, switches, and fixtures (PUN INTENDED). Let the record show that today I single-handedly assembled and installed a ceiling fan! I didn't electrocute myself, it works, and it hasn't fallen down yet. I did have rather a lot of parts leftover, though. Devon has in fact electrocuted himself several times, but he seems fine except for that slight tic. He might have had that before - can't be sure.

Oh, and we bought and installed a medicine cabinet, but I forgot to take a picture. When the bathroom is 100% done, I'll post many more photos!

An Update in Pictures

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 05:30:00 +0000

Too tired for words. Here are some pictures instead!

Some drywall in place so you can see what the kitchen will feel like

Modified framing for the new spice cabinet

Setting tub surround tile

Our new tile saw is serving us well

Marble window sill in the shower, metal tile edging

Tile done!

I found this hole covered in blue tape. Electrician is back on the shit list.

Kitchen and Bathroom, Week 2

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 15:19:00 +0000

Week one of the project was mostly demo and rewiring, as I think I talked about last post. Week two has definitely been more interesting and hands-on. Here's an update with lots of pictures!

Last weekend, M, J, and K (who are all the BEST) helped with some prep work. We fixed up the framing where the old medicine cabinet was, built two temporary walls (one simple enough, one a total pain) to support the kitchen and dining room ceiling joists while we installed the new header, and did some cleaning and organizing in the garage and shed. I didn't take any pictures, unfortunately, but this was hugely helpful for getting our week off to a good start!

Monday we basically went to the hardware store repeatedly, but lots of different ones. Devon picked up the DensShield for the shower backer from a specialty building supply place (more on this material below) then together we went to the lumber yard for new headers, posts, and other assorted lumber. This is after we had the LVLs cut to a reasonable length - luckily it's not a long trip home:

After we picked my dad up from the airport, we showed him the project then went to a normal hardware store for lots more general stuff and our first load of drywall.

Tuesday was a day of huge transformation for the kitchen. Here are a couple of before and afters:

Right after demo

After!

Right after demo, from inside the kitchen

After!

The wall between the kitchen and the living room is a bearing wall, but only kind of. The ceiling joists switch direction at that point, so bearing on that wall are just the joists from the kitchen/dining side. It doesn't have an roof load or any load from the living room side. I tried my best to remember college structures class to figure out what we needed for the new header. What we installed (2 1-3/4" x 9-1/2" LVLs) is WAY overkill for current loads. We've talked about eventually adding a second floor, though, and we wanted to go ahead and design for actual live loads above. Anyway, we used LVLs (laminated veneer lumber, a type of engineered lumber) because I found them to actually be way easier to size than standard lumber. They're very predictable and the load tables are very readily available and reliable. Here's the sheet from our permit set where I showed the tributary area and load calculations:

The little elevation on the right shows what the whole deal will look like from the living room.

The wall between the kitchen and dining room wasn't supposed to be a bearing wall (it runs the same direction as the joists), but we noticed a couple of struts from the roof bearing on it. We decided that we'd put in a header just to be safe. For that wall I did some really rough calcs and found that a single 2x6 would probably do the trick. So, naturally, we put in a double 2x8 header. More is more, right? For both headers, we used Simpson brackets wherever possible to help strengthen the connections and deal with lateral loads. Here's an ACE4 in place at the big header:

Jumping ahead a little, here'd the intersection of the two new headers. The strips under the LVLs are to deal with the electrical boxes for bar lighting. The 2x4s are just to bring the smaller header down to the height of the bigger one:

Anyway, do you believe that Dad and Devon did all of that framing in less than a day?! It was really fun to see such a huge impact from a day of work. M, J, and K will be pleased to know that the temp wall did the trick and the house did not fall down.

Where was I? Wednesday? I don't remember what happened Wednesday, or with any specificity what happened on Thursday or Friday, for that matter! Devon smushed his phone screen in one of his many trips under the house, so we're a little lacking in documentation. Here are some pictures of some things that happened sometime!

Dad and Devon working away - you can see half of the temp wall here.

I patched up some building paper and insulated the exterior wall in the bathroom.

Here's that fancy new utility sink and absurd faucet!

New tub! Connecting to the old drain pipe (not touched in the repipe) was
apparently not a good time.

Left is where Devon had to take a sawzall to the old drain piping.

New drain piping from the tub

Oh, and in some unpleasant but not very visible work, Devon finished up installing some new foundation supports. Since we switched from a bearing wall that was in turn bearing on lots of floor joists to a header that's bearing on two points, we needed to support those points. We used prefab concrete footings and super heavy duty adjustable steel post jacks.

That kind of brings us to today, which I do remember! Dad and Devon had the bathroom floor tile set and a lot of the tile backer and drywall in. They finished up the walls, I taped the tile backer joints and waterproofed the window, and we grouted the floor.

A few shots of the floor tile:

Set in thinset - Dad and Devon did all of the measuring and fitting on Friday

Devon picking excess thinset from between the tiles. So detail oriented!

Grouted!

Here's the shower at the end of the day - DenShield installed, joints taped (fiberglass mesh tape and thinset, per the manufacturer's instructions), and window surround blocked out and waterproofed with RedGuard. By the way, we are no shower experts, but here's why we picked DenShield: For one, it's allowed by the residential building code in California (greenboard is not), it's easy to use (scores and snaps like drywall), and it doesn't require either a vapor barrier behind it or a full waterproofing layer over it. The only requirement is that you seal the seams. I'm nervous about leaks at the window, so that waterproofing to seal up all of the joints and transitions at the window is extra.

We did some kitchen work, too. I insulated the exterior wall with recycled denim insulation: (dusty, but not itchy and fiberglassy!)

Dad and Devon worked on some of the more finicky bits of drywall, like around the light boxes on the header: (they're having to put two layers of drywall in several places. We're not convinced the electrician used the best boxes for the job here, but it's too late now!)

Tomorrow the agenda is to mud and tape the bathroom drywall, put another coat of waterproofing around the window, then start setting tub surround tile.

We're all tired, but it's great to see the progress we're making!

Catching Up

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 04:15:00 +0000

Insert some stuff here about how I'm the worst at maintaining a blog. Moving on!

Our biggest house project yet is underway. We're completely remodeling the kitchen and bathroom, plus rewiring and repiping the whole house. Oh yeah, and it has to be done by the time our first baby arrives in mid-June. Nothing like a deadline!

We've been planning and drawing and hiring subs and spending all of our money for months now, but I'll give you the quick update.

First, the big stuff. Here's the intersection of the kitchen, dining room, and living room:

We decided we wanted to disappear both walls and just have an L-shaped bar where the baker's rack and hutch are above. Since the fridge is on that wall now, we're switching the current fridge and range locations. We did some fancy math and calculated what size new header we need for the wall. It's a bearing wall, but it's not carrying all that much load. We decided to use some big old LVLs.

Okay, now more cosmetic stuff. Our kitchen looked like this:

Tile countertops are the worst. Very old plywood cabinets are also the worse. The floor was seriously, hyperbole aside, the actual worst. We wanted more cabinet space and more counter space, plus more usable versions of both.

The plan is for basically new everything. After much anguish, we decided to go with a local cabinet maker (one of Devon's hockey teammates). I'm glad we did, because he had some great ideas and from what I've seen so far, the cabinets look awesome. They'll be white shaker style. We picked out an Ikea farmhouse sink, because it's cheap and because it goes all the way to the back splash thus simplifying the concrete countertops we're going to pour. The flooring will be cork and should be nice and warm and cozy to stand on. We also picked out crown molding, exactly how the drawers and doors work, a garbage disposal, a dishwasher, a range, a light, and about a thousand other things. Such decision fatigue!

Okay, next the bathroom plan. Loyal readers may recall that we removed this horrific item a few years back:

We were still happy with the new vanity, medicine cabinet, light, and toilet we installed. Scope creep is REAL though, and when we started thinking about how to fix the tile issues in the shower that resulted from the window replacement, we ended up deciding that actually the floor tile was pretty bad too and to scrap the whole thing. We'll reinstall the toilet and the light, but we're mostly losing the vanity and medicine cabinet. Per code, we need 30" clear centered on the toilet. The vanity we put in was really really close to the toilet, so we can't put it back. We got a new cabinet and a new smaller vessel sink, then we'll cut down the wood counter top to reuse. The medicine cabinet we had was massive, and because of a vent stack in the wall, we can't reinstall it centered on the new vanity. It's way too deep to surface mount, so we'll get a new one.

As a reminder, here are a couple of photos from the end of bathroom renovation the first:

Okay, enough about the plans - let's see some action.

Here's the kitchen after we finished packing and removing the stuff we wanted to keep:

The big pile of wood is from the door between the living room and the dining room. We disassembled it so that we could move the fridge to the dining room for the time being.

And here's that living/dining/kitchen corner:

Aaand the bathroom:

Millions of thanks to K and J who helped us move heavy things to prep for the demo!

Shit got real last Monday, when some demo guys came in and ruined everything in less than a day:

We spent that evening wondering just what in the hell we were thinking. I cried. It was rough.

For the most part, what we uncovered was what we expected to find without any horrible disasters. No rot, no mold, no termite damage. Yay! Though we did find this crime against carpentry:

If you aren't sure what a door header is supposed to look like, I'll wait while you google it. This is not it.

After the demo deed was done, the electrician came and started the whole-house rewire. I'll have to grab some photos of the new panel and such when I go to the house next. He was there the rest of last week and we just stopped by to answer questions and feed the poor long suffering rabbits. Yesterday the plumber came, and true to the company name, did a one-day repipe. They were there late, but it all seems to be done! Now all of the old and problematic galvanized supply piping has been replaced with lovely shiny copper. We also have a super cool new utility sink. I'll take a picture next time I'm there!

Yesterday my dad arrived and reconstruction started. I'm currently so tired I can barely function, so I'll catch up on the rest of the saga another day. I know you're excited.

Window Puns are so Transparent

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 03 Jan 2015 06:17:00 +0000

Oh hey, loyal readers! I'm going to try super hard to post more than twice this year. Pinky swear.

The last several posts have been about the front yard, so I'm sure you're sick of looking at it. Let's talk about putting big old holes in the house, shall we?

Even though I've failed to write about it once, we've managed to replace all of our windows! We did leave the windows in one room untouched. We plan to eventually put a sliding glass door in there, so there didn't seem to be much point in paying for windows that will only be in place for a few years. We plan to even more eventually make that room into a sort of bottom landing space for stairs to the super eventual upstairs. I digress.

We replaced a total of 10 windows. We chose Milgard brand vinyl windows. They are not the fanciest or most expensive windows by a long shot, but we think they look pretty decent. They open and close, which is a novelty for us. They are double-glazed with argon and they have a low-e coating. Basically that means that you don't feel an actual draft standing near them. Winning!

We opted for new-construction type windows instead of replacement windows. They're more work, but we didn't have much faith in the existing frames.

I felt pretty fancy when my window drawings were approved by the city! They probably would have been fine with a napkin sketch, but let me have my moment, okay?

We started with the teensy tiny window in the entryway. We were able to master our technique without having to wrestle with big heavy windows.

We became pretty handy with a pry bar as we removed all of the interior and exterior wood trim. The small window was easy to remove, but the big wood ones were pretty heavy. Our window-removing savior was what my family calls a go-to-hell tool. It's actually called an oscillating tool and you should buy one. Go on, you know you want to. We have a Bosch and have been happy with it, but there are many available.

Anyway, here's the rough opening. The siding was in many cases super close to the opening.

We wouldn't have had room for the window flange, so we nailed 5/4 blocking all the way around. We used some pre-primed lumber because 5/4 was hard to find and this was the best we could do. The window opening needs to be square and level, and you need the correct gap between the window and the opening. We were able to shim behind the 5/4 lumber to adjust the wonky openings.

Next up we flashed the windows with Fortiflash. I'm going to decline to show detailed pictures of this because our method is so... unorthodox? Um, wrong? It was the best we could do given the situation, but I would never recommend it. Given that I sort of do this for a living, I'd rather not lead anyone astray!

In any case, here's a window with the flashing in place. Don't try this at home.

Putting the window itself in is basically the easy part, except that you've stupidly just covered it in sealant. Stick your hand in the sealant and you'll feel sticky for days. We learned some importance lessons about disposable gloves on this first window. We also learned some lessons about not putting windows in upside down. Oops!

Here's the before/during/after of our first window. The real after is still pending, because it still looks just exactly this ugly.

Window trim is tip top on the 2015 to-do list.

And now, because I have about a thousand window pictures, I shall make you look at more of them.

Here's the bedroom - the window on the right is an aluminum replacement window of unknown vintage. Maybe 1970's based on the classy fake wood sticker on the handle. On the left is a new window. We used casement windows in the bedroom so that we're in compliance with current egress codes (these generally cover sill height and opening size).

A few of the windows had a small sheet metal head flashing. When we pulled it down, we discovered it was installed by some very thrifty soul reusing some kind of insect killer container.

We posted this photo on Craigslist and actually gave away many of the window bits. They're no good for installing in a house, but these folks seemed to have some crafty plans.

The bathroom window replacement brought up an unfortunate tile situation. A trough between the tile and the window is undesirable to say the least. The tile is in rough shape anyway, so this just changes our timeline for replacing it. We're having a bit of a debate as to whether or not we can retile the shower ourselves. Feel free to weigh in!

Here are the new front living room windows. This is the fix for the big hole Devon is standing in in the first picture above.

Google very helpfully auto-awesomed one of my photos of the kitchen window replacement. It's like we live in a dreamy Mediterranean villa! I'd like my money back, though, because there's a big hole in my freaking villa.

So that's that! We've lost momentum on actually ordering and installing the trim, but we did design it and make detailed cut lists and material lists. If the window trim ever happens, we'll tell you about it here on Over Do-It-Yourself!

Pet Rocks

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 05 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The weird bit of dirt to the left of the driveway has been neglected even longer than the rest of the front yard.

It looked like this when we moved in:

Then it pretty much looked like that for two years, give or take some black plastic that never did kill the weeds like the internet promised. We've had a long standing plan to fill the area with some nice looking rocks, build a wood walkway to extend the driveway surface, and maybe plant some fountain grass.

We were renting a truck to take window waste to the dump, so we took the opportunity to get the rocks. We discovered that landscape rocks can be crazy expensive. We found some we liked then realized that they're $620 a ton. And we needed at least 1.5 tons. Uh, what?

So we decided to learn to like the MUCH cheaper ones.

Getting a lot of rocks into a truck at a landscape place is a piece of cake. You park on the scales and they dump the rocks in the truck. Getting them out is harder, to put it mildly.

Here's the truck with about a half ton of rocks, so 1/3 of the total. We removed them from the truck a shovel full at a time. It didn't take as long as I feared, but it did hurt for several days following.

But, bright side! We now have lovely and intentional looking rocks instead of dirt and weeds.

The wood walkway and potential plants will just have to wait, along with every other project!

Greener pastures

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 00:23:00 +0000

Oh hey there, first post of 2014! We've been a little discouraged by our slow progress on many projects. We still ponder and plan about house projects constantly, but it's been hard to actually finish any of our schemes. We have accomplished a few things, though, so I'll attempt a series of catch-up posts.

First of all, I was looking through the last couple of old posts and realized that when we left off, the front yard looked like this:

It looks significantly better now!

Right now it's unmown. It looks kind of nice and meadowy like that, but it tends to try to escape, so we do have to mow it every now and then.

We did one little project that you currently can't see because the grass is so tall and has grown so aggressively.

We wanted a border between the yard and the flower bed areas, but we don't really like most of the Home Depot-available landscape borders. We went to our awesome local landscape supply yard and scored some authentic San Francisco cobbles. Well... it says they're San Francisco cobbles, but perhaps they were hoping for gullible buyers just like us. In any case, they're nice looking squarish stones, so we threw a bunch into our long suffering car.

Here they are in place. The grass wasn't as aggressive at that point, so they looked pretty nice.

Here's a similar view today. That ridge in the grass is the spot where it's overtaking the stone border. I'm planning to learn to use the weed eater so I can cut the grass back from the border and back off of the sidewalk. But really, in what universe is learning to weed eat a particularly high priority?

The rosemary and lavender are going crazy, and the canna lilies are the tallest we've seen. Apparently they thrive on a diet of crappy soil and mild neglect.

Our succulent project is coming along well, too. Every now and then we divide the plants that are doing really well and replace ones that have died. For the most part, they seem very happy. We had lots of cool flowers this year, though I didn't manage to get photos of any.

A Garden to Grow Into

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 08 Dec 2013 21:06:00 +0000

Remember my irrational hatred of geraniums? I can't explain that, but I am pleased to report that they're gone!

Before - awful geraniums, including the pink one that was mutated by the termite-killing chemicals

After - blissful empty space! The window canopy is folded down because Devon was adjusting the new antenna.

Ripping out the geraniums finally prompted us to redo that part of the flower bed. Our long-standing plan was to make some cool concrete planters of varying heights and sizes and fill them with succulents. We made one sort of half-hearted attempt to build one of these planters, but we messed it up then lost interest in the project. I had a brainstorm one day and realized that these Turfstone pavers might do the job pretty well:

We had quite an adventure trying to buy them. At Lowe's, the sign said there was no minimum, but the employees all said that must be a mistake - you had to order a whole pallet. We tried the landscape supply place very close to our house, but they also said that we had to order a pallet. Then, on my way home from work sick, I thought I'd make a quick stop at a place that theoretically could order a small number for us. They said we could pick them up at yet another location, so I spent the rest of my sick day picking up Devon, picking up the stones, and heading home. Worst sick day ever.

Anyway, 16 pavers x ~35lb each = 560lbs in our little car:

It was sitting a bit low...

A few days later, we started placing the stones. We placed them like this (working with a work light even thought it was only about 5:30pm):

Then filled them with a mixture of soil and sand:

Then in actual daylight, we split up and planted all of the succulents we've been collecting for a year:

They need to grow into their new homes, but we think they're going to look pretty nice eventually!

Weeds

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 19 Aug 2013 02:40:00 +0000

Today I finally did some painting in the garage. (More on that later.) Before cleaning all the paint off my arms and legs and hair (I have bad aim), I decided to spend a couple of minutes pulling the most obnoxious of the weeds in the front yard.

... an hour later:

I'm not even sure these photos do the size of the weed pile justice. It was huge.

There's now some competition for my least favorite kind of weed. It used to be an easy pick - these nasty thistly-looking ones that break off in your hand when you try to pull them. Jerks. Today I discovered some other really nasty ones, though. They look sort of innocent and grassy, but they have lots of very fine, far-reaching roots, so when you pull them, a huge clod of dirt comes up with them. Do not want.

The Grass is Always Greener in Somebody Else's Yard

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 11 Aug 2013 20:33:00 +0000

So, the front yard. We're not really into the golf-course perfect lawn thing (good thing, as you'll see below), but we couldn't decide on much else to do with our small front yard besides plant grass. So over many (too many) months, we've been slowly transforming an oddly orderly group of bushes into something that resembles a yard. Sorta. This is the long-overdue post of our attempt.

It used to look like this:

That's two million of the same purple bush. They really liked it here, so they got really overgrown. We finally decided we were sick of looking at them. Mature bushes like this would cost some actual money at a nursery, so we thought we were being rather generous when we posted on Craigslist and Freecycle that the plants were free to anyone who would come dig them up.

Oy. Nobody showed up when they said they would. Everybody wanted to tell you their life story related to why they didn't just show up when they said they would. People said they were too hard to dig up. People (repeatedly) asked us to dig them up for them. No.

I think we successfully gave away 4 out of 12. The rest we dug up ourselves and put in the compost bin a couple a week.

So, clean slate! Weedy slate, but clean slate.

We decided to avoid dumping a truckload of round up on the yard, and we attempted a greener and uglier method weed killing. We got a couple of rolls of black plastic and hauled out some of the random paving stones we've found around the place. We left this lovely installation in place for a few weeks.

When we pulled up the plastic, everything was dead. Hooray! Off we went to Home Depot to rent a tiller. After we out-smarted that pesky switch that opens the fuel line, we tilled away.

Then, because even fancy grass needs water, we installed an irrigation system. Our knowledge of irrigation is pretty much like our knowledge of any of this other house nonsense - we read about it on the internet. Well, Devon read about it on the internet. I helped, because I really love PVC cement. Also, I love those handy ratcheting PVC scissors. (They're probably not actually called scissors.)

I am useful in the autocad stage of each project! Here's our diagram of where we needed to install sprinkler heads to cover the space.

Digging trenches is no fun, but luckily the yard is small. Here is it tilled and trenched.

We test-fit the whole system, and I think we only had to go to the hardware store once for additional T's and elbows and such. That's practically miraculous! Here's one of the sprinkler head locations.

The water connection is by the house, across the sidewalk from the yard. Devon found this handy nozzle thinger that you're supposed to use to drill under sidewalks. You attached it to a length of PVC and attach an adapter and garden hose to the other end. It's supposed to spray a strong enough jet of water that with a little muscle you can push the pipe under a sidewalk.

Seems like it should work, no? Yeah, it doesn't. At least, it doesn't work when your soil has so much clay that you could make pottery. One more trip to the hardware store, this time for a steel pipe and a sledge hammer. Here's Devon employing the improved brute force sidewalk drilling technique.

Once we were through to the other side, we needed to hook the system up to the water supply. I happily cut and glued connectors and such for the pump:

And Devon was in charge of teflon-taping our new and improved hose and sprinkler valves:

Here's the whole mess assembled. The stub to the right is for a future additional irrigation zone to serve the landscaping. Eventually those geraniums will go away (I despise geraniums) and maybe we'll plant something to disguise this set-up a little.

We cemented the whole system together. Doesn't it almost look like we knew what we were doing?

We put the heads on and look! Water!

Fast forward to the next weekend - time to plant the grass. We ordered Buffalo Grass, which looks pretty and is fairly drought tolerant once established. You can't just spread seeds, though - you have to plant these little plugs 12"-18" on center. Here are two of the trays. We used three for the whole yard.

And here's the yard all planted! It was a pain, but we were once again glad that the space isn't that big. I got a horrible lower-back sunburn from leaning over for hours. You just don't think to put sunscreen there...

We also planted our lemon tree, which has lived in a big pot for a couple of years now.

The fruits of our labor - brand new grass being watered!

Here's the yard about one month later. The grass is growing well... just not as well as the weeds. This is when we realized that we should have actually followed the nursery's instructions for preparing the soil.

We read about what kinds of weed-killers are safe for buffalo grass, and here's the yard as of yesterday. The dead things are weeds! So, it's not beautiful yet, but we're getting there.

And now for something prettier, here are some photos of our other flowers and plants.

Sometimes, pay a guy to overdo it for you

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 07:01:00 +0000

Thursday night, 10:30pm: We hear a weird noise from the garage, look at each other, and reluctantly investigate.

Things homeowners hate: weird noises, especially at bedtime.

So, the water heater that we always knew would die soon choose to die (rust through) on Thursday night. The valve at the water heater didn't work, so we had to turn the water off to the whole house. I'm sure these types of things ONLY happen at inconvenient times, but this seemed extra inconvenient. Devon was scheduled to spend 11 hours of his Friday taking the PE exam, and since he works closer to home and has a more flexible schedule, he's usually the one to deal with house stuff that has to happen during business hours.

Friday I scheduled a plumber and went to work for a half day. Since I hadn't showered, my coworkers probably weren't too sad that I went home early! We wanted to look into a fancy tankless water heater, but the price tag was something like $4,000 - $6,000 after the dedicated gas line and new vent. Ouch.

The plumber put a new valve in for us (ball valves all the way!) on Friday evening and scheduled a time to come Saturday morning and replace the water heater. We showered at Devon's office and went out for a fancy belated birthday dinner.

Saturday the plumber worked on the new water heater while we dug up some ugly plants (more on that later).

Before we moved in:

And now, our slightly larger, much newer and nicer water heater:

The moral of the story is that sometimes you should give up your DIY ambitions and pay the nice plumber to do it for you. Your friends and neighbors will thank you, since this is a much quicker way to get a hot shower.

Workbench Planning and Demo

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 19:28:00 +0000

Two posts in two days?! Don't get used to it!

While we're on the subject of the garage, I thought I'd share our next project. The garage had a small workbench, but it didn't have much in the way of storage and it was generally not that great. You can see it over in the corner under the pile of valuable stuff that was left here.

We spent an exciting Friday evening planning out how we wanted to build the new bench and designing it in AutoCad. Life as a homeowner is exciting!

We need to rent a truck to haul away the debris from the old workbench then buy materials for the new one. Yesterday we decided to spend the afternoon on the demolition portion of the project.

Prepare yourself for the cluttered horror that is our garage:

This is after 15 minutes of cleaning, too! Oh, and the contraption to the right is Devon's brew rig. You should help me peer pressure him into blogging about it.

Here's the old workbench after the junk has been cleaned up. Devon is considering mysteries of the universe.

We're going to build the new workbench out from the bare studs, so the awful wood paneling needed to go, for everybody's benefit. Underneath, we found this:

It's Stalwart Sheathing (also called Celotex, I believe), stapled together. There was some kind of masking tape on top of that. So, we decided that this stuff too must go, and started ripping. It all came down pretty easily, since it was held up by staples, small nails, and force of habit.

Inside the wall, we found treasures both living and dead! Living: some cool orange "organic growth". Dead: some kind of bug or bug shell.

We vacuumed up the dead bugs and carried on. The old workbench was surprisingly sturdy, but we won the battle. I think we're going to keep the top boards around for a later project - they're 2x10 redwood and just need to be trimmed and stripped.

Here's the corner where the workbench used to be. We're trying to pretend that that corner of the garage isn't visibly lower than the rest.

And the whole wall:

As you can see the inside face of the siding is water stained. Someone in the past ripped the building paper from between the studs. (Seriously, past home "improver"?) The REAL fix is probably to reside the house and do it right, but since that's not going to happen right now, we might just clean and paint and leave the siding/studs exposed. There's no requirement for sheathing on that wall, and no real need to insulate.

Stay tuned for another post about the fate of that wall and the new workbench!

A New Garage Door

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 06:56:00 +0000

For the first time since 1989 (best as we can figure), our house has a functional garage door! We have so much stuff in there that we will likely never put a car in the garage, but it's SO nice to have outdoor access for big stuff and the ability to vent the space while working/brewing in the garage.

When we moved it, it looked like this:

It LOOKS like a door, but it's a lie. On the inside, it looked like this:

It was covered over with paneling, which was secured with tape and 2,000 tiny obnoxious nails.

Step 1 was to rip down the paneling. The door itself was, naturally, super gross.

One side of the door hadn't had a working spring in some time, so that was pretty easy to take apart. The spring on the other side was still engaged, so we really took our time and made sure not to kill ourselves with a rouge spring. Success! The spring hardware was apparently meant to stay put for the long haul:

After much cursing (as with most projects around here), we removed the spring hardware and all of the random bits of wood holding the door in place. It was sometime during this process that we found some newspapers shoved next to the door (weatherproofing, obviously). The oldest one was from 1989, so we assume that the door hasn't moved since at LEAST then.

It dawned on us that we had to make some really substantial progress before we were allowed to go to bed. If we still wanted the contents of our garage to be there in the morning, that is.

I'm going to spare you most of the painful details of the new door installation, for your own good. The short story is that we should have thrown the directions out the window before we even started, because not one single thing worked per the instructions. Our house is old, nothing is square or level, and garage door installation instructions are terrible. I guess this is why normal people pay a guy to install a new garage door?

Here is Devon working on the first panel. If we had this to do over again, or if I could give you a piece of marital advice for your own garage door installation, I'd say this: buy his and hers ratcheting wrenches in the right size. There's so much stuff to attach to the door panels, and it's an enormous pain without the right tools.

It was sort of like building a fort once we got going.

But as these things always go, as soon as we got the rhythm down, we ran into a huge problem. We got a reminder of the fact that nothing is level or square. As we stacked the panels, we could no longer connect them to one another because the whole door frame was so out of whack.

The diagonal pencil line is where we needed to chisel to to make the frame vertical. Sooo we bought a nice set of wood chisels! We wouldn't have any fun tools at all if nothing ever went wrong.

I'm fairly sure that we had to remove the first two panels and start over after the chiseling, but I've sort of blocked it out, to be honest.

By the end of the day, we finished our fort. We didn't even get started on the tracks, but at least we didn't have a giant hole in the house.

We had to shim one side of the door up a whole bunch in order to approximate level.

Day 2: Time to install the track. The attachment brackets didn't work for our set-up at all, so there was MUCH cursing and voiding of the warranty. Here's Devon installing our own special version of the attachment hardware.

This was my view from the loft. One thing that I must admit worked amazingly well was the level of the rails. We were able to attach them directly to the floor of the loft.

This brings us to the photo I posted awhile ago as a pop quiz:

It's hard to see, but the door was hitting the spring mounting bracket when raised. We used your standard brute force repair:

It works! We actually kind of hate the lock that came with the door, but we haven't gotten around to finding a new/better one.

An embarrassing number of weeks after the door was functionally complete, we finally removed the temporary trim (needed to prop the door against before the tracks are installed) and put proper trim, weather stripping, and fresh paint on the exterior.

All done! This was kind of a big project, but very worthwhile. We actually don't think a garage door installer with half a brain would have touched it, so it's probably just as well that we stubbornly did it ourselves.

Today we started on our next garage project, which is what finally prompted me to write this post. Maybe I'll post about this new project in a more timely manner! Maybe...

Bathroom Renovation

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 01:18:00 +0000

The day you've all been patiently waiting for has arrived: this is the long promised bathroom renovation post!

The bathroom has been finished since... awhile ago, but I just finished the shower curtain yesterday.

First, I'll remind you how ugly it was before, so that you realize that anything would have been an improvement.

And now!

Here's the run down of the work we did:

Regrouted the floor (I already posted about this awhile back)
Replaced the toilet
Replaced the vanity, sink, and faucet
Replaced the medicine cabinet
Replaced the vanity light
Replaced the towel bars
Replaced the shower curtain rod
Added a shelf
Added a curtain for the window
Added a light and fan above the shower
Patched drywall
Replaced light switch and outlet covers
Painted

I probably have photos of every single item above, but I'll attempt to stick to the highlights.

The old toilet was enormous and used 3.5 gallons per flush. Who needs that kind of guilt every time they flush the toilet? We decided to replace it with an efficient and small toilet, so that we could sleep well at night and put in a larger vanity. Anecdotal evidence suggested that replacing a toilet was not that hard, so we jumped right in.

Our only real mistake was that we tried to remove the old toilet tank, paint behind it, and put it back. Naturally the flex hose sprung a leak and we had one evening with no functioning toilet. Oops.

Gross paint. Missing from this photo is the sponge that was stuck behind the tank.

Once we got started the next day, everything went surprisingly smoothly.

We discovered that cleaning old wax rings is gross and that our toilet had a flange with hand-cut notches.

After cleaning the floor as much as possible and painting the wall, things were looking up. (The white stuff on the left is grout that I hadn't cleaned off of the tiles yet. I don't recommend waiting for weeks to clean it off completely...)

See? Devon LOVES replacing toilets!

And what a toilet it is. It has the Power of Niagara!

Ta-da!

Next we tackled the medicine cabinet.

The old one didn't even open all the way because of the weird wood trim around it. The wood trim was glued to the wall by some jerk.

It's pretty satisfying to rip stuff like this apart. The old cabinet was sized to fit between the studs. We wanted to put in a bigger cabinet, so we had even more ripping stuff apart to do.

This whole thing proved to be more than a one-weekend job for us, so we installed some temporary measures.

Here's the extent of the drywall demo. At the top is the bracket and box for the light. We exposed a 2x6 old growth redwood double stud. Why on earth our bathroom is framed with such precious stuff, we don't know. I guess using lots of old growth redwood for framing wasn't a big deal back in the 1940s!

Here we have the stud removed and the drywall more or less patched. The white drywall mud patches are where we got a little overzealous with the sawzall and cut into the living room. Drywall dust in only one room just isn't enough, ya know?

We installed the light before putting the cabinet in so that we could reach inside the wall.

Unfortunately, we failed at math, and this happened. Yep, the cabinet was hitting the lights. Oops. It was actually not too painful to move the light up, but it did involve more drywall work. My FAVORITE.

Finally we had the cabinet and light both installed with no critical conflicts.

Hand drywall saws are not the most precise instruments, so the drywall edge looked pretty rough.

Using our awesome new mitre saw and most curse words available in the English language, we pieced together a border of quarter round trim. The cabinet we bought is an Ikea special and is not actually meant to be recessed. I assume that's why it has these super annoying little corners that we had to trim around, and why it doesn't have a handy self-finishing flange.

After we failed at nailing the trim in place, we resorted to a tube of liquid nails. Let the next bathroom-renovators deal with it! We used drywall mud to fill in the nail holes and weird corners, then caulked the joints between the trim and the wall.

All in all it looks pretty spiffy! Just don't let us catch you looking too close.

The vanity was easily the worse part of the old bathroom. The marbled teal top clashed horribly with the blue floor, and the cabinet itself was made of disintegrating fiber board with metallic gold trim.

The view behind the vanity was, if possible, even worse than the view of the vanity. Why did anyone with a conscience even produce this color of paint?

In another one of those super fun experiences with old plumbing, we found that the shut-off valves didn't work. We had to turn the water to the house off to accomplish what you see above. We got new valves and took this photo just to gross you out:

The old one is one the left. Obviously.

Somewhere in the middle of the vanity work, we painted the whole room.

You can also see our snazzy new curved double shower curtain rod here.

Voila! Our new vanity cabinet is an Ikea special, with a few modifications required to fit it next to the tile wall base.

Ikea has really nice butcherblock countertops, so we bought the smallest piece we could and cut it to size. Here we're trying out the sink and faucet placement before drilling holes. Devon put a really nice oil finish on the butcherblock.

Hole saws are cool!

I don't even want to think about/admit how many trips to the hardware store it took to assemble the sink plumbing. The finished product looks a little like Frankenstein's monster, but it works! We did have some leaks early on (thus the mixing bowl at the bottom), but they turned out to be because the gasket that came with our cheap sink drain couldn't be trusted. Since we reset it with a big gob of plumber's putty, it's been leak-free.

Here we are saying goodbye to most of the junk from the bathroom. The toilet and sink sat in the backyard for awhile before we got around to arranging pick-up with the city, but at least they weren't on the front porch, hillbilly style.

For good measure, here are even more "after" photos.

New towel bar

The shower curtain that took me months to finally finish.
I bought a shower curtain, then replaced the bottom portion with solid brown fabric.

The curved shower curtain rod is awesome.
You can hang towels on the outer bar, plus it makes the shower feel bigger.
When my parents visited, Dad helped us install the fan and light.
Thanks, Dad!

The shower and tub are basically the same as before.
We added a curtain (made from a shower curtain) to protect
the window and wood trim.
We bent the hook on a shower caddy to account for the thickness of the tile
and hung it from a knob secured to a stud.

The pretty light - and the cabinet even opens!

I love this shelf even if it doesn't hold much useful stuff.
I found the liquor bottle and the silver dish at my
friendly local thrift store.

We changed out the switch and outlet covers.
Also, the blue canary in the outlet by the light switch
is watching over us.

Deck the Halls

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 05:50:00 +0000

Oh hi, blog readers! Fancy meetin' you here. And now, so that you don't notice that I haven't posted since ever, I shall distract you with shiny lights!

Christmas! Yay!

So, Christmas lights are hard. I feel just the slightest bit of empathy for the people whose Christmas lights I make fun of. And I make fun of EVERYONE'S Christmas lights, so a little empathy for each person is really a lot, all together.

Right?

It is, I admit, really hard to get them straight. Gutter clips are not the magic that the box claims, and you have to move the ladder a bajillion times. We didn't try too hard, really. This was only our first try at Christmas lights, and we didn't want to set the bar too high.

Christmas happened inside, too! This is our little tree, a dwarf Alberta Spruce. We're planning to keep it outside in a container and bring it in each year to decorate. The guy at the nursery said we could definitely get 5 or so years out of it this way. After that we'll plant it and pick a new Christmas tree strategy. For now, though, it's doofy and I like it. And it even has presents under it!

Here's a closer look.

Those are some sea turtles from our trip to Barbados, just there to keep things from getting too Christmasy.

I also hung up all of the beautiful Christmas cards we've gotten.

It's a little hard to tell, but they're hanging in the entryway. Many thanks to internet and real life friends for the cards!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Pop Quiz!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 04:31:00 +0000

Oh, hi there, loyal readers! We have not fallen off of the planet, but we did fall off of the home improvement bandwagon for a little while. Mostly because we were busy showing off our house to our families and a house full of awesome housewarming party guests!

We're back with a vengeance, and we have another installment of Quiz time!

What's wrong with THIS picture?

Hint: It has nothing at all to do with my off brand duster.

Old Furniture, Clean House

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 17:33:00 +0000

I thinking cleaning might be the one area where we're not really interested in overdoing it. When it comes to tidying and cleaning, we're more in the "do a little as possible" camp. That said, we did finally give in and clean the house up after weeks of chaos and bathroom renovations and half-unpacked rooms. Now we've isolated the chaos to the garage and the still-packed-ness to half of one room.

Pictures or it didn't happen:

I'm loving our loud rug and red living room accents. The walls are sadly bare, but that's a project for another weekend. I do have a whole pile of pictures and art next to the tv stand waiting for said weekend.

Oops, Devon's jacket is annoyingly reflective in these photos. Anyway, the dining room has a dining room table in it now! How novel! This is the table we made when we were living in Mountain View. We need to make or acquire chairs at some point.

The kitchen is still on the chopping block when we have the time and money to redo it, but for now it's in a pretty usable state.

This would be that still-packed bit I mentioned. We set up Devon's desk, but my desk still needs some sanding and another coat of finish. All of my sewing stuff and yarn is still boxed up, for the most part. The closet in this room is still a mess. We'll get there, though!

The bedroom. I love the headboard and rug and I love the quilt my sister made me, but they don't quite go together, huh? A new quilt made from the wedding table runners is on the list of things to make someday.

And, chaos. We ran out of time to clean the garage. We need shelving and a bigger work bench. We need to do something about the cavernous crack in the floor. We need a garage door that works. We need a better way to access the loft. Really, we need several months to work on the garage alone!

This brings me to the photos I didn't include above. What? You're sick of looking at boring photos of our house? Too bad!

New (old) dressers! While we fully admit to being big Ikea fans, we are not fans of their dressers. We decided that since we didn't like the Ikea fare and didn't feel like spending a lot of money on boring furniture store stuff, we'd look for antique or second-hand dressers.

I went to Oakland to visit the Habitat for Humanity ReStore back when we still needed lots of things for the bathroom. I didn't find a single thing in the ReStore, but I did find the dresser on the right in the St. Vincent de Paul attached to the ReStore. Jackpot! After sending pictures to Devon, measuring the dresser and the car several times, and making sure the mirror would come off for travel, I bought it. I found a nice guy from the salvage store next door to help me load it. A rent-a-cop also helped. He took one look and bet me $20 that the dresser wouldn't fit. I agreed and was very pleased with myself when it slid right into the car. It was an oversight on my part to not have a counter bet in place! I did have to take the mirror apart to get it in the car, and I couldn't see a single thing out the back of the car all the way home from Oakland. Still, I love the dresser!

We had a less dramatic journey to pick up the dresser on the left, which we found on Craigslist. We got it from a very talkative guy who was moving to a smaller place. He regaled us with the virtues of the dresser, but really most of the handles are a little bit broken. It's still very cool overall, so we're keeping an eye out for new handles.

Here's one more photo of the living room (looking towards the dining room) which shows our very favorite furniture purchase - a mid century hutch. At least, I guess it's a hutch. I'm not really sure what to call it. This was a lucky or stupid Craigslist find, depending on how you look at it. I saw it listed for $100. If you've ever tried to buy a mid century anything, you know that's a steal! These sorts of things go for at least $800 around here. The catch was that it was in San Rafael, which is at least an hour drive north. And it's all one piece, so there is obviously no way it would fit in our little hatchback.

We hatched our genius (stupid) plan and set out the next day. On a Saturday morning, we rented a U-Haul van at something like 7am and drove up to San Rafael. The woman we bought it from was moving, so she had couple of movers there. Luckily, they carried it downstairs for us. It's quite heavy! We loaded it in the van and strapped it in with tie-downs. We got a late breakfast and headed home, and the whole ordeal was over before noon. The U-Haul rental was more than the price of the hutch itself, but we still think we got a deal.

That's it for today! I'm off to do anything that isn't cleaning or driving too far to buy furniture.

Spice Addiction

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 06:58:00 +0000

It seemed like such a simple little project... famous last words. After some really rather embarrassing screw-ups, I've finally managed to convert an old ironing board cabinet into a spice rack.

I was clearly not organized enough to frame the photos the same way.

To start with, the cabinet was full of little hooks in illogical places, all of them painted over about a million times. Kind of like everything else around here. I yanked them all out with pliers and ended up with this pile of yuck.

We bought some wood of the perfect width and even found a quart of the blue paint from the kitchen in the shed. I don't like the blue paint, but repainting the kitchen is for another day. The quart of paint, by the way, was $0.89 at K-Mart when purchased. I broke out my favorite little roller and painted the shelves.

Next I did what seemed logical at the time. I did some math to see where the shelves needed to go, I measured each shelf up from the bottom of the cabinet, and I drilled the 1/4" holes for the shelf supports.

Then I attempted to put the shelves in. First of all, they didn't fit because of the thickness of the brackets. Once we trimmed them to fit, they didn't sit flat. At all. Not even close enough to fake it. I thought I had just done an awful job drilling the holes, possibly cried about it (houses are stressful), then pulled out all of the supports and filled the holes with joint compound. Le sigh.

Okay, next idea! I tried making a jig out of some scrap 1x2. I thought if I made a little c-shaped thingy with the holes in it, I could level the jig and drill the holes through it. But then I couldn't even get the holes straight on the jig. Blarg.

New idea - just use the edge of the level to draw lines on the shelf. Actually drill pilot holes in an attempt to make the 1/4" holes more precise. Ah-ha! This is about when I made my big discovery: the shelf itself is completely out of square. I guess the house has survived an earthquake or two, and it's just plain wonky. I decided that my shelves would be level and the cabinet could do whatever it wanted to. I finally, after much painstaking pilot-hole drilling, managed to install reasonably flat and level shelves.

Then I went into the next room. Turns out I was a little over-zealous and drilled four of the holes clear through the wall. Oops. I guess I just love patching drywall SO MUCH that I wanted to make myself another little project.

Okay, less talking, more pictures.

Here are the shelves, finally installed! If you look closely, you can see that the shelves are not the same sort of level as the cabinet.

Then, chock full of spices! They are about 99% Penzeys, of course. I believe there are about 106 different spices, herbs, or spice blends in this photo. The sad thing is, that isn't even my entire collection.

These are refills for the things I have in jars. They live above the fridge.

These live in the cabinets with the food. For these I don't have jars or the jars are too big for the spice rack.

These are just mustard and mustard seed. I planned to give homemade mustard at Christmas and it didn't pan out. Maybe this year!

Spices, ideally, should not be stored out in the open. The random assortment of paper towels, back-up spices, and little-used kitchen appliances we have above the fridge should also really not be stored out in the open! To solve both problems, I ordered some cute vintage fabric from Etsy and made curtains.

Of course, the little cheap slidey curtain rods don't come in 17" lengths for the skinny spice rack. (I was annoyed to later find 18", but I didn't find them the day I was shopping.) I bought the shortest one available at the time, which I think was 24". When we bought our drywall saw, it came in a little kit which is basically a handle that accepts sawzall blades. It has come in quite handy, even though the blade wobbles no matter what you do.

This was a pleasantly easy fix. I used a metal sawzall blade with lots of teeth and cut off both pieces of the curtain rod. It came with a little plastic cover, so you can't even see the less-than-perfect edges.

The vintage fabric was very narrow and only available in one 2-yard chunk, so I supplemented with wide orange hems.

At the end of it all, I'm quite pleased with the spice rack and the curtains. But man, why was that so difficult?

Pop Quiz!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 19:29:00 +0000

Quiz time: What's wrong with this picture?

Hint: Both laughter and swearing ensued.

This also serves as a sneak peak of the bathroom renovations, which are ongoing. I promise they will be blogged about in excruciating detail!

The Fair!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 05:23:00 +0000

Once in awhile, we stop working on the house and try to have some fun. (By the way, much house work is happening, despite the fact that I'm not posting about it. I'm saving up all the bathroom stuff until I have a dramatic reveal photo!) Last weekend, we got up rather early (that part was not fun) and drove to Sacramento for the state fair. Fairs are fun! But Sacramento is hot. 107° to be precise.

The main reason for going was so that I could visit my 3rd-prize winning shawl and collect my ribbon. I'm a little sad I didn't place higher, but it was still fun to enter. In case I haven't forced you all to look at wedding photos often enough, here's the shawl in action at our wedding last June:

the shawl with lots of pretty shoes

it's giant

pattern detail

and a photo where you can tell that we were there, too!

Mildly relevant statistics: It took me about a year to knit (though there was a 4 or 5 month break in there somewhere), and I used 1.41 miles of yarn.

The fairground has some (air-conditioned!) exhibition halls, and my shawl was displayed with other Creative Arts entries.

There were lots of really beautiful things! One of my favorites was this poppy quilt. At the bottom of the photo you can see the heads of the knitted presidents collection. Yup, you read it correctly.

We made a point to see some critters while at the fair. That's what you're supposed to do, right? Besides eat weird fried food?

First we saw some of those happy cows from the California dairy commercials. They did look contented.

good looking dairy cows

At some point we discovered a barn run by the UC Davis vet school. It was full of super adorable baby critters!

a day-old lamb

2-day old piglets

There was also a 20-minute old calf, but we didn't get a good photo.

During our fair visit, we ate a deep fried Snickers bar (actually good, even though we didn't quite want to admit it) and deep fried artichoke hearts (our house is 75 miles north of the Artichoke Capital of the World). Our only regret is that we got some mediocre tacos instead of a Twister dog.

On Appliances and 30" Doors

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 05:28:00 +0000

So, did you know that you can order appliances online? Not just from stores like Sears and such, but from slightly dodgy websites based in anonymous midwest towns and dedicated to shipping appliances to tax evaders like us. How convenient! We shopped for appliances locally but were underwhelmed by both the big box stores and by the local stores full of ex used car salesmen. We did eventually find a fridge we liked at the local place and a washer and dryer we liked at Home Depot, but buying appliances from two different places is silly. A quick search online turned up a sketchy site selling all three items at a savings of roughly $400 beyond Home Depot's memorial day sale prices.

Excited by this new found corner of the internet, we placed our order. Then we waited. For WEEKS. It turns out the price for cheap and tax-free appliances is that they take for bloody ever to get to you.

For about a week after we moved in, we kept some food in a cooler in the garage. Then we picked up a mini-fridge from some friends and used that for another week. (It will eventually be a brew fridge.) It doesn't have a latch - that's where the bungy cords come in. It also doesn't have a built-in temperature control - that's the box on top and the reason there are wires all over the place.

Classy, right?

Anyway, we're moving rapidly towards the point of this post.

The more we tell the following story to other homeowners, the more I'm convinced that EVERY homeowner has a story like it. It's still rather embarrassing, but at least we're not alone!

I was working one last Saturday, so Devon was home alone for the appliance delivery. We paid extra to have the delivery company put the appliances in roughly the right places and take away the packing material. The washer and dryer were moved into the garage with relatively little trouble. We are irrationally excited about our new on-site laundry facilities!

The fridge made it all the way to the front step before Devon and the delivery dudes ran into trouble. Luckily, Devon was able to take the screen door off and the delivery dudes moved the fridge as far as the dining room.

Problem solved? Of course not!

The fridge is 33" wide - actually the smaller size available. It's standard depth, though, because someone decided that counter-depth fridges should cost more. Anyway, the door between the dining room and the kitchen is 30". 30" is, unfortunately, less than 33".

Devon proceeded to spend a lovely weekend afternoon taking apart the house and the brand new fridge, then putting one of them back together.

Honestly, we didn't like those bi-fold doors anyway. We'll just think of it as a chore we were going to have to do at some other point!

Soon refrigerator parts were strewn about the dining room:

After Devon took both doors and the drawer off the fridge, it fit perfectly!

See? Plenty of room! Devon had to cut little ramps out of wood so that he could push the fridge over the threshold between the rooms. Apparently refrigerators are heavy, but I wouldn't know.

All in all, 3 doors in the house were removed and 1 was replaced, 3 refrigerator doors were removed and replaced, one (crappy particle board) cupboard was removed and replaced, and one bit of shelving was cut off with the sawzall.

Devon did a good day's work, don't you think?

We still can't quite believe that it never occurred to us to measure the doorways. I mean, people buy fridges all the time, right? And they all have doors in their houses, I assume.

I don't have a picture of the lovely washer and dryer, but you can use your imagination. They are white, because white ones are cheaper. They also play songs when you turn them on and when the cycle is finished. I guess buzzers are out of style.

Bunnyproofing

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 06:53:00 +0000

Last week we finished a project that will help with (eventually!) letting the bunnies have the run of the place. They're super excited, naturally.

First, to back up a bit - when we set up our apartment in Mountain View, we wanted to organize the cords behind the tv. Partly to keep them away from nibbly bunnies, partly just so they wouldn't be a total mess. I devised a system of velcro strips to attach all of the cords and chargers to the back of the tv stand. At the time, I thought I was pretty clever, but the system didn't hold up well. The first time we had to move something, it was a mess again.

The old cable management attempt

Before we tackled the cord situation this time around, I repainted the red insides of the cabinet. I spray-painted it last time, and the surface was always rough. It attracted bunny fur and was then a pain to dust. It was pretty much just dusty all the time as a result.

That little roller is the BEST THING. I love it more than any person should love a flimsy plastic tray. And it was $1.97. Be still my beating heart.

Anyway.... once the tv stand had its legs repaired after some slight damage in the move and its insides repainted, we implemented Devon's really clever idea for managing cord/rabbit relations.

First, we painted some 1x4's with my favoritest toy:

Then we attached them to the back of the tv stand:

Then we shoved the whole thing against the wall:

And ta-da! A little cubby for all of the cords and chargers and nonsense to live. I don't even feel like we have all that many electronic gizmos on the tv stand, but they certainly generate a big pile of cables.

The idea behind painting the wood was that it would look like we did this whole thing on purpose. Since real wood will never look like Ikea laminate, we went with the red.

I haven't gotten around to taking a picture of the whole set-up truly finished, but you get the idea. The best part is that there's nothing at all on the floor. Except dust...