Rest In Peace Harley Joe

We lost Harley today. He passed away after abdominal surgery on Friday. He ate a toy that lodged in his intestine. Although he's eaten toys before, apparently this one started to kill his small intestine before he could pass it. Anyone who knows me, knows that I get attached easily to pets, and Harley was the first dog of my own. I'll be grieving for a long time. We got to see him a few times after the operation and I knew he needed go. Although he couldn't get up, he put his big paw on my chest. I'm going to miss him and his funny personality so much.

RIP, my loyal friend. We'll miss you so much.

Has Anyone Seen our Crew?

I wish I had good news to post on the progress the crew made this week, but alas, I don't have any news on that front. A few guys came a few days this week, but no noticeable work was done. So frustrating! We have now issued an ultimatum that if they don't complete certain tasks by Thursday, they're fired. Frankly, I hope they hope they comply, since it would be a pain to find a new contractor. But I'm willing to follow through on our threat.

W got quite a bit done on his own this week. We're trying to seal the house as best we can, in the hopes that our utility bill might go down a bit. He hung a door to the attic, keeping the warm air downstairs. As I previously posted, hanging our doors is no small challenge. It involves first squaring up the old door, then building a frame, then hanging it and getting it to swing correctly. I think we still have 12 doors to go! W is getting good use out of his nail gun.

This weekend, we focused on the back "new" part of the house (it's an area that was originally a porch, but enclosed at some point, a while ago). We insulated the pipes so they don't freeze up. There's a crawl space under the laundry/ half bath area, and those pipes are fairly exposed. We still need to get insulation under the floor, but that isn't quite as pressing.

We also pulled up all the old flooring in the laundry/bath area, so that the crew (hopefully) can easily and evenly lay the new flooring. We'll use the flooring that we salvaged from upstairs, a nice looking pine. Some of it looks like heart of pine with a nice, tight grain, although I'm not sure that all of it is as high quality. In pulling up the layers, we noticed some water damage and cut floor joists, so we were able to repair those. I'm glad we did that ourselves to be sure that the foundation is solid.

I'm really looking forward to the point when the crew is done with their stuff and we can get into our part. We certainly have a lot of work we can do now, but it's hard when we have to clean up our stuff every night to make sure it's out of the way of the crew. And even more frustrating when that crew doesn't show!

I'm hoping we'll get started with hanging the cabinets this week, but it's tough with the holidays approaching. Hopefully we'll have a few up by Christmas. That's my Christmas wish.

For those who have asked, my pregnancy is going well! I'm going into month 5 and still feeling really good, although I need to find some better clothes to work in on the weekends. My jeans aren't cutting it. My doctors are aware of our home renovation and I really don't have to change my behavior too much. I'm more careful about the things I lift, but I'm still able to haul things around. I'm also careful around any chemicals, but we haven't had too many of those around. To strip all our doors, we have a natural product so I can still help with that. I think I'll get out of painting, but I'm not upset about that at all.

This will probably be my last post for a couple weeks, but I'll try to get some pictures up. I realized that I haven't posted any since the walls were primed. It's coming together, albeit slowly. Seasons Greetings to all!!

Hit man for hire?

This week was another frustrating one. Again, no need for pictures, since nothing changed! The crew didn't even show up most of this week. I think they came on Monday, but I'm not sure about that. Tuesday was W's birthday and it was spoiled by our contractor. It's been six weeks since we told them what tile we wanted for our master bath. On Tuesday, they finally admitted that they didn't place the order for our tile, after first trying to place the blame on Lowes. Apparently this type of thing is par for the course when working with contractors, but it blows my mind. In most occupations, this type of thing would ruin your business, but that doesn't seem to be the case for contractors.

However I will take this opportunity to tell anyone who's reading- never use or refer Maribel Construction. They're incompetent and irresponsible. Three more bath tiles popped off this week, a sure sign of poor installation. Maybe this will pop up on Google searching. I can hope. If only we could find a statue of the head sales guy, we would most certainly topple it. It may involve turning the troops against their leader, but I'm sure we could rally the crew. Sometimes a civil war is all it takes to get things moving. Ah, I feel better now that that's off my chest.

After the contractors declared "Mission Accomplished" prematurely this week and quit showing up, I'm hoping for a surge in troops next week before a draw down in January. We picked out a new tile (more expensive, but I don't care about that!) that matches the other tile, cabinet and vanity we selected- no small task. It should be in on Tuesday. The floors on the second floor should start Tuesday. And they should wrap up the decks as well. And if they don't show, W and I may revolt and start using their equipment as weapons against them.

It may be overly ambitious, but I'm really hoping to move out of the basement by Christmas. The gas smell still lingers and I'm tired of it. W and I started laying the foundation for the cabinets this weekend. I'm hoping we can get most of the cabinets up by Christmas too, although I'm resigned to the fact that we won't have a functioning kitchen with counters and appliances until 2008. But I'm taking it one step at a time- first a bedroom, then a kitchen. I think this time last year, I was hoping for a new pair of boots or something luxurious like that.

Keep your fingers crossed for progress this week.

Highs and Lows

With the Thanksgiving holidays, I've been remiss in my postings. I'm out of town for the weekend, so no pictures right now, but I thought I'd go ahead and post an update.

The workers got next to nothing done while we were gone for Thanksgiving. However they did leave our heat running at 75 degrees for 4 days, just to make sure our oil bill didn't dip. Although they had said they were coming on Thanksgiving Day and the Friday after, they didn't show for either.

But they did make some improvements this week after W had a good talk with the crew. The bathroom tile job is still dragging on. I swear, this is the longest tile job I've ever seen. And as you saw below, we didn't choose a crazy design. All of the drywall is completed now and the walls have even been primed, or in some cases painted with a flat coat. That wasn't our intention, but there was a little misunderstanding on that. I think we bought about 50 gallons of paint in all.

The low point came on Wednesday night. The crew left a small puddle of oil on the basement floor from the old furnace line. (Side note: the crew did not remove our old furnace tank. There's still some oil in it. Any ideas on how we can get it safely removed? I'm guessing this will be an insurance issue later down the road.) We were out eating dinner (yep, still eating out every night) and making our nightly stop at Home Depot, so we didn't make it back home till 9pm. We walked into the house and it smelled like a gas station. (Now you see why this was the "high" point of the week as well.) As we approached our cozy plastic corner where our bed is, the smell got stronger. When W found the source, and realized the crew caused the problem, we called the head honchos and they sent us to hotel for the night. So at 11pm we made it to a hotel and turned in for the night. BUT the next night, the oil puddle was still there! AND they left 2 gas soaked rags in the living, just to ensure the odor permeated the whole house! They must have missed the warning label on gas tanks about spontaneous combustion, or maybe they were trying to prove it. So we headed out to a hotel again.

It turned out to be a great night. Take food on the hotel beds, and watching a full night of Thursday sitcoms. For someone who has been living without a TV for 2 months, it was a big treat.

Our new kitchen cabinets arrived on Thursday, so we may have a kitchen in a few weeks. We're approaching the point in the project where more of the work will fall on us, which is fine by me. I'm tired of dealing with the contractors, and I know W feels that much more than I do.

The crew only has a few more key tasks (flooring 2nd floor, finishing baths, build back entrance steps) to complete, so I'm hoping they're gone in 2 weeks. Then we can start refinishing the 1st level floors, installing trim and wrapping up the kitchen. I'm just hoping they stay on track and finish soon! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Big News!

We have lots of progress to talk about finally! After 2 tries, they have started tiling the guest bath correctly. They have almost finished mudding all the walls, and are working on sanding them. That's a very messy process, and almost always results in me getting to work with white dust on my clothes.

The exterior of the house improved this week by adding the recessed lights on the deck. It looks pretty driving up to the house now.

W has had a rough week of it, and at this point he only has 7 working fingers. He broke his pinky finger in the palm of his hand, and Sunday, he sliced his thumb very thoroughly. It was a good test of my first aid skills and stomach. We got through it without a trip to the emergency room though.

In spite of these setbacks, we managed to frame and hang a door together. It was my first time using power tools, and it was fun! I managed to use the router to create mortise holes for the hinges (all with W's guidance of course). This being our first time hanging an antique door, we learned a few things, but all in all I think it looks pretty good!

Also, we're very proud to annouce that in addition to planning a home renovation, we're also planning for another big change. Yep, I'm pregnant! Today begins my 4th month, with an expected due date of 6/1. Some of you may know that's just one day off of my sister's birthday. Adding to that irony is that she got married on my birthday. We've always been close, and I take this as some sort of promising sign for good times ahead for both of us.

Ok, I'm getting kicked out of our hot spot, so signing off for now! Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Things to be Thankful For- Heated Homes!

I'm sorry for my tardy posting here, but I couldn't bring myself to write on Sunday. I was depressed at the thought of another week without heat, but I'm thrilled to report that yesterday I walked into a toasty home!!! It was very, very exciting. I will never take heat for granted again. It took a lot of self control to turn back the thermostat to a reasonable 68 degrees. I would have sat in a t-shirt on my folding chair and smiled all night if I could have. For comparison, here's what my relaxing evenings looked like before Tuesday:

W improved the quality of living tremendously even before the heat was turned on. He created a little corner of plastic tarp heaven that kept in the heat from our propane heater. And despite very little help from me, he managed to bring our double mattress into the basement. It's so wonderful to sleep on a mattress, compared to the air mattress we were on for so long. I married a good man.

We did have a slightly unfortunate event on Friday night. W & I took off for a relaxing week at my aunt & uncle's house, and some neighborhood kids (assuming) came in with a paintgun and started off painting our living room walls royal blue. It's not quite the color I had in mind. Kidding aside, it could have been much worse and gave us the impetus we needed to install new locks on all the doors. I don't expect we'll have any future trouble.

Frighteningly little progress was made towards the end of last week, but they've been cranking this week. I'll have a newsy posting for this weekend, including pictures of the bathrooms being tiled and the front deck coming together. And we just learned that our kitchen cabinets are ready to be shipped. We just have to get that floor refinished in time.

That's all for now!

More Drywall, Less Heat

We made it through another week without heating. I convinced W to head to a pet-friendly hotel one night last week and we had a blissful weekend in a nice, warm hotel at Penn State. So all in all, we spent three or four nights in the cold. We did buy an indoor propane heater, but it doesn't have much of an effect on our large space, despite the tarp we use to trap the "heat" in the basement. I figure it dips into the 50s inside each night. W did manage to find our box of coats, hats and gloves, which I am so grateful for. A generous friend lent me her down coat until I found my own. I wear it around all the time, including right now. I do wish I could find my flannel sheets! W tells me that we'll have heat by the end of this week. I'll cross my fingers. Here's a picture of our luxious sleeping quarters. Note Harley curled up on his bed to the left of ours, tucked under a blanket, and the space heater on the right side.

We do have a good deal more drywall than last week. I love to see that stuff go up. It really makes our house look liveable. Here are some pictures of the bottom floor now.

Dining room:

Kitchen, hasn't been done yet:

Living room:

We're hosting our first guest tomorrow night! Our brave friend is coming to stay the night despite our warnings about the state of our house. He's a hardy guy, up for any type of challenge but still I feel bad that we don't have a better situation.

The work team says they only have 2-3 weeks of work left on our project. I hope they're right but even if they're slightly off, we've been really impressed with their fast progress. If they're on track, this week should be a big week of progress on the bathrooms and flooring.

Just as I finished typing this up, I noticed that our propane tank must have run out. So it's going to be a cold one! Wish us luck, and think of us as you roll out of bed into your nice snug homes!

Drywall and Insulation

The appearance of the exterior of the house hasn't changed dramatically from last week. Sadly, no new decks. The real changes are inside. The workers put dry wall throughout the second floor. It makes such a difference to have walls up. I could actually hear my own voice echo! very exciting stuff. However, we won't be able to get a foothold on that floor because we're replacing the floor soon.
They also finished putting up insulation in the back of the first floor, where the powder room and laundry will go. You can see the framed walls for those rooms. Hopefully they'll start putting up dry wall on the first floor this week. But already it's much quieter. I can't really say that's it's warmer, since we still don't have heat. But I image it would be worse without the insulation. Tonight will be the coldest night yet (in the 30s), but this should be one of the last cold nights. I think the electrician is going to work on wiring the thermostats early this week. If that wasn't his plan, I think we'll have to ask him to reprioritize. Those who know me, know that I'm chronically cold and dressed in layers, so it's pretty comical to see my bed attire these days. It usually involves at least 2 layers.

We made a couple big decisions this weekend- picking the flooring for the second floor and the granite for the kitchen. Going to the granite store is so cool. Seeing these huge slabs of polished stone in such a variety of color, it's hard to believe they all came from the depths of the earth. We picked a tan color with some black flecks, and then we hope to have a soap stone island.

Today was a busy day. We started off by watching 3 people carry off some of our radiators. We were hoping to salvage them, but it turns out that it's more of a hassle than we were willing to go through with. But the crew was comprised of 2 women, one in flip flops and an older man. It made me laugh to think that our crew of 11 guys wouldn't handle the radiators (they're still scattered throughout our house), but this motley crew was ready to take them on. Good for them!
W's project today was carefully removing the upstairs wood floors so we can reuse it in the back of the house. In the 1930's, oak was more desirable than heart of pine, so we have oak on the first floor and pine on the second. These days, heart of pine is a rare commodity, so we're salvaging it to reuse in other areas of the house.

We hung out with good friends on Saturday night, which felt like such a treat. It's been a while since we've seen our friends. Plus, they were so kind to bring up a new air mattress for us Sunday morning! And I enjoyed a respite from the house work today by having a fantastic lunch at Z&Z's house in DC. They finished renovating their house last year, so can relate to our process, and their house is proof that it's worth the pain of renovation. Thanks again for the great visit and wonderful home-cooked meal!

And a closing shot of our pup, who is happily enduring the renovation!

Siding and Basement Bugs

** Updated Tuesday evening for pictures **

I'm only halfway up and running tonight. I won't have any pictures since they're on the other computer, which isn't here right now. I'll do my best to paint a picture of our progress to date. As of my posting last week, we were sleeping with the carbon monoxide detector. I'm happy to report that it never woke us with its alarm, and the water heater has been vented properly, more or less.

The siding is as complete as it can be for now, until the roofing and decking is completed. We're really happy with how it turned out in the end. We had to have the workers change the siding on the dormers, since they filled the whole thing with framing and no siding. It looked silly, but looks great now. We realized that the front roof isn't very stable, so we're having to rebuild that. So far, that's been the only unexpected project.

Today is a huge landmark. The electrical and plumbing are all roughed in, so the drywall can start to go up. Once this starts to happen, it'll really start to look more like a home. I'm getting a little tired of our temporary status, as we enter our second month of living from the basement. It hasn't been too uncomfortable so far, but it does get frustrating having dust coat everything and sleeping on a dying air mattress loses its charm.

I finally identified our basement critters as camel crickets, thanks to the help of the Washington Post. Apparently these guys really like the dry weather we've been having. In the scheme of basement bugs, these crickets aren't too bad, but I'm not a huge fan of them. They're usually at least an inch across. They don't bite, and they don't make noise. But either way, I do NOT like sleeping anywhere near them. For more info: http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/ent/notes/Urban/camelcrickets.htm

Tonight our basement had an unusually large presence of camel crickets, and so I'm moving our bedroom upstairs to the kitchen area. This means sweeping and mopping, but I'm happy to oblige.

W & I had our own project yesterday in trimming the ash tree that is close to the front porch. W bravely pulled out one of the big ladders and scaled up the tree with the chain saw to cut off one of the limbs that was brushing the front. I'll post a picture to show the improvement. It looks nice now that the front has a clear view. We still have a lot of work to do on the old oak tree along the street. It's over grown with a couple vines. We've cut the roots and hopefully the winter will aid our efforts.

Before tree trimming, and before they fixed the dormer:

The workers were focused on putting up the siding, and finishing the electric and plumbing last week. This week I think they'll be working on the front and rear decks (only a small one out back) and putting up dry wall. They've framed in the powder room downstairs and the bathrooms upstairs. W & I have almost finalized all the selections, which has been no small task. Picking bathroom tile proved to be the most difficult selection. We ordered our kitchen cabinets, so we may have a functioning kitchen in 4-5 weeks! I'm hoping for a washer and dryer sooner than that.

One of the nicest things about this renovation has been the neighborhood's excitement about our project. They are thrilled that we're fixing up this house that had obviously been uncared for for many years. Many people stop just to shout "looks great!" through their window as they drive by. And lots of others have walked up to chat with us about our project. Even in Lowes, the tile guy said, oh that's YOUR house!

So maybe by my next post, I'll have some dry wall to show off! I'll try to get pictures up tomorrow.

One quick shot of our friendly neighbors, Sam & Bella:

Technical Trouble

Hi all-
We had some connectivity issues last night and weren't able to post anything. We'll get a new posting up Monday night. Sorry!

Facelift

**Monday update- I'm able to upload pictures now. Water heater is still not fixed. **

This week was an interesting one. The workers made a good amount of progress both inside and outside. Blogspot is having some technical difficulties, so I'll have to wait until tomorrow to upload some shots.

They've completed a good amount of the siding. I really like the color we went with. We plan on installing black shutters in a few weeks, but I think it looks nice even without. They've also made a lot of progress on the plumbing and HVAC. Most of the plumbing is roughed in and all of the ductwork is installed for the HVAC on both floors.

You may remember that we were going to sleep in the penthouse this past week. That went well for the first few nights. It was a little louder than I was prepared for, but it was doable. Then on Wednesday a cold front came through during the night. With it came a strong storm with lots of wind and rain. The purpose of an attic is for ventilation and ours is particularly effective right now, since we don't have windows (or didn't at that point). The wind was blowing mist onto our faces and we could hear a leak somewhere in the room. After we closed the tarp to block some of the rain and wind, the sound of the tarp brushing on the floor sounded eerily like a squirrel scurrying around the attic. Needless to say, it wasn't a restful night.

Thursday wasn't quite as bad, but it got cold! We have insulation in most of the house, but we don't have heat and there are still some gaping holes near windows. It was in the mid 40's outside and it couldn't have been more than 55 inside. We were fine bundled up beneath our down comforter but it's an experience I hope we don't have to repeat too many times.

Tonight marks a significant breaking point for me; I've caved and agreed to sleep in the basement. Till now, I've resisted due to the crickets and general damp smell, but it turns out that it's the warmest place in the house right now. To add to the excitement, the hot water heater was replaced but only slapped together, so the exhaust is dumping into the basement, as opposed to outside. So tonight we'll be sleeping by our newest purchase, a carbon monoxide detector. So far, we're clear.

(Harley warming our bed.)

Note the open exhaust pipe pointing to the left- excellent.

My parents dropped off our dog today too, so our little family is complete again. He seems to enjoy the excitement for the most part. And during the day, we'll drop him at a local doggie day care, so that he's out of the way of the workers.

I think the main pushes for this week will be completing the siding, plumbing and electrical. I'm also hoping they'll work on redecking the front and back decks. Right now the back door just opens to a drop off, so it would be convenient to have that decked again, especially now with that the dog needs access to his yard again!

Sorry for the lack of pictures tonight. I'll try to get them up early this week.

Living with Studs

I thought we had things pretty well gutted out, but apparently there was much more to be removed. We are really down to studs now! There are only a few small areas that have any type of original blown in insulation. There are no walls whatsoever. The house looks like this throughout.

We had some great progress, scattered with a few irritations, mostly from my perspective. We had our first delivery of dry wall and insulation. This is a great sign of progress. If dry wall is coming, that means we should have walls before too long. Dry wall delivery was an amazing process for a first time renovators like myself. They just popped out a window and lifted the pallet up. I thought it was cool.

The house has almost completely been rewired as well. Although the old knob and tube was interesting, the new insulated wire looks much safer. We have new windows in the garage and the house and garage are wrapped in green shrink wrap (I'm sure there's a more technical term).

The 2 minor frustrations of the week were fixable. First the workers tossed the contents of our dog's rubbermaid box, including about $200 worth of medications. Second the oil from the boiler was drained onto the basement floor, not touching our belongings but filling the area with the pungent smell of gasoline.

W is telling me that we should be able to create a semi-permanent bedroom for ourselves in the attic, hereafter referred to as the penthouse. This sounds like a pretty good plan, since it'll get us off the air mattress for a few nights (which I think has a small leak) and might relieve me of mopping duty for a little while. However, the penthouse does have a few drawbacks, including the gaping holes where windows will go and neatly drilled 2" holes where insulation was blown in. I think we'll give it a try for a few nights. Here's a shot of our penthouse suite.

This week, the electric should be completed and the siding should start to go up. I sure hope I like the color we picked!

Good Bones

We thought our house had good potential- good bones- and this week they were exposed! The workers showed up Tuesday morning and made a lot of progess. It was really exciting to see. The big accomplishments of the week were removing the siding and stucco from the house, opening the front porch, removing almost all the plaster interior walls, and removing the wall that was enclosing the stairway. I think they filled at least two 30 foot dumpsters. They're doing a good job of keeping our home pretty clear, but the dust is inevitable.

Here's a shot of the newly exposed staircase. It'll look even nicer when that door is repaced by a window for morning light. The exterior staircase to that door has already been demolished.

We've been sleeping on the air mattress again, which is pretty comfortable. However I don't like the idea of sleeping right on all that dust (created from tearing down the plaster walls), so before going to sleep, I have to mop the floor. Never did I imagine that part of my "getting ready for bed" routine would involve mopping! We slept in the future kitchen Friday night, as shown below, since we thought it was the most insulated at this point. In some rooms, there are missing windows or exposed gaps in the walls. However, I still woke up freezing at about 3am, but didn't want to go to the trouble of finding my shoes, the flashlight and the heavier blanket in the basement. After shivering for 2 hours, W rolled out of bed and grabbed the down comforter.

You'll notice our 1 lamp without a shade that we transport around the house to where we are.

It's hard to see the layout, but you can see all 3 remaining bedrooms and 2 closets on the second floor in this photo.

We were looking around the house at the progress and noticed some newspapers that were lining the floor of the attic. They were from 1969! I realize that's not all that old, but it was funny to see how untouched the house has been for so many years. Plus I got a kick out of the wedding announcement pictures.

Home Sweet Home

We spent our weekend moving out of our condo and into a few small areas of our house. About 90% of our belongings went from the moving truck straight into the garage. The other 10% is in a corner of the basement.

We were wiped out Saturday after a day full of moving, so we crashed on the air mattress. Although we live next to a fairly busy residential street, it is so nice to hear crickets as we fall asleep.

We're finalizing plans with a contractor, so hopefully big progress will start shortly. W already made big strides and demolished all the walls in the basement. He filled up a third of a 30 foot dumpster with all the drywall, studs and metal framing. It looked cramped and creepy before last weekend, but it almost feels downright airy now!

And here's our temporary bathroom in the basement that we'll be using during the renovation. Note the huge pipe that runs through the shower, over the toilet.

All in all, we've got things pretty well set up. I'm hoping for dramatic changes by the time of my next posting. Have a great week!

And thus it begins...

This weekend marks the beginning of our home renovation project! We bought a 1935 American Four Square home that needs a lot of work. It was retrofitted into upper and lower level apartments and it hasn't been updated (or cleaned for that matter) in a very long time. Our plan over the next 9 months is to gut the whole house, re-side, re-wire and re-plumb the house, build a completely new kitchen, create 2.5 new bathrooms, all while living in the house! I thought this blog would be a good way to force me to record this project, and allow others to enjoy our project vicariously- for better or worse.

So this weekend we managed to gut the basement down to only essential studs. W did all of that while I focused on the making the rest of the house liveable- cleaning floors, walls, & the most disgusting toilets I've ever seen. My other chore was removing carpet tacks from 2 rooms and a hallway. I still have one room to go.

We've got one week till moving day, but it's pretty liveable at this point! If at any point, you'd like to see more pictures, just email me.