Almost done with the utility moving

Because we're GENIUSES, obviously, we have decided to move every single appliance in the kitchen, which has meant that a lot of the work we're doing up to this point is happening in the crawlspace.  This week, we got the gas and electric moved, finished up the final plumbing, and should be ready any day to finish taking out the last of the cabinets and then actually begin putting things in.  Meanwhile, we're living like this:

Stove and dishwasher in the living room, delightful! 

There were several issues that complicated things - multiple changes made over the years, all of them kind of haphazardly done (adding a 220 for a stove at some point, even though there is a gas hookup, the completely crazy plumbing changes done to throw a random dishwasher in the mix, multiple cable hookups over time -I think every major cable company has done an install here, including a dish on the top of the house, none of which are functioning except the FIOS line).  Each trip under the house means a game of "can you see where this wire goes?" so we can pull it out and simplify the underworld landscape.

The great news is, we've decided 90% on our kitchen cabinet layout - just in time for the big IKEA sale.  And better news is, they don't require any purchase of appliances this year, just a straight "if you buy $4500 worth of kitchen cabinets, you get 20% off", which fits into our scheme perfectly.  So we'll also be ordering those soon, before the sale runs out!

Oh, and you can see the gap under the door above - we did get a visitor the other night, we discovered him while putting things away:

I think he was just as surprised as we were.  We caught him under a bucket and set him back outside.  And we've covered the gap with a rolled towel when we're not working in there!

sneak peek

As with every project, as soon as we think, "we're almost done, just another couple of hours...." we run into all kinds of snags and unexpected complications.  Just when we were getting the beam all ready to go up, one little thing after another kept cropping up (split joists, bowed boards, electrical confusion), and what we kind of thought would be an afternoon job consumed the whole weekend.

Dale spent entirely too long with his head and shoulders in the attic space, with some odd splicing to figure out.  We had to cut a larger opening to sort this out, but it will be handy so we can access the wiring when we put can lights in the kitchen.

While Dale was working on electrical and constructing the laminated beam, I took down most of the kitchen ceiling tiles and the furring strips.  I still have a row or so to go, because this is where our work zones overlapped.

The ceiling itself is actually in a lot better shape than we'd anticipated.  There are small cracks, but no separation between the plaster and the lath, which is what we were afraid we'd see.  These small cracks are typical of plaster ceilings, and we can patch these up just fine.  There are a few small places where the plaster is soft, over the window and another small spot in the middle.  I also removed 3 layers of wallpaper on the window wall. 

We've managed to pile up quite a large amount of construction trash.  We got rid of all the bathroom construction trash over time, rather than renting a dumpster, and we'll get rid of this the same way.

So taking the wall down gave us a pile of 2 x 4s with a ton of nails in them.....

that we added to the boxes that are filled with the plaster and tile.  The trashcans are full of ceiling tiles and wallpaper scraps....

and we finally got the beam installed and the remainder of the old wall taken down.  The house is dusty, the floors are filthy and there's pretty much a film on everything.  But.... I don't have final photos because we still have the temporary support wall in place.  Dale got called to go into work this evening, so that last little step is still there before we can get a real feel for how it is going to look with the wall gone!

almost there!

s.l.o.w. p.r.o.g.r.e.s.s

I don't know if I can even call it progress, that's how slow it's going.  Dale had to work overtime all week and weekend (he worked over 75 hours this past week!) so when he came home each night, he sort of just took a shower then dropped into a chair for a couple of hours before going to bed.  And I've had the semester start off with all kinds of issues, so since we tore the wall down, nothing has gone on there.  Well, I did take down the plastic after cleaning up the rest of the plaster removal.

The cats are loving the open wall.  They see the horizontal braces as the ideal perch to survey the house.  I keep trying to knock them off so they won't get into more trouble, but they are persistent.






Because when Dale is home I can't even bang things around since he needs his sleep, I ran out to check out a tile shop in Orange County.  I am wanting to do a black and white checkered floor in the kitchen, but I don't want it to look all country, I'd like it to be a little more elegant.  I love this picture of a tile floor:

(from my Pinterest board on house ideas)

I love the black and white checkerboard on the diagonal, and the bands of borders around the side.  But I want it to be in a richer finish, so I went out to check out some marble.    I picked up some 12 x 12 tiles of carrara and nero marble for the field, and a couple of marble mosaic borders.  I laid them out and love the way they look.  So now I have to map out the floor and plan the design.  I am hoping to hit another shop this week to look at kitchen cabinets -- we are likely going with IKEA cabinets, but I'd like to see what other options we might explore before we commit.

Kitchen Demo

Last night after I got home from my long day of teaching, I picked up a couple of plastic shelves to hold our stuff, and unloaded all the kitchen cabinets on the demo side.  It doesn't look pretty, but we'll be living like this for awhile:

Yes, a classy look.  The cats will enjoy getting into everything.

This morning, Dale's job got cancelled because of rain, so he was eager to get started.  First, we took all the drawers out and doors off, then started swinging away with a sledge hammer!

Time out to put the doors and drawers out, and our helpers inspected....

Then it was heavy duty worktime, getting all the tile and wood framing out.

I kept sweeping and cleaning as we went, I hate it when things get piled up.  After we got the cabinets out, we took off the crap tile from behind the stove.  It had this nasty creosote kind of adhesive holding a melamine panel up.  yuk!  The not-so-fabulous 70's tile was really awful, too.  We also took a few rows of the ceiling tile off -- not the whole thing yet, because that will create a mess everywhere, but that'll come off soon enough.


At this point, we decided we could go out and eat a big lunch so we could work all afternoon demolishing the wall, and also pick up some boxes to put our broken plaster in and more plastic to partition off the area so we don't have a house full of dust.  Then we got down to business.

It's VERY satisfying knocking all that ugly stuff down!  and when we could see all the way through, we realize how nice this going to be!  of course, the plastic is up so we can't really get a full feeling, but the kitchen itself is enormous now.

So this is what it looks like now.  Dale has to work again tomorrow morning, so this was a good place to stop for now.  We swept and mopped, and we can walk through a opening we made.

Tomorrow, we hope to get the ceiling cleaned up around the wall so we can see if it really is load-bearing -- we thought it was, but after checking the rafters, we may actually luck out and not have to go with a load-bearing beam after all.  Hopefully, but we want it to be structurally sound, so whatever it takes.  There is a beam across the entry, so we plan on matching that, anyway, it might just be that it's more decorative and less structural.

Well, that was a long break from blogging....

So - in the past month, instead of blogging and working on the house, I've been quite busy traveling, finishing up the end of the semester, getting ready to start the new semester, and enjoying a bunch of family time.

First, we went to Indiana to spend the holidays with Dale's family.  It snowed the day we arrived, to his great happiness, and snowed 2 more times while we were there. More happiness for Dale, less than ecstatic for me.

That's the view from my daughter's driveway after the first snow.  The picture below is during "the blizzard," which was over-rated.  8 inches, but not too horrible.  Lots of blowing snow.

While I was out visiting, my daughter Leslie and I did a bunch of work on the baby's room - we painted the walls, installed molding, did some sewing -- it was a regular craft-o-rama.

She found this picture on Pinterest (left), and we did a dragging technique on the walls with a bamboo colored glaze (right).  The colors in the picture inthe right are a little off, they're closer to the ones in the inspiration picture, but it was hard to catch a good photo at night.

We also made the curtains, the banner, and several other small projects. 

Then we flew home around new year's day, and a week later, left for a conference in Honolulu, where the weather was more to our liking - around 75-80° each day.  We went with our dear friends Herbert and Eric - Herbert and I both presented at the conference, and then spent the rest of the time doing the tourist things!

The view of Diamond Head from our room - -a cheery sight to wake up to each morning!

We hiked up a slippery, muddy slope to view Manoa Falls -- great memories, even though we were filthy by the time we got back to the car!


We also got a great view of the city from the hills.



And the view from the plane as we left --

As soon as I got back, I had a few days to do laundry and clean up before I headed up to Santa Maria to help my niece clean out my sister's house, so she can get it up for sale.  Lots of packing and sorting, but we got most of it done.  We will probably meet up again in a month to have a yard sale to get a lot of the extra stuff taken care of.  I got home late last night.

Sooooo....we're back and now the other fun begins.  We are going to work on getting our kitchen done.  First step, knock out the wall between the kitchen and the living room.  This morning, I got the furniture moved away and removed the paneling from the wall.  Here's how it looked back when we closed on the house, and now...

OK, not an improvement yet.  But we need to get this off and then start removing the plaster.  Getting the room ready for all this mess means taping it off with plastic and trying to keep the mess contained.  I figured if I got the large sheets of paneling off first, I could get the room taped off easier.

As far as plans for the room go, we're playing a bit by ear.   We want to get this wall opened up, then do our measurements and get things planned.  Doing a lot of work on old houses, you learn that you get a lot of surprises any time you check into the walls, and I don't want to have all my plans based on something that can change at the last minute.  On the other side of that wall is this:

So there's a gas line and electrical at least.  No HVAC in this house, so we don't have to worry about that at least.  But it is a load-bearing wall, so we have to put a beam across the span. 

We're not in a big rush. Again, the bathroom took months, so will this.  I have a high tolerance for living in chaos, and I have a lot of things going on at work this spring, so we're going to take this one step at a time.  We have some cabinets in mind, and some ideas for the flooring, but we'll see how things progress as we go.  I want to move the sink to this side of the room, in a center island.  But I want to try out the sizes before I commit.  So we'll build some temporary structure to check out and live with it a bit. 

But...one tiny step forward!

happy Halloween -- and happy anniversary to us!

It was one year ago today that I was making multiple runs of the rental truck, bringing all the final boxes, furniture pieces and odd items over from our rental to our home, making it the official move in date.  We actually spent the night and moved the kitties over the night before, but Halloween is the day I feel is our official move.

Last year, I remember getting done handing over the keys to the rental house, dropping off the moving truck and sinking into a chair, surrounded by boxes, grateful to be not in motion, when it occurred to me that within the next hour, we'd have trick or treaters visiting and I'd better hustle off to get candy, light a couple of candles and sit on the front porch.

I met a lot of our neighbors who came by to welcome us to the neighborhood. Dale was working late so he missed a good portion of the kiddos, but the cats were perched in the window watching all the little ones stop by.

This year, we actually got some decorations up (we have TONS of Halloween stuff), and have the candy all ready to go.  Dale worked last night so he'll be home, but I have to teach tonight and so might miss all the fun. 

In the last year, we've gotten quite a few things done in our house, and although we have many more to go, we've made some big leaps towards making this house home for us:

• remodeled the bathroom (huge job!) total gut job and added new drywall, tile, floor, ceiling, vanity, toilet and shower
• reworked the guest room, replacing the closets, adding crown and base and paint
• redid the front entry, removing paneling from walls and doors, adding crown and baseboard, refinished the doors and painted everything
• worked a lot in the yard - tore out and replanted the north side of the front yard, removed 6 trees, cleaned up the front yard and began replanting the curbside strip.  Planted succulents along the south side of the front yard.  Cleaned out and trimmed the trees in the backyard along the south wall.  Moved in a lot of plants while clearing out a ton of weeds.

On the agenda for the upcoming year:

• finish the crown molding and baseboard in the studio
• finish the crown molding and baseboard in the hall
• remodel the kitchen
• add a swimming pool
• continue working on both the front and back yards

We are getting started on the kitchen in the new year - we have several trips between now and mid-January, so after those are done, demo begins in the kitchen!  I hope next year's list of accomplishments is even better than this year's!

Oh, Rubbish...

The pile of trash is growing...


If our yard was even remotely attractive, I would have rented a dumpster to get the demolition trash out of the way.  A lovely pink tub, piles of plaster and broken tile, plus a lot of old wood full of nails -- yep, that's the view from the living room right now.




On the bright side, demolition seems to be pretty much done, and tonight we got started on the plumbing: new hookups for the laundry area in the garage (although I have to buy a washer and dryer still), and the drain system in the house got roughed in. 



I also changed out the light fixture in the front entry, but forgot light bulbs, so I didn't take a picture.  Meanwhile, I'm also getting stuff moved over bit by bit.  The weekend will be here before I know it and we'll have to move all the big stuff, too!

Progress -- still demolishing!

One of the things you find out when you do any kind of renovations is that no matter what you gear yourself up for, there's always something else that unfolds along the way, making everything more complicated.  For us, it was finding that there was a 2 1/2" mortar bed under the tile floor and an equally hard mortar bed behind the tiles around the tub.  Getting these broken up was a back-breaking job - enough for Dale to get his back strained so that Friday night, he was very stiff and in a lot of pain.  So we took one night off, then got back to work on Saturday. 



This morning, we picked up a jackhammer so he could make quick work of breaking up the floor.  Within 45 minutes, it was broken up into small pieces that I could carry out, and he was on his way bringing the jackhammer back to the tool rental place.  When he got back, I was just sweeping up, and now the bathroom is a nice, blank slate.





You can see the floor is two different levels -- higher by an inch on the right in the picture above, where the tub and the linen closet were.  We then took off the subfloor in this area - we need the floor to be all one level, so we are dropping the higher section down and bringing the lower section up, each by 3/4" - which will work just fine.  Taking up the subfloor also allowed us to get a good look at the existing plumbing, so we can see how we are going to run the new plumbing.  On the right here, the existing tub/shower will be split into two runs, one for the sink to the far right, and the second shower head near the back of the wall shown above.

On the picture on the left, the existing sink plumbing will be moved to the right and higher for the other shower.  At least we're leaving the toilet plumbing completely alone!  You can also see in the picture to the left, the old wall heater, which was totally rusted out, but the wiring was still live.  When we went to check out the breakers, we were lucky enough to see the bathroom ones labeled.  So we flipped that breaker and disconnected the wiring there and another box that had been closed up.  And since we were still working in the area, we just left the breaker off.

So - while we still had a rental truck, we went to the home improvement store and bought our long list of supplies; wallboard, cement board, plywood, lumber, plumbing and electrical supplies, insulation, vent fans and a window, among other things!  Our goal is to keep the remodel around $2000, and we spent about half that today.  We drove back up to the place to unload the truck and store everything in the garage - and none of our lights would work! We thought it was because we had put in a work order to change the electric and gas utilities over, and we ended up unloading everything in the dark.  It wasn't until I went through the house getting things locked up to leave that I noticed Dale's circular saw had it's powerlight on - glowing in the middle of the dark house.  Wait a minute....I flipped a few switches, and found one light that worked -- it turned out that one of the breakers we flipped had to have nearly 3/4 of the circuits on it -- whoa, we need to check into that.  But we felt pretty silly stumbling around in the dark, when all we had to do was flip the breaker to get light back on!