Once again - saved by my friends. I've been trying to work on the dining room forever, with a goal of having it "finished" for Thanksgiving. The brain and the brawn did a ton of work - but there was still a ton left to do. Once we got back from Nationals (and recovered from the party), we had 10 days to finish the sanding of the patched walls and ceiling, fill any spots that needed help (and then re-sand), and prime and paint the walls, ceiling, and moldings. Anything else that got done would be icing on the cake.
Everything was going according to the master plan (even though I scheduled myself to sand while hungover - dumb, dumb, dumb... but effective!) until some of the skim coating started pulling away from the evil wall. (It's evil because it needed so much work). Then it needed special primer (which smelled like painting with nail polish remover!), another layer of compound, which needed more sanding, which needed more priming... All of which had to be squeezed in during the week after work so that we'd have time to paint! It was only managed thanks to one very determined friend...
And then the weekend rolled around, with another layer of primer necessary, and all the painting. So - friends to the rescue yet again. A bunch of people came over on a chilly Saturday, and did amazing work. By the end of the day on Sun we had the entire dining room painted, the loose paint from the bathroom chipped off and the bathroom primed, the linoleum up on the dining room floor (that one was all Baj, great work!), and the furniture in the dining room! Scraped in under the wire. Thank heavens for amazing friends, yet again!So we went from here:to here:Slide show of the mass effort:
Finally, a picture of the mouse in Erin's bed. I wish we had video of our heroic capturing efforts, but sadly our hands were fully occupied. So you'll just have to imagine lightening fast reflexes with a tupperware container (mine), screaming and jumping (Erin's), and determined hunting (Stiletto's)...
In Erin's bed to be precise. With some belated assistance from the cat, I caught it and threw it outside. I'll blog the full amusing story later - but any suggestions for vermin control that we can use with a cat in the house would be greatly appreciated...
Well, now that I have your attention... Ha.
So due to an unfortunate incident with my automatically locking house doors, the brain (my contractor, mentioned in the previous post) wasn't able to get much work done (and I hadn't hired the brawn on Fri as she was already booked). However, the brain had put up a bunch of paint stripper on the doorway in the dining room, so I had to take it off on Saturday. I think I may be missing a trick, because after hours of stripping, two coats of the stripper, and melted paint everywhere - that doorframe still looks painted. As do my gloves and the tools I was using. Argh. I left it, the brain and the brawn will be back next Tues and can hopefully rescue me.
Erin and I also spent a couple hours working in the backyard. We cleaned it up, did a bunch of weeding, and planted the two baby dogwoods that Max got for me. Translation - we threw out a ton of cat poop, stepped in some (byebye work shoes, you served me well), and made many new dirt patches which the cats were happy to poop in right in front of us. I think I'm going to try the cayenne pepper trick my friend told me about - apparently some cats ignore it, but some really don't like the smell, so maybe we can reduce the amount of yard pooping... Well, if nothing else, at least they seem to bury the poo in the dirt patches, vs leaving it on top of the grass. Yucky.
Much work was done last week - and none of it by me. At least, none of it by my muscles. The wallet is exhausted from the workout though.
On Wed the insulation guys came. Despite being rather late (shocking), they were friendly and efficient. I now have an insulated attic and two new roof vents. The insulation is pretty cool - as environmentally friendly as fiberglass can be, with no added chemicals. It looks like the fake snow stuff you see in Christmas displays at the mall. I thought it was pretty well contained - until Erin came home and noticed it was falling out of her cabinet, where the drainpipe comes through. So much for keeping the cat out of the way!
On Friday I hired a couple contractors - one of my rugby coaches (the brain), and a rugby friend (the brawn. This is funny when you know the rugby friend. Sorry Hoop. You're huge too :P). They did some outstanding work in the dining room and the downstairs bathroom. The drywall is finished in the dining room, and the bad wall has the first skim coat on it. The bathroom fan now works, and they scraped off a bunch of the loose paint. AND - there's dust everywhere. We tried to clean, but I think the dust is still winning. There will be more on Fri when the next phase begins... But so nice to see progress in that room! Pics soon, thanks to Hoop.
Otherwise known as - Baja's doors part 1.
So Baja's room had no door. In fact, it had a vaguely middle-eastern look, with its pointed top, and no frame. Therefore, hanging a door in the opening was not going to be a joy. I concocted a brilliant plan - I would find double doors, like closet doors, put some wood around the outside of the doorway, and hang the doors from the wood.
The first phase went beautifully - I found lovely solid wood doors on Craigslist, for free! It was the actual hanging that began the difficulties... First, when hanging the wood, I didn't measure correctly and the cross piece was too high for the doors - it would show and the doors would not sit flush with it. Remove, recut, replace. Result - five extra holes I must now patch. The doors were too wide. No fear, I bought a new saw blade, and cut them. Door 1 cut beautifully. Door 2 did not. There was some burning. And curving of the cut. And general annoyance. Door 2 is no longer quite so beautiful.
Then to the hanging - Door 1 again went nicely. Door 2 is just plain evil. Firstly, because the radiator is too close to the door, it won't swing open all the way (that's ok, I knew that), and in order to put the door on, we had to chisel gouges in the wood of the "frame". Luckily Erin is good at that. However, I then went on to display a large inability to line the hinges up, resulting in the bottom hinge deciding to pull out of the (not solid wood, particle board) door. And there's not really enough room to attach the hinges, since the door won't open all the way. Can't get the pin in if we take the hinges apart, and can't get the drill in straight if we don't. So the screw heads will stick out. But at that point it had been a very long day, and Max sensibly suggested we finish that door later, once we figure out how to reattach the hinge.
It occurred to me today that I should really look to see how many hinges I should actually use, after assuming that two per door is fine. In a (not) shocking turn of events - I should be using three for these heavy doors. And I didn't place them on the door correctly, having assumed that they should be equidistant from the top and bottom. Not so much. It won't be too much of a big deal to add a hinge per door, but the placement will stay. But now I have to go get more hinges before we can finish. Buying them all at once on Sun would have been much easier. Hence the post title... And really, at this point I should know better!
Pics and results coming soon...
Yeah, ok, so I've totally slacked on the posting. But that's because despite working diligently on the house, I really haven't done anything of note. I really really want to (the dining room is just begging for new drywall and some floor removal), but somehow all the little jobs just take too damn long.
So what have I done since last post?
1. Hung a shelf in the bathroom. Expected completion time: 15 min (counting the time to get the tools from the basement). Actual completion time: 1 hr and 15 min, after discovering that I couldn't drill into the wall I originally chose because there is SOMETHING impermeable back there...
2. Worked on Erin's wall. Expected completion time: 1 day. Actual completion time: you think I'm done? Let's not be silly. I managed to put up the last coat of compound on the drywall, attach one piece of molding, discover that the other really wouldn't fit, decide not to scream, and sand part of the floor where the cabinet was. It may never be done. In fact, I may rip it down in a year when I'm less frustrated and re-do it. Because I can see the crookedness and gaps, and I haven't managed to cover them in an aesthetically pleasing fashion. I am REALLY not up to cabinetry level yet. Yes, I know, practice practice, but perhaps I should have started with a small table or something.
3. Set up the new Hoosier cabinet in the kitchen. Ok, that actually worked out quite well. It looks very nice, especially with all the orphaned plants I keep acquiring on top of it. I may remember to take a photo.
4. Work on Mom's porch. Expected results: finish one wall. Actual results: put up 3 new studs. Sigh.
Also, the damn bugs won't go away. I called the super expensive exterminators back for a follow up visit, and they essentially told me to live with the bugs. And to stop killing the ones I see (!!!!!!!!) so that they can carry the poison back to the nest to kill the ones I don't see. Um - yuck. I mean, we only see one every now and then, they aren't everywhere, but it's still a little embarrassing when I turn the basement light on and then wait at the top of the stairs for 45 sec to make sure the bugs have time to flee...
The rugby season starts for real next weekend, so I've no free weekends until November. Hopefully I'll be able to get some real work going on some Sundays though, because I am determined to "finish" the dining room by Thanksgiving! I mean, the stove works now and everything! And I am so very tired of looking at its unfinished-ness. (I rather imagine Erin feels the same way about her wall.) And so the challenge is out there - finish the dining room by Thanksgiving or bust!
It's been rather crazy for the past couple weeks. We've had quite the flurry of work, with the goal of making the room previously known as the scary room fit for human habitation by yesterday, and fixing some other long standing appliance issues. The work went down to the wire, but I think it happened. As per usual, there were some ups and downs.
Ups -
--Most of the tin ceiling is in good condition.
--The subfloor under the linoleum is also mostly in good condition - and even the wood stain isn't that bad.
--New washing machine! It's very pretty. And my clothes came out quite clean! A Frigidaire front-loader.
--Finally the stove is fixed, courtesy of an appliance repair man. I have learned that it's about 40 years old, and is in solid shape. There's a screw that can turn the pilot light off, and it was off. The pilot assembly was also quite gunky. But he cleaned it and all is well. It's kind of cool - it takes 45 seconds to a minute to actually start once you turn it on, as it has to heat open a valve.
--We put some plants in the window guards. We look a little prettier :)
Downs -
--Part of the tin ceiling is not in good condition. And whatever the tin is covering is also not happy (i.e. falling on my head as I tacked up some aluminum flashing as a temporary fix). This will not be a fun repair, I suspect. And my interim repair job was super frustrating and very unattractive.
--There are no straight lines in my house. Seriously, I swear it. The small job of replacing a dropped ceiling panel in the hallway closet turned into a couple hours of swearing and attempts to make do, as everything was off-square and not the current standard size.
--More frightening large bugs were seen in the basement. Yes, I screamed. And chased them with Raid. Today I had a new (and much more expensive) exterminator come - they were really really thorough, and he seems pretty confident the bugs will be gone in a week. And he even left me some glue traps for future, though I'm pretty unexcited about having to pick up a piece of cardboard with bugs stuck all over it...
--Those brand new window guards are rusty already. So not amused. I will call the company, but really.
--Polyurethane is nearly impossible to remove from your skin. Damn stuff is clear, light (so it just feels like sweat when it gets on you), and I am still finding spots of it days later.
--Sneezing while wearing a respirator is only funny to spectators. Yick.
Neither here nor there yet -
--I had another plumber come and give me an estimate for the oil to gas conversion. His was much lower than my original guy. On the one hand that's really nice, but on the other hand now I have to figure out why...
