FOAM CORE FANTASY

finished the slipcover!

2011-11-04T08:00:00.005Z

Almost. It's far enough along that it looks finished to the casual observer and that's good enough for now. I want to do something with tabs and buttonholes and covered buttons so that the band around the circumference will be more fitted. Then I want to get some firmer foam for the seat cushions and cover them in a more tailored way. I also want to make some throw pillows with the leftover bits of fabric. In my spare time.

Here's the original pattern. As I mentioned before, I had to do something different with the skirt because I didn't have quite enough fabric in the $3.00/yard remnant to follow the pattern exactly. That's how it ended up getting all fancy.

Here's the end result and a couple of other views. I'm not sure why I didn't take a full picture from the front. Maybe I didn't feel like moving the coffee table.

Although the appearance of this couch has been vastly improved, over all I'm not that impressed with the whole idea of slipcovers, now that I've done one, or at least I'm not impressed with the drape and tie variety. It's kind of makeshift, even if it doesn't look that way. Actually it sort of does look makeshift, but I can live with it for now. I sort of want to see if I can figure out how to actually reupholster the couch properly one of these years. We'll see.

Hydrangea Heaven

2011-09-29T16:19:00.009+01:00

I have always loved hydrangeas. We used to have a huge old Pee Gee hydrangea growing right outside by the corner of our bedroom but sadly it went away along with the rest of the old part of our house. I've been wanting another one ever since, but have hesitated because of all the deer that we have running around here, eating everything in sight.

Finally I broke down and bought myself a pair of Endless Summer hydrangeas and some deer spray, which actually seems to work quite well. It stinks when you first spray it on, but then the smell goes away. Apparently the deer can still smell it for about 3 months afterwards, so it's a pretty easy solution as long as it works.

The one we planted by our front steps is doing really well, but I neglected to plant the other one for about a week and it got dry and droopy a couple of times and died shortly after I planted it. That'll teach me.

Then suddenly my friend JoAnn had a hydrangea that she needed to move. It was enormous - about 4 or 5 feet across, with absolutely gorgeous blue flowers. I had spent the summer admiring it, full of hope that one day my own little hydrangea would get that big and healthy. It was so huge, and she couldn't figure out where else in her yard to put it, and then when it broke into four pieces while she was digging it up, she decided to offer them to me!

So I am now the proud owner of four(!) offspring of this lovely bush which are now gracing the hillside outside of my not-yet-screened-in back porch with their glorious beauty. I can hardly wait to see them bloom and grow next summer. And I like the fact that they remind me of JoAnn whenever I park my car in the back, which is pretty much every single day.

After we planted them I gave them a pretty hard pruning so that the root systems could establish themselves in their new location without having to work too hard to feed so many leaves and flowers. The deer gave me some further assistance later that evening:

So we got right on spraying them with the deer spray after that. Although hydrangeas are not the most practical choice for our location because of the deer, the fact that they'll get morning sun and afternoon shade is ideal. I really want them to thrive.

Another less than ideal situation is the fact that they were divided and transplanted at the end of the summer when it was still quite hot. Hydrangeas can apparently be a little delicate and sensitive during warm weather, so Doug rigged up a couple of screens to give them more shade while they adapt. We took them down about a month later after the weather got cooler.

So now I'm just waiting and waiting and waiting until next summer to see how they do. I'm absolutely thrilled to have ended up with an entire row of blue hydrangeas!

August Home Improvements

2011-08-30T06:43:00.000+01:00

We've made a little progress on our house this month. Nothing major - just a few little cosmetic improvements to make our house an even more pleasant place to live. The first thing we did was to pick out and install the glass for the tops of our cabinets. After all this time we finally got around to it - because we discovered that there's a really cool glass store in Kensington that has all kinds of different glass textures. I wanted something slightly wavy and I found exactly the style I had in mind.

You might notice that the sample moulding piece I made way back in October of 2009 is still languishing up there on top of the cabinet as are the actual lengths of moulding that I painted and got all ready to go in March of 2010. I have I feeling I'm going to have to do it myself if I want to ever get it installed. All that's left to do in the kitchen, besides the door trim and the baseboards is this top of the cabinet moulding and the shoe moulding around the floor. That's it.

After I get everything else done, hahaha, I want to take a class at the glass studio and learn how to do this:

I stole that picture from their website so I'm assuming they will teach people how to do leaded glass. If you look around my house (or this blog) you'll see that I have a thing for clear leaded glass (as opposed to stained glass).

Considering how I had to live for five years of my life, I guess you could say I'm fairly adaptable and tolerant of things not looking the way they ought to. I was absolutely horrified at myself when I first hung this construction paper over the bottom halves of the windows in the living room a few months ago to keep people on the street from looking in and being tempted by our new TV.

Doug has in the meantime informed me that if someone wanted to steal a TV they'd be going after a much bigger one than what we have. What do I know? I didn't even have a TV for six years after the fire and I think the one we got recently is huge.

Anyway, after a while I sort of got used to the construction paper on the windows and it wasn't until a couple of my good friends gently reminded me that this really isn't a good look for the living room that I decided to buckle down and make some curtains. I've them on four windows on the main floor and four windows upstairs.

I think it's a big improvement, marred only by the fact that there is no window trim or baseboards there yet. But you can't have everything now can you? So why not put up curtains before the window trim is finished? After all. we've got to keep the order of doing things UNUSUAL in order to maintain any kind of consistency around here.

When I was in South Carolina I bought a coffee table at an antique store for 75 dollars which I think is a pretty good deal. It's very cute. Check it out:

The table is oval with a glass top. It's exactly the right size to go in front of the couch. And if I get tired of it in the living room, it's metal, so I can paint it with rustoleum and put it out in the not-yet-screened-in back porch.

Next up is finishing the damn slipcover for the couch. It has been languishing upstairs by the sewing machine for over a month. I lost my momentum due to the sheer tediousness of sewing all of those long seams and then it got interrupted by curtain making and a dress. (A dress!!!) But now it's time to get back to it. Sigh. Here's what it looks like so far:

I'd almost rather pull weeds than work on this slipcover, so wish me luck!!!

Gutters Finished!

2011-07-31T15:36:00.000+01:00

I'm happy to report that Doug has finished installing the gutters. He did a beautiful job on them and is now I'm sure feeling quite relieved to have finally finished something that he'd been putting off for a long time. I am happy about the water no longer hitting and wearing out the porch roofs from the roof above, no more lack-of-gutter induced erosion around our house, and no more sprained ankles caused by these grass-covered areas of erosion for me! And there won't be huge amounts of water pouring all over me and my bass whenever I go to or from my car during a rainstorm. Not anymore. Yaaay Doug!

Here are some photos of his excellent handiwork:

I think the house looks a little more finished now with the gutters on. And now we'll be able to do some foundation planting too.

I like the way he's got the downspout from the gable gutter on the right heading directly into the porch gutter. And the porch gutter's downspout goes into an underground pipe so there will be no erosion on that hill

Doug decided to use brackets to attach the gutters to the house instead of the big long screws that go across the gutter. He thinks those are more prone to coming loose. Hopefully ours will be less prone to coming loose because I think this was a lot more work. But sturdy is good, especially with gutters.

He spent a lot of time relocating and declogging these pipes which come out on the other side of the driveway. He installed these pipes under the driveway about 15 years ago and they just sat there in a state of neglect. I'm glad they are finally being used for their intended purpose.

Now I'm actually looking forward to getting some rain so that we can enjoy the greatness of his gutters.

our new crape myrtles are blooming!

2011-07-17T23:36:00.003+01:00

We are so excited at how well our five crape myrtles are doing. For a while we thought maybe they wouldn't bloom during the first year after we planted them (last fall). But they are now in full bloom and they look extremely happy out there all along the front sidewalk. Our crape myrtles are called "Muskogee" and they are supposed to grow into medium sized trees that will stop growing just before they get to the power lines.

We are ever so slightly disappointed at how pink they are - it seems like they were less pink and more purple when we bought them last fall. They almost matched the front door. I guess I'm just going to have to go for a blending of various shades of blue and purple now. That will probably look better than the matchy-matchy effect anyway. I wonder if our soil has slightly affected the crape myrtle color? It makes a huge difference for hydrangeas. I also wonder whether our new hydrangea will eventually switch over to being pink in its new location. I guess we'll have to wait and see!

Ladder Rack

2011-07-15T21:47:00.001+01:00

We are working on a bunch of different outdoor projects here in Foam Core Fantasyland and we've even managed to finish some of them, and almost finish some others.

The World's Biggest Tree Stump is long gone and tomorrow we will be covering the area with sod so it will be as if it had never been there.
We put weed fabric behind our new retaining wall and backfilled it with topsoil. Tomorrow we will also top that soil with sod.
Doug has been working to find and de-clog the drain pipes he installed under the driveway about 15 years ago so that we can hook them up to the gutters and not have a lake in our driveway every time it rains.
I cleared out a space for the other hydrangea we bought on impulse about a week ago and it is now planted near the back door. It looked pretty sad and wilted so Doug pruned it back quite a bit.
Doug built a ladder rack so the ladders will no longer be piled up in the dirt. They look very tidy now and he also figured out a way to make rollers so they are much easier to put away. And they can be locked so no one will be able to steal them.

gutter madness

2011-07-12T11:31:00.001+01:00

The delightful flurry of activity continues, with Doug finally being in the mood to put gutters on our house after six long years of not having them. However, the past two days' attempts to buy what we need so that we can finally have these gutters has been less than delightful.

Yesterday I drove all the way up to the Gaithersburg Roof Center to pick up some gutter hanging brackets and clips. Doug had called ahead to make sure they had what we needed so I thought it would be a relatively short and simple errand. Wrong. For starters, somebody misinterpreted something Doug said so they had to look up the number of the proper part, which took just about forever.

Finally they said they had those in stock, so I paid for them, got my ticket and went out to the warehouse pickup area to get them. The first guy came out, looked for them for about five minutes, came back, shrugged his shoulders, and said "We don't have them." That's it. The second guy was sure he'd be able to find them and spent a lot of time conducting a thorough search, but still came up empty-handed.

He escorted me back to the service center where I watched them all act is if the fact that the inventory was showing something that the warehouse didn't have was the main area of concern. After they finished discussing that highly improbable situation amongst themselves and got over their indignation at the realization that an error had occured, they finally realized that I was still standing there waiting patiently, apparently for nothing, and they said "Now we're going to have to credit this back to your card" like it was my fault that they had sold me something they didn't have in stock that I had driven all the way up there to buy, based on inaccurate information they'd given out over the phone. There was not a single word of apology or regret over the situation. The only impression I got about how they felt about it was that I had inconvenienced them in some way and that they were doubly annoyed because they had to deal with the existence of their own incompetence.

I didn't say anything - I've been in plenty of situations that have been far more challenging to my patience than this one was. There are plenty of people out there who will not take responsibility for any errors and that lack of caring is what causes sloppy work to happen and also eliminates any perceived need to apologize for the sloppy work. That kind of attitude makes it impossible for those kinds of people to be conscientious in any way.

So no apology for that mess. I will give him credit for offering to call the other Roof Centers to see if they had what we needed in stock. He found out that I could get the parts I needed if I went to two other stores, so I left feeling momentarily hopeful that I would be able to get this taken care of relatively quickly the next day.

Unfortunately Doug's phone calls this morning to the two individual stores to verify that they really did have what we needed resulted in us temporarily going back to square one because they actually didn't have everything after all.

So we decided to give up on the Roof Center and try our luck with Seamless Gutters. They said they had everything we needed so I went on up to their store in Gaithersburg and bought the brackets and the clips and took them home, happy that there'd been such an easy solution to the previous day's frustrations.

No such luck. They entered the order correctly but put 6" brackets in the box instead of the 5" ones we needed. They weren't labeled in any way and although I looked to make sure they were the kind we needed, I did not notice that they were an inch too big. The size difference is not noticeable when there are 40 of them piled inside a cardboard box, but they need to be the right size and they weren't.

After lunch I took them back and was full of hope that this would be an easy and simple exchange. No such luck. And of course they didn't have what we needed, and I again received a refund and no apology. So that was two wasted trips to the Seamless Gutter place in one day.

I don't know what tomorrow has in store. I have managed to maintain my usual veneer of calm over an undercurrent of mild annoyance at the huge amounts of my time that have been wasted. The fact that I can take pride in my ability to remain calm in the face of rudeness and incompetence has kept me from losing it so far. And I think any tendencies that I previously might have had to become frustrated in these kinds of situations have been severely dulled as a result of my experiences over the past six years. It's either so constantly present that I don't even notice it, or I'm unable to feel it because what would be the point? Or I'm now completely immune to frustration - who knows? Maybe I'm just too tired to care.

Doug, on the other hand, is livid. He plans to go up there and let them have it tomorrow. I am worried that he will cause some sort of scene and they'll beat him up or have him thrown in jail. He is very frustrated. I don't know whether to accompany him in a show of support or not. I don't like to see him acting the way he's going to act and sometimes my efforts to calm him down just make things worse. So wish us luck!

Although my dealings with these people have been unsuccessful so far, I still believe that if you want people to help you, you've got to make sure they want to help you. In other words, treat them with respect even if they don't deserve it. Maybe that's my whole problem.

A New Wall

2011-07-11T21:42:00.000+01:00

Our front porch area is starting to finally look rather civilized, between all the weeding and us putting in the little retaining wall last week. We even put our very first foundation plant - the lovely hydrangea you can see in the picture below. Isn't it pretty? I hope it likes it there. And the wall is a perfect height for sitting.

I've started attacking the weeds next to the fence and have made some good progress. It's going to take forever to get it completely under control after so many years of neglect. I pruned those two azalea bushes to about half of their former size because vines had killed many of the branches. That'll teach me. Hopefully if I manage to get all of the weeds out and throw down some mulch it will be easier to deal with in the future. All that liriope I planted had better hurry up and spread the way it is supposed to.

no more giant tree stump!

2011-07-07T22:00:00.000+01:00

I've been on a roll lately with getting things happening around here. There's been an unexpected and completely delightful spirit of cooperation in the air that has caused many good things to happen recently. Doug's brother came over with his chain saw the next day after we pulled down the stump and he chopped it into manageable pieces. I was able to take about a third of it to the dump. Doug put the rest of it out by the street, hoping someone would help themselves, and about an hour after I got home the rest of it disappeared. So that was easy.

Also this week we've been building a wall near the front steps. Between all the weeding of the liriope and this cute little wall, our front yard is starting to look pretty spiffy!

T I M B E R ! ! !

2011-07-04T23:55:00.002+01:00

We have had a really ugly looking 20 foot tall Norway Spruce stump adorning our front yard for almost four years . It has been irritating me every single time I've had to look at it, so that's been almost 2000 different times during the years since the electric company cut the top off of it. Although I've mentioned it a few times, I'm apparently really really patient and I don't like to nag, so nothing has ever come of it - until today.

Every time I mentioned getting a chain saw and just cutting it down myself, Doug has said that I should wait because he wanted to pull it out of the ground so that there would be no tree stump. I'm not sure how this happened, but all of a sudden Doug responded to my most recent threat of chopping it down myself and today was the day we finally got it down. Doug did most of the work, but I sawed most of the tree roots so that it would come out of the ground easily.

Isn't it hideous? I think it is a real eyesore.

At first Doug toyed with the notion of attaching it to his car and pulling it down that way. Fortunately he changed his mind. I guess he didn't want to end up in one of those Darwin Awards videos.

He decided instead to use his magic pulley. This is the same pulley that Doug used to lift the all of the foam core panels up to build the roof of our house and that we later used to build the front section and the front porch. This pulley has amazing powers! It will lift or pull hundreds of pounds, maybe even a thousand. He attached it to an unused concrete pier near our foundation at one end and to the top of the tree at the other end.

After the rope broke he used a chain around the trunk instead.

We also decided to cut most of the big outer roots with a Saws-All.

Now we're making some progress!

Watch it come down in this exciting video!

Yaaay! It's down at last! Now all we have to do is chop it up and take it to the dump. And that WILL be happening tomorrow! Yaay Doug!

Powder Room Finished

2011-05-05T20:32:00.003+01:00

The powder room is finished! It really really is! It even has a door knob - the first interior door knob in our entire house. Doug installed it and the shoe moulding so that I could finally get this room finished.

The hallway moulding, on the other hand, is not finished. But the door has its final coat of paint now. Here's a shot of the mirror over the sink, the cubbyhole over the toilet and the medicine cabinet over the toilet.

We even have a door stop so that the door knob won't smash a hole into the drywall. And Doug finally put in the shoe moulding so that I could finish painting the baseboards.

Here's a toilet's-eye view of the sink and the towel bar:

And here's our very first interior door knob. After almost a year of living here, it's really great to be able to use something other than a wadded up paper towel stuffed in the hole to open and close the door.

It feels so good to have one small room completely finished. Once I get door knobs and door stops for the piano room, it will be the second room in that category.
One room at a time!

Basement Steps

2011-03-08T15:25:00.266Z

We've been back in our house for almost a year and there are still many big projects left to tackle. For those who ask how the house is coming along, the answer is either "slowly" or "it's not," depending on my mood and how recently any work has taken place.

Near the end of February Doug went off on another vacation, I mean tour (to me it's like a vacation when you get to go someplace warm, make less money than you would if you'd stayed home, and spend all day relaxing on the bus). So I decided it was time to do the finishing of the basement steps since he wouldn't be here running up and down them twenty five times a day.

They were starting to show some wear and tear after a year of use in their unfinished state and the newel post had gotten a few large cracks in it that I needed to repair first. I guess that's proof that we have a really dry basement, thank goodness.

It's not that visible on the picture below, but there were huge amounts of black heel marks on all of the risers just from one year of use. That made me start to rethink the practicality of having white risers and stringers and stained treads. That is the look I want for the upstairs steps and Doug wanted the basement steps to be the same. Before he left he had moved over to the idea of staining everything to match the flooring, but with a dark banister and newel post.

Once I got all of those obnoxious heel marks sanded off, actually while I was sanding them, probably in a inhaled sawdust fueled combination of delerium and anger, I started imagining other possibilities for these steps. I've never been someone who really enjoys anything that involves getting dirty, and there I was, once again, covered in dust and thinking "I don't ever want to do this again and I don't ever want to ever again see heel marks on something I've gone to the trouble to make look so nice."

Staining the risers the same color as the treads would help, but since we'd been planning on painting the risers, the stair place had made them out of poplar and they had a very different appearance from the oak treads. The grain pattern was a kind of unattractive look for the risers and who knows how they'd take the stain. It might look awful.

Since the inevitable return of the black heel marks was just making me nuts as I sanded them off, I decided to follow through on that mood (nuts) and do something totally bizarre. It's not my style at all, but I thought Doug might actually like it because he often likes unusual things and the non-tradition style would call more attention to the overly fancy and expensive basement staircase that he just had to have.

So what in the world at 3:30 in the morning was I thinking I would do to solve my various issues? Why stain the risers and stringer the same color as the banister, of course! They'd match and it would look all coordinated and hide the heel marks! I'm sure I was hallucinating, but somehow I decided to follow through and actually do it.

The taping was a huge amount of work, but pleasant enough because there was no dust involved and I could do it sitting down. Because I'm so lazy.

I tried a few stain colors out on a sample piece of oak, to decide which colors to use. That didn't pan out too well because the grain on the newel post took the color very differently than the tread sample. The banister was different too. The Jacobean stain color that looked so nice on the sample was scary dark on the newel post. Fortunately it did a fantastic job of hiding the weirdly slanted grain patterns on the risers.

I had to do something about how horrifyingly blackish the newel post looked, so I sanded it some and read some more stuff on the internet about the various colors, considered how things would look against the background wall color, and then selected Red Mahogany for the second coat of stain. Of course I felt compelled to lessen the effect of the Jacobean with even more sanding. Sanding is very hard on a person's wrists. I hate sanding!

So I put on the Red Mahogany over the sanded Jacobean. What a relief! The color is halfway decent! Then I removed all of the tape, and kind of thought uh-oh about how it looked, but it was too far gone for me to permit myself too much remorse so I continued. The "natural" colored stain that I used on the treads is actually darker than our flooring material over all but it kind of blends in with the darkest parts so I guess it's okay.

I'm actually pretty pleased with the color on the newel post now. It almost looks like an antique. For about a week I went back and forth between horror at what I'd done to Doug's staircase and thinking that it sort of looked interesting and okay.

I plan to paint the sides of the steps white to match the balusters, but I'm not going to do that until all of the trim is up. Doug wants to make cubby holes under the steps and it makes more sense to do all of the painting in that area at the same time. I hate to leave it unfinished, but that's the way it often goes around here.

Doug was really surprised when he got home and saw what I had done because it was so completely out of the blue and not like anything we had discussed. It's not quite as dark as it looks in the picture above. He didn't love it at first (probably because it wasn't his idea) but he definitely wasn't horrified the way I was. Now he likes it and I do too. I've actually grown slightly fond of it because it definitely has personality and I might as well like it since I did it.

Putting on the three coats of polyurethane really dressed it up. The stairs have a sort of furniture-ish look about them now.

And if you use your imagination, you can see that the newel post looks sort of like a mouthpiece - a trumpet mouthpiece with a very large shank. Right? Or maybe I'm stilling feeling the effects of all that dust I inhaled.

I learned a lot from this experience and I have a much better idea of what I will do for the upstairs steps. They are the ones that really need to be done right and now I am not afraid. I think I know what I am doing and I know I can make them look good, with no surprises. I'll definitely be sticking to plan A up there.

The Piano Room is Finished

2011-01-27T04:47:00.001Z

The piano room is completely finished! Everything is done. All of the baseboards all of the shoe moulding, all of the thresholds, all of the window trim, all of the window handles, all of the lights, all of the painting, all of the staining, EVERYTHING! This is the first room in our house that is completely and totally finished. Now I can finally start making it into a real room instead of a storage room for unpacked things.

The thresholds that Doug made turned out really nice. We got some great advice about screwing them down and filling in the holes with plugs made out of the same wood. They are nearly invisible.

I messed around with a few different colors of stain and managed to somewhat disguise the fact that the thresholds are red oak while the floors are white oak. It's impossible to hide the grain, but the red did get somewhat subdued by the different stains I used. The threshold doesn't match the floor exactly, but it's a compatible shade so it blends in pretty well.

The Minwax stain colors I used were Provincial, which is a kind of neutral medium dark brown, and Driftwood, which looks like it has gray paint added to it. I wiped the Provincial off almost immediately but I let the Driftwood sit on there for about ten minutes before wiping. Then I put on three coats of oil-based semigloss polyurethane that we already had on hand and that made it a little shinier than I wanted it to be. But I'm sure it will get scuffed up soon enough and look more normal. I'll get some satin next time.

Here's the completely finished room. Look at those cute sconces on the sides of the windows! I am really going to enjoy spending time in here.

Damn! I just noticed it's not completely finished yet - we don't have doorknobs! Sheesh, it's always something. Okay, the doorknobs are next! I've grown so accustomed to not having doorknobs that I didn't even notice they were missing. But at least I can start unpacking everything now.

Thresholds

2011-01-10T03:54:00.003Z

Doug has spent the past two days making custom thresholds for the piano room. They are very wide because the walls into this room are so thick. We left a pretty big space between the two different flooring materials partly so that we could use a wide threshold to make the slight height differences seem less noticeable. It's a pretty smooth transition and although it looks kind of ridiculous in the picture, it looks great in the room. The top photo is the doorway from the piano room into the back hallway.

This threshold is between the piano room and the foyer. The piano room floor is slightly higher than the foyer and both floors are floating so the threshold here is going to function as a giant T-moulding. It's pretty massive, but it's very smooth to walk on or over from one room to the next.

I'm probably going to stain it to match the darker parts of the white oak flooring to make it less noticeable that the thresholds are red oak. They don't seem to sell white oak boards at Home Depot.

We are trying to get this room completely finished as soon as possible. Doug did a fantastic job with the door trim and baseboards, don't you think? It turned out exactly the way I was hoping it would. Now I have to paint all of that fancy trimwork plus a pair of french doors - the kind with millions of window panes. Fun, Fun, Fun!

Basement Office

2010-09-16T23:45:00.002+01:00

Doug's office area is shaping up pretty nicely so far. It's a new setup that will hopefully work well for him without taking up too much space. He's got a shiny new black table top that was made out of a door by him, and stained and polyurethaned by me, and he just put up the shelf that we both collaborated on. It's looking good!

September

2010-09-13T01:06:00.006+01:00

People have been gently admonishing me for not keeping this blog going after we moved. To be perfectly honest I had kind of lost my enthusiasm for this project (not that I was ever 100% enthusiastic about it) because of the extreme loss of momentum that occured after we moved back in. There are certain things that must be done before I can fully get my life back to where it should be and I've been very patient for the past five years doing things Doug's way for the most part. Patience is the only way because he will not be rushed.

So I decided to get caught up finally. I've backdated the entries so you can see what's been going on with the house on a month by month basis, going back to April. You'll notice the entries become much less detailed after my initial burst of energy on April's post.

This month it's been all about homemade tables. We don't have any furniture due to a rather unfortunate event and we didn't replace anything because we didn't have room in our rental place and because who knew this whole thing would take so long? I did, but that's another story. At this point I would like to have as little furniture as I can get by with. I hate clutter, although I've certainly learned to live with it.

Anyway, the card table I've been using for a desk all this time was no longer doing it for me, so I decided that maybe I could make something for cheap. I was right, and the best thing about that was that I got Doug to make it for me! It took him about 30 minutes so I didn't need to feel guilty either.

I had in mind a 20 or 22 inch door with legs attached. My dad made my mom a sewing table like that and it seemed pretty simple. The doors only came in 18 or 24 inches and the room is really small so Doug talked me into the 18 inch one. It was not deep enough so he kept it for himself and made me another one that is 24 inches deep and it's perfect! I used Minwax Polyshades, which is stain and polyurethane together in one product and it looks great. So now we have matching desks.

Doug decided that he didn't want to do four legs, so he did just two in front and hung it to the wall in the back. Because this seemed to be becoming a more or less permanent installation I successfully got him to put baseboards and shoe moulding(!!!) on four of the six walls in the office where the desk is. Four done and two to go! In that one room. It looks great and it's given me a chance to conclude that I like painted shoe moulding better than shoe that's been stained to match the floor. That's good because paint grade is cheaper.

Here's my shiny new black table/desk. It's about half the price and four times better looking than anything I could have gotten at Ikea.

He made taller legs for the CD storage unit to accomodate the baseboards. I was so excited that I couldn't wait to put all the drawers back in before I took the picture.

Doug is extremely happy with his 18 x 80 desk and he was thinking about shelves on the wall on either side for his printer and fax machine. I suggested an all in one shelf with a 6 inch deep section spanning the two 14 inch parts on the two sides. He liked that idea a lot so I'll be back down there staining for the next few days, while pushing for the rest of the moving of the shop to happen by the end of the month. Wish us luck!

August

2010-08-31T00:26:00.001+01:00

I began the month of August full of enthusiasm at the prospect of Doug getting his shop moved so that we would not have to throw money down the drain for rent anymore. I had good reason to feel hopeful because all of the drywall was finally up.

Doug helped me do some of the taping but I did nearly all of the mudding in this room so that he could do other more lucrative things. I hate this particular activity because it is so incredibly messy, but I enjoy the results when I do a good job, and I have to say that this room ended up looking better, from a drywall finishing standpoint than any other room in the entire house, including the rooms upstairs done by the so-called professionals back in January of last year. I tried to keep it as neat as possible so there was very little sanding to be done after all the coats were on and it had dried.

The real reward came after I primed everything and painted the ceiling. The ceiling/wall intersections were so clean and clear of globs of drywall that it was easy to paint a really clean straight line between the wall and the ceiling. No blue tape was needed. It felt so great to be able to make something look good so easily.

This is really lame, but I chose that yellow because we had some left over, and because it's a nice cheery color that will hopefully put Doug in a productive mood and because it matches the electrical wires. It's also a good background color for his machines. It's called "Surfboard Yellow."

We debated over whether to have the room start out looking as nice as possible or whether to just say it's a work area that will look like crap pretty soon anyway. I always think people do better work in a more pleasant and professional looking environment so we decided to go ahead and get a cushioned floor instead of bare cement and he also installed baseboards. It looks great. Maybe he'll be less messy to keep it looking nice longer. This is the only room in the house that is completely finished. I'm glad we at least have one room that is completely finished!

By the end of the month Doug had gotten all of the big pieces of equipment moved, but nothing else. He's currently doing a major overall on his main machine which hopefully won't take too much longer.

July

2010-07-31T00:03:00.000+01:00

I welcomed Doug back from his vacation, I mean tour, full of enthusiasm at the prospect of him being well-rested enough to work diligently with the goal of getting his shop moved by the end of the month so that we could finally start throwing less money away on rent.

The room in the basement that will become his shop needed drywall on one wall and the ceiling, plus some remedial work on one of the other walls. I forgot that it always takes him a week or two to get back in gear after a trip of any length. So as of July 20th the ceiling was still not wallboarded. He had to carve away a 2/4 to accomodate all of those wires and provide a place for the wallboard to attach.

And he made a sound deadening box for the heating duct so hopefully we won't hear his machines operating all over the house.

By July 27th he had installed all of the drywall and was preparing to attach a sound deadening second layer of drywall. The Green Glue will created a barrier between the two layers.

Needless to say, we did not get the shop moved by the end of July.

June

2010-06-30T23:30:00.000+01:00

Doug went on vacation, I mean tour, for most of the month of June. Why do I sound so snarky, calling it a vacation? Because when you get to go away somewhere and have more fun and a more relaxing time than you would if you'd stayed home and you make less money than you would have if you'd stayed home, well that sounds awfully vacation-like, doesn't it? I'm also feeling snarky because his vacation caused me to have to turn down 4 months of work for reasons I won't go into again. This was the month that gig would have started. So that's even less money. We're broke so money matters.

Before he left he spent a few days putting the window and baseboard trim up in our bedroom, probably hoping that I would immediately blog about it, telling the world how awesome he is. No such luck, bucko! I needed a little time to simmer down and recover from my bitterness. It does look awesome though.

I might have spent the month of June putting the topcoat on his lovely handiwork so that we could finally move into our real bedroom after four months in this place, but since he didn't put on the shoe moulding yet, it's not finished and I'm not going to paint it until it's all ready to be painted. It won't look right if the painting is done in stages. Sorry.

It really is beautiful. It's frustrating for me to look at it because it's so close, yet so far from being finished.

So instead of painting the trim in our bedroom for the month Doug was away, I painted a couple of large rooms in my parents' house instead. That was very rewarding because it looks good and more importantly the job was started and finished within three weeks. That made me feel really good.

Maybe, Maybe Not

2010-05-31T05:22:00.000+01:00

Towards the beginning of May it looked like we might be providing some temporary housing to some friends of ours so Doug started putting in the baseboards and doing the window trim in our bedroom which would enable us to move out of the spare where we'd been staying and into our actual bedroom. I primed the headers and the side pieces. This project got postponed a bit when our housing services weren't needed after all, but all least everything was ready to put together.

Our neighbors planted these lovely azaleas at the edge of our property. It will be really nice to be able to sit on the back porch and enjoy them one of these years.

Our own azaleas have seen better days but they are still fairly photogenic.

I'll Remember April - home at last, and all about our kitchen

2010-04-30T23:27:00.001+01:00

April was the very first month that we spent in our new house. It was wonderful in many ways and frustrating in a few others.

The main thing is it feels wonderful to be back. I feel like I belong here and it's a pretty deep feeling. When we used to bring our cat Ted over to show him the progress it was obvious that he knew exactly where he was, even after having been stuck living at the cinderblock chalet for the last 1/6 of his life, even when it was all still under construction. He just knew. I guess I'm the same way. I can feel where I am and I like it a lot. Now I just need to get used to the fanciness of it all.

It's been a little daunting to be living amongst construction materials and having to unpack so much stuff, but our kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, closet, and laundry room are all fully functional and that's what counts. Our yard is the prettiest it's ever been (except for the weeds in the liriope) and the driveways are incredibly convenient.

I really hadn't intended to go this long without doing another post but then I decided that it would be good to put some distance between myself and the frustration I felt in April when all work on the house suddenly ceased, seemingly forever. I accepted that, thinking that maybe the taxes were going to get done at least. Wrong. An extension was filed, setting the stage for the resumption of a deeply ingrained very bad habit. So my ability to go off and do the ship gig that I had been offered for June through November was thwarted once again because I have to stay here to make sure that Doug actually finishes doing the taxes, since otherwise they wouldn't get done. Please don't ask me how I know this. It is very frustrating for me to have to contend with this after years of waiting for our house to be finished so that I can get back to doing what I do. I think it's probably a good idea that I didn't write this at the end of April. You all should feel relieved that I didn't provide an update then, hahaha!

On a brighter note, I had a lot of really enjoyable gigs in April and my hands weren't trashed for a change from working on the house. They felt great in fact. And Doug made a lot of mouthpieces. He was very diligent with the mouthpieces. Diligence is good. I spent my spare time unpacking our clothes and all of the kitchen stuff and figuring out what the issue was with our new washing machine. Finally I discovered that the installers had neglected to remove something that should have been part of the installation process and after I got Doug to believe me and take the thing off it worked fine.

It is absolutely wonderful to have the laundry just steps away from where we keep all of our clothes. It's so easy to just fold everything and put it away immediately so there's never more than just a tiny bit of clothing clutter in between loads. It's incredibly convenient. This aspect of the floorplan had been in place since the original planning of our addition, now house, and I went through more than ten years doing without a washer and dryer in my house as part of that original situation. So I really appreciate what I have now. I am so happy that I don't have to go to the laundromat anymore and instead have this super convenient setup!

I'm really kind of glad they initially sent the wrong size cabinet for our kitchen. Look where it ended up! It's been pretty easy to hide the clutter in our closet, so far.

The one thing I didn't like about our old house from the time we bought it was that it didn't have a dishwasher. Being the spoiled brat that I am, I'd never NOT had a dishwasher until we bought our house just before we got married. Doug said "That's okay, I'll do the dishes, you won't ever have to do them" and I said "That's great! - I'll mow the grass instead!" Washing the dishes is a horrible activity for bass players' calluses.

So Doug did the dishes and I mowed the grass. It was never a satifactory situation. Our old kitchen was rather dysfunctional, to put it mildly. I pretty much could only bring myself to use it after spending a day cleaning it up when he was out of town. That's pretty dysfunctional if you ask me. I always thought if only we had a dishwasher, things wouldn't get so out of hand.

Our new kitchen is the opposite of our old kitchen. There's more than enough counter and storage space. We have a beautiful refrigerator, a stove where all four burners work, an oven that works, two sinks so that I can have a clean one, and even two microwaves which I really didn't see the need for, but Doug did. It seems excessive to me, but so do a lot of things. But it's really nice to have the two sinks.

And I finally have a dishwasher, but it is not the dishwasher of my dreams unfortunately. I had a dishwasher all picked out - a completely normal one that had gotten great reviews. But then Doug saw those newfangled double drawer dishwashers and went nuts over them. (I should mention here that he's never had a dishwasher in his life except maybe once in a group house where he lived for a year. He doesn't care about dishwashers and was scornful of my desire for one.) I don't know how this happened but all of a sudden we ended up getting a two drawer dishwasher, probably because I'm so open-minded and easy going. This kind of thing always happens when I'm trying to buy something and Doug is along.

So the beautiful new dishwasher was sitting there all installed and ready to use for nearly a year and a half before we finally moved in. When I first went to use it, I was mildly disturbed by how inconvenient it seemed, but at the same time I was completely distracted by how incredibly clean and shiny and new all our old stuff looked after having been washed in this thing. Especially Doug's tupperware collection and the flatware - so shiny! And sterilized too!

But the more I used it the more I hated it. The drawers are incredibly awkward and they don't hold tall things. They actually don't hold much at all. Part of the sales ploy was that it is energy efficient because you can do a smaller load without it being as wasteful. But the unit is actually two complete dishwashers so if you have a normal amount of dishes to wash, how is that saving energy when you're running two dishwashers instead of one? And the two of them together don't hold as much stuff as one normal dishwasher. The bottom drawer holds even less than the top one. You can't wash a medium sized platter in either one of them. I want a normal dishwasher, dammit!

Now I've finally gotten used to this dishwasher so it doesn't bug me nearly as much. I guess you could even say I've accepted it. But the next one is going to be a normal one, that's for sure. Unfortunately this dishwasher is actually two small ones so I'm probably going to have to wait for both of them to stop working before I can get a new one. And we'll probably still be too broke. I should have held my ground.

I LOVE my sink! It's huge and deep and so easy to rinse dishes in and to keep clean. I also love the pull down nozzle on the faucet. I'm so glad I got the one I wanted. An added bonus is that it's so deep that you can't see any unwashed dishes that happen to be sitting in there.

Doug does not like the refrigerator because with one of the doors you can't just casually give it a little nudge and expect it to necessarily close all the way, especially when it has a gallon of milk in the door shelf. You have to close it a little harder and then double check to make sure that it's closed all the way. I think it's the need for double checking that he doesn't like. I just keep my hand on it until it's shut.

For the first several days I was awakened every single morning, shortly after Doug left the house, by the beeping of the refrigerator door alarm. One time early on we went somewhere for the day and came home to discover that the refrigerator door had apparently been beeping all day. When the door is open the light stays on and the temperature thingy said that the inside of the refrigerator had heated up to 103 degrees during the eight or so hours we were gone. Fortunately we didn't have much food in there. That must have made a lasting impression because it's only happened twice since then and we were here both times. I'm really glad it has that alarm, even though it wakes me up sometimes.

One of Doug's more innovative ideas was that we should have a little five gallon water heaters on each of the two upper floors in addition to the big one in the basement. This is another thing that happened because I'm so easygoing. Doug really likes having hot water come out almost immediately. Except that in the kitchen it's only slightly hotter than lukewarm. I guess it needs to be adjusted. I'm especially glad now that we have a dishwasher, I mean two dishwashers, that will sterilize the dishes because the tap water temperature doesn't cut the grease very well.

Last fall I was thinking about solutions to the crown moulding fail at the tops of the cabinets. While Doug was away I made a bunch of sample alternatives. Thanks to all of you who participated in my survey. The least fancy one turned out to be the winner.

I went ahead and prepared all of the moulding so that one day we can just put it all up. It has been languishing up there on top of the cabinets above Doug's sink for five months so far. Maybe one day he will look up and realize how happy I would be if they were installed.

We have so much counterspace that the kitchen became the place to do the weekly sorting of charts for our Monday night gig. Now that we're on temporary hiatus, the boxes are still there and they're not even in the way.

I guess that's most of the details about our kitchen. I'll post some pictures after we install the rest of the moulding and the quarter round, and after I get all of those boxes of music off the counter.

In the rest of the house I've postponed alot of the unpacking because I thought it might be best to wait until the baseboards and shoe moulding were installed before I got too far along with loading up the bookcases and then having to move them again to finish the baseboards. Maybe instead I'll just get rid of all that stuff since it apparently isn't really needed for day to day life.

So that just about sums up April. In spite of a few annoying quirks that will be worked out eventually, we are both incredibly happy to finally be back in our beautiful new semi-finished house!

We've Moved!

2010-04-06T22:25:00.006+01:00

It was really tough to change gears and switch from working on our house, to cleaning it up so that it would be liveable in its still-under-construction state, to packing up all of our stuff to bring over, but we finally did it.

We got started on Wednesday March 31st, naively thinking we could do it ourselves in only one day. On Thursday my parents came with their pickup truck and that was a huge help. On Friday we finished getting everything out and we also finished all of the cleaning, which we'd sort of been doing as we packed. I must say we left the place looking pretty immaculate. We cleaned EVERYTHING and got it all completely spotless. It was kind of gratifying to know that it would stay that way for at least a few days until the next tenants move in.

So now we've been back in our house for a few nights and it feels wonderful in many ways. There is still a lot of unpacking to do and there are a few kinks to work out with all of the new appliances and plumbing fixtures, but it feels so nice to be back on our own property and our quality of sleep has improved dramatically now that we aren't sharing a bedroom wall with a noisy furnace anymore. Doug and I have both been totally sleep deprived for five years because of that furnace in our rental house, not to mention all of the hot dusty wind that blew through the house every single time it came on.

But I am grateful that we had a place to stay, and a nice landlord, and this beautiful tulip magnolia tree which has been the highlight of every spring for the past five years. This tree is what I will miss the most - I'm going to have to come back and visit it every year.

Piano Room

2010-04-03T16:51:00.000+01:00

This past Tuesday was moving day for the piano, so guess what we were doing Monday night after our gig? Why putting in baseboards, of course!

Our two recent priorities have been the closet mentioned in the previous post, and the baseboards behind the piano. The closet needed to be done so that there wouldn't be any more construction dust happening where we keep our clothes because that would be really kind of bad. I still have a small amount of painting to do in there that I wasn't able to get to before, but at least that's not a dusty activity. It would have been bad to get the piano in there with unfinished baseboards behind it, so that became the next emergency job to quickly get done.

Doug also trimmed out the window behind the piano. This is the second one he's done - isn't it cute?

So Monday night after our gig we went over there and while Doug was putting in the trim in the piano room, I finished caulking spackling and painting the closet. After he caulked the window and the baseboards in the piano room, he went home - it was like 6am or something - and I stayed on to finish the painting. I got it all done in the nick of time - about two hours before the 10:00 appointment on Tuesday morning.

The piano movers did a great job and I finally was able to go to bed by 1:30 that afternoon. I got up at 8:30 pm and was totally jetlagged for days afterwards.

Our Walk In Closet

2010-03-31T06:52:00.002+01:00

When we were first planning the addition that eventually became what is now our house, the size of it was based on how much room Doug needed in his basement. The main floor was going to be a big music room for me that could double as a small performance space. The upstairs had plenty of room for everything we could possibly want to have up there, including a separate walk-in closet.

I hadn't really given a whole lot of thought to it other than making sure it was big enough to be flexible, and accomodate a window. I figured I'd see how it looked after the wallboard was on and take it from there.

So the plan was to have it sort of evolve, and evolve it did. When we discovered that one of our kitchen cabinet sections was taller than what we had ordered, they sent a replacement and said we should just keep the other one because they had no use for it.

After staring at it for several months it finally dawned on me to use it as a divider in our closet and either get or build some kind of unit to put underneath it. I discovered that there was a Hemnes chest of drawers from Ikea that was exactly the right size and it was nice and cheap so we bought it.

Here's a more detailed shot of the rod and the trim. We used upside down baseboard material leftover from the kitchen and the crown moulding that Doug had ordered that didn't end up working in the kitchen. It looks really nice here - it's too bad we didn't think about the shadows when we installed our recessed lights. Oh well, we can use this moulding elsewhere.

The top surface of the inexpensive dresser seemed a little delicate, shall we say, and prone to scratching easily, so I decided to toughen it up with several coats of polyurethane. It looks a million times better and makes the dresser look much fancier than it is. I sure hope it holds up.

After Doug saw how good those plain old doors in the downstairs hall closet looked after I added moulding to them, he practically ordered me to do the same thing to the doors in our closet. Here's the before picture:

And here are the doors after the moulding and painting and trim. You can also see the very first window that Doug trimmed out. We decided that the closet window was the best one to practice on. I'm very happy with how it turned out. Doug did not try to alter my size specifications and it looks exactly the way I pictured it would - awesome!

Notice also those handsome baseboards - Doug decided that he wanted tall ones they also more easily accomodate his floor heat junction boxes.

So except for the shoe moulding or quarter round at the very bottom, this room is completely finished now. It is even more finished than the kitchen which is still waiting for its moulding around the tops of the cabinets.

The thing I like most about our closet configuration is that we won't be tripping over each other because our sections are so well divided by that big cabinet in the middle. I think we are going to really enjoy the accessibility of those two levels of rods and it will be nice to be able to keep the stuff we wear less often inside the closet within the closet. I'm very happy with how this room turned out and also with how colorful it is - that's another thing that just sort of evolved.

spurts of work and stops and starts

2010-03-22T05:39:00.000Z

The February snows really did a number on us, so there was no way that we could get all the work done we were hoping to get done by the end of the month. It took forever to dig out of the Cinderblock Chalet and even longer to dig our way into the FoamCoreFantasy in order to continue the work.

We picked up a gig at the beginning of March that turned into a weekly thing and Doug really really really wanted to have a rehearsal in his not-yet-finished basement studio, so that became the priority, which meant that the work we needed to do upstairs in order to move in by the end of February was not going to happen in time.

So we finished that section of the basement, had our rehearsal and then stopped working on the house for a while - so what else is new? I guess we were saving our strength as usual for the big last minute push to the end. Apparently slow and steady is not an acceptable way to pace the activities. There must be dramatic surges and enormous bursts of last minute energy.

Notice that paint job around the edge of the ceiling - that's proof right there that I didn't paint that bathroom. But I will be fixing this situation as soon as I have a chance! I'm glad Doug likes that purplish blue for his studio. It's kind of dark, but it works okay because he's got such excellent lighting down there and there's lots of white coming from the ceiling and there will be even more from the eventual bookcases.

Back on Track

2010-02-06T03:25:00.008Z

I think we were both kind of burned out for a few days from all the preparations for the inspection but we are now back in productive mode.

On Wednesday we did the final pre-mudding preparations for Doug's office, studio, and buffing area. While Doug finished putting up a few last minute bits of drywall, I removed all of the switch plates and heating grills that had been installed last week for the sake of the inspection. We both took down the lights. I put down plastic on the floor and pink protective paper on the steps. I also covered the banister and newel post with plastic so that I won't have to scrape drywall mud off of them later. Then we got all of the straight seams taped.

Last night was an inside corner taping marathon. I'm so glad we did the garage first so that we could get some of the techniques down. That was a good room to start with because it was just a big square room with a bump out in one corner. Last night we did all of the inside corners for a stairwell, under the stairwell, the main room, and the buffing room. It was a huge job. Every wall to ceiling intersection and most of the wall to wall vertical intersections are inside corners, in addition to the slanted ceilings and all the other little shapes Doug had added. Inside corners take at least twice as long because you have to mud two wall surfaces before putting the tape on instead of doing one long strip the way the other seams are.

Since we had gotten started so late (9pm - where did the day go?) we ended up working until 7:30 this morning. Doug kept wanting to quit - we were both pretty tired, but since we came in one car for a change, I was able to crack the whip and say "We are not leaving until we are finished!" That seems like kind of a mean thing to say to an exhausted person at 5:30 in the morning, but we did finish and today we took the day off so that first coat can dry. It was well worth it.

We've got two skim coats left and they should go much faster. And then finally I'll be able to paint that damn room and we'll only have one left - his shop, and that's going to be an easy one.

Doug's studio will be this color - Big Sur Blue. It's kind of dark, but there will be lots of white and there's also lots of good lighting so it should be fine. Look at those nice shiny freshly painted white cinderblock walls!

No drywall mud or paint will get on these light fixtures if I can help it! This prep stuff is really boring work so it's a good thing I know how to amuse myself. Doug had several colors of leftover paint to choose from for his shop bathroom - yellow, green, aqua - but he chose pink. I tried to talk him out of it but obviously I was unsuccessful. That tank over the toilet is his central vacuum unit which he decided to locate there for some reason or other. So all of the dirt and dust from all over the entire house will empty into the can over the can.

All the latest news

2010-02-04T20:13:00.006Z

So here's what's new in Foamcore Fantasyland:
The electricians are completely finished. Last week they finished installing the rest of the lighting in the basement and outside, putting plates over all of the switches and outlets and did some final hookups.

The HVAC people came and installed a gigantic unit outside, attached all of the vent covers, put in the thermostats, and turned on the heat. They said they needed to come back after twelve hours to adjust the compression in the refrigerant or something like that and we haven't seen them since which unfortunately is not all that surprising. I just hope they aren't trying to void our warranty or something.

The heat feels great. It kind of oozes gently out of the ceiling instead of blowing huge amounts of dusty cough-inducing air in your face the way the heating system at the Cinderblock Chalet does.

Speaking of heat, Doug has not finished hooking up his floor heat yet. I don't know if it even works. Not that we really need it.

I spent the better part of two days putting plate covers over all of the floor heat outlets and the media outlets for all of the TVs and computers that we might be able to afford ten years from now. This was for the inspection. Those covers will have to come off and be put back on again when we do the baseboards, so that activity felt like a very fulfilling way to spend a couple of days. At least I wasn't on my feet for twelve hours straight. I still think it's a lot more fun to paint cinderblock.

Last Thursday an amazing miracle happened. The ever-hopeful Doug had decided that since we didn't have enough money to renew our building permit when it expired the next day, we should go ahead and schedule the final inspection even though we didn't have everything finished. Boy is he smart! I didn't want to inconvenience the inspector and make him mad for having to flunk a house that is obviously not ready to be inhabited. I thought we should just suck it up and renew the permit the way we had to do last year.

Anyway I never get my way, so the inspector came and the first thing he said to me was "I can't pass a house that doesn't have all of its gutters." I thought "Yaay, finally Doug will be forced to put up the gutters!" We haven't had gutters in the front of our house for over three years and there's a big gully next to the house and a huge area of mud on the low point of the driveway. It's awful. Doug has been insisting to anyone who will listen that gutters are not required and he has refused to put them up as part of finishing the outside of the house. So now he will be putting them up in February instead of last summer or the summer before. And I, of course, will undoubtedly be helping him. Isn't that great? But at least it will finally be done. Normal people have gutters on their house. Is it so unreasonable for me to want that too?

So the inspector has definitely endeared himself to me on this point already and then he started looking around the rest of the house. All of the plumbing, electrical, and HVAC appear to be finished and the house looks really good except for not having any baseboards and door and window trim. By that time Doug has shown up. I think the inspector felt sorry for us, or me maybe, and he decided to go ahead and finalize it, because we are obviously struggling to get it finished. But we have to call him again in three weeks so that he can make sure that things (like the gutters)have progressed properly.

So we can start moving back in as soon as certain things are finished. We are going to completely finish one room at a time, starting with our bedroom, as soon as we finish the basement. No more flitting around from one project to the next. We can start living there as soon as the kitchen is completely finished, including the mouldings on top of the cabinets. We can stop paying rent at the Cinderblock Chalet as soon as the floor heat has been on for a couple weeks and the baseboards are installed in the piano room.

So this is all potentially very exciting, but I'm not holding my breath. Except when I'm sanding drywall. Already the pace of work has slowed down a bit, in spite of the fact that Doug has announced our upcoming move to our landlord. I hope the landlord has gotten to know Doug well enough by now to know what he might actually mean when he says "by the end of the month." I think two months is more realistic. Anyway, wish us luck!

I've been clean for 41 hours!!!

2010-01-25T01:09:00.006Z

Due to some playing engagements this weekend, that is exactly how long it's been since the last time I got dirty - and it feels great! I feel like an actual human being for a change. I hate getting dirty and anyone who thinks I've enjoyed the activities of the past three and a half years has definitely gotten the wrong impression. I'm looking at this period of non-dirty activities as a preview of my life in the not-too-distant future. No more day in and day out of dirt and dust and gross clothes for me anymore. A return to civilized living is finally in the works!

But now I've got on my freshly laundered work clothes and I'll be heading back over there to get back to work this evening. It was nice while it lasted.

This past week we've been putting in 14 and 16 hour days that often went until 5am. But I guess it was worth it because we got a lot done. Doug put in a sensor so that the lights will automatically come on when he gets near the door and also every time a deer walks by. He shouldn't have any trouble finding his key from now on. He also installed the door trim both inside and out. It looks really nice. And he installed all of his fluorescent light fixtures which took him a really long time for some reason.

While he was doing all of that, I finished up with the painting. I had some leftover paint from the ceiling of the back porch which I used to make the garage less drab and industrial looking. So the RL Faded Seafoam color is now in the basement too. I think it looks pretty pleasant for a garage.

We used some nasty stuff called UGL to fill in some of the texture of the cinderblock walls, but unbeknownst to us it has sand in it so although it's a bit smoother, it still has a finely textured roughness to it. It's kind of like stucco or something. I'd like to go over it with some semigloss, but that's going to have to wait a bit.

A couple of days after I'd finished beautifying his garage, Doug asked me if there was some reason he should know about regarding why I had gone to so much trouble to make his garage look nice. He wanted to know if I had any future plans and had the nerve to imply that I had made it look so good because I was entertaining the notion of eventually using the garage for my own purposes. He wanted to know what my "plans" were. He's so suspicious! I replied truthfully that I had just painted it that way so I wouldn't be as grossed out if and when I ever had to walk through there. I've already taken the farewell photo of the one and only time my car will ever be able to fit in there. It's his garage, I swear!

He's got all of his junk moved back in now and even with all that stuff in there it looks a million times better than it did before.

Doug's been putting up drywall in the basement all day while I was having fun playing music. He's pooped now.

I'm going over to get the piano room ready for the flooring which I will install tomorrow. Doug left a bunch of "Good Stuff" foam oozing out of all of the edges of the sub floor. I need to scrape that off and move all of the wood and everything else out of there, and re-install the floor heat mat. I think that's probably just a few hours of work.

I'm very eager for Doug to finish the drywall in the basement - the final two rooms in our entire house - so that we can do the mudding and taping. I can't wait to paint it! I've got some cool colors picked out!

Also, the plumber has finished all of his work and we now apparently have hot water, which I didn't notice the past four times I washed the paintbrushes because I'm so used to not having it that it didn't even occur to me to turn it on, especially since I was not informed right away about this exciting new development.

The electrician is coming on Tuesday to finish, and supposedly the HVAC guy will be here then too. It will be interesting to have an actual heating system hooked up, although with our insulation the two space heaters and one kerosene heater have been doing just fine.

I guess we'll need more heat to stay warm when we get finished overexerting ourselves in another few weeks.

Oh, and today when I stopped in there for a minute on the way home from my concert, I accidentally said to him "Hey, my garage still looks good even with all your stuff moved back in there." Oops!

just like papier mache

2010-01-18T05:23:00.002Z

After we got up all of the drywall in the garage (Doug did most of this but I helped him lift all of the sheets onto the drywall lift), it was time to begin the finish work.

The first step is to mud each seam and then apply the tape. The drywall mud is this gloopy white paste that is about the consistency of mashed potatoes. Doug would slop it onto the seam while I measured and cut the drywall tape and wet it in a bucket of water to get it ready to put on. We had to coordinate closely to get this done quickly and properly since we hadn't ever taped the seams in an entire room before. It's tricky working up on the ceiling.

After the paper tape was dampened, I would hold it in place while Doug smoothed it and the mud out with a taping knife which is basically a five inch wide spatula. All those lines you see there on the ceiling are the seams where the sheets of drywall intersect.

The next day I went over and mudded the screws, which was a pretty easy job considering how many screws there were. All of those polka dots are where the screws are.

After the seams were dry, I scrapped all of the excess dried chunks off of the edges of the seams and then Doug did a second smoother coat and he did another coat over all of the screws as well.

Today I went over to do more scraping but the mud wasn't all the way dry, so I didn't do it after all. I looked at Doug's second coat and decided that once it was dry it would be good enough for a garage, so I'll just go straight to sanding it, hopefully tomorrow.

So today, instead of sanding and doing another coat of drywall mud, we painted the cinderblock walls on the inside of the garage. That was a pretty vigorous activity due to the rough texture of the walls. Tomorrow we'll put a second coat of paint on the cinderblock and sand and prime the ceiling and the walls that are drywall.

Two More Projects

2010-01-15T05:17:00.003Z

Last year around this time, I installed all of the insulation in the upstairs walls (for soundproofing purposes). It was an absolutely miserable experience and so when it came time to put fiberglass in the basement, I did everything in my power (and succeeded!) to not get stuck working with it again. That stuff is horrible. It gets in your hair, all over your clothes, and last year it did weird abrasive things to the skin on my hands that took months to go away. I get it got ground in or something. Anyway, I don't want to touch the stuff. Ever again.

So I came up with some things to do instead, like finishing the closets in the spare bedroom. This is a very weird closet configuration that I came up with as a by product of a change we made to the stairwell and it will work great for our purposes. There are actually four compartments in this closet, two of which you can't see. I'll spare you the details. Anyway, I put the flooring in the two elevated sections and got Doug to do a little finish work so that I could finish painting it. It seems that one of my big thrills in life is painting the closet walls a different color than the walls in the room. In this case they are the same color as the hallway just outside the room.

Here's a closeup of the flooring I put in this section of the closet. I wish I could have done all of the other rooms that quickly.

When I was at the antique store buying the leaded glass windows for the kitchen, what I had really been looking for was a transom sized window to go over the door of the pink bathroom. Casually looking, since I didn't have the measurements with me. But I did have Doug with me, and in his usual manner he suggested that I buy this window anyway because it might work and if it didn't we could use it elsewhere.

So I used some of my fiberglass avoidance time to clean up all of the paint spatters and to sand off most of the gunky old paint. The frame was a little lopsided so I got Doug to make a piece that I could glue and nail onto the top.

Then I got the brilliant notion to use some of the reject crown moulding from the kitchen to go on the very top. I cut the pieces and glued them together and Doug attached them together more firmly with his finish nailer.

See how thrifty I am? I reused the blue tape from the kitchen windows. I decided to paint the frame the same color as the kitchen windows since that had worked out so well against the yellow walls.

It looks okay in this picture, but in stairwell where it's going to hang, the color didn't look as good for some reason I think the northern lighting in the window kind of washes it out. So I repainted it the same color as the back door and the hall closet. They are nearby so it kind of ties in.

The color combination of deep aqua blue against the pale creamy yellow has really started to permeate my house. It's spread from the kitchen out into the back hall, and now it's in the stairwell too. I'm not going to let it come too far upstairs though. Enough is enough already!

Grey Matter

2010-01-12T05:08:00.005Z

We're not talking IQ here, we're talking R-value. Apparently our house is very scientific, in addition to being well insulated. Our garage is directly under our living/dining room and it is required to have a certain R-value worth of insulation in the ceiling since it is considered to be an outdoor space, in spite of the fact that it lies within the walls of the foundation.

Since we are into overkill in the insulation department, we hired an insulation company to come in and spray a solid foam called Icynene into all of the joist bays in the ceiling of the garage.

They came early in the morning and put plastic over everything and suited up to protect themselves in case any of the foam accidentally dripped.

When they were finished our ceiling had four inches of Icynene packed in to all of the open spaces. Icynene has an R-value of 3.6 per inch. Another advantage of using it is that it seals all of the cracks in a much more thorough way than is possible just using fiberglass.

They did the walls between the garage and the bathroom too. The other wall is made out of foam core panels so it doesn't need any additional help.

Our house is very foamy between the foam core panels, the icynene, and one of our favorite colors upstairs, Faded Seafoam, which we've used in several different places including the ceiling of the back porch.

Here's a shot of the intersection between the bathroom wall and the ceiling.

The next step was to fill in the rest of the ceiling with R19 fiberglass. So at this point our R-value is well above the required R30.

Since the garage was all nice and cleaned out, I realized that this would probably be the only time I'd ever be able to park my car there (It's Doug's garage, not mine, and I know it will be packed to the gills again once we finish working on it). So I drove on in. It felt kind of fun to park inside for a change. I'm glad I had the chance to try it out.

Just Call Me Ms. Moulding

2010-01-11T08:24:00.000Z

I haven't posted in ages because I've just been too exhausted. Sitting here writing about all the stuff we did is not the best way to relax after spending a long day doing all the stuff. It's pretty much the last thing I want to think about.

But since the work day was shorter for me today because I had a rehearsal tonight, I'm feeling all peppy and unworn out for a change so I'll attempt to list some of the things we've been up to during the past few weeks. We've put in some really long days. Yesterday we worked from 8AM until 3AM, and that's not a typo after the 3. It felt wonderful to stop at 4:30 this afternoon in order to rest up for my rehearsal.

After we finished all of the outside work that we'll need to pass the occupancy inspection, we started back in on the inside. The plumber came and finished all of his work last Tuesday. All of the plumbing stuff is hooked up now - the faucets, toilets, water purifier, dishwasher, refrigerator, etc. - it all works now. It's really nice to have something totally finished.

We got a washer and dryer which we don't have to pay for until May, so that's good news. Our laundry room is a lot smaller now.

Doug finally finished installing the baseboards under the kitchen cabinets so that we could move the refrigerator and dishwasher back into the kitchen. He also installed a vac pan into the island. The vac pan is part of Doug's central vacuum system that he is so thrilled with and just had to have. If you pretend that the sawdust on the floor in the picture below is what the floor looks like after Doug has had a bowl of cereal, (no pretending needed) all I will have to do is flip on the switch with my foot and use a broom (or my foot!) to move the crumbs towards the plate and they will magically disappear.

I've heard that the foot plate is the most convenient thing about having a central vacuum. I'm still a little skeptical about those big long hoses that hook into the wall outlets. Hopefully I'll learn to appreciate this thing once I start using it. I'm keeping my regular vacuum cleaner around just in case. I don't trust all this newfangled nonsense. And it's really loud down in the basement when it's running. The note it hums, or roars depending on where you are, is an F sharp for those of you who care about such things.

Once the kitchen was more or less finished (no crown moulding on the tops of the cabinets yet - he's making me wait), Doug had to start getting rid of/reorganizing all of his junk down in the basement so that we'd have room to maneuver the drywall lift. I was not invited to share my organizational skills, so in order to keep myself from going crazy while I waited for this long and painful (for Doug) process to occur, I started coming up with a few little beautification projects to while away the time.

I felt so good about the added moulding on the outside frame of the back door that I decided to experiment a little bit on the inside too. I'd been planning to have all of the inside doors and trim be white throughout the entire house, hoping it would pull together all of the various room colors, but the effect against the creamy lemon yellow of the kitchen and the hall was looking a little bland. The door below used to be plain white with moulding only around the window. I decided to add a rectangle of moulding on the bottom section of the door and paint it the same color as the outside.

I'm very happy with how it turned out. There were people trying to discourage me but I knew it would look good. I made this moulding by using a flat one that had a small bead on either side as the base and gluing a piece of half-round onto the middle of it. After the glue dried I cut the miters and Doug nailed it into place for me. That was very nice for him to overcome his skepticism and help me with this.

Here's an unpainted cross section where you can see a warped bit of half round that is not quite attached to the base piece.

The blandness of the white window trim in the kitchen had been bothering me for months and it finally occured to me to paint it the same color as the frames around the windows in the pass-through.

It's a much cozier look I think. I sort of like how the blue ceiling of the porch is so compatible with the cabinet color. I don't know why this photo has such a greenish tinge to it.

So I was still twiddling my thumbs while Doug faced the heartbreaking decision to get rid of his beloved water fountain that he had never hooked up, and I suddenly started staring intently at the very plain white hall closet doors. I think I am falling in love with Buc's miter saw. And I knew what I had to do next.

To be continued.......

Don't worry Doug, I'll be getting to the drywall soon enough. I'm way behind schedule due to extreme exhaustion. You know how it is.

snowbound

2009-12-21T02:27:00.004Z

After four hours of shovelling, we finally escaped from the Cinderblock Chalet and drove over to see how our house looked in the snow. I think this is the first snow picture I've ever taken of our new house. It looks kind of pretty. All houses look pretty in the snow though, even the cinderblock chalet.

The world's tallest tree "stump" has got to go though. I snidely wagered way back in 2007 that it would probably take at least 6 months before the rest of the tree came down. The bark is falling off. Doug keeps saying he wants to carve it into a clarinet for our front lawn. So elegant. That's right up there with the saxophone lamp he was going to make. I'll be okay with him not getting around to that.

I think I'll focus on what we have actually gotten done during the past month or so, if I can remember, that is. We haven't been there for two days because of the snow and things like that tend to make me forget. I expect it will take a couple hours of shovelling to get back in there to on the house tomorrow.

We spent a lot of time this fall working on the outside of the house. It is totally finished except for two pieces of trim, the screens for the screened-in back porch, the lattice aprons under the front and back porches, and the flagstone veneer over the cinderblock on the bottom level. That stuff can wait since our inspection does not require those things - except for the trim which I'm sure will be much more fun to install in January.

This is our unscreened-in back porch

Inside, Doug put in all the baseboards in the bathrooms so that the plumber can come in and finish his work. We finally installed the brown fan in the upstairs front room. We did several top coats of a super durable finish called Bona Traffic on our kitchen floor so that the refrigerator and dishwasher can be moved back in and hooked up. Doug finally put in all of the toe kicks for the kitchen cabinets that we installed last February. He won't do the moulding at the top of the cabinets until after the inspection at the end of January he said, which is disappointing, but apparently necessary. The kitchen floor looks great. It has a satin finish now. All of the exterior doors now have beautiful door handles and locks. I painted a closet. I'm patiently waiting for more stuff to paint.

In the hopefully near future we'll be putting up the drywall in the basement. I don't think this will be nearly as laborious as it was this time last year doing all of the bathrooms and the laundry room upstairs. We have ten foot ceilings on the top floor and that was a lot of extra work. The basement should be easier and it's about a third as many walls to cover. I'm looking forward to getting that finished because then we can get busy with the finish carpentry. Oh, and painting and staining the stairs.

We still have to get the HVAC guy to come back and put in our heat pump. Unfortunately, due to all of the delays, the air handler up in the attic is designed for R22 refrigerant but now they only make heat pumps that use R410 refrigerant, so we are going to have to get some kind of conversion done to our air handler to make it compatible with the heat pump, since the R22 compatible heat pump didn't get purchased in time. Delays cause problems, that's all there is to it.

We're pretty much ready for the plumber to come back and finish his work, unless there are additional details that I'm not aware of.

We haven't seen the electrician in a while. I don't expect he'll be back until we've finished drywalling the basement although it would be really nice to get the floor heat hooked up sooner rather than later. The two space heaters do a pretty good job of heating our super-insulated house, but they aren't that efficient and it would be more comfortable with the floor heat. Or the regular heat.

That's all I can think of for now. Wish us luck.

The Pink House

2009-12-18T16:47:00.006Z

I found out last week that somebody has painted my house and this time, for a change, it wasn't me! I guess I should clarify and say that somebody painted an absolutely beautiful picture of our house the way it looked long long ago.

As the result of one of those amazing connections that occasionally happen in the world of blogging, an artist named Peter Krebs who grew up in our area discovered this blog as a result of a post I had written on my other, less house oriented blog. He recognized my house as one he had painted a long time ago when he was a student, freshly back from a summer studying art in Arles. I love the Van Gogh/Hopper-esque style that he used in this painting. It really captures the feeling of an earlier time. I miss how beautiful our area was back before they came in and widened the former two lane country road in front of our house. There was a relatively nice balance of suburbs and country out this way at that time.

Please go read Peter's beautiful and loving reminiscences of his time growing up in this area before all of the "progress" started. His perspective as a young boy growing up in this area and his appreciation of all that it did for him is extremely refreshing. And it tells the story behind the painting that he did of our house over 15 years ago.

********************

Our house has been through a lot since that time, in fact it has been through a lot ever since we bought it way back in 1985. We have very few photos now because we lost nearly everything in the fire, but I recently acquired a few faded ones that my parents had taken over the years.

Our house stopped being pink only about 3 months before the fire happened. I had finally gotten around to painting the original sections to match the gray siding on the huge new addition that we had put on the back of the house. I remember thinking "This is it, I'm not doing this again. It's ridiculous that I should have to paint the entire outside of my house - twice." I was bitching and moaning because it's not fun to paint when it's not warm and sunny. It was November, but still warm enough to paint, and I was finishing the last bits of it during the two week Thanksgiving break of the tour I used to do.

And after all that work it only lasted for three months thanks to the fire.

The era of the pink house began after we replaced all of the windows in order to save money on heating and so that we could actually open and close them in the summertime. This was our first house and we wanted to make it our own. I wanted to paint it blue or green, but Doug had a thing for pink - he said it reminded him of all the pink houses we saw in Bermuda on our honeymoon.

I tried a few different shades on the back of our house, but they were all rather garish, shall we say. Then I saw a big old house in Rockville that was painted a sort of dusty rose color and I thought that would be an acceptable pink. We got really excited about it and I went up and knocked on the door to ask if they would tell us what color they had used. Apparently it was a secret that they were quite proud of, but on the way back down the sidewalk an oak leaf caught my eye because it had a bit of pink in it. I held it up and the pink in it totally matched the house! From there we found a genius paint mixer named Jens who helped us to achieve exactly the right color.

It was kind of an interesting color, not exactly like the house in Rockville, but close. Apparently people used to use our house as a landmark of sorts. One person told me she used to refer to it as "the raspberry house" and she was sad when I painted it gray. By then the color had faded to a paler pink and wasn't quite as distinctive. The old photo below obviously has some color issues of its own, but it's the only one we have. This was during the time when they were widening the road, so the front yard is kind of beat up.

The picture below was taken by my mother during the time that we were replacing the windows. That's my brother up on the ladder. He was a huge help. Doug is on the back roof, I'm down there working on the back windows, and my Dad is standing there observing all of the activity.

These pictures were taken right after we bought our house and before we started all of the never-ending work. The bottom one is my favorite. The greenery looks very similar to what you see in Peter's painting and my beloved old maple tree is still there. I miss that tree!

If you'd like to read more about the old days of our house you may do so here , here , and here .

Thank you, Peter Krebs, for bringing back these early memories of my old house. It makes me especially glad that we decided to try to keep the spirit of our old house alive in the newer version that we are building now.

Finally got my balls installed....

2009-11-22T07:06:00.004Z

It's so nice to finally have them up where they belong.

They had been waiting to come outside for MONTHS!!!

And now they are finally happy.

Back Door Before and After

2009-11-11T22:35:00.003Z

I recently finished painting the back door and the trim that Doug finally put up. He took the door off so that I could do a really good job and he also repaired the deadbolt area where the firemen had broken in. I sure wish I'd thought to leave the door open or unlocked when I was leaving, but who thinks of such things at a time like that? Anyway, on the "before" picture below, you can still see what remains of the CONDEMNED sign that they stuck on the door the next day. Officially, our house is still condemned, although it doesn't look like it should be anymore.

Below is the "after" picture. The medium blue looks nicer with the blue ceiling than the faded dark green did. You can click on the picture to get a closer look. I'm very happy with how the threshold turned out too. I stained it with Cabot solid stain in a color called Spruce Blue. It sort of matches the green slate just inside the door.

This was the first time I had ever stained anything and it was actually pretty fun, especially since it ended up looking so nice. You can see a picture of it on the previous post. Now I'm thinking about staining the porch floor a light blue at some point. I think you are supposed to wait a year before staining pressure treated boards, so I'll wait. We still need to get the baseboard trim done anyway.

Here's a closeup of the trim around the outside of the door frame. Doug is glad that I talked him into putting it on now that he sees how nice it looks, and now that a few of his friends have complimented him on it. He did a great job with the reveal as well.

And in other news, here are the two rooms at the front of the house on the main floor that I recently painted. I'm pretty pleased with the way all of the different colors intersect. I guess I'll be decorating based on wall color rather than the other way around!

The colors are Faded Seafoam for the piano room, Wisteria for the foyer, and Sour Lime for the living room. Wild, huh?

Next up will be the completed front porch, balls and all. Stay tuned.....

more painting and staining

2009-10-26T20:11:00.002Z

Today I stained the threshold to the back door and I'm very pleased at how it turned out. I'm so glad I didn't paint it. The wood grain looks kind of wild in this sort of grayish blue-green. I can't wait to reinstall the door. It's going to look so pretty in its new shade of blue.

I spent most of the weekend sanding the walls and doing other prep work for the last two rooms on the main floor that need to be painted. This morning I finished the cut-in painting in the foyer. I'm excited about this color. It's a medium purplish blue called "Wisteria" and I think it will be a nice contrast to the rooms that it is adjacent to. And when the front door is open the combination of the two colors is similar to the colors you see in a hydrangea bush. Hmmm......

I'll post some pictures of the finished rooms withing the next couple of days, I hope.

Possible Mouldings for our Kitchen

2009-10-20T05:10:00.003+01:00

While Doug's away, Cyndy will play - with power tools! HaHaHa!!! Usually I avoid these things like the plague because they can be dangerous to your hands and I need my hands. But I decided to save a whole lot of decision-making time by constructing a few mockups of potential moulding for our kitchen cabinets.

We were planning to use a copy of the original crown moulding from our old house to go around the tops of all the cabinets. Doug really want to use it in the kitchen for sentimental reasons. But the other day, he got started putting it up and we realized it didn't look good because the recessed lights cause the moulding to completely cast a shadow upon itself. So we'll just use it somewhere else instead. There are plenty of places it could go.

I remembered the experience with making the vent pipe covering and decided to get things moving by doing a sample of what I had in mind myself. That way when Doug gets back from his trip it won't take as long to get it done because all of the discussions will have already taken place.

My original idea was just to use a piece of half-round. It would look neat and clean and simple. But the sizes I bought were not big enough to look right so I ended up splitting a wooden closet rod in half. That one was so easy to make that I decided to get fancy and play around with the other sizes of half round. The second one I made is a flat trim board with small half-round beads on the top and bottom. Then just for laughs, I made another one that was three pieces of half-round attached to a trim board.

After the glue was dry I cut them with the miter saw and glued the two mitered ends together on each one. I couldn't find the staple gun or the finish nailer so I just used glue to put them together. I primed and painted them last night and this morning I put them up to see how they'd look.

#2

#3 - that's just silly!

#2 on the left, #1 on the right

different angle - #2 on the left, #1 on the right

When I first made #3 I was laughing because I thought it looked like Lincoln Logs, if you're old enough to know what I'm talking about. Then yesterday as I was driving home from my gig, I saw this and it just made me feel like mocking #3 even more.

If you think they all look bad, please don't hesitate to tell me, because the other option is to go with no trim at all. Except that then the stupid outlets for Doug's recessed rope lighting will show.

tile, fans, and trim

2009-10-01T02:45:00.007+01:00

So what have we been up to lately? We finally finished putting up the ceiling in the back porch. That was a job and a half, or more actually. It took forever, but it looks really nice.

The tile people came and did our kitchen backsplash. So all that's left in the kitchen is putting on the Bona Traffic floor protection, the moulding around the tops of the cabinets, and the baseboards.

That's Doug's sink above. He can be as messy as he wants there because I have my very own sink too. The company that makes it named it "Orca" because it's so huge.

I selected all of my knobs and pulls and they all arrived last week. I'll be installing them very soon I hope.

I finally found a fan style that Doug LOVES and which also satisfied my need for a low profile light. I got talked into having a fan with a light, which I have never liked the idea of because I think most of them are ugly for one thing, and nobody would believe how much lower the ceiling would end up feeling until we actually installed a fan last week that the fan store guy had talked us (Doug mostly) into buying. It was completely unacceptable so we meticulously repacked it and took it back.

This is what I found instead and Doug immediately latched onto it and found a couple of new ones on eBay. It's a little more modern than the general style of the rest of our porch, but it's plain enough that I think it will look okay. It looks an awful lot like an airplane propeller but the light at the bottom is great and doesn't stick out at all.

It cost a bit more than we were planning to spend, especially since we needed two of them. I'd been planning to buy a cheap brown fan for my bass room which would match the ceiling lights, but after we spent all that money on the fancy fans for the back porch I decided to paint a fan that Doug just so happened to have. He bought it twenty years ago, and it was still new in the box. He doesn't remember why he bought it. He's a hoarder so he probably bought it because it might come in handy one day. This time he was right!

This was a very inexpensive project. I had a can of rustoleum that I was going to use to paint some ceiling light trim that happened to be the right color. I also had a can of brown paint that I'd been thinking about using for the window trim in the pass through of the kitchen. It was in the reject section of the paint department at Home Depot and it only cost a dollar. The color is perfect, but I got my money's worth on the paint quality. Behr paint is absolute crap, or at least the paint in this can was. I'm glad I was only using it for fan blades! Anyway that fan is going to look pretty awesome for only a dollar more than the cost of a can of Rustoleum.

This week we've been putting up the trimwork on the back porch which is a very slow and tedious process. Oh, and I've mowed the grass twice in the past two weeks. Nothing new there.

That's what I'm talking about

2009-09-10T01:58:00.002+01:00

We got half of the porch ceiling panels installed today.

Using this contraption which is called a drywall lift.

porch ceiling and powder room

2009-09-09T12:33:00.006+01:00

On Monday we installed the first of the twelve porch ceiling panels. This involved me standing up on a ladder holding the 4x8 sheet of beaded plywood with my head mostly, but using my two hands to balance it against the rafters while Doug screwed it in place from the stepladder. The aqua/faded seafoam color looks really nice against the gray siding. I'll try to get a picture of it sometime soon.

Yesterday we attempted to put the next panel in place and this time I had to try to hold the panel up while standing on a wobbly stepladder. This did not work out, so we've borrowed our friend Buc's drywall lift again (my suggestion) and it should be much easier and more efficient to get the rest of the ceiling attached this way. Those panels are kind of heavy for just the two of us to deal with on a high ceiling that has quite a bit of slope to it.

Meanwhile, Doug saved the day with our powder room lighting problem. I had decided that a shorter version of the pendants in our kitchen would look really cute in the powder room. We've been using a lot of fixtures from this one series from Kichler in an attempt to get some consistency happening in all of the main parts of our house.

The pendants work perfectly over the island in the kitchen because they hang pretty much at eye level. Unfortunately in the bathroom the bulb was visible and the glare was horrible. We tried a bunch of different light bulbs and nothing worked, so I was starting to look into replacing the shade when Doug presented me with a globe that he had rescued from the basement of the old part of our house that we had to tear down. It had been sitting there in the basement the entire time we lived there and I guess the previous owners had removed it when they did their "country colonial" redecorating, probably in the late 1960's. This globe looks like it might be from the early 1900s.

I really like the fact that we now have an especially old piece of our old house incorporated into our new house, and look how cute it looks! It's even more adorable than it was with the scalloped shade. I think it looks kind of like an earring.

What I did on Tuesday instead of selling my bass....

2009-09-04T17:33:00.004+01:00

Tuesday was a freakishly productive day. It started off with a call to my luthier in New York to cancel an appointment to put my spare bass on consignment which I had made just the day before. After he heard me playing it one last time on Monday night, Doug told me that I should really keep it and not think about selling it any more. I feel selfish keeping it because we need the money, but we have other things we can sell.

So I didn't drive up to New York. The weather was completely fantastic so I decided to get started painting the porch ceiling panels, a project I was NOT looking forward to at all. I was planning to paint each panel one by one on the porch, which would have taken days, but the weather was so nice that it made sense to do it out in the back yard. And since there was so much more space out there, it made even more sense to paint all 12 of them at once! So I decided to go for it.

First I set up some stuff to elevate them out of the grass slightly, and then I carried them all out there using one of those magic plywood carrying handles. I'm really glad it wasn't windy. It wasn't too bad carrying them that way, but my hands did hurt the next day. They are fine now.

After I finished all of the backpriming and the paint was dry enough, I flipped them all over and began to realize that there really wasn't enough time to finish painting all 768 square feet of paneling by myself by the end of the day. So Doug graciously offered to postpone his annual car vacation by a day in order to help me finish. It doesn't start until Saturday anyway.

So we primed the beaded part and got the finish coat on in just enough time for it to be dry enough to carry back onto the porch. And Doug carried them all back in while I gathered up the rest of the stuff. He's definitely in my good graces right now. And he'll stay there if we can install them on the ceiling as soon as he gets back from his trip!

They are blue because it is traditional for porch ceilings on old houses to be blue (like the sky) and that is the look we are after.

flooring and painting and doors, oh my

2009-08-21T16:18:00.010+01:00

We've almost made it through the summer! It's actually been okay without AC because of our daily ritual of opening all of the windows for about an hour each night or early morning to get cool air into the house. The foam core panel construction retains most of the coolness until about 4pm or so. If we manage to get in this routine when we actually start living there again we'll be able to save big bucks on airconditioning, hopefully.

Today I'll be putting on a second coat of paint in my blue bass room. Tomorrow I'll be using that room to paint all of the upstairs doors that we installed this week, and then I'll install the flooring, which means that the painting and flooring in the upstairs will be completely finished! Of course we still have to do the baseboards and window and door trim, but whatever.

In preparation for the flooring in the blue room, Doug had to do a little remedial work on the subfloor to make it perfectly level. He used various pieces of wood that we have around right now to accomplish this and then he sanded it all flat. It was a grueling, tedious, and messy job, but he got it done. I love the fact that he used bead board for part of it. So fancy! But it's all going to be covered up in another day or two.

We hung the mirror in the pink bathroom. It goes pretty well with the lights and the faucet handles.

The electrician was here for a couple weeks installing all of the light fixtures and switches.

Early on in the lighting selection process I had no idea what I liked or wanted. My frame of mind was still in the stage where I was resenting the fact that I had to pick out lights at all. Anyway, I found a couple of bargains that didn't work out where I had originally intended for them to go, so we just put them in the various rooms upstairs. They look slightly on the flamboyant side for their locations, but they were cheap and we already had them.

Above is the green bedroom. The color didn't photograph very well - it's a little bit more of a deeper and clearer green than you see here. It looks really fresh and I liked it so much that I painted our closet below the same color. It looks very different during the day in the two rooms because of the natural light, but I really like it in both of them.

I finally figured out what to do with the gigantic tambour unit we got that was the wrong size for the kitchen. We hung it in the middle of the wall in our closet and we're going to hang double closet rods on either side of it. Doug and Cyndy's clothing will be well separated, which is excellent!

I got a chest of drawers from Ikea to slide in underneath which is just the right size, and I'll be able to close those tambour doors to hide the clutter. And the inside is divided down the middle which wouldn't have worked at all in our kitchen, but now we each have our own compartment for stuff. So we are definitely making lemonade from this situation. The color below is a little distorted - the real green is actually about halfway between this photo and the one above. I never thought I'd end up with such a colorful closet - it's pretty ridiculous, but also ridiculously pretty.

Also this week, Doug installed the front porch railings that I had finished painting a while back. But he didn't install the balls. I'm not posting an outside picture of his beautiful railing work until he gets those balls up.

So there!

Help me decide...blue chimney or yellow chimney?

2009-08-10T03:50:00.012+01:00

BEFORE

We had this ugly vent pipe coming up from our microwave/range hood that needed to be covered. Originally we were going to surround it with drywall so it would have been yellow to match the walls. But then I got the bright idea of making a "chimney" for it that could be removed if necessary. I designed it and Doug made out of the beadboard and various mouldings that I had selected. I painted it to match the cabinets and I think it looks nice, but it might look even better if it matched the wall instead. That way there would be a nice horizontal line of color all the way around the tops of the cabinets. What do you think? I can't make up my mind. I guess I could always just paint it and find out. If you feel like it, leave me a comment with your opinion. Thanks!

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER, AS IT IS NOW

AFTER, IF IT WERE CHANGED TO YELLOW
(awesome photoshopping by Gene )

Speaking of nice even horizontal lines at the tops of the cabinets, the always gracious Kathy Schmick at Smoot Lumber came through for us once again. We installed the replacement cabinet for the too tall one that the cabinet company had sent and it looks so much better with the heights matching all the way around the kitchen. Unfortunately it's kind of hard to tell from this picture because we had to take out the refrigerator in preparation for coating the floor with a fancy super-dooper flooring protector called Bona Traffic. And the room is still kind of a mess because we're not finished with everything yet. But it's coming along.....

REPLACEMENT CABINET IN THE CORNER BY THE WINDOW

Oh, and I noticed that my cabinet color is very similar to Julia Child's kitchen cabinets in Julie and Julia, which I saw today. Isn't that nice? Maybe I'll take up French cooking as my next new hobby after I get tired of homebuilding. Oh wait, that's already happened. The cooking's probably also going to have to wait a couple more months.

Flooring Progress

2009-07-21T02:55:00.006+01:00

I spent most of last week painting the front porch railings and Doug finally finished the sections that curve around to meet the stair railings. They are really cute and clever and as soon as they're up I'll post a picture. I still have to paint them so I'll be doing that as soon as my knees recover from the flooring work we did over the weekend.

We completely finished the living/dining room and the kitchen. Doug also took care of some of the cabinet details that were related to the flooring. I did most of the measuring and cutting with the mighty miter saw. Our white oak floating floor is by Kahrs, for anyone who happens to be interested, and it comes in 8 foot lengths that sometimes snap together and other times need to be encouraged with a chunk of wood and a hammer. I dubbed Doug the "floor whisperer" because whenever I couldn't get a piece of flooring to fit together easily, he would come over, kneel down, and do some magic wiggling between the two floor pieces until they obeyed. Then I would walk down the length to flatten out the seam. While Doug was working in the kitchen I would cut the lengths for him and also slip in a few pieces in the living room. We ended up finishing both rooms at about the same time.

Tomorrow I'll wrap up a few painting details and hopefully get started on the Bona Traffic polyurethane coating for the kitchen floor. I'll be happy to get back to some low impact activities after all of the wood banging I was engaged in over the weekend.*

THE MIGHTY MITER SAW

LIVING ROOM

KITCHEN

*I'm quite aware that the more crude among you might be somewhat entertained by my choice of words. Go ahead, be entertained. You'll certainly be having more fun than I did!

foam core reality

2009-07-19T00:59:00.003+01:00

I often feel like a hypocrite writing this mostly happy little blog about all of the wonderful experiences that we've had since we began building Doug's fantasy house. Now I know full well that I have been a participant in this venture, and in spite of the fact that I never ever thought it was realistic, it is as much my house as it is his and so it is as much my problem as it is his. It always has been.

I know that Doug believes with all of his heart that he wanted to do this for me and for us, or so he says, but the truth is I didn't want to do it this way for a number of really important and practical reasons. It has always made me feel uncomfortable. The fancy things in this house are inappropriate for our income level, especially considering the fact that Doug's insistence that we do it ourselves has enormously reduced both of our incomes. I've been absolutely miserable not being able to work the kinds of gigs I used to do. I loved my life before this house fiasco began. I feel like I've been sentenced to hard labor for three years - so far.

When we were deciding what to do way back in the fall of 2005, I wanted to have the insurance company do the normal thing, which would be to restore our house - that's what they were going to do. They said it would take six months. Our house was nearly completely paid for so we could have used a home equity loan to cover the additional costs of bringing the basement up to code and to get our addition finished in a minimal and affordable kind of way. And by hiring professionals to do the work, however sloppy that might have ended up being, as least we could get back on track as quickly as possible. It seemed to me to be the most reasonable way to deal with the aftermath of the fire.

We had a very nice life together before the fire. We both had gigs doing what we loved most - playing nearly every night and travelling. But we disagreed about what should be done about the house. I felt very uneasy about Doug's plan. I didn't want my old house to go away - I wanted it to be repaired, which the insurance company expected to do. His plan involved a lot of work for him, I mean us. I had just finished painting the exterior of our house a couple of months before the fire. It was not as much work as the first time I did it, but it was still pretty exhausting. I wasn't in the mood to do more, and why should I be? I'd rather live in an apartment than paint another house. I knew from years of experience how Doug's projects never seemed to get finished for one reason or another. And I knew that ultimately Doug would never be satisfied with anyone else's work.

I found myself not really trusting that it would work out with the two builders we attempted to use and I'm quite unhappy to say that I was right. I didn't enjoy thinking we were headed for financial disaster as we planned, well mostly I planned, this absurdly lavish house full of all kinds of ridiculous and amazing things that neither of us had ever had or needed before.

Doug, not surprisingly, was completely overwhelmed on a daily basis by all of the unnecessary complexities of being tour manager, a job we had mutually decided would be unwise for him to do again considering everything else we were suddenly having to deal with. It was impossible to talk sense into him when he made the decision after that, while I was away for several months, to be tour manager again after all.

So you can probably imagine how it went whenever I tried to suggest a more conservative plan for our house while we were out on the road that fall. He was so stressed out once again by all of his various duties that he wasn't able to seriously consider that it might be better in this particular situation to be practical and unambitious for once. He basically told me that what I wanted was not an option. "That's just how it is - we have no other choice." Nice.

So I gave up and went along with him and his fancy ideas. I hated myself for feeling so negative about "our" dream house. On the other hand I didn't feel like it was appropriate for us to have a dream house. Just a plain old house would have been fine with me. One that we could live in sooner rather than later.

I've always been completely happy living in a hotel or a cruise ship cabin. But since it seemed that I apparently had no idea that we could afford all this, or even how little time it would take, I decided that I would attempt to disguise my feelings of negativity as much as I possibly could and just devote myself to this lovely project known as Foam Core Fantasy until it drives itself into the ground. And I guess that is what this little blog is all about.

finally back to work

2009-07-03T05:18:00.005+01:00

Not much has happened over at the house since I last posted back in March. I thought we'd get back to it as soon as I finished school, but alas, my whip-cracking attempts were in vain. That has been rather discouraging for the past month.

Finally this past week we have resumed work and I'm very pleased with what we have accomplished. I think what got things moving again was the fact that our replacement cabinet arrived and we needed to take down the one that was too big so that we could put the new one in.

It's pretty clear to me now what needs to be done when and in what order. If we actually see each little project through to the end instead of just flitting around, things will begin to seem like they are leading in a particular direction, in other words, our house might eventually be finished.

So this week I have been buying moulding and painting it and Doug has been measuring and cutting. It's been nice to ease back into working on the house without killing ourselves. We'll do some more of that later I'm sure.

Here are a few pictures that show some of the more recent developments. I found these two old leaded glass windows at an antique store for pretty cheap and they fit nicely into the pass-through and let a little more light in to our somewhat shady kitchen. Doug installed them and put the trim around the outside and I painted them.

I think we managed to get a sort of "old house" look by adding them in. You can click on the picture below to see the trim details. Doug did a really good job assembling it. I'm very happy with the way it looks and especially with the fact that it is finished!

This is the old too-tall cabinet. It's really nice, but it's HUGE and it was a different size from what we ordered. They don't want it back so we are going to try to figure out whether we can use it somewhere else. That yellow stripe is a packing strap so the doors wouldn't open while we were carrying it upstairs.

I don't know why my camera makes all of these colors look more vivid than they actually are. The upstairs certainly looks bright and cheery! It is, but not this bright. This is looking down the hall from our oh-so-purple bedroom. The purple is really not as scary as it looks here. The color actually changes and looks good in all different kinds of light.

The lights on the ceiling of our bathroom are kind of cool looking.

The lights on the wall don't match the ceiling lights at all, but they still look good together so it works out.

I just love my little round laundry room sink. It is the perfect depth for washing things by hand.

Next time I hope to have some pictures of the new kitchen cabinet that Doug installed today. It looks so much better now that the height matches the cabinets in the rest of the room.

Faucets!!!

2009-03-11T05:08:00.005Z

Pat the Plumber came by and worked last week. We now have two sinks and one toilet that we can use. We've probably saved about $40 already from not having to go up to Starbucks to use the bathroom anymore. But now that I've said that, this bathroom reminds me of a peppermint mocha. This is the one where Doug picked out most of the stuff. He selected the cabinets, the countertop, the faucet, and the wall color.

Doug was nuts over these faucets. They are kind of cute. I think they look like airplanes. They are chrome - but the walls are so pink that it makes the faucets look pink too.

Master Bath version

This is a cross section of the upstairs rooms. It looks like a rainbow up there. To balance out all of this color I decided to paint the master bathroom gray.

It's getting there! But I'm hoping that since the weather has started to warm up Doug will start working on the outside of the house and keep at it until it's done. I've got lots of flooring to install and painting left to do while he works outside. Maybe we'll finish our various tasks at the same time. Wish us luck!

(and send money)

Laundry Room Picture

2009-03-03T04:59:00.003Z

It's hard to take a picture of a small room - all of the angles get distorted. Anyway, here's our laundry room so far. Just waiting for that washer and dryer to magically appear. I guess we'll have to buy them first though.

Notice the little 5 gallon hot water heater in the lower left corner. We'll have instant hot water upstairs because Doug hates waiting for the hot water to arrive when he's about to take a shower. I told him that's just how it is when you have a two story house, but he thought this would be better. Hey, it'll heat the laundry water faster too!

And don't forget, we have this thing down in the basement that uses the warm outgoing waste water to preheat the incoming cold water. Wait, does that mean all of our cold water is going to be lukewarm? Will I like that? Will I have to waste energy making ice to cool off the lukewarm cold water? I don't like ice cubes in my water. Well compromise is what it's all about. And I'm good at that.

Anyway, I think Doug did a beautiful job installing the cabinets, countertop and sink, all from Ikea. And the walls are a very pleasant color for peaceful laundry activities. The color is called "Sanctuary."

okay, here are some pictures

2009-02-28T08:56:00.014Z

Building a house and working on a masters degree do not make for an ideal combination of activities. When they offered me an assistantship last May I told Doug that I couldn't bail on the house - it would need to be finished before I'd go back to school, or take a cruise gig, or go on the road, or anything else that I'd rather be doing. But Doug told me I should take it because there was no way we wouldn't be back in the house by August (last August). I never learn, even though I always sense these things deep down inside.

Anyway, things slowed down a lot last fall because I wasn't over there cracking the whip as much. Doug neglected the outside of the house so we sitll have this nonsense on the back of our house, of which I am very tired.

CLICK THE VIDEO BELOW TO SEE WHAT IRRITATES ME

Okay, enough nagging and griping. I'm just exhausted from taking 10 credits this semester and staying up until 3AM a couple nights each week just to get some painting done. But at least now I'm finished with my recital! As of last week. Next up is the big term paper.

Anyway, here are some pictures:

This is looking down into the basement from the piano room floor which Doug decided to tear out and do over because the floor was not level and it was also kind of bouncy - not a good subfloor situation for a grand piano. It took him a week to fix it and it feels very solid now.

Way back in the summer of 2007 Doug put a deposit on a very unusual looking piece of Cocoa Onyx. We have since learned that onyx is not a practical choice for a bathroom countertop. Next he had his eye on this piece of granite, from Brazil. Our cabinet door is there next to it. I thought hmm, well that's fun... I'll just leave it at that. It's kind of flashy but it would have looked nice with the aqua colored paint I had selected for the walls. Fortunately Doug decided that maybe it was just a little too wild and I was quite relieved when he selected a very tasteful brown and white marble instead. But then he decided that he'd rather have pink walls in there (I'm letting him "design" some aspects of the guest bathroom). So pink it is. The bathroom looks really good, but I haven't had my camera over there when the light's been right to take a picture of it.

This is why I hadn't posted any new pictures after we got our kitchen countertops installed. Not very photogenic, eh?

Our new refrigerator arrived yesterday. It sure is big and white. As you can see, there is an issue with the cabinets that will need to be solved soon. We also recently got our stair railing installed, which you can see in the background. It's really pretty and old-timey.

We'll be putting in subway tiles for the backsplash under the windows and the microwave. Other than that cabinet situation, things are looking good!

This week I painted the laundry room with the paint I had purchased for the guest bathroom before Doug decided he wanted to change it to pink. Anyway the laundry room now looks as good as the bathroom would have. I love the color. We got cabinets, a countertop, and a sink from Ikea for a really good price. It's a very elegant laundry room. The only things it lacks are a washer and dryer.

Tonight I painted the master bathroom. This is really weird but I decided that gray walls would look good in there. There's a lot of white tile and that keeps the gray from looking gloomy. It's very calm and old-fashioned looking. I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

Meanwhile Doug was downstairs painting the bathroom of his shop. I suggested that he use some leftover yellow paint we had. There was also a half a can of pink paint left over from the guest bathroom. So which color do you suppose he selected for his machine shop bathroom? He's so metro....

burned out

2009-01-28T05:37:00.003Z

Wait, that already happened. Look at me.....cracking jokes about the fire, at my own expense. Expense is certainly an appropriate word to use right now. Anyway, I really am burned out - as in extremely tired of the last four years of house insanity. This project was not my idea and I'm ready for it to be over.

So that was the tired me talking. I love our house and it is going to be amazing. And it will all be finished soon. How soon I couldn't tell you, but I can definitely say that it will be relatively soon.

There has been a flurry of activity during the past couple of weeks. We work really slowly and carefully because we are not professional housebuilders and we want to do it right in spite of that fact. When we have people coming in to do some of the stuff we are usually either one step ahead of them or two steps behind where we ought to be. That is both stressful and embarrassing, yet fairly typical. It is almost a relief when somebody says they are not going to show up because it gives us extra time to get caught up.

So after the radiant floor heat mats were installed, Cyndy got right on installing the floating wood floors. It's a pretty simple operation because the pieces just snap together. The ends get trimmed with a miter saw. No real skills required. Here you can find a picture of her handiwork.

Doug finally realized that Cyndy was not making it up when she mentioned two weeks, I mean two months, oops I mean two years ago that the subfloor in the piano room was creaky, bouncy, and felt kind of weak. Doug pretty much blew this off until two days after the floor heat people arrived from Georgia, at which time he decided that the subfloor needed to be removed and replaced. Now typically this is the kind of thing you would do before the wallboard is installed instead of waiting until three weeks afterwards. I guess I'll just leave it at that. It was a difficult project, was very messy, and took a week for him to complete.

Cyndy was not able to continue with her flooring project due to certain complications not of her choosing, but is looking forward to resuming this as soon as possible. Painting, an activity that she very much enjoys, is also on the immediate horizon. Why is she referring to herself in the third person all of a sudden? She does not know. Maybe she is having an out-of-body experience, possibly a sympathetic reaction to the out-of-house experience with which she is all too familiar.

The tile people came. They did a fantastic job. The bathrooms are beautiful. So are the floors in the laundry room and the hall. Sorry I (Cyndy here, I'm back) don't have any photos. I'm way too tired to post any pictures right now.

The kitchen countertops are stunning. Doug will no longer be allowed in the kitchen after we move back in. I've got to protect those magnificent countertops that he picked out. Can you believe it? Actually he ended up picking out all of the countertops in the entire house - in the kitchen and both bathrooms. What is up with that? I approved of his choices, except for the expense.

The electrician is supposedly starting his final batch of work tomorrow - putting in all of the outlets and light fixtures that we've had sitting around for the past year. That will probably take at least a week the way things seem to go around here.

I started back to school yesterday. I already feel a million times more energetic because the time spent in school is time I am not working on the house, abusing my hands and my back. What a relief!

The work we are doing right now is so much more visually rewarding than most of what has happened previously. I'll try to get some new pictures up soon.

another productive week

2009-01-17T06:26:00.012Z

There was a lot of new stuff happening this week at our house. We finished installing our kitchen cabinets with the invaluable help of our friend Buc.

On Monday Peter and Bridgette from Speedheat arrived to begin installing our all-electric radiant floor heating system.

They threaded the wires that were going to be under tile by hand.

They used pre-made mats to go under the wood floors and then covered them with underlayment, which is what you see on the bottom half of this picture:

They are smiling because they have just finished wiring our entire house. And we really enjoyed having them here this week! We can't wait to feel that lovely warmth oozing up between our toes.

Peter and Bridgette from Speed Heat

Our tile installers began working this week too. The stuff that they have done so far looks wonderfully clean and precise. I'll put up some pictures in a few days.

Tomorrow Doug is going to be levelling the floor in the piano room and I will begin installing the floating wood floor. Our house is getting less and less dusty, which mean less and less vacuuming for me!

Next week the tile work will continue as will the floor installation, and the countertops are due to be installed on Thursday. Yaay! Things are really shaping up.

Crazy Kitchen

2009-01-11T20:03:00.003Z

We started installing our kitchen cabinets yesterday with the excellent help and guidance of Doug's friend Buc. It's pretty complicated with all of the levelling and measuring and we are lucky to have someone who really knows what he is doing helping us.

We weren't originally planning to have yellow as a background color but since my attempt at using a neutral gray was such a miserable failure we switched. I guess I just don't like neutrals.

The yellow is a softer color than it appears here. It transitions very well from the yellow-green in the living/dining room and we are using it in the back hallway as well. I'm glad the cabinets look so nice because we have a huge pass-through opening. The color coordination is coming along nicely now. It's all a little brighter than I had originally envisioned, but I think it works. That yellow looks good with all of the other colors I like.

We picked out our countertop material two days ago. Please remember that I was the one, during the planning phase, who said "What's wrong with formica?" Apparently formica isn't good enough for one of us, so we are getting this instead:

It is indeed flabbergastingly beautiful, but one of us is going to have to pay a lot more attention and wipe up immediately all of the orange juice that one of us accidentally tends to spill and not wipe up. New house, new habits!

Why are we so broke?

A Strange and Disconcertingly Productive Week

2009-01-09T04:54:00.005Z

Saturday 1/3: The drywall finishers worked for a little while in the morning and said that they need to wait until Monday or Tuesday to do the "final" sanding because the mud needed to dry enough first.

Sunday 1/4: Surprise! They showed up with 5 additional people to completely sand all the walls. I was at my brunch gig and by the time I got there they were gone. Apparently, suddenly, the walls were dry enough a day earlier than inspected, but they showed up before they knew that for sure so who knows.

Doug informed me that they expected to start spraying the primer the next day and we needed to completely vacuum all of the walls and floors to get the house completely free of wallboard dust. So that's what we did from 4:00 pm until 3:00 am. Utterly miserable filthy hellish work.

Monday 1/5: We finished the vacuuming from 6:00 am until 10:00 am. That's right, we only got 2 1/2 hours of sleep. It was not a good day. They put plastic over all of the windows and fixtures and sprayed the upstairs.

Tuesday 1/6: Doug went over to the house early. I was attempting to sleep in and get an actual 7 hours (which I didn't) when Doug suddenly came home and woke me up with the news that we needed to buy the finish colors as soon as possible. Um, I thought I was going to be doing that painting, but whatever.

I wasn't really quite ready to make a final decision - I hadn't even been given a deadline. I was kind of freaking out about having to make such important decisions in such a hurry. Doug was in on the color selection process so it became a little more involved and complicated, but we picked what we thought were some decent colors. We knew a couple of the colors were a little over the top, but in our sleep-deprived state we were feeling a little adventurous.

Wednesday 1/7: They started painting the living/dining room. My first reaction to the color in there was a mixture of horror and glee. I think Doug thought the color was a little too crazy, but he was willing to wait to pass judgement. The kitchen was being painted a color called silver gray and I immediately didn't like it, but didn't say anything. Doug seemed to like it okay. I was embarrassed that I picked such an ugly color which had looked so nice on the paint chip. We had the hallway paint but they didn't get to that, fortunately.

It was raining like crazy and all of the windows had plastic over them. The lighting was a couple of flourescent strips so it was really dingy. The living room color which I had been admiring for months on the paint chip looked super hideous in this light and the kitchen looked even worse.

By the end of the day, after everyone had left, I finally voiced my displeasure about the colors, which looked absolutely horrible together, and also the way in which I'd been forced to select them. I've done a lot of painting, and I'm picky about colors, so I usually buy just a pint, see how it looks, and then adjust accordingly before I commit to a couple gallons. And I do one room at a time.

When I told Doug I wanted to repaint he was not too happy about that. I showed him the colors I was thinking about and he agreed that they looked better. I told him that I wanted to paint the rest of the house later because railroading me now would only lead to additional regrettable choices. Then I told him I wanted to get rid of the kitchen color ASAP and he said his usual "I think we should wait." "For what?" I wondered. Anyway Wednesday was a horrible day that did not conclude in a satisfactory manner.

Thursday, 1/8: Doug woke me up and said he'd decided (overnight, apparently) that his choice of eggshell for the finish was a mistake and that I should hurry up and buy a new kitchen color and change the hall color too if I wanted to. Even though we had already bought 4 gallons of eggshell finish paint for the hall, he wanted to replace it with flat.

I am not a morning person so I usually gear my brain up for the next day before I fall asleep so that I won't have to think too hard the next morning. So it doesn't always work so well for me to be awakened with the announcement of an exciting new change of plans. But today, after I recovered from my disbelief, everything worked out great.

I decided, since I suddenly had a choice again, to use the new color in both the kitchen and the stairwell. It's a creamy light slightly greenish yellow and it looks lovely. It also seems to have calmed down and beautified the sort of chartreuse color of the living room. It looks amazing in the sunlight. And if it looks too weird after we move in I'll change it to something more sedate but so far I like it more each time I see it. The hall and stairwell color is definitely a keeper.

Tommorrow we look at countertop materials and in the afternoon we are going to start installing our kitchen cabinets. I'm so excited!

So far, our wall color scheme seems to be heading in the direction of greenish-yellow (celery-ish), and various shades of blue and purple. I'm not going to decide on any of the bathroom colors until after the tile is in.

These are the two brightest/deepest colors we will be using. In these photos they don't look as bright as they really are.

I'll be smiling in this room from now until we come to our senses and repaint it - but maybe we won't come to our senses. Why start now?

This dark purple tones down the eastern light in the morning, is quite vibrant during the day, and is an excellent sleeping color at night.

Please Don't Drink the Gatorade!

2009-01-08T03:02:00.003Z

Really, you absolutely do not want to drink this stuff!!!

This post, which is completely tasteless and utterly unnecessary, has been created in honor of LivitLuvit's TMI Thursday series. I've back-dated it a bit so that it won't be the first thing that pops up - just in case my parents are sharing the link to this blog with their friends or something.

We can't live at the house we're building. For one thing, it doesn't have plumbing. We've been spending a small fortune at our favorite outhouse - the Starbucks up the street. As you can see from the photo above, Doug doesn't always bother to go to Starbucks. For him it's sometimes easier to just go in the bottle.

Along those same lines, look at what the tile people left outside our door one day. The contents of the box - what does that look like?

Ha Ha Ha! Fooled you! Actually it fooled me the first time I saw it too. It's actually just a bunch of leftover brown grout.

On the other hand, one night I stopped by after a gig and Doug was still there working. I saw a Home Depot bag by the back door and thought he must have set what he had just purchased there while he fumbled with his key and then forgot about it. So I picked it up. It was still warm. OMG! It was disgusting. I guess Starbucks was closed already, but he could have gone to the MacDonalds. But he didn't. I didn't say anything to him about it. He leaves all kinds of shit lying around all over the place, but this time it was the real thing. The next morning that bag of you know what was still sitting there. I guess he forgot about it. I certainly didn't.

I am very relieved (get it?) that we now have a working toilet, so these little episodes will no longer be happening. Yaay!!!

Tile

2009-01-03T16:54:00.005Z

We finally selected our tile yesterday! I'm thrilled to be done with that. The floor tile might start going in the week after next. We'll see. Here are some pictures - the colors are not as dark or as bright as they appear here:

For the back hallway, we ordered 12x12 squares of Brazilian Green slate.

The bathroom floor tile is 2 inch octagons with little gray diamonds and that is a sample of our cabinet doors.

The walls will have subway tiles on them and we're going to have a little beaded stripe (like the top one) in Storm Gray going all around the room.

The other bathroom will have unglazed 1 inch white hexagons, which actually look beige. It's a nice gentle contrast with the white tub and toilet and the dark brown cabinet. The grout will be the same brown as the cabinets so the floor will look like a honeycomb.

Drywall, Day 30

2009-01-03T16:44:00.004Z

The drywall installation, which was supposed to have taken only a week, has dragged on for nearly a month so far and we haven't even started in the basement yet. Is anybody really surprized by this? The top two floors look beautiful though. I can't believe how our house has changed - it's really amazing.

The good news is that some painting might begin this coming week and we might be able to install our kitchen cabinets very soon! Then there will finally be enough room in the basement to put up the drywall there. After the electrician comes back to do something or other that is.

The other good news is that when you cut 4x12 sheets of drywall down to 10 feet long they weigh about 17% less and are much easier to carry down the steps. The 4x12's were impossible.

good times . . . . .

2008-12-29T05:10:00.004Z

We've been putting in some really long days lately. We have an occupancy permit deadline coming up that we are trying to meet. Don't ask me why Doug is suddenly interested in taking a deadline seriously, but for some reason he is. Maybe he noticed that I was finally getting kind of comfortable with the lack of progress. We certainly can't have that.

Anyway, all of a sudden we have people helping us, which is great, but the coordination of schedules between our drywall putter-uppers and our drywall finishers got a little out of whack and as a result we've been putting in some really long and exhausting days putting up some of the drywall ourselves. I knew this would happen, dammit!!! We basically get up, do drywall, sleep about 6 hours, get up, do drywall, sleep about 6 hours, etc. etc. etc. I've noticed that our pace is about 15 times slower than the two guys who did most of the rest of the house. That makes me feel especially glad that I had this wonderful opportunity to participate in the drywall installation. It just makes the whole process that much more special. Right? Doesn't it make you feel jealous? It has been such a meaningful experience.

Yesterday we finally finished the three rooms that were left to do and today there were some final touches that needed to be taken care of here and there. I had a brunch gig and Doug probably slept in so we worked late, as usual. It's midnight now. We were too tired to continue, so tomorrow we'll get up, probably at 4AM to finish the cleanup so that the drywall finishers won't have to deal with our tools and other junk lying around all over the place.

For the second floor Doug ordered 125 sheets of 12 foot x 4 foot drywall. I don't know how this happened, but I for once did not check his math, partly because he didn't ask. I certainly regret that now because there are 27 (that's TWENTY SEVEN) sheets of absurdly heavy drywall left over up on the second floor. Guess who Doug thought might help him carry these down the stairs, out the back door and down the driveway around to the basement today? What? You have no idea? Well I helped him carry one of them all that distance and then six more from the first floor to the basement since he also bought way too much for the first floor as well. That was all I could do. I will have to use my brain (somebody needs to) to figure out a more intelligent (and probably expensive) way to get all of that drywall moved downstairs. I've done enough (hopefully not permanent) damage to myself on behalf of Doug's Foam Core Fantasy. It's neither smart, nor worth it, to completely destroy yourself just for a house.

Speaking of permanent damage, Doug chopped off about an eighth inch of his index finger with a circular saw the other day. So now our subfloor has blood all over it. He wouldn't go to the doctor. He thinks it will grow back. I guess fingers don't matter as much to trombone players.

purple polka-dotted kitchen

2008-12-24T14:59:00.009Z

Here's the before, from ten days ago:

Here's the after, from yesterday! Almost finished.

What do you think, should we keep this look?

This is looking from the living room to the front door:

Yesterday we worked from 7:00 AM until 2:00 AM. Today will be much shorter. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

It's like an igloo, only warmer

2008-12-20T06:44:00.007Z

Our house looks like an igloo inside. I'm glad it doesn't feel like one - it's becoming more and more weather tight as Doug completes his last minute foaming around the windows. The inside of our house is so white now - it looks completely different. The drywall dust on the floor looks like snow.

It's a whole lot more house-like now that all of the bare OSB (that's Oriented Strand Board for you amateurs) has been covered over by the beautiful beautiful drywall. Dougs thinks all of it will be up in another day or two. The finishers are due to start next week, and we have a tile guy coming over tomorrow to give us an estimate. If we can't afford him we'll do it ourselves, I bet. So things are moving right along now, finally.

The mold and moisture resistant XP drywall matches our front door.

These are the final days of the Blue Room.

I'm going to kind of miss that blue painted OSB!

It's a purple kitchen! So pretty! So temporary!

Drywall, Day Two

2008-12-06T16:33:00.007Z

Buc brought a couple of his guys over yesterday to help with the drywall and there was a flurry of activity instead of the usual plodding along. I'm not used to having so many people in my house so I'm really glad I had a bunch of other things I needed to do instead.

I think they are doing a great job of measuring carefully and working quickly. They got a lot done in one day. The upstairs is kind of a big job because we have ten foot ceilings up there. Our bedroom looks so civilized now! The greyish white wallboard is so much prettier than that ugly brown OSB.

One of Doug's frantic last minute activities that I was helping him with before the drywall guys came was shooting some more foam up into the intersections of the roof panels. Why he couldn't have done this two years ago while we were twiddling our thumbs waiting for the contractor to show up ..... oh never mind. He seemed to be proud of the fact that he thought of this great idea to cover the seams with aluminum tape to prevent the foam from oozing back out, since the surface needs to be smooth for the drywall, so I'm putting a photo of that up here for you all to admire. He really misses working with metal, I guess.

One of the things I most admired about the drywall guys was that they were thoughtful enough to lay a sheet of paper under their truck so oil wouldn't get all over our driveway. I'm easily impressed that way.

Today we put in another window on the south side. We have two remaining windows to replace. We left the old ones in all this time so that the drywall could get delivered through them (see below). Hopefully Doug will complete all of the miscellaneous odds and ends by the time everyone comes back next week. I wish (now she's totally lying!) I didn't have so many playing engagements this weekend or I'd be over there helping him. I'll be there tomorrow after my brunch gig until Doug finally conks out - sorry, that's the best I can do.

Drywall, Day One

2008-12-05T06:38:00.008Z

Since we are almost finished with the outside trim, what better time would there be to drop that and move on to something else? So drywall it is!

The morning started out rather tediously with a bunch of tiny little things that had been left to the last minute (what better time?) which we had to quickly finish before Buc came over to get us started with the drywall.

Buc got here at about 1:00 and I quickly realized that this was "man's work" because all of a sudden there was nothing for me to do. Which was fine because I was getting kind of bored and I was still very sore from all of yesterday's window activity. It was very interesting to observe how the work dynamic changed after Buc arrived. Doug no longer needed me to be his personal manservant because he was so busy learning all about drywall installation from Buc. He actually seemed a little nervous about it, which is sort of unusual for him. Anyway, this drywall lift apparatus that Buc is letting us use is pretty impressive. It holds the drywall right against the ceiling so that it can easily be screwed into place. And to raise it up you just turn the crank. There are wheels on the bottom of it so it can be moved around easily.

They got the first 12x4 piece up and then I went to Home Depot to pick up some Zip Tool drywall bits for cutting out the holes for the lights and the vents and I also got some dust masks. When I got back they were preparing to put the second sheet up.

There was still nothing for me to do so I went out to get them some lunch. By the time I came back the second sheet of drywall was in place, ready to be screwed onto the studs. Hmmm, that sounds funny....
By then it was time for me to leave for my gig. When I stopped by the house tonight afterwards I saw that they had finished about 1/3 of the upstairs ceiling. Doug was completely exhausted but still working on some additional things that he had saved for the last minute. We will be back over there early tomorrow morning attending to more of these last minute details before Buc and his two friends show up. That's right, apparently it was decided today that more helpers are needed. That's good because I'm busy all day tomorrow except in the morning.

Even though it's just a small area upstairs, the wallboard that was put up today has completely transformed the rooms where it's been installed. All of a sudden the ceilings look really high! It's amazing and I am looking forward to seeing what happens tomorrow. Maybe they'll get some walls done too. I guess it is time to really start thinking about paint colors, countertops and tile - all of the good stuff!

Ready or Not, Here Comes the Wallboard

2008-12-03T16:56:00.011Z

We got our wallboard delivered today at 6:30 AM. Wanna see how we got it delivered in through the upstairs window? Check out these two videos! Be sure to turn your sound down though - that's one noisy truck!

Not surprisingly, this delivery and the wallboard installation has occurred before the outside is completely finished. I guess we'll have better weather for that in January. That makes perfect sense, right? Well it appears to make sense to one of us at least.

There were three guys on the wallboard delivery crew. One of them operated the boom that brought the stacks of wallboard up to the windows, and the other two super strong guys pulled the stacks into the house and moved them to various locations inside.

I'm really glad it wasn't Doug and me doing all that heavy lifting. That will come later today. We kept our old windows in place on the south side of the house so that the new ones wouldn't get messed up from the wallboard delivery. Now we need to get the 4 remaining new windows put in quickly so that it doesn't hold up the wallboard installation. It's been over a year since we finished installing all of the other windows so I hope we aren't too rusty at it. Actually we were pretty good at it back then, so hopefully it will be a quick and easy process today.... RIGHT!

Time to get back to work!

our house is at the end of the rainbow

2008-11-15T23:52:00.011Z

It is like a pot of gold.....

with a big hole in it

North Side Improvements - almost finished!

2008-11-15T02:21:00.006Z

Most houses these days have one or two sides that aren't as attractive as most of the rest of the house. On our house that side would be the north side. We had to make some sacrifices in symmetry in exchange for the floor plan - things like closets and stairs were needed on that side of the house. And Doug really wanted to have that gigantic window in the stairwell. It looks great from inside the house, and we are trying to make it look as good as it possibly can on the outside as well.

Doug asked me what I wanted the trim to look like on his fancy-ass gigantic window so I drew him this rough sketch:

Then he drew it on his CAD program and came up with this drawing, which includes the actual structure of the window itself:

I really liked the fact that he had added the points on the sides of the arch so that the top is completely parallel to the window itself, but I thought that it stuck out too much on the sides from the rest of the vertical trim. He cut it "his" way and I still thought it was too wide, so he cut it down to where I wanted it to begin with and now it looks perfect, I think.

But I can't wait until we can take that damn scaffolding down!!!

Maybe we should plant a tree on each side so that the lopsided window array is not so obvious! Notice the new gray vents up at the top. They look so much better, or at least a lot more subtle, than that big white patch that was up there before.

Now we are putting the bandboard trim around the bottom of the house and soon the cornerboards will all be in place too. I'm really eager for all of that Tyvek to finally disappear for once and for all.

making our house beautiful

2008-10-25T00:44:00.006+01:00

It's cold!!! When we finish our house I want to sell it and move to Florida. Just kidding! Seriously, was it this cold in October last year?

We've been working on the band board around the bottom edge of the siding for the past two days. It's going okay. Doug has devised an elaborate system for constructing it which involves attaching the upper drip edge to the shim that goes under the band board. I'll post some photos after it's done. It is going to look excellent, especially now that Doug has realized that my suggestion for how much the drip edge should stick out looks better than what he thought would look best. When will he learn? And what kind of a hopelessly useless question is that?

Anyway, some small blunders have been made from time to time in the looks department on our house. I've had to work really really hard to make sure that some of the ugly looking things weren't allowed to fully develop. There are still things that need to be addressed, but I try to spread them out so that Doug won't be too overwhelmed by my need for an attractive house. Although I'm completely overwhelmed by his need for this excellent of a house at all. Since it costs the same amount in time and materials to do it right, by our standards, why not have it look the best it can?

We are not professional housebuilders, so a lot of what we come up with is based on our limited experience. I sort of feel that I have been paying attention to what kinds of things are attractive on houses and in yards for quite a bit longer than Doug has. Anyone who ever saw our previous backyard undoubtedly knows what I am talking about. I've been doing "research" with my camera for years, to determine what I like and what I don't like. Anyway, this post supposed to be about learning from our mistakes, so here are some examples:

Doug's Gable Box Experiment, conducted while I was away for ten days last fall. He was feeling creative and did this on a whim. He sent the picture to me in Wyoming. I was horrified and considered taking the next plane home. This is not what we discussed at all. Why does experimentation that looks like this need to occur at all?

YUCK!!!

Isn't this a whole lot better? At least it looks normal.

Then there was the recent Showcasing of the Vents in a specially built nice white frame. Way to call attention to the utilitarian aspects of our house, Doug! Fortunately he saw the error of his ways immediately.

YUCK!!! I knew this would look stupid.

So the new gray vent covers have been ordered and they will look pleasantly unobtrusive, just like these on the front of the house:

And to be fair, I too, made a bad choice. I wanted White Inside Cornerboards instead of the usual J-Channel because J-Channel really makes it look like vinyl siding. Doug wanted to use the special inside corners that Cedar Impressions makes. I was skeptical because I thought they would look fake. So to rub it in, Doug left up the ugly white inside cornerboards for nearly two months:

YUCK!!! I'm so embarrassed that I suggested this.

Finally, today, he replaced them with the Cedar Impressions inside corners. Thank you so much, Doug, you were right and I was wrong. And I've been urging you to change it for nearly two months. I'm so happy that you finally did it because it looks so much better now....... or does it?

Hopefully my next post will include photos of the completed bandboards and perhaps some outside cornerboards as well. And maybe even the front porch trim? The house is shaping up!

some men beat their wives....

2008-10-24T04:57:00.005+01:00

Mine just makes me be a construction worker. I was so enthusiastic last week because my foot was finally out of the cast. I suddenly felt all excited again about the house. It was so great to finally be free to wear shoes, walk easily, and climb ladders and scaffolding. But I really overdid it with the hammer. My hands are killing me this week and I feel very grumpy about that.

Our house is never going to be finished. The only reason I agreed to tearing down our original house was because Doug promised that we would get professional people to work on the new part - and that meant not us. What I feared would happen did happen. Why in the world is someone like me building a house? It's ridiculous. I wanted to do the normal thing and let the insurance company restore our original house after the fire so we could move back in as quickly as possible and get on with our lives. And here we are, a couple of musicians still slaving away on our house that we haven't been able to live in for almost four years. Four Years. I can't do what I really want to do because I have to stay home and build my house. But I digress....

So we worked extremely hard last week and nearly all of the siding is up. But not quite all of it. Because not finishing anything is what it's all about around here. So now we are working on the trim - another long, drawn out, tedious process that will probably take several weeks before it is nearly done. I got really out of shape for construction work after being laid up with a broken foot for six weeks, and now I am really paying for it, both physically and mentally, after last week's burst of enthusiasm. I am not in the mood to build a house anymore. Why should I ever be in the mood to build a house? I never wanted to build a house. Why in the world am I building a house? Lots of people don't have to build their own house all by themselves. But I guess I should just suck it up - after all the pioneers used to build their own houses. Who do I think I am, anyway, complaining about this? I am a musician who needs the use of my hands. I don't want to destroy them just because of this house that I don't want to build. That would be really stupid.

Well I'll probably be feeling much more cheerful when my hands stop hurting, my foot is completely better, my back stops hurting, and we actually completely finish one of our many homebuilding tasks before moving on to the next one.

it's getting there

2008-10-20T05:06:00.004+01:00

The north side is the last big section that is still waiting for siding. It's been going up pretty quickly on the lower part. The upper section is going to be tricky because there are a bunch of vents to deal with. My foot is not 100% better but I'm very happy to be back at work and now I can even get back on the ladders. See how much more work we get done when I'm there too?

Thursday

Friday

Doug uses a laser level to make sure we're putting it on straight.

No job is too small to leave unfinished.

These siding boxes are definitely messing with my brain.

Cedar Walton, Impressions, D7, and Straight No Chaser.

even more siding progress

2008-10-11T06:41:00.006+01:00

So I've been kind of detached from the housebuilding scene lately. Look what has happened to the nice neat workspace that I used to maintain:

There are siding scraps everywhere, all over the entire floor. Hey Doug! Where's the trashcan? I can't walk through this room in my cast. There is no clear area of floor big enough to safely set my foot down. I know what I'll be doing when I'm back in action. But he's made really good progress on the siding all by himself, with no help whatsoever from me. Check it out:

September 24, 2008

October 3, 2008

When we were first talking about siding (about 10 years ago) the siding people convinced us to go with vinyl. I was really burned out from scraping and painting the exterior. They said "vinyl's final." I didn't like the idea of it too much, but the low maintenance was very appealing. Doug immediately went nuts about "Cedar Impressions" by Certainteed. It is quite a bit thicker than normal siding and does not look cheap like some vinyl siding does. And it most certainly is not cheap. But he had to have it and it has held up so well over the past 10 years that we decided to use the new version of it for the new version of our house. The color is called "Granite Gray." Most people say they can't tell it's vinyl. Maybe they are just being nice, but they seem to mean it. The new stuff has an even better texture.

One thing that's cool about the new siding is that it has temperature gauges built right in so that the siding can be spaced to allow for expansion and contraction based on the temperature at the time of installation. The nails go into slots, so that the side can move as it needs to without buckling.

Now that I'm back at work with somewhat limited use of my foot (no ladders for now) I'm putting up the siding in the lower sections while Doug works from the ladder. Doug has figured out a way for me to use the hammer with no risk of injury to my fingers. So I hold the nail with the needle-nosed plyers in my left hand and hammer with my right hand. Two tools at one time - aren't I something. By the way, the hairy arm shown below is not mine! I couldn't get Doug to take the picture I wanted so I photographed him doing it instead.

One thing I've noticed is that I seem to have a lot more control over the hammer when I used a backhand stroke. Isn't that weird? It seems so wrong. Maybe it's because in real life I play with a French bow and the backhand stroke of the hammer approaches the nail just like an upbow. The normal forehand hammer stroke seems more similar to the way the German bow is used. I guess we all can figure out what I'd rather be doing.

blah blah blah blah blah......

2008-10-02T16:22:00.014+01:00

I've been feeling a little detached and uninvolved in the housebuilding process recently. My broken foot has been the main cause of this. It is extremely frustrating to not be able to work on my house. When both of us are there it seems like we get three times as much work done as when it's just Doug. That's mostly because I help him arrive at decisions faster when I'm there, and believe me, there are tons of tiny decisions that need to be made all day long. And I haven't been there.

Not being there is stressful because one of my "jobs" is to make sure that Doug doesn't engage in risky behavior while he's up on the ladder. I have no idea how far over he's leaning over or whether the bottom of the ladder is sufficiently stable. I cringe to think about it. Maybe he's more careful when I'm not there. I can only hope is that he is so careless about safety in front of me because he enjoys hearing how much I care about him when I yell at him about how unsafe he's being. That's kind of sick, isn't it?

We've both had our share of injuries which have slowed down the progress of the house. Mine tend to come from over use and Doug's are usually from accidental mishaps. We both messed up our knees and totally trashed our backs carrying in 25 of the new windows all in one day. My hands were stiff for months last year after I dismantled all of the old stud walls. My knees didn't enjoy that activity much either. Last fall when Doug decided that planting 2500 liriope would be an excellent activity for me, I ended up with a mild case of carpal tunnel syndrome. And my broken foot is the most recent housebuilding injury. It happened as an encore to the sprained ankle on the other foot. Doug's first house related injury was when he tripped in the dark over a circular saw that he had neglected to put away. He hit his chin on something on the way down and his teeth seriously cut into his bottom lip. Ouch!!! He couldn't play for a while but he used his other skills to deal with that. When we were carrying in all of the windows he thought he had a hernia, but it turned out to be "just" a strained groin muscle. Last spring he mis-stepped and fell through the floor joists on the porch and cracked one of his ribs. He's had occasional hand issues because of the nail gun, but he sometimes wears anti-vibration gloves to help with that. I always wear work gloves when handling wood and I haven't gotten a single splinter. As a bass player, I am terrified of getting splinters. Thankfully neither of us have suffered any permanent injuries. I think we're actually going to make it through this ordeal relatively unscathed!

Doug has been putting up the siding kind of randomly recently. He wants to get all of the tricky parts out of the way before we do any more big areas. I say "we" because I'm due to get my final X-ray tomorrow where the doctor tells me my foot is fully healed and I can get back to work next week. Wish me luck! Anyway, the screened-in porch has a bunch of different angles and we have to figure out how to do the siding and trim it attractively which means that sometimes we need to work through different opinions about what is attractive. I'm usually trying to find the least complicated way to make it look good whereas Doug seems to be highly attracted to complicated ways of doing things. So we are constantly trying to find the balance between those two philosophies.

It constantly amazes me the way "men" seem to think that carpentry and construction require mysterious abilities that only certain people have. There seems to be a certain mystique associated with it or something. I prefer the practical and matter-of-fact attitude that is presented in the Journal of Light Construction and Fine Homebuilding. We've both been reading these magazines for at least 10 years.

It seems to me that the main things that are required to do a good job building a house include common sense about structure and how things go together, measuring accurately, and using materials of good quality. It is no different than sewing in that regard. At this point, having done quite a bit of both, I actually think that sewing is more complicated. I am really grateful that I have that background because I've managed to come up with some solutions for our house that I know damn well came from the sewing part of my brain. The similarities are really quite amazing. The biggest difference between the two is the physical part. It's definitely not the most ideal activity for a couple of musicians, that's for sure.

more siding progress....

2008-09-20T04:08:00.005+01:00

The siding has gotten a little farther along. Doug's been working pretty hard although it probably doesn't look like that much progress has been made. When we are working together we get about 3 times as much work done as Doug does when he is working by himself.

I have about 3 more weeks before my broken foot comes out of its cast and I'm really looking forward to getting things back into high gear. The trimboards were kind of tricky to put up because there is a lot of shimming involved. And as you can see there is still a bit of trimwork left to do in the front. But our goal right now is to get up all of the siding and then go back and finish the trim. I'm so glad he covered those gable boxes though.

When Doug showed this blog to his friend Steve at the car show, Steve commented that in Canada where he's from they call those little windows like the ones on the first floor "piano windows". I had no idea - I guess my instincts for choosing windows for the piano room were right on target.

I got Doug to make a little house on the side of the house to enclose all of the utility ugliness. It even has the same green shingles on the roof. There will be a removable panel on the front and a hole to read the electrical meter through. So it won't look like this for too much longer.

This is our electrical box plus the 3 phase stuff that Doug had to have and the FIOS conduit. The hideousness of all this equipment was driving me nuts, especially since it's so near the front of the house.

Now that the broken bone in my foot is starting to feel a little better, I can see that I'm going to have to get out there in my cast and mow the lawn. I have no experience in nagging Doug to mow the grass since I've always just done it myself. So far, the gentle suggestions have not resulted in any grass mowing action on his part.

Siding Progress

2008-08-23T22:27:00.007+01:00

Today Doug finished the siding on the front of the house and put the trimboards up for most of the front windows. I'm really looking forward to seeing the cornerboards now!

These two vents look surprisingly good, in spite of the fact that they are on the front of the house.

We experimented a little bit with window trim styles.

For now we are going to stick with the plain ones. After we install the cornerboards and finish jazzing them up with crown moulding, we will know whether or not the windows need something fancier. For now I kind of like the understated and simple look. I think it fits well with the style of the house.

first the ankle, then the foot

2008-08-19T04:29:00.004+01:00

We were making excellent progress with the siding on the front of the house. My sprained ankle was healing nicely but on the first day that I was able to go back to work on the house, I somehow managed to injure my other foot. The x-rays show what looks like a little broken piece just above my arch. I have to wear a soft cast that looks like a ski boot for six weeks. I can barely walk in this thing, not to mention climb a ladder, so that really sucks. Poor Doug is going to be stuck working on the house all by himself through the end of September. The timing is especially bad because putting up siding works much better with two people, and now I can't help at all. But Doug is doing a great job without me. The front siding is almost finished. It will look great when the trim boards are all up.

The Siding has Begun

2008-08-09T20:45:00.004+01:00

Yesterday we spent all day putting up siding. This is how far we got:

Today I mowed the dry crusty grass and sprained my ankle while Doug put up the simple but beautiful trim around the windows.

Beginners' Luck

2008-07-31T05:34:00.003+01:00

We passed our big inspection! Yaay!
We've never built a house before, but apparently we are doing it right. We now have official permission to finish the house. It is a big relief and we are thrilled to have reached this milestone.

The three parts of today's inspection were:
Framing - passed
Electrical - passed
Mechanical - passed

The next inspection is the Final Inspection!!!

Almost Ready for the Framing Inspection

2008-07-29T05:31:00.009+01:00

The long-awaited framing inspection might happen this week. We are just about ready. This inspection is a big deal because after we pass, we can start putting in the drywall, and the cabinetry, and the flooring, and the counter tops, and the appliances, and the electrical and plumbing fixtures, and the interior doors, and do the finish carpentry work, and the painting, and I can't remember what else. I sure hope we pass it so we can get going with all of the really fun stuff. Wish us luck!

And now.....it's picture time!!! Personally I find these pictures to be not that interesting. But that is perfectly in line with what's been going on at our house for the last month.

This is one of the central vacuum outlets. You hook a hose up to it and vacuum the room and all of the dirt and dust goes through pipes in the walls to a giant canister deep in our basement which we only have to empty about 3 times a year, supposedly. Doug thinks this is fantastic. I remain skeptical.

So for about the fifth time after I've once again gotten the grass growing they are digging up my yard again. They are laying down conduit so the electrical wires can come underground from the telephone pole to our house. They are putting in the Fios stuff at the same time.

A Study in Orange and Green, featuring a hard hat, Fios, and very dry grass.

The trench has been dug and the conduit is about halfway installed.

This is what it looks like when you get 3 phase for your house. It's pretty hideous looking, but fortunately it is on the least visible side of the house. Unfortunately it is on the front end of that side. I'm trying not to look at it too much because it does not make me very happy. I think someone might need to build a cute little bump-out on the side of the house to contain all of its ugly bits.

We are starting to figure out the front porch. (That means I'm telling Doug how I want the front porch to look.) He has built the steps and we got a great deal on "Railing in a Box" which was naturally offset by getting way more than we need, because "you never know and it's such a fantastic bargain." But it's going to look really nice when we get the flooring in and put "Wrap and Snap" on the columns.

Also this month our friend Gary came over and he and Doug spent a few days routing all of the telephone, cable TV, and internet wires into various rooms throughout our house. Later we will put in the speaker wires. It's going to be nice and tidy having all of the "media" wiring contained in the walls, instead of being loose everywhere.

Trombonists in Dupont Circle

2008-07-26T07:59:00.001+01:00

I have been very lax in posting about our house progress recently. Let me just say that none of the progress has been particularly exciting, even to me. But we finally got our electricity hooked up and now we have a big inspection coming up next week. Or so I've been told. I'll try to post something relevant in the next few days.

In the meantime, here is something to entertain certain of you in particular who might happen to be visiting this here blog. Since there was a bass already there at the theater where I was subbing, I was actually able to take the Metro to my gig tonight for a change. This is, I believe, a fairly typical Friday night at the Dupont Circle metro station in DC. Pretty cool, huh?

Sorry these clips are so short - it still takes forever to upload them.

Also, what is wrong with these people, only one of them uses a DE mouthpiece?

Oh that's right....they couldn't buy one even if they wanted to.

More Odds'n'Ends

2008-06-26T03:15:00.003+01:00

No photos this time - unfortunately the appearance of our house has not changed much during the last month. Things are kind of poking along and hopefully that will change as soon as we get our big inspection.

Doug wants/needs a 3 phase electrical hookup for his mouthpiece equipment and although we applied, paid for, and received permission for a residential version of this, the power company sent out a commercial inspector who wasn't familiar with residential meter applications and we had to redo everything to meet commercial requirements. We have to add some extra things to the box on the outside of the house and it's been kind of a pain for everyone involved.

In the meantime we ordered the replacement basement steps from the same excellent company that made our upstairs stairs. Doug installed them and they look great and feel really solid. They are at the correct steeper angle now so we have more floor space, more clearance overhead, and more useable room underneath them. Doug is going to have an excellent office/studio area now.

Doug finished up with the bathroom exhaust vents and is almost finished with the central vacuum. I still can't believe that we are having such a thing in our house. It wasn't my idea. We saw it at a home show and Doug went nuts and bought one immediately.

There are two outlets on each floor and the hose stretches (hopefully) to all corners of the house. There are also going to be two plates at floor level in the kitchen that kick open with your foot that will suck up anything that you sweep up to it. Supposedly the system is very quiet and the suction is greater than any normal vacuum cleaner. All of the dirt goes from the hoses down through pipes in the wall into a can in the basement that gets emptied out every couple of months or so. I don't think we need something this fancy, but it will probably be fantasically convenient after I get used to it.

Also this month Doug did a week long tour and went to the trombone festival in Salt Lake City. I'm glad he got a break, even though it always delays the progress when he goes out of town.

I should talk.... I really haven't been helping much lately. Between gigs it's all I can do to keep the grass mowed. We didn't used to have so much grass, or maybe it's that grass takes longer to mow than weeds. I had a nice break last week playing at the Glenn Miller Festival. As soon as Doug is finished generating sawdust I will be scraping off all of the foam that has seeped through the cracks and doing a thorough vacuuming of all surfaces in preparation for wallboard. That's a bigger job than you might imagine.

But I really really really mostly want to hurry up and start putting the rest of the siding on. I will be so happy when that happens!

a few pictures....

2008-05-13T08:05:00.004+01:00

This scrawny looking tree is a London Plane tree which is very similar to a sycamore, but is supposedly not as messy with the twigs, leaves, and seed pods. I really love the white bark that sycamores have and unfortunately the London Plane has bark that is more tan in color. But it will be an excellent shade tree and it is supposed to be very strong in addition to growing very large very quickly. We have them on each side of the front of our house.

We are planning to put this granite veneer over the cinderblock foundation and garage area. It should look pretty nice with the gray siding, the white trim, the green roof, and the purple door.

Look at this amazingly green grass in our backyard!!!

And this cute little baby bunny rabbit in our backyard!!!

Odds and Ends

2008-05-12T06:59:00.000+01:00

The work for the past month has been a little bit of this and a little bit of that. We finished planting all of our shade trees - two white birches, two London plane trees and a weeping cherry. I've mowed the lawn 4 times already. It's looking greener than it ever has, except for one area which did not receive the proper topsoil last fall. We added a bunch of ComPro and Leaf Grow and seeded it again so that area should be looking better soon, especially with all the rain we've had recently.

We ordered a new set of basement steps from the stairbuilding place. These will replace the screwed up steps that our former carpenters built last June. The downward slope was too gentle and it resulted in not enough headroom in one part. It wouldn't have passed the inspection. The new steps should arrive sometime this week and Doug will attach them, hopefully before he goes off to the trombone festival.

The electrician started working in the basement which caused Doug to realize that it was time to finish the framing work down there. It is also time for him to wrap up all of the final bits of framing so that we are ready for the inspection as soon as the electrician finishes. The electrical rough-ins are almost complete, but the electrician is on vacation this week.

I've been busy with a lot of miscellaneous gigs so I haven't been around to crack the whip as much. It seems like when I'm over there a lot more work happens. Unfortunately I have finally gotten used to how long this whole thing is taking, so I'm not pushing as hard as I had been previously. The sense of urgency and the energy that it inspired has dwindled quite a bit. It is certainly a lot easier and more fun and more profitable to play a gig than it is to work on the house.

I'm really looking forward to putting up the siding so the outside will look finished and we can take that scaffolding down and get rid of it. The yard looks great now. Except for the 20 foot high tree stump from last October that Doug still thinks looks really cool. He says he wants to carve it into a totem pole. Won't that look nice? I think I'll carve it into something else. Obviously he will not decide it's time to chop it down until I've already made arrangements for someone else to do it. Maybe I'll have it chopped down while he's at the trombone festival since I've decided to not repaint the front door. We'll see.....

On the other hand, maybe I'll just chill for now since I don't want to see any unpleasant surprises when I get back from the Glenn Miller Festival in June - ha ha ha!!!

Let's see - what else? Doug has purchased the materials for the outside steps and he decided to upgrade the porch flooring material to tongue and groove. It looks nice but is very expensive.

I have mostly been working outside in the yard and trying to organize the cleanup inside in preparation for the big framing and rough-in inspection. It is a challenge because "organize" and "cleanup" are foreign concepts to one half of this couple. Every load of construction trash that I take to the dump feels like a victory of some sort. I'm really looking forward to a few more trips in the next week or so. I guess that covers it for now.

2008-04-18T07:00:00.000+01:00

LOOK!!! I got my magnolias!!!

2008-04-17T06:21:00.002+01:00

WE HAVE BIRCHES!!!
Doug deviated from the original plan for the trees. He was out looking at tulip magnolias without me one day when he came across a couple of white birch trees that he just had to have. As usual, I went along with it. They weren't cheap, but they are very beautiful. The one below is in the back yard and there is also one in the front. Check out that super green grass. I planted it last fall, and now I have to mow it. FUN!!!

We put the triple-trunked one in the front yard. I think it will look nice against the eventual gray siding. I'm really starting to like the purple door now. I think the color has darkened somewhat. So maybe I won't repaint it when Doug goes on his short little tour next month. Or maybe I will!!!

Here's what these baby birches will look like when they grow up.

2008-04-15T05:53:00.001+01:00

WIRED!!!
Our electrician has been doing a fantastic job, as far as I can tell, and he's also super nice. Here is a sample of his handiwork:

He had to thread all of the wires on the exterior walls through the drilled-out chases in the foam core panels. To make his job a little easier, I tried to put as many outlets, lights, and switches as possible on the interior stud walls. On the exterior foam core walls I put them directly over a chase whenever possible. He still had to do some digging though, and so I'm still sweeping up bits of styrofoam. Here are the wires from all over the house hanging in the basement waiting to be connected to the circuit-breaker box.

LEADED GLASS IN THE PASS-THROUGH!!!

2008-04-11T05:23:00.002+01:00

I found two matching leaded glass windows in an antique store and we have decided to put them in the wall above the opening between the kitchen and the dining room. These windows are in great shape and they have beveled glass. They will bring some southern light into the kitchen by way of the dining room, I hope. They look like this:

And here they are in their positions above the pass-through. They are kind of big, and it's hard to tell how they'll look after everything is in. Doug said if they look funny, it's no big deal to take them out and put in wallboard instead. I'm glad he thinks so! I was doubtful about the proportions, but I've gotten used to how it looks now. I think it will look especially good from the dining room side. This photo is from the kitchen side.

Here is a sketch that shows them with the cabinets. Unfortunately I didn't draw the windows big enough so they don't look as big as they do in real life. I can't wait to get my cabinets installed so I can find out whether this will look okay. I hope it works because the windows themselves are pretty cool looking!

2008-03-30T04:41:00.005+01:00

SPRING IS HERE....AGAIN

And this time there are no carpenters - just a couple of robins. We are still working on our house while we live in the rental house which is behind the fence.

This tulip magnolia tree is the best thing about our rental house. I definitely want one!!!!!

Our electrician has been installing the lighting rough-ins. This is what I did in the kitchen to show him exactly where we want the lights to go:

Kind of festive, isn't it? But it served the purpose. All of the lights that he put in are in exactly the right places.

2008-02-28T23:21:00.007Z

Things have slowed down somewhat during the past two months as we've become busy with other things. Doug continued with the miscellaneous carpentry work. Cyndy finished plotting out all of the outlets, switches, and light fixtures, and the electrician has begun installing the rough-ins. That work will take another month and then we can have our framing inspection. The HVAC people also came back and finished everything they needed to do for the inspection.

After the framing inspection happens we can start putting up the drywall and install those kitchen cabinets which have been sitting in boxes in the basement since last May. I really hope we will be hiring professionals to do the drywalling. Please cross your fingers for me on that one.

If we get people in to do the drywalling then we can work outside on the siding at the same time and not be in their way. We haven't decided yet whether or not I will be doing the inside painting. Knowing Doug, he will want to do all of the finish carpentry while I paint.

So the big things that we still have left to do are: finish the electrical rough-ins, put in wallboard and kitchen cabinets, install the radiant floor heating system, install the flooring, tile the bathrooms, paint the entire inside, put in the appliances and plumbing and light fixtures, replace four more windows, and put on the siding. That seems like a lot, but it's a relatively small list compared to what we've done so far and I think it will all happen fairly quickly, especially the stuff we hire people to do. I am hoping we will only be doing about half of the work that remains by ourselves.

2007-12-27T23:11:00.006Z

FRONT DOOR INSTALLED, BUT NO SIDING UNTIL SPRING

We finally installed the new front door which I had painted way back in June. I’m still not so sure about this color. When I originally suggested purple I was thinking of a darker, duskier color....actually exactly the way it looks here in the shadow.

Doug "felt strongly" that the color needed to be lighter because if it was too dark it would heat up too much in the sun and the door would warp. The current color will probably look lovely when we get the gray siding on and get some purple flowers happening out in front – maybe some crape myrtles, or a butterfly bush. That's the plan anyway. Maybe I'll get used to this light lavender, but judging from some comments we’ve received, it is perhaps a bit too bright for our suburban neighborhood. Although some people like it. Doug definitely likes it. I'll probably get used to it, even though I wanted it to be darker.

So the next time Doug goes off on a cruise or tour before we finish the house, maybe I'll just find the time to paint it a darker and more subdued color. Ha, Ha, Ha - won't he be surprised!!! Sorry Doug. But in the meantime it is just going to be a garish winter for everyone who is stuck looking at it. I know we are not your typical homeowner-neighbor types. But how many of you would paint your door this color? Just wondering….

We put up some Tyvek on the front of the house, but now it is too cold for us to put up the siding. I KNEW this would happen. So the scaffolding will stay up all winter now. Anyway Doug’s been working inside, putting in framing for some pocket doors and making what was going to be a walk-in closet into a sewing nook for me. I will be able to close it off with pocket doors. It is going to be great to have this space. We hadn’t figured out where I would do my sewing until just this week. There is an area next to it that will become a three section closet, opening into different areas. One of the sections will be used to store music stands. It is hard to describe, but it is a unique and clever use of space and I am absolutely delighted with it.

While Doug continues fine-tuning the carpentry, I have been going from room to room making lists and figuring out where all of the lighting, outlets, and switches will go. It is a pretty tedious process, but so is everything else. I’m putting post-it note squares at the outlet and switch locations and up on the ceilings for the lights so the electrician will know exactly where we want things.

WORK WORK WORK.....MORE AUTUMN ACTIVITIES

2007-11-28T22:57:00.003Z

After they finished with all of the driveways, sidewalks, and final grading, I immediately got right on planting the grass seed – AGAIN. Didn’t I do this exact same activity just last fall? It was a little later this year. Fortunately it all still sprouted.

Doug built a little retaining wall at a spot where the slope is particularly steep. You can see it in the picture below. Isn’t it cute? It will be great to no longer have mud running across our driveway. I can't even imagine what that is going to be like.

I decided that I wanted to plant some liriope (groundcover) on the steeper slopes so that I wouldn’t have to mow grass there. Doug figured out that we needed 2500 plants to cover the area. 2500!!! I would have said never mind, I’ll just mow, but he had already ordered them. It was exhausting planting those stupid things and it took about three weeks to get them all planted. I think we got them in just in the nick of time before it got too cold. I can’t wait to see how they do next spring.

There was a huge unattractive rock pile under our cedar tree. I don’t know who thought it would be a good idea to have one there, but it tripled in size over this past year with various rocks that had emerged during the grading process, huge chunks of cement, and miscellaneous pieces of cinderblock and bricks. I finally couldn’t take it any longer and I spent an entire week moving that damn pile, first down to the driveway, and then into Doug’s truck. And then to the dump in about six 500 pound trips. One rock at a time. Rocks are heavy. I just love my life right now. But now the cedar tree has beautiful liriope planted under it and it looks quite elegant.

The electric company had been snipping away and totally deforming our Norway Spruce near the power lines for years. It was looking really ugly as a result. We knew it was time for the tree to go away so Doug called them up and said told them it would be okay with him if they cut it down. They said they would do it for free, but they would leave everything there for us to clean up. So I spent a week sawing all of the branches off of the trunk, loading Doug’s truck with the branches and the trunk chunks, and taking it all to the dump. It was about 6 truckloads of branches. Unfortunately a large part of the trunk is still standing. A totally bare trunk that is about 20 feet high. It is more than I can handle by myself. I wonder when we will finish cutting the rest of it down. Anyone want to place bets? One month? 3 months? 6 months? Longer than 6 months? I know how our neighbors would bet.

This has been an exhausting fall, but now we have a cute little retaining wall and tons of liriope.

2007-10-16T22:23:00.001+01:00

PHOTOS: NEW DRIVEWAY and NEW ROOF
Some big changes occurred this fall. We got a U-shaped driveway, a sidewalk, and a patio/landing for the front steps. All of the final grading has been done. The circular driveway in the back has been paved. It all looks great and is very convenient.

WET CEMENT

Doug really likes having scaffolding up around our house. It makes the house look "manly" don't you think? We had scaffolding up around our house for years, and now it's back. Who else do you know who owns their very own scaffolding? It is much safer than a ladder for working on siding and the trim around the roof areas.

We had the 12 year old roof taken off of the addition and a new roof was put on the house and the two porches.

They toss the old shingles down into the truck.
You can also see part of the giant rock pile.

Looking down at our driveway, 3 stories below.

We like being way up in the air! And look - there's our newly paved back driveway.

2007-09-23T22:09:00.001+01:00

DOUG TAKES OVER THE CARPENTRY WORK
Doug spent a lot of time this summer doing some fairly big carpentry jobs since we apparently no longer had carpenters coming to our house. He did a lot of preparatory framing for the plumber, such as building the shower, tubs, and vanity and adding all kinds of cool touches like nooks for the shampoo and soap. I’m sure the tiling people will just love what he has done. I know we will enjoy having all of these great details.

When Doug first discovered the faulty basement stair work, he decided that we could not have these carpenters do the main stairs. Stairs are pretty complicated and require extreme accuracy and a lot of experience. We went up to Taneytown, the stair-building capital of Maryland and visited three different stair-building establishments there. We found a place that could build us exactly what we wanted. The guy came out and measured and we waited eagerly for the stairs to arrive. They came in three sections because we have two landings. Doug put them in. They are very beautiful and fit in the space perfectly. And they are wide – perfect for carrying my bass upstairs.

So we finally no longer need to use the wooden ladder to get up from the first floor to the second floor. We can just walk up the stairs. It is amazing. We’ve been using this same ladder for 15 years and having stairs feels like a miracle. And they are gorgeous, aren't they?
NO MORE LADDER TO GET UPSTAIRS!!!
YAAAY!!!

The plumber has finished all of his rough-in work. The HVAC people need to come back and do one more day of work to be ready for the inspection.

We are still waiting for the electrician. He is on another job that is taking much longer than expected. That’s probably where those mysterious carpenters are too.

disappearing carpenters

2007-06-29T05:45:00.004+01:00

While Doug was waiting for the carpenters to come back to finish the steps, he did a bunch of miscellaneous things, like framing the attic floor and some doorways, more window installation, and installing a patio door into the porch. That is when he fell and CRACKED ONE OF HIS RIBS.

We had such a fantastic experience with the kitchen designer that we decided to get some advice from a lighting designer as well. We have mixed feelings about that experience. We did learn a lot, but it was expensive and more complicated than it needed to be. I wish we had researched it more and figured it all out on our own. But we did get detailed lighting diagrams done for the electrician who was due to start work this month.

I spent a lot of time this month sanding and painting a bunch of doors. These doors all have multiple window panes in them. It was a real pain to paint these doors, but they look really nice. Except that the front door color is not exactly what I had in mind – it’s what Doug had in mind. Maybe I’ll be able to do something about that later, like the next time Doug goes out on tour. The door is very pretty, but maybe just a little too pretty for our particular neighborhood.

Next we had to pick out and buy all of our plumbing stuff so that the plumber could do the proper rough-ins. I hate picking stuff out – it is so hard to decide what will look the best in all of those rooms that don’t even exist yet.

I got awesome deep bathtubs and beautiful medicine cabinets. Oh, and my kitchen sink is named “Orca" - not by me, but by the manufacturer. Doug selected some pretty cool looking faucets and a really girly sink for the powder room. If I can stand what he likes, I let him pick stuff out. I still don’t know about that door color though.

The pretty sink that Doug picked out

This door certainly is purple

2007-06-10T05:41:00.003+01:00

STAIR TROUBLES
Around the middle of May, a different set of carpenters showed up to start building the basement stairs. Doug was going to the ITF in Las Vegas, but Cyndy decided to stay home so that she could let the carpenters in - hoping that they would continue working on the steps while Doug was gone. On their last day of work they left early while Doug was out buying additional lumber for them. They didn’t come back - ever. So I stayed home from Vegas for nothing.

About a month later we realized that they had made a significant error with the basement steps and probably just didn’t want to have to deal with fixing it. Their excuse for not coming back was that Doug was tardy in supplying some of the materials they needed. They actually left and never came back while he was at Home Depot buying the additional wood for them.

Fortunately these were just the basement stairs, and there was enough room to work around the error – except that there might not be quite enough height where the stairs pass under the header joist. It’s close, so hopefully the inspectors will let it go, if they even notice. If not we’ll have to get new stairs built, or build them ourselves.

2007-05-15T07:11:00.000+01:00

These pictures are of our partially constructed back porch.