Tag: renovation

Well this week I’ve moved back into the house. The upside of giving away most of your earthly possessions prior to renovation is they aren’t covered in several layers of dust. Nor are they water damaged. The downside is the stuff you did keep stored requires cleaning or replacing and you can’t find half of it anyway.
I was crazy mad trying to put together a bookcase with rudimentary hand tools because I cannot find either one of my drills. The cordless I think may have grown legs. The corded one, it’s down in the cellar somewhere. Can’t find any of my pliers. Tools, I learned from Nathan & BL who had work done on their house, can accidentally get picked up during the rush to leave the work site.
Most of the work has been done and there are just a few things that are left to do. Painting the ceilings, getting the tops of the walls near the ceiling, hooking up the cable/phone wires, hooking up the radiators and then hooking up the AC. These things aren’t required for me moving in.
The place looks nice and very sparse. I put out a call to friends to give me (or loan me) furniture to help fill it out. One friend has been trying to pawn off a few wood table pieces on me for years. Another is preparing to move next year to Chicago and is willing to part with things not worth moving. Though I have my limits, I will not take anything the dog has peed on. I do have some of my own furniture that I couldn’t find homes for before the move but I have yet to see if it has survived unprotected storage.
Lastly, I want to thank Scott and Matt for keeping a roof over my head for the past 3 months during the renovations. They were wonderful hosts. Because of them I was able to live a short distance from my house, so I could see the changes and address other issues that came up, quickly. Also since I wasn’t living in the house, the work went faster, and I was saner.

I’m so easily influenced by other people….
My contractor couldn’t believe my assessment of the floors as being ‘okay’. I pointed out concerns I had with the floor such as the rough hewn boards that already snagged a sock. He told me that wears down after use and it shouldn’t be a problem, but if it continues to be a problem he’d address it.
I was over at my house, painting, as usual, and had some neighbors drop by while my contractor was popping in and out. They loved the floor. Now I don’t want to be one of those people who does things to impress the neighbors, but their opinion began to change my mind about the floor. Or maybe it was the contractor and the neighbors going on about the floor that did it.
Then a carpet salesman showed up to show samples. Maybe he was trying to get a feel for my price range or maybe it was his honest impression, but he said my floors cost a fortune. He basically repeated the same things my contractor had been saying… they don’t make these anymore… can’t get the character anywhere else, etc, etc.
Okay, I get it.
I got the rare thing early, which is why I horded some boards bound for the dump. I figured if something happened to one of the boards I’d have a replacement. I may have horded a few boards too many. Anyone else with a heart pine floor need a board or two?
Lastly, I think this is a point when having my contractor be the guy he is with what he knows being the biggest value. I wouldn’t have recognized these floors as something valuable to keep in their dirtied form. David (the contractor) has worked in a bunch of old houses in DC so he knows about the quirks and was able to recognize what kind of flooring I had.

I’m now officially broke.
This Summer I get to save up money for the plumber to put the radiators in. I should be able to rustle up the $2000 needed to do so by October. I’m not even going to think about what’s left of the SpacePak till I can stabilize my financial situation. The carpet, I might be able to scrounge up something for that. And I think I will still end up owing my contractor money.
Yup. Broke. Brokie-broke-broke-broke.

Well this is my new floor. Which actually is my old floor. Just that my old floor was covered with carpet, fake wood tiles, and ick.
If I were to buy a new floor I would have gone with a lighter color. But do like the fact that the floor is one of the several things I kept from the original house (besides the toilets, the sink, & radiators). My contractor tells me that the floor is heart pine and it is very pricey. Um, okay, I’m happy it could be reused. There was some cost savings to keeping the floor, storing the floor, cleaning the floor and having it sanded and finished over going out and buying a new-new floor.
My contractor is also keen on pointing out the ‘character’ of these old floors. Honestly, my feelings towards the varied widths, the knots, nail holes, varied shades and other unique features can be summed up as ‘eh’. They’re nice and they do add to the house’s overall character, which I do care greatly about.

I painted the exposed brick white. It looks lovely when the light from the outside streams in and bounces off the semi-gloss white. The problem, or more so a problem because it is interior, is the brick gets dusty. The brick that makes up my house has a lot of small holes, gouges, and was not laid evenly. This makes it hard to paint the exposed surfaces and what doesn’t get painted sloughs off brick dust.
The big gouges mostly have gotten touched with some caulk. In some spots that has worked out okay. In other spots I see that so much caulk was squeezed into the cavity that it is beginning to shrink and separate from the brick.
It’s white paint on white primer so that wall has gotten 2-3 coats. I can’t tell because it is hard to see where I painted before. Yet the strong tell tale signs that I missed a spot is a thin layer of brick dust that shows up quite well on a white surface. The number of small holes in the brick is more than I can sanely fill with caulk, so I’m going to have to accept a layer of dust.

On one side is a toilet, and I flushed it! On the other is a claw foot tub. The tub has a very generic shower head, which I will replace as soon as I am able to with something more fun.
The tub is dirty. So is the toilet, but I don’t care. Ooh! Look! The toilet sits on top of the tile this time. Not in the tile liek the crack heads who ‘renovated’ the house did.
Technically I could move back into my house, but the contractor probably wouldn’t be too happy if I did. I still have to paint the walls in the bathroom (that part above the tile), and paint the ceiling, because I was told, flat ceiling paint in the bathroom is a no.
The day when I can walk into LUSH and actually buy a bath bomb to throw in my bath is close at hand.

I’m writing this between trips to the Home Despot and I’m really tired of running around. But what I am happy about is the sign of plumbers hooking up the toilets. Yay! Also David, my contractor, had me show his guy what to paint. He said that he really needed something for one of his guys to do, but I think he really hates the paint job I and my friends did. And the guy painting is saying I didn’t have enough paint.
Speaking of paint, which I need to go grab after posting this. I still can’t decide on the color for the living room. I had a paint fiasco, sort of with the Community Forklift eco-paint. As it was explained, they had some trouble with the color mixer and it is alright now. Anyway I wound up with two different colors of pink. I sort of liked one, and hated the other and didn’t like the one I did like enough to go out of my way to match that color. So I’m looking at other pinkish reds. The goal is to have a red in the room, but not be overpowered with red. So I’m looking for a dark pink or a washed out red.
Anyway, the end is looking close. Once the toilets and bathtub are in, I just need to get carpet in and have the 1st floor sanded. Oh, and the heating needs to be hooked up. Then I get to save my pennies to get the AC hooked up next summer. And if I save a lot of pennies, maybe get that extra shower.

This bathroom, still incomplete, because it needs the tub, toilet, sink and lights installed. They are things I already had or have been bought already. It’s the labor that concerns me.
I knew that this bathroom would be expensive simply because of the tile. Tile and the labor to put in the tile. Tile is something I could do but because of the order of how the bathroom needs to be complete, some things couldn’t wait for me. Because the toilet, tub and sink (things I can’t install myself) go on top of the hexagon tile, which goes in after the tile baseboard (black tile). The space will be tight when the tub comes in so the walls go in before the tub.
What’s left in the coffers is in the low teens and there are some important things that are still left to be done. Finishing this bathroom is one. And I can’t help but wonder if I had gone with something more simpler if there would be more wiggle room in the building budget.