Floored.

It was a great day today!  We went to Lumber Liquidators and picked out our flooring.  It is Brazilian Koa and will be multicolored in tone.
http://www.lumberliquidators.com/catalog/product.jsp?productId=7700

Tomorrow we will set to work emptying out the bottom stairs and prepping for laying it out!  Not any pictures but it was an exciting day for these home rehabbers :o).

We exchanged gifts today.  Nate got me some sexy grey boots I wanted (but didn't know he knew I wanted!) and some big mugs for my coffee.  I don't like having the conventional small mugs....for both my tea and coffee I like a big ole mug.  Good presents Naterman!  I got Nate a wooden (very nice) Scrabble set since he has been wanting to play with me.

Tonight we are having mulled wine:
http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/gluehwein-2/Detail.aspx

We are trying it out for making it for family over the Holidays.  I made a 1/4 of the batch for us and we are drinking it and playing Scrabble while we wait for my father to arrive on his flight tonight at 9:30.  After that we will be visiting with him and getting pumped up for our floors being laid!

In other EXCITING news....we went to Lowes today and got a huge carpet remnant for $48 to cover the new floors (to prevent scratching while we rehab and with the dogs) and also chatted with their flooring department about carpets and installation.  It sounds like putting in the carpet where we want it will only be around $1000.  YAY!

Guest room

As the title suggests...today I moved in to the guest room to do a little work.  Until I get more drywall up to finish, I am a little out of things to do...at least major projects.


The guest room has needed attention for a while.  Obviously it needs drywall up on the back wall, and it also is awaiting framing for a closet.  The ceiling had wall paper on it which was partially removed.

So today I patched holes in the wall, redid one of the corners, and then worked on patching the ceiling up and getting it ready to be painted.  Sort of a blah work day, but I needed to get to the store and we are boarding a puppy from a previous litter over break, so I had other things to do today.






Naters and I are headed to Outback for dinner tonight!  My brother in New York gave us an Outback gift certificate for Christmas.  Since my Dad and other family will be visiting over the Holidays, we decided to go out and be romantic together tonight before the hubbub and festivities begin.

Yums!  Go Outback!

Back from Hiatus

Friday's action: priming

Hey all.  Doubtless you are on the edge of your seat to see if I gave up and moved out or had a nervous meltdown or something  (haha just kidding).  Well, not so much, but like a physical manifestation of my angst I was floored on Friday with a stomach bug that I wasn't able to fully shake until last night.  It's amazing how things like that can suck away your strength.  But I did work 3 of the last 5 days...just haven't had the energy to blog.

Primed walls that are there and primed the ceiling.

Painted part of the bedroom ceiling friday

So I have gotten some things done!  This last week has been a week of painting and priming, and disgruntlement with the snail-like pace of things improving.


I feel fairly inept at REALLY making enough impact on this house to release us from it so we can move.
Example?  I cannot do plumbing, electrical, drywall, and most electric tool type things.  I have little patience for very detailed projects with many steps (this is a personality flaw I am not proud of).  But the main reason I cannot do these things is I am not strong enough to do so...mostly physically but a little mentally.  Mentally I am not strong enough to crawl in the crawl space (creepy music) where there are all sorts of nasties.  In particular, I am PETRIFIED of spiders.  I see a spider and I become a cheetah for the speed I get to the other side of the room.  I think it is certainly genetic in my case (shudder).

Finished front entryway until Nate can get molding back around the door (if he ever can get to it). I think it looks pretty decent, all things considered.  Nate doesn't like around the door where there is a bulge, but it is better than crumbling plaster!  Like I said, I am not a perfectionist...

These ineptitudes make me think of my other ineptitudes in life.  When I quit medicine it was a very difficult decision. I did definitely felt the burden of the debt (oh yes I did and DO!), the loss of the future career, but I don't think I foresaw as much the feeling I would now bear of uselessness.  I have gone through 18 years of schooling, and doubt I could get a job that pays much.  I have nothing to show for my life this far, nothing to support myself with should that be necessary.  This is depressing.  A biology degree is next to useless without a professional degree....you can't even teach without a Masters in Ohio!

Window will need trim (this may fix the plaster issue)

Many people seem to excel at one thing, or many things.  I feel like I excel at nothing and dabble in many things in an alarmingly mundane fashion.  Even in my dog breeding, which is what many would now probably attribute as my main "thing" these days, I am just learning and have and will continue to make mistakes.  I'm thinking this is just a part of life.

Still need one little drywall piece bottom of the stairs.

In voicing some of my concerns to my father about a month ago, I complained that "everyone else seems to have their life together, while we have all these issues".  My father, the sage old wise man of my tribe ;o) (jk he isn't old in my book) told me that is just the way they appear, and that we appear to have our ducks in a row to other people.  Comforting to know our exterior facade tells others we have our life on track!

We don't.  Maybe one day though.  I will say I think we have done remarkably well together as rehabbing homes are VERY difficult on relationships and probably account for split ups in many cases.  I doubt Nate and I would fight much at all without this house getting between us (literally...remember separate yet together?).

In lighter and happier news, I have begun looking for a place to stay while we finish up our house and put it on the market.  It seems it would be a TAD difficult to keep our house "show" clean while we have our standard poodles in it, so we want to try to move about a month before we plan to put it on the market so we can make it look more presentable etc.  It's going to be difficult to find a short term rental, but I found a few possibilities!  Fingers crossed they will pan out.  The hope is to move out in late January (I think).


The holidays are almost here.  I hope everyone is enjoying a delightful Holiday season and will have wonderful times with their families!  I am considering making mulled wine for some of our festivities we plan to have over the Christmas break.  Tomorrow Nate and I (and maybe my father) are headed to Lumber Liquidators to pick up our flooring for installation over the next few days.  That's good because I am running low on things to do (that I can do)!

I love this song:

Primer

<Disgruntled cranky noise>

I have come to the conclusion that I do not have the patience to live here and work on this house anymore.  Yeah it has been one of those days!

I'm SO tired of working every day to make things look better and have it go SO slowly...when I want to move already.  Gar.  Yar?  Pirates.

Today I primed the stairwell....which as usual made me see more flaws that need fixing in the wall.  So I also patched some holes and whatnot with drywall compound.

Now the question is...what shall I paint the wall?  

I was thinking

a. White

b. Same color as the downstairs

c. a steely blue/gray

There is a poll at the upper right area of the blog.  Suggestions are optional :o)

Sexipantedness.

I have nothing more to say about what I did today. 

What I woke up to!

clean :o)

 I continued to rub down the backsplash, and after I did that a few times, decided to spend my day cleaning.  I also removed the blue packing tape that was on our dishwasher (for three years I might mention).  Naters and I had a LITTLE trepidation that the marks from it would stay, but they came off okay! :0)

............then I made myself trudge to my van to forage through the icy roads to Lowes.


I needed various painting stuff like primer, some paint (for front entryway touchups) and spackling jiggerdoodles.  In addition, picked up a ton of lightswitch and outlet covers.

And then I found myself a surprise to make my day better!

No blue tape on dishwasher WOO HOO

When I got home I proceded to put some of the covers on, and then went on to my two seperate ghetto fixes:

UNDER CABINET LIGHTING!

We were out of duct tape, so I had to use that brown tape to affix it to the cabinets.  This is why it is a ghetto fix.  The lights are meant to be screwed to the bottom of cabinets, but since ours are refinished 1950s cabinets (or earlier) the underside is just one layer of metal.  If I find our duct tape it will be duct taped in to place, and then maybe painted black.  This is if I have time!

Second ghetto fix. 

I also had scrubbed our antique-ish faucet with lime away today, and where the silver stuff has come off I spray painted it with rustoleum.  Hopefully it looks better to Nate (who has been complaining about it for years).  It does to me anyway.  I doubt we can replace it since it is odd.  

This song gets in my head WHENEVER we have an awesome rehab moment.  Needless to say, its in my head today :0).

Glory.

In the kitchen....

In the Kitchen,

The mighty Kitchen,

Lorraina grabbed a knife......

Today I gave up working on the upstairs (because I am still out of primer and drywall compound and don't like going to Lowes) so I went downstairs to work on a project I have been avoiding for months:

Grouting the kitchen backsplash.

Why have I been avoiding this?  This looks like a fun project you say?

Because slate is a pourous tile and the grout grabs to it like it is its business.  It took forever to remove most of the grout from the tiling in the kitchen, so it has taken me months to recooperate.  I figured I needed the patience of a saint to fill in the gaps in the pieces of tile I used for my mosaic.  I was correct.

It took me a while to figure out how to even get the grout in between the stone bits, but it ended up I used a sandwich bag to mix it in, and then cut off a tip of it to use it similar to an icing bag.  This worked pretty well once I got the hang of it and the tricks of keeping it from clogging up (had to periodically remix the baggy to keep the hole from clogging).  Then I would just toss each baggy when all the grout was gone.  This was also cleaner.  

Immediately following each baggy I would wipe the tiles and the grout to secure it in place and also wipe clean the tiles.  

Before- yes it looks better BEFORE!

After.

Now I just need to CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN.  And the nightmare returns.  

Only one more thing (okay maybe three things) remain in the kitchen before it is done!  New hardware on the cabinets is one :).  Retro kitchen is almost complete!

High Hopes.

 

Beginning today's work of fixing the ceiling wall junctions in the Master bedroom.

Ceiling wall junction

The other day Naters came downstairs while putting up drywall and said wistfully...."what if we are able to sell the house for $250,000?" 

I think he is starting to see the benefits of my labor...but I don't want to get too excited.  I would be happy with just a 50K take from this (which is probably under what we have put in).

\Which leads me to ANOTHER negative of rehabbing.

IT IS EXPENSIVE!  and in a down economy, you may not recoop your losses.  

the one piece in the back corner isn't in because a vent needs to go there.

Now we are lucky because we researched the WAZOO out of neighborhoods and live in a very nice one.  Down the street new built houses cost around 450K and the condos are generally 150k-250k.  So, we are still doing okay I think!

I just searched the houses for sale in the area and found one one our street for 289K (this was rehabbed).  Here's hoping we can get ours to look RELATIVELY close to it so we can make a little on this nightmare. 

http://www.realliving.com/HER/OH/Columbus/43201/homes-for-sale/961-Harrison-Ave-55052952/popup

This wall will be ready to paint soon.

I find myself sitting and looking at houses for sale in our area, trying to make myself feel better about what price we may be able to put our house for sale for.  We are hoping to place it for sale around $210,000 with only one bath...or $225000-250,000 if we add in 1.5 more baths.  This is actually the goal by March!  Let's hope Nate can get to it.  First though we need the bottom floor to get it's wood floors, and the second floor to get it's drywall.

bedroom will be ready to paint soon.

And then there are lots of other details like outlets that need done and lights put in. 

Worked on this again.

What specifically did I do today?

Today I worked on our ceilings (removing old wallpaper...who puts wallpaper on ceilings for real?) and working on the drywall and the edges between the walls and the ceilings and in general cleaning up.  We will be breaking down our bed soon so I can paint in here.

 

mess from old wallpaper

Conclusion:

So, if any of you all are DYING to try rehabbing a house...wanna come here and test run it and help US get out of it?  Come on....you know you do!

Team work!

Today we had Married couple action!  And by that I mean TeamWork!

 TEAMWORK, DO IT TOGETHER!

master bedroom window

I have been unsure what really to start on next, but I jumped right in with filling some gaps in walls and some issues around windows.



Sadly, our Master Bedroom has had little work done to it in the three years we have lived here, because we have been striving to make the house more presentable for guests.

In particular, our master bedroom window was DESTROYED by the contractor who put in our windows.  I mean they had not a care about our internal walls.  So, we have once again some horrid gashes and whatnot in the walls and areas to fix.  So I added drywall compound to the wall (this will likely crack since I added more than a 1/4 inch at a time, I figure I can go back over it again at the final sanding). 

And then I worked on the edges in the hallway leading to the bedrooms in our upstairs.  There are some gaps in the ceiling and walls where Nate put in new framing but left some areas without drywall.  Again I used drywall compound to fill these in, but will need to do it again at another date to ensure that it looks smooth without cracks.  

The finished hallway product.  It doesn't look wonderful now, but another layer, some sanding and a little paint and it will look like a real hallway.  Aw, it is nice when things pay off like that.  I'll wait for it.  

And then I went back to my trusty bathroom wall project.  I was thinking on the problem of sanding plaster (which is NOT easy) and decided I should make my last layer a layer of drywall compound, since it sands easily and I am getting better at laying it on smoothly.  So yay!  This is almost done! WOW!The few areas that appear like they still ned to be worked on will be fixed by adding the trim pieces to the window, 

Nate worked on adding WALLS! to our bedroom today.  I cannot tell you the blessing this will be.  I hate staring at framing in our home.  HATE.  With a passion.  So Naters put in the drywall pieces while I worked on some of the wall issues, and then I started finishing the walls.  Its nice to get it done right away.

We also had some ceiling damage from when our roof was leaking when we moved in...so Nate ripped down some of the plaster that was damaged.  As you can see the ceiling isn't awesome in general.  I'm not really sure WHY it is that way, although it seems that previous inhabitants put up many layers of wallpaper on it as well as the walls.  So, I am thinking the first step to making them be presentable will be pulling down as much as possible, and then just priming and painting them white.  Aside from popcorning them up, I am at a loss how to fix them.  Suggestions?


 Never allow someone to convince you that walls aren't needed.  They brighten up rooms, make them seem larger etc.  Although now I have all this empty wall space I need to fill with Artwork!  That could be fun...I have always wanted to try to make my own art (albeit I know not how to work with the canvases for oil based painting).  I have been wanting to for years now!

Finally a picture of our bedroom in its current state.  Soon hopefully it will be adorable.  Don't we have an awesome bed?  Very grandious.

Well off to make steak dinner and watch a movie with the hubbadub.