Layers

Today I went to the new house to do some serious scrubbing to prep for painting. The water wasn't on yet so I drove over carefully with a bucket of hot water in the passenger side floor board. Just a few drops escaped when I turned into the drive - success! One hearty splash of vinegar and a few big squirts of blue Dawn dish detergent later and I donned my yellow cleaning gloves to get to work.

It was there on my knees crawling along with my scrub brush that I began to think about the family who had lived in this house before. I found a quarter peeking out from the edge of the baseboard and pocket it. I'm up about 86 cents since we started. See? This house is already turning a profit! But back to the history of the house. I wonder about the previous family.

In no time at all thirty minutes had passed and two men from the water department arrived to turn on our water out at the street. After ensuring nothing came gushing out at the valve down in the basement, I thanked them at the door. The one in the neon jacket told me he'd been in the house multiple times turning the water back on for them. I explained that the house had been foreclosed on when we purchased so that kind of made sense. He mentioned the previous owner had driven a little volvo. That struck me as so odd that he would remember that little detail. The family is now gone from the house, but not forgotten as it's residents. As we peel back the layers from the house, we get to see a little glimpse into the lives they lived in this house too.

Now back to the work we're doing. The main bathroom had powder blue tiles going halfway up the walls. I spent some time chipping them off with a hammer and pry bar one at a time. Every once in a while, I would hit the jackpot and four tiles would come off at once! Underneath the blue tile I was surprised to find... more tile! But this tile was flush with the drywall so I left it. We will tile over it with something fresh. The bottom layer of tile was originally white before being painted a burgundy color and then a minty green color on top of that before it was finally tiled over with the light blue tiles. Whew! That's a lot of styles for one bathroom. I ripped out the linoleum floor next. Daniel took out the vanity, toilet and pried out the rusty inserts from the built in medicine cabinet. We'll be trying to salvage the tub with a good deep clean and just spruce it up with new controls, spigot and fresh caulk.

Daniel is the true visionary in this marriage. He can always visualize the way something will look in a room. Sometimes he has an idea and I'm skeptical. I usually give in to his idea and find out he was right and it looks awesome. Here's yet another example. He picked this tile for the bathroom. I wasn't sold on it but we needed to make a decision so I agreed. 

 

I think the floor looks awesome! Here's a little secret. This isn't real tile! It's a stickable vinyl tile that you can grout between. I love it. It was a good price and he got the whole thing done in just a couple hours after church Sunday night. I should know better by now and trust his judgment. After all, he did choose me. :) 

Next to go was the wall tile, vanity and linoleum in the master half bath. When he pulled the mirror down, he found a fun little surprise. You can see the original siding from before the master was added on. Neat! This bathroom had pink wall tiles painted over with white. Under the vanity was a layer of the tiny 1" by 1" tiles. The floor must have been this style before they put the linoleum down.

 

Every single house we have bought has wallpaper that has to go. Wallpaper removal is basically the bane of my existence. For once though, I was pleasantly surprised. I don't know what type of paper this was, but it peeled off extremely quick in large strips. I didn't even have to use the steamer. Under the wallpaper in the hallway, I found some three color sponge rolled paint someone had taken a lot of time to do. I'm pretty happy this paint technique has gone out of style... In this picture, the paint is on the left, a strip of the wallpaper is on the right.

Our biggest concern now is the kitchen floor. Daniel pulled up a layer of linoleum, two sheets of of plywood and a layer of the thick linoleum tiles he had to painstakingly chip up before he finally found that there was indeed hardwood at the bottom of it all. However, the hardwood is covered with some sort of tar glue. We are having all the hardwood floors throughout the house professionally refinished. Yes, this is something we could do ourselves. But we just don't have the time before our move date. So we'll trust the pros with that job. We're crossing our fingers that they'll be able to sand through this crazy layer of black to get to the wood underneath in the kitchen.

 

So that's where we are. Just peeling back a little more of the layers of this house each day, discovering more of it's secrets. A house is just a structure with four walls and a roof, right? Yet somehow this little building is so much more. Even with this house, knowing we don't plan to stay in it long and are investing in it with a "business" mindset, I can't seem to hold it at arm's length. Every minute we spend working, planning, cleaning, renovating, I pour a little more of myself into it. It's not just a house. It's a home. And while it may not be our home for too long if things go as planned, it will be someone's home. That's what makes it special. We get to add our own little layer to this home. We become a part of it until someone comes in later and peels our work back just as we're doing now.

Until then, keep dreaming with us!

Days 33-40 - Our Plumber Is Our Hero

This house became our house almost six weeks ago.  From that first demolition day til today, hardly anything remains of the original fixtures inside!  By next week we should be able to say, "Welcome to our 'new' house."

As much as we like to "Do It Yourself", this house - especially the plumbing - has taught us to appreciate the value of professional help a lot more.  From that big gash in the major waterline to an incredibly heavy old tub to leaky shutoff valves, we are thankful for the pros.  Even the laminate floor install turned out to be a blessing since the professional installers did way more repairing and leveling than we would have thought to do.

This past week we definitely need them again.  The "plumber" we've been using is really more of a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to home repairs.  His son helps and his brother is a trim carpenter so between the of three of them, they can accomplish a lot!  We hired them again to come out Monday to install the new banisters for the stairway.  It looks amazing!  The balusters we chose are metal and have two "twist" designs in each rod.  We put these in upstairs on the landing and on the bottom half of the stairway.  One thing I really appreciate about this crew is their attention to detail. On the bottom half of the stairs, they put a baluster every 3 inches so little Maria can't fall through (the previous balusters were 9 inches apart!).  On these balusters, he lined them up with care to create a perfect diagonal line between the tops of each twist descending down the stairs.  It's a small thing, but I love the precision.  Daniel had sprayed the new handrail and newel posts white over the weekend.  They need touched up, but it's already a major improvement!  Here are some before (taken before we even owned the house) and after photos.  Carpet goes in on the stairs next week.

Daniel has finished tiling over the gross old counters and it looks great!  He also put in a small 4 in. back splash matching the counter tile.  Right now the edge of the tile is pretty sharp so we're going to soften the edge a bit with a tile grinder.  The hardware for the cabinets is "coming soon". We chose a granite composite sink.  Supposedly they are excellent for resisting scratches and staining.  I'll let you know if that's true once we move in.  Daniel put in new white trim around the window.  And now appliances have all arrived so this place is starting to feel like a kitchen again!

 

Just a reminder of what it looked like before we bought the house:

Daniel pulled out the old sink and planned to hook up the new one himself the next day.  The next morning when I went to the house, I found a slow leak coming from the water line, flooding the cupboard and pooling... you guessed it, on our beautiful new laminate floor.  I had terrible visions of warped floor boards in my head as I scurried to wipe it up.  So much water had leaked that it was dripping through the basement ceiling.  We set up three fans to blow on the floor for the next 18 hours and prayed for the best.  Thankfully, none of the board have warped so far.  Since John (our not-really-a-plumber plumber) was already coming Monday with his brother to do the other work, we just added this shutoff valve repair and sink install to his list.  I'm glad we're finding all these leaks and getting them fixed BEFORE we move in!  Shutting off the main water valve is not as much of an inconvenience when you don't live there.

John was also tasked with installing the over-the-range microwave.  He was a lot cheaper than Lowe's install rate and, as with so many of our projects, there were issues.  The electrical cord that had connected the previous vent hood was actually dangerous and a fire hazard.  So John and his son ran a new breaker for the microwave and installed a new plug.  Again, thank goodness for professionals!  Had we done it ourselves, we would have never known it needed rewiring.  It's possible we could have burned the house down when we started using the microwave... gulp. 

John's son handled the drywall repair.  He was able to blend the textures pretty evenly.  Now we just have to paint those areas (again). 

I attempted to install the new light fixture in the powder room while Daniel was at work.  Sometimes I like to pretend I know how to do these things...  I really do think I could have done it myself had it not been for issues with the mounting screws not fitting the box.  Apparently they had used an outlet receptacle instead of the larger box for a light fixture - weird.  We found some other screws to fit and Daniel finished the job.  I'm going to put up a mirror in here instead of replacing the medicine cabinet.  We didn't patch the hole though since it will be covered by the mirror and leaves the option open for a medicine cabinet later.  So if you ever come over for a visit... don't look behind the mirror!

A tip on bathroom vanities - We chose the Allen + Roth Norbury vanities in different sizes for all three bathrooms.  The largest vanity for the guest bath had a cracked counter due to being shipped without the center support piece.  When we went to Lowe's to exchange it, 2 out of the 3 other vanities were also cracked due to shipping!  The powder room vanity was supposed to go in Monday.  It had a hairline crack in the sink.  Surprise surprise, the other two vanities in that size at our local Lowe's were also cracked.  Aargh!  I ended up driving to another Lowe's 30 minutes away just to get one vanity that wasn't cracked.  Overall, I love how these vanities look and so far (without really using them) they seem to be of good quality.  I think they just package them poorly for shipping.  So word to the wise, if you're picking one of these up, make them open the box to check the counter and sink before you take it home.  Save yourself the extra trips to the store.

So as you can see, the house is coming along.  I've started the cleanup process, and it's going to take awhile.  Just the amount of dust on all our furniture will be a lot to clean up.  But fortunately, I have friends to help!  Faith came on Saturday and we spent some quality time together sharing a bucket of soapy water.  Good company makes every job easier!

By this time next week, we hope to be moved in!  Wish us luck.  We'll update you after the move. It's starting to make more sense to update the blog weekly so I will be shifting to more of that type of schedule.  Daily is a little too much for this busy gal!  I got tired of staying up past one in the morning writing. :)

In the mean time, keep dreaming!

Days 22-24 - Power Tool Convert

Saturday
I have a confession - I've been avoiding the blog.  These last few days have been, well, a little frustrating.  I avoided writing any new posts so I wouldn't have to admit it out loud!  But it's the truth and anyone who's done any remodeling to their home knows that some days just kind of stink.  Sometimes it gets hard and you think to yourself, "Will this ever end?"

Saturday we went to the house with the goal of getting one bathroom up and running - the guest bath.  Daniel had already laid the floor so all we needed to do was get the trim boards in and install the toilet and vanity.  No problem, right? So we thought.

We are putting white trim boards throughout the house.  While vacationing with his family in Branson, MO, Daniel convinced me he really needed a new saw - a Rigid 10" sliding miter saw - that was on a great sale at the Tanger factory outlet store.  Getting it home was interesting since he also had to get the giant stand with it, but we made it work.  Well I'm glad we got it now!  It works great for cutting the trim boards at a much more precise angle than his old saw.  I tried my hand at it.  One thing I learned, test to see where the blade is actually going to come down before cutting - don't trust the laser!

I worked on (in my opinion) the nastiest thing in the bathroom, the wax ring for the toilet. That thing seriously grosses me out.  However, it had to be done.  So I scraped up the old wax ring to ready the flange for the new ring.  The flange had a screw missing but I didn't think too much of it because I assumed it kind of all sealed together once the weight of the toilet was on it.  We kept the existing toilet because it was relatively new and just needed a good cleaning.  In our last house, the plumbing had been winterized two years before we bought it.  I scrubbed those toilets more times than I can count before the ring from the winterizing chemicals came out.  So I can handle a dirty toilet any day. 

Anyways we got the new toilet set with the new wax ring in place.  However, there was way too much wiggle in the unit after we had tightened the nuts to hold it in place.  This was probably my fault for not speaking up about the loose/missing screws in the flange.  Daniel flushed it a few times and no water appeared to be leaking so we went downstairs.  That's when I heard it.  A drip, drip drip was coming from inside the wall we had just replaced with new drywall in the powder room which is directly above that bathroom.  It sounds like we may have a leak.  I think I might cry if we have to rip out that beautiful fresh wall that was just textured and painted...  But we aren't sure so  our plumber is coming out on Tuesday.  It's possible the dripping sound was just inside the pipe and not actually dripping inside the wall.  I'm praying that's it!  We turned off the water and took the toilet back up.  To be safe, we are having the plumber install the toilet and vanity in this bathroom so he can check things out.

Sunday
Daniel worked on painting the doors of the built in linen closets above the stairs and in the master bath as well as the stringers on the stairs.  The wood was sanded down and primed, then sprayed with a semi gloss white paint.  Apparently the semi gloss is supposed to hold up better against wear and tear so it's what we will be using on all the doors in the house.  The carpet will cover over the edge of the steps.  We're still deciding what we want to do with the existing balusters and handrail.  Right now it's a bit dangerous at the top of the stairs with just a gaping opening since the banisters on the landing were removed by the previous owners.  So we will either paint or replace the existing pieces on the bottom half of the stairs, depending on what we find for the upstairs banisters. 

I guess what was frustrating about those two days is it just felt like not much progress was made.  The one major thing we tried to accomplish didn't go over well, and now we're worried about a leak.  We're starting to really feel anxious to move into the house.  There's so many of these small things (like painting a closet) we could do even easier if we lived there.  So hopefully we'll get to a place soon where we've achieved a livable status!

Monday

Today was exciting because I got to try something new - tiling!  Daniel is pretty good at tiling and has done it quite a bit.  That's how he convinced me to buy a new Rigid 7" tile saw on sale at Home Depot a year or so ago even though he had no projects going at the time.  It's turning out to be another good tool investment.  This new saw gives a pretty clean and accurate cut on the tile from the Restore for our master bath shower walls.  We decided to add a small accent row of the fancy glass tile from Home Depot.  We only needed 4 sheets of the accent tile, but those 4 sheets actually cost more than all the boxes of full-sized tile for the shower walls from the Restore.  I don't regret spending the extra money for the glass tile, but I do think it's kind of funny when you compare the cost.  That's why we shop Restore!  I'm loving how it's turning out and love it even more knowing I helped put it up.

I'll post another photo after we've grouted because that always makes a huge difference.  The only downside of this shower, no cut outs or ledges for all our soaps.  The existing walls just didn't really allow for it without going to a lot of trouble.  No worries though, I know I can get some handy suction caddies to hold our stuff.  Those ledges and cutouts just look prettier.  The tile will go all the way to the ceiling and I think it's going to look awesome!

I think Daniel is loving that I'm into our renovation project so much.  Before, when he would talk about wanting a new tool, I would always go through the whole spiel of, "Do you really need that?  Why can't you just use this tool you already have?  What specifically are you going to use that for?"  But now, I'm thinking, "Yeah we definitely need a table saw.  Maybe we could get one for our anniversary in May?  I'll have to watch the sale papers..."  It's a whole new me!  Congratulations babe, you've converted me.  Now that I see the difference that the right quality tool can make, I'm hooked.

The more I learn to do, the more I dream of doing!