Big Girl Room

Our biggest project so far has been improving one of the bedrooms on the 2nd floor. And of course its for babygirl. So I mentioned beadboard in the last post. First I'll start with before photos:

So after we pulled up the carpet the room wasn't too bad. But the old plaster walls are so dingy and uneven and like I said before, I had my heart set on beadboard. So my Dad and hubby got to work, cutting and gluing/nailing the sheets to the walls. The walls were so uneven we used a tub of liquid nails per sheet! Nothing was even or level so it required a lot of attention to detail. After a couple re-dos, the boys did a fantastic job.













After Dad headed back to VA, Hubby was left with painting. Like everything else we've done so far, it took 5x longer and 3x as much paint as we thought. Here he is in progress:















As you can see, I picked a light bright blue above the beadboard and a soft green for the ceiling. We still want to add crown molding to really finish it off, but after all the other trim work, this should be a piece of cake. And here is the semi-finished product:

Thanks to our model Reggie. Obviously I still need curtains, a rug, accessories and artwork. Grammy is working on a custom bedskirt to match the bedding. But the heavy duty work is done! I'll post finished pics when we get it pulled together.

Whoa Double Rainbow!

So it's been a few weeks since we've posted. I hope we haven't disappointed the nine people who actually read this thing, but home improvement for some reason has lost a little of its mojo. Call it the "sophomore slump", or when a rookie "hits the wall", whatever it is we've hit it. We still love the house, but the excitement of "hell yeah, we own a house!" has turned into "oh shit, we own a house!"

Wife has some posts she's working on and they'll be up soon, but the highlight for me since the toilet installation was absolutely the electrical work we had done. We hired this great guy named Harry Anderson, who played in a friend of a colleague's band, to fix all the fire hazards identified from the housing inspector and to boost our service to 200 amps from the 60 amps we had. Don't ask me what any of that means. The best part of Harry's work was his installation of two strategic outlets in our living room. First he put an outlet behind the TV, so now Babygirl can't yank the extension cord running across the room out of the wall right as Clinton Kelly is about to tell whether to match your socks to your shoes or pants! Better still, he installed another outlet so I could hook up my stereo.

Babygirl was at daycare that day, so I spent the afternoon wiring my speakers and connecting all my components. I finished hooking in up and threw on some Neil Young and it was just me and the dogs, in my new house. I don't know what it was, the plaster walls, the hardwood floors, or the sleep deprivation, but my stereo sounded incredible. I was having a Double Rainbow moment. After a few songs, the wife and Babygirl arrived and for the first time I really felt the joy of owning a home, the American Dream: thirty years of mortgage payments, leaky toilets, endless hours of yard work, but fuck it I could play my stereo as loud as I wanted and it sounded beautiful and my wife is beautiful and my beautiful daughter was dancing with me in our new house.

Double Rainbow, all the way!

Status Update

Hello Dear readers! It has been awhile and I've really started slacking on the posts. But only because things have been busy around here... We've done a lot of small projects and they are not super exciting but here is a quick rundown:

1. We bought a new stove. I forgot to snap a picture when it was brand new and since I'm not known to be a clean cook, it could use a good scrub down. For now I'll post a sample online photo instead. We actually bought this not too long after move in, so its sort of old news now, but since its one of the best things about our kitchen I want to give it proper credit. We are planning to put in a new dishwasher and then after that just live with the old kitchen (imagine bad linoleum, oak cabinets, and blue laminate counters) until we get to do a full renovation of the space. The kitchen is pretty large and with great new appliances it functions well so we can live with it for now. We also have to give a shout out to Grammy for the new fridge. She volunteered to help clean at move in and promptly offered to replace the fridge as our housewarming gift. The previous one was that bad!

2. Pruning. The previous owner let the natural elements take over the lot so we did some tree trimming, removed some tree stumps (left by previous owner) and cut back all the brush from around the front and sides of the house. We haven't done any landscaping (yet) but just reclaiming the yard helped a lot. In the process we discovered that our yard has been home to a large colony of snakes, we've found five so far... I'm freaking but I did my research and found out they are harmless. I still don't want them around but I'm hoping now that we've bulldozed their habitat down to the ground they will move on. (PS the "we" referenced above = husband)

3. My Dad came out and spent two weeks helping get things in order. So much was accomplished, I can't even begin to thank him. I couldn't take time off work so the boys were on their own to manage the house, keep the baby and get stuff done. I can't believe they survived. First, we started by painting the nursery. Babygirl was previously set up in the front room until this could happen. The goal was to have the nursery painted and get her moved in before my Dad arrived but it didn't quite happen. Apparently plaster walls suck up paint so a tiny room required two coats of primer plus two coats (of white!) paint and numerous return trips to the paint store to purchase additional quantities. So Pap showed up and helped to knock out the paint project, move in the furniture and hang the curtains. I still want to do a few things to spruce up the space for the new baby so I'll save pics for a future blog...

The next project to tackle was the front bedroom which will be the "big girl room". I had my heart set on beadboard and even though it was costly, a pain in butt to install and no one could quite see the point, everyone humored me. I guess that is the beauty of being pregnant during home renovations. The job is finally done and every agrees it turned out great. I'll give it proper credit in its own post... up next.

Bat Attack! Reprise

Since my wife likes to use the first person plural in place of the third person singular, I would like to expound in first person singular how I exhibited some total "MAN" last night.

After putting on my work pants and sleeveless shirt, I performed perhaps the second manliest task involving a toilet that a true man can attempt. I installed a toilet! I dropped that bad boy down on a brand new wax ring and reconnected the water. Before I could test it out with the most manliest of tasks, I went downstairs to put the tools in the basement.

At the foot of the stairs I caught a black blur out of the corner of my left eye which I dismissed as a hallucination from the increased testosterone levels in my blood. However, when I came up out of the basement and saw the intruder flying around in my living room there was no dismissing the situation. BAT ATTACK!!!!

I calmly put down my PBR and called to the wife upstairs that we have a bat in the house and she locked the dogs in the bedroom. My bulldog is rabid enough already. I reached for my shotgun and then reconsidered. A broom would suffice. It was me against the bat.

I'm an animal lover, but I couldn't let Edward Cullen reach the second floor where my beautiful baby was sleeping. I also had to resign myself to possibly shattering a lamp or knocking over the TV because this blood sucker must die!

Edward flew at my head a few times, but I'd only had one PBR and was still nimble as a cat. I missed on my first two swings, the count was 0-2. Unfortunately for Edward, he left his 0-2 pitch hanging in my wheel house (high and outside) and I nailed him. He slid under my speaker and tried to hide. Here is where we can now switch to the nosotros form, Ashley grabbed a blanket and we pulled Edward out from under the speaker with the broom and smothered him. After that it was just a matter of getting the blanket outside and Edward fluttered a bit on the ground and then flew off to find Bella or a crowd of shirtless 16 year old boys.

I basked in my manliness. I had just performed two of the most intensely masculine duties a husband can do. The only things more impressive is if I had rebuilt an engine and then defended my home from a horde of Russians or a crystal-meth tweaker.

Creatures of the night, think twice before you invade my house after I'm high off of successful plumbing.

Bat Attack!

We were feeling pretty great after installing our toilet tonight, until we came downstairs to find a massive bat swooping around our house as if he owned the joint. My bloodthirsty husband sprang into action to protect our family and home and nearly destroyed the creature with a combination of a broom and blanket. I sat on the steps and mostly laughed my ass off. Why didn't I think to grab the video camera so all six of our followers could enjoy the chaos? Just take my word for it, it was a good time.

We have no clue how it came in. The electricians were here all day (more on that in another post) and had the basement door open most of the time. Maybe he was hanging out down there and just waiting to come up at night and suck our blood? Creepy.

Tiling project is finally complete!

Well the last post was very rosy and full of confidence. We spent another long and discouraging weekend working on the tile... things went a bit downhill after the first weekend and initial installation. I say initial installation because as we started to prep the tile for grout, we realized

that some of the tiles were popping up. No big deal, we went out to get some tile adhesive, pried those suckers up and lathered them with adhesive before placing them right

back where they belonged. The problem was, as we started checking, more and more tiles were popping up. And before we knew it we had ripped up at least 1/3 of the floor. And so the second installation began.

So most of the weekend felt like three steps forward and two steps back. Finally on Monday we were ready to grout. Grouting was surprisingly simple. I stayed away because we mixed it with a chemical component that the tile guy recommended for extra strong grout. So grouting was a super simple part of the project for me. The big guy did a great job and we decided to be extra cautious and let it sit again for 24 hours before sealing it last night.

And finally, finally the toilet went back in tonight. No more trips downstairs in the middle of the night. That is a BIG big deal for someone like me with a 6 month pregnant bladder.

Next up is to finish our custom vanity. We started sealing it with polyurethane this weekend while we were waiting for the grout to dry. I guess that is the royal "we" because again, I stayed away to protect BB2 from the fumes.

Plumbers crack! (almost)

I'm thinking about paint colors and shopping for a new shower curtain... I've looked at my usual go to home decorating websites and am not having much luck, if anyone has seen good options let me know!

Hammam

Saturday.

Our first major home improvement job needed to be our upstairs bathroom. The original floor was blue shag carpet which we immediately ripped out before we moved in. That left us with just the plywood sub-floor, again not a real kid friendly surface.

The first step was to remove the toilet and rip out the vanity. Brother  came over and helped with both. Taking out the toilet was simple, just empty the bowl and tank and then take off the two bolts connecting it to the floor. After setting aside the toilet, we destroyed the vanity.

Next up was to remove all staples, nails, or carpet fragments from the sub-floor. Before you lay down your mortar and backer board the surface must be as smooth and flat as possible. Then we mixed up a layer of modified thin-set mortar and cut out our pieces of backer board. AB decided against the traditional backer board and instead bought this stuff called Ditra. It's a German product which she learned about through her work and it claims to be a superior surface (watch the video here). 

We then spread the thin-set down and laid the Ditra down on top. The first piece was easy and went down with no problems; however, I got cocky and started working faster. AB got home from the tile store and noticed a few lumps of mortar under the Ditra, but no problem, we peeled it up and smoothed out the mortar. Then it was time to relax and let the mortar dry and enjoy some cold beers.

Sunday.

Today was the hard part. We were ready to lay the tile. Brother came over again to help babysit and supervise my tile cutting and we were off to the races.

First thing was to rent the tile saw from Home Depot. I had never used a wet saw before, but it was pretty intuitive. Just measure and cut, making sure you keep your fingers out of the way.

AB put a string down the length of the floor to serve as the guide for properly aligning the tile. We couldn't just start against one wall because the room is not square and we would surely have ended up on the other side totally crooked. AB then started tiling around the toilet first. After some inspirational words and some coaching on spacial perception she did a really fine job. Me and bro did cutting, wife made sure they all fit properly.

Everything was going smoothly, but we were getting tired and it was getting late. Also the mortar was starting to dry out. We pushed through and finished up around 11 pm. The final product looks great. Our first mistake however was to not put down a threshold first and then tile up against it. Now we just have tile up to the door and we can't figure out how to attach a threshold without damaging the tile. Our second mistake was to not mix up some fresh mortar. The wee hours affected our judgement and now a few of the tiles toward the door are loose. Nothing a little adhesive won't fix.  Overall the job was a huge success. Thanks to Brother for helping with Babygirl and advising on geometry.

Next up: Grouting, threshold, and baseboards!

A small project

Hubby decided one night to caulk our tub. The tub originally came with a glass door trimmed in gold which we ripped out immediately. This left a few holes and dents in the surround. Nothing a little caulk can't fix. Or so we thought.

Luckily it was an ugly tub to start with. We both agreed that from now on any project with a component resembling cupcake frosting should be left up to me. Or maybe babygirl.

News from the Midwest

Well we made it. After a short stint in the hospital, a heart attack for hubby and I, baby girl is happy and healthy. Thanks again everyone for all your support through that.

So the moving trucks came, packed and loaded us in record speed and miraculously all of our things appear to have made it in one piece. Here are some moving day photos. (Move in day just happened to occur during a record heat wave. 100+ temps in a house with not so great cooling to begin with and an open door all day= tons of fun and a sweaty husband.)

We are almost unpacked and a few random things seem to be missing. Apparently the movers may or may not have made off with one fruit basket, one nerdy angels and demons video game, one pair of men's cowboy boots and one (not two) woman's black sandal.

We have internet now, just not a lot of time, but we'll try to update as often as we can!

Reppin' for KC

In addition to our new house, we are thrilled to be able to rep the KC with the likes of Tech N9ne. In the below video you will find KC's finest lyricist extolling the virtues of Gate's Bar B.Q. I haven't tried Gate's yet having focused most of my attention on Oklahoma Joe's. I know this blog is about remodeling, but I am allowed random tangents from time to time. Enjoy the video.

Work is Underway

I spent the last three days in KC and got to spend some time over at the house. Our first two projects are complete and I have to say this whole hiring someone else to do the work seems to be the way to go. The floors look great, here are some before and after shots.

The true "before" was a heavy old dirty and disgusting blue carpet. I couldn't bring myself to post those images, I'm just happy its gone!

Also installed this week, a brand new energy efficient furnace and tankless hot water heater. Not a very exciting improvement but a big chunk of our renovation budget. Here's to $10 utility bills this winter!

Before: 50+ year old furnace, still kicking but we were warned it would suck down gas like nobody's business. Also a hot water heater that was at the end of it's lifespan...

And after... I don't know a lot about this equipment but since it cost so dang much money I can't skip over posting this improvement.

Up next: We are leaving VA on the 30th! Off to the beach for a few days before we land in KC to wait for our stuff to arrive. Stay tuned for the next project, we might actually get our hands dirty.

The House

Here is the house. These are from a house hunting trip back in April before it officially became our First House. Thanks to everyone in KC who told us winters in the midwest are not that bad. Liars.

We probably won't get to painting the outside for awhile but we'll start taking votes now for a color scheme. I'm thinking orange and blue. Wahoowa.

Manifest Destiny

America's 19th century westward expansion was driven by ideas of American exceptionalism, Divine Providence, and the Protestant work ethic. Our family is heading west for a cheap house.

We've chosen Kansas City and purchased a home. The house needs some work. This blog will be about how an infinitely patient, exceptionally handy husband works tirelessly at the behest of his laid back, type-B wife to renovate our first home.