Gettin' Some Trim

Trim is another low effort high impact project, but it sure is tedious… the precise measuring to within 1/16th of an inch, the cutting 45 degrees this way and 22.5 degrees that way, the priming and painting only to have to prime and paint the trim ends again after you’ve made your cuts, the furniture moving and following your work with wood filler and touch-up paint - ugh. Lucky for us, our friend Matt owns and was happy to share his miter saw, compressor and pneumatic brad nailer, which saved us a ton of time.

In the hallway, the floor was a bit far away from the bottom of the baseboards due to some floor sag around the chimney. This gap maxed out at nearly 1 ½ inches at its worst, so we couldn’t use the standard quarter round we used elsewhere. Instead, we decided to use casing, and we selected a style that tied in to the trim above the baseboards.

Eighty-six cuts and forty-three piece installations later, we finally have finished trim in our guest room, upstairs hallway, office, and two of our upstairs closets. It really does make a huge difference – the gaps between the baseboards and the floors are gone, and the rooms finally have a clean, finished look to them. Hooray!

Down the Drain

There’s some water infiltrating our basement – not a lot, but enough to hamper our future plans to finish it into living space. The cause is obvious – on the east side of our property, the drainage is inadequate, we have two downspouts, our neighbor has two downspouts, and our neighbor’s property is slightly higher than ours. As a consequence of the curvature of spacetime, water will always follow the easiest downhill path, and in our case, this path hugged the corner of our foundation. Hence the infiltration.

Enter the French drain. French drains are very effective at intercepting and diverting water, and they’re fairly simple – all you need is a sloped trench, a perforated drain pipe, and a bunch of drainage rock. For less than $90 in materials and a day of labor, we now have a 60-foot French drain and a dry basement. C'est fantastique!

Trivia note: You might think it’s called a French drain because it originated in France, but think again! It is called a French drain because it was invented by Henry French, a judge and farmer who lived in Concord, Massachusetts, in the mid-1800s. Rumor has it he also made excellent fries.

Closets!

We recently took on a few smaller projects which we've been putting off for months, mostly because we'd had bigger fish to fry. The nice thing about these is that they're what I like to call LEHI - Low Effort High Impact.

The first of these was a closet remodel for Kelly and myself. When we moved in, the closet configurations upstairs were a very inefficient use of space - each had a single shelf with a dowel under it stretching the length of the closet. Given that the closets have nine-foot ceilings, they had SO much more potential. I'm a big fan of utility and options, so I decided to go with the ClosetMaid system, which is available at all the big box hardware stores. It allows easy configuration, and is pretty straightforward to install. And, best of all, kits were on clearance at Lowe's, so I picked up everything I needed for about $85 per closet.

Step one - tear out the existing stuff so you have a blank canvas to work on.

Step 2 - Find the studs and set the hang strips. Finding the studs is pretty easy in a “normal” house (where they’re spaced 16” on center), but of course our 100-year-old house has them irregularly spaced, and we have plaster walls so a studfinder wouldn’t work. I ended up rapping my knuckles around to find them and drilling holes with a 1/16” bit to confirm. Grrr.

With the studs found, enter my Hilti PML line laser. I love working with lasers. So precise, so time-saving. The laser shoots a straight line right up the whole wall, which allows you to easily hang the strips straight and even/level with each other (which is important if you want your shelves level, and if you want to make sure that the sheer load on the shelves is evenly distributed across your anchors).

Step 3 – throw that sucker up. The kits are modular, so you can configure the whole closet system however you’d like. Given our high ceilings, I was able to create two rows of hanging space and several shelves, and still have room left to push my dresser in there. Finally, no more retrieving my clothes from piles in the basement. Not bad for a couple of hours of work!

Garage plans....OFFICIALLY APPROVED!

Dave spend a grueling three hours at the permit office today and we have our stamp of approval! We'd been told it could take weeks, even months, to get the city's approval but we got same-day approval. Yahoo! 2 1/2 car garage with rooftop deck here we come! Now we move on to getting bids...

Shopping Spree

We finally found window treatments for the 2 office windows. Of course the windows were not the same size, one was 34" wide and the other was 32". Finding something that matched the room and fit both windows was a challenge. In the end we decided upon very affordable bamboo shades from Lowe's that matches the floors very well.
We got some killer deals at City Liquidators. If you haven't been there, they have awesome deals on furniture. We got two bookshelves that match the floor and tie in the bamboo shades.
Another City Liquidators find was new barstools for the kitchen island. They're super comfy and the brown leather matches the leather on the dining chairs. Only $45 each! Can't beat it.

Browsing through City Liquidators you find a lot of crap, but some crap can be made pretty with a little work. I found this plastic gold 24" x 36" beveled mirror for only $19.95!! I took that sucker home and spray-painted it my favorite color (oil rubbed bronze). It lives above the fireplace.

A little inspiration...

Every room and space in this house blows me away and gives me some much needed inspiration! I think I'm ready to start redoing the downstairs! :)

Chimney Sloppins

Chim chiminey
Chim chiminey
Chim chim cher-ee!
We are as lucky
As lucky can be

Chim chiminey
Chim chiminey
Chim chim cher-oo!
Just one more fire
And our house mighta gone ka-BOOM!
(And the cleaning was just $90
So that's lucky too)

Now as the conditions
Of chimneys ar' strung
The state of our chimney
twas on the bottommost rung

25 pounds of creosote
Seems like a lot
An' said me good sweeper
If 'at stuff gits hot

It'll blow up your chimney
And burn your house down
And out in the drizzle
You'll slap on a frown

So heed my good words friends
'Tis worth spending a buck
If your creosote ignites
You'll be shit outta luck

So call your good sweeper
Have him bring his broom
And scrape sweep and chisel
Out potential doom

Now that our house won't be reduced
To ashes and smoke
In this 'ole wide world
There's no 'appier bloke

Chim chim cher-ee
Chim cher-oo!

Out with the gold, in with the new!

We (and by we I mean David) replaced the hardware on all four interior doors on the main floor this past weekend. It was one of those small projects we kept putting off in lieu of more important projects and then kind of forgot about. But while at Lowe's the idea popped into our heads and we bought the goods. After the installation was complete, we were amazed what a difference a small detail like hardware can make and wished we'd done it months ago. It looks like we put in new doors! The hideous gold knobs are gone and replaced with oil-rubbed bronze (love it!) sets that match the exterior door hardware we installed this summer.

Let the Landscaping begin!

We planted our first tree at the new house, a cute 5' tall Japanese Maple. We stumbled upon the great deal while at Lowe's buying items for other projects. As it turns out, Fall is a great time to buy trees at 1/2 the normal price. Lucky for us!!

Fireplace Season! So Cozy...

In the spirit of the fast approaching winter, we had a cord of wood delivered for use in our fabulous fireplace. The pile doesn't look like much, but it took two of us 3 hours to move and stack it all!

And here's Poof enjoying the cozy fire :)

I can almost taste it...

We have final plans for the garage and will be applying for permits this week!! Keep your fingers crossed!! Here's the plan if you're into that sort of thing...

Relaxation & Renovation

Not a lot of blogging has been going on lately, but we've been busy. We've been working on many small projects which I'll blog about shortly and we also took a two week vacation to the Redwoods, Lassen National Park, Mt. Shasta and Crater Lake. I'll post a link to our photo album soon.

Judge this book by its cover!

Exterior painting has been completed! Thanks to Enrique, his associates and 60 gallons of primer/paint we have a whole new house. :) The pictures don't do justice to how dirty and damaged the paint was "before", but the yellow trim was bad enough on its own.

The colors we picked are based on historically accurate colors by Miller Paint. The house color is Rain Barrel and the accent red color was Shaker Red. We had Lowe's match the paint samples, and used December Starlight from the Lowe's brand as the trim.

For the primer we used recycled primer which we stumbled upon at Metro (in Portland) while picking up our composting bin. It worked great and is REALLY, REALLY cheap. I would highly recommend it.

Here are some before and after pics (click on the images to enlarge):

Here you can see the enclosure we had built to hide the A/C unit and close up the space under the deck. It's actually two large gates which still allow access. Another Enrique special! :)
The bare South Wall of the house is where the garage will be added....hopefully this Fall but perhaps not until Spring. We do have final drawings that I'll post soon!
And our own little slice of heaven on the deck off the master. David installed our hammock we picked up in Nicaragua a few years back:

Liveable Rooms! Liveable Rooms!

After nearly 3 months of non-stop work, our upstairs rooms are liveable and beautiful (if I do say so myself!). Rather than drag out all the details of the work we completed, just know the blood and sweat is buried within the postings of this blog. Without further ado, here are some before and after pics of the upstairs.

Master Bedroom:

Office:

Guest Bedroom:

Hallway:

The Built-In:

From Fail to Fabulous

One of my favorite lasting impressions from our home inspection was our inspector's take on the retaining wall pillar that stood next to the crumbling front steps. He took a photo and labeled it 'Retaining Wall Failure'. It was like a potentially good FailBlog.com entry but without the fail part. The pillar hadn't failed, it was just leaning towards failure. The kitchen faucet was a fail considering it didn't work at all when we moved in, but he didn't take a picture of it and label it 'failure'.

To rectify the situation, we recently had our local handyman Enrique work his magic on the steps and the pillar. He pressure washed all the moss and dirt off the wall and steps, repaired the pillar, patched the steps and repaired the cracks. Enrique never ceases to amaze us, he did a fantastic job! He succeeded where the pillar failed.

It's a Jungle Out There!

This past weekend, we attacked the garden area in front of the house. David, Susan (David's mom) and I pulled A LOT of weeds, small trees and random crap from the front garden. Under all the overgrown bushes, plants and weeds there was a cute solid brick border along the entire length of the garden.

We were surprised it only took the three of us a few hours to get the planters to a state of normalcy. The next step is to till the soil, add some nutrients to it and start planning some plants! Yippie!

Here's what we started with:

Here's what it looked like half way through:

Here's what we've got now: A real garden area ready for pretty plants!

Thanks for all your help Susan!

Rags to Riches

We are ALMOST done with phase 1 of painting/redoing the upstairs, just a few windows to put back together and then I'll post some before and after pics! In the meantime, I am happy to report that we've installed all the light fixtures in the three rooms and the hallway.

We had help from Enrique (who is our new home improvement BFF...I'll post more about him later) to install all the ceiling fans. For each fan, Enrique had to install a mount, attach a 2"x4" cross piece between the joists and secure the fan bracket to that. The master ceiling fan installed easily. The office and guest room fan took quite a few installs to get them to be 'noise-free', but eventually they were in!

David turned into Mighty Electrician Man and installed the hallway fixture and the guest bedroom fixtures. If you look real close on the before pics you can see some serious classy cob webs.

Guest room before and after:
I love that the smallest room in the entire house had TWO five-light fixtures...did they really need the light from 10 bulbs in that room??

Master before and after (and the office looks the same):

Hallway before and after:

Meet My Nemesis

Every day. Multiple times a day. I hear the song.....the song of the Ice Cream mobile. The song that is sure to become the soundtrack to my nightmares.

I'm sorry but a mini-mobile full of ice cream driven by someone who can stand listening to that song over and over and over and over again doesn't scream 'kid-friendly. It screams CREEPY! I wonder how much I could pay the ice cream mobile to NOT drive within a three block radius of my house ever again?? I thought we'd done well buying a house that isn't near train tracks or on a bus line...but it never occurred to me to check the daily ice cream mobile route.

A Mean, Green Earth Machine

And....we're back! After many weeks of traveling, a wedding (congrats Nick & Kurstin!) and hosting company I'm back in the blogging business.

Today I fulfilled a little fantasy I've had since we moved to Portland, I'm officially a composter! In my mind this means the veggie gardens that will (hopefully) exist by next summer will be bountiful and uber-organic.

Word on the street lead us to Metro after hearing they had a great composter for $39 with a retail value of $80. And indeed, Metro had the Earth Machine at that great price and we snatched one up (ours ended up being $46 because we got the aerated bottom add-on which helps keep critters out). One of the label reads 'The Earth Machine: 21st Century Home Composting'. So...unfortunately I have to report the composter is not period-correct for our 20th century home, but what can you do? You can't win them all.

We got the compost batch off to a good start with kitchen greens, yard greens and yard browns. Yeah, that's right. I know all the fancy pants compost terms and I'm not afraid to use them.

The first compost:

I also want to say a hello to Leslie, Zack (sp?) and their adorable dog who live just up the street. I had the pleasure to meet Leslie as she was walking by the house this afternoon. Her, Dave's mom Susan and I were chatting when she realized she recognized our house from the blog. Who knew, people ACTUALLY read this! In a VERY huge coincidence, Leslie had also been to Metro today to buy The Earth Machine...happy composting Leslie!

The Fav Lamps

Now that our living room is free of our giant Cal King bed, we were able to arrange furniture and get the TV mostly set up. A while back, we bought a Tiffany style Arts & Crafts floor lamp, and after arranging the furniture yesterday we realized the one floor lamp doesn't give off enough light for the big room (there are no built-in lights). I decided the best additional lighting option would be to get the matching table lamp. While at Lowe's last night, I picked it up! The lamps are an amazing deal for what you get. My favorite feature is the 4 watt candelabra bulb in the center of the stands. When the other bulbs are turned off, it gives off a beautiful low-light glow. We also have both lamps on dimmers (one of David's obsessions). They are available at Lowe's in-store and at Lowe's.com

Moving on up....Master Bedroom done (well, mostly)

The master bedroom is painted and we moved our bed upstairs last night. NO MORE SLEEPING IN THE LIVING ROOM! WHOO HOO!

Master Bedroom: BEFORE

Master Bedroom: AFTER
(sans the window treatments that will be put up this weekend)

Master Window Treatments...Mastered

After days and days of research, online searches and shopping, I have managed to find a window treatment solution for the two windows in the master bedroom. We wanted a double-drape set-up with a light-blocking thick outer curtain, and a sheer white inner curtain. Since the windows are set far apart from each other, we needed a panel for each window and individual drapery hardware for each window. For the outer curtain, our specifications included a 'look' that would work all year round, fit with the 'cool' color theme and coordinate with the green on the walls, not white (David's request), blocked all the light and added insulation. I looked at 'affordable' drapes all over town including Pier 1, Bed Bath & Beyond and Fred Meyer. I was incredibly disappointed in what I found as far as colors, quality and length (we needed a longer-than-standard 91-96" length).

So, I headed to Pottery Barn where I knew I would find some good options. I was pretty set on linen or cotton drapes, but after I saw the DIVINE texture and softness of Pottery Barn's velvet, I HAD to have it. They didn't have the exact drapes I needed the store, but I was able to order them from potterybarn.com in 96" length and in Pewter, a beautiful silver color that will look perfect with light green walls and add richness to the cool color theme. The drapes are currently on sale for $129/panel (down from $149/panel) and I had an additional 10% off coupon making them $116 each. Totally worth it for drapes you'll use every day and stare at as you drift off into sleep and wake up each morning. They arrive this Friday and I cannot wait to install them! Here's a preview:
The next (seemingly easy) difficult task was to find drapery hardware. The hardware had to match our oil-rubbed bronze window hardware and switch plates, have widely spaced screws on the mounting bracket to support the weight of the velvet drapes, be a double rod set, and not be ugly. Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware have beautiful hardware sets, but at $159 and $219 respectively per set (and we need 2 sets), they cost more than the drape panels! That's where I draw the line. I ended up finding the winner at Lowe's. Made by Allen + Roth, it's the double rod Meridian Bronze Drapery Set and was on sale for $39.97 (down from $50ish). I used another 10% off coupon so they only cost $35.97 each! This is an incredible price for good quality hardware and it makes up for the drape cost. :)
I originally wanted a very Arts & Crafts, square finial style, but this was the only style available in the double rod set from Lowe's, and I think it will work just fine! I was a little nervous about how 'swirly' the mounting brackets look, but when it's installed on the wall with rods and curtains (thanks Lowe's for your excellent displays) you don't notice the swirl, just looks like nice hardware.

Historical Fun Facts: Part II + A Fire

We've had our target.com fireplace gear (grate, screen and tools all for $63!) for a while now just waiting for the right night to make a fire. And last night was the night! It wasn't particularly cold, but we were particularly tired from a weekend full of wedding festivities (congrats Paul and Stacey!) and decided a cozy fire sounded.....perfect.

Dave chopped some wood we found left under our porch and set up the fire. It seems the flu hadn't been opened in QUITE a while, when Dave pulled the chain he heard rattling noises followed by a few bangs and then a half rotted piece of bird whizzed by his face and plopped onto the logs. Yummy.
From the light of the fire, we noticed there was a stamp on one of the bricks inside the fireplace that we'd never seen before. I did some research and can't seem to find any reference to the specific 'N. Clay Co' from our stamp, but found info on the Portland Clay Co. established in 1892. They made a bad-ass brick back in the day.