thefourthdoor

Muffin Problem, Solved!

2012-01-31T16:14:00.003-05:00

Remember all the pissing and moaning about my muffin top last year?

I'm pretty happy to report that I have fixed the muffin top problem! All by buying a pair of $6 overalls off the clearance rack at Target. Overalls which, if I'm honest, give me an illusion of a spare tire, but I'll consider it to be the lesser of two body evils. Especially since the tire is imagined but the muffin top was oh so very real.

Everything designated "Work Clothes" got an honest assessment from me and I ended up piling up a ton of old clothes for donation. It felt pretty good to get rid of the old, tight clothes and just stick with a few essentials that I know fit me well and can do what I need out of them. For instance, my winter work jacket was a very warm, very old pink puffer jacket from the GAP. It was an XS and my arms stuck out of the sleeves like some sort of awkward 13yr old after a growth spurt (oh the memories!!) and once I zipped up the jacket over my many layers, I could barely move. Usually I'd end up abandoning the jacket while working in favor of movement.

Did I mention my new work "jacket" is a men's fleece lined flannel shirt? I look so 1994. And a little bit like a lumberjack.

Planning the yard. Not as fun as stomping it.

2012-01-30T17:01:00.005-05:00

Over the weekend Pete and I sat down at our table with a copy of our house's survey, a pencil and a plastic ruler that one of us clearly stole from a grade school. We were on a mission to seriously talk and map out a master landscaping plan for the Wee House. After many years of loose conversation and general agreement, it was high time that we penciled a plan for the yard together. Something to serve as our guide through this everlasting renovation of the Wee property, and that encompassed both of our many ideas for the outside.

All in all, it was a well spent hour and a half. We measured, plotted, planned and dreamed our ideas right onto paper. I wouldn't call it fun. If anything it was just another reality check for how effing long this renovation is going to take us. But it was nice to get each other on the same page of our personal plans, you know, the ones that have since only existed in our respective brains or have only been verbalized in passing before this point.

We got the following plans ironed out:

- Driveway planning. Right now we have a mess of pebbles and sand forming something that maybe once resembled a driveway? Once the septic is done, we'll get right on getting something that doesn't look so... afterthoughtish put in.

- Good fences make for good neighbors. We think both sets of neighbors are great people and are beyond excited to live next to them someday. However, that does not mean I want to be all up in their business and vice versa when we're out in our yards. Right now we have an uber low fence and a retaining wall and I feel like time I spend in my yard means I'm on display for everyone to see. They've really seen enough of my muffin top to last them a lifetime.

- Privacy and noise reduction planting locations. Rather self explanatory in that I like privacy, hate noise and love plants.

- Patio location. It'll be off the dining room. Another total no-brainer.

- Fruit tree location. This one is totally all Eva and my crazy plan to turn the backyard into a wee farmette. I started with six fruit trees as my opening bid, but bargained down to four. Two apples trees and two peach in wide open back yard.

- Split rail fence location for the grapes. Apparently I think that because my grandparents successfully ran a vineyard that I must have some sort of genetic aptitude for farming and viticulture.

- Veggie Garden locations. Again, me and my crazy notions of backyard farming.

- Tree locations. We're big believers in planting for the next generation and are trying to put as many trees in as possible while still maintaining our sunny yard!

And to think, we only resorted to name calling once during this whole thing! Go us.

Le Sigh. Le Muffin Plague

2011-10-06T10:34:00.006-04:00

Eight years ago I stood in a JC Penny dressing room as 20 year old trying on a pair of jeans. Admiring how Levi’s stepped it up a notch to introduce a new low rise selection and marveling at how I ever wore pants that came over my hips. Back in the early 2000’s I was rocking some serious low rise and skin tight denim around campus. All purchased from a multitude of mall stores, Cough Cough ::: Express Bikini Jean:: Cough.

Thankfully in the years that have followed my college graduation I’ve learned a thing or two about the benefits of a (slightly) higher rise and pants that don’t cut off your circulation when you sit down. My denim stash is much less “Jersey” than it used to be and I've slowly given up all my low rise/glittered/bejewelled jeans in favor of quality design and construction.

Which leads me to my old pants, I’ve been slowly turning over denim from daily wear to work wear over the past couple of years. My now work pants are currently covered in a paint, rips and stains of construction origin. Which is all just fine… except… they are all REALLY low rise.

I'll just admit it.

I get muffin top now in my old jeans.

While I still can get my old pants zipped up, and you better believe I’m taking that small victory, that doesn’t really mean they actually fit me anymore. A harsh reality that I think most women must face at some point in their lives: current body vs. the old body. My body has changed shape in the last 8 years, what with biology taking me from the fine boned, slim look of a college sophomore to the (not really) curvy statue of a corporate woman who spends her days sitting in front of the computer and commuting 3 hours a day.

In layman’s terms- Baby got some back now.

I’ve come to slowly slowly realize that I ...

a) need new work pants, a phrase alone that is contradictory to me. Work pants mean well worn and way past what is acceptable to leave the house in pants.

b) I do some heavy duty renovating and need a pair or two of serious pants or coveralls that can keep up. Old Express denim isn't exactly Ford tough when it is paired against plaster shrapnel.

c) Ultimately I have got to get rid of my renovation muffin top, it’s bad for my already piddling sense of self esteem. And it makes me feel guilty after housing a cheese steak for lunch on the weekends.

AndPlusAlso I’m sure my neighbors are tired of my crack hanging out every time I bend over on the job site. I know I’m tired of hiking my pants up before bending down to work.

This all leads me to my new shopping quest of procuring some new constructions pants. I’d like one pair of coveralls and one pair of jeans or pants, that should be enough for me to get rid of my old muffin offenders and get through the next couple years of work.

Nerdy Couch Confession

2011-09-02T16:41:00.003-04:00

You know you have a Chesterfield addiction when...

you *gasp* and in a hushed whisper say "A Chesterfield", when that tufted awesomeness pops up during a scene in Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows Pt.2

The only way I could make this confession worse is when I tell you this all went down during the Midnight showing of HP7.2...

Sigh. I blame Sandra Bullock. It was a candid shot of her Chesterfield Couch in some rag years ago that got me started on this dark tufted path of obsession...

Irene. Is Riotously Evil Not Evaded.

2011-08-29T12:40:00.008-04:00

Phew.

I'm so glad that last week and it's multitude of natural disasters is, well, so last week.

Earthquake+ Hurricane Irene+ Tornado Activity + Flooding... I'm really ready for some boring weather going forward for the rest of the year. All these kids going back to school are going to have some interesting fodder for their " How I Spent My Summer Vacation" essays.

It is with an amazing amount of relief that I can report we suffered no major damages during the storm to any of our properties. Some limbs down, major flooding in our backyards, and an actual swimming pool in one of our basements. I'll take it. We're safe, my family is safe and our home is intact.

Unfortunately, my current town did not handle the flood waters so well and two bridges washed out almost completely during the 16' creek surge we had at the during the first bands of the storm. We think the bridge washed out sometime around 1am, because at 11:30 when Pete and I took a stroll around the neighborhood during a lull in the storm, the bridge was still there and seemed solid. There was an insane amount of water rushing into the lake, but nothing that appeared to be destructive. It was during that stroll that we went to check on our backyard, which slopes down a bit towards a teeny little drainage stream, was then about 20' deep, 75' wide and 100' across of water.

The words "We're Effed" came outta out our mouths when we saw how high the water had risen. A whole multitude of gratitudes came forth for our deep property and small, sloping hill. Had we gotten the rain that was expected, which was a good 4-5" more, I have almost no doubt I'd be singing a different tune right now.

The rain let up and we (thankfully) did not end up effed by mother nature.

As for the actual storm itself, I slept through it. Like a log. In fact, it was the best night of sleep I've gotten in a while. All the stress of the preperation and anitcipation, combined with the adrenaline of area Tornado warnings just conked me out for the night. You should have seen me during the Tornado warning, I packed an essentials backback, laced up my Timbs and sat in the hallway for 15 minutes with the cat in one arm and dog on her leash like the paranoid freak that I am.

Hurricane season is so much more nerve wracking as an adult. I liked it better when a Hurricane was a potential day off of school.

Waiting on Locust

2011-08-26T11:00:00.004-04:00

Flippity Flip.

There is a hurricane coming our directly towards all four of our houses.

Listen, this Jersey girl lives in Jersey for a reason, and I deal with all negatives that come with living in the Garden State by all the counter balance positives. I like the beach, hate extreme weather, the great soil and love myself a good mall. In 2011 I've dealt with Blizzards, 115 Degree Heat Indexes, my first Earthquake and now Irene is threatening to storm herself through almost everyone I love.

And that my friends, scares the beejebus outta me.

The only thing I am really, incredibly, extremely grateful for is the warning time. We have about two days to mobilize and prepare; to set plans in motion and evacuate as needed. I'll take it. Two days seems like a luxurious amount of time compared to the minutes Joplin, MO had for the tornado that caused such unimaginable devastation earlier this year.

Last night after a long and stressful day at work, Pete and I hit up the grocery store and headed right over to the other house to prep as much as possible for Irene. We closed and locked all the windows, nailing some of the worse ones into the house. All the debris around the yard was pulled inside, things like picnic tables, scaffolding and the lawnmower got stashed in the safest place possible. All of Pete's tools got moved off of the garage floor, we put a lot of them inside the beastly '72 Land Cruiser. We also broke out the hammer and nailed up lots of extra supports for the front of the garage.

I am nervous as hell about how the garage is going to handle this hurricane. At least I can rest easy in knowing it was built to code and then some, all thanks to my Dad and his insistence in building quality construction. And all the hurricane straps are nailed in like woah. So, that is some relief.

Inside the house I tapped up a few windows and moved anything "valuable" into the center of the house. Hoping that if we get some blown out windows that things shouldn't get sucked out or ruined when the rain gets driven in.

We also grabbed our two chainsaws and gassed them up. They'll stay with us during the storm in case clean up is needed afterwards.

Tonight and tomorrow is prep for our house. Not going to lie, it makes me a little sick to my stomach thinking about everything that has to get done...

Please stay safe through the storm everyone. I know our homes are important to us, but nothing is like the people and pets who live inside of them.

xo, Eva

Not At The Big Top

2011-08-18T13:28:00.004-04:00

The daylight is changing down here in South Jersey just a tiny bit, we’ve hit that time of year when nature cruelly reminds you that colder days and less sunshine are ahead and are coming faster than you'd like. Instead of exclaiming about how nice it is that the sun just went down at 9, we’re starting to see signs of the sunset starting earlier and earlier. As always late august reminds me of childhood and how I’d start to dream about the upcoming school year and all its unknown mysteries ahead.

This year I have no school to go back to. And I’ve spent most of the summer ignoring the one outlet I have for getting out all the thoughts, feelings and memories I have associated with this time in my life.

The truth is, Pete and I obsess about our housing. Paying, planning, selling, cleaning, decorating, fixing and living in them. Most of our free-time life revolves around our houses somehow. I just needed a little break from something in our house cycle, and also, maybe my job BLOCKED BLOGGER. Since my lunch break was my number one time to blog you can imagine how much that sucked. At first I was devastated and pretty sure it was just a glitch since the page would load and load and load until I got a time out error. But as the days turned into more days, I knew it was for real and that I was going to have to figure out a new way to keep up with blogging if that was what I wanted to do. So I thought about my blog, its life cycle, where it could go and if it was what I really wanted to do by putting out my 'dirty house laundry' on the internet for everyone to see and judge.

The problem with blogging at home? My office tends to run at about 95 degrees in the summer with it’s non- a/c having, summer sun getting self. I don’t even turn my home computer on unless I have to because I’m freaked out about overheating and loosing everything that I haven’t backed up (everything). Plus, I’m both uber lazy and very busy. Work and full time adult life, family, friends, holidays and all that jazz.

So with a few obstacles blocking my lazy self from blogging, I took the easy way out and gave my brain a break for a few months.

It was nice.

Until I started realizing that I was composing blog posts in my head without even realizing it. When I found that amazing $100 Chesterfield on Craigslist, I mentally started a post about it, and then I started the follow up post that detailed how it was already sold and despite my best effort to be slimy and offer him triple the asking price- I still didn’t get my dream couch.

Oh, and the time Pete and I had 30 more minutes worth of work to do for the day before a summer storm rolled in with no signs of quitting. I mentally was telling everyone how I might win the best/most crackpot dangerous DIY award of our drenching rain installation of a ledger board on the garage. Ladder/Rain/Drill… not the safest combo ever, but Pete needed to get it done that day for his sanity and I recognized that in him, so I worked while getting drenched to the bone. With promise of dry clothes and pizza afterward.

Projects went on.

The Summer Sweltered.

I met my newest love, who arrived in a 9lb11oz Nephew package.

Harry Potter Ended.

Life went on.

I just didn’t blog about it.

But I’m ready to get back to here, and hopefully everyone is ready to stick around for the rest of our house related follies

Sorry to disappoint any that thought maybe I ran away and joined the circus.

Lawn Maintenance, Shop Vac Style

2011-07-01T15:41:00.003-04:00

The one where I tell you about how my husband had to vacuum the lawn.

57 has a few patches of grass to its name. Nice little bits of lawn in the front, and a big enough sized pad out back. The space out back would blend seamlessly into the other units and vague "no mans land" if a two sided fence coming off of the house did not offer a bit of separation from all that. Why two sided? One side got ripped down a few years back, and we decided to keep it open as a sort of gate/passageway to the back door.

This area out back is where kegs are kept for parties in all but the most frigid of winter weather, plays host to the nice weather beer pong games and, judging by the amount of butts in the air conditioning unit, is where the smokers go to get their nicotine fix on. The ground is a hybrid of greenery and an ancient cement landing pad. After these tenants moved out it also hosted shards of broken bottles. Not just ONE broken bottle spread about but it looked like someone was hoarding broken glass in our back yard. We have female tenants moving in next, I'm presuming that they are going to be like 97% of the female college population in their footwear choices and will wear flip flops all the time until it snows on the ground. At that point (again, presuming) they'll switch to uggs or toms. Flip flops + Broken Glass = No Bueno.

We want these girls to like 57. Perhaps like the place so much, that *gasp* they don't destroy it and give a crap about keeping it in decent condition.

So Pete did the most sensible thing he could think of to clean up the broken glass the backyard.

He vacuumed the grass with the shop vac.

It worked.

Shop-Vacs never cease to amaze me with their versatile vacuuming ability.

PS- We got an email from one of the tenants today asking when they could expect to see the security deposit back. Gave me a good chuckle.

Rubber Gloves Required

2011-06-30T08:30:00.001-04:00

Here is a little peak into what our lives are like when we’re working on 57.

The first Saturday we got the keys back:

8 am: head out door

Buy much needed iced coffee at mcdonalds.

8:20- arrive at 57 braced for worst. Take a brief tour of the place mentally calculating damages and making notes of items that need to be replaced. Snap picture of the cabinets and measure them while jotting down the sizes on an old “how to compost” leaflet fished out of giant purse.

8:45 head off into Philly for a Habitat for Humanity RE-Store garage sale. Cheap prices plus 25%?! Yes please.

9:15 arrive at the garage sale which started a mere 15 minutes ago. The place is mobbed already.

9:20 Call dibs on a matching stainless stove and microwave set for the beach house.

9:25 Dibs again on a sink base.

9:45- I get in a long line with the tickets and my 6 free books and wait while Pete goes to snag a parking spot by the door. While waiting in line I watch multiple fights over a table set and grill happen. Also, lament that I can’t purchase the amazing French provincial buffet for uber cheap because of lack of space in house/trusty SUV.

10am- Buy all the items for… $146. Load the SUV where everything fits snuggly inside, curtsy of creative arranging. Amen for our large car. I’ve said it before but we could not do what we do with these houses without an SUV. It is essential to the way we do home renovations.

10:30- Go to Wal-Mart, pick up heavy duty cleaning supplies and some snack food to keep at 57.

11:30- Head over to Lowe’s for a few items for 57. Buy the exact model of dishwasher we’ve been eyeballing for the beach house on clearance for $200. Somehow, despite meaning to we’ve just bought the remaining appliances for the beach house. Squick.Have to leave dishwasher there for later pick up due to lack of SUV cargo space.

1pm- Picnic lunch in the shade outside of 57 on our scrap rug from the trunk, 57 smells too bad to eat in there.

1:30- Start scrubbing down the walls and bathroom floor. Sister-In-Law, Janet, comes over. Get almost the entire downstairs scrubbed with her help. Janet rocks. Go through a half gallon of bleach and heavy duty de-greaser.

7:00- Call it a night and head home

8:00- Head out the house showered and cleaned up for a quick trip to another Lowe’s to price out cabinets and get dinner.

8:30- Price out stock cabinets.

9:30- Ordering beer and nachos at a favorite bar to discuss the day and make a tentative budget for the place. Budget also gets written on scrap composting pamphlet.

11pm- Home. Crash into bed.

Busy and especially expensive Saturday, although, we got so much accomplished that I fell into bed feeling really good about the day. Which is really, the best way to feel when you're falling asleep.

The Draining Month Begins

2011-06-29T07:54:00.004-04:00

Since 2004, this mid-june to mid-july has the potential to be my least favorite time of the year. It is when we get the keys back in hand from our college rental unit and have a scarce four weeks to make it habitable for the next group of renters. Every year we hope like crazy that our renters will want or can stay for an extra year (come on fifth year seniors!) Which means no clean out, no repairs and another year’s lease is signed with ease.

In the off years between renters the unit is an unholy mess and gargantuan effort to get the place in inspection passable condition, all in the short four week down time. When we have to deal with 57 – what I call the townhouse- it eats a giant amount of our summer work schedule right up that leaves us and our wallets drained.

This year 57 might just be the death of me.

We’d been getting reports from our property management company, first year for them btw and it has been so worth it, about the condo and how was everything was in deplorable condition for a long while now. When the heater broke our HVAC guy gave us the skinny on the damage to the place and said he went right home and jumped in the shower after working on the unit because it was so gross. When we got the notice that the renters would not be returning for the next year we felt relief, these guys were trouble and the sooner they left our lives the better. However, in the meantime the unit was having trouble renting and we were getting feedback from the agents that all people they brought through got hassled by the current renters and that everyone was so appalled by the filth they wouldn’t consider renting it.

After a few really stressful months something AMAZING happened, the agent brought through a bunch of girls and a father to see the place. The girls got hassled and at that point the father gave the renter a piece of his mind about his actions and the condition that the place was kept in. (points to that dad) Amazingly, the girls signed the rental contract with us a week later!!! Angels sang down from the clouds.

All that happend in the spring, flash forward to the first week of June and our contract was now up with the current tenants. The moved out on Friday, we stopped by early Saturday morning to check the place out, opening the door we braced for the worst being that there was already visible damage to the outside of the place. I was expecting Camden. What we got was bad. Really bad. The worst we’ve ever gotten back and this was the only time we’ve ever had tenants for just a year.

However it wasn’t the bombed out crack house that I was expecting. It was more a beer soaked, dirt slimed, graffitti’d party den that was a bit of cross between a Frat house and a dive bar off of route 95. I also counted no less than 18 not-very-graphic-or anatomically correct man parts drawn on the wall. Everywhere I looked something was wrong. There were hand prints on the ceiling, vomit on floors, tons of giant holes in the walls and someone tried (and succeeded) to kick the front door in.

Here is a good part to mention that both Pete and I lived at this place, separately, for over three years. NOTHING LIKE THAT EVERY HAPPENED WHEN WE LIVED THERE. Pete will even tell you about the most epic party ever that he threw where the 5 surrounding towns had to bring in their police to break it up, and yet… nothing like this damage. The worst thing that ever happened was we caught someone peeing on Pete’s car.

Let me lay out a picture of what was broken:

- Dryer

- Stove

- A/c

- Hot water heater

- Downstairs vanity

- Four doors

- Every wall in the dining room

- All but one ceiling light is broken

- The light in the bathroom

- Upstairs medicine cabinet

- 3 yr old Carpet was shot

- All the walls in the living room have graffiti on them

- Fire Alarms ripped off the ceiling

- Upstairs window

- Front porch

- Walls in downstairs bathroom

- Every closet door is missing a handle

- And there are random bits of trim missing

- Shelves in closets

- Paint, can paint be broken? Cause this paint was up the creek bad.

The next month is just going to be splendid.

Upgrading the microwave cart

2011-06-27T08:35:00.000-04:00

Let's go back about a month ago...

Eva: I'm going to throw this old microwave cart away. It's just getting in the way, taking up space and we have no use for it now.

Pete: Are you sure? Did you take a picture of it yet?

Eva: I'm positive I snapped a pic of it. There is no way I didn't.

The conversation ends with me bringing the 80's era wood paneled microwave cart out to the dumpster in bits. Last night I just checked my entire library of pictures. There is not one single picture of this horribly ugly wood sticker paneled thing anywhere hiding on my computer.

Blogging fail.

Unfortunately the before would have been helpful at just how far we were able to rejuvenate a little corner of the beach house for $110. Use your imagination and rest assured this microwave cart was just as horribly outdated as the rest of the condo.

Originally sitting in this little corner was hip height mdf wonder of a "wood look" cabinet that sat on wobbly plastic wheels. One of the doors sat a precarious angel, always threatening to fall off if you closed the door with too much force. On top of the doors sat one drawer that we shoved every take out menu and spare trash bag into. Topping off this whole shebang was the matching wood look microwave. Don't you wish you had a wood paneled microwave also?!

Since a full kitchen renovation is on the books for the future, but not anytime soon, we knew that we'd be keeping the stand alone micowave until the point of the gut reno. It really is wicked handy to have around and we're sure that our renters appreciate us having one. However, that flipping ugly cart had to go, it was bringing down the whole look of the stairs right back into the 80's. Putting the microwave on the counter was out as a solution. Our counter space in that kitchen is almost nil. There is really no room for a microwave on the counter at all.

We did some combing of craigslist but nothing struck our eye as working well for a new microwave cart. Falling back to ye old faithful for the beach house, the two of us planned an Ikea trip after work. It's not exactly a "trip" so much as there is an Ikea about 15 min from where we work, but we did make plans to hit up our fave non-shore pizza spot beforehand for some cheesy saucy goodness. The budget was "as low as we could get it", but we definitely didn't want to spend more than $100.

Surprisingly that amount of money doesn't give as many options as you might think.

After combing the aisles and displays in Ikea we settled on the Bekvam, a nice solid wood kitchen rack for $60. It was a nice and small option that didn't break the break and fit the space. The nicely compact box of parts fit neatly into the back of our sedan and we drove away with the mission accomplished.

A few days after buying the cart we found ourselves at Home Depot, which isn't that strange since we're there all.the.time, and while bringing up our cartload we walked out the store right by a bathroom fixture display. There was stopping on our part admiring the really good deals to be had and we both zero'd in on this one vanity cabinet w/ a soft gray/ ivory washed color that had clean shaker lines. For $99 it came with a stone top and under mounted sink, the quality of the piece was pretty damn good considering it's recession-friendly price tag.

Then I opened my big trap and " Wouldn't this look nice as the microwave cabinet?" came tumbling out before I could stop myself. Damn it Eva! I always make things more complicated. We already had a very nice cart purchased and this one was more expensive. This one was clearly nicer, and it would fill that awkward space under the stairs better. So we bought it and shoved the giant and unyielding box into the back of our SUV.

The next week, we journeyed back to Ikea to return the other cart and while browsing the fantastic "As-Is" section I snagged a large door/ side panel (?) in a black color for $3.50 to use as a protective extra counter on top of the sink vanity. The new counter also keeps the microwave from falling into the sink, we just assumed that the giagantor microwave would cover the smaller sink completely and it does... but almost doesn't. Which leaves the potential for a microwave-in-the-sink disaster at threat level red. We also didn't realize this until after the sink counter was glued down. Hence the new topper counter top!

Sink Vanity turned Microwave Cabinet: $99

Appliance Spray Paint- $6

Ikea Counter- $3.50

We're really happy with the new microwave cabinet, it fits in with our whole modernization effort of the beach house perfectly!

Opperation Staircase- Completed!

2011-06-06T11:23:00.002-04:00

All throughout the month of May we had a deadline looming with the approaching Memorial Day holiday. That unofficial kick off of summer meant our beach condo rental season of the beach condo was gearing up to take off. Call me crazy, but I think our renters would be expecting stairs in a two floor condo. Which meant we had to find the time in the jam packed month to rock out the final steps to finishing up the stairs and hallway.

Desperate to not have a repeat of last years ridiculously stressful final project wrap up and pre-season cleaning, we made a realistic time line of what tasks were left. Being honest with ourselves and how much actual work was left made all the difference this year! Instead of stuffing everything into one workfest of a weekend we decided to stretch the time and break our project list into two weekends.

The To-Do list looked something like this:

- Install steps

- Poly and silica coat steps

-Install handrail

- Switch out Microwave cabinet

-Paint "new" media cabinet

- Hang wall art

- Uber deep clean

- Pack up all "our stuff" and put rental items out

- Get burned on beach

In case you don't remember, we decided to make our winter/spring project in the beach condo the staircase and hallway. The staircase was a beat up blue carpeted nightmare topped with a plastic tube as a handrail. Ever since we replaced the hallway/upstairs landing blue carpet with the same laminate wood flooring as downstairs it wasn't a huge project to freshen up the space, but one that was really needed!

Where did I leave off with the stairs...ah yes. I was pissing and moaning about staining the wood steps and how despite my best efforts I couldn't get the stain to absorb evenly. Sigh. Such is a nature of pine and light stains, you can apparently condition the wood all you want but it will still absorb the stain with varying degree. Either that or I just plain suck at one the easiest diy tasks one can do. The great news is that after applying three coats of brush on poly the steps looked 75% than they did when simply stained. Perfectly acceptable for something that is only going to get stepped on IMO.

A big thorn in our sides during this project was wtf to do for the handrail. We checked out every single availible option and debated at length about what to do. Finally, it got down to two weeks left before Memorial day and we needed to pull the trigger on something. As luck would have it, we drive right by the showroom and warehouse of one of the biggest suppliers of sprial staircases in the USA on our way to work. We stopped in on way home and talked to a super nice sales guy about our options. At first he showed us this gorgous custom oak banister that I was drooling over, but it was $900. So I kindly cut the sales chase and said "That's gorgeous, but we're looking for something much more economical and in the DIY range. What do you offer?"

Which is how we ended up with a $300 brushed stainless coil in the back of our car as we pulled away 20 minutes later. It was the cheapest option that looked the best and that we could DIY. A black factory powder coat was availible for an extra $150, which I would have loved to get but could not justify opening the wallet even further for. Even though the railing was way more than we wanted to spend it was justifiable in the fact that we could not find a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g else that work. And rather than continually spend money here and there for experimental items we bit the bullet and bought the item for full blown retail.

Then, by the end of the weekend we had this:

The stairs are complete and I LOVE THEM.

Want to see what we started with? Check out the first post of Opperation Staircase HERE.

Skeeto Update

2011-05-25T12:09:00.003-04:00

To follow up on my plea for mosquito advice here are the updates:

- a bat house is no beauno. Pete has put the ix-nay on that considering we back to woods with "natural" bat houses. It is true, we see plenty of bats playing in the evening air around our properties so no real need to attract more.

- fabric softener sheets= may help a bit. Last night I went out to work on my garden at dusk after work, and besides wearing leggings and high boots, I coated myself in Off and stuck fabric softener sheet around my person. One at the top of each boot and another in my ponytail. All bites received last night were on my lower back and upper thighs. I witnessed the bugs wanting (I could just tell they wanted to) to bite my knees and shins but ultimately steering clear of that area. No telling in how many sheets of fabric softener are needed for full body protection.

I'm wary of eating the raw garlic clove at day trick. Supposedly it makes you smell bad to mosquitoes, but I've tried it before for other health reasons and consuming raw garlic daily makes you smell bad in general. Garlic smell wafting outta your pores on the regular does not make you any friends. Unless you don't want friends. Then I highly recommend you swallow crushed raw garlic cloves with honey everyday before breakfast. Everyone will steer very clear, humans and bugs alike.

tiny little nest...

2011-05-23T09:43:00.003-04:00

Isn't this just the funniest little thing? Any ideas as to what it could be?

If you guessed a wee hornet nest you'd be right. This 1" mini city in the clouds was inside my (quite rusty) wheelbarrow. Sucks for the hornets, but I had to destroy the tiny nest being as how I a) hate hornets b) I had to use the wheelbarrow for an actual purpose and c) am not in the business of hornet farming.

Quite a difference in size when you compare this to the bee hive I found inside the Wee house while tearing out walls...

Dead Snake. Live Tree Planting.

2011-05-19T13:32:00.001-04:00

Problem: You have a mondo sized pile of dirt in your yard.

Issue: That dirt needs to level out a lot of yard square footage.

Final pickle: The task would break your back and cause a certain wife named me to stop talking to her husband after about hour 10 if done by hand with shovels and wheelbarrows. Potential for quite from jabber mouth wife- almost worth the sore muscles.

Solution: Ask brother in law if he would mind lending you his tractor for the job.

pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease

This all how we ended up with a kick ass tractor for a week to help us with getting the fill dirt spread to grade the land around the garage. All in all, the tractor was heavenly! It was such a workhorse and I think I'm in love. Not even kidding, I broached the topic of starting our search for one about two hours into using the borrow tractor. The thing just rocks. Buying one is not in the cards now, but maybe in the future, once we actually live in the Wee house, we'll be parking a tractor in our ginormous garage.

We also took advantage of the tractor by using to help us plant our long talked about willow tree. One of our long term landscaping goals was also to grow a weeping willow tree in the back of the back yard by the stream. The area is the perfect spot for planting a willow, they love being near a water source, lots of sun and should be kept father from structures with foundations since the root system can be extensive.

So why did we decide to go for the willow tree now? Time! Simply put, time is on our side with the house. When we do move into the house, in about a decade..., the tree will have had the necessary time to get established a little bit. In our personal experience with planting trees it takes about two years for the tree to get over the shock of transplanting and start to flourish. We did splurge for one older bigger tree at a nursery, and then trimmed the budget a bit by grabbing the glorified twig version from a big box store for much cheaper.

The older tree weighed a damn ton! Never under estimate how much a balled tree weighs people! It may look manageable, but I can assure they are quite the load. We learned that the hard way with our first married Christmas tree, a balled blue spruce that now is thriving in the Wee house yard. It just about killed our arm muscles to make that happen for a not quite four foot tree.

Using the tractor we were about to get the two willow trees and all of the necessary tree planting equipment- plus my super pale self - into the back yard with ease. Other tree planting equipment is a rake, shovel and brick of peat moss.

Funny thing about pictures is that while I look calm and smiley, the inside of me was gagging and trying not to look at the dead snake that Pete just beheaded which is just outside the frame of the shot.

As we rode the tractor to the backyard I had to hop off to grab my camera, right after I dismounted I saw the snake slithering away from the old shed. holymolyomg. I don't do slithery things. Screaming, and you better believe this former teeny bopper from jersey has a set of lungs on her, I ran back to the tractor and stood on top of it while freaking out. I grabbed the shovel, thrust it towards Pete screaming KILL IT. Poor guy didn't really have much choice in the matter what with his wife acting like a lunatic and all, he went ahead with beheading the snake.

Could we have let the snake live, yes. It wasn't going to do much to me besides give me a few (more) gray hairs if I ran into it again but I was freaked out and I don't respond well in situations like that andplusalso I flipping hate snakes. Afterwards I kept calling Pete Neville, which he didn't get at all because Deathly Hallows Pt.2 hasn't gotten released yet and he's never read the books. (Anyone else super excited for that scene? It's one of my favorites)

After the snake was dead we went on to the back yard to plant the trees. Planting trees in our yard is super easy since we don't have any bedrock laying just under our top soil. First you dig a big ass hole. We always aim for a hole twice the size of the root ball, and for the bigger tree the tractor did most of the digging. Then, you back fill the hole with a bit of the dirt and add some peat moss. Eyeball the amount to be even and enough that when you put the tree in the hole, it won't be completely buried. Trees are not tomatoes and should not be deeply buried when planting. We aim to get the root ball even or just above the ground.

Once the tree is in at the right level, put the rest of the leftover soil back. Water the crap out of the tree for a long time and don't be surprised if you don't see any growth or improvement right away. Trees take time to get established and over the shock of transplanting. At this point you stand back and admire the tree.

Plea for skeeter advice!

2011-05-13T14:43:00.000-04:00

This weekend I told Pete that I'm pretty sure mosquitoes subscribe to a newsletter that clues them in on my location, if there is one lonely bug in a zip code then it will find me. Or if there are 50 million, they will all find me for feasting on. Just me. I can be right next a group of people and no one else will walk away with bites. Something about my A+ blood makes their tiny little insect hearts sing with happiness.

The bites cause a major reaction on me as well, they get all puffy and itch like hell for days. Especially compared to Pete, who usually gets a bump that is gone in two days. I also don't usually stop scratching until I start bleeding and a teeny bit beyond that point. Which all makes for some (not very)attractive legs in the summer...

Part of me really wants to include a picture of my legs just so you can all see I'm not being a drama queen. My legs get tore up in the summer because of bugs. the other part of me doesn't want to gross out my readers with legs that look like they've laid down in an ants nest covered in honey.

I digress.

The point of all this is to ask for help. I would like to spend my 28th summer not looking like I bug bitten mess. For once I don't want to have to wear pants in august because the bites look like my lower legs have been attacked by some ravenous beast, and I don't want to have to go through a box of band-aids a week trying to make the bites heal without scars.

Please, give me any tricks you know of to get the skeeters away. I'll do and try them all. Anything from skin so soft to pure deet to eat three cloves of garlic a day is welcome advice. Has anyone had luck with lawn treatments? I currently coat myself in Off before leaving the house and multiple times a day when working outside. But I still get bites. Lots of bites. Including one under my eye that makes me look like I've been rumbling in alleys with dancing gang members that carry switch-blades.

Thank you.

Clearing the yard...

2011-05-11T11:27:00.000-04:00

Here is where I could go on and on and on about cleaning up the rest of the yard. But endless talking about yard work is really boring when I get down into the writing out the details. There isn't much of a method to clearing a yard either, so don't let anyone fool you into thinking there is. Pick a starting point and just work until it looks better. That method works for both big and small efforts.

Side yard waiting for clean -up.

We tackled the side yard, which was a mess of overgrown trees, creeping vines, cinder block and tree parts like roots and limbs. Since I'm a little bit more than scared of snakes I had this genius idea to beat the piss out of the piles/ground with a branch before going in to grab stuff. Smart eh? Scare any potential slithery things away! I'm pretty sure it worked since I didn't see any...on Saturday..

As the sun beat down on us, we worked on clearning everything up and piling it on the patio holding area. Cement in one pile, organic in another and random construction lumber in the final pile. There wasn't enough time to get to the dump, so everything sits waiting for this weekend when we're going to be taking at least one trip over to the county dump.

Our patio looks like it belongs with a crack house. I can't wait to tear that slab up and the lean-to down.

Cleaning up Concrete

2011-05-10T23:26:00.001-04:00

Right after the dirt got delivered, we hit the Wawa for breakfast and my coffee. The call for the dirt delivery came much earlier than we anticipated, so getting out of the door fast was in order for us to get over to the Wee house with a certain amount of quickness. That speedy exit meant that I didn't get a chance to brew my needed morning coffee at home.

I love that about South Jersey, you're never far from a Wawa :)

After chowing down and caffeinating in the back yard we got down to the second order of business for the morning, cleaning up all our random concrete piles around the yard. Some from the removal of the old "garage" foundation, others from the construction of our new garage and then the odd ball piles of cement that where littered about the yard. We had a little less than two hours to get the trailer loaded and hustle our butts over to the recycle center. In theory 120 minutes sounds like a decent amount of time, but when it is reference to unearthing and moving concrete- it is not nearly enough time.

We worked out a pretty great method of attack of the topsoil and concrete pile. I took one side with a bevy of buckets and one of my crowbars for poking into the dirt and pulling out the big slabs. Pete hit up the other side with a metal rake and the tractor cart to help us move the larger bits and full buckets up to the front yard.

The pile afterward the massive pick through, see the post from yesterday for the before shot.

Being mindful of the clock and how much weight our poor SUV can handle towing, we had to call it quits on loading the concrete around 11 and hightail it outta there to get the recycle center before they close the gates for the day. We got there 5 minutes prior to last call and 35 minutes before closing time.

Once again, and certainly not for the last time, we found ourselves under the high tension wires unceremoniously chucking cement and cinder blocks into a giant pile of rubble. To avoid hitting the other with an errant throw to the pile we work on different sides of the trailer.

It took us 13 minutes to clear the trailer. Boom. Done.

The best part, all the disposal is freeeeeeeee and gets recycled. At the county dump we would have had to pay and everything would have ended up in the landfills. I love this place, I just wish they would take my wallpapered plaster walls.

Fun fact: Dirt is not cheap

2011-05-09T09:46:00.005-04:00

I have sunburn on my back, bug bites on my neck, blisters on my palms, several broken fingernails and a bruised forearm. All that adds up to one really long weekend working outside on the Wee house. It really felt good to get back to business on the house, and busting out these long weekends of hard work. There is much to talk about, including the story of how Pete killed snake with a shovel. But that and other stories will come at a later time.

Despite the fact that the house is half gutted and the garage isn't completed, we decided to spend this weekend focusing on improving the yard a bit. No massive landscape effort to turn it into paradise, but we really needed to clean up the yard like woah. There were pockets of really overgrown jungle vines, random bits of the old garage's cement foundation piled up and cinder blocks scattered about. It just wasn't pretty and if we let everything to continue to grow with wild abandon over the summer it would be much harder to handle in the fall.

A major part of the weekend for us was going to be getting some fill dirt delivered and then working on grading the land around the garage/our driveway and side yard areas. The "natural" flow that our yard had before was disturbed by the new garage, and we really needed to boost the dirt up around the building. At first we started getting quotes on how much a load of topsoil would be, thinking that it better to just use that because of it's ability to grow grass and fill in low spots of land. However, the prices we were getting just put top soil out of our budget- it was about $22- 27$ per yard, we needed 18 yards and every single place was charging extra high delivery fees thanks to the current hefty price of diesel fuel. Then we found the price sheet for Winzingers, our trusty free concrete recycling center, and topsoil there was only $15 a yard, BUT fill dirt was only $5 a yard. Plus the insanely high cost to get it delivered, which was more than the actual dirt.

Our poor neighbors had to deal with this as their wake-up call on Saturday morning. I felt like a jerk for disturbing the neighbor calm with a dump load of dirt at that early hour.

The total still ended up being freakishly high for just dirt, but the final bill was a lot easier on our wallets with the fill option. Although, these prices really help to change the old adage of "cheaper than dirt", cause dirt is not cheap anymore.

We'll get a small load of topsoil in the fall and use that as a thin frosting layer for the grass seed something to grab onto. So what if we had to pick part of a curb and asphalt out of the pile, the fill dirt was going to serve it's purpose of filling in the low spots...

The dirt delivery was just the kick off of our hard working weekend! Anyone else accomplish a ton during this past weekend? Or did you get to enjoy fabulous weather without having cheap dirt stuck to the sweat that was all over your body?

no go on plaster disposal plans

2011-05-03T10:07:00.000-04:00

When we took our leftover cement and cinder block to the recycle center we also brought along a bucket of plaster with us. The point was to ask the center if they would accept the plaster for recycling for free. If they did take it, that would save us bundle of cash on the county dump fees where you are charged by weight. Plaster is heavy y'all.

Good news: They'll take it.

Bad news: They won't take it if it has wallpaper attached.

Dream Killing News: Every inch of our house has wallpaper on top of the plaster.

For about five minutes I debated how practical it would be to scrape off a century's worth of wallpaper from all remaining plaster surfaces of our house before demoing the plaster for recycling. Then I remembered- our old wallpaper seemed to be put up with a permanent sticking charm. No amount of warm vinegar/fabric softener water will loosen the wallpaper's death grip on our walls and this delusional plan of mine shouldn't even be attempted.

So we're back to square one when it comes time demo the rest of our walls. Buckets and paying for the county dump. Fun times.

Saving money to lose it

2011-05-02T11:44:00.001-04:00

This year Pete and I have been focusing on lowering our financial output. Which is a fancy pants way of saying we've busy been searching out ways to save our dollars. You always read advice in how to save that has you watching the nickles and dimes, but we decided to attack with the big guns and go after a few ginormous bills that where making our checkbooks weep.

Besides, I already brew my morning cup of coffee at home and forgo the fancy afternoon lattes.

First up was the home insurance on the Wee house. Do you have any idea how much coverage on a vacant property that is in the midst renovation costs? It is mind-blowingly expensive. When when we got the coverage it was hard to find someone who would even write the policy for us.

What? You don't want to insure this hot mess of a house that is sitting empty and gutted? I can't even imagine why...

A few months ago, Pete's parents found themselves with an empty house that they needed to insure. They got refered to a company that writes vacant property policies and the quote came in way less than what we were paying. Call us flabbergasted. We raced to the phone and inquired about a policy for ourselves. Turns out, we could get the same coverage we have now ( we have a few riders on our policy for injury because of the reno's ) through them for about $1,500 less than our current payment. Yeah...That is comma in our savings amount.

Needless to say, we switched insurance and are super happy to put that money into the garage and renovations instead.

Next up was our Wtown taxes. New Jersey has notoriously high property taxes. It is a fact of life for living in the Garden State and the price we all pay for being with a 30 minute drive to mall or Target at any location in the state. Way back in 2007, when the market was still *hot*, our entire town got reassessed on the home values and after that reassessment our property taxes doubled. Which was not so awesome.

Last year we failed to sell our house for something very close to the assessed value. (Also not awesome). Which led us to believe something along the lines of " Hey. The town is wrong. We can't sell our house for this much, so it can't be worth X amount." So this tax year, we filed for the lowering of our property assessment, which would lower our property taxes.

The whole petitioning process cost us $5 and about an hours worth of time in filling out forms. We asked for an insanely low amount, but it was also the price that we honestly think that our house could possibly sell for if we needed to unload it asap. So there was some justification in our minds for the price point we choose. The adjuster called us, and basically was like " um, how are you asking for this price? There is no way you're house could be worth this little when compared to the comps."

Ahhh we beg to differ...

None of those other comps have a train running next to their house. And despite all the appraisers, property assessors, real estate agents and mortgage lenders we've had out to the house- not one person can give us a nailed down price on how much the train hurts the value of our home.

We met with the lovely lady who came by to inspect the digs, there was home tour conducted of casa and property. She sat down with us and agreed with our appeal. Not quite for the rock bottom price we proposed, but that was a long shot anyway. We reached a happy middle number and signed off on the OK. The new taxable assessment is about 12.5k lower than the previous amount and brings our taxes down a sweet couple hundred a year.

Despite the fact that it means our house has lost value (uh-duh) I'm still filing this whole tax appeal process as #winning.

Did I mention that we got notice that our college rental property taxes are going up? Oh, I haven't? Well that is long story for another time, but in the shortest summary: Taxes are going up the exact amount we just saved between the insurance and appeal.

#taxesareforsuckers

Apparently winter can't last forever

2011-04-21T11:25:00.003-04:00

The weather is warming up finally down here in South Jersey, which means that with each rise of the mercury my mood is correspondingly rising as well. The rise in mood helps me to remain positive even while working outside on the garage and renovations, funny how something like spring can help you recapture your motivation to work hard. I still have to double layer my pants when I work over at the Wee house, leggings under jeans, but no longer do I need to wear a fuzzy hat and gloves!

Last weekend we got a ton of stuff done for the house- including taking an entire load of cement to a recycling center and DIY disposing it for free! Sure you have to drive back into an extra creepy looking desolate back woods South Jersey area, complete with humming high tension wires, to get to the deposit pile. However anywhere we can save money during this renovation is so helpful, especially when you factor in how much the cement chunks would have cost to throw out at the dump, so I'll take the atmosphere of a slasher flick to save money. I'm guessing we're saving about $400 to DIY ourselves like this, which is a sweet chunk of change that we could use on other things instead.

In other related news, we got our first failed inspection for the garage barn. The demo permit could not be closed out yet, due to all that nasty piles of concrete and cinder we have laying around. The bright "fail" sticker is so sad looking on our table. We're working on rectifying that failed situation and out of sympathy for our neighbors who've been staring at all this leftover shit for over a year.

Warmer weather means a lot more work to get done around here. After such a long blah winter though, I'm ready to step it up in the home department.

I heart distractions

2011-04-07T09:42:00.004-04:00

If diversionary and self-distraction tactics was a class, I'd get an A+.

Currently I'm using up all my old banked yoga classes to breath deep and cope with the fact we just got told about the current state of our townhouse rental, and it isn't pretty. I'm fuming mad that adults would treat a decent property like it was some crack house in Camden. Then I remember that shitheads are all around and in the course of renting to college students I'd be sure to get some doozeys. Like the time our old tenants didn't want to tell us the toilet was broken and we got a water bill that was the equivalent of filling two Olympic swimming pools. Part of me wants to send pictures of the place with all the damage to their parents...

This all leads to me to two things.

The first is a favorite mantra of mine, I repeat it myself when I'm having a rough go of it and feel a little down. "time marches on". In a day, week, month, year...I'll be somewhere new. Feeling something else. Knowing that despite what it going on in my life, time will go on and my life will change with it.

The second is my current obsession with hunting down the *perfect* Chesterfield sofa. I have an obsessive personality, so expect to hear about this couch about 9,775 more times in the coming days. Also expect for me to never actually purchase a Chesterfield, but only to feverishly stalk one down in my free time.

Remember: commitment issues + a cat whose radar is set on "destroy all furniture" + garage build budget + current couches in decent condition = not the greatest idea for me to buy a couch. However, this hunt is the perfect diversionary tactic from our townhouse issues of late. Something else for my scattered mind to focus on, rather than just being cranky about the rental.

My poor husband bears the brunt of my "omg I love this" craigslist find random emails. They usually go something like this...

In regards to this posting:

A LEATHER COUCH I BOUGHT NEW AND HAVE OWNED FOR TEN YEARS.

SLIGHT WEAR NO TEARS OR HOLES TOTALLY RE-SPRUNG

CAN BE SEEN IN KENNETT SQUARE PA. BY APPOINTMENT

3800.00 CASH ONLY !!!

From: Eva

To: Peter

Wizzing with happy over this gorgeous couch Boo on the price though. http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/fuo/2309015131.html

From: Peter

To: Eva

CRAP WOW that’s expensive for a 10 yr old couch that the leather looks bad worn, not nice worn! Color is kinda neat but not too sure about it. But still, the price? They have to be kidding. What are they $6k new?

From: Eva

To: Peter

They range in price, but you usually aren’t looking at much more than 6-7k for a new one. Even the ones from Restoration Hardware aren’t as much as this one! I thought the color was awesome! It’s “unexpected” :) But the price? Really? Someone is high.

From: Peter

To: Eva

That’s just ridiculous. If you pay $6k for anything new, you have to expect to lose 1/3 of the value as soon as you walk out of the showroom. Even most cars are close to that. That comes to $3900 and that was in 2001 – and that’s if the 10 yrs is true which I have my doubts.

From: Eva

To: Peter

Sometimes I wonder about these CL people. What logic goes through their head as they looked at the couch and said “ Self. That couch is worth more than a 10 year old Toyota. There are going to be buyers lining up to my purchase my circa-1994 blue sofa for sure”

If it was 90% off that price I’d buy it. Or at least think about buying it.

The End.

Faux Shopping

2011-04-01T10:47:00.006-04:00

Happy April Fools!

No jokes here, mainly because I'm terrible at playing jokes on people. My face can't stay still and before three words of the prank are out of my mouth I'm doubled over in a giggling fit. Can we say, sure give away? This is why I can't play poker, despite being part of the same body my mouth has a mind of its own and I'm always apt to blurt out things that need to stay inside!

Since I'm still a wee bit of a grump over the house renovation and situation stuff I've now turned my attention to my favorite form of house therapy- Pretty pictures and imaginary shopping. That usually helps me refuel with inspiration and ideas for the future. So here is a smattering of the random shopping that I've been obsessively looking at lately: Ralph Lauren Talmadge Hill Bedding:

Specifically the large plaid duvet cover of the collection. I got my hands on the duvet at the outlet and it was very much still out of my price range, but I did marvel over what a quality item it seemed to be. The fabric was luscious, warm and inviting for long winters naps. I think the Americana Preppy plaid look fit into our houses colonial cottage styling well. Our old duvet cover is getting a little worn after three seasons, so I'm going to make it my personal challenge to procure this RL duvet for our bed by next winter at a great price.

Chesterfield Sofas: Specifically a well broken-in used Chesterfield. Something about their stately tufted lines makes me weak in the knees. Even if a good 50% of my friends say they scream "lawyers office". Each week I comb through Craigslist to see if any are available within a four hour drive and if they could be 'the one' for me. Certainly we don't need a new couch right now, especially because I think I would crumple to the floor in hysterical tears the first time my cat used the couch as a scratching post. Even though there isn't likely to be a new sofa that crossed my door in a long long time I still love to hunt for one.

I think I'm one of those extra weird people who enjoys the search for an item way way way more than actually owning it. Which would explain why I'm terrible with commitment to things. Except Pete. He's awesome and I'm very committed to him. But I don't really think of him as a "thing".

Next up on my obsessive search is a rug that is as perfect as the Dash and Albert Cat's Paw rug for our dining room but one that fits our budget better. I did a little measuring and we need a 7x9 or 8x8 rug on the dining room floor so it doesn't look like someone wearing a tiny coat. The Cat's Paw jumps from 5x8 (too small) for $400-ish right on up to 8x10 for $800. Way out of my pocketbook's comfort zone right now for a rug. No matter how awesome and perfect it may be....And despite my constant searching I just can't find anything that makes me jump up and down with excitement yet.

Here is what I'm looking for in a vauge, short descriptions:

- Would like it to have yellow in it

-Vintage looking a plus

- No comtempory designs

- Doesn't look cheap ( hard to tell over the internet)

- Light and colorful

- Under $300

Lately I've been checking up on PB twitter account, to see if they are going to run any special promotions on rugs for the outlets. I've been there before when they ran a "take an additional 50%" promo, so my fingers are crossed that is coming again this spring. I'll for sure drive my rear end out to Lancaster to see what kind of potential deal could await there.

Anything anyone else is obsessively fake shopping for lately?

Crank Pot is Me

2011-03-29T10:19:00.004-04:00

New Jersey missed the memo that it is currently spring. We're dealing with January temperatures here where the mercury dips down into the freezing zone at night and barely gets enough sunshine out during the day to do a damn warmth wise. It is so cold for March that we had to turn out heater back on, after we though we shut it down for the season two weeks ago.

In this weather it tends to be the wind that does you in comfort wise. Turning an otherwise enjoyable sunny cold weather day, into some sort of horrible blustery experience where you curse the sky for taunting you with cold sunshine and whatever the reason is that makes you be outside. It's been in that cold sunshine where we've been spending some quality weekend time at the garage lately.

However, once there I've been maxing out after two hours of work because the weather and house situation makes me incredibly grumpy. Pete witnesses his normally way perky wife morph into some sort of snappy bitch from hell in about 90 minutes. The last half hour has got to be torture for him as I stomp around the place ready to snap necks, complete with eye rolling and glares. Until I finally give up work in a fit and go to the warmest place in the house to stew in silence alone. Sitting on the plastic wrapped screen porch on top of an empty dresser. Staring at the rusty screens and astro turfed cement, wondering what the hell I was thinking with this house, with all our houses, until it is time to leave.

The worst part about my fits is that I can't stop it from happening and nothing short of leaving the work site gets me back to normal. My natural disposition is to be an optimist that has a perma smile plastered on my face. That crummy attitude isn't who I am at all. But the houses are just draining me right now. I feel like they're four giant leeches that I can't shake off even though I so desperately want to be rid of them and move on with my life.

Anyone whose ever done any home renovations who didn't tell you that they hit low points along the journey is full of lies. Lying to safe face about their decision. Lying to themselves. Or so pumped full of something that makes all work blend into a happy fuzzy haze.

Overall, I'm frustrated at our shitty homes and a little burnt out. Those feelings are just my reality right now. Will I turn around again? Yes. I know I will. Being cyclical with my emotions is a standard MO for me. Sometime along the line I'll get my optimism back, my drive and the ability to pound out 12 hour shifts of hard work for our future on our craptastic houses. But currently, I want to stew in the cold non-spring weather being a miserable bitch about everything house related.

There you go.

True confessionals of a DIY'er.

Pretty new air nail gun!

2011-03-23T14:01:00.000-04:00

Our air nailer is dead.

Died. Gone. Bought the farm. Bit the spoon. Finished.

You might remember this is the same air nailer that pooped out some time back in September. When it up and left Pete up on the roof high and dr, where he had to start swinging a hammer in order to finish the purlins. At that time we debated buying a new nailer, but being in the midst of shelling out big bucks for the garage construction we really didn't want to part with the $200 it would cost for a spanky new air nailer. Thankfully Pete was able to apply his ridiculously mechanical brain towards the nailer, opened it up and spiffed it back up to life.

And then a few months later, Pete fell from the second story of the garage. During that fall, he dropped the air nailer onto the cement floor and then landed a sheet of plywood combined with his entire body weight on top of the nailer. Apparently all those things are a deadly combo for an already on the brink nailer, because shortly after all that happened, the nailer ceased to work indefinitely.

In case it is not abundantly clear from my posts- WE NEED A FRAMING AIR NAILER.

Since we try not to look at dropping two Benjamin's lightly, a ton of research went into finding a new nailer. Almost immediately we discounted getting the same air nailer, a Porter Cable, again. Overall we weren't thrilled with the longevity performance. It wasn't that old, only about 6 years, and did break once before dropping it onto cement. We don't count the falling incident against the performance, since it was human error. Frankly I would expect something to last longer given the amount of use the nailer got combined with how well we (mostly) treat our tools.

Shopping for a new nailer at ye' olde orange warehouse store.

There was much debate about using clipped head vs. round heads, as well as which brand we should go for between Bostitch, Dewalt and Hitachi. Why those brands? Bostitch is the brand of our siding nailer and we've been pleased with that so far. Dewalt because I'm a total whore for their brands and believe they make a quality product. Hitachi is another brand we've heard good things about and is aimed at Pros, so we thought it could handle the amount of work that we'll be throwing toward it during this renovation.

Ultimately, it was the clipped head Hitachi that won out.

Which I find, strangely enough, really pretty. That just excites the girly girl inside of me to use it more!

Happy St.Pat's!

2011-03-17T12:02:00.008-04:00

For our first anniversary back in 2009 Pete and I took a trip to Emerald Isle...

He got food poisoning and I drank my weight in Guinness and Bulmers.

Once Pete was on the mend, we spent a lovely morning learning about our favorite beer

and I finally got to see a real castle!

although I never did pretend I was a princess when I was little. Usually my imagination had me as the stable hand or had some equally not glamorous position within the castle walls.

This uber lame and extremely last minute photo essay (which is composed of snatched pictures from facebook) covers about 1/10th of our Ireland trip and is my way of wishing everyone a Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Stain boo-boo

2011-03-15T09:37:00.004-04:00

This weekend marked my first ever solo staining project...the stair treads for our spiral staircase.

Let's just say, my staining for this project wouldn't be categorized as winning.

The truth is the physical process of staining the wood was incredibly easy. Brush on, count to ten, wipe off and then let dry. The frustrating and non-winning part came when I tried to get a uniform stain on the wood. Despite using a wood condition prior to the stain, my warm honey colored stain came out looking like I dropped melted red crayons onto the stairs and then chiseled the wax off with a putty knife. Random spots drank up a lot of the red and parts of the stairs ended up looking uber splotchy. Overall the stairs look great and I'm really happy with the actual color of the stain, just sad that it looks so blotchy.

I'm not sure if I need more practice, another type of wood or a different color stain all together I've heard that darker color stain is easier to work with because it just cover so much and makes the imperfections a lot harder to notice.

Sigh.

Since these imperfections are noticable (especially to me) I'm not sure about the next steps I should take to fix/hide them. The option is out there to sand down and re-stain every stair but I'm afraid that would just leave me in the same predicament and would eat up a lot of time. Currently my favorite option is to remind myself that the stairs are going to be set in a darker corner of the condo, away from direct sunlight and are going to get stepped on by a whole host of not-so-gentle feet over the years. When I tell myself that, 'perfection and show quality' isn't what is what is exactly needed there. Also, I may have deluded myself into thinking that a coat of poly will help. Don't ask me how or why, I just hold on to the thought that poly will make it all better.

Hopefully I just needed to step away from the project and revist it with fresh eyes that aren't so critical. Maybe the blotches will have magically fixed themselves yesterday?!

Am I the only one out there that has failed on staining pine with a light color? Wait. Don't answer. I don't think I can handle the truth of knowing that I fubar'ed something that is so basic in the DIY world...

Opperation Staircase... p3.

2011-03-07T10:59:00.004-05:00

A weekend or two later, Pete and I returned to beach condo ready to finish painting the stairs. As much as the two toned look works for some people, we wanted the whole staircase to be a pretty glossy black. In the interest of being able to still use the stairs- you know, to access the only bathroom and bedroom in the joint- we had to work using the paint every other stair method.

Which how we ended up with this spunky black and gray painted staircase after the second go-round with primer was applied. The black stairs were dry and we were able to walk upstairs very carefully while waiting for the gray primer to dry.

The poor dog was so confused about why she couldn't follow us up the stairs anymore! We had to carry her up and down the stairs to make sure she didn't end up a mess of white puppy streaked with paint.

Left of the project To-Do's:

Reveal pretty all-black stairs! (They look awesome. so awesome that I forgot to snap a pic.)

Find flexible stair rail. Any suggestions? We threw out the hideous plastic tube that used to be on there. It was really bad looking and we didn't want to be tempted to put it back on there out of laziness/desperation

Router the wooden steps out. It took multiple attempts (last count was 4 tries) but we finally got all the wood we needed for the project.

Stain steps.

Attach steps to stairs.

Show off the new door that Pete built for our heater closet.

Find/make wall art for stairway walls.

Find a free weekend to take the trip down to the condo to put it all together. This alone is going to be tricky for us, suddenly we're on the verge of spring around here and I'm finding our calendars are threatening us having no available weekend free time.

Priming and Painting the Stairs...

2011-03-02T12:06:00.001-05:00

Moving back to our current spiral staircase renovation:

We left off with the stairs ready for an application of our heavy duty primer, Shelac Based Zinsser primer tinted a lovely shade of gray. The tint helps to provide a perfect base to our glossy black paint, or any darker paint.

Why Shellac? Mainly because it is uber durable and offers a great surface for the actual paint to grab onto. We really don't want to ever have to repaint the stairs again during our tenure of ownership at the condo, and they get a lot of high traffic abuse during the summer months. You can see in the pictures that a lot of the stairs had some rust stain issues, and even though we were using black paint, we didn't want anything to leak through the final coat. Also, it's made from beetles, like crawly little bugs, I find that pretty interesting...

When it came time for painting, we did the every other stair method for coverage,that way the we could still utilize the stairs, since the only bathroom in the place is on the second floor. Hoofing it up the stairs every other one with no railing is murder on your knees and for people with balance issues (me.).

A few hours later, after the primer was extra dry... we cracked open the black paint and started rolling away. That night we were under an extreme time crunch, so the black paint had to get down and then we needed to get outta there asap. Which worked out because the fumes from the paint and primer were almost overwhelming us. The night ended with us getting outta there without being able to take a moment to step back and check out the transformation taking place.

Look for Less: Couch Edition

2011-03-01T10:24:00.004-05:00

I haven't noticed the Oasis at C&B until recently, when it caught my eye in the catalog spread. Very casual in comfy chic kinda way. Something I'd want to put in a sun room or in a shore house. Not that long ago, I got a chance to plop down on the Oasis in the store.

( It was awesome. I love couches that aren't mine)

Then I noticed the Landon sofa at Macy's:
The price comes in at $1,099, which is about 1k off the full retail price of the Oasis.

There are some differences I can spot right off the bat in the picture but you do have to go photo hunting for most of them...The one thing I'd want to make sure of is that the bottom cushions are as cushy and wonderful as the C&B version. They don't look as full in the photos, but photos can be a little deceiving.

Operation Staircase

2011-02-24T11:37:00.003-05:00

First of its kind project for us, redoing a metal spiral staircase.

The staircase at our beach condo was in sad ( but still serviceable) shape. The blue carpeting was worn down and perpetually a bit dirty looking. All the spindles and risers had a not so fresh coat of white paint that was heavily chipped and marked with the smudges of countless suitcases and sneakers. But the topper was really the handrail, which was a plastic tube. Like a giant crazy straw.

Those staircase decor items of the 3-d fish and hanging towel? Long gone.

Looking up the view wasn't much better...Hello $30 rickety fan that made clicky noises but provided much needed air flow in the condo.

While the staircase as a whole wasn't too offending, it was really Dull. Out of the whole 700sq ft condo, the staircase is the only little bit of unique interest in the place. Stuck in the corner of blahvilles that is the kitchen.

Since the kitchen is way out of budget right now (WAY), we decided to focus on the stairs for our winter project. I know, cause we needed a "winter project" like we needed another hole in our heads.

First, Pete took off the weirdo handrail and a top step to use as our template. We're lucky in the fact that these stairs are solid metal steps underneath. I think it helps tons on the stability and DIY ability for this project. Had the stairs been more of an open skeleton underneath I'm not sure I would have felt as confident about redoing the treads as I was.

If you look for the pink ugg in the picture below, you can see we've already replaced the blue carpeting on the landing with leftover laminate from the downstairs. Thumbs up for the improvement and for using something we already owned!

Before painting I got out my bucket of water and cleaned off the walls. I'm sure most of you are like this as well, but I feel compulsive about having REALLY clean the walls before painting. The idea of all that painted in grime makes me feel... like I'm committing some sort of DIY crime. Sometimes I tell myself the amount of prep I do is why my painting projects always seem to take longer than they should, especially compared to other bloggers and their gold medal antics in the speed painting olympics. SomedayI should just face the fact that I'm a pretty slow painter. Call me a easily distracted daydreamer.

Being Mr. Up and Up on safety, Pete measured the stairs and the differences they had in height from each other. Turns out, our stairs were out of code. As not a one was a matching distance or within the right range from the other. Awesome. So in the interest of safety/covering our asses and being within code Pete took almost an entire afternoon to move the stairs. You can see the bare metal on the center pole how far some of the the stairs were moved.

Next up, the ultimate primer application...

Happy Birthday Mom!

2011-02-22T10:17:00.003-05:00

Happy birthday to my mom! My numbero uno commenter, reader and all around blog stalker. I love you and hope you are enjoying your snowny birthday.

My mom loves herself some blogs, so other readers who are not my mother ( I'm guessing 5 of you) feel free to post your blog links in the comments section! Give her (and myself) some new reading material.

PS: I got you a present! It's from HERE.

No, not baby booties.

Nightmare house

2011-02-21T09:43:00.003-05:00

Last night I had a nightmare that we had another house, one I had completely forgotton about. For a few minutes after waking I was panicked that we did acutally own a fishing shack in the middle of a swampy bay area.

Phew.

floor seeking a fun rug. must like vaccuums and pets.

2011-02-17T11:18:00.003-05:00

Currently we have a half done garage, a staircase that is missing the actual stairs and an entire house in the middle of being torn down to the studs. And what is the one thing I keep constantly thinking about?

A rug for our dinning room.

More specifically this rug:

the Dash and Albert Cat's Paw Rug.

I love how it's full of fun color and whimsy, while being a little old fashioned modern. Got all that? Those are the buzz words I'm using now to describe my design sense going forward for our house(s).

Ever since we brought home our lovely new table last May, it kicked off our slow and completely unnecessary ( but wanted) spruce up of the dinning room. The two of us shopped for and debated chairs, stools and a settee before settling on our current seating solutions. Seen here for the wrap up of the search, it only took about five months to get to that point. Now I'm back on the rug hunt, estimated time to completion from kick off of project- 1 year. Yeah, I'll be happy if I have a rug on the floor by May.

I'm pretty sure I'm focusing on this rug with such intensity because, well, it's easy. So easy you might meet it under the bleachers after school. Compared to every other project going on, the idea of buying said rug and just simply rolling it out in the dining room is just so appealing.

Now all I'm waiting on is the email from Pete where he tells me the rug is hideous and I must be out of my mind to like it. It's a fun repartee we have going on lately. You should have heard the *spirited* discussion we had this weekend about trim colors in the beach condo...

Your opinion- hideous rug? Should I keep looking? or can you see the appeal?

Checking in

2011-02-16T11:08:00.003-05:00

Quick apologies are in order as I've been taking a little break from blogging lately. Everything is Ok! No major upsets or categorically life changing events have happened. I'm just going along living everyday life in New Jersey. Day in, Day out.

My full-time-adult-grown-up job has hit a busy spot though, working those extra hours are zapping my brain cells hard core. By the time I wearily close down my computer at the end of the day I'm completely spent and have lost all ability to form cohesive thoughts for the blog. Since my job gives us the bucks to help pay for our houses, it is pretty important for me to focus on getting my work done before updating here. No matter how much I wish the situation was reversed!

Just because the blog has been silent doesn't mean the projects have stopped! We've been working away on beach condo stairs and are completely done with phase one of the project. The phase where I'm pretty sure I lost my sense of smell due to marine quality oil based paint.

Demo: In Progress

2011-02-03T11:45:00.000-05:00

Believe it or not, I like in progress pictures better than the before usually. There is something about this stage of demo that is so exciting to the inhaled too much plaster dust renovator. You can see the result of your work right away and that is incredibly gratifying during a large project like this. At the same time there is still much more to demolish and discover about the house, which makes my crowbar jump with anticipation of what is to come.

The fun of demo helps to even out the disgusting moments of demo. Like when you tear out a bathroom sink and discover an insane amount of mouse poop underneath. Or when you throw up in your mouth from another poop discovery.

Shadow or No Shadow

2011-02-02T08:26:00.001-05:00

Happy Groundhog Day.

I hate groundhogs.

Click here to find out why.

peace out paneling

2011-01-31T10:29:00.002-05:00

We finished with the removal of the paneling up in the one bedroom. It went along swimmingly well! It was almost too easy to pull the panels off and throw them out the window. Even though I bent Mr. Smashy in the process. Who bends their crowbar?

There is something so gratifying about tearing out those ugly panels. You see such results in short order that it helps to motivate you along to tear out more! I especially love seeing the real house behind the panel. Gives me a better feel of the house, the history of it and what it might have looked like before the invasion of wood paneling.

Like the different wallpaper I found behind some panels. Pure freaking love. At one point in time, this house was styled in fabulous wallpaper. I weep for the fact that it is no longer there. Can you imagine how different this house would look if all the paneling was never put in? They would have never destroyed the original trim in order to put the paneling in! Everywhere you looked would have been awesome vintage wallpaper bordered by chunky wood moldings.

I wonder if there is anything we're doing to the house that makes people want to punch us over? Or give us a good smack upside the head? I'm sure there is...

BYOG- Bring Your Own Gloves

2011-01-29T11:25:00.002-05:00

We just got our oil tank completely filled up.

My wallet is gasping for breath.

No wonder we keep the house at 55 during the winter.

Excuse me while I go get a hat and put on my fuzzy blue robe.

Back into the swing of things...

2011-01-25T10:50:00.000-05:00

When you start demo'ing a room it helps to have a plan of attack. Even if the eventual goal is to have that entire room torn down to the studs, you still have to have the steps planned from A to end point Z. It seems almost ironic to you need to plan out the mass chaos that you are about to impart upon the room. But taking a few minutes to mentally plot out your crowbar attack saves such frustration and effort that plotting the destruction is so worth it!

Here is how I started with our upstairs bedroom. I knew that paneling would be the big thing that had to go and that was my main objective item to get out of there.

First up was to tear out the makeshift closet up on the back wall. After that 'closet' came down I looked up, which is when I realized that the ceiling tiles should/had to come down before the wall panels did. I had to take the ceiling down first for this room, but it is also usually best to work from the top down when demo'ing a room.

Closet bar and shelf are now on the ground hanging out next to our amazing propane work heater. That heater is the best way to take a work space from freezing eyeballs temperature up to a pleasant frostbite feeling. And as an added bonus, it looks kinda like R2D2. Almost.

The ceiling tiles were a lightweight pressed paper product and thankfully were tongue and groove style stuck up there. Which made them really easy to pull down when I didn't have to worry about any errant bonks on the head. Crazy easy to jam my crowbar (Mr. Smashy) up and just pull pull pull, they came down with almost no effort. I started stacking each tile into neat(ish) piles. Right next to the second makeshift closet of the room. Who know you could have so many faux closets in one room?

Once the tiles were off the ceiling, I went around the room and pried off all the trim. Which was annoying in the fact that all I wanted to do was start taking off the paneling! But the trim was a necessary step before the paneling. All the trim was well attached to the walls and would NOT budge no matter how hard I tried to pull it off with the whole panel. Bummer. Whomever put up the paneling did it right, if there is even such a way of putting of fake wood paneling right.

Finally, I got to start on getting the paneling off. Thankfully it came off with almost no fight. The glue that was used to hold it up had long since petrified and was hard as a rock. A small benefit to working in the freezing weather.

Where was Pete? Knocking down our suprisingly sturdy fake closet. It really helped to open up the room back to its original shape. This house is so disjointed and messed up that it makes me laugh. Doors where windows should be, parts of the wall missing, holes cut in the floor... sigh. Got to uncover it all to see what we're working with here.

current projects

2011-01-18T11:02:00.000-05:00

We're back on the project front right now...

Currently our focus is on two exciting things, one ongoing and one that shouldn't take us longer than the winter.

- Demo on the Wee house when we have a few spare hours on the weekends

and

- Figuring out stair treads for our beach condo's spiral staircase

If you guessed that the wee house demo was the ongoing project, you'd be a winner! It will constantly be our "filler" project between major to-do's for now. The demo has been going along swimmingly well these last few weekends. Even though we move a little slower in the cold, I've been very pleased at what has gotten done during our few smashing hours over there. You forget that sometimes demo can be so gratifying for the renovator soul. Fast demo can remind me that maybe, just maybe, we won't be stuck with a crappy house for the rest of our natural lives. And that with continual hard work there is more than a snowballs chance in hell that we'll actually turn this house into something nice.

I'm going to file this optimistic moment away for when I really need it.

Which I'm sure will be soon.

The before shot of the room we've been focusing on currently...

As for the stair treads at the beach condo, we're still shopping around for the right material for them. Like all our other projects it has been a lot of up in the air "what should we do" discussing. Waffling back and forth with what our budget will be and how to get the biggest bang for our bucks combined with ease of DIY ability. So far we're leaning towards cutting out the treads from wood and staining them.

The before shot of our stairs with their blue carpet, chipping white paint and plastic handrail.

Why work on the beach condo when we have so many other projects going on, like a crap hole of a giant house? Simple- because it needs love to. The beach house was dated and was uncomfortable at times to stay in. In order for us to maximize our investment, we needed to be able to attract renters and have ourselves be comfortable there in the off season. Hence the slow climb out of the early 90's to get the condo up and kicking. Last year we invested a ton of money and time into the condo, which has resulted in some great improvements. This year we wanted scale back and take a breather from the heavy duty major projects down there.

Which is why our only project for down there this off season was to get the stairs and teeny tiny hallway done. Paint, new stairs and a new door for our heater closet. Thats all! Maybe I'm over simplifying the steps by condensing them down into three items, but it will be a (relatively) small project that should have a nice impact in further improving the place.

Year ahead plans

2011-01-14T10:39:00.001-05:00

Currently my head is swirling with a ton of fresh new ideas for 2011.

When my head is full like this it is hard for me to pick out the specific bits to get them down on here. There is just so much to do and I'm thinking about it all. But I'll try to pick out the big and interesting stuff so you guys can get a peek at what we (might) have in store for all our houses this year.

Major goal of the year:

Finish the garage.

Based on our guesstimate, we have about 10 more solid weekends of working on the garage until we can call it complete. Since projects always run longer than we think, I'd say it is safe to put money down on it really taking about 12 more weekends for a solid wrap up.

Left to do (not in order):

Regrade the land around the garage

Build the car port on the side for our everyday drivers

Get the top section of the back wall up

Prime, paint and install the batten boards

Paint the garage

Paint and Install the garage doors

Build and install copula.

Put down sub-floor upstairs

Build staircase to second story

Install back windows

Secondary Projects:

Fix up the stairs and hallway of beach house

- new stair treads, painting, decor and new heater door-

Tear out the upstairs of the Wee house

- already started but continue on with the de- paneling and carpet removal, get to crusty plaster tear out-

Clear out our house.

- we have a lot o'stuff. a lot. -

Clean up our rental after our college students move out

- hopefully sans rabies this year-

Project that are at an impasse

( otherwise known as Eva wants to do them, Pete doesn't)

Lipstick touch the kitchen

- Sand and refinish butcher block counters, paint darker brown, add a faux copper tile back splash, replace hated bamboo floor-

Finish Dining room

- New light, get rug, add open shelving along one wall, new curtains-

Paint TV room

- The murder red color is slowly driving me nuts-

Wallpaper hall

Finish closet room

-paint clothing racks, add throw rug.-

Sell our college rental

- maybe? will the economy allow it? who knows-

And that is just a taste of what we're planning on tackling this year. There are many more ideas just bopping around in my head, waiting on their time for action. Unfortunately time and budget constraints might put the kibosh on some of the above items, but I'll try my hardest to accomplish my house related goals this year! I mean, if I can give up salting food for a year...

Craig L. Hunting

2011-01-06T14:10:00.000-05:00

We're back to my current PA/ S. NJ/DE craigslist finds! I love hunting on CL, it is so much fun and fills a slow day perfectly.

I love the modern country lines of this dining room set. The set looks ripe for a good makeover with some paint and new fabric on the chairs. Nothing too bold, but a light aged turquoise combined with linen recovered seats would look smashing and fitting with the style of the furniture. Maybe even a two-tone table with refinishing the top of the table in a darker stain of wood. And the price? $39! Win.

Link

For those that are looking to jump on my newly found love off brass accent items. The airy open bottom pairs with the glass top and clean lines to form a coffee table that could get put in such a variety of rooms. I'd bring it into my living room to play against all the older style and antique items.

Link

An antique wooden filing cabinet has been on my furniture wish list for about a year, so I'm always searching about for the *perfect* one. I have to say, this file is pretty freaking close to being the perfect one. However, I'm on a shopping diet right now so it's $400 price tag is too rich for my blood. S

Link

2010: long wrap up

2011-01-05T11:45:00.001-05:00

This weekend while I was in the midst of a well deserved Saturday morning veg out session on our couch. While relaxing I thought back about this last year in terms of home renovations, construction and major house based changes.

All those thoughts made me tired.

and they made me realize why we're totally broke.

January:

Started the year off with a 30% renovated bathroom in our beach condo that was running longer than we anticipated thanks to a run of extremely frustrating set backs that included the wrong tile color... and realizing it at 2 am.

We also chipped away at demo on our not-heated-at all wee house where I learned the art of layering gloves.

February:

It was the month of spending weekends at places with acronyms.

A valentines day trip up to NYC that included a quick stop at the C&B outlet. The weekend after our jaunt to NYC I took a sibling trip to DC for some quality time with my sister and step brother. Following weekend was Pete's birthday which we spent in AC and then drove down to OC for some more worker bee action on the bathroom.

March:

Finished working on the beach condo bathroom! 15 seconds after bathroom completion we ripped up the carpet in the bedroom at the condo. I painted the living room in our Wtown house from a raisin purple to a fresh cream color. We got notice that after 8 long months and close to 40 showings our house had its first offer.

April:

First offer fell through. Got second offer. Felt amazingly optimistic that house would sell.

Worked our tails off on getting the marble tile floor down in our condo bedroom. Included bringing 27 boxes of tile, 7 sheets of plywood and cement board up three flights of ( no elevator having) stairs. Also discovered the wonder of the Craigslist free section for getting unwanted and extremely heavy furniture out of said third floor condo with no exerted effort from your own muscles.

Loaded up our old bedroom furniture, on our open trailer, and brought it the two hours down to the condo during a raging spring thunderstorm. Yay for plastic wrap and lots of tape.

May:

Kicked off the month jumping through all the house selling hoops, in anticipating of a end of the month closing. Combed through the house and got rid of some bigger ticket items on Craigslist.

Spent all free weekends down at the beach condo and worked multiple 12 hour high stress days on the bedroom floor. All in an effort to get the whole place ready for our memorial day kick off for a season of renters. The 26 year old A/C blew up on the deck (seriously, I thought a car hit our building), got emergency HVAC work done that resulted in a new A/C. & Heater for the condo.

Get news that house sale is DOA. Crushed.

After failed house sale: Buy new headboard since old bed is now at the beach house and the mattress was living on the floor. Buy new dining room table, cause it was awesome and 50% off. Start my epic dining chair hunt.

June:

Built a raised veggie garden bed, of what was a very successful tomato and basil garden, and put it in all.by.myself. ( still so flipping proud of my DIY raised veggie garden box )

Our one and only outsource, the concrete contractors, started and finished the Wee house garage foundation. Marvel at the speed of contractors while lamenting the price.

Got a peek at the damage that was done to our college rental after the tenants moved out. Not pretty. Curse at poorly painted orange walls and subsequent orange wall cover up job.
Curse college students that 'sneak' having a cat. Cat that uses the floor of the bathroom as its own litter box. Start the massive project of deep cleaning while Pete renovates half downstairs bathroom of rental. Buy new fridge for the rental, as other fridge has one too many beer pong balls clogging the inner workings and leaks a strange liquid substance.

July:

Officially took the house off the market. Bought new furniture at Ikea, and turned our office into a walk in closet. Finish up working on college rental. Move right on to prepping the garage site for building! Start buying our massive amounts of materials that are needed.

Got news that the lock on our condo door malfuntioned on the 4th of July and that a locksmith had to get called out.... a 3am. Balls.

August:

Working on the garage framing, learned that "hey! I can build a wall! Who knew?". Get the trusses up. Start to prep the trusses for the roofing materials by marking and installing ~10,000,000 purlins.

Get news that beach condo washer/dryer unit has up and died on our renters, estimated replacement cost of $1,400. Friend happends to have old washer dryer unit that gives it to us, Pete takes the day off of work to install everything himself.

September: Continue to work on the garage. Started putting up the fiber cement siding panels.

Bought the garage doors from craigslist. Learned how to install a window.

October: Started roofing the garage. Averaged about 6 panels up per 8 hours of working. Drove off to the south for some much needed R&R.

November: Finished the garage roof. Helped my Dad move out of his house in prep for his new life traveling the country in an airstream, took lots of Dad's cool house and tool stuff. Spent rest of free time getting garage winter tight.

December: Start working rejuvinating the staircase and hall of the beach condo.

Lose track? Here is cliff notes version....

New Bathroom
Laid marble tile floor
Tore out old house
Cleaned, painted and put a new 1/2 bath in rental
Bought, re-homed or recieved over 12 items of furniture
Built a garage
added a "closet room"
painted the living room
didn't sell our house

Welcome 2011. I'm not ready.

2011-01-04T14:28:00.002-05:00

As per my usual MO I'd way late to all the year-in-review blog land posts...

I did start one, but I'm still stuck somewhere in October and currently mind boggled at the length of of our 2010 list. The length isn't only because I am terrible at short explanations for anything, but also because we apparently did a ton of house related stuff last year... a few things that I never even blogged about.

I'm working on condensing the list. How does everyone feel about just bullet points?

As for 2011... I'm not super thrilled that 2011 is here. Overall the passage of time has started speeding up for me and the year twenty eleven just feel so futuristic. Yet it is here. Right now.

We have a whole lot of work waiting for us this year ( so much it is kinda scary).

After seeing how much of the garage we got done since the end of July, which is when we started the DIY portion, we're a little eager until we can get back outside to finish it on up. Once the garage is "finished" the two of us are going to shift our entire focus to the Wee house, which is when I might start to cry out of happiness. It has been a few years of talking, planning and saving to make the renovations start happening, so to know that we've finally gotten to that point? Well I'll be thrilled. Even though I know it is only going to open up a huge can of new worms when we start our serious house renovations.

As you could well imagine, I haven't quite gotten to my goals for 2011 since I'm still wrapping 2010 up in my head ( and on here).

2011-01-03T09:54:00.000-05:00

I took a technology break last week.
and it was awesome.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T08:51:00.000-05:00

Philly Architectural Salvage Locations... p3

2010-12-21T11:40:00.000-05:00

The last Philly salvage place we check out was ReStore.

Overall: A. we'll definitely be back.

We got lucky and snagged a street parking spot right in front of the place. I'd imagine that any other time but in the evening you'd be able to find the same, since it is on a residential street.

It is a mid-sized loft-ish type warehouse where everything is super well organized, the place is well lit with natural light and the surroundings feel nice. The major bonus is you're not paying for the "nice feeling" surroundings, everything seemed fairly priced to me.

Vintage door knobs are pretty much automatically awesome in my book, but I went nuts for these milk glass knobs! They are pretty unique and are just gorgeous in real life. There was serious restraint on my end to hold back from purchasing them for the price of $30 a set. Only slightly higher than the normal brass or crystal sets they also had on the table.

Pete caught me eyeballing up antique tiles for our eventual fireplace(s). I'm leaning more toward old, original (and slightly ugly-ish, they are a brown and green tie-dye look) tiles for them while he like something less authentic but nicer looking.

Windows galore! Doors Galore!

I'm so glad we took the time to check out these Philly salvage and antique places. Not only are they so close to us, but they provided us with the chance to talk more about the upcoming renovations for the Wee house. Talking about the reno always gets our creative juices flowing again, especially when they have been stalled behind a long time of garage building. Makes me so anxious to get the garage done and move on into working on the house!

Dining Room Seating- Check!

2010-12-15T10:07:00.000-05:00

Confession: After buying our fabulous new dining table in May, we moved the old dining set into the living room, with every intention of putting it up for sale immediately. We sold the set on craigslist in November.

Even I'm giving us the side eye glance for waiting so long on that one.

However, that means we did finally settle on seating for the new table. It was a really long process where we sat in countless chairs at so many different stores, brought home four options (that ultimately got returned), did hours of online browsing and had at least 3 blog posts ( here, here , and here ) devoted to the dining room alone. What can I say? I either make extremely fast snap decisions based on emotion or I like to beat an idea to death with thorough research and pro/con lists.

Our search ultimately ended with me sitting in a Home Goods chair looking extremely dejected and frustrated. Taking a thoughtful sip from my Starbucks, I looked up at Pete and went "Lets go with the couch and the stools. We both really like them and I'm tired of dealing with this crap."

Couch and stools. Um Eva, you're missing the "chair" part...

I'll backtrack to the start. It all started with this picture that I found floating around the blogosphere last year that eventually got sourced back to SouthernLiving.com. Everything about the picture looks so inviting to me. I loved the smaller in stature wood and metal table paired with the upholstered loveseat. Everything about this set up makes me want to plop down and have a cozy dinner at the table with Pete, something we rarely do.

When we came home with our new table, this picture popped back into my mind. So while searching for chairs, I also expanded my search to include an armless love seat. Which is why when I came across this love seat on overstock, I was uber excited to show Pete an example of how we could interpret the look from the inspiration picture. The loveseat was pricey at $300, but I figured if we ever tired of it at the table that I could easily find another place in the house for it.

Since we need seating for more than two people at the table we grabbed the another idea of using stools in place of chairs. That would open up and be a good balance to the bigger love seat.

The stools would be the CB2 Contact Stools I wrote about way back half a year ago. Pete loves them and now that we have then, I'm a fan myself. With their small size and simple look I thought the stools could pull furniture double duty by being movable seating and act as side tables if the need arose.

They are a great as seating option for kids because they are super solid, spin in circles and can be wiped down. A few days after ordering the stools showed up on our front porch. We almost had an "oh no" moment after placing them at the table, because they came close to not fitting. Thank goodness that even despite not measuring the height of the table they did end up working just fine. You think we would have learned that by now, but always freaking measure!

Which is how we ended up with this:

Next instalment: I'll tell the story of how we did eventually end up with two chairs. The search restarted with a comment from my friend who mentioned that she'd cut someone in order to snag a spot at love seat at our next girls night....

Philly Architectural Salvage Locations... p2.

2010-12-13T11:37:00.001-05:00

I'd grade the Antiques Exchange a B-, depending...

Not horrible but I doubt we'll be jumping up and down to get back to the place. The place just didn't fit well with us and our needs (budget) right now, but there we do think it is worth another look at a different time.

Major bonus is that this is right down the street from Standard Tap.

(Go and eat there. Delicious food and great beers)

I'll start off with my biggest problem of the place- everything was really overpriced. Which is why you all you see are price tags that have faded ink and have started crumbling. You know when the tape yellows and starts to flake away? Lots of tags just like that. I also liked the "hold" on an item from June of 2009. Just a hunch, but I have a feeling that they aren't coming back.

The other thing that really got me and knocked the grade down was that I'm pretty sure a large amount of certain items they had were reproductions. Really crazy cool looking reproductions, but I take issue whomever is trying to pass a modern piece as an antique. Especially when you're talking a cost of multiples of thousands of dollars.

Other than those negatives, we did like poking around all the floors and saw some neat stuff.

Our favorite was the door section, where we found some awesome old pocket(?) doors that had glass inserts with the original rolling hardware attached. Love them and the fact that they aren't something you always come accross while shopping. When it comes time for the Wee house, we'll definately try to come up with a place for a door like this.

I really adored this Victorian fireplace surround. Something about its smaller size and toned down details really attracted my eye. I forget the exact price, but I do remember it made me laugh.

This cooper antique coffee urn made us stop in our tracks with its large size and shiny looks. However we didn't love the $1,4oo sticker price. Shame that is so completely out of our budgets, this would look awesome in an antique kitchen or dining room.

The top floor was really cool, it was amazingly bright with natural light thanks to the skylights, but was really run down ( complete with graffiti). You could tell it was the area where things went when people stopped caring about them.

If these pictures pique your interest or you're planning on visiting Philly for another reason, then I will say it won't be wasted time or effort to plan a quick stop at the Antiques Exchange. Just don't bank your hopes on it and bring a fat wallet. Info in case you want to check it out for yourself:
http://www.architecturalantiques.com/
715 North 2nd Street, Philadelphia

House of (Holiday) Cards

2010-12-08T14:30:00.003-05:00

From: Eva
To: Peter

Christmas card?

From: Peter

That is really funny. I like the hat. I don’t need to be in the Christmas card anyway. Leave it solely up to the Jewish girl :)

From: Eva

I figured that you could be on the inside of the card. Maybe even the back!

And it is not my fault you didn’t want a picture with the hippo at south of the border!

What about this one?

Better?

Maybe we should take a picture with the garage? Since that is really our baby this year?

From: Peter

Are you really thinking about getting a Christmas card this year of just us? We never send them out. That sets an expectation for the next 100 years you know.

From: Eva

I am contemplating it... I feel like it is my job as a wife or something to send them out...
I loved getting all the cards from my friends last year. They made the house look so festive!
I’m seriously getting into the holiday spirit this year. Be prepared for major January Post-Holiday sadness.

Plus, Shutterfly is offering 50 free cards to bloggers.

I like free.

From: Peter

I agree. But I spent many years setting the negative precedence that cards are stupid. I like to expect them, just not give them. You know, like any selfish person would do!

****End of Email Chain***

* edit... Shutterfly, you disappoint me by punking out on the free card promise. Despite that I shilled your products like a two bit table dancer on my measly blog I got nada from you.

-signed-

sad cardless eva

Wrapping up for the holidays!

2010-12-07T13:15:00.002-05:00

Much like a lot of people, Thanksgiving was the official kick off to our holiday season. We took a long look at the December calendar and saw that it was packed with obligations. Which is when Pete and I decided that it was time to pack up the garage work for the winter. There are people to see, presents to wrap and champagne to drink every weekend! Sad as it is to have halt the work that was rolling along I would be lying if I said that I didn't need a break from the garage. Cause I really do.

As much as I love the garage and am having fun building it, working outside in the winter on construction is a hard way to spend all your free time and every weekend daylight hour. Work goes slower cause you're slower to get things done. The wind hurts your face. You come home with sniffles everyday. The sun sets before you know it. And we have a lot of limitations on what we can do because of the weather (such as no painting).

No one really gives you a medal when your eyeballs freeze or snot pours out of your nose all day long on job site. And I'm not into doing things just so I can say I did and be a DIY Topper.

Example of the DIY Topper: " Well I worked outside on my garage during the biggest snowstorm the east coast has seen in a 1,000 years."

One cold and windy Saturday we double layered and headed over to check off in our pre-winter to-dos for the garage.

I moved our considerable sized stash of awesome old oak planks out from the rusty and crusty lean-to, into a much more suitable home in the garage.

All while Pete worked on a temporary winter wall for the back side of the garage.

We towed in Pete's someday project car, the '72 Land Cruiser. It proved especially challenging because of the one flat tire. But now the Land Cruiser lives in the garage until Pete has time to work on it. Which will be in about a decade.

And then we put up our winter " garage doors", which are in the form of plywood.

I'm ready to change gears for a little while!

Philly Architectural Salvage Locations... p1.

2010-12-01T09:29:00.005-05:00

Even though our feet are firmly planted in the demolition part of the wee house renovation, we still can't help ourselves when it comes to checking out items for the future rebuilding stage. We like to look for the items we know we'll need or want (eventually). Shopping architectural salvage/antique places really helps to fuel the creative process for us and we get a ton of light bulb moments while browsing around. Almost like we're building an inventory or mental check list of certain things.

Because of our constant searching regarding anything house related that is old and awesome, we try to check out almost every salvage place we hear about within a few hours of driving distance. Unfortunately that means we've hit some dud places along the way, in addition to our perpetual fave spots. Which is why when we saw Provenance featured on a DIY network show we wrote down the name so we could a) remember it and b) make plans to check it out.

There is a small parking area outside the warehouse and you just walk right in the open door.

The warehouse for Provenance is large, but not huge and overwhelming. Something I appreciated because those monster sized warehouses tend to feel a little creepy when you get to a dark corner.

I LOVED how nicely everything is arranged inside. It is about as neat and organized as I think a architectural salvage place could ever be. Makes it about a million times easier to shop the place when you don't have to constantly dig out items just to even take a look at them. I'm not a gal that is afraid to wade through the muck and get her hands dirty while searching for a gem. But I know not everyone is like that and that some people don't always have the time to hunt down that *one* item. For those that don't like a hot mess of a salvage location- this is the place to go.

I want to make out with this door because it is just that awesome. It is almost exactly what I want to put in the front of the wee house (eventually). I die for its transom. and the hardware. I wonder if the house wants this door as a holiday present...

Just a few old glass knobs...

Small mantles...

Big mantles....

Antique heat registers, something we're definitely planning on incorporating in the Wee house.

The outside area....

and there was so much more inside that we didn't snap pictures of.

We got to chatting with one of the partners for a bit and he filled us in on the business and how they operate. Provenance definitely is a place we'll be going back to, and I'm thrilled that it is so close to us and walking distance to one of our favorite burger places in Philly, Standard Tap. Makes me so excited to move on with the Wee house renovations. Now if only the garage would ever get itself finished...

* this is all based on our own personal experience and you must be out of your gourd if you think I got compensated in any way for writing this. I just like spreading the good renovation word around.

Black Friday Shopping

2010-11-30T09:24:00.005-05:00

You may think we're a little nuts, but Pete and I LOVE heading out on Black Friday! We don't wake up super early to hit up the door buster sales or even have a marathon list of people to buy for. Our only goal is to get out there and see as much as we can while enjoying a free day together. Often we'll pick out a major destination that we want to explore and then build a game plan around that location.

For example: In 2008 went up to the Crate and Barrel Outlet (awesome) in Cranbury, Nj. From there we went on to the Fortunoff Outlet (not awesome) on Long Island. After that we checked out the Roosevelt Field Mall. Afterwards we decided to head on into Manhattan and experience the Herald Square Macy's where the two of us spent hours checking all nine floors of the building. Ended the night with some delicious Magnolia Cupcakes before heading home on the NJ Turnpike South.

Mixing things up this year, we decided to head west and spend some time learning new places in the familiar area of the Philadelphia region. A quick search in Google for Architectural Salvage Philly gave us three really promising sounding businesses to check out. So we based our day around visiting them first...

The plan:

Brunch at Sabrina's Cafe , highly highly recommend. Delicious.

Salvage:

Provenance
912 Canal Street, Philadelphia, PA 19123
( A+)

ReStore
3016 East Thompson Street, Philadelphia, PA 19123
(A)

Architectural Antiques Exchange
715 North Second Street, Philadelphia, PA 19123
( C+)

... it took a few hours by the time we explored all three locations but the day was still young! So we loaded up on an amazing hoagie from Campo's and yummy drinks from Starbucks while heading out to the King Of Prussia Mall. Since we both work about 5 min from the KOP mall, we know that area like the back of our hands. Which was awesome because we were able to scoot right around all the massive traffic in the area and got a primo parking spot!

After KOP we hit up the Limerick Outlets, I mean Philadelphia Premium Outlets, quickly. Woah it was packed! I can imagine it was super scary that morning. The Nieman Marcus Last Call used to have some really neat home items, but not this trip unfortunately. At this point we had enough time to get one more location in, The Lancaster Outlets which is home to our favorite outlet store, The Pottery Barn Outlet.

By the end of the day the only thing we purchased was a new GPS system for our car from Best Buy. However, we had TONS of new house related ideas filed away in our brains just waiting for the time to come for us to use them. I can't wait to hit my new favorite salvage places again!

Anyone else have a black friday tradition like ours? All day shop-a-thon, or do you spend the day warm and snug in your house far away from the crazy crowds?

Pictures and detailed reviews of the architectural salvage locations coming soon!

A Fall Miss

2010-11-29T11:15:00.002-05:00

Today I am thankful that we're ok.

Last weekend Pete fell from the second story of the garage onto the cement floor and landed on his feet. Right in front of where I was standing, narrowly missing me by about 6 inches.

One second Pete was upstairs, then BAM he wasn't and there he was-standing in front of me looking a little bewildered at what had just happened. Turns out that the plywood he was standing on slipped off the framing and magic carpeted itself off down to the ground. The ground where I was headed to right at that very second to work. My poor giant head almost got squished by plywood and Pete.

It could have been really bad, but it wasn't due to sheer dumb luck and good timing. Pete has some bruises on his arm and sore leg muscles when he walks down stairs, I am so beyond thankful that those are the only issues resulting from the fall.

Oh, and my bff the air nailer is now broken due to the fall. Pete dropped while falling and it hit the cement floor with quite the clatter. Fingers crossed it can get fixed or we can find a killer deal on a new one.

Learning curve: Never work directly under someone on a construction site.

Houston, we have a roof!

2010-11-24T11:20:00.000-05:00

WE FINISHED THE ROOF THIS WEEKEND!!!!

I'm a wee bit excited about it, in case you couldn't tell...

We started the days work with Pete getting up on the roof and working on the lookouts, while I cut the wood to size on the ground and passed it up to him.

Originally we thought that the back wall needed to get up in order for us to get the final two roof panels up. With talking to some old timers of the construction trade they gave us to schematics to make what is called a "chicken ladder" which should solve our problem of getting the panels up without a wall. Why is it called a Chicken Ladder? Cause you're too chicken to get on the roof and do the job without one.

I made the ladder out of 2-2x4x16, a few 2x4's and a bunch of little 1x's for the rungs. It took about two hours to get the wood cut to size and screwed into position before it was ready for work.

The idea behind the chicken ladder is that it hooks onto the roof. To get the ladder on the roof required Pete climbing up the purlins with me pushing the ladder from below until it got to the peak, then we could hook it on and place it over an already down roof portion. Once the ladder was in position we could grab the last panel and start our normal process of getting them up on the roof. Instead of walking on the roof purlins like before though, Pete used the chicken ladder to safely screw down the panel.

As expected the last two panels did give us the most trouble. We came the closest to losing one over the back side as Pete pulled it up, those panels are slippery little suckers! I've also never thanked my freakishly long arms more while on the job than I did while putting up the last panel. Because of the slope of the land at the very back of the garage there is about an extra foot or so of height that we have to deal with. To counter that we had to put the ladder on cinder blocks, which made it suspect to instability and was still a little bit lower than I felt comfortable with, as I had to hold the panel up with essentially just my finger tips. When Pete got the first screw in on that panel I was seriously super happy!

How are we getting the ladder off that roof you ask? See the rope? This weekend we're going to pull it over the side and hold our breaths while hoping that it doesn't break. Fingers crossed.

Front garage wall is up!

2010-11-22T12:56:00.004-05:00

Three sides are up, one to go!

As for the garage doors, we'll be nailing plywood over the openings over the winter. During that time I plan on painting and prepping the doors to get them ready for a spring installation. We have to tweak them a little bit to make them perfect, a usually side effect of buying them used and saving boatloads of money.

Weather Thanks

2010-11-18T11:11:00.004-05:00

Today I'm thankful that this fall has provided us with mostly mild weather. Mainly because I overall hate being cold, but also because it gives us the chance to keep working on the garage as long as the weather holds out. November is always iffy weather wise here in NJ, so it was a crap shoot how much past the first of this month that we'd be able to stand working outside for long periods of time. Especially since the house isn't heated in the least bit, so you get no breaks from the weather or chances to heat up. So I'll take the 50's and sunny!

In this edition of:

2010-11-17T10:10:00.000-05:00

Old crappy houses I happend across and loved.

For those that have just started reading the blog, I'll fill you in on a little factoid. My husband Pete and I are seriously obsessed with crappy old houses. Nothing gets our blood pumping more than taking a peak at a run down and saw better days a centuary ago gem of a old house. We'll almost immeadiately start dissecting it, discussing the work that would have to go in and all the ideas for the house to make it what it should be. It's a sickness.

We love peeping on shitastic grand old homes in historic areas. Even though we have two lame ducks of our own, there is a strange need to talk about the what ifs and the what could bes for these strange and beautiful houses. Nevermind the fact that the two of us have never even done a restoration of house of such a grand caliber or even done a true historic renovation at all. We still can't stop talking about how fun it would be to someday touch and shine up a home like the ones we saw while in Savannah and Charleston.

The first house i feel for was around the perimeter of Forsyth Park in Savannah. Facing the gorgeous open space of the park, I couldn't help but to fall fast for the brick exterior and front porch that looks over such a historic green space. Couple that with the bumped out window on the second floor? Give me a book and I can bet you I would never leave that little window nook.
If you look closely at the picture, you'll see my little fist ( the one that is not clutching on for dear life to my much needed coffee) clenched in excitment as I look over to Pete with my " I love it, we should move to Georgia and buy it" face.

Next up is the grand mansion that we happened across on a walk around the permiter of the town. It was such a stately home in bad shape that I really wanted to move right in. Bonus, as this one was actually for sale. Not bonus, no way in hell we could buy it. The back gardens were overgrown and snarly looking, but if you looked past the vines you could see the old fountains and lawn. The house was just HUGE, I'm sorry we didn't grab a better picture of it. Since it was empty and for sale I didn't think they would mind if I ran up the steps and took a quick picture.

Something as simple as a great power wash would seriously transform this place. I hope whomever buys the house treats it the way it should be treated! I'm sure they will though, Savannah seemed to be on the ball with preserving its homes.

Finally, my favorite of the bunch. This house was in Charleston and was right across from the park in the Battery area. I can't even imagine how much this house is worth even in this condition. It is a shame, but this house is crumbling down and really needs a preservationist to get their mits on it. The brick driveway I posted yesterday, the one in bad condition, is the driveway of this house. The amazing columns are likely worth more than my annual income to repair and made me weak in the knees when I looked up at them. Pete basically had to drag me away from this house.

When ever I see a house like this, grand and historic in such a wealthy area, I try to guess the story behind it. How did this house, which is clearly worth a ton of money and in such a prime location, end up like this? When its neighbors have manicured lawns and fresh paint. was it Divorce? Death? Caught in a legal battle? Old owners who have fallen on hard times but own the house outright and have nowhere else to live?

Vacation Inspiration

2010-11-16T10:02:00.001-05:00

We took a few things away from last month's trip to Savannah and Charleston when it came to house and garden design. These are the things we're storing those ideas away until the time comes to implement them in our own home.

1. Glossy black paint. We can't wait to crack open a can of super high gloss black to paint to really make our exterior accents stand out at the Wee house. All over both cities Pete and I would constantly notice and point out to the other anything architectural that was coated in black paint and caught our eye. I got especially excited over the blue, black and white combo below, because those are the serious contenders for whenever the Wee house gets painted.

2. Tea Olive Trees. I am fully obsessed with this sweet smelling flowering tree. At some point one of them will be planted by our patio off the dining room ( neither of which that we have right now...) so I can spend my late summer evenings in pure scent heaven. Since we're way north of the sub tropical location of Charleston, I plan on getting the hardiest version for our NJ garden and wintering it if need be.

3. Brick driveways. Even though brick is a costly material to use for a driveway and will likely cripple me during our eventual DIY installation project- I'm completely sold on it! My favorite look is the two smaller lanes of brick, heading up to a fully bricked parking pad.

4. Garden design. During our tour of some great older homes of Charleston, we went gaga for some of the private gardens. No pictures we're allowed on the tour and they were sticklers for it, so I have nothing to share from the ones we saw then. Picture romantic, private and inspiring natural rooms that make you feel like never leaving because your bones have relaxed into mush from the surroundings. I'm pretty surprised that I'm not still there. This is an example of a great garden that we snapped from the street.

5. Big mo-fo gilded mirrors. I love them. Not sure Pete is on board with the giant mirrors the same way I am.

Stay tuned for the "Crappy Houses that Pete and Eva fell in love with while on vacation" blog entry...

Outta Room

2010-11-11T09:51:00.002-05:00

We are almost all wrapped up with the roof! Only two more panels to go on the very end of the backside. Unfortunately those have to wait to go up until the wall is built, since we need to be able to lean an extension ladder on the wall in order to get the panels up. Follow that? Because I barely can.

The entire time Pete's been putting up panels he's been using the roof purlins as a ladder and screwing down the panel by leaning over from the side of them. He can't step on the metal roof cause it will act as a slide and dump him off the roof in a comical but super dangerous fashion. With the last panels, there is no more roof to stand on. So he's got to use a giant ladder, which needs to lean up against the back wall of the garage.

Pete, putting in the last panel where he can sit on the roof. You can see how he's almost out of room. And the view from inside.

Current Craigslist Faves

2010-11-10T09:43:00.001-05:00

I would classify myself as a hardcore Craigslist addict. I love passing the time of slow afternoons by just browsing around the CL to see what is being offered up that day, and to mock the crap that people try to sell for massive amounts of money. Since our house is pretty stocked with all the furniture we need right now I rarely ever end up buying anything.

Here is what I'm obsessing over currently:

link

Vintage drafting table, I love the idea of using them for a kids craft area tucked in a corner of a sunny room. That huge area is so great for creating crafts and art, all while keeping it off the dining room table. Put a sheet over the table and you have an instant fort!

link

This fantastic vintage campaign desk. I love everything about it, from the expansive top, to the sharp brass accents and the curvy legs. If I could convince Pete that we should replace our current office desk before moving, I would be all over this desk like a drunk frat boy on a keg tap. The price is high at $275...and is exactly what is keeping the desk from just showing up in our office.

link

Matching twin sized Jenny Lind beds. How stinking cute would these be painted a bright pink and set up in a little girls room? Or painted white and tucked into a coastal styled guest bedroom down the shore? We have neither type of room, so I'll be passing on these beds for now.

Anything else people search the CL for on the regular? Especially when they full well know that they aren't going to buy anything?

Not so great weekend

2010-11-08T08:21:00.002-05:00

It was not a banner weekend full of renovating over here at the fourth door.

I have a wicked cold and could barely move out of bed on Sunday.

Saturday I lost my camera.

Boo.

Trucking along

2010-11-05T10:01:00.001-04:00

Late in October Pete framed out the upper front wall of the garage. Unfortunately he is going to have to re-do some of it because we've since decided to change the layout of the front three windows. Instead of having the windows so spaced out they are going to get pulled a lot closer together and centered in the middle of the wall. It sucks having to re-do work because of design change, especially at this point of time, but both of us agree that we aren't really loving the spread out look of the three windows.

What is on board this weekend for the barn:

-Getting our 14 boards of sub-flooring down in the upper space! Even though my arms are not looking forward to this work, I'm really excited about getting the floor down so I can finally get up there. The closest I've gotten is sitting on top of the ladder once.

-Frame out, house wrap, install the windows and side up the front upper wall. That is going to be a total bitch to work with the fiber cement siding up that high. We still haven't figured out how exactly its going to work, but I guess it can be done somehow.

I'll consider it a productive weekend if both of the above to-do's get done. With the highs in the low 50's and the diminishing sunlight hours we definitely can not put in the same hours that we did in the summer. And I fricken hate being cold.

I feel like the fourth door is turning into an "all barn garage all the time" blog, and I apologize for that to some extent. There has to be a few people out there who wonder if ANYTHING else is going on our lives. And yes, there are lots of other things. But at the same time, this garage currently our reality. Building something like this on the weekends as just a crew of two takes a really long time and tends to be all consuming.

We are always thinking about, talking about and working on the garage in almost all our free time while trying to balance a tiny bit of a social life and important family time. Once we get the garage wrapped up for the winter, some time in the next four weeks or so, we'll begin to be able to even think about doing other things. There are plenty of big plans for the winter months, so there will be no shortage of diverse projects coming up!

Roof Cheat Sheet

2010-11-03T10:10:00.003-04:00

While marking out the garage panels I was constantly checking back to the reference sheet of paper that held the numbers that I was supposed to be marking. Total pain in the butt to have to move one more thing down the line with you, and I've never been good at memorizing long strings of random numbers- this was the best solution that I could come up with. Sharpie on the back of my hand. It helped a ton! Mainly because I knew my hand wouldn't blow away if a breeze shot up, the way the paper would. Only thing missing from this photo are my odd Megan Fox type thumbs...

(K)need Protection?

2010-11-01T10:00:00.003-04:00

Like the total Mensa candidate that I am, I kept forgetting my knee pads when we'd go over to the Wee house. Kneeling in our sandy gravel driveway for marking the screw lines on the roof panels had my knees barking after just barely touching the ground. Enter invention, mothered by necessity. Carpet padding and blue painters tape was a win for protecting my knees enough for me to get the job done!

In other news, it is getting a little bit frosty up in South Jersey. In fact, this weekend it was 51 when we arrived at the site on Saturday, which is exactly half the temperature/heat index of the day it was when we bought all the lumber for the garage! We're not quite as along as we'd hoped to be by this point, which is dissapointing. Mainly because it means for some cold weekends coming up as we try to get this thing weather proofed before winter hits. I don't think we'll have a winter like last year, which hit us hard early and steady all throughout the season.

All up on our roof

2010-10-29T11:54:00.004-04:00

Run down of putting up the metal roof so far....

1. Pull roof panels out of pile in garage and scatter about lawn

2. I measure and mark out the locations where Pete is going to be putting the screws

3. Grab panel and walk over to garage, Pete climbs ladder and puts top of panel on the roof.

4. I tell Pete to be careful as he starts to climb onto the roof purlins

5. Using my massive muscles I push the panel up as high as I can get it on the roof while Pete climbs up to get it.

6. Pete grabs panel and holds it while I'll let go to climb the ladder.

7. Once on ladder I push the panel up one handed until we get it up to the peak.

8. Line panel up.

9. From the top of the ladder I hold the panel lined up and keep it from sliding down off the roof.

10. Have extreme concerns about the panel slipping and beheading me as it slides down

11. Pete places first screw it at the top. I can let go and hop off the ladder now.

12. Pete continues going down the panel screwing it down into place

13. I mark out next panel on the lawn, as heights make my palms sweat in an extremely unattractive fashion. I barely am ok with the ladder.

You can see why there are no pictures of us putting the panels up, cause we need our hands! The panels aren't super heavy, but you can definitely start to notice some fatigue setting in by the fifth oneof the day. It is a lot of upper body strength used in bursts when putting them up. I love how they cover such a large area, so you see results as soon as you get a panel up. Very gratifying to have something that shows results almost instantly, even if it is overall slow work.

West Bumble New Jersey

2010-10-29T10:15:00.003-04:00

I like living in the middle of nowhereville New Jersey...Not a house in sight and not one other car drove by the whole time Pete snapped these field sunsets shots on the back roads as we drove home from a hard day of work on the Wee house.

Garage Roof Situation

2010-10-28T10:13:00.005-04:00

The last few weekends we've just been slogging through getting the garage roof done. It is definitely one of those slow but steady processes as we just can't seem to find a way to work any faster. As it is now, it takes us about 40 mins per metal panel of roof from the ground to finished installation. There are 30 panels total.

Why a metal roof? Mainly cause we thought it was cool. Isn't that always a reason to make a major decision that will be around for 40 years- for the Cool Factor. Metal roofs are pretty uncommon in the state of NJ, with the exception of broke down rusted sheds in back yards and random commercial properties. We've found that metal roofs are all rage outside of NJ. In fact, during our road trips we always end up pointing out all the cool metal roofs we see along the way.

Random factoid- Sookie Stackhouse ( of True Blood, my current obsession) has a metal roof. It is mentioned in books a few times and shown on the show.

One of the biggest benefits of choosing to do the metal roof was the fact that we didn't have to lay plywood/osb all over the roof the way you have to with asphalt shingles. You just have to put a series of 2x4's (purlins) up and the roof gets screwed into those. 2x4's -while not cheap when you have buy things in large quantities-are buckets of money cheaper than osb, which runs about $13 a board here for the cheapest stuff.

Then came the fact that I've helped dispose of two asphalt roofs in my time and they were hell to get rid of. I clearly remember shoveling the shingles off the trailer and into the dump and thought/wishing I would pass out because it was just that hard. The shingles are heavy, they break apart, are rotted, it smells like shit, and all sorts of gross bugs have made their home in the mess. Anything to avoid doing that again.

Along with looking cool, I love the fact that the metal roof can be recycled when its time is up. No trip to the dump for this roof! There are a lot of other major benefits to having mental roof and they are all available via a quick "metal roof benefits" search on Google. So far I'd recommend anyone in need of a new roof for a shed, garage or house to check it out. I'm iffy on recommending the DIY installation for a large structure, cause it is a wicked pain in the rear and we fubared a little part of it already.

I just realized that I've been lacking on the pictures during October. Perhaps I need to institute my "No post without a picture this month" policy again for November...

Garage Door Quest P.2

2010-10-25T12:48:00.003-04:00

After a lovely drive on the back roads through the state of Maryland, of during which I only had one hunger induced meltdown about the way Pete printed out the Google Map, we arrived in the City of Frederick. Found our way to seller house and pretty much instantly upon arrival we were amped up.

The house was awesome, a large old historic home set on an idyllic lot in the middle of dream hamlet of stately old homes. The kind of neighborhood you walk around and just drool at when you're a historic home junky. Out of respect for the seller B* I'm going to gloss over a lot of the location details and story that led to him getting new garage doors. But I will talk about this house and B* cause he and his house were really just that cool.

Being super awesome and because Pete and I do not look like (nor are we) crazy weirdos, B* took us on a tour of his home and gave us the run down of the history behind it. We were enthralled as he showed us the original leaded windows, down into the basement and up to the third floor. It was really great to talk to another old home enthusiast and to see how he and his family have made living in such a historic home work for their modern needs without taking away from the original charm of the place.

After about an hour of talking and loading the garage doors on the trailer Pete and I really wanted to take a walk around the city. B* gives us directions on how to get to the downtown, offers us the use of his bikes and then tells us to pull the trailer into his driveway so we don't have to worry about someone messing with the doors. Nicest guy ever. And I don't even offer the people I meet for CL drop offs a glass of water.

We took a walk around the city, soaking in some more of the awesome historical homes and beautiful architecture. We grabbed a quick bite and ice cream for the nice walk back to the car. It was all in all, a great way to end our CL adventure.

Plus, we really do love the garage doors! Win all around!

Garage Door Quest P.1

2010-10-21T13:20:00.000-04:00

Budget left for garage: pennies
How much garage doors cost: lots of pennies.

You can see our conundrum here. Garage doors are like woah expensive, which might explain why they are really something people don't replace often. Or ever get rid of gorgeous, drool worthy carriage garage doors for super cheap.

We shopped the big box stores, finding that the in stock options didn't really jive with the look of the barn garage. Briefly we thought about creating rolling barn doors for the front of the garage, close to what we have here on the current garage. Except that we don't really like the functionality of the sliding door for a garage. It can be a bit of pain when it comes to getting light in the garage or getting a car in and out because you can only open one side at a time.

Then for like a half a second we entertained the thought of getting gorgeous carriage doors made. But when a comma and a few zeros were attached on that price tag we slowly backed away from that idea.

Frustrated we turned to craigslist and searched all the areas around us to see what was available. When it comes to a big purchase like this we usually search everywhere within a 5-ish hour driving radius. No point in letting driving limit the potential to find something that could be perfect for us.

And in western Maryland- we found them. Potentially awesome garage doors for a great price! Pete started up a line of communication with the seller to find out more information and from there we started to get really excited about these doors...

Up next- the all day road trip and how freaking awesome the seller ended up being...

Anyone else willing to make the drive to find that *perfect* item for a great price? Or are we the only nuts who think nothing of hopping into the car and driving far far away to save some money?

updates

2010-10-20T10:38:00.003-04:00

State of the Fourth Door:

- We have just returned from a seven state 1,600 mile road trip in a Mini Cooper.
- I LOVE Savannah!!
- The barn garage has about 65% of its roof.
- I crossed off alligator from my "seen in real life" wild animal check list.
- It is effing cold in the house again. No using heat until November is in full effect.
- My commute takes too damn long
- People in the south make the worlds greatest fried chicken.

Things that are not good:

-I'm about 85% sure that I've broken my nose. It makes funny squeeks and noises when I sneeze. When the weather patterns shift I can tell because it feels funny, like its swollen.

The end.

Thanks for the paint help!

2010-10-11T11:53:00.003-04:00

Thank you so much to everyone who chimed in about the exterior paint confusion. It is good to hear about all the options that have worked so well for different people in the past. Especially hearing good things about Sherwin Williams, right now we're thinking they are going to end up being our go-to option when it comes time to buy the paint.

The solvent free linseed oil paint seemed so cool! There are so many aspects to the paint that I really love, however I just can't seem to find myself willing make the barn the guinea pig for it. Especially given the high price of $124 per .85 of a gallon for a product we've never used. Despite my normal willingness to try new products like the paint I am a little gun shy on this one. Who knows why. Maybe I'll give it a whirl on a smaller project in the future.

Next up on the decision front- Picking a color for the barn.

Thank you!!! :)

Paint Brand Help Needed!

2010-10-07T10:03:00.000-04:00

Please talk paint with me.

I need help narrowing down all the options for exterior paints. There are just so many to choose from that it is hard to stop from feeling a bit overwhelmed. Our go to interior paint is usually Kilz because we loved the coverage on our plaster walls and the great containers ( which they don't use anymore). The fact that it is very affordable for a gallon is also a nice little bonus.

With the garage/barn we want whatever paint that will provide the best durability for a long time. Something that will stand up to the elements without looking like a POS in a few years. Our only experience with exterior paint is with Finneran and Haley a few years ago and we weren't overly thrilled. Besides they aren't even in business anymore.

We're leaning towards Sherwin Williams, but would LOVE some input and real life experiences with exterior paint. Is paying top dollar necessary? Or is there a cheaper gem option?

Many many many thanks!

Flashing

2010-10-06T11:10:00.003-04:00

This might be the first time that I've ever flashed a window where a picture of me doing so has ended up on the Internet. Though its a picture of the boring version of flashing, nothing to do with booze, beads or Mardi Gras. Everything to do with installing a window. Yawn.

I've never really installed a window before. When Pete was replacing the windows in our current house I helped him in the form of holding the window still and bitching about the glass splinter I got. Being as this was new construction where everything was built square by us and to the exact measurements of the windows we purchased- I was up for the task. Trying to fit a replacement window into a existing space is much harder.

Installing the windows was one of the easier DIY things I've ever done. I'd put it a few notches below "taking a nap on the wood pile while Pete works". It took a little know how, which I got from Pete taking the lead and reading the instructions that came with the windows . And it involved caulk, nails and not dropping the window.

Like a lot of the construction I do around here, I don't feel comfortable giving you an extensive "How-To" guide or real in depth pictorial. But I can comfortably say- Give it a shot.

After the sills were flashed by moi, the entire wall got wrapped by the house wrap. Right on top of the window and door openings. Once the wrap is on completely you staple it down like crazy and then cut an "I" shaped slip to use as the opening for installing the windows.

The Pete magically transported back to the 1960's while nailing down the siding. Or I got bored and played around with the Picnik options while posting this...

Through the magic of the time warp internet- here is the finished sided wall! Three walls done, One and a half to do before winter!

*Looking for some helpful hints to window installation? DIY Network has some great info on their site here.

i heart air nailers

2010-09-30T12:17:00.005-04:00

When you list your air nailer as one of your BFF's, you know you need to step away from the construction for a little while. I can't help it though, the tool is saving us from the massive arm and hand failure that we would have if every single nail had to be pounded in with a hammer. Not to mention keeping our siding looking a whole lot better. Could you imagine if Captain misses a lot (me) tried to hand hammer all the nails? There would be holes all over the damn garage.

At the start of this project I repeatedly professed my love for the air framing nailer. And I still love it. A whole lot, especially since Pete was able to fix it right back to working after its unfortunate *poooffff* incident. Well now our siding air nailer is getting the same love from me.

This is the one we've purchased. I know that buying an expensive tool for single one-off jobs isn't really in the cards for everyone. And that renting might be a better option for your own needs based on a wide variety of reasons. I just know that for us, and based on the projects that we currently have on our plate, renting a tool like this every time we needed one would be a colossal waste of money. It is much more cost efficient to buy the tool and have it available to us when we need it.

Pete takes really good care of his tools, so this one time investment should last us a long time and can hopefully be put to good use for many people. You never know who will need our help putting up siding! Or if we decided to re-side the entire house ( very likely).

Anyone else out there with power tool bffs also? Or is it just me?

To life

2010-09-29T11:12:00.003-04:00

Normally I try to keep this blog pretty single focused about house related topics. But sometimes things come in your life that you feel the need to share because they are so significant that you are really forever changed as a person. These last few weeks have been that time, and things have been quite rough around our house lately.

At the beginning of September Pete's Grandpop went into the hospital and when he left nine days later it was with a very serious cancer diagnosis. With knowing the delicate nature of his heath, the family rallied around him trying to make his last days as pleasant and full of love as possible. In a matter of a week Grandpop declined to the point where Pete and I knew it was time to say good bye.

The funeral was yesterday and was a beautiful tribute to the full life of a great man.

Tootles Tv

2010-09-23T11:25:00.005-04:00

Every fall Pete and I debate the same thing: Should we or should we not cancel the cable down at the beach condo?

For a few years we fell pretty solidly into the Should Not column because of a multitude of reasons. Usually it was because we didn't remember to call until a few months had passed and by that time the disconnect and reconnect fees were going to eat up a lot of our potentials saving. Secondly, we do try to spend time down there in the winter and having tv to watch while you do work around the condo or veg out is really nice. In fact it was lovely to have last winter when we re-did the bathroom. In the past the cable company offered special winter rates that allowed us to get our normal package for a lot cheaper. Which when added with the fees, made it not that bad money wise to just keep the cable.

Last year the cable company dropped a month of the winter rates and then restructered the channels that you got for the low price. Suddenly we were paying a decent amount of money per month for every home shopping channel, one highly political news channel and the local sports station. Nothing else. When we called, the company claimed that in order to get our old channels back we'd have to upgrade our off season package.

Pshaw.

For the rental season we provided a complete (yet basic) cable package and wireless internet. Pretty much the day after our last renters packed up we were at the cable company handing them their box back saying "No more please". We asked about keeping the internet, which would allow us to stream tv and movies, but was told it was going to be $65 a month for that alone. Ha!

Bye internet and tv at the beach house.
Hello $800 a year savings.

Back wall siding up!

2010-09-22T12:17:00.003-04:00

Closing off all the walls one by one...It is strange to not be able to see through the walls and into the backyard anymore! So funny how fast you get used to half done construction.

Since we knew what to expect from having already doing the long wall, there weren't many surprises during putting up the siding on the back wall. Only two small obstacles presented themselves during this wall.

The first was that the back wall of the garage is higher off the ground than the side wall due to the grade of the yard. That meant lifting the heavy panels even higher trying to get them on the support ledge. Thank you Aleeve for calming my screaming back.

The other issue we had to work through was cutting and extending the house wrap higher than the long side. Since the paneling will extend up the back of the garage we needed to make sure all the wood was covered by the house wrap with at least six inch of seams overlapping. Pete had a spare little roll of house wrap hanging out in the other garage that worked perfectly since we didn't feel like cutting up the big mondo roll.

Ta-da!

* Its funny, but I think with this wall up I've discovered a new favorite spot in the yard- right behind the garage! This spot is where we eat lunch while on the job and we chill out in the shade during water breaks. Oh, that pile of rubble next to the tree is left over from our concrete crew earlier in the summer when they tore up the old slab. We saved a decent amount of money if we cleaned up the site ourselves, instead of having the work crew doing it.

Our Out Building Money Pit

2010-09-20T11:56:00.000-04:00

Not long ago Pete presented me with a little yellow sticky note in the car when he picked me up from work ( we commute together). On it was the total we've spent on the garage so far.

I gagged a bit.

When you're building something big (like a garage) you know it is going to cost money (ok, a lot of money). We had no delusions that this was going to be a cheap project. The wallet was going to have to be opened, even with all the DIY jobs that we were planning on. Mentally preping yourself to spend thousands of dollars only helps so much though. Actually spending the cash and watching your savings account dwindle down lower and lower can be a harsh reality check.

I likend it to planning our wedding. We knew (thanks to our budget) what it was going to cost us overall. Every day those numbers ran through our head while planning. However when it came time to actually write those checks out as the wedding date drew closer and closer...yowch. And then the reality of the bank account the day after the wedding...

Hopefully when it is all said and done I know we'll love the garage and it will have been a really worthwhile investment in our home. When we sit back during water breaks and just look over the construction zone it is so fun to talk about how we'll use it in the future and what will go where. You have to maintain a positive attitude about a big slow job like this, focusing on the end result. Dwelling on the hard middle part can be a big killjoy.

Even though the sticky note number provided a reality check and a reminder that we need to keep tight reigns on the rest of the budget for this project. It was still nice to see how much we've gotten done for that amount. Maybe its because my best friend Google has provided us with some rough estimates for building a four car garage in NJ and so far we're coming in about 50-80% LOWER than those various quotes. One site even had the range for a four car garage at 108,000. Um. I'd stroke out if we spent that. For real.

I'm not trying to be coy about the price spent, I just don't feel comfortable yet giving out the budget until we have something that really shows off our investment. Eventually when it is all done, I post a budget breakdown.

First outer wall up!

2010-09-17T10:41:00.003-04:00

After the garage was mostly framed out, we started on the siding. The first step was to completely wrap the garage with a layer of house wrap. One big mo-fo roll of the house wrap was about $200. You saved $50 if you used the store brand instead of the brand name without a big ol’ logo on the wrap. So we sold out and decided to become corporate whores with the garage wrap ad to save the dollars. You win if you can figure out which big box store we bought the house wrap from, it is very subtle...

Wrapping the whole garage was pretty easy and fun. I unrolled the wrap and pulled it tight while Pete hammered in the nails. You have to pay attention to make sure the wrap stays level and covers all the exposed wood. Other than that, it was nice and easy because while the giant nine foot roll is a little awkward to handle, it isn’t heavy. We wrapped the long western side wall, and tucked the roll back into the garage for the time being. The heavy duty stapler helped get the wrap on the garage nice and tight.

Then, almost excited at the thought putting up our first piece of siding, we grabbed the nine foot section of cement fiber siding and tried to get it up on the wall.

Fail.

There was no way one of us could hold the board in place while the other shot nails in it. The boards are heavy, I’d put them at this-is-really-heavy-and-awkward-to-carry weight range and are extremely hard to handle (impossible) by yourself. We just couldn’t hold the board up flat against the wall and get it secured at the same time.

Quickly using those lumps that are three feet above our asses (bonus points if you know the movie ) we turned our plethora of scrap wood into a handy shelf to put the siding on top of. It was a little difficult to level the whole thing and then find a way to secure the shelf because, there was nada to nail it into on the side. The siding needed to cover all the wood which left us with only the cement blocks exposed. As a solution for that We whipped up corner braces and stakes to hammer into the ground for support. About an hour and a half after our original attempt, we try once again to get the siding up.

Success!

The ledge worked fantastically and we were able to get the first panel up and secured with little trouble. That is, if you don’t count the major muscle strain that it took to lift that unwieldy and heavy panel a foot or two into the air. You should see how much Aleve I am taking lately. I had to (temporarily) stop drinking beer because I’m afraid of causing liver damage. Or is that just with Tylenol and I can crack open a cold one after work again?

Second panel did not go up as smoothly as the first. We got the panel up and realize it is crooked. Damn it. Then, I absentmindedly softly kicked it into place- Bad idea! I cracked the bottom and it crumbled off. Whoops. To fix the lopsided bit we grabbed some shims and straightened out the panel using them. Since the west wall of the garage doesn’t have any windows, it is one super long stretch of putting up the full sheets of paneling. This needed to get up not looking like we did it while on a bender.

We worked and worked and worked...

Dealing with some challenges along the way required head scratching until we figured out a solution. Such as one really twisted framing board that fell right where the seam between two panels was supposed to be. A few quick cuts of an extra 2x4 and we had that board sistered right up. There was shimming going on left and right. Sweating, since this was on the sunny side of the building in the afternoon and lots of “I’m gonna drop it!” shouts but after a few hours of super hard work- we had our wall up!

Garage Siding Decision

2010-09-15T09:21:00.000-04:00

After Pete and I did significant garage and barn stalking about town we decided on a look for the garage. Traditional was going to be the name of the game here for our construction. Board and Batten!

I snapped this inspiration pic while at a stop sign out in PA. For once I was decently speedy with busting out the camera and nabbing a picture in time. Paparazzi I am not.

There was almost no debating different materials for us to use for the siding. We really didn't want vinyl siding thinking that it is much better suited for a different style than we were aiming for. Overall the base price of the vinyl was better than all the options, but we knew that vinyl siding requires plywood or OSB sheathing to be put up underneath. All that wood product, even OSB is about $13 a panel around here, was not going to be budget friendly for us considering the size of our exterior walls.

We'd heard good stuff about fiber cement products and we were pretty much sold on it from the get-go of the project. Doing some more research on the fiber cement products only swayed us right on into the definite column. Fiber cement products, offer some serious protection against rot and bugs, plus has much longer longevity for wear than most anything else. Major bonus and a huge check in the YES column was that fiber cement would not require any wood product sheathing. Saves trees and us money! My fave combo right behind cheese and wine.

Also worth a mention is that I like the pro-environmental aspect for the fiber cement siding, we're always up for doing things environmentally friendly around here. In fact I'm still pushing for geo thermal, solar power or a back yard wind turbine when it comes time to look into electricity or heat/cooling systems. But that is neither here nor there right now.
While fiber cement is certainly not the end all be all green siding primo contender-it is a better earth friendly choice over most traditional home siding options and I think its always worth considering for a new build. Here is a pretty comprehensive guide to the environmental breakdown of fiber cement siding.

Ultimately we decided to not go with Hardie Board, which is the brand name of a fiber cement siding producer. Nothing personal James Hardie, it is just that CertainTeed has the same product you do but for a bit cheaper. We went with the WeatherBoards Cedar No Groove Vertical Pane option. The vertical batten boards will be put on later.

garage planning

2010-09-14T09:59:00.003-04:00

When we set out to plan this garage we did a couple of planning steps before pulling the trigger on the project.

The first was to pick a size that would suit our needs for now and in the future. Currently we have a two car garage and a healthy sized shed. Both are stuffed full of assorted stuff. We are not minimalists, by any sense of the definition. We also have about a billion and a half cars, plus a riding lawn mower that would all just love proper housing. What can I say? Pete’s a total car guy. Some guys have sports. Mine has engines.

This isn’t a new organization revelation by any means, but we found that for us- we’re able to cut down on the crap by knowing what we have. That means everything should be in one place, so we don’t end up with primer in the attic, basement, shed and that random closet where things just find themselves. In the past when we’ve gone through and really assessed our stock of shctuff we’re pretty much mind blown with how MUCH we have that didn’t get used. One or two or a few times of seeing how much was a wasted purchase or “yes please I will take your handmidown” was enough to get our rears into gear. It had to be a together effort for better organization that we’re always continually working on.

Knowing that we needed a place to store pretty much everything- the cars, the bevy of power tools that Pete treats like children, the construction supplies for all the houses and anything else that might come our way ( children, eventually) - we decided on a four car garage. We knew that would be all we would ever need and then some. Frankly, if we ever max it out then just call “Hoarders” and some therapists because it will be clear we have a big problem.

Second big planning step we took was- How do we want this to look? Since our house is old, and we live in an older town we took a stroll around and stalked out our neighbor’s properties. Besides being slightly creepy as we stood on sidewalks and stared at garages about town, we also noticed a trend. Most of the out building structures were older, quite big and barn like. Since we’re in the middle of a town, I doubt they were full blow farm barns. But smaller stables, livestock pens and carriage houses- definitely. We loved how often they seamlessly went with the main house. Because of that we wanted to build something that looked like it could have always been on the house.

Small side note here, the Wee house is one of the older houses on our current street. I’d place most of our neighbor’s houses at the 50-80 year old mark. Since our house is pushing about 120 years old that means we win! I’ll collect my prize of dealing with termite damage later. In talking to our neighbor he told us about the barn that was originally on his property but has long since been torn down. Pete and I gather that that barn was once ours. This is partially from nothing more than our own need to make up the gaps in history and the fact that it is strange a house of our size and age wouldn’t have a barn. But we think that when our house sold off the land to be divided for the neighborhood- the barn wasn’t on the property anymore.

Once we had the basic design down it came time to plotting out the land for the garage location. Since we have a very narrow but long lot the garage is two cars deep, instead of all across. With that layout it just fits better with the flow of the land. Knowing how we utilize our current yard, we were able to apply those same basic principles of use to the Wee house lawn without living there yet.

Here is the last part of the planning- discussing the budget. We knew this garage wouldn't be cheap, because new construction of this size never is cheap overall. But that we'd defiantly do our hardest to get this built while still being friendly to the bottom line of our total renovation budget. So far we're sticking to the budget like me to that last little bit chocolate cake on a plate.

Then the fun started and we applied for our demolition and construction permits….

Dead Something in Basement

2010-09-05T16:33:00.004-04:00

Something died in the Wee house basement. I say something because Pete can't even tell what it used to be. No friggen way did I take a peek. The best description he could give me was that "it used to have fur. and is bigger than a mouse" Gag.

The worst part is, it died in the basement drainage hole. Which is full of water. So instead of just being a super nasty dead animal in our basement this has become a liquefied mush of decomposition that is impossible to scoop out and get rid of now. Double Gag.

Basement and first floor of the house stink real bad. Thank goodness we're doing outside jobs only currently. I'm pretty prepared mentally when it comes to finding long dead smallish animal skeletons in the house. We've already come across at least four mouse skeletons and one mummified mouse. But this something is freshly dead, and bigger than a mouse.

Any advice? Should we throw lye down? Bleach? Wait for nature to take its course?

Hammer Time! ...'cause the air nailer died

2010-09-03T10:12:00.006-04:00

Pete was up on the roof balanced precariously on a 2x4 when our air framing nailer decided to go *POOFFTTT* and die on the job. My best tool friend on the job site was dead! Unfortunately everything we planned to do that day revolved around the framing air nailer. Pete went old school with the hammer and manpower for a few boards, in order to finish what he started but after that he had to switch gears and work something else.

I stayed on the ground, measuring and marking a million boards for our roof purlins. The delay of the air nailer breaking meant I was able to get a lot of them done and stocked up waiting for Pete. Check it out, the garage is really coming along!

Thankfully Pete is super handy and later on in the week (after a few hours of taking the nailer apart, inspecting it very carefully) he was able to find the thingy that seemed to be broken. Some small tweeks were needed and then the air nailer worked again! Phew.

Much ado about trusses

2010-08-30T09:28:00.004-04:00

Look back over DIY trusses putting up’ing:

- Work with a crew who knows the basics of construction and DIY work. You don’t want to have someone over who has never picked up a hammer before. Enthusiasm -while wonderful is second to skill for this task.

- Be knowledgeable. There were a lot of little things that Pete got done before the trusses went up that I haven’t touched on. Please do not use my thoughts on the garage process as an all encompassing DIY guide to building a garage.

- Realize how dangerous the job can be. When you are alert to the fact you have to be thoughtful and careful the entire time it really helps everyone stay on their toes to keep safety as numero uno.

- Have the right equipment! What was done to our garage could have never gotten done without the bucket lift and our firefighter friend manning the controls for it. He was 30 plus feet in the air the entire time and not a peep of complaint. I think maybe we should have gone for a crane though.

After the trusses went up Pete and I talked about the whole day in lengthy detail and what we learned from the job. I told him that I’d be really hesitant to recommend the same route we took to many people who were looking into building a garage. In fact I’m still not convinced that we should have taken the DIY route for this job. It. Was. Hard. This job was one of those times where I’m glad that the final DIY product is good but it was a royal pain to get there.

When you combine everything that is making our garage unique, you get a lot of complications with DIY construction. Th big starting point is the size of 26’ x 40’, which makes it a four car garage (hi, my husband’s name is Pete and he is addicted to cars) instead of the much more regular two car sized garage. The size required almost double the amount of trusses than what would be considered standard. Had it been a normal amount, I think everything would have been able to be wrapped up by 3pm, which was when we were about 2/3rd the way through with the 22 trusses.

Then we have the open room space on the second floor, instead of the space being eaten up by roof supports. While I can’t wait to have all that spare space and think it was a great idea to add for not that much more added money, it also lead to needing a higher roof to create usable headroom space and balance out the first floor car space size. The high pitch also helps to mimic of our house’s roof, trying to tie everything together in some sort of continuity. All together this meant we had bigger and bulkier than normal to handle floor and roof trusses and at almost 200lbs each they just added another layer of difficulty to an already hard job.

Had everything not been New Jersey super sized I think it would have been a bit easier to handle and get done without having a panic attack on my end…

Want to see some more DIY Garage building?

Check out Life Begins at 30's awesome garage! I adore the french door that overlooks their backyard and am a little (lots) jealous at how fast the project seems to be moving along.

The Flipping Couple built a massive space to help house their cars from the frosty Minnesota winter weather.

Broken washer update

2010-08-24T14:00:00.004-04:00

Remember my washer woes of last week? When the washer at the beach condo up died an untimely death and we were going to be looking at a twelve hundred dollar replacement bill?

Like most of you, repair bills that have commas in them make me shudder.

Immediately I fired up my friend Google and started researching the price of a brand new stackable washer dryer. Since the laundry nook that is the condo is super tiny we can't use a full size normal stack able washer and dryers. Unfortunately it seemed that since the smaller sized stackable appliances are not in high demand they are higher priced than one would think and harder to find in stores ready to buy.

Frustrated I sent off a vent email to a close group of friends.

one of them wrote back " I have a extra one of those stackable sets in my basements. You guys can have it if you think it will work"

Turns out that when my friend bought her house, it came with an almost brand new stacked washer dryer. Then a few years ago she and her husband decide to upgrade to fancy new washer and gas dryer. So the stacked set has sat unused and they've been trying to pawn it off on someone ever since then to get it out of the basement.

We picked up the set on Wednesday of last week and on Friday Pete drove down to the beach condo with his younger sister sitting shot gun as his helper. He had a small four hour window of which to get the old washer and dryer out, the new set upstairs and installed. If everything went well it could work. If the job turned into an epic fail, when then the next renters we had were SOL and without a washer and dryer.

Thankfully everything worked 90% well.

That 10%? The stackable unit is about a half inch too large for the laundry nook so it sticks out past the folding door we had there. Oh well. It works perfectly otherwise and frankly at this point in time was all we needed. Maybe in the off season we'll cut the drywall away behind it to put the door back on.

When this all worked out so well, I felt as if it was all my built up karma points had been cashed in.

Total savings by DIY: $1,150.

Rain Delay

2010-08-23T10:03:00.002-04:00

The day after the trusses went up dawned grey and misty, and Pete had to head out to work for a morning assignment. By the time Pete returned the mist had turned to steady rain with no sign on the radar of stopping. Undeterred ( or stupid) we geared up to finish a few things on the garage. Having slight hope of catching enough of a clear section of the day in order to get them done.

Silly silly us.

We arrive at the Wee house and it is pouring rain.

See all the piles of wood to the left of the garage sitting on the ground? We moved them "inside" the open garage in hopes of preventing major warping. Once that is done it is still pouring rain. Pete needed to get up to the roof in order to add the purlins, which would be our next step. There is no way it is safe to do that though with all the rain coming down. He was contemplating what to do next when I snapped this pic from under the cover of my pink hard hat.

Here you see me, with my naturally optimistic nature and love of rain keeping a smile on my face. Yeah it was pretty rainy out, but whatever. I try to make the best of every situation.

Half an hour of pushing our giant rented machine around in the sandy mud in order to get it hooked up and I'm twice the drowned rat I was before. The smile is gone, I'm freezing and day dreams of dry shirts are dancing in my head. Behold- the worst picture of myself I've ever put on the internet. The heated seats of our SUV were amazing on the way home.

Up go the trusses!

2010-08-20T12:10:00.003-04:00

Last Saturday we put up the trusses on the garage...

Putting the trusses up was hard all around. It was physically exhausting from lifting, hauling, climbing and running around. Mentally it was tasking because putting up these trusses was a super dangerous job. Weighing in at about 200lbs, 26ft long and about 12ft high for each truss these bad boys were not to be messed with or underestimated. Wrong moves could have spelled disaster for the truss, our framing or worst of all, one of us who were working on the crew. My dad was on a job site once when a roof collapsed and unfortunately there was a fatality because it.

Right before 8 o'clock in the am we roll up to the job site with coffee in hand. During the next hour we go about prepping the site while our recruited helper, my dad plus our friends Eric and Steve, roll in. Then Pete's dad shows up with our rented scissor lift. Which my dad insisted on and we all agreed that it was $350 well friggen spent at the end of the day.

The guys get down to work with hoisting up and placing the first truss. I'm trying to watch to see where a job roll for myself can be created. Unfortunately, this is where it all started to go downhill for me. I can't really explain why, but I was about two steps short of having a complete panic attack by the time the second truss is going up. It must have been that I watching all these guys whom I really care about and love doing such a dangerous job. Whatever it was exactly, I had to stop watching immediately or I knew I was going to loose it.

Since there was really no job for me to be doing on the trusses I went inside the house and decided to do some organizing of supplies and demolition. Getting away from watching the work outside helped immensely and I was able to focus my energy onto something else besides worrying.

Once I calmed down and after my run to Wawa for lunch for everyone, I was able to snap a few pictures of the work happening. Then I ran back inside and did more work there until late afternoon. Some might say I punking out on putting up the trusses and I get that maybe I was a little bit. But the reality really was that there was not anything I could do to help until a certain point.

That certain point came mid-afternoon when about 2/3 of the trusses were up. After a grueling day of hard work (that we seriously appreciated) two of our crew had to leave. Which is when I jumped in to help finish up. There was an established rhythm going on at that point so I was able to find an area of the job that I could do. Soon enough I fit right in and was working along with everyone like part of a well oiled machine.

The sun was going down as the last truss went up 10 hours after placing the first one. At that point I can hardly explain to you readers the sense of relief that I felt. Everything was up and there were no major accidents that occurred. I hugged our friend as he went to go home for the night, thanking him profusely for all the hard work that he put forth for our benefit. Sometimes the kindness of your friends and family really touches you and this was one of those times. They must really like us to do all that work.

Even though the sun was gone, the night wasn't over. Trusses are super sensitive when just set up with no braces and the last thing we wanted was a stiff breeze blowing through and knocking all the hard work done. After a quick pizza and blueberry pie break we got right to work on bracing the trusses for the night. Even though we planned on coming back the next day to finish the bracing you just never know about the weather and what it plans to do, so we wanted the peace of mind.

Right around 10pm we rolled outta there for the night.

Long hard day it was indeed.

Almost Truss Time!

2010-08-19T12:14:00.004-04:00

You've all seen the finished framing that Pete and I did together, now what you don't know is that it took an additional weekend worth of work to get that frame ready for our pre-made floor and roof trusses. However, I fled the work site and left Pete standing there to shoulder all the final details by himself. The call of the beach was just too great and I jumped in my car to meet my sister and family down the shore for the weekend. It was glorious! (To justify my absence I did clean the entire house before leaving...)

Pete finished all the little framing details and mid week met up with my Dad to get the delivery of the trusses. We thought long and hard about getting pre-made trusses or going the DIY route would be better. After getting quotes from various truss companies Pete worked out what the material cost would be to him for DIY. I'll have to get the exact numbers from him, but the cost difference was not so great that it just made sense to save a lot of headaches and time and to go with pre-made. Especially given the GIANT boards that we would have needed to span the width of the garage, I have no idea how we'd get 24ft boards to our house.

Early Saturday morning we got to the house and these 22 trusses were just waiting to get put up on the garage. These are a little different than standard x trusses because we wanted utilize the second story of the garage as usable space, so all that open space you see between the floor and roof will someday be finished off into a room!

Coming up next: The long Saturday. Putting up the trusses was the hardest house project we've tackled yet.

Rental Washer Broke...

2010-08-18T09:13:00.007-04:00

Yesterday we got the news from our rental agency that the washer in our condo unit bought the farm. The motor just up and died according to the maintenance guy who was sent out there, and we both believe him as the washer is likely older than I am. The washer and dryer came with the unit and we knew it wouldn't be long before replacements were in order. We're just thankful that it was the motor that busted, not a major leak causing water hose.

The laundry closet when we bought the place. There is a real door on there now, no more seashell shower curtain.

Because the washer died while there are tenants in the condo, we have to get a working machine in there asap. We also need make sure there is a washer for the three remaining summer rentals we do have booked. An hour after the original news our property management company calls us back with the estimate for getting a new washer.

$1,200.

I might have laughed. Or choked. I can't remember.

I told her that I do not authorize that amount to be spent. She sounded peeved, but hell I don't care. I'm not spending twelve hundred dollars on a basic washing machine for my rental unit. Especially when I don't have a fancy new machine at home! I, the self proclaimed laundry queen, have an older model that came free with the house.

Last year Pete and I priced out models at the Sears Outlet and they ran about $700 for a basic stacked laundry set. Those same models often popped up on craigslist for $300. Because of that shopping we mentally budgeted somewhere around $500 and it was on our to do list for this off season. With the new bathroom, bedroom floor and A/C unit last year, we were just tapped out by the time this rental season started.

It is the timing of all this that just sucks, two more weeks and we'd have the time to take care of all this without it being a rush. Now a project that could have been easy is now super urgent, when we're in the middle of another huge project that is demanding all our time and money.

Now we have to scramble. Find a new machine that works for this unique space, find the time to go down there and the help to get the machine up to the unit. Hope it is as simple as possible to swap the units and hook up the new one. Pete's nervous about getting the dryer off the wall. If you look closely, it's not a stacked unit we have now. Someone just mounted a dryer to the wall above the washer...

Overall though, we're not that worked up over this. We'll find a way that works for every one and doesn't cost us twelve hundred dollars. There is just no point to getting all bent outta shape sometimes. While it is annoying to deal with, things like this happen all the time when you have a rental property so you have to be prepared to deal with them as they come up. Last year we got two huge plumbers bills and had two a/c unit calls. Since both those problems are fixed now it was bound to be something else. In the large picture of everything it is still so worth it to us to have this place and rent it out in the summer, so that is what matters the most.

Four walls up!

2010-08-16T09:24:00.000-04:00

In a matter of one hard working day Pete and I rocked out the remaining framing! By the time we left that evening all four walls were standing and had been properly supported by some temporary braces. Temporary braces add needed support to the frame until the rest of the structure can be build up. They also give the homeowners peace of mind during pop up summer thunder storms that tons of money and hours worth of work aren't going to get blown over by a stiff breeze.

See that long piece of lumber? That my friends would be our very first FAIL of this garage project. Pete and I thought it would be a *great* idea to engineer a whole bunch of the really bad/leftover wood into one plank that would span the width of the garage. Our s-m-r-t plan was that it would be great extra support.

So I go about laying out all this lumber and we get to air nailing it together. Hoist it up and over onto the top plate and... major failure. The wood bounces like a rubber pencil. No way will it help to support the garage, if anything I'd bet that it would help to pull the walls in. We had a good laugh at our own expense and ditched the lumber.

Lumber sitting

2010-08-15T10:50:00.002-04:00

How does one put 16' boards in a car that only has 14' of interior space?

One quick stop at the local lumberyard for some needed wood and suddenly I'm recruited by Pete to keep the 2x4x16's from falling out on the way home. All three minutes home I'm sitting on the lumber while leaning over keeping the trunk door closed as much as possible. It was surprisingly hard and back/hand crampy to do.

* note, I'm pretty sure my method of lumber sitting/ leaning to hold a door closed is illegal and therefor you should not try it at home.

Garage walls going up!

2010-08-12T10:47:00.004-04:00

See Eva... Raise a wall.

I was bound and determined to raise a wall myself. The whole time I was doing so Pete kept making "tickets to the gun show" cracks about my lady biceps. Like I've said before, I'm suprisingly scrappy for my slight-ish stature but I'm not exactly ripped in the muscle department.

And I didn't purposely try to match my Phillies hat to my work shirt. It just worked out that way. The hat was free at a game, and it rocks for working outside because of the mesh backing which lets the noggin breath a little.

Coffee table hunting

2010-08-11T09:54:00.001-04:00

My blogger friend (and former real life coworker) Lisa of ...just over the river put out the ABP for a new living room coffee table. Her adorable new dog Pilot has a habit of getting his toys stuck underneath their current coffee table, which leads to rug scratching and head clunking as he attempts to get the toys out. Worth a mention is that Lisa is not exactly super thrilled with their current coffee table so this pretty valid reason to get a new one has her excited.

I started to write a response to her coffee table APB when I realized that it was going to make for one super long comment. Which prompted me to switch the location of the response to here, with the suggestions I found that might work for her (and anyone else out there searching for a new coffee table).

Here are the requirements:

No or very little hang-over on the table top for dog safety
"Light and airy" (the current table is too "heavy" for the space)
Could have a bottom shelf but not too low
A durable top because "someone" forgets to use coasters and we put our feet up on the table
In the $200-ish range would be awesome
Could be glass or wood
Could be rustic with modern lines

And the following suggestions:

This Nate Burkus Glass Top Coffee table is funky and a little unexpected, but it would pair well with Lisa's living room style. The slim profile would also open up valuable eye square footage in her cape cod home. Plus, with a glass top glass marks will wipe up with ease!

Next up we have a coffee table that I love so much that I would make out with it behind the bleachers after school.

Hello Holbrook Coffee Table! It has the same look as Restoration Hardware's Brickmaker Table, for about 1/5 the cost. With the heavy top balanced out by a substantial,yet open bottom the table slides in as an"airy-ish" option. Plus the Holbrook also offers up a marriage of rustic and modern lines that was one of Lisa's wants for the style. Or at least its my interpretation of it rustically modern. Unfortunately the Holbrook is out of the set budget and the top might need some extra protection from the "someone" who forgets often use a coaster.

To make up for going over budget on the last table this one is way under. Check out this $99 special from JCPenny! It has a modern airy vibe, and plenty of room for dog toys to roll through underneath.

Squeee!! I love the Metal Accordion table from Urban Outfitters! From the flat square top down to the wee little feet of the table. Very open and airy, plus it is easy on the wallet with a non-budget busting price of $128!

There you go Lisa, all my suggestions. Now I know why we don't currently have a coffee table... finding "the" one is hard. Good luck and I hope this helped a bit!

Edit:

The over-budget Pottery Barn Tanner Coffee table is a fave of mine and a home blog staple.

You can replicate the look by grouping two of these metal and glass cocktail tables from Overstock.com. They had the cheapest price I've found for that look. Bonus is that if you ever get tired of using them as a coffee table they can be broken up and relocated to be used in a while slew of different places around the house.

If anyone has any more suggestions for Lisa, drop on over her blog and leave a comment!

Up goes the first wall!

2010-08-10T13:14:00.000-04:00

After our push to get the sill plate laid in the 100 degree heat we were seriously relieved that the next weekends' weather was going to be in the normal upper 80's. Still hot and sweaty, but oh so much unbelievably better to work in. During the week the inspector came out and passed our sill plate!

Passing the sill plate inspection meant we now could move onto the framing. Turns out, I love framing! We worked really hard and at the end of the weekend the entire garage was framed. It was really as close to instant satisfaction I think I'll ever get on this job site.

Bright and early Saturday morning this is what the job site looked like. Notice the one framed wall on the garage floor, we couldn't put that one up without first getting the passing approval from the inspector.

First corner goes up.... and I start to get the hang of how to hold the wall steady as Pete nails it down. Pretty proud to say that clutzy mc drops a lot didn't let one wall fall at all!

After the wall is up and squared off, Pete nails in the window headers. In this picture you can see my new BFF, our air framing nailer. If you are going to undertake a long term project where an extensive amount of DIY framing will be required, buy the right air nailer for the job. You'll thank yourself for making the investment.

First full wall up!

2010-08-07T09:31:00.003-04:00

Today Pete and I are on our way to pick out our roof and siding materials! This makes me super excited. More proof that I am turning into such a little construction nerd :)

Sill plates, framing and storms!

2010-08-06T09:37:00.004-04:00

Sunday morning rose with promises of another scorching day and some late afternoon thunderstorms. We met up with my dad at the job site around 8:30 and he got us right to work. I started hammering in a board on top of the sill plate, to act as a foundation for our framing that Pete and my dad were laying out.

One thing I learned real quick while leaning over hammering was that the sun reflects off of concrete like a mo-fo and will burn your eyes fast. I have pretty tough eyes that aren't very sensitive to light, but I was dying a few minutes in. I had to dive into my purse and pull out my good sunglasses, the Marc Jacobs that I paid $40 for at Nordstrom Rack and try very hard not to sit on or break like all my past sunglasses because these were a splurge for me. So here I am pulling out my good sunglasses on a construction job site because my eyes are watering and I can barely see.

Sassy.

A few hours of sweaty work go by later and we're about to break for lunch when I hear my name being called. Again, and it is by a female. What the? I turn around and my friend has pulled into the driveway! I start jumping up and down like a spaz because, 1: I am a spaz and was surprised and 2: this friend had a baby three days ago! Her family was headed home from the hospital, which is seriously 30 seconds from the Wee house when they saw our cars and decided to stop by. Which meant I got a little peek at the baby :) When I say I was cheesey smiling the rest of the day I mean it. Seeing her little baby at our house reminded me why we're doing all this DIY. We want a family someday (not anytime soon mom) and the Wee house is where we want to be. Full disclosure of honesty, I started crying a little bit because I was just SO happy for them. I'm a little bit of an emotional nerd.

We broke for a late lunch and checked out the weather forecast, severe thunderstorms starting between 5 and 6pm. Decide to go back to work and squeeze in a few more hours worth of work. We're both busting our rear ends working away when I look up. Um, that cloud does not look good. In fact there are lots of clouds that don't look good all around us. Crap. None of our wood is stacked or covered and it looks like a major storm is headed our way. At this point it was 3:30, so I thought I had at least an hour until the storm him.

I abandon my hammering job and start to stack the wood into 4 piles, breaking them down by size and quality. This way we won't have to grab from one big pile and check every board for straightness. We'll know that if we're grabbing a board from a pile that it is the right size and has already been checked for curves, splits, knots and bows. There are three piles on the garage foundation: Two "A" piles and a mixed B pile. All reject wood gets thrown back into the trailor to be used for scrap or returned.

As fast as I'm working the storm is sneaking up faster. Looks like the estimated time of arrival was off, because it is just about 4pm. Pete notices the clouds forming so he comes over to help, working together we might be able to cover the wood piles before the rain starts. Um, not to so lucky. We're trying to strap down the first tarp when the storm comes rolling in, the first few fat raindrops start to hit us and the sky above is dark as dusk. Lightening strikes are all around us and the thunder is sounding immediately after the flash of light.

I'm a lover of summer storms and find getting caught outside during a summer rain to be a fun time. But I do not eff around with lightening and bad winds. That crap can kill you, especially when you have a huge open space behind you and you're standing under one of the biggest trees in the area. With one lousy tarp on the wood pile we give up and run inside to escape the storm.

About thirty minutes later the worst has past. It is about 20 degrees cooler outside with a light drizzle. At this point we decided mother nature has determined our stopping point for us, finish up tarping the wood piles and pack it in for the weekend.

Garage Sill Plate Time!

2010-08-04T10:07:00.003-04:00

By the time we got to the Wee house with our load of wood it was early evening. Not exactly the start time we'd originally envisioned, but running late is usually our MO. Especially when we try to squeeze a billion things into one little Saturday.

Take a close look at our wood pile, notice the darker greenish boards at the way bottom? Those would be our pressure treated lumber that is needed for the very first step of garage construction. Mental head slap. Now we had to move around the whole pile of wood in order to get to the boards we needed.

Pete squaring off the first plank of the sill plate. The blue underlay is a barrier to help protect the wood from direct contact with the cement. This offers protection from water, the leaching acidic nature of the settlement cement and insects from penetrating into our hard work! Well worth the $5 a roll price tag for all that protection. Super easy to install as well, just unroll and attach. Cut to size.

Trying to match up the right bit size for the holes in the wood. We marked the holes in the wood by me holding the board level over the screw pins and Pete smashing it with a hammer to leave an impression on the broad side of the wood. Worked pretty well for us and we thought we were so SMRT for figuring out how to do it, the next day my Dad filled us in on a little secret. We could have just measured the board and marked out where to put the holes. Whatever. Smashing worked just fine and was way more fun.

Spanning the door frame opening in the back. To help save yourself some headaches and to make sure everything perfectly lines up- always span the openings. You can attach first and then cut away the opening second. Much easier to lay down one large board and square it than to do two smaller boards.

Bound and determined to get this sill plate done we pushed on past sundown and into the night. There was a little bit of guilt for breaking the neighborhood quiet drilling and hammering, but we packed up around 9pm. Which I suppose isn't that late and disruptive. It was so much nicer working once the sun went down, while it never got "cool" having some relief from the beaming 98 degree sun was wonderful.

Oh, and this is a little after the fact- but I just came across this great Bob Villa How-To article about garage foundations. Well worth a read if you're planning a project like this yourself. Even if you plan on hiring out for the whole or part of the garage. Familiarizing yourself with the work that should be getting done is very important.