Not Quite Easy

I spent Saturday painting the trim of the stairwell and then stopped before edging the gray because I realized there was a slight problem. The handrail. It's going to be pretty impossible to paint the wall without removing it but suddenly I was stumped as to the best way to do that.

I suspect the best way to do it (i.e. the way to not ruin all the holes and make them unusable) is to remove the screws holding the hardware to the actual wood handrail. Would the holes still be small enough then to slip the handrail right back into place when I'm done painting? It would be much easier to paint the wall if I removed the hardware at the wall, but I suspect I will do more damage to the plaster and have to fill the old holes and create new ones. That seems like a lot of unnecessary damage to the wall. Though maneuvering around them with a paintbrush doesn't exactly sound fun.

Either way, we're going to have to take one set of hardware off. See the second one up from the bottom of the picture?

Not only is the spacing completely off (the hardware appears to have been installed completely at random and we don't really care about that too much) but it turns out that it's not actually attached to the wall anymore. We can slip the screws in and out just by tugging on them. So however we remove the rest of the hardware, that one will have to come out entirely and be moved, which means holes to fill, new holes to drill (in both the handrail and the wall) and Spackle to sand. No wonder I lost my momentum on this project.

So the question for you, reader, is whether or not to remove the 2 screws on the handrail or the 3 screw on the wall, for those holders that are still functional. Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Another weird problem: now that we fixed all the hallway light bulbs, we discovered  that the switch on the right (which we thought went to the light with the broken bulb) actually doesn't go to anything. We thought one went to each light, but the black switch on the left apparently goes to both, leaving us clueless as to what the one on the right goes to. At some point, we'll have to have an electrician come and sort that out.

And just because I can, here's a picture of the morning after a big snowstorm. The snow was so thick and wet that it was slipping down our roof in one giant mass. We had some pretty monstrous icicles too but D knocked them off so that we wouldn't be impaled. I especially enjoyed watching the "hat" on our lamppost slowly shrink throughout the day:

Time for Round Two!

The holiday's are over and D is days away from finishing his thesis, so home improvement is back on the to-do list. This spring, we turn our attention to the upstairs. Now, those of you who have seen our home have noted that readers who have not had the pleasure may not even realize we have an upstairs to begin with. That was at least partially deliberate (very astute readers might have wondered about the extra bedroom I mentioned in this post). You see, we don't like to acknowledge that we have so much space. And since we have a Cape Cod-style house with a door to the stairs, we like to keep it closed and pretend it's a coat closet. But the time has come to recognize that behind the door are two more bedrooms and a full bath.

So we are going to finally begin work on the upstairs, specifically on the hallway and the future master bedroom. We're limited because we don't want to do any major painting until the windows are installed (probably early March) but there are small projects to keep us busy until then.

Here are some pictures and plans for what's going to keep us busy for the next month or two:

First, the hallway. The door on the left leads to the living room (here's an old picture for orientation of where the door is from the living room side)

You can see that thanks to some woodwork trim, there's a neat upper edge that divides the lower level from the upper level, which is very convenient when it comes to painting--they can be different colors and be painted at different times (which is good considering the upper half is going to take lots of fancy ladder configurations to get the ceiling and walls above the stairs). This month we're focusing on the lower half.

We're painting it Knitting Needle, the same color as the living room and painting all the trim white (it's all that pale yellow the previous owners seemed to love). We're also hanging new hooks from that band of wood above the light switches. We removed some pretty ugly ones but want to continue to use it for storage. We bought

3 sets of 3 Bjarnum hooks from Ikea that we think will look nice either in use or closed. Here they are in both positions:

Project two is the walk-in closet (not original to the house, obviously, since they didn't own so much junk in the 1950s):

Since the structure is all Closet Maid, I can make a lot of changes without having to totally start over. I'm planning to move the wire shelf down, since I am not 6'5'' like the previous people apparently were, and I might swap out the inefficient shoe cubby with something that will hold more. You can see the air-conditioning duct (the silver thing) that runs through the closet, so I can't mess with that much. Also since the closet is so big, I want to paint it. I'm leaning towards a silvery blue and hoping to find one of those really cheap cans of paint at Home Depot that was mixed and then returned. It's a closet, so I'm not that picky. Now's the time, since once it's full of clothes it will be impossible to empty out.

And finally the bedroom. You can see from the color that it was a little boy's room before. Though we're not going to do anything until the windows are installed, we're planning ahead and trying to decide how we want to decorate.

It may not be clear from the pictures but we have two dormer windows that bring a lot of light into the room. Each window also has a tiny shelf ( a little too narrow to sit on) and also "attic" doors on each side for storage. We like that the sloping ceilings end fairly high up, so the room is open and airy instead of claustrophobic, like a few Cape Cods we've seen.

Right now, we're planning to paint the walls a pale sage green and use blues and grays as the accent colors. We want our furniture to be shades of black and white stain and paint (D is a proponent of mismatched, eclective furniture though I tend to prefer buying in sets). We want a lot of storage and so have been looking everywhere for various storage beds (alternatively known as captain's beds). We've found a few good solutions by Pottery Barn, Gothic Cabinet Craft, and Blu Dot but Ikea beat them all out in price and customizability (that's not a word, but you know what I mean).The Ikea Mandal is really cheap and we can paint it whatever color we want. We bought one this weekend and I'm considering if it would be possible to stack two of them, for added storage space and height. Structurally, it does not seem impossible, though I can't find evidence of anyone else doing it...

The headboard (sold separately) is pretty cool and we might decide to buy it and install it somewhere else, but it doesn't quite do it for me as a headboard.

Other ideas for the bedroom: painting the ceiling a soft gray instead of bright white; installing a ceiling fan; installing wall lamps on each side of the bed; finding a headboard we like; turning one of the dormer cubbies into a little vanity area for me; finding plush, gorgeous rugs; finding the perfect floating nightstands that have a drawer (Most are just shelves. The drawers on the bed necessitate having a nightstand attached to the wall, so it doesn't block the drawers from opening).

And that's what's going on with us. As always, suggestions are always welcome. We really have no idea what we're doing, we just pretend like we do.

Killer House, the Sequel

As I'm writing in the office, I hear a familiar scratching/scraping noise. Can it be? I go outside, shake the downspout, and yes, hear frantic scratching from a little furry critter.

We have gutter guards over our gutters to keep leaves (and squirrels?) out, but there is a small squirrel-sized gap near the top opening of the downspout. I suppose that's how they are getting in. The why is, unfortunately, unknown. What is luring squirrels into our downspout? Are they trying to build a nest? Did they store a bunch of nuts in it? Do they think it is a slide?

Whatever their reasoning, I didn't want to leave it inside. It'd probably stink a lot to have a rotting squirrel in your downspout come warm weather. I carefully disconnected the downspout from the system and this time a grey blur emerged and scampered away to the nearest tree. Oi.

Killer House

A couple of days ago, our house did something bad.

As I was getting ready for work I heard a strangely loud scraping noise from our office. I thought it was the oil company filling up our heating oil tank, but there was no truck out front. The noise kept coming back every few minutes, so as I left, I walked around the outside to try and figure out what the noise was. 

The scraping/scratching noise got increasingly frantic as I approached the corner of the house. Something was stuck inside the downspout of our gutter system. Either a squirrel or a big rat. It had fallen down all the way to the bottom and was trying to climb out. There, fortunately, was an easy solution to the problem - just unhook the bottom of the downspout and shake out the critter. Unfortunately, the freezing weather and fall leaves had resulted in the bottom foot of the downspout being filled with a solid block of ice and leaves. I couldn't knock it out and I didn't have the time to bring out rounds of boiling water to melt it. 

The high for the day was to be over 50, so I figured I would come home and the ice would be soft enough to knock out. The furry creature could last the day.

Wrong.

I kicked out the ice and then out came a squirrel popsicle. I guess hypothermia set in. 

Bad house! No killing!

RIP, stupid squirrel.

Initial Thoughts on Windows

In the last two weeks, we've had four in-home estimates and one online estimate. I think we've almost made a decision, but I can blog about that later. For now, for the benefit of anyone else reading this that might buy windows (which is a small crowd, since--as I hope--most of these readers are far more knowledgeable and experienced homeowners than me), here are my thoughts on the estimate process.

1. Subscribe to Angie's List. Or at least pretend to.
Most of the companies ask where you heard of them. If you say anything but Angie's List, you'll get a pretty neutral response. But mention Angie's List and suddenly they sound impressed and excited. I'm convinced that your ability to rate them for others to see actually means something to them. So don't subscribe for the reviews (they have not been particular helpful) but just for the power to review. Or just tell them you have Angie's List, because they'll never know.

2. Ask for print versions of the warranties for both the contracting company and the manufacturer.
I have been amazed at how much we have been lied to on our warranty coverage. The problem is that EVERYONE is lying, so you can't eliminate a company just for that. "How much does it cost to replace a broken window?" "Free." "What about labor?" "Free." Except they don't tell you that after a year or two, either or both of the supplies and labor will probably be pro-rated until eventually you're paying full price. I don't mind taking responsibility for my windows, but I mind that these people are not telling me the truth. (Finally by the end we asked very pointed questions so that there was no way out, and then we got honest answers: "Do you pro-rate your labor costs?" "Well...we follow the industry standard of pro-rating after 2 years..." Gotcha!)

3. Most people will bring a sample window but some don't. If you're a visual or tactile person, ask for one to be sure.
First, I thought it was weird, but then when one guy didn't bring the window sample I found myself immediately not wanting to hire his company. They all look pretty much the same, but somehow having something to touch can really help. I bet asking for them when you make the appointment would guarantee that everyone brings a model.

4. Learn your figures.
The minimum energy efficiency on the window to qualify for the tax credit is strict and could change. There are u-factors and solar heat gain coefficients and air transfers. Everyone will tell you about them whether you want to hear about it or not ("I know, I know, the last 3 guys before you all told me about them!") but you should probably read about it from a neutral source before you start.

5. If you're like us and only do minimal research beforehand, you will not get enough information from the first person to give you an estimate.
We ended up getting much better at asking questions with each visit so that now I realize that I did not get even half the necessary information from the first guy.  In fact, our first salesman (probably sensing I didn't know much) tried to sell me on things like virgin (non-recycled) vinyl (which apparently is an industry standard, not a special feature), metal locks (again, all of them come with that), and not using day laborers for the installation (no one has admitted to using them; they all claim to use in-house reputable staff). We could probably call back for more info on the things we now realize are important (like the warranty, see point 2), but that company isn't making our final cut either way.

6. Get the REAL price.
Make sure that the final estimate includes everything and not just the standard price/window. Some companies include capping (putting aluminum or some other substance on the remaining exterior wood to protect it), material disposal, and grids but in the price/window but others apparently don't. Make sure there are no hidden costs. We had to ask specifically "does the price include X?" to be certain.

There are probably more but I wanted to jot these down while I was thinking about them. I'm sure I'll have plenty more to say when we decide on a company and start the actual replacement.

I'm hunting wabbits!

Not these:

But these:

As I put away our Christmas decorations and straighten up the house, I thought it would be a good time to ask how different people clean their wood floors and rugs. It was so much simpler (though a lot uglier) with our beige wall-to-wall carpets in our last apartment. Now, we have varied floor coverings and bare (polyurethaned) wood, which makes clean-up a lot harder.

Doing next-to-no research, I was prepared to use a vacuum weekly plus a wax or oil like Murphy's Oil occasionally. D, doing much more research, discovered that oils are unnecessary and even harmful for floors. Vacuums can be bad, especially if you set the bristles spinning, which can wear off the polyurethane. Our hard-core Dyson animal, so great for our old carpets, isn't even very good at hardwood. D is a proponent of microfiber dustmops, but I apparently am not very skilled at maneuvering them and tend not to pick up very much as I go.

After a long debate, D also finally agreed that a tiny amount of moisture very very occasionally will also not kill the floors, giving me license to use a Swiffer once in a blue moon. The dry mop just never made the floors feel very clean.

He dust-mops while I vacuum our rugs, which is actually difficult, since they are small and the Dyson is large. Plus I have to pick up the beast and carry it around to each area rug, which is no fun (though nice exercise). Then I use the hose to suck up the pile of dust bunnies that D gathered. I also use the hose to try to get into crevices and corners (like under our love seat) where the bunnies seem to gather and where the dust mop can't reach. Together, this seems like a lot of work, especially since we aren't even cleaning the upstairs yet. And even right after cleaning, I start to see the bunnies emerge from hiding to taunt us. Last week, after D started waking up very sniffly every morning, I moved our night tables and was appalled to find a whole litter of bunnies that must have though we would never find them. I sucked them up right away, but it got me wondering where else they are hiding. Is there no end to them? I think maybe I preferred our carpets, where the dust lived far more invisibly in non-bunny state (it was still there, but I couldn't get under our furniture to see it).

So what do you do?

A Post About Windows

I had a plan for my first post of the new year. I was going to talk about how now that the holiday season is almost over (and it was an amazingly beautiful and relaxing one in our new place), it's time to get back into the season of home improvement. I was going to talk about how we have a contractor coming to give us an estimate on windows for our upstairs, and talk about all different configurations we are considering. I was. Until this morning.

That post will have to wait because this morning the home ownership gods decided to remind us that we are not always in control of our own repair decisions. At 10:00am on what the weather channel is calling a "blustery" day, this:

Made contact with this:

 Here's a closer look:

We're very glad that it did not shatter the window pane, though it certainly woke us up (it's the side window in the downstairs bedroom where we sleep). For now, we taped it up on both sides:

But we're not sure what to do next. As I mentioned above, a window contractor is coming to give us some upstairs estimates on Monday, so we can have him check this out too. However, we don't want these windows replaced, we just want a new pane. Would this be a better job for a glass specialist? D thinks that it would be worth calling a few places and asking if they are familiar with repairing older windows, to make sure that the window frame isn't damaged during the repair. I have no concept of how much something like this usually costs ($10? $100? $1000?) but obviously it has to get done.

Well, at least this post still turned out to be about windows. More home improvements on the horizon!

Holiday Season

It's been slow here in terms of house repairs as we get the place decorated for Christmas. And there's no better way to decorate than with 20'' of snow:

And so we got our first chance to experience a snowstorm as homeowners which meant SHOVELING. Wooo! (I'm sure it will get old pretty quickly, but for now since it was the first snowfall of the year, it wasn't so bad.)

(The picture is quite deceptive. D did most of the shoveling the evening before just after the snow fell. I, a weakling, was not very efficient and so mostly just watched).

And so combined despite our sparse Christmas lights, I think we have a very festive scene:

And a close-up of my little village scene, which I've had since I was a child and which now has a perfect home in our picture window:

Finally, some pictures of the inside, decorated for the holidays. I realized that I never put a picture of the living room in its finished, pre-decorated state, so here are some "before" pictures:

(That's an Ikea Expedit in the doorway to create some separation between the entry and the living room.)

And now here are some photos from after we decorated:

It's going to be a merry Christmas, especially once we get the fire lit and sit around sipping hot chocolate. Home repairs and painting will have to wait until next year.

More Winterizing

Last weekend, we decided that it was time to explore the crawl space in our basement and check out the status of our pipes. Usually, our crawl space looks like this:

(see that tiny door behind all those bikes? yep, that's the crawl space)

It's easy to understand why we forget it's there. But it is, and many of our heat pipes head in that direction. D was brave and went in (I mostly watched from the safety of the cement) and measured all our pipes. We were a little surprised to find that they were all completely uninsulated. We didn't know that, since actually the crawl space was blocked during our inspection, so we never got in there before we bought the house.

So we were off to Home Depot for another big purchase. Buying insulation turned out to be harder than we though. First, the measurements are for the inside of the pipe, which isn't how we measured, obviously. We just had to estimate the exterior diameter best we could. Since insulation is supposed to fit snugly, poor D had to go back to Home Depot twice more to finish all our repurchasing and returns until we got it right. Second, there's a lot of kinds of insulation. We bought foam ones for the small pipes and fiberglass ones for the bigger pipes. Somehow, I got fiberglass particles on my exposed skin (hands and collarbone) and started turning bright red and itching on our first trip for insulation. I had to rush home and shower. That's why D didn't trust me to go back again and went the second and third time by himself.

Then it was insulation time:

After those little particles got all over me, I really took the warnings about breathing in particulate seriously and made D put on a mask. Isn't he cute?

So now our pipes are insulated. Unfortunately, the guest room and office are still much colder than the main rooms of the house. The heaters are lukewarm to the touch, so we know that water is flowing through and we don't have to bleed the system any more. It seems that even with the insulation, traveling under the house makes the hot water cooler. I think this will just be a fact we have to live with, at least without having to make major renovations.

We are investing in a good electric blanket...

Autumn Leaves

We've taken a break on home improvements after the Housewarming Party and decided to focus on the holiday season instead. But that doesn't mean we could ignore standard cold-weather preparations. And so today we tackled the leaves...

We raked the front yard once shortly before our party, but had deliberately ignored the back--which no one can see from the street--until most of the leaves fell. By late November, "fall" was over. D used the blower while I raked (I wanted too--I needed a post-Thanksgiving work-out). We filled 5 tarps-worth of leaves, which we dragged to the front curb. Fortunately, our neighborhood has curbside pick-up that runs on a cycle, so we don't even have to bag the leaves. There are still a lot of leaves in the back but we made a nice dent in it. We also re-raked the front yard. I'm sure I will be sore tomorrow.

We also finally got around to shutting our outdoor faucets. It took a while to find the right knobs, since we completely forgot that kind of useful information we got during our home inspection. But we figured it out, and have the outdoor faucets open with the indoor part shut down. As soon as we find them in the garage, we will also dress the faucets with the cute little booties my parents gave us.

What didn't we do? Well, we have some unfinished wood on our back steps that we planned to weatherproof.

The problem, which we just noticed today, is that Thompson's Water Seal requires a few days of dry, warm weather. The instructions state that 2 days of above 50-degree weather is necessary. We may have missed the boat on this one. Hopefully the wood won't take too much of a beating this winter and we can take care of it in the spring.

Another thing we didn't get to, but that is on our fall prep list, is fixing our window sills. The front bay window was already on our list of to-do's:

Then D's dad noticed that we have some rotting outside our upstairs windows, and that we should treat it before it rots too deeply.  The upstairs bedroom window is much worse than the bay window. It's practically hollow in there:

We need to buy some wood filler and exterior primer and paint. By default, we tend to go to Sherwin Williams; but I think this job doesn't require a particularly nice paint, so we'll probably just go to Home Depot. Paint recommendations are welcome. We're also considering just replacing the upstairs windows, which are original to the house and do not have storm or screen windows. If we do that, the sill will get replaced too. Alternately, we could just install storm/screen windows to the existing structure, which means that we will still have to fix the sill (that could be a tongue-twister). We're still doing research and it's all pretty expensive, so we'll probably just stop the rot and deal with the bigger issues later.

A Warm House

I've been meaning to post a quick thank you to everyone who came to wish us well (or wished us well from afar) at our housewarming party a few weeks ago. Over 40 people stopped by and I think fun was had by all, so our inaugural house party was a success. Best of all, we did not run out of food (thank you, Costco, despite your daunting quantities). Here are some pictures, all of which we took before our guests arrived. I planned to snap a few at the party but was too busy having fun!

Thanks to D's aunt, who sent us a beautiful flower arrangement that arrived with perfect timing, our table looks complete.

The only ones not happy about the party? The cats. Can you spot them both? Our skittish one is that lump to the left of the gray one. He dove under the covers the second the doorbell rang.

Chandelier Hanging

Our house included a free, already installed chandelier in the dining room.

Unfortunately, we hated it.

So J got a second-hand chandelier for a nice discount and I promised to install it. I took down the old fixture, begun unraveling the electrical wires, and got a minor case of "electrocution". You really DO have to turn the power off. After tripping nearly all of the circuit breakers (poorly labeled box!), I turned off the power. I took it down, picked up the new fixture, and quickly realized I had a problem, as was chronicled by J on October 2nd.

I resolved (after re-installing the old chandelier) to worry about other things. Unfortunately for me J REALLY didn't like the fixture, so she began pushing me to get an electrician. Which I was 98% against since it SHOULD be easy.

Fortunately for us, my grandfather read the blog and (in short) told me it WAS easy and gave me some pointers. I was concerned because the box we had didn't have the corner screw holes to attach the cross-bar. My grandfather pointed out that these boxes are standard and the holes almost certainly hiding underneath the plaster. Yes, he was correct. The next problem was that the center nut/U-bolt system to hold the fixture up didn't fit together. A trip to Home Depot yielded an adapter to make them work together.

After some gentle tugging and twisting (we have old and crusty canvas-coated wires) we got it installed.

Our cat P immediately demonstrated his confidence in my fixture hanging.

It's been hanging for about a month now with no issues, so I'm calling this mini-project a success.

Next on the agenda are windows! We've still got the original windows, drafty and sans screens. I'm inclined to keep them warts and all since I hate getting rid of something that's lasted 60 years. We plan on getting some quotes for storm windows. That should help with the draft and screen issues.

A Dining Room, at last

One and a half months after ordering our Basque dining room table, bench, and chairs at Crate and Barrel, they have arrived! We are very excited to welcome they into our home where they will be filling an almost-completely empty room. While waiting for them to arrive, we hung blinds (Roman shades, to be exact. I am slowly learning the vocabulary of window dressing.) and even successfully hung the lamp that caused us so much trouble last month (maybe D will write about that in a little more detail later), after getting more advice and doing more research. We're still working on table decor and other little details, and will eventually get a nice, bright-colored sideboard to contrast the sturdy lines of our table as well as a rug, but otherwise, the dining room is DONE!

Isn't that wine rack cool? A cheap find at a garage sale in our neighborhood. I think I'm going to like living here.

Incidentally, this is so far the only room we haven't had to paint. I love the soft brownish green the previous owners painted in here. We have yet to go through the old cans they left us in the garage--I hope we can find some of this color for some touch-ups.

State of the Living Room

Our $1000 media wall is now complete:

Before we became homeowners, $1000 would have seemed like an insane amount of money to spend on a single wall. After spending large amounts of time comparison shopping, $1000 is actually a solid value to outfit a wall of this size (142 inches wide, about 95 inches high). (That price is not including the TV, books, stereo, etc. Just the cabinets and shelving system).

Our criteria for this wall was: cabinets (important to hide clutter), book shelves, space for a TV, and <$1000. Another issue was the a baseboard runs along the wall, so ideally, whatever we choose will rise above it so as not to insulate the room from the heater!

When trying to find a source to create a media wall our first inclination (and still is for any furniture need) was to see what Ikea had. The Ikea Billy would be the easiest option. They have multiple colors and a wide variety of accessories to integrate a TV into. The problem is that the Billy isn't the sturdiest or most attractive furniture set. The system is plastic veneered fiberboard masquerading (poorly) as wood. It does the job, but not in a aesthetically pleasing way. Most depressing of all, a Billy system to cover the wall is nearly $1000, which we had set as our unofficial budget for the wall.

                                   

The next option I seriously considered was the Ikea Ivar. It's made of unfinished pine wood, which after being stained or painted could be a very attractive piece. It also has options for cabinets, which though plain could be enhanced by gluing some trim to the doors. It would only cost around $600. The major deal breaker was the TV - the shelves are only wide enough to accommodate a 32'' LCD. Which happens to be the size we currently own, but we hope to upgrade to something a little bigger in a few years. I looked into making wider shelves, but the Ivar shelves have a custom metal bracket on each end that would have been very difficult to fabricate.

After two strikes, I came up with my best and final idea. Ikea kitchen cabinets for the base (~$600), container store elfa shelving brackets (~$250), and premium pine shelving that I would cut to size and have J stain (~$150). It's a strange idea on (e)paper. Kitchen cabinets? Closet shelving system? But it gave excellent flexibility in determining the width and height and had the added benefit of the cabinets rising above the baseboard heat. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. We did buy handles for the doors, but I think we will keep them off. The "expanse of wood" effect would be lost with some handles sticking out.

So, along with the fireplace wall,

the living room is coming into form. We still have to design the entry way portion of the living room:

                                      

The current plan (at least in my mind), is to replace that arm chair with a love seat. Behind the love seat will go a Ikea Expedit arranged horizontally. The two rugs will be replaced with one large, rust-colored wool rug. Beyond that, I'm not sure. We'd like to have a coat and umbrella rack. More book shelves and storage could be nice. I'd like to leave some wall space available to hang paintings or photographs. Maybe some modular cubes arranged like a triangle? Lots of options....