New beds everywhere

We have some new beds around here! First, in an effort to make the guest bed less of a literal climb to get into at night, we got a 4'' low-profile boxspring. It was build it yourself but we're getting pretty used to that these days (seriously, building that Ikea Friheten sofa was pretty awful). It was straightforward and much cheaper than buying a pre-built one. We actually struggled to find a wood-slat boxspring. Ikea doesn't sell them (yes, we pretty much just start out there by default) because their mattress are all designed for their own beds, which don't need boxsprings. And most mattress stores charge a fortune.

We also bought a new mattress, the medium firm Myrbacka latex (Ikea of course). It was an equally awkward drive home as last time, but fortunately this time we enlisted the help of friends with a bigger vehicle, roof rack, and more skill at tying knots. The new one is much firmer than the one we tried out at the store, which I guess isn't surprising given all the use the in-store one gets. Because of that, and also just to protect it, we bought a plush topper for it.

In the end, the bed is over 6'' lower than it was before, meaning that guests don't need to hop or use a stool to get in or out. And toddler spills from climbing are a bit less dangerous (yup, those have happened).

And speaking of the toddler, this one graduated from a crib with dropped sides to her very own bed! More building...yay...I honestly was willing to consider buying from somewhere other than Ikea, but the little one asked for a blue bed and lo and behold, they actually had one (yes, she is spoiled and usually gets what she wants). And while it was a bit pricy for Ikea, it was still in line with or even cheaper than most other options. And so we got her the Busing extendable bed, which sadly necessitated buying the mattress that goes with it, the Vyssa Vinka, because it's Ikea so of course that means proprietary sizing. At its fullest position, it will be a twin bed. But for now and in its middle of three positions, the size is proprietary. Right now it is actually shorter than her crib bed, though it is wider. She's tiny and keeping it at its smallest setting means less space for her to accidentally roll out or lose her toys. She's pretty pleased with it, though I think her favorite part may have been picking out sheets.

For the first time in a long time, we were missing a piece of hardware from the kit. It wasn't critical to the construction but it was an important component to keeping the side piece near her head stable (the pieces designed to keep her from tumbling out of bed). And of course because of the way it was constructed, it had to be added during the building process and not afterwards. So we followed the (new?) process of requesting the missing piece from Ikea's website. I'm pretty sure that stores used to just stock some extra pieces at the customer service desk, but that does not appear to be the case anymore.

The process was going to take 2-3 weeks. We couldn't wait. Fortunately, it's a common-enough piece and we borrowed one from our bookshelves:

And then, just about when we'd forgotten we'd even ordered a replacement, this arrived in the mail:

Yes, apparently spare Ikea parts travel all the way from Sweden...I find this both delightful and very very strange.

For the Birds

This spring, our toddler decorated a bird house and we set it up on a shepherd's hook outside our picture window. To our surprise and delight, a mama bird took up residence pretty quickly. We saw her flying back and forth with twigs and things and built herself a nest. And then, abruptly, she was gone.

We thought that maybe there was too much foot traffic in the front yard. Otherwise we're not sure why she abandoned her home after about a week. The house was vacant the rest of the season (not surprising).

Then this fall with the new room slowly becoming our favorite place to hang out, we decided to take advantage of the good view of the backyard out the french doors and we hung up a bird feeder (same shepherd's hook, since we removed the house in the front).

Originally this post was going to be a call for help - after several days, we had no visitors. But suddenly yesterday:

The birds seem to have gotten the memo. We've seen blue jays and robins and whatever these little fellows are. We have a bird book by the door now to help identify them and we've put a little bowl of water out as well. The best part is we can enjoy these guys from inside our new room from the comfort of our sofa. Time to buy a better telephoto camera lens I guess.

Speaking of sofa and new room, we finally unfurled our new rug and LOVE IT. This is the ombre teal rug by CB2. We went with the smaller size (5'x8') after realizing the larger one (8'x10') would cover up almost all our new wood floor. And it fits beautifully. I love the way the shading follows the south-facing window, so it's like the sunlight on the floor (we tried it the other way but this direction was the clear winner). It perfectly matches one of our living room throw pillows, so it's more in line with the blues in the other room than I thought it would be.

Love love love.

Breezeway 15: done! and swanky closet

Finished finished finished! Final check is in the mail and the decorating has begun!

We have the rug but can't lay it down for another week or so while the floors totally finish curing. It's held up the rest of the minor purchases because I want to make sure I match the blue tone well. We're sticking mostly to the same reds and turquoises as the living room, but I think this rug will be a bit greener than some of the blues in the next room. The blinds should be arriving today too. I know it will take time to accumulate just the right things to hang on the walls and don't want to rush it. Still, it's frustrating to have empty walls now just begging to be filled.

Another small project we did this summer was adding the ceiling medallion to our swanky closet chandelier. It covers up the orange insulation though it does make us realize how dingy the closet ceiling is. Not that painting the ceiling in the closet is much of a priority.

While totally unnecessary, this fancy addition makes me smile whenever I go in the closet. A fun little update.

Wood to Burn

Continuing with some posts of other things we've been doing the last few months during the breezeway build - a well-organized log rack. Last October, our rotting oak tree gave us one last gift (well, I guess technically the tree removal service did this part for us, but you get the idea):

We moved it to the backyard to age for a while (and to get away from the house - can anyone say "termites"?). D realized that splitting logs is quite a physical challenge, but made great headway, splitting about half of them before we moved them to the back.

And they sat - on the edge of our patio in messy piles since November. We committed a blog faux pas and forgot to take a picture of that mess, but trust me, they were everywhere.

In the meantime, D excavated an old log rack from the back of our yard where the previous owners had left it dented, broken, and half buried in debris, dirt, and leaves. After several unsuccessful guesses at the size bolts needed to repair it, he finally came home with the right hardware and reassembled it a few weeks ago. Then it was a job of careful stacking:

I love it and am so excited to have all this beautiful wood to burn this winter. We got our chimney cleaned too, so we are ready to go.

One odd point of the chimney cleaning - the chimney sweep said that we needed some concrete repairs at the top. We aren't sure we believe him and definitely would want a second option and some pictures, given that we had the top of the chimney totally rebuilt in 2011 after our raccoon visitor. Either way, it didn't sound like something we have to do this year, so we'll file that one away for later.

Breezeway 14: ugh wiring and unrelated stuff

So when I said two posts ago that the Nest thermostat wasn't hooked up yet, turned out that it was, but that the wire was broken. Sigh. So now they have to rerun the electrical which means yet another step back. Off went the thermostat, off went the french door trim (I guess that's where they run the wire?), off went some drywall (I'm just guessing but that's sure what it looks like on the left below the light switches). And now of course there are white patches and crooked busted up door trim (we told them we want new trim now) and more waiting. There's also a super weird problem causing the new motion-sensor light outside to flicker when the inside lights are on (unrelated to ambient light caused by the lights being on).

This project started off strong but now I'm sick of it. The good news is that the floor people came back to re-polyurethane and that looks much better now. But we have reset the clock on furniture and rug while the floors cure.

So with all that annoyance is going on, I thought I'd finally get around to changing the subject. You see while all this are breezeway work has been happening, we've also been busy on other things. One thing that we had to deal with was some very persistent rust on the overflow drain vent in the new tub from our 2012 bathroom remodel. We don't even take baths in this tub, so the overflow was rarely exposed to any significant moisture besides what you'd expect from showering.

At first glance on the internet, this seemed like it could be a critical issue caused by a leaky rotten gasket on the outside of the tub, but fortunately the back was in good shape.

Either way, from my reading of random handyman websites, we had to act fast or the whole tub could rot through.

Fortunately, the contractors honored their 5 year warranty - to my surprise! They came out to take al look and explained that it wasn't actually the tub rusting but a piece of metal hardware fixed to the tub. Either way they agreed it was a material flaw and that they would fix it. Fast forward 3 weeks to July and the new part arrived. It looked like a pretty significant repair, so we're grateful that professionals took care of it.

Now we have rust-free hardware and no more pesky rust stain dripping its way down the tub.

Breezeway 13: waiting and decorating

We hit a bit of a lull on the final "punch list" completion and so the new room has been lingering in a state of almost-doneness. So we have started to plan our decor. One setback - we got picky over some of the bubbles and imperfections on the floor during the polyurethane application, so they are coming back tomorrow to sand lightly and re-coat. This means another week before we can put down any furniture at all and 30 days until we can put down the rug, which just arrived after being backordered for a few weeks and taking up space in another room while the floors are in a suspended state of perpetual curing.

But at least I can tell you our plan.

Step one - cover the windows. After ordering several samples from blinds.com for roller shades (they make so many colors!) and looking at the choices in a variety of lights and at night, we settled on a lightly patterned one that did a decent job of filtering the light and put in an order. We're not planning to put up curtains or cover the french doors at all, so the room is going to be bright, making light filtering shades a better choice than any kind of room darkeners.

Next to the sofa. After having an empty room for about a week and having the toddler enjoy the empty space, we debated whether or not the one we'd chosen (but not yet purchased) would take up too much floor space. We laid out and agreed that it would take up a significant chunk but that there would still be enough room for play.

So once we figure out how to get it home (seriously, this thing is currently only in the store wrapped together as 3 boxes on a palate totaling 250 lbs), we plan to add a Frighten to our collection of funny-sounding Ikea products.

After avoiding it for years, we finally are going to buy upholstered Ikea stuff. It's cheap (and with destructive young children that seems like a good idea) and has room to spread out and has a cool pull-out sleeper. We don't intend to use this as a guest room (see note above on how bright it will be) but having the flexibility of pulling out the sofa to sprawl out on was irresistible. Plus honestly I have always wanted a chaise lounge. No idea why. 

Onwards to the rug - as you might have guessed from the paint color and the gray sofa,  we are sticking to the same color scheme as the living room - gray, teal, and red - to help us blend the two spaces. We fell in love with this rug from CB2 (it's slightly more on the green end of teal than the living room, but we think it will work) and simply couldn't decide for a while if we wanted the 5x8 or the 8x10. Now that the drywall and trim is up, we measured it out and decided on the smaller size (why get expensive beautiful wood floors only to cover them with a rug that would pretty much go wall to wall).

(Our room will not look nearly as nice as either Ikea's or CB2's photos, but whatever.)

We have an ambitious plan for possibly assembling built-in style cabinets underneath the windows and shelving beside them, sort of like we have in the living room surrounding the television, but in white. There are some complications there, notably that Ikea kitchen cabinets are no longer made in the same thin depth that they used to, so they will not fit behind the door to the garage. So we are exploring custom cabinets or doing some Ikea hacks to shrink them. More on that later though. First - get the floor finished and put in the basics.

Breezeway 12: heating

Thursday ended with this - blankets and pads all over the new floor and a partially installed baseboard heater. Also the lovely smell of some kind of epoxy.

I was a little confused at why it wasn't all finished in a day - after all, they'd laid the pipes under the flooring and it seemed like it should be relatively quick.

Then I went down to the basement and saw this:

Our heating guy had set up his own table and laid out lots and lots of parts and tools. I guess this was a more complicated job than I thought.

Then on Friday - I saw more to indicate that yes, this project must be making our heating system a it more complex:

It isn't totally finished yet, because not everything is connected. We have a thermostat, though it isn't turning on yet. We decided on another Nest simply because we have another one already and can get them to talk to each other and sync up.

The baseboard at least is all finished, which will also allow us to start measuring to decide if we want to install cabinets between the heater and the windows.

Work has slowed otherwise, and our final punch list isn't moving along too quickly, at least in a visible way (for example, the electrician had to come tweak stuff over two days, but that doesn't make for interesting pictures). Still, the room is pretty much livable and we have started planning decor. A rug is on the way (well, technically backordered) but we can't put it down for a few more weeks anyway according to guidelines we read on polyurethaned floors.

Breezeway 11: the new new floor

Pardon the long silence - we've been reveling in our new floor but also suffering through the long staining and finishing process. Bottom line: we have a LEVEL FLOOR!

Here's the line between the living room and new room:

Our old floors are so uneven that they had to do a lot of work to fill it, build it up, and then sand it even:

This is the line between the dining room and kitchen. You might remember this identical view with the first floor here. In fact, why don't I just repost that key picture below the current one, so you can see the amazing difference.

There was an interesting moment where they cut a wire while carving through the subfloor. That was fun. They had to pull out the cabinet and call in an emergency electrician to fix everything. 

On days 1 and 2 of the new floor, our dining room was out of commission because of all the sawdust and tarps, so we had a picnic in the new room:

Then on days 3 through 5, we mostly had to stay off the floor completely (we could tread lightly in socks to get things out of the fridge, but that was it). We only just opened up the room to the cats this morning (after giving them pedicures so that they couldn't do much damage when they inevitably skidded on the ultra slippery floors).

We didn't manage to get pictures on day 3 when they stained it, and day 4 when they did the first 2 of 3 layers of poly, so here it is, in all its shiny, freshly polyurethaned glory this weekend:

For comparison, we do have a test strip. So the top of this picture is the new kitchen floor, the bottom is the existing dining room, and the single slat shows the unstained wood on the bottom and the stain without polyurethane on top. Our builder says the color will age and yellow a bit over the next few months and get even closer to our old color. And funny enough, the match is even closer at the living room line. I guess the dining room area is a bit more worn out.

So what's left on this project? Some stuff isn't finished because of subcontractor scheduling delays (a little more electrical work and the base board heater this week, for example, and the Pella door people unable to show up until mid-August) and some stuff is "finished" but needs tweaking. This week we are giving that list to our builder as the final "fix this before we finish paying you." We have lots of tape around to show what we want fixed, but I think we are in the home stretch.

Breezeway 10: attic interlude

Progress on the room went backwards throughout the week and then slowly forwards until it looks almost like it did before the massive destruction (except the floors, those are going in tomorrow). They pulled the trim off all the doors, lowered the doors, put up the trim again and filled in the 3/4'' at the top, repainted, etc. They ripped up the kitchen floor all the way to the basement ceiling and then laid down boards again for the weekend so that we could walk on it.

But all that is boring for pictures, so I thought I'd give you a tour of our new ATTIC!

As a last minute addition to the project, we realized when the breezeway ceiling was removed that we had so space between the roof and the ceiling - perfect for an attic. So our builder cut a door in our garage ceiling, put in some steps, frame it, and voila - instant storage space!

There's plenty of room to go into and out of the house door to the garage while the stairs are down, which was important to us. We can't open the actual garage door with the stairs down, but that seemed a lot less useful. Having the access in the front is helpful given how crowded our garage usually is.

We decided on the "cheap" option when our builder laid out the various ways they could open up the space, which was basically to lay down some plywood, rather than pay extra for sturdy flooring. So for now we're limited to storing only relatively light things and only for a portion of the space. Later we can easily build a more sturdy floor and over more area.

As a bonus that was in our original attic project, our builder had the electrician put in a light with an actual switch near the door - we hadn't even thought to ask for lighting, assuming we'd just use batter power when we needed to get up there. It's really quite a nice space (if it weren't so hot - but then, it is late July). We're excited that we finally have a place to store things we rarely need - I'm thinking holiday decorations and housing supplies that don't need climate control (our old ceiling fan, extra bathroom tile, etc.).