Win Some, Lose Some: Completely Random Edition

Today's big win was round two of leveling the floor in the third bedroom.  Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Exhibit A:

Yes, that is a 4' level sitting on my floor.  Perfection.  After dinner last night I caulked up all the seams that were ruining the job, and then we popped over to Home Depot for yet another bag of concrete.  We mixed and poured the last two bags before bed.  Success!

And now for the first bad news of the day: my sofa arrived this morning.  At 8:30am.  Not between 3pm-7pm yesterday as promised.  And it's a nice sofa, except for one big fat freaking problem.  Wanna see?

HAHHAHAHAHAHAHH!  It's hilarious, right?  Or I've become slightly unhinged, I'm not sure which.  But either way, look what happens when someone sits on one of those freakishly tiny cushions:

Yeah, so.  Also, it is SO uncomfortable right now.  I feel like I'm sitting in a church pew, which is not a place I enjoy being.  I know the down-wrapped cushions will deflate over time, but as it stands, the seat is way too narrow and this thing is unspeakably, horribly fluffy.  Really, it looks kind of nice with the throw pillows on it-- the scale is great since it's a whole foot longer and about 4" taller than my previous sofa-- but I obviously cannot keep this thing.    

Tomorrow we initiate the return-- this company claims you'll get a full refund (less a 10% "restocking" fee) including free return shipping, so we'll see.  Good thing I haven't sold my old sofa on Craigslist yet-- I mean, I posted it yesterday and I've already had multiple offers because have you SEEN the other sofas available on Craigslist?  Damn, they're ugly. 

Lesson learned: just because buying furniture over the internet worked really well for your mom does not mean it will work well for you, and you're going to be crushed when you spend $1200 and wait three months to receive your sofa only to discover that it is just not going to work.

Anyway, this was probably some kind of sign or some shit, because we really don't have the money to buy a sofa right now.  When I die, just pry my old bones off the old brown sofa to which they will surely have fused.

Returning the sofa means I won't have to feel so bad about spending nearly $900 on flooring for the third bedroom and laundry room, at least.  AND our only car is officially dead at a shop across town right now AND we'll have to pay to get it fixed in order to trade it in so we can buy a new car, AND we spent about $250 leveling the floor AND we have tons of huge bills to pay following all of this summer's medical emergencies.  

So I guess what I'm getting at is that if you're reading this and you are a fabulously wealthy philanthropist and you just don't know what to do with all that money you have just lying around, please consider a small donation (about, say, $10K) to two poor professors who are just trying to get by.  Sigh.

SNAFU*

Last night we pulled down the third bedroom's acoustical-tile ceiling in anticipation of our dumpster's arrival this morning.  We were hoping that all the insulation would be in good shape like what we saw during our exploratory demo:

I keep trying to figure out what those light-blobs are, and I think I'm going with "friendly ghosts."

Unfortunately, this was pretty much the only part of the ceiling where the insulation hadn't been completely devoured by our pals the roof rats.  WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IS EXTREMELY GROSS.  DO NOT SCROLL DOWN UNLESS YOU WANT TO SEE SOME TRULY NASTY SHIT.  SERIOUSLY.  DON'T DO IT.  Consider yourself forewarned.

--proceed at your own risk--

 

--what you are about to see cannot be unseen--

--you should really watch cute kitten videos instead of looking at this--

--you're going to regret it if you scroll down because it is really truly gross**--

**Actually, honestly the rat shit doesn't even bother me anymore.  I mean, I'm, like, aware that it's disgusting, but after a whole year of living in this formerly infested house I'm pretty blasé about it.  Roof rats don't carry hantavirus, and all these turds are really old, and I just don't care that much at this point.  Which is probably why I was okay with whipping out my phone to take a bunch of pictures of feces.  Quick anecdote to 1) show how far I've come in my relationship with rodent shit, and 2) give you another opportunity to back out if you're still not sure whether or not you want to see what I'm about to show you:

When we lived in New Haven, our apartment was the second story of an absolutely beautiful house that'd been built in the 1890's.  It was in an awesome neighborhood (if you're familiar with the area, we were just a block down Orange Street from East Rock Park) where we could walk to bars, grocery markets, downtown, parks, everything.  The apartment had high ceilings, two huge bay windows, a butler's pantry, thick original moldings, a private screened porch, old glass doorknobs on six-panel doors, gorgeous glossy hardwood floors, the works.  I loved it passionately.  Anyway, one day I was standing in the butler's pantry talking to my mom on the phone and idly dusting the countertop, and I noticed these little black bugs hanging out near my potatoes.  I picked one up and then, realizing that what I was holding was actually not a bug but was instead a mouse turd, I screamed into the phone.  I skipped work and disinfected the entire kitchen.  I cried the whole time.  Flash forward to now, when there are inch-long rat turds raining down from the ceiling, and all I want to do is take a picture.  Life is funny.

Okay, are you ready?

Nice nest, huh?

Captive rat turds dangling from the insulation.

 Hi there, rat holes!

 This was the biggest nest.

 

 Pile of contaminated insulation.

 Ick.

So after we pulled all the old insulation down and rolled it up into a giant burrito using the plastic drop cloths I'd put down on the floor, we carted it out to our dumpster.  Which is now full of poop.  So, yeah, we'll be re-insulating before we drywall.

*Which is my all-time favorite acronym-- Google it if you aren't familiar.

Something Like Before and During, Part 2 of [INFINITY]

We've been in our house for just over four months now, and we've come a really long way.  In fact, we frequently talk about how the place doesn't look like the same filthy rental we bought in August.  A few fun facts:

1.  When we first moved in, we had to change our socks 3-5 times a day because the floors were so gritty.  My mom and I each mopped the entire house three times and we STILL couldn't go barefoot.  It took about a month of several-times-daily cleaning before we could go to bed at night without first washing the grime off our feet.

2.  The floors and bathroom weren't the only things that were utterly filthy.  On the day we closed, I took a few photos to commemorate the grossness.  Enjoy:

Living room walls, ick.

 Baseboards in dining room, ugh.

Door between kitchen and dining room, blergh.

 Ceiling vent in master bedroom, gross.

3.  In addition to the few things you've seen on the blog, we've done a lot of invisible and outdoor work.  For example, when we moved in there was a 9-foot-tall hedge along the property line that completely obscured the house from the street; we later found out the neighborhood kids called our place "the haunted house" because they imagined that all sorts of creepy stuff was happening behind that hedge.  We actually had no idea what the house looked like, and when Ray chainsawed the hedge down to waist-height two weeks after we closed, I was pleasantly surprised to discover it was kind of cute.  And it looked even better after we painted the front door, removed a screen door that didn't fit and was actually TIED to the front of the house, pulled out an old dead bush which was also TIED to the house with bright-blue nylon rope, and put up house numbers.  Some photos:

Dying bush AND screen door tied to the house.  Seriously, who did that?

Believe it or not, you're not looking at a photo of a car.  See the roof there on the left?  Yup, that was the view of our house from the street when we bought it.  AHHAHAHAHAHAH!

 And now you can see the place, which we think is an improvement.

4.  There were no house numbers when we moved in.

5.  We had to call a plumber on day two of home ownership when we noticed the hookup for the washer was leaking all the hell over the place.  At which point I promptly burst into tears because we were obviously in way over our heads-- the place was filthy (see Exhibits A-D above), the yard was like a jungle, the plumbing was bad.  Luckily Ray talked me down from the ledge.  I went back to cleaning, Ray went back to clearing the yard of its rogue blackberry bushes and bamboo clumps, we gave the plumber $250 to stop the leak, and now we're all happy-- especially the plumber.   

In The Sh!tter

Please pardon my nasty French.  It's just that I've spent the last two weeks hanging out in the bathroom, and I'm beginning to tire of spending all my time in a 4'x8' space.

Most of that time has been spent slowly building layers of joint compound onto the drywall patch we installed after The Thing came down.  You see, the ceiling and walls over the tub are wildly uneven from years of being soaking wet.  They have gentle rolling hills, craggy cliffs, and a rocky coastline--  I'd compare them to the general topography of... Ireland, maybe?  So in places I'm having to build lumps out of joint compound so that the drywall patch will match up to the lump that's already in the ceiling.  This. is. crazy.

But it's okay, because this summer we're obviously going to have to rip out all the ceilings and drywall in the bathroom before we tile the shower surround.  This is a temporary thing, and I'm considering it a learning experience.

I finally finished one side of the wall patch, and I decided I'd go ahead and sand it and apply the orange-peel texture (mmm, my favorite! blergh.) so it'd match the rest of the drywall in the room.  Here's a shot of my orange-peel drying (you can really appreciate the giant lumps in the ceiling here, no?):

 

You can also see some brownish mold, courtesy of The Thing, on the wall there on the left-hand side of the photo.  Thanks a lot, The Thing.  And you can also see that my corner piece appears to be a bit uneven; not sure if you can tell that this is because there's a massive lump on the other wall.  I'm working with what I've got here, people.  Like I said, it's temporary.  And I'm actually fairly pleased with myself for getting the actual wall so even and replicating the orange-peel.

And since I couldn't resist, I went ahead and painted the patch too:

Paint's still drying, and you can REALLY see how crazy the ceiling is in this photo.  Few more layers of mud to go up there.  Ugh.

So, while I was between layers of drywall mud last week, Ray and I decided we'd finally tackle the leaking toilet.  A bit of water had been seeping out from around its base with every flush.  We'll just replace the wax ring, we thought.  No big deal, right?  This'll take twenty minutes.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.  We failed to take into account that hiding behind every wall, light switch, and fixture in this house is an unpleasant surprise.  We removed the toilet and discovered that 1) the flange under the toilet was cast iron, 2) it was broken, 3) there was literally no floor under the flange.  The flange was just sitting on top of the pipe.  We thought.  So we tried to remove it-- we'll just replace it with a modern one, we thought.  Off to Home Depot for a replacement!  We'll be done in an hour.

Nope.  Wrong again.  We could. not. pry. that. thing. up.  And we broke it a little more in the process.  We checked on the Internet and learned that cast-iron flanges are generally attached to the sewer pipe with lead.  Yup.  On to Plan B.  Back to the Home Depot.  But they don't have the piece we need to repair the floor (which is to say, a set of metal plates that go underneath the flange instead of floor).  I don't even want to TALK about what we had to do to repair the flange as best we could and make it as stable as possible.  Suffice it to say that McGyver would be proud, and that when we finished, we were laugh-crying and there was old toilet wax all over everything we own and we were barely speaking to each other.  But we reinstalled the toilet, and to our continued surprise, it's not leaking anymore.  So we "fixed" it.  We didn't fix it, but we "fixed" it, and that's good enough for us until the whole thing falls through the floor (or lack thereof).  

And finally, I decided to tackle something that's been making me crazy since we moved in.

When we bought the house, the shower had the grossest sliding glass door:

Also loving the old wooden toilet paper holder that was roughly four feet from the toilet.  Why? 

And just in case you need a reminder, here's what the faucet and emergency drain looked like.  Can you BELIEVE I begged my husband to buy this house with me?  Even I can't wrap my mind around how I managed to fall in love with the place after seeing this:

And as I mentioned in the third-ish ever post way back in August, we ripped the shower door out immediately.  And this is the horror we found beneath the track:

Aaaand I just gagged.  Anyhow, as I mentioned in that super-old post, I scrubbed the hell out of every surface in the bathroom.  Eventually I got the majority of this evil off the tub.  But a huge clump of funk remained where the wall meets the tub meets the Blue Monster.  And as you can see in the photo, there's also a huge gap there that was never caulked.  And there was a five-inch-long strip of ugly mildewy adhesive about halfway across the tub that would. not. come. off.  So basically every morning when I get in the shower I cringe at the horror.

But I'll cringe no longer.  Today I set to with a chisel, some extra-fine-grit sandpaper (we'll be refinishing the tub when we tile the shower surround anyway, so taking a little finish off was hardly the worst thing that could happen) and a brand new tube of caulk.  I scraped all the old moldy caulk out and replaced it with a nice fresh bead, I filled the weird gaps, and I sanded the stubborn adhesive off.  And now, ladies and gentlemen, if you'll pardon the dirty footprints in the tub itself (don't want to get any water in there until my caulk dries!), please admire my handiwork:

Finally funk-free.  And now a detail shot of the faucet wall.  And yes, I know there's still a HUGE BLUE PLASTIC shower surround here.  Still, give me some credit.  We're getting there.

 Sloooooooooooooooowly.

Before & During (Part I of 736,824,061)

We've finally made some progress in most of our public spaces-- living and dining rooms, kitchen, laundry / utility / mudroom area.  The photos below are obviously not shot-for-shot before and afters for a couple of reasons: 1) it turns out I am AWFUL at taking pictures and can't seem to duplicate a shot even if I'm the one that took the original, and 2) these are not afters so much as durings.  We still have a lot of work to do in every one of these rooms.  So following each photo is quick rundown of what we HAVE done and a little bit about what's left to do.

We'll go about this as though it were raining (which it will be for about the next ten months) so you've decided to park under our carport and come in through the laundry room door.  Which, by the way, we do not encourage.

LAUNDRY AREA:

This is the inside of the door you just walked through ca. August 13, 2012.  To help you orient yourself a bit, the kitchen door is to your right and the third bedroom door is on your left.  You can see a bit of the tool-storage area on the left-hand side of the photo, and the electrical panel is just to the right of the photo frame.  It's dark and scary in here, no?  You're just about ready to run screaming from the house, but you don't for whatever reason.

Instead, you back up and take the long view of the same corner, though now the security door is just out of your photo frame on the left:

 Oh no!  Check out that ill-fitting plywood (see those gaps?  Is that safe?  You don't think so) into which the electrical panel is screwed!  This place is terrifying.  The walls are a lovely mélange of plywood, vertical paneling, and shiplap.

Fast forward to September 21.  The below photo is sort of a combination of the first two views, with just a few modest changes: 

What we've done:  painted everything obsessively, added drywall to the wall behind the electrical panel, gotten a gorgeous new washer-dryer which we could never have afforded but for my sister and brother-in-law, covered the tool-storage closet with a curtain.  

What still has to happen: the place needs ceilings-- the acoustical tile that's currently overhead is unspeakably ugly and actually missing in places, leaving the attic open to the laundry room.  And did I mention we have roof rats in the attic?  Yeah.  So just have to find out if our tiles are asbestos.  If not, we'll rip them down, avoiding showers of rodent crap, and drywall the ceiling.  If so, we'll pay someone else to rip them down.  And then drywall the ceiling.  If you look carefully, you can see I still need to caulk the top of the seam between the drywall behind the electrical panel and the wood paneling.  Obviously the ripped-up linoleum flooring is on its way out, to be replaced by 12"x24" peel-and-stick faux slate.  We'll grout of course.  What do we look like-- savages?

Before heading into the kitchen, you turn around to check out the other side of the laundry room.  Flashback to 8/12/12:

It's too horrible!  You close your eyes.  When you repoen them, you're back in the present day:

Remember to take the tag off that area rug before you photograph it again, you remind yourself.  And you turn around and head into the...

KITCHEN.  

Flashback:

Ew!  Everything about this must be gutted, obviously.  It is gross.  Those weird doorless shelfless cabinets-- who did that?  And there's no place to put anything in here.  Though you can't see it from this view, there are also no cabinet doors on the left side of the kitchen.  And that fridge holds roughly two bottles of hot sauce and a six-pack of Natty Light-- perfect for a college boy, but not going to work for someone who produces three elaborate meals per day.  The oven has no timer, and all the eyes are so tilted that your pots and pans slide off immediately.

Today:

Better, no?  Functional stainless appliances (made possible, as with the washer-dryer, by unbelievably generous gifts from our families) make this much more workable and a lot more attractive.  My IKEA Billy bookcases were relieved of their book-holding duties and brought in for some extra storage on either side of the stove.  

What still has to happen:  Um, everything.  New cabinets all around, new floors, new countertops, real baseboard molding, new light fixtures, blah blah blah blah fifteen thousand dollars. 

You head for the door at the far wall.  Well, now you're in the...

DINING ROOM.

You walk through and stand in the living room so you can get the full view in flashback mode:

Yep, that's what it looked like in July (obviously not our stuff).  Anyhow, you're standing in the living room, and you can see the kitchen door at the left of the photo, and out the french doors is the electric green lawn brought to you by the Pacific Northwest.  I don't really feel the need to say anything about this photo, except that I think that thing hanging on the wall on the right is a snakeskin, not... what it looks like.

And as of today:

Just got that table today.  I'm not sure I love it, but maybe once we get some chairs?

Still to do: install new light fixture, hang art, find chairs (preferably cool antiques).  Maybe a skinny dresser on the right-hand wall to serve as a buffet and store my kitchen and dining linens?  Thoughts?

You turn around to check out the progress in the...

LIVING ROOM.

Circa 8/10/12:

Left side, awful lighting.

Right side.

You're like, wait, why are those window mullions not painted?  Why is that gross woodstove jammed into the fireplace?  That tile is ugly.  Nice archways, though.  You close your eyes and flash forward. 

Combo view:

What we've done: painted the window mullions (ask my mom about that-- it took SO MANY coats of paint and primer because the wood has some sort of super-tannins that CANNOT be blocked by mere mortals, so Mom painted it for six straight days while Dad reno'd the bathroom), painted the fireplace, ripped up the icky tile, painted the walls and trim, added curtains (love you, $9/pair IKEA Vivan!) and hemmed them, hung a few things.

Still to do: hang way more things, make new throw pillow covers, reupholster the golden corduroy armchair my mom purchased new in 1983, tile fireplace surround, repair damaged wood floors.

If you're digging my old threadbare Persian, you can thank my grandmother, who has told us at different times that 1) it belonged to her mother and is a priceless antique, and 2) she herself bought it at a yard sale in the 60's.  I prefer version 1, so I'm going with that.  The rug is special to me anyhow-- if slightly too small for my space-- because it was in my parents' first house and also my sister's, and now it's come out to the West Coast to make my first house a home. 

Hope you enjoyed the tour!  You can just show yourself out the front door.  And while you're out there in the front yard, give Ray a high five-- he's probably digging up some bamboo roots, removing a massive hedge, rat-proofing, mowing the grass, etc etc etc even as we speak.