Inside and out

The spring has been very, very wet, and we're happy to say that our new basement waterproofing has stayed completely dry. I think if we can make it through this, we'll be safe for good. It hasn't quite been to flood levels yet because each downpour has been interspersed with enough dry periods to let the groundwater levels fall -- but some of these storms have been incredible, just like last year. Tonight's disturbance was brief, but left behind beauty.



No, that's not an exaggeration. That's exactly what the sky looked like.



The day lillies are enjoying the moisture too...



... and Tequila has been taking full advantage of his kitty balcony whenever the sun is out. He looks slightly happy here, right?

Out back, the garden is now finally finished. Jeff did most of the work on laying the blocks, which was a lot harder than it looked.



We then got Hilltop Tree Service to bring in a load of soil to fill it up. That took a while, because first their truck's transmission went out and it took nearly two weeks to fix it. Then the lift died on them, so they had to unload it all by hand. Ouch.



We then filled the garden with flowers and decorative plants on the patio side, and vegetables and herbs on the yard side. Jeff put his visual merchandising skills to good use.



That project done, it was time to turn to the dining room. At the new front door, we decided we needed to delineate an entryway. So we decided to build a liquor cabinet with a post, which would also serve as a partial wall separating the entry from the dining area.

This area needs to be tiled as a good landing spot for wet shoes and so on, so that means the hardwood parquet had to be pulled up to install the cement board. We've decided to lay the hardwoods over the parquet for a number of reasons, including that it will mitigate the issues with different flooring heights at the entry and kitchen.

Unfortunately, the parquet was glued down with very sticky, still very much pliable adhesive that couldn't be chipped or sanded off. I once heard a hardwood flooring dealer tell a new installer, "If I ever catch you gluing wood to wood, I will kill you personally." He was right there.



So even though it's only an area about four by five, the residue meant several hours with a heat gun, laboriously scraping every trace of the adhesive off. What a gross job.



We got these nice 12 x 24 inch porcelain tiles, the square footage of which which we overbought ridiculously. So now we have five whole (rather expensive) tiles left over, but since they're not stock items, we can't return them. Oh well. Here they are before getting their grout. Large tiles like this sure are hard to install.

The doorways that pass from the dining room and kitchen to the little niches that separate those rooms from the living room have always been really weird. They're blunt, rectangular openings directly across from the brick wall's arched doorways. Plus, they're about two and a half inches taller than a doorway is supposed to be. You might not think it's that big a deal -- but years of living around standard sizes teach your mind to notice details like that, whether you can articulate them or not.



Solution? Make the doorways arch to match the bricks on the other side, and lower them to the correct height. Here's the dining room one in process.

The new wainscotting is fully installed around the room now, too, and it's gotten its primer coat. The ceiling has been smoothed, the crown molding installed, and both will get primer and paint this weekend.



Because house work sometimes overwhelms, we've started fishing quite a bit from our dock across the street. Several weeks ago, the sunfish and bluegill were getting ready to spawn, and they were biting like crazy. Here were the four best, ready for the grill, from the first night we got really lucky.



We're saving others back in the freezer in anticipation of my parents' visit next month, though the big fish have settled down quite a bit, and the babies are very crafty, stealing worms from your hook without even disturbing the line. Little fish jerks.

The most fun surprise: A family of four baby raccoons and their mother are living near the retaining wall next to the docks.



Baby raccoons are a little bit cute, right?

Lots of little updates

First of all, it was an interminable winter, with many, many snows. The lake was very beautiful, though. It froze quite deeply several times, which was fun. The best afternoon was a day we went down to the public dock and beach area called C Point, as the ice was breaking up into millions of tiny shards that sounded like the world's biggest soft drink. All the little pieces rubbed against each other and shattered into several inches' worth of what looked like crushed glass. My photographer friends, please forgive me for the technical ineptness of this shot, but it tells the story well.



We're now completely done with the upstairs. While we've been working on it, Tequila has taken to something hilarious. We keep the air compressor on a big piece of cardboard, so as not to gouge the floor. Tequila's decided that's the place for him to be, no matter what. We turn the corner to this sight often.



My compressor, he says.



Next big project was the staircase from the first to the second floor. Having been carpeted, it was built rather roughly -- and far from square, I discovered. Every step was a slightly different size and shape, so I had to make a poster board template for each and every one to cut the replacement. Fun.



When it was all finished, Liz had to give her approval.



Then it got stained and polyeurethaned to match the upstairs floors, meaning we can move downstairs, at long last.



When we hit a nice warm spell, Jeff taught himself to redo all the screens in the house. He did an absolutely perfect and much-needed job. Last year, the bugs weren't deterred much in a few spots. It'll be much more challenging for them now.

The major basement leak is now completely fixed with our new landscaping, but we've had another small one twice in the middle of terrible storms, this time originating seemingly in the middle of the south wall,. this is directly under the dividing line between the dining and living rooms -- pretty much the dead center of the house. It seems impossible we could have a grading problem causing this. However, there's a strange drywall column protruding from the wall nearby. Could that be the source?

Two hours' of backbreaking work later, I discover the **expletive deleted** who owned the house before us had BUILT THE COLUMN AROUND THE MAIN DRAIN COMING FROM THE SLAB HALF OF THE HOUSE. So, if he ever got a blockage in that line, how exactly did he plan on getting to the cleanout valve (see the bottom of the pipe), I wonder? He'd have to TEAR THE COLUMN OUT. As he was planning on finishing the basement all the way and had already carpeted it, I have to ask: What are people thinking when they do things like this? Shouldn't there be a law or something? I'll rebuild a similar column around it with a nice, easily-removable panel at the bottom for servicing the drain if needed. You know, like a person with half a lick of sense would do.



Anyhow, the leak was coming from where the drain comes through the basement wall, and it turns out this is a very common problem, and easily fixable. A good reference from a friend resealed it with epoxy, injected urethane foam behind that, and covered the whole thing with hydraulic cement to boot. We're having hellacious thunderstorms this weekend, and it's watertight as can be.



Back to the main floor. We've decided on a light green with notes of chartreuse and gray for the dining room and kitchen. But greens are super-difficult to choose -- so we got a bunch of different chips from the various paint manufacturers and taped them to the kitchen wall for a few weeks. We think we've landed on the color you see here, which we painted with a tester can. A month later, and we still like it. That's a good sign.

The dining room is next, so first step is to remove the popcorn, of course. We're getting lots better at this with every room we do. The key is soaking till there's almost no physical scraping required. If you're doing it right, you get big, nasty chunks pulling themselves down. Like this one.



There had been a door at the north end of the room at some point, so one of the three-way switches was located in what is now a corner far away from the room proper. The former dry bar also had two of its own can lights, which we're moving over and transforming into a pendant light for a little seating area we're making. So all the switches had to move around the corner, where they're now ganged in a single box with the closet's light switch. Very time consuming, but well worth it from a practicality standpoint.



Since we're carving out an entry for the new front door, the lighting fixture has to be moved over juuuuust enough to make it really, really difficult. So instead of trying to move the existing wiring, I decided just to run new stuff everywhere. The soffit made that much easier than it might have been. Four little, easily-patchable holes later, and there's all-new Romex everywhere.



And now the old ceiling fan (a real charmer in polished brass and wicker) is just hanging there with no juice and no purpose. The bare bulb marks where the new dining table fixture will go. More on that when we get it installed -- but it was a great find.



We're also turning our attention to the outdoor living spaces. Jeff painted the porch swing and a nice old wooden bench to match the front door and the house trim. The raw wood of the porch will very shortly become white, so you can imagine the contrast in store.

In the backyard, it's time to get the garden going on the site of the former stagnant pond.



Those aren't black boa constrictors you see -- they're two GIANT pieces of rubber plant bed edging that had gradually been buried over the years around the pond. Some of them were down several inches. This was a hard job.



We've got a landscaper coming in a few days to tear out several stumps from the strange bush/tree things that ringed the pond, but one of them was in our way to set the blocks for the garden. So Jeff set his mind to getting it out, and did it with brute force. Wow.



Then finally, today I built the patio-facing side of the retaining wall that will hold the garden. This is its highest point, as it will stretch into the yard, which slopes up quite a bit. At the back, it will be only a block or two high. It's already looking hugely different. Good riddance to the ugliest part of the exterior of the home (besides its doorless facade, of course).

Yes, yes, it's been too long

Sorry we haven't updated the blog in a while. A good friend died unexpectedly, and it really took the wind out of my sails. And the holidays are always a distraction -- good in this case.

We're back on it.

We decorated the new porch with festive garland, lights and a wreath. Next year, it will all be white and even prettier -- though we really loved coming home to this anyhow. Four snows so far (ack) were picturesque, if a bit of a pain.



We installed a new lighting fixture outside at the end of the new sidewalk. That's also where the incredibly ugly gothic house numbers had been, so we gave those an upgrade as well.



This fixture is on a dusk-to-dawn sensor, which is nice security. We also put its larger version (the same one on the front porch) between the garage doors. It's on a motion detector, so we have light when pulling into the driveway. And thanks to our parents' generous Christmas gifts, we even got ourselves garage door openers -- a very welcome luxury, to be installed when it warms up a little.

The library shelves have been done for a bit, but you really have to let paint cure a long time to make sure books and other objects don't stick. However, Jeff took advantage of the open storage to sort some -- not all, but some -- of his t-shirts.



That's just wrong.

Then there was the not-quick task of installing all the doors in both bedrooms, then putting up all-new crown molding, raising the old baseboards, installing cove at the bottom, and caulking and painting each and every seam. Also not quick work.

The new Ethernet line to the library lets us plug the computer right into the wall with no ugly modem or router in sight. Love that.

And now we have the library pretty much done. The brown chair and ottoman from my old living room work OK, but they're a little too big. We have another smaller chair in the basement that needs to be re-upholstered, but its size will likely be perfect.



It's pretty nice sitting in the chair watching a movie on the computer screen. We hope to get a bigger monitor before too long.

The guest bedroom is similarly done. That was a bit more of a challenge to furnish.

The bed is an antique one from Jeff's great-grandfather. It's an odd size, so he had a new mattress and box spring made for it a few years ago. Problem is, the box spring (the shallow kind) is really too large for the frame, and it had cracked one of the legs. Not a good fit. So it needed to be altered.



Jeff went to work gluing and clamping the damage while I dismantled the box spring to cut it down about 3/4 of an inch.



Let the glue dry overnight and tried fitting it back in. Still too big. More chopping. And yet again a little too big. So after the third try, the room is done.



The kitties approve of the twin ottomans at the foot of the bed. (And no, I have no clue why Blogger is rotating that image -- but maybe they'll fix it. I'm not the only one this is happening to.)

This will be a very welcoming guest room, we hope. A couple of details still need fixing, like the single drape panel that's cut a few inches too long (how annoying when you buy premade drapes) and two oak pieces that need to go underneath the exterior door thresholds. But we're 95% there.




All that remains upstairs are the doors to the laundry, some minor paint touch-up and re-smoothing the ceiling in the bathroom. Then we move on to installing the new hardwood steps, and we can focus on downstairs.

Turning colors with the season

Not a lot is progressing inside, but the exterior is a whole new house now.

Our neighbor Tony and his crew got started painting during a sudden chilly snap last week. That makes for good house painting, apparently. Temperatures in the 50s with low wind are best for them, and that's exactly what they had.



We actually dipped below freezing two nights, so I pulled in the last of our grape tomatoes and bell peppers. They, um, didn't taste very good this late. Oh well.

The house is sided with T1-11 plywood siding, which has four-inch vertical grooves cut into it and a rough surface. We find it very appealing, but ours had the original paint job on it, we think -- and it was very, very tough work for the crew. In fact, the house soaked up twice as much paint as we estimated it would. However, that's a good thing, because that means the siding is literally saturated with the very high-quality acrylic in Lowe's Valspar Duramax paint.

Because the painting was so much more work than Tony's guys expected, I decided to go ahead myself and rip off all of the shingle siding that used to look gross underneath the windows. Glad I did that, because it was an enormous factor dating the house right back to 1979.

Among the many reasons you don't want shingles on your house: mud daubers love to build nests behind them, as I discovered when pulling them off.



Apparently this kind of wasp isn't aggressive at all towards humans, but I'm still absolutely petrified of them.




All the shingles gone, with the original siding still underneath and continuous. Add in a bottom line of the 2 x 8 cedar and cut off the vertical trim that used to go to the bottom of the wall, and we have a house that looks somewhat timeless.



Bit of a difference, huh? We really can't wait till the porch can be painted (actually stained) white. But we have to wait another five months or so to let the treated lumber dry out sufficiently to hold the stain properly. Doing it too early can make for bad adhesion -- and we want to do things right.






Oh, and the trees and other foliage are gorgeous all around the lake. Hope to be getting back on track inside soon.

"Close" is in the eye of the beholder

So I said on the 14th of September that we were close on the library. Well, all things are relative, aren't they?

We would have been well and fully done by this time, I'm sure. But as we've come to expect, life got in the way.

In the form of this.



Long story short: Installing the baseboards in our bedroom, we evidently put a nail through a pipe in the bathroom wall. The nail goes in and seals the hole, until it rusts through some weeks later. So we came home a couple of weeks ago to this gaping hole, filled with dozens of gallons of water from the out-of-control leak all day while we were at work.

Also meaning we had to tear a huge hole in our bedroom wall for the plumber to work.



All fixed now.



And the library shelves are all finished and the crown molding installed too.



Plus I ran cable through the walls to get phone and computer network cable installed where we'll want a desk. Why not, when I'm tearing things up anyway?

Ready to move to the guest room. Stayed up till 1 a.m. today getting the popcorn scraped. And a nice bonus for once: The single wall of wallpaper was installed with a very water-soluble paste that came off with no struggle whatsoever.

However, the wall had always had a strange lump right in the dead center. In fact, it's obvious the textured wallpaper was installed expressly to "hide" the lump -- which it didn't do one bit.

Always realizing the cause might be a lot stranger than I thought, I dug in. I didn't bother to try to strip a section of wallpaper around it, which was a good thing. A 3-by-4 foot section was pretty much all torn up, as though the top layer of drywall paper had been removed. Jeff theorizes they had something glued to the wall, and I bet he's right.



Let's cut away.



And what I discover when I get inside the wall:



Look at the stud closest to the camera. Your eyes aren't playing tricks. It's been cut in half and then sorta-kinda put back together, with a huge bend outward.



In close up. This is one of the more bizarre things I've ever seen. I have absolutely no idea why they would have done this. Especially strange is the little nail seemingly attempting to hold the two pieces together. The pencil line you see is where it needs to be in order to fall in line with the rest of the wall. It's an easy fix with a swipe of the circular saw, and an easy patch.



And that's all done. Time to smooth and paint. Then trim, then floors, then doors, then baseboards.

Then the laundry room gets its doors and everything receives a final once-over. And then upstairs is done.