Before and after.

At move-in (May 2010).

This morning.

The gray things are what was in there for edging. They’re concrete cylinders. They’ll be replaced, maybe just by (normal) bricks.Also: need to pick up another three violets and another Russian sage, I guess.

What’s in there:

• 1x Wichita Blue juniper
• 2x “Cascade” azalea
• 2x “gold mop” (chamaecyparis pisifera, if you like that better)
• 2x Russian sage
• 2x violet

Then there are a couple of specimens left over from the yard apocalypse that I figure have earned the right to stay there (the hosta left of the grill and the laurel of unknown variety near the right edge). Also starting to think I’m going to be tearing up a lot of turf and re-sodding next spring. I don’t think all the weed-and-feed in the world is going to fix the lawn’s current problems. Or maybe the only real problem is my attitude.

And one day I’ll turn the gas on and see if the grill works.

bkd

March 2011:

June 22, 2011:

Most notable, of course, is the primer that spilled onto the driveway. I’ll enjoy putting an asphalt patch on top of that.

Here’s an up-close of the side yard in case anyone cares:

How many differences can you find?

More to come — later.

bkd

Answers:

1. Painted the masonry block foundation gray (= pressure washing, applying waterproofing primer (heavy stuff), and concrete paint).
2. Painted the “trim” on the porch and stairs gray.
3. Painted the porch railing.
4. Planted a bunch of stuff.
5. Mulched.
6. And the dwarf Alberta spruce is bigger now (if you look close enough, you can sort of see it in the first photo).

Mostly for my own sake, here’s what I’ve planted…

East side front yard:

• Azalea (some red variety)
• Shasta daisies
• Midnight Blue Salvia (x2)
• Rhododendron (x2; one doesn’t seem prone to living)
• Hydrangea (“endless summer” variety)
• Lillies (3x)
• Arbor vitae
• Green mountain boxwood (along the driveway)
• Weigala (a maroon variety)
• Spirea (x3 — can’t see them, they’re off to the right)
• Blue rug juniper (x5 or 6)
• Blue pacific juniper (x2)
• Bunch of weeds (x?)

West side front yard:

• Common boxwood (2x, one on either side of the stairs leading into the back yard)
• Hydrangea (a sort of purple variant)
• Japonica (pieris?) — this is a cool plant
• Boulevard pyramidal cypress (“broad, pyramidal, evergreen shrub with soft, silvery blue-green foliage that turns bluish-gray in the winter” — if you were wondering)
• Day lillies (stella d’oro variet, 2x)
• Korean spice vibernum (next to the steps going up from the driveway)

Before pic:

The railing really looked worse than it appears to in this photo. And the porch itself had trace amounts of glue (at one time there was astroturf pasted onto it) on top of green on top of red on top of gray. I think. The photo makes it look like the red might have been beneath the gray. Stupid photo. This is better of the railing:

Then:

1. Scraped the railing with wire brush, drill attachment, and putty knife (you can’t see it in the photo, but half of those vertical posts are spirals, which makes fun surfaces to try and get paint off of).
2. Primed (2x), then painted (2x) the railing.
3. Swept, vacuumed, hosed off, then re-vacuumed the concrete.
4. Painted the porch (with concrete paint “for porch and garage floor”).
5. Applied carpet tiles.

I don’t know how you’re supposed to make a concrete porch look good — or if it’s even possible. It occurred to me at one point that, if it were a nicer house, maybe tile would be the answer. More to the point, though, if it were a nicer house, I wouldn’t be leaving design decisions like that entirely to someone like me. But it’s a 1958 ranch-style house in a blue-collar, suburban Pittsburgh neighborhood, so I guess I’m good with paint and carpet tiles.

Still to go (in this vicinity):

• Repair the concrete around the stairs.
• Paint the stairs (probably).

bkd

PS, FWIW the carpet tiles are purportedly “indoor/outdoor”. The reviews (I got them from the HomeDepot Web site) implied that people had successfully used them in fully outdoor applications, so maybe they’ll work out. OTOH, it rains *a lot* in Pgh.

A month ago (April 2011):

Today:

Finally managed to get the garage door closed.

There’s more progress than is obvious; I have most of the plantings done (in this part of the yard), just that they need to grow in and I need to finish mulching. Mulch spreading speed is hampered by lack of available old newspapers (although the neighbors are helping in this regard). It’s also hampered by how crappy-steep that slope is.

Here’s what’s in there, if you want to get in on the front yard plant ghoul pool (strictly a “what dies first?” game; after the first fatality, we can reassess).

• Some variety of arbor vitae.
• Rhodedendron (x2, different varieties, can’t remember the names and it’s too hard to go outside and look even though I’ve left the tags on).
• Azalea (x2, different varieties, can’t remember the names, etc.).
• Asiatic Lily (x3, ibid.).
• Sierra something or other (x1).
• Hydrangea (x1, some variety, who knows?).
• Salvia (x2, midnight something and some other blueish name).
• Green Mountain boxwood (x5).
• Blue Pacific juniper (x2).
• Blue Rug juniper (x5).

My money is on the hydrangea dying first.

Still need one more blue rug and probably a couple other bushier junipers or similar to plant next to the hedge at street level. The corner between the driveway and the street I’m going to use for a little flower bed I guess (daylillies? exotic grass? low-rise clumpy flowering things? mal sehen).

Here, this angle makes it look like I’ve done something:

And, yeah.

bkd

PS, I also bought a lawn mower. I almost enjoy mowing the lawn so long as it’s *my* lawn.

I think last time I posted the bathroom was gutted and mostly wall-less. A couple months ago my parents flew out and my dad put up new drywall for me:

That bleached red towel down there is stopping up the toilet drain. If you ever come stay at my house, you may want to think twice before using any bleached red towels after showering. Just saying.

Anyway, I don’t want to type, so here are a bunch of photos instead. They imply that putting the bathroom back together has required a few steps. They’re also chronological.

And that’s as far as I’ve gotten. Can’t take a shower upstairs yet. One day maybe.

Still to go:

• Finish putting up the tile tub surround.
• Install tub/shower hardware.
• Install electrical outlet.
• Shelving over the toilet.
• Towel rack.
• Baseboards.

If I were the archaeologist-protagonist in Raiders of the Lost Ark, after opening up the Well of Souls, I would throw my torch down and look inside and see, writhing and crawling and hissing and baring fangs, thousands upon thousands of baseboards. Uncut. Unpainted. Unmitered. I roll over onto my back. Baseboards. Why does it have to be baseboards?

Better than Nazis, I guess — but only marginally.

bkd

PS, Here’s the before photo. I’m not sure it’s all that different, but at least the walls and ceiling aren’t brown any more. That’s kind of huge.

Since I last posted about the kitchen, I’ve done the following:

1. Installed the toe-kicks on the cabinets.
2. Installed baseboards on the walls (mostly).
3. Put up the “field tile” on the backsplash.
4. Installed the microwave (my dad helped with this).

Which doesn’t seem like much for a three month time period. Also: my dad installed the transition strip between the kitchen tile and the living room hardwood (thanks!).

Photo from way before:

And now it looks like this (though there’s usually a lot more stuff piling on the counters — sorry for the lack of authenticity):

If you believe in yourself, you can notice the toe-kicks.

Stove (lower) and microwave (upper).

The forbidden corner, where feng shui goes to die.

OTOH, I like that my new blender looks like it has teeth on the front of it. Sharp, sharp teeth (and wavy).

Still to go!:

1. The edge tile and grout on the backsplash.
2. Veneered facing on areas under the microwave.
3. Finish baseboards (right now none of the mitered joints have been attempted).

And I’m not sure I’d really call it a ranch-style house. Otherwise, fine.

bkd

Water lines by Rube Goldberg, aka what happens when you tell the guy at Home Depot that you want to hook up a dishwasher without soldering anything.

Eh — maybe I should have just left well enough alone.

Another couple run-throughs without leaking and I’ll put the cover panel back on the dishwasher. You were wondering.

bkd

Hoping to get the sink, dishwasher, and disposal done this weekend still. Today? Sure, I’ll hope that, whatever.

Still to go:

• Sink
• Faucet
• Dishwasher
• Disposal
• Sink Cabinet Doors
• Toe Kicks
• Caulk on Countertops
• Outlets (2x)
• Backsplash (this might not happen soon)
• Over-the-Range Microwave (ibid)
• Window Blinds
• Baseboards
• Paint Touch-Up
• Floor Transition Strip

So I got that going for me.

bkd

What the in-store sample tiles looked like.

It wasn’t very gauged, either.

The dry run. Also on the floor: a hammer, wire strippers, small wonder bar, four-foot level, joint tape, and a Dremel.

Thinset.

It’s like an under-utilized veterans’ cemetery where there was in-fighting about what direction the crosses should face.

Spray away, buddy.

All done but the grouting.

The float at work. I’m not sure in what sense it “floats”.

Semi-dry grout awaiting clean-up.

Light’s green, trap’s clean.

It occurs to me that life is like a box of slate tile: (1) you never know what you’re going to get; (2) even once you see what you have, you have no idea the ramifications of it or how it’s all going to work out; (3) then you cement them to your floor because, man, you gotta do *something*; and then (4) it becomes permanent and you live with it.

Was also weird to me how different the floor looked before and after grouting. Before: wild, like there were a bunch of rocks on the floor. After: like the floor in some fairy-tale castle. Kind of liked the wild floor better. Maybe I’ll see if I can get a three-inch-deep stream of water to flow over it permanently, that might help.

bkd

PS, Next time I’ll over-order by 25-percent rather than 10.

PPS, Where you see all the dark tiles grouped together, those are the areas getting covered by cabinets and appliances.

And now I have a power tool that shoots muddy water at me. Finally.

bkd

Nine switches down, four to go — upstairs. Then I can hit the basement! Good times, good times.

bkd

Not pictured that should’ve been:

• Dremeling the underlayment to fit.
• Applying the latex underlayment putty to a couple uneven spots.

It was just the area where the old cabinets used to be and the floor exposed by taking out the wall that needed new sub-floor and underlayment. Took a few tries to figure out what thickness both of those needed to be (19/32 for the subfloor, 5 mm for the underlayment). Learned that all wood screws aren’t the same and that just because two boxes of nails have the exact same description on them, that doesn’t mean they’re the same quality of nail.

And if anyone in the Pgh area needs help installing a new plywood sub-floor, I’d be happy to help.

bkd

Other direction.

Done:

• Floor stripped, sanded, and re-finished.
• Closet hardware removed.
• Closet wall and ceiling replaced.
• Ceiling primed and painted.
• Walls primed and painted (“Barraud House Blue” and “Tyler Stone Medium”).
• Trim primed and painted.
• Baseboards cut to fit modern registers.
• New registers installed.
• New light fixture installed.
• New three-prong outlets installed (x3).
• New light switch.
• New closet organizer installed.

That’s really not much of a list. It really shouldn’t have taken so long.

Still to Come:

• Window coverings (x2).
• Ceiling vent replacement.
• Door painted and replaced.

Really looking forward to it.

bkd

The sound in the background is the fan in the living room. It’s 95 degrees outside and I don’t have air conditioning is why. Some of the tiles came off more easily than this one and some were more difficult. I finished about half the floor, but wanted to leave a race track around the edges so I can paint without having to walk on glue residue. The word “residue” seems underutilized.

bkd

I’m probably going with these instead. Yep.

Yeah, so I posted a question on ikeafans.com and a couple people responded with completed designs. Pretty cool.

bkd

My greatest victory of the project so far: fixing the one bum circuit in the upstairs. I’ve had only occasional electrical in my living room and two big bedrooms. For some reason it took me a month to figure out that the problem might be caused by one bad connection at the start of the circuit. Then it took me two more weeks to figure out that the outlet in the corner of the living room — you know, directly above the breaker box in the garage, might be the first outlet on the circuit. Then I replaced it and everything worked and, yeah.

Here’s what the inside of that outlet box looked like:

You can sort of see that the shielding has worn away on those wires there. I guess that’s bad. Trimmed them down, taped them up, stuck them back in the box. Brilliance on my part. Also, turned out that these old outlets are grounded after all (even though they’re two-prong outlets), which is sort of super.

I’ve also started (very gradually) swapping out the other outlets and light switches.

The old push-button switches look all cool and stuff, but in reality they just sort of don’t work well and I’m replacing them. But cool-looking.

bkd

In the beginning was the bathroom.

And then we pulled the vanity out of it. Yes, the tile is pink and the walls and ceiling are brown.

Was pink.

Happiness is a cold chisel.

Then (after cutting them out with a drywall knife and hitting them with a hammer repeated) the walls came tumbling down.

Stoked to discover 52-year-old razor blades inside the wall. Made of tungsten!

And now, instead of a hideous pink, green, and brown bathroom, I have a rubble-covered, wall-less, function-less room. ¡Viva el progreso!

For some reason also I thought I’d enjoy this renovation stuff during-the-fact. It’ll be a good thing to have done, but in the meantime I’m sick of having to live in the basement and dump my bank account into Home Depot’s.

Out,

bkd

Also took the “bulkhead” out of the kitchen (just a drywall box coming down from the ceiling and hanging down to meet the tops of the wall cabinets). That change is less dramatic, although imho it makes the room look bigger.

Used to be just a three-foot opening; now it’s maybe seven-and-a-half.

View of coat closet. Obviously.

Missing: bulkhead.

There had been much speculation in certain circles about what would happen with the beam going across the to-be-removed wall. See!

It’s just two 2x12s screwed together. Had to get into the hallway wall a little bit. And on the side of the opening not pictured are two 2x4s holding up the new beam.

And aside from writing the check, I’ve had nothing to do with this part of the project.

bkd

]]> http://www.bkdunn.com/blog/2010/06/meanwhile-back-in-the-kitchen/feed/ 2 http://www.bkdunn.com/blog/2010/06/red-roof-on/ http://www.bkdunn.com/blog/2010/06/red-roof-on/#comments Thu, 17 Jun 2010 12:22:16 +0000 bkdunn http://www.bkdunn.com/blog/?p=1197 Cost me $4,500 or something crazy, you’d think I’d be willing to take a real photograph of it. It’s probably raining outside though. Or it’s hot. Either way. The new roof is sort of a reddish brown.

You can’t really see the color in the photo. Cell phone pic.

It’s been weird having people come work at the house. They come really early, usually wake me up when they get here (6:30? C’mon!). Then they bang on things until they get tired and then they leave. And I sort of don’t want to do anything while they’re here, mostly because I’m pretty sure they’ll tell me that I’m doing it wrong.

New roof! Now my closets might not leak.

bkd

• Delivered my car to me from San Diego.
• Got my washing machine drainage pipe to stop leaking.
• Took out the laundry sink (that had rusted through).
• Capped the water inlets for the laundry sink.
• Pulled out the sink cabinet from the kitchen.
• Took out the now-useless plumbing from the kitchen.
• Encouraged me to buy a sawzall.
• Bought me a hedge trimmer.
• Cut the four-feet-tall weeds in the front yard down to the ground.
• Discovered a dozen eggs in the side yard (?).
• Stripped the little bedroom of its leather-like paint.
• Got two of the four basement fluorescent light fixtures to function regularly.
• Pulled the vanity out of the bathroom.
• Removed the worn-out bathroom sink drainage pipes.
• Found a nearby Mexican restaurant that’s surprisingly good.

It’s a good tally for three days. Didn’t realize my dad knew so much about plumbing. Feel kind of bad there was none of the fun stuff ready for them to do — I guess the kitchen would be the only real fun stuff (tiling, hanging cabinets, installing counter tops). Maybe next trip.

The family that strips together…

Sawzall conquers all — or at least can saw a sink cabinet in half. Wonder if it can cut through a zombie spine.

No gushing water. Any more.

Yep,

bkd