Our reward to ourselves after the major milestone of the carpet installation was a trip. We went on a Carribbean cruise, and it was EXACTLY what we needed after the extremely exhausting few weeks we had leading into the carpet installation.
We’re slowly getting back into the swing of “normal life” and starting in the setting up of the upstairs rooms. Exciting! However, the vacation took our camera as a victim by the way of a “waterproof bag” that turned out not to be “waterproof.” D’oh. As soon as we get that little broken camera situation resolved, I’ll be back with more updates! Boo!
One of the things we considered our first major milestone in the home reno, the upstairs carpet, was installed last Friday! Woohoo! Sure, I got painters wrist in the process, but we got it donezo! Here we are enjoying our new carpet.. haha
Here’s Oak scraping off the popcorn in the almost-last popcorny-room upstairs.
This is in the last bedroom with popcorn. (We have a “not-thinking-about-it-now room that still has it – our master bathroom. BOOO. But it doesn’t have carpet, so as far as we’re concerned it doesn’t exist at the moment)
Many milestones achieved this weekend:
- Our contractor came and installed the new subflooring in the gray bedroom and hallway.
- Put first coat on trim in gray bedroom.
- Re-hung fan in gray bedroom (Thanks Dave!)
- Oak finished mudding and sanding the aforementioned “last bedroom”
- We spent like 3-4 hours cleaning all the drywall dust off the floors of the bonus room on Friday night (yay! engulfed in a dust cloud!). However, we did learn the running the vaccuum in “wet mode” by putting some water in the bottom of the canister allows the suction to stay MUCH longer than using the filter, with the same amount of exhaust dust. NICE shop vac tip there!!
- Washed all the bonus room walls with Murphy’s oil soap, which I’m convinced I am semi-allergic to, due to the minor rash I get from it EVEN WHEN I WEAR GLOVES! What the heck. Too bad this stuff works so well and smells nice.
- Primed the walls and ceiling of the bonus room. Thanks Dave!
- Cleaned drywall dust off many hardware pieces, like all the switchplates, and the ceiling fans and other light fixtures that need to be re-installed. Thanks mom!
- Painted the ceiling in the bonus room with our favorite Glidden color-changing paint.
- Put wood putty on trim in bonus & “last bedroom.”
- Murphy’s oil soap fun in “last bedroom.”
- Primer coat on walls, ceiling, and trim of “last bedroom.”
Hm. No wonder I am tired. haha. This will probably be the last post I make before carpet. We’re down to crunch time, folks.. 
I don’t need to watch HGTV these days… I’m living it. lol.
Remember our guest bedroom? The one with the crazy stained/water damaged subfloor and the hole in the ceiling??
Well, it’s almost “done”! (However, it was not without a few arguments over the entire “smoothing” process… the repair made it that much more difficult!) The trim .. I will paint after the contractor comes to put in the new underlayment on Friday. Before I show the awesome wall color photo, let me share a new love affair with Glidden’s color-changing ceiling paint. OMG, amazing. We had first tried the Behr ceiling paint, which, I guess was OK but it was SO HARD to tell where you put the paint on. With the Glidden paint, it appears you’re painting the ceiling pink. Which, is weird psychologically but great for getting good coverage in ONE COAT (well, counting primer, it’s two coats). When you return to the room an hour later, it’s all magically evenly WHITE! Oak has become the local ceiling-rolling expert..
I do almost all the other painting tasks, but I have to applaud Oak on his abilities to evenly paint the ceiling. It gives me a serious neck and shoulder ache. The top (un-pink) part of the photo is where the hole WAS! whoot whoot.
One paint that we tried in this room that we did NOT enjoy was Zinsser’s primer. It was super super thin – even painting over the beige that was there left a very uneven color! The gray covered it, of course, but in the meantime we were almost dying from the uber strong fumes as well. We will be sticking with our Kilz, thanks.
Here are some “almost-after” shots (just imagine some nice shiny white trim instead of the sloppy edges.. haha):
Can you believe I painted the entire ceiling line without taping or any other tricky devices? It’s like I am getting some serious painting skills or something. I just don’t have the patience to do that with the trim. yet. For now, I will tape…
You may be thinking… that dark gray is not a very Carrie-esque color. Well, it was some “oops” paint, which cost a grand total of $5 for the room. And, because this is the guest bedroom to some extent I do not want to offend our guests with a crazy wall color. lol. However… I have some plans on introducing color into the space (let’s channel my design buddy/hero David Bromstad..)
I’ll be back with the basement bedroom pictures soon. It’s completely done, but apparently I forgot to take some pictures. Whoops!
Yep, that’s a picture of a toilet. Well, the toilets were yet another unique thing about our house. All of them were lacking in the whole “toilet tank lid” category. Which is extremely odd. What would you want with a toilet tank lid? Maybe they all got broken? Or they have some alternative use I don’t know about and got highjacked by the people that cleaned the house out?
You also can’t buy just a tank lid at the store. Nor, can you find one at the Habitat for Humanity thrift shop. Tragic. So, we purchased some nice new American Standard toilets from Home Depot. Surely they use way less water than the dinosaur 30-year old toilets that were there, anyway.
The toilet in the half-bathroom on the main floor is extra special. We figured since this one is the “high traffic toilet”, we would finally get and put in one of those crazy toilets that can flush 15 golf balls (or whatever that claim is..). Yes, we have the golf ball toilet. And let me say, I definitely notice a difference between the “flushing action” in the other, basic (read: cheaper) American Standard toilet we installed upstairs. I’m pretty sure the flushmaster could suck a small animal down the toilet in a single flush.
When my mom had a fish tank back when I was a little one, and a dead fish would get flushed, I’d always kind of have this fear that the fish would somehow revive itself and swim back up to the toilet to freak me out. If only we had the flushmaster 9000 back then, I’d be sure that the fish was truly gone forever.. haha.
I’m sure more on the bathrooms’ cosmetic makeovers will be posted in the future.. For now, they have the crucial functions established. Ding!
Well, we had to get a new HVAC system. What is HVAC you ask? It stands for Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning. In our townhouse, we almost never thought twice about our HVAC system, or what was going on with it. I’m sure you haven’t either unless it stops working! Well, now we have a (kind of) understanding of the whole thing.
Time for my very first disclaimer: No, we are not HVAC professionals. Read up on installing duct work in your own house on some other, more official web site, before attempting this yourself so you know the proper terminology (vs. my use of “that thingy.”) I also personally apologize for the “man project” nature of this post. Hey, sometimes you gotta do this stuff!
Our house is on a “dual zone” system. That means, we have two thermostats that are linked to completely separate systems. One system has the thermostat on the main floor and heats and cools the main floor and basement. That system has a gas furnace, which works, and a questionable air conditioner that we are worrying about in the spring. The upstairs system is based on a heat pump, which uses only electricity in an outdoor unit that resembles an air conditioner, and an indoor “air handler” that distributes the heated or cool air throughout the house. That’s what we got replaced – the old one had a host of problems – like flooding the ceiling in that one room. We were basically told by several people that it wasn’t worth fixing because it was old and crappy.
So, we have our new, lovely energy efficient model (for which we will get some major moolah rebates come tax season, and from our electric company.. which only slightly softens the blow of how much this crap costs). However, the technician that installed the unit said that the flexible ductwork that is used for the air returns left something to be desired. In fact, one of them was imploded (collapsed) and he couldn’t get a new efficiency reading on it to get us our happy rebates. This is the air handler up in the attic with the old, ghetto return duct:
Oak, being the frugal/clever fellow that he is, asked that we replace these returns ourselves. I don’t remember if we got a quote on having the technician do this, but I’m sure it would have been at least another $300 for labor costs. And it totally was NOT difficult! It didn’t even really involve any “man tools” – I know, bummer! After Oak found a place that would sell HVAC equipment to regular folks (as many will only sell to the pros), he bought some lengths of flexible ductwork, mastic (which is a special adhesive), special duct tape (not the gray kind we’re used to!) and uber long zip ties. That’s about all you need!
We did the short duct first. This duct goes from the right side of the air handler (the right vent in the picture above) to the return vent in the hallway. I’m only going to show the pictures from attaching one end because it’s basically the same thing at either end of the duct – one end goes to the air handler, and the other to the vent.
First, you must hug your duct. Oh, it’s lovely and shiny!
Now look at the awesome hole where your vent comes out. Wow. You can see downstairs! Next, apply the mastic to the metal circular part of the vent with a cheap, or old painbrush. Basically whatever you use is effectively going to be ruined. This stuff is super sticky, but spreads on like a thick paint. Go all the way around the vent:
Now, it’s time to attach the vent. Start by sliding off the shiny part and attaching it to the mastic. Then, affix a zip tie over the whole thing to really hold it in place.
Slide the shiny part back into place and you’re done!
Now repeat this on the other end of your duct. Pretty simple eh? The other duct (the one that goes to the bonus room) was a little more complicated because it was longer and involved climbing into another, less accessible part of the attic. Here’s Oak squeezing his way through :
And the shiny new, un-imploded vent in place. Our technician suggested running the duct under our hard ducts, which seems to work better than it going over the top like the old set-up did. Ding!
If you have any leftovers, you can fashion yourself an ultra-stylish robot costume! Just kidding. We actually had an entire length left over that we are going to exchange for some of the smaller ducts that carry the heat into the rooms. The ones we have work, but we can replace them for a higher “R-value” (ie better temperature retention). So, I may be returning with more HVAC fun in the future! Congrats if you made it to the end of this post without getting bored.. 
I think you may remember my mentioning of “doggie yum-yums” up in the subflorring in our hallway. Well, we are pretty sure that is also what caused these extremely rusty vent covers. Here’s the one in the dining room (aka our current bedroom.. haha):
Tres attractive eh? At first we thought perhaps they could be brushed and cleaned, but then after an inital attempt we decided to just get some new ones. Well, we can’t have a NORMAL vent cover that you can buy at Home Depot, it’s some specialty size. So these went nasty looking for a few months until we got the new heat pump. We asked that contractor to order us the new covers at cost from his HVAC supplier, but we’d put them in. Here’s Oak installing the new vent cover: 
He also cleaned out the vent with the shop vac before installing the new frame. We are now proud owners of not one, but two shop vacs. One ultra cute and handy Sears craftsman vac, and this huge uber-sucking dinosaur puppy that Oak acquired from somewhere in NY.. haha. Overall, although I didn’t really participate in the whole process, I’d say this was a simple project. Here’s the much better after:
Pretty! As long as you ignore the other flaws in the wall and severe need for a new paint job, we can admire its beauteousness. It’s really funny how holes in walls/ceilings don’t phase us anymore. Hole in the wall? Enh! Whatever! We can fix it!
Here’s the other side of the vent in the kitchen. I’m not sure what Oak looks so forelorn about. Maybe he already misses the rusty old nasty vent covers! (or not!)
The craft room was the second (after the laundry room) to get painted a COLOR! I got to do this painting around the first week of December, after Thanksgiving. Exciting! It is nice to feel when one room is “done”, even though, I still have to touch up the trim, paint inside the closet (I’m trying to figure out what color to use..), and paint the window. Oh well. Rolling the walls is by far the most exciting part, but lasts the least amount of time. Why is that? Grr!! Here’s a peek at the color, poppin’ white baseboard trim, unpainted beigy colored window, and the new ceiling light fixture. There was a ceiling fan in this room before that has since been moved to the master bedroom – I felt no need to have a fan blowing all the papers around my craft room, thankyouverymuch!
My first attempt at window painting is currently in progress in the master bedroom, which should basically conclude the painting in that space, then I’ll move back into do this window.
I hope everyone is having a healthy and happy 2010!
Oak has always dreamed of being able to have two ovens – very handy for entertaining, baked goods, stock-making, and so on. We always had a struggle with what temperature to use when cooking two things at the same time.
Well, our house had a microwave-oven combo. As you can see, it was a lovely unit:
Also, check out that HAWT brass squashed light fixture. When we moved in it had like a 1/4″ of dust on it. We have it as a souvenir out in the garage. There’s a simple flushmount fixture there now but I really want to put in an L-shaped track light when we redo the kitchen.
Anyway, the microwave didn’t open. It was missing a crucial piece: the handle. (WTF?) Initially we thought, oh, we can just use the oven for awhile because we already had a microwave… but an hour of trying to chisel off the black gunk on the inside caused us to throw in the towel. Even my mom, the queen of rescuing grungy appliances, said it had to go. Um, GROSS! Unfortunately I never got a picture of the inside of the oven. Consider yourself lucky!
We went on a hunt on our new favorite site, craigslist. Double ovens are tricky because they need to fit the width and depth of your cabinet. We finally found one! Best part was that we ended up getting it for something like $175 (you might note that a new double oven is at least $2000). Ding a ling.
First, the old oven had to come out. Note the awesome hair on Oak caused by several days of hardcore housework. I think they took out the electrical panel on the top of the unit for fun! haha.
Our new oven would fit the cabinet, but the pesky electrical box stuck out and would cause the oven to stick out a few inches too far. Dave had the great idea of recessing the electrical box back into the wall behind so the oven would fit. Sweet! Here he is removing the box to cut the new recess:
Yeah.. OK, he actually DID turn off the electricity this time and he was not actually being shocked. Had you fooled there for a minute didn’t I?
Oak decided to give our new unit a hug after we plugged it in and did discover it was functional (always a question with a craigslist find)!!! Woohoo!!
A little more work by the boys and our new double oven was in place. It’s already made several delicious meals and batches of stock!! It even has convection… aren’t we fancy?
Side story: As you recall, the microwave in our old unit was lacking a handle. However, when you looked in the door, you could see that there was something inside the microwave – like balls of plastic bags or something. Oak and I liked to joke that there was a raccoon living inside of the microwave. Being the curious cats that we are, we had to bust that puppy open. Dave thought there might be some money hidden in there (ie. our key to fame and fortune). However, the result was several bags of cereal and some leftover Halloween candy. Um, yes that is what I store in my microwave!! Whatevs! Stay tuned for some more interesting items found in around the house..
Our yard has like… a lot of leaves. Our neighbor noticed Oak and Evan struggling with rakes on our 10-year pile up of leaves, and offered up his hefty heavy-duty leaf blower. Oh boy!!! That definitely made things easier. You still had to rake the very bottom layer of decayed leaves, but, at least the vast majority got moved along!
Leave it to the boys to be screwing around.. No the blower wasn’t actually on at this point.. haha.
Next step… figuring out how to get grass!! haha.
