Morning commute

One of the main reasons it was so important for us to stay in the neighborhood was because of my morning commute. Because parking at the University is so expensive and because I was living so close, I sold my car almost two years ago now and have biked/walked/ridden the bus since. In moving a half mile west we are now a bit further away than we were, and although I hate to admit it, I am lazy enough to dread that extra half mile ride in. The first commute in didn’t help much. With the neighborhood being old and historical, there is a smattering of streets that are still paved in brick. This by itself is not that uncomfortable, but it was the first time I’ve ridden my bike in a couple of weeks.

[On a side note: this is because one afternoon while leaving work I was greeted with the unfortunate surprise of missing my bike seat and post. You would think this type of thing would no longer surprise me- Clint and I have had 3 bikes stolen (one during broad daylight from campus), and one homeless man in our front yard who broke Clint’s lock with a hammer and screwdriver- again during broad daylight while he was home (when confronted he gestured at the bike with the hammer, said “I was just trying to see if I could get that off” and walked away). Clint has had his front tire stolen, and we have been privy to multiple attempts to get our seats off. Everyone’s advice to us was to bring them inside, but for us in our one bedroom, cramped apartment this meant we would have to use them as easy chairs in the middle of the living room. But I digress.]

So this weekend I finally got around to hauling my bike in the jeep to get it fitted for a new seat post. Clint and I got it on, and I was excited to once again not have to ride the bus, which while efficient AND free always makes me worry about what I could be sitting in and who is going to talk to me.
So the seat was on, angle adjusted, and I was off! I was ready to experience the new commute, but only got a block before I realized the front tire was low. I rode back, filled it up, rode another block filled up the back tire, and again was ready to go. I was excited for the easy ride in my new comfortable saddle seat (I definitely went for comfort over looks) but another block in, I realized that we had tilted my seat too far forward. The angle was pitching me forward, the seat post was sliding down from not being tight enough and my arms were tired from trying to hold myself up from their strength alone. And then I hit the brick roads. Needless to say by the time I got to work, I was not loving the commute and was cursing the gain of the extra half mile.

Relaying my story to a colleague that morning- he suggested the bike route. Of course, the bike route! I took it in this morning and it was amazing. I pick it up at the end of the alley, and it runs right alongside the river all the way to campus. It goes under all the major roads and I only have to cross two streets once I get to campus. This is a huge improvement from my former commute, through streets where college kids often interpret stop signs as optional recommendations. In the morning the bike path is amazingly quiet and serene- with only a few other people jogging or riding. It made me all at once love our decision to buy the place. I love the fact that I don’t have to get in a car and sit in traffic to get to and from work. I love that our bikes can get us to anywhere we want to go- the movies, grocery store, target, and just about every major goings-on in the city, and I love the fact that for a few brief moments every morning, I can feel like I’m a million miles away from everything.

Shoddy Workmanship

After being in the house a few days, we’re starting to learn some of the intricacies of the place you can only get while trying to function on a daily basis. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s how much things have changed since the construction on the house, particularly the addition (kitchen, bathroom, laundry room). For example, we definitely do not give building permits to monkeys or small children, which from our experiences we can only assume they did. We should have been wise to it going in though- it’s not like there weren’t clues. The first thing that comes to mind is the fact that they WALLED IN THE HOT WATER HEATER. It’s not as though they were completely irrational, they did leave a small section of the drywall in the laundry room cut out in case the pilot light ever goes out. Of course you have to move and disconnect the dryer to get to it, but there I go again trying to apply logic to construction. There are other smaller clues about the child/animal labor, like the fact that not much sits flush with the wall- (light switches, outlets, cable lines, vents) and clearly a teenage girl had a hand in it because there are at least two phone jacks in every room. Clint has made it his personal mission to remove all of those although we were advised not to, for future buyers, but at this rate by the time we sell the place phones will be obsolete because we’ll just beam our mental rays to people to talk to them.

We are largely moved in though, at least as moved in as we’re going to be for now. It helps having the garage because we don’t have to try to find a place for everything immediately. And as a bonus we’re probably providing a comfortable home in our belongings for all the crickets and slugs that live out there (I’ll just make Clint go through those boxes when they’re ready to come in). We saw two more slugs on the back deck last night- I’ve learned to look for the slime trail and to look away as soon as I see a dark shape. That will be an ugly ugly day when I accidentally step on one of those. Likely similar to my reaction when I see centipedes, which involves screaming, jumping on the nearest elevated object, and yelling at Clint for not killing it fast enough.

It’s starting to feel more like home, although I’m still not 100% comfortable walking around the house barefoot because of the sheer number of staples we’ve pulled out from every floor in the house. There are still least a hundred more in the stairs, but not in places we step so those can get pulled later. I realized I have a problem this morning though while waiting for the bus and looking at a telephone pole where people frequently hang flyers. I caught myself looking at all the remaining staples and judging which ones would be easy to get out with needle nose pliers, and which ones would require a flathead screwdriver. This vacation is coming at a perfect time.

Home

We did it- we’re all moved in and slept in the house for the first time. The farmhouse feel held up at night. Our bed looks out two larger windows where you can just barely see the orange street light through the trees. Otherwise it’s incredibly dark with a cacophony of crickets and cicadas all around. We can’t figure out why there would be so many bugs just a half mile from where we were, (most likely from the river) - but we love it. As long as we don’t see any of them, such as the 6” slug on the side of the house last night. We finally made it to bed around 2 am, torn between excitement and wanting to stay up and talk about the newness of it all, but also exhausted and fighting off sleep. As we lay there taking it all in, we also picked out the sound of the train on the tracks just on the other side of the river. I don’t know what it is about trains, but I love them, and love that we can hear it from the house. Although I am struggling with the change, and miss the organization and familiarity of the old place, at the same time I love the change- on a quiet tucked away street, just far enough away to feel new yet still close enough to walk or ride to all the places that make our neighborhood feel like home.

Many many thanks go out to John, Billy, Jason, Duffy and Kiesha for all their help- we absolutely couldn’t have done it without them. I’m going to attempt to get the place put together tonight, then maybe get some pictures up (if we can find the cords to download them). The dining room is going to serve as our temporary living room until we get the trim stripped and floors redone, but even without the living room we still have a lot more space than we did. Chloe is still adjusting to the change. She follows us from room to room and every time we leave she wants to come with us. It’s funny because I kept expecting that when we slept there the first time, then it would sink in- but it largely still hasn’t yet. Now I’m thinking it’ll be when we can’t go back to the apartment. For now the old apartment is serving as Clint’s studio for the three posters he has to (somehow) print before we leave. I’d imagine that means he’ll be up between now and when we’re on the plane, but it wouldn’t be vacation if he didn’t have a near impossible to do list before we went.

Chloe is helpful

In what I can only assume was an attempt to help me, Chloe hopped into this box and is now ready for the move.

Weekend recap

I meant to give a quick overview off all that was done this weekend, but it ended up being much longer than expected (rather symbolic, really).

Friday- we continued stripping trim. We got two of the walls in the living room nearly done.

Saturday- Kathy (Clint’s mom) headed up for some much-needed help. She tackled the kitchen while Clint heat-gunned more trim and I destroyed the bathroom. She probably doesn’t want this to get out- but she is a cleaner extraordinaire. She got every crevice of the kitchen more clean than it has probably been in the last twenty years. She was even able to point out some issues- like the refrigerator seal rusting off, and dangerous nails sticking out of the back of cabinets. We realized the previous owners not only have an affinity for duct tape (it is everywhere), but also all things sticky (which is also everywhere). It was no match for her abilities and Goo Gone, though. Having three sets of hands on Saturday was fantastic.

In the bathroom I decided to begin peeling paper off the ceiling which was held up by thumb tacks. In my mind it was going to be a quick and easy project- just take the paper off the ceiling, repaint the bathroom white to make it look clean, and get the shower curtain up and bath mat in so it’s ready to go. Just a quick fix to hold us over until we can afford to redo the bathroom, which is by far the worst room in the house. It was a great reminder that nothing is easy, and to always assume something will take four times longer than expected. I uncovered water-stained and discolored acoustic tiles on the ceiling, but of course couldn’t stop there. I continued on to the walls which were also covered in the paper, and in the end was left with walls that had bits of wall paper on, old layers of paint, some drywall with the paper on, and in some cases drywall where the paper had torn away. At this point I was thinking I had torn off something immensely valuable, would have to replace the drywall, and would either need to call in someone very expensive to redo the bathroom, or we’d be hosing off outside and using the shed as an outhouse.

Sunday-Luckily Clint’s dad was in town the next day to help him build the final wall in the studio- and I was introduced to the concept of covering any and all drywall problems with mud. I lathered on a layer over the areas with exposed brown paper, and am letting that dry for 24 hours. I also coated the ceiling with Kilz, and even with the respirator the smell was overwhelming. The ceiling is now white though, as opposed to green, white, brown and rust colored, although I’m slightly afraid all the paint will come down with our first shower. I was also able to get the kitchen relatively set up- thanks to Billy and Clint moving the packed kitchen boxes over on Thursday night. I very quickly realized that we have limited cabinet space. I got everything in, although I’m not at all sure where food will go. At the end of the night I got the upstairs floors swept and mopped in preparation for moving in. I think it was a sign I’ve watched too many reality competition shows like Project Runway and Design Star because I kept thinking that I was in the final few moments, where time is running out I’ve done all I could, and all I could do was clean up, cross my fingers and hope for the best. We sealed off what will one day be the living room so that Chloe doesn’t eat the lead paint chips or lick the stripper, and cleaned up the general mess we have created in the last week. (I can’t believe it’s only been a week).

On a side note, when Clint and I came together for lunch on Sunday (he spent the day working on the studio)- we agreed we were generally tired of working. We’ve literally been working from the time we get up to the time we go to bed. At first I was thinking the upcoming vacation would be hard because we’d want to be in the house working on stuff. Now I couldn’t be any happier to get away from it for a bit. We had our first conversation of wanting out, which I can’t believe didn’t come sooner, but his uncle John (who is graciously coming up tonight to help us move) said it wasn’t called “buyer’s remorse” for nothing. Good point. At those times, when I’m worn down by the immense burden we’ve gotten ourselves into and see nothing but problems everywhere I look, I remind myself that if we still want out in a year, we can sell and are still better off than if we rented. I’m sure (I hope) we’ll feel differently after getting a few of the in-progress projects completed, but it is definitely overwhelming at times. Yesterday, while cleaning the cabinets I realized that the part we were most looking forward to- being able to change what we want- is what makes it both a blessing and a curse. Because we can technically (although not financially) change anything, we constantly want to change everything, but can’t. I keep repeating to myself at those moments- it’s a marathon not a sprint, although I’ve never been particularly good at long-distance running. If all goes well, tonight will be our first night sleeping in the house.

A few more

This is the master bedroom upstairs.



The trim which has been tormenting us daily. I'll get an updated, picture of it stripped soon. It looks worlds different.



All the carpet we pulled out that Billy and Clint took care of last night (and hopefully didn't get any communicable diseases from). This is in our garage, which is HUGE, especially considering we only have one car.

Finally! Some pictures.

This is the living room before


and after. It has to get worse before it gets better....right?

If you write it, he will come...

So I was completely kidding about Clint and Billy doing all the work while I was at Lemongrass, but apparently we exposed Billy to just the right amount of chemicals the other day because for some reason he decided today that we're moving tonight. I have no idea why, because this will only serve to make our lives even more chaotic for the next few days, but getting this started makes me ecstatic. I think I might have just now realized we bought a house and we’re moving.

The ticking clock

I think it’s starting to settle in how little time we have before Seattle. Especially considering we still have to do the final round of packing, move, clean and fix up the old apartment, and hopefully get the new place in some semblance of order- all before next Friday. I get stuck a lot trying to decide the next course of action- should we move in immediately, should we get as much trim stripping done as possible first, should we shift our focus in getting the kitchen & bathroom cleaned up so that we can actually live there? To add to it all, we need to get Clint’s studio up and running concurrently since he’s losing his darkroom [read: closet] and washout booth [tub] with the apartment. On the upside, he won’t be rinsing the ink out of his screens in the tub, which means the shower curtain liner won’t be tainted with the mixture of all the ink colors, which conveniently makes it look like we are utterly disgusting to visitors. It took Billy at least a year to figure out we weren’t bathing in a tub full of filth (I’m not sure what that says about his opinion of us in that he never questioned it).

We’ve almost got one full wall of trim done, we stepped back at the end of the night last night and looked at it- in our humble opinion it’s going to look amazing. Funny thing is- it’s going to look so natural, like it was that way all along, so I’m glad we’ll at least have photographic evidence of the transformation. I think our strategy should switch- before we were thinking we didn’t want anyone in here until we’re finished, now we realized it should be just the opposite. We should have everyone over just so they can see the before, to truly appreciate the after. I will say on the learning curve, there have been a few magical tricks that once discovered make the entire process so much easier. Heat gun was the first. Pulling the 1/8” layers of paint off in one go made me lightheaded with joy. The second, more subtle trick I’ve found is the denatured alcohol to get off what I am calling shellac, but whatever it is it turns into a gooey brown mess once stripper goes on. I still haven’t perfected the denatured alcohol, but I’ve at least narrowed it down to realize it requires steel wool, paper towels, a scraper, and perhaps a spray bottle, I just have to figure out the order. My final discovery has been the beloved dremel. I’ve used the dremel in projects past but have apparently since forgotten the magic of the little rotary tool. Using the steel brush attachment it cuts through paint in areas where multiple layers of stripper have just mocked me. We’re off to get a corded dremel soon, although I’m slightly worried that once we have that, I’ll get tunnel vision and forget all about the packing, moving and painting that needs done. Although I understand it correctly, Billy and Clint are going to take care of all that while I’m at Lemongrass tonight.

Cubs in Five

Ok, so it’s not at all house related, but a ridiculously talented musician friend did a cover of one of my all-time favorite songs by the Mountain Goats - “Cubs in Five.” It’s a song about impossibilities… perhaps it is house-related after all. Check it out here.

For a Fleeting Moment, It Was a Home

Last night I got a glimpse of what the project would eventually feel like as a home. Our extremely generous friends Mary and Eric brought a traveling dining room complete with tablecloth and camping chairs, and fed us with a four course Mexican feast! Not only that, but they ended up stocking our refrigerator for us with leftovers. There was one point after eating that we were all lounging back in our camping chairs, engaged in great conversation, and happy and content from our full bellies, that I realized there will come a day that we’ll be sitting in that very room actually eating at a table in what we hope will be a beautiful home. It was so fulfilling for a few moments- of course it all came to a screeching halt when someone needed to use the bathroom, which naturally wasn’t functioning at the time (we did warn them beforehand that it was rustic). On that note though, after three trips to Lowes (for this project alone) we finally finished something! The toilet is now no longer running constantly and Clint and I are practically experts on the internal workings of a toilet.

Later that evening while we were working on the toilet we heard a noise that sounded like two cats fighting so we quickly turned off the lights to look outside. Apparently in moving to a quiet dead-end street by a river we’re not only immersing ourselves in mosquito territory, but also the wild kingdom. There were at least seven raccoons that we could count combing every square inch of our neighbor’s yard- drinking from his fountain, standing on his chairs, crawling under his shed. Keep in mind this is at twilight where it really wasn’t even dark yet. We realized then that Chloe could NEVER get outside because she doesn’t seem to have the intelligence to know when she’s out-skilled, or outnumbered.

Billy also headed over a bit later which was nice to have it again feel like home, and I worked a bit more on the trim. We had the realization yesterday that if we ever want to strip the baseboards and trim, it needs to happen before we get the floors refinished because heat gun and stripper near newly finished wood floors doesn’t seem like the brightest idea. So I guess that’ll be the majority of my work for the next few days. I have no idea how long it will take, but I’m optimistic given the learning curve I’ve experienced thus far. And it’ll be nice because that was one of those projects I initially put off for “later” so maybe it’ll be good to have that immediacy because I’ll actually get it done. I’ll get pictures up here soon- our last few days have consisted of work all day, straight to the house at night, then back to the apartment to collapse so I haven’t been able to upload anything. We only have about one more week of that though before we officially move in. I'm not sure if I should be excited or frightened about that.

The restoration or rather...

I had the idea last night to call this entire process the RENOvation of our house. Becky didn't seem as excited by that...hhmm (I may still call it that. hee hee)

I want a house? (This used to have a period)

Our new home or our latest project...
More photos to come.

You can't see it [It's Electric!]

Our next big adventure- figuring out what to do about our electric situation. We knew going into it that we were taking on some old "knob and tube" which is apparently not inherently bad, but because people use the exposed wires to hang their clothes on, which starts fires, it's not much appreciated in the insurance business. SO, being on top of it before we bought the house- we brought in an electrician to get an estimate for the work. Apparently we somehow picked out the low-baller electrician because he came in, looked around, pointed at a few things, and gave us a reasonable amount. Feeling confident about our informed, proactive researching, we happily handed over our check and bought the house. Flash forward about two weeks, once we have our own keys to the place and can come and go as we please, we call around for a couple more estimates.

Enter electrician #2, which I unfortunately missed, but my husband informed me: “was as old as the hills” (mid-70s). The highlights of that visit were the electrician firing at Clint “WHY do you want the outlets grounded?” which both stumped and disarmed him for any future questions, and the electrician saying he hadn’t seen a circuit breaker box that bad- which means a lot, because we’re talking about some 50-odd years of electrical work.

Our third electrician is apparently electrician extraordinaire, who proposed literally creating holes in our plaster (walls and ceiling), or somehow magically removing the trim along the baseboards, which as literally been painted to the walls with some 100 coats of paint. This would literally bring our entire house up to code, of course it also means more than likely removing all the plaster, and replacing with drywall. Which if we’re not dumb and infertile from the lead & stripper, we’ll likely need to be on a respirator from the plaster dust. And this is all if we’re not the start of a west nile pandemic caused by the mosquitoes. We’re waiting for his estimate, which we’re pretty sure will cause us look closely at the paperwork from the closing to see what, exactly the return policy is (30 days? 60?). I’m still feeling surprisingly optimistic though, at least until we get that quote back.

It begins

After the first two and a half days of homeownership, I think it's finally starting to sink in what we're undertaking. On one hand, it's incredible- as we work on everything we just keep thinking about what it will eventually look like, and all that we will get to experience in the house. On the other hand, we're realizing how much hard work, or "sweaquity" as Clint likes to call it, before we get there.

After the signing on Friday we first stopped by the gallery to take Clint's work down, then we headed over to the house and begun immediately ripping up the old, stained, smelly carpet. We got most of the carpet tacks up, and piled it into the garage. We also started noticing a number of itchy bites we had. I'm pretty sure that as close as we are to the river, we'll be battling mosquitos quite often.

Day two, we pulled all the staples out of the worn, but salvagable (we later found out) wood floors. We started to see what it could maybe, possibly look like- if we squinted really hard. We also began the arduous process of stripping the original trim. When our realtor stopped by later that day we checked to see if we ever sell the house if we could mandate a clause that require they never paint it again, because it is insanely hard to get those 100 or so layers of paint off. The process is slow, but the wood underneath is beautiful. This is the day that we decided it had to be done one room at a time or we would lose our minds.

Day three- after breaking down and buying the heat gun, we're finding the stripping process to be moving a bit faster- although while using it I'm in a state of constant fear of scorching the wood. We've moved on to the large window, which according to Billy we can never replace because "you can't find a window that big in America!" Also of note, this window doesn't open, and even if it did, at best it would only go up about a foot. Clint installed the exterior light, and very conveniently found my phone in the street, which had been missing for two days. I also gingerly removed part of the 90 year old trim around the door (as Clint covered his eyes) to hopefully make the stripping process go a lot easier- easier now meaning not spending an entire day on a 5 foot long area of wood. We've decided that we'll probably just end up living in that room, which is a step up from our original idea of living in the garage (which is at least as big as our apartment now). Our new goal is to try to get that done by the time we move in, although our definition of "done" is constantly changing. We'll see.