June 2005 - Posts
I'll probably regret saying this some day, but I'm looking forward to plain-old house cleaning. The cleaning up of sawdust, construction mess and nails from the floor gets a bit old. So the other day I washed all the upstairs windows, knowing that they'll
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I've pretty much decided to use spar varnish for the exterior doors after the responses to my last blog. Before going out and spending money, I wanted to do a little more research. The book I have on finishing didn't have a lot of information about spar
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We spent the weekend preparing the laundry room for Paul Pollets and our boiler installation, which should happen in about two weeks. Quite a lot needs to happen between now and then, and I feel as if we only made a dent in all of it this weekend. I awoke
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I seem to have broken my routine of updating the Weekly Poll on Sunday mornings. Weekends have become days for early rising and long hours spent preparing the house for our new boiler system. This leaves very little time for browsing the Internet. We
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The project was supposed to be simple: get the 4 parts and re-install the toilet. I stopped at HD on my way home and got the new wax seal and the bolts, forgetting about needing a new valve and water supply hose. That's okay, I had another errand to run
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Our new parallam beams will be delivered today. I didn't think I was that excited, but I keep looking out the window to see if the truck is near. (I also put the webcam to view the street.) These beams are to replace a structural wall in between the kitchen
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It was much easier to choose our doors than it has been to choose the hardware. We have looked at so many locksets that we're at a point where it's difficult to make a decision. Then we get the call from The Door Store and they need to know the specs
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I don't like the idea of posting anything political on our blog, but I think public broadcasting is very important and benefits all of us. So this is your warning that this has nothing to do with home renovation or remodeling. Please stop reading and
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Our new doors should arrive in a couple of weeks, and I'll be finishing all of them. (There are two exterior doors, an exterior French door, and 2 interior doors). I've started a little bit of research about exterior finishes. The store we bought the
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One step forward, two steps back. Then a couple sideways, go up, and stop to figure out where you're at and how to get back to where you need to be. That kind of describes where we're at right now. We know where we're headed, but the path isn't always
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Well, we aren’t performing brain surgery as we work on our respective projects – at least in the regards to orderliness of the operating room. Nearly a third of us have "Good Intentions" when it comes to keeping our work area tidy and clean, but if you’re
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We did it! Today we replaced our original cast-iron soil-stack with ABS. We'll miss the iron (it was nice and quiet), but once we build and insulate a chase around this one, I'm sure it will be just fine. The new stack is complete with fittings for our
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UPDATE (from this morning) : I figured out a bit more about our drainage (DWV) system. We actually have separate, full 2" drains for the kitchen and basement bath, and for the basement laundry. The pipe that is1 1/2", which looks as if it's the drain
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It's 4am and I woke up about an hour ago thinking about our plumbing "situation". Last week I started thinking about replacing our plumbing stack (which is cast iron, btw.) with an all new one. The reason for this full replacement is to make it easier
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After grilling some salmon and vegetables tonight I thought that our cooking habits will probably change. My bet is that by next winter we will be so used to grilling our food, that we will have forgotten how to cook indoors. By the way, we got a new
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10. There's dust everywhere. 9. You can't walk barefoot around your own house 8. You use a shop vac for everyday vacuuming. 7. You have one (mostly functioning) bathroom. 6. Your kitchen is only somewhat functioning, if at all. 5. You can't find clean
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I try to wear my gloves as much as possible while working on the house and while gardening, but my hands still take quite a beating. I have all sorts of hand lotion, but I can't seem to make a habit out of using it consistently. My favorite hand product
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This weekend was like a refresher course for me on how to use different tools. We leveled out and replaced a section of the subfloor in the living room and put in some temporary walls to prepare for the first beam that goes in. I finally learned to use
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I just got a call from a good friend of my dad’s back in Madison. Tom is a remodeling contractor, and I worked for him during a few summers in high school. My dad works for him now in retirement, which is cool because he also used to work for Tom before
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Gah. We got so much done this weekend that this Weekly Poll post is late. Normally I do the Weekly Poll while lying in bed with my coffee on Sunday mornings. This weekend I didn’t get to the computer even once. I must not have done a great job picking
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I’m starting to change my mind about the plumbing stack. It still needs to come out and be replaced, but perhaps not this weekend. I really want to research this “new cast iron” possibility a bit more, and I also want to get some framing done! The primary
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Our dumpster is gone. The dumpster folks came yesterday around 2pm (only 24 hours late) and hauled it away. I was hoping to watch the process online from work, but the ProjectCam failed me, having locked up at 8:48 yesterday morning. Doh! Any new trash
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On Sunday I began to remove some of the non-bearing stud walls on the first floor. We’re moving things around a bit, and the first wall to come down was between the kitchen and the foyer. In order to get it down completely, I had one obstacle to deal
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Trissa and I went back to Frank Lumber, aka “The Door Store” this past weekend, and ordered the exterior doors for our project. Who knew there are so many choices when it comes to door selection? We picked out three different doors: front entry, back
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Our first floor demolition is complete, and the dumpster is full. Trissa will call this afternoon to have the container picked up tomorrow and taken away. Very satisfying, and I think my dump-run van is happy about it too. I don’t think it has that many
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We sure spend a lot of time working on our houses! Nearly a quarter of us spend between 16 and 20 hours a week doing everything from hard-core demolition to fixing up the yard. A few people are working full time, spending 40 or more hours per week. Do
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That's the name of the game for the weekend. I'm ready for the green monster to go to the dump. There's a little bit of room left, so we now have to finish pulling up the floor in the kitchen. We've determined that we need to cut through the layers of
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Last night Trissa and I took a short break from demolition duty and went to see the Seattle Mariners shut out the Toronto Blue Jays! Aside from spending twice on food what we did on tickets, it was lots of fun! Before the game we did spent an hour cleaning
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