Category: home improvements

White on White

Before we’d even finished moving everything over from our apartment, I painted two walls in what’s now dubbed the “fish room”. Once you set up the tank, you can’t really move it, so to [revent some fishtank disaster I was up till 2:30 painting, it dried, and we stripped the blue tape as we were filling the tank.

The other half of the room has been partially taped, waiting to match, since the third week of October. Oops. When we realized we’d be replacing the window, I decided to wait a bit longer. But on Thursday, I finally got psyched up to finish. Here’s the room all taped (at 11 PM) – really the only way that you’ll be able to tell the progress of over-painting “Harsh, Ugly White” with “Vermont Cream” is for me to show you the blue tape lines.

… and :

… and :

“Ooooh.”

Edging and painting took about three hours, and washing the brush and roller about another 30 min, so I was up past my bedtime for a work night. But it’s finally off the list. And I’m so, so happy about that. It kind of makes me want to finish the two master bedroom walls stat so that I can get that same feeling of accomplishment and happiness there.

Ready for a change!

We’ve just kept pushing back the carpet install date for the family room so that we could finish painting, but it’s finally here. Here are a few last pictures of the old Barber monstrosity for posterity.

Facing east:

Facing west:

Lucky we weren’t counting on hardwood floors to refinish – just ugly plywood sub floor! Though I guess for how cold this room is, carpet’s the way to go.

And then after:

And:

Like the paint color? We’re so happy with it. I can’t wait to get trim up, and the paint’s impossible to photograph (esp with a digital camera and nothing to really focus on), but we’re so pleased. Kevin keeps having his momentary “not dark enough” doubts, and I keep having my “too yellow/green/brown/dark/light” doubts depending on the sun and the time of day, but we both think on the whole it’s intriguing and perfect, and the colors work very well together. (phew.)

We’re so pleased. Carpet was on Kevin’s list from day one, but somehow I missed it at first. Apparently I was excited enough about the trim and appalled enough by the paint that I didn’t even notice the carpet, either during the initial home viewing or during the walkthrough. The carpet cleaners showed up at the same time we did for the initial viewing, so we know it was professionally cleaned. And beyond salvage. Once we knew that, we didn’t lay down sheets for the resulting drywall work and painting, but most of the stains that you see in the photographs were there before we started. What a mess.

The new carpet is SO cushy, soft and clean. We could write odes to it. We waited a day or two to move in the TV and couches. My great concern (already somewhat justified) is that we will avoid that room: pretty, new, expensive rug & couches = no use for fear of demolishing them. I’m forcing myself to settle in, but it’s so not the habit.

Squeaky clean

Kevin washed the kitchen windows.

I can’t tell or convey how pretty and shiny they are – you’ll just have to imagine. So bright!! I’m thrilled.

In forever “one forward, one back” mode, the window pane that we were hoping was just dirty is definitely failed (that opaque one at the far upper right). We got a quote for doing the whole huge garden window at the same time that we did the rest of them , but it was enormous ($10K++. gah.) I’m still not clear what this window’s failure means. The ones in the family room, we replaced because they were actively leaking copius amounts of water into the family room. If this one is just foggy (as opposed to actively raining ruin on our home), we might ignore it for a bit?

All Busy

One coat of paint in, the room is looking awesome. We had a major paint chip powwow on Sunday, comparing a 2”x1” sample of carpet to 3”x1”paint samples and trying to extrapolate that to an entire room. Rather absurd. We managed to narrow down to three options that we liked for both the carpet and couch interactions, and then used the fireplace brick as the final color determinant. The winner was something called Sand Fossil, and the trim, chosen in the waning afternoon light, was Creamy White. After a round of edging and a round with the roller, I’m pretty impressed. Not only is it a lovely color, but we decided in under 30 min, without antagonism (it’s a very pleasant surprise to me how acrimonious all of the house decisions have been. We don’t have the same color or style taste at all, and yet we keep ending up with easy, wonderful decisions. Either we’ve landed on a perfect stylistic vibe, or Kevin has been graciously and enthusiastically giving in to all of my whims. Not sure, and I’m certainly not challenging it, but I’m enjoying the non-battles.)

This picture is more evocative of my love for Kevin than my love for painting (especially edging!!), but at least he captured the moment.

I was listening to the Oscars and he shortly after started mixing Grasshoppers, so at least the amusement factor was high.

It’s so daunting to post pictures of paint color, since it’s such a personal aesthetic. We were going for classy, and at the very least, coordinated, and I think we’re awfully close if not there, but I’m envisioning a massive blog-world shying away especially after the light and bright white nothing from the last post. I probably would have been just as happy leaving the room primer-white (I say Fresh/Clean/Bright, Kevin says Sanatorium and runs for the hills – he’s probably right, but I love those blank, empty walls), but I think this color was a great choice. It’s a little bit more mustard than I expected, but in the evening under the lights it looks green, which I love. And I just can’t wait to see it with the trim and the carpet. The two motivating factors for this room were something dark & dramatic enough to make the trim pop, and something bright enough to capture every glimmer of sunlight. And that was tempered by having something that would accentuate the couch color and wouldn’t make us cringe relative to the orangey fireplace brick. A tall order. And yet, the fireplace looks so much more lovely, I like the color on the walls, and I can’t wait for the trim.

Some thoughts on room orgainization

Kevin has a Better Homes and Gardens software suite that we’ve been using pretty continuously to map out our house. I’m such a fan. One of the best features (if not the most useable, I may still revert to graph paper) is a furniture placement option. Our family room has to be one of the most awkward spaces I’ve ever seen, but it’s big enough that it gives us some flexibility. (You can tell that the previous owners felt the same way – the room was such a hodge podge of couches, a tv, a treadmill, a child’s computer and kitchen and play room…) We have nice big furniture to fill the room, so now it’s just a question of placement. Ideally, the couch and chair face not only the tv, but don’t block the fireplace. It’s such a weird, big room — I think the only way we can really make it accessible and welcoming is by setting up zones…

But, the starting point is just where to put the couches.

Option 1:

Option 2:

Any other ideas??

The TV needs to go along the bottom wall, since that’s where the jacks are. (I laughed. Kevin’s been angling for a bigger TV for ages – long before we found this house – and I’ve been resisting, as usual. A combination of cheapness (thrift?) and general opposition to buying TVs. But the to-scale diagram of the room with the to-scale tv makes it look like a 12”. We still won’t be buying a TV tomorrow, but I was amused enough to call him in and concede the point. Our 3-ft wide TV is puny compared to the room.)

We’re thinking we’ll also do a reading corner in the upper-right corner by those windows, or perhaps a puzzle table. It looks teeny compared to the room but it’s a 5½ x 7½ foot space, so it’s not that small.

Huzzah!

I woke up early this morning (7:23) and didn’t fall back to sleep. Very unusual, but I decided to get up and just get working on the room in the morning light. Two times around all of the edges with the brush, and a second coat all around with the roller, and now the priming is done in the family room! Yay!

Even the edges are all crisp and white instead of drywall color or bleeding-though blue!

The room is 24½’x17’, with 6 windows, two sets of double doors, a bump-out, an extra-tall brick fireplace, and a cathedral ceiling, so I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to be done with ALL of that edging.

Of course, the priming isn’t entirely done. After all of the work of mounting the second layer of drywall and carefully cutting out holes for the thermostat and the ugly, ancient electrical heater, Kevin thought about it all a little bit more and proposed removing the heater entirely. Yay! I loved the idea. It’s on the same circuit as way too many other things, and the obvious amateur wiring has always made us skittish. Too bad we didn’t think of taking it out before Kevin made all the cuts, though. 🙁 So he’s patched the wall, and there are still another two coats of joint compound before it’s ready for texture and then primer. Still, that’s one little rectangle that can be taken care of in 3 seconds with a roller. We’re getting there!

The priming took all morning, and then I spent the afternoon doing errands, including trips to both Home Depot (for paint samples) and Lowes (for the carpet sample). The light was too low to make accurate color decisions by the time I got back, so that will be the first thing on the docket for tomorrow. Then back to Lowes to return the carpet sample, and back to Home Depot to actually buy the paint.

While I was gone, Kevin completed the hardware store trifecta by heading over to Ace Hardware to look for insulating foam (they didn’t have it). Our new fire door for the garage/laundry room finally came in earlier in the week. We were planning to replace it anyway, due to the ugliness of the old one, and then our timing got accelerated a bit when the ironing board accidently fell from next to the washing machine while Kevin’s family was here. The ironing board effectively jammed the door to the house closed, and so Kevin and his dad had to break in from the garage through the deadbolt, since we don’t have a key to that lock. The new door, then, is an exciting addition. Kevin broke out his favourite home improvement tools (the crowbar and the big rubber mallet) to remove the old door and frame, and was amused when he removed the trim to find this:

See the empty gaps all the way around the door? No wonder it’s been so cold in that room!! Usually you put insulation around the door, but they’d only put trim (which wasn’t even sealed or caulked). And no wonder all of the weather proofing attempts for the bottom of the door didn’t seem to have any effect! 🙂

Well worth the money

When we bought the house, we knew that we’d be updating some of the windows at some point. The windows in the bedrooms and master bath are new and gorgeous. No complaints. The windows in the living and dining room are completely attractive, if not heat-retentive. But the windows in the fish room and the family room were old, ugly, leaky and failing. When we were decorating the family room for Christmas, we realized that two of the big windows were actually leaking large amounts of condensation (more than a spongeful, whenever I checked) and so windows suddenly zoomed up the priority list, replacing the attic and crawl space insulation. Out with the 70’s and 80’s brown aluminum crumminess, in with the 2008 vinyl happiness! We still need to repaint and replace the trim in the family room (tbd as soon as we finally choose a paint color). The walls are nearly prepped – I did a coat of primer on the entire room while listening to Super Tuesday results on the radio – and we need to get things painted before the new carpet gets installed on the 27th-ish (our appointment hasn’t been confirmed yet).

So, in the fish room, before:

And after:

(more after: isn’t this window the prettiest ever? I’m delighted. And the old one didn’t open – this will give us a breeze in the summer!)

(Like the moss on our tree? Go, Pacific Northwest! And when that hydrangea blooms?? Wow. Not to mention when we paint the walls. Or break down the quarantine tank and get those buckets and electrical cords out of there! Then it will *really* be classy!)

There are six windows in the family room. The far corner, before:

And after:

The patio corner before:

And after:

The top windows before:

And a long shot from the far side of the room, after:

Aren’t they neat! We’re already impressed at the difference in warmth, and every time I walk into the kitchen area, the fish room window just looks so clean and impressive to me. 🙂 Gorgeous.

Two afternoons of work well done

I’ve been wanting to post this for the last two weeks, and the weather keeps being crummy, and I can’t take pictures (either it pours, or there is NO light – those held hostage under the deep, dark Seattle clouds will understand). So pretend this was posted back on 12/27.

When we bought the house, I also bought a pruning book, read it, tried out a few things, and then gave up and decided to wait for better instruction. Kevin’s dad is an arborist, and both of his parents are gardeners, and so we and our yard have been waiting with high hopes for their visit. We weren’t disappointed. Our three fruit trees were massively pruned (and did they ever need it!), five pine trees and the half-rotten enormous leaf-producing monster tree outside the kitchen window were de-limbed, and our shrubs have been taken from unwieldy monsters into much more manageable creatures.

Kevin’s dad was impressed (to put it mildly) by all of our moss, but once he adjusted to see past it, it was a treat to watch him work. As gifts, his parents brought out a handsaw, many yards worth of screw-together poles, a saw attachment, and a neat little pulley-operated clipper attachment. In two full afternoons, we learned a lot about what to cut and how to go about it, but the best part was watching Kevin Sr. confront the branches on a tree.

The tree on the side of the house, for example, stands in the 3 yards between our neighbor’s fence and our house, looming over the plate glass window and the kitchen garden window. (photo from early November)

Working from a ladder and then from the room, he gradually took down about 2/3 of the tree, dropping all of the limbs down onto the same 2’ stretch of walkway. (after-photo from the opposite vantage point):

Same with the fruit trees – 20’ branches consistently avoided the two fences, the neighbours’ yards, and the squashable surrounding shrubs.

Kevin got to “raise the skirts” on the back five pine trees, though with slightly less grace. 🙂

I spent more time on the fruit trees and the shrubs, and cutting up enormous falling limbs with the handsaw. We amassed QUITE the brush piles. The main one is on the back patio

and the auxiliary one is by the six-foot-tall side fence.

The plan is to try to get rid of the side pile via our semiweekly yard waste collection, and then possible rent a chipper for the enormous guy out back. Good luck, us.

The two biggest successes were the tree out front by the driveway, and the fruit tree right out back. Before, the pine by the driveway hid the house almost completely from the street.

Whereas now, you can see the roofline! Kevin’s dad took the branches up the trunk about 8 feet (and it seems like more from the ground, since the limbs drooped so much). The front yard is so much lighter!

For comic relief feel free to ponder the mass of the branches removed vs the two 96-gallon, black yard waste bins to the right of the garage. Ha, ha…

You can see all of the cuts on one side of the trunk from this photo:

The backyard tree is another joy to me. The poor thing was hacked within an inch of its life and then abandoned, and the suckers had almost entirely taken over. (Picture, with snow for contrast, from a few weeks ago.)

Now, there’s a defined center-top, very few suckers (the two that were left have some of the only branches that are growing at the back of the tree, so they stayed), no more hacked-off knobs, and much sparser, healthier-looking branches. We’re delighted.

It’s still probably in its twilight years, but it looks so much less abused and dreadful.
Next step: convincing them all that we want them to visit for more than tree work. 🙂

Progress

Tonight was the most complicated portion of the sewing: binding the mountains to the sky with a differentiator strip of blue between.

The mountains and the sky are 45 degrees off of each others’ axis, so it took a little bit of effort to make everything look the way it seemed that it should. I pinned the sky on top of the mountains, and then sewed left to right, adding the blue strips along the way. This picture should give you a good sense of the scale of the project (look at the needle).

Once that was done, I sewed the hills (and attached lakes and trees) on over the mountain base.

SO CLOSE!

Meanwhile, Kevin’s been drywalling like a madman, and has made it through the third coat of joint compound. It looks amazing.

It’s been becoming increasingly clear that we won’t make it through priming, let along painting, before his family arrives tomorrow but the room is at least cleared out of all construction scraps and relatively clean. (Some awesome guy saw our Craigslist ad and bought (aka carted away) the leftover pieces and paid us $25. We were pretty psyched. And, all of the tools in the foreground have been moved to shelves in the garage – a pretty major improvement.)