Unexpected diversions

I'm sure it happens to everyone who renovates their own house. Hell, I'm sure it happens to people who aren't renovating their own house. But why does it seem to happen MORE when WE'RE renovating our house?

I'm speaking, of course, of those little things that go wrong with stuff in the house that are completely unrelated to whatever it is we happen to be working on. Here's a fun idea: let's make a list!

Here's a short, non-chronological (and probably incomplete) list of unrelated things that we've had to fix unexpectedly while working on the basement:

• front door sill


• kitchen drain


• bathroom sink drain


• my wisdom teeth


• refrigerator


• kitchen linoleum where we ripped it while moving the fridge


• dining room chairs (reupholstering)


• the cat

...and a whole bunch of other stuff I'm too tired to think of.

Oh, and of course, this weekend's very own unexpected diversion:



The damn garbageratormajig lost one of the little blades inside and was making an awful racket. Of course, this happened while I was in Prince George, so it took the War Department a couple of days to decide that MAYBE that loud, metallic grindy-type noise wasn't a usual thing, and maybe she should just not use it for a while.

Anyway, we got a new one, but holy hell, when did garbage disposal units get so damn pricey? Of course, we couldn't find the make and model of the one that was in there, so we had to completely dismantle the kitchen drain and put in the new one from scratch, but it's done, and really only took a couple of hours. Or three. No more than four, really.

Oh, and as an added bonus, the new one is called a Badger 5. Tee hee. (I spent the whole afternoon yelling "Snake!" It was awesome.)

Anyway, the real basement news is ... the painting is finished! Wheee!

That's right, we have officially finished the painting, and even put down a deposit on some very nice carpet. It's looking pretty sweet, even if I say so myself. And here's a schwack of pictures to prove it (I took some with and some without the flash so you could kind of see the colors in different light. I dunno if it worked though, I'm still trying to figure this camera out.)











(Needless to say, if you have any ideas on how I should go about building a proper cabinet for that gaping hole around the electrical panel, I'm all ears.)

All I have to do is pop in a couple more tapcons to crunch the floor right down and we're ready for the carpet guys.

Tapcons. Joy.


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White on white on white

Urgh.

We're so close. So very close.

But oh. my. god. The freaking trim. The trim, the trim, that terrible trim.

Cut the trim. Dado the trim. Fasten the trim. Fill the holes in the trim. Sand the trim. Caulk the trim. Tape the trim. Paint the trim. Paint the trim. Remove the tape, and touch up the wall around the trim.

Rinse.

Repeat.

Urgh.

I guess the good news is that I won't be doing a whole lot of the old before-and-after pictures in this post. The difference between one coat of white paint and two coats of white paint might make all the difference in the world when it's live and in person, but it doesn't show up at all on camera - not even MY awesome camera.

(Did I mention I got it cleaned and it's all shiny-like-new-like?)

The bad news, I suppose, would be that there are a whole lot of pictures of, well, white paint. But if I have to suffer through putting the crap on, you have to suffer through looking at it. (Trust me, you're really getting the better end of that deal.)

Anyway, when last we left off (besides the pie, obviously - which I should also hasten to point out that I did not make), we'd just finished hanging the door between the office and the laundry room, and built and installed the bookcase. So, for starters, here's the bookcase with not one, not two, but FOUR coats of paint on it:



Here are some of the baseboards, which have all been cut, attached, filled, and painted (except for a couple in the back of the closet that need a little more sanding):



And the trim around the closet:



And the doors that will eventually go in the closet:



And, lest you think the laundry room isn't getting any love, we also put up the trim on the laundry-room side of the office door:




So we had one last little bit of construction-type work left (uh, I think it's the last bit of construction-type work) and that was to build a new casing for the old, battered office door and hang it in the doorway between the laundry room and the workshop. This doorway, in fact:



Of course, we originally made this plan back when we thought it would be cool to keep at least part of the original house, and before we realized that setting the old door on fire and buying a new one would be a lot less hassle at this stage of the game, but that's renovations for you! Ha ha! Please kill me.

Anyway, here's the old battered door itself, patiently awaiting our attention:



And here it is with a new casing:



Woo!

Here it is hanging in the doorway!



Woo woo!

And, of course, (oh, you KNEW this was coming, didn't you?) here is it after we took it down and replaced the hinges, routered out the casing properly, and rehung it in the opening:



Sigh. Just once. ONCE. That's all I ask. But hey, check it out - now it CLOSES:



Pretty sweet, eh?


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Filler post

Figured I should make an update just to check in and say, "Hey, we're still doing this thing."

That said, there are no pictures. You wouldn't want any. Trust me.

So here's the short list of what we've done since the last update:

• Filled and sanded the screw holes in the door casing between the laundry room and the office.


• Sanded both sides of the office door.


• Determined how much we'll have to cut off the ends of the closet doors to make them fit, and worked out a way to install the trim around the closet so the door will still open without looking ridiculous.
  
  (This was harder than you might think, mostly due to some stupid, stupid drywall edges and - of course - non-plumb/non-level framing/drywalling and general asshattery.)


• Installed trim around office door.


• Filled and sanded the screw holes in the trim around the bookcase.


• Primed the bookcase.


• Primed the bookcase again.


• Put a coat of white paint on the primed bookcase.
  
  (I'm so freaking SICK of painting a coat of white paint on a coat of white paint. Holy crap does that suck. And that's also why there are no pictures. Trust me, it's so boring, I can't even describe how bad the pictures would be without falling asleep. Oh, I will post one picture; getting the paint into those top four narrow shelves was an absolute bitch until I saw this pretty little number at the paint store:
  
  
  
  Cute as the dickens, and SO amazingly useful - not just for the shelves, but also for getting the side of the trim when it's too close to the wall for a normal brush.)


• Painted the bathroom door (both sides).


• Painted the bathroom door again (both sides).


• Installed baseboards around eighty-five percent (give or take) of the office.
  
  (I suppose I could have taken a picture of the baseboards, but I haven't finished installing all of them because we have to put the vertical trim up around the closet first, and can't do that until we put the horizontal trim across the top of the closet, and can't do that because it needs to be trimmed down first and I can't do that because I left the dado blade in the table saw and put it away around the corner in the laundry room so I'd have room to install the baseboards and I don't feel like lugging it back into the office and changing the blade over when I'll probably have to put the dado back on anyway to do the trim around the workshop door - if we ever get THAT installed...
  
  Anyway, I'll take a photo when they're done, mmkay?)


• Painted the trim (two coats) on the bathroom side of the bathroom door.


• Painted the trim (two coats) on the office side of the bathroom door.


• Installed the handle and strike plate on the bathroom door

Uh.... I think that's about it... Oh, we also mowed the lawn, got our fridge fixed, watched parts of the three games the Jays lost to the Indians, ruled out one of the places we were thinking of getting hitched, and made an excellent mac'n'cheese with some of the old cheddar the Top Brass brought last week. But nobody cares about any of that except us. So... yeah. Pretty full weekend.



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We seem to be running out of holes....

There seem to be fewer and fewer holes in the basement these days. Because we keep putting things in them or covering them up with other things. And no, not just random things we find lying around. Things that are supposed to go there. Things that we bought or built for that specific purpose.

It's actually somewhat freaky, to tell you the truth. Things are ... getting finished. Like, actually done-finished, not just finished-until-we-finish-this-other-part-we-needed-to-finish-first-and-then-we-can-do-more-work-on-it.

Yeah.

First off, we do have a small cause for celebration: we passed the final plumbing inspection! Woo! Couldn't have done it without Leonard, of course. The guy's an absolute gem.

With that all wrapped up, however, it was time to turn some serious attention to the trim and other bits of finishing that must be done before we can pass the final, FINAL inspection, the dreaded (and deservedly maligned) Final Occupancy Inspection(tm).

Not that the inspector is likely to care how much attention to detail we apply when filling nail holes and sanding the edges of things, but that's more for our benefit anyway.

Oh, and something I think I forgot last post: we installed one more of the doors in the basement, the one between the office and the laundry room:





We had to put that in as a barrier to keep the cats out of the office while we were sanding, prepping, priming, sanding, painting, caulking, and painting the window wells. They're still crooked, but at least they're white, shiny, and crooked:





Oh, and did I mention, done?

Anyway, the big project this past week was the built-in bookcase. (You can see the hole it's supposed to go into in the second of the two pictures of the door up there- the big hole to the right, with all the crap sitting in it.)

I, of course, had never built a built-in book case before, but I know someone who has. And he just happened to be in town this week! Amazing coincidence, that, eh?

So poor Top Brass Pa had to spend his Saturday on vacation helping me manoeuver a jinormous sheet of 3/4-inch good-one-side plywood around on top of the table saw out in the driveway. He was very gracious about it, however, and I must admit that I probably couldn't have done it without him. That's not to say that he actually did any of the work, mind you - I made every measurement, cut, and tool mark on the bookcase myself - but his advice was invaluable, and he was always on hand to catch the pieces of lumber as they came off the other end of the table saw. (I actually only made one wrong cut - and we had enough spare wood from the sheet that it didn't matter at all. For me, that's pretty damn good!)

What we did was to take some measurements of the hole and design the shelf layout on paper. We then built a box, complete with back, that could be lifted right into position on the two-by-four supports I had built into the wall when I framed it. Overall, it worked like a freaking charm.

So here's my wee beauty after we sledge-hammered it into position (it was a shade tight on the bottom. Just a little):



And just in case you thought it was a simple matter of nailing some boards together, think again:



All of the shelves are dado cuts - and yes, that took a lot longer to do it that way. Nearly the whole day, in fact.

Here it is with the trim around it and the edge pieces glued and nailed into the shelf faces (the tape is just to hold the trim until the glue sets - it's not staying, no matter how well you think it matched the colour scheme):



And yes, the nails in the trim are some of the holes we've spent the rest of the weekend filling.

Among the other holes-that-aren't-holes-anymore, are the two heating vents and the cold air return:







And that's about it for this update. I'm hoping to do the final sanding on the trim for the door and bookcase tomorrow, followed by a coat of primer on the bookcase. Then it's paint, paint, paint. Oh, and caulking of course. And then some painting.

But damn me to hell if it isn't starting to look like a real room!



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I should work less and post more...

At least, that's the impression I get from all the whining about the lack of updates. You'd think I didn't have a job OR a passive-aggressive, mildly incontinent cat, the way some people carry on. And that's just the War Department!

Anyway, despite the lack of updates, we have been busy. (Even if it seems to me I've posted that same sentiment on this blog at least once or twice before.) While we're waiting on Leonard to come back and install the remaining fixtures, we've been installing trim, caulking trim, painting trim, and doing unspeakable things to leftover bits of trim.

Oh, and digging, of course. Let's start with that, shall we?

When last we saw the enormous pile of crap in the back yard, we'd just taken three full loads off the top of it, and barely made a dent. Well, after another four trips to the Victoria Materials Depot on a hot and sunny Saturday (of which we've had precious few enough this summer, let me assure you), we've made more than a dent in the pile, we've made a dent in the back yard!



By the way, that's a nice little gig they got going on at the VMD. We pay them to drop it off (about $10 a load) and someone else comes in and pays them to take it away again! If we could have cut out the middle man, we might have been able to afford to pay someone else to do some of the work for us...

Anyway, once that was cleared away, it was back into the basement again, where Amy spent a great deal of time and energy installing the trim in the bathroom. I did most of the cutting, but the caulking, hole-filling, and paint preparation was all her:



I wasn't going to let her have ALL the fun, though, as I spent a good couple of days cursing and swearing at the window wells, which had to be closed in with plywood. Of course, this being our house with my framing job, none of them were square (of course) and no two sides were quite the same size:









Every single piece of plywood in those pictures was custom cut and shaped for its location. That was a lot of cutting, nibbling, testing, sanding, cursing, and - eventually - spackling. And no, those last two aren't some elaborate optical illusion. They really look like that. Of course, the trim is square -- it's the windows themselves that are totally out of level. (Since I took those pictures, I've covered over the edges with corner bead and sill trim, but I'm too lazy to go downstairs and take another picture right now. Next time.)

Anyway, we've got about a week until Leonard comes back, and we have to get the vanity installed, the trim done and painted, and a few other bits and pieces finished up in the bathroom before he gets here. And we have to prep, prime, and paint the window wells, build a casement for the workshop door, install the office door, get the office carpeted...

Uh, yeah. So... lots to do. I don't have a joke for that. It's just a lot of work.

Sigh.

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Painting's done!

No, really. We finished painting and I have the pictures to prove it.

Actually, we finished painting last Monday, but I haven't got around to making a post because, well, we've been busy with other things. Like, oh, for instance, buying this:



Pretty sweet little sled, I gotta say.

Anyway, you don't come here to look at pictures of cars (and if you do, your Google skills need some serious work), so let's get to the basement portion of our program, shall we?


So, first up, the folks at Cloverdale paint worked their magic and color-matched the upstairs wall quite nicely (which is good because I really didn't want to have to paint the whole damn living room):



We painted the office a lovely color called "Dorset Cream" by Farrow & Ball:



And no, we didn't pay for Farrow & Ball paint. We're not made of money. But it's such a beautiful color, and the paint at Cloverdale is really nice stuff, so we're pretty happy with the end result.



For the bathroom, we picked a color called "Silver Sage" by Restoration Hardware. It's not easy to see in the photos, but it's a really nice shade of grey, with green, blue, and brown tones:



And, of course, we painted the laundry room, too, but that's just white and boring. Kinda like all the pictures I took of the office and bathroom after we primed them. A complete waste of time. No, really. Have you ever tried taking a picture of an entirely white room? It's almost as frustrating as painting on a second coat of white paint.

So, next up, flooring! The cork planks for the bathroom are currently sitting in the office, "acclimating" to the room... Oooooh, sexy!

Oh, and the electricians should be coming by at some point this week (I hope) to finish up the last bits of their part. Which means we should have actual LIGHT with which to work! Joy!
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Okay, so NOW we're back.

All right, all right. You can all just pipe the hell down now - here's your stinking update.

Despite the lack of bloggage lately, we have been making progress. Well, okay, WE haven't been making much progress, but our drywall guy's a freakin' machine. If only the damn mud didn't have to dry between coats...

So, the last post of any substance involved clearing out the scrap drywall and doing a little prep work for Tony the Drywall Guy. Well, needless to say, between the time we originally contacted him (before we went to Australia) and the time we called him back to start the job, he'd forgotten who we were and where we lived. Fortunately, he was still willing to do the work.

And wow, what great work this guy does! Here's a little "time lapse" slide show of the past four weeks:

Round One:





Including all his prep time, that took him about five hours. We would have considered ourselves lucky to do that much in five WEEKS.

Round Two:





All that took him about three-and-a-half hours. Yeah. He showed up at 4:30 and he was gone by 7:00. No shit.

Round Three:





That was about another three-and-a-half hours. And that was it. He was finished the job. Oh, of course, he also mudded up the big piece we put in the upstairs hallway:



And, thanks to him, we didn't have to worry about overlapping the drywall and the shower edge, or using a ridiculous amount of caulking.

Before:


After the first coat:


I'd tell you what we paid him, but you wouldn't believe me. Hell, I still hardly believe it. Seriously, he was that cheap. Hell, I would gladly have paid him FOUR TIMES what the final bill was, just to avoid having to do all that ourselves. And there's no way we could have done anywhere near as nice a job. Anyone need a mudder? Cause we know the best one in town, no fooling.

Of course, now that he's officially done, we no longer have any excuse to avoid getting back to work. And after drywall, the next step is...

Well, see for yourself:



We spent the long weekend working our way through that five-gallon bucket of drywall sealer/primer. Yeah. Five gallons of it.

Two coats.

On everything.




Good times, good times.
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