Some of us (Teague) don’t get things like holiday weekends, but I work at a University where life is good, so I have Monday off. That means I have three whole days to work on house projects. (In between fireworks and grilled hamburgers, of course)
Things I would like to accomplish this weekend:
- Get garage sale items organized for next weekend
- Finish the trim on the kitchen cupboards that has been half-completed for months
- Put 2 coats of spar varnish on the entryway floor
- Make new curtains for the living room
- Prime the side wall of the kitchen addition and all of the trim
Things I wouldn’t mind starting, if I somehow manage to have extra energy:
- Remove the nasty carpeting from the upstairs hallway
- Clean and paint the downstairs radiators
What’s on your schedule for the long weekend?
We’ve had our living room walls patched and primed for about a month. The glaring whiteness was getting to me (I’m a big fan of color), but I tried to hold off on painting because we have many half-done projects I could be busy finishing.
Yesterday, my need for change got the better of me and I went out to get paint. I had taken the day off, and this seemed like the perfect way to spend it. Teague and I had already agonized over color chips for weeks and weeks, so I was pretty confident about what I was doing.
2 gallons of paint and 6 hours of effort later, I’m pretty sure I don’t like it. I wanted Victorian drama and elegance – I ended up with intense and slightly guady.
When I opened the can of paint, the color looked brighter and more saturated than the chip. I’m very picky about color, so I should have stopped right there. But, seeing one too many episodes of Trading Spaces, I convinced myself that it would darken up once it was on the walls. I painted one wall and took a few steps back to look at it with various lighting schemes. Yesterday, I thought I liked it. In fact, I thought I might grow to love it. But somewhere around 11pm that night I began to hate it.
This morning I thought I might wake up to find I liked it again. Unfortunately, no such luck.
Part of the problem is that we’ve got a mish-mash of goods in that room; we’ve got three different wood tones, 2 couch colors, curtains that don’t match the couches OR the walls, and a random sampling of knick-knacks scattered throughout. With white walls, you didn’t notice the color clashes quite so much – now, they seem to taunt me. Maybe once we streamline the furnishings I will like the color more… otherwise, it’s back to the paint store for a less saturated color.
I just read this thread on a board I frequent:
http://www.supernaturale.com/glitter/viewtopic.php?t=14630
Basically, some poor historic home owner was giving a tour of of his place to some of his coworkers. One woman tripped on a step, and is now suing him. The poor guy. Let’s hope he has more than the lovely “hazard insurance” we’ve got. Makes me think twice about letting anyone in the door…. we’ve got safety hazards galore! Soon enough we’ll have real insurance though, and it’s not tour-worthy yet anyway.
Maybe we should post an “Enter at your own risk” sign at the front door?!
Guess what? We’re re-siding! I love it.
It’s time to put the clapboard siding back onto the kitchen, and Teague laid the first few tracks to make sure they were straight and level. Hopefully I’ll finally be able to contribute, since he’ll be working all weekend.
It’s kind of like putting a puzzle together. There’s a large stack of siding of varying lengths, and we’re not sure it’s enough to cover the entire thing. We salvaged everything we could when we took the old room down, but many of the boards were too badly damaged to be reused.
It’s a fairly straight-forward installation though, and as always, the internet provides a wealth of information….
Siding Installation Information
Installind Clapboard on This Old House
The neighbor keeps asking when we’re planning to do vinyl, and I keep telling her I adore our clapboard siding, as does Teague. The house would lose 9/10ths of it’s charm if we covered it up.
Last night, while I was on the porch sanding down a door I’m refinishing, I noticed we were making quite the racket. Forget the hum of crickets, the breeze through the trees, and the ice cream truck jingle. We’re blocking them out with our hammers, saws, and sanders. Our neighbors must despise us.
During winter, I was so looking forward to nicer weather so that we could take our work outside. The cleanup is so much easier, and we’re not trapped with a bunch of terrible fumes. One more reason to love summer.
Teague’s father stopped by to help out last night, and the two of them got a plywood wrap on the east-facing wall. Here he is using the tablesaw:
While browsing for information on restoring and preserving decorative eave brackets (for the new back roof), I came across a very nice set of guidelines (PDF) for a historic district in Charlottesville. Don’t you think every historic town ought to have a set of these?
Wagner Design & Construction!
Now that the wedding is over and our lives have settled down, it’s time to embark on our next big adventure. Teague is starting his own design and construction business!
With an interior design degree, a background in construction, and more tools than we can cram into the shed, I think he’s well equipped for the job and whole-heartedly support his efforts. I think he’ll make an excellent general contractor. He has a great work ethic, an eye for design, and he pays attention to the details. (He’s a bit of a perfectionist) And, he just plain loves the work. Which is probably the most important part.
So, if you know anyone who needs a little help around the house, and they’re not in, say, Chicago, send them his way ;)
As many housebloggers have noted, temperatures in the Northeast are so high that I’m fully expecting to burst into flames at any moment. While all of the sane people locked themselves in an air-conditioned room and are sipping iced tea until the heat subsides, we continue to soldier on (somewhat).
On Saturday, Teague framed up the third kitchen wall even though it was 94 degrees and climbing. It’s really looking great.
He doesn’t like the feel of sunscreen slathered on, and tends to tan rather than burn, but baking on a black roof without any sunscreen can lead to a nasty burn. The moneyshot:
I have been stripping one of our downstairs doors with the heat gun, which is REALLY great entertainment on hot days. I scorched myself pretty good when I accidentally tapped my leg with the metal end. For the second time. Oops. They should make it look less like a hair dryer and more like a dangerous weapon, so I remember to hold it away from my body.
In other news, we got some must-haves with our Home Depot gift cards, including:
– a Rigid 6-gallon ShopVac (our old one only had three wheels)
– a Skil circular saw
– accessory tools for the heat gun
Yeehaw!
We’re in the middle of a heat wave – it’s been 90+ degrees all week, and extremely humid as well. As a result, our wood floors (which, as you may remember, were used as a litter box by previous owner’s cats) are now SWEATING CAT URINE!!
I could not be more grossed out. Prior to the heat wave, or house smelled ok. Now, the house reeks, the floors are wet with urine, and I have no idea what to do to help the situation….. we’re not ready to resurface or replace them just yet, so I’m thinking we need to buy some type of pet-odor-removal product that can soak up or neutralize some of this nastiness. I found a few things online, but I’m hesitant to order without hearing reviews from someone trustworthy.
Here are a few product links I’m considering:
UrineOff: http://www.urine-off.com/Directions.aspx#hardfloor
Odorxit: http://www.mrlandlord.com/odorxit/
Anyone had any luck with this sort of thing? I know that nothing short of ripping them out will totally solve the problem completely, but any improvement to the current situation would be welcome!!
UPDATE #1:
Just thought you’d get a kick out of the pics – here’s the floor with 4 boxes of baking soda on it… I made sure I thoroughly covered the spots!!
And here’s a closeup, where you can see that my dog Nero took great care to walk directly through the mess as many times as possible.
Thanks for all the tips – the smell is nearly gone now, thank goodness.
UPDATE #2, August 2006 –
We get lots of questions about how we finally got the smell out. The news is good and bad. Good because it can be done; bad because it’s not a quick fix.
We tried every cleaner in the book, including Nature’s Miracle and UrineOff. The baking soda treatment probably helped the most because it actually pulled moisture out of the wood. We applied baking soda to this area dozens of times and it would literally clump up with urine residue. In the end the only thing that *really* got rid of the smell was replacing the worst of the floorboards, sanding, staining and refinishing. Now that the floor is refinished you’d never know we had a problem downstairs. It was alot of work, but 100% worthwhile!
How is it one transitions smoothly from this fantasy world…
To this reality?
After two weeks of nice restaurants, lush landscapes, maids (and moms!) cleaning up after us, and no alarm clocks, we weren’t sure we wanted to come back. But we missed the dogs, and the house, and our quiet little street. It felt great to round the corner and see that our house was still there waiting for us. AND that a kind neighbor had mowed our lawn while we were gone.
Teague is anxious to get back to work on the kitchen, and now he is armed with Home Depot gift cards (and a few new tools!) we received from family and friends. I continue to be no help on that project because I need some serious direction on what needs to be done (and how to do it), and we’re never home at the same time. So….. I’ll continue my puttering, cleaning, painting, lawn taming, etc. until he tells me otherwise……
The wedding and honeymoon went by way too quickly, and we’re having trouble adjusting to the real world……… I’ll post more very, very soon (including photos!), but right now I’m still playing catch-up at home and at work. I just wanted to say a quick hello – we missed you, house bloggers ;) Now that we’ve had a few weeks away from the house, we’re refreshed and ready to plow ahead on our many plans and projects, so we should have some good stuff to post.
I also want to say thank-you to everyone who traveled up to Bar Harbor to celebrate with us. It was an amazing weekend, full of craziness and laughter and love and friends. We’re very lucky to have all of you!
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