WhyI Like My Desk Job...

The next phase of the landscaping project: remove concrete! Easier said than done.

Here's what the back started out looking like. The entire back yard was concreted in, ie. zero maintenance for the previous owners. Too utilitarian for me! So, what do we do? Jack hammer it out, of course!

Here, Pete demonstrates how boys handle their power tool toys. Good job, Pete! We had lots of help, of course. Lured by the promise of big power tools and beer, 4 loyal friends came to help break up all the concrete over the course of two, looong days. Thanks, guys!

The process went something like this: break apart block of concrete, sledge hammer it in to smaller pieces, if necessary, and carry it to the pile. Sounds pretty straight forward? Logically, yes, it was. Between my 30 seconds of jack hammering (I left the rest to the boys) and sledge hammering, I was left with two HUGE blisters on my thumbs, not to mention so, so, very sore.

I could barely move at the end of the day on Sunday. Pete and I laid on the couch that night completely immobile. Every inch of my body ached! This is why I make a very good desk bunny at work.

This is the pile of broken up concrete we ended up with. What are we going to do with it? Good question! Know anyone that wants any chunks of concrete??

This weekend, we started getting the patio area ready for laying the paving stones. This meant grading the area, both to level the land and slope it away from the house. This involved raking the dirt free of the remaining concrete chunks and pebbles, filling in what used to be the drain hole, pile in two car loads full of substrate sand, and rake it flat. Here's what we ended up with at the end of today.

The next stage is to use a plate compactor, fill the next layer of fine sand then finally lay about 150, 16 square inch HEAVY paving stones. Those get filled in with a sand-concrete mix to finish out the paver project. Putting grass in to the other half of the back yard will come once we figure out what to do with the concrete chunk pile!

Remodel Stage 2: Landscaping

Since my last posting, we've managed to clear most rooms of boxes, hung curtains and blinds in most rooms and hung paintings. It was a busy May, getting through the spring quarter at school and getting ourselves settled in after the chaos of the kitchen and bathroom remodel.

But, now that we're free for the summer, it was time to start getting dirty in the yard!

The previous owners practiced the yard maintenance standard of zero upkeep, so as you can see, it's a big mess of green, overgrown everything.

Here are a few pictures showing the before condition of the back yard. It's basically an overgrown blend of plants that are not meant for a small yard, and untamed bushes and spider plants. Pete poses to demonstrate the tool he is about to become very familiar with!

The plants behind him in the top picture are comprised of a pine tree that seems to be growing out and not up, a dense bush of a plant I'm not familiar with, a holly bush and a rose bush.

I had a bit of a hard time taking out the pine tree, it being a tree. But it wasn't working out in its location and there wasn't an obvious place where we could transplant it to. So, chop chop it went, in to the pile.

Here's what we ended up with at the end of the weekend - whew! Besides sore arms, backs and feet, we now have cleared out areas! The back part of the yard, seen here, is especially nice to have open. The plants were encroaching on the driveway, making it hard to get in and out of the driver's side of the car. Now with all those plants cleared, the land looks bigger!

What's left, shown to the left of the picture, is a rose bush. It's pretty mature, so I'm keeping it! I'll attempt to transplant it to another part of the garden. I'm not quite sure how to do that and what my chances of success are, but let's cross our fingers and hope for the best!

This shot shows the side planter where the spider plants took over. The roots were so entangled with each other than I couldn't salvage any of the irises. We dug everything up, including an, again, overgrown plant that was really not meant to reside in a small yard. Those roots were all tangled up amongst each other too, so much that there was hardly any dirt left between the roots. We'll have to dig it all up and refill it.

Here's our pile of yard waste! The green bin is overflowing and we have at least 4 more loads full just from what we dug up this weekend. We haven't touched the other side of the yard yet!

I dug up a few interesting artifacts, shown here. Strange items kept being unearthed the more I dug, including 2001 New Year's confetti, and these little guys shown here, a garden gnome, a tiny plastic bucket with a chain, and a figurine. It was like Mr. Magoo's magic emporium out there!

Plumbing 101

Plumber Pete put his plumbing skills to the test today. As you may remember, the en-suite half bath is the only room in the house that wasn't touched during this remodel so far (well, apart from changing out the blue toilet seat...).

The faucet was corroded to the point where there were distinct visible gaps between the counter and the faucet body. Yuck!

We'd gotten a new faucet a while ago but didn't want to pay the plumbers to put it in. Mechanically, the theory of removing and installing a faucet fixture is easy.

The difficulty comes in, as we learned, when there is so much corrosion on the connecting pipes that it's nearly impossible to get the nuts off to even remove the old faucet!

Here's what the faucet looked like when it finally came out.

And here's a shot of the new, much improved faucet. It's night and day!!

I also rediscovered a framed painting of my grandparents', which works perfectly in the hallway.

The First Sign of Spring

It's spring!! A few weeks ago I was walking behind the garage to check things out and found - gasp! - a rose bush! One thing in the garden I'm going to keep!

So here it is. It's hidden behind some not-worthy-of-keeping bushes, so I didn't bother including them in the picture. AND! There's one in bloom!

It's a gorgeous color - it's orange, yellow and red-ish. Beautiful! And there are more buds, so more blossoms are coming!


Here's a photo of the illustrious granite that is left from the kitchen. The granite guys left it behind the garage for us, which is what I was looking at when I found the rose bush. There's enough to make double vanity for the eventual master bathroom remodel.

I've attempted to cover it with some of the construction plastic that was left, but it seems to have dislodged itself from one end, exposing one side of the remainder of the slab, as you can see. Since it's pretty well hidden from the road, not to mention it weighs a TON, it's safe to say that it's safe where it is.

Oooh Floor Transitions are In!

Get this: the company that we bought the laminate flooring for the kitchen from wanted $200 for two transitions. We needed two: one from the kitchen to the dining room and one from the kitchen down to the first step down to the basement. NOT worth $200 of my hard earned money!

So, I asked the carpenter, a wood-working wizard to make them for less than that. And yesterday he came in with these, shown below, for $60!

Over the weekend we cut off part of a shelf in the stairwell to fit over the lovely linoleum on the bottom shelf. I placed a few cute, new baskets there and voila! Transformed!!


Another project over the weekend was to remove all the layers of from the ironing board. This took some time because there were six - yes SIX - previous layers of fabric and padding underneath the gross top one. I think the previous owners just kept adding layers on top of original layers - yuck! (side note, I don't know why the previous line of text is underlined....). The close-up is me pointing to an old nail, 50's era style. I kept one in for good measure.

One of the layers was so old that it was disintegrating in to powder in my fingers. It must have been a foam padding. The bottom most padding looked like it had hairs in it...maybe animal hairs? Did they use that back then??

Window Coverings!

This weekend was more of the same...adding what seems like an endless number finishing touches. Moving boxes in from the room above the garage, unpacking to see what "treasures" are uncovered and figuring out where it can all go.

Yesterday the carpenter came to finish adding the last two cabinet doors in the kitchen. These were last additions to fill the 8" gaps between the ends of the cabinets and the wall (Ikea doesn't sell them in this size). This means the kitchen is done! Here is a video clip I took of the finished kitchen:



Window coverings went up in the bedroom finally! Down came the paper coverings and up went bamboo shades.

And in the dining room! It was a long, hard search for the right color and the fabric, but I ended up with this blue-ish, silvery gray. It complements the tan of the walls really well!

These just went up tonight for a fit check; I haven't ironed them all or cleaned up the room yet, as you can tell. The front window will get a third panel (right now it has two) so that it doesn't look so much like a sheet hanging up. As you can tell, it looks like it's missing some pleating next to the other windows, which look more full.

One problem we encountered was that the ceiling and floor aren't exactly parallel with the window frame. Surprise! So in comes lessons from HGTV (where else) -- align the window treatments to align to the window so that the eye follows the lines that are parallel and won't look crooked.

We did this for the front window (the one with two panels). If we were to have leveled the drapery with gravity, the right side of the curtain would have looked 5/8" higher. So, we just raised the right side by that amount and tadah! it looks even. Thank you, HGTV!


Here's a video of the bathroom. It'll get a couple more cabinets matching the tall one...eventually.

Wall Hangings

The mirror is up in the bathroom! By putting the mirror right under the lights, it reflects light throughout the room and makes it even brighter. I'm glad that I went with the darker storage cabinet. It would have been too bright with the white ones.

The only unfortunate thing we discovered is that the sink isn't quite lined up with the light fixture, which wasn't apparent until we put the mirror in the middle. We lined the mirror up with the lights since it's closer to the mirror, but it's obvious they're not all lined up when you look at it. It's not much, but it's not perfect...guh!

Also up on the wall is some artwork to fill in the breakfast bench wall.

I painted these a few years ago in my art class (which I plan to start up next month, so take note, ladies!). They were painted to be hung in a square, not all lined up in a row. But in this space it looks better this way.

The colors work well, don't they?

Here's also a close-up of the paintings. They're bamboo shoots and leaves that are interconnected if put together in the right order in a square.

Also up on a wall is the cork/white board. It fit in perfectly in the blank wall space between the door frame leading to the dining room and the shallow cabinets on the inside wall of the kitchen.
It'll be the grocery list board, honey-do list board, coupon board, etc. board....

Ideally it would be located next to the back door, but there's no wall space that wide enough to house it. Another option was to put it on the wall above the bench where the paintings are, but the hooks would have hit a head sitting on the bench.

So, out went the board to the other wall and in came the paintings, which look better here anyway!