Seven Ten Clark » Renovation

Where do we start?

Karrey — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:34:28 +0000

The problem with having such a long list of things that need to be done (or purchased) is that it’s difficult to know where to start. Well, we KNOW where to start: the basement walls. They’re cracked and bowing, and they need to be addressed first. We’re going to be installing wall anchors to pull the walls straight from the outside, and that’ll probably be done first thing after the ground thaws out and dries out this spring. It’ll be a pretty big, expensive project, although hopefully it’ll be taken care of within a few days’ time.

The problem, then, is figuring out what to tackle first after the walls are completed. Here are a few prospects:

Tearing up every square millimeter of carpeting in the house and installing hardwood flooring ourselves
Tearing out and rebuilding the basement bathroom
Tearing out and replacing the stairs leading down to the basement, and walling-off the stairs and putting a door at the bottom of them so that it’s a separate space that isn’t open to the upstairs
New couch
The Kitchen of Doom

I’m going to follow this up with a series of posts filled with ideas that I have for these projects.
Where would you start?

Tiny bathroom update

Karrey — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:24:30 +0000

Hey, guess what! We’ve done some more work in the bathroom! Guess what else! I’m not going to give you a full update about it yet. I know, I know: boo, hiss. I’ll give you a peek to satisfy you for the moment, but I don’t want to give you a full update until its, um, fully done. Soon, I promise! Maybe even this week.

In the meantime, here you go:

Gardening update…

Karrey — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:51:18 +0000

…with non-up-to-date pictures. These are the latest shots we’ve got of the garden, but since we took these, we’ve fenced in this plot, planted veggies, created an herb garden planter next to the patio, planted herbs, and done more work on the front. We’re behind on updates, I know! Here’s some preliminary eye candy:

Kevin sweeping up the back sidewalk

Our pile of apple wood (great for grilling!)

The sidewalk, that I edged by hand with a hook knife

Our vegetable garden plot, about 4'x25'

Ahh, tulips

I promise to get some more current photos of the progress tonight.

Kitchen collection

Karrey — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:19:33 +0000

We have so many projects going on, people. No joke. Actually, we’re only ever involved with one project at a time (obviously, home renovations aren’t really good venues for multitasking), but we’ve got so many backburners that it’s getting out of control. To be honest, we might have developed a little bit of house ADD, since we keep starting projects and almost finishing them, and then leaving them to languish. Like the bathroom. Oops.

Anyway, one of the projects we’ve got waiting in the wings is the kitchen. We’ve been smart about this room, though, and we’ve decided not to even start on it until we have all of the pieces we’ll need to finish it collected or purchased, so we can do it all in one go. It’s such an important room of the house that we can’t afford to lose use of it for longer than it’ll take to do the work. In the meantime, Kevin’s workshop has slowly been filled with bits and pieces that we’ll incorporate into the room. Want to see what we’ve got so far?

This is the sink cabinet that we picked up for free from the owner of the stove below. Metal cabinets with a sink in great condition.

Check out this fabulous original Chambers stove! It's in great condition, and I can't wait to see it installed in my house.

Remember these guys that we picked up over the winter? Original Youngstown Mullins kitchen cabinets from the 50s. We'll paint them all white and put on matching hardware.

Things left to collect for full kitchen assembly:
black and white checkered ceramic tile flooring
Formica laminate countertops referenced here
Dishmaster kitchen faucet referenced in the same post
Lots that I’m forgetting

Big changes don’t have to take very long

Karrey — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 03:21:34 +0000

In fact, we were able to accomplish this much in just a few short hours this evening. I stayed home sick today with some variation of the Martian Death Flu, but I was feeling well enough by the time Kevin got home from work that I was able to help a little out front. Here’s what we (mostly Kevin) did:

Before and after

Glorious progress

You can see the rest of the set of pictures here.

No money, mo’ problems

Karrey — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:56:05 +0000

So, I really did go to Lowe’s last week and picked up that paint that I had planned. I found a great green color that’s going to look fabulous in the bathroom alongside the fabric that we picked up many moons ago in order to make a window curtain and shower curtain. I got the grey and off-white paint for the bedroom. I even picked up some yucky (but cheap) white mini-blinds to hang in the windows of the bathroom.

And all of it has sat around gathering dust since then, 10 days ago. Ten days of laziness! Okay, so the ten days weren’t totally lazy. We had a scooter get-together last weekend, Kevin’s been working hard getting a friend’s Vespa on the road, and I had a very important concert to attend (Simon Joyner, John Vanderslice, and The Mountain Goats were all outstanding). Also, yesterday there was the death of a beloved pet of mine who still lived at my parents’ house, which led to another night of lying around doing nothing. I think that one is excused.

Other than that, however, we’ve got one big excuse for everything: we’re BROKE as a JOKE. Seriously, after paying 6 months’ worth of property taxes and paying down our debt, we have no money left over. What does that mean? It’s time to put some sweat equity in our little abode. Since the weather is going to be halfway nice, I’m enforcing the following to-do list:

Pick exterior paint colors (main color and trim)
Price replacement of storm windows and doors, which are now on clearance
Tear out plants around the outside of the house that we don’t want to keep (there are many)
Clean up yard debris like leaves, pine needles, etc
Take measurements of back patio and price wood for building pergola

I may add a few items to this list, like sewing up a window curtain for the bathroom or prepping the wall for paint, but for now, since Easter is on Sunday and we don’t get Monday off, I’m trying not to be overly ambitious. We’ll see. I promise to update with pictures over the weekend!

Iowa Farmhouse Dreams

Karrey — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 02:14:03 +0000

Today we traveled to Wellman, Iowa to pick up our brand new old 50s kitchen. It had snowed overnight, so the roads weren’t the greatest in our borrowed Ford Ranger pickup, but we managed to make it there in one piece.

The kitchen we were driving out to pick up was found in an 1880s farm house on about 8 acres that had been bought by the new owner at auction. Apparently, it had been a bachelor pad for about 10 years before it went to auction, and it was not very well taken care of. This kitchen was really easy for Kevin to dismantle, and he was able to take it apart in about a half an hour, after a bunch of unscrewing of 50 year old screws.

While Kevin was busy in the kitchen, I decided to take a look around the rest of the house. While my heart lies in the interior design of the 50s-70s, seeing turn of the century homes allowed to rot and decay hurts my feelings a little, and this was a really sad example of that.

It had your standard 12ft. ceilings, some of the original light fixtures (at least original to whenever electricity came to this neck of the woods, which I’m sure was long after 1900), incredibly tall baseboards, windows that reached almost floor to ceiling, and even some wonderful push-button light switches:

I could have even sworn that I could see the plaster patchwork that was done behind the plain white wallpaper to cover up transom windows. Sigh.

I was happy, at least, that we were able to salvage a gorgeously molded front door with a somewhat peculiar glass window encased in it, featuring a ship on a stormy sea. It also featured one of those awesome turn-knob door ringers.

You can’t see the detail in my crappy cell phone pictures, but the center pane is surrounded by very intricately etched panes. One of the previous owners of the house decided to put siding up about 40 years ago, and while doing the job they decided that they didn’t want to use this as the front door anymore, so they plugged a bunch of insulation into the door frame and sided right over it. We pried it out of the frame and took it with us for a very reasonable price. We actually managed to pack the kitchen and the door up and made it all the way back to Iowa City without hurting any of it. We stowed the cabinets and sink at Kevin’s shop and made it a block away when one of the panes of the door’s window shattered. Kevin was pretty heartbroken, but it was one of the lower corner panes, which happens to be the least intricate, so I’m thinking we’ll be able to copy the pattern and etch it into a new pane of glass.

Wish us luck!

Kitchen renovations? Already?

Karrey — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:52:33 +0000

Maybe soon! Thanks to our friend Mark, we may be coming into an ugly, but workable, set of metal kitchen cabinets. They’ll need some work, but they’re period-correct and they’ve got a lot of potential.

Probably more cabinets than we need

From the looks of it, this sink is probably cast iron. Also, over five feet long!

I'm digging the hardware, too.

We’ll be getting a Dishmaster kitchen faucet, which are awesome retro faucets that are actually still in production and made in the USA. You can read about a tour of the factory and a little about the company’s history here.

Now, I know I was talking about fancy stone countertops here, buy why spend thousands on rocks when you can spend hundreds on period-correct boomerang laminate with stainless steel edges?

These two are directly from the Formica corporation, and can probably be ordered directly through Lowes. This might be the cheapest option, and I like the Charcoal and Skylark options.

These ones come from a company called Bars and Booths, who seem to specialize in retro countertops and tabletops, which is right up our alley. They’ve got a special selection of boomerang laminates, but they’re also pricier. I like their Glacier and Turquoise color schemes.

Moved!

Karrey — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:07:14 +0000

Sadly, we have been so busy with getting ready to move, moving, and cleaning to update our little website here! There’s not really a lot to say about the move that everybody doesn’t already know from their own experiences moving. The thing I most regret is the fact that we boxed up all the stuff we never use really nicely, and the stuff we need all the time was moved last, which mean it went in piles instead of boxes. That makes it more difficult to wade through, but we’re managing so far.

I’m definitely going to have regular updates from now on, now that we’re in the new house and internet is hooked up, but for now, let’s do a photo dump. Enjoy!

The toilet was made on Kevin's birthday

Testing out a prospective overhead light for the bathroom

Coming together

Installing the toilet

Testing out the new sink

Since the craft room is the least "necessary" room, it's the first casualty to the moving hurricane

Oh, bright white paint, how I love thee.

With all of the pictures, you’re welcome to click on them and see the complete set on my Flickr. Right now, it looks like a hurricane hit the house, so I’ll be updating as we get things organized and figured out.

Crash course in tiling

Karrey — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 20:26:18 +0000

Oh, what a weekend. Our friend Mark came over on Saturday and stayed for a very brave 12 hours to help Kevin with the first leg of the bathroom tiling project. They got a crash course in laying subway tiles in a small space with lots of corners and edges, and ended up getting about half of the wall tiles cut and glued to the walls with Mastick. About halfway through the day, I made a run to Lowe’s and got enough black subway tiles to add a line of them through the middle, which I think looks pretty darned sharp.

Sunday, Kevin worked his ass off for another 12 hours, this time mostly by himself, to get the rest of the wall tiles up and the hex tiles laid on the floor. He didn’t finish the last of it until about 3am, and since the Mastick needs 24 hours to cure before grouting, we’re going to have to put off that part of the process until tomorrow. I’m secretly glad, because Kevin needs the break. My poor dear barely slept last night after we got home, although I did treat him to a backrub before bed. Hopefully, we’ll be able to do something productive tonight but still let him take it easy. I’ve got some angst to share, but first, pictures:

While Kevin and Mark worked tiling over the weekend, I sort of haphazardly flitted from bedroom to bedroom, trying to get painting done and not really accomplishing much of anything. I did manage to get everything but the corners and trim painted in the master bedroom, I got the first coat of paint on the trim in the guest bedroom, and I painted the trim in my craft room (Valspar actually changed the name of the paint I picked out in the previous post to “Swiss Coffee”, so it ended up matching the Behr paint name exactly! Weird.). That might sound like a lot, but it’s really not, and I feel really bad about it.

I have two reasons for not getting much accomplished: 1) I had a blinding headache for several hours on Sunday, making it almost impossible to look upwards or bend over or do just about anything, and this could be attributed to any number of factors, including breathing in too many paint fumes (It’s too cold to open windows, so our ventilation sucks right now); and 2) I really fucking hate painting. I love picking out paint colors, but when it comes down to it, painting is a series of crappy little monotonous detail jobs that I hate. I have no idea how to overcome this to get the job done. At around 9pm on Sunday, Kevin’s brother Kris came over and got to work spackling, painting, and helping Kevin lay the floor tiles. Meanwhile, I gave up on painting and completely scrubbed out our new fridge and cleaned up the kitchen and living room, which I found really enjoyable. The kitchen looks like crap, but at least it’s clean!

On the docket for the rest of this week: grout bathroom, install bathroom fixtures, paint living room, paint hallway, paint stairwell, finish painting master bedroom, finish painting craft room, finish painting guest bedroom, paint bathroom, MOVE. After that, we’ve got the rest of the month to clean the old rental house and get ourselves situated. Oh, and fit Christmas and NYE in there, as well. Busy times.

Any advice on just getting over the paint roadblock? Or should I leave that to the boys and figure out other things to accomplish?