Casa de Lovely

Renovating In West Seattle

Archive for category Lessons Learned

Casa de ‘Not lovin’

Jul 10

Posted by Jen in Homeownership, Lessons Learned | No Comments

So for those that follow this blog, you will all notice that there has been a long break in updates. Sometime last year I fell out of love with our old house. Enough so that I convinced my husband that we should sell it. It had felt too hard trying to make friends in our area. I was tired of the constant work needed to make this old house somewhere I wanted to be. We literally almost killed ourselves trying to get our house on the market this summer. Summer came and the work wasn’t done. Our daughter enters kindergarten this fall and we were starting to hit the point of knowing that we would be starting her in school down here and then moving her to a new school a month or two into the year. This started feel like a really bad idea and wasn’t something I wanted to put her through.

We made the decision to hold off till next summer and re-access at that point. Then we settled in for a little bit. I noticed how much nicer everything was. How much more it felt like a home. Then we hosted for the 4th of July, and everyone came. All the friends that we have made in the last 6 years. All of our friends from our neighborhood that we wanted to move back to. Then I realized that we could combine the two. That we would actually be losing something if we did move away.

I got a little bit of the love back. I don’t know if we are going to stay after next summer. But what I will say I like our house more than I have in a long time. I am enjoying the improvements that we have made and I am having fun doing new ones. So look forward to more posts, and seeing the improvements we have made and are making.

Our past
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And now to our future.

Stick a fork in it…

Jul 11

Posted by Bryan in Bedroom, Lessons Learned | 4 Comments

The @#$%@# bedroom is done. Well, almost done.

   

(The toxic pink curtains were my daughter’s idea — Jen showed her five different colors at the store and she picked that one. Also, the last photo shows the plexiglas protector to prevent the annoying orange cat in photo #3 from scratching holes in the corner again.)

Next on the agenda

  • Apply border
  • Wall plates for the plugs
  • Install door jamb and bifold doors for the closet
  • Install prehung bedroom door
  • Install window jambs and sills
  • Install casings 
  • Patch floor where old wall floor plates used to be
  • Fill and paint nail holes
  • Touch up painting
  • Install plexiglas corner protector
  • Clean old linoleum mastic off the floor
  • Move my daughter and all her stuff in
  • Cut hole and install heat vent

I’m not sure what I was doing wrong with the baseboards, in that there’s lots of gapping between the baseboard and the drywall. Is that something I should just caulk and call it good, or is there a better technique? Coping the corners wasn’t too hard, since I had a very simple profile, but I should buy an actual coping saw for the next time I do it.

I do know that I almost certainly won’t be using MDF for casings in the future. Yes, it comes pre-primed, but the primer doesn’t do all that great a job of holding the final coat of paint. Also, the edges aren’t square, it’s hard to plane, it doesn’t really hold screws very well, and it tends to bulge up around the finish nails (where wood doesn’t).

Now all I need to do is buy an inexpensive jigsaw so I can cut a hole in the floor above the existing heat duct for a vent grille. Which I should do soon, but which isn’t really necessary before I move my daughter into the room.

 

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Second Bedroom Gets Closer to Done

Apr 4

Posted by Bryan in Bedroom, Electrical, Lessons Learned | No Comments

Five weeks ago it looked like this:

    

Four weeks ago it looked like this:

    

The white stripe is where the boundary masking tape went. It’ll be covered up by a self-stick flowers-and-garlands border we got from Amazon.

Two weeks ago it looked like this:

Look! Lights and plugs!

The upstairs storage area is lighted as well.

Next on the agenda

  • Apply border
  • Wall plates for the plugs
  • Install door jamb and bifold doors for the closet
  • Install prehung bedroom door
  • Install window jambs and sills
  • Install casings
  • Patch floor where old wall floor plates used to be
  • Clean old linoleum mastic off the floor
  • Move my daughter and all her stuff in

Lessons Learned

If you have a 10′ wall, don’t try to cut down a single piece of 12′ drywall. There’s no way to get a tight fit and maneuver it into place, and plus you’ll crunch all the corners. Instead, just accept that you’ll have butt joints to mud and feather with the tradeoff that you won’t have big gaps at the edges to fill.

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Yardwork continued with a side of navel gazing free of charge.

Jul 26

Posted by Jen in Homeownership, Lessons Learned, Yard | 1 Comment

I sit here at work typing with a swollen hand. I feel like a wimp, while my mom and sister were here I watched my mom work tirelessly on my yard. She works harder than I can.. I had to stop last night when I started hurting. I see compulsion in the way that she works that I have alway tried to emulate to a destructive degree in the past. I don’t think it’s been entirely healthy for her either though. Anyhow, even with all the work done now I still spend my time kicking myself for the work not done, and being a homeowner the work is never be completely done, that’s the kicker.

So before I lament what’s not done, here is what is..
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I still need to finish the edging on this part..
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I think in a small way I have come to grips with what my limitations are with what I can accompish day to day. I had started to accept that, then when I became a mother.. and it was hammered home. You can’t parent properly and do a 76 hour remodel deathmarch, or packing or unpacking-fest, or anything where I would work from dawn till the middle of the night stopping for no one.

Acceptance is one thing, not still beating myself up for it is another.

Lessons Learned (First of a Series)

Oct 20

Posted by Bryan in Bathroom, Lessons Learned | 2 Comments

I’m sure there’ll be a whole lot of these posts, but here’s a couple of things I learned from working with backer board and thinset:

1. If you’re using HardieBacker cement board, don’t use generic cement board screws. Make sure to buy the green-coated square-drive HardieBacker brand screws. With the 80-year-old framing in our house, driving one of the generic screws went like grr umph argh oh hell that’s good enough whew that’s one; whereas driving the HardieBacker screws went like zip ZARCH zip ZARCH zip ZARCH.

2. Don’t mix thinset with your bare hands, no matter how expedient it seems to be at the time. Last night I was cementing down the backer board sheets to the bathroom floor, and at first I mixed up what I thought was half the 50-pound bag but only turned out to be about a third of it. That was easy — the drill + mixing paddle seemed to be able to handle it, and hand mixing with a brick trowel wasn’t too hard. But it only put down one and a half sheets.

So I went to mix up the rest and it didn’t want to mix — I put down my drill when I noticed literal smoke coming out of the motor housing, and still there were huge dry clumps at the bottom that the brick trowel wasn’t breaking up. So I just stuck both hands in and kneaded it like the world’s thickest cookie dough, and then washed my hands off under the hose immediately afterwards.

About two hours later, as I was thinsetting the joints, I noticed that my hands felt sticky, like there was a thin layer of rubber or silicone on them. When I finished all the jointing and cleanup at 12:45am, I realized that, no, in fact, it was the skin on my hands that was peeling.

Basically, it appears that the entire top one or two layers of epidermis on my fingers and palms got killed by the thinset and is peeling off. Ick. You can kinda see it in this photo:

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I guess this is my first remodeling “injury” — so far hardware stores have been more dangerous than the actual work, as I bash into wire racks sticking out into the aisle and so forth.

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