Officially Moved In!

Tuesday was my first night in the house! It was so quiet...I'm so used to all these noises, like the neighbors above me dropping something or walking around in high heels, passersby yelling or laughing, or even the streetcar going by my old building. It was definitely an adjustment...I used the white noise app on my phone so I could listen to something as I was falling asleep! Kahlua is slowly adjusting but still spends most of her time in my room under the bed :)

My friend noticed a couple of weeks ago that the water heater was off, and I thought that was weird but I didn't really need hot water yet so I put it off. I asked the guys who were working on the floor leveling if they turned the gas off for any reason but they denied it. Well, I took Friday off so the gas company could come by and do a (free!) inspection and sure enough, they said someone turned off the gas from the meter, but it wasn't them. Anywho, they turned it back on for me, re-lit the pilot light on the water heater, showed me how the furnace worked, and just gave me a lot of information so it was a good thing to do. With the gas turned on, I was able to do laundry for the first time this weekend! I have only ever lived with laundry in-unit once in my life, for about 9 months, so this is a huge deal for me :) I'm never going to have to buy rolls of quarters at the bank again!! And where have I been showering without hot water you ask? Mainly at the gym after I've worked out, or sometimes at Stan's place. But even with the hot water now turned on I still haven't showered at the house for reasons that will soon become clear...

Saturday was a super busy day, so no work on the house was done, but yesterday my friend Matty came over to help rehaul the bathroom. "Oy" is all I can say. Before we even started anything, I opened the box to the vanity that I had ordered online and it was broken. A piece of wood where the door hinge connects was splintered off and therefore the door was working on one hinge. So I ended up returning that obviously! Well, I could do without a sink in the bathroom for a while because the kitchen sink still functions, so we proceeded to rip everything out anyways. First, the vanity was not attached to the wall, and the sink wasn't even attached to the vanity cabinet! Oy. Then the toilet, which was just disgusting and looked like it had never been cleaned. Oy. THEN the vinyl floor...we started ripping it up and unfortunately ran into rotting floor boards underneath :( See, the floor had been rotting it looked like for some time, but the seller just put more plywood on top of the rotting floor and ugly vinyl on top of that, then didn't even caulk between the vinyl and bathtub, which resulted in even more rot. Oy! Thankfully, Matty and my other friend Travis have offered to replace the floor so I won't fall through, although it might take another day or two. So I am bathroomless for the time being!

Matty removing the vanity

The scary looking rotting floor :-/

After returning the vanity, I ended up deciding on a pedestal sink. I know that will translate to less storage, but at least there's a medicine cabinet and I can put pretty baskets on the floor next to the sink or even shelves above the toilet for things. I didn't have any in-bathroom storage at the apartment either so it won't be a huge adjustment! Going with a pedestal sink also allowed me to go with the only vinyl tile flooring I liked that wasn't special order from Lowe's! It's kind of a dark rust color, and I was afraid it would be too close to the color of the vanity cabinet so I was kind of at a loss for what flooring to choose, but having the vanity arrive broken was kind of a blessing in disguise I guess! I get to go with the flooring that I originally wanted (that doesn't cost an arm and a leg) plus I'm saving a TON on the sink now, it's like 60% less!

I don't know how much energy I'll have to tackle anything else until the bathroom is useable again, but I do have quite a few boxes I could go through in the meantime!

-Megan

Wall-be-gone

The kitchen wall is officially all the way gone! Travis came over again on Saturday to rip out the studs and patch over the open spaces. Here's a progression of the tear down process:

Apparently I didn't take a normal "before" picture of just that wall...oops!

Minus the sheetrock

Minus the studs and partially patched!

It looks so open! I am super in love with how it turned out! Travis also showed me how to do the mud and tape stuff, which was really fun to learn. It will take me a while to master it but I'm up for the challenge!

Travis putting on the first coat - I sanded and put on the second coat on Sunday

Travis and Courtney's dog Guapo helped :)

While Travis was doing all that dirty work on Saturday, I primed most of the living room walls and ceilings, as well as the walls in the "master" bedroom and started on the bathroom. Here you can see why I need to prime every single surface of this house...I tried to capture the contrast between the primed parts and the non-primed parts of the wall:

That grime was EVERYWHERE on every wall and ceiling!

On Sunday I had an impromptu paint party! Regina, Erin and Matty came over and helped prime the second bedroom and paint the master...it looks really dark in the picture, and it's actually a bit darker than I pictured it would be but if I really hate it I can always paint it again! It's a purple-y mauve color, which I'm a big fan of, so hopefully I'll love it once it dries and I move all of my stuff in :) I figured I'd get my bedroom finished up before this next weekend so that once I'm totally moved in, I'll at least have the bedroom as a calm space in the house. I'll be needing to paint many more walls in the house so if you missed this party and want to help out, there will be plenty of more opportunities! :P

The paint crew!

Wednesday evening I plan on painting the base trim and possibly the window casings so the bedroom will be good to go by this weekend, and then Saturday will be the big moving day! Who wants to help? :D

-Megan

Very Productive Weekend!

Okay, first thing's first: I got my lawnmower and mowed the lawn for the first time ever! My grandma offered to buy the lawnmower for me as a housewarming gift - awesome! I ended up going with a Greenworks corded electric lawnmower, and it took a little getting used to...I'm not sure if it was better to go the long way or the short way, and it was a little difficult to maneuver but I got it done! I also did what I could of the backyard, but there were a lot of obstacles so it still doesn't look that great!

Ain't she a beauty!

First mowed lawn!

The other big HUGE thing I tackled this weekend was sanding the floors! I rented an orbital floor sander from a local company and man, was it heavy! I think 115 lbs or so. The rental place put it in my trunk but it was an ordeal to get it out once I got to my house :P I had originally rented it through this morning, but it turned out I only needed it for about 5 hours, which saved some money! The sandpaper was actually more costly than the rental itself at ~$6 a sheet!

I used the big floor sander to sand the middle of the floor to about 3 inches from the baseboards and used 3 different, progressively finer grits to get it down to smooth. Then yesterday I used my new (refurbished) palm sander to do the edging right up to the baseboards, as well as go over any stubborn spots like right inside the front door, which wasn't covered with carpet, but was covered with disgusting grime! Trying to get the sander back into my car to go return it was the same comedy of errors as getting it out, but I did it and it's DONE! I also got a shopvac and tack cloths to pick up all the sanding dust which I will be doing shortly. This week, probably Wednesday, I will be putting on the first coat of polyurethane, then hopefully the second coat before the weekend so it has time to cure by Saturday and I'll be able to start moving things in!

Sander and "before" picture of the floors

It was so vibrate-y!

Palm sander for the edging and "after" picture of the sanded floors

Oh yeah, and the last BIG SUPER HUGE thing from this weekend...my friends Courtney and Travis from the gym came over to help knock out that wall between the kitchen and living room! Travis used to be a contractor and has done stuff like this a million times before, plus he has all the tools :) We unfortunately ran into electrical wires so the studs are still there, but I'm having an electrician come in this week to re-route them, and then Travis will come back over to knock out the studs and do finish work on the open parts.

Travis pulling off sheetrock

View from the living room

View from the kitchen (with annoying wires that need to be moved!)

It looks so open now! I can't wait until the studs are gone! Well, the plan for this week is to get the electrician in there, put the finish on the floors, and maybe start tackling the bathroom (did I mention I ordered a new toilet and vanity?) and hopefully be done enough with that other stuff so that this weekend Travis can come back in and knock out the studs, as well as move in all of my furniture!

Oh! I forgot to mention, another friend of mine from the gym, Todd, came over to look at the wiring since he has some experience but deemed it was a bit much for him, BUT he was able to switch out that dryer outlet so now I have a working dryer! Thanks Todd!

Until next time...

-Megan

Floors (the pretty part!)

This past weekend, I finally started doing something productive with the house! I ripped up all the gross stinky carpet and underlayment, with some help from Stan. We rolled up all the remnants and put them in the "bonus room" in the garage (really just a plywood room that will be torn down shortly) for the time being until I'm ready to order a dropbox. 

It begins!

This is the very first time I've done anything remotely like this, so it was scary but very exciting at the same time! It was really easy tearing up the carpet and underlayment, but the hard part was just around the corner.


Living room, with the gross kitchen just beyond

See all those little chunks of stuff? Each one was a staple that I had to pull out with pliers. AND those tack strips around the perimeter were no picnic either. I went and bought a pry bar and a rubber mallet to pull up the tack strips. It went like this: pry bar, mallet mallet mallet, snap up small remnant of tack strip, remove nail with claw hammer, repeat. That went on for about 2.5 hours and I only got 3/4 of the living room done (including removing the staples). Man, my hands hurt after all that! Does that mean I'm getting old? The worst part was using the pliers on the staples.


Living room before

Living room after

So here's my progress so far! I also removed the curved brass edging from right next to the front door. I have tomorrow off, so I'm first going to go shopping for appliances and hopefully get some good Independence Day deals, then back to the floors!

-Megan