Baby it's cold outside

We have come to discover that the downside of being a homeowner is that things break and well, you can usually live without whatever broke, but it's usually a painful experience. Case in point, a 45 year old furnace doesn't put out much heat, but it does create some. When said furnace breaks down, it puts out zero heat. This isn't usually a problem in Seattle, where winter temps hover in the mid 40's, but of course this happened right at the beginning of Seattle's first cold spell of the winter. It got down to the 20's at night and not much warmer during the day.

Now, Allie and I are pretty stuborn people and we both didn't want to be the one that stayed home from work to meet with any kind of repair person, so it was a game of chicken to see who could stand the cold more. I'm not sure who broke first, but it was me who stayed home bundled up to meet the handful of repair men to pass through. Short story is that a part had broke on the furnace that would cost roughly $2,000 to replace. It made no sense to fix that part only to have the same furnace back in use, so we splurged and got a new one.

We're very happy with the new one (it's a Bryant) and even more thankful for the nice bonus the government will be giving us for purchasing a more efficient furnace!

The old furnace. It was speculated that this guy was roughly 45 years old and was originally an oil furnace that had since been converted to burn gas. Estimates were that this guy was about 50-60% efficient, meaning that 40-50% of the energy the furnace used didn't make it into heating the house.

The new furnace. Pretty fancy huh? This one is about 95% efficient - that rocks!

the first halloween

this past weekend, we decided to stick around for halloween, so we could actually hand out candy, as it's been a while since we've been able to do that. 6 kids later and the night was over. that's it. 6. totally justifies the last minute half ton bag of candy purchase at costco earlier in the day. because apparently, the 5 smaller bags just might not have cut it. oh well. we met a few neighbor kids at least.

in true diy fashion, we decided to use a power drill to carve our pumpkins. after doing a little bit of acual labor, we used drill bits of all different sizes to create a mishmash of holes to let the candlelight shine through. we quite liked the end result.

Now that you've already seen the final product...

So I know you've already seen the final pictures of the bathroom, but it took us (Clint and Lindsay) a lot of work to get there, so I thought it'd be a good idea to share some photos from that.

So the floor was rotten because the genius who decided to stick the toilet where it is decided he should cut a beam and not support it. What happened as a result is that the toilet leaked whenever a great deal of weight was put on it. We solved that by bracing it and adding a support in the crawlspace for the end of the hanging beam.

This is a photo Clint standing on the remaining beams and measuring sheetrock.

Floor! Our brand new piece of subfloor, and sheetrock over the slats of course.

Not the final product, but some more sheetrock, a tub and updated plumbing!

ooh, a living room

sad, but true story...it took us a few more days than expected to unpack the boxes in the living room. apparently, motivation increased at the setting of a date for the cable gods to reconnect us to the world of technology. yes, two saturdays ago, we were blessed with a visit from the cable guy. quite unfortunate that his arrival was presupposed by a torrential downpour. rewind a few days more, and you'd have found us at best buy picking out a television, then at home, figuring out how to mount it above the fireplace. good news, it worked. bad news, our productivity level has decreased due to the re-emergence of the tv.

rewind even further, and you'd see the effort that went into preparing for this day. we decided to take down the unpleasantly dated mirror above the fireplace. at first, we thought it was an original, charming feature. turns out, it definitely wasn't original, so we didn't feel so bad about removing it. then, brian reinforced the wall (wood slats) with some plywood before drywalling it.

the excellent before shot - mirror, varnished floors, and carpet piles galore.

we had a few friends over.
i believe we had a few beers, so why not take down the mirror?

wood slats behind the plaster (that was behind the mirror)

plywood's up

drywall! a nice small area to test our skills.

after shot (on screen: why do the yankees always win?)
next phase will involve doing something about the fireplace

in addition to getting the tv set up, several other living room critical events have occurred. first, the couch arrived. then, during the cable set up, the lovely folks from crate and barrel delivered brian's chair. of more recent achievement, the blinds came down and the curtains went up. it's feeling much more homey and comfortable. next up...crown molding, we suppose. oh, and a second chair. at some point.

the sofa that took forever to agree on,
paired with a neighborhood poster of seattle.

the chair. and brian putting up the curtain rods!

things are coming together. yay.

back to el bano

quick bathroom photo update. walls are painted and the room is about 98% there. the remaining 2% includes painting the trim around the window (fun job!) and somehow removing the sticker adhesive from the toilet and sink. seriously, one would think the manufacturers would make that process a bit easier. oh well, at least we have a bathroom. woot.

beginnings of a bathroom

for about 10 days, our toilet sat in the living room...taunting us.

thankfully, with the help of several neighborhood shops, we were able to time our restroom breaks with lunch/coffee runs (sorry if that was tmi. and sorry that i just said "tmi"). enough apologies, already. it was a tough several days without a bathroom, but the royal throne was finally placed in its resting spot in our updated bathroom, and we are nearly complete with the project.

let's not forget the before image:

tools and the toilet, just hangin out.

laying out the tile to get a feel for pattern

ah, the beginnings of a bathroom - the toilet is in! we chose white subway tiles for the tub/shower surround and white hexagonal tiles for the floor, to help bring back some of the charm to the space (plus, they're relatively affordable choices). sure beats vinyl stick and peel tiles and cultured marble top vanity.

more updates to come - we've painted the walls, installed the rest of the wainscoting, put in the crown molding, and then some!

Refinishing the Floors

Our first goal in home restoration was to refinish the floors to their original glory. We had refinished a floor before in our life and thought this was going to be a breeze. We were wrong to say the least. There was probably about 100 years of dirt, varnish, paint and stains on the floor throughout the house.

Armed with 34 grit sandpaper, I took my first swipe at the floor. My piece of sandpaper gunked up with the junk from the floor while only clearing off about a square foot of floor in about 5 minutes time...this wasn't going to work like we thought it was.

After discussion with our friends Libby and Eric, we discovered that we needed to get the junk off the floor as best we can prior to sanding it down. This involved spreading Stripper (essentially a form of paint thinner) on the floor, letting it sit for 20-30 minutes and then scrapping off a layer of oozing, jelly-like gunk. To say the least, this was the most disgusting house project to date.

The guest room after pulling up the carpet. You can see the white spots on the floor. We believe that someone sprayed pieces of wood or something with white paint or plaster without bothering to put down a barrier to protect the floor.

The living room. You can see a very well worn spot in the middle which looked as if it never received a coat of varnish back in the day. They probably had a rug to go in the center of the room to cover the spot they didn't varnish.

The main bedroom, once again with white spray spots on the floor.

The dining room, note the dark spot in the middle of the floor where it looks like a rug sat and they were too lazy to varnish the entire floor. No complaints really because that section of the floor was easier to sand.

The space right outsdide of the bathroom had tons of wear and tear from years of water and traffic.

Eric scraping off the floor using the stripper.

Allie using the edge sander.

The dining room, mid way through its sanding.

More sanding and vacumming.

Eric sanding down the main bedroom.

The dining room after a good amount of sanding.

We eventually put on three coats of a water-based polyurethane with a satin finish to protect the floor. It looks fairly nice, but we don't have any pictures of it because we were quickly rushed into another project - the bathroom! We covered up the floors to protect them and haven't see too much of them since completing the finish. We'll post up some photos when we uncover them.

So we bought a house

Allie and I bought a house near lovely Capitol Hill in Seattle. It's an old house to say the least, it was originally built in 1903 and has sustained a few remodels in its lifetime. Oh and it's pink! But it's in need of a good coat of paint.

Let me take you for a tour as it was when we bought it a couple of weeks ago:

Our Pink House

Our neighbors

Clearly, the house needs some painting

The back of the house with the very unsturdy porch

Another view of the back

Okay, let's go inside!

The entry way as seen from the Living Room

The Living Room. We believe that the fireplace is not original

Another view of the living room

The Dining Room

Another view of the dining room

The kitchen

The kitchen, looking back through the passthrough at the dining room

The kitchen again

The "master" bedroom (it's not that large to call it a master really)

Closests were added in both of the bedrooms at one point, a nice feature

The guest room/office

With closet!

The lovely bathroom

Another view of the bathroom, one of our first destinations on home remodeling