Playing Catch Up.....
Although it might seem as if I've fallen off the face of the earth, that would only be an exaggeration. Sometimes life gets in the way of blogging about a home renovation. In this case, life includes, significant changes on the employment front, competition between gardening and unpacking, five days while my desktop computer was undergoing diagnostics to explain why it would spontaneously shutdown and then provide error messages when re-starting, and progress on completing this house project. So, I've come up for air and have some time to play catch up.
June 16th -- This has been a wet spring, which is the good news, but the bad news is that afternoon storms have brought more hail than we've seen in a very long time. There were so many hail storms that this one is representative of them all.
Hail on the new "hail-proof" roof:
I once read that comedian David Letterman started his career as a weekend weatherman at a local station in Muncie, Indiana. He was fired when one night his forecast included, "canned ham-sized" hail. We didn't have that, but here is an example of what was "quarter-sized" hail.
You can see here how the hail put some holes in the eggplant
These hosta plants took the brunt of the hail and the leaves were shredded.
The raised beds survived the hail better than I thought THEY would given that THEY looked like this during the hail downpour.
Unpacking is a slow and tedious process, but the larger pieces of furniture (dining room table and chairs, sofa in the gathering room, assorted chairs, etc) are back in the house. At least the rocking chair looks good in the reading nook in the master bedroom.
There was a "mini-disaster" with the dining room table, but we've all recovered by now. This is a very old antique walnut table that sits on two pedestals. To store it during the renovation, the table top was removed -- very carefully -- from the pedestals, wrapped in a foam covering and a mover's blanket and stored in the garage. Apparently last summer's soaring temperatures in the garage caused some of the foam backing to stick to the table top. It was traumatic when discovered, but several days of carefully removing the foam and applying wood treatment has calmed my nerves and restored the beauty of this table.
June 22nd -- Now you don't see it
Now you do...finally. the whole-house attic fan was installed, but like everything else, it was indeed a process.
About four hours later, we flipped the timer switch, the fan started, the louvers opened and the warm air was being "sucked" out of the house and exhausted through the gable vent in the front of the house!
There were a few minor tweaks in the days that followed (attic fans should be installed at least 3 feet away from smoke/CO2 detectors), but it works like a charm now and is an amazing way to cool down a house and another reason to not install central air conditioning. We had two consecutive 90-degrees day and the house cooled down in less than an hour with the fan running. Bring on the summer heat!
June 24th -- The roto-rooter company was scheduled to arrive first thing this morning to clear the basement drain, but they didn't arrive until noon. Since the contractor was paying for this service, our agreement was that once there was an estimate for clearing the drain, he would approve the cost. I showed the guys the drain, they poured some water down it only to see how slow the drain was and they diagnosed the problem as a "clogged drain." I told them to call the contractor with their estimate. They also told me that they would do an inspection of my house, at which point I said that wasn't necessary since it had been renovated and they were only there to clear the drain. They looked at the sink p-trap (above the clogged basement floor drain) and told me that since it was a chrome fixture, it should be replaced. I told them the chrome p-trap has worked fine for 26 years and they were not going to replace it. About 10 minutes later, after they talked to the contractor about their estimate to clear the drain, they told me that they were leaving without doing any work. Later, the contractor called me -- after he had cooled down -- to tell me that first they wanted to charge $89 for a "diagnosis fee" -- yes, to tell us that the drain was clogged -- Duh! and second, they wanted an additional $400 to clear the drain. About two hours after the contractor told them their price was outrageous, a lower price was negotiated and at about 5pm a crew returned. Again, they looked around the house to try to find something else to "diagnose" but I insisted that they were there to clear the drain only and to do so at the negotiated price. They carried their motorized snake to the basement, turned it on and about 5 minutes later the drain was cleared. The contractor explained that this was a company he had used for many years and would never use again. Their charge, even the lower negotiated one, was outrageous for the 5 minutes that it took to clear the drain.
All that remains is to locate a 7" diameter drain cover. Which, it turns out, is rather difficult to find and has to be ordered. So, the punch list is not yet completed, but we're getting closer.
The kitchen is about 80% unpacked, but it has been a real challenge trying to figure out where to put things. So far I have yet to find the ceramic mugs, the magnetic knife holder, and a few small appliances.
June 26th -- Despite all the new electrical work throughout the old and new parts of the house, the electricians did not replace 9 older outlets and 2 light switches in three rooms in the older parts of the house. These old outlets and switches were beige and all the new outlets and switches are white. Needless to say, these beige outlets and switches made my eyes twitch every time I passed them. The older outlets were also two-pronged and not grounded, so there was a pragmatic reason to rewire them besides the obvious aesthetic reason. So, today was the day to do something to make my eyes stop twitching.
A dear friend gave me a private tutorial on wiring outlets, and that is indeed what I spent a few hours doing. Doing electrical work is terrifying to me because I don't like things as powerful as electricity that I can't see! While skilled electricians will wire outlets while they are "hot," not me. I threw the switches in the fuse box and a few hours later my eyes were no longer twitching!
The window for planting and the more interesting yard work is closing as it usually becomes too hot after the first week of July for new plants to survive the heat of summer. So, gardening is a major competition for my time these days, and a great excuse to interrupt the unpacking process!
The wooly thyme has done well on the south-side flagstone patio. I found a great website that guaranteed delivery of reasonably-priced plants, so I decided to order more wooly thyme and also Turkish speedwell to plant between the flagstones between the back porch and the garage.
This is what mature Turkish speedwell looks like when in full bloom.
This is what my newly planted Turkish speedwell looks like. You can't see it, but at least two of these plants have little blue flowers!
Here is a photo of the additional wooly thyme that I planted between the flagstones on the patio on the south side of the house. I can't wait for the wooly thyme to spread between the flagstone cracks and encircle them.
June 28th -- The kitchen is now 95% unpacked and the ceramic mugs, magnetic knife holder, and small appliances are still M.I.A. (missing in action). They have to be in some box that I obviously did not label as "kitchen" stuff, but this is annoying.
There have been some lovely surprises during the backyard transformation. There are no mature trees on my lot, as this was farmland, with the exception of a small grove of 100-year-old lilac trees. I had located the gas grill in the lilac grove, and when I moved the gas grill to the patio, I discovered that at some point -- well before I moved in 26 years ago -- someone had laid some stone (see the photo below) and must have set up a bench to sit under the shade of the lilac trees. So, following a "new trend" in landscaping -- to designate parts of the yard as "rooms" -- welcome to the new "shade room" on what is otherwise a very sunny yard.
June 29th -- The burlap privacy screen has now been hung from a wire strung through the metal frame along the south property line. The house to the south, built 90 years ago, violates the current building code that requires a 5-foot setback and is literally a foot away from the fence. The burlap is laminated on one side and will do well in the wet weather, yet also lets the light through. I planted two new lilac bushes below the burlap screen to replace the two that did not survive construction. In addition, once I trim the lilacs that did survive, new growth will sprout up in front of the burlap privacy screen. This will do until I can find a creeping vine that keeps its foliage during the winter -- I really don't want to plant ivy as it will takeover everything.
You can also see that the portable, folding hammock has now found its way to the deck!
Unpacking continues, but still no sight of the missing ceramic mugs.....
However, the raspberry bushes are starting to produce the early summer crop, which is always smaller than the second late summer crop. I love this everbear variety that produces two crops a season.
And, it was fresh berries for breakfast this morning.
July 1st -- The stair runner carpet has come in and the installer is scheduled to come today to measure and cut the runner and measure the treads in the stairwell to the basement. The runner has to be bound and the bound runner will be installed on July 7th. The cut tread covers for the basement stairs will also be installed on the 7th. However, between now and the 7th, I need to sand the part of the stair treads that will be visible on the main staircase. Again, I will have to hang plastic sheets to contain the dust that the sanding will generate -- every time I think the house has been cleaned of construction mess....well, here we go one more time around.
After the tread ends are reasonably smooth from the sanding, I will apply very thick coats of the white, high gloss paint that matches the rest of the trim work.
Here is the first flight of stairs, looking down from the upper level of the house, and
here is the landing and second flight of stairs that lead to the front door, after the notorious 90-degree turn of the landing that separates the two flights. This is the landing that makes it virtually impossible to move any piece of furniture or bed up these stairs.
Yes, I am now the proud owner of not one, but two electric hand sanders -- a random orbital sander and a "mouse" finish sander. Who knew this would be yet another valuable skill I would obtain?
The carpet installer was here for about an hour to measure the stairs so he can cut the carpet runner and have it bound. We agreed that the runner would cover all but 4" on each end of each tread. He was an awesome guy because he marked where he would install the runner so that I don't have to sand any more of each tread than necessary. The black tape below shows the space on each stair tread that the carpet runner will cover. He told me that if there are any "good" pieces of carpet left over he will have them bound for a possible area carpet or small runner. Sounds good to me.
Given the upcoming holiday and that most people will take off on Friday, we are hoping the carpet is bound and ready to install on Monday the 7th.
Whew...that was a lot of catching up to do. As you might imagine, I will continue to write this blog as the project winds down. However, I have started to think of suitable ways to end this part of the journey, but I have some time to do that as my new position doesn't start until September 1st.
Oh, for those of you in suspense, the desktop computer is back and they were not able to find any problems, which makes me wonder if it will probably be the power supply that goes. As long as it is not a hard drive or something on the motherboard, I'm good.
On to prep for the sanding of the stairs, the clean up and the painting!
