There is no escape.....

There is no escape....

July 10th -- There seems to be no escape from construction these days.   There is a house across the street that was recently sold and is being gutted and an addition is being added.  

But this really takes the cake...

A ton of  "no parking" signs starting springing up around the neighborhood.  This morning, a small armada of dump trucks and very large heavy machine trucks showed up, and then the dust and noise.  You can sort of see in this photo that they have started roto-milling the neighborhood streets. 

Roto-milling is where they scrape off the old asphalt as they make several passes along the street.

 It is 95 degrees today and these guys by the truck are working in heavy protective clothing to make sure that the fire hydrant lines are not roto-milled off the street with the asphalt.  I think my job these days of unpacking my stuff sucks!











Update on the unpacking front....the small appliances have been located and unpacked!  They were in a box, but the box ended up in an area of the garage that contained all non-kitchen boxes.  So, the final mystery has been solved.

As I unpack and move back in, I finally decided to paint the unfinished wood futon rack.  There is lots of leftover paint, so it makes sense, besides it is a bit depressing putting my old, crummy furniture back in the house.  Yesterday it took 3.5 hours to put a coat of primer (the 5-gallon paint container read "drywall primer") on the futon rack.  Next, I'll put on a coat (or two) of the white, high gloss paint.

As a preview of what is to come as things wind down:  I still have my home office to unpack and reorganize, which will be a real task, in addition to some clothing that I still have to weed through and figure out how to store the seasonal clothes.   I am currently embroiled in an interesting situation with my public utility, and that will require a blog post of its own and will fall under the general category of things that happen during construction that no one told me would happen.  And, before I close this blog out, I will work on a true "before" and "after" post to show the dramatic transformation that has occurred throughout this project.

Oh how I've missed your mug....

OH, How I've missed your mug....

July 8th -- I knew I would eventually find them, and I was so psyched when I found the box clearly marked as "ceramic mugs."  The case of the missing ceramic mugs has been solved.  

However, there are still a few kitchen things that are M.I.A. -- where is the hand mixer (and attachments), the immersion mixer, the vacuum sealer (and bags), and the magnetic knife bar?  I really hope they are all hiding out in the same box that I have either overlooked or is still hiding somewhere in the garage.

With respect to unpacking...I have been able to pass along my unpacked moving boxes and packing materials through freecycle -- a wonderful Internet group where people post items that they no longer need so that others who have a need can come collect them -- all without any exchange of cash.  A very nice young woman who has an entire house to pack up has been picking up my boxes.  The mission of freecycle is to keep items out of the landfill, and that is a good thing.

More unpacking, and the search continues for the small appliances and the magnetic knife bar....

Runner..runner....

Runner, runner....

July 3 to 7 --   The last several days were spent sanding, scraping, and painting the stairs for the carpet runner install on the 7th.  

I was armed with every scraper known to western civilization, along with tools to pull out old nails and staples that held previous incarnations of carpet and two electric sanders -- a palm sander and a random orbital sander. 

Oh yeah, let's not forget the sheets of plastic that I hung in hopes of containing the sanding dust.

I also learned how to apply wood putty to fill cracks and divots, and

I eventually got the hang of using a caulking gun, especially after watching about 5 YouTube videos

 I think the worst part of this was trying to remove the old caulk where it was rough and would catch the dust, especially in the corners.

The plastic sheets did a decent job of containing the sanding dust to the foyer.

and, I got very good at using the shop vac to clean up the sanding dust as I went along.

  

After two days of prep work and waiting 24 hours after applying the first coat of paint before I applied the second one, I have to say that the end of the stair treads look pretty good. 

I also put another coat of paint on the trim, both newel posts, and on the banister while I was at it.  I can't wait for the carpet runner to be installed!

July 7th  -- The carpet installer called early this morning to say that the carpet was ready to be picked up from the binder, even though he had told me last week that, given the long holiday weekend, he couldn't guarantee it would be ready by Monday.

Although the lighting isn't great, the runner looks fantastic, and the deep burgundy and flower pattern adds the right amount of color to make the staircase really look great.


Here is the view from the sitting room on the upper-level looking down

Here are two views from the landing (a.k.a. infamous 90-degree turn that prevents discourages any typical-sized furniture from getting to the upper-level), looking downstairs.  The only difference is that a slight movement of the camera affects the light from the skylight.

 Here are a few photos from the foyer, looking upstairs.

The "super-industrial" carpet treads were also installed on the stairs to the basement.

Here is the view looking downstairs

And here is the view from the basement looking upstairs!

And, there was a decent remnant of the carpet for the runner left over.  The installer, a wonderful guy, gave me the phone number of the guy who did the binding, and told me to tell him how I got his number and he would give me a very good price to bind it off.  The remnant will make a nice area rung that will  fit perfectly in the foyer. Sure enough, I called the binding guy and he will pick up the remnant on Thursday and bind it off for me.

It is such a pleasure to have craftsmen who are not only good at what they do, but who are also amazingly friendly and very helpful.

Given how the runner looks, all that work to scrape, sand, and paint the stairs was well worth it.