Internet down

Just got home from a long day of work and sat down to watch a little television and check-in on HouseBlogs.net. Pop open the laptop and.... No internet. Ellen runs into the same problem with hers. I haven't had to flex my troubleshooting muscles lately, but their aren't too many moving parts involved in our wireless network. I found our cable modem laying on the floor (it belongs on the window sill four feet above). Unplug, replug, wait. No luck. I try to put the cable modem back on the window sill, but it won't reach. Now, we don't have the office finished, so we don't have faceplates on the cable yet. Not that that would have stopped our puppy from yanking the cable from the siding and chewing through the shielding. I waded through the mud of our still drying yard, flashlight in hand, to confirm my suspicion. Fantastic...

I'll be running the cable through the attic and down through the wall this weekend. For now, I've moved the cable modem and router to the guest bedroom cable, which fortunately does not have a data filter on it (Time Warner has been cracking down and filtering each run from the box in our area).

That's it for tonight, but more updates soon.

Our weekend: Planned vs. actual

Our project plans for the weekend:

• Buy baseboard moulding
• Paint moulding
• Install moulding
• Build mirror frame
• Install front door moulding
• Build a bookcase

What we actually did this weekend:

• Added a bathroom renovation to the priority list after giving our muddy dog a bath in the small, slippery tub
• Read multiple books about bathroom renovations while drinking chai
• Three trips to Lowes (finally bought moulding and trim paint)
• Took advantage of the 70 degree sunny weather to go hiking with Rogan (the dog, who now needs another bath)
• Started painting the moulding
• Cleaned the puppy-mudprints from the floor
• Took down the Christmas lights
  
• Moved the dining room table into the dining room
• Ate a superb dinner at the dining room table (first meal not on the couch or outdoor patio table!)

After being housebound for the past week during the Austin Ice Storm '07, we really had to get out of the house this weekend and enjoy the good weather. Now that we're stocked up with all of the supplies we need, we should be able to get the rest of the planned list knocked out over the next week. Or two.

In other news, our backyard basically flooded this past week.


We had water within an inch of our french door sill. Steve spent an hour in the freezing rain unearthing cinder block pavers in an effort to construct a small-scale Panama Canal for the water to flow around the house.

We quickly discovered that the backyard was previously a large patio that was covered by topsoil and seeded with grass. I see a French drain in our future. Anyone have any suggestions?

Our neighbor is working on a few outdoor projects and is researching privacy fences. She's interested in a corrugated metal fence with cedar posts. We took a drive through town to see a house that has the fencing she described. We liked what we saw and hope to post some photos as an example soon.

That's it for this weekend. The dog is already asleep and we're not far behind.

In search of the perfect paint

While Steve was consumed by a myriad of fix-up projects with his dad, I was equally obsessed with the search for the perfect interior paint color. Steve and I thought it would be ideal if we could paint the house before we put the flooring down so we wouldn't have to worry about protecting our brand-new hardwood floors. Since having the floors in before we moved in at the end of October was one of our non-negotiables, the pressure was ON to find the perfect paint, and fast.

We had to pick one room to start with, and I chose our guest room. I've always had at least one yellow room in my house in the past, so our furnishings lend themselves to a buttery room. In my last apartment, I used Bavarian Cream (from Behr?). It was a soft gold that I loved. I didn't want to go so yellow this time, though, so I selected a lighter shade and the first room's decision was made.

Then came the hard part. Steve's mom and I had collected approximately 200 paint chips at Lowe's as I searched for an interesting yet light paint that I could use in the hall, living room, and kitchen (which all flow together). The perfect paint wouldn't make our north-facing living room and kitchen look too dreary, but I couldn't resign myself to a Linen White existence either. I was torn between painting the walls a light neutral or a warming the rooms with a color with more pop. With so many paint chips, my eyes had started to glaze over. Yikes! I had to narrow it down. I began googling paint colors to see if more experienced renovators could help me narrow down my array of options. I was already partial to a few of Restoration Hardware's colors, namely, Latte, Flax, and the ubiquitous Silver Sage...and if I chose to stay wih yellow, Butter or potentially Windham Cream, a Benjamin Moore color recommended in a New York Times column on the very subject of finding a foolproof paint. (Silver Sage was also suggested by the column's readers. Yup, ubiquitous.)

Steve didn't like the Windham Cream, so that was out. I was hesitant to use Silver Sage because I thought it had been overused and it is so strongly identified with RH, but I drove up to RH anyway and bought several 1 oz sample cans of paint to help me make up my mind. After striping the walls with a variety of shades, I decided to use Silver Sage in the dining room, which gets a lot of light. I may be a cliche, but I love it! Instead of driving back to RH, I went to our local Benjamin Moore store with my paint chip. (I had read online that BM makes RH's paint.) They actually already had the color formula on file, so I was ready to go! Second decision down...plus a bonus: Steve's mom had the idea of using the rest of my sample cans on the inside of our cabinets. So, I can review my choices again if needed!

Steve actually made the third decision. Since I was in charge of all other color selections (with his input, of course), he got sole ownership of the office color. He gathered his own extensive collection of paint chips in the blue-gray-green spectrum and ended up selecting a color called Sea Pine from Lowe's. It ended up coordinating really well with the Silver Sage. Nice work, Steve! Third decision down, and with minimal back-and-forth by me!

After all that research, I actually made a snap decision. I went back to the paint store to get Latte paint for our bedroom (which has a red accent wall). I almost bought enough for the rest of the house, but while I was there, the paint store guy told me I was too "vibrant" for an all tan house. He suggested Butter instead. I fell for it - and I'm still not sure if it was because I secretly wanted yellow all along, or I just couldn't resist his charms! Steve and his parents gamely tackled the painting while I was at work the next week, and despite his parents' less-than-love for yellow paint, they did an amazing job! Our little house is warm and cheery...for now. Believe it or not, after all that back-and-forth, I am still considering repainting the living room and kitchen. So stay tuned...

(And for those of you keeping track, we just finished the flooring. On January 13. Almost three months after our move-in date. So much for non-negotiables...we know much better now!)

Flooring, the start...

We really didn't have a plan for the floor when we bought the house. We were originally thinking of staining the concrete since we knew it was a slab house. After tearing out the carpet and linoleum, we realized the concrete wasn't really in any condition to be stained. There was old black adhesive or sealer on the concrete, and it didn't come off with any amount of scraping. We could have sanded or re-poured, but neither of us wanted stained concrete that bad.

We had ruled out carpet, laminate, and tile earlier based on both of our preferences in flooring, so that left wood. We considered bamboo flooring but got gunshy because of some of the reviews we were reading online. Our research led us to BR-111 Triangulo engineered hardwood (we chose 3/8th inch Brazilian cherry). We had seen the 5/16 version at Lowe's, but it had a thinner wear layer and was still pricey. We ended up purchasing from HardwoodInstaller.com. They had good prices, provided curbside delivery (though we opted for pick-up at a freight terminal), and had good tips on their site. Overall, the experience was very smooth and we had no damaged wood in the process.

Our plan was to float the floor over the concrete with a 3-in-1 underlayment. We used Titebond 2 glue for piecing the wood together and a pullbar for fitting the wood together in tight places. Other than that, some rubber mallets, blocks of 2x4, and rags for cleaning the floor were all that we ended up using.

We started in the guest bedroom and aligned the flooring to the previously mentioned grid lines left over from the linoleum tile. Since the linoleum covered the whole house, we were quickly able to determine that the house was square, so if we kept our wood to the same lines, we wouldn't have squareness problems (caused by the house, at least). We didn't really have a clue about laying out a pattern, so my dad and I dry-fitted about 4 feet of wood in a few configurations until we got the hang of it. We varied the starting wall every four rows and began the flooring from the front of the house. The first room took about six hours to complete (the smallest room we were doing...).

As we were nearing our deadline to move out of our apartment, Ellen and I brought our bed over to the house and had our first night's stay in this little room. It's cozy, but we had motivation to get the master bedroom floored. The flooring was the last project my parents helped with before heading back north, so we were on our own to get in a rhythm with the 900 other feet that needed to be covered.

The attic

We tackled the attic in a few stages. During our inspection we assessed the damage. There was a 1x3 foot rodent nest at the east end of the house. There didn't appear to be any recent rodent activity. The HVAC system looked to be in good shape. The ductwork is all insulated rigid piping, which, from what I can tell should hold up well. There didn't appear to be any water damage and we know the roof is fairly new, so no troubles there. I spent the better part of a day throwing all of the junk left over from the previous owner down into the garage. There were mostly clothes, though we found a few keepers like a small wood slat cart with wheels (maybe for gardening?) and a large bronze serving tray. There were tires, an old kiddie pool frame, some tools, books, and lamps. Not much in working order though, and anything with fabric had dry rot and was chewed by rodents. We bagged all of the junk and added it to the ever-growing heap of garbage in the garage.



My parents came to visit during October and my dad helped re-screen the gables and vents. I put out rodent poisoning on the first weekend I had the keys, but there still wasn't any sign of rodents. Good deal. My dad finished unloading the attic and vacuumed. We cleared out the rodent nest and put all of the old closet doors down across the joists for storing boxes.

The space looks clean at this point and will need some additional insulation when I get around to it...

In the beginning...

We received the key to our new house on September 22, 2006. We didn't actually expect to get our keys when we closed, since it was a Friday afternoon and didn't know if our loan would get funded. It did and we high-tailed it out of there, across town, and stopped in on our latest piece of debt. I had a few of Ellen's friends coming in from out of town for the weekend, so our plans to get started right away were somewhat delayed. I took a trip over Sunday morning while the girls cooked bacon and chocolate chip cookies.



The sliding patio door that didn't really close and sometimes fell into the house.


The master bedroom closets with 12x12 inch linoleum tiles intact (there was carpeting on top of linoleum through the entire house)


The kitchen as found upon arrival (our house inspector was with me during this photo)


The living room area with kitchen in the back left corner (transition in linoleum styles)


On the first day I was able to remove all of the carpet from the house and toss it in the garage (which was already half-full with the previous owner's junk). I lifted the linoleum tiling with a putty knife. The backing was old enough and dry enough that I could slide the tiles off the concrete slab without any struggle. Towards the end of day one, we had mostly black floors and sore backs.


This is the future dining room floor with the tiles removed (note the grid lines, which will prove useful later)