Winter Wonderland. Again.

View out of my back windows - I have a bit of an urban forest behind me thanks to very deep lots on a neighboring cross street.

Come spring, I'll be working on a whole host of projects back here. 

By the time all this snow melts, it should be about June...

Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey Chim chim cher-ee

How to spend a fun Sunday Morning: 

1. Take one fireplace that hasn't been cleaned since the Eisenhower Administration, add one ten buckets of hot water + heavy duty cleanser, and scrub.  

2. Rinse, repeat.  

3. Notice that the brick is actually the color of the hearth tiles. Who knew?

Total Time: 2hrs.

Gross sooty mess.  

The Bathroom is Done

It's done it's done it's done!!!!  My friend Krista come over and helped me put on the last coat of wall paint.  It's all Behr Ultra Plus Premium color matched to Yolo Colorhouse Air.05 in a semi-gloss, for moisture and durability.  Doors for the linen cabinet are being finished up and installed by the end of the week.  One last project will be to install a decorative metal screen over the radiator nook, trimmed out to match the cabinet above.  But that's not a high priority item at the moment, so onto the punch list it goes.

Updated pictures: In time for the Valentine's Day Party

Drawings

Being an architect and all, I figured I would post what it's all supposed to look like.  Someday.

Left: "Before" Floor Plan                                     Right: "After" Floor Plan

Below: New Kitchen Elevations 

The Kitchen Gets Some Love

The kitchen became my pet project after the holidays.  Cracked plastered, bubbling paint, and wallpaper residue all had to be removed and repaired and cleaned before I could even prime the walls.  But once I did, wow, it looked so much less like a crack den just covering up all that nonsense with the crisp white paint.  But you KNOW I couldn't leave it white.  What better place to put my favorite color than the kitchen?

That's right, that's a chartreuse kitchen you're looking at!

Ok, technically it's Behr Ultra Plus Premium (low VOC) in Lemongrass, but I know you are all horrified no matter the name.  But I promise after all the white base cabinets and appliances and upper shelves are in and I hang some Audubon prints (pages from last year's calendar!) the room will be awesome.

All the painted trim in the house will be Ace Cabinet Coat in Palace Gown, a warm white.  It's the most indestructible trim paint out there.  I've had my Behr ceiling paint tinted to match for the kitchen and bedrooms.  The living room, dining room, and sun porch ceilings are a light blue/green - Behr paint color matched to Yolo Colorhouse Air.05.  (I would have loved to use Yolo's paint, but there's no retailer in my area, and the shipping costs of online stores were cost prohibitive).

Where is the rest of the kitchen you ask? Why, it's right here.  

What, you don't keep your dishwasher in your dining room?

Window Trim in the kitchen

I would have *loved* to slap a new coat of paint on the trim, but the 80 years of people preceding me doing just that finally won.  After removing multiple sets of curtain rod hardware, the surface was so beat up it all had to go.  I broke out the heat gun I got as a housewarming gift (Thanks Bri!) and got to work.  I used the lower temperature setting in a vain attempt to produce fewer fumes.  Alas, during the coldest weather we've had in YEARS, I've been working with at least one window open so as to not pass out.  It's grueling ugly work and makes me now look at all my other 20 windows (on this floor) with terror.  I've averaging 6 hours a window. Eeek!  But it had to be done, and the windows will look so nice when they're all restored.  Right now I'm focusing on the trim and not the windows themselves, except for the casements, because I can remove those without taking down any trim, because really, it can wait until it's nice out.

New Downstairs Apt Laundry Room

So the stacked laundry unit from 1989 died in the downstairs apartment late October and I finally found the time, energy, and money (well, 6 months interest free financing from Lowe's) to do something about it during Christmas, mostly because the tenants would not be there to be disturbed. 

Before                                             After

Much like my pantry upstairs, the shelving was circa 1950 and had been painted until it structurally became part of the wall; albeit a dirty, slanted, beat up part.  I sealed myself into the pantry with plastic sheeting so that no dust would get into the apartment as I worked. I am not sure what I was thinking, trying to work with w/d still in there.  As you can see in the photo, there's about 12 inches of clearance after I took out the shelves get around/behind the stacked unit. The entire room was covered in lint, due to a dryer vent leak, which meant I had to wash all the walls down with steel wool, which was the only thing that would get it off, while leaning over and around said appliance.  All the paint was flaking and had to be scraped as well. Ceiling included. What a dumb-dumb.  After about 4 days of this, I eventually called a guy from Craigslist to come and haul it away for scrap so I could actually finish the room and not kill myself before the new appliances got there. After that, I had to spackle all the holes from the old shelving, prime with Kilz2 (low VOC bad-ass primer), and throw on a coat of Behr Linen White exactly 2 hours before the appliances arrived.  After they were set-up, I installed new adjustable shelving that can be easily taken down to access the back of the room. A week of my time later and the downstairs has a spanking new laundry/pantry space that is way more functional (and cleaner!) than before.

                                   

Why are there so many bricks under my bathtub?

So I did end up finding a plumber for a reasonable amount of money and he did all the rough plumbing right before Thanksgiving, though not without a huge spraying leak in the basement that turned it into a mud puddle. But I digress.

Plumbing in kitchen. Water pressure before was more like a drool.

Before the plumber came, I decided to take a peak through the access door to the bathtub plumbing, mainly because I didn't remember ever looking too hard.

I was probably blocking this out of my memory, so as to avoid pain and angst:

Marginally better after vacuuming: 

 And the removing of the bricks. 4 of them. There's more, just my midget arms can't reach them. 

Why are there bricks just chillin under my tub? Why?

If you look hard enough, you can see the sill plate has rotted due to 80 years of leaks at the corner of the bathtub.  Good thing I am a ninja with a mini crow bar and was able to pulverize the dry rot and replace it with wood from the pantry.  That pantry is like a treasure trove; it is so much more useful as a pile of stuff than it ever was as a room.

Toilet Before and After!

Before: Original, 80 years old, using 6 gallons per flush, 11 inches away from the bathtub. Awkward.

After: New Toto Aquia II, dual flush, rotated 90 degrees. Fabulous.

Also note the switch from beige/pink tile (gag) to dark stained oak wainscoting. Which used to be a laundry chute in the basement until I deconstructed the big wood box, removed all the nails, sanded each plank down, and stained it with the tung oil left over from the floors. Cost? Zero Dollars.  Unless we count the chiropractor's visit after said deconstruction with sledgehammer. Then it's $37.

Bathroom today: We put the sink in 5 days ago, after a month of no running water.  It was one of the best Christmas gifts ever.  Also the waterproofing system is in, as is the vanity light and fan box. We start tiling tomorrow!

Big milestone today - all the electric is done until I get a new motion light for the front of the house.

Cute schoolhouse lighting in the kitchen. 

Also I finally got the wallpaper down now that I have water, but no picture quite yet.  

Cherry butcherblock with 3 coats of dark tung oil.  

It came in the house with the help of the guys from Keystone; the 12 footer over the veranda railing!

Workout room / guest room finally got a ceiling.  No more insulation drifting down like dirty, squirrelly snow.  I'm currently ignoring the patch job the walls need.

Both apartments got new programmable thermostats to help save energy, as well as insulation blankets around the hot water heaters.

Floors with one coat of oil. 

  

They got two more coats, which took a while to dry (I believe we put it on too thick? The directions on the website were not the clearest).  They are several shades darker and matt finish in real life.  Well, currently they are covered with construction paper and have been for over a month, so I have no idea what they look like, but I am positive they are dusty and will need a good scrubbing.  But most of the stains did come out or blend in pretty well, which is a small miracle considering what they looked like before.

My main job these past weeks has been janitorial in nature.  I come to the house after work, I pick up trash, break down boxes, sweep, vacuum, scrap paint.  Very light in the skilled labor department, but the guys couldn't work if I didn't.  At least that's what I tell myself.  In that vein, Mom and I took the last construction debris to the dump, mostly plaster and odds and ends.  Everything possible has been recycled, and all the wood is separated for construction use or fire pit burning later.  Usable things like the pantry door (fiberglass) and the old vanity I put out on the curb and people took them within a day.  I love that about living in the city.  There's always another life for things you don't want.

Things are moving along now and should be wrapping up in a couple of weeks, barring any disaster...