Marathon Bungalow

Bathroom in Progress

2008-03-10T21:27:00.004-04:00

The half bath is getting close to being done! First, a big THANK YOU to Dale and Jan for coming a few weekends ago to help us with this! Needless to say, it wouldn't have gotten done without them (or some contractors)! We painted - took 2 coats of primer and 2 coats of paint - all no-VOC, which really did have less odor. The color is called "sagey" and is a pale green - almost looks white without the light on (which is what I wanted). We also got the new dual-flush toilet in, got the new sink in, got the new faucet on the new sink, and put up the towel hook and the toilet paper holder. We still need to:

find a new light fixture
install said light fixture
in the interim of finding a light fixture, Jeff has acquiesced to my desire to try spraypainting the current light fixture - look for results after the weekend
replace light switches and outlets*
put on switchplate covers

*We discovered during the tear-down/out phase that the POs had glued (yes, glued) the old outlet cover onto the wall. We realized that they must have done this because they had broken off the screw inside the outlet box which holds up the outlet cover. So, we have to replace the outlet box. While we're at it, we're also going to replace the light switches, so that everything is white and matchy-matchy. I was surprised today to find out how expensive this stuff can be at Lowes! Wish Jeff and I luck as we venture into minor electrical work this weekend.

The results thus far...

The following picture is notable mostly for the lack of towel bars/shelves/etc in comparison to the before photo.

While Jan and Dale were here we also upgraded the closet right next to the half bath. It used to be pink (with some yellow near the ceiling, we discovered). Now it's a nice white. And now we have some great shelves in half of it so that we have a linen closet (of sorts)....

Last Chance Half Bath

2008-02-17T14:25:00.002-05:00

We're finally doing something about the neon blue half bath with multiple wood towel bars and fixtures. Woohoo! We've already procured the pedestal sink (no faucet yet), and we have a contender for the toilet at Costco. We've gotten some color samples from Sherwin Williams. And, we've got Jeff's Mom and Dad coming next weekend to help us do all the work, so I think we are on our way. For now, here's a photo to let you know what we are dealing with....

Weekend Work

2008-01-27T12:35:00.000-05:00

Yesterday Jeff and I ran a lot of errands (including buying some frames for our macro pictures from Belize and looking at mirrors for over the console table). Today we got up early and raked leaves. I guess you end up raking leaves on the last weekend in January when you A. are gone most of the weekends in the fall and early winter and B. winter comes late and most of your leaves (or rather, your neighbor's leaves) don't fall until December. The leaf-sucker truck is supposed to hit our street this week, so we used an assembly line approach of one person raking, the other filling the can and taking it to the street to dump into the pile. Here's the result of our work:

It seems like a lot of leaves for a 1/5 acre lot, especially when you factor in that earlier this fall/winter we put out at the curb (and had sucked up) about 1/2 as many as you see there.

Inside the house today, we finally used the picture hooks and picture rail and hung up the stained glass window I got at a garage sale last summer. Before and after pictures below...

BEFORE
Would have been better if I had taken down the hooks before taking the picture. Oh well!

AFTER

New Resolutions

2008-01-16T21:49:00.001-05:00

So, the husband accused me of simply posting everything I wanted to do to the house EVER and calling that our goals for 2008. At first I dismissed this as normal husband-doesn't-want-to-work-on-the-house whining. I quickly rattled off a list of things of other things that I want to do for the house and did not include on the list as proof that this was not some catch-all list:

Refinish hardwood floors
Scrap popcorn off ceilings and replaster and/or drywall over (after first checking to be sure it's not asbestos up there)
Add railing to the front porch
Build a screen porch
Install a new HVAC system, preferably with a whole-house HEPA filter
Repaint the outside of the house (although some touch-up painting will probably have to be done soon and probably should be on the 2008 list)
Fix the problem of the parking pad and the bad slope from the alley
Have custom wood storm windows made to replace our aluminum ones
Gut remodel the kitchen, potentially creating an upstairs laundry room and opening up the kitchen to the dining room
Finish the attic - creating at least 2 new bedrooms, 1 bathroom, and also reconfiguring the first floor

However, after looking at the list some more, I've decided that perhaps (a big perhaps) he's right. Plus, of course, my list did not include a few of the things we need to do to get ready for baby, so it wasn't even complete in terms of "must dos." The baby-ready things include:

Turn the parlor into the guest room/office, which involves moving furniture, rearranging some books and bookcases, and potentially getting rid of the husband's video arcade game.
Turn half the parlor closet into a linen closet by installing shelves and some type of divider
Potentially hang a second rod in the current guest room/future baby room closet to allow for more hanging of cute baby clothes that do not need a lot of space vertically
And of course, turn the guest room into the nursery - which might involve repainting (shhh...do not tell Jeff this) and definitely involves removing a lot of things and buying some furniture, a new overhead fan/light, a rug, etc.

So, there's no way we can do all this in 2008. But I'm going to leave the list up because as House Blogs said "make no small plans." And it will be a handy checklist for what we do get done and provide a good laugh for everything we don't...

New Year's House Resolutions

2008-01-12T11:43:00.001-05:00

This list is going to be long, really long, probably longer than what we can actually accomplish in 2008, but so many of these tasks seem small...

Living Room

Hang stained glass with picture hooks that are FINALLY coming from Rejuvenation
Purchase and hang mirror for over console table
Print and frame macro shots we took in Belize (same wall as mirror)
Potentially purchase coat/hall tree. This will probably be something we keep an eye out for antique-ing or garage sale-ing, so if we find one, great.

Dining Room

Buy pot and repot palm plant (has been in need for several months)
Fix electrical outlet that's loose
Potentially buy buffet/server/some large piece of furniture - another antique/really good deal kind of thing

Kitchen

Replace pendant light (I cannot believe we haven't done this already)
Buy and hang curtains for windows over sink
Finish painting back door and back window (another hard to believe item)

Hallway

Buy and install new lights
Patch ceiling once lights are installed

Guest Bedroom

Fix electrical outlet that doesn't work

Main Bathroom

Repair broken shower head/hose
Run the bathroom vent to the outside (also sort of an attic thing)

Half Bath

Potentially completely remodel (we need to run our budget numbers)
If no gut remodel...

take out numerous towel bars
paint
install 1 towel bar
potentially replace flickering light fixture and mirror

Whole House Interior

Hire plumber to fix washing machine drainage issue and replace polybutylene pipes
Hire electrician for miscellaneous tasks
Install vapor barrier over crawl space
Paint trim
Strip doors and stain or potentially just repaint (either way something has to happen)
Door knobs - refinish/clean up brass, replace missing screws, tighten loose screws, etc
THE BIG ONE - potentially hire window expert (do such people exist?) to remove all windows, strip all lead paint, repaint, reglaze, replace 2-3 broken panes with old wavy glass, and reinstall, including fixing broken sashes and finally opening the one window that seems to be painted shut. This would be big - I'm not even sure how it would work or what it would cost. I'm guessing somewhere between $5,000-10,000. We have 16 old windows we'd need this person to work on. The lead paint is the main issue we're concerned about, so we'd need in expert in that. Plus, would this person also strip the trim around the windows? or would they just do the windows themselves? We clearly need to start making some phone calls...

Whole House Exterior

Front of House

Purchase & install porch swing
Fill in dwarf mondo grass on slope (particularly left side)
Fill in liriope in right-of way (particularly left side where we didn't plant any!)
Touch-up paint around mailslot
Fix doorbell (electrician needed)
Install outdoor outlet (electrician)
Potentially replace entryway lights
Potentially replace door knob, kick plate, etc

Back of House

Buy deck furniture
Finishing staining the deck - dependent on the drought and whether or not we're allowed to powerwash and/or whether or not we are willing to break the law
Landscaping?? This one is really dependent on the drought.

Belize Videos

2007-12-02T18:00:00.000-05:00

Here we are at the Zipline at Jaguar Paw. The guide was kind enough to take over the camera...

Jeff makes a 25-foot splash at Big Rock Falls - near Blancaneaux

Thanksgiving 2007 - Belize Style

It's always something

2007-11-05T20:31:00.000-05:00

This morning I took a shower, went to the bedroom to get dressed, and heard water running. When I looked over at the bed, I saw Jeff was still in it and realized the sound was coming from the basement. At this point, I yelled out something unintelligible along the lines of "we have a problem. in the basement. get up. now." while running downstairs.

I was greeted by a waterfall pouring out over our washer.

We quickly sprang to action and unplugged the washer and pulled it away from the geyser. We also shut off the water at the main shut-off valve, conveniently located behind the dryer. And then we stood and stared as the water kept shooting out the top of the pipe (and no, we didn't go get the camera. Jeff took the picture while waiting for the plumber).

The water kept coming, and I must say it took Jeff and I an embarrassing length of time to realize that the water was flowing into the sump pump well, the pump was pumping it out, and that same water was then spurting back out. Once we figured that out, we unplugged the sump pump. There, immediate problem solved.

Then we called a plumber and thankfully they were able to come today with their big roto-rooter machine. They went out 100 feet and attacked 3 tree roots along the way. The City of Raleigh can thank us because our property line only extends about 60 feet - so we did a little line maintenance for the City. Anyway, the plumbers said it was tree roots, poop, and Charmin. No kidding, apparently the plumbers actually recognized the Charmin. I guess it's such high quality it doesn't break down very easily. Who knew? I, of course, think this means we should switch toilet paper brands, while Jeff feels it's a testament to the high quality and all the more reason to buy it.

Anyway, this immediate plumbing problem has been fixed. We'll probably have these same guys (I'm assuming that all their employees are male and I'm from the midwest so "guys" is actually gender neutral) out to finally install a shut-off valve for our washer set-up and to replace the few polybutylene pipes we have. But for now, we're back in business.

Halloween Horrors

2007-11-04T17:46:00.000-05:00

So, that's the salmon deck. The good news is that the stain went on easy and only took us about 2 hours. The bad news is the "wood took the stain funny" (according to the Sherwin Williams expert) and now our deck is pink. We went to SW and took a piece of wood to show them what had happened, and they agreed that the color was nothing like the "Mission Wall" we had picked out. So, they kept our wood sample and played around with some things. The next piece of bad news is that apparently we're going to have strip (not just sand) that color off to get a new color stain down. The good news is that SW is going to pay for all of that and refund our money from the stain. The bad news is that they aren't going to come do the work for us. The other piece of bad news is that we never finished powerwashing the railing and "the wall" last summer, and now we're in the middle of a huge drought, so we can't powerwash it now, which also means that we can't stain those parts now either.

Thus, if you come visit us, you'll probably see a salmon deck floor and unstained railings and wall!

In other news, I ran the Raleigh Half Marathon today and finished in 2:21.27, which was almost a personal record for me (my record being 2:20.46). I did, however, all-out run this one with no walk breaks. Not that there's anything wrong with using the Galloway method, I just wanted to prove to myself I could do it the old-fashioned way.

Finally, guess who carved which pumpkin:

We have readers?!?!

2007-11-02T22:06:00.000-04:00

So apparently there are at least 2 people out there who actually read this blog. To them, I apologize for being so delinquent in posting. October was a crazy busy month for me -- swimming lessons, kickball team, dog class, training for a 1/2 marathon, 2 weddings, 1 set of out-of-town guests. It was nuts! November should be a little less busy but involves 2 trips - one to Chicago and one to Belize, so I'm not making many promises on posts. However, we did just buy a new snazzy camera and I have some time tomorrow, so I'll be posting some pictures and the tale of the salmon deck.

Some of you (the 2 of you, that is) may be thinking "salmon deck? what does she mean?" You might think that we've been grilling some salmon on our deck. A fair guess but wrong. Perhaps the environmentalist out there thinks I'm making some obtuse reference to global warming and the possibility that one day, as sea levels rise, salmon will swim right up to our deck. You'd also be wrong. In fact, I'm referring to the color of our deck, thanks to some odd behavior of the stain we picked out. More tomorrow...

Pictures Posted

2007-09-23T21:12:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I finally posted the promised before-and-after pictures for the dining room and the right-of-way. Check them out under "Befores and Afters." I also updated the Living Room post and reorganized the pictures because there seemed to be some confusion about what was before and what was after.

Jeff and I had another busy weekend around the house. Part of the time we were doing some basic cleaning in anticipation of my parents arriving tomorrow (first time for them to see the house). Part of the time we were out buying stain and staining the deck. I would post pictures of that, but it was all I could do tonight to just get caught up with what I'd promised before, and now I guess I'm behind again...

Picture Rail

2007-09-21T22:36:00.000-04:00

When Jeff and I first moved in we thought "one day we're going to trade out the rinky-dink crown molding in the dining room and living room for real crown molding. And why the heck is the crown in the living and dining rooms about 1 inch below the ceiling??"

And then one day I was in someone else's old house and I realized "that's not crown molding we have - it's a picture rail mounted really close to the ceiling - like these people have." And a few months after that I realized my neighbor has the same thing. All the other picture rails I've seen are more like 12 inches from the ceiling, but in some old houses around here, I've seen it close like ours is. I wonder why that is - is it because we have 9 foot ceilings? (maybe it's only a foot below the ceiling when the ceiling is 10 feet?) was it stylish to do it this way in the 1920s? was it stylish to do it this way in Raleigh?

Anyone out there have any ideas?

Anyway, tonight I ordered picture hooks for our picture rail so we can finally hang up the old stained glass window I got at a garage sale this summer. We've just had it resting on the mantle, which looks okay, but now that we know we have a picture rail, we feel we should use it. So, Rejuvenation got some of my money tonight...

(Here's where I make promises to post pictures once the picture hooks come in...)

Well...

2007-09-19T21:13:00.000-04:00

So, I really thought I'd post some pictures on Monday, but it didn't happen. The last 2 nights have been pretty hectic - between book club last night and dog class tonight. Part of the problem is that I need to take time during the day to actually take the pictures. Maybe that'll happen tomorrow. I'm not making any promises.

Neglected

2007-09-16T20:44:00.000-04:00

It's been awhile since I posted. Tomorrow I plan to update with pictures of the new right-of-way (the area between the sidewalk and the street) work we finished this weekend. I'll also try to post some pictures of our new dining room light fixture and window treatments. I'm posting this tonight to keep myself honest... :~)

Getting Unstuck

2007-08-24T22:07:00.001-04:00

Montie the Realtor came by on Tuesday. Jeff showed him all the cracks and he helped allay some of our fears. First, he said that the crack in the piece of siding, while large, was not new because the wood inside the crack had weathered and didn't look fresh. He's pretty clever, that Montie. I'm not sure why we didn't think of that. He also said that the cracks in the mortar were not good but that cracks in the brick would be bad, and we don't have any cracks in the bricks, so I guess that equals out to "not good, but not bad." And finally, he thought the crack in the interior between the door and the window didn't look good, but if all that was wrong was the door sticking, then we should try "an old realtor trick" of greasing the door with a bar of soap. He then provided the name of a structural engineer he'd recommend to come look over the cracks, although he said the situation wasn't at all "urgent."

So, that was all very good. I think I mentioned Montie's take on the clay soils drying out and causing foundation problems around the Triangle. He said he mostly sees that in Chapel Hill and Cary. Just another reason not to move to Cary.

My final update on all this is that we've now had two thunderstorms this week (Benny (the dog) managed to not pee in the house for either one - a minor victory in and of itself), and guess what? The door is no longer sticking. Not in the slightest - it's just like it was. As in, had we been out of town this past week, we might have not noticed all these cracks for a long time because we wouldn't have had the "door sticking" clue. So, we didn't even have to use Montie's old realtor trick, but we're going to file it away for future reference.

The Crack Continues

2007-08-20T22:29:00.000-04:00

On the excellent advice of my father-in-law, Jeff and I headed outside today to see if there were any other signs of cracking or settling at the corner of our foundation. Unfortunately, what we discovered was not reassuring. There is a piece of siding with a really big crack the whole length of it right near this area, although it's much lower down on the house than the crack on the inside. As to the actual foundation, we saw some cracking in the mortar, but no bricks with cracks through them. It was hard to say if we actually saw one big continuous crack in the mortar or if we were just imagining several small cracks could connect to form one big crack. We also couldn't get a good picture of the brick foundation cracks, but here's the siding that's cracked.

The crack continues onto the other side of the fence. All the way to that weird piece of siding that runs vertical (but doesn't go all the way to the top of the house - it's always stuck out to me and I've wondered why it was done that way). These clues feel like they are adding up to something not good (and I'm feeling like I'm on House Detective without the benefit of a handy home inspector telling me exactly what's wrong).

The siding crack up close...

We're pretty sure that crack was not there before, but I'm going to scour through old photos to see if I can spot it. There were also some other disturbing (but probably unrelated) signs of the siding really needing some work. We knew we needed to repaint, but this actually looks like the siding is pulling away from the house in a few places. Yikes. We walked around the house and didn't notice this on any other sides.

So we decided to call our realtor Montie (whom we already had much fondness for) to see if he had someone he'd recommend come take a look. And you know what? He offered to come take a look himself!! How nice is that?? So he's going to stop by tomorrow and give us some advice, which is quite a relief. He did say, however, that the clay soils around here can really get dried out (we haven't had rain in ages and are in "severe drought" stage) which can lead to foundations settling and cracking. Yikes. And of course we just spent $3,000 on non-refundable plane tickets and hotel reservations for our trip to Belize in November...

Feelin' Good

2007-08-19T21:30:00.001-04:00

We went and saw Superbad tonight. It was funnier than I thought it would be. More exciting (to me) is that it dawned on me that I could create a linked list on the right side and that the links could be of things within the blog, so I'll still use the post date trick, but now readers can just click directly without navigating through the archives. Now, if I could just figure out how to make the blog full screen. (Ben, are you out there?)

Horizontal Crack Bad

2007-08-19T14:44:00.000-04:00

So here's our latest problem. One day this week I went to let the dogs out the back door and noticed that the door stuck a little. I thought "wow, it is really humid." The next day I noticed that the door stuck A LOT, so I looked up, thinking that perhaps something was wedged in the doorway. But then I noticed this crack...

Now, I know this crack is new because 1.) the door is sticking when it didn't before and 2.) we just repainted this room (it was orange) this spring, and the crack is clearly through the new paint. (Which I've also noticed, thanks to these pictures, is pretty sloppy, but we were planning to do the trim later. Really.) To put it in context, the back door is off the kitchen and looks like this...

It's always been an odd setup to me, and it's clear that the nearly floor to ceiling window on the left is not original to the house. I think it was added sometime in the '70s, based on the age/features of the window. The door also doesn't seem like it's original, nor does its diamond-shaped panes seem to fit in our craftsman-wannabe bungalow. I would love to know who decided on this configuration and why. Double French doors or even (horrors) a big sliding door set would seem to make more sense than this setup. But back to the crack...

So, this seems bad, very bad. I don't know where I heard the saying "vertical cracks okay, horizontal cracks bad" but it has helped reassure me about many cracks in our plaster walls. Of course, most cracks in our house are more diagonal than strictly vertical or horizontal, but with all the others, I have managed to convince myself that they are "mostly vertical." This one, however, cannot be said to be anything but horizontal.

You'll also note that it continues not just through the trim, but along the top of the door frame...

And, I'm afraid, it might go through the door sill. Or is that just where the two pieces of wood meet and maybe it was always like that?? (click on the pictures to get a better view of what I think might be the continuation of the crack)

However, the real killer for me is that I think it continues on the outside. Outside?!? A crack that goes all the way through the wall to the wood trim on the outside doorframe? I don't know, but it sure looks like it...

Please disregard all the dirt and cobwebs, but you'll also notice the large crack about 3 inches up on the wood siding. Somehow, that concerns me less because I think that is just from the siding separating a little and the paint cracking, which somehow seems much less severe than this mega-crack that goes through the house.

So, the question, of course, is "what should we do?" Of course, we are once again paralyzed by a complete lack of knowledge. Now that it's been almost a week, I'm just about at the point of "live with it and see what happens next." I just hope that "what happens next" does not include the caving in of our back door.

Taking the Plunge

2007-08-18T23:20:00.001-04:00

I originally thought I would get all my before and after photos posted and really get the blog cleaned up before I sent the URL out to people. I've now realized this is going to be a really slow process, so I've decided to just go ahead and send it out. I also realized that trying to get it "all ready" was delaying my posting about the latest projects (of which there are always one or two or five or ten or more, depending on how manic I'm feeling), which is only driving me further behind. So, my apologies for the lack of content, but it's coming, I promise.

I also thought I was much wittier than this blog seems to read, so I'm going to work on being more clever, which will probably backfire horrifically. If you have to work at being clever, you probably aren't very clever.

If you want to see before and after photos, click on the right under "Archive" on the January posts. For now I've only got the living room and some landscape shots up, but I will be adding new pictures all the time, so check back often.

Please feel free to post comments and let me know what you think!

Before and After

2007-08-02T22:31:00.000-04:00

One of my main reasons for wanting to start a blog was to post before and after pictures of all the projects we've completed. I guess I want some public recognition, or at least an organized collection, of all the things we've done so it doesn't all feel like a big waste of time. Somedays it feels like we haven't done much to the house, and somedays it feels like we've come along way.

I haven't figure out how to just post all the before and after pictures some place else and put a link to it on the side, so I think this weekend I'll just start posting them within in the body of the blog and then figure out how to make it look better later...

Getting Started

2007-07-24T21:40:00.000-04:00

My husband Jeff and I moved in to our 1925 bungalow almost a year ago. I've thought off and on about sending out some before and after pictures to family and friends because even though we haven't done much structurally, we have made a number of significant cosmetic improvements to our home. However, it always seemed like too much effort to organize the photos into a temporary online album. Over the past year I've been reading a lot of house blogs for ideas and inspiration, and it finally dawned on me that I could start one of my own to chronicle our progress on the house.

I'm sure I will end up seeking advice more than giving it, but my husband is a prolific "recommender" (a self-titled description), so I am sure that as we come across products, people, and places we like, he will want me to post recommendations. On the flip side, he also loves to receive recommendations, so I'll look forward to hearing from people as we dig in to projects.

Landscape

2007-01-15T22:37:00.000-05:00

I'm going to use a trick I saw on another blog and backdate some posts so as to create little archive areas so I can group things topically. I'm feeling pretty tricky and proud of myself but also feeling like blogger ought to make this a little easier.

Anyway, what follows are pictures of the landscape (or lack thereof) around our house. Jeff really doesn't like to garden (at all) so most of this has been me. Actually, that's a lie. Most of this work was done by the two landscape architects who lived here 15 years ago. I'm just thankful for what's left that the POs managed to actually not kill. I think this was no small feat for them given their general ineptitude (bitter? who me?).

Camellia by the kitchen window in early March. It was glorious (no, really) to look out the window and see this blooming in early Spring.

There are actually two camellias by the kitchen window
- one bright pink (previous photo) and one light pink

These are the bulbs I planted in the fall that came up in the spring - just like I told Jeff they would. I also put in the brick paver border. The POs had some awful plastic stone-look-a-like thing. I don't think I have a picture, but trust me, it was bad.

Here's the alley side of the house - dogwood in bloom and the two camellias I talked about behind it. That's our trash can - not very attractive, but one of the great things about our neighborhood is that the City still picks up trash from the alley. That's right, we don't have to remember to take out the trash. Oh, for any gardeners out there - see all the tall stalks between the 2 rows of bushes that look like maybe they should be daffodils? We never got any blooms. Any idea why that would be??

This rhododendron and camellia are in the backyard and you can see them right as you step out the back door. You'll also note the nuclear green glow of the fence...this is before we powerwashed. I'm hoping to get a matching rhododendron to plant to the left of this one. I think groups of 3 just work better. Plus, this whole area is pretty much just dirt right now.

Dining Room

2007-01-15T20:49:00.000-05:00

In the dining room we repainted before we even moved in. Since then, we've added new window treatments and a new light fixture. We got the light fixture for $100 at Costco. We love Costco! I've seen a very similar light fixture in the Rejuvenation catalog for over $700. The curtains are from Linens-n-Things. One day we'll buy more furniture for this room...perhaps a new table and chairs and definitely a buffet or some sort of hutch. One day we might actually open this room up to the kitchen which lies just behind that swinging door.

BEFORE - note purple color of the walls and purple velvet curtain topper with wood blinds....

BEFORE - note "flying saucer" light fixture in brushed nickel. I love brushed nickel, but not when you have antique hardware all over your house that's brass. And yes, those are little purple "saucers" on the flying saucer light fixture (I guess the POs thought "purple walls, purple curtains, why not purple lights?")

AFTER - note new curtains and red color of walls. Our realtor told us this is "Raleigh Red." Sherwin-Williams called it "barn."

AFTER - new light fixture (thanks Dale for installing it!).

AFTER - We have the table centered under the light fixture, which makes the room seem smaller, which we like - probably because we have no furniture to put in here...

AFTER - Same angle as the 2nd "Before" shot above. Sorry for the huge Best Buy ad on the TV.

AFTER - Mr. Ben

Right-of-Way

2007-01-15T20:30:00.000-05:00

"Right-of-Way" = area between sidewalk and street. Technically, the city owns this area and is supposed to maintain it (yeah, right). I do know that if the big tree we have starts to go, the city will come cut it down, which they did earlier this summer to the only other tree on our street that canopied over the road. Now it's just our lone tree that provides shade across the entire street. It's a U-shaped tree - the power company apparently likes to come cut out the middle every now and then.

Jeff and I started this project in late July and finished in mid-September - 6 weeks give or take. Not too bad. Our neighbors put down brick pavers in this entire area earlier this summer. I think that's what prompted me to spruce ours up. It looked really bad and was not practical for getting out of the car.

Unfortunately, I don't have a very good before photo. What follows is not the exact same area, but it's a general idea of what the area looked like. There were some old pavers, gravel, and weeds.

Here's a photo of the right-of-way last fall after we spent hours hauling old lumber and trash out of the basement for the "junk truck" to pick up. You can tell that we didn't care much about what was underneath.

Here's a shot mid-way through the project - with the new brick pavers down. We did them in a basketweave pattern to match the existing brick walkway.

From the street looking towards the house...

And here's the final product - after we spent hours and hours and hours transplanting liriope (monkey grass) from the backyard to the front.

Before and After Living Room

2007-01-01T23:01:00.000-05:00

What follows are before and after pictures of the living room. I plan to post these for every room...eventually...

This is the living room the day we looked at the house for the first time, so it's all the PO's (Previous Owners for those of you who don't read house blogs all the time) stuff. I'm not sure why I look so pissed off. Maybe it was my disbelief that people could live in so much dirt or that they'd paint their living room lime green. The second picture is pretty much the same angle, now with all our stuff in it at Christmas time. Note the new wall color (Sherwin Williams Basket Beige). Does it look more brown or more green to you? People seem to be split 50-50 on this...

BEFORE

AFTER

Here's the view as you walk in the front door. I haven't taken a new picture, but we now have a console table where the small Korean chest is in the after photo.

BEFORE

AFTER

This is the view from the dining room looking back toward the front door.

BEFORE

AFTER

And here's the fireplace and mantle. One day I'd like to have shelves built in below the two windows...

BEFORE

AFTER

And no, we don't leave our stockings up all year. That's just the picture I had available. We've since scrubbed the bricks on the threshold (is that the right term? the ones right outside the actual firebox). Foaming bathroom cleaner actually does work pretty well for this - a tip from one of the hundreds of home shows I've watched. Jeff couldn't believe it actually paid off to have watched so many of them.

The men viewing this will probably first see Jeff's big-ass TV. I have to admit, I've grown to love it too...