Ahhhhhh, now THAT felt good...

After an entire summer of putting off fixing the outside spigot ourselves (which the PO's inconveniently placed inside the crawlspace) with its broken handle and its shutoff that doesn't shut off, I just placed a call to a Highly Recommended Plumber who will be here in 15 minutes. We plan to hire him to fix all that needs fixing plus put the faucet on the OUTSIDE of the foundation where we really need it to be.

I haven't met him yet but this guy sounds like exactly the type of plumber we've been dreaming of finding: For years he owned one of the ares larger plumbing business but it just got to where, to quote my HVAC contractor who recommended him, "it just wasn't fun any more" since all he was doing was running the business and supervising a large staff who was mostly doing big new construction jobs. He wanted to go back to actually doing plumbing, so he sold the business for a buttload of money and is back to doing mostly relatively small jobs where it's just him and maybe one occasional assistant.

So, we're slowly finding all the essentials in life: A good electrician, a good plumber (if he works out, that is), and a good general handyman. Now if I could only find someone within 40 miles who was willing to work on my Mazda minivan I'd be happy.

Update: Got an immediate good impression of him. He's going to come do the work tomorrow, "shouldn't be more than $150, depends on how long it takes me to drill through that beam there." He's going to put in a spigot that doesn't need to be shut off during the winter. And it's worth way more than $150 to have someone else take on this task. WOOOT!!

Now if I could just win the lottery and hire folks to do EVERYthing around here. I am most definitely not one of those folks who does this work for the joy of it; I'd be very happy to let someone who really knew what they were doing do it all, thank you very much.

The Pee-Proof floor is finally done

And here we have it folks. While the rest of you are showing off your gorgeous kitchens, rooms full of custom made-by-you woodwork, the bathroom you remodeled last weekend, and (for the angolito types among us) this month's house purchase and remodel, I'll show off my measely little hallway, now made relatively pee-proof because of the big guy in the first picture is an obsessive marker (which is probably how he ended up in pug rescue to begin with).

Bad doggie hallway:


Nice doggie hallway:

(minus the dogs, all the dog's stuff, the cabinet at the end, the new trim so we just put back the old, etc.)

Not only does the paint look a lot lighter on my monitor than for real, the wall at the end of the hallway looks white! It's not, it's the same Cincinnatian Hotel Taupe as the rest of the hall and dining room, a color I'd describe as a golden-brown coffee with a lot of cream in it.

One thing I'm going to do to add to its pee-proofness is run some clear caulk under the baseboards,so that if the little ****er lifts his leg on something, it can't run under the baseboards to where we can't clean it up properly.

The vinyl sheet flooring is only considered a 5-year plan; we hope he'll either grow out of his marking, or I'll kill him, we'll see which one it is.

Does this make me somehow less of a REAL do-it-yourselfer?

I know that the decision I made yesterday certainly hurts my creds as a serious tool-slut in some folks' eyes, that's for sure.

I bought a finish nailer. Yes, that's a normal thing for a DIY-ing tool-slut to buy.

But I didn't buy a pneumatic nailer, I bought a Black & Decker Firestorm 18v 18 gauge electric/cordless nailer. Not one of those propane-based cordless nailers, just an ordinary cordless tool.

I anticipate so many of my house-fixup friends cringing and gnashing their teeth as they read about this. "WHY?!? Why not a pneumatic? Why waste your money on this cordless piece of crap when you could get a good compressor/nailer kit for only twice that?"

Probably someday I'll start doing the pneumatic tool route. But as I look at the projects we're realistically facing in the next few years, about the only thing we need is a finish nailer, and about the only thing we'll need it for is hanging some trim, installing a bit of wainscoting, and maybe assembling a medicine cabinet (hmmm... I need to add "build medicine cabinet" to my "50 by 50" list). And I just really like the idea of a totally cordless nailer. I checked with a couple of people who have the B&D nailer who said that it does just fine for what they need. I checked the reviews on various sites and they all were fine. I live close to a B&D outlet. I got a brand new one for around $100. It has a two year warranty and they give you a brand new one with a brand new 2-year warranty if anything goes wrong. I tried it, putting back up some of the trim we removed from the hallway, and it works GREAT.

So yeah, ok, it's not pneumatic. But don't even think of trying to challenge my tool-slut creds.

Now if this one last patch would just hurry up and dry so I could paint it so I could put the rest of the trim up, I'd take pics to post!

The original flooring is dead. Long live the floor.

We think we're nearly ready to pull the plug on all our hopes of restoring our dining room floor. We were so excited a few months ago when we realized that there was original wood flooring under the dining room's nasty carpet. But it's wasn't exactly the fairy tale that others get to live, of pulling back carpet to find a beautiful condition original floor underneath. This floor wasn't in great condition, and we think there's a good chance that we'll never get it to even decent condition, particularly relative to the money and work we'd be sinking into it, because

• it was never finished to begin with
• it's probably much lower quality wood, meant as simply a subfloor to the linoleum that was in that room when it was originally the kitchen, the 30's version of a plywood subfloor
  
• it can't be refinished until days and days and days of backbreaking scraping are done to take up the glue and felt from the old linoleum (floor refinishers won't touch it until every bit is gone)
  
• we can't tell how badly it might be stained under all that felt and glue (it was a kitchen, after all, and a kitchen that had a fire no less)
• there are a whole bunch of holes where water pipes and drain pipes and radiator pipes poked through the floor that would have to be patched
• there is about 5sq ft that is missing and just has plywood in its place.
  

Add all those together, and it just seems not worth the effort. Not cost effective, not time effective, and no guarantees that I wouldn't slit my wrists with a floor scraper before we were 1/4 of the way done.

So we haven't said our final goodbye's or made our final decision yet, but the I think we're hearing the death rattle. I'm investigating other flooring - just to help us make a decision. I've emailed someone who, a few months ago, had a good price on salvaged heart pine - just in case we decide to go that way.

If we end up giving up on the original floor, I'll be sad but I won't mourn for long. I'll be too busy arguing with V over the fact that we absolutely positively could not even consider the possibility of putting back that badly stained 1x6 construction-grade lumber that the PO's used as "baseboards" throughout the house, not on top of newly refinished floors. No way, uh-uh, fuhgedaboudit. I will sneak out in the middle of the night and bring it all to the landfill if I must, in order to keep it from going back up in that dining room. V doesn't even fully realize yet that the battle lines have been firmly drawn on this issue and I WILL emerge victorious. But she'll be ok being the conquered one once she sees how nice it will look with baseboards that actually look good.

A'painting we will go

We're finally painting the dog hallway (done except for some touch-ups) and we're in the middle of painting the dining room, which we hope to finish by this weekend. Finally found a color that we both said "YES! THAT one!" to - Just happened to be one of the historic colors: Cincinnatian Hotel Taupe, which translates to a kind of coffee heavy with cream with a hint of gold. My first choice was very similar and I wanted it just for the name: Dust Bunny. Now, how appropriate would THAT have been, huh? We'll hopefully get the baseboards back up in the hallway tonight, so I'll take pictures of our New Improved Doggie Hallway. The appearance (and, I'll fess up, the SMELL) is like night and day.

We finally caved and decided we're going to try and hire someone to do the dining room floor. It's just too much work, and we're too impatient. OK, and too lazy. That's one hell of a job. I start calling floor contractors today, starting with one that a coworker recently used and loved.

I miss blogging, and even more than that I miss reading other houseblogs, but life's just been too busy these days. Perhaps after the semester gets fully running, there will be time to just kick back and read.

My Mom (well, her quilt) is a covergirl!

I had to brag on my mom, since she (well, one of her quilts) became the covergirl for the current issue of McCall's Quilting magazine. The quilt is one that she designed herself, and they included a bunch of photos plus the full directions for making the quilt, which they rated as "Advanced" in terms of the skill level required.

Her picture's even in the magazine, but I told her that it doesn't count as a centerfold if she doesn't have a staple through her belly.

Needless to say, I"m rather proud of her.

http://mccallsquilting.com/curiss/1007_reflectsmokies/

An anti-dog cleaning spree

Well, not anti-dog but anti-dog smell. The dogs are confined to one room and one hallway, but between one of them being a partially incontinent old man and the other being a testosterone-poisoned obsessive marker, it wasn't pretty.

So on Sunday we had a Cleaning Marathon and tackled it all with a vengeance. Step 1 we actually did last weekend, when we took up the carpet and put down the vinyl in the hallway. Yes, a marking dog and a carpeted floor is a really nasty gross combination. This weekend's tasks included deep-cleaning the crates, deep cleaning the floors, saturating everything that ever touched Dog with Nature's Miracle, removing the area rug, removing all dog bedding ( no matter how much they loved it) that wasn't easily tossed in the wash or that was made of some nasty synthetic that held onto dog smells now matter how well you washed it. I also cut in half and sewed up the cut edges of some way over-sized comforters that we used for dog blankets to make them more easily washable and to make it easier for us to swap out a stinky blanket for a clean one.

Oh yeah, and we cruelly tortured washed the dogs. What a concept, eh? Of course, Obsessive Marker Dog was seen shortly thereafter lifting his leg on Tiny Brat Dog as she peed. Oy.

Other than that, I got some stuff freecycled (some picked up, some scheduled for this week), we did a full dust/walls/floors cleaning of the house, and I spent several hours getting my sewing room put together which included *gasp* unpacking three more boxes!!! We've only been here, what, going on 15 months now?!?

Ahhhhh :::taking a deep whiff of the air::: Do I detect a hint of minty freshness?!?

And the heat goes on...

(Sonny and Cher have eaten my head)

Today: Expected high 95 degrees. Current humidity: 95%. This is not a combination that is conducive to doing anything more than being a wilted vegetable inside the house.

But of course it's the PERFECT day for our AC to decide to not work up to snuff. Last night after running for several hours it was still 80 degrees and 70% humidity downstairs (outside was 76 and 95% humidity). Oddly enough, the upstairs unit seems to be running fine except that the thermostat is going wonky - it reads 80 when it's really 76 (and, accordingly, keeps running), then it reads 74 when it's really 76.

Thankfully Head AC Company Guy is here bright and early (though he seems as awake as I feel, as I'm missing my sacred ritual of sleeping in until 10) to figure out what's going on. He doesn't look happy, but then again neither would I if I were up doing service calls at 9am on a Saturday.

"Oh, we can do this in just a couple of hours, tops."

It is with great shame that I am admitting to the world that a pathetic little project - taking out the [nasty dog-pee-infused] carpet out of a hallway and putting down some sheet vinyl - has kicked my ass.

The first piece was easy enough to do, or at least it seemed that way until we realized that the amount of adhesive the HD guy recommended was bogus, and we had a 9' long section that was lumpy with excess glue. We gave it our best shot to smooth it out, squeegee it out, and finally we just picked up what we could of it and scraped off all the extra. And in the mean time I'm doing things like jamming one of my fingers and dropping large heavy tool batteries on my toe (ow! there were tears!)

By the time I was done with that first section, my back and knees were killing me. I was cranky, not nearly as careful as I had been earlier, but I got the second piece cut (this one was tricky because it included two doorways and a heat register, then turned the tools over to Von to glue down while I headed up for a long shower.

Several hours later my whole body aches, in that "don't even THINK you are going to be able to fall asleep without finding a hidden stash of percoset, darlin'" kind of way. Thanks to V's kindness I was treated to a backrub complete with sore-muscle cream, so now I smell like I have bathed in a really intense double-bubble bubble gum scent. My toe hurts but I didn't break it. My knees are a fascinating bright red, with dark bruises under the red. Of course, I never contemplated knee pads, I was too damn busy getting freaked out about the possibility of getting a permanent gob of floor adhesive stuck to my favorite rolling pin.

I'll post pictures once we put back the baseboards, which will be after V. paints the room, which will be after V finishes patching the drywall holes in there (one dug by our very own Lucy)
and my selecting and buying the paint.

I'm wondering if I actually got the ADD meds which my doctor will prescribe if I want them (since I have a real live gen-yew-wine ADD diagnosis with all the classic symptoms, which combined with menopause brain makes life quite challenging), if I could start accomplishing what 98% of the folks in housebloggerland seem to be able to do, such as completely remodel entire rooms in a weekend.

OK, it's 2am, school's back in session which means I must go earn my living tomorrow morning, and I need to make an attempt at sleep. Oh gee though look at this: Major thunderstorm just crossed over the Chesapeake Bay, headed straight for us. Even if I go to sleep now, I won't be sleeping for long it seems. Wheeeeehaaaaaaa!!

Peeking in and waving

Life's just been far too nuts to blog: Illnesses, surgeries, cancer and heart surgery scares with friends and family (though everyone's pretty much ok for now), almost-walking babies and serious attitude pre-teens on the weekends (we're surviving both), a week-long trip to San Francisco for the LinuxWorld conference (where I stayed in a cool old house, met some wonderful people who I knew from online, ate some great food, learned a lot at my conference, and won a 250Gb external HD but did NOT win an iPhone, Wii, laptop or Vespa, dammit!), and I am now buried under "fall semester about to begin" insanity.

And except for general cleaning and a wee bit of late-night "if I don't do something I'll go nuts" organizing, life's been too nuts to do anything on the house, either. My only accomplishment worth bragging about - that I'm now riding my bike to work most days - isn't house related and is a pretty shameful thing to brag on considering that I only live a mile away and there's practically no excuse to not walk or bike, and yet last year I only did that twice.

Even through we've been overwhelmed with so much stuff, once the semester is actually started, V. and I are going to try and make a commitment to do at least a little bit every week; surely we can find two hours a week to work on the house, even if it's just organizing stuff in 15 minute increments.

Anyway, I doubt seriously if anyone missed me, but I just wanted to poke my head up and squeak "I"m here!" for a moment anyway.