home improvement

Painting the Kitchen

We’ve spent our three-day weekend painting the kitchen, so I’ve been away from the internets. There’s still a lot of touch-up work to do, but the bulk of the work is finished. My kitchen was pretty fugly before, so the new paint is a serious improvement. The cabinets had been painted a dark green color, and the walls and ceiling and trim were a dingy off-white that always looked dirty even after everything was scrubbed and clean.

Kitchen Painting

Now the cabinets and ceiling and trim work are bright white, and the walls are “spring squash” which is a bright yellow-orange color that looks really sunny and happy. I’m really pleased with how it’s come out; the room looks much bigger and cleaner. There are still some other improvements I’d like to do; I want to mount a light under the cabinets so I can see my food while I’m preparing it. (As Lisa did in her kitchen) and I want to replace the overhead light with the clean, simple, unobtrusive ceiling fan I bought ages ago. I also want to replace the backsplash behind the stove with a clean aluminum panel. The ones that want to get the best paint can have a peek here to get a great finish.

Kitchen Painting

Also, my friend Kathy came over and cut out the extra pipes that ran up the wall in the corner to the now non-existent kitchen that used to be upstairs. I’ll still have to repair the drywall in the corner, but that’s a future project.

The kitchen really needs to be completely ripped out and done over. The floor is bad, there’s very little cabinet or counter space, and the sink is in a really poor spot. The drywall in the whole room needs a makeover. But none of that is realistic right now, so the simple improvements will at least make a grungy room tolerable and cheery.

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Buy the House Next Door to Me

The house next to mine is going up for sale at the Sheriff’s auction on September 17th. The auction is held in Room 260 of the City-County building, and bids can be put in starting at 10 a.m. The auction starts after 3:30 p.m.

It would be really wonderful if someone bought and renovated this house, because it has a great history and has really beautiful architecture. Plus my property value would go up.

2005 Update: someone did end up buying the house next to me, and is doing a great job of renovating. Very exciting.

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House Painting

The guys started work on my house today – repairing siding and scraping paint, which will go on for the first week or so, while they do the prep work before painting. I’m so excited about it, that I almost went home for lunch to see what they have done so far. But I decided that was a little obsessive, and probably would annoy the guys. Who are — Rick, the head painter (click site) dude, and Nick and Frank. Apparently everyone on their crew has to have a name that ends in “k.” The owner of the company is Mike Mullins, and he lives in my neighborhood at 1610 N. Delaware. I’ve seen two houses that they’ve worked on and both are excellent. I also gave them my first check today for 1/2 the work. Big check.
So check out what my house looks like right now, because it won’t be that way for very long.

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Frustration Recovery

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I’ve recovered from the crappy weekend, somewhat. In the evenings, I’ve been doing a bunch of small, “finish-it-in-one-shot” projects that have gotten small, niggling problems out of the way. And I’ve still had plenty of time to play with Spike, so he seems happy. I think if I keep working this way, I’ll get through it. It would be really nice to win the lottery, though. At the very least, there’s no way I could put the house on the market until I accomplish all of these projects anyway, and I wouldn’t be able to do it until spring. So I’m stuck here one way or another; may as well make the best of it!

I had some good things happen this weekend, actually… I had a great lunch with Lori B. while planning a scavenger hunt — details to be announced later. And I went with Dan and Doug to see the Harry Potter movie, which I loved, by the way.

I also worked out some additional organizational things to do last night, which I’ll be putting into action, tonight. They should help me get on the right track for getting stuff done around the house. I also got more work done on the inventory I’ve been doing of all my stuff. I have all of my DVDs and Videos cataloged, as well as all my electronics and a good chunk of my book library. Once I get my CDs cataloged, I can turn all of it over to my insurance company, which will lower my rates. Pretty cool.

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Crappy Weekend

I had a really crappy weekend. I worked all day Saturday on the house, especially the living room, and I got nothing at all done. I managed to get the old nails pulled out of the ceiling joists for only 1/3rd of the ceiling. I got the blocks of wood nailed up that will support the new drywall for only 1/2 of one wall.

For the backdoor, I put the second handle on the trap door, so it’s easier to open. And I ran the extension cord up from the basement. I shoved some foam around the top opening of the door, and tried to use the spray foam to fill in around the cracks on the sides of the door. That crap is really messy and hard to control and I got it on my hands and still can’t get it off. I got some of the leaves raked, but I still have to bag them, and I need to clean the gutters out again. And the rest of the leaves are falling, so I still have to do that. I need to cut back some tree limbs, and caulk the one gutter. And when am I going to find time to do that? I have to spend the evenings with the dog, to make up for the fact that he’s alone all day. The poor little guy; it’s not his fault the house is in such shitty shape.

I’m really pissed and frustrated with the house. It’s ugly as hell, and I’m not making even the slightest dent in getting it in shape. There’s only one room that’s even close to looking nice, and I’ve been in the house 10 months. At this rate, it will be 15 years before the house is in order. I hate this fucking house and want to move. There’s way too much shit to do, and there’s no way I can accomplish all this by myself. For some of these jobs I need another person, and I’m going to have to hire someone to help me. That just makes me more pissed off.

I have to do something totally different than the direction I’ve been going with the house. I need to clean out and rearrange something, or move something around. I’m thinking of just closing the living room off altogether. Maybe moving all of building supplies and materials out of the back room into the living room, putting up a door, and closing it off altogether until spring and not thinking about it. I may do that this week during the week.

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Utilities turned on

On Saturday, the phone guy and the cable guy redid the lines to my new house. The cable’s working fine, but the phone still needs to be worked on–apparently at the central office. But I cleaned out the shed at the back of the house, and got some of the linoleum off the living room floor, and vacuumed and dusted the upstairs. I weeded some in the front of the house. Moved the TV and some small furniture, and a box of glassware. Sunday, I painted another coat on the dining room floor and moved some more stuff. Packed my CDs and liquor. Saw The Count of Monte Cristo on television, and decided that I’d paint a pattern on the floors. Don’t know what yet; I’ll do it after I move.

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sanding floors

On the homefront — I sanded Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It sucked. It was really hard and the sander I used didn’t do a very good job. I picked the square buffer-type sander because the drum sander is too big for me to control easily. The square sander is also really hard to control, and it isn’t as efficient: I went over the floors dozens of times and they didn’t get up all of the first layer of junk off the floor. So I gave up and decided to paint rather than stain. You can also see murphy bed in Boise here and buy it at a great price.

My reasoning is this: I need to preserve the wood now that I’ve sanded it, or the traffic will damage the wood. I need to do it quickly and cheaply, and hiring a pro to finish the sanding would take too long. Simply putting down a polyurethane isn’t good enough because the floors look like crap. So I’m painting with an oil-based polyurethane paint that will protect the floor for a year or two until I can hire a pro to sand it up and redo the floors. You can see the website if you need for flooring services.

I put the first coat on the foyer and part of the dining room last night. I take tonight off and pack, Wednesday I’ll spend with friends. Then Thursday, I’ll finish the dining room and put a second coat on the foyer. Saturday the cable guy and the phone guy are coming, and when they’re done, I’ll put another coat over all the floors.

Floor sanding & painting

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Working On Floors

Rich came over Tuesday night and we finished ripping up the foyer and the entryway. Last night I went back over and removed more of the baseboards and ripped up some of the plywood that’s still around the edges of the room. I still need to get the baseboards in the living room and then try to work on the linoleum that’s still stuck down in there. Then I can start sanding!!! I might try to get the sander this evening just to have it in the house. I could potentially start on the dining room tomorrow morning.

I also put the legs on the dining table Paul gave me and set it up in the game room, which is going to be the dining room temporarily until I get the living room finished. I’m starting to feel more and more like the place is mine.

2165 N. Penn - House Projects

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Celebrity Tattoos

Cool: Celebrity Tattoos.

On Sunday I finished the ripping up the living room and most of the foyer, with Gary’s help. Good thing in the foyer; where the window was broken, all the plywood was rotten and molding. If I hadn’t decided to rip it up, it would have been a huge mold problem in the future. Fortunately, the floor underneath it is okay. Gary also brought me Paul’s dining room table; it will look great in the dining room. Cool, that’s one less thing I have to worry about buying off the bat.

The foyer is the wide plank flooring like the living room. There’s a small section where it would probably be a good thing if I replaced a couple of the planks. I hope to god I can find the planks to replace all these easily. Tonight I’ll go to the house and try to finish up ripping up the flooring. I also want to try to knock the plaster down off the ceiling this week before I begin to sand the floors, take down the outside edge strip of the drop ceiling, remove the ugly tacky baseboards they put in the living room and foyer and generally clean everything up.

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living room work

Rich came over last night at helped me pull up the plywood floor in the living room…. discovered two things:

1) I’m definitely doing the right thing pulling up all the crap floor to get at the hard wood.

2) It might take longer than I thought.

The floor in the living room looks… right. It’s definitely the right choice to fix it an go with that floor. It is fire damaged. I’ll need to replace about 8 boards, with the help of experts from water damage restoration san diego as they repair all forms of home damage due to water or fire.If you want services, you could check here! And they will look like the historical period of the house! Awesome. It will not be that hard to do and I will have tremendous satisfaction from it. According to some guys in the neighborhood who had a fire in their living room too, I should go ahead with the sanding before the board replacement, because some of the boards I’m thinking need replace might be just fine when the top layer is sanded down.

The “longer than I thought” part… I will probably only be able to do the downstairs before I get moved in. Rich and I worked 4.5 hours and there’s still one corner of the living room I have to do. I might be able to get the foyer ripped up this weekend, and the extra room downstairs done this week, but I don’t know about upstairs. It depends on how easy/hard the linoleum is to get up.

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