hiatus

As you may have guessed, nothing much is happening around here, house-wise. Don is in the final throes of a semester of taking three graduate courses at once (he's nuts), which leaves little time for renovation when combined with his recent promotion to team lead at work.

We had hoped to get the banister finished by Thanksgiving - it is, in fact, dismantled and parts strewn all over the guest room. But it is clearly not to be. Happily, we realized that since we hung the office doors, we finally have a space for overnight guests. And just in time, too. Both of my parents will be visiting (separately) around Thanksgiving, and finally they'll be able to stay with us, which makes a visit much more, shall we say, economically feasible. We'll set up the trusty aerobed in the office, shut the doors, and show them where the towels are kept.

In the meantime, we're taking a bit of a hiatus from working on the house. The pressure to have things done before the holidays has been lifted, giving us a chance to actually enjoy the holidays - we're finally going to have a Christmas tree this year! We're going to relax, enjoy our friends and family (and maybe the new Warcraft expansion) and pick back up in 2011. Don will be taking three classes again - ouch - but we have some relatively practical plans and we think we'll be able to get the last few glaring omissions in the house finished (bathrooms, anyone?).

So, you won't see me much in this space until January. I hope all of my readers have a great holiday season, and please - take some time out to enjoy your home!

let's pretend i was here all along

Oh, hello, dwindling blog readership. Is that you? I've been gone so long I hardly remember what you look like. Here's the thing. Lately, instead of working on our house, we have been living in it. It is AWESOME.

When last I wrote (in, uh, March, sorry about that), the floors were being finished up. After the flooring people cleaned up and left, we sat down and tried to make a cohesive plan to get the rest of the smaller tasks done so that we could finally move in. Things like crown molding, window trim, replacing the front door, etc. We just couldn't figure out a way to do it quickly while Don's graduate school classes were still in session. Turns out grad school is a lot of work, who knew? At the thought of waiting until his classes were over (last week, actually) to sit on my beloved still-in-storage couch, I may or may not have thrown a tantrum. Once I allegedly calmed down, we realized that there was, in fact, another solution: throw up our hands and just give up!

Okay, not really. What we decided to do was to move in with the house as it was - finished floors and walls, no window trim, no crown molding, unpainted upstairs, unfinished upstairs bathrooms, front door still unreplaced. We elected to just stop working on the house for the rest of the semester, to just move in and enjoy having a house that looked mostly finished even if we knew it really wasn't. We would pick back up as soon as classes were over, and hope to get the rest of the finishing stuff done this summer so that we could focus on the next big project we'd like to start (which involves filling the nursery upstairs). This way, we can finally actually live like normal people in this lovely house we happen to own.

So. We've been doing just that - living. And in the process, the house got really messy, because we are huge slobs, and then I was too embarrassed about the mess to take pictures of it for you all but also far too lazy to do more than cursory cleaning. We're, uh, looking into a cleaning service.

But! We cleaned the house up this weekend in order to host a Mother's Day brunch (a raring success, incidentally), and I took the opportunity while it was still clean this morning to snap a bunch of pictures. So I'm writing up a bunch of posts so you can see the house as it now is, and what there still is left to do. Don's classes are over, and we've got big plans.

progress, of the miniscule variety

So. Hope everyone had a nice holiday season. Ours was lovely, with lots of family time, both here and elsewhere, and lots of giving and getting of nice things. And lots of food. Oh lord, the food. Anyway. It's over now, and it's back to the daily grind, or something. I haven't got much to say today, and no picture, alas, but Don and his dad did work on the house on Saturday and managed to get all that plaster up from over the front porch. All that's left to do there is pull out the boards the plaster was resting on -- Don says he'll try to do it after work this week, we'll see how that goes -- and then they're going to put in the new joists for that room and pull the wires through for the front porch's ceiling lights, since once we put the floor down that area will be inaccessible again. Having the wires pulled through and the boxes installed will make it a lot easier to finish up the front porch when we get there.

Measurements have been taken, a list has been made, and Don will be going out relatively soon -- probably this weekend -- to get all or most of the lumber for the upstairs floor. Hopefully the whole thing will go fairly quickly and we can finally move on with our lives. I'm SO ready to have the upstairs bathrooms installed.

nothing to report

Family emergencies (on his side), work overload (on my side) and a bad cold (both of us) prevented anything getting done on the house this weekend. Figures. Scheduling is once again up in the air; we know what we'll be doing next but we just need to find the time to do it.

In the meantime, I'll be lying here in bed with a box of tissues and a vat of cough syrup, watching the cat ignore me because the new bay windows? With squirrels outside? SO much more fun than being petted or snuggled. Or so I've heard.

one giant step forward

Last week was pretty eventful. On Thursday, in particular, we had a veritable swarm of people running around the house: the window guys were working on the glorious dining room bay window you can see in the foreground of the picture below (and which I am sitting in front of right now, having moved my little work table over in front of it so I can watch the squirrels chase each other around the tree in the side yard); the lawn guy was mowing and also giving us an estimate for some yard cleanup; our new ADB representative was here getting some papers signed and getting the grand tour; and the HVAC guy was here (finally) fixing the upstairs air conditioning. Whew! Everybody said hi to each other -- the lawn guy took a card from the window guys -- and everything got done in good time.


And now, here we are. The huge hurdle we've been waiting to get over for months and months is rather anticlimactically past (okay, maybe it's only anticlimactic to me -- everyone who's come into the house so far and seen the new windows acts pretty darn climactic), and we're finally ready to move forward. We've been waiting and waiting for the windows and the HVAC for so long that it's hard to transition back into the mindset of DIY; it's been contractors this and financing that for most of the year, and now it's finally back to Don and his dad, working on the weekends and getting things done.

The next big step -- and really, the last of the overwhelmingly huge projects -- is the upstairs floor. We're doing the same thing we did downstairs, if you can remember -- tearing up the original, sadly unsalvageable floors, sistering or installing new joists to create a level plane, and then installing a level plywood subfloor.

A new dumpster got delivered on Friday, ending my brief period of dumpster-free bliss (although, amusingly, the HVAC guy told us that he drove right past our house on Thursday, totally missing us because there wasn't a dumpster in the driveway). It's ready and waiting, and Don plans to start ripping up the floors upstairs while he's home this week. Other things that'll go into this hopefully last dumpster (sorry, Benjer): the drop ceiling in the front screen porch and the one in the kitchen; the mudroom, in its entirety; the old desk in the basement and the platform it's on; and the vast majority of the things Don's grandfather seems to have crammed under the basement stairs.

And that's it. From then on, it's all construction, all the time. Once the floors are done, the plumber will come and install the plumbing for the two upstairs bathrooms, while Don and his dad create a wiring diagram and pull wires and install outlets. Then, insulation and drywall and a practically finished house.

Please try not to place your bets too high on when it'll all get done.

no one here but us sleepy kitties

I have no updates for you. The upstairs bathroom is not yet demolished, the attic is still full of trash, the stairs are covered in plaster, and we haven't heard back from HVAC guy (surprise!).

Also, Don has the flu, and I have three proposals and an office move to deal with. So all I can give you right now is this picture of a sleepy kitty:


Enjoy.

pictures to follow

Demolition day has officially come and gone. A HUGE thank you to those who showed up (even though certain people couldn't be bothered). Unfortunately, even though everyone there worked like maniacs, we didn't get done. I was so busy actually helping for once that I didn't get any action pictures -- but by now you all know what demolition looks like. I'll get some pictures of the final scene of devastation and rubble tonight when I get home from work and try to get them posted this week.

Highlights of Saturday included Alex (aka Don's new best friend) showing up promptly at 8 with a big bag full of tools. Danielle was a demolition whirlwind, completely clearing every wall she touched -- up to four and a half feet. She also proved to be the consummate party guest, bringing along both a crowbar and cookies. Zenchick made friends with the cat, who loved the attention, and also managed to save me from being the person to step on the first nail, while Angie and Donna seriously went to town on the nursery closet and cleared that mofo completely out.

After we were done for the day, Alex and Danielle and Don and I all went out for dinner (after taking a break to go to various places and clean up) at Rub, which Don and I had never heard of or been to before. Very good barbeque that even sauce-phobic little me could eat, plus great drinks and a gigantic projection screen where we caught the crucial twelve minutes of that disastrous Redskins game. And wedge salad! I'm a dork for wedge salads. It's also just minutes from the house, which gives it about a million points in its favor. We're always looking for restaurants close by. Turns out if you just go over the Hanover Street Bridge there's all kinds of options. Who knew? I mean, other than Danielle.

Anyway, after that we came back home and collapsed. Sunday we slept in prodigiously, then watched TV and played video games until it was time to head out so I could take Don for his Christmas present: the deep-tissue massage I booked for him for the day after demolition day. When he got out he said it was the best forty-five minutes of his life, which means I continue to maintain my reputation as the best present-giver. After that, back home for more relaxation and a little web fun starting up my latest project.

As for the upstairs, I suppose now we'll just be hacking away at it ourselves until it's done. Don went to work about three hours early today so that he could leave early and get home while there was still enough daylight to work on it. We'll keep you posted.

kind of like a padded room

So, I promised pictures of The Great Tarping of Ought Seven. Here's one, anyway. Living in this space is a little surreal; the tarp covers everything from floor to ceiling, so it can be a little unnerving. I'm not used to black walls and black ceilings and vaguely shiny rooms. As you can see, Don put clear tarp over the windows, to keep the light but make sure we're maintaining the insulatory effect and also for privacy for when we move down. The picture above is the corner of the living room; the entire living room and dining room look like this. Very weird.

anticip-p-p-p-p-ation

Since Don's officially a working man now, I get to be the one who stays home for contractors these days. My job is pretty friendly towards working from home, since we've got a good VPN system and our work doesn't require top-secret secured facilities like Don's usually does. So I'm here, working on two different proposals at my very messy and non-productivity-conducing desk (I should probably fix that part). And guess who else is here?

HVAC guy! No, really! He's here! He's doing things! It's very exciting. He was scheduled to get here at 7 this morning, so Don had to roust me out of bed far earlier than I'm used to (I told him not to leave the house unless I was actively upright). He didn't show up until 7:30, after I'd sent a few increasingly snarky messages to my boss indicating that I might be in to the office after all, blah blah blah. But he showed up. I let him in and told him to yell upstairs if he needed anything and try not to let the cat out because she's not very brave, and he got to work. So far I've heard banging, thumping, drilling, and a couple of thuds and clangs, all of which I take to be a good sign.

Cross your fingers people, we might actually have heat by the end of the day. Just in time for temperatures to go back up to the 80s this weekend! Thanks, Baltimore weather!

(PS - If you get the title of this post, you're a dork. Good job. ;) )

so close

The HVAC guy did show up yesterday after all. And he made a point of talking to Don before he left for the day to let him know where he was at and what still needs to be done. It's like a magical transformation! At this point, all of the vents and ducts are officially in and hooked up, including the ones in the kitchen addition. The return -- that bit that sticks out of the side of the house -- has been installed. There's one piece of ductwork missing -- the piece that connects the return to the rest of the system. It needs to be specially fabricated at the shop. After that, he needs to connect the gas line to the furnace and make a couple of other connections and the first floor will finally be done, done, done!

You would think he would just schedule himself to come out to our job and finish it all in one fell swoop -- he had two days left of work to do for us, shouldn't he be at our house two days in a row? No. Apparently we're not important enough to just finish all at once or something -- his modus operandi seems to be to skip from job to job to job, doing a bit on each one. Which, let's be honest, is probably why he seems to have so many scheduling problems. Whatever. He told Don that he'll "check his calendar" -- which for some godforsaken reason he is incapable of carrying with him, the reason we've had so many "I'll call you back!" conversations -- and let us know when he can come out to finish. He predicted that it would Tuesday or Wednesday. Feel free to place bets.

this blog is about to go downhill

Don is going to go to school full-time. If all goes well and the University is accomodating enough to actually offer the courses he needs, he ought to be able to finish in two semesters. It's a lot faster than working full time and having to sift through the night classes, hoping that what he needs is available at the right time, which is what has taken him so long to get to this point. Once he's got the degree(s), he'll be infinitely more hireable. In the meantime, we're looking for a part-time job for him in something like bookkeeping, to make up the small shortage in money and to keep his hand in the financial field (if any of you local types know of anything like that, let me know).

This means that the house is pretty much going to be on hold. Once the HVAC on the first floor is finished (as it should have been TWO MONTHS AGO), we'll move downstairs. For the duration, it'll be like living in an apartment, kind of. We may occasionally venture upstairs in our free time and work on pulling down paneling and plaster -- we won't be able to afford to do anything else with our free time, after all -- but in general, nothing is going to get done on the house. Which means, of course, that there won't be much to write about here. I'll write, but you should probably consider Ancestral Pile on hiatus for a while.

If you're desperate to pay attention to me (um, probably just my mom then), you can head over to my revamped LiveJournal, which is currently serving to chronicle my trials and tribulations as I attempt to write fiction and apply for a Masters degree in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University (also kind of on hold until Don finishes school, but in the downtime I'm teaching myself to write, it's fun and exciting).

home again

I don't think any of us really felt like leaving the beach. I think in the day and a half we've been back I've probably said to Don, "Hey... let's go back to the beach now!" at least two dozen times. He's agreed with me every time.


Photo is, as usual, courtesy of Lindley, because I barely took any. You can check out my very limited set of photos -- mostly of the house we stayed in, typically enough -- here, and her much more exciting set -- including some awesome night photography on the beach -- here.

I got a tan, but you can barely see it because of all the freckles I also got. Sigh. We came back in the middle of a somewhat horrifying severe thunderstorm -- I think my knuckles are probably still white from the grip I had on the steering wheel from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore. The power was out when we got home, which was a lovely welcome. If it hadn't been raining and blowing so hard I was afraid the car would be blown right off the road, I might have just turned around and headed back to North Carolina. A full week in a house that was actually finished, with real walls and windows and doors and paint and furniture! Seriously! Furniture! was so incredibly relaxing. Next year we're going for two weeks. And we've seriously considered sneaking away for another week in October. Off season is cheap!

But now it's back to the grind. Time to call the HVAC guy and find out if he's recovered from Installation Guy's disappearance and if he's going to come out and finish our vents anytime soon. Time to call the window people and find out if our financing has gone through and when they might be starting. Time to start pondering schedules, and money, and priority lists. Time to worry about Don's employment, about school costs and scheduling, about family, about money, money, money.

Let's go back to the beach now.

i have made weirder requests

Does anybody have a wooden coat rack they're willing to part with? I need one that's not particularly heavy, and it's got to be wood or something else cuttable, since I really only need the top half.

Doesn't it sound like I'm preparing to do something really strange? Actually I need it to display handbags at craft shows; my mom makes these fabulous handbags and we'll be selling them along with our jewelry and accessories at several craft shows this season (I've added them to the calendar on the website, check it out). So I'm looking for something to hang them from, and a coat rack seems like the best option. Anyway. Let me know if you have one.

Nothing is going on with the house; we're waiting for HVAC Boss Guy to call and let us know when he can come out and finish up. Don's changing the locks this week, as No-Longer-Installation Guy still had our keys when he up and quit. I'm trying to use up all the stuff in the fridge before we leave for the beach without going to the grocery store, which may result in us eating peanut butter and pickle sandwiches or something later in the week.

a little more coherent

Thank you all for your positive comments to my slightly hysterical post yesterday! Seriously, people were coming out of the woodwork (I'm looking at you, zenchick). Anyway, here's what happened:

When we found out on Tuesday that Installation Guy had quit (which reminds me, we need to change the locks, he still has a key), Sales Guy said he'd come out yesterday to assess what needed to be done. Once he'd seen how much was left to do, he'd be able to schedule a time to come out and finish. This was totally fine with us -- we know the situation IG's actions have left poor Sales Guy in, and it's not a pleasant thing.

So he comes out in the afternoon, looks around, and says, "It's pretty awful in here. Let's see if we can at least get the air conditioner turned on."

!!!!

(If you could pronounce exclamation points, I would have at that point.)

So he banged a few things, fiddled around in the basement for a while, and lo! The air conditioner was turned on! The job's not done, mind you -- ducts still need to be run to the kitchen and bathroom, and one or two vents in the living room aren't hooked up, and one of the returns isn't installed yet, but most of the vents on the first floor are in fact blowing cold air. He'll come back as soon as he can to finish up the ductwork, but in the meantime we have blessed, blessed air.

It's not really cooling the house down, since there's no insulation right now and no walls to separate the rooms, but it's performed a huge service by getting rid of the swamplike humidity on the first floor, which has already made our lives SO MUCH BETTER. The cat, last I saw her, was sprawled happily on the living room floor, enjoying the change. I may join her.

maybe we can bet on it

Yes, yes, you want to know what's going on and whether we've got air conditioning yet. Well, we don't. But this time it's our own fault, I think. Or at least partly. Installation Guy isn't done yet, but he's close to it (I think he just needs to finish up in the kitchen or something). It's not in our contract with them to run the necessary electrical (apparently because Sales Guy was under the mistaken impression that we were hiring an electrician to run every little wire in the house -- not likely, even I know how to wire an outlet, sheesh). So we need to run some wire from the box to the new HVAC unit(s). Don was supposed to get his dad to come over and help, but for some reason he didn't call his dad until Saturday evening, and apparently his dad never got the message, because we didn't hear back and Don had a fit of machismo and refused to call again. So the wiring's not done, and we can't call Installation Guy like he asked us to when we were done with the wiring so he could make the final hookups.

Don is under the impression that Installation Guy is supposed to be out to the house today anyway, to finish up the kitchen and whatever else isn't done. I got the impression from what IG said on Friday that he won't come back to finish up until we get the wiring done and call him like he asked. We'll see who's right.

tuesday

Still no air conditioning.

(Still not King.)

stress relief

Demo day is officially canceled, which seems to have completely cured Don of whatever mental breakdown he was suffering yesterday. The knowledge that he doesn't have to accomplish twenty-five impossible things today is like a huge weight off of his shoulders. It wound up working out better to cancel it anyway; HVAC guy won't be done until Monday, and if we had moved downstairs all of our stuff would be hugely in his way. So, whatever. At the end of the day, all that really matters to me is that we'll have air conditioning next week and I won't be sick anymore. For the last couple of weeks, while it has been really hot, I have been basically useless, which is really frustrating.

So, no demo day, and we might actually be able to enjoy the predicted nice weather this weekend. That would be nice. These things happen. We'll try to reschedule when we know further what's going on, but if the fraternity guys don't give us a response again we may have to give up and just work on it when we can.

This week has really been miserable (in the TMI realm, I've also been having awful cramps the last few days), and I'm SO glad it's just about over. Cross your fingers nothing horrible happens today.

what a surprise

Yesterday I called Don about halfway through the day to check in and see whether the HVAC guy had shown up as promised. You can probably guess the answer. No guy, and Don was positively livid. He told me he'd called both Installation Guy and Mr. Sales and Service (who is actually the owner of the company and Installation Guy's boss) and left really nasty messages for both of them. He said if he didn't hear back from either of them by the end of the day, he planned on calling the bank and stopping the check we'd written them (for half the total cost).

Well, before long Mr. Sales and Service called Don back and apologized profusely. He said he had similar calls from three other customers besides us! Apparently, while Mr. S&S was on vacation, Installation Guy -- who normally doesn't do his own scheduling -- had overbooked himself, gotten extremely flustered as a result, and then just stopped communicating with everyone. (!) Apparently he doesn't deal well with pressure. So Mr. S&S told Don that he was taking over the scheduling, with an iron fist or something, and Installation Guy could be out at our place on Thursday, or we could have our check back. Since getting our check back does nothing to get us air conditioning, we said Thursday was fine. If he doesn't show up then, we'll get the check back and find somebody else.

The positive side of this -- because I always find something to be positive about or I'd probably kill myself and others -- is that it frees our timetable up a little for moving downstairs. We were originally going to wait until Installation Guy was done, so that our stuff wouldn't be in his way and we'd have A/C when we moved down there. Now we're just going to go ahead and proceed with the move, and just shove our window units in the downstairs windows for the nonce.

Don got a phenomenal amount of work done yesterday, clearing and packing and organizing and sorting all the stuff upstairs. When I got home from work we went up to Summer and Matt's house and picked up some bags of packing materials (bubble wrap and styrofoam peanuts) that they had from their wedding crystal packaging (thanks guys!). Don will use it today or tomorrow to pack up all of his grandmother's glassware -- we've had it sitting around ever since we found it in the dining room ceiling. He's going to get rid of the last remnants of construction debris on the first floor and then tarp off the rooms we're going to be living in (as opposed to the rooms which will be used simply for construction purposes).

I hope we can get everything done in time for demo day. Even after we finish moving downstairs and packing up our non-necessary stuff, we still have to clear out the attic (a huge task on its own), build the dumpster chute to use on Saturday, and create a temporary landing extension for the staircase so that we can reach the landing window to toss stuff out of and also reach all the walls in the stairwell. Don is optimistic; I am worried.

all kinds of news

The biggest news is that the new and improved Anapurna website is up. And, unlike the old site, you can actually successfully use it to buy things from us! Yay! Go check it out.

Other stuff going on, that I thought I'd get down before it drifted away in the massive cloud of to-do lists and scheduling I often find myself in:

Don got a call from the HVAC guy (who, incidentally, has the pointiest shoulder blades I have ever seen on a human being). Said guy is going to come over tomorrow night with a contract for us to sign -- with the original price they quoted us (yay!). He's really truly officially going to start work on Monday. It's like a dream come true! Air conditioning!

We're getting our nearly-full dumpster switched out for an empty one on the 13th. Benjer must love us, we rent so many damn dumpsters. This will be the third this year.

Demolition day, as you all know, is on July 21st. Don't forget to tell me if you want to come.

Windows will be installed sometime after that, hopefully in early August. All the paperwork has been signed for the financial stuff on that one, now we're just waiting through their lead time. Plus, we're getting the demolition done, which will make things easier for them (since they're doing all the framing for us -- they don't have to worry about the demo part).

At some point -- I am guessing next weekend -- we will officially Move Downstairs. I haven't made a lot of progress on cleaning out the office. This must change.

Don says that he'd like to have the upstairs subfloors done and all the final framing in place by the time school starts (August 29th). Considering that we're going on vacation for a week within that timeframe, it's a tight schedule. We'll see how it goes. I'm a little concerned about the plumbing for the new master bathroom, but Don seems to think it's "NBD".

monday morning weekend recap: other people are more productive than me

We weren't as productive as Don had hoped this weekend, but we definitely accomplished some stuff. On Saturday we lounged around, feeling guilty the whole time that we weren't getting anything done but enjoying ourselves anyway. Sunday, I woke Don up at 8 AM (I'd been up for a while already but I let him sleep a little more) and we headed outside. We ripped off the very last part of the back deck -- you can sort of see it in this picture from last summer during the Great Possum Debacle. We threw out the broken grill and broken dryer that the previous owners had left, heaving them into the dumpster with great joy.

While Don worked on tearing out the deck, I cleaned out the mudroom. I think Don had hoped to start the demolition in there, but we just didn't get to it. But everything that was in there is gone, generally to places where it actually belongs, which is good. So it's ready for whenever we do get to the demo (next weekend? Anyone want to come over and help?).

All that was done by about 11:30 in the morning, so we headed out for brunch at the diner and then went to Home Depot, where we picked up a "professional" four-gallon backpack sprayer and some weed-killer concentrate and some herbs and potting stuff. While Don mowed the backyard and then strapped himself into the sprayer and ventured off into the jungle, I planted some basil, thyme, and rosemary and set them out on the little concrete landing off the back door. We'll see how this growing experiment goes.

As we all know, I'm not very good with plants. I have watering issues. But Lindley came up with the notion of leaving a filled watering can right next to the plants, and putting the plants next to the back door where I'll always see them when I come in and out of the house. Hopefully, since I'll see them I'll remember to water them, and since the water will be right there I won't neglect it out of laziness. Cross your fingers -- herbaceous lives are at stake.

On a side note, Ariana apparently has a lot more to show for her weekend than I do -- and check out her kitchen! White cabinets with glass uppers and black countertops like that are EXACTLY what I want, and I am taking this opportunity to point out to Don that Ariana and Jeff's kitchen doesn't look "foofy country" at all just because it has white cabinets. I'm just saying.