skilled labor

Don took the week off this week to demolish and rebuild the floor in the unused half of the kitchen. We ripped out the bathroom and closets over there a while ago, so it was ready for the floors to be ripped up and rebuilt. Just as he did in the rest of the house, he either sistered joists or laid new ones to create a level base for a new subfloor.

The mudroom created a bit more of a problem - it was, inexplicably, built upon some kind of concrete slab. So when he ripped out the floor, expecting to find more crawlspace, he found instead... concrete. Really hard concrete. It took him all day yesterday just to drill holes in it to secure a low frame for the new subfloor.

Today, all that's left of the project is one section of subfloor and then to run the plumbing for the washer and dryer back out to the mudroom - it got cut back during demolition as it was all over the place. We'd planned to run it beneath the floor - but now we know why it was above the floor to begin with, as there is no way to get anything through that concrete. So we'll run it neatly on the floor along the wall and built a small soffit around it, which will in turn be covered by some sort of bench or shoe rack.

The last step, of course, is to get the washer and dryer out of the dining room and back in place so I can do all of the laundry that's built up this week...

i'm back and my clothes are clean

Count Don among the multitudes offended that I haven't been posting here. "Why haven't you AP'ed?" he asked me in an aggrieved tone a few days ago. He knows the answer very well, of course: this happened, sending me winging off to Washington for two weeks, and then this was released, causing much household excitement, and of course this is coming up, meaning I've got a lot of stuff to do. "You could do it yourself, you know," I said. "You know the passwords."

He rolled his eyes. "I don't want to blog," he said. "I want to be blogged about."

Well then. In the interest of maintaining his Internet celebrity status, allow me to give you the big, huge, incredibly exciting update:


We have a washer and dryer. And they work! When I got back from Washington, Don met me at the airport with flowers, took me out to dinner, and then whisked me out the next morning for a full day of shopping with no complaining on his part (I know, he's awesome). In addition to ogling jewelry and watches we would never buy, trying on strange clothing items, and buying some long-awaited new shoes for him, we also managed to (finally!) agree on and purchase a washer and dryer. Don and his dad had actually finished with all of the necessary plumbing before I left, although I didn't expect him to be willing to buy anything yet. But lo, Sears was having a sale, and they had the models I wanted, and there we were. So, rather than spending three hundred dollars each (!) on platforms to raise the machines up to the level we liked, Don spent the week before the delivery building a serviceable platform that cost nothing, as we had all the appropriate lumber around from working on the floors. We will eventually replace it with something sleek and fabulous (and maybe with storage) when we re-do the mudroom, but for now it -- and the temporary plywood floor, and the bare walls -- will do.

We've decided to open the mudroom up and make it part of the kitchen, giving us better flow and a little more space. This means that mudroom renovations, for now, went just to the point of getting the laundry facilities in place and functional, and all the rest will wait until we undertake the big kitchen renovation. The machines were delivered last weekend, and I've spent the last week washing anything and everything made of fabric in the house, up to and including the cat.

Okay, maybe not the cat.

plumbing accomplished

I was, for the most part, too buried in work to even take a breath this weekend, but Don and his dad managed to install the water line for the laundry room while I was glued to the computer. I took a break for five minutes this morning to risk life and limb holding things out of the way while Don completed the last few solders, and lo! It's ready. Don spent most of today on his back in the crawlspace wrapping the new pipes with heat tape so we won't have a repeat of last year's pipe-bursting disaster. Or... uh.. the one the year before that. See, progress! We learn from our mistakes! Or rather, other people's mistakes.

In any case, I am officially allowed to start shopping for a washer and dryer now, although we're waiting until at least the second paycheck from Don's new job to come in to actually buy anything. Not that it matters -- I've got five proposals due in four days next week, so washers and dryers will take a second-place to work for a while. Good thing I work from home in my pajamas -- don't have to do laundry nearly so often as I used to!

two weekends of progress in a row?!

This weekend was eventful all around. On Friday, we went out to dinner with Don's family for some fantastic food at Roy's. Saturday, Don was supposed to go to a fraternity golf tournament and I planned to go downtown to the Baltimore Book Festival, but weather forced us to find other, more indoor plans. I had a draft to work on for work for most of the day, but we were able to steal some time to head out and go shopping, because Don starts his new job today and was in desperate need of some pants. Sunday was our work on the house day. Don's dad showed up bright and early -- 8 AM -- and the two of them got an astonishing amount of work done upstairs before they called it quits at around two. They removed the wall which separates the master bedroom and the master bathroom and replaced it with a header, which means that we can rebuild the wall a few inches over, giving us room for the shower in the master bath. Then they got started ripping up the floor in the master bedroom. They finished tearing up the floor in both the bedroom and the bathroom, and will move on to the master closet and the middle bedroom and parts of the landing next time.

From what I understand, the current plan -- such as it is -- is to tear up the floors all the way back to the chimney, in the middle of the house, and then go ahead and level the joists and put in a subfloor in that area (long-time readers will remember the process from when we did it on the main floor -- but never you fear, newcomers, the pictures they are a-coming anyway). Then we'll move our bedroom from its current spot in the back guest bedroom into the master, and the office from the dining room to the living room underneath the master, and the same process will apply to the back half of the house. And then the floor will be done.

That said, however, I have been promised that before they get too involved in the upstairs work, they'll finally install a new water line to the laundry room and slap down a temporary subfloor in there (we're not finishing the space for real until we renovate the kitchen), which will mean, glory of glories, that I can FINALLY buy a washer and dryer and do laundry in my own home. Hallelujah! Tentative plans have that work being done this upcoming weekend, although as usual there are no guarantees. That doesn't stop me from drooling over appliance websites all week, though.

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.

the hypothetical laundry room

In addition to cleaning out the back bedroom, the other project we need to get done before the HVAC guys start their install is the laundry room.


Our laundry room is actually the back entrance to the house, the one we use (we never use the front door). As you can see, it's in pretty bad shape. We took out the washer and dryer that were there when we moved in -- the dryer's broken, so it's bound for the dumpster, and we sold the washer on Craigslist for 45 bucks. Now we need to rip out the dry-rotted floor, take down the paneling and the drop ceiling, go down into the crawlspace below and fix the plumbing (that's the pipe that froze this past winter -- it goes to the laundry room, the downstairs bathroom, and the outside hose faucet), and then put in a sealed subfloor of some sort and any new plumbing.

Eventually we'll put in a new washer and dryer, but we definitely have to get it prepped and ready for the HVAC guys. We were hoping to work on this this weekend, but we're unsure of scheduling and things right now, unfortunately. We'll see!

a waiting game

Window people are coming on Friday evening to talk to us about stuff. They offer financing and they're having a great sale, so provided we can work out what we want with them in terms of actual stuff and timing, we're just going to go whole hog and replace all the windows in the house, including the ones which have been boarded over or filled with styrofoam (you think I'm joking, but I'm not!). We're also hoping to put in four (!) bay windows: in the master bedroom, the guest bedroom, the dining room, and the family room. Bay windows are large and heavy, another good reason for having the window people do the installation instead of us (in addition to not having to face the prospect of it taking MONTHS of weekend work).

The HVAC guy should be coming over on Monday to take measurements and work out the duct placement and maybe even give us a final price. He told Don that he's currently running about two or three weeks out, which isn't so bad. I can live three weeks more without air conditioning (although I'll probably whine about it).

In the meantime, we are going to play a lot of World of Warcraft, try and get our homework done (why did I think grad school was a good idea?), and maybe tackle the laundry room/mudroom at the back of the house. Just think -- maybe soon I'll be able to do my own laundry in my own house! It's the little things that keep me going.