Yes, Well….

Apparently, we’re enjoying being back in the house so much, I can’t be bothered to blog about it.

Still planning on taking pictures throughout the house and posting a wrap up.  However, I think I will wait until after next Friday to take pictures — that’s when it gets cleaned again.  We still have lots to put away, pictures to hang, etc.  Seeing as there may not be an NBA season this year, we should have plenty of time this winter to clean out the basement.  And M has been hard at work restoring the yard.  He’s filled two more yard debris dumpsters with dirt, yard waste and, most exciting, the laurel hedge on the back side behind the garage.  It’s gone.

Here are a few bits and bobs.

Party Recap

The party was great.  Lots of people came throughout the afternoon and evening, and it was really nice to finally have a big party where there was room for all.  People spread out upstairs, on the porch, the back patio, the living room, and of course, ended up in the kitchen.  We had help with food, and I enjoyed not having to worry about cooking or refilling food dishes.  We did learn that current t0-code smoke alarms are all connected, so when one goes off, they all go off.  And they’re loud.  We are thinking that putting an exhaust in the kitchen will be the next project.

Here is the one and only picture I have from the party.  The kegerator was a hit.  Much classier than having to pump the keg.

The Copper Thingie

I previously mentioned that we had a copper downspout and arch made to divert the downspout from alongside the house to the outside of the back stairs.  It turned out pretty cool.  We chose fish for the rain chain, which are not the most effective at channeling water, but it’s good enough.  We’ll put a pot with plants underneath to catch the run off.  The copper looks great with the changing leaves.

And I’ll just note that after a couple of months of using the back stairs and lots of traffic on them during the party, they’re still standing!  Good job, M!

Painting Shenanigans

After the push to mostly finish the painting before the party, we have avoided the few remaining things — some touch ups and a second coat on the downstairs bathroom.  I pulled out the paint cans yesterday and really made a mess of it.  There’s something to be said for being in the rhythm when you paint all the time.

When downloading pictures off my camera, I was reminded that I did not share pictures from my most exciting painting memory:  painting the ceiling peak over the stairs. There was a spot we could not reach with either an extender or ladder on a flat surface.  So M rigged up this contraption with his folding ladder.  Since I have the steady hand, I got to go up it.  It’s resting on the 2″ stair railing.  Looks safe, doesn’t it?

That’s it for now.  Back to our regularly scheduled naptime.

Pop Art

So remember when I told you we were getting an Warhol-esque picture done of Sybil and you helped me choose which picture?  We finally ordered it and got the proof.

Here’s what we submitted:

And here’s what we’re getting:

Can’t wait till it gets here!  Which unfortunately will not be before the party because we waited too long to order it.

Hope to see many of you on Saturday!

How Did We Do?

Why, hello!  Long time, no chat.  I’ve been busy in sleeping in my bed, in my bedroom, in my house, in my neighborhood.  Totally awesome.

This will be kind of long, so bear with me.  We need to catch up.  I’ll keep posting for a few more weeks with some wrap up posts.

Party, Party, Party

First things first, we are having a House Re-Warming/Open House party next Saturday, Sept. 24th from 3 pm – 11 pm.  Stop by whenever you can and for however long you can.  We’re getting a keg (Ninkasi IPA or Lompoc C-Note — any preferences?) and making pizzas.  Send me a message if you need the address.

Update

At 3 pm today, the last remaining room, which thus far had resisted the enemy paintbrush throughout the Summer 2011 Campaign, fell, on this, the intended last day of painting.  Yes, that’s right.  We repainted the ENTIRE house.  The last room was the downstairs bath, which shed its Pearl White/cruddy walls in favor of Devine Steamer.   The bath is still cruddy, but it looks slightly better.

Painting is done, other than some touch-ups and a second coat in the aforementioned bath.  The kitchen is now blue (Devine Storm), the dining room is a darker red (Metro Paint in Barn Red), and I can’t remember what else has been painted since we last spoke.  But we are very close to packing away the paintbrushes for a long, long time.

From Mellow Yellow to Moody Blues. Ignore the mess -- we're still unpacking.

We’re still settling into our new space.  I didn’t think the rooms themselves had changed that much until we started putting things away.  Lots of old spaces no longer exist, and we have new better ones in their stead.

The best part of the new house?  The Shower to End All Showers.  It’s the best shower I’ve ever showered in.  Including the one at the Mandalay Bar Spa where I have been known to shower 4 times in one day.  Ahhh.

I know what else is new.  We got a custom copper gutter-downspout-thingy, which turned out really cool.  The back stairs interfered with the existing downspout, so we needed a way to divert the rainwater to the far side of the stairs.  We had a fancy downspout extender built, with curved copped pipes to support it over the stairs. It ends in a  fish rain chain.  I don’t have any pictures of it but will post some next time.

Eeek, sensory overload! Must hide!

The cats are very happy to be back home.   Lots of chatter from them.   Arnold gets overstimulated, so he’s had to remove himself from the activity in order to sleep.  One of his hiding places is the baskets in the mudroom bench.  Mikey likes all the windows and attention.  He’s a flopper.  They both like the many circular pathways through the house now — endless running in circles and chasing each other down.

Ooh, scratch my butt

Alrighty, onto the main topic of the post.

How DID We Do?

When you tell people you’re doing a remodel, they delight in telling you horrifying stories about projects than went went over schedule and budget.  Really reassuring.  So common questions we got were, how far behind schedule were you and how far over budget did you go?  I will attempt to answer those here.

Schedule

This one is easy.  The general contractor came in on time or faster.  In fact, if we needed to move back to the house earlier, I believe we could have.  Some of the last tasks were drawn out because we had to wait for the shower door and M’s back stairs to be completed before final inspection anyway.

When the contractor bid the project, they estimated it would take 20 weeks.  They added 3 weeks padding to the schedule in setting our start date at March 28th to be sure to be complete in time for our firm September 4th move back date.  After hiring the contractor, the project manager put together a detailed schedule, and he estimated 18 weeks total, which ended up being about right.

No regrets on the extra padding in the schedule.  Despite what you hear about projects running over, there was no stress that we would not be homeless when our housesitting gig ran out.  In addition, as you may have surmised, we greatly underestimated the time we needed for tasks we were responsible for following the contractor’s completion: cleaning, paining and moving back in.  So the extra time was actually a very, very good thing.  And both of us hugely appreciate that our contractor understands that staying on schedule is of paramount importance to the homeowner.

Budget

This one is harder.  Technically, if you look at the budget we told our financial planner and architect, we were over budget before we started. To be fair, that number was somewhat plucked out of the air, and through the bid process, we learned that 3 out of 3 contractors thought our project would cost significantly more than the budget number.  After that, we scaled back and removed some things from the contractor’s statement of work.  Ultimately, the initial contractor’s bid we signed onto was approximately 8% over our initial “thin air” budget.  This did not include many of the materials that we planned to source ourselves, like the tile, wood floors and carpet, architect fees, and moving and other additional expenses caused by being out of our house, so we knew the true spend would be much higher.

For the most part, we managed those additional expenses (other than the wood floors) in our normal cash flow, after drastically cutting all other categories of spending, other than apparently eating out.  That’s what we expected (or hoped) would happen, so I’m not counting those against our budget.  In some cases, we paid for these expenses before work even started on our house (e.g., most of the architect fees were incurred in 2010), so it was pretty well spread out.

Everyone talks about the dreaded change orders.  Maybe our contractor was better at communicating than others, but I didn’t find these to be all that bad.  These were largely changes we consciously decided to make, like changing from a bathtub to a shower or doing more cabinetry than originally anticipated.  A couple were unexpected things with the house, like repairing the foundation, but we knew our house well enough to be mentally prepared for that  (and, looking back, I thought there would be more in this category than there was).  There does get to be a point where you get tired of a few hundred dollars getting added to seemingly every sub’s final bid, but it really wasn’t that bad considering that the initial estimate (done 8 months ago at the time of the overall bid) has to make a lot of assumptions about endless details that we hadn’t yet decided.

All told, we had 5 change orders, which raised our original not-to-exceed ceiling by about 18%.  However, our contractor came in under budget, so we actually spent 95% of that.

The credit cards and bank accounts are still smoking, but our debt load from the remodel is within a few thousand dollars of what our financial planner accounted for in our master plan (based on the “thin air” budget), so we feel very good about our ability to pay it off.  We may even take a vacation in the winter.  (Back to the Big Island or check our Kaui?  Suggestions?)

There you have it.  On time?  Yes.  On budget?  Since our debt load is more-or-less as expected, I’m going to say yes.

The Final Countdown

Yes, it’s time for The Final Countdown.  No, not Gob’s magician act from Arrested Development.

(Although our new TV room would only be better if we could watch new episodes of Arrested Development in it!)

No, I mean The Final Countdown to moving back in.  M and the cats move back on Friday, IN THREE DAYS!!!  I have a little more than a week after that in the hills with the dog.  by Labor Day, it’s aloo back to normal.  We’re super excited.

In preparation for human and animal creatures living in the house and perhaps wanting to sit on something other than a 5 gallon bucket, we went to Ikea last week.  The upstairs is most ready to be put back together, but since we didn’t really have the right furniture for the new space.  We found a loveseat and TV stand, both super cheap! 

The Kivik loveseat with Ingebo Dark Blue cover

Comfy, squishy back cushions for cat who like to look out windows, wide arms for plates, drinks and cats, and darn near perfect for taking a nap on.  We’re both looking forward to taking a nap.

Hemnes 3-drawer TV unit in Back-Brown

 We moved all the leftover bookcases into The Steamer Room, abd voila!  Now, it’s a reading room.  Or will be, once we find the seat cushion and books.

The Reading Room

Someone made a comment to me that we must be really efficient at painting now.  And I think we are.  It’s time consuming, but we’re in a groove, and it doesn’t take us long to gather up everything we need at the start or clean up at the end of the day.  In particular, we keep a bucket of paint thinner in the utility sink and, after healf heartedly cleaning the brushes, we drop them in the bucket and leave them.  They’re totally fine by the next day.  Also, I never clean roller brushes.  Someone shared the tip with me to wrap them tightly in plastic and keep them in the refrigerator to use them the next day,  Well, since our refrigerator is still unplugged, we just wrapped them in plastic and left them out.  It turns out they’re not just the next day, but even a week or two later!  So, the moral of the this story is: don’t waste time or water cleaning roller brushes.

One roller per color

 All y’all have a good night now, y’hear?  (Forgive me, I’m coming to you from Nashville and must go off to some vendor event that undoubtedly involves country music.)

Pass!

I’m a little behind on updates.  We had final inspection a week ago. Pass! Pass!  There is one small thing where the inspector wanted something changed, so that is being completed (sloping the header at the bottom of the stairs to match the angle of the stairs).  We did a walk-through on Monday with our contractor and architect and signed off.  So in theory, our house is done and habitable!  Yay!  I shall celebrate by opening another beer (Lagunitas IPA — yum).

Glassed In

The shower glass arrived, and it looks great.  All our subs have seemed to be super careful and precise, and this one was no exception.  The guy who wrote up the specs wanted to make sure the towel bar lined up with the top of the tile half-wall, which is a nice touch.  These are our only towel bars in the bathroom, so no hogging towels.

All done! Except for the sticker on the glass

Floored

The other big news is that the floors and stairs are one day away from being completely cherry-clad.  The floor itself is all laid, the lower stairs are done, the upper stairs just need treads, and the landings need to be installed.  We’re also adding quarter-rounds on the treads to solve a small spacing issue.  That’s it!  Then our house is really done.  Except painting, of course.

(Sorry about the crappy cell phone pictures.  Forgot my camera again.)

We have floors!

Maybe we'll turn the living room into a ballroom, so everyone can admire the floors while dancing

We decided on squared off bottom stairs (these are still treadless)

These stairs DO have treads, but need some touch up on the risers (and a second coat of Beluga)

The cherry looks great and has lots of good character!  They will cure over the next few months to couple of years, darkening into a deeper, redder color.  They’re so solid too.  I didn’t realize how used to the “spring” in the fir floors I’d become.  It was a little funny to walk across certain parts of the floor, without an added bounce in my step.

And Lest We Forget…

Why, yes, we are still painting! It’s gotten more tolerable now that most of what remains is topcoat or touch up.  At this point, the upstairs is very, very close to completion.

Beluga walls -- this corner still needs another coat

That space under the window is 84″ wide, so I am now on the lookout for a not-outrageously-priced couch or loveseat to go there.  It has to have squishy back cushions because the cats have made it quite clear that they prefer squishy couch cushions in front of a window.  We decided to move the TV up from the living room to this room.  Now that we’ve gotten used to the 60″ TV at our housesitting gig, we’ll have the evaluate whether a 37″ TV will do.  I’m not ashamed to admit that I love TV.

The Purple Room is no longer purple.  It shall now be known as the Steamer Room, which is the color it’s painted.  Also fitting because it’s the hottest room in the house in the summer.  Mmm, steamy.

The Steamer Room

And, now, whether we deserve it or not, M and I are taking TWO WHOLE DAYS OFF.  This is so we can drive 3 1/2 hours and back for a family party (Happy Birthday, Mom and Schwestie!).  The drive actually sounds nice and relaxing, and we’re looking forward to the weekend.

And as a random final side note, I checked the blog stats to see what internet searches led people to the blog.  I’m pleased to note that one search was for “ceiling fan ‘not ugly’“!  There are others who share my pain!  Perhaps the most perplexing one, though, was “inside dumpster.”  Hmm.  I hope they found whatever it was they were looking for.  Our dumpster was not inside.

A Good Weekend

The weekend finally felt like we made a lot of progress.

The carpet went in on Friday.  A little unexpected, but when there’s  a hole in the schedule, you take it.  We stayed up late Thursday to finish the first coat on all the trim and to clean up the upstairs.  I think it looks pretty good, don’t you?

Next up was the mudroom.  We didn’t really plan on blue walls when selecting the blue floor, but I think it will work fine once we get the rest of the stuff in there.  I think I’ll redo the bench cushion in something with white, red and/or blue in it. This is the color our kitchen will get changed to … eventually.

Saturday afternoon, we rented a UHaul to move our remaining stuff (furniture and some kitchen things) back from H&J’s.  With the truck, it was just one load.  Lots of stuff scattered about now, but at least it’s looking more like a house in disarray than a construction zone.

Today, M did more trim work and I continued painting blue.  Another Devine “rule” is to only change corners mid-room at an inside corner.  So that’s how we ended up with these parts of the hallway/living room blue.  The remainder will be a grayish color — you can see a swatch on the wall in the stairwell.

Last but not least, M finished his outside stairs last week.  They look great, and our contractor thinks they will pass inspection!  Once they pass, M will do a little more sanding and finish work and then stain them.

Perhaps the best part of the weekend is that we finally managed to pace ourselves enough to visit a few of our favorite haunts in the neighborhood, see and chat with several neighbors and hang out with a friend this evening.  Back home 5 weeks from today!

Yikes!

The carpet is going in tomorrow! So much for my plans to paint the upstairs this weekend BEFORE the carpet goes in.

Our Color Palette

First, a “save the date” announcement.  Our housewarming party/open house will be September 24th, starting sometime in the afternoon and going until we can’t stay awake any more.  Everyone is welcome, and, out of towners, this would be a great time to visit! We’re getting a keg of something hoppy.

So the Devine color consultant was totally worth it!  Both of us feel immensely relieved that we know what to paint each room (mostly) and that it will all coordinate while still suiting us.

The color consultant spent nearly two hours at our house.  She toured the house and looked at some stuff that we had accessible (couch, rugs, etc.) to get an idea of our style.  She proclaimed that we like eclectic thing (yes!).  Then we talked about non-negotiables, those things that we were not willing to change.  Besides the aforementioned “stuff,” our non-negotiables were the master bedroom, the newly painted and tiled bathroom, and the red dining room.  We also showed her samples of the wool carpet going in upstairs and the cherry that will be our floors and stairs.

The next step was to develop our palette.  Rather than looking at rooms and deciding what colors would go with the room, she removed herself to the kitchen and started fiddling with color samples against our non-negotiables. She occasionally asked how we felt about certain color or combos.  There was some hit or miss and, during the process, we agreed to repaint a few things.

The Devine theory is that you pick a “skin color” that should cover 60% of your house or more.  This gave me heart palpitations.  I got a talking to about painting every room a different color, and she assured me she could get me color everywhere even with most of the house painted the same, and I would like it more.  We eventually reached a compromise that uses a main color but gives us some variation in a few places.  Our palette is based off a light blue-grey color with blues, greens and grays with some accents like red, purple and gold.

So here we go…

Devine Beluga

Our skin color is Beluga, and this will go in the entry, living room, stairwell, the main room upstairs and the hall downstairs.  We’ve painted some swatches on our walls and it looks great, especially upstairs!  Sometimes more blue, sometimes more grey.

Devine Storm

Our next major color is Storm.  This will go in the mudroom, kitchen and hall (and possibly in one of the little rooms upstairs).  The house we are staying at now has a few areas painted this color, as well as the exterior.  We’ve both really liked it, so it’s  happy coincidence that it works for our house too.

Other colors that show up in some quantity in our house are Buffalo (bathroom), Manzanita (bedroom, similar color in the office), and Blade (bedroom ceiling and guest room).  Our palette gives us a couple of extra colors for the two little rooms upstairs and for accents (Rain, Steamer, Peanut (which is the color of our kitchen cabinets), Shantung and Dusk).  Then our red dining room and many red decorative accents (rugs, etc.) give the whole thing a little bit of liveliness.  You will note that to get our complete palette, we will eventually have to repaint several rooms that really only need a couple of walls repainted (sigh).  But it will look great once we get there.

So there you have it!  We love it (although I feel like I just just my colors done. I’m a winter BTW).

(I have no idea how to get the little pictures to line up.)

Devine DuskDevine ShantungDevine Cayenne (not actually our red, but close)

Devine Buffalo

Devine Manzanita

Devine Blade

Devine Rain

Devine Steamer

Devine Peanut

Slogging On

There isn’t much to report this week.  M continues to work on his outdoor stairs, which have turned from a fun challenge to a frustrating morass.  I am continuing to paint.  We’ve painted every weekend since Memorial Day and I think we’re about halfway there.  I’m taking Fridays off for the rest of the summer to try to speed up the progress.

Today we are meeting with a color consultant from Devine Paint who recommended the colors for our friend’s house, which looks great.  We have given up and decided that we need professional help.  I am excited to turn the remainder of the house into a paint by numbers project.

Last weekend, we repainted the bedroom.  Astute readers will say, “But that wasn’t part of your remodel!”  Well, mostly true.  A window was moved from one wall to another, but more importantly, our bedroom became the scene of work — table saws, tile cutters, grout mixing, etc.  So it was a mess and needed some serious cleaning and repainting.  We just need to install the rest of the quarter rounds and find the screws to the mirror, and then that room is done.

It’s been a year since we lost Sybil.  We love the new guys, but Sybil will always hold a special place in our hearts.  We’re getting a Warhol-style portrait done of her to hang at the top of the stairs.  Just need to pick out the perfect photo to go from.  Which one do you like?

Three Months Down, Two to Go

Sorry for the long delay.  It’s been another busy couple of weeks, and we hadn’t hooked up our computer after the last move.  M and I are starting to look longingly at ads for tropical vacation and wondering when our tropical vacation is coming. Um, not any time soon.

It’s easy to think that progress has slowed down until I look at pictures from the last time I posted. Three months into our project, the contractor is very, very close to being done. We’re talking punch list.  Since M and I are out of the house until Labor Day, the last two months will be mostly painting, floors and moving back in.

The Kitchen is Done!  The Tile is Done!

The kitchen cabinets went in, as did the fronts on the bathroom vanity. The kitchen cabinets are awesome!  They match well with the existing cabinets (except that they are a thousand times nicer — the existing ones are stock Home Depot cabinets), and they have more room inside than I expected.  I can’t wait to fill them up.  Which may actually not be that far off.

Just before the cabinets went in, I painted the walls behind them.  I was so tired from painting ceilings, but I knew it would only take a few minutes once I got the paint can out.  Indeed, even with picking bits of rust out of the old paint can, it didn’t take long.  Now that the cabinets are in, I’m thrilled I don’t have to paint around the trim.

One nice thing about the fact that everything in our house (pre-us) came from Home Depot is that we know where to go when we need to match something.  Getting matching knobs for the cabinets was not an issue.

The tile setters returned last week to finish off the tile.  They tiled up to the bath vanity around the little half wall and installed the pebbles in the kitchen where the old tile got yukked up or needed to be extended.  It looks pretty good!  Still probably wouldn’t be my first choice if we were doing the whole kitchen floor, but given our options, it seems to work.  I wish we’d extended the tile border more on the dining room side of the kitchen, maybe up to the refrigerator (it looks less intentional than the hall side, pictured below), but we’ll live with it and see if we get used to it.  If not, there is a bunch of extra tile.  You’re always supposed to buy 10% or so more in tile for breakage, etc., but our tile setters haven’t needed extra for anything.  They sure don’t waste tile.  We even returned two full boxes of leftover field tile.

This is the pantry cupboard. The one on the right that you see just the edge of is also new.

Electrical is Done!

The electrician came last week to do the finish electrical — installing fixtures, faceplates, etc.  It really makes things look more complete.  I painted all the ceilings the weekend before in anticipation and am glad I did.  There are a few places where we’ll still need to dangle the fixture for some touch up or color change, but not much.  Aggravatingly, I painted the living room ceiling up to the plastic zip wall in the middle of the living room (beyond the fixture hole), but the fixture is so big, it overlaps the line by an inch or two.

It’s nice to be able to turn on lights in the house now.

Painting Will Never Be Done!

We continued the painting slog.  We also discovered that caulking the trim and covering nail holes falls under “Interior Paint” rather than “Trimwork.”  Sigh.  More on painting below.

I continue to struggle with colors.  Anyone with an opinion is welcome to come over and opine.  I can’t guarantee I’ll take your advice, but I’ll definitely take it into consideration.  I thought M was going to let me paint the mudroom lime green, but then a friend looked at it and said it looked like mom jeans.  There goes my lime green.

Dog Days

We moved to our housesitting gig near Council Crest.  Our gig includes taking care of a very large black shaggy dog, Sabine (we tell people who ask that she is a black Golden Retriever.  They give us funny looks, but it sounds better than mutt).  I’ve never had a dog, and it’s been a long time since M has (and it was a little Dachshund), so we’re getting used to the different routine — mostly not staying away for as long at a time and getting up early enough to walk her before work.

Sabine goes ballistic when she sees cats, and socializing attempts have not gone well so far.  So now the cats are relegated to the basement, which is a very nice basement, but still, they would like more windows and attention.  It’s worked out that I stay on the main floor with the dog, and M stays downstairs with the cats.  We sometimes rendezvous on each other’s floor since I have the kitchen, and M has the man cave with 60″ TV, shuffleboard, hockey net, basketball hoop and laundry.  After a couple of tense days at the beginning, I think everyone is beginning to settle in and relax.

I did take Sabine to our house for a little adventure.  It was an adventure for all of us.  So exciting, she pooped in the basement.  Don’t think we’ll be trying that again.

Besides the dog, check out the fan, pendant light, railings and oh-so-nicely-painted balusters

Do It for the Kitties!

This has become our rallying cry.  Given the situation with Sabine, we decide to move the cats back to the house as soon as it’s habitable and the workers leave.  They will be better off with free reign even if they are on their own a bit more.

Looks so sweet and innocent. Also looks like Devine Buffalo and Miller White Shadow

Mikey has now gotten out twice in the last week. With the new neighborhood, wooded area, lots of dogs, a busy road and Mikey’s “street cat” confidence, we were quite worried.  Fortunately, he is easily betrayed by his treats, and both times, we found him after a short time looking.  The second time out, he busted out the screen and got in a fight with another cat.  He was very pleased with himself.  We were not.  It heightened the urgency to get the cats back home.

Can't have a picture of Mikey without one of Arnold

As I may have alluded to, painting sucks.  While we painted the last couple of weekends, we kept reminding each other to think of the kitties and persevere.  The sooner we finish, the sooner they come back.  This was made easier since we painted the bathroom in shades of Mikey — white trim with dark grey walls.  We completed all the caulking, trim and topcoat over Fourth of July, and just need some touch ups.  Had we asked for opinions on the dark grey, I’m not sure we would have gotten much support — it is dark, nearly charcoal.  But it looks great with all the trim work, and lighter reflective colors in the tile, fixtures, plumbing, etc.

Unfortunately, our painters are lazy, take frequent beer and Blues Fest breaks and are not very good, so that and some trimwork are all the painting for the last two weekends.  But our painters, they are cheap.