This Damn House

I took a bit of a hiatus (3 months!) from blogging. Er...did anyone notice?

My excuses are a variety of personal and medical issues which slowed down progress on The Project, and a broken camera which interfered with project documentation. Plus about a month ago I noticed that I needed to have our house on the market, like, yesterday, and a general state of complete and utter panic overtook me.

The panic has helped motivated me to do a ton of little but much needed tasks...painting hallways, packing up excess furniture, etc.

But what I needed to kick my butt back into blogging gear was a major project to post about.

So, for your reading pleasure, I spent the better part of the last three days re-tiling our main bathroom. This involved detaching and removing the toilet and vanity, tearing out the existing tile, ripping up the water-damaged sub-floor, laying new cement back-board sub-floor, and the tiling itself.

I have a whole host of new "how not to"s to post soon. In the meantime, here is the bathroom we've been living with for the past 3 months. Note in particular the lovely duct-taped plastic sheeting:

Now we are living with this. Note in particular the lovely tile on top of which there's no toilet or sink. Form over function, baby, form over function:

"They" being the hypothetical buyers of my house and "it" being all the work I'm doing!

Sometimes I look at the wonderful, beautiful improvements we are making to the house (like the bathroom tile) and I think: why didn't we do this years ago, when we could have reaped the enjoyment of this feature, instead of the next people to move in.

The answer, of course, is that I'm just not willing to put that much work into aesthetics or even minor conveniences. I never did care that much about looks! But selling my house is important enough that I am willing to do it to improve its marketability. But oh man, while I'm down on my knees with the trowel in hand for hours, I'm sure wishing I'd done it 2 or 6 or 12 years ago.

The great irony is that I'm just perfectionistic enough to do the job to a quality level the hypothetical new owners will never know about. They will never know that I ripped out plywood to put in cement backboard because it will last 10 times longer. They will never know that I carefully cleaned grout off every tile, even those that will be forever hidden by the (new!) vanity.

I think I just don't want "previous owner" karma haunting me for the rest of my life.

When re-tiling a bathroom, here are some things not to do:

• buy 13 inch tiles and a 12 inch tile cutter
  
• buy pre-mixed mortar, lest you discover halfway through your project, at 9PM on Sunday, after all the hardware stores have closed, while you are up to your elbows in wet cement, that your last gallon of pre-mixed mortar is also conveniently pre-set. In the bucket.
  
• decide that a $40 mixing paddle is a silly indulgence for the 1 gallon of (non-pre-mixed) mortar (which you just acquired on Monday morning), so you'll use your hands
  
• if you do decide to mix the mortar with your hands, do not be lured into a false sense of security just because it is a lot like mixing cookie dough, and therefore it would be silly to wear gloves...else you will discover that mortar will, in fact, set on skin and fingernails. (and hair, in case you were wondering) Oh, and just because it feels like cookie dough, do not be tempted to lick your finger
  
• if your non-pre-mixed mortar looks and feels like Play-Doh after mixing instead of pudding...for the love of God, add more water before you start using it
  
• ...and speaking of gloves, if you get a pre-blister "hot spot" on your thumb after 15 minutes of using the evil tile nipper, and you ask your husband to bring your work gloves, and he says he can't find them, do not say "Eh, don't worry about it, I've only got a couple more tiles to nip, I doubt I'll get a blister that fast."
  
• put those little white plastic tile spacer thingies on the floor between the tiles. Yes, they have four corners, and therefore it is tempting to think they go in the corners between four tiles. But they don't. You place one little poke-y part between TWO tiles and leave the other little poke-y part poking up, so you can easily remove them when it comes time to grout
  
• take a break from cleaning up grout (which, in case you were wondering, starts to set in about 30 minutes) for dinner and putting the kids to bed
  

On the other hand, I did find color-coordinated grout and caulk. The color? DeLorean Gray. How cool is that?

I'm packing up a subset of my belongings, in preparation for putting our house on the market, then moving into temporary housing before eventually landing at our final destination (Mosaic Commons). So I'm carefully sorting through my family's belongings, identifying those housewares, clothing, toys, books and other things that we can live without for six to nine months.

I've barely gotten started and I have some 20ish boxes packed.

Which then begs the question...if we can live without it for that long...why do we need it at all?

Some of the stuff falls into the clear category of nostalgia (old yearbooks, baby clothes, etc.) Then there's a bunch of clothes that don't fit me now but I have reason to believe will fit me in the future. But what about the rest?

Why do I have a crockpot I use 5 times a year? If we can live with 2 frying pans instead of 4 for a few months, why not a few years? Those clothes I keep to wear for special occasions that never arise...the toys that cost a lot to buy but never really captured the targeted child's interest...the sheets that fit my bed but aren't nearly as nice as the three sets I use more often...the spices purchased for a special dish that didn't turn out so special... why am I lugging this stuff around with me?

Mind you, we've already parted with vast amounts of stuff. And I'm not actually a packrat compared to many folks in my socioeconomic strata.

But for reasons I can't clearly identify, stuff imposes a certain spiritual weight. I feel...heavier with all these belongings, as if I'm carrying them around in my mind all the time.

Ironically, the time pressure of getting the house ready has forced me to stop freecycling. If it's not something I need right now...toss into the box it goes!

I have so many started but unfinished projects in the house. It seems like my motivation is high when the project looms large before me; once the most egregious flaws of the area are fixed, though, I find myself drawn to new big projects rather than the picky sticky yicky stuff at the end of the current one.

So last weekend I painted the bedroom...mostly. Ran out of paint with one half of one wall left. Picked up more paint, but never picked the project back up. Painted the living room....except for the base trim. Re-tiled the bathroom floor, but still haven't put up the matching tiles around the base of the wall. Painted the hallway but need to put the curtain rods and curtains back up.

And I know all this needs to be done, and yet somehow "paint trim in living room" keeps getting pushed to the bottom of the (very large) to do list!

How do I motivate myself for these underwhelming detail tasks? (Probably with the knowledge that I can't post an "after" picture here on TDH until I do them! You'll note you all haven't seen many pictures lately.)

Done!

Well, okay, not done. There's a socket acting up on the light bar, and a little spackle that needs sanding and painting, and I need to seal the grout, but...well...OMG this has been 6 month project.

	It started out just plain ugly. The silver and blue wallpaper really capped it.
	Normally I wouldn't fix something just because it's ugly but there's also some leftover damage from a plumbing flood a couple years ago
	So I'll fix the damage, but that requires I take down the wallpaper.  Well, no tears shed there.  Except...
	Pulling off the wallpaper pulls off chunks of rotting wall.
	And also reveals hidden mold.
	The walls are therefore dutifully repaired...but not before the process reveals water damage to the subfloor below the tile.
	In despair and distraction, we cover the mess in plastic sheeting and hope that it will repair itself over the following few months.  It doesn't.
	When we finally accept the reality of the situation, we pull out the tile, which causes the amazingly cheap ass fiberboard vanity to disassemble itself.
	So what started out as a little water repair ended up with nearly a full bathroom re-do!
	Wow! Why didn't we do this years ago?

or if you do, be prepared to eat your words. (Try with ketchup if they are a little dry going down)

(This sage advice is brought to you courtesy of Mrs. TDH who was looking at some of her early blog posts and found this quote: "we're going to have to hire someone to do the work, because there's no way in hell I'm re-tiling and re-grouting the bathtub. Just ain't gonna happen."

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Now I'm off to scrub the grout out from under my fingernails. TTFN

And now I'm asking for it!

This is our kitchen:

The vinyl sheet flooring is ugly, permanently dirty, and peeling up. In short, it needs replacing.

We had originally planned to install some sort of laminate floor. But I was so happy with how the tile turned out in the bathroom that now I'm considering tiling the kitchen, instead. It's more labor intensive but now I'm a Tiling Expert, so BOOYAH! Also, we found some tiles we love on a great sale at Home Depot that actually makes tile cheaper per square foot than the nicer laminates.

A friend of mine tried to talk me out of tile, though. She said that tile in a kitchen means that anytime you drop a plate or Pyrex bowl, it breaks. It's hard on your feet for standing long hours. And is it harder to clean?

So I turn to you, my faithful readers, to opine: tile? Or laminate? Or vinyl sheeting? (Assume in all cases I choose something attractive and functional.)

Our house! Our new house! It is no longer just a dream...as of last week, it is a hole in the ground lined with concrete!

Even covered with snow, it gives me warm fuzzies.

I get even warmer and fuzzier fuzzies looking at this artist's rendition of what it will look like next spring:

(That's actually a rendering of Camelot Cohousing neighborhood, rather than my future neighborhood Mosaic Commons, but both neighborhoods are part of Sawyer Hill EcoVillage, so close enough.)

I'm just unbearably excited. It's been a long long long road to get this far. (Mosaic just celebrated it's 8th Anniversary this weekend!) After all the work and struggle and disappointments and despair, now it's going up before our very eyes. In fact, it looks like we'll be moving in early next fall. (The Quicker Fixer Upper project better get Really Quick!)

If you like construction photos, you can see all the details here.

Oh, hey, won't you be my neighbor? We still have homes to sell in both neighborhoods! drop us a line.

Yesterday, we had a huge, ungainly broken treadmill in our basement. We were sure we'd have to figure out how to lug this 300 pound monster to the dump. And all that metal and electronics filling up the landfill, releasing toxic chemicals...oy.

So we tossed it up on Freecycle without much hope. Who the heck wants a broken treadmill?

This morning a guy came to take it away. No dump lugging! He makes a hobby of fixing and reselling broken treadmills. (?!) No landfill! He makes a few bucks selling it, we save a few bucks not paying to dump it, and the environment saves a few virtual bucks for not having to absorb the destruction of one big piece of equipment and the manufacture of another.

win-win-win. How cool is that?

(Hey, I'm still maintaining a list of all the freecycling I've accomplished, as well as my freecycling failures.)

If ripping up 3 layers of flooring wasn't crazy enough, we've also decided to pull out a large custom built cabinet that has been in the house since (as a tag behind it said) 1988. The cabinet was kind of nice but it was in less than great condition. More importantly, it cut out a huge amount of the floor space in the dining room that we (and hopefully prospective buyers) want back.

Of course, it's This Damn House, so no project is as easy as you'd think. But...now I fear we may have bitten off more than we have time to chew.

Beind the cabinet there's 1/2 of a sort of false wall.  The cord you see goes to a light switch installed in the side (outside) of the cabinet which controls the dining room light.  It looks like the easiest way to fix this up is to frame and hang the rest of
the wall.  Maybe.

Below the cabinet is the supporting 2x4s nailed to the floor.  The hard part here is that the lateral 2x4s extend the full length of the cabinets, including under ones we are keeping.  So somehow we have to cut them in place and pull them up.  how the heck we gonna do that?!

And of course there's misc. aesthetic issues, like needing base trim around the new wall and existing cabinets.

It's not a pretty situation for sure.  :-\

Sorry, kitteh, it's covered with Hardie-backer, and by this time tomorrow, God willing and the creek don't rise, it'll be covered by ceramic tile.