Halloween around the house

 

The best laid plans...my last post was...April?? Well, I did think of you my fellow housebloggers. I always do when we do house "work."

We like holidays around here. We don't get many trick-or-treaters in our neck of the woods, but I always enjoy seeing macabre or funny Halloween decor as I drive or walk around a neighborhood so...for your viewing pleasure... our spider's lair.

I always smile to myself as I clean off the real cobwebs on the front door and then put up the fake ones. We humans are such funny creatures really.

What have we been up to around the 2-flat this year? Well, nothing more glamorous than cleaning up our basement laundry room (visualize removing 1930's tile and black mastic from the floor with Soy Gel and Steve power-washing the stone foundation walls after stripping crumbling paint with more Soy Gel), concrete repairs and various and sundry in this category. Small progress, but now I can go into the laundry room without feeling like I am visiting a serial killer's lair. That counts for something.

Actually, Steve built a lifetime warrantied Tenant Storage Locker and a nice laundry room table too. I will try to post some after photos, but it's not a Pottery Barn laundry room or anything.

Okay, so I managed a post. Now I need to see what you all have been up to...Happy Halloween everyone!

Happy Halloween!

Last year I posted about our scary basement for Halloween. I wish I could tell you it's not scary anymore, but I'm afraid that wouldn't be true.

We have decided that this Spring when we get our tax refund it will go for asbestos abatement in the basement. So a decision has been made to spend the cash, which is some progress.

Have a safe and Happy Halloween!

And Mindy & Teague-love the costume idea!

To dream the impossible dream...

This week was one of those weeks I was feeling at odds with things. I'm sure it's partially due to the void of not working on the house. I'm kind of addicted to accomplishing something and the house fulfills that quite nicely. If I'm not getting that fix, I get kind of restless.

The impossible dream, I refer to in the post title, is of course the idea of organizing our basement. Steve and I spent about 4 hours down there going through screws, nails, and tools in the hopes that when we need it, we can find that one screw we are looking for.

I know it's impossible dream, but we have to try. What would the world be without a little Don Quixote spirit. There's a reason why that story is a classic. It's funny, and it can be related to many things from everyday life in my opinion. It's about hope and whether we are aware of it or not, we are all living on hope on some level.

Okay, now that's enough of the introspective stuff, let's get down to what we actually did!

Ever since the BIG project finished up last Fall, we've had a pile of paint cans to go through. You see, we have a "system" for organizing them.

With Steve and I, we are pretty much as organized as our schedules will allow. The busier things get, the harder it is to be organized. Last summer got a little crazy and things got a bit messy.

We write down all the formulas with the room each paint color belongs to. We also mark the cans with a sharpie with what room they belong to. We combine any cans that can be combined.


I also went through the shelves and organized what was there. Luckily all the paint fit on the shelves. We like when that happens.



Then we tackled the (ejem) organization of our various nails and screws and other miscellany.



We have quite a few trays like what you see here with various boxes or little brown bags. We went through all of this. and separated out in categories like: brass screws, black screws, small, med. & large wood screws, etc... Where we needed to, we broke things down more or less. Glazing points, for example, have their own little drawer.

Bonus: We found the extra nail set we'd been looking for!

I even went through our electrical supplies. We still have to go through plumbing supplies.


And the result? This shining beacon of organizational nirvana. Now we just need to get a few more of these and we'll be in good shape.



And while we were doing all this, we were listening to The Drive on our favorite work site boom box. I usually listen to either XRT or NPR, but somehow the station got changed.

The day this thing goes will be a sad day indeed. I have such fond memories of it, that I'll probably have to bury it in the backyard and maybe even mark it with a little stepping stone or something. But let's just hope that day never comes.

Last summer, we realized that the boom box was older than our contractor and found that pretty funny. Funny how such a junky thing can be so treasured. Do you have any ratty old objects that you are attached to like this?

Meet the Basement

Ever since we had the post replacement last May, things have been pretty much in disarray in the basement. Believe it or not, Steve used to have his office down there. Happily, he now has moved up the world and his office is on the 1st floor den.

What you see here is where his office was. We had rugs down and less junk, but it was pretty dismal. Especially because there was no natural light. So this summer, when we were adding windows, I insisted that we put a new window into this room.


Before, this window was boarded up and Steve had a huge cork board over it. It is amazing how much nicer a space is with some natural light.

As you can see in this photo, our foundation is stone with brick above it. When we finish the basement, we have the choice of covering the stone and brick with drywall or we could sandblast all of it and leave some of it exposed.

We know someone who did this and it looks nice. Of course, you'd lose insulation, but we were thinking of putting in radiant flooring and that would certainly help with warmth.


Here you see why brick should not ever be painted- a little thing called efflorescence.

Today, we swept and used our new shop vac to clean up as well as threw out as much we possibly could. We are trying to get rid of anything we don't need.

We also installed the shop vac finally. We selected the StorNGo by Ridgid because it doesn't take up alot of space and has 5 horsepower.

I was also on a mission to remove dead wiring and random nails and screws that have no use anymore. Getting rid of all the remnants left from all the hack jobs done in the past makes me feel better.

I'm really not sure how we are going to approach the basement renovation. I have some ideas for cleaning up certain areas that would just be temporary. No basement dig out is imminent as I've said before.

Currently we have some kind of tile on the floor that's been painted over. Underneath that is poured concrete. Of course, it's not unlikely this tile contains asbestos too.

I wouldn't want to scrape the tiles up myself until I have them tested and see what I'm dealing with. It would probably take me a long time and that's the kind of job you want over quickly.

The basement stairs have one coat of brown paint on them. Underneath this is solid oak. I have had the notion to strip them sometime when I'm in the stripping mood- probably not till we can have the windows open again though.

This is the view from our den to the basement. All this is original plaster and it's in decent shape.

I have also had the notion to repair the plaster where it needs it and paint the walls here. I mean why not? It would look cleaner and freshen it up.

Although I've thought of replacing the staircase with a spiral one that saves space, part of me likes keeping the original stuff. Especially when it's solid oak and in very good shape.

Oh, by the way, in this photo you can see who the real pack rat is around here. That stack you see are annual reports that are just a portion of what Steve has for reference for his work!

Anyway, this is just one side of the basement. The other side has the boiler, water heater, laundry room and lots more storage space. Alot of space to be claimed, which is why it is so tempting.

p.s. Greg, we didn't buy a Silent Paint Remover. I was planning to rent one from the hardware store this weekend, but when I went there, all of them were broken (phone first!). They told me that the switches were broken and that the company that makes the switches went out of business. That doesn't sound good and I may have to just use my heat gun now. I prefer to use the heat gun with outside ventilation and it is way too cold for that now, so this will have to wait.

Scary basement getting less scary

Steve got to work plastering the holes in the basement ceiling today. Plastering is sure a messy job- especially when it's a ceiling.



First, he applied the Plaster Weld (otherwise known to us as "the pink stuff")to the existing edges for better bonding. Steve is a firm believer in taking extra steps.

Then he mixed up the plaster.

He added sand as an aggregate so the plaster would match the textured look of our existing basement ceiling.

Here he is getting ready to apply the first batch.

He mixed it almost to the consistency of peanut butter.

And here's the first application going up.

It took a few layers to get it leveled out and quite a few hours, but it looks pretty good now.


Here's what it looked like with just the lathe up last weekend. And what did I do while Steve was plastering away all day? Rest assured I was pulling my weight. I was at the laundromat washing our comforters and other bulky items and I cleaned the house. I was going to SPR the den door, but I decided it would feel better to have a clean house this weekend.

Next weekend will be a stripping weekend.

Nostalgia...well, not quite

It's getting to be tax time, so Steve and I spent a few hours Sunday categorizing and sorting through all the receipts and invoices from the work that we did in 2006. Suffice it to say, there was ALOT of paper to sort through. Fortunately, we had managed to keep a level or organization through the process so we were not bad off at all.

Looking over all the invoices since paid and done with, I was reminded of just how much work we had done last year. It was alot. It was exciting. It was exhausting. It was, of course, more work than we thought it would be. Nerves frayed and tempers flared at times, but we survived to tell the tale.

And I found myself reliving some of the excitement and gratification that comes from big projects like we had going on last summmer. I found myself getting just a little hungry for the next big project.

The wheels starting turning about how much I want our basement finished off. Of course, the fact that Steve and I basically spent all day Saturday down there -him installing lathe and me weatherstripping 4 windows and cleaning out cobwebs- didn't help ease my growing urges.

I even started thinking that most dangerous of thoughts, "What can I do to move this project forward?" Now, I knew I was in trouble. I'm now scheming how I can come up with the funds to have the asbestos down there abated as soon as possible.


Now really, this is a good thing. For if Steve and I are to start working on anything down there on a regular basis, removing that dangerous element from the basement seems a wise move and one we will probably make.

But as for a total overhaul of our basement, there is only one thing that can save an obsessive project monger/house restorer such as myself from my own self. Lack of cash.

We will not be up for a big expense like that for a while, unless something dramatically changes in our finances.

In the meantime, we can do things little by little and bit by bit. Steve is repairing the plaster ceilings in a few places to make the rooms solvent. We don't need to live with holes in the ceiling for 5 years after all.

And we'll have the asbestos properly abated and I can work on things in the basement and not worry about cancer so much.

Otherwise, here are the projects we are planning to work on for the rest of winter:

Stripping the den/basement door and refinishing, Building out the pantry, correcting our swinging door installation, installing a few threshholds.

Furniture-wise, Steve is planning to make some new bed rails for a headboard my Mom bought. He's making them out of walnut to match the headboard. He is also going to make a stand to hold a large model boat for my Dad. And then, after he's done woodworking for others, the next item up is (for now) a plate rack for our kitchen.

This should keep us busy enough for a while...