The New House

It has already been referred to as the Brady House. Our 1969, split entry just waiting for us to add our personal style throughout.

The 4 bedroom, 3 bath, quarter acre is far more than we were looking for in a house. Yet, we could not pass up the opportunity.

In many ways, the house is stuck in 1969. Fortunately for us, the prior owner was attempting to flip the house and had completed much of the demo we would have otherwise done ourselves. A big thank you to him for removal of carpet, etc.!

Some of our initial projects included a new furnace, water heater (tankless), refinishing the floors, carpet in bedrooms, roof repair, and thinning and removal of trees.

SOLD!

On April 22nd it was official ... we sold our first house. All that work will now be enjoyed by another couple. We have already started on our new project. More on that soon. For now, let's celebrate the successful closing of a home sale dispite the slowed market.

Merry Christmas

Laundry Room

One of the things that sold us on our house was the large utility room. The house lacked storage overall, but the utility room was the largest room in the house. And the one in need of the most serious facelift.

We converted the once utility room into 3 separate spaces; 2nd bathroom, pantry/storage, and laundry room. While we have been using the bathroom for months, and have the pantry stocked with food, we had not completed the laundry room.

Part of the hold up was the horrible plumbing job by American Plumbing Services. They came highly recommended and had great reviews on Angie's List. No matter ... they messed up our project. Lesson learned: Although a company may have overall good reviews, find out about the individual assigned to your job, and their personal performance history.


C, an Electrician Apprentice NOT Plumbing Apprentice, set off to redo much of the work we paid good money for. The problems stemmed from the fact the water supply was not recessed into the wall, the shut off valves stuck out from the wall 8 inches, the drain pipe was secured only by the fitting at it's base, and the exhaust pipe was 2 inches off the wall. All of this prevented us for being able to push the washer and dryer to the wall. Rather, we had to float them into the room about 10 inches; precious real estate to say the least. Another issue was the mounting of cabinets with the exhaust pipe running the height of the room.


Another problem we had with the plumbers was the drilling of holes in the top of our new utility sink. We had assembled a temporary stand, and in an effort to "help" us they drilled four screws, one in each corner, right through the top surface. The owner of American Plumbing Services promised to reimburse us for new sink. We have yet to see the results of that promise.

C cut into the wall, re-plumbed everything to include placing the water supply and drain in a tidy little laundry hook-up box. He then patched the wall and installed cabinets.

We shopped around for the cabinets and decided upon the self-assembly required Ikea cabinets. With a kitchen remodel in our future, we considered this an experiment to help us determine if we wanted to use a similar product for the kitchen. The assembly was simple enough for one person, and the initial install was also completed solo. The final tweaking did required two sets of hands. One thing we learned about the Ikea product was that while most items are in stock, cabinet doors are custom order. We were able to take the cabinets home on the day of purchase, and the doors were delivered a couple of weeks later. The hinges for the doors are pretty amazing, and we were able to snap the doors into place without take the cabinets off the wall.

My dream laundry room includes a shiny red, front-loading washer and dryer. My budget does not include those items. In order to achieve a colorful element in the room, we painted the wall beneath the cabinets and above the washer/dryer red. While the pictures don't show off the color, I feel like I have my red and didn't blow the budget to get it. Win-win!

Follow Up - New Windows

It has been a month, and we still love the new windows. Although we live on a dead end, we still experienced a fair amount of street noise from the gravel road. That has been greatly dimminished. But, most exciting is the cost savings on our heating bill.

Last week I recieved the gas bill and set out to do a comparison. If you look at the same period in the prior year, we saved $80 with the new windows. When I average the last 3 years bills for the same period, there is an average savings of $50. Of course, there was an investment in the new windows, but it is nice to see a cost savings in addition to the aethstic improvement.

Our windows were custom order insulated glass, installed by Classic Sash and Door.

The windows are in!

Back in August, we ordered windows to replace the last remaining single pane glass in the house. Today they were installed!

The before picture shows the storm windows circa 1970 with their unsightly aluminum frame. The center window was busted and missing when we bought the house. We never dared remove the others for fear of breaking them too. We may not have liked the look, but it was better than the draft created without them.

The after picture shows the new double pane, insulated/gas filled glass. To keep as much of the original look as possible, each window was custom made to fit the opening (12 in whole, the window wraps around to the left with 3 more panes). The installers cute small strips of wood which the primed and set into the frame to hold the glass in place. You can still see some spots of former paint, but with a fresh coat on the trim these babies are going to look awesome!

In other news, we have made good progress on the laundry room. We made a trip to Ikea last night to buy the wall cabinets. We only needed 3, thought it would be a piece of cake. Well, we were wrong! Turns out most of their doors are customer ordered. We came home with the cabinets but won't have the doors for about 3-4 weeks.

C did assemble and install the cabinets today, and was happy with the process. We have long considered using Ikea cabinets when we get around to doing out kitchen. This was a test run of sorts, to see if assembling the cabinets was worth the cost savings. So far so good. Check with me again when I've been eating out of a microwave for months and I may have something different to say.

Tying up loose projects... Take II

Back in January, I wrote an entry about all the loose ends we needed to tie up around the house. The projects that were 90% complete, but that last 10% seemed so out of reach. Well folks, it may have taken me a couple of years, but I FINALLY got the office ceiling painted. You may recall, we (read: C) moved the closet back in Nov. '06.

This weekend also saw touch-up paint in the new bathroom, re-hanging of curtains I took down to wash a year ago, hanging of new curtains purchased a year and a half ago, adjustments to surround sound installation, installing of the register covers in the new bath/utility rooms, and prep for the hanging of cabinets in the utility room.

Remaining untouched is the trim from the floor install. We have a call in to someone more talented than us to hire out the job. That doesn't seem to be moving too fast though. (Leave it to me to wait 2 years to work on something, then not want to wait a week for a quote). Anyone know a finish carpenter or flooring guy/gal who is both available and good??