2015 - 1st Half of the Year

It's no secret that I like the outdoors... except after moving out here. The heat, the humidity, and the little tiny biting midges... it's just impossible. "Outside" was easier to deal with back in Texas because only the first of those three things was really a problem, and also plants grew really slowly. In Charleston if you turn around the grass has grown 4 inches because it rains roughly every other day from late spring - early fall. Landscaping was terrible, this fence was worse, and I set out to do a little something about it.

So I was told around 1979 the previous owner's parents planted a couple of loquat trees right up against the house. Like up against the bricks, which is a terrible idea for plenty of reasons. It took a chain saw, a lot of digging, and the truck to remove the larger of the two (also conveniently located right next to the gas meter). 

The remainder of the landscaping in the front yard was awful as well, so I took out all of it and planted some new things. Thousands of weeds came along with, but up until the horde showed up things looked pretty good!

I also planted a pecan tree in the hopes of getting pecans sometime reasonably soon. If the grass and everything else grows like crazy this will too...... right?

(9 years later she still has yet to get any pecans)

The old fence gone, now with a new one in place. This was really fast to put up. Just cut the dog eared part off of the pickets and use the cut off bits as a spacer to keep the gap between all of the pieces of wood the same. The frame for the gate pieces is made of chain link fence pipe and both of them have a caster from Harbor Freight on the bottom to help keep them from sagging. Works a LOT better than the old gate which has no support whatsoever and was made from pieces of wood that were all warped and junky.

Wrapping up the first half of the year, indoors. The first big project done and behind me but under pressure to finish the design and get the next one started. On a more personal level things weren't going so well since the previous summer. The first rental house had a major construction accident during what was supposed to be a simple roof replacement. The other three parties insurance companies just pointed their finger at each other, I had to hire an attorney, and some of the advice given was bad.

I also lost an immediate family member in the fall, right around one of the last updates before the multi-year break this site took. It wasn't until summer that I could really begin to process it all, but that was left incomplete for a long time.

The calm before chaos returns.

The End of The First Big Project

The post I thought would never happen... the first major project at this place, finally finished. Here's how the last part of it happened.

After going on way too many tours of homes I ended up with a huge thing for lighting. It doesn't take a whole lot to make a big difference in a place. At least one or two places had toe kick lighting so I had to learn how to do it myself. It's not really that hard. LED strips, a transformer, some low voltage wiring, and there you have it! Unfortunately there's a gap in there because it's impossible to install at the dishwasher. 

Not very visible when it's light out but I installed more LED strips underneath the shelves in the pantry that I made. It would have been a lot easier to see if the doors were open, but the inside of the pantry isn't exactly the nicest thing to look at so let's just pretend that it's all organized in there. Pantry doors are actually just closet doors that I ordered online. They can be used for all sorts of things and have held up great after being used for 10 years!

Did I mention that I like lighting? I've done cove lighting in every room that it made sense in and it makes a huge difference. This is just LED rope lighting on a dimmer and has been used easily 5 days out of the week for a decade now without complaints.

I also finished up the new front door early in the year. Mostly finished.... I never did put varnish on the trim pieces around the windows after staining them but they held up well enough until I refreshed the door much later.

Wrapping the exposes LVL that used to be hidden above the ceiling with veneer was the final piece of the project. To do this I bought some walnut veneer and gave it a couple coats of water based polyurethane. It matches the kitchen cabinets pretty well, and looks a lot better than a painted beam would.

The old and the new

And, done! Merry Christmas

Nine Years, a forgotten username and password later....

 Once upon a tine I planned on getting this thing caught back up. Then life happened, work, having kids, divorce, and becoming a single parent decided to hop along with. Not to mention immensely huge life changes of a more personal nature.

This picture sums up the state of the place and life in general.

 

 The 1870-1890s Eastlake piece is my distant past carried forward. It was in rough shape when I bought it at a neighbor's garage sale the spring after grad school. A piece between two drawers ruined by wood boring bugs, failing, poorly done refinishing job from som point, the entire thing had been completely neglected. A basket case that I completely repaired and renewed. It is survival.

The art on the wall and floor lamp are from a brighter time in my life, back in San Antonio the first of two times I lived there. They were from a peak moment in terms of friends, social life, work, and more or less everything really. Something unmatched until much more recent times. It is happiness returned.

The small table and chairs for my kids. Mom bought them when I was 4. I love my kids, no explanation needed.

The bathroom in the background for what all has happened over the last 9 years. The floorplan in this corner of the room is changed. A short hallway to the left gone, the dartboard area the previous owners penciled in when they added on to the house now half of something new and much better. It is my life and personal identity made right.

 What's not present is clutter. I am no longer married. 

I've said a few times before that I'll be back much sooner with the next post, and there is a LOT of content to cover since then! This time I'm not making any claims or promises. I want to catch this completely up but that's a bit of  challenge. When regard to future posts I make no claims but am hopeful they will come along naturally and in short order.

- Michelle

Where Have I Been?!

Sometimes you get right in the middle of things and then life comes at you fast. Last fall around the most recent update my brother died and I immediately left to go take care of things. This happened when I was finishing the outside of the front door. To sum it all up, I was dealing with that off and on until about March and I really didn't feel like starting any projects at home for a while. I wasn't in the mood to finish the ones I already started either, or really do anything much at all.

On top of that, I may have mentioned on here that a house we own in a historic neighborhood had a construction accident. There was massive damage and no one's insurance would step in and take care of their client's responsibility (there are three responsible parties). We ended up having to file a lawsuit and here we are, one year later. It looks like everyone may settle up next week so that burden will finally be lifted and we can move forward with that.

So where does that leave us now? The next project will be the corner of the house with the master bedroom, bathroom, closet and half bath off the family room. Basically, I am finishing rebuilding the 2002 addition. I have almost figured out the floorpan but there are a couple of things that I think still need improvement before I'm ready to get out the circular saw and start tearing things up. I'd also like to have a source for the vanity and design the built in hamper in the bathroom first, and have stone/tile picked out. With any luck I'll be able to get this project going in October and it will take a LOT less time to actually do because I won't have to keep stopping to go research some crazy idea one of us found and wanted to incorporate.

Immediately after this project wraps up I'm moving on to the next one, the dining room and den. This will be a little more of an adventure because I'll need to contract out some of the work. I am not an expert in putting in Terrazzo, adding doors to the back yard or rebuilding a fireplace. Since this is in the original footprint of the house we're going full MCM here. I've lifted a few cool ideas from pictures and house listings so it'll be fun to see how much can be incorporated here. To be honest I'm looking forward to this more than the bedroom/bathroom.

Stay tuned...

First Half of November

 Technically the very last day of October... the fan finally arrived and I installed it right before a Halloween party started, but I didn't take and pictures until a couple of days later. We really like it! The fan is a Haiku by Big Ass Fans. This is the only one that's still made in the US as far as we were ever able to tell anyway.

 I also came close to wrapping up the mini-project known as the front door. This is how it looked when it was installed and after windows were in. Neither of those were as easy as they sound - especially trimming the door on the long and short sides. It was probably the most difficult part of the project because after putting all of this work into it the last thing I wanted to do was cut it too small!

Since our huge project is finally wrapping up I was finally able to start cleaning up. These cabinets were intended to be used at a rental but that didn't work out. I donated them to Habitat along with a ton of other stuff we removed from the house. It was great to finally get the den back!

It's not perfect, but it's a whole lot better.

October

In the month of October I worked only on doors. The remaining ones that I had to install went up, all the stuff for the front door arrived and it was time to figure out how to make it and put it all together. It actually wasn't that hard. Given known dimensions of a standard front door I was able to take measurements from a picture and use those to figure out how large and where the windows should be. Then all there was to do was cut them out and finish the door.

To do that I needed a router and a guide. The best guide for this sort of thing that I could come up with was to clamp dimensional lumber and run the router against that. It gave straight, repeatable cuts every time. I took out only 1/4" of material at a time so this took a while. Once I had actual window sizes I was able to take those to a local glass company to have windows made. While waiting I stained and finished the wood. All of this made a huge mess with tons of sawdust flying around everywhere. Of course I did all of this in the dining room so there was a lot of cleaning to do.

Second Half of September

The second half of September was spent mostly with me wrapping up electrical odds and ends. The doors for all rooms adjacent to the family room arrived from Baird Brothers and I also started the finishing process and installed the first one of those. It was nice to FINALLY have a door to the master bedroom!

I also ordered everything we would need for the front door. No small undertaking since I wound up trying to match up finishes between parts that were new and others that were over 50 years old.

The last project was to make the refrigerator surround. The plan calls for a Subzero but since we have a heavily damaged rental house and unresponsive insurance companies to deal with it seemed best to use the refrigerator we have for the time being.