Adventures in Renovation

Right now, I’m on a plane to Thailand. My house is far, far away. Slowly but surely, everything I need to do when I get back is slowly fading away. But I’m still trying to shake that nagging worry that I have work to do.

Renovating a house is crazy. But sometimes I get the feeling it’s just because I make it that way.

This week I’ve been teetering on the edge of failure… back and forth. up and down. And so close to success I could taste it.

Sunday ended up much than Saturday. I had a pow wow with Camillo and he agreed to do my drywall while I was gone for the same price as my budget. I was incredibly relieved. He also agreed to install the gas line for the stove and dryer. And sure enough, 8:00 AM Tuesday morning Camillo and his Dad showed up with sheets of drywall and installed the new gas pipes that day. Things were looking up.

But I really drove myself into the ground trying to do everything else. And I finally finished the plumbing for the water supple for the kitchen, laundry room and the hose bib outside. With more help from Camillo! Apparently, he loves soldering water pipes. Probably because it’s such a macho manly thing. :)

But this last week I drove myself into the ground trying to finish a million little things on the house, prepare and pack for my 2-week trip, and getting ready for a brand launch I’ve been working on at work for the past 3 months. I haven’t been that stressed out since… I have no idea. It was like college finals. Lots of stress and caffeine and very little sleep.

But at about 10PM on Friday, the night before I left, I finally gave up. I let it go. I just had to accept that it wasn’t going to happen and focus on getting ready to leave for the trip. It was hard even tho I was so sick of working on it… I was so close. If I had just one more good day, I could have finished. So damn close. I was so sick of it.

And I was making really stupid mistakes. I couldn’t think straight at all. After I waited a couple hours for the glue to set on the plumbing, I decided to test it for leaks. Camillo was there and he said “Oh good. It’s better to have 2 people there for that.” (in case there’s any problems.) I turned on only the cold water and then went upstairs. Camillo noticed a little water near the washer hook-up valves and thought they might be on, but as soon as he touched the valve… BOOM! The pipe explode and water started spraying everywhere. It wasn’t the valves tho, I had actually forgotten to glue a joint. Duh! So I checked all my pipes and found 2 other joints I hadn’t soldered! That’s what happens when I rush stuff… I miss things.

Oh yeah… I also totally ran out of pipe. A few times. The last little bit I put together for the hose bib, I had to use 2 couples to put 3 little leftover pieces of pipe together. That’s all I had left. Barely enough to finish. Oh well, It’ll be covered by drywall so no one will ever see my dumb mistake. Except on this blog. And Flickr. Other than that… I’ll take it to my grave.

So I’m kinda glad I didn’t get it done. I was kind of skimping out on shit and not fixing problems that came up. Now I can make sure I do stuff right. That is, if I can remember what I was doing after I’ve been on the beach for 2 weeks. ;)

Posted by at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The story so far:

Vicki’s been traveling southeast asia for almost 4 months now. I wanted to have the kitchen finished by the time she got back to surprise her. Work at my new job has been very busy. Vicki decided to come back early and I realized the most I could hope to accomplish by then was to get the drywall up. But when the drywall goes up, it’s very encouraging and exciting. Vicki’s been saying it’d be a lot of fun to paint the walls right after she got back.

I also realized the best situation would be if someone could do the drywall while I’m visiting Vicki in Thailand for two weeks. But I don’t trust the guy who did my drywall upstairs enough to give him a key to my house while I’m out of the country. Not even because I’m afraid he’ll steal my stuff as much as I’m worried he won’t do a good job without me checking his work. And it’s hard to find anyone a cheap as Ramone. But Greg said he could do it for me and at a price comparable to Ramone. It looked like everything was falling into place.

So I’ve been busting my ass for the last couple months in order to get everything ready for the drywall to go up. I’m up late all the time, getting very little sleep and keeping to a strict no-fun diet. Even with the chaos of the holidays right in the middle, surprisingly it looked like I was going to be able to get everything done…

My dad came up yesterday to help me knock off my slowly shrinking list of little things to finish before the drywall can go up. We managed to get all the things done that I had already figured out he could help with. Lot of little jobs: removing the door jamb to the basement, replacing the drain for the tub, putting in wood blocking to hang the kitchen cabinets and microwave on, fixing the loose floor boards upstairs and down, and running some flexible conduit to run ethernet cable through for upstairs. He’s been a tremendous help.

Now I’ve been trying to get Greg over so he can take a look at everything that needs to get done for weeks now. I wanted him to take a look at exactly what he’s got to do and talk about exactly what my budget and schedule is so I could make sure he was okay with everything. He even said he could hook up my gas line for my stove and dryer for me which was very exciting because that was a loose end that I keep forgetting about.

So I finally got him to come over to my house yesterday so he could see my progress. We talked a little about all the work I had gotten done since he last saw it. I showed him the gas line and figured out what I need to pick up from Home Depot for him. I ran over what my budget was and what kind of materials I had left from the last drywall job. And he seemed cool with everything until he was walking out the door and I asked him if he thought he could actually get everything done in two weeks. He asked me “When are you leaving? Well I’m going to be working on my house for another three weeks. So I won’t start until after that.”

Poof. All my dreams were gone.

It’s an incredibly huge disappointment. I’m crushed. I know Vicki won’t really care as much, but I was really looking forward to painting “I love you Vicki” or maybe “Welcome to your kitchen” on a nice big finished wall for the day she got back.

Posted by at 7:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Day before yesterday I finished the drain for the kitchen and laundry room. Or I should say, I did the drain all in one night. It took maybe 6 hours. I was up till 2 in the morning working on it. I moved the miter saw into the basement so I could keep working and not piss off the neighbors. But then the next day I was too tired to do any work at all. This inevitably happens. Maybe one day I’ll figure out how to work on stuff like a normal person and just methodically work without killing myself and get it done ahead of schedule. But for now, I don’t have time to wait.

All in all the drain wasn’t that hard. There was plenty of room to work in the wall. I ran all the pipes behind my studs so I didn’t even have to drill. I didn’t have to re-cut anything. Towards the end, I dry fit all the fittings and marked them with little marks to make sure they’d line up just like they tell you to do in the books and it worked out really well. I was really surprised. Nothing like the huge pain in the ass tight fit like my bathroom was.

Now tonight I can hopefully get rockin’ on the supply pipes and I might even finish that before this weekend. That would be awesome! But who knows.

Oh yeah, I also moved my range hood vent up three inches and that wasn’t all that hard to do. One day I’m cursing myself for being an idiot and feeling discouraged, and the next I’m banging right though stuff and feeling great about it. That’s the roller coaster ride of renovation.

Posted by at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Less than two weeks left. Before this weekend it was really looking like everything was going to be done ahead of schedule. But now a couple thing have gone wrong and I’m really stressed. On top of that, my house is full of flies. I have no idea why. They’re either coming from the neighbors house or there’s a dead mouse somewhere in my house. It’s freaking me out.

Last night I realized I put the range hood vent in the wrong place. I lined up the pipe at the top of my mark instead of the bottom. I guess it’s fortunate I realized that before the drywall went up. Still, I was pretty pissed at myself. Oh well, another thing I have to do twice.

Tonight I’m going to tackle the drain. I think I’ve got it all worked out in my head and on paper. I’ll go to the hardware store at lunch and then start drilling and gluing.

This weekend my Dad and I got all the trash out and to the dump. I finally got rid of 5 buckets of concrete I’d been trying to get rid of since I tore the porch down over 6 months ago. Yea! And this should be the last trip to the dump I ever have to make.

We also put up a bunch of insulation in the laundry room in the ceiling and one and a half walls. It’s noticeably warmer now. And much quieter. That fiberglass is a pain to work with tho. It’s nasty. I was cursing while we were putting it up because I should have bought more of the cotton insulation. I love the cotton stuff. I could make a bed out of it. Too bad I have to drive all the way to DC to buy it.

Sunday, my Mom came up to offer her wallpaper removal expertise. She took almost all the “Cafe Le Boo” painted wallpaper off the kitchen wall. The whole place looks really clean now. Very nice. She’s coming back next weekend to finish up that wall and a small portion on another wall.

I also bought a bunch of lights to try out from Ikea this weekend. Everything was on sale too. They sell a 3 pack of recessed 3” halogen lights, just like their track lights, for only $17. What a deal! I love Ikea.

Also, I bought a couple of these lighted shelves that are meant to replace the bottom shelf on the cabinet. They project light both down on the counter and up through the cabinet. It’s a really cool idea, but I’m not sure they’re going to look very good. They’re kinda greenish especially through the frosted glass and not very bright. We’ll have to see when I actually put the cabinets in.

Posted by at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)