Wherein the boy should get a medal too.

Just a warning on this post: BAD PHOTOS, AHOY. I was working in low-light/flash situations and they look terrible.

I was doing some research on my house and I decided to ask for help from the Multnomah County librarians. I always feel a little sneaky doing that, being that I'm a librarian and all, but nobody knows how to use their resources better than them. They found this newspaper clipping:

One of the houses I blacked out is mine. My house is modern! Hell yeah it is.

I also found this historic map that showed the proposed design of my house. It doesn't match the way my house looks now.

My house actually looks like this, with no nose at the front of the house.

The boy checks pretty frequently on Zillow to see how my house is doing. I don't do that because it's depressing (and I don't think it's accurate). It turns out one of the OTHER houses mentioned in that newspaper clipping is currently for sale.  And from the pictures it looks EXACTLY like mine on the inside. The boy got megapoints for that find.

I've written before that I don't believe my dining room has always been this big. I think it used to be two rooms.

Exhibit A: the hardwoods in this room inexplicably end about six inches past where the carpeting begins. There's only subfloor under the grody, grody carpet.

 

Exhibit B: this window in the basement looks into a very small square crawlspace that runs underneath the far corner of the dining room where the windows are. It meets the main crawlspace only via a small ventilation hole. That's not normal. I think it used to see daylight.

Exhibit C: there's a high spot on the dining room floor where that wall with the window to the crawlspace hits. Something is amiss.

Exhibit D: variegation in the finish on the wall . . .

 . . . which makes me think a wall used to be here. 

I really wanted to look inside that house for sale, so I sent an email to the realtor and asked. We pretended we were househunting and I have such a terrible memory, would he mind if I took photos? Playing spies is FUN. I was worried that Greg wouldn't be able to play the part because he's an enginerd but he was awesome. He totally kept the guy involved while I measured and took photos.

Their living room is identical to mine. They have the same fireplace tile (many people told me mine wasn't original, *coughDADcough*), except that they have twelve tiles across where I have ten.

Theirs

Mine

Oh, looky here. They have half as much dining room as I do. Their dining room ends right about where my wood flooring runs out. Hmmm.

Theirs

Mine

We both have excellent taste in living room paint colors!

Into the kitchen we go. They didn't retain any of the original tile or fixtures, sadly.

Theirs

Mine. We win because we have Gatorade.

That light fixture above the sink is going SOON. So what's on the other side of that dining room wall?

A breakfast nook!

Theirs

Mine

We measured the depth of their breakfast nook, which was 78", corresponding exactly to the high point on my dining room floor.

Their house was really dilapidated and sadly had lost a lot of the original charm. They bumped out their attic, adding two bedrooms upstairs (but no bathroom). This is good food for thought, should we ever want to add on.

We also discovered in the basement that they have the original oil tank!

Their window looks into their front yard.

This is excellent news for me. I had assumed that the tank was buried on my property, which makes it a hugely expensive pain in the ass to decommission and remove. If the tank has leaked (and they always leak) they have to bring in a back hoe to remove ALL the contaminated soil. My neighbors three doors down did this and spent $15,000. $15,000 for something that doesn't even look pretty or improve the function of your house. $15,000 to basically mess up your yard.

I looked at the historical permits and theirs look the same as mine. Both are labeled as underground yard units.

Theirs

Mine

It might explain what this random pipe in the side of my house is. Maybe where they used to fill the tank?

So, to recap, here's what I think happened. My house used to look like this in the front, with a separate dining room and breakfast nook.

They knocked down the interior wall between the dining room and the nook and brought the exterior nook wall out so it was flush with the outer wall of the dining room, creating a dining room on steroids and an exterior that looks like this.

Clear as mud? Am I crazy to think this or even care about it? Don't answer that.

I had so much fun being sneaky with Greg that I think we should quit our jobs and become grifters. Just think of how much more interesting this blog would be.

Finishing the bathroom

I hit a couple of snags while I was finishing the bathroom, mostly because I’d never done it before.  It wasn’t anything major, but it slowed down my progress.  My bathroom vanity finally arrived one afternoon and I thought (honestly!) that I would just install it after work.  No big whoop.

I got the thing unpacked and staged in the bathroom.  It was pretty.  I somehow came to my senses and realized that I wouldn’t be able to put it together after working ten hours.  I should eat dinner, drink wine, and play with the dog instead.

I should also go back to Home Depot because I hadn’t purchased the correct plumbing materials.  Grrr.

The following Friday I put together the sink, which required installing the faucet and the drain kit.  In retrospect this would have been easier with a second person.  I had the sink cradled in my lap while I blindly tried to wrench things into place, all while keeping handles and spigot pointed in the right direction.  This is harder than it sounds.  It’s not anything that requires a professional but there is a certain finesse to doing it.

I chose a faucet one step up from the "builder’s special," which is what they charmingly call the cheapest faucet available.  I didn’t want to spend a ton of money (faucets are surprisingly expensive) but I didn’t want to cheap out, then buy another faucet in a year.  I chose brushed nickel, which seems to be really popular right now.  Do you remember how everything in the 80s was brass and how outdated it looks now?  I hope that doesn’t happen with brushed nickel.

It will probably happen with brushed nickel.

Once the faucet was installed I put a thin bead of caulk along the base and set the sink on top of it and then the weirdest thing happened: the sink was no longer flush with the base.  It rocked a little bit.  I shifted the sink around a little, and still it rocked.  I have no idea what changed but I just hoped the caulk would magically fix the problem.  And you know what?  It did.

My major problem with getting the vanity installed was a shelf installed inside.  It was just high enough that it interfered with the P trap of the drain.  I thought, “Well I’ll just remove the shelf!”  Who needs a shelf?  I removed the screws only to find that the shelf was glued in.  Really tightly.  I tried to fudge it and install the plumbing anyway, resulting in a bit of uptilt of the P trap, but this made the drain leak.  Ultimately I borrowed a jigsaw from the North Portland tool library and cut out a little spot for the pipe to hang.  It doesn’t look that great, but nobody should know but me and my roommate, right?

It took me about a week to stop checking the drain to see if it was leaking every time I used the sink.  I still check every once in a while, sure that my work will fail.  My friend Keith came over and taught me how to change out a light fixture and I hung some artwork.  

I think I like it even better than the pedestal sink I had planned.

The new kitchen floor

The Marmoleum I wanted usually takes about three weeks to arrive.  They send a big truck from the midwest and it travels around delivering linoleum happiness to people.  With the economy in the crapper nobody was ordering flooring, so the truck was just sitting there, waiting to be filled.  Three weeks after we ordered the tiles they said it would be at least another three weeks.

As I mentioned before, I was brushing my teeth in the kitchen sink because my bathroom vanity was on order, and the kitchen floor was just dusty subfloor.  I think it was a real testament to either 1. how much I love this house or 2. how tired I was, that this didn't make me crazy.

I had waffled over the kitchen floor, wondering if I could install it myself.  I had been warned that it's not as easy to install as ceramic tile, that to get the seams sealed required some skill.  The Marmoleum Click tiles, which snap together like laminate flooring, would add height to the floor that I didn't want.  I found out that Marmoleum comes with a 25 year warranty if you have a certified installer put it in.  So I decided to spend the money to have it installed professionally.  I got a ridiculous number of bids and selected A-1 Linoleum.  I can't say enough good things about A-1.  They were fantastic, they were honest, they were NICE.  The owner split the difference of rushing the tiles out, which was about $60.

Worth every penny. Having a real kitchen floor again made me feel like a princess.  I love the feel of the linoleum under my feet.  A lot of people complain about old linoleum in their apartment or house and I have to point out that they have vinyl tile, which is a totally different thing.  Linoleum is made of renewable materials and uses no toxic chemicals.  So if I ever sell the house and the new owner doesn't like the floor (and MANY people dislike my flooring choice) they can rip it out and I don't need to feel quite as guilty if it ends up in a landfill.

The only problem with putting new things in your house is that it highlights how much other things need sprucing.

How bad does that weird carpet in the dining room look, now? Someday down the road I'll fix that . . .

But for now I really really love my kitchen.

Day 7: Painting

My very tall friend Garbear came over to help me paint.  Painting with tall people is the best.

Despite the fact that I bought a sample of this paint color and painted a large swatch, it still ended up different than I wanted. The swatch was gray with a purple undertone; it was perfect. When we actually painted the entire room I got lavender.  It's pretty but it's not exactly what I wanted.

For all my work, it still sort of looks like Easter ralphed in there.  But it's clean and fresh Easter puke.  And man, painting the ceiling is the coolest trick in the world. I will never ever paint a room without painting the ceiling as well (except for the dining room, but I was really tired!).  It makes the room look so clean, so crisp, so brand-spankin' new.

Garbear then painted my bedroom ceiling, the bedroom closet, and the insides of the built-ins.  A funny thing happened, though.  At some point during the day one of us filled his pan with flat paint.  Then at some point I filled it with semi-gloss.  Then who knows what went in there.  It was the exact same color (MetroPaint's Mountain Snow) but in a different sheen  Imagine the tiny bit of shininess you see here:

painted in great swaths across your ceiling.  It looked terrible.  Until I figured out the sheen mix-up (and I'm going to blame MetroPaint for mislabeled paint, not the beer we were drinking. BEER DOESN'T MAKE BAD THINGS HAPPEN.) I was thinking that Garbear was a spectacularly untalented painter. I assumed he was pressing harder with the roller or something, which doesn't make any sense.  I wish I could say that this was the last time I made this mistake, but after three months in the house I'm realizing that half the bathroom door is shiny . . . and the closet (which I hit with a second and third layer of what I thought was flat) has some shiny spots where I accidentally touched up with semi-gloss.  AGAIN.

Seriously, keep your semi-gloss and flat paint in different zip codes.  Or maybe ventilate better than I did?  Addled brains do not lend themselves to good decisions.

Day 3, 4, & 5: The bathroom

I'm pretty sure this wasn't original to the house. I knew I wanted to rip this vanity out, even as I was walking through the house for the first time with my realtor. Yep, I knew this house was mine even then. The question of the hour concerned the tile and whether it would continue under the vanity. My realtor and I were betting it would, but you never know.

I loved the floor tile in this bathroom. The shower tile (which was not original)? Not so much. And the color scheme they chose in here was puzzling, like Easter threw up.


I disconnected all the plumbing and turned off the water at the wall. I removed the countertop first, separating it from the wall where I discovered they had used 1/4" of glue. I don't do this for a living, but this seemed like an excessive amount of adhesive. I curse whoever made this decision.


I couldn't see where they had screwed the vanity to the wall, so I just pulled for all I was worth. Many things I do, not with brains or brawn, but rather out of stubbornness. It turns out that vanity was indeed screwed to the wall, but I just pulled that mothereffer right out of the wall. My back realllly hurt that night. But I had won! Take that, ugly vanity!

The technical term for this is "icky."

My spidey sense had told me I needed to pull this vanity out, and I'm glad I listened. There was mold, lots of dirt, hair, and dust. It was a respiratory nightmare, so guess what I did? I PUT ON A MASK. Go me.


Some bleach and elbow grease later, and I had all the grime taken care of. The thick layer of adhesive? I spent four hours chipping that stuff off. I gouged the hell out of the wall, too.

My friend Maura told me, after the fact, that there's some sort of product you can get at the hardware store that will melt this stuff off. But where's the fun in that? It's not like I had anything else to do in the house. Ahem.


It's sort of fun to see the old layers, the paint choices made by people 50 years ago. People back then were COLORBLIND.


I bought a Kohler pedestal sink on craigslist for $40 and was so excited to install it. Once I started digging around on the Internet I found out they call it "the graduate school project of DIY." It turns out you need to open the wall and install a crossbeam into which you can bolt the top part of the sink. It's tricky and there's a chance that you can crack the sink if you have something a few millimeters off. I firmly believe I could do this, given some help and lots of time, but I didn't have a lot of time, and I had many other projects to do. So I decided to let the pedestal sink go and install a new vanity. Of course, the one I wanted wasn't in stock so I had to order it. I was still awaiting delivery when I moved into the house, which meant I got to brush my teeth in the kitchen sink for two weeks.

I spackled all the gouges and holes in the walls and primed the bathroom with a gallon of Kilz. Then I scrubbed the hell out of the bathtub and toilet. Future plans included painting the bathroom, recaulking the tub, and replacing the wax ring on the toilet. I'm ambitious. Or dumb. One of the two.

The new garage door

My closing came down to the wire and I actually ended up closing two days late because of a hold up with the appraisal. Apparently they didn't like my half of a garage door. I didn't either, but it didn't seem like something that should stop me from getting my house. After much back and forth with my lender it was decreed that I had to put $800 in escrow until I proved that I had installed a new garage door. Grrr.

I looked online and saw that garage doors can cost as little as $180. I did a little digging and found out that installing a garage door yourself is pretty hard. I guess those big springs they use can cause dismemberment! And let's face it, I don't know how to install one myself and no one I knew had ever done it before. So I called up my friendly garage door installer and asked for "the cheapest garage door humanly possible." So while I didn't want to spend money on that, it had to happen.

Look who's all growns up!

And you guys? Coming home from work to find a project completed, a project that didn't require you to lift a single finger, save to sign a check? That is HEAVEN ON A STICK. He even swept up after himself. And the installer was hot, to boot. EVERYONE WINS.

In the end I was so glad they made me do this. I think my neighbors appreciated it greatly, I now had somewhere to store things like the lawnmower (which had been sitting in the kitchen, which smelled terrific), and I didn't put it off forever like I know I would have otherwise. Everyone wins.

Day 1 & 2: The kitchen

It has a nice personality!

The nicest thing I could call the kitchen is "comically grimy." The cabinets, while still in good shape, likely hadn't been scrubbed in 20 years. There's no range hood, so I imagine any smoke just sort of sat in the kitchen. The cabinet doors were filthy and the hardware was from the 70's. And it was very ugly. I decided to remove all the doors and drawers, remove their hardware, and to give them a good scrub in TSP.


I numbered the doors so I'd know where they'd go later. This was another Good Idea.

Some of the hardware didn't want to come off, it was so caked with grime. After scrubbing and rinsing and drying the doors, I did the same inside the cabinets, removing the old contact paper.

Man, do I have feelings about contact paper.

I removed 70 years of contact paper from the cabinets, layer upon layer of it. The bottom layer took me about two days to remove and I had to blast it with a hair dryer first to warm up the adhesive, then carefully peel it off in small strips. I swear that I am still finding bits of the old paper stuck to things in the house. I've decided that contact paper with adhesive is the devil, in fact. I decided it's not allowed in the house . . . well, except in those six drawers . . . but that's it!

I then painted the insides of all the cabinets and hit the doors and drawers with a coat of Howard Feed-N-Wax wood preserver. It made them shiny and pretty again. I had a lot of people ask me about paintning my cabinets, but I'm reluctant to do that. Once you paint it's hard to undo without a lot of time, effort, or expense. And I like the look of real wood. With the new hardware some of the cabinets look really nice:


With some of the doors the old hardware created a stained depression in the wood which still shows:


Someday, down the line, I'd like to have the doors refinished. I think the burl of the wood is gorgeous and these cabinets are STURDY. Someday I'll have a professional hang the doors too, because, man, is that ever hard to do by yourself. All of my doors are crooked or they overlap a bit, or they aren't level . . . I never knew that would be such a challenge.

First projects in the house

Monday: Day 1 of house work week.


Buying a fixer I sort of bounced all over the place with where I wanted to start. For some reason I felt like I needed to get the basement finished out so I could offer it to potential roommates as a place to be creative, watch TV, or just get away from each other. Nevermind that the sink in the bathroom doesn't work, I have a finished basement! I'm not sure what I was thinking.

As a side note, waiting for my closing date was the most stressful thing I've been through in a while. I couldn't do anything at the house, so instead I stewed and worried. I slept horribly, crunching numbers in my head almost constantly. Could I really afford this place? How long would it take me to get a roommate? One Saturday night I tossed and turned, convinced that no one would ever want to live with me if I didn't have a dining room table and chairs. THE HORROR. But I went out the next day to Rerun on Fremont and got a really cool (if a little dilapidated) Danish dining set for $70.

Anyway, the basement. Scott, Z, and Keith volunteered to help me put in laminate flooring in the basement the following Saturday. Lumber Liquidators had a very good sale going, so I could outfit the whole basement for about $350, which seemed like so much money at the time. So my first project was the pull the mildewing carpet out of the basement. This is the part in the story where people always say, "You wore a mask/ventilator, right?"


Ummmm . . . . no? It didn't even occur to me at the time. In retrospect? BAD IDEA JEANS, you guys. But I did it and I haven't died yet. The carpet came up really easily, as did the padding underneath. I got it hauled up the stairs and into the garage and it wasn't even 10am yet. I was feeling so good, like I was going to have this whole house finished in the one week I had taken off of work.

I encountered another layer of padding in the basement, the glue-down kind. And I noticed this unfortunate little problem:


These are water stains from where the water table rose in my basement. Or at least that's what I thought it was. So I emailed Keith and told him what I suspected and waited for a response. In the meantime I had this epiphany: any potential roommate is not going to care about the basement, they are going to care about the kitchen and the bathroom. And furthermore, so would I. So I decided to shelve the flooring project and focus instead on getting the bathroom and kitchen fixed up.

Most days I'm not very smart, but this idea? It was a very good one.