Just a girl with a hammer

Tag: decor

  • Flooring!

    Flooring!

    In other big project news, after eight years(!) in the house, we finally got our wood floors refinished. It took this long because I couldn’t afford it for years, then once we could I knew we’d have to move out of the house to have it done. We also had a huge question mark about the sloping subfloor under the carpet.

    We had no idea if fixing a creaky franken-floor would cost $500 or $5000. Just to recap, at one point our dining room was two rooms: a formal dining room (the side with the big window) and a kitchen nook that was 2/3 as deep as it currently is. The kitchen nook was bumped out to meet the front of the house and the wall between knocked down.

    Plywood removed and subfloor revealed

    They either ran out of money to finish out the oak flooring or got lazy? They put down plywood and slapped some carpet on top. The floor sloped and squeaked. When I moved in there was evidence of a previous roof leak (this wall is drywall when every other wall in the house is lathe and plaster and there was clearly damage to the ceiling), and the mouldings were all hiding in the garage.

    Anyhoo, we finally bit the bullet and hired Union Floor Co. In preparation I started cutting the carpet away from the wall so it could be easily rolled up the morning that work started. In the course of doing this I discovered past water damage and dried, inactivated mold. Yay! We are assuming this was from the previous leaking roof because why would you replace the plywood when you’ve had a leak and you could just put carpet on top?

    There were a couple of reasons that the floor squeaked. For starters, when they were nailing in the plywood THEY MISSED THE JOIST. So the plywood was sitting atop the joists in places. There was a particularly bad squeak that Greg would stand on and rock back and forth, just to drive me crazy, and I would think, “Oh that’s why people get divorced after a year.”

    It turns out that that squeak was caused by a nail that had been shot into our metal air duct. Every time we stepped in that spot the nail would scratch across the duct. Company that built this floor, I WOULD REALLY LIKE TO REVIEW YOU ON ANGIE’S LIST.

    Other issues included the weird hatch in our closet (read more about that here):

    We had deep gouges in the bedroom where someone dragged something heavy across the floor.

    Pet stains in the living room:

    Extensive staining, water marks, and paint drips in the dining room:

    They just generally looked terrible:

    The dining room was leveled and patched with white oak flooring, as Siberian oak is no longer available.

    We moved everything into the basement and a POD outside and I decided that we are never ever moving because we have too much stuff.

    We moved out of the house for a week and into an Airbnb a block away. I was able to check in and be incredibly picky about how the floors were looking. The main worker kept saying things like, “The scratches aren’t coming out in the bedroom but you lived with them before, so . . . ” and then I’d feel like I was having a stroke.

    I had told the owner that we didn’t care how much it cost, we wanted all the scratches and stains removed, either by flipping the boards or installing new boards. It was in our contract. We didn’t move out of our house to “live with” floors that weren’t fixed because it was more effort. I called the owner and asked him to clarify with his employee that we wanted them as perfect as humanly possible.

    And they did it!

    We opted to seal the floors without a stain and they’ve assured me that the new white oak will patina to match the original Siberian oak. I’m skeptical, but my fingers are crossed. We did a satin finish, which is the least shiny option.

    The nails in the original flooring are more pronounced
    Other than that, the floors look SO GOOD.

    Former closet hatch

    Site of former floor gouges

    We’re very happy with the results. We’re also totally exhausted from cleaning the house and moving back in. There was a fine layer of dust on every surface, requiring a wipedown of all the walls, counters, windows, etc.

    I’m going to be camped out here for the next couple of weeks, until my feet stop hurting.

  • And now my greatest source of shame

    And now my greatest source of shame

    There’s one area of the house I never photograph because it’s so awful. I don’t ever want guests to see it, which means it’s always the first place they peek.

    Our bathtub looks like someone was murdered in it, after which time they cooked up a batch of meth. Or maybe the meth came first, but then something definitely died in here. I tried bleach, vinegar, scrubbing bubbles, Oxyclean, you name it. Ironically, it’s harsh cleansers that cause or intensify those discolorations. You live, you learn. (Can you spot all the Alanis Morissette song titles in that paragraph?)

    Our grout is cracked and missing in places and looks awful. We have both that weird pink bacteria AND black mildew. Greg flew to Germany for a two-week business trip this spring, so I decided to finally do something about it (that wasn’t a full on remodel).

    I had that f*cker refinished. Take that, meth corpse! Then I poured myself a glass of wine, put that one Neko Case song on repeat, and went at the grout with Q-tips and hydrogen peroxide. Then I patched the missing grout in places. It still looks pretty terrible but it’s MUCH better.

    The tub didn’t turn out perfectly. There are tiny holes where bubbles formed in the finish and there’s what they call a “sag” where it looks like the paint dripped.

    I called the guy at Premier Glaze and asked if this was normal or something he wanted to fix? He came out to see the results and declared, “I want to redo this for you.” So that’s still in our future. But our bathroom no longer looks like a crime scene! It just looks like a pretty normal bathroom with mauve shower tile from the 80’s.
    Then, since I wasn’t having enough fun showering at the gym, I had the walls replastered. Before, we had a giant hole in the wall where the previous owner had removed the medicine cabinet. I kept the hole, hidden behind the mirror, just in case I wanted to install a new medicine cabinet later. It’s been five years, so I’m guessing that cabinet ain’t going to happen.
    The wall was terribly rutted and poorly patched (by me!)
    I used John Macnab and the process took two days.
    The finish is SO DREAMY. The walls look beautiful. I wish I’d had him replaster all the walls instead of just these two.
    Last fall when Anna helped me pick out a color for the living room she tackled the challenge that is this room. The original purple and yellow tile is easy but those awful pink shower tiles throw everything out of whack. Anna ended up finding a color (BM Hampshire Taupe) that matches the grout in the purple and yellow tile. Then she picked out a metallic (Ralph Lauren York Purple) for the wall over the shower. 
    The main color initially went on the color of a flesh colored crayon and I totally panicked. Then I decided to just go for it because hey, I can always repaint. And you know what? I love it. It’s the perfect taupe-gray with just a touch of purple.
    I know what you’re thinking: “That looks like the same color.” Greg couldn’t even tell that I had painted it a different color, but look:
    We refer to this as “the butt painting”
    The new tub finish cleans up beautifully using Scrubbing Bubbles and a soft sponge. Did I mention it only cost $355 to refinish? Why didn’t I do this earlier?
    And some day I will have the money to hire either Tommy from This Old House or Chris and Meryl to retile the shower and there will be great rejoicing.
    And just to recap, when I moved in:
    And then:
    And now.
    Yay!

  • I let someone photograph my garden in January

    Our house is featured on Houzz today, holy smokes!

    General contractors, home builders, and more ∨

    Home improvement can start with something as minor as installing track lighting or ceiling fans.
    Search for a fun counter stool, clock, sectional and storage dresser to spice up your basement.

    I was emailed by a Houzz photographer in December about showing some before and afters of our house and I initially didn’t want to do it. There are still so many rough edges and unfinished projects that I didn’t feel like the house was ready. In the end I decided “perfect is the enemy of good” and that I might never get a chance to have a professional photograph our house again. 
    Greg declined to join in because he felt like he’d be stealing my thunder (and he’s shy). Oddly, the bathroom didn’t make it into the shoot. I think that’s the universe confirming that I need to repaint!
    There are more photos here, as well. Eeep!
  • Starting the year off right . . . with chemical fumes

    Starting the year off right . . . with chemical fumes

    A happy new year to you! Is anyone else glad to have December behind them? I feel like I just finished a marathon and now I want to climb into bed and watch movies while wearing sweatpants for the next six weeks . . . but I also sort of want to get out in the garden? It’s a weird feeling that is making me antsy but also very sleepy and like I’d like to eat a lot of pasta. It’s awfully confusing and it’s making me get weird impulses around the house.

    The doorbell that’s original to the house has never worked. I bought a wireless one at Home Depot when I moved in and called it good. This summer our electrician was futzing with the original unit while he waited for me to pick up supplies and he actually got it working for about five minutes. You guys, it makes the most beautiful sound.
    He lost the thread somehow because it stopped working and we chased him up into the attic so he could finish the electrical upgrade there. I plan on having him come out again sometime when I have money to burn so he can get it working. 
    I was thinking about crawling into bed with my seed catalogs this weekend but then I decided I should try and strip the paint from the doorbell cover. No idea why! Then I ate a bunch of pasta. It was actually a pretty good night.
    Under three layers of paint (white on top of red on top of tan) there were brass musical notes and a gunmetal case. I had to spend a good hour with steel wool and a bottle of Brasso to get it looking like this; it could use a few more hours of elbow grease still. Citristrip and plastic wrap removed the paint with almost no effort, which makes me wonder what else in the house might be worth stripping.
    I should just strip Greg. He certainly smells better than Citristrip and he’d probably make me some pasta afterward. Priorities, I have them.
    I hope you had a marvelous holiday season and that your new year smells better than mine.
  • Snug as a bug, slub as a mustard

    Snug as a bug, slub as a mustard

    Since spending an ungodly amount of money on having the house insulated, we’ve noticed a drop in our heating costs. The house is less drafty than before, which really helped when the temperature dropped to 6 degrees. The one exception has been the bedroom, where we have sliding glass doors with a broken thermal seal. The old curtains had thermal liners but they weren’t big enough to cover the whole expanse of glass, and as a result this room was freezing.

    I wanted new drapes anyway and I wanted to try something I’d seen on various blogs: curtains made from dropcloths. I bought the heavier weight canvas cloth in the largest size I could find.

    I had to wash them three times and then air them out for about a month because they smelled awful. I wanted to do pinch pleats on my drapes but, due to a poorly situated seam in the dropcloth, I didn’t have enough fabric. I had picked up a roll of 54″ thermal blackout fabric this summer on clearance, so I used that as a guide for making sure the curtains were square. I have a terrible time making things square, which is why most of the baby blankets I’ve made have been trapezoids. But I think these turned out pretty well!

    They are fully lined, so they’re HEAVY. As you can see, “sewing a straight line” is not in my grab bag of skills.

    Wonky seams aside, these things really work. Our bedroom is a black pit when they are closed and the room is about 15 degrees warmer. And since they cost me less than $100 to make, I bought a new duvet cover.

    Ignore the uneven artwork, I was just experimenting.

    I’ve had my heart set on mustard since before I painted the room. I saw an image on Pinterest of a dark moody room with a tufted mustard armchair. I loved the image so much I didn’t even pin it and now I can’t find it. It was that good.

    Greg really doesn’t like this color and I am deeply in love with it. I get it, it’s a divisive color. I look at it and see curry and goldenrod and deliciousness. Greg looks at it and sees baby poop and old mustard. Tomato, tomahto.

    We both agree that this duvet is incredibly soft. It’s Coyuchi organic cotton and it’s the first time I’ve opened a package of bedding and smelled . . . nothing. It’s dreamy. I recommend it, if you’re in the market for a new duvet (and they come in lots of colors if you hate the mustard).

    ALL THE SNUGGLIES.

    The last step before I declare this room “done” is to replace the bedside lamps with better task lighting. Those lamps suck for reading or drawing or anything detailed. And since I do everything from bed (I’d cook dinner from there if it was possible) I need good light.

    On the upside, Greg really like the colorful pillow I sewed! It has a zipper in it and it’s pretty square and I’m pretty darn proud of it. So, are you with Greg or with me? Help me convince him it’s good. How can you hate on a color called “slub mustard?”

  • Entryway, take two

    Entryway, take two

    A year ago, right before Thanksgiving, I decided to paint our entryway. The color didn’t turn out quite like it was supposed to but we lived with it. 
    So shiny! So blue!
    When I consulted with Anna to pick a paint color for the dining room she noticed that we have a lot of mid-range brown furniture and suggested French Press by Benjamin Moore for the entryway. 
    The color has really grown on me but initially both Greg and I missed having blue in here. How silly is that? I really like mixing brown and black but Greg isn’t a fan of the black doors with this color. 

    I’m really, really, really over gallery walls (I blame Pinterest) but I still like them in very small spaces. I’d love to cover every inch of our bathroom in artwork . . . too bad humidity is so bad for it. I crammed all the spare artwork I could find to juj it up in here.

    Greg was teasing that some day someone else will own this house and they’ll see all the layers of paint and think they were applied over a 60 year period when in reality it was over three. For now I think this is staying. I finally admitted that our baseboards are so layered in paint that I can’t freehand a straight line and used Frog Tape. Holy shit, that stuff actually works!
    I’m thinking a more colorful rug will make me fall in love with this entryway. Any opinions?
  • The bedroom! An outward manifestation of my capriciousness!

    The bedroom! An outward manifestation of my capriciousness!

    While Greg was gone and I was painting the dining room, I also painted the bedroom. For anyone keeping track (me, Greg, psychiatrist), this is the third time I’ve painted it. I picked this color out myself so I can’t even blame Anna if people don’t like it. It’s Stained Glass by Benjamin Moore.

    I promise it’s not the same color as the dining room. It’s darker and bluer (and very hard to photograph).

    I think whoever prepped this house to sell was worried that they would run out of paint, so they decided to paint two walls in each room one color, and the other two walls a different one. The paint colors were all mis-tints bought from the clearance bin at Home Depot. I know this because they left me the cans in the basement. This bedroom had two pale green walls and two French blue walls.

    I initially painted it Cilantro Cream by Behr and it was okay.

    Then Greg was going to move in and I decided I had to repaint the bedroom. So I tried to get a color match to the spare bedroom color, which was a Metro Paint color. Because Metro Paint is made from recycled paint, there’s no consistency to their colors. The color match wasn’t very good, but again the color was fine. Pale blue. Like the dining room.

    Mid-painting

    But now it is dark and delicious and I love it. Why are interiors so hard to photograph?

    I really want brass swing-arm sconces instead of those dinky bedside lamps. I don’t care if I’m blindly following fads, I think they’re pretty:

    I used to read books but then I discovered TV, which is like reading except it’s less effort and you can surf the web while you do it! This TV is old and weighs over 60 pounds, so I had to con my friend Bill into helping me get it off the wall before I could paint.

    I love the color of Dracaena ‘Limelight’ against the walls

    I have something in the works for new drapes, which will hopefully be less labor intensive than when I sewed the living and dining room drapes. The sweater rug at West Elm went on sale recently so we got an 8×10′ rug for $350 but now I’m wishing I’d gone with the darker colored rug. And not just because I’ll probably spill wine on it.

    At the very least we need a new duvet cover, no? I think this one deserves to be replaced after all the wine it’s put up with. What color would you go with?

    I’d like to incorporate more plants in the room as well, but being so accident prone = no plants on the bedside table. Two things recently made me laugh until I almost peed: an article from The Onion “Man Puts Glass of Water on Bedside Table in Case He Needs to Make Huge Mess in Middle of Night” (thanks Scott) and this photo on Pinterest:

    Everything was fine until I got up to pee in the middle of the night, tripped over the stack of books, and impaled myself on the antlers hanging on the wall.

    If you’re wondering what Greg thought, he likes it! In fact, he’s digging the more saturated colors so much that he thinks we should repaint the spare bedroom.

    I’m thinking I should let him have the fun this time and I’ll just watch. Painting is a lot of work and I have so many things to spill on the new rug.

  • And then I painted everything

    And then I painted everything

    Greg recently went to a trade show in Europe and was gone for two weeks. Two weeks! I have a habit of painting while he’s gone (proof here, here, and here) and this time was no different.

    Except that he was gone for so long that I had to paint multiple rooms.

    First up was the dining room. For anyone keeping track (so far that’s me, Greg, and my psychiatrist), this is the third time I’ve painted this room. The first color was a disaster, so I painted it again two days later.

    The color(s) when I moved in

    First disastrous paint color, minty fresh

    Two days later, second alright color

    The second color, that washed out blue, was never something I was in love with. It just didn’t make me shudder the way that minty green did, so it stayed. Also, I was sick of painting by that point.

    But! Now I had holes in the ceiling to repair and a ginormous hole in the wall to fix. When you’re very lucky, your house comes with TWO fuse boxes.

    This fuse box confounded three different electricians, who couldn’t figure out WHY there would be two boxes in one house, one upstairs, one down. It powered a very strange set of things, like: the refrigerator, the outlets in the bedroom, one switch in the living room, and, somewhere in Mongolia, a single lamp that an ancient man cooked by. The main box in the basement powered everything else.

    One reason that our electrical upgrade took so long is that our electrician removed this and properly rerouted our wires to one single box in the basement, which he then balanced and upgraded. This is all fancy talk for saying that we had a huge hole in the wall now, and the lights no longer dim when you run the microwave. Huzzah!

    Blah blah blah, patchy patchy patchy . . .

    I finally got smart and got professional help on the paint color. Anna Kulgren is a gardening friend who I came to learn also has degrees in architecture, interior design, horticulture, and loads of other things. She’s also a brilliant color specialist and runs a small design-build studio in Portland called Optic Verve. She came over with her suitcases full of color swatch decks and got down to business.

    In no time she found the perfect color for the dining room. You guys, she’s SO GOOD.

    But first I also had to patch the ceiling where the old light fixtures were. I think I did a pretty okay job.

    We chose Benjamin Moore’s Caribbean Teal and I’m head over heels for it.

    I cannot recommend Anna enough. If you are struggling with finding the right colors for your home, call her. She also figured out colors for our crazy blue entryway and our bathroom. I can’t wait to get painting again. That’s really saying something, considering I spent two weeks prepping and painting. I’ll show you the bedroom next!

  • Ready for insulation

    Ready for insulation

    I’m also ready for my nervous breakdown. I don’t know why, but this upgrade-the-electrical-and-insulate-the-house project has broken me. Oh wait, I know why: it’s really freaking expensive and disruptive. Again, I would never survive a full-scale remodel.

    I’m going to apologize in advance for how whiny I’m being. Break out your tiny violins.

    I mentioned a while back that Greg was going to invest in the house and pay for electrical upgrades and insulation, but that changed. Everything is fine with the two of us but it left me scrambling to apply for financing and it annihilated my savings to pay the electrician. As expected, everything took a bit longer than expected, if that makes sense.

    The financing took place with Umpqua Bank with a really obnoxious man who kept asking, “No husband? You’re doing this by yourself?” Then he slowly explained how a checking account works and what would happen if I “just had to have that diamond ring” and overdrafted my account. I am not making this shit up.

    Have I mentioned that I’ve been having insomnia so I cut alcohol out of my diet? It’s like I’m not thinking sometimes.

    Anyway. Our electrician finished all the work in the attic! Instead of wires hanging out of our living room ceiling we have this super cheap Ikea fixture.

    I’m not sure this is an upgrade.

    I want something beautiful and dangling in here eventually but I have no money right now. So a cheap Ikea fixture it is! Yay, throwaway culture. The good news is that my electrician redesigned the wiring so things make a modicum of sense. Everything’s up to code! If we die in a house fire it probably won’t be due to sketchy wiring!

    I also had him put in a new receptacle in the hallway so we can better see how badly we need to vacuum.

    I grabbed these $39 schoolhouse fixtures from Lamps Plus, then went into a shame spiral over how they were made in China and I should have bought real Schoolhouse Electric fixtures and supported a local company.

    We really need to vacuum.

    Then Greg came out and said, “I think the scale is wrong and they’re too big for the space,” which made me start worrying about that. But you know what? I’d rather they be too big than too small. And everyone is going to be distracted by the fact that we need to vacuum so badly in here, and then they’ll be noticing that our rug is the wrong length for the hallway. So it doesn’t matter.

    If you need me I’ll be here, waiting for my waaahmbulance and reminding myself that things could be worse. I’m not destitute, nor do I live in a country where I could be punished for being a woman and driving a car. I can put up with stupid loan officers. Also: my mother sent me this:

    Reference

    She’s the best.

  • And lo, there was hyperbole!

    And lo, there was hyperbole!

    Guys, these lights almost killed us.

    I came home from the gym last week after attending one of those classes with an oily bohunk who makes you lunge and lift and squat, all the while yelling, “faster! faster!” while he flexes his enormous, hairless muscles at you. It felt like I was part of a movie montage where the nerds try to get in shape but they’re hopelessly flabby.

    Anyway. I got home from the gym and the electrician had wired up the receptacles we installed and Greg was like, “Should we hang up the lights now?”

    I was like, “Um, of COURSE we should hang those right now. But let me go throw up first and then I think I’m supposed to drink a glass of egg yolks.”

    There were a series of errors, beginning with the fact that the sun was going down, so we were working by headlamp. Next: Greg was hangry. He’s a very sweet man until he gets hungry and then he gets mean. Third: At some point I dropped one of the nuts that attaches the fixture to the ceiling and it rolled away to parts unknown, laughing most likely. Remember how Greg was hangry? This was not our best moment. And we couldn’t install the last light fixture.

    Also: at some point I misplaced one of the Edison bulbs that came with the light fixture and we didn’t have a replacement. We spent 20 minutes tearing the house apart looking for it.

    I went and took a shower, during which time Greg located the missing nut! I came out from the shower and we finished the last light installation. Thank freaking goodness.

    Nine hours after we started this project I flipped the breaker back on and hit the brand new dimmer switch . . . and nothing happened. Sonofabitch.

    There was nothing to be done except go to dinner (at 9:30! so European!) and bemoan our lack of a proper reveal. We assumed the problem was in the dimmer switch, since our electrician seems to know what he’s doing. After dinner Greg decided to swap out the new dimmer switch with the old one and voila! it freaking worked. FINALLY.

    We were missing a bulb but it was still pretty glorious. To celebrate I promptly got a migraine that lasted four days.

    But I’m fine now! And lights! Such pretty lights! Such pretty holes in the ceiling that need to be patched! Boy, I don’t feel like doing that at all!

    But if I’ve learned anything from movie montages it’s that my muscles will soon be huge, I will get the girl, and you will find me either yelling Adwian!Adwian!* or singing We Are the Champions with my buddies** at the end of all this.

    I love movie references. I love lamp***. The end.

    *see: Rocky.
    **see: Revenge of the Nerds.
    ***see: Anchorman.