Just a girl with a hammer

Tag: living room

  • 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.

  • Fire!

    Fire!

    Back in 2010 I had the fireplaces professionally cleaned specifically so I could light a fire for Thanksgiving. We have two fireplaces: one upstairs in the living room and one in the finished portion of the basement. They have separate smoke chambers that run side by side in the same chimney.

    Our basement room started filling with smoke shortly after I lit a fire in the living room fireplace. Either the deformed damper that was permanently stuck in the open position downstairs was sucking in smoke from the upstairs chimney OR we had a crack or break in the brick/mortar between the two smoke chambers. Regardless, we never used our fireplaces again because I couldn’t afford that kind of work at the time.

    We decided to splurge and have gas inserts installed in the fireplaces, which would bypass the need to replace the dampers or deal with cracks between the two smoke chambers. I got three bids and ultimately decided to go with All Fuel. I felt like they really took everything into consideration, including how to deal with the curved front of the fireplace downstairs.

    In order to comply with code, we had to install a hearth in the basement. We used Neilson Construction and I couldn’t be more pleased with the job they did.

    Just for fun, let’s look again at what the fireplace looked like when I moved in.

    The previous owner had installed a hearth, poorly and incorrectly, and it broke up when I accidentally hit it with a floor scraper. Hall and Oates were sort of blocking the cold air that came in because the damper was deformed and stuck in the open position.

    I don’t even know, guys.

    The flooring was cut away to accommodate the new tile. You might be asking why we went with a hearth that’s wider than the fireplace. When we installed the laminate flooring we couldn’t get the flooring flush with the curved, irregular bricks of the fireplace, which left a 3/4″ gap on the sides. It was too irregular to use something like quarter round (and that would’ve looked dumb, anyway), so I decided to have the guy tile around it. I wish I had a picture of the gap but I somehow missed that spot in the 1.4 billion photos I’ve taken of this house.

    I also went looking on Houzz and it turns out an extra-large hearth isn’t all that abnormal. Yay! This would’ve been a fun time to install some funky tile but I really just wanted this hearth to look like it had always been there. We found tile that exactly matched the 6″ x 6″ tile upstairs and went with that.

    Original upstairs fireplace tile
    New downstairs fireplace tile! It’s just missing the transition strip.

    Tom, the tile installer, hand cut all the tiles to fit around the clinker bricks. I swear I almost wept when I saw what a meticulous job he did. I want to retile our bathroom NOW before he retires. He seriously rocked this job.

    All Fuel took the wood piece we had covering the firebox and had a metal fabricator create a perfect match. They had to grind away some of the brick edges to get everything to sit flush. They told me that this was one of the most challenging installs they’d ever completed.

    And here we are now.

    Before:

    And after:

    Next project: get a mantel built

    Now, to the living room! Upstairs we were missing a tile.

    The tile is all original to the house and it’s unlikely we’d be able to find a match. We opted to pick out new tile that looked almost identical, then had them chip out the old. They left the granite corner pieces, which are still in fine condition.

    Like it was always there

    Now I just need to stain the hearth grout (they informed me that it was originally charcoal colored and has bleached out over the years) and we should be good to go.

    I want to reiterate how great All Fuel was to work with. We had to wait about three weeks to get a bid from them and wait a little longer for install, because they are in such high demand. Their bid was $2000 less than Jacobs and they covered all the little things that make these projects better. They wear booties in your house so they don’t gunk up your floors. They put down drop cloths. They are very communicative about what they’re doing, when. They are unfailingly nice and very clean. Someone picks up the phone right away when you call. The install takes three days total and this was probably the least stressful project I’ve ever endured (for the record, insulation was the most stressful).

    Likewise, Tom at Neilson Construction was fantastic. There were several times when I asked for things (extra cuts! more tile!) that created more work for him and he cheerfully gave me exactly what I wanted. He was so easy to work with.

    If you need me, I plan to be camped out right here for the next few months.

  • 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.
  • I can’t leave well enough alone

    I can’t leave well enough alone

    This is our entry way. It was fine but I’ve been itching to paint the doors black. I’d been resisting this because black doors are de rigueur right now and I try to avoid trends. But then I realized I was being a stupid hipster and it’s okay to follow trends sometimes. It’s just paint.

    So I painted the doors here and in the kitchen and I freaking loved them.

    But then I started looking at the paint job in here and how the previous owner didn’t even cover the old orange paint in the area between the front door trim and the coat closet trim. I started to get itchy to repaint the walls. Thanksgiving won’t be perfect if I don’t repaint the entryway!

    Greg was like, “Wait, what, you’re painting again? I thought you were all done.” and I was like, “La la la, MORE PAINT FUMES HOORAY!” I had pinned this image a while back onto my “awesome paint colors” board. It’s ‘Peaceful Night’ by Behr.

    Image from Design*Sponge

    I went to Home Depot and grabbed a gallon because I was like, “Oh, it will be so awesome I’ll want to use it everywhere!” Without testing it first. Do you see where this is going?

    Uh, that’s not the same color. I know, Internet browsers, photography filters, blah blah, I should have tested the color first. Because it’s electric cobalt blue. Cobalt blue is having a moment, so our entry way is totally on-trend but it doesn’t really fit with the color scheme of the rest of our house.

    I ran to Ikea and bought the largest natural wood frame I could find and threw a Fatsia japonica leaf in it (think it will last until Thanksgiving?) and tried to break up the blue with some scavenged artwork. No dice, it’s still crazy blue. So we’re going to have to repaint it. I don’t hate the color (as I’m sitting here I’m realizing it’s very similar to LeAnn’s garage, which looks amazing) but it stands out from the rest of our house. We employ a pretty consistent color value throughout our house and this is off the charts in comparison.

    If you’re in love with this color and want the almost-gallon I have, just let me know. It’s all yours. And then I am not allowed back at the Home Depot for at least a month.

  • I missed bloomsday and probably your birthday

    I missed bloomsday and probably your birthday

    So I missed garden bloggers’ bloom day, even though I still have things blooming in my garden. I have been incredibly distracted lately, flitting from one thing to the next.

    I’m hosting Thanksgiving, so I’m in full-on house-crazy mode. A couple of years ago I decided to install a range hood and patch the hole in my kitchen ceiling right before Thanksgiving. Lately I’ve been obsessing over decor in the living room, as if anyone is going to notice any of that. People will notice whether the turkey was dry or if we ran out of wine.

    If we’re being honest, having enough wine means no one notices the turkey.

    My brain tends to home in on one thing, as if THAT’S the reason I can’t [fill in the achievement]. Of course I didn’t get a raise! How could I when my living room mantel is such a mess? Thanksgiving will be a disaster if I don’t repaint the front door! Nevermind that I haven’t answered emails all week, many of them ABOUT THANKSGIVING, that door! That door.

    That mantel.

    Last weekend I didn’t really feel like working in the garden but I had 200 bulbs to plant. So I got out there and it turned out to be one of my favorite types of day for gardening. It was cold and brisk but I could get by with just a sweatshirt. I planted crocuses, camassia in the rain garden, tulips and alliums in the lab, and daffodils under the coreopsis. I’m hoping the coreopsis will hide the dying foliage of the daffs but I’m skeptical of my placement.

    I also moved and removed a lot of plants. My Phylica pubescens that I was so excited about? I killed it. I don’t feel so bad since there was a vigorous conversation about this plant on Scott’s Facebook page.

    I hate that plant! It dies if you look at it wrong!
    You can’t under-water it. But you also can’t over-water it. Or it will die.
    That plant drinks all the milk and then puts the empty carton back in the fridge.
    Don’t look at it, period. Or it will die. 
    Phylica pubescens watches you while you sleep.

    At least I’m in good company. I swapped it out for some of my cannas. I swapped those cannas out for some different cannas from the backyard. Clear as mud? Moving on!

    I thought I ordered three New Zealand wind grasses last spring. I actually ordered three New Zealand sedges. They are fine sedges but they don’t have the height and color I wanted for this area.

    I moved two to the berm but I suspect I’ll rip them out, come spring.

     

    I’d write more but I need to sand that chemical burn out of the coffee table or Greg will never marry me. Happy Friday, happy bloom day!

  • Much better

    Much better

    Our dining room is kind of a mess. When Greg moved in we put his dresser in our bedroom and transferred mine to the dining room where it served as a buffet. It worked great for storing table linens and big bowls, but it couldn’t store any of our alcohol out of site. 
    We already have a lot of bottles of random stuff that we rarely use but might need for cocktails down the line. Then our friends moved to India and left their bar supplies with us, so we suddenly looked like full blown alcoholics. You can sort of see that in these two photos, which show the state of our dining room on a daily basis. Computers! Shoes! Cans of paint for no reason!

    Boxes! More paint! Oh my god.

    Enter the new bar storage and my attempt to style a shot.

    I found this deco-styled buffet on craigslist for $100. I waited and watched and the price dropped to $80 and, miracle of miracles, Greg actually liked it. Guys, we never agree on furniture. Ever.

    I want to replace the hardware, but otherwise it’s exactly what we need. All of the extraneous bottles got tucked underneath and we can keep just a couple of bottles handy up top. I know, the carpet is fabulous. Someday that will go away.

    Then my dresser could go where I really wanted it: in the living room. Previously we had a mid-century style corner table and a cheap pressboard TV stand.

    Before

    Ignoring the fact that I’m still waiting on the delivery of the last rod for the left-hand window, this is making me like the curtains I made much more. They don’t take center stage, they provide some contrast and texture, and they don’t offend me. I also hung Enje blinds from Ikea, which give the room a wonderful gauzy light during the day.

    I know the TV is awful. We only watch it if people come over for a movie night, or I’d huck it. I prefer to watch TV in bed, like a fat, lazy American.

    One! million! pillows!

    Now I just need a big-ass farmhouse style table for the dining room, some curtains (*sigh*), and to refinish the floors and maybe I’ll be happy with that room. It’ll still look like a tornado hit it, but it will be a stylish tornado.

    Dream table, from Restoration Hardware

  • How to make your own French-Belgian linen drapes

    How to make your own French-Belgian linen drapes

    Well, the curtains are done.

    Before

    If you’d like to make your own version of CB2’s French-Belgian linen panels you just have to follow a few easy steps.

    First, fall in love with an expensive fabric. The hallmark of a good sewing project is thinking you’re going to save money by making it yourself, then spending a TON of money and wondering if you should have hired child laborers instead (kids with ADD can sew a straighter seam than me). I chose a Tencel “linen-look” fabric that drapes beautifully and can be dyed.

    Next, cut off eight foot lengths from your bolt of fabric. Don’t vacuum or swiffer the floors first. You want the fabric to catch as much dust and hair as possible. Ideally you should be muttering, “Oh my god, what is wrong with me?” every couple of minutes.

    Starch and iron all your edges. The rolled hem foot on the sewing machine is a bitch to use and if all the stars are not aligned correctly everything will go to hell and you’ll be ripping out stitches for hours. A crisp fabric really helps in this case. Practice using your rolled hem foot until you feel confident using it. I bought a smaller piece of my fabric and sewed the edge, cut it off, then sewed it again and again and again, for what seemed like forever.

    Start sewing on your real fabric. So far so good.

    Oh my god, what is wrong with me? Son of a . . . bitch . . . shit. I hate the rolled hem foot.

    Rip out the seams and redo it when this happens. Start to wonder if it wouldn’t be faster to use a regular foot, even with all the pressing you’d need to do. Run your finished panels through the washing machine before hemming the bottom, just in case they shrink (pros do this before they ever start sewing but I have issues). Notice that a lot of your seams now look like hell when they seemed just fine pre-washing.

    What is wrong with with my rolled hem foot? Blerg.

    Spend an exorbitant amount of time at JC Penney (sorry, JCP) trying to special order the stupid corner bracket for your curtain rods. They have a new system and the clerk is 1000 years old (but nice! so nice!). Pull up the part on your phone and show her, as you realize that you could’ve just ordered online, in your pajamas no less, and saved everyone the headache.

    Wait for freaking EVER for your hardware to arrive. Learn that JC Penney screwed up charging your gift card twice, so your order never shipped. Also, they processed the order under the name “Haether.”

    Hem your panels. You’d think by this point you could reasonably sew with your rolled hem foot but YOU ARE WRONG. Decide that the lack of overhead light in the living room is probably a good thing.

    Hang up your panels with simple clip rings and realize that you can’t really see the shitty hems, so maybe everything’s gonna be okay. And you know what? They do vaguely resemble the inspiration panels.

    Congrats! When they are closed they look like you spent a lot of time and money to hang white bedsheets.

    Also, you screwed up the length.

    So. Greg thinks they need some color and I’m worried about the sun bleaching any color we put in them, which is why I wanted white curtains in the first place. We’re going to live with them for a while and I’m going to get more Ikea Enje blinds so I can get rid of the current situation:

    This attractive option was installed by the house stager from my reveal. She was *so* worried I’d peek at the room that she posted signs everywhere and glued (OH, SO MUCH GLUE) those awful looking blind inserts into the window casing.

    And then she emailed me, admonishing over and over not to peek. My friend told me I should peek, just to spite her, but I am a rule follower. I didn’t peek. And I didn’t remove those god-awful blinds until now.

    I have a couple of options now. The first, to dye the curtains navy. We have a lot of blue in the room currently.

    Second: dip dye the bottoms dark blue. The blue wouldn’t bleach out because it would fall below the window. This is on-trend right now but it will eventually go out of style. Of course, if that happens I can just dye them navy at that point.
    It might look something like this.
    Or this.
    So I guess the last step in making these panels is crippling self-doubt. Tada! Any opinions are greatly appreciated.
  • Curtain prototype is done

    Curtain prototype is done

    Last year I found the perfect mid-century pinch-pleat draperies at JC Penney. Pam at Retro Renovation said her readers found them to be a good source. At Christmas my parents gave me a gift certificate to JC Penney for so I could buy some . . . and JCP immediately stopped producing the style/color/length I needed.

    Image from Retro Renovation

    So I’ve been buying (and returning) curtains left and right, trying to find something I liked. Then I saw this post on Emily Henderson’s site about where to find cheap but good curtains. I liked these “French-Belgian linen panels,” but at $60 a pop I’d need to spend $600 just in the living room.

    I am so sorry for these terrible photos. Do you know how hard it is to photograph a window with natural light streaming through? I picked up some “linen-look” tencel fabric, which is dyable, and used a rolled hem foot to zip a 3mm hem around all four sides. The real deal will be a floor-length panel with a more substantial curtain rod.

    I have an Ikea Enje blind behind it, which is wonderful during the day but it provides zero privacy at night. I wonder if all the people who have installed Enjes in their house realize this? Wait for the sun to go down, turn on your lights, then step outside and see your life on display.

    So now I start the laborious process of doing the prep work for a bunch of panels. The fabric is so thin and malleable that it has to be starched and ironed (and any stray threads trimmed) before running it through the rolled hem foot on my sewing machine. My hope is to get one panel prepped after work each night, then sew like crazy this weekend and get them hung. I figure that gives JC Penney enough time to magically start producing the pinch-pleat draperies I wanted in the first place.

  • The freakshow bulb keeps giving

    The freakshow bulb keeps giving

    I loved this freakshow bulb in health.

    Allium schubertii

    And I love it in death, too.

    Greg doesn’t seem to care for it but I’m going to keep loving it until terrifying bugs hatch out of it.

  • Update on the living room

    Update on the living room

    I still need to switch out the lamp and figure out window coverings and sew new throw pillows, but the living room is starting to feel like a real room again.

    Just a reminder of what it looked like before:

    And the huge cracked mirror behind the artwork on the mantle . . .

     . . . which we had to dismantle . . .

    We know the mirror wasn’t original to the house because it was stamped with “April ’52” all over the back.

    Spackle, spackle, paint, paint, paint! Swap in the boy’s couch for mine and grab the painting from the dining room.

    My grandma was stoked to see her clock over the mantle.

    I found this label in the attic when Greg and I tried to fix the noisy bathroom fan.

    The last mention of the Albina Shingle Company in The Oregonian was on May 3, 1946 when the  factory burned down. So I think that label dates from pretty close to when the house was built in 1938. It very likely came in the package with the original roof.

    The view from the dining room.

    Of course, these didn’t go anywhere. I will not apologize for my Battlestar Galactica prints.

    What do you think? Are my modern pieces playing well with the boy’s traditional couch or do I need to kick him out?