Halfway Home

I'm about halfway done laying the new floors now.  I've done the kitchen, living room and most of the hallway.  I just need to do the master bedroom, walk-in closet and the other bedroom/office.  The floors look AWESOME, we're super stoked.

Once I'm done laying the flooring, I just need to install the new electrical outlets/switches, install and paint the trim and do a few small things, then we're pretty much done with round 1 of the remodel...FINALLY.


My work area:

Looking down the hall towards the master bedroom:

Looking from the dining area to the living room (if you click on the picture you can see a bigger version):

The kitchen:

We can't wait to be done!

Sneak Peek

I've been working on getting the house ready to lay the new flooring this week in the evenings after work. I finally laid the first planks last night and I'm off to a good start.

So far, so good!

Excitement builds

Our flooring has finally arrived! We are now this close to being done with round 1 of the remodel. I'm hoping to be done installing it by the end of the week...

Not quite a putting green yet

The front yard is almost finished now.  The rock walls are built and filled with dirt, the sprinkler system is installed, Sarah planted the flowers and I've spread 4 yards of topsoil in the flower beds and where the lawn will.  Now all I have to do is lay the sod this weekend.

The wall turned out pretty well, I'm very pleased with it. I only ended up needing to buy about 20 bricks on top of the ones my neighbor gave me in order to finish it, so that worked out really well (thanks again Barry!).

The sod goes in this weekend, and once it's established I can pressure wash the walls to make the bricks look new again.

More pics soon!

May is such a TEASE!

Spring is here...I think. May is such a teaser month. Sun one minute, drizzle the next. As a Washingtonian, I can only dream of waking up in the morning and it is already 70 degrees out.

As a kid this happened a few times each Summer. My older sister Autumn, our neighbor Kim and I would throw on our swim suits at my parent's lake cabin and hop into the lake for a morning swim. Memories of this resurface when Darrick and I join our friends Chad and Stef at their lake cabin in the Summer. Hopefully July and August will provide us with these opportunities again.

BBQ'd breakfast sounds like a delicious alternative to cooking inside this summer as well. =) A friend just told me recently that even Pop Tarts can be BBQ'd. I think I will have to try that as I need no convincing that good old bacon and eggs is simply scrumptious from the grill.

Back to what I'm posting about...our garden. The rain and spontaneous spurts of sun have really boosted the growth so far. Along with a few doses of Miracle Grow, I can say most of the plants are looking quite green and bushy. This makes me happy. =)

The sweet peas have grown to about 5 inches tall. It is amazing how they wrap their tiny terminal tendrils ( I looked that up) around twine or anything supportive so that they may climb their way to creating a breadth of color and scent in the upcoming months. I am excited to open the door to the patio on a hot summer day and smell their wonderful scent.

The veggies all seems to have taken flight, but their engines have stalled. Lot's of leaves but not many signs of fruit to come. I think heat and sun in the next few months will allow them to really soar. Patience is a virtue.

Sadly, Leroy snapped my basil plant and killed it last week. Hot Fiance Darricko bought me a new plant yesterday and gave it a new home in the original spot of the deceased. A sweet present to a girl who had just gotten home from 36 hours of hospital work. Thanks Darrick. I will make you some kind of basil yumminess soon.

The corn has definitely taken a liking to the soil I prepared for it. At first the starts were looking spindly and sad, but over these last couple weeks they have perked up. Same for the raspberries and strawberries I was given by a few friends.

I would say the flowers are what I am enjoying the most right now since most of our plants haven't actually produced yet. The snapdragons are blooming and I officially love the look of them in a simple glass jar; see below. Notice that I just had to take a few shots of the dogs with the flowers...hehe! Bentley is the black lab in the pictures. He is our friend Austin's dog and has been staying with us for the past week. He makes me want to get a third dog. Maybe a yellow lab. D says "NO". We will see.

For those of you planning your own garden this year, check out my homemade signs. They were very simple to make and you can use any color of paint that you want. I chose to have Darrick cut up a board for me, spray paint the wood black and then we nailed the wood to stakes. Last, I wrote what kind of veggie the sign would represent with a pale purple paint pen. Easy as pie and it makes the garden look loved that much more.

The first pictures you will see are what the back yard looks like right now. All fill dirt. Sod to come.

TTFN, Sarah

Feel the Heat

I don't know what the codes were regarding attic insulation when our house was built in 1973, but I find it hard to believe that the codes called for, um, ZERO insulation back then. Okay, our house doesn't have zero insulation in the attic, but it might as well. The attic has 35-year-old cellulose blow-in insulation in it that doesn't even cover the 2x4 rafters. So, on a good day we have something along the lines of R-5 insulation up there. For reference, current code calls for R-49 in the attic. Because of this, the heatpump has been working overtime all winter (and the previous 35 winters before that I'd assume...). When the heater turns off, you can literally feel the heat moving upward and being sucked out of the house.

Since we're still waiting for the new flooring to arrive, we're taking care of some final projects that need to be addressed in the meantime. One of those projects is insulating the attic.

After doing some research about insulation options, we decided to go with the Owens-Corning AttiCat system. This is the one that you can rent at Home Depot. We originally were going to go with insulation that is made from recycled newspaper treated with a fire retardant since it's "green" and earth friendly and all that crap. But, after comparing the two, the paper-based insulation would have been a couple hundred dollars more expensive and weighed about twice as much as the fiberglass-based insulation.

So, this morning we went down to Home Depot and bought 23 packages of the AttiCat insulation and rented the special machine to blow it into the house. This stuff is pretty cool and it's really easy to do. All you do is plug in the machine and drag the hose up into the attic and have your lovely assistant (Sarah) feed the bricks of insulation into the machine. The bricks expand about 16 times in size when fed through the machine and then it pumps it through the hose and all you have to do is "spray" the insulation into the attic.

This was the attic before we started adding the extra insulation. The gray stuff on the bottom is the old insulation that's covered in 35 years of dust. It's maybe 3 inches thick.


And after two hours of crawling in the attic blowing insulation around, it looked like this:


It's kinda hard to tell when you compare the before and after pictures, but there's 18-24 inches of insulation filling the entire attic now, giving it an R-value of 50-60 or so (MUUUCH better!). The results could be felt right away. It's amazing how much warmer the house feels now and the heat has kicked on a lot less than usual this evening.

Another great thing about this product is the mess was pretty minimal. After blowing 2000 cubic feet of insulation into the attic, this was the mess that had to be cleaned up. And most of this mess was because I accidentally dropped the hose when it was on and blew a bunch of insulation around the place.


We should have done this months ago!

Happy Puppies

With the gorgeous weather we had this past weekend, we had to get out of the house for a change instead of spending all of our time working on it! So, Sarah and I met up with some of my car nerd friends and we went for a leisurely cruise up to Bellingham. Of course, I-5 isn't very leisurely or interesting, so we took the back roads there along Chuckanut Drive. It's a beautiful drive that takes you through La Connor (where the Tulip Festival is every year, the tulips were dead and gone by now though unfortunately), and through a few small towns and then along the water through some great twisty roads that invite a little "spirited driving."

Once we arrived in Bellingham, we all got lunch at the Weblocker Restaurant. Then, we went to Larrabee State Park to hang out on the beach for awhile before heading home.

Lucy and Leroy had a blast at the beach! We already knew Lucy loved the beach since she's been to a few of them now, but this was Leroy's first time playing in the sand and water and he loved it!

Leroy HATES getting baths, but when Lucy jumped in the water to chase a stick, he went in right after her without a second thought!

After swimming, they frollicked on the beach for a bit and helped themselves to a roll on a stranger's towels.


After that, they played some football with us guys.


And my friend Bird snapped a "fantastic" candid shot of Sarah and I:


(I can only assume I said or did something asinine just moments before this photo was taken...)

More work in the yard

While we're waiting for the new floors to arrive, I've turned my attention to the front yard. A few posts back, I updated you on the beginnings of that project. Since then, I've made a pretty decent amount of progress. The first part of the retaining wall is now complete and I've filled it in with about three cubic yards of dirt. I still need to bring in another yard or so of good topsoil to really level everything out before I lay down the new sod though.

Looking pretty good, huh?

Here's a good detail shot of the retaining wall. The black fabric you see along the top is a weed blocker that will help keep weeds from growing through the rock. It also helps keep the dirt from leaching out when it rains. It will be hidden once I lay the sod. I still need to pressure wash everything to get rid of the moss and dirt from the blocks. It will look pretty much new once I do that.


Talk about increased curb appeal! Can't wait until we can paint the place in a couple months.


While I'm talking about the yard, our neighbors across the street (Barry and Pat) deserve a huge THANK YOU. The entire transformation of the front yard has essentially been free for us since it just so happens that they were digging up and redoing their back yard at the same time we decided to tackle our front yard. All of the stones for the retaining wall came from their yard, as well as all the fill dirt I needed. We totally lucked out on this project!

Leroy had a bad day

Leroy had another round of shots on Friday morning at the vet. As usual, he was excited to go to the vet because all the girls there love him and he never misses an opportunity to say hi to people.

All went well at the vet so Sarah and Leroy went back home. However, a couple hours after they got home, Leroy developed an allergic reaction to his leptospirosis shot and his head started to swell up! And I don't mean it got a little inflated looking; poor Leroy looked like a bobble head doll! His neck also started to swell to the point he was having a hard time breathing, so Sarah quickly tossed him in the car and back to the vet they went!

Adding insult to injury, Sarah got pulled over on the way there. Not for speeding, but because she didn't have a front license plate on her car (my bad!). Luckily, the officer saw Leroy's giant head and let her off with a quick warning

Once at the vet, they shot Leroy full of steroids and Benadryl. The swelling stopped soon thereafter.

Leroy is doing much better now after a few days of rest and relaxation.

Not a happy puppy:

Time Flies When You're In A Garden

Let me tell you about my Bad Ass Garden!

Be prepared this summer to enjoy tomatoes, corn, zucchini, cucumbers, pickling cucumbers (yes I make homemade, knock your socks off, jalapeno pickles), spaghetti squash, rhubarb (it is sad to note that rhubarb doesn't produce much in the first year, but wait until next year for some rhubarb pie!), blueberries, raspberries (thanks to our neighbor Diane who loves to give me starts), giant pumpkins, oregano, chives, onions, basil and a large pot of rosemary. I also decided to grow some peppermint along with three types of lavender.

It's all been planted in raised beds that were tilled up with steer manure and peat moss. I checked the soil pH, the drainage is fantastic and I gave each start a little jump with some fish fertilizer. Let me just tell you that fish fertilizer made my hydrangeas rally after little care for the last 2 years.

I used a Jiffy greenhouse to plant marigold and snapdragon seeds. The starts look great and I've planted a few of the marigolds in the vegetable bed as I read that they are a pest deterrent.

Another fun and ultra simple thing to plant are sweet peas. I planted them just outside the downstairs patio door so that when you open the door in the summer, they will smell just great. I got a wild multi colored set of seeds which are doing really well. In the last photo below you can see how I made a trellis from stakes, nails and twine to hold them up as they start to get longer and want to travel.

I still have 3 rhododendrons that died on the side of the house to dig up. I purchased a pink hydrangea and a purple rhody to take their places.

I also want to find a purple lilac tree and a pink dogwood. Both are blooming right now and they look awesome!

One last thing that I did was transplant a begonia from a plastic pot from the store to a lovely green ceramic pot which sits right outside our door.

So now the rain has come and the forecast states it will rain for the rest of this week. I'm super stoked that I got the garden planted! I will post more when things start to really take off!!!

Hope you enjoyed this post! If you have some gardening techniques to share or starts you want to get rid of let me know!

I'm planning to get some horseradish and green beans in soon along with some multicolored poppies and nasturtiums.

Almost There

We reached a major milestone this weekend: we ordered our new wood floors!

FINALLY.

We decided on a style called "Cappuccino Maple" by Simple Floors. We really liked their selection and the quality of their products couldn't be beat in the price range we were looking in.

From the get-go we wanted a dark wood. We also wanted the hand-scraped look, not a super-smooth finish, and wide planks. Oh, and it had to be real wood, not laminate. The flooring we chose is what's called an engineered hardwood. What that means is the flooring is real wood, but the planks are not a solid 1/2" thick piece of Maple, Oak, or whathaveyou like with traditional wood flooring. Instead, with engineered wood flooring, each plank has a 3/8" thick plywood base and on top of that is a 1/8" thick layer of the flooring quality wood (in our case, Maple). 1/8" of wood doesn't seem like much, but wood flooring really doesn't wear out or anything, and unlike laminate flooring, it can be refinished.

The bad news about ordering the new flooring is that they just planted the trees the floors will be made from about a week ago, so it will be another 10 years or so before we can get our flooring delivered. Okay, it's not quite that bad, but we do have to wait 4-5 weeks before it can be delivered. Sad face for us.

So in the meantime, here's a few example pictures of the flooring we chose:

Iron Chef: Renton

Kitchen remodels are expensive. REALLY expensive. So, we won't be doing that for at least a couple years. However, that doesn't mean we can't give the kitchen a makeover!

After starting on the front yard a couple weeks ago, "winter" finally hit us and it's been raining buckets for about two weeks now. Since working in the yard in the wind and rain is pretty miserable, I decided to turn my attention to the kitchen for a couple weekends. If you recall, our kitchen was pretty darn ugly. Usable and in good condition, but outdated and ugly nonetheless. At least the dishwasher, refigerator, oven/stove and microwave are new though, so we didn't have to worry about those.

Here we have the kitchen in its "before" glory:
To get the party started, I removed all the doors and drawers from the cabinets and cleaned everything really well with Simple Green cleaner. I then gave them a light sanding and re-cleaned them with the Simple Green. Once they were dried out I gave everything a coat of primer.

Looking better already:

Once the primer was cured it was time to add some color. We decided on a color called "Vessel Gray" which is steel gray color. It's a nice neutral color that adds a bit of modern look to the kitchen.

Finding a place to lay out all the doors and drawers to dry was a bit of challenge.
Once I was done with the cabinets, I turned my attention to the counter top. It's just a plain-jane laminate counter top, but it had yellowed/discolored a bit over the years and had a lame pattern printed on it. It was in good condition otherwise, though. I found a new paint made by Rustoleum that is designed specifically for painting old laminate counter tops. It's a Xylene-based paint and is supposed to cure to an epoxy-like finish and also wear as well as a regular laminate counter top. With that said, I was pretty excited to try it out.

For anyone reading who has seen this stuff and has been wanting to try this with their old counter tops: DON'T. This stuff sucks. First of all, the stuff smells REALLY bad. The whole house smelled like a chemical plant for three days after I applied it. Just being in the house for more than 10 minutes gave me a headache. Also, the stuff is really difficult to work with. It dried quick and gets tacky really fast and it drips easily too when you're painting verticle parts of the counter. It's supposed to "self-level" to even out any imperfections in the paint... it doesn't. Once cured it's supposed to resist staining and chipping... it doesn't. Hell, even putting something heavy on the counter for an hour or so results in a divot forming in it.

Long story short, the counter looks better than it did before, but I'm far from impressed with the stuff. It looks good from afar, but far from good I guess you could say. Sarah says she likes it though, so maybe I'm just being too much of a perfectionist.

Me high as a kite from the Xylene fumes while painting this crap on.
Once the counter top fiasco was completed, I finished off the kitchen by putting all the cabinet doors back on with new hardware, adding a new sink and a new faucet. I also ran a water line to the refrigerator so the ice machine works and I also added a garbage disposal while I was installing the new sink.

Before I show the "after" pictures, one last look at the "before":
And now the moment we've all been waiting for...


The "after":Looks like a whole new kitchen, huh? Once I can tear out the ugly linoleum that's in there now and install the new hardwood floors (hopefully next month), it will really bring it all together.

Oh yeah, I also added some under-cabinet lighting to brighten things up a bit and give a nice ambiance to the kitchen when it's not in use.
Not bad for $400, huh?

Overall, I'm really happy with the transformation. It will definitely do for the next year or two until we can do a proper remodel on it.