Things to do next year

We've got a huge list of things we would like to get done during the next year. We'll see what actually gets done!

1. Fence the back yard, so we don't have to worry about the dogs escaping.
2. Have the plumbing checked out, and at least have the worst pipes replaced, if not all of them.
3. Finish the electric rewiring, including the garage and outdoors.
4. Replace broken garage siding and repaint all of it.
5. Put an entry door on the side of the garage.
6. Landscaping - cut down a dead tree, plant some new trees, put in some brick walkways.
7. Finish at least part of the basement - new bathroom and bedroom/office/playroom.
8. Work on the kitchen - this one probably won't get started let alone finished next year.
9. Get some new furniture -- things that match!
10. Install at least a plywood floor in the attic; check out venting the attic.
11. Restore the windows.
12. Scrape and repaint the roof overhangs.
13. New toilet, tile, and fan in the existing bathroom.
14. Crown, picture, and/or chair moulding in the rooms without it.

There. That comes out to a bit more than one project a month. I'm sure we'll think of more to do -- or we'll have emergencies to deal with as they happen. I didn't even bother writing down "check into installing central A/C" since I'm pretty sure that won't fit into our budget at all next year.

Nook Gets a Curtain

Not much in the way of news. But I did find the perfect fabric for a curtain in the nook (aka the happy room). It was a remnant at the fabric store. Here I just draped it over the existing curtain rod, until time allows me to make it a "real" curtain.

The Happy Room!

I had some ideas for the breakfast nook, where I make my coffee and do some reading for work in the mornings. The room also serves as additional counter space when we run big kitchen items like the mixer or crock-pot, and it's where the naughty cat takes his meals. Since I'm the only coffee drinking, crock-pot using, cat person here, the nook's my room. But it's so boring. So I decided to paint. I had a color in mind, but I didn't think Mrs. B would ever go for it, given that she vetoed my ideas in other rooms. However, my color choice was approved!

Before and After:

Can't help uploading another one.

The curtain was there when we moved in, and will be replaced eventually. I'd like to put up a shelf to hold our gazillion cookbooks and some coffee items. Either a chrome shelf, or a wooden one painted white or red. Or both white and red. Awhile back, I saw a nice dinette set, red table and red chairs. It was a bit too expensive at the time. I think it'd look great in the room, but what we have in there now does work. And who else has a scalloped octagon-shaped faux marble table in a lovely shade of tan?

On another front, the dining room has been re-electrified. Last week I prepped it for the electrician by removing the old outlets (all 2 of them) and the light switch, making holes for 4 new outlets, and running all the wire to each and to the breaker box. All he had to do was install the receptacles and hook it up to the breaker box. I even adventured into the attic to remove some of the old knob-and-tube wiring running to the light fixture. Snip snip. It only took the guy not even 3 hours to finish off the dining room (if he had had to do all the work, I bet it would have taken him at least 25 hours to do, judging by his progress before. And, it wouldn't have been done anytime soon, since he won't be back until sometime in January).

P.S. The paint color is "Polished Turquoise" by Kilz (found at Wal-Mart); but I had Menard's match it with Dutch Boy paint. I stumbled onto this website, which apparently gives you the color codes for many brands of paint. So if you see someone's house site and like what they've done, but cannot obtain their paint locally, perhaps you could match it using this information.

Demolition of the Creepy Basement Room

Last weekend, the electrician offered me use of his reciprocating saw to get rid of the creepy basement room. Creepy because it was unlit, full of sizeable spiders, and very closed-in. I hadn't even thought of just removing it, rather, I've been putting off cleaning it aside from shooting a can of Raid in there after we moved in.

("creepy room" all the way in the back, walled in with gray beadboard):

The demo was fairly easy. I tried to accomplish it in the quietest manner possible, due to the baby being upstairs. I pried off the beadboard walls with a hammer. Under that, the walls were insulated on the inside with cardboard. It looks like this is a box the insulation originally came in:

Then there was a plain box with a Montgomery Ward shipping label still attached. I wonder if the house isn't a Ward's house. There was this unpleasant surprise on one of the room's sagging shelves. Who knows how long it had been there. This chandelier was in the room. A few parts of it are broken, and all it says is 'made in Spain.' I wonder which room it had been in, if any at all.

Almost done:

All that was left to do was get rid of the wall studs. I picked up the saw to make it easier, instead of hammering them out. The wood floor-plate was held in place by metal rods which easily came out.

I left the existing shelves up, for now. They'll be easy to take down later.

This is where I started to get tired of the project. I tend to start things and not finish them. I had no interest in cleaning up all the debris. I didn't realize there'd be so much of it. But, I took the nails out of the wood, so I could throw the wood in the burn pile. (Living in a rural area does have its benefits, like being able to burn whenever you want).

Finished! (Almost). Cleared up about 25-30 square feet, turning creepy into not too bad. It will also make rewiring the living room much easier.

Slow but steady electrical progress

We're making some progress on the rewiring. The electrician was out this weekend to do some work, but was rather late both days so he didn't get all that much work done. Actually, only a two lights -- in the nook and entry -- got rewired (and the nook light had already been wired, he just put up the light fixture in place of the temporary light fixture). We're still without light in the kitchen. I had hoped the kitchen would finally be finished, and the work would move on to the dining room. So, before he arrived, I cut out holes in the dining room for the new outlets and removed the old outlets. Such optimism! Removing the old outlets is much nastier than cutting in new ones. In our place, the outlets are surrounded by and screwed into wood. Not wall studs, but just wood. It makes it very difficult to remove the outlets, and then there's the task of removing the wood that's in the way of putting in a new box.

With plaster walls attached to metal lath, there really isn't a way to figure out where the wall studs are before going into the wall. After hitting one stud on my first new outlet, I figured out that I could make a small hole and feel around for obstructions before cutting out the entire outlet hole and then looking. Clever! (Some things come pretty slowly to me, like tying shoes). On all the new holes (except the first) I managed to miss wall studs by only an inch or two. It is nice though to know where they are, so if we want to put up shelves, we know where to attach them.

Lots of chiseling and wire snipping later, we've got a start.

Running the wire is also a pain, but not nearly as bad as the kitchen wire was. (The kitchen wire had to be run up from the basement to outlets at counter height, whereas the dining room outlets are all close to the ground). I had to drill a lot of holes in the joists in the basement to run the wire through. I had a drill bit designed for the purpose, but it didn't do the job all too well. I had a 'Speedbore' which also didn't do such a great job. Finally I bought a monstrous-looking bit designed for wood and metal, which really ate through the wood. Our problem I think might be that the wood is so old and tough, a normal wood boring bit might not be tough enough, having been designed for fresher wood.

Pictured: my beloved Bosch drill, holding the super bit that works. On the left is a thin, foot-long bit I used to drill downwards from inside the outlet holes so I could locate where exactly in the basement to drill upwards to run the wire. Second from left is the typical wood-boring bit. Second from the right is the Speedbore Max' bit.

In my aggravation while doing all this (grumbling "It's not my job!" most of the time -- this is why we hired an electrician in the first place) I ripped out the old knobs and tubes that were just sitting there empty in the basement. It looks like they even had special double-headed nails to hold the suckers in.

The knob-and-tube, which once ran the entire length of the basement, is nearly gone. There's more in the attic, but that's on its way out too. And, of course, its buddy, the cracking cloth-covered romex which circled the basement but now circles the waste bin.

The plan is to have the dining room and living room done this weekend. So, I've got to cut out the living room outlets. The living room had one plug on the plug circuit, while the rest are on the lighting circuit. That room will be more challenging since the existing wires don't run up from the basement like all the other rooms, but instead run down from the attic, even to the outlets. I avoid the attic if I can, since there's no floor up there, but lots of nasty insulation. Got a feeling I'll be spending some serious time up there soon.

We made one design change this week. The electrician pushed us to get white outlets and switches, which is fine. But now we think they might look too strange in the living and dining rooms, where they have always been brown. Brown goes with the woodwork too. So I bought a slew of brown outlets and a few switches, heavy-duty ones, and they cost no more than the white variety. We strayed from the brown since he told us they cost more and were so hard to find. Not at all, one just has to look at the dusty bin on the very bottom of the receptacle display at Lowe's. Now we can reuse our patterned brown switch and outlet covers. We should have enough left over from the entire house to do both front rooms. The bedrooms, kitchen and bath will all have white plugs and switches, which is fine. Hooray for brown!

Christmas Tree Up

We weren't sure whether we'd put up a tree this year with everything that's going on at the house. But we ended up doing a tree, thinking the bright lights would be something interesting for the baby to look at. And, it's baby's first Christmas, so we had to do something.

I was given the order to get the tree. "Not too big, not too expensive." Oh, and not real, either. Normally I'd go for a real tree, but this year, I agreed that an artificial tree would perhaps be less hassle. I went to the garden store where I knew they'd have a huge selection of trees. And they did. Most of which were way too much money, though a few of them actually looked almost real. I don't understand why trees nowadays are all pre-lit; are people that lazy to be unwilling to light their own trees? Naturally the pre-lit trees don't come with energy-efficient LED lights either. And they cost significantly more than the unlit trees, though the only real value added would be a couple of strands of cheapo lights.

After browsing for about an hour, I settled on the cheapest decently sized tree they had. Six-and-a-half feet of fake tree, with white lights, for $40. This one didn't come unlit. Looking back, I should have bought the colored lights tree instead. Whatever; I don't see this tree being our main display for more than a few years.

So I successfully complied with Mrs. B's instructions. Although, if I were let loose on my own to buy a fake tree, I probably would have gone with a white one. since the tree's fake, it may as well proclaim it's artificial fakeness to all who see it. The tree's not fooling anyone. But, I was specifically instructed to stay away from non-green trees.

That's about it. A few strands of LED bulbs, ornaments and doo-dads, and it's done. I didn't even hang up all the ornaments we have.

Secretly I am biding my time until the year I can put up a big, real tree. With the big C7/C9 bulbs, and TONS of tinsel.

Unrelated: the garden store also had picture rail hooks, which have been impossible to find anywhere else locally. And, at $1.49 for a package of 4, much better price than the 2 or 3 dollars per hook that I've seen online. Granted the hooks I got are not as pretty, but who can see up that high anyway? Not me!

Interior paint color advice?

We cannot agree on what to do with the living room and dining room. Right now they're both painted a light beige with a hint of yellow (that's what the prior owners painted the whole house in before selling it). Right now you can't tell the dining room is a dining room since at the moment it's the throw-everything-on-the-table room. And half the dining room serves as my office.

I was thinking of using red for one of the rooms. I like red. Maybe a brighter yellow, or chocolate for the other. But Mrs. B. isn't so keen on red, and isn't enthusiastic about painting the two rooms different colors since they're so visible to each other. I can see that. The blue rug in the living room is going to go (it was left here but it serves the function for now). And should the rooms be two different colors, what color to paint the underside of the arch in between?

I really like what these people did in their house, but I'm afraid it might look so great for them because they've got the fancy ceiling beams and other goodies that we don't have.

A little rant. I went to a few home improvement stores to check out paint swatches and pictures of interiors, and almost all the interior pics showed rooms with painted-over trimwork. A bit annoying for those that have unpainted trim, since the paint might look a lot different against wood rather than white trim.

I think I might write to Trading Spaces. One of the designers is actually from my little town, and my sister-in-law could use some designing in her house too. We'll see!

Results of last night's village meeting

I read in the local paper recently that there was an opening on the village trustees council. So, I went to last night's meeting to express my interest in filling the position. The person filling the vacancy would have a lot to do with local ordinances, which I figured was up my alley, being a lawyer. But, when I got to the meeting, the first order of business was swearing in someone else for the job. That was surprising since there didn't seem to be any period during which others could be considered, and I later heard that vacancies are usually open for a few months. Without being insulting, I do think I'd do a much better job. At any rate, I heard there's a fairly high turnover rate on the board, so I suppose I'll bide my time for now.

The meeting was strange in some ways. Apparently our town leaders don't know if we have a book of ordinances somewhere, or what the ordinances even are. I don't understand how they can enforce rules, if they don't know where they are, let alone no one in town has access to them either. I also heard that our water department may be in some hot water with the EPA for some unknown violations, but I have no specifics. I can say they're woefully inefficient at announcing and ceasing boil orders.

All in all, apart from not getting the position I wanted, it was a nice opportunity to meet some more people in town. (There's only 350 or so people here, so I met about 2% of the town last night).

Oil tanks finally gone!

In one of the rooms in the basement, there were two hulking oil tanks left over from before the prior owners switched from oil to gas heating. They were about a quarter full of oil, just sitting there, taking up half the room. (In the picture you can see the coal chute from before the owners switched from coal to oil).

We wanted to get rid of the tanks, especially since they still had oil in them. Nasty, stinky oil. I found someone who would take the oil for heating and the tanks for recycling as scrap iron.

We probably emptied close to 100 gallons of oil out of the tanks, 5 gallons at a time. Some of the pipes came off with a pipe wrench while others had to be cut with a band saw.

Then we took the legs off the empty tanks, put a ramp on the basement stairs, and slid them up the stairs. We had to remove the back door and screen door so they'd fit.

Turns out on of the tanks was rusting through and slowly leaking, and eventually would have dumped its contents on the floor. Yuck.

But they're gone now! Yet another item to check off the home inspection list. After the rewiring is completed, all that remains on the list of issues observed during the home inspection will be fixing a couple of cracked windowpanes in the basement.

Rural Illinois Broadband Internet Access

Here in rural east central Illinois, there aren't too many options for fast internet. Some towns 10 miles or so away do have more options, but the cable company and others have overlooked our area. Perhaps it's not profitable enough for them to establish service in our area (although there are grants they could get to facilitate that process).

Anyway we've suffered along with dial-up internet. We're on our second provider since the first one didn't provide a stable or quick connection, even by dial-up standards.

We researched the high-speed options in our area. Either we could spring for satellite-based internet (like satellite TV), costing about $60-70 a month plus a hefty installation fee and a multi-year contract, or a wireless internet company that also charges a hefty installation fee and about $60 a month for service and requires a multi-year contract. Not going to happen.

I had to switch our cell phones to another company -- don't believe the AT&T commercials stating triumphantly "more bars in more places" -- not a single bar here! I went with Verizon, since they have a signal in our area. However, Verizon also has wireless internet options that I didn't know about before. The cost is the same as most other high-speed providers, $60/month, but there are no installation fees, and we can try it out for 30 days to make sure it works before being in a contract. And they have discounts if you work for certain employers, so the wireless modem was free, and no activation fees either. So I went with that for internet, and it's worked a lot better than dial-up. They have two signals available, one for really fast internet, and one for slower internet. Our connection hovers between the two, presumably since we're in a borderline area. So we're trying it out for the next month. But it sure is nice not to tie up the phone line trying to check email, etc. I thought I'd post this in case it might help someone else out.

And, last week I read about an opening in our village's council. I'm going to go to tonight's meeting to express my interest in the opening, although I know someone else has already expressed interest. I doubt I'll get the position, since I'm new in town and not well-known, but I figure it's worth a shot. I'm not sure what the trustee meetings involve, which I think is a problem since there doesn't seem to be any way to access information about our village government activities. I've got plenty of ideas, so we'll see what happens tonight!

Revamping light fixtures

Since the lights in the kitchen were all taken down during the ongoing rewiring project, I thought I'd try my hand at refinishing them. Sure, I love the looks of the shiny fixtures at Rejuvenation.com, but at about $70 a fixture to replace the ones I have, it's not a viable option right now.

The one on the left is pretty much a before picture. I found a blog suggesting boiling the fixture in water (with some baking soda thrown in). I tried that, letting the water boil with the baking soda, then throwing in the fixture. The pot then boiled right over, all over the stove, like one of those "volcano" things you make with vinegar and baking soda. I gave up on boiling the fixture to get the paint off.

The fixture on the right is somewhat of an after pic. It's after I used conventional (nasty) paint stripper and a scraper to remove the paint. Not just one layer of paint either. First, the chunky, thick and drippy white layer. Followed by an easy layer of harvest gold. Finally, an extremely stubborn layer of avocado green paint. Not all the paint came off.

I then tried scraping off the paint on the somewhat-boiled fixture, since the paint on that one did seem not as tightly adhered. A lot did come off, but enough remained to make the effort seem not worth it.

What to do next? Go to the hardware store and spend some money! I got a spray can of Citri-Strip, some assorted grades of steel wool, and some wire brushes. I soaked the fixtures overnight in the pleasantly-scented stripper. Then I wiped off a lot of the residue, and treated the stubborn spots to some course steel wool. I wasn't worried about scratches since I was looking for a brushed steel finish anwyay. The wire brushes helped get in the crevices. Once the paint was finally gone, I cleaned the fixtures, and sprayed them with glossy clear enamel to prevent rusting. I should have gone outside or in the garage to do that though, since I really stunk up the place with that spray paint.

Here's the result. Only two more to do, after these!

At last, a shower

When we moved in, there was no shower. Highly inconvenient. So we hunted for a hand-held shower that goes over the tub spout. Found one. It actually worked well for the couple bucks it cost. We got bolder and mounted it to the wall. Now we had a shower for very short people.

I spotted a "Converto-Shower" in an old house parts catalog. Basically it's a tub spout with a long pipe leading to the shower. I suppose it's the same as an ordinary shower, but the vertical pipe is outside the wall, and no major plumbing has to be redone. I thought about ordering it, but I am cheap, and didn't want to risk the cash on something that might not work as well as it sounds.

One lucky day at the architectural salvage store, I found a really old version of this item, from the Chicago Faucet Company. It had just arrived that morning. Ten bucks and I was out the door with my prize!

All that had to be done was: remove the old tub spout, install the new one, attach the vertical pipe to the new spout, and screw the top support into the wall. Easier said than done.

The old spout was incredibly difficult to remove. It did turn counter-clockwise like the pictures in my handy repair book, but it took two people to get it to move at all. This picture's after the old spout was taken off. Nasty!

The new spout did twist right on, after applying teflon tape to the threads to prevent leaks.

However, the problems really started when I tried to get the vertical pipe to attach to the "new" spout. The vertical pipe rests on a thick washer-type thing that sits in the spout, to keep it level and prevent leaks. It looked like a press-in fitting or something. Anyway, I got everything hooked up, but when I turned on the water, it leaked badly. Turns out the washer-thing was chipped in half, so the pipe wouldn't be flush with the opening. I improvised a fix by using a big washer and some crazy glue to rebuild the broken part. If that failed, I had some of that metal plumber putty stuff (the kind that claims to be able to bond even underwater).

But the crazy-glue fix did work. There's a minor leak, coming from the diverter lever, but we can live with that. Attached the thing to the wall, put on a fancy-looking yet cheap showerhead on, and voila! A shower! (The whole project took about 8 hours or so, including two trips to the hardware store for parts).

New baby!

One reason for not updating the site in a a while... our new baby showed up! Little Vivian arrived on Halloween, a healthy 7 pounds. Everyone's doing fine, but we're all tired.

Sorry trick-or-treaters -- I bought candy to leave outside in a bowl, but in the commotion of the day's events, I forgot to leave it outside. We'll make it up to y'all next year!

Electricity Updates

Though I should have been keeping current with the progress, I haven't so now I'm playing catch-up.

We hired a local electrician to upgrade our service from 60 to 100 amps. That portion of the work went fairly well. But the house still needed rewiring to take advantage of the upgrade.

The electrician started on one of the bedrooms, so when the baby arrived that room should have been done. Unfortunately, it wasn't, and it seemed to be taking an inordinately long time for a simple bedroom rewire.

Finally though, that room got done. We decided that the kitchen needed to be the next room done. First, since we couldn't run the microwave without fear of popping fuses or overloading the poor wires. Second, since after I tried changing a light bulb for the kitchen overhead light, the light sparked and stopped working. Here's my "fix" for that problem, to the right. And third, the refrigerator (brand new) weirdly started turning on and off. So did one of our phone's handsets. Both were plugged into the same outlet (only one of two in the kitchen).

The first day of the kitchen rewire went slow but steady, and I helped knock out some holes in the wall for new outlets. I had hoped progress would be quicker though. Since our guy only works on the weekend for us, I decided to prepare all the outlet holes required, find the right spots to drill through the basement ands walls for the wiring, and run some wire. The electrician sure was surprised when he came out next, and the kitchen and breakfast nook are just about finished! Only the lights have to be done, which is fine because I have no desire to walk in the unfloored attic (where the knobs and tubes are not logically laid out at all unlike in the basement). Especially nice that most of the kitchen's done, right before Thanksgiving.

Tool tip: the Bosch 14.4V compact/brute tough line of drills got excellent reviews from a consumer magazine, and good reviews on amazon.com as well. That's what I ended up buying, and it's done a great job at drilling through the studs/floor in the basement (which are apparently made of petrified wood).

The bad blogger that I am

I haven't posted since September. Shame on me. Let me come up with some excuses!
Moving into the new place was more work than I thought.
I had to rid the basement of spiders and cobwebs. It was overrun. That took many hours with my new best friend, the Shop-Vac.
Once we moved in, we had to figure out how to get on the internet (since we're in the middle of nowhere). No more fast cable modem for us. At the moment we're on terribly slow dial-up, but hope to upgrade to some kind of satellite or wireless service if funds allow.
Working full-time (over the already mentioned, frustratingly slow dial-up) and trying to keep up with the repairs, and getting ready for an addition to the family didn't leave much time for writing. I'm sure other people could balance it all better, but I like to sleep!

Miscellaneous Projects Take Up Lots of Time

It seems with our own house, there's so many small projects that end up taking up a lot of time. There was the race to paint the front steps before the onset of the fall rains and cool weather. The PO never painted the steps, so they were bare and greenish-looking wood. We didn't think they'd last too long unprotected, so we opted to paint them a standard gray like the rest of the house. We bought some sand-like material to mix in with the paint to make the steps skid-resistant.

Next, was "Project Storm Window." I found a couple of old, decayed wood storm windows in the basement fuel room. I thought I'd practice bringing them back to life before touching (breaking) any storm windows that were in decent shape. Hours of scraping, priming, glazing, and painting later, I had a pair of decent storm windows. So I was lazy and didn't remove and fill in the rotting wood (there would have been nothing left if I had). But they should hold up for at least this winter, marginally performing their duty.

That project led me to redoing all the storm windows, since we couldn't have a pair of good (looking) ones and the rest not. But then I had to do the ritual to the actual house windows, some of which had no glazing on them at all! All in all it took about a week to do. Figuring out which storms went to which windows was another nightmare.

And, PO, why why why did you update half the storms to the aluminum screen/storm combos, leaving the other half with the wooden storms?

Sears (or similar) kit house?

While surfing the internet, I came across this description of a Sears house that could be ordered in the '30s. The appearance is almost identical, except for ours lacking a fireplace and having the front porch enclosed (done after the house was built). And, the room sizes in our house are just a little bit larger than the kit home's. Whether it's a kit home or not, the layout is great!

Inspection

The inspection didn't come up with many unexpected problems. One big issue will be the electricity. Right now, the poor 60 amp fuse box is overloaded. Looks like we'll have to have the place rewired. On the plus side, it doesn't look like anyone's ever nailed a hole in the walls, which is why the plaster's doing so well. (Good thing the inspector showed us the picture rails).