things were done

It's past midnight, got home not long ago from a long long night of work, but things got done and nothing went terribly wrong. I can only muster some photographic evidence:






Our floors rule.

progress!

So Jeff and I worked on the house Saturday from 9-8, and then today from 10-6. We are very tired, but we did a lot of good things. The countertop is officially on and fits. The hole for the sink was officially cut. The sink is officially installed. The plumbing is mostly done, except for an old ass broken pipe (the drain pipe between the sink and the basement) that needs a plumber to get it undone so we can replace it (as the top part cracked as it is so old and nasty). To get this far took a lot of work.

Part 1: countertop didn't fit, have to trim countertop. Fits.

Part 2: countertop fits end to end, but the backsplash blocks 1/2 of each outlet on the wall. Have to move outlets. Took all week (involving demoing part of wall, rebuilding wall, rerunning electrical).

Part 3: countertop fits end to end and doesn't block backsplash, but NOW the front to back is such that the backsplash juts out so far that the sink (well, at this point we haven't cut for sink yet, but measuring tell us) won't fit as the front of sink basin will just into front of cabinet.

Part 4: drive to Lewiston, imagine they make narrower sinks and Home Depot will sell them. No dice. This is Friday night, and we give up and have dinner at a wacky pizza place in Clarkston--pizza w/ mustard instead of tomato sauce, canadian bacon, yum yum yum. Bud in mugs. Good.

Part 5: realize we have to make countertop narrower, rent belt sander and Jeff spends an hour Saturday morning hunched over the countertop and sands an inch off the backsplash. Countertop finally fits!!!

Part 6: measure a million times for the sink hole. finally get it lined up. Cut hole for sink.

Part 7: get countertop (w/ Ruth's help) on cabinets, do some more beltsanding to get sink hole big enough. It fits! Happy dances! Oh crap, for some reason the standard sized sink screws won't fit between our sink and countertop. Give up. Sleep.

Part 8: Jeff does a bunch of plumbing. We visit hardware stores around lunchtime today, realize they don't make bigger sink screw contraptions. Jeff comes up w/ very creative solution. It works.

Part 9: Finally get sink screwed down. Plumbing mostly in. Test. Wait a second, the hot comes from the left pipe, not the right. Plumbed backwards. Hilarity. Thankfully an easy fix (just a quick switch) which will be done tomorrow.

Part 10: Eat frozen pasties. Look forward to vacation.

So yeah, that's the countertop debacle--we totally thought it would be easy and we've been messing w/ the sucker for a week now. But, it's pretty much done and it looks really nice. The before and after pic looks funny right now because we don't have the doors on the bottom yet, we're going to be doing a tile backsplash after we move in (so you're looking at old laminate glue from where we tore that off), and we still haven't had time for the floors. We realized it won't be too hard to do once we're in because all we have to do is move the stove and fridge which are rolly. It might happen before we leave on Thursday, but I'm kind of doubting it.

The electrician comes tomorrow to wire up the disposal (which we also put in), the dishwasher (which we also put in) and to give us a bathroom fan and outlet (which 1940s houses apparantly don't have). Tralala. So so sleepy.

Ok, a sort of strange before and after--think of not as after but as "in progress."





and the working man....


Goodnight everyone. Probably no updates for awhile...unless those floors magically get in before we leave.

you know what's....

You know what's hard? Precisely fitting a countertop between two fixed walls. Our countertop is 11 feet and runs from wall to wall in the kitchen, so leaves no room for error. Last night Jeff cut it (took a long time due to some unexpected nails) and we had to call our friend Andy over to help us lift it up and after all this....it didn't fit. We gave up. Tonight, went back, recut, called Andy again, and voila! It fits!

You know what's funny? Sure, the countertop fits, but did we take into account the outlet and lightswitch on the back wall? The ones that were once visible but now w/ the built in 3" backsplash on the countertop, coupled with standard height cabinets that are a bit higher, are 1/4 covered? Um, no, we didn't take those into account.

You know what Jeff is doing right now? Reading about how to move electrical boxes.

You know what we're doing tomorrow? Hoping to move electrical boxes so that we can get back on schedule. However, 5pm signals bbq time at Andy's so we will give up at that point (if not sooner).

You know who has a lot of patience, much more than me? Jeff. I just want to pay people to fix shit when it goes wrong. My sisu is weak with the home repair.

You know what's really insane? PULLMAN LOVES FIREWORKS. There are 2 firework stands that have been up since the weekend--and tonight both had lines about 10 deep. The past 1.5 hours prove that point as that since 9pm there has been constant, and I mean constant, noise from fireworks. It's all around us. It's really amazing and starting to get mildly annoying. I wonder when it will stop. Along with the constant fireworks are a lot of freaked out barking dogs. Good times. 3 cheers for America.

So yeah, no parades for us tomorrow. BUT, bbq and then fireworks and local bands at Sunnyside Park in Pullman so that should be entertaining. The bus is running tomorrow night too, so no need to drive or find parking. Hoorah for public transit. Boo for lack of forethought. Yeah for Jeff's perseverance.

ps to below post

OH, and I should've said: it was Jeff's birthday on Friday too, so we went out for a nice dinner @ Swilly's and went to a friend's place for dessert. Twas good.

Also, for those who heard about my cousin Brad's accident, he's doing better but still in very critical condition @ UMichigan's burn unit. They've been able to do some skin grafting on his hands, but they still have him on meds to keep him totally unconscious b/c of the pain. Crazy stuff--kind of puts our dumb stress in perspective.

So yeah, there is more to life than the house--like birthdays and perspective.

xo

timelines are no fun

We have officially reached a terrifying point where we have TEN days left to finish up our work on the house. Reason is, in 11 days we fly back to the northwoods and when we return on July 24 we have one week left of our lease--meaning we need to move asap. Considering we haven't even packed one box yet, we need that week to pack and move. So...10 days. We've done a crazy amount of work in the past month but have a few major things left to do.

Lately, we've been tackling the final chore in the house: the kitchen! We planned on bumping out the old base cabinets about 4" so that they'd be a standard depth and we could install a dishwasher and use our new countertop w/out having to get it specially made. We began this task last weekend, and realized that it was a near impossibility. After a few panic attacks, and the help of some housewarming gifts from family, we decided to make a Home Depot run and buy new base cabinets. So...new base cabinets were purchased on Sunday and picked up in 2 chunks--one chunk on Friday night w/ our Uhaul. We also picked up the floor tile and the new countertop at this time. Saturday we got a call that our other chunk was in, so back to Lewiston.

In between the 2 Lewiston trips, we did a MAJOR chore of cleaning out the garage. The garage had become our dumping ground and had all old drapes, carpeting, padding, etc etc from the house. The garage also was full of other crap b/c we made a deal with the devil (aka estate sale guy) and for FREE got all of the contents of the garage--which meant good things like rakes and ladders, and gross things like dead mice, 50 year old lawn chemicals, and oodles and oodles and OODLES of junk. We're pretty sure they saved everything, it was pretty insane. Once we started cleaning we just unearthed more and more and more. We started the cleaning on Saturday morning and filled the entire 14 foot Uhaul. We got to the dump around 3pm and it felt really really good to get rid of all that crap. It was an incredibly filthy job though, and also exhausting. We had to get the truck weighed before and after in order to pay, and turns out we had THREE-THOUSAND POUNDS of garbage. So, in the span of a morning and afternoon, Jeff and I moved 3000 lbs of crap twice. We were so so so tired after that it was crazy. We got back to the house and gave the remaining stuff in the garage a good clenaing and now have a very lovely garage. For some really unusual reason we didn't take before and after pics, but do have some pics from the landfill which are kind of fun:

Notice the front-end loader pushing all of our garbage onto a conveyer belt--pretty slick. Also notice all the dust particles in the air--yuck.


Thumbs up to garbage! This is about 1/4 of the way through.


Jeff's arms after the journey. He is NOT that tan. We both took showers and left huge dirt rings in the tub--pretty nasty.


So, that was Saturday. Today began the day of kitchen. We spent all day getting the base cabinets in. It was pretty tricky getting them level and square as nothing in our house is level or square. But, there they are--they're in.

The beginnings: notice no cabinets.


Cabinets on the move:


And the end result of today. The new dishwasher is just sort of hanging out there, we need to hook all plumbing up still...but it looks cool.



Alrighty then, that's been our life lately. Get up, work, come home, eat, go to house, work, sleep, repeat. Vacation will be lovely.

The current timeline:

Monday: countertops on, sink in (but not plumbed in)
Tuesday: plumbing and garbage disposal
Wednesday: 4th of July, beer, fireworks, hopefully a day off if we're lucky
Thursday: current temp predicted is 101!!! Ack. Plan is to lay the kitchen floor, but we'll see how the heat goes.
Friday: floors
Saturday & Sunday: buff and revarnish living/dining/bedroom floors (we're not redoing them, just lightly sanding and revarnishing)
Monday: electrician comes, puts fan and outlet in bathroom, wires up dishwasher and disposal
Tuesday, Wednesday: probably do all the stuff that didn't actually happen according to schedule.
Thursday: fly to green bay. get ride to UP. sleep deeply.

So yeah, we've been busy. And so it goes.... looking very forward to vacation.