Days 3 & 4: There's Even More!

On Sunday, I woke up with a migraine. A head-in-the-toilet kind of migraine. As a result, I ended up being pretty useless for the day, but that didn't stop the rest of the family from getting to work!

Cliff and Dan started by taking care of a window outside needing some repair, while Mom finished up the bathroom cleaning by shining up that lovely hunter green shower. She also did some weeding for us out front, which is something I've been meaning to do but haven't gotten to yet!

Cliff also took care of the awful hole we had in the cabinet under our sink. I am quite glad to have that scary hole out of my kitchen!

Later, Cliff and Dan tackled what I found to be one of the most potentially scary things in our house: some soggy drywall we discovered behind the washer and dryer in the basement. Long story short, there have clearly been some long-standing problems with moisture in that part of the house. Some of it has been alleviated by us redirecting the sump pump drainage. In the spring, we're going to tackle a more extensive project of sealing off the cement in the back and covering an exposed external stairwell which should hopefully take care of the problem long-term. In the meantime, Dan and Cliff cut out the drywall and we're leaving it to the dehumidifier to get things dried out for now.

On Monday, I was finally back to my old self. First up for me was starting the bathroom painting project! I can't wait for that yellowy off-white paint to be gone!

Cliff and Dan finished up their work on the electrical, with Dan even getting a chance to try things on his own. . .

. . . while Mom offered to take care of cleaning our windows.

By Monday night, we were a pretty tired bunch, but it's amazing how much we got crossed off our list. In addition to the projects documented with photos, we also got a number of other things done including reconnecting the heater ducts, examining the sump pump and purchasing a backup, getting rid of that weird dangling plug in the utility area, and ensuring that our deck is solidly in place. We also had the gutters cleaned and inspected, had someone look at our brickwork, got an estimate and came up with a game plan for our floors, and got supplies for a number of small projects we'll be taking care of in the next couple of weeks. As we get each thing crossed off the list, we feel a little more in control of things and a little more like this house will slowly become what we dreamed it could be. We definitely couldn't have done it alone; thanks so much, Cliff and Mom, for all that you did to help us out in only four days!

Day 2: Getting to Work!

Sorry for the delay! We were so busy working that I never got around to posting, and we are just now getting back into the swing of things (it's possible I might also have gotten derailed by a Netflix disc of "Glee"). Lots to post, so let's get to it!

Let me begin by saying that Dan and I are SO grateful that Mom and Cliff came to visit and helped us get so much done. Before they came, we were feeling pretty overwhelmed and nervous about what they might uncover when we started digging a little deeper, but I'm happy to report that Cliff has declared our house to be a solid house. Granted, we still have many more projects to tackle, but we have been assured that we did not go wrong when we bought our house, and given all that we have found, that is a tremendous relief. Whew!

On Saturday, Cliff and Dan didn't waste any time getting straight to work. To start, Cliff took care of fixing our front door which made a ridiculously loud noise when it scraped along the threshold; some new screws (to be followed by a little sanding) mean we will now be able to open and close our door without frightening the neighborhood. Cliff also took care adding a register to our furnace closet door in the basement to improve the air flow. As usual, Elsie was around to supervise.


After that, Cliff and Dan got busy on the electrical work to be done on the house. We had a number of ungrounded outlets, some funky wiring in places, and some outlets and light switches needing replacement. Cliff stepped in with his expertise and came to the rescue! Dan also got the great opportunity to be his electrical apprentice.

In the meantime, Mom and I started with tackling the upstairs bathroom. I had semi-unpacked this room but still needed to finish putting things away, cleaning the closet shelves, and lining drawers, so Mom helped me out with that. Here is the bathroom midway through the bathroom organizing project!

Once we got going on the bathroom, I realized how much I wanted to keep working on it and try to get things fixed up in there. First on my list was sanding down and repainting the bathroom vanity, which is sorely in need of a fresh coat (not to mention some new hardware)!


While I finished up in the upstairs bathroom, Mom kindly stepped in to do the dishes. And then, she proved just what an awesome mom she is by offering to clean the basement bathroom, which has gone untouched since we moved into the house. If that is not real love, I don't know what is!

Some of our last projects for the day included Cliff taking a look at our underperforming bathroom fan (which was in desperate need of a good cleaning) and fixing some very loose drawers in our kitchen.

Unfortunately, one of the kitchen drawers took a tumble for the worse, but Elsie soon discovered it was a terrific hiding spot! (And, no worries, Cliff is fixing the drawer for us.)

And, in the midst of it all, Mom and Cliff's dog Gypsy was around to keep things light.

It was an exhausting day, but it felt awesome to get so much done. And this was just day 2--stay tuned for more progress on days 3 and 4!

Day 1: Assess and Gather Supplies (with a Floor Update)

For our first day of the Weekend House Project Bonanza, we walked Cliff through the many things to be done on our house project list. Much to our delight, there were several things on our list that Cliff said looked fine and didn't need repair (woohoo!). In addition, we realized that several of the outdoor projects on our list were not going to happen as soon as we looked at the weather forecast. This means that a number of outside projects--like sealing a cement wall in the back of our house and taking care of the insulation hanging down outside--will probably have to wait until spring. I have a feeling it will be May before Philly finally dries out from all of this rain, so we might have to wait until then for some significant sun to dry things out so we can move ahead!

Given the rainy days in the forecast, we are focusing our efforts on indoor projects. Yesterday we made a master list of everything that needs to be done, gave Cliff time to inspect everything, and then took a group field trip to Lowe's. I think it was the longest shopping trip I've ever had in a home improvement store, but we got all stocked up for the many projects ahead in the next several days, including electrical work, taking out drywall, and finally taking care of that awful hole in the cabinet floor under the kitchen sink!

The big news from yesterday is that we got the final estimate to have the floors done in our house. We knew that the number would be big, and it was. It wasn't a horrible surprise but was about 20% higher than we were expecting, and the more we thought about it, the more we felt like it would be too much of a stretch given that we don't know what other big-ticket projects might be waiting in the wings. We are still planning to do the whole house in solid hardwood, but for now, I think we're going to take it in stages.

We think we'll start with the upstairs to cover the lead paint floors, which is something we can probably afford to get done right away (we're going to head back for another estimate to get just the upstairs priced, but I'm about 95% sure it will be doable for us). We also need to cover the stairs, which are also painted, but proportionately they are more expensive since the labor is more intensive and there are a couple special pieces that need to be ordered. As an alternative, we think we'll just carpet the stairs for now, which will be significantly less expensive than wood. It will also have the added bonus of creating a divider between the downstairs floors, which will still be pine, and the upstairs floors, which will be a different colored oak. When we have more money, we'll add the new floors downstairs, and then eventually we'll probably have our stairs done to connect everything in between.

We're a little disappointed not to get the whole house done at once, but the floors downstairs really aren't that bad for now, and it doesn't seem worth the stress of stretching ourselves thin to get it all done right away. We know there are less expensive flooring options, like carpeting or laminate, but we just can't justify spending thousands of dollars on something we don't really want, so we're opting to take things piece by piece. Knowing that we are going to be here for a long time, it's really important to me to take the long view and to take our time to do things how we want them even if it takes longer. I've always been a quality over quantity kind of girl. Little by little, piece by piece, we'll get there eventually!

In addition to the work we're doing, we had someone come yesterday morning to take a look at our brickwork and get us an estimate for some pointing that needs to be done. This morning, someone else is coming to clean and inspect the gutters. We're hoping to get all the outside stuff taken care of in the next few weeks and get our house all sealed up in time for winter!

Stay tuned for more updates as we make our way through the house project list over the weekend!

Bringing in Reinforcements

This weekend, Dan and I will be fortunate to have the help of my stepdad (and my mom!) with fixing a number of things around the house. We are taking Friday and Monday off of work for a four-day house project bonanza!

Mom and Cliff are coming all the way from Georgia to help us with things that we either don't know how to fix, don't have the tools to fix, or would never even consider fixing ourselves (i.e., anything electrical). We are very lucky to have such a handy person in our family who will be coming with a truck full of tools and a willingness to help us out!

The projects for the upcoming weekend are mostly nitty gritty things that reveal, yet again, either complete neglect or incompetence on the part of the previous owners. Among these glamorous projects are the following:

Containing the insulation currently dangling outside from the floor under our kitchen, which at the moment looks like something from a science fiction movie and is slightly reminiscent of the river of slime in "Ghostbusters 2."


Placing a new piece of wood in the cabinet under our kitchen sink. The current hole not only makes it unusable but reminds me that I don't really want to know what lies beneath a cabinet and the floor on which it's installed.

Doing something about this random plug dangling from the wall in our laundry room. I have no idea what it goes to, but it seems to me that having something attached to wiring indiscriminately hanging down to the floor is not good. Particularly when it is located in the one room in our house prone to flooding.


Connecting these air conditioning ducts. In addition to water, the previous owners apparently believed that air also magically jumps from one place to another as desired without containment.

Other fun candidates on the list for the weekend include replacing old outlets and switches, fixing drywall, repairing rotting outside sills on the basement windows, sealing some concrete underneath the deck, and taking a look at the back up for our sump pump. If at any point you find that you are feeling sad that you cannot partake of all the fun that is in store, dry those tears and feel free to come join us! There's enough projects for all!

Really, though, we are so very thankful for the extra help, tools, and (most importantly) expertise and are looking forward to getting these essentials taken care of, especially before winter hits. Mom and Cliff very generously offered their help as a housewarming gift, and it is a very nice gift indeed!

Weekend Itinerary

This weekend, our plan for the house is pretty simple: Barely do a thing. We are feeling burned-out and in need of a break from the endless stream of "to do"s. This evening, we went to Starbucks for this year's inaugural pumpkin spice lattes (i.e., little slices of autumny heaven) and to do some reading, which is something I've neglected to do for weeks. Tomorrow we are headed to NYC to visit with a friend and spend some time in Central Park enjoying this gorgeous fall weather. The weekend will be filled with lots of nice, normal, non-house activities. Aaah.

We did get one thing accomplished today when the contractor from Lowe's came to do measurements for our floors, which means we should have an estimate next week. We're calling tomorrow to schedule one more estimate, so if we are lucky, we will hopefully have new floors before too long. I'm sure we'll also try to tackle some little things on Sunday, but we don't have anything major planned. This is awesome not only because we can do other things but also because I might develop carpel tunnel syndrome if I have to do any more painting right now!

See you on the other side of this beautiful fall weekend!

Weekend Recap: Painting the Dining Room

At this point, Dan and I are pretty tired. . . physically, mentally, and even emotionally, things are getting pretty draining. Every weekend comes with a project, and most weeknights are devoted to either catching up on everything else we need to do (e.g., bill paying, dishes, laundry) or doing house project research. In between, we are still going to work and living out of boxes and sleeping on the floor while uncovering new things that need to be fixed all the time. Yes, indeed, I am tired.

Our only real project for the weekend was getting the dining room painted. We had to start with moving our mattress out of the dining room and into the living room, so we've temporarily relocated there for now (but we're still living the dream of sleeping without a bed frame). As with the last painting project, this one took forever because we had to prime and paint the trim in addition to the walls.

Getting the room prepped

Dan puts up primer near the ceiling

Given the hassle of taping around all the trim, Dan and I decided to try just cutting in with the brush this time and see if we could get the job done that way. We had a few mishaps, but nothing that can't be touched up, and overall it wasn't too bad. In the midst of it, Dan somehow managed to give himself a little paint job. . . perhaps subconsciously he wanted to try on a distinguished gray-haired look.

As usual, we had a cat around to supervise (because wet paint and cat hair is such an ideal combination).

Still, even between the cat hair and the Dan-now-has-white-hair, we managed to get the room mostly done. We still have some touching up to do, but for the most part, we have one more room under our belts!

For the dining room, I wanted something cozy and warm but not too dark, with a color that would be a nice bridge between the colors we plan for the living room and kitchen. This color does not really photograph all that well (it looks much more yellowish in these photos; the color is Behr's Almond Toast), but I think you get the idea.


The warmth of color in this room just makes me daydream about having friends and family gathered around our dining room table for holiday meals and glasses of wine and game nights. We have some pretty nice ideas for decorating the space, too, though right now that feels so far away. Still, we are one step closer to making the rooms in our head become realities in our home, which is pretty exciting, and now we have at least one room on each floor that really feels like it's ours--a very nice feeling indeed. Now we just have to hang on to that feeling long enough to stay motivated for all the projects to come!

The Verdict on the Floors

So, my dear readers, as you all know, the floor situation has been plaguing us for weeks. When we first moved in, we imagined that the floors would have long been refinished by now, that all the walls would be freshly painted, that our boxes would be unpacked, and that we would be comfortably settled in. Six weeks later, we are still sleeping on a mattress on the dining room floor, we have one room painted, our house is covered in unopened boxes, and our lead-painted floors are still sitting untouched. And so it goes.

We finally heard back from the EPA-certified guy about refinishing the painted floors, and he indicated that, due to safety concerns with the lead paint, he would not be willing to refinish them. I'm still trying to wrap my head around why you would get bother to get trained in lead paint removal if you aren't willing to actually remove lead paint, but I think I'll save my brain space for something else and just let that one go.

The good news is that, a couple of days before hearing back from him, Dan and I came to the conclusion that putting in new floors is probably the way to go. It will eliminate the problem of dealing with the lead paint, which is proving to be a huge barrier to any progress. There are places where the floors are in poor condition and hardly seem worth saving. Even if we did get the floors refinished, we don't know what we'll find under the paint, and some things, like paint in the cracks between the wood, cannot be fixed. And putting in new floors will be a lot less messy, smelly, and time-consuming than having the whole house refinished.

We've decided to go with solid hardwood floors, which will be more expensive but seem to make the most sense in the long run. We'll never have to deal with the lead paint on the floors again. New flooring will hopefully help eliminate some of the floor squeaking in our house, which is so bad in places that we can sometimes hear our seven-pound cat walking across them. Hardwood floors will be here long after we're gone, so we'll never have to worry about replacing them again, and they are very much in the spirit and style of the house. And, of course, there's the added bonus that new hardwood floors will look amazing and be a great investment.

We've gotten one estimate for new floors and are getting another one in about a week or so. Due to our budget, putting in new floors will mean some other things, like making more updates to the kitchen, will have to wait, but it seems like the best solution and the best thing to do from a long-term perspective. As much as I get a stressed thinking about how much money we will be putting towards the floors, I am SO excited at the prospect of what a difference they will make.

More than anything, I think it feels nice just to have come to a decision. The most stressful part of this process has been weighing the pros and cons of all of our options, and it felt so overwhelming. Now, hopefully, we can stop volleying between choices and move forward. With shiny new floors to boot. Hooray!

Naturally, I'm expecting that we are going to run into a million snafus with new floor installation, or that it's going to be twice as expensive as we thought, but I'm still going to try to maintain some hope that we'll have our new floors this month, or at least by mid-October. October is my favorite month of the year and I will be very, very upset if I miss the joys of fall leaves and cool air and pumpkin spice lattes due to stressing over my floors. Plus, our five-year wedding anniversary is October 14, so maybe this year for our anniversary we'll get the floor dilemma resolved once and for all. I'm just asking. Please?

Mood Swings (Dan Guest Post)

It's Saturday morning, I'm rested up, schedule cleared...

Me, during the week

with apologies to the blog Hyperbole and a Half

Tackling the Green Stuff

On Saturday morning, I decided it was finally time to tackle mowing the grass and trimming the hedges before the neighbors started talking about us (if they haven't already)! We have a small, flat yard, so we decided to purchase a manual rotary mower, which gives us the added bonus of being more eco-friendly (not to mention cheaper). First up was assembly, which was super easy, but I did call in Dan as reinforcement when I had a little trouble physically attaching the handle.


Once that was completed, it was time to get mowing! As you can see, our grass had gotten pretty long (ahem), but the mower did a pretty good job taking care of things!

While I mowed the front lawn (which is really more of a rectangular patch of grass than a yard), Dan took care of trimming the hedges.

Looking much better!

Once I got the front yard finished up, I moved on to the back, which was significantly scarier. The grass had grown just a bit out of control. No one really sees our backyard, so it wasn't too big of a deal, but I was starting to worry that woodland animals might mistake our backyard for a forest or grassland, and I would prefer that such creatures actually live in forests or grasslands and not take up residence in our yard.

Making my way through the grass was a little tougher than it was in the front (here I am making my silly "It's so hard to cut this long grass" face), but it was nice to see the ground again!

Last Saturday was, I think, the first time I've mowed a lawn. It felt like such a quintessential homeowner thing to be doing on a Saturday morning. Dan and I were kind of laughing at ourselves when we realized how "grown up" we were out trimming hedges and mowing the grass!

I was surprised to discover that I actually found mowing the lawn to be kind of fun. I liked pushing around our old school mower, and I found it immensely satisfying to see a mess cleared away and see the immediate result of a trimmed, neat lawn (visible results is also what I find so satisfying about cleaning and organizing). Of course, lots of things are fun the first time around and not so much the tenth or twelfth or twentieth time, but I'll take my little pieces of homeowner satisfaction wherever I can get them!

A Little Bit of Indoor Sky

Dan and I finally made some progress on painting this weekend. We were hoping to get two rooms done, but as we're slowly learning, everything takes way longer than we anticipate. The bedroom was a bit of a big project to tackle because we had to paint the ceiling and do two coats of primer since the walls used to be dark green. And my oh my, with three windows, two closets, and the bedroom door, there was an awful lot of trim to paint! On top of that, Dan is a bit rusty at painting and I've never painted an entire room before, so we're a little slow going. We're hoping we'll be able to pick up the pace as we get our system down and get a little more practice!

I've had the color for our bedroom picked out for about four years. . . way before we ever even thought about buying a house. I wanted something that would create a calm, peaceful environment while also being a nice backdrop to some of the travel photos we have in our bedroom (many of which are from national parks). I decided years ago that I wanted to go with a sky blue, and I couldn't have been happier to finally get it up on the walls!

This is a picture of the room before we painted it. It's the only room in the house that wasn't off-white when we bought it. The color isn't terrible, but to me it's pretty drab. It felt dark and dreary for a bedroom, and the yellowy antique white that they used on the trim left things seeming kind of dingy.

We decided not to paint the baseboards since we didn't want to do work that might get undone once we redo the floors, but everything else, including the closet interiors, got a nice new fresh coat of paint. I love what a difference the color has made in brightening up the room and making it feel so clean and airy!


Walking into this room feels so wonderful now. For starters, it's the biggest impact we've been able to make on a room since we bought the house; it feels great to finally see our stamp on things and to start to feel like the space is ours. On top of that, the room feels exactly how I hoped it would feel--the moment you walk in, the color is so calming and serene. I seriously can feel my body relax the instant I step into that sea of blue. We ended up using a color called Utah Sky for the walls with a trim of Cotton Fluff. To me, that sounds like the perfect recipe for sweet, peaceful dreams!

More on the Floor

If I could categorize anything under "I'm so sick and tired of thinking about it, I can hardly stand it," it would be the floor situation. We just keep hitting one wall after another with the painted floors, and it is so frustrating.

On Monday, we finally had the EPA-certified floor guy come out to give us an estimate. He was nice, professional, and seemed to really know his stuff. He told us that it would probably be more cost-effective for us to put down new flooring rather than have someone deal with the lead paint, but he said he would put together a quote for us. (We certainly aren't opposed to new flooring, but it could get really expensive; we want to make sure that it wouldn't be more cost-effective to have someone deal with our old floors first, so we're exploring all of our options.) The guy also installs new hardwood floors, so he talked to us a bit about that and told us he would get us an estimate for that also.

That was Monday. It is now Sunday, and we still have not received any estimates from this guy. I sent a follow-up e-mail on Wednesday just to ask when we should expect to hear from him. I have yet to receive a reply.

It is aggravating enough to deal with the painted floors, but to have to deal with non-responsive and/or incompetent contractors on top of that is really getting frustrating. I know that non-responsive contractors are not exactly an oddity, but still, this stinks. Especially since we have been waiting to move forward on this project for weeks.

Dan did order a sample of a paint stripper that also works to deactivate the lead in paint. He is going to give it a try this weekend to see how easy (or not easy) it is to use, and then we'll decide if we'll go ahead and just strip the floors ourselves and then bring someone in for the refinishing. Or we might just put down new hardwood floors. Or we might give up and go with carpet. Or we might seek a middle ground in a laminate hardwood. The sheer number of options is part of what makes this so overwhelming, but I guess it's good that we have some choices. Now we just have to keep finding our patience.

Things You Can Learn from a Hurricane

Last weekend, Dan and I got a little surprise from Hurricane Irene when water leaked under our basement door. Thank goodness Dan was headed down to the laundry area and saw it relatively soon, or we might have had a huge disaster on our hands. Most of the water was limited to the laundry room, which was a hassle to clean up but no big deal. The bigger problem was that it seeped onto some of the carpet in the finished part of our basement, which became a huge mess and a lot harder to get rid of.

In the spirit of sharing what I learned about our house as a result of Hurricane Irene, here is a letter from the Jenn of today to the Jenn of a week and a half ago with some post-hurricane lessons learned.

Dear Jenn,

Here are some things I think you might like to know as your prepare for the impending hurricane:

1. If you want to know what's really wrong with your house, a hurricane will happily assist you in uncovering anything you were temporarily hoping to avoid. Like the fact that you knew the house had signs of basement leakage in the past but that it seemed to be under control.

2. Do not be fooled into thinking that just because your house has survived the wettest month ever on record that you can breathe a sigh of relief when it comes to water leakage in your house. It's all about to become pretty meaningless.

3. Hurricanes do not care if you have only been living in your house for five weeks and are already tired and overwhelmed.

4. You will surprise yourself by not completely panicking when you walk in and see half an inch of water on the floor. You will surprise yourself even more by not cursing.

5. You will discover that Dan possesses MacGyver-like qualities enabling him to think quickly under pressure and use whatever is on hand to fix hurricane-induced leaks, including caulk, packing materials, paper towels, styrofoam, and some random metal rod that he found.


6. You will feel ridiculous when you are forced to remove half an inch of water from the floor using a dustpan, mop, and/or snow shovel because you have not yet purchased a wet vac. For a moment, you will imagine people looking in on you and laughing at how silly it looks. And you will laugh at yourself, too.

7. You will be grateful that you have a utility sink in the laundry area, handy for dumping water. You will be even more grateful that Dan went downstairs to use it before you both headed to bed.

8. Cardboard is remarkably absorbent. So is paper, and basically anything else you can find in your house to throw down on top of water because you have run out of towels.

9. Storm water + basement carpet = smelly mess.


10. Elsie is curious under absolutely all circumstances. Even when it means that she has to walk across a wet floor and soggy cardboard.

11. You will stand on paper towels, weigh down absorbent materials with weights, and do whatever you have to do to get the smelly water out of the carpet. You will stay up until 4 AM, practically asleep while standing against the wall, in order to keep working on soaking the water up.

12. You will actually manage to smile and maintain a sense of humor. And once the initial crisis has passed at 2AM, you will not neglect other things that need to be done, like rinsing out the paint roller you hurriedly left behind.

13. Remember that water alarm you bought? You should take it out of the package, put batteries in it, and put it on the floor before a hurricane moves in. Though, let's face it, if you do set it up you probably won't hear it all the way up on the second floor anyway.

14. The battery backup on your sump pump does not work. You will weather this storm without it when the power goes out, but (surprise!), you can now add something else to your "to fix" list.

15. There is no predicting what your house will do. Remember that leaky window in the kitchen? During the rest of the wettest month on record, followed by a hurricane, it will not leak. Not one. single. drop.

Best wishes during your soggy adventure,
Post-Hurricane Jenn