well, we got some really bad news today. the contractor came out to refinish the floors. exciting, right!?! i got a call about 2 hours after they started that i needed to come look at the floor, it wasn't looking good. our worst fears were coming true, the hardwoods were really stained. i went out at lunch and was met by a horrid stench. nothing like a freshly sanded, dog urine soaked floor to brighten your day. and they weren't just sort of stained, they were STAINED. there wasn't more than a few square feet of unstained wood in the sunroom (and it smelled like death). the living room and dining room had some decent areas (which looked mighty nice freshly sanded i might add) but also some really bad areas. well, we found the reason the floors were painted ... to hold back the urine stench (literally, that was why they were painted, to seal in the smell). mystery solved. looking back it all makes sense. apparently, the previous owners (renters actually) just allowed their dogs/cats to go pretty much wherever they pleased and didn't bother to ever clean it up. nice. i'm not sure how anyone could live in that, i'm sure it had to have reeked before it was painted. you could even see the outline of some former piece of furniture in the dining room where a dog/cat had repeatedly gone in the same areas (it was jet black there). i'll get some pictures taken and posted soon. sigh.
so, pretty much there is no chance of refinishing this hardwood. the stained areas will take the good stain much differently (as in, turn black). some areas the wood was deteriorated enough that the paint is so deep in that it's essentially impossible to sand out. not to mention it will most likely always smell ... the poly finish breathes so it won't trap the smell underneath. the hardwood guys were very nice and said we wouldn't be charged for what they did. they were nice enough to stop when they could see it was pointless, whereas some guys would have just finished and charged us. they also offered lots of advice on how to proceed. good guys.
we've been pondering and researching our options tonight. we are currently leaning towards putting new hardwood down on the first floor (over top of the existing) and in the hallway upstairs. we would then put the carpet back down in the bedrooms and potentially put hardwood there sometime in the future. i haven't done hardwood before, but from what i hear it's not extraordinarily difficult just somewhat time consuming. so, if things go really really well in the next month and half, we might push ahead and finish the bedrooms. but for now, we'll plan on carpet (for money and time's sake). before any of that happens ... we need to paint ... the floors again (aack). we need to do something to kill the urine smell and keep it from coming through. i'm going to research some other options to hopefully kill any lingering mold/bacteria that comes along with it.
as far as hardwood goes, lumber liquidators sells a 99-cent/SF 2 1/4" strip oak (mixed red/white) floor. i asked the hardwood guys about it, expecting them to sneer at it ... only to be surprised that they actually like it (but don't tell their bosses). they personally think it looks better, especially in an old house, because it has more variety and leaves you with a neater overall look than the super clean grades of wood. i was a bit shocked at this, but happy that a cheaper material does look nice. so, we're going to ponder our plan a bit more over the weekend (we're out of town). right now it seems like the best with regard to money, time, and overall finished product. neither of us would ultimately be happy reverting to carpet, so now is the time to act if we ever want hardwood. it is just really overwhelming, stressful, disheartening, etc. to think we have a bunch of hardwood to put down along with everything else in the next month or so. sigh.
we are also going to be evaluating a potential claim against the sellers. we had asked our agent to inquire about the hardwoods and why they were painted during the purchase process. we were never given an answer other than that they were all painted white. they did not disclose WHY they were painted white ... and you know that they knew why. i'm trying to gather some info via our agent about how she asked the question and some details about how long they have owned that place to see if i think we have a case. right now she thinks we should be taking it to small claims court because they did not disclose that damage when we asked about it. so, maybe we can have some of the extra costs defrayed, but it's hard to recoup time. double sigh. anyway, so we're pretty discouraged right now. but we have a possible plan, it just involves a lot of work. a lot. we welcome any thoughts or suggestions or a pencil to stick in our eye.
in other news, we ordered area rugs for the living and dining rooms (for our "refinished floors") on tuesday. amazingly, they will arrive tomorrow! wow. Kohl's had then on sale for over 50% off, plus we are getting a $10 credit for every $50 spent ... so that can pay for some other home items. let's just hope those turn out ok ... right now i expect them to come the wrong size and color and not be able to get a refund. monday and tuesday night we did final cleanup for today's aborted sanding effort. what a waste of time. in actual fun news, we ate dinner with Sarah and Jeremiah tonight (and it was Indian food, double good). they were 2 of our hiking companions on our Grand Canyon trip this summer. it was good to see them again (it had been a month or so) and catch up ... and give them the tour of our stinky house. they are a lot of fun to hang out with. and, you can just start to tell that Sarah is a few months into her pregnancy! we're really excited for them. well, i'm going to lament over some milk and cookies and go to bed. hmph.
the wicked witch of the north is dead ... otherwise known as the old garage. Chrissy and i went out this afternoon and dealt the final blows to the old lady. in about 2 hours we had the rest tore down and onto the wood pile and some of the cleanup done. the shack did retaliate a bit against me. in all of the time we spent out there the other weekend, i didn't step on a single nail. tonight, i didn't step on 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 nails. 2 of them were just roofing nails ... but the other 2 were 16 penny framing nails which both hit the bottom of my feet (i know, should have been wearing my work boots). the first of those i was certain had put a hole in me, it sure felt like it. i lucked out, it must have hit a callous or something. anyway, i'm going to look into getting a small dumpster out there for the shingle trash. i think it would just take too long to bag up and send out with the trash.
we did some other cleanup in the house and called it quits. Chrissy wasn't feeling the greatest from a migrane and i was happy to have part of the day off. in the next 2 days we need to prepare for the sanding to begin on Thurs. we need to remove a few last tack strips, move everything out of those rooms (including moving the carpet again), and do a good cleaning to get any debris out of there. we're gonna do a quick scan for missed staples/nails also. i think we've also decided to have the hardwood guys go ahead and stain and finish the floors also. i just don't think we're gonna have the time to do it ourselves. it isn't going to cost much more (about $0.75 /sq. ft.) so we'll let the pros do it. well, i'm off ... looks like the Sox are gonna go up 2-0 ... sweet.
We made great progress yesterday, however did not quite finish the electrical work. Dad and Dave arrived around 8 and got to work quickly. Dave did a little repair to the back door that i didn't even realize it needed. He also did some much needed repairs to the basement stairs ... making it much more comfortable to walk up and down throughout the day. We removed a huge pile of trash from the basement and i did a major cobweb removal to make it easier to work up in the ceiling. Meanwhile, Dad and Jim made quick work rewiring the basement lighting including adding several new lights. Combined with the cleaning and stair repair, the basement is hardly recognizable.
Next, holes began appearing for some new outlets on the first floor (we added i think 6 more outlets, 5 more than i had even hoped for, very cool). The challenge of getting wire from the basement up to the outlets then began. It appeared the much of the previous power came from somewhere above ... which is really hard do in a retrofit. Come from below, that can't be so hard ... can it? Well, our house has appx. 9"x9" timbers for sills that need to be drilled through to get up into the wall cavity. In one of the first holes, Dave nearly had a fire ... his drill bit got red-hot trying to get through these really tough timbers. A big glass of water down the hole set us more at ease (and the smoke stopped coming out). They devised a new technique and the rest went fairly smoothly (that i know of anyway).
After the downstairs was rolling, Brad Stayte (who was also around helping ... including doing a bang-up job of staple removal from the stairs), Dave, Dad and I started working upstairs. I worked with Dad to get our wire from the basement up to the attic. Luckily, we found a nice path beside the vent pipe. From there, we all started working at getting wires pulled from the outlets to the attic. I think i inhaled a bit too much of the attic's insulation ... but i guess my lungs will be well-insulated for winter. Speaking of insulation, i was very excited to find some insulation in the exterior walls. It appears to be an older expanding foam insulation. It seems to be cracked in some areas, but is vast improvement over what i thought would be there (nothing). Upstairs, we ran new wire to all the outlets (including 3 new ones) and the bathroom lights (which we are adding a switch for). Meanwhile, Jim had been running a ton of wire for the downstairs outlets and getting the boxes ready.
Mid-afternoon it became apparent that we just weren't going to have time to finish. So, we had dinner and took things to good stopping points and called it a day so the northerners could get home. I'd say we're about 75% done with this portion. Pretty much all the outlets have new wire. Basically, we need to get new wire to the lights and switches plus terminate with outlets/switches/covers. We weren't sure at first if we'd do the lights, but Jim found some questionable wiring at the kitchen lights that he feels should be replaced. The upstairs lights will be pretty easy, but we'll probably need a hole in the ceiling to do the main level lights. Unfortunate, but ultimately it'll be much better to have fresh wiring. It will be really nice knowing that the whole house is on safe wiring ... elminating some scary looking connections of knob-and-tube to modern wiring (a big mess of them above the downstairs shower of all places).
All in all, it was a successful day even though we aren't done. We'll find another weekend soon to finish the job. I really enjoyed spending time with my dad and brothers ... not something i get to do much anymore. Despite all the long day of hard dirty work, we still had a lot of fun. I really look forward to doing it again.
well, part one of the electric project is done, although it almost wasn't to be. it rained a lot overnight and this morning ... at about 7:45 Cinergy called Jim and told him they weren't going to disconnect us because it was raining. what?!? all they have to do is snip 3 wires. after discussing with a few people, he finally came up with the real reason ... the union agreement says they don't have to work in the rain, so they didn't want to. unions, hmph. we got to the house and as we pulled in a Cinergy guy drove up. he hadn't heard that we had been talked to already, but came out to tell us he wasn't going to be doing it. we talked to him ... and eventually Jim had him convinced to do it (but no guarantee of a re-hookup later). good thing too, with Jim coming this far ... that would have been such a waste to not get it all done. thanks Cinergy guy.
so, with that emergency behind we dove in. Jim got the old disconnect and meter base down while i ran a couple errands. shortly thereafter, the new disconnect and meter base were up. the old panel came down ... the new went up ... we were doing well. we took a lunch break and i ran to Menards to pick up the new main service wire and a few more supplies. it took forever ... we only had about an hour til the inspector was supposed to show up and we hadn't even run the new service wire. so we double-timed it ... only to have the inspector show up 1/2 hr early. turns out ... his inspection lasted all of about 25 seconds ... didn't even care that we weren't done, didn't even look at the panel inside. whew! uh oh ... what if Cinergy responds really quick to his reconnect call and comes to hook it up before we're done? back to double-speed. at 2:59 (1 minute before the original inspection time) that last connection was made. about 4:00 Cinergy had us back in power (we were always wondering if they would actually show or not ... esp since it was after 3:00 when their workers get off work ... 3:00??). we did a few last items ... and some planning for Sat ... then headed home.
after cleaning up and Chrissy was home from work, we went and got dinner at Barley Island ... mmm. then we closed down Lowe's gathering more supplies for tomorrow. wow, we've bought a LOT of electrical "stuff" the past 2 days! this includes, a new chandelier for the dining room ... a light for the sunroom and mudroom ... and all new lights for the basement. anyway, we got today's mission accomplished and are hoping for a restful night's sleep to begin again tomorrow morning (inside wiring updates). word on the street is that my dad and brother Dave are leaving at 5am to get down here. yikes! i didn't know there was a 5 other than p.m. unless you get there by not sleeping.
Pictures - Top: Jim hooking up new meter base; Middle: partially hooked up new electric panel; Bottom: completed exterior portion
in other news, we'd like to welcome 2 new members to our family: Marvin and Ferguson. Who are they? well, they are our new (but old) chairs. you weren't expecting that were you? we were trying to figure out how to lay out the living room and thought that it would be nice to have 2 chairs in there. we looked around and found these two guys on Craig's List. we borrowed my co-worker's truck and headed to the southside of Indy on Monday night to check them out. obviously, we liked them ... so are now proud owners of two Danish modern chairs (so they say). they are in good condition and very comfortable. we might want to re-upholster them at some point though. we chatted with their previous owners Chris and Jessica for quite a while. they are really great folks. turns out they make their living selling modern art at a gallery downtown, via Ebay, and through referrals (our bank chain, Irwin Union, has started putting them in their branches). they are doing well enough that they have both quit their regular jobs to pursue it full time. they have two funny labs named Marvin and Ferguson, so we thought we'd carry on their names for them. we enjoyed talking to them for a while, then headed back north with our new chairs. after that, i headed back downtown to watch the Colts game with some friends. last night, i was pretty much spent from work, so we took the night off. tonight, Chrissy finished pulling staples from the upstairs hallway and did some cleanup up there in addition to the things mentioned under Project #5. today i also officially signed a proposal to have someone do all our floor sanding for us. that should happen in the next 2 weeks i believe. that's it for now. gotta get some sleep ... tomorrow will be a long day i think.
Project #5: re-do the wiring in the house and upgrade to 200A service. Most of the house still has the old knob-and-tube wiring ... which is really really outdated. There is some new wiring to a few things, but a lot of new still connects to the old stuff which isn't really a good idea. So, the plan is to start fresh. My brother Jim is coming down tomorrow night (Thurs) and on Friday we will be replacing the electric panel and upgrading to 200A service. When i say "we", i mean he will do it and i will watch/be the gopher. I picked up the permit to do that this morning. After that is done, we will start with rewiring the rest of the house. Saturday, my dad and brother Dave are coming down to help with that. A few of our friends here will most likely be there to help out also. I've not retrofitted wiring before (my dad and brothers have thankfully) so i'm a bit apprehensive. I just hope it goes smoothly because I don't know enough about that stuff to feel comfortable doing much of it myself. Once it is done it will be a vast improvement. The new wiring will be much safer and more efficient (less energy wasted due to losses in the old wire). I also think it will add quite a bit to the house's value to have fully modern electric throughout.
Tonight we started prepping for the process. We went through the house deciding which outlets could go, which needed changing, and where we would like to add a few. We also moved the carpet into the dining room to make it easier to work in the mud room. I then headed down to the dungeon and started cleaning up a bit down there to make it more comfortable to work in this weekend. Wow, is it ever dirty, dusty, dingy down there. Lots of random trash too as could be expected. I hope to finish piling the trash in one spot tomorrow night along with finishing sweeping and running the shop vac to suck up all the cobwebs and nastiness. Work has been tough this week so i hope i have time to do some of that tomorrow evening.
90 Year-Old Garage - Free To Good Home (some assembly required)
well, it's almost down. we headed back out after church, lunch, and part of the Bears game (a.k.a. around 2). we picked up an extra prybar after church (another successful Menards trip, several good finds) ... one that was a little more suitable for tearing down a shed. it really helped, we made great time today ... it tore through the roof ... and it freed up the other one for Chrissy to use pulling down siding. in about 2 hours i had the rest of the roof down ... and by a little after 4 there was just a frame left. we moved/straightened up the wood pile. wow, what a pile too. Chrissy did some more cleanup and i attacked the framing. i had the roof framing down and stacked away just as we ran out of daylight (so no pictures of the current condition). so, we only have the wall framing left. that shouldn't take more than an hour or so when we get a chance to work out there again. there is a bunch of cleanup to do still. Chrissy raked up the mess in the yard, but we're still about ankle deep in shingles, nails, and bits of wood on the old slab. so, we'll gather that up in bags and slowly work it out in the trash i think. it's a really nice feeling knowing that it's almost done. we celebrated with some Skyline Chili (to-go, they'd didn't want us dirty folk in there). they opened the Skyline in Noblesville about 2 months ago ... that sealed the deal for me :-)
well, we started demo-ing the shed today. it was a tiring day, but we're a bit over halfway done -- and it looks better already. i started with the roof on the south side and encountered some unbelievable deterioration. termites and water damage had pretty much done most of my job. i think another year or two of walnuts hitting the roof would have done the same thing i was doing. i think the many layers of shingles were holding everything together. breaking through the disintegrating wood and shingles was a pretty messy ordeal. it also became obvious that the front 5 feet or so was an odd addition. i moved from the south to the east side where things were in much better condition, which actually made things somewhat harder. you actually had to pull the nails to get the roof off, not just put your hammer through it and watch it crumble. Chrissy started with the front door and moved to the west side tearing off the siding. she was a hammering, prying machine! the north wall gave us some trouble as the wood was in better condition making it harder to come off. so, she moved on to the rest of the front wall and part of the east side. bascially, we have the north and west roof, north and 1/2 of the east wall ... then the main frame (which shouldn't take long). hopefully we can get most of that done tomorrow. along the way we encountered numerous pill bug villages, flying ant nests, termites, spiders and the like. i found someone's secret whiskey stash (empty unfortunately) and in another spot, a secret stash of condoms. i can only imagine what we'll find next. we worked until around 5, then gave ourselves the evening off.
while we worked, we had some visitors! JD that i work with was passing through and stopped to say hi and see how things were going. we gave him (and his son Jack) the official tour while he was there. Tony stopped by with Allison to say hi also. like Tony, Allison also seems really nice. we chatted a bit and gave them the tour also. they seemed really excited to see what we were doing and excited to have neighbors who care about their house. it should be fun having them around.
cleaning up was a bit of an ordeal ... i think i'm going to be finding muddy grit in my hair, ears, & nose for a while. and we get to do it all again tomorrow. oh, and we also hacked down one of the few shrubs on the property (west side near the back of the house). that's for project #5 ... any guesses what it is?
we managed to finish de-staplizing the bedrooms and part of the upstairs hall tonight. just the stairs and remaining hall staples to go! on a related note, if anyone needs some used staples, we might have a hookup for you. we also took the laminate flooring out of the sunroom. i added some before and during pictures of the sunroom and a sneak peak at Project #5 (see Flickr page). i'll wait to introduce that one until later. i'm spent tonight.
injury report: the chest injury (?) has improved gradually over the week. i'm still pretty sore, especially when coughing or sneezing. i'm hoping i am able to make it through tomorrow without significant pain because ... tomorrow we attack the shack! if anyone feels like releasing some agression, stop on by anytime. oh, and Purdue gets to lose again tomorrow. horray.
PS: if anyone wants our carpet, let us know. the person who wanted it originally has had a change of plans. it's all brand new ... basically 4 reasonably sized pieces (12x12ish) and one big one (14x23ish). would work well to just drop down in an unfinished basement or even replace a room or so in your house. we have a bunch of padding to go along with it. free carpet, how can you resist?
Weds night is Bible study night, so we returned to action tonight ... again with the staple/tack strip pulling. yes, there were more. we finished Bedroom #2. only Bedroom #1, the hallway, and stairs to go! we also broke in the new shop vac cleaning out the ducts downstairs (as far in as the hose would reach anyway). it's amazing some of the things that end up in there after 90 years. well, some things aren't so amazing, rather unamazing really when you think about it ... dust, cobwebs. i'm more referring to plastic golf balls, spools of thread, marbles, and such. i hope to tell you about Project #5 tomorrow. too tired to type much more tonight.
well, more staple and tack strip pulling tonight. finished Bedroom #3. also did some space planning for the living room. it's a big room ... but kind of hard to lay out furniture in. we have some ideas though. also got our quote from the hardwood guy. a little higher than i hoped for. i'm gonna chat with him in the next day or so to see what can be done -- part of how it was quoted was a bit odd, so i'm gonna try to use that as leverage for a lower price. wheelin' and dealin' ... that's me. oh, beware of the upstairs toilet seat guys ... it doesn't stay up very well. i'll let you use your imagination ... let's just say i rode the learning curve for all of you. in other news, the trash man didn't like our trash apparently--unless we don't get a trash day this week because of columbus day. probably because our cans were too full (stuff sticking way out the top of them). i guess we'll just have to ration it out better each week to get rid of it. maybe dispose of some of the small stuff elsewhere (don't tell anyone, but that just might be our dumpster here). well, adios for now.
PS: thanks to my smart bro Nate ... there will hopefully be no more advertisements in the comments anymore. he found a setting to change to stop that ... it was getting really annoying.
well, i've managed to injure myself in another strange manner. more on that later. i mowed the lawn Saturday morning, then we went off to watch another brutal loss by the Boilermakers. ugh, nasty. we resumed activities Sunday afternoon. Monday is trash day, so it was time to load up the trash pile again to get as much junk out as possible. this time, from the old shed. the timing didn't work out to tear it down this weekend, but it was probably better as it took several hours just to get it cleaned out. there was more junk in there than expected. we found lots of old lumber (mostly junk), many of the original window screens and storm windows (in generally poor condition, but neat to find), lots of sheets of glass, a smoker (for smoking meat, not a guy smoking a cigarette), 3 partial shovels, 3 knives, pet medication, boxes of clothes, an exercise bike, a box of tile, many shingles, and a partridge in a pear tree. we piled as much as would fit into our trash cans and some boxes and are crossing our fingers that the trashman took it all. after last week, we decided they wouldn't take a random pile of wood ... so we cleaned up the pile for future elimination (burning) elsewhere. Chrissy cleaned up a ton of it (removing nails, screws) so our friendly wood burners don't get left with a pile of rusty old nails. i also did a really quick re-cut of the lawn -- still trying to catch up from being too long. oh, and we met our neighbor across the street, Tony. he saw us out working and stopped in to say hi. a very nice guy, pretty close to our age. he and his wife Alison have 2 little kids and are quite the remodelers also. it's comforting to know that we at least have 1 really good neighbor. we are looking forward to getting to know them and our other neighbors.
we took a dinner/Colts game break and headed to Menards because we saw they had some good sales. we got a nice 12 gal/5 hp shop vac (on sale and didn't know it til we bought it, nice surprise), a rake, a shovel, some tulips, and a couple other small items. some good deals which is always nice. now we move to the injury report. background story: about 2 weeks ago i went to lay down on the floor and felt a pop and some pain in my ribcage. it hurt for a little bit and was sore off and on for a week or so, but not too bad. back to Sunday. i was putting the casters on the bottom of the shop vac and they were snapping in really really hard. i was pushing, "hammering" with my palm ... nothing. finally a few were going and we were down to the last one. i really was putting some oomph into it ... when i felt the right side of my chest just kind of give way. pain. lots of pain. and then more pain. i think i dislocated a rib or something. i somehow got the last caster in (i don't remember doing it) ... then we spent another hour (until about 9) or so pulling staples/tack strips from an upstairs bedroom (#3). the pain was better except for anything that required using the muscles of the chest (most anything). i did a little web-diagnosing and decided that at the moment a Dr. visit wasn't all the useful if its a rib injury (even a fracture) ... they can't do much but give you drugs to help you through the healing process. i'll see how it goes ... if it doesn't start toning down i'll have to visit the Doc. then i had about 2 hours (which turned into 4 hours) of "home work" to do ... yippee.
monday morning, the pain was pretty bad at first. moving anythinghurt. i must have slept on it funny. i took regular Advil doses and things got better most of the day. i'm still pretty sore and coughing isn't fun ... but i think i'm on the road to recovery. we decided that pulling staples/tack strips wouldn't be that good for me today, so instead we went to the library and grabbed a ton of remodeling and landscaping books -- research time.
i've posted quite a few more pictures (nasty yard, nasty shed) on Flickr. oh, and here's a shot of all the carpet/pad we took out. that's all for now. i think i'll thumb through some books and get a good night's sleep.
not a whole lot to report. i worked late again, so we just spent this evening at the house doing some more detailed planning. we're working from room to room, recording measurements and jotting down the various things we'd like to do now ... soon ... or someday. it gets to be a bit overwhelming. last night i started doing some research on landscaping ideas also ... and getting the site "master plan" started. again, a bit overwhelming. we just need to keep things in perspective, only do what we can ... and can afford. small steps, small steps. eventually we'll get to everything.
well, i'm beat. tomorrow, do some mowing and work around the house and then head to the Purdue/Iowa game (thanks to tickets from the boss). Boilers better shape up for me. after that (if i'm in a good enough mood post-game) we'll probably hit the staple/tack strip patrol. have a good weekend everyone.
Project #4: improve the lawn. As was previously mentioned, the first lawn mowing brought to life just how nasty our lawn is. Well, we just took step one towards making it better tonight. We did the first fall fertilizing and broadleaf weed control. We picked up the weed & feed (Scotts 22-4-11 Winterizer plus weed control) last night and planned on getting a drop spreader. We were standing in line at Meijer getting ready to pay and were just chatting with the guy ahead of us. He then says that he has an extra spreader at home that he'd sell us if we want it. Well, stingy me says sure ... i never turn down a good deal. So we buy the fertilizer and meet him outside to discuss. We arranged a super top-secret meeting at the Schwinn store parking lot in Carmel, 4:30 today. He'll be in the red Mercedes wagon. So, i went and made the deal this afternoon ... felt like i needed to be looking over my shoulder for the cops or something. He was wrong, it was a rotary spreader, not a drop spreader. Oh well, rotary will work for now ... especially for $10. So, tonight i applied it ... mostly in the dark, so i hope i managed a somewhat even distribution. I can't believe how quick is getting dark already.
Our friend Brad told me about a great website the other day. It is Purdue's Turgrass Program's information site. It has a ton of great tips on weed identification and control, fertilizing schedules and tips, and lots of other info -- especially useful if you live in and around central Indiana. Based off their info, I was attempting to put on 1 lb. of Nitrogren/1000 SF tonight - although I'm a few weeks late on that application. Reading through their info has me questioning the future of our current lawn. As i mentioned before, we have a pretty bumpy lawn and i thought i'd just roll it in the spring to even things out. Well, Mr. Purdue Expert says that isn't good for the lawn ... i believe because it overconsolidates the soil which is rough on the turf. Their suggestion for a really bumpy lawn -- non selective herbicide, re-grading, and re-seeding ... a.k.a. start over. The time to do that has passed for this year, so we'll re-evaluate next summer and perhaps dive into re-seeding in early fall. In the meantime, we'll try to improve what we have by getting rid of the weeds and helping the grass along with fertilizer. I'm gonna get some "before" pictures of the lawn, so next spring we can see if what we've done has helped ... something you can look forward to all winter long :-)
i worked late Monday, so we didn't hit it again til tonight. we removed the rest of the carpet and pad (upstairs) -- sweet! we also finished removing staples and tack strips from the living room floor. all that leaves on the first floor to prep for hardwood refinishing is that in the sunroom (under laminate floor). i added quite a few "before" and "during" pictures to our Flickr site so go check those out if you'd like a visual. it was neat to get a peak at the upstairs floors. they are of wider (and thicker) strips than downstairs (see picture). the mystery of the white paint continues. we are doubting that the house was really lived in with white floors ... the painting job was so terrible that there is no way they could have just lived with it being that bad (e.g. about a 1 foot wide strip was unpainted under a door - see picture, etc.). we are wondering if they wanted a way to cover up that there was considerable wear on the floors. their first thought was paint ... then the realized that was a dumb idea so covered it with carpet?? the stairs give a good idea of the condition since they weren't painted. the finish in heavy traffic areas is definitely very worn, so we could see them wanting to cover that up to avoid refinishing. for a couple bucks more a SF they could have redone them all instead of carpet. oh well. we shall do it for them.
i also picked up a used wheelbarrow this afternoon. been keeping an eye on Craig's List for things we can use around the house/yard and a good deal on a wheelbarrow was a good place to start. the lady i got it from said there should be more stuff coming as they prepare to move (maybe an edger and weed trimmer ... plus other various tools).
well, we worked late ... i'm tired, my hands hurt ... meeting with a potential hardwood contractor in the morning. wish us luck!
Project #3, painting this old house. this one is in the early stages, but there is some progress. Chrissy's dad does some part-time work in the paint department at Home Depot. He knew there was a big sale on Behr paint & primer last weekend. so we went ahead and picked our colors out for the interior. We went last Sunday night to buy, but it turns out the sale wasn't in this HD region. So, Chrissy's parents were nice enough to buy it up there for us. it worked out well since Chrissy was going to be up there this week anyway, so she could pick it up. we'll probably paint the rooms that are having hardwood refinished now (before hardwood sanding) and leave the others (baths, kitchen) for one of the last things. so who out there likes to paint??
the colors are as follows (again, they don't all look quite like the paint chips even though i got the colors from Behr's site).
we're back! no progress on projects 1 or 2 to report, however some things have been done. thursday i worked late and Chrissy went up north for a Dr appt so nothing happened that night. friday night i roamed around looking at lawn mowers (and soaked in the glory that is the many isles of joy at Lowe's -- "ooh, we could use that, and that, and that ..."). i also visited the Sears Outlet store to see if they had mowers ... they only had riders, but i did look through their appliance selection (we need to get a full assortment of appliance before we move). i was close to buying a fridge (same one we were looking at in regular Sears) but i decided (with some help from a saleswoman at regular Sears) that it was likely dropped, not just scratched. so, we'll pass on that. i do think we will be back though, seems like some good deals there. many items have just a small scratch on the side or something.
saturday brought a bit of everything. i spent the morning and part of the afternoon helping some friends paint their house, i guess we'll call it training for our house. my friend/cousin Jeff was in the area from Bloomington, so we met up for a late lunch to catch up on things and toured the house. it was good seeing him again, it had been too long and i'm glad things are going really well for him. he is official visitor #2 ... Chrissy's parents stopped in last weekend as our firsts. after jeff left, i continued my lawn mower search. i ended up going old-school style: a 20" wide Scott's Classic reel mower (see picture). as i was doing my research, these little guys kept popping up as a nice mower alternative. we'll call it the healthy alternative: healthy for me (pushing it around is good exercise), healthy for the yard (the shearing cut of these is better for the grass than the machete approach of traditional mowers), healthy for the environment (no emissions, gas mowers are notorious polluters). the downside is that they don't do well with long grass, they can get caught on twigs, and they won't mulch up leaves like a regular mower (maybe we'll look for a cheap, used push mower to chop up some fall leaves). i talked with my bro Nate before buying because i know they have one. they like it despite some of the downsides. the box fit nicely in my trunk and within 20 mins i was mowing. i mowed essentially twice that night because the grass was REALLY long. they are actually pretty darn fun to use ... for mowing the lawn anyway. they make a nice scissors-like noise and have a nice little spray of clippings that is fun to watch (confirmed by Chrissy who got home about this time). it was actually a lot easier to push than i expected also -- they're a lot lighter and smoother than your granddaddy's reel mower. upon mowing, my feelings about our lawn were confirmed: it sucks. i think we have more weeds than grass at the moment. and it's kinda lumpy. so, i will start treating with a weed & feed product this fall so hopefully by next summer we have some decent grass (preview of an upcoming project). i think i'm going to try to get the lawn rolled in the spring to smooth it out a bit too. after that, we went home and i cried myself to sleep after the shalacking Purdue took that night.
Sunday afternoon we went back out. since we had sunlight wedecided to work outside. i did another quick mowing (and probably will again Tues or Weds) to hit some of the long pieces that didn't get mowed before. i think it will take a bit to catch up since it got so long. Chrissy pulled a ton of weeds up front. there were some old pallets and misc. trash out by the old garage that i pulled apart (let's hope the trash man will take the 3' high pile of wood i left along the alley). Chrissy cleaned out the mini shed thing. we hit the jackpot of plastic cups in there! we weren't able to look in there before (it was locked) ... apparently the old owners came and took off the padlock sometime last week. we also found 2 more old house doors and a bunch of spiders. after cleaning it out, we also moved it over by the other "garage" where the pallets/trash had been. we figured we'd trade grassless spots to have it in a better location. let's just say it's not the sturdiest of structures either. sorry, the pics didn't turn out so well because it was getting dark, so i'll add one later. we also got our third visitors, our friends Kristi and Traci stopped in to take a look around. after they left we decided to call it quits. we were pretty tired, hungry, and dirty.
