New Door Handle Project

I know I mentioned in my last post that we got around to replacing the door handle on the front door.  There were a few reasons why we wanted to do this project, not the least of which being that THERE IS NOT DEADBOLT! Granted, our neighborhood is pretty nice, but seriously, are we advertising that it's easy to break in? Secondly, the lock on the knob that was there....well, let's just say that at least it looked like it worked. We decided to go with the Kwikset Ventian Bronze Smartkey Arlington Handleset With Lido Lever (sponsored link) from Lowes, since we had a gift card that needed to be used. The lever style handle seems much easier to use than the old style. We also picked up a hole saw kit while we were there, since we're planning on replacing some of the doors upstairs. So, now that we've gone ahead and replaced the handle, we're feeling much more secure.

That being said, here's the before and after!

 

 This was the original door handle. Note the complete lack of a deadbolt...

 



 Here's a shot of the new inside handle, with deadbolt!

 

And this is what it looks like from the outside.

The Wife's Perspective

Welcome back to our blog!  As Lovin' Al posted yesterday, we're very sorry for neglecting this blog for so long, and we promise to be better about updating it this year.  With the wedding craziness now over, we're back to normal life, and we have a lot of great stuff to show you.

One of the highlights was our first adventure in furniture building - back in May, we posted some pictures of our guest room bed-in-progress.  We managed to complete the bed just in time for my mom's visit in June, and it's hosted quite a few guests since then, all of whom have given it rave reviews for comfort, sturdiness and style.  Here's Maddy, giving it her seal of approval about five seconds after we completed the final assembly:

We also successfully installed a brand-new dishwasher, which not only cleans our dishes but sings a cheerful little tune when it's done:

While our outdoor Christmas decorations definitely need some improvement for next year, I think we did a great job decorating the inside.  The deep red walls of our living room set off our Christmas tree to perfection, and we pulled off an 18-person Christmas Day dinner without a hitch.

Our budget is a little limited right now, so we may not be doing any large-scale remodeling for a while, but we have plenty of small things to do to continue making this place a home, so we'll be keeping you updated.  For our next project, we'll be building a storage bench for our entryway, to give us a comfy place to sit to take off our shoes and a convenient place to stash things like reusable shopping bags, hats, and gloves.  We'll be adapting a plan from Ana White, since we used one of her plans for the guest room bed with great success.  Watch this space for a step-by-step tutorial if you are interested in building your own!  

Well, it has been a while since we've updated the blog, hasn't it. A lot has happened since the last post, most notably being that K and I finally went ahead and tied the knot back in October! As you might imagine, not a whole lot of work has happened on the house, what with all the wedding planning and such.

But...this is not to say that *NOTHING* has been done, if not construction related. I had the chance to decorate the house for Christmas for the first time ever, and definitely came away from the experience with a number of lessons learned:

1. I need a taller ladder!!! Our 16 footer just ain't getting the job done...
2. Find a better way to anchor the lights to the gutters/house. Using the plastic hooks just didn't seem secure enough, and I wasn't able to attach the lights vertically going up the side of the house.
3. I need at least 1 or 2 more strands of lights to really get it done the way I want. Driving down the street seeing the lights on our house was just kind of disappointing. It just looked kind of half-assed.
4. Lights are freaking expensive! Of course, I had to go and get the most expensive sort of lights (LED)...
5. Finally, MUST...HAVE...MORE...DECORATIONS!!! I strive to be the guy on the street that everyone looks at and says "Isn't that a little over the top?"

Beyond the decorating though, we have done a couple other minor projects. The partially finished basement has been partially unfinished. What the hell does that mean, you say? Well, I'm glad you asked. You might remember from a previous post that the basement walls were hideous "wood" paneling. Words cannot describe just how bad it was. Suffice to say, it is no more. After a night of therapeutic demolition, the room is back down to studs. The exterior wall had already been demolished by the basement waterproofing company (with our OK) so that they could install the perimeter drain track.

Now that I think of it, I don't know if we ever posted about the waterproofing experience. It kind of sucked, but I'm not entirely sure that it was the companies fault. We think there is an underground stream running under our house, which means that there's always some amount of water in the pump cistern. It never got above the level of the floor, even when the pump wasn't on. The thing is that I'm not sure that the company was aware of this, and the discharge from the pump was, well, a lot. Who am I kidding, it was like we took the stream, and gave it a path above ground. The front lawn where it ejected was a friggin' swamp. I almost lost my riding mower while tending to manly lawn duties. It was like the lightning sand in "The Princess Bride" except there were no ROUS's (that I could see anyway).

Other than that, they had to do some demo inside the house, which included taking out the framing of the exterior wall to get at the concrete, as well as destroying the first three steps of the stairs coming up from the basement. So, one of my projects was to re-build those steps, including essentially fashioning new stringers from scratch, which I married up to the original ones using construction glue and screws. Plus, I got to play with pneumatic tools again in putting down the stair treads and risers.

So, yeah....basement is partially unfinished. We still need to pull out some of the 2x4 boards in the wall framing, because the jackass who "finished" the basement originally framed the wall studs something like 24" on center rather than 16" as it should be, and then just went in after and added the boards. This would have been fine if all the electrical hadn't already been run. So rather than pull out the electrical, drill holes in the new boards, and run the electrical again...you know...properly, they decided to notch out the boards and just screw 'em in, then put the paneling up. Needless to say, this is a potential electrocution hazard, since if anyone decided to screw into the stud, they might end up going through the wire instead, since it's right behind the wall rather than through the center of the stud. Once we get around to finishing the basement, that will be the first order of business to fix.

Lastly, we finally got around to buying and installing a new handle and deadbolt on the front door. The process was actually fairly simple, and the finished product looks so much better! I'll post pictures when I have a chance.

Ok, I've now created a post that is entirely too long, and I'm sure a good portion of you stopped reading somewhere around halfway through...if you've gotten this far, congratulations, and thank you! I'll try to be better about updating in the future.

Sticker Shock

As you may remember, when we bought the house, we had to have the bath area in the upstairs bathroom fixed. We got all the required building permits and hired a contractor (who did a phenomenal job!) to finish the job, once it became clear that there was no way in hell we were going to be able to finish the job ourselves in time for the move. When the inspector came in to check the work, he said he wouldn't give us the final sign off on the building permit until we had a bathroom fan installed (not the contractors fault...because of the size of the bathroom, everyone was under the impression that the window would be sufficient venting). Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal. I'm pretty handy when it comes to electrical, so I could install one with no problem. But since it was the building inspector who is looking for it, he's going to want to see an electrical permit...and I'm no licensed electrician. We went and bought a bath fan, figuring that we could just have someone licensed come in and install it. We had an electrician come in and take a look so he could draw up an estimate. Really, how much could it cost for such a small job? Then the estimate came in...

HOLY CRAP!!!

Did he REALLY just send us an estimate saying it'd cost $525 to wire the stupid fan that we already bought, and it wasn't even a joke??? I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or punch something. At this point, I'm thinking that I've missed my calling in life...

Suffice to say...it appears we may be exploring other avenues to get this done.

ME LIKE BUILD THINGS...

I know this isn't exactly renovation related, but this week we decided to attempt to build a bed...from scratch. On Monday, we headed out to Home Depot to procure the lumber and other assorted necessities to attempt the feat. As an added bonus, I got the go ahead from my lovely future wife to buy myself an air compressor so that I can use air tools (thank you babe!). Between Tuesday and yesterday, we turned this pile of lumber...

into this headboard...

and this foot board...

Last thing that needs to be built is the frame, and then paint before the project is complete. Suffice to say, playing with pneumatic nailers, chop saws and drills to turn a pile of wood into something that looks passable as potential furniture has definitely gotten the testosterone flowing. All I need now is charred meat and explosions to throw me into full fledged, mono-syllabic grunting, knuckle dragging, neanderthal man regression. You'll know the transformation is complete when my next post says simply, *grunt*....

Here comes the sun?

Can someone....anyone....please tell me where in the hell the sun is? We were getting 80 degree weather in March, but we can't break 70 degrees in May? What gives??? Are you listening Mother Nature? Ok, I think that should just about do it for my rant for today. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest!

Yardwork, part deux

We had a nice sunny, breezy day to get some yardwork done, and finally had the chance to break out the new riding mower!  The lawn is mowed, the poor neglected perennial bed is about half cleared out, and a volunteer pine tree in a bad place has been cut down.  We still have to finish clearing out the rest of the bed (mostly involving fighting with an awful mixture of multiflora rose and wintercreeper), kill the few sprouts of poison ivy we've seen popping up here and there, and somehow figure out how to scrape up all of the crushed rock and sand from the old pool base so we can restore the grass there.  That's just the back yard - in the front, we have to do some revamping of the existing gardens, and we also need to figure out our sump pump discharge that is still flooding into the street (despite extensive discussion with the basement waterproofing company, we don't have a good solution yet).

Who wants black-eyed susans or hostas?  We're sort of drowning in both at the moment, and would be happy to rehome a few...