Earthquake today

We had an earthquake today, but it was pretty far from us so it wasn't too bad. I am pleased that our new earthquake valve did not trigger.

The bathtub drain is driving us crazy! We bought a nice bathtub from Kohler, and you have to buy a specific drain kit to go with it. The darn thing doesn't work! Our first plumber, who was incompetent, took 3 tries to get it in and it never worked right. It drains really slowly because the plunger doesn't come up high enough. We had another plumber look at it who advised me not to mess with it. I called him back after a year (good plumbers are really hard to find, and he is trustworthy and reasonably competent as far as I can tell). He looked at it again and adjusted the plunger so it comes up higher but now it drains really loudly. It also doesn't work most of the time after you've drained the tub and go to plug it up again for another bath. You have to manipulate it by hand. $170 and it doesn't work. Nice. Oh, but it's "cool" because it is supposed to move slowly when you raise it. I think things that are really cool actually work.

I finished a small project which is that I got my good dresses stored properly in archival boxes. These are dresses I've accumulated through my adulthood and would definitely wear again. I am thankful my size has only fluctuated by one size so most of them fit or are really close.

Garage door scheduled!

The garage door company called today and the installation is scheduled for Monday 8/4!

I finished a small project today of getting my dresses stored properly. I only wear a dress once every few years or so, but I have several from various events over the years. I had them stored in plastic bags which is a really bad for them. I did some research on how to store clothes, and like all things house, there are many different opinions and many of them contradict each other. I ended up dry cleaning them all at an environmentally friendly dry cleaner and putting them in garment storage boxes I got at The Container Store.

Here are the two boxes sitting in my closet:







I am also working on organizing the renovation documents. It's really slow going because there are a lot of receipts and invoices. The 2006 pile alone is about 3" thick after pulling out things I don't need. Even though it is another one of those "move swimming pool with a teaspoon" projects, the good news is that I am generating paperwork more slowly than I am organizing it, so I will get caught up someday.

Garage and Ivy

Yesterday, I did my weekly cutting of the ivy. I can only cut so much each week as the yard waste can doesn't hold much. I hope to have my initial cutting done by early fall, and then this job goes from "to do" into maintenance mode. There has already been a lot of regrowth on the part of the ivy I cut just a month or so ago, so I know I am in for some maintenance. I hope I can get my ivy cutting down to just once every two or three weeks, but we'll see. I wonder what bad karma I am working off to have neighbors on 3 side that fancy overgrown ivy?

Today I finally finished rearranging the garage in anticipation of the new door being installed. It took many weeks, but the front 10 feet are empty. The garage looks better, but is much less organized than it was since I had to focus on getting the stuff into the back half without regard for organizing it. I am very unhappy that after over 2 years of living here so much of our stuff is still in the garage, but what can you do? The house just isn't in good enough shape for a lot of it to be inside yet. And no, it's not "junk" that should be thrown away - that would by my nightmare to have a garage full of stuff that should be trashed. C thinks it actually looks better than most people's garages but I think it looks horrible.

Now we just have to wait for the door we ordered to be delivered to the installer and for them to contact us.

Garage

I am still prepping for garage door, working a little bit every day to get the front 10 feet of garage cleared for installation of the garage door.

This project has taken so much time and has been very overwhelming. I estimate that since moving here 26 months ago we've moved everything at least 5 times.

My efforts in the last few weeks have made the garage a lot worse and jumbled up whatever organization we had. Our stuff is now packed in a lot closer with no order the way it is arranged. I hope I can access what I need in the meantime

We still have lots of stuff still out there that just isn't ready to come in yet, e.g. my small stereo. I have a small bookshelf stereo and with the construction mess in the house there isn't really room and it would get very dusty.

Prior to this house, we lived in small apartment (600-800) and everything fit fine. Now we live in an 1,100 s.f. house with a garage and it is a MESS. I feel like my apartment vomited up it's contents, each of our possessions spawned it's own family and then someone shook it up like a snow globe. I'm not cluttery by nature; most people know I don't hold onto things and like to live small. I'm just not sure what has happened here - we definitely have not gone on a buying spree, and in fact have gotten rid of a lot since living here.

Part of the mess is construction debris - leftover materials of mine, tools I now use, materials for projects in process, etc. Part of it is stuff left by contractors. I found 4 bags of open stucco and one full one. Only 2 open ones are mine, the rest are left by our incompetent contractor. it was NOT fun moving a 94 pound bag of stucco that is the size of two grocery bags, squishy and has no handles. The incompetent plumber left several pieces of large duct work behind. Yeah, I'm working on getting rid of things, but it takes time to get rid of stuff so that it doesn't end up in landfills. I've made a commitment to always have something on Freecycle until we are cleared out.

Still working on garage

I took a quick run to The Container Store to pick up some odds and ends. Always an enjoyable trip to go there. I am continuing to work on the garage to clear the front 10 feet in anticipation of the door installation.

We finally got the parts for the coffee table/fire pit for the outdoor furniture after calling twice and waiting many weeks. We haven't gotten the table together yet, but at least we now have all the parts.

More Ivy, working on garage

Today I cut the ivy back some more. Here is a picture of after my cutting:




It's improving, but I wish it was gone.

I also spent some time working on the garage in preparation for the garage door installation.

Yeah, I'm behind on the blog

Today is actually August 5 and I'm just getting mid-July posted. I have more going on with the house than time to write about it so I get behind. I have all the entries ready to be put in final form, and will continue to update as I have time. I imagine that at some point, I'll have more time to blog about the house and less to do on it so I'll catch up. But until then, keep checking in - I'm still posting.

Furn pickup and whole house fan

Today the charity came and picked up an armoire, desk, dresser and coffee table we don't need for this house. I am so happy and the garage looks so much clearer - better than since we've moved in!

I also started researching whole house fans, which are a very specific item not just a fan that cools the whole house (although they do that). It's a fan that is installed in the ceiling of your highest floor of living space (in our case, we only have one story) and pulls air through your open windows and vents it out of the attic. If you don't have adequate attic ventilation, you need to cut more vents so the air doesn't seep back into your walls or try to find an outlet through any crevice in the attic. Inadequate outlet for the air can actually cause a breeze to blow out of your electrical outlets in the living area!

As with all things house, it is quite complex and will require me to get schooled on WH fans, find an installer and make sure it's done right. There are loads of options to consider.

TP holder and towel bar ring

It takes a long time to get to things. I thought I'd have the toilet paper holder and towel bar up last summer, and here it is year later and they're finally up! As with many things house, it was poorly designed. I really think designers should have to install the things they make. I also think that anything that needs to be installed should be tested on real people before being sold. After getting the TP holder done, I decided to soldier on and install the hand towel ring. Once I had the learning curve down and all the tools out, it only made sense to finish it up and clean up once.

Here is the TP holder:




As you can see, I still have the stickers on the toilet from when we bought it. It's on my to do list to remove those as well as all the paint splatters left by the incompetent contractor.

Here is the hand towel ring:

Cutting ivy

Yesterday I did some more ivy cutting. I am making progress, and like the yard more and more with each cut of the ivy. It's really bad to try and cut the ivy from the small fence on top of the wall. The branches are all interwoven into the lattice.







Here is the really thick corner I haven't gotten to yet. It used to grow all the way to the ground.

Working on garage

The big push right now is to get the front 10' of the garage cleared so that the garage door can be installed. The garage is still really full of stuff, and no, we're not hoarding a bunch of worthless junk in the garage. There are things in there we want that just cannot be moved into the house yet. For example, I have a small stereo that I want to use in the office, but the office is still under construction so I don't want to set it up yet.

We also have several large pieces of furniture in there that we now know we won't use, but moved in with us because we thought we would use them. I tried getting rid of a dresser, but now they only pick up at least 2 pieces and they don't take desks. They may take them though - the operator said she would add them to the order and see if the drivers took them. So, the push is to get the furniture accessible enough so the furniture can be taken on Monday. The next push is to finish moving everything into the back 10' of the garage so the door can be installed in a few weeks.

tree trim, cap sprinklers

We had a crew come out and trim the palm trees out front. They are beautiful and unique, but they create so much yard waste that we cannot keep up. They need the low lying branches and berry branches trimmed almost every week during the summer and about every 2-3 weeks during the rest of the year. We got really behind because C does the trimming and his back has been bothering him. I finally realized that between the ivy, the bamboo and the palm trees that we just were not going to be able to catch up so I called a crew in.

The crew also capped off some of the sprinkler heads in the seating area we are creating. Eventually we will put in some sort of "floor" such as decking or flagstones.

Prepping for garage door install, cutting ivy

Since I signed the garage door contract, I am now prepping the garage for the installation. The crew needs the front 10 feet of the garage cleared for them to work. I am way too disgusted with the state of our garage to post pictures, but trust me it is full. There is a lot of stuff in there that cannot come into the house yet, but is not trash worthy.

We have several pieces of furniture being picked up Monday July 14. It's large pieces we moved from our apartment before we knew how we would use the space we have here. It turns out now that we don't need any of them so they have to go. There is only one charity here that will pick up furniture, and when I called them a month or so ago, they wouldn't come because they will only take 2 or more pieces. I do have two pieces, I just didn't have them dug out of the garage yet. I've begun rearranging the garage so that the movers can pick up the 5 pieces of furniture, but it is a big job! I estimate I have moved everything we own at least 5 times since we've been here (26 months). Imagine moving your entire house 5 times in two years. Not fun.

I continued to work on the toilet paper holder as well.

Another job that I have been working on every Thursday is cutting back the ivy in the yard. We have neighbors on 3 sides whose ivy grows into our yard. Yuck! Several landscapers told me that ivy can harbor rodents. It will also pull our concrete walls down over many years. The ivy has to go! The problem is that the yard waste can only holds so much, so I do a little each week.

Here is how it looked after I was done this week. The ivy did reach all the way to the ground at one point, but much earlier in the process I cut it back to my shoulder height so it has not completely regrown yet.


Just for laughs, here is the same corner when we first looked at the house in late 2005:

TP holder

Today I started installing the toilet paper holder in the bathroom. The roll has just been sitting on the bathtub deck for the past 2 years. It just hasn't been a priority to get the holder installed, and now it finally worked it's way up on my to do lists. I purchased the holder in the spring of 2007 and thought I'd have it done a year ago. That's just the way it is in a remodel. I've found that for a lot of the small jobs, I just can't be bothered to prioritize them. They will all get done at some point, and there are so many (hundreds) that I would rather put the time into getting them done than figuring out which one to work on. I do have a critical path/priority order for the bigger things or things which depend on each other.

As with all things house, it did not get finished today because it is more complicated than it seems on the surface. The holder is being mounted on the side of a cabinet next to the toilet, and it came with hardware for a wall mount. I had to fiddle with things, take detailed measurements and make some calculations to get it to work.