Week ending 2/26/10

This week we didn't make much progress on the renovation because our focus has been on the bed and the sofa. We went shopping on Saturday and spent 4 hours looking at theater seating. It was grueling and unfun and when we got home I was ready to pass out. I hate shopping! I am missing whatever female gene there is that makes women like shopping.

On Monday, I got rid of another box from the garage. You still can't tell I've made any progress except when you look at it over the long haul. It definitely looks better than when we moved in almost 4 years ago but that's about it.

One of the ongoing adventures in this house is the stuff we find in the yard. We've owned the place 4+ years now, and had the yard completely landscaped and sodded and stuff still comes up. Here is a belt buckle, piece of glass and piece of ceramic tile the dogs uncovered:


I also went to a local stone supply store to look at pavers for a temporary patio and stones to replace the bark mulch on the perimeter of the yard. Right now the "patio" is just bare dirt and it makes a huge mess when the dogs chase each other in circles around it. They are wearing a track! It also gets really muddy in the rain and kicks up dust which gets everywhere and in the house. Eventually, we'll do a real patio but in a rare exception to my "no temporary fixes" rule we are thinking of doing something short term.

Needless to say, even limiting my paver shopping to just one local store there were way too many options, each with it's own set of pros, cons and price. I thought by limiting it so much that just one paver would jump out but that's not the case. I'm going to have to bring C into this one.

I also looked at small stone for the perimeter of the backyard. Currently, we have bark mulch and it requires ongoing, constant maintenance. I go to Home Depot once a month and buy 8 huge bags of bark and it doesn't even keep up with the degradation. The chips degrade in the weather, the dogs eat and/or chew them and I pick them up when picking up after the dogs so they constantly need to be replaced. We want to look at putting pebbles around the edge of the yard where the bark is so it won't need any maintenance. But once again, way too many options.

A lot of people ask me why I don't "just do something temporary," and the reason is that over the long haul it wastes too much time. I have hundreds of jobs still to go and best case scenario is that we won't be any form of done for many years. If I allowed us to get sidetracked and started doing temp fixes we'd have a bunch of half-baked fixes and the real fixes would never happen. With so much to do, the only hope we have is to do it once and do it right.

Week ending 2/19/10

Well, the new bed has been great. It was lots of work to select it, build the platform and set it up, but now that it's done we love it. Here is a picture:

We've also swapped out some of the layers so we can try different firmness levels before we make a final decision. The company allows you to swap your layers for free for 90 days. The bed is really big for our 1952 small bedroom, but we don't care - it's worth it.

We are also looking to replace the sofa with home theater seating. We will probably end up with 4 theater chairs joined by armrests in a straight row. They recline and have lots of padding so they are comfortable. We're looking to find the right brand and price, etc. and like every project we take on, it's a lot of work.

On Thursday I finally got back to work on windows - the mattress and later the sofa waylayed window and door progress. I spent 1.5 hours and got the final living room shade up. That's 6 windows out of 12 completely done, and all but one window visible from front of the house has a shade. It looks so much better from both the inside and the outside.

Here are the last two living room windows before the window shades were up:

Here's one shade up:

And here's the final shade:


Quite a difference, eh? It feels so much nicer and more private too without gapping plastic and torn paper.

Hours to date on windows and doors: 352.75

Week ending 2/12/10

On Saturday, we went to Bed, Bath and Beyond for linens for the new bed. It was horrible and exhausting. There are way too many options. We got home and I didn't like the sheets. The color was off. We're still sleeping on the cheap sheets and using the too-small comforter, but the bed is great.

On Sunday, I just couldn't believe how awesome I felt after just two night on the new bed. Life changing I tell ya! I made another BBB run to return the sheets from yesterday and they didn't have what I wanted so I ordered them online when I got home.

Week ending 2/5/10

On Saturday, we had just one goal for the day: get the bed set up and sleep on it that night!

Of course, it went awry as home improvement projects usually do. I predicted we would not be sleeping on our new bed that night and C thought I was being pessimistic. But there were too many steps that had to go right to get it done in one day so I knew, home improvement statistics being what they are, that chances were high that at least one thing would go wrong.

We started at 11:00 a.m. by removing everything from our room, disassembling our old bed and cleaning the room and floor. Then we unboxed and assembled the foundation (like a boxspring, except no springs).

We started building our platform and made a crucial mistake early on - we thought the foundation was 6' wide by 7' long (it's a California King, the only size long enough for C). When we unboxed and assembled it, the measurements were some odd numbers and instead of sticking to our plan we decided to size our platform the same as the foundation. This led to lots more cutting than we had planned and made the project harder. We also ran into the lumber not being sized as it is labeled, e.g. a 1x12 is really only 11.25 inches wide. I know this and have worked with this on many occasions, but what threw me here is that the boards I got were grouped not with lumber but with hobby type boards that usually measure true to label. Around 7:00, we made the mandatory second trip to Home Depot. Every DIY'er knows that you never do a project with fewer than 2 trips to the home improvement store.

After waiting in line a LOOOOOOOONG time to return our old stuff, we set about finding materials that would be a better fit. We found nice, sanded plywood that was not too expensive and decided to get it. We then waited a LOOOOOOOOOONG time to get it cut.

At this point I was really tired and ready to call it a day, but C wanted to push on so we did. We got the platform built, put the foundation and cover in place and started assembling the mattress (we bought natural latex, which comes split down the middle and each side has 4 layers. All this is contained in a box-shaped, zippered fabric cover). We began having trouble fitting the layers and kept wrestling them but just couldn't get them to fit. Finally we measured the cover and found some weird measurements which we found out were for a regular king sized bed! At 10:00, we had to throw in the towel, put our old mattress on the living room floor, make it with sheets, etc and resign ourselves to more crappy sleep. How disappointing and exhausting. The house had boxes, lumber, our old bed, tools, supplies, etc all over and looked like a bomb went off.

Here's our old bed, right before we took it apart:

and here it is with the mattress removed:



On Sunday, we called the company and they said they would look into it first thing Monday morning when the warehouse crew came in. By 4:00 Monday, I hadn't heard from them and called them. They called back and said they were shipping a new cover on Tuesday via 2nd day air, which meant Thursday delivery. Nice. I understand orders get screwed up, but how about overnighting it since we're sleeping on our living room floor, on a horrible mattress in a house that looks like a bomb went off. Oh, and how about overnighting it on Monday? I don't know what we would have done if we had gotten rid of our old mattress.

On Tuesday, they sent confirmation that the cover did ship and should be here Thursday.

On Wednesday, I spent 3 hours getting one shade up. Is everyone in home improvement incompetent? The shades were missing some screws, which I understand, but I called customer dis-service during their normal hours and left a message. Nobody called back for hours. Finally, I tried the online chat, and got a response right away. Uh, hello, if you have people available via chat, can't they answer the phone too? When I told the woman who responded about the missing screws, she simply said she would send an email to customer service. Uh, and just WHO ARE YOU? The link says "chat live with customer service." No apology or explanation was offered and she was unable to give me a tracking number, ticket number or any estimation of how long it would take. I'm going to my local hardware store and buy replacement screws on Friday. Screw them!

Thursday, I spent 1.5 hours sanding and got one window done. I'm starting the next interior door soon.

The mattress cover did not arrive today - what a shock!

On Friday, I called the mattress place first thing and after several calls they finally tracked down my cover and said it's on a truck and scheduled to be delivered today. The rep did have the factory start a new one so it would be ready to ship in the event it didn't arrive. The good news is that it did arrive and we spent a few hours in the evening assembling the bed and had a great night's sleep on it. OMG, it's heavenly! I'll post pictures once it's made up with new bedding. I bought cheap california king sized sheets a few years ago, but I'm going to buy nice ones and a new comforter since our queen doesn't fit.

Hours to date on windows and doors: 351.25