So as many of you know the Mid-Atlantic region has recently been affected by some unusual natural events.  Last week was The Earthquake of 2011 as I am now referring to it.  Last Tuesday Virginia experienced a 5.8 earthquake that was felt as far north as New York.  I’ve lived in Maryland my whole life and have never felt an earthquake, so when it happened, I was confused for a solid 5 minutes.  I couldn’t understand how we could have bought a house that was so structurally unsound that it was now falling down around me.  After I finished processing what had happened I realized, “I know what this is! I’ve read about it!”  Also, I checked Facebook.  Naturally there were 20 posts from my friends and family all reporting that what we felt was indeed an earthquake and not my house crumbling at the foundation.  The devastation was horrific.

 

 

That’s not really my joke; I stole it from the intertubes.

 

So anyway, after that big event came and went the talk turned from The Earthquake of 2011 to the approach of Hurricane Irene.  What do Baltimorons do when a big storm is heading our way?  Buy all the milk, bread and TP we can fit in our cars.  Being that Kevin and I are on the Medifast diet right now, we had no need for additional food and instead we actually did something useful.  I should say Kevin did something useful. He brought our cars and trash cans into the garages, secured our lawn furniture, and emptied the trailer of debris that could become airborne.  Twenty minutes later he was out of things to do, so we turned our attentions to inside the house, and this is what we got done!

 

We moved our furniture in the Kitchen to protect it from the windows being blown out. 

 

 

Sike!  We moved it so we could do this!  We ripped out the carpet and padding in the living room in preparation for the new hardwood flooring.   Kevin’s been gradually removing the many layers of flooring across the main floor of the house.   We still have to take up at least 2 more layers in some sections.

 

 

After a trip to the dump, I started cleaning up the sunroom while Kevin took down the hideous non-functioning fan/light.  When you turn it on, it just buzzes.

 

 

I wasn’t lying, that thing is ugly right?

 

 

Then, he replaced it with this simple, beautiful, functional new one that I bought for us.

 

     

 

He also replaced the missing latches on the storage doors in the office, as well as replacing 2 outlets that have been unusable and without covers for months.

 

     

 

What did I do other then take pictures while all this was going on you might ask…

 

I made delicious pumpkin spiced chocolate chip pancakes for lunch.  We are allowed to eat them on our diet, believe it or not. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is what our girls though of all the activity and the impending storm.

 

So there you have it.  A rainy day of impending doom well-spent. 

 

Storm update: its been gently raining for about an hour with no gusty wind.  If it keeps up like this, maybe you wont be seeing a post about the tree that fell on our house.

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That’s right, folks.  It’s in.  Done?  Not so much; but there is so little left to do that I might as well call it so.  I’ve got to make the top piece for the upright portion, and I have some different ideas still on how to do that.   I also want to add some sort of shoe-management into the shelving.

 

 

This.  Took.  For. Ever.

 

I designed this in February, and started construction a few weeks later.  I’ve probably got about 40 hours into it.  It really shouldn’t have taken that many, but hey, it’s my first piece of furniture.

 

I learned a lot.  I also learned that I need to learn a lot.  There are known unknowns and unknown unknowns to take away from this project.  Here, this pretty much sums it up.

 

 

I learned the critical importance of both following your plans too much and not following them enough.  I’ll explain.  In the beginning, I followed them without thinking each thing through, and I ended up building the shorter bench the same length as the longer bench.  Why?  Because I had copy/pasted the longer bench in SketchUp and then neglected to correct the length of the copy.  And so I ended up with a bench too long.  There was something a bit surreal about that, by the way…  having a copy/paste mistake on my computer end up as 3ft of extra bench on the floor of my shop.

 

 

I also didn’t follow my plans enough towards the end of construction, because I figured it was like putting together a puzzle and at this point, the last pieces would just fall into place.  This is how I ended up having trim pieces that were too long or too short because I forgot about the lid height or the the overlap… you get the idea.  If I had gone back to my plan instead of re-measuring from the build itself, I would’ve seen the issues right away.  But overall, the plan worked.. it’s pretty dang close.

 

 

 

I think I would like to spray next time instead of roll. I bought some ProClassic from Sherwin Williams and used some microfiber rollers, and the results are really very good. I did the finishing prior to assembly, which helped with preventing globs in corners. However, if I could prime, then assemble, then spray, that would be better, because I could fill in little gaps and cover seams in the trim.

 

 

 

As for the “known unknowns”.. well, I need to learn how to cut things perfectly square and straight.  There’s likely a good tool for that.  Using the guide on my table saw did a pretty good job, but where the lids meet, I had to plane some to get them to sit nice. 

 

Oh, the cushions.  Dani might write about that; we’ll see.  She picked the fabric and made them, I just cut the supporting wood and helped staple. 

 

 

 

Oh, I submitted the design to Google’s 3D Warehouse, so if you like it, you can download it and play around with the design till your heart’s content.

 

So, I can’t officially cross it off the list, but it’s in and useable, and I’m quite happy with that.

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Ok, we’re continuing the tour of the first floor.  If you haven’t already, check out the first in my house tour series; Episode IV: A New Home.

Sorry this post was a little longer coming than I originally suggested, but this week the handy hubby decided to start a project that we have no time, money, or patience for, and is in no way related to our home.  It involved buying a well-used (i.e. P.O.S) VW Beetle.  I’ll let him tell you the rest of that story.  So that took up a bit of our time, recently. 

But back to the house. Today, we’ll finish the first floor with these rooms:

• Kitchen
• Sunroom
• Office

The Kitchen

This is the one room in the house that is definitely an after picture.  As you know from previous posts this room has been gutted to the studs and rebuilt.  Having this room almost completed has actually changed my opinion of the entire house.  Believe it or not, I did not love this house when we bought it.  However, Kevin did, and I was tired of looking, and I have to admit it met all of our requirements.  So why was I not in love?  I couldn’t tell you.  I just didn’t get that warm fuzzy feeling. 

But now… how could you not get warm and fuzzy about this!


The doorway in the left of this next pic leads to the sunroom.  The window overlooks the drive way, which is why, as Willow is demonstrating, it is one of the dog’s favorite spots.  The girls frequent the spot to growl at the wind or try to scare away the mailman. 



The doorway in the corner leads to the office.  Things that will eventually change is the ugly brass 1980-something chandelier.   Also the dining table that I inherited from my parents (and is a favorite from my childhood) will move into the sunroom to go with the bench seating.  The mismatched chairs will go in a yard sale.  The color of the room is Mochachino by Behr.

The Sunroom

This is easily my favorite room in the house.  It is very poorly insulated and three of the walls are old crappy windows so its not very pleasant to be in during winter.  In the summer, though, it is a whole different story.  I throw all the windows open and stretch out with a book; all the pleasures of the outdoors with all the luxuries of the indoors.  And no pesky bugs!  Anyway, you get how a sunroom works; I digress.
The room was previously the yellowy/off-white color you see on the doors.  Recently I painted the trim an ultra bright white and the walls are Secret Passage by Olympic.  We are going to replace the doors and strip the paint off the brick wall.




The bench seating that Kevin is working on building is going where the TV cabinet is, and the cabinet is being sold.  Also, we would like to replace the ceiling that looks like aluminum siding with natural wood so it has more of a porch feel.  Kevin wants new floors in here, and I admit it would look better, but the dark-color, rough berber carpet is perfect for the dogs coming in and out.  

Can you tell who's the Jedi and who's the Sith? 


Here’s a hint.


And the answer is:

The Office

The original owner of this house built this room above the garage and originally had only an outside entrance.  It was his home-office for his building company.  The streets parallel and perpendicular to ours are named after him, and most of the houses closest to us were built by him.

For us, the room houses our computers (i.e. blogging central)  and my home salon area for family members I love enough to work on my days off for.   Koa frequently comes in here to nudge Kevin with her nose for no other reason then wanting attention.  Kevin acts like it bothers him but secretly he wants the attention too.  You can see the paint swatches on the corner of the desk; they are evidence of another project coming. 



There is a closet next to the window that Kevin wants to cut into to make a built-in shelf.  It will mimic the line of the ceiling on the other side.  Then, the salon chair will swing around and the mirror will go on the wall where the current cubby shelves are.  The bachelor couch will go on craigslist and I will start hunting for some armchairs. 



And that concludes the first floor of the house!  We’ve got one more post yet in this series, which will cover the second floor.  I’ll be back later this week eventually with the conclusion:   Episode VI: Return of the Eighties.

See you then!

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As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been tying up some loose ends in the kitchen recently, which has freed me to start a new project.  My wife, Dani, has asked me to make a corner storage bench for the sunroom as a birthday present to her.  This is a bit of a sneaky move on her part, because she’s wanted one of these for a while, but by asking for it as a birthday gift (admittedly a belated one) she’s managed to bump it to the top of the projects list.  She’s a wily one.

 

She recently repainted the sunroom, which I think she’s going to do a post about.  We’d both like to see the room put to use other than as a temporary kitchen or a tool storage area.  The room is a bit awkward, because it serves as the primary entrance to our house, but it’s supposed to be a relaxing room. 

 

We’ve decided to put a rather large corner storage bench in the…well..the corner.  We think it will look great, and it will be very functional for things like parties and holiday dinners.

 

 

That’s the corner we’ll be putting it in.  The room is in a state of disarray as it’s just been painted.  If you’re quick enough to notice that there is a chainsaw at the door and snow on the ground outside, it’s because we lost some branches from the recent snow storm, and I need to go out there and take care of it.  I placed the saw there this morning hoping I’d be motivated to do so…. yeah, not so much.

 

I’ve been playing with Google SketchUp recently.  It’s a very nice 3d modeling tool for designing just about anything; and it’s free.  It has a bit of an initial learning curve, but after I got the hang of it I could do some pretty cool things.  I used it to design the bench seat.  Here’s the design as it exists right now.

 

 

 

The higher end-piece there has cubbies for shoe storage.  If you look closely at the first picture, you can see that the far left end piece has a notch in it.  That’s to accommodate the baseboard heater that you can see in the picture of the corner we will be putting this in.

 

This past weekend, I went to Home Depot and dropped a lot of money for the supplies and tools that I needed to build this thing.  Probably about the same amount of money it would have cost to buy one from the Amish Market, but at least I’ll have the tools and learning experience to take on to my next project.

 

So hopefully sometime this week I’ll get started on this.  I need to sit down and bust through our taxes first, though.

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Let's pretend for a moment that people have asked me what we've been doing for a kitchen this whole time.  Well, I'll tell you!  We've been using our sunroom as a temporary kitchen during the renovation.  It's less than ideal.  We have a dish bin that we carry down to the laundry room each day to wash dishes.  We have a fridge, microwave, coffee maker, and toaster oven.  We are actually doing pretty well with it.  My wife has been able to do some creative cooking.  We don't want to break the bank eating out every night, and I think she's sort of taken to the challenge.  Here's a peak.

I have big plans for the sunroom.  Far, far in the future.

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