Day One-sixty-six: Part deux

So today was an indoor day and done all without the help of professionals. The kitchen is one of the main goals for the weekend and it's coming along. Here's the work in progress. This is a shelf that we're building to fill the space between two cabinets. We wanted the additional space and a support for the countertop. You can see one of our levels in the picture. That, a ruler, and a sharp pencil are as important as the drill, saw, and screws.

This is the bottom shelf that's the missing piece from the corner unit that we're building. Note: it's upside down.

These are the parts for some other shelves that will go above the stove and one part of the counter. A power saw makes quick work of making the shelves.

Finally, this will be a decorative part of the kitchen. Prize to anyone who can guess what it will be.

Day One-sixty-six: Taking concrete steps

Apologies for the pun, just couldn't resist. But as you can see, we were being literal as well. The front steps have been skim coated and the broken, improperly graded walkway has been replaced. This was done yesterday and with plenty of sun and heat this weekend the walkway will whiten to match the steps within a couple days.

A second scheduled part of the work was to parge a section of the back wall that had been patched to close up the vent in the basement bathroom.

Finally, we had the company close the holes and crack in the basement wall. We asked about parging the basement walls but it doesn't go over painted areas well, so once the cement cures we'll stick with Drylok or some similar water-proofing paint to coat all the basement walls.

Day One-sixty-two: a lesser known Beatles song

We keep plugging away to turn this...not abused...but overlooked house into a beautiful new home. One of us does more building up while the other is tearing down (with the goal to rebuild again, trust us).


The exterior of the front door now matches the interior after a nice refinishing to bring some luster back. First we had to sand it back to bare wood (see: comment above about tearing down before rebuilding).

The kitchen also is puttering along, with the cabinets (doors, drawers, and rails) getting their fifth and final coat. We might not have needed that many if not for the false start with trying to stain them. Live and learn.

The bathroom on the main level also is nearing the finish line. It got a new color on the walls and other accoutrements, but we still need to attach a mirror, repaint the trim, and seal floor and wall tile. But at least it LOOKS like a real bathroom now.

Finally, we had a visit from both the guy who did our home inspection and from a structural engineer to look at the crack we found in a foundation wall. The good news is that it doesn't appear too serious. It's obviously not ideal and will need to be shored up at some point (the SE thought we had years) but for now we can seal up the open areas where the window and chimney were and the crack itself, seal and drylock the whole shebang, and be done for now. The best guess by the SE is that this resulted from water pressure during some point years ago and not from the addition--not when it was installed and not now pulling away from the house. This was quite a relief.

Finally, the walls in the basement continue to put up little resistance to our demolition efforts intended to: a) eliminate any moldy wood and b) prepare for a redesigned and open floor plan. This:

 begat this:

 which became this (there's actually less up now):

Day One-fifty-four: Houston we have a problem?

In our quest to uncover the source of the mystery odor we may zeroing in on the source. We did more work tearing down the closet and other bulkheads in an area we want to clear out anyway and discovered a number of pieces with mold on them. We're fairly certain that the original owner did all this work and given that there are no obvious water sources (aside from the usual humidity of a basement) and that the mold hadn't spread everywhere in the years, it seems plausible that the owner used wood that was already moldy or damp because he had them on hand and didn't consider the consequences.

Unfortunately, in this quest we also took down the remaining panels on the cinder block walls and discovered a fairly deep (more than 6 inches in places) crack in the foundation. It's all along the mortar line between blocks, but there is a definite inward bow to the wall now. Our working hypothesis (until we can get a trained professional in to examine things) that they damaged the wall when they dug out the foundation for the addition in the mid-80s because this wall is directly underneath the wall in the house that leads into the addition. We should know more by the end of the week if this is something to lose sleep over.

Day One-fifty-two: five month anniversary eve

This was a banner week. On Monday we had the granite guy come out to create a template for the countertop in our kitchen and on Friday a team of guys installed it. Aside from loving the color and taking a huge step on one of the remaining big jobs, we now have our final working sink in place.

As for our other current projects, well sometimes you need to clear the decks before you can take a step forward, right? The exterior of our front door didn't match the beauty of the inside, so we sanded it down to bare wood and will be working on it in the next few days to take advantage of some gorgeous weather. Every project goes better with the right tools, and a power sander saved about day's worth of effort getting who knows how many coats of stain off. Of course, we hit on the sander idea after we'd already spent a day or more relying on elbow grease. We're learners, but not always quick learners.

Slightly bigger, but about the same level of mess, we've also decided to accelerate our plans to renovate the basement. There are two good reasons for this (at least we think they're good). First, we never liked the little "bonus" room that a previous owner carved out of the main area, so we're going to remove walls to create a more open, contiguous space. Second, a funky odor in the basement has bedeviled us, so we decided to discard all of the old paneling and sheetrock (dating to the 1980s or possibly older). The tools for this job are a trusty hammer, a pry-bar, an oversized screwdriver to wedge between things, and lots of manual labor.

Taking down the framing and wall behind where the wood burning stove used to be revealed a surprise that could be part of the smell--seems water used to come down the chimney (that we have sealed up) because it carried soot back down in a liquid form that ran down the wall.