Jersey House: fixing up an 1899 house in suburban New Jersey

Jersey House: fixing up an 1899 house in north jersey, without killing each other, or the house, or the cat.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

chilly

we accidentally let the heating oil run out. and because we're genuises, didn't figure it out until the vents had been blowing cold air for like a day. hey, it was freakishly warm here! and yeah, we're idiots.

so, oops.

luckily, before jbb had called the oil folks to come fill it on thursday already, so we just had them move it up to today. holy crap is this stuff expensive! the bill makes me want to go lie down for a while.

but the furnace guy just left, after changing the filter thing and doing his magic, so now i am cranking the heat to a decent temp, and standing over the nice warm vents until my feet defrost. according to the thermostat it was 50 deg in the house. Ehh. still warmer than my parents house (my mom likes to see how long she can go before turning on the heat each year. good times, yeah.)

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

did I ever tell you about the devil wallpaper?

of course I did. Because the wallpaper in my office was sent straight from hell to torment me, mom, and anyone who ever came near it. Not just ugly, but apparently bonded straight to the plaster.

The devil wallpaper, she is off. How you may ask? Well chickens, it's all thanks to this handy dandy little wonder with it's own carrying case:

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The black and decker mouse. Fitted with 60-grit paint stripping hook and loop pads.

Yeah, I sanded off the wallpaper of the damned. And it worked! Messy as hell, but I expect no less of a fight from the wallpaper of the damned.

And then JBB and I tackled the double-wall. Some ninnys before us installed a layer of wallboard over the plaster on one of the walls. They'd removed the picture molding at the top of the wall, but didn't bother doing anything about the baseboards, or the window molding. Idjits. One of the corners was loose, so after removing the picture molding again, we just ripped the sucker off the wall, ganked out the drywall nails. What we find? Wait for it...

Painted over wallpaper.

Because the gods of wallpaper haven't already made it explicitly clear that I am not in their good graces, I guess? Sheesh. Interestingly, it was actually painted a decent color, which confirms that it was not the previous owners doing (catty, but accurate). At least this stuff was so old it pretty much flaked off. Flaked off with a lot of scraping and some soaking with an unhealthy concentration of DIF.

At least the plaster underneath was in quite good shape. I ask you, who covers up painted over wallpaper with drywall? How is that easier? You've already painted over it, jeeze people. Think ahead!

Did I mention I did this all in one night? Because I'm nuts? And by the way, there is REALLY bad TV on at 2:30 am on a Friday.

Then, there came the washing of walls. And the repairing of cracked/gouged plaster (I got a little scraper happy. It was 3 am, cut me some slack). I finally went to bed when I ran out of joint compound. Luckily the next morning, my mom came over and primed the ceiling and picture rail trim while I skimcoated the sanded-down devil wallpaper and the entire formerly-covered-over-wall.

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gorgeous! and smooth! finally!

Of course, I didn't bother to sand the room until 2 weeks later, when the thanksgiving deadline started to loom. My hair was white from dust, and thank god for the shopvac. But I hit the woodwork while I was at it, so all in all, the room, she was prepped.

I primed pretty much every surface in the office, painted the ceiling (I HATE painting ceilings). By the time the parents came over to help I'd moved on to the white trim just in time for Mom to finish it up--she's awesome with the cutting in--and I could go for the acid green wall paint.

All that was left was scrubbing the crap out of the floor, and taking this:
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and moving it all back into the office. Finally the spare room was spare (and ready to act as guest room, once we got the mattress delivered).

Granted, we still have to put the last piece of trim up on the formerly wallpapered/drywalled wall, and I have to organize all my craft crap and yarn stash, oh, and finish painting the windows and doors. But hey, it's almost done!

Friday, December 01, 2006

let's travel back in time a few weeks, shall we?

because I am lazy and it takes me weeks to upload pictures, I never was able to fully explain the kitcheny chaos that was the weeks before Thanksgiving.

First off, JBB had a bizness trip the week before thanksgiving. a week-long bizness trip. To europe. the week before thanksgiving. yeah. fun times.

So the weekend before he left, he and Dad hung the boxes on the wall and screwed the suckers together. the ikea cabinets hang on a rail, not unlike a french cleat, but a little niftier.
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course JBB and dad had to hang the rail twice because the first time it felt too low. alas.

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and there was much discussion. and sweating.

et voila:
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then they had to bolt the suckers together:
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and of course they still had to do the lower cabinets, and thanks to our wildly uneven floor, parts of which had multiple layers of flooring, this was no easy task. I believe JBB is trying to level the back legs on the sink cabinet:
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we had had to have the plumbers back in to move the rough in, because it was off by about an inch or so. and then rather than cut a new piece of drywall, I suggested we just flip the patch over and cut one extra hole. Worked pretty well, if I do say so myself:
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I left it to dad and JBB to mark and cut the actual holes in the cabinet for the plumbing though. dad did a nice job, and rather than sign his work, he did this:
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did it work?
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thank god, yes.

apparently the corner cabinet was also a bitch to get in. but i wasn't there for the making of that
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just saw the end result.

note ikea's handy dandy poster instructions:
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But then JBB took off, and left me and Dad to do the countertops, cut the sink hole, install the sink, and the doors/drawers.

there was naturally some minor panic, since the electricians were coming to do the undercounter lights and the finish work like the next day. which they did, and oooooh:
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shiny!

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gfci!

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lights! and fan! and did I mention recessed lights? (the fan shade was cracked, we need a new one, but still with the pretty pretty)

But more importantly, the plumbers were coming to connect the sink and faucet that friday--then revised to thursday. so counters HAD to be done by then. oy.

So we got cracking. The ikea birch butcherblock is pretty nice, and damn heavy. luckily, JBB had drawn the outline of the sink where the cutout should be before he left. it's pretty big, since we got the drainboard attached sink from elkay, so there was some debate as to whether we cut out the WHOLE hole, or just the sink part. After some checking of interwebs and sinkage, turns out I was right--whole hole. Dad did the actual cutting in several sections with his jigsaw to keep the big piece from dropping and splitting.

the leftover cutout
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ta dah!
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once that was done, it was all about getting the suckers into place. I sealed the cut edges in the hole with spar varnish, and then screwed the counter to the boxes and to the cover panel that is screwed to the wall to the left of the dishwasher to support the counter edge. then, dropped the sink in, using a shitload of clear silicone caulk.
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looks pretty good, no?

Dad took the two pieces of countertop for the other side of the run back with him to attach them invisibly in a right angle, and brought them back the next day for installation. I got to do that part, mainly because I can haul myself inside that corner cabinet without busting my spine. sadly, we did not get any pictures of the beautiful join dad did.

What did we learn? Ikea instructions are good, but sometimes leave things out. Dad and JBB work very well together. Dad and I work well too, but with a whole lot more cursing and a lot of "stop being so damn whiny and just do it right" and "quit being a baby!" on both our parts. Poor mom. She avoids it as best she can, usually by volunteering to finish painting the trim elsewhere in the house.

next up?
hanging the doors, where we learn that I can understand ikea instructions quite well, and no one wants to believe me when I explain how they even give instructions on how to take things apart when you screw up. and dad has an excellent vocabulary of curses and likes to direct them at inanimate swedish objects.