Year of the House

The basement cleanup continues...it was really rewarding to sit on the floor under the desk with the vacuum cleaner and beautify the carpet. No, really. I swear, it WAS!

But the real excitement this weekend came Sunday, when my cousin (who's an architect) came down from Boston to take a gander at the house, take some measurements, and think think think. He's going to suggest plan ideas for the addition -- he already had some great ideas just in looking at the house (one was to start the addition farther back, which means we wouldn't have to mess with the place that the electric, cable, and phone come into the house, and we wouldn't block one of the basement windows (thus preserving natural light down there)...also, it would likely give us those couple of extra feet in width we were looking for, to avoid having to go to the zoning board! Hooray! Oh AND, it would also likely mean that what is currently the dining room window could become the door to the addition, which would make a whole lot of sense.

He, too, likes the idea of pocket doors (or at least accepts the fact that *I* like the idea of pocket doors). One nice thing to note...not only did he take lots of pictures of the house, along with measurements and such, but he also took lots of pictures of the NEIGHBORS' houses. He didn't want our addition to look just like others', but he also doesn't want it to look so different that it looks funny in context. His goal is to make it look like the addition isn't an addition at all, but was built at the same time the house was originally.

I'm excited to see what he comes up with. Also, I have another call into a NEW surveyor, since surveyors don't seem to want my business. Oh well.

Posted by Kerri at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

You know, moving things INTO your home is such an exciting experience...A new sofa! Table! Chair!

But moving stuff out is such a HUGE pain.

And when it's finally over, it feels almost as good as getting something new. A guy came today and took the armoire from hell. It probably weighed about three hundred pounds. I got it for free from a girlfriend about ten years ago. She got it from her boyfriend, who had gotten it when he originally got married to his first wife in 1982.

I told the guy it weighed a million pounds, so he got a friend to help him carry it, and they put it in the back of his minivan. The good thing was, Rich and I got energetic this morning, and we actually got it outside before they got here. I think they were pretty pleased about that. :-)

So now the old ktichen table is doing temporary service in the bedroom, holding up the TV. All my socks and underwear are in bags, rather than drawers now...but that's OK. I think I can handle that. It's only temporary. RIGHT? It's ONLY TEMPORARY!

Posted by Kerri at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Today was another milestone -- the sofa and futon are gone from downstairs. With much less effort than I'd expected, we got the sofa out of the basement, into the pickup truck, and off to the transfer station. I hate adding 180 pounds of trash to the landfill, but tried to give it away on four different freecycle lists, to no avail. Oh well. It was a great sofa in its lifetime. And it was REALLY fun to hurl the cushions towards the back of the big warehouse thingie where you leave trash!

And the futon is really only partially gone -- the cable guy came to fix a signal problem we were having, and we lost track of time. The transfer station closes at 3...and Rich got there at four minutes to three...and the guy was ALL CLOSED UP. I am quite peeved about this whole thing, and plan to WRITE! A! LETTER! or something. So now we have to wait until Tuesday (not open Sunday or Monday)...which probably means waiting until Saturday. But that's no problem. It's in the pickup now, and is fine to stay there until next weekend.

Tomorrow? The armoire goes to the guy from Freecycle who wanted it, and we tidy up and vacuum that half of the basement, and set up Rich's first desk!

Posted by Kerri at 08:22 PM | Permalink

Kerri needed a new range hood, because the fan motor on her old one was dead as disco, and she opined (and I concurred) that it would be a better use of time to just replace the range hood entirely, rather than try to repair the old one (which was old and yucky, and a cheapie Builder's Special to boot).

The choice of a range hood was dictated by budget on one hand, and practical considerations on the latter. You can get some gorgeous range hoods by Miele and other manufacturers, but they're (a) fiercely expensive, and (b) very difficult to keep clean — perfect if you have a full time staff to polish your appliances every damn day, but impractical for normal people with jobs and kids and so on.

So, when we were wandering around in Lowe's looking at appliances, she pointed at a stainless-steel Broan range hood, and said "OOH SHINY!" (I should interject here that she had a preference for stainless steel, because the white paint on the old range hood had gotten dingy with grease and trapped dirt; we agreed that brushed stainless should be easier to keep clean.)

Since we opted for the Bosch dishwasher instead of the Miele, the budget had room for a reasonably nice range hood, so when I ordered the dishwasher at Wickford Appliance, I added the Broan "Allure 2" to the tab, opting to install it myself.

Getting the hood in proved to be a two-man job. I was able to get the old hood out without any real fuss, but noticed to my annoyance that the previous installation (done when the house was built) was definitely quarter-assed — it wasn't good enough to be considered half-assed. The cabinet bottom was recessed, and instead of being secured to cleats in the recess, the hood was hanging from drywall screws that had been driven into the quarter-inch fiberboard (!) bottom of the overhead cabinet. Then, the wiring passed through an unprotected hole in the sheet metal: no clamp for strain relief or even a grommet to keep the edges of the hole from abrading the wiring! So, snag #1: I had to go get parts and materials to do the installation the way it should have been done in the first place, rather than just being able to use what was there.

Off I went to the Home Despot to grab some materials: 1x2 pine stock to make cleats, wood screws, a wiring clamp, and halogen bulbs. Got home, ready to proceed, snag #2: the 1x2 was too big for the under-cabinet recess, and I had no bandsaw or table saw to rip the cleats down to the right thickness. Grr. Right around then, K came home, and lo and behold, discovered that she had a jigsaw in the closet (which saved us a trip over to her mom's place). Since I'd never used one before, she did the ripping (and an excellent job of it, too).

I then screwed the cleats into place, then it took the two of us a couple of tries of wrestling the hood in and out of the opening to get the mounting screw placement right (why they couldn't include a template, I have no idea), and now it's up!

A lovely hood it is, too - the fan is (reasonably) quiet and effective, and the halogens give great light. Mission accomplished!

Posted by Rich Siegel at 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

As a bit of background, Rich is moving in, and we're feathering the nest. As it were. First step, set up an office downstairs in the finished 'family' room. It started its life as a playroom, then became a sewing room and spare-room/flophouse for various pals, and then a rubbish tip. A corner of it will still be my sewing room, but the lion's share of the 400 or so square feet will belong to mister man.

We've also started the process of planning an addition. I've called surveyors, and my cousin, an architect, is coming to visit in two weeks to check out the situation, and start thinking about plans and drawings. We'll add a garage bay, lots of storage space, maybe a semi-seasonal workout room, and such on the first level, and then upstairs from that, a real office and a master suite...and a dining room.

Then we'll redo some of the kitchen.

Thus, year. Gah. What are we getting into?!

Posted by Kerri at 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Today was the first day of any significant home changes. Well, that's not entirely true...but more about that later. [1]

The delightful contractor came to the house this morning at about 9 a.m. to install the new dishwasher and drop off the new range hood. He was supposed to come sometime between noon and 4 p.m. I didn't even have pants on yet! Oh well, it was good enough. I quickly got dressed, rassled Rich up, emptied the dishwasher, and in less than an hour, we had a shiny new Bosch dishwasher was installed in the kitchen! Kyle Ames, the installer, was nice, friendly, and efficient. Heck, if all appliance installations are that easy, we'll be golden!

Then there was the range hood. I should let Rich tell that one.

So, weekend one, pretty good so far!

Posted by Kerri at 10:25 PM | Permalink