Progress?

I feel like this summer took both an eternity and passed without actually taking up any time. The heat lasted forever, the months themselves flew right by. Between going back and forth to Colorado, going to visit the family in Canada, Natalie coming into the country for a road trip and the ridiculous kidney infection in the middle I'm not sure what happened. Anyway, it's September already and I'm clearly behind on my blogging (and everything else in my life).

The master bedroom is as good as it's going to get for a while, simply because I don't want to put the last bit of bamboo floor down before I do the master bath. I'd then have to carry tiles, floor boards, mortar, etc... over the bamboo and that just sounds like it's inviting trouble. Essentially that means it isn't going to be done any time soon. I do think it will look good though - check out the picture above! Obviously that door isn't going to stay mushed-pea green, that was the old color. Because we all love mushed-pea green, especially with a renaissance angel theme. I wish I was making this up, but that's really what they had in the master bedroom and master bath. Lovely.

The master bath has become the non-room. I just pretend it doesn't exist, which seems to work well for me. And for giggles, because I don't have enough of those, I tore up the downstairs bathroom too. Funny right? Right? Yeah. Retrospectively I'm not so sure about it either. It's just that the creepy seashell motif was really starting to get under my skin. In any case, it is now without popcorn ceiling, toilet, or really any identifying feature of a bathroom.

I'm thinking of painting it a dark green. Maybe? I'd like it to loosely coordinate with the living room, which currently has a warm brown, deep red, and sage green thing happening. Of course dark green in that little tiny room might make people feel like they're peeing in a confessional, which could be uncomfortable. Actually, I could go with that and pretend it's a deliberate poetic statement. It's not, but nobody has to know that I'm not being hugely ironic. In reality, I just like green.

Deconstruction

It's funny the way these things come when you need them. I suppose any big project is like that. It's been a frustrating month and so this project was well-timed. There is something incredibly liberating; joyful even, about tearing a room apart with nothing but a hammer, a crowbar and your own hands. I'm not much of a destructive person, but I have to admit this came when I really wanted to tear something apart.

Of course, I'm also a little daunted by the fact that my master bath, although never beautiful, had at least been functional before I got at it. Now, sadly, it has no plumbing with which to function. No toilet, no sinks, no tub, not even many walls. It started just because we were thinking we would replace the tub surround, and so had to pull the tile off the wall. Once that started, we found out that the tile was the only thing holding the wall together - apparently there was long-standing water damage. In any event, what started as a relatively minor project turned into a room stripped down to the studs and about 10 trash bags of rubble.

So - who's coming to visit who knows anything at all about bathroom remodels? Hmmm? Any takers? It would be nice if you had also recently won the lottery, so that I could buy the raw materials. That would help too. Anyone?

Now that the destruction is done, I'm largely ignoring the existence of the master bath and will probably finish the master itself before I wade back into the scary gaping-hole that I've managed to create. Mom and dad helped me to lay the first couple of lines of bamboo in the bedroom so that they're straight and I can carry on over the summer. My parents, like the sane people they are, have escaped to Canada where it is not hovering around the 100 degree mark, but is a normal human temperature. I'm stuck here, sans plumbing.

I'm back, as though from the dead.

Not that I was actually dead, just silent. Given that silence is contrary to my usual state, it is akin to death, perhaps a little death. Actually the problem isn't that I've been silent, only that I've been silent here. In other arenas I've been writing my little hiney off, but thankfully the hiney is back on and normal communications can be resumed.

The house has also been on pause, which is slightly frustrating but now work can begin again post-haste. I do have furniture, which is a thrilling and fascinating luxury. I can't even describe the joys of being able to come home and crash down on my couch to stare lovingly at my fireplace (which is, quite obviously, not lit as it is 4 million degrees (approx) in Texas and my AC unit is frantically trying to keep up).

I've found, that all distractions aside it is much more relaxed now that I actually have finished rooms in which to live. There just isn't the same sense of urgency when I actually have a relatively comfortable living space. Now I'm much more lax about construction - instead of working into the evening I stop at 2:00 pm and enjoy the rest of the day like a sane person. I'm calling that 'progress' rather than 'laziness.'

At this point one of the stumbling blocks I'm running into is finances. Buying paint for the master bedroom isn't a big deal, but buying the amount of bamboo that it's going to take for that floor is a little daunting. Likewise, things like towel racks and soap dishes for the master bath are no problem, but bath tubs and tiles for a shower surround are a little more costly. Given that I'm trying to do this thing without going into debt I may have to meter out projects as finance allows.

In other news, my garden is flourishing and apparently I'm a compulsive plant-buyer. It's just that they looks so sad and lonely in the store all by themselves. I just know they need me to bring them home and make them a part of the family. Only problem with that logic (lack of logic here being entirely discounted as the problem) is that I have limited yard space, and each new plant requires it's own, backbreaking hole. That would be just fine if I had some overall organizational scheme in which I dug big beds in one terrible day of labor and then filled them at my leisure. I just don't. I dig little weenie disconnected holes that require hot sweaty messy work pretty much every other day, and then try to cobble them together into something attractive and interesting. As we speak I have a lonely avocado plant hanging out randomly in the middle of the back yard looking kind of sheepish about being in such an odd spot. The plan (retroactively) is to extend the garden that runs along the back of the porch out to engulf the avocado in an attractive kidney-shaped arm. Of course, this plan was devised after the avocado was in the ground.

Anyway, I'm glad to be back in the saddle!

The Horror of a Pink Floor

From the start of the floor-staining ambitions I've pictured the floor as a warm brown/burgundy combo - swirled and mottled and generally more interesting than a flat color. As it turns out, interesting isn't hard to come by in stained concrete. Huh.

Everyone had a different theory on how I should apply the stain, but generally the consensus was that if you want more uniform color a roller is good and less uniform color you use something more irregular - string mop, rags, whatever. Given that I wanted irregular I went for the string mop.

The color is semi-transparent and layer 1, which was brown, went on easily and looked completely blah and boring - flat, kind of dead-ish brown. I went to talk to the paint guys at Lowe's about the brown/red idea and they suggested a red called 'gem stone' which provided hours of fun and entertainment and at least one melt-down.

Apparently semi-transparent isn't actually the same in all colors and different colors have different levels of transparency. Who would have known this?

Long story short is that gem stone is apparently so close to not being transparent that it mops on to the floor in big terrifying dark pink/fuchsia streaks that immediately start to absorb into the concrete and don't want to wipe away causing minor hysteria. Fun! Nobody could ever say it was flat and boring.

Thankfully I started in a corner that is going to be largely hidden by other things, so the shockingly pink part of the floor will be mostly covered. In the end I had to dilute 'gem stone' with about one part stain to five parts water to increase the 'transparency' and then put another brown coat on top of it to tone it down.

All in all the final product looks pretty good - a swirly brown-red that is warm and pretty without being the center of attention in the room, which is good. I don't want people staring at the glare coming off of a hot pink floor all the time or anything. That would have been a little bit different than the look I was trying to achieve.

I'm really happy it's done because that means that I can actually get my furniture! Woohoo!

Etching Concrete

The concrete saga is never-ending. It really feels like it's been weeks of crawling around scraping little bits of stuff off of the floor - paint, ceiling texture, wall stuff, glue, god only knows what else. The good news is that yesterday we finally reached the stage where we felt like we could etch it to get ready for staining.

Staining the floor is the next major milestone simply because once I have a floor, I can actually get my furniture out of storage and start living like an almost-normal person. With chairs and things. Major step forward in Amy's world.

As it turns out, etching the concrete is really really fun. You get all kitted up in what feels like a hazmat suit - wellies (rubber boots, for those of you who haven't the foggiest what I'm talking about), rubber gloves, body condom if you happen to have one lying around. Then, you pour acid all over the floor and scrub it around with stiff broom. Then the fun really begins. Now you bring the garden hose inside your living room, which defies any and all sense of normalcy, Essentially then you spend the rest of the day hosing water onto your living room floor and squeegeeing it out the back door with a giant squeegee.

In all, there is something really satisfying about spraying out your house with a garden hose. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think it satisfies some internal joy in doing-what-I'm-not-supposed-to. Maybe that's it. Of course it could just be the ridiculousness of it all, or the opportunity to wear wellies. Who knows?

After the car-wash-style etching, then came the concrete primer, which was considerably less fun. Picture spreading watered-down elmer's glue all over the floor - I'm relatively sure I've never been so sticky in my whole life. Also had a minor panic incident this morning when I came downstairs to find the floor all streaky from the nonsense primer. Damn damn. Mom and dad managed to calm me down by pointing out that it's probably just not quite dry in some areas and so those areas look darker, not that my floor is forever going to look like a streaky mess. At least we're hoping that's what's happening. In truth, none of us have done this before so really, they could be making this all up. The best news is that if it looks absolutely aweful, we can always just paint over it with a solid color and forget about the stain entirely.

Pictures of dirt!

So - I know the garden just looks like dirt right now - but there are seeds in there! And onions! More than I care to count actually... I'm going to be overrun with spinach, onions, lettuce, radishes and peas. Who's coming over to help me eat everything?

The living room is starting to look like a real room, and don't worry Jan - it isn't edged around the fireplace yet. I'm not going to leave it looking like that. :)

Door dreams

So clearly I'm a complete slacker for not posting with any kind of regularity- the writing project has been monopolizing my time and energy but that's no kind of excuse. Progress is, actually, being made on the house - albeit incredibly slowly. The best news is that the color choices in the living room, which I've been agonizing over, have been made and look fabulous. Walls are painted, ceiling is painted and the floor is being sanded and scraped (inch by painful inch - not kidding) to prepare for stain. I may soon, fingers crossed, have a real living room. This would be a huge step for me because it would mean that I could finally hire movers to get all of my stuff here - given that i can't even remember half of what I have, that will be like Christmas all over again.

We've run into a minor problem in terms of the back door though. The cement around the door was crumbling and the jam? The sill? The bottom part, at any rate, of the door was rotting out. Dad and I chipped the whole thing out (involved a wedge and a rubber mallet - highly satisfying) but now there's a slightly alarming gap below my door that is actually big enough for Cat to get in and out. Going to have to fix that before I develop a varmint problem. Mostly I just wanted to use the word varmint in a sentence...

In cheerier news, I've planted my little vegetable garden, and apparently have enough onions to feed an army - I'm really not sure what I'm going to do with them all if they come, but I've got a similar excess of spinach and lettuce, so expect lots of random food to be distributed this spring. I've also planted peonies, for the first time, which are apparently ridiculously picky and have to be the right depth to bloom. Naturally I just shoved them in and covered them with dirt like everything else, so I'll keep you posted on peony progress (because I'm sure you're all waiting with baited breath).

I've also taken a ridiculous ton of rose cuttings so if anyone wants climbing roses, I'm going to have some spares. Put some morning glory seeds to soak this morning, so I'll start those indoors and move them outside in a few weeks. Clearly I'm more excited about the garden than anything else. But that's probably because I don't have to scrape anything to work in the garden.

Best Offer I've Had All Year!

So - with my actual work, you know, the kind where I make money, I've had a ridiculously short-deadlined writing project that is amounting to about 20 pages, theoretically comprehensible, per week. Hence the house has been moved to "back-burner" status and I'm getting in about one good work day per week.

Essentially this means I'm going to be camping out in a partially finished house for quite some time. I'll learn to love plastic sheeting and construction dust. I will - I'm sure. Mom and dad were kind enough to come in on my designated house day this week and help with the ridiculously tedious, boring, uninspiring work of patching and painting the closets in the master bath. Wheeee! I know, I know. It is hard not to envy us right now, no? The worst part is I don't even have anything funny to say about it, it really is as dull as it sounds.

In better news, I received the most compelling offer I think I've ever had, and if not ever, then certainly it's the best offer of 2009. Some local lawn company papered my house with totally reasonable lawn-mowing rates, and an intriguing add-on service as pictured above. Bold as brass, right out there in the open. Isn't it wonderful to live in such a progressive society that lonely female homeowners can have such a valuable service, delivered with discretion to their home, for a small weekly fee? Not only that, they take all major credit cards. It's like Manna from heaven. :)

Sexy new ceilings and serious hot water

So - I have a confession. (bless me father for I have...)

Actually it's not nearly that good a confession, so don't get your hopes up. I did, sadly, have to contract out my first job. Sigh. I can no longer say it's all been done-myself. But, from this contracting I did get a fancy new on-demand water heater (tankless, very sleek, I feel all kinds of fancy with this thing!)

I went to the home-show this past weekend with Jan, Marg and an assortment of other folk and stopped to ask a local company about the tankless water heaters, which was kind of entertaining. The conversation went something like this:

KR (old-timey owner of water heater company): so how old is your current heater
Amy: Well, it was put in when the house was built, but I think it was second hand because it says 1978 on the side.
Long pause.
KR (to fellow water heater guy): What is the shelf life on a gas water heater?
Other water heater guy: 8-10 years, why?
Long pause.
KR (to me): Do you like your floors?

It was kind of funny actually because the water heater people were mildly panicked about my apparently antique water heater and rearranged their installation schedule to get me a new water heater on Tuesday (i.e. two days later). The whole thing had kind of the air of self-congratulation re. crisis averted. It felt like there should have been a champagne toast or confetti or something.

When they hauled the old one out they were remarking about it's unusual weight and the possibility that it was actually half filled with sediment. Lovely. So now I have a fancy-pants new water heater that is mounted outside, so if it malfunctions (which I have been assured it never does) it will malfunction on the grass, and not my floor.

Outside of that little bit of excitement Dad and I scraped the popcorn off the downstairs ceiling and he put in a ridiculous amount of work to get it sanded and patched and primed, so I have the uber-sexy smooth ceiling - which looks fabulous. Now I just have to figure out what I actually want to do with the downstairs. Ideas anyone? Color scheme? It's a ridiculously long room, so it could take some color, but I haven't thought beyond major repairs to actually form any ideas about style. The only think I've decided for sure is that I want to stain the concrete, but beyond that, I'm at a loss. All ideas welcome at this point!