And by here I mean here, not here as in my house because O boy would that be far from the truth.

No, here here there has been the constant sound of sheetrock saws cutting holes in ceilings for recessed lighting and in walls for outlets. There has been a pretty regular hum of a shop vac catching sawdust and the like. There’s been the pounding of 2x4s being framed in, moving walls around to just where we want them.

And shhhh. Did you hear that?

Yep, there it is.

If you listen closely, you can hear the soft whimper of a mama who doesn’t have a working stove or oven and is serving her family meals on paper plates.

My fridge is plugged into an extension cord, my range is completely non-functional and has served only as storage for the pots and pans for which I now have zero use, and there is a piece of plywood screwed to my dining room wall.

Scrap plywood: a DIYer’s baby gate

Have you heard the expression that the kitchen is the heart of a home? Well if that’s true, our heart is currently laying out on the operating table and oooo, boy is it painful. Having the kitchen in a complete state of upheaval makes me care O, about thismuch about how the rest of the house looks.

If I am eating off of paper plates from birthday parties past, am I to give a hoot that my dining room table is a veritable dumping ground? And if there is a constant, constant layer of fine plaster dust coating my floors, do you think I’m going to bother to sweep up those cheerios? Not a chance.

It’s always at this point in a project that things start to drag for me. Demolition? Great, hand me a sledge hammer. Installing floors? Perfect, I’ll lay the pieces, you use the nail gun. But electrical? Meh. I usually do end up wiring some outlet boxes or helping DanO fish wire through the joists to the can lights, but even then it’s 4 seconds of helping for every 20 minutes of work. And the visual impact of wiring electrical compared to, you know, knocking out walls is very minimal.

::yawn::

Thankfully, I have found a way to be useful during all this wire running. I sit in the kitchen (being supportive to DanO with my presence, obviously) on my laptop looking up things on craigslist. It’s true. We got our wood flooring on craigslist, I am watching appliance listings with an eagle eye, and we plan to list any cabinets we don’t re-use on there as well.

O, did I mention? Instead of choosing a tile and laying it in the whole area, we are continuing our original wood floors – interweaving unfinished identical wood and sanding/staining it all to match so that it’s one continuous flooring throughout- and then the mudroom will be tiled. This will look awesome, but will be about 800% more work than the original plan of tiling the whole space.

So where are we and what’s left to do (because I’m sure y’all like itemized project lists as much as I do)?

We have already: demolished the interior of the formerly 3 season porch, insulated it, raised the floor to match the rest of the house, installed new windows and a new door, removed 4 layers of flooring in the kitchen, removed the west wall’s cabinets and appliances, removed the overhead east wall’s cabinets complete with soffit, wired all of the outlets, hung all of the recessed lights, wired them, moved the natural gas line to where the stove will now go, framed up a wall over an old doorway, widened the doorway into the dining room (will be french glass doors).

We have yet to: install the heated floor thermostat for the mudroom, hang sheetrock, mud and tape (and patch) the sheetrock (O! The patching that will be needed!!), replace the over-sink window, lay the floor heat, lay the wood floors, lay tile floors, hang french doors, install back-splash, build cabinets, paint existing cabinets, have counter tops installed (by someone else!!), replace appliances, trim everything out, and… wait for it…

lay down and take a nap*.

* Actually, no napping will be allowed on our parts until the backyard, patio, and garage are also completely remodeled/re-landscaped. That’s up next.

Really quick, let’s go back over what we’ve done since moving into this house 3.5 years ago:

Sanded down and re-finished the original wood floors

Removed all radiators, installed a forced air system, new furnace and central AC

Remodeled the ground floor bathroom

Tore out and poured a new cement front walkway

Re-landscaped front yard (which I apparently didn’t blog about. whoops.)

Installed a built-in entertainment center in the living room

Replaced the stairs into the basement

Remodeled the laundry room and basement bathroom

Added a dormer

Remodeled the entire second story

What’s next, then?

The porch, breakfast nook, kitchen, mudroom, backyard, garage, patio and driveway. Obviously.

Ok so here’s the deal: we have (had) a three-season porch through which you enter the house from the back yard. We don’t really love that set-up and it is space that doesn’t get used. Also, our backyard and garage are in desperate need of an overhaul and have been since we bought the house (it was vacant/overgrown). Lastly, our kitchen is actually pretty nice – some previous owners installed new, good-quality cabinets some time in the 90s – but the layout is really, really inefficient. Like, can’t fully open the refrigerator door, inefficient. Thus, the math goes something like this:

unused porch + (backyard over haul^patio) x garage + inefficient kitchen = REMODEL ALL THE THINGZ!

First step is the porch. We are integrating it into the house by replacing the windows, insulating behind the walls, and tearing out the wall between it and the breakfast nook (which will eventually let us remodel the kitchen with a more efficient layout).

We have started the gutting process which is no cake walk. When you picture someone taking a hammer to a wall, the hammer goes right through it, right? Makes a big ‘ol hole in the sheetrock with one swing? Well, in 1935 when our house was built, walls weren’t made out of sheetrock. They were made out of wire mesh covered by cement covered by  a coat of plaster.

Insert crow bars, sledge hammers, and diamond-tipped saw blades, O MY!

Do not adjust your monitor. The trim really is that shade of blue and has been since we bought the house. We knew the porch would be remodeled, so we never did anything about the heinous trim assuming we’d take care of it along with the rest of the room eventually. (Also, WHO PAINTS TRIM THAT COLOR?!)

While DanO wielded the heavy-duty tools and took on the cement walls, I attacked the blue atrociousness.

And the really, really exciting news about this particular project?

I am not pregnant!

HUZZAH! For the first time ever, we are starting a brand new project and there is no nugget or gummibear in my uterus! There is no 9 month make-it-or-break-it deadline. There is no ‘be gentle with the work load, pregnant lady’. No concern about my placenta while we’re having sheetrock swung over our yard. No cautionary face masks for even the most innocuous of fumes. No sitting on a birthing ball laboring while we install hard wood floors.

It will be a fun experience, learning how to be a home re-modeler not pregnant. I can paint? I can climb ladders? I don’t have to excuse myself every 20 minutes to go to the bathroom?

Well heck! LET’S REMODEL ALL THE THINGZ, THEN!

A-like-so:

The idea and bones came from the IKEA (where else?) Billy bookshelves, which we bought several of this past weekend (goodbye Christmas IKEA gift cards!) then modified to fit our space and needs. We also used 4×8′ sheets of bead board wainscot as shelf backing instead of the flimsy cardboard that comes with the shelves.

I BIG PINK PUFFY SPARKLY HEART WAINSCOT.

What you see above is the skeleton of what it will be. It is just resting upright on the ground here without any of the movable shelves set in yet, but by this evening it will be flush up against (and mounted securely to) the walls, have outlets cut through it, and (hopefully) have re-installed the base trim around the bottom.

Related: It is nail-bitingly nerve-wracking to pull off 75 year-old original base board.

In the next couple of weeks (some other time when we have a babysitter) our to-do list looks like this: attach the crown molding on top, wall-mount the TV instead of sitting it on the shelf, and fabricate bi-fold doors to cover the screen (lest this become a glorified TV shrine).

:: :: :: Let’s chat. :: :: ::

How awesome are those shelves are going to look? Go ahead, tell me.

What crazy things do you do with your babysitting/free time?

Why, they’re at the hardware store of course. And no, they didn’t get a babysitter this time, they brought the kiddo along. And that store? Well, it’s not for the faint of heart. There are no helpful folks in orange aprons wandering around asking if they can be of service. It’s pretty much just a warehouse building (TWO buildings, actually) with a cash register in the front of one of them. It’s very fend-for-yourself.

It’s something of a consignment shop for building materials. Construction companies will bring the extra materials they don’t use (or that the owner changes their mind about) on the houses they are building/remodeling here to be re-sold, and the warehouse simply takes a cut of the sale price. Really, really great deals to be found… with some digging (O! The digging!).

Yesterday we were on the hunt for 7 doors of the exact same style in various sizes for our second story remodel. (It’s coming along, friends!! It’s really coming along!) There must have been, I don’t know… over 1,000 doors to look through (O, you think I’m kidding? I’m so not.) of differing heights, widths, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 panel doors, mission style doors, fancy routed doors, french doors, doors with glass elements, pre-hung doors, slab doors, interior and exterior doors, wood doors, bi-fold doors, hollow-core doors…

DOORS!

::jazz hands::

We spent literally 2 hours looking though, analyzing, and measuring (wait for it…) doors. OBaby was such a trooper despite being all cooped up in his stroller (DanO had to lift and move heavy things, so wearing him was out, I’m currently ‘wearing’ enough baby weight, and it’s not the kind of place to let a tot run free, you know?). We brought several bags of snacks and handed him one cracker at a time. Worked wonders.

So we were about 1 hour 45 minutes into our door hunt (can’t go over it… can’t go und… sorry.), and we had a few doors on our ‘cart’ but we had left them over a ways from us rather than roll those heavy things everywhere. Another young couple walked into area of the warehouse where we were, passing our cart.

“Hey!” I called out.

“They’re not going to take our doors, Allison.” DanO said abruptly, probably embarrassed that I was talking to strangers again (I do that a lot. True story).

“No, Dan! It’s your brother!”

And so it was, his brother and his fiancée there at the crazy building materials warehouse, also hunting for doors because they are also renovating an old house themselves.

This is what normal families do on Wednesday evenings, right? Run into each other in un-heated industrial buildings filled with lumber?

(Don’t answer that.)

Seeing his auntie and uncle gave OBaby the boost he needed to get through the last 20 or so minutes of our search, and we were able to find all of the doors we were looking for! Not only that, but… I know I mentioned the cost of diapers yesterday and talking specifics of money gives some people hives, but I just have to share this… each very nice, solid wood door averaged out to be $41. FOURTY ONE DOLLARS! That’s only a dollar more than a case of diapers. FOR A DOOR! We looked at the Sunday ad for your more average consumer hardware store – those same doors are presently on sale for $120.

I say? That was worth the digging.

Also, bless DanO’s brother and his fiancée’s hearts for humoring me and taking a group picture at such an occasion as this. We have kind of an awesome family.

(…and I think OBaby knows it. Look at that smirk.)

OBaby: as good a construction cheerleader as there ever was (with the exception perhaps of the needing to be sequestered thing).

Yes, he was safe. Yes he was far from the action. No he could not reach anything dangerous (or anything at all). No, he was not breathing in anything dangerous. Yes, we were smart about it.

There, you can stop worrying about our parenting decisions now. You’re welcome.

Scope creep much?

Starting at 8am on Friday (which DanO took off of work, and by “work” I mean sitting at a desk developing software as opposed to dramatically modifying 75 year old houses) we began ripping a 20ft square hole in our house.

(And by “we” I mean my husband and my father-in-law. OBaby and I listened to the pounding and sawing from a safe distance.)

And then a semi-truck which converts into a skid-loader (?!?) came and dropped off a bunch of lumber in our front yard, just in time for lunch.

Please tell me I’m not the only one who would take a picture of a funny looking transformer-type truck contraption dumping a bajillion pieces of wood in their front yard.

I’m not, right? You would capture this too, right?

Anyway, after the go-go gadget truck delivery and lunch, the hole got bigger.

And bigger.

At this point, OBaby and I watched from a safe distance.

And we both wondered what the heck we had gotten ourselves into.

The hole now sufficiently large, it was time to start closing it back up. Much geometry and skill saw usage ensued. I was of little help to this process, with the one exception of always being ready to hand DanO more nails to reload the framing gun (construction skillz, I haz them).

DanO’s brother, who is also currently overhauling an older house in Minnesota, came for the free pizza and stayed to help with the wall (it was dinner time at this point).

And yes, DanO and his dad are wearing the same exact shirt. O for cute, right?

While much progress was made, the sun went down on this day and there was still a gaping hole in my house. Yikes.

{To be continued…}

What, did I skip a step in there? Please allow me to explain.

Here’s the thing, friends. If you are going to be a do-it-yourselfer, especially on an older home, please, please for the love of all that is structurally sound, please do things the right way. I’m not saying you need to do things top of the line, do what fits your home’s price point, but when you undertake a project, follow standard procedure. Don’t cut corners. Don’t break city electrical codes. Don’t use the wrong materials.

It’s so not worth it (not to mention illegal).

This is was the second story of our house. Just an unsuspecting, plain, 2 bedroom 1/2 bath ho-hum area, no?

Except, look closer. Do you see the gaps around every.single. joint? The strategically placed “crown molding” trim that’s supposed to distract from the fact that the ceiling is made out of foam and not sheetrock? And *knock knock*… you hear that? The sound of thick cardboard-like, paper-based material used for the walls?

Being up there made me fear that if I huffed and I puffed (or sneezed too hard) I could have blown the walls down.

Heinous, no?

I mean, sloppy work is one thing, cheap carpet is one thing, dated wood finishes is one thing, but cardboard walls? O for shame, previous homeowners. O for shame.

They did throw in some nice perks amidst the gaping holes and inappropriate material choices, though. For example, they somehow rounded up every single oak modular bookshelf I ever used in the dorms at college and screwed them, side-by-side, securely to the wall. The real estate listing when we bought this house called this “built in bookshelves”.

Pffffft.

And now I’m just being sassy, but, are you serious with the leaf fossil tiles all over the bathroom?

Like I said, outdated is outdated and it is the nature of the beast that is house renovations, so I’m not pointing any fingers over choices of finishes (hello, chrome faucet with plastic tear-drop handle). No, it’s the upside-down electrical outlet (which is in a different color than the light switch which is yet another different color than the  light switch’s face plate ::facepalm::), the use of regular tiles as a back-splash (rough edges exposed around all borders), O, and more gaps (right side of the “vanity”).

Ok, I suppose I should be nice. The screw-it-up do-it-yourselfing people who finished the upstairs (and I use the term ‘finished’ loosely) did do a couple of things nicely, like actual built-in shelves.

And a nicely organized closet in one of the bedrooms.

2 points to them for that.

But here’s the thing. The walls, the electrical, the carpeting, the tiles, the (poorly installed, vinyl, when the rest of our old home has wood) windows, the ceiling, and heck even the insulation needed to go. We could have, then, ripped off the cardboard and foam “walls”, re-wired, re-insulated, replaced windows, and then replaced the walls with sheetrock, but then we thought:

“If we’re going through all that trouble anyway, why don’t we just move the walls to make more efficient use of all the space up there?”

I mean, if we’re going to gut it, why not really gut it? (Wait, where have I heard that before?)

And so we did.

(To be continued…)

Things were humming right along on demolition day this Saturday. At one point we had 8 people swinging sledgehammers, using crowbars, and hauling stuff into the dumpster. Much progress was made and things were looking good.

Unfortunately, right after lunch DanO stepped on a nail that went through the sole of his shoe, through his sock, through his skin and into his foot.

Uhm, ew.

For the record, DanO was wearing both protective eyewear and a dust mask when he stepped on the nail. What I’m trying to say is that we were being safe. You know, when my husband was injured.

It was quickly clear that this wasn’t going to be a kiss it better and move on boo boo. DanO came down from the second story, took of his shoe, and… well… again with the ew.

We wanted to clean up the wound, but apparently I am an under-prepared mom because we had no hydrogen peroxide to speak of in the house. Nor did we have any rubbing alcohol, and I’ll be darned if I let my Malibu rum be poured over some one’s smelly feet.

So naturally we used mouthwash (which is also high in alcohol content) to clean the hole (and I do mean hole).

What? Don’t look at me like you’ve never spent a Saturday afternoon in the bathroom telling your husband to pour Cool Mint Listerine over the hole in his foot.

DanO: You’re going to blog about this, aren’t you.

Me: Maaaaybe…

Thankfully in the days since, his foot has neither turned black nor fallen off (but it does still smell minty fresh). I tried talking him into getting a tetanus shot like, immediately, since he couldn’t remember when his last booster was, but he insisted on wrapping up the hole and going back to work (he got one the next morning).

Men.

]]> http://omyfamilyblog.com/2010/09/i-may-have-taken-some-liberties-with-the-term-mortally-wounded/feed/ 18 http://omyfamilyblog.com/2010/09/so-this-weekend-we-tore-out-the-entire-second-story-of-our-house/ http://omyfamilyblog.com/2010/09/so-this-weekend-we-tore-out-the-entire-second-story-of-our-house/#comments Thu, 23 Sep 2010 02:04:12 +0000 AllisonO http://omyfamilyblog.com/?p=8483

What did YOU do on Saturday?

(Please don’t tell me you had a picnic and a beautiful day at the park with your family. I will go positively green with envy.)

(OBaby totally wanted to rush upstairs and “help”.)

(Also, here I go with the apologizing again, but this video was rather motion sickness inducing. Sorry.)

(Last thing: DanO may have been mortally wounded* in all the work we did this weekend, I may have taken pictures of it, blood and all, and I may be planning on sharing them tomorrow. No, no. You can thank me later.)

(*Ok, so he’s not going to die, but it was a pretty big boo boo and did involve going to get a tetanus shot.)

(Gosh, I like parentheses these days.)

If this (O My Organization) week has taught me anything, it’s that organization is hard. It takes a painful amount of effort, and sometimes you fail. I kept thinking to myself “This was not the week to choose to organize.” We are having a garage sale this weekend, are re-landscaping the front yard, had an unfortunate run in with a city ordinance, have an incredibly mobile child, and I’m flying to New York City in less than a week.

But really? When is a good week to organize? It’s always going to be something. Life is going to keep happening and while deciding that you want to completely overhaul your desk area and workspace on the same day that you lay dirt and plant shrubs in your yard might not be the best planning in the world, I have learned and truly believe this:

The effort you put into organization now (even though it sucks) will save you effort later.

I have a testimony of that, and I am going to bear it now.

So, you know how the interwebs used to be the place that my spare time went to die? Well, I had another black hole in my life and it was even more frustrating than my cereal/boxed mixes/nuts/soy sauce/raisin/crouton shelf. It was called my desk.

You don’t have any idea how badly I wish I could tell you that I staged this picture by adding extra stuff to the top of my desk and making the piles all disheveled. Nope. I actually cleaned it up a bit and then realized that I needed to take a before picture. O yea, this is my desk on a good day.

It got to the point that I didn’t even use it as a functional desk. Really I just used it as a paper stopping place or the surface to which we moved all the junk from the dining room table when we had guests for dinner (true statement). I would toss coupons and mail at my desk with no real flow or priority level. It was ugly.

I needed a space to be able to work on my computer, be inspired to write and create, and be organized in storing household stuff such as coupons and receipts. I needed a plan.

(I also needed a themed blogging week to kick me into high motivated gear and tackle this project, so thanks for that!)

Organization Tip: Unlike what AllisonO did with her kitchen cupboard, make a plan. What do you need from the project? What are your guidelines (time line, budget, space constraints, etc.)?

I made a plan by thinking of all the purposes that this space needed to fulfill, then I chose a part of the space that would be dedicated to those purposes, and I set guidelines for myself (time line was to have it done for this week’s posts and budget was $45). And then just for fun I drew it out because I’m a doodler. (You should see my college notebooks.)

Then? The hard part.

My first actual task when organizing (as it was with the cupboards and when I have a week of posts to prepare) is to start with a blank slate. I cleaned off my desk and actually emptied almost every item out of my drawers (because those were unruly, too).

Organization Tip: Empty it all out before you put it back in. Sort, throw away, prioritize, and sort some more.

Then I began putting things back in the drawers according to the plan I had made. At times the plan didn’t fit the reality of what worked, but (unlike in the kitchen) everything worked out with a little problem solving. I now have a drawer just for stationary and cards (I like to have about 394 birthday cards on hand and they take up a lot of room), a drawer for coupons, mailers and receipts (O THE JOY!), and one for paper/crafting supplies/the camera.

Next step was supplies. As with the actual organization, what I had envisioned and put down in the plan didn’t match perfectly with the reality of what was available at the store, but it all worked out in the end. Fabulously in fact. I had several coupons for JoAnn Fabrics, so I started my search there. About 2 seconds after walking in the doors (wearing OBaby in our mei tai of course so that all of the sweet ladies at the cutting counter could flirt with him) I found something that made the whole project come together in my head. This is what ::ahem:: inspired it all:

I know that this isn’t technically about organization, but this word as it relates to my desk area means so much to me. I wanted this work space to inspire me to write, blog, and create, but what really inspires me to write and create is… my desire that somehow this space would (even just once) inspire someone else. I knew I wanted to put this on the shelf above my desk as a reminder to myself of what’s important.

(And it didn’t hurt that it was on sale for 50% off, either.)

On the shelf over was a (also 50% off) white antiqued mirror that I bought to place on my desk as another reminder to myself in this space. We have a cricut cutting machine, with which I am going to (probably right after I return those cereal containers) cut red letters that say “reflect Him” and put them over the mirror.

I still needed a paper sorter, some clipboards, and a way to hang them all on the wall. I decided that, since I was already at JoAnn Fabrics, I would go ahead and buy some fabric that I could use to cover plywood as the backing for the organization station. All it took was 3/4 yards of fabric (with a 40% off coupon), an upholstery stapler (we bought at HomeDepot a few years ago for $10 or so), and a 40×24 piece of plywood (would be about $10 at a hardware store, but my father-in-law had some on hand).

From there I decided on an organized layout for the board, focusing on the placement of the things that needed to get my attention. I doctored up some clip boards to match the theme and hung them front and center to be used for “To Write” and “To Do” lists. I made the paper bin which is used to hold notebooks and frequently accessed papers low and, well, accessible.

Are you ready to see the result?

I have to be honest with you. A huge part of my motivation for this project was decorative. I really did need an inspiring and dedicated work space. But in reality, it’s the cleaning out of the drawers and the organization (as in, actually having a place to put things) that has made all of the difference in the world. As I type this almost exactly a week after finishing it, my desk looks remarkably similar to these staged photos. In other words, it has stayed clean. Why? Because there’s a place for everything and everything is in it’s place (did anyone else’s dad used to recite that to them on “Clean your room.” day? No? Just mine?).

Sure, it’s pretty, but it works because it’s organized.

Organization Tip: Focus on the end goal and what drives you to get there. For me I needed the decorative and inspirational pieces to this big project to motivate me through the sorting drawer after abandoned drawer.

The item breakdown:

Overhead shelf (was there before) – Ikea (Lack series)

Snow Globe – Disney World (it was our honeymoon souvenir)

Two photo frames – both used to be different colors and as a part of a previous project, I sprayed them black. The photos are matted with clear photo corners and I covered the (varying) mat colors with shipping paper (like paper grocery bag material, purchased on a roll at the Dollar Tree)

Large clothespin – JoAnn Fabrics (40% off coupon)

Metal “Inspire” words – JoAnn Fabrics (50% off)

White capital letter A – JoAnn Fabrics

Black small mounted picture frame – previously owned, added red flower stickers (also from JoAnns)

Clipboards – base and list pads of paper from the Dollar Tree, red paper to cover from JoAnns

Metal paper pocket – JoAnn Fabrics (College stuff section, on sale at 50% off)

Metal utensil cup – JoAnn Fabrics (50% off)

Cork board – pack of 4 12″x12″ squares from JoAnn Fabrics (50% off in college section)

Standing mirror – JoAnn Fabrics (50% off)

3/4 of a yard of fabric – JoAnns with a 40% off coupon

Plywood – free from OBaby’s grandpa’s workshop

My sanity – priceless

~~~~~~

I will post a (super easy) tutorial on how to make $1 adorable clipboards to match any room in your house (in fact I kind of have an itch to make 3 for my kitchen) tomorrow, so come back and be inspired by that, but right now I have something even more inspiring:

Sharing our organization tips, projects, or attempts (hey, failures are welcome too!) with each other!

I can’t wait to learn from what you have been up to with organizing. Go ahead and add a link below to your blog post about organizing, I only ask that you link back to O My Family somewhere in the post. That’s it! Have fun!