![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tugrikGoing to work this morning was like a mini-war zone in the house. Step over twisted metal bits in my bedroom doorway. Slide past junk in the hall. Step over boxes in the kitchen to get to the tool-and-parts-covered table. Giving up on making anything for breakfast because it'd take too long to clean off a spot on the countertop or table itself. And yet... this is a good thing.
The reason for the tools, parts, boxes, junk and assorted mess is because this weekend was a domestic-repair extravaganza. We have a laundry-list of things we need to do to the house to make it more liveable. Some are easy & cheap and we get to them as opportunity arises. Others are difficult and expensive to the point we feel we really shouldn't do them to a rental house. After all, any money we dump into such things ends up lining the landlord's pockets as increased house valuation. I love our landlord-type dude but he's definately of the 'absentee' and 'absentminded' variety. Sometimes it becomes a quality-of-life issue and we simply need to do the work if it's within our means. Paul (the landlord) means well but he'll simply never get around to it. Heck, we see him in person once a year at best. The advantage is worth it, though: we've not had our rent raised since 1996. We spent the entire dot-com bubble in a wonderful neighborhood paying half of what our neighbors in the same make of house would pay.
A big guilt-point I have about my house is the state of the bathrooms. I live in the master bedroom and have an absolutely huge master-bath. It's got green tile, a japanese-style soaking tub (inset into the foundation), acres of countertop space, a large closet and a triple-wide medicine chest cabinet. The other usually-three-but-now-two roomies have to share the infamous 'hall bathroom'... which is slightly larger than a closet. It's got one tiny medicine chest, the world's ugliest sink and vanity with a leaky faucet and one wall with a huge mirror. Due to the lack of storage space and multiple bachelors using that room every surface is littered with stuff. The top of the toilet, sink and other edges have toothbrushes, razors, combs... it's pretty scary.
The rest of the bathroom wasn't so bad. The tub and shower were recently rebuilt and the room was re-tiled in the process. There's a vent-fan in the roof now which keeps the place from getting mildew problems (the cause of the rebuild two years ago). The shower, tile and huge mirror give the place a white-and-chrome motif for the most part. As my sister puts it, the bathroom is "no longer scary to use" but it is still ugly-cluttery. This lead to Revar's toothbrush-grump and the desire to find a wall-hanging toothbrush rack. On to Home Depot we went as a way to start our Saturday.
While we were there, Revs picked up some faux-wood window shades (the tilting-slat kind) to replace the bedsheet over the window that'd been in place the last five years. We ended up having to bounce between three different Home Depots to find the right one and get it cut to size. In the process we kept finding inspiration... and thanks to Revar having a spare bit of cash, we followed up on it. A 48"-wide, three-pane medicine cabinet like the one in my bathroom was first, followed by the matching light-bar to replace the ugly rusted one. When we saw how cheap a replacement sink could be we added one in. A new faucet was on sale for $30 (normally >$100!) that looked and worked great. We ended up bouncing between stores until we found all the bits and pieces we needed, spending over 8 hours on our feet marching around aisles. This makes for painful feet. I'm glad I'm losing weight, but I want it to go faster, darnit.
A quick call to my dad (Thanks, Dad! And re-happy father's day, again!) got us the info we needed on how to replace the sink. We started into it at 10pm Saturday night. While loosening up the encrusted drain pipe it pretty much crushed in my hands. No wonder there was always dampness in there... the drain leaks, and probably has for years! The metal pipes were corroded through. Okay, we'll need more parts on Sunday, then. Removing the sink itself requires chipping through the old sealant and then prying it off the base. Poor Revar picked a point with too much leverage and the sink-corner exploded up on lift... making Revs get one hell of an adrenaline rush and fall back, snapping the commode's lid in the process. Whoops. There's the next part we need to get. Eventually we got it out, scraped down the top of the vanity and settled the new sink/faucet combo into place. A quick hook-up and sealing and all was well, save for the trash-bucket under the drain that would have to hold until the next day. Chipotle got home just about then and expressed both surprise and mild dismay at the state of things: bathroom torn up, boxes and tools littered about. We were hoping to be done before Chipotle got home, but we took too long. So much for surprise.
The next morning I got up early and got the new drainpipe, dragging a non-awake and grumpy fox along with me (*waves at reality_fox*). I failed to get the right parts and ended up drafting poor Dustykat to come help. He identified the right pieces and within an hour we'd gotten a working drain. Revar and Chipotle staggered out of the house to seek a sunday-brunch while Dusty and I kept working at it, getting the new light box and medicine cabinet hung on the wall. It looks niiiiice. I don't have a wide-angle enough lens or I'd snap a photo to post with this.
Revs had expressed frustration with improper tools for installing the window blinds (my big DeWalt cordless tools don't fit in tight spaces) so at the last Home Depot run I tapped my credit card just a little to pick up a 7.2v angle driver kit and a new battery charger to replace the one that came up missing. I'm always up for new tools though this time I kept the expense down, since I was working on borrowed cash. I'm being good about my creditcards these days, honestly I am! It turned out to be very useful for not only the window blinds but also some of the other things worked on this weekend.
We topped it off by a trip to Target on Sunday evening before they closed, scoring a toothbrush holder and soap dispenser that matched the now all-white-and-chrome bathroom. I think after the next Thursday cleaning and scrubbing things will look great.
As long as the 'domestication bug' was hitting I rode it out a while and worked on the kitchen. We bought a rack to mount the watercooler on, freeing up a huge chunk of counter-space. I bought replacement tools (spatulas, spoons, etc) that hang on the wall by the stove to replace the ugly ones I'd had for a decade. These are designed to work with the Calphalon pot set I have and won't damage things. I got my knife block back from my dad (though it's still missing a knife I have to replace) and put it back out. New cutting boards (one for meat, one for veggies) and places to hang them were next, followed by a replacement rice cooker and steamer. This week I need to buy some 2-into-6 outlet boxes for the kitchen gadgets and get to work on making appliance storage places in the lower cabinets. Last week I did massive triage on the spice-and-stuff cabinet, throwing out ancient things and buying frersh replacements. All of this is centered around my renewed interest in cooking and I hope it encourages me to eat out less.
The end result is that the house is now soundly trashed. It was after midnight when we finished and the house was full of tools, cardboard boxes, plastic wrappers, styrofoam packing, old-sink-parts, old light fixtures, instruction manuals and associated junk. The kitchen table, countertops, 'game room' and floors are pretty ugly. Revar and I need to empty the truck at the dump tonight or tomorrow before Revar's vacation and I need to spend the rest of this week cleaning up from the upgrades and doing all the little finishing touches. Next will be completing Chipotle's move to the new room, storing the game-room and garage boxes in Chipotle's old room and then the Big Project of reclaiming both the garage and gameroom into useful spaces.
Gaah. I can actually see light at the end of this tunnel. But, if we finish... what then?
The reason for the tools, parts, boxes, junk and assorted mess is because this weekend was a domestic-repair extravaganza. We have a laundry-list of things we need to do to the house to make it more liveable. Some are easy & cheap and we get to them as opportunity arises. Others are difficult and expensive to the point we feel we really shouldn't do them to a rental house. After all, any money we dump into such things ends up lining the landlord's pockets as increased house valuation. I love our landlord-type dude but he's definately of the 'absentee' and 'absentminded' variety. Sometimes it becomes a quality-of-life issue and we simply need to do the work if it's within our means. Paul (the landlord) means well but he'll simply never get around to it. Heck, we see him in person once a year at best. The advantage is worth it, though: we've not had our rent raised since 1996. We spent the entire dot-com bubble in a wonderful neighborhood paying half of what our neighbors in the same make of house would pay.
A big guilt-point I have about my house is the state of the bathrooms. I live in the master bedroom and have an absolutely huge master-bath. It's got green tile, a japanese-style soaking tub (inset into the foundation), acres of countertop space, a large closet and a triple-wide medicine chest cabinet. The other usually-three-but-now-two roomies have to share the infamous 'hall bathroom'... which is slightly larger than a closet. It's got one tiny medicine chest, the world's ugliest sink and vanity with a leaky faucet and one wall with a huge mirror. Due to the lack of storage space and multiple bachelors using that room every surface is littered with stuff. The top of the toilet, sink and other edges have toothbrushes, razors, combs... it's pretty scary.
The rest of the bathroom wasn't so bad. The tub and shower were recently rebuilt and the room was re-tiled in the process. There's a vent-fan in the roof now which keeps the place from getting mildew problems (the cause of the rebuild two years ago). The shower, tile and huge mirror give the place a white-and-chrome motif for the most part. As my sister puts it, the bathroom is "no longer scary to use" but it is still ugly-cluttery. This lead to Revar's toothbrush-grump and the desire to find a wall-hanging toothbrush rack. On to Home Depot we went as a way to start our Saturday.
While we were there, Revs picked up some faux-wood window shades (the tilting-slat kind) to replace the bedsheet over the window that'd been in place the last five years. We ended up having to bounce between three different Home Depots to find the right one and get it cut to size. In the process we kept finding inspiration... and thanks to Revar having a spare bit of cash, we followed up on it. A 48"-wide, three-pane medicine cabinet like the one in my bathroom was first, followed by the matching light-bar to replace the ugly rusted one. When we saw how cheap a replacement sink could be we added one in. A new faucet was on sale for $30 (normally >$100!) that looked and worked great. We ended up bouncing between stores until we found all the bits and pieces we needed, spending over 8 hours on our feet marching around aisles. This makes for painful feet. I'm glad I'm losing weight, but I want it to go faster, darnit.
A quick call to my dad (Thanks, Dad! And re-happy father's day, again!) got us the info we needed on how to replace the sink. We started into it at 10pm Saturday night. While loosening up the encrusted drain pipe it pretty much crushed in my hands. No wonder there was always dampness in there... the drain leaks, and probably has for years! The metal pipes were corroded through. Okay, we'll need more parts on Sunday, then. Removing the sink itself requires chipping through the old sealant and then prying it off the base. Poor Revar picked a point with too much leverage and the sink-corner exploded up on lift... making Revs get one hell of an adrenaline rush and fall back, snapping the commode's lid in the process. Whoops. There's the next part we need to get. Eventually we got it out, scraped down the top of the vanity and settled the new sink/faucet combo into place. A quick hook-up and sealing and all was well, save for the trash-bucket under the drain that would have to hold until the next day. Chipotle got home just about then and expressed both surprise and mild dismay at the state of things: bathroom torn up, boxes and tools littered about. We were hoping to be done before Chipotle got home, but we took too long. So much for surprise.
The next morning I got up early and got the new drainpipe, dragging a non-awake and grumpy fox along with me (*waves at reality_fox*). I failed to get the right parts and ended up drafting poor Dustykat to come help. He identified the right pieces and within an hour we'd gotten a working drain. Revar and Chipotle staggered out of the house to seek a sunday-brunch while Dusty and I kept working at it, getting the new light box and medicine cabinet hung on the wall. It looks niiiiice. I don't have a wide-angle enough lens or I'd snap a photo to post with this.
Revs had expressed frustration with improper tools for installing the window blinds (my big DeWalt cordless tools don't fit in tight spaces) so at the last Home Depot run I tapped my credit card just a little to pick up a 7.2v angle driver kit and a new battery charger to replace the one that came up missing. I'm always up for new tools though this time I kept the expense down, since I was working on borrowed cash. I'm being good about my creditcards these days, honestly I am! It turned out to be very useful for not only the window blinds but also some of the other things worked on this weekend.
We topped it off by a trip to Target on Sunday evening before they closed, scoring a toothbrush holder and soap dispenser that matched the now all-white-and-chrome bathroom. I think after the next Thursday cleaning and scrubbing things will look great.
As long as the 'domestication bug' was hitting I rode it out a while and worked on the kitchen. We bought a rack to mount the watercooler on, freeing up a huge chunk of counter-space. I bought replacement tools (spatulas, spoons, etc) that hang on the wall by the stove to replace the ugly ones I'd had for a decade. These are designed to work with the Calphalon pot set I have and won't damage things. I got my knife block back from my dad (though it's still missing a knife I have to replace) and put it back out. New cutting boards (one for meat, one for veggies) and places to hang them were next, followed by a replacement rice cooker and steamer. This week I need to buy some 2-into-6 outlet boxes for the kitchen gadgets and get to work on making appliance storage places in the lower cabinets. Last week I did massive triage on the spice-and-stuff cabinet, throwing out ancient things and buying frersh replacements. All of this is centered around my renewed interest in cooking and I hope it encourages me to eat out less.
The end result is that the house is now soundly trashed. It was after midnight when we finished and the house was full of tools, cardboard boxes, plastic wrappers, styrofoam packing, old-sink-parts, old light fixtures, instruction manuals and associated junk. The kitchen table, countertops, 'game room' and floors are pretty ugly. Revar and I need to empty the truck at the dump tonight or tomorrow before Revar's vacation and I need to spend the rest of this week cleaning up from the upgrades and doing all the little finishing touches. Next will be completing Chipotle's move to the new room, storing the game-room and garage boxes in Chipotle's old room and then the Big Project of reclaiming both the garage and gameroom into useful spaces.
Gaah. I can actually see light at the end of this tunnel. But, if we finish... what then?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-06-16 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-16 01:45 pm (UTC)The bigger issue is I think I'm one of those personality types that enjoys the building and changing more than the using of the end product... which isn't all that bad a thing other than the odd reactions when enough projects wrap up to be 'done' for a while.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-16 02:37 pm (UTC)A friend's dad once offered advice on home improvements that has turned out to be consistently and eerily accurate:
1) Any given home imrovement project will require at least three trips to the hardware store. Always.
2) Projects consistently fall into three price categories: $100, $500 and $1000. If a project exceeds one of these thresholds by even a single dollar, it will immediately balloon to the next highest price; i.e. there's no such thing as a $400 project...it will grow in cost or complexity until the $500 threshold is met. And if you go a dollar over that...
no subject
Date: 2003-06-16 03:36 pm (UTC)PARTY!!!!!!!
no subject
Date: 2003-06-17 09:30 am (UTC)