Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

Here are the decorations I put on our house. They are pretty minimal, but I think they make an impact. At least our neighbors know the house isn't foreclosed any more!

All I did was cut monsters out of newspaper and tape them to the windows. In the picture you can see through the newspaper a lot, so I actually put a second layer on all the monsters to make them less translucent.
They still looked like newspaper, but that's ok. Baby steps. The hubby mentioned that this is the most outwardly decorated our home has ever been. And that is a sad truth (I blame graduate school!).

From inside, they looked pretty sloppy:
But I will probably use them again next year anyway. I'm fond of my little monsters :)

Safe and candyful halloween to all!

Painting the Upstairs

One project we wanted to finish before the carpet arrived was the upstairs painting. We actually finished this project prior to painting the subfloors blue, but I'm just now getting to blogging about it. Better late than never. You've even already seen the 'after' pictures with the carpet installed. But here the pictures are anyway.

We wanted to finish this project up before carpet so that I wouldn't have to worry about paint getting on the carpet later.

The original wall colors upstairs weren't my favorite but they weren't that bad. However, we were concerned the bad smell of the house may have settled into the paint on the walls. Repainting the walls will seal any bad smell into the wall. Anyone who has lived in a house that belonged to a smoker will tell you that the best way to get rid of that lingering smoke smell is to paint the walls.

I used a 5 gallon bucket of Valspar in "Pale Blossom" eggshell. It's basically a beige version of white. It's a great neutral. Since I was planning on painting pretty much the whole upstairs the same color, I figured it should be a very neutral color. I don't want to be sick of it later.


I was really pleased with the coverage I got from this paint. This picture shows how well the paint covered this medium purple on the very first coat:


That purple room did require a second coat, but since the other rooms were already light beige colors they only needed one coat plus touch-ups here and there.

The whole place looked whitewhite once I finished since the trim, walls, and floors were all about the same color. It was a huge improvement. It looked so clean! Once I painted the trim with ultra white, the walls settled into the background a little more.

Here is Heathrow offering his approval.

One bedroom ended up painted blue-gray, because I was worried I was running out of Pale Blossom paint. I got the blue paint from the "oops" bin so it was a bit of a risk, but it ended up being a soft blue-gray. It's lovely in person; I got lucky!


The room was originally yellow. . .
Yellow no more! The toilet was uninstalled from the bathroom and living in this room because I was preparing to tile at the same time. So busy!!

Heathrow is keeping an eye on the other important tools while I work.

Here is one bedroom after being painted and having carpet installed. You can see I missed a spot--haha, oops!

What do you think of the transformation? Do you like the super-neutral? I'm on a beige kick these days, I just want beige and white everywhere. What are your favorite colors this season?

New Carpet!

Finally the big day for carpet has arrived! (This post is actually late, the real big day was the same day as Greenhouse Day).

The carpet installers arrived at 7:30am, which was before we were awake. They had called at 6:45am saying they would be there soon, but we both slept right through it! We were happy to see them anyway. While they brought in their supplies, we rushed around and uninstalled the ugly metal doors on all the closets so the carpet would continue into the closet without any spaces.

They installed the pad in about 45 minutes--so fast!

They had to install new tack strip in a few places. They didn't stretch it over the tack strips, just stapled it down next to the tack strip.

Then in came the carpet! They unrolled some so I could see it. It looked great in the house!! The color was perfect--not too light or too dark--and the whole thing felt so soft!
The carpet installers were great, they finished in about 5 hours. I made them lunch. They were funny guys, we chatted while they ate, but they didn't pause for long. They get paid by the job, so they try to finish each job as fast as possible, without mistakes. They did forget to cut the carpet out for one of the vents, but that was the only thing that wasn't perfect. It was funny because I walked into the room and thought to myself "isn't this room heated? I swear there was a vent in here..." and then i found the squishy spot with my foot. It was super easy to cut the carpet for it though, so now that room is heated again. Haha :P

Doesn't it look so cushy??
Now we can start really living in the rooms upstairs. We will be moving the bed up and sleeping in the master bedroom right away! Hooray!

Floor Part IV

Since the oil paint on the floor was so stinky (and the chemical smell did not go away), we tried putting another layer of regular low-VOC paint over it. Lovely baby blue from the "oops" bin at the local Orange hardware store.


And some ugly purple-brown from the "oops" bin:

Within a few days, the smell in the house was 100% better. I highly recommend this method to anyone with nastified subfloors: bleach, primer, then low- or no-VOC paint to seal in the primer smell. Even after several days of rain, the house doesn't start smelling like pee or chemicals at all. Hooray! Next stop: carpet!

Digging a Hole to Fill It Back In

My little greenhouse needs a sturdy, level place to set her feet. Today I'm preparing that space for her!

There is a fairly steep slope right in the spot I hope to have the greenhouse (in the picture, it's the area to the left of the brick patio), so I'm building a small retaining wall to hold the soil in place. All those pots are full of dahlias, but they are a story for another day. I did plenty of research online to make sure I understood the wall-building process. Then I followed these steps:

Step 1:
Dig a hole in a straight line, with an approximately level bottom. (Forgot to take this picture) Tamp down the soil in the bottom of the hole. You can use a hand tamper, but since i didn't have one, I used a brick like a heathen.

Step 2:
Fill the hole part-way with special gravel that is designed for this purpose. The special gravel tamps together well and is a nice sturdy base. This layer needs to be pretty much level, but don't kill yourself leveling it. Tamp down the gravel (again, hand tamper or brick.)


Step 3: On top of the gravel, add special leveling sand. As before, special sand is important because when you tamp it, the grains lock into place and don't shift around. Regular sand is shifty, hence the term "shifting sands". This level must be level.


Step 4 - 65:
Apply blocks. Level blocks side-to-side and also front-to-back. You don't want a wall that is lean-y in any direction. If a block needs adjustment, pound on it with a rubber mallet. If you don't have one, put a piece of wood on top of the block and hit it with a brick. Thats what I did. Once the blocks are all in place, backfill behind the wall with soil.


I used wall blocks that have a lip on the back, so they don't need mortar. This is much more DIY-friendly than cinder blocks, which must be mortared. The lip on the back of the block slides up against the back of the block below, so as the soil behind the wall pushes forward on the blocks, they lock more tightly into place.

I purchased 60 blocks for my wall, which ended up being 3 blocks short of done. Shoot! I will buy those tomorrow and finish up. Here is how the wall looks currently:

It looks really tall in the picture, but in reality it's only about 2 feet. Tomorrow I will add the last 3 blocks and continue backfilling. I'm really pleased with the wall. It feels sturdy, is very level, and looks pretty good. There is just enough room between the wall and the fence for me to walk. Now I just need to move several hundred lbs of soil for backfill and I'm ready to install the greenhouse!!

Greenhouse Day!

Today was Greenhouse Day! It is the day my new greenhouse arrived!!! The greenhouse was a graduation present from my in-laws (WOW! Such wonderful in-laws!) and I have been waiting anxiously for it to arrive. It arrived on an 18-wheeler! It was pretty funny to see such a huge truck navigating our little tree-lined street. The poor truck driver did not think it was very funny, but he did comment on how excited I was to have it arrive. He asked what I was going to do with it, and I said "PLANTS!" ;)

Greenhouse Day is now a local (very local, just our house) holiday around here.

The greenhouse arrived in 4 boxes, so I have a lot of assembling to do...

This little latch makes me very excited, because I can see myself using it every day for the next 5 years. Plus the redwood frame is just gorgeous:


I need to fix up the spot where the greenhouse will live. The backyard is not super sunny, so this is the best location (maximum sunlight). There is also the added benefit of increasing the privacy of the patio, since right now the neighbor's look directly onto our patio from their deck. The greenhouse will block the direct view without blocking light. Perfect!

Next blog post will be about prepping the spot. Today it's raining, so hopefully this weekend!

Floor Part III

Applying bleach to the floor did a great job of decreasing the house stink down to a 2 out of 10 on the stinkiness scale. On dry days, the smell was almost gone. On rainy days, though, there was still smell. Sigh. Take 3.

Our third attempt to control the smell was Kilz oil-based sealer and primer. The goal was to seal the subfloor so that stinks were no longer able to ooze into the air.

Here are the befores (note large stains on the subfloor):

And afters. It's not the best paint job ever, but it does cause water to bead up on the surface. I hope that means it will keep smells in. It does mean when somebody spills something liquid on the carpet, the liquid will not be able to soak into the subfloor the way the pee did. Oil primer is sure stinky in its own right though . . .

Here is a closer view of the floor. I left some areas unpainted just for convenience, but I made sure they were stain-free areas. I ran the edge of the roller on the tack strip, but I didn't want too much paint on there since the tack strips need to be functional later.


I actually kind of like the super-clean look that the bright white floors give the upstairs. We are going to give the primer a few days and then see how the house smells. . . .Right now it smells like a chemical factory.

To be continued!

Floor Part II

So we ripped the carpet out. Hooray!


The house still had a bad smell even after the carpet was out. It is easy to see the huge pee stains on the subfloor in the picture. My first offensive strike against the smell was Glade scented baking powder. The house did smell nice at first, but because of how much the subfloor had absorbed the bad odor, baking powder just didn't get the job done.

Round 2: Bleach! We diluted bleach half with water and sprayed down the floors, focusing mostly on the stained areas. The preliminary results are in: success! The bleach made a huge difference. The smell in the house went from a 5 out of 10 stinkiness after carpets were removed, to a 2 out of 10 stinkiness. (Before we removed the carpet, I would have called the smell a 7 or an 8)

Another "ew" picture:

By the way, here is the official stinkiness scale, between 1 and 10.

0. regular air.
1. Musty basement.
2. Burned dinner.
3. Bradford Pear trees in bloom.
4. Dog poop.
5. Skunk.
6. Garbage truck.
7. Rotten broccoli.
8. Sulphur volcano.
9. The truck that empties port-o-potties.
10. Burning waste from the sewer treatment plant.

We are going to see how the bleach holds up over the next few days and then make a decision about how much further to go along this path against pee-smell. Whats your guess? Will it work?

The Home Office

The hubby is hoping to make a home office somewhere in the house. I'm totally on board with this plan; it was great for him to have a real working space at the old house. He often ended up working on the couch in the living room, but it's good for him to have a room that is his own space.

His only requests:
A huge desk against the wall. Curved corner desk would be good.
Whiteboard.

Not many demands! But still many things to consider.

We are leaning towards a bedroom being the office. If we do this, should we include a snacks-and-drinks solution, since the kitchen will be far away?

What other functions the room should have? Is it just an office or should we incorporate a day bed (the way we did in our previous home), or some other guest-room qualities? We don't really need all 4 bedrooms to behave as bedrooms right now, so we have a lot of flexibility there.

Is this a one-person or a two-person office? This obviously makes a difference in how we arrange the room. I don't need an office. . . I would probably just want a comfy chair for reading in. I like the arrangement of this little vignette (not the colors). I'd totally sit in this chair:


The hubby doesn't like glare on his computer monitor, so he always ends up closing the shades. How should this be taken into account? Maybe we choose to put him in the darker bedroom since he doesn't need light?Right now we are considering the above bedroom for home-office use. It has very nice light (one of only two south-facing windows in the house). Will it be wasted on my cave-dweller? ;)

Anyway, I will be thinking about this more in the future. Here is an inspirational picture:

We mostly like the colors. Hubby was quick to point out that the desk and the dog are both much too small.