Drumroll please… a big milestone this week!

My plumber’s been in! That’s right, I have a working bathroom!

Now it’s not all good news. Apparently I wasn’t supposed to tile all the way up to the valve, so my plumber got to have fun chipping out my work to make the trim piece fit. And he couldn’t make the one I wanted fit, so he swapped it for a more basic one. Honestly, no big deal. I like my shower head, although he also said he had trouble installing it and it was leaking like crazy. But still, it’s done!

Upstairs Floors Post 5: You Can Walk Everywhere Now

So you saw last time that my floor patches were kind of terrifyingly unsupported because it looked better that way. After I wrote that my dad and I fixed the problem by putting subflooring up from the living room. Yep, fun job. Before that could happen, out came the old gas light lines.

We interrupt this productivity: Boob light phaseout complete!

Flooring progress has been slow and mostly more of the same. I decided to take out a few more damaged floorboards in the front bedroom; we’re better at it now. And reinforcing them from below, a two person job, hasn’t started yet. Instead, I did a floor reinstallation dry run in the back bedroom to see how much more I needed. And even though it’s all pretend, I can totally see the after in my imagination. Just squint a little until the spray foam looks like walls, the floor looks sanded, and the sawhorses look like a dresser.

Upstairs Floors Post 3: Now there’s something to see

So I ended my hiatus this weekend. Yesterday very little happened and I started to brace myself for a VERY slow process to finish this job, but today it actually looks different! So first I planned ahead. The floors in my house were installed without a subfloor, so every floorboard joint is over a joist. I taped off where the joints would be if I kept it that way.

Upstairs Floors Post 2: Dragging my feet is my favorite pastime

Bad news, I don’t have anything to show you. I’ve been taking it easy, but also pondering. Because I need lots of time to do that every time I take on something complicated. So if you want visuals, you can watch what I’m watching. Note: there are a lot of videos just like this. I’ve watched more than one and gotten no benefit from the repeats.

In a nutshell, I have to make these ugly square holes in my floor not square by removing extra sections of boards at random lengths.

Planning ahead, to the flooring and beyond!

I feel like I’ve turned another corner with the house. I’ve constantly had to do bits and pieces of things all over the house to be ready for one contractor after another. I’ve started low priority things during downtime and not finished them. And I ended up spending half the summer siding the cantilever. Which I still love. But now, my plumber is coming (when he gets back from vacation) to hook up my bathtub and I’m getting that patio door installed, and other than those things, no other contractors are coming in until I have the drywall taped. I’m free to work at my own pace!

So does this mean that I’m done skipping around? No! My next order of business is doing the jobs that will get rid of all the piles of junk that are in my way. I’m putting the floors down before the walls are up. And I don’t even think that’s crazy. But I want all this crap gone. And by gone, I mean installed.

Bathroom tile post 2: All the comforts of home

OK, I’m exaggerating. Some of the comforts of home. I now have cleaning supplies under my (temporary) bathroom sink.Yep, I’m moving up in the world!

My mom bought me all this stuff for a different bathroom. Remember it? It’s part of the back bedroom now. It was small and awkward and poorly built and had plumbing hacked into original plumbing that was falling apart and that window had even less reason to be clear than the new one, which is frosted. I’m glad I moved everything around; it made this a much nicer house.

The Blue Disease Runs in the Family

I wanted to be different than my parents. I said I wouldn’t give my life over to keeping a perfect house like theirs. I said buying a small rowhouse with no land would accomplish this.

I said I was going to decorate differently than my mom. Maybe I will. But the most deep rooted, primal aspect of her decorating taste is a preference for one particular color. That color is on the first two things that are truly getting finished in my house.

Siding Post 7: I Can Do It in Every Position

Get your minds out of the gutter, folks. I’m talking about painting of course!

That shirt’s really taken a beating. Mostly because the back of my house has all kinds of awkward tight spaces. You’ve probably seen before that I needed to hop the property line to lean a ladder against the side of the house above. Plus there was the excitement of finagling that big, heavy (non-conductive) wooden ladder in between all the phone lines. But the other side is crazier.

Siding Post 6: Almost Painted

This is probably the last you’ll see of my siding before the back side is really done. My agonizing over paint colors is done and culminated in going with the ballsiest suggestion I got, painting the siding (a slightly grayed out) navy blue. One criticism this idea got was that it would make my house look too Cape Coddy. I don’t really see this as a problem. If I could put an acre or two of dunes in the alley that would be even better, though it would also make my house farther from the subway.

And the beadboard on the “porch ceiling” is light blue. I had to wash off the residue from the tar paper that was nailed to it with paint thinner, which paired nicely with the Hop Devil I was drinking. And then it needed two tubes of caulk. I still missed a few holes, so I might have to caulk a weensy bit more in between coats. But here’s what I’ve got so far: