My Income Is Risen!

I’m a little late to the party with posting that joke. But anyways, Easter was moving day in the Crooked House! So we met after brunch and I went to get stuff out of her old place. I’m pretty flattered that she wanted to come to the Crooked House because just look at this giant Mediterranean Revival twin in West Philly where she used to live! LOOK! I want this house so bad.

The leaded glass! That fireplace! The gas sconces! Original bathroom tile! Everything! But I’m not sure about having 7 roommates. And the bathroom has new plumbing that was rigged on the outside of the walls and I’m sure there’s a host of other hidden problems too. So it was probably a good life choice that I got a small house.

Anyways, by the time we got to my house, my parents were already there. My mom made dinner while we were going back to return the van and after that we came in to this!

I’d like to think that print on the wall gives me a whole window in the dining room. It was a gift from my French host family in 2004 when I was in high school. The real window gives me light and air but overlooks a dingy blind alley. It also reminds me of my roof deck envy. I just don’t see any good way to get up there, but it’s a similar view. Particularly a little more to the left where there’s a handsome church.

And then there was all the prep for having someone live here. First off, we’ve finally, FINALLY gotten somewhere with the painting! I touched up all the damage on the walls in the back bedroom, put up blinds, and took out some of my furniture. And 3 out of 4 closets are done! I especially have to thank my parents and their friend Evan. Evan came to paint for me even though he never did it in his own house. He told me that he’s no good at it, so I had him do the closet. And he worked in there for 8 hours like a champ and even offered to come back a second time. Weird. And I put up the wood blinds and cleared out the room because she brought a full size bed. It covers all this bare floor but totally works.

Then, would you believe what a difference clean windows make? The front ones have survived the whole remodel plus I’m sure many years of neglect before that. My dad was mocking me pretty hard for how bad they were. The house is actually brighter now.

And the stained glass transom is clear now! Who knew? My mom had this made for her first house. She said that she had it made by a local stained glass maker. He told her he couldn’t make it the way he wanted for her price. She wouldn’t come up, so he made it the way he wanted and undercharged her instead of toning down the design to fit her budget.

It hasn’t been properly displayed in over 30 years. Now she said it’s in a better spot than it ever had. I get a disco ball effect when the vestibule light is on!

I’ve run out of room to tell you about the super exciting kitchen work. Soon though!

 

Ups and Downs with the Bookcases

So first of all, yes I got them! I took the Suburban up to the seller’s house in Perkasie, and we got all of them except the middle lower unit in. This meant an hour and a half of driving over my usual afternoon commute. The seller is a concrete contractor and was working closer to where I work the next day, so he offered to bring it to his job site so I could get it there. But then he finished early and brought it to me instead. I said before that last week was bad. But then he showed up with this on his trailer. And yes, that’s my bookcase on the truck.

And here they are in the house! They’re supposed to go on the other side of the room and will get a little cosmetic tweaking – more on that later – but this is a start.

Sadly, the lowest shelf of the upper shelving units is fixed. won’t house a TV . But if I can choose between practical and solid mahogany… there’s no contest. The middle base unit has a pullout and a carousel for a TV, so that got me thinking that I could just be old fashioned and keep my TV 4 inches off the ground, too. And that way if there are people with bad taste in TV coming around too often, I can install locks on the doors! Should they insist on being allowed to watch, I’ll see if I can rig something up using the boiler as a stand and and throw some lawn chairs in the basement.

And then, remember how the bases are too deep to fit in my house? I plan to cut 5 inches off the backs, then rout out the side panels and reinstall the original backs to make them look like they came that way. This was easy in my mind. We’d run them through the Irishman’s table saw. He left it in my house and we’ve used it plenty.

But my dad wasn’t comfortable with us being able to balance something that big on such a small table. So instead he said we could clamp on a fence and cut them with a circular saw. We took one out to the sidewalk and made the first cut. The result? Wavy. A disaster.

I’ll need a Plan B. Either going to Philadelphia Woodworks to have a real wood shop and professional guidance – at $70 an hour – or hoping I can do better redoing the cuts with a router. But for now I’ve just thrown the room together to leave this project till later.

I thought seeing things bit scrunched and the couch off center was going to make me twitch, but I gave it a shrug. It’s fine. Also, I’ve figured out that the couch will be smushed against the bases if I size them to fit the stereo receiver, but because there’s a big gap behind the cabinets above the baseboards, I’m just gonna be lazy and cut a big hole in the backs. Problem solved.

Odds, ends, and cabinet colors

So the painting is still happening, and none of it is quite wrapped up yet. And my roommate is moving in Easter Sunday. That’s in 10 days. And then things unrelated to the house started going wrong and I’m starting to feel overwhelmed. The good news is, my roommate doesn’t care (particularly since I offered her a discount if the place is wrecked) and I’m taking tomorrow off. So let’s get on to the actual progress.

Most importantly, this weekend my dad and I built the Phase 1 kitchen drawer fronts! And they’re multiplying! First there were going to be 3 or 4 but now I’m up to 12. There were just enough scraps of cabinet grade plywood to make them all although 2 of them have the grain running in the wrong direction.

The DIY work for these  (before assembly) is cut, sand, prime, sand, prime, sand, paint, paint. I got the first coat of primer on one side of all of them and hope to be all done by Sunday so I can de-clutter and organize the kitchen next week. But I think 2 coats of primer will be especially important with the 2 drawers with vertical grain.

Then there’s the other question with these – what color to paint them. All my upper cabinets and 2 of the lowers are still going to be open and I won’t be styling the shelves, so this is still going to look a little makeshift and utilitarian. I thought about putting a kinda bright color on to just have fun with a space that doesn’t matter. I also want it to look good with my temporary countertops.

The problem is that lighter colors don’t really work with them and darker colors are impossible with the ProClassic paint I want to use. It’s really great for cabinetry and stuff. And in the mid-toned colors, everything seemed to be either too bright or too grey. I think I’m liking this one – and the coordinating colors even look like what I already have.

A friend of mine said that the color looks like it would go in a room that’s modern with rustic elements. That’s definitely not my house but it sounds more like some ideas I had for it before. I think I like it, but what do you think? And remember, this is for the lower cabinets only and I’m not committing to it forever. Am I making a mistake to not just go even brighter for fun?

Then I need hardware, and obviously I need it to be cheap. The best bargains I can think of are my parents’ oval brass knobs. They have lots on cabinets in their laundry room, but I’d need to put something cheap in to replace them.

Or, I have 7 of these yellow porcelain knobs from the furniture that was in my room when I was a baby

.

But what I’m thinking may really best is that my friend’s parents have a bunch of circa 1953 chrome pulls that a previous owner took out of the kitchen and left in the basement. I talked them out of throwing them out, so they may be fair game if I ask, right?

 

A New IKEA Curve Ball

Bookcases were supposed to be a post Phase 1 problem, then they moved up because I thought I had a cheap, easy, and fairly good solution. My grandmother got rid of these 3 IKEA bookcases. On their own they’re not quite right for the space..

SoI thought one extra skinny one and height extensions for the whole set would make it better scaled. And symmetrical.

But there’s a problem. IKEA is discontinuing this wood finish April 1^st and has already stopped restocking it. This feels an awful lot like what happened with the kitchen cabinets last year. I was able to get the height extensions but would have to go to Elizabeth, NJ to get the skinny shelving unit. That’s about an hour and a half away if I don’t get stuck in traffic at rush hour next to New York City. And the friends I contacted in Jersey aren’t free for dinner so there’s nothing fun to do while I’m there.

But then I was thinking about it. All this will probably cost over $200 once we add in gas and Turnpike tolls, so it’s not almost free like I thought it was. And it will take a full evening right up to my bedtime plus an extra car borrowing trip to my parents’ house. And the Billys are not exactly what I wanted anyway. I like that they’re plain and slim looking. I do NOT want one of those big entertainment centers that look like breakfront china cabinets; these would fade into the background and hold my stuff without making the room look too busy or closed in. But I also have good vintage stereo equipment that will not fit on 11 inch shelves.

And so I turned to Craigslist. And for twice the price I can get this pretty simple bookcase with the deeper bottom part and SOLID MAHOGANY instead of veneered particle board. And closed cabinets! But I’ll need the Irishman to cut the backs off the deep base parts to make something from Bucks County fit a South Philly house.

I talked to the seller and I think (with modifications) this is gonna be perfect for me! Or you can talk me out of it.

Then I also need something on the windows in the back bedroom now that it’s soon to be rented. And because this room has the permanent windows and casings, I can put in permanent window treatments that are better than what’s in the other rooms. I’ve been thinking I definitely like the idea of stained wood blinds in a room that’s mostly light colors now. Home Depot has one style of real wood blinds in stock at a reasonable price and I was going to go with it.

But I knew that what I really wanted was something darker. And I think they knew that, too, because on the third time I toggled back and forth between different styles, an ad came up for a 25% off coupon. So they got me. I got a darker color that I like better, but it was only $60 extra. The other downside? My roommate might need to use the super classy felt blanket for 2 weeks. (Also you can see that I finally killed some of my plants.)

 

A triumphant end to Phase 1

I always imagined that the stove would be just about the last thing I’d do in Phase 1. The house wouldn’t be perfect but it would be livable and I’d make pasta and it would be triumphant. Well, I’ve been making pasta and a triumph it is not. Even easy meals are kind of tedious in a chronically messy kitchen. And elsewhere in the house, the march toward civility is moving backwards.

Now the plan was always to slow down a bit and get my life back for a little while after Phase 1. So when would that come? It was looking like at some point or another I’d just anticlimactically say that’s enough.

But now there’s big news – I have a triumphant end to Phase 1 once again. Because a good friend of mine wants to be my roommate! That means great things for my bank account. And it also means more stuff to do now. She’s pretty easy going, but she said in no uncertain terms that the doors need to be back up on her room and the bathroom before she can move in. And there’s at least one solid weekend’s worth of work left to turn the living room and kitchen right side up again. I’m hoping for a little more help from the Irishman; without him, it could easily be 2 weekends.

And the new end of Phase 1 (I think) is the washer and dryer. But first, there’s all this painting that feels like it will never end. But there are bright spots. I’m done most of the prep now and at the very least, the messiest painting should be done this weekend. I hope. And the back bedroom closet doors look oddly new with the mildew bleached off and painted over. Of course new wasn’t what I wanted, but I’m happy enough to have it here.

And there’s quarter round in the living room! That’s not just a big step forward (and a prerequisite for the bookcases) but also one more thing out of the basement. 5000 to go before the washer and dryer come! Just kidding. But not really.

So, it looks like I need to put a third coat of paint onto most of the walls. Hopefully that’s done this weekend and I can really put the house together next. Then here’s what’s left:

• Finish Phase 1 trim painting, which means all upstairs woodwork. Re-hang upstairs doors.
• Clear out the back bedroom. There is stuff in the furniture. I’ll have to put it in boxes.
• Procure and install curtains or blinds for the back bedroom.
• Move the bookcases I have back to the long wall where they were and anchor them. Add a 4th narrow unit and height extensions. (Bringing over books and other things that go on them can go beyond Phase 1.)
• Hang the 2 downstairs interior doors and slider screen door that are currently stored in the living room.
• Bring over one more piece of furniture for the brick wall by the stairs.
• Add 6 more drawers (for a total of 7) to the kitchen. Make plywood drawer fronts. Paint them? Rearrange kitchen things and bring in china.

The list is getting shorter and less scary, right?

 

3 years!

Actually it’s tomorrow, and the plan was to have a blowout party yesterday. Instead I’m sitting on a wooden chair looking at how torn apart the living room is and thinking I’d rather take a gun to my head than tackle any more painting just now. And so instead I’m blogging. Everything is a little half done because surprise surprise, it’s twice as much work as I thought again. Even with my parents and their friend (which is amazingly nice) helping. And when it comes to that punchlist, there’s more painting making its way into Phase 1. Partly because many of the most important things to paint are in the way of each other.

So here’s how it went. At year 0 the house looked great even though there were unseen things that could have killed you.

Stairs

But then some issues, like this extreme crookedness, were pretty visible right away.

Back bedroom

A year later, the scope bloat was complete and instead of living in a slightly buffed up old house and tackling issues slowly, I had a shell and was looking forward to owning windows… and returning to compliance with a law requiring them. Luckily I didn’t get busted for having a chopped up door here for 3 months. Also, I just got rid of the last of this green textured plywood.

And we have to remember this mess just because. There was drywall nailed onto these half wrecked walls and the Irishman told me I had to add framing for the cabinets. I didn’t do it anywhere else and it was torture!

Year 2 ended with very, very exciting white drywall primer.

And a not-so-functional bathroom. The bucket was to flush the toilet until I finished painting the room and got the tank back on.

And in year 3? So many firsts. Paint colors!

t

The doors! My first love. (Keep this in mind, suitors. You’re my second at best.)

Lights that turn on (without risking burning the house down)! And none of them are in boob form!

F

Floors! Holy crap, they were holding up everything!

Furniture! And my mom cleaning like a (heteronormative) badass.

Of course owning furniture isn’t enough in these narrow working class rowhouses. You also have to get it inside.

And most recently, all the kitchen appliances work! I just picked up spaghetti and tomato sauce at my corner bodega and it was joyous.

So… let’s pretend it still looks like this.

Actually it looks like this. But when the living room looked like that the kitchen didn’t work and was jammed with stuff. And this actually looks pretty under control.

So a real, functional, homey house? I’m SO CLOSE. I said a small house was more than enough, but I didn’t know how hard it would be to get away from all this construction stuff in 800 square feet.

And here’s one more thing to mark off the to do list. I’m deleting the remaining banister work from Phase 1, so this is what I’m calling complete enough.

And let’s talk about the silly things that are annoying me. Like looking at mugs, toothpicks, and candles where the china belongs.

But compared to July 2013, I’m SO CLOSE. I said that before. But it’s true.

 

Let’s update that punchlist

Big news yesterday! I got a new plumber in for the last really important thing! And that means I’m past due to update this punchlist.

Building Systems

• Connect radiators, fill system, fire up the boiler. Done!
• Wire thermostats and activate zone valves. I used to have a temporary thermostat in the basement. I’ve moved backwards and now it runs on a toggle switch..

Kitchen

• Finish installing laminate countertops. Done. But some of the pieces I glued on are peeling off. So now I need to repair them.
• Install sink. Procure and install faucet and drain.
• Procure and install 30 inch gas range. Done! Yayyy!
• Procure refrigerator, install hinges on the left side (Most come with right side hinges but are reversible. Done!
• Build remaining countertop out of leftover oak. (Requires dowel or biscuit joints)
• (Optional) Install drawers in lower cabinets. Update: I really want to get all of these and have good storage and less clutter right away.
• (Optional) Procure and install dishwasher, garbage disposal, and over-the-range microwave. I actually got a disposal from a friend who’s redoing his house. It’s 2 years old. And Philadelphia requires these for major remodels so this is actually important.

Front Bedroom

• Finish painting closet shelving. Add clothes bars. (2 clothes bars in, one to go.)
• Finish painting temporary particle board around windows. Install temporary blinds.
• Install door strike, stop molding, and door knob at entrance to room. The door strikes I have don’t fit this lock.
• Pre-paint and temporarily install trim around closet doors.

Back Bedroom Note: This list is low priority unless I find someone to rent the room. And then I’ll be scrambling to do it.)

• Sort all tools in closet and move to basement. (Half done)
• Install closet door strikes and stop moldings on both doors.
• Paint closet doors, closet shelving and trim on door wall. (Up next.)
• Install permanent blinds, shades, and/or curtains. (This actually may wait until someone is renting the room)

Living room and General Clutter

• Count and sort kitchen items. Re-box items for yard sale and return them to parents. Done! Now I have to help them sort stuff though.
• Collect all unused building materials. Shamelessly return everything for store credit. Done! And I’m about $250 richer.
• Install 2 remaining interior doors. Remove cardboard at entryway. (But let’s add in the screen door for the slider, which is in the way too.)
• Paint temporary particle board around front windows and install temporary blinds.
• Install panel sticking on stairway wall.
• Repair and refinish banister.

Upstairs hall

• Empty both closets. Paint closet shelving. (One closet ready to go)
• Install roller catch and stop moldings on linen closet door. This door is thinner than standard and has a dummy knob. (I bought the catch in 2013 and have no idea where it is)
• Install threshold and permanent stop moldings on bathroom door.
• Paint all door jambs, casings, and remaining baseboards. (2 of 5 are ready to paint)

Bathroom

• Procure and install towel bars, toilet paper holder, etc.

Basement

• Remove lathe and borrowed tools. Clean floor and walls.
• Discard duplicate paint cans. Consolidate paint to one can of each color.
• Add additional shelving as needed. (I got some and don’t urgently need more.)
• Finish drywall at top of stairwell. Discard remaining stored drywall scraps.
• (Optional unless I get a roommate) Procure washer and dryer. Consider 24 inch appliances or local appliance dealer that will dismantle full size appliances and reassemble in basement.

So I think we can call this serious progress. I now have all the basic functions of a home!

Almoster and Almoster

I may be going in circles with the heat, but some things are getting better in a big way. Last week, I borrowed the Suburban again and may have finished everything I’ll ever need to do with it. So what’s new and better now?

I have a real refrigerator! We dented the side getting it in. Oof. But it’s not that obvious, and it was a Craigslist bargain so I don’t feel like I threw too much money away. And my over-the-range microwave is in! The vent ducting isn’t all hooked up just yet and there needs to be an outlet in the cabinet above it, but baby steps.

I have bookcases! I used to want something a little airier looking than these basic IKEA Billys, and I wanted something that would hold stereo equipment as well as books. But everything I really liked would cost thousands of dollars and these were free when my grandmother moved into a smaller room. The proportions are a little off right now. I want to add one more narrow unit to the right, and make it 16 inches taller with height extensions. My TV, Victorian clock and (reproduction) Brancusi bust will fit, of course along with books, but stereo equipment is not happening.

The big fancy mirror in my bedroom is finally mounted on the dresser. Now I have room for the matching wash stand. There are a few pieces of fancy missing; I’m wondering if it’s feasible to have them remade.

And last but not least, I’ve gotten rid of a lot of trash, household items to sell or donate, and wood to burn. Up until now, I’ve always had at least one room plus the basement and the back yard that were pretty jammed with it. The basement is empty enough that I can paint things down here.

The back yard hasn’t looked this good since 2013. My office building is having an e-waste collection on March 1^st, so the microwave is sticking around a bit longer.

And the dining room table is still pretty crapped up, but this is progress, too. It’s reached steady state conditions. I clear stuff off the table and then gather stuff from the rest of the house and put it here. This should be the only messy spot in the house by Saturday. Unfortunately, I’ll also have all the low hanging fruit cleared out by then and the rest will take actual work. But hey, the floor is clear!

So what’s left to do? The 3 year house-anniversary is less than 2 weeks away and I’m hoping somehow Phase 1 can wrap up before then. If I want that to happen, I’ll need to:

• Install the rest of the door strikes and stops. One strike plate doesn’t fit so I’ll also need to go back to the salvage yard.
• Hang 2 interior doors and the screen to the patio door downstairs.
• Paint the shelves and door jambs in 3 more closets.
• Get somebody in to hook up the stove. My DIY confidence is pretty high but it stops somewhere short of gas plumbing.

I think the boiler hates me

I’ve got a good story today, but first you need a little bit of boring background information. This is an aquastat relay, which controls the boiler, the circulating pump (which moves water through my radiators), and the chimney damper. It also powers and receives a signal from the thermostat. There are 4 screw terminals for the thermostats near the top, but 2 of them have a metal strip factory installed to jump them because most systems only need the other 2. You can see that strip covering up the word thermostat right above the little plastic sheet, and the TV terminal is one of the ones for the thermostats.

The heat wasn’t working after I finally got all the thermostats hooked up right, and first I assumed that the complicated thing I have with 3 thermostats and 3 zone valves (instead of 2 wires on 1 thermostat) was the problem. So I took down the thermostat in the living room and connected it right to the relay with some extra wire. Now with simple wires it should turn on.

But it didn’t.

My dad had been worried that we blew one of the transformers by wiring it wrong, so I thought either it was that or the thermostat was bad. But I waited for my dad to come down with a multimeter so we could test for bad wires and what not. And so he came in and put the multimeter across the thermostat terminals and immediately, click! The relay flipped and the boiler fired up.

I gasped. The thermostat is bad and current is running through the volt meter and turning the boiler on. How is this possible? So I tried just running a wire across. That should be the same as when a thermostat saying “turn on” to the boiler. But it did nothing. Did I have a whole lot of faulty wire? He switched the meter to measure resistance and found that the wire was good.

And then he stuck wires across the terminals and click! Whoosh! On it came. And I did it again, and nothing. We did this a few times and then I asked him to sit there until the house warmed up. He said no. But finally, he pushed the wire against one terminal only and on it went. So we realized that he was flexing the circuit panel and something was connecting that wasn’t connected before.

There must be a bad solder on the back side of the circuit panel. So we disconnected every wire going into that relay, took it off the boiler, and dismantled it. Nothing looked bad. I figured I needed a new relay, which I guessed I could afford at $160, even though I had just said I could not afford $130 for an automatic ice maker in my freezer.

But then, remember those 2 thermostat terminals with the jumper running across them? The ones I don’t actually need? One of them was loose. So we put it all back together and what could have been a 2 second job was accomplished instead in 3 hours.

I went and reinstalled that last thermostat in the living room and we connected it back to the relay. And nothing happened. So remember the wire we used to bypass the thermostat before? I put that back on. Now my heat is on all the time until I get hot and go downstairs and power off the aquastat.

Working out of a rut

I was starting to feel stuck in a rut. Mainly because I can’t handle tons of small jobs. And because I thought I needed way more help from my dad than he had time for. So this weekend I made a new plan. Just do all of them. It meant a lot of jumping around, but I can handle that better than thinking about it all.

So… I finally put blinds up in my bedroom. Not super cheap like I planned. There’s a street light right outside my window so I got room darkening ones.

And the first few door strikes are in. I was scared to do this by myself. And my mortising job isn’t perfect but it’s good enough… I hope. Also, this back bedroom is the only room in the house with super shiny new hardware. I did it because I couldn’t afford solid brass. And the super frustrating thing. I will still be one door short.  because the strike I bought for my bedroom doesn’t fit the latch. Another trip to the salvage yard is in order.

And there’s a pile of drywall scraps left in the basement. I need to finish the stairwell before I make them disappear. Remember that I have a removable panel on this wall so I only need to drywall the ends. The extra elbow room in the middle is nice.

And my dad came down today and got the thermostats wired up. Except we can’t find the tiny screwdriver we need to connect the last thermostat. Oh well.

And I still had a bunch of trash cans full of lathe in the basement. I had ideas for creative ways to reuse it, but then I couldn’t stand the sight of it anymore. So instead I cut it all in half so it will fit into my parents’ incinerator fireplace. My parents had those friends who own the old Suburban over for lobster last night, so that seemed like the perfect time to borrow it again. And so my dad drove it down and we took out all this! (I’m on good terms with those neighbors… for now.)

They’ll be having a lot of fires. Also a third of it is trash. And what does my basement look like now?

Womp. Still pretty terrible, but at least there’s room to turn around. And we brought in the big fancy mirror that goes on my dresser.

But somehow the big fat screws that go to this disappeared so now it’s staying against the wall. Also, can you see that the fancy part at the top is damaged and missing pieces? I may have to leave it off at least for now. But I guess that’s a problem for another day.

I still need a bit more from that Suburban, so it may stick around all week. Up next is getting rid of my parents’ extra set of couches and… drumroll please… a refrigerator!