Archive for the 'Home Improvements' Category

If you’re hanging drywall…

Posted by Nate in Bruno, Home Improvements.
Tuesday, August 15th, 2006 at 12:32 pm


…don’t forget the dog! Much like the Princess and the Pea, drywall inspector Bruno can feel a defect under up to 7 sheets of drywall. Luckily this batch passed muster, and hanging is proceeding — THANKS, mom and dad! It’s looking great!

Basement: looks like a wall…

Posted by Nate in Bruno, Home Improvements.
Monday, August 14th, 2006 at 1:19 pm


Friday afternoon I wired the newly-hung recessed lights, but left both circuits – sconces and downlights – just hanging near the final switch box. I finished just in time for Scott and I to go check out the St. Paul Irish Fair with Justin and Juliana, and a good time was had by all. Of course I knew that Saturday was going to be busy cleaning before my parents got to town, so I stayed up late after I got home and finished wiring things into the switch box, as well as installing a motion sensor switch for the laundry room. There’s no switch for that one upstairs and we somehow always manage to leave it on after feeding the dog, doing laundry, messing with homebrew, you name it. The sensor is awesome so far, you just walk in and presto! Light! Then after you leave: presto! Dark!

Yesterday, Sunday, we made it out to Home Depot for some lumber, and construction started in earnest on the basement wall. After much clever fussing with the location of the door into the new "storage room," my dad and I thought we had it solved so the door could swing all the way open to keep the corridor look of the pillars. Perfect. It took my mom all of about 2 seconds to point out it was moot anyway because of the adjustment corner we had just finished building in the wall! Ah well. It’s still the best solution for the space, just not what we thought we were getting.

With luck we’ll borrow Scott’s truck (other Scott ;) tomorrow to grab some drywall, a door and some hardware, although I imagine with all the family coming into town shortly it will just sit in the basement until after the North Shore retreat. Fine with me, the point is it’s getting done slowly but surely!

Bonus pic: Helpy McHelperson makes sure the lumber doesn’t go anywhere before we need it.

Basement Project: Sconces

Posted by Nate in Home Improvements.
Thursday, August 10th, 2006 at 9:43 am


Well, finally. When Karen left I was full of plans for huge projects: I’m gonna paint the cupboards! I’m gonna cut down that stupid tree/bush in the backyard! I’m gonna put shelves in the office! I’m gonna redo the lighting in the whole house!!! … instead, I’ve been walking the dog a lot, dealing with stuff at work, and trying to singlehandedly cook and eat an amount of vegetables that makes the detox diet seem easy!

Until yesterday, that is, when I kicked off the long-anticipated Basement Project. First, some photos of what I’m going for, structurally:

Probably a bit hard to envision, but essentially instead of splitting the basement down the middle on that beam, I’m going to build a wall about three feet back. This leaves approximately 1/3 for storage, 2/3 for hanging out.

The pillars look great in the new space, and will look even better with … sconces!

I’d been planning all along to put recessed lights down there, but I’ve lately been worried that those would light the floor well and some of the walls, but reinforce the "cave" effect by leaving the ceiling dark. Sconces should spill up onto the ceiling a bit more and open things up.

The PITA part of installing sconces is pulling the electrical wire to them, since they’re on the wall. There’s some drywall patching in my future, but since there’s a board right there it’s really the only way to make the corner from the ceiling to the wall. I have to get some little metal shims to cover the wire before I close it back up, just so I don’t stick a nail in it when I put the crown molding up.

You can see the pulling process in action. Next I came in between the joists above with my fishing tape, found the end through the corner hole, and tied the cable to it. Twice I was too optimistic about the pressure and lost the cable by not taping it… Oops. Finally pulled the cable back out into the open channel where everything will be wired.

One down, three to go! Actually, by this morning, they’re all down and wired and I hooked them up to a dimmer just to see the effect. So. Cool. I can’t wait to get the downlights in place tonight or tomorrow and then finish the wiring so I can get started on the wall. The last big piece to solve: one door into the storage near the stairs, or two (one near and one far)? Bruno just loves running laps through the basement, I’m afraid the wall might be a big disappointment to him. With two doors he could still have a nice racetrack, but it would cost more and probably look less cool. (No, he doesn’t own the house, and no, he’s not the boss of me.)

Kitchen coming together

Posted by Nate in Home Improvements.
Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 at 4:26 pm


I should have bought stock in Ikea and Home Depot. Years ago.

Instead I just get to increase the wealth of their existing stockholders, but it still seems like a good deal when the results turn out this nice: (ignore Karen showing you how well she brushed her teeth)

Two smaller things of note in the bigger picture: in the very back is a new steel wire shelf with a wood top, a perfect space for our toaster, coffee maker, and various stuff underneath. This lets us clean up our main counter space for day-to-day use. Also, left of the sink (detail at left) is a new separate filtered water faucet! It’s so great to have a built-in faucet finally instead of the stupid ones that attach to the end of the existing faucet and always have a bad seal anyway. Total. Crap. This one feels nice and looks nice – it even matches the faucet I put in a while back!

So… I think that about wraps up the kitchen! (for now)

Deck bench in action

Posted by Nate in Home Improvements.
Saturday, July 15th, 2006 at 9:23 pm


Day two of the bench construction, first thing was to cut the angles for the corner and finish driving the 8 million screws attaching the seat boards. Power screw gun essential. The screws that came with the brackets are all galvanized for use in pressure-treated wood, overkill for me, but at least they’ll hold up outdoors. I ended up buying some new deck screws while getting the lumber so I could match the color of the wood a little better.

Done! Next on the list is to get something to treat the lumber – I’m not going to seal it yet, but there are a few different products intended for new lumber like this, just to help get it "off on the right foot". Not sure what exactly that means but it sounds important from the reviews I’ve read… Also might replace the two seat boards on the smaller side – one of them is "cupping" a bit (curling up at the edges) and the other has two badly placed knots. I think I have enough left over lumber for those two short pieces, we’ll see.

…and here it is in action! I think they’re both making the sign for "delicious", since they’re eating Princess Torte from Wuollette Bakery. Whoa. Good times. I’m actually writing this on Karen’s laptop while sitting on the bench right now. It’s sweet, but it’s getting dark enough to make me realize we’ll need another lighting solution out here since it’s so darn appealing to hang out on during these hot summer nights… Yay.

Deck bench part 1

Posted by Nate in Home Improvements.
Tuesday, July 11th, 2006 at 10:00 pm


So about a month ago Karen and I were almost on this reality TV show where they do a bunch of work on your backyard. It sounded really cool and we were excited until she asked us what our budget was… Um, budget? So we respectfully declined – I thought those TV shows did the work for free! Anyway, during the interview in our backyard the producer asked us what sort of work we might want to do, and even suggested a bench on the deck. Say no more!

Karen and I had the same idea for where it should go, on the South side of the deck, and we were both keen on maybe making a nice corner out of it. Only trouble was, a bench from scratch was looking like a fairly complicated project, let alone all the hassle of a corner..

Luckily my internet searching lead me to the promised land – cool plastic bench brackets made just for the edge of a deck: "Just add lumber!" (see the lumber above, the brackets installed left)

Since they’re going to be well off the ground and mostly angled, I opted to not get pressure treated lumber — lots and lots of chemicals, even if they’ve cut out the arsenic since ’04. I also looked briefly at some of the composite wood/plastic blends they have preshaped for decks, and while they ‘re super cool and never need maintenance, they’re also way expensive and didn’t really match our existing deck at all. In the end I went with nice cedar, and it looks great so far.

Of course the "quick afternoon project" started to extend into the evening, pushed further back as I realized I didn’t have the socket I needed to put in the million hex screws and bolts. (On the list of "required tools" they only list a crescent wrench, but I would have shot myself in the head after one bracket if that’s all I had. Much nicer with the socket wrench.)

Alas, night has fallen on an unfished deck bench, but enough is completed to start to convince me it’s going to look super sweet. The deck always seemed a bit "unfinished" to me — nice, and I wouldn’t trade it, but missing something on the edges. I think this might be it.

Parents projects part 3

Posted by Nate in Family, Home Improvements.
Wednesday, May 10th, 2006 at 8:54 pm


Once again – work for me and Karen, and the parents (plus Sierra) at home. Rick got up early to go birdwatching at Murphy-Hanrehan park, a decent drive south-west of the cities – and he saw a new bird! Good news! (He’s got so many now, new species are harder and harder to come by…)

Of course that wasn’t a busy enough day for him, so he took advantage of a mostly-dry day and tackled the terribly leaky garage roof. I’d noticed all winter that whenever we had a melting spell that somehow water was coming in on the South roof edge and soaking into the plywood wall! No good at all, and it was on my short list of projects to hit this summer… But, unbelievably, I hadn’t even been up on the roof to look at it yet. Earlier in the week Rick scaled a rickety lumber stack and fence to take a look and informed me that the shingles were totally shot right along the wall line. I’m guessing a combination of south-facing sunshine and ice dams for too many winters, plus some pooling right at the edge there.

Either way, time to replace them, and we just happened to have a stack of shingles left over from the previous owner and a bunch of roofing nails from an earlier roof project. He told me afterwards that he used almost a whole gallon of roofing cement to patch everything up, so that thing’s going to outlast the whole garage! No more leaking!

Meanwhile, Marianne and Sierra hit the town for some shopping, errands, and general running around. After work everyone rendezvoused at the Herkimer for happy hour and Smarty Party planning. Perfect.

All grown up

Posted by Karen in Home Improvements.
Monday, March 13th, 2006 at 8:18 am


There have been requests to see our recent furniture upgrades. Yes, it’s true, we have real, not-bought-at-a-thrift-store-or-yard-sale furniture! I think we are finally officially becoming adults. (gasp!) But don’t worry, I have no plans to get rid of my pound puppy, and Nate still has his tauntaun. And actually, half of it was either free or bought second hand. But what we bought cost more than $20! And – it matches. Whoa. So I wish we had taken before and after pictures, but we didn’t, so I’ll just have to describe. Picture this: a full-sized box spring that we couldn’t fit through the door to get it upstairs with it’s mattress, so we just made it the base layer, the foundation if you will, for our bed. On top of the full box spring we put a queen box spring. On top of that we put a queen mattress. It sucked. Every night I rolled into the middle, every morning I complained. So we deemed it necessary to upgrade. And here it is, in all of its grown-up glory: Please note the matching bedside tables. Very exciting. That same week, Caveman Cody moved to Denver. Great opportunity for him, sad times for us. But as luck would have it, some furniture he was trying to get rid of happened to be the same style as what we had just bought! So we gladly took that off his hands, and ended up with I guess what you would call a bedroom set. Weird. Here it is:

Moving on to the next room, Nate and I had bought a dining room table and chairs from an old co-worker a few years ago. At the time, we couldn’t believe our luck, but I didn’t get along with it from the get-go. It was super wobbly, the veneer was ugly and starting to bubble, and it was an oval, which as it turns out is near impossible to find a tablecloth for. During one conversation I said that someday I wanted to get a big, beefy, solid wood rectangular table. And then lo and behold, I got an email from someone at the U who had taken a job out east and was trying to sell a bunch of his furniture, and one piece just happened to be a big, beefy, solid wood rectangular table! I had been thinking more like in a couple of years or so, but what are you gonna do when it just presents itself like that? So now we have this sweet table:

And so ends the tour of our new furniture. Who knows, maybe we’ll eventually even replace the pea green vinyl armchair with the packing tape holding its insides in that’s currently in our living room. But we don’t want to get too crazy.

Helpy McHelperson

Posted by Nate in Bruno, Home Improvements.
Tuesday, February 14th, 2006 at 11:47 am


Bruno helps us put together the new bed from Ikea.

Faucet update

Posted by Nate in Home Improvements.
Monday, January 30th, 2006 at 2:15 pm


The old faucet turned out to be all pretty up-to-date hardware, and the replacement was about as easy as it could have been. The under-sink shutoff valves were tight and needed some coaxing, but actually did the job perfectly. Until I’d looked under the sink in detail, I was worried the hardware might be old enough to not even include shutoff valves… Eek. At left is the "before" shot, you can see the single handle faucet and the black sprayer – apparently just for show, the sprayer’s not hooked up. (I know, what?)

Here’s the "during" shot. There was a bit of plumber’s putty and corrosion residue that had to be cleaned up and scrubbed down, but not too bad. You’ll note the nice length on the old water connection pipes – the new faucent had about 2" less, and, of course, the existing flex hoses didn’t reach. They were short by one miserable inch. But they were this crappy plastic and the replacements are nice SS braids, so that’s good… Extra hardware store trips: 1.

And finally, the "after". Ta da! I’m actually looking seriously at getting an under-the-sink in-line water filter instead of that hanging one. I mean, it’s nice to not have to use the filter for everything, but I think aesthetically it will be much nicer to have it out of sight. And it will prevent accidentally sending hot water through the filter…

Also notice the shiny new sprayer! It’s hooked up and works great. I didn’t even replace the base stand for it, since it was tight and hard to reach, and doesn’t look out of place with the new setup. Sweet. I’m still adjusting to the split hot / cold valves, but I definitely like to look and feel of the new setup.