From brass to satin nickel hardware!

My fabulous friend Kelli has done another guest blog post! She'll also be featured in my next post. Feel free to share congratulations with her for these improvements in the comments.

When I purchased my house almost two years ago, the previous owners had upgraded some great things in the house - I had new stainless steel appliances, shiny and satin nickel light fixtures, and new sink faucets which were a shiny nickel. However, these didn't match the brass hardware on the door knobs, locks (exterior doors), and door hinges. To be honest, it didn't bother me that it was mismatched - as long as it worked, that was all I really cared about. I definitely liked the newer silver stuff and put it in my long term plan to update the hardware.


In September, I was hanging out with a co-worker of mine who was in the process of selling her house (about a mile from mine!) and she showed me how easy it was to update the hardware. She also had brass hardware in her house when she bought it, and she was putting the money in now in the hopes that the house would sell faster. She also put in bamboo floors in the kitchen and living areas and new appliances in the kitchen, which is very similar to what my previous owners had done.
I was really impressed with how easy it looked to update the hardware, and she told me she had spent about $500 for her whole house, which was a little smaller than mine. I figured if she can do it, so can I! I got a coupon in the mail that week for discounts on total purchases at Lowe's (which I can walk to from my house) so I figured I might as well take a crack at changing out the hardware. I thought the door hinges would be hard to do because I would have to take off the door and re hang it, but I didn't! My coworker showed me how to switch out each one, and how to remove the pins when she needed to put a door stop at the top (see picture on right). She was using a battery operated screwdriver to do all the hard work. I only have a corded drill, which is quite a bit heavier than the screwdriver. Unlike my coworker, I opted to get slight fancier handles for the doors in my house (see picture below). I did this for two reasons - one, I wanted to enjoy them and I liked them better, and two, they are more accessible for people who have arthritis or have a hard time gripping a handle. I figured anything I can do to make my home more accessible is a good thing!

This is a bathroom/bedroom handle with lock 

I took about 5 trips to Lowe's over a month to get the interior handles and doors done. I took notes about what I had so far (and did some measuring) and added up how many doors I have! I bought just enough supplies to do a few doors at first to make sure I liked the style and could really do it. I switched out two closet doors on my first floor, and ended up installing one of the handles backwards (I fixed it later once I figured this out!). I also bought all the hinges in bulk because I got a lower price (contractor's price) per unit. What's odd is that Lowe's and Home Depot both sell packs of three door hinges, but it was more expensive than buying the individual hinges without the contractor's price, so be sure to do some price comparisons! I also looked online but found my nearby Lowe's to have a competitive price.

strike plate

The handles didn't come with many instructions so it was a bit of trial and error. It took me until the third door for me to realize that the allen wrench which came with each new knob was for removing the handle and switch it around if needed, since not all door handles face the same direction. The hardest ones were the static handles because I had to re-drill the holes where these handles went into my pantry doors and one bedroom closet. Otherwise, the door handles were very easy once I got the hang of it! Not only did I have to replace 3 hinges on each door and the handle itself, I also had to replace the piece in the door frame (aka strike plate).  I put in three different types of handles - ones for the bedroom/bath which have a lock on them, for the closets which do not have a lock on them, and static ones which do not need to turn. I still haven't replaced the exterior door locks because they are a little pricier and involve having to switch out the key cores or re-coring them - I'm not sure yet! Maybe a future blog post!

Brass exterior door handle and bolt to be replaced

Fall Haul

My garden did really well this year. At the end of the normal growing season I had a lot of green tomatoes that I turned into a soup, more eggplant than I know what to do with, and my first attempt at growing sunchokes. Those sunchokes all came from one plant! They're a really cool tuber with a nutty flavor. You can turn them into chips. Or put in a soup.

The eggplant were just the final haul. I had been pulling 2 or 3 off of the plants each week for quite a while now. Next year I will plant more winter squash and perhaps more sweet potatoes.

Guest blog post: Installing hardwood floors!

Guest blogger Steve shows off the amazing transformation in his house!

Finally!  It took a couple of years to get to it (very un-breaking nails-like), but I finally got the hardwood floors installed on the main level of my house in September.  The new floor is a huge upgrade from what I had before.  I bought the house with carpet so I had no idea what I was getting into when I removed the carpet.  Water damage on the main level with just a hint of termite damage to go with it.  Exciting, right?  Well after living with it long enough, I took some time off from the job to work on the floor.  Is there a better way to spend a stay-cation?  After two weeks of work (and a couple of weekends afterwards), I got the job done.  What an improvement!  But I can’t rest, there’s still the upstairs to do so that promises even more fun.

Improve on, breaking nailers!

Deck Party Success!

I got my final building permit approval the day before my deck party/cookout. I finally have space to host a lot of people. I wanted to celebrate the many people who have helped me with house projects, those who have been supportive of the process, those who lend me tools, my birthday, and the milestone of building a deck. We had lots of food, including tons of cookies! I may have been on a baking frenzy. I had some self-rising flour I needed to use (or it wouldn't be self rising any longer) so I made some sugar cookies and it just spiraled from there... milk chocolate chip, toffee & milk chocolate chip, zucchini with craisins & coconut & chocolate chip. At least 60 people came throughout the day and all (adults, kids, and dogs) seemed to be having a good time! This cutie even got to use scrap wood as building blocks.

My shade tree... a little less shady

I had planned to do a blog post devoted to the big tree in my backyard because the shade it provided while building the deck was crucial {+1}! Those same shady leaves weighed down the branch that fell on my deck on Saturday before last{-1}. But the limbs prevented the big branch from doing any damage to the deck {+1}. My mom and I had to spend that Sunday morning after early church cutting the branch apart {-1}. I got to use a chainsaw {+1}. [And +1 to Whitney for letting me borrow her electric chainsaw!]

Still in the positives! It could have been a lot worse.

Deck Done!

The deck is completely built and passed inspection!

Everything else to be done to the deck is protective or cosmetic (no fears... I'll blog about that too).

Mother Nature initiates my deck

I planned to add the finishing touches to my deck tomorrow since the weather is supposed to be in the low 80s and sunny. A storm blew through while I was gone today and decided to initiate my deck to living under a big tree. I guess I'll be spending most of tomorrow taking care of this branch instead. My neighbors were kind enough to send me pictures of the branch before I returned in the evening so I wasn't shocked when getting home.

On the bright side, this was the branch that was mostly over my house, so my gutters won't get as clogged this fall.

Deck nearly complete!

For all intents and purposes, it's a deck!

I want to add a ledge above the railing and am debating on how to do it. Here's your opportunity to vote on style! My three options are:

option 1 - no gap b/t ledge and railing
with post caps on 4x4s (36 inches)

option 2 - no gap b/t ledge and railing
with 4x4 cut flush (36 inches)

option 3 - gap b/t ledge and railing
(40 inches)

Leave your vote in the comments!


UPDATE (Aug 27): Option 1 wins based on comments here and Facebook! BTW- If you look closely in the picture above, the 3rd segment of the railing has a board on it that is how option 3 would look. Instead, I'll be notching boards to make the ledge and having my mom help me pick out post caps while she visits. Option 2 would have been the most difficult, so I'm glad that wasn't the preferred one =) Also, technically, recessed lighting could be done with any option, but due to limited electricity sources at the moment, it won't be happening any time soon.

Railing going up

I put the rest of the screws in the deck boards like I had planned and drained the battery of one drill halfway through the process. Luckily I had borrowed an extra corded one to complete the job. [Have I mentioned how much my friends rock? Maybe just a few times.] It wasn't quite dark when I finished that, so I decided to go ahead and tackle the railing. I knew I shouldn't need to cut the railing at all for the long side (18ft vs 12ft), so I started there. That involved putting up 3 of the pre-constructed railings. I started at the end closest to the house and lined up the bottom part of the railing with the edge of the 4x4 post. Then I needed to adjust the top part of the 4x4 to match. I only have 2 hands so I wedged my trusty ply-board scraps between the picket and the post.  I would put a screw into the railing part of the way and used my feet to push it flush with the 4x4. Since I had secured the bottom, I used my body weight to lean against the railing when I screwed in the top. On the other side of this railing, the top 2x4 wasn't completely straight and I couldn't just push it flush so I grabbed my vise anyway and fixed that problem. I have a new-found love for my vise, which was a hand-me-down gift.

Anyway today is my day off and I have a little time to get up the last 2 railings, so I'm going to go for it. Hopefully that will result in a new blog post today or tomorrow!

Toasting the deck!

The deck boards are down! Whitney came to help me with the last ones tonight and afterward we sat on the deck and had dinner and beer to toast it (reminiscent of toasting my kitchen completion) .

We were determined to finish placing those boards tonight. The thunder didn't stop us. The short-lived drizzle didn't stop us. We did it!

The last board needed some sawzalling (yes, I made that a verb) but we didn't encounter any impossibly warped boards. We made it all work and now it feels like a real deck!!! I could have table, chairs, a hammock, a grill and still have space for a dance party. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but it does look really large now that all of the boards are down. I still need to add some more screws (planned for tomorrow evening) and need to put on the railings (anyone want to help on Sunday?), but this milestone  is HUGE!

Monster Board!

The good news is that my deck boards are about 3/4 done!

Onto the challenge of the night...What I call, Monster Board! Whitney came over to help me put on deck boards and, per normal, there was a board that was bowed at the ends. It didn't look any more drastic than some of the ones that Rachel helped me put on over the weekend. We screwed in the first 3 joists and then decided to move to the end to get it in place. We pushed and tugged. Not close enough. We went back and screwed in the other boards to pull it closer, but no matter what we did it would not budge the last little amount we needed. Why was this board so difficult to move? Here's a look at the end of it

Our theory is that this board is from the dead center of a tree, which made it very strong. See how the rings are pretty symmetrical and the circle is right in the middle of the board. There is no cup or umbrella to be seen (see last post if this confuses you). We got it on though (keep reading for details)! The board is a little short, but so are the subsequent boards, so it doesn't look bad, and it's long enough for the screws to secure it well. Besides, as Whitney pointed out, you won't really be able to see that when the railings are up.

This blog post is also about how amazing my neighbors are! Whitney has been a great help on this deck throughout the whole building process. The neighbor whose backyard butts up to mine is also super cool. In addition to just being really nice and encouraging about the deck process (all of which he's had a great spot to witness) when Monster Board was refusing to budge and he happened to come outside with his dogs (one of whom loves to bark at other dogs, people... well, anything that moves) Rick came to our rescue when we asked for some help. He hopped the fence despite my dog trying to protect his territory by barking, jumping, and nipping (not to hurt, but to warn)... I should add, my dog normally LOVES Rick, and he got over his protectiveness quickly and apologized by pushing his head under Rick's hand. Anyway, we used my leg power AND his arm strength to get Monster Board in much better alignment. It was crazy, but my neighbors are the best. Oh, and Whitney is coming back to finish them tomorrow and Rick has offered to help again if we run into problem. See... The.Best. Period.

BTW - I may or may not be finishing this post on my laptop while on my deck (ok. I'll admit... I definitely am!)

Half of the deck boards are installed!

Thanks to Amanda and Rachel half of my deck boards are installed. Amanda helped me haul them outside last weekend. Rachel battled mosquitoes Friday night to start the deck board installation process and was willing to come back Saturday so that we could get to the halfway point! Let me remind you that halfway is 12ft x12ft. It's no small feat.
The first ones took a while because we were learning the best ways to space the boards and secure them so they would be straight. I had read that using a piece of plywood worked well as a spacer and we found that to be true! (see right)
Once we got our method down, the next boards took us considerably less time. I would wield the drills while Rachel would push the board into place with her feet (guys would probably use only a prybar, but I like our leg strength method too). We learned that it's better for the ends of the board to bow out because once one end is secure, it's much easier to push the boards at the end than in the middle.
My dad gave me the tip to make sure the grain of the wood at the cut ends look like an umbrella instead of a cup so that the boards don't "catch" water, but let it run off. (see below) Oooops, I didn't double-check all of them because a couple are flipped to cups (not to be confused with Flip Cup).

We also took my 2nd trip of the day to Home Depot to get more screws and drill bits. I found myself breaking bits (again) because the drill bit gets really hot, hits knots in the wood, is slightly twisted on the exit, was a longer bit than I needed, or some combination of reasons for me to break two of them in the 25 boards that we completed. Tip: Buy Extra Bits! I had gone early in the morning to Home Depot with Amy (big thanks shout-out to my neighbor) to get some more deck boards and the lattice to put along the sides so my dog wouldn't loose all of his toys under the deck. With 25 deck boards down he was risking that already, so the other part of my Saturday was spent cutting the lattice to shape so that I could block off the sides of the deck. I used both a hand saw and a circular saw to cut the lattice to size. I did lots of measurements around the railing posts and dug some of the ground so that it would be slightly more level. I'm going to wait until all of the deck boards are down and I've trimmed them before securing the lattice with nails, but its temporary-state is enough to block an accidental flying dog toy. After they're nailed on, I'll put more dirt around the bottom to make them more resilient. Oh... and before Rachel came on Saturday, I installed toe kicks on the steps (see right). Since we had put 8 deck boards down on Friday, I had to crawl under them in order to get under the step closest to the house to screw the toe kick on from the inside. (For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm referring to the piece of wood between and perpendicular to the ground and the actual step. After the step was installed and I went to take a step up, my foot slid under the step and I had added another nasty bruise to my shin. Tip: Put a toe kick on your step when you make it BEFORE you install it.) The step further from the house (in picture) was much simpler to do because the deck boards above it were not screwed on yet. In other words, I didn't have to crawl on the ground (well, on a tarp on the ground) in a 16 inches high by 16 inches wide space and maneuver under 2- 2x8s to install THAT toe kick. Threat of rain/storms halted work tonight, but here's its current state:

Set back

I have successfully made more work for myself. I knew my deck would take a long time to complete so I opted to keep my deck boards on some blankets in my dining room until it was time to screw them to the frame. My intentions were to keep them from being exposed to a lot of weather before securing them in place. That may have helped them some, but turned out that some of the boards were damp. I had them stacked and the dampness seeped though the blankets. My poor floors.

I was planning to do some touch-ups on the dining room floor because my kitchen contractors weren't very careful and scratched it. This will force me to do it sooner. I'm thinking 4 or 5 layers of varnish this time.

Wine Glass Holders (i.e. more cabinet space)

There was a lot of open space between my breakfast bar and the cabinet, so I decided to play up the "bar" part of "breakfast bar." It is the perfect amount of space for hanging wine glasses and still not block the view for face-to-face conversation with someone at the sink, which is very important... trust me. I found these racks at Lowes for about $3 each. For less than $20 I now have space for up to 18 wine glasses. Not that I have 18 wine glasses, but that's not the point.

It frees up space for me to store things in the cabinet that they are hanging from. If I get a chance/have inspriation, I can get more organizers to allow me to show off some of the nicer dishware that I have through the glass.

Whoa there, out-of-control-yard!

I was out of town for about 3 1/2 weeks and returned to a jungle. I spent my first evening back getting it under control. I probably used half a spool of weed-eater string getting my front and some of my backyard manageable. I also weeded and weeded and weeded. I'm so glad that I mulched my side yard! I still need to finish assessing my garden. I already know that my tomatoes need extra reinforcement and my lettuce has gone to seed, but I think there's also some veggie harvesting that needs to happen!

BTW - Shout out to my neighbors who watered my garden while I was gone and took care of the kitty!

Attic Insulation Lessons Learned

After doing 2 types of insulation (foam and batting) in my attic, I have some experienced advice.
1. Removing old insulation is one of the worst projects. Don't bother.
2. Because of #1, foam insulation is only worth it for new construction.
3. Plan to do attic insulation in cool weather (70 degrees or less).
4. If doing batting insulation, arm yourself with a few 2x4s (a/b 4 ft long was good for me)... I used a couple of them to sit on and then used one to push the insulation where it needed to be.
5. Wear long sleeves, long pants, a mask, eye wear, and gloves.
6. Have an exacto knife available and some plywood to cut on b/c you may need to cut the insulation bats into pieces.
7. Solicit help. You'll at least want 1 person to hand insulation bats up to you and it's really not a good idea to climb ladders and do projects that involve balancing on beams by yourself. Heaven forbid you fall through the ceiling. We found an awesome trio worked really well... 2 in the attic to move stuff around and one to hand insulation up.
8. Borrow a truck/SUV to transport insulation. I could only fit 4 bundles in my car (and I needed 6-7 for my small attic).

Green with Truck Envy

If you ever want to be surrounded by all LOT of pickup trucks... situate yourself on a military base. When visiting a friend of mine who lives on a base, I had some overwhelming truck envy. There are so many times it would be great to have my own truck, but I can't justify two vehicles. Besides I'm super lucky to have great friends with trucks who are willing to help me when I really need it... and for those times that I don't have help, delivery costs aren't high enough to justify buying a truck. So I rationalized my envy away and will continue to make due without.

Broke AND bruised a nail

While doing some deck building, my thumb got slammed between a 4x4 and a 6x6. It was painful and left quite a bruise. I can use my thumb again without it hurting, but for a while there... it was all sorts of painful.

Anyway this is evidence that I named my blog well.

Guess I could put on some nail polish again to hide my boo boo. [Can you tell I've been hanging out with a 4 year old and an almost-2 year old?]

Area 51?

After showing my co-worker my attic insulation outfit he wondered if I was actually doing work in Area 51 instead of my neighbor's attic. Always jokes about my house projects :)
For the record, I don't suspect any supernatural activity in my neighborhood, however we found a 1979 newspaper in my neighbor's attic. Her attic was definitely due for some new insulation... or at least some cleaning out.

Payback

For so many projects, I've had to make my house worse before it gets better. Well, my house teamed up with my neighbor's house to pay me back for all of those times.

I had to do some acts of contortion in order to balance on ceiling joists for insulating our attics, which resulted in an absurd number of bruises on my arms and legs. They're healing pretty quickly though.

Adventures in Attic Insulation: Phase We're old pros now

It may have taken us 3 hours to do my neighbor's attic insulation, but two evenings later we did mine in less than an hour. We're quick learners! The three of us (my neighbor's friend is super cool and came to help insulate at my house too!) had a system down and I made some other adjustments in my attic to make it more bearable so we didn't need to take any breaks (post on that coming soon). I was flabbergasted a/b how efficient we were. I was so excited about it that I probably said "I can't believe how quickly we are getting this done" enough times to make my neighbor think, "Yeah, yeah. I get your point." Although she was probably equally excited and relieved since she was in the hot attic with me.
So glad that is done and I don't have to deal with fiberglass again... or at least for a while. My house will stay cooler this summer and warmer this winter.

Adventures in insulation - Phase 3-hour-workout

My neighbor's next-to-nothing insulation looked like this across her attic:

The temperature dropped to the 80s so we decided to tackle the insulation in her attic. It was still really hot up there and took some contortion in order to get the bundles in the back of the small angled portion of the attic, but we did it with the help of one of her friends in about three hours. Like many sports, we took time-outs and water breaks; we had our endurance tested and sprinted at the end; we had to think out strategy and execute; and got very very sweaty. I mean... check out my oompa loompa get-up.

Anyway, I'm pleased to post this picture of her newly insulated attic! We're exhausted, sore, and even itchy, but have planned to do this to my attic on Wednesday night. We feel like we have a good system down and are hoping to be able to do it in 2 hours this time! Wish us luck.

Joist walking

My dog has gotten pretty good at walking along the joists of the deck. It's pretty awesome so I've uploaded a video.

One tool? or TOOLS?

I needed to get a 3/4 inch wrench to tighten up the bolts for the railing posts on my deck. I had some options... One wrench for $11 or 11 wrenches for $20! [Note: The set was on sale. Same brand. Same shiny 3/4 inch wrench. Same "lifetime commitment" (as the advertisement above them claimed... I should have taken a picture of the ad)].

This? ($10)

Or these? ($20)

Needless to say, I have a lot more wrenches.

Steps and railing posts

My deck has come a long way in the past week thanks to my parents and Whitney for their hard work in the 100+ degree weather. Thank goodness for a lot of shade! Where we left the deck on Friday was passing framing inspection: all beams placed, fence up, & joists attached. My dad was insistent on getting the steps made and the posts for the railing attached before he left. We worked hard on Saturday to fill in some holes and pound the dirt tight and level in order to set pavers for the steps. Unfortunately that led to a 4x4 falling smack dab on my thumb so it's a little swollen and painful, but it wouldn't be a real DIY project w/o some bumps and bruises (and a couple of splinters in this case).We brought a few deck boards out so that we wouldn't need to balance on joists (although my dog does that well - video of that coming soon). Here's a look a the step with those deck boards. The steps are attached with braces and drilled into the 4x4. Each 4x4 post is attached with 2-1/2 inch bolts, nuts, and washers. We used 2x8 pieces as blocking and deck tension ties to attach the posts that run along the joist (left hand side on picture below). Since the beams are 2-2x8s thick, we did not need additional materials to attach the posts to the beam (closest side in picture below).

Adventures in (more) insulation - Phase Transportation

Both my neighbor and I need insulation in our attics. She has next-to-none and I need to supplement the foam insulation. We decided it would be most cost effective if we bought it together so that we can get the "contractor's discount" of 10%. Unlike contractors, we lack trucks. It took two trips to Lowes with 2 cars each time to transport our 13 bundles of insulation. They're heavy bundles and took some convincing to fit in the cars, but we did it! Only a few were slightly mangled, so they may not be as "sexy" (it's a safe link, I swear) as they once were, but they'll still do the job.

Car stuffed full!

Plus what you can see,
there's a bundle in the trunk of this car too

Framing Inspection Passed!

And our questions answered! BooYah! Deck!

"Need to trust my instincts" or "Opportunity for ingenuity."

Yesterday's conversation while in Lowes:

Me: "I'm going to get another box of nails, just in case. I'll bring it back if I don't need it... unless you are sure we won't need them."
Dad: "Let's just check out."
Me: "Ok. If you say so. But you're going to get more if we need them."

Today:

Me: "How's it going out there?" (They worked on hanging the rest of the joists while I did some work.) 

Mom (cracking up): "We're going to need more nails."

Turns out she was laughing so hard because Dad had said "The little b***h was right." I prefer his normal nickname for me which starts the same way, but is more endearing - Bitty.

We didn't end up going to the store though. We used some of the decking screws I already had. Luckily they hadn't used all of the nails on the inner boards because we needed to use them on the outside joists. Some of the nails were too long to go into the outside boards and I don't have a pair of heavy-duty pliers to cut the nail in one fell swoop. Here's what we did:

On the left: Dad took a pair of electrical pliers and made a notch in the nail where he wanted it shortened.

On the right: We took other pliers - one to hold the nail steady and one to bend at the notch - and bent it up and down until it broke.

Rosie (one of my parent's dogs)
is hiding

What we've got so far.

Up next? Inspection... or at least questions for the inspector.

Parents visit and parents help build a deck!

My parents came to visit me for Independence Day through this weekend. Since I had the day off, we worked on the deck to cut the posts for the last beam and to set it 24 feet away from the house. We must have measured it 4 different ways 10 times! We mixed the last bag of concrete for the hole along the fence and filled in holes with sand. I had already nailed in the joists between the band board and the beam closest to the house, but we did a few more yesterday... mainly in order to put up one of the fence panels. When I got home from work today, the rest of the fence panels along the deck were in place! They had also put in more joists (dealing with split and warped boards) before they ran out of joist hangers and it got too hot. The frame is almost complete!
There's still a decent amount of work to do for the railing and steps, but we are making lots of progress now.
Kudos to my dad for some creative engineering (that's where I get it from). And Kudos to my mom for her persistence (and that's where I get that from).

BTW- My awesome neighbors helped me stain those fence panels. Nice, huh?!?

The Derecho had mercy on me... deck building continues

After a crazy storm on Friday I was one of the lucky ones to have power on Saturday morning. I was grateful for the power mainly so deck work could continue... although having AC was nice. Three of my friends came over before it got terribly hot on Saturday. We spent about three hours placing the center beam (which involved a lot of measuring and calculations) and setting three fence posts. We made sure the posts were straight and level with my new favorite tool - a post leveler:

We came up with some clever ways to keep the posts level while the concrete we poured around them set.

I spent some time this evening attaching joist hangers and filling in the holes. Here's the progress and the slowly diminishing fill dirt hill

p.s. I made a falafel bar for lunch on Saturday including jalapeño-cilantro sauce, roasted red pepper hummus, cucumber-dill yogurt, tomatoes and cucumber in balsamic, and pita.