Above, yet inside, the Rat-Hole

Last weekend we went up into the attic space to remove some of the old roof. Armed with a reciprocating saw, a pry bar, a ladder, and a trash bin, (as well as lights, gloves and respirators), we methodically cut out the old planks that spanned from one log truss to the next. We were only able to do the roof above the kitchen. Now we have to do the old roof above the living room.

New Plans... Now with Pictures!

A repost of the existing floor plan might make this post make a little more sense (so here's the original floor plan on the left).

My spouse mentioned earlier that we had come up with a new plan. We haven't been quite 100% on board with the previous plan(s) and took another shot at coming up with a solution. We broke it down into two approaches. First, we rethought our solution for remodeling without doing any additions. Below is our solution. Bear in mind that we haven’t put in all the exterior windows and doors, yet. We are really happy with the new entry! Plus, we came up with a new concept for the current master bathroom. We’ve cut into the second bedroom to make the master bathroom a full bath which makes us really want to use it (currently we only brush our teeth in it).

These new ideas take into account the possibility of future additions (see plan below). The reconfigured old master bathroom allows us to demo the old second bathroom to make room for a washer/dryer/hallway. The carport becomes the new master bathroom, closet, and office/den/library/guestroom.

The best thing about the new plans is that we feel like we’re really going to make the best use of the space in the house, even if we don’t do the additions!

More Big Plans

This weekend we got a lot accomplished, for not spending much time at the house. Kenmore had its semi-annual recycling event, and so we took the fridge out of the front yard (hooray!) and loaded up the dishwasher (which we never used- it was rusted inside, and we were only using it to put our microwave on top of). So we got rid of our trashy appliances in one afternoon, which was glorious. Now the house, while definitely not looking nice, doesn't look QUITE as stereotypically trashy. It looks its own brand of trashy now. *grin*

The second thing we did was put a gate at the end of our driveway. It's just a couple of T-posts with a cable and a padlock, but it should do the trick. We both felt weird about actually using it and locking it, though. It just seemed to be bitter and agressive. So we put up a sign right next to it that says, "No Parking in Driveway." That, so far, has done the trick. I'm looking forward to having less garbage in our driveway, not to mention room to actually park our cars, or get out of our driveway, or not get the driveway torn up by humongous pieces of machinery.

Additionally, we spent most of the day Saturday and Sunday chasing around to various stores. We bought a great book on how to renovate a house, and bought the cheapest microwave stand we could find to replace the dishwasher in functionality. We also looked at fencing materials and windows. Soooo many windows. We're going to price out Andersen windows- we like them the best so far, and we think they're really nice. We can get low-E windows that are wood on the inside and vinyl-clad on the outside, with a variety of grid patterns. Plus they're double-hung tilt. So we'll see how many kajillions of dollars that will end up being. We're trying to figure out what size windows we need where to get a good quote.

Which brings me to my last, and to me the most exciting, point. We redid our floor plan. We're SUPER excited about it- it'll allow the house to be much more salable if we don't do any additions, and yet it will be even easier than before to actually make the additions. It's going to be nice, and has actually relieved a bit of our anxiety about undertaking this project. So hooray. I'll try to get my spouse to post the drawings later this week.

Stumps and Lines

The earthmoving contractor installed our new water line. The meter was moved in front of our drivway (off-center). The new line is 1" 200 lb. polyline. The blue wire you see in the first picture is so the water line can be located in the future. We had the contractor install a frost-free hose-bib for us, too. He offered to do it for the cost of parts so it was hard to say no. He complained about the owner of the front lot, too, which makes him a great guy in our opinion.

You can see the original lines in the second picture. The bottom line (in the picture) is the abandoned steel line from forever ago. The black line right next to it is the 3/4" polyline that was feeding our house until Tuesday (5-9-06). We used to think that the faucet (seen in the bottom picture) was stubbed right off the main line, but it actually comes off some other location under the house.

The same contractor had to remove the redwood and cedar stumps. These are some pictures of the process. He excavated around the redwood stump and clawed at it for a long time. It looked as though his back-hoe was going to fall into the hole sometimes. Finally, he just kept slamming the shovel on top of the stump and broke it into pieces. He asked for pictures of the stump if any of them turned out. He couldn't believe he was able to extricate the stump!

Backyard Flowers

Here are some pictures of the flowers that are in our backyard. All of the pansies were saved from the front lot (which has been bulldozed). The pansies all seem to be doing quite well.

There are several clumps of poppies here and there that just came up on their own, too. All the poppies are yellow except one.

There are also forget-me-nots, blue-bells, buttercups, and a couple of others that I don't know the names of.

I've included a picture of the big happy rhubarb next to the driveway just because it's so big and happy! There is some more rhubarb growing in a tire elsewhere in the backyard. People keep telling us to harvest it, but it's so pretty just the way it is! Maybe we'll just take a couple of stalks from the around the edge.

Can you dig it?

I'm sure many of you have waited for almost an entire week with bated breath to hear what has been going on with the developer/builder guy (who we really should think of a clever name for). Okay, so we're the only ones that have been waiting to hear, but that's because we have been forced to live and breathe this stuff. UGH!

Anyway, what it boiled down to was this: pay $350 for half of the water line move, or wait until he breaks our line on "accident" while building his house and pay for the damage and sue him to get our money back. We also could have just refused and started legal action. Considering the lawyer costs $250/hr, it was actually cheaper just to suck it up and pay the $350. The good news is that the contractor's billing us directly, so we're not getting billed extra by homey. We actually convinced homey to sign a document stating that we had only agreed to pay for half the water line move, and not for any other utilities, and that the agreement should not be construed as a future promise to pay for half the move of other utilities. And it was notarized. So now we have proof that we had not agreed to split anything else with homey. The next thing we have to worry about is the electrical- he's already starting to make a stink about that. So, we have to go back to the lawyer and figure out what our plan of action should be. He was the one that advised us to just pay the $350 because it was the cheapest option. We got a bill for $100 from the lawyer already. Joy.

Now to the juicy details.

Luckily, the contractor that homey hired to do the work is an outstanding fella. He had to deal with a lot of crap because of us fighting with homey, and he was very professional. He worked with el esposo (since I'm not the one home during the day) to figure out where the new water line should go (which el esposo and I had agreed upon). The trenches were dug today, the lines routed, and he even installed a new hose bib for us for the cost of parts. All we need to do now is wait for the moving of the water meter and we'll be done with this horrible part of our saga.

Here's the fun part: el esposo was out on the island yesterday at work, so he didn't answer his cell phone. Contractor guy called him and left a message. Apparently he had broken our water line while doing some initial exploratory work in preparation for today and had shut off the water, but he was trying to find out if anyone was home so that they could turn off the water heater to keep it from burning up. Hooray! No one was home! So we were a bit miffed that our line had been cut. Contractor guy called el esposo back a little later, when el esposo was on his way home. He had fixed our line, turned on the water, and explained that the reason he broke the line was that it was mere inches beneath the surface. Oh, okay. All was well.

So last night, mi marido and I are out digging up plants likely to get damaged in the moving of the line, since the trencher was going to need some room. We dug up snapdragons, poppies, and irises. It was great fun to play in the dirt, and the weather was amazing. Anyway, we were poking around near the old hose bib, and lo and behold, there was the water line, maybe three inches below the surface. It's old galvanized horror, too. No wonder he plowed right through the line! We almost broke it with a shovel. Anyway, we got our plants moved and even attacked some of the blackberry trying to worm its way into our driveway. It was a fairly productive night.

And that's where things stand. In the next few days we'll get our new water meter, and then we'll have our water line on our property, safe from homey. We're thinking about getting our septic tank and drainfield located, just to make sure it's not on homey's property. Oy, what a mess THAT would be! In the meantime, we're just going to prep for the electrical crapola the best we can. We just want it to be over.

Here's something else interesting, that we wished we would have known beforehand: contractor guy was really surprised that homey was allowed to take down the redwood, since it's an endangered species. He says that he always has to cordon off redwoods when he works, because they're protected. Damn! If we would have known that beforehand, maybe we could have prevented its death. Oh well. Just something interesting to keep in our back pockets. Drat.

If mi marido can think of anything else to add later, I'll have him do so, since he was the man on the ground throughout most of this drama. Maybe we'll post some pictures this weekend of poppies, pansies, gigantic rhubarb, and other lovely things living on our lot to take our minds off of other, anger-inspiring things.

Falling Trees and Hopes

Here are the trees on the front lot before they were cut down.











Here are the trees being cut down.

Here is the lot with no trees. Notice the two kind of spindly trees on the neighbor's lot across the fence. We were thinking it might be nice to see those trees fall down in the next big storm on the builder's house. I think the redwood and cedar shielded the other trees a lot during wind storms.

April 28th was an emotion-filled day. The trees on the front lot were cut down and the builder essentially said he’d love to see us in court! Here’s how the day went down.

At 9:00AM, PSE dropped my electrical connection. PSE told me that I should have received 48 hours notice. The builder had called me the previous evening to tell me that my power was going to be turned off tomorrow from 8:30 to 11:30 AM so that the trees can be cut down (turns out that the power was off from 9 to 6, and therefore I didn’t get any work done). Evergreen Tree Experts cut down the redwood and cedar on the front lot.

The builder and I had arranged to meet at 1:30 to talk about the utilities. I teold him that the PoTelCo guy told me that if an easement was set up across the front of the builder’s lot, that the electrical underground connection could be on private land and thus not cost as much. He just nods.

I asked if he got the letter I mailed to him. He said he no longer lives at the Renton address I have for him and that he didn’t get it. I gave the builder a copy of the letter. He read it and then gave it back to me. I tried to give it back to him, but he refused. I asked for his new mailing address and he refused to give it to me and said that his cell phone number is good enough. I shouldn’t have allowed him to give me back the letter, I guess. At least he read it.

The builder told me that we could split the cost of the new water line for my house (half of $700 is $350). I said I would consider it but that I still felt that it was his responsibility to pay for the whole thing. He said that he is an Indian and that it is in his people’s nature to settle these things in court (I have never run across someone who would use their ethnicity as an excuse before and I was a little taken aback). He said that if there was an earthquake and my waterline was damaged (and that the break was on his lot), that I would need his permission to fix the line, that he would not give me that permission, and that I would have to pay to have my line moved so that I could have a water connection. This feels like a veiled threat to me. I still think that the implied (prescriptive) easement would give me access to the line for repair. I need to ask my lawyer about this.

I asked him about the overhead electrical line and how he proposed to move it. He said maybe he wouldn’t move it. I asked him how that is possible since the house he is building is 2 stories. He shrugged his shoulders implying “I don’t know.”

He said I should think about the three options of paying for the moving of the utilities: paying for all, paying for half, or paying for none and to think about the ramifications of each decision. He is willing to split the cost of the water line. He said he is very willing to deal with these issues in court. I told him that if he’ll pay for the utilities to be moved, that he could proceed with his construction sooner. He said he can wait. He said that he has the water line scheduled to be moved on 5-5-06 (Friday next week).

This encounter with the builder was extremely frustrating. I tell my spouse about it and we both end up on edge for the rest of the day (and evening). We discuss just building a fence down our driveway to limit his access to his lot since he uses our driveway for access (for the time being). We could also dig a trench. A trench would not be so obviously aggressive and we could put a water line in it in the future. In the end, we decide that we will try to talk to our lawyer first, but that may not be until Monday.

Oh, the builder also told me (because I asked) that he might move into the house since he wants to live in this area! Of course, if he can get a good price for the house, he’ll sell it. Oh god! My spouse and I don’t want him as a neighbor!

To end this blog-post, here is the redwood on the ground. I counted 65 plus rings on the redwood and 75 on the cedar. They were likely planted when the house was built in 1935. Sad to see them go. So sad.

Comin' up roses

Okay, it should actually be "comin' up pansies," but it just doesn't have the same effect.

There has still been no movement on the lot in front of ours. Which is no big deal- his loss, not ours. Anyway, the weather here has been FABULOUS- it hit 75 today. Now that we actually have a yard, the nice weather makes me want to do yardwork. If only it had had the same effect when I was a kid...my dad would have been overjoyed... So, since the weather was wonderful, we decided to do a bit of gardening. Unfortunately, we didn't have any flowers to plant. Or did we?

I've noticed several pansies growing "wild" on the front lot over the past couple of weeks. There are all different colors, and they're scattered at strange intervals throughout the lot. Since they were going to be bulldozed anyway...

So we planted many lovely pansies in our yard. I am happy. I got to be outside and play in the dirt, not to mention save some flowers' lives.

If it stays warm we can move on to the next phase of house fun time: ripping out walls and redoing electrical wiring.

Poole weighs in

Michael Poole (the previous owner) finally called me back this morning. I told him that Dhillon is telling everybody that Poole told him that the utilities would be moved by either the owner of the house (us) or Poole. I said that because I gave the PaTelCo guy Dhillon’s contact info and the PaTelCo guy said Dhillon went off on the utilities (especially the water line). Poole asked for the letter I mailed Dhillon to be emailed to him as well as to have Dhillon’s contact info. I emailed him the letter and Dhillon’s contact info. He said he’d give Dhillon a call and try to find out what was going on.

Mike was really nice on the phone. Our real estate agent led us to believe that he was difficult to work with. So far, that is not my experience. I asked Mike to give me a heads up if he and Dhillon resolve anything.

The PaTelCo guy is also checking into the way this stuff works for me since they do this stuff all the time. Dennis was really nice, too.

On anther note, I was standing in the nook waving to my honey as she drove away this morning (to work). I’m going to miss that. The new house (should it ever get built) will deny me of that simple act. Oh, well.

Waiting once more

Since the letter was sent we haven't heard a peep from Mr. Front Lot Guy. So we really have no idea what's going on there. My spouse didn't have time to try to track him down today, but maybe tomorrow. If not, there's always the weekend or next week. We're not the ones in a hurry to build a house, so we can wait as long as we need to. We also found out from the company that does the installations for the electric company that we don't HAVE to put stuff in the right of way. If the owner of the front lot will give us a 5-ft easement, we don't have to have a contractor do it, and Mr. Front Lot Guy could rent an excavator or trencher and do it himself. But, since we haven't talked to him, we can't tell him that.

Personally, I wonder why he hasn't contacted us. Part of me wonders if he's working on getting his own legal council, although so far every single person has told us he doesn't have a leg to stand on. Who knows what's going on. Everyone else will know as soon as we do. ^_^

Legal-ease

Another benefit of working for a large homebuilder is that I've got resources up wazoo. And that's aside from the half hour of free legal stuff. I chatted up our land development guys, who said it was crazy to think that the utility move was the responsibility of anybody but the builder on the front lot. THEN, after we really needed some good legal help quick (after the half hour was used up), our sales operations manager referred me to a real estate lawyer my company's used in the past. So I called him up on Monday afternoon and he helped us immediately. Tuesday morning he returned our letter, edited, and today we sent the thing out. It was awesome, both the response time and the letter. I am SUPER happy. Hooray for where I work! Hooray for it being quick and easy to get legal assistance!

Anyway, this builder guy is NOT a great fella. At least not in the way he conducts his business. He called us and expected us to meet him in half an hour this past weekend, even though we had plans. Thanks, butt-munch. So we waited. And he didn't show up. We left.

Today he had some guys out to look at taking down the big, beautiful trees. They'd been waiting for the builder guy to show up so they could give him a quote. He never showed. How in the hell does he manage to stay in business? It's a small consolation that he's terrrible with everyone. At least we don't have to take it personally.

Who moves first?

My spouse gets certain perks working for the company that she does. One of them is a free half hour of legal counsel. I called a lawyer yesterday and described the situation. He said he’d do a little research for me. He called back today and said that the law is not clear but that the courts do support asking the question. Huh? In other words, a court would hear the case and not just throw it out (I guess). Well, it was free advice.

I went down the Kenmore City Hall (which is in the middle of a strip mall, by the way) to ask my question (who should pay to have the utilities moved). I may have just pissed off the builder on the front lot. The planning department noticed that the existing water line was not on the builder’s plan and tagged his file with a Do Not Issue Permit Until Resolved sign. I guess it’s official now. Something will happen for real before he starts to build. The woman I spoke with gave me two avenues to go down. One, wait it out (the builder will have to move my utilities himself if order to build, and then try to bill me). Two, work it out (this may be the harder choice). City hall and PSE both felt like the builder on the front lot should pay for (or at least help pay for) moving the utilities. Neither would commit to saying so on paper.

Dhillon (the front lot owner/builder) said that he wants me to pay for and coordinate the moving of the utilities. He told me that Michael Poole (the guy who my spouse and I bought the house from and who split the lot) said he was going to take care of moving the utilities before he sold the lot with the house on it. I am now trying to contact Michael Poole to find out he thinks and if he can offer any advice. Maybe Dhillon should get Michael to pay for all this. That seems fair, but I’m biased.

Our Rights!!!

I've been talking to (different) folks at the local electrical utility for three months now. Each time I learn something new, something different, sometimes something that conflicts with what I was told (or understood) earlier. Yesterday, I spoke with the legal department. I called them because no one else could answer my question of, "Can I dig in the right-of-way myself?". I was told no. I was also asked why I would want to. I said I didn't want to pay $2000 for an 80 foot trench. I was told that I have prescriptive rights and that I am not obligated to change (and pay for) my electical connection (which trespasses on the empty front lot).

Now I have to figure out how to get the builder (on the front lot) to dig/pay for the moving of my electrical connection. He speaks English well, but has a thick accent (Indian, I think) and sometimes I have difficulty understanding him. Plus, I don't think he understands me sometimes. If he had an email address, it might be easier to communicate, but he doesn't have one.

The water line is a similar situation.

We'll see how this plays out. My spouse and I might have to be annoying or confrontational in order to get everything to play out properly (read: to our advangtage).

Trenches on the brain

So, we just got back from our lovely long weekend away. I was able to sufficiently distract spouse from various rat hole problems and trench issues.

However, now that we're home (and we were actually happy to see the rat hole!), we have to begin to deal with things again. Luckily, the weather's nice today, so the rat hole is actually a comfortable temperature. Unless you're sitting still, but then you're fine with an extra shirt, so no worries.

Here's the latest development: we can't dig all of our own trenches. The one from our house up the driveway is fine. We'll actually have to dig three or four trenches alongside our driveway to the road. One for electricity, one for water (which has to be three feet away from the electricity), one for phone, and one for cable. I'm not sure if the phone and cable can go in the same trench or not. They will have to have separate conduit laid, so we'll see. Spouse knows more about that than I do.

That's all fine. We can rent a trencher for less than $500 and do the work ourselves. No worries. BUT, we found out that we're not allowed to dig our own trench from the power pole to our driveway, because it's a right of way. We'll have to hire an outside contractor for that. We've made a few calls, and it works out to be around $3000 for the trench. One trench. Yeargh. We're still making phone calls to try and see who can do it for how much. We're not licked yet.

Soon the weather will stay warmer, and then we can start ripping out walls. Whee!

Trenches & Barriers

The weather's been nice the past couple of days. It has rained on and off, but it's been sunny and warm, too. It's been wonderful! And with the warm weather comes bees down from the attic. We really will have to do something about that.

Anyway, the nice weather also means that our thoughts have turned back to the rat hole. It's time to get moving again. Last weekend the guy that owns the front lot was looking at his lot with a bunch of other folks, so it looks like they might be starting to think about doing something on that lot. I'm going to be sorry to have a big house sitting in front of ours. *sigh* Well, we'll see what happens.

We really would like to work with the builder guy, but we can't understand what he says. His accent is too thick. Stupid language barrier. Unfortunately, because we can't understand him, we can't really work in tandem with him. Oy. So, we're just going to try to get out of his way while he tears apart that lot. Thing is, our utilities cross that lot, so if he screws up, he screws us.

That means we have to get our rears in gear and dig a trench in the next couple of weeks. We know what we need to do for electric, and so we're just waiting to hear about what we need to do, water-wise. We've been hoarding our money, so we should be able to afford the trench. We're just going to rent a trencher and have at it. So, come April, we'll have our trench, our utilities will run across our property, and all will be well.

We'll see how all this REALLY goes down.

Gettin' Warmer

So, after several weeks of being freezing cold, it looks like the weather's going to start getting warmer. Thank goodness. I can't remember if we mentioned this in an earlier post or not, but we've been very, very cold in chateau rat hole. Stupid pellet shortage. If only our pellet stove was big enough to burn wood... Oh well. Thank goodness for the old, not-safe baseboards in the master bedroom and our travelling oil radiator. We've been doing a fair job of staying warm.

Anyway, we don't have any progress to report. It's the same old thing. As soon as the weather gets warmer, off come the walls and in goes the new wiring. Mwa ha ha ha. I can't wait.

We did have our first guest this weekend, though. He's a good house guest anyway, and I was surprised he actually agreed to stay in the rat hole, especially considered that the walls in the guest room are covered with nothing but a thin layer of duct tape. But he stayed, and it was fine. I guess our home is fit for human habitation after all! We have another house guest the weekend of April 1st, too, and I'm very excited. A college friend is visiting, and I haven't seen her for five years. Whee! We'll see what SHE thinks of the rat hole. *grin*

This week we get to put in some plants my spouse got from work-related stuff. It'll be fun to put them in, since the weather's supposed to be nice, and it's been a long, long time since I've played in the dirt (I don't count the trench of horrors!). It'll also be a challenge to figure out where they should go, since we're still planning on levelling the yard this summer, anyway...

But that's all we have planned. The rest is all non-house-related work. Next weekend we're going away to stay in somebody else's house. And I bet you it'll be warm.

Kitchen Cabinets

We've been thinking about our kitchen. We have laid out an option that we both agree works. We don't have a big kitchen, but as long as it works well, we don't mind.

Here are two elevations of the kitchen. The one on the top left is the north side. The one on the bottom right is the south side.

If you hadn't noticed, I'm kind of a 3D geek and I tend to make use of the tools I have access to. In fact, if I don't have a tool, I'll find one or make one. The elevations were done in Revit (as were the previous floorplans).

The images below are of a cabinet door design for the uppers. The first one on the left is a front view. The one on the right is a close-up to hopefully show a little more detail. The bottom is a section so as to show the profile. The images below were made with SketchUp (a great little 3D app that is very intuitive, highly recommended).

We will probably end up with painted doors. We both like wood, but the fact that we don't have a lot of light in the kitchen makes us lean towards a lighter color for the cabinets. My spouse isn't to keen on light woods and I'm not too sure how well lighter woods would go with the more retro feel we are trying to reference.

The two big lower panels could be glass or wood. The tiny panels on the top will be glass, and we could even put in a piece of art-glass every so often to add a little interest to the surface. I'll try to incorporate the SketchUp door with the Revit model to show everything in context later.

The profile isn't set in stone yet. This is one that we've both liked, though.

Home Show

We really slacked on the ol' posting this week. Oh well. There wasn't much time to work on the house- we both worked late, or came home and worked more. We did get our kitchen cabinets designed, though. Now we just need to decide whether or not we'll use natural wood finishing or if we'll paint them. I love the look of wood, but the kitchen is so small that I worry that it'll seem cramped and dark if we used the shades of wood I like. I don't like blonde or honey-colored woods. I just don't. But, they might look good painted, too. I'll have to see if I can get my spouse to post them later this week.

We also attended the Seattle Home Show last weekend. It was pretty good. We weren't in the market to buy anything right then and there, but we gathered tons of information. We saw tons of different kinds of windows, found out more about fireplaces, saw good lighting, saw fun doors, and got lots of information on tile, countertops, hardwood floors, millwork, etc. It was really great for idea-gathering. We wish, in retrospect, that we had taken more pictures, but oh well. That's what the showrooms are for, I suppose. Now we just have to find the time to do it.

I think our next part of the project will be to replace the cold water plumbing. That means we'll have to run it to more places, though, like the toilets, than we're currently running it to. Since it's been so cold, we've put off cutting even more holes in our walls. Hopefully we'll be able to get to cracking on that in the next couple of weeks, though.

I want to just skip right ahead to the kitchen. Shame on me.

Inspiring Pictures

As mentioned earlier, we visited a tile showroom. There were so many beautiful tiles and patterns. Here are just a few that I photographed. We definitely liked the small tiles and are leaning heavily towards small hexagons or rounds for the bathroom.
































































Small tiles satisfy the OCD in my spouse and I (both for eye candy but especailly for installaion obsessiveness).

We also stopped by Restoration Hardware and a couple of other showrooms. While I'm not sure we'd buy from RH, it was great to browse through their showroom.

This hardware set had the best feeling handles/pulls. We really like the flare in the middle. I've seen some pulls that are a little more exagerated in the middle and they feel even better.







My spouse didn't like the ellipitcal knobs (neither did I), but we did like the round knobs in this set.









While we don't like chrome in the kitchen, these pulls could be nice.










This bathroom set was nice, and the lights adjusted! How fun is that! The escutcheons are rectangular instead of round which is a nice change of pace.







My spouse really liked the porcelain switch plates. She's found a bunch of other switch plates (in art nouveau styles) that are great, too.








We loved this door hardware. Stone River Bronze makes some amazing stuff! Rocky Mountian Hardware makes some great stuff, too. But they're a little out of our price range.

Big ideas

We spent the weekend gathering data. We're waiting for the weather to dry out and warm up a bit before we start doing the rewiring, and we're going to do more plumbing in March. We're also still doing research on which sawzall we want to buy, and until we purchase one we can't really remove any of the old pipes.

Once we get the rewire done and the walls in place, it'll be time to start making the inside of the house nice. We're going to put in some simple crown molding and decide on other architectural details. So, we went around to a bunch of places trying to figure out what exactly we like and what we want. We visited a Kohler showroom, IKEA, a kitchen showroom, and a tile store, not to mention ReStore over in Ballard. ReStore gathers stuff out of old houses and resells it, like sinks, windows, doors, doorknobs, grates, cabinets, you name it. There's all sorts of great antique and vintage stuff there, and it's reasonably priced. It's a great way to recycle a lot of building materials. We'll keep it in mind for later.

We also stopped by Restoration Hardware and Pottery Barn. It was great to look at a lot of different types of cabinet and bathroom hardware. The feel of drawer pulls and knobs is really important, and we found some nice stuff. At Pottery Barn we bought a pair of really nice Tibetan-style stools, courtesy of a generous gift certificate from my aunt and a supplemental one from a good friend. The stools are our first furniture purchase for our new home, and they've already come in handy, since there's no couch to sit on, let alone chairs. ^_^

On the way home, we swung by Barnes & Noble and used yet another gift certificate to purchase tons of home improvement magazines. So far we've seen some pretty interesting stuff. The best purchase of all, though, was something called the "Old House Interiors Design Center Sourcebook." It's basically a list of websites and companies that manufacture period-style home stuff, like tiles, wallpaper, door hardware, etc. It's wonderful and amazing, and if we can afford anything we find in there, we're going to get it.

Next weekend it's off to the Home Show, where we'll spend all weekend getting our head filled with really great ideas. That's what we're hoping, at least.

New (Floor) Plan

Here is a new floor plan based on the fact that we can build in the SE corner. We've moved the fireplace, too. Have to consult a contractor on how feasible the fireplace is, though.

For those of you who remember the post about the corroded hot water pipes, here is a picture of one of the worst. Solid corrosion. Almost no room for water to pass through.

And here is a picture of our vintage exhaust fan in the full bathroom. It's on a timer and there is a little bit of startup time (about 5-10 seconds) as it winds up. It's actually not even attached (up in the attic space). It just sits there. No screws attaching in to a truss. I'll have to do something about that someday.

Room

Today we found out from city hall that we can build as close as five feet from the property line. The property line is basically the fence the put up right in front of what used to be the front door. The distance from the fence to the side of our house is five feet.

Big deal, you might say. What this means, though, is that we can actually add on a third bedroom. We were originally going to put a deck there (and I think it would have been a lovely place for a deck), but a third bedroom will add resale value to our house as well as allow us to live here longer. If we have a bedroom for each kid, there's really no limit to how long we can stay. So, that'd be a pretty nice thing to do. They're going to be pouring foundation on the front lot, anyway- it might not be hard for us to go in on it with the builder, or at least his crew. Who knows. They'll be here already, after all, and there's something to be said for under the table...

At the very least, it gives us something to chew on until it's warm and dry enough to rip off the walls and actually begin the rewiring.

Dough-a-go-go

We were talking tonight, and we realized that we never really talked about whether or not we got our money back.

Well, we did. We almost didn't. Somebody (the loan people) didn't do the paperwork right and forgot to make sure the funds would be released to us and not back to the seller. Ugh. It took a bit, but we did get our money back. What's really scary is that it's already half gone. We haven't even started to rewire anything yet or do the new drywall, and the money's already half gone. Oy. House stuff is REALLY expensive. Of course, the electrician himself was $3K. That was a quarter of our money right there. Now I'm wondering how the heck we're ever going to manage to do some of the things we want to do. We'll probably be able to do the rewiring, and the new walls, and maybe put in bamboo floors, and then we'll be about out of cash. We won't have even started on the kitchen... Well, we'll figure it out. Here's to hoping for good raises.

Now we just have to go buy a sawzall and the rest of the pex for the cold water plumbing, as I think I mentioned before. Whee. That might happen this week. First order of business is to sweep all the stuff off of our roof. We had a big wind storm here over the weekend, and I think half the forest is on our roof. Okay, so the big, beautiful cedars on the front lot kept us out of the worst of the wind, but there's still a lot of stuff up there. They make special roof-sweeping brooms. We're going to buy one of those. It's supposed to be sunny the whole week (miracle of miracles!), so we have some time.

Safety First

Or, in our case, eventually. No, we actually put up our smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detector. We won't be dying of fire anytime soon, hopefully. Actually, it was an extremely unpleasant task, for being such a simple one. First, we discovered that every single ceiling we tried to fasten a detector to was different. One was wood, one was wallboard, and one was plain ol' drywall. We fastened one to a beam. The same beam, actually, as the ceiling fan o' death that nearly claimed the noggin of my brother (several times). We've also fastened our makeshift ceiling light to that beam as well. Thank goodness for old Ikea paper lanterns. The light it casts is beastly, in my opinion, but it does the trick until we can redo the ceiling and put in recessed lighting.

Anyway, what made the whole detector experience horrible was that it was a throwback to our run-ins with fire alarms at the old apartment (which we shall call, for now, "heaven," as it was clean, comfortable, had heat, and wasn't in danger of flooding). Some of you know this, but the system was hard-wired and made the most god-awful noise. It would have awoken us from a dead slumber. In fact, on our last night there, it did. Horrible. Long story short, we're now really, really sensitive to noises like that. The detectors, of course, needed batteries, but when you put the batteries in, it makes the alarm noise. Several times. As soon as you connect. I literally couldn't hold on to the detector the first time it happened- the noise upset me so much I nearly ran. So, the installation was basically an hour of us having our wits shattered by ear-splitting noises. It was lovely. We got over it. Sort of.

Thing is, we suspect that we would be fine here even if there was a fire or carbon monoxide leak (the only possible source of carbon monoxide in the Rat Hole would be the pellet stove, since there's no natural gas or forced air or anything here). The Rat Hole is so drafty the carbon monoxide or the smoke would probably just drift right out.

We also got our security deposit and half month's rent from the old apartment this week. It's nice to have- now we can buy pex to redo the cold water plumbing and maybe buy that sawzall we've had our eyes on.