Admitting I like dried flowers. In pictures.

I have no patience for dried flowers - but who knew tulips could die so beautifully?

Springtime!

At the house there is a scary wood mask, covered in some kind of peeling leather, that has been outside on the deck for ages.. probably because of its creepy factor. Two weeks ago, a pair a robins decided to nest in it.

at two weeks ago
at three days old..
at nine days..


you have to watch the video..

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyPz7U24eg0

CaCa Brown..

I wish I had more pictures of what this bathroom looked like before renovation. It was all brown.. brown bathtub, brown toilet, brown bidet, brown carpeting.. yes wall-to-wall brown carpeting in the bathroom. I call this color Caca Brown, my father calls it Chocolate Brown. Either way, who really wants a brown toilet?


We had to shift all the plumbing under this raised platform 6" to accomodate a new sink in the place of the brown bidet, everything but the tub was changed out. Electrical outlets added, shower added to tub, tiled wall & floor, replaced boards & refinished wood floor.

moving & refinishing the tub, tiling the floor...

tiling the wall..

This is what it looks like now.

Jackhammer

Jack-hammering the basement floor of what will be a new bathroom, to lay the piping. We had to pour a concrete slab in the basement, 1100 sq.ft. because the floor was originally just dirt under the floorboards. But this is the only place where there was already concrete.. and it was too high to lay pipe.

The Most Wonderful Thing

This is one of the best I have ever found in a house. Hands down.

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The Dump

I go to the Dump about once a week these days. In the beginning I used to go everyday, twice a day sometimes. In the last 365 days I have gone to dump well over 80 times. El Caballo Blanco, my trusty steed, has hauled over 50 tons of construction debris and refuse to The Dump. We also haul bags and bags of books for donation - please don't tell the powers that be. Here are some hauls I photographed:

Whiteout in DC

So we have had an enormous amount of snow these past few days. Sometime between Saturday night and Sunday morning our 50 foot pine tree fell over into the street under the weight of the 20+ inches of snow. RJG’s first reaction: "Uh oh.. all the animals are buried under there" - the dog, the cat and numerous hamsters whose names we have forgotten.


Pater has been mourning the death of the pine tree ad nausea and has grand plans to hoist it back into position with ropes and pulleys. I am glad that the pine went down, it was growing perilously close to the house at an alarming 60-degree angle. This morning, in the midst of an even worse storm, some amazing neon suited men lopped off the top of the pine and other hazardous broken tree limbs. Thank you neon men!

Trees are falling down all over the neighborhood, this one on New Hampshire avenue a few blocks away crushed two cars.

outlets

outlets

wood

wood

sinks

sinks

for anyone who has ever dreamt of being Indiana Jones.. or a chimney sweep

Today I had to go into the attic. I hate the attic. I have to find out why the ceiling of the round room keeps leaking. We spent a week taking off "popcorn" a spiky textured plaster applied to walls that was really a la mode in the 80's. We had to heat up the textured compound with a blow torch and scrape it off, then the entire room had to be replastered by hand because it is in the round and had lots of curves. Now there is this leak in this beautifully plastered room. The attic is only 4 1/2 feet high at its highest point. There you can be on all fours, but i have to crawl the entire length of my house on my stomach to get to the leak, where the attic is only 28 inches high. Its dusty. Its gross. I keep getting splinters in my forearms and my knees hurt. There are leaks everywhere. You can see the black water stains on the beams, which is a bad bad sign.

Over Counters

Last week the counter top installers at Pyramid granite came by. This was very exciting because once the counter is in we can hook up the appliances and 3rd floor will be done! I am using Carerra Marble -the ubiquitous grey and white kind - in the U.S. standard thickness 1 ¼” .


Marble makes for a rather high maintenance counter-top. Marble is a softer stone, prone to scuffs and chips. Being porous, marble stains and can be etched by acidic substances and foods. So marble must be coated with a sealant periodically.
Granite is the best choice if you are looking for a full stone slab. Granite is extremely hard and impervious to the elements. It doesn’t chip or stain, you can chop on it, lay white-hot pans on it, spatter it with oil and acid, and stomp on it in spikey heals, Granite won’t show the wear and tear. Take a sharp knife and try scratching the surface of a granite counter top with the pointy tip, you will dull your knife before you see a scratch in the granite.


But this is a small kitchen in an old house and granite looks too modern. Marble, the traditional surface for pastry tables, makes everything feel a little older. And a little wear and tear will hopefully accentuate its timelessness. Also the marble I got was half the price of the cheapest granite. I can cover the entire marble countertop with tempered glass as a chopping surface, and the whole affair will still cost less than using granite.

radiators on the ceiling

During demolition we tore down the ugly drop-ceiling in the basement that had been installed in the 1970's when the basement functioned as a mental health clinic. This revealed something I have never seen anywhere: old cast iron radiators bolted to the ceiling provide all the heat for the basement, counter intuitive since heat rises. This may have been done to keep the radiators higher than the boiler so you do not have to drain them every week.


Back laundry room cleaned up. This will become a kitchen.


Back storage area cleaned up. This will become a bathroom

libri coerceo

My dad lives in a sea of books. There are books everywhere. Walls of them line the halls, pile up in the kitchen, on the dining room table and up the staircase. Some rooms are so filled with books that you can't get inside.


While moving thousands and thousands of books to clear space for construction, I have come across some true gems. Here are a few of my favorites:





(not included is the classic “I’m Ok, You’re Ok” which I have lost somewhere in the house and can’t find)

..more books

I love the specificity of locale in the "How To" titles: How to train a dog.. "in your house OR apartment", addressing the changing lifestyles of pet owners in 1950. And if having a vegetable garden is not challenging enough, you can now grow midget vegetables in your tiny tiny home!

dust everywhere

Today we are sanding the walls of the 3rd floor hall, the biggest wall along the stairs measures 22ft high. Plaster makes lots and lots of very fine dust that gets into absolutely everything. So its looks like its snowing inside. There are two types of plaster wet and dry, and each person will tell you something different about which is better to use. Easy sand is a white powder and you have to mix it. It comes in three grades 20 45 90, they are all supposedly the same consistency and strength these numbers describe the amount of time it takes the plaster to dry.
Also sheetrock and drywall are going up in the basement, its so fun when drywall finally goes up because it makes everything look like its getting done so much quicker. There is a tiny light at the end of the tunnel.

the beginning

We started renovating on Monday december 8th 2008. It took myself and two other people two days to move all of the stuff out of the big room in the basement. This is a picture of the big room in the basement on Tuesday December 9th 2008 once all the furniture had been moved out.



This is a picture of the same room a few hours later. Same day.

Vaseline has many uses

Even when I wear a mask the fine spray from the paint machine gets everywhere. The best way to avoid this is to put Vaseline all over your face before you start painting. That way you won't get it on your eyelashes and nose like this.

My very own Never Ending Story.

Meet theNeverEndngStory.. What started out as a quick fix-up of an old old house two years ago has grown into a rambling endless renovation..