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Wow, I’ve never written a guest blog post before! I can get used to this!

/me sips his martini and relaxes into his recliner.

Kelli had told me about a number of the tasks she was hoping to accomplish with her house, and when she mentioned the need to break about the front stairs with a sledge hammer, how could I not offer my services? Besides visiting my friends, I could destroy a house!

Colleen and I traveled on Friday night, at one point stopping at a gas station near an interesting sign.

When we arrived at the house, it was a little after midnight, but we still ended up talking for a bit. There was a futon setup for us, and Scratch even let us know he inspected it to make sure we’d be well rested for the morning.

I had to meet the mantis myself, and I was sorry to hear of its recent passing.

Kelli informed us that some cleaning product claims are bunk. After seeing all the work she had done, I am inclined to believe she knows what she’s talking about.

We got a late start on Saturday, so we had a late breakfast before starting our work. Actually, we took a break after eating all that food first. It was a long break. Scratch helped.

Brandon was tasked with destroying part of the kitchen to make room for a dishwasher. I removed staples from the ceiling. Colleen worked on scraping paint off of the wall in the front bedroom, and Kelli scraped stuff off of the floor. I kept feeling like something was missing when I realized we didn’t have any house work music playing! Kelli fixed that problem quickly enough, and we were jamming.

Some of the staples were tricky and didn’t want to leave the ceiling, but I showed them! I also found a spider and decided that its name should be Wally. I should have taken a picture of Wally, but instead I took a picture out the kitchen window into the backyard.

After Brandon removed the greased-up lampshade from the ceiling in the kitchen, I cut the wire that was left. It won’t be bothering anyone for a long time.

After a bit of work, we had a mostly staple-free ceiling, a hole where a cabinet used to be, and cleaner walls and floors. We went out for dinner and watched a DVD as a reward. Colleen went to sleep while Kelli, Brandon, and I walked around the town a bit. Kelli pointed out a number of the other houses in the area that either had been recently fixed-up or will be.

It rained the next day. I learned that there are plants growing in the gutters, which I think would be cool but then I don’t own a house with plants in the guttrs during a rainstorm. They’ll have to go soon, I’m sure.

The basement also had a bit of water. Kelli said that she’ll have to do something to stop the water from getting in under the foundation from the backyard.

Colleen and I had to leave for Chicago relatively early on Sunday. I was a bit disappointed that I couldn’t do too much more than pull staples out of a ceiling. The front stairs will have to wait until the spring to be destroyed. I’ll be ready for them. Still, it was great to visit with Kelli and Brandon and see their new old house up close.

When we read the instructions and took the old thermostat off the wall, however, we ran into a problem. The instructions are written for thermostats with wires that are already labeled with letters, or are at least connected to the plate that’s labeled. Our thermostat plate and wires were not labeled. In fact, when I stripped back some of the insulation cloth to give us some more slack to work with, I discovered a third wire that had been purposely left unattached. Anyway, rather than try to hook these things up and test them the Tim the Tool Man way (flip the switch and see if it sparks) I looked around at some other people’s blogs to see what they’d encountered.

I found Kevin Freitas’ blog in which he explained that he’d had the exact same problem with the exact same old thermostat as ours! Unfortunately, our wires didn’t really look like his wires, but with the information he provided, we made an educated guess and nobody got zapped!

Here’s our old thermostat.

Here are the wires we weren’t sure how to match up. We have a red, a white, and a black.

Here’s the plate they were originally connected to. Only the red and black wires were connected. The white wire was buried inside the outer insulation.

Brandon hooked up the red one to the screw labeled “R” and the black one to “W.”

Zoot looked on, secretly hoping Brandon would get zapped.

We kept Kevin’s blog close at hand to refer to (it’s up on the screen of Brandon’s laptop.)

Getting the screws nice and tight:

When it was all hooked up, we set the temperature, flipped the circuit back on, and turned the thermostat on to “heat” and guess what? It did!!! The lovely blue glow you see in this picture is the furnace flame!

Now we can be toasty warm.

I also told you about Grandma persevering at scraping the wallpaper in the living room and dining room:

Yesterday and today she worked on that and now she’s only got one little section left before she’s all done. Unbelievable!

Yesterday I sallied forth to Menards to find the coupling I needed to hook the shower extension onto my tub. Silly me, I thought I could measure both ends, walk in, find the piece I needed, and have made a successful trip. Not so. Trouble is I suck at measuring, so I bought the wrong size coupling. I had one coupling that had been used to attach a hand held spray nozzle and I knew that one end of that fit into the faucet. So when I went back I took that coupling with me. I also took the shower extension with me since I didn’t trust myself to eyeball it any better. I couldn’t get the threaded end of the shower extension to fit any of the couplings they had! So I asked a trusty Menards associate. He scratched his head, tried to fit the threaded end into a few more couplings, had no success, scratched his head some more, and consulted with his youthful protege. “Looks like garden hose thread, not pipe thread,” the lad said. “Maybe it’s metric,” the elder pondered. I took back my shower extender and took another close look at it. I scraped away some of the pipe tape that had crustified around the joint and discovered that the oddly threaded coupling was actually screwed into what appeared to be 1/2″ pipe thread! “Have either of you got a wrench handy?” I asked. We found a wrench and the stronger of the two associates gave it a few good turns and sure enough, the odd coupling (sorry for the bad pun) came out and I was left with a perfectly standard 1/2″ pipe thread which would fit perfectly onto the coupling I started with in the first place!

So here it is connected:

As swimmingly as that all worked out, it is actually a little too short for my tallish husband so I’ll be looking for another section of pipe to extend it a bit, but for now, he’ll just have to stoop a little.

So now on to more recent developments:
It rained in Des Moines today. A lot. When I got home one of the downspouts had come detached from the gutter and was streaming water straight down at my foundation! I got up on the ladder and hammered a nail into it as a temporary fix, only to find that the downspout was leaking a stream of water from the elbow. I took the elbow apart and surprise surprise, it was totally clogged with years of composted leaves. Yummy. In the process I re-sliced open the cut on my hand from the razor blade, so I’m putting that wound on infection-watch. Don’t worry, I’m current on my tetanus shot. After I got that whole contraption put back together I still had a big pool of water threatening to seep down into the foundation, so I took the bricks the chimney sweeps had removed from our chimney and used them to displace some of the water. I don’t think it really did all that much, but it was a way for me to at least feel like I was trying in a futile situation. When I got back inside I looked like a soggy sewer rat. BUT! I noticed when I was changing into dry clothes that a mud splatter had landed on my face and looked JUST LIKE Marilyn Monroe’s beauty mark. My grandma said I should leave it on, but I had to wipe my face.

The good news is that there wasn’t much water in the basement at all. Just a couple damp spots on the inner foundation wall where water was starting to seep in, but nothing like the puddles we found when we first bought the place.

While Grandma worked away upstairs I went down to the basement to start picking out the recyclable copper wire from the pile the electricians left me.

That was a dirty job because the cloth covered wires were all coated with several decades’ worth of coal dust.

Mmm sooty:

Here’s a really scary connection I found in the wire I was untangling. Remind me again why my house didn’t burn down long before I ever had a chance to buy it…

My bucket o’wire for Craig. He’s going to burn off the insulation and take the remaining copper to a metal recycle shop and they’ll apparently give him money for it. Can’t be that much, but hey, recycling rocks in all its forms. I admire his motivation.

Since I was already in the basement with my camera I thought I’d poke around some of the nooks and crannies that having a digital camera makes it so much easier to explore. Most of the original foundation of our house was built of these hollow cinder blocks. Where they come together at a corner or at the end of a wall, they often open sideways into a series of little pigeon holes. My grandfather used to store tools and owners manuals and things in the ones in his house on E. 14th St., so I thought I’d see if there were any little treasures left behind in my walls.

I found a spool, or something resembling one:

I found a ginormous rusty nail:

And I found several pockets of coal left behind in the furnace room:

Once I’d grown tired of spelunking in my basement I went back upstairs to clean up a bit and feed the cats before fleeing to my mom’s house to take a shower. I actually found a pre-made shower curtain rail that is big enough to encircle my WHOLE tub, but I need help installing it so until that’s up, no showers at my own house yet.

Phew! This post has been a doozy. I’m ready for bed.

P.S. Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day! I wonder how many people will blog in pirate-speak today.

The house is in various stages of disarray, but no worries!

This is the light fixture that was removed from the basement hallway. Pretty gross huh?

The ceiling fan we picked out for the living room:

The light in the dining room that compliments the ceiling fan in the living room:

New light fixtures in the bathroom. We’re going for a chrome and white look for all the bathroom fixtures. These lights look a little out of place amongst the 70s wallpaper and dingy yellow paint. Just wait until everything is crisp and white! (Additionally, we have had them install a ceiling fan + light, but since that wasn’t fully installed yet I didn’t take a picture.)

The wood burning stove insert is all done, the chimney is re-lined, and the part above the roof has been rebuilt completely. It all looks GREAT and I’ve never been so excited for cold weather to arrive so I can try this out!

Just a quick plug for a really great business here: The company we hired for this, Alpine Chimney Sweep, was simply awesome! If you have any chimney or fireplace or wood burning stove issues at your house and you’re anywhere near Des Moines, I really recommend looking them up. They’re friendly, efficient, clean, and even bumped up our installation day because they had an unexpected opening in their schedule.

Here’s the stove unit ready to install:

While they had the chimney and firebox all cleared out, I took the opportunity to take a few pictures of an area most homeowners never really get a good look at: the inside of the chimney and ash dump.

Here’s the firebox all cleaned out:

The damper had rusted shut and debris from the crumbling chimney had fallen on top of it. It had to be removed anyway, so here’s what’s left of the broken pieces, leaving room for the new liner and stove pipe:

The view up the chimney:

I put my camera in great peril to get this shot looking down into the ash dump:

The front of our new wood burning stove:

A wider view:

I’m really glad they put the original flue damper handle back in its place. It’s not needed anymore, but it’s better than having a big hole in the brick where it should go. I can’t wait to clean up the area around the hearth and maybe paint the brick a different color. I have big plans for this fireplace area of the house! Big plans, I say!

Sadly, by the time we got around to looking at the chimney outside we’d lost too much light for me to take a picture. You’ll get your picture though, never fear!

I am absolutely thrilled at how much progress was made this week. I never imagined everything would go so smoothly and so fast. Here’s hoping for continued good fortune in the rest of our projects to come.

Oh! And another quick shout out to a damned decent guy, Matt, who works with Brandon, at least for the time being. Matt is headed back to Omaha to rejoin his lovely wife there and since he’s moving, he graciously offered us his futon, no charge! That’s great because we can use all the free furniture we can get! Thanks again, Matt!

[tags]bathroom, ceiling fan, chimney, contractors, dining room, electricity, fireplace, light fixtures, living room, photos, wood burning stove[/tags]

Here’s the ceiling fan we picked out:

And the light for the dining room that compliments the ceiling fan (the bowl on this one isn’t as yellow as it came out in my picture):

See?

I LOVE the overhead light/fan fixture we bought for the bathroom. It’s a little more contemporary, but very simple and I like to think timeless. (Again, not as yellow in real life.)

For the lights on either side of the mirror, we went with a bolder, and more expensive choice, but I think it will work really well.

So here’s our pile of light fixtures in our house. I told Brandon it feels like Christmas!

[tags]bathroom, ceiling fan, dining room, electricity, light fixtures, living room, photos[/tags]

First the electrician came and he was super professional, friendly, and really knew how to deal with our house. In fact, by the time I got in to work he had already emailed me a fully itemized quote, with everything we talked about on site, AND his total price for everything is exactly what we were hoping to budget for initially, right around $5,000. Of course, we have a little extra money available should unexpected things come up, but he seemed really confident in how smoothly this job would go. We will probably get a third electrical quote, just for good measure, but this guy has all but won the bid already.

The chimney sweeps came next at 9:30. There were two people, the person who owns the business and her assistant of seven years, who is also fully certified. They did their inspection and then we sat in the air conditioned living room to discuss our options. This company offered two solutions: 1.) insert a stainless steel liner through the chimney and get it working as a traditional fireplace, or 2.) install a wood burning stove insert with a lined chimney pipe for increased energy efficiency. There would only be a difference of a couple hundred dollars between the two choices, so after hearing all about the stove insert and how it works and all the options we have with it (it does have the option to look like a regular fireplace if you want that ambiance) we’re leaning toward that. Either way, the work will cost just under $4000, which is GREAT for our budget.

After everybody else left, Brandon and I went outside to measure for building our retaining wall planting beds on the south side of the house. I had forgotten my tape measure, but we found a yard stick inside left by the previous owner, so while Brandon walked the area measuring with the yard stick, I wrote down the measurements on a diagram. I’m going to take that information tonight and start drawing a (mostly) to scale diagram of how these will be laid out so we can plan for how much it’s going to cost.

It was so much fun going through everything with Brandon. He’s really caught the enthusiasm to get started now too.

(Excited squeal and happy dance!!!)

[tags]budget, chimney, contractors, electricity, fireplace, landscaping, retaining wall[/tags]

Last night, however, I did go to the library and do a few searches in their catalog to get a feel for where info on my house and neighborhood might be. My house sits in sort of a black hole between neighborhoods, as far as historical information goes. It’s not technically close enough to Union Park to claim the Union Park neighborhood. It’s too far north to count as Capitol Park. The plat it’s on is part of the “Union Addition” but that’s pretty meaningless to me at this point. The houses in the area are very middle class, built between 1905 and 1945. I found a few books on general Des Moines history, but one book I found right before closing is exactly what I want to read. It’s called Historical Residential Architecture in Des Moines, 1905-1940. SCORE!!! Unfortunately, it’s in the closed stacks of the library so I can’t take it home with me and pore over it repeatedly. I’ll just have to be content to visit it in the library and take notes and copies of relevant information. But the book is so great because it focuses specifically on two house types: bungalows and four-squares. I’ll be sure to share the exciting bits!

Brandon and I have a plan for the first few days of ownership. Here’s how it goes, sing along if you know the words:

Friday, Aug. 17 we close escrow and take ownership. We immediately begin clawing at the walls and floors like frantic badgers, ripping out carpet, pulling down paneling, and generally causing mayhem and destruction.

Saturday, Aug. 18 we borrow someone’s pickup truck and haul away the heap of trash we will build on Friday. (More about waste removal in a minute.)

Sunday, Aug. 19 we do additional cleanup on the place and make bundles to put out on the curb for garbage pick up.

Monday, Aug. 20 my grandma will hire the cleaning ladies to wipe everything down and give it their best on the kitchen and bathroom.

Tuesday, Aug. 21 we’ll start the tiny bit of moving in that we’re going to do: a bed and a dresser. We’re basically going to just live in the front bedroom, since that room needs the least amount of work and we need the rest of the house clear to give space to work on the woodwork and walls and everything.

And so on and so on.

So, about the waste removal thing:

When we bought my grandparents’ house in Clear Lake it was left to us to clean out all of the stuff Grandma and Grandpa didn’t need to take with them to their assisted living apartment. This amounted to 25 years’ worth of accumulated odds and ends saved fastiduously by my depression-era grandparents. We had like, five garage sales and for whatever was left that we couldn’t sell or donate somewhere, we called the local garbage company and they brought us a dumpster to fill up. It was a nice industrial sized thing that they let us keep for about a week. I think it was like $30 for the dumpster delivery and pickup, and $15 to dump it if it was under a certain weight. So like $50 max when all was said and done.

Since I’m new to Des Moines I decided to call around to see what rubbish haulers charge for their services around here. The first place I called quoted me $270. The second place said $390. I began contemplating buying a 30 cent book of matches and just setting fire to the looming pile of garbage.

Then I had an epiphany. Well, I wish it was that dramatic. It was more that I just saw the answer staring me in the face after having looked at it for weeks and weeks. As I pulled my mom’s garbage can up from the curb, I realized I was probably calling the wrong people about getting my garbage hauled away. I needed to be calling the Metro Waste Authority. Or rather, I needed to Google them. Anyway, I found out that they sell $5 stickers that you can attach to bundles of carpet and other oversized items that don’t fit in the regular garbage cans. So that’s certainly an option for us. ALSO, the landfill east of town accepts pick-up truck loads of garbage for like $16-30. So that’s what we’re going to do.

Now, tonight I have plans with two coworkers of mine, my uncle, my uncle’s pick-up truck, and a brand new dolly that my husband is going to buy after work today. My small collection of friends, relatives, and tools are going to move the washer and dryer from my other uncle’s new house to my new old house. I’ll report later on whether my plan actually functioned as it was intended.

Next Tuesday we go another round with the contractors, this time getting a quote from a big name electrician and another chimney inspection for a second opinion.

[tags]carpet, chimney, contractors, dryer, electricity, fireplace, garbage, landfill, neighborhood history, paneling, washing machine[/tags]

So they waited and we talked about everything about the house that I know and they gave me ideas about what the work will involve and everything. Once the realtor showed up and let us in they got to look around at everything. Here’s an overview of our discussion:

These older houses often have something called fireshield inside the walls behind the plaster and lathe. That means the walls are not hollow, in fact you have to drill through that stuff to fish wires through it. He’s not certain ours are like that, but it’s something they were putting in the construction of these old houses.

He measured the house to be about 1000 square feet, 1200 if you count the attic (which, incidentally, was exactly what I guessed!). And he’ll use that number to estimate how much wiring will be needed.

We talked about what it would take to put wiring up to the ceiling and run wiring for the existing ceiling lights. Because those all have knob and tube, they have to run it all through the ceiling, they can’t just fish it up through because there’s not a big enough hole for modern wire to go through. They’d have to cut notches in the joists to put the wire through. Regardless, we’re looking at ceiling patches and probably re-doing the texturing on the ceiling in the long run. If the crown molding is wood, the best solution may be to take that down so it can stay in one piece, strip the paint and texturing off it while it’s down, and once we fix up the ceiling, put it back.

The may be able to access the bedroom lights and the kitchen light through the attic crawl space, though.

The meter will have to be outside, probably right under the bathroom window. The circuit box will probably still be in its present location.

He agreed we should wire for 200 amps to prepare for a garage. I asked him about how to wire the kitchen and he said the garbage disposal and dishwasher go on one circuit, the countertops go on one, the fridge and stove go on one, and the lights may be on one with the lights of another room. That seemed to make good sense to me.

He wasn’t able to give me a firm bid today, but he’s going to get that to me tomorrow or the next day. He did generally ballpark it for me at around $7000, but I really want to wait to see what his actual bid is before I go with that number.

I learned a lot from Dan the fireplace inspector. He showed me all the specific problems with the fireplace and chimney. He had a diagram of the insides of the whole system and showed me how it all works. He recommended this kind of flue damper since ours is totally rusted out and it isn’t the best design for that to begin with.

I did get a firm bid from him with stuff specifically itemized. His bid was $5000 exactly for the whole job to make it a working fireplace. It takes about a week to get the whole chimney done and ready to use.

The tree service gave me a $400 bid to clean up all the trees close to the house and wires, clean off our roof, and haul away the cut debris. I told him I’d take care of the brush in the back and along the alley myself. I need a good excuse to buy a chainsaw anyway, and I know Brandon will LOVE that.

So that’s what we’re looking at right now. I did finally get everything done and then switched off the circuits and locked up the house. It took me just over half an hour to ride downtown, find a place to lock my bike, and get to work.

There’s just so much work that needs doing. I just want to get started already!

[tags]chimney, contractors, electricity, fireplace, trees[/tags]

I got a phone call from my cousin Ryan, our realtor, at 7:30. I was brushing my teeth. We agreed to meet up at the house around 8:15 or 8:30 to meet the home inspector. Bill was already there poking his fingers in water spiggots and shining lights under the cupboards. I could tell right away that Bill knew what he was doing, so I followed him around and listened to his observations and recommendations. It was like he was a doctor checking all the vital signs of a very large animal. I learned a lot!

Steve, the contractor we’d also asked to come over arrived soon after and he followed me around the inside and outside of the house and took notes on what kinds of work we’d like him to do for us.

We didn’t get an electrician to come along like we’d hoped, but Bill and Steve made some general recommendations of what to ask for when the electrician does get to go through the property.

When I finally made it in to work, I found it really hard to shift gears from house-type work to actual work work. I wanted to jump right to the next step, scheduling more estimates and organizing my notes. I did get to spend a little time on that from work.

One of the big expenses we’ve expected from the start was the fireplace and chimney. As far as we know, it’s supposed to be a working fireplace. However, the part of the chimney that’s exposed outside is literally falling down. There are bricks sitting on top of the roof and gaping holes where they once fit into the chimney. Since I’ve never lived in a house that had a fireplace, I really don’t know what it’s going to take to just make basic repairs and then bring it up to code so it can be a working fireplace. So I called a family-owned chimney service called Chimney Crickets. (Great name!) I talked to a guy there for quite a while and he discussed three possibilities with me:

1. Restore it to being a traditional working fireplace
2. Retrofit it with a metal insert stove and run a stove pipe up the chimney
3. Seal off the chimney and give up on it being a working fireplace

For option one, the chimney needs to be sound (and if it’s not it may need to be rebuilt), it needs a clay lining, which it probably doesn’t have since it was built before 1927, and it needs a weather cap on the top.

For option two, we’d still have to fix the mortar at the top of the chimney and possibly rebuild the whole chimney if it’s too badly damaged.

For option three, well, we brick it up. I guess. I don’t want option three.

Regardless of which option we end up choosing, the thing needs a thorough inspection, so I’ve scheduled that for 8am Tuesday morning. Cost: $65. Then he’ll know for sure how much it’ll cost.

Since I’m already going to come in late to work that day, I also scheduled another electrician to meet me at the house that morning and give me an estimate. Bottom line, the whole house needs re-wired. Completely. We figured out that as it’s currently wired, we’re getting about 40 amps of service to the house. Considering that most houses these days use about 100 amps just for basic appliances, and 60 amps is considered pretty out of date and hokey, that’s pretty bad.

We’ve always expected that our biggest expenses will be the electricity, the chimney, and the kitchen. Those are the three big things I’m going to try to cover in the loan we’re getting with the mortgage. Everything else can either wait, or we can do ourselves. But I’m going to have to be figuring out how much all that other stuff is going to cost as well, so I’ve got some serious planning and window shopping to do.

Besides all that stuff today, I faxed the inspection report to my insurance agent and said a little prayer that he’ll deem the property insurable.

I have an evening ahead of me full of planning, making lists, and talking things over with Brandon. I anticipate it will feel very satisfying to see it all down on paper in my big notebook. And I know I will fall asleep absolutely exhausted today, from the sheer energy of thought I have exerted today.

[tags]chimney, contractors, electricity, fireplace[/tags]