Our New Old House

I know it’s still a little ways off, but I have a whole list of projects, some of which I’d like to complete before winter, some that MUST be completed.

• Install gutter apron (PRIORITY ONE, ASAP)
• Finish landscaping wall
• Transplant hostas and ferns
• Make kindling bundles out of the sticks in the backyard
• Borrow a chainsaw and cut the logs that are too big for the wood burning stove
• Finish the shed or at the very least gather all the pieces and move them inside

Let’s see how many of these I can finish before the first snow.

[tags]wood burning stove, gutters, yardwork, retaining wall, landscaping, future plans[/tags]

Brandon and I finished putting up the fascia this weekend so the gutter guys could come put up the gutters this morning.

I primed the boards before we put them up.

Then we nailed them onto the ends of the rafters.

Brandon was a wiz at measuring and cutting the boards to fit. We ended up with just the right amount of wood and just a little bit of waste. But we’ll keep the extra pieces for some other project in the future.

Gutter guys are working to put up the gutters now. More pictures when they’re done!

[tags]gutters, fascia, photos[/tags]

First of all, I’d like to thank the members of the Des Moines Rehabbers Club who kindly offered me advice this morning.  I sent a rather panicked email to the mailing list this morning and got some really excellent responses.  It helps so much to have someone to turn to in a crisis like this! 

The flooring company has secured the right color grout, but they didn’t order enough tile for the bathroom.  They will finish the parts under the tub, toilet, and sink and finish the rest when the tiles are in.  They’re going to cut the tile to fit around the pipes in the floor, rather than some other way.  I’m glad of that because it didn’t seem right to have to cut all the pipes down and redo all that plumbing. 

When I talked to Brandon (who’s at the house today while I’m at work) he said they’d laid the subfloor in both the kitchen and the bathroom and were going to get the kitchen done today.  That was earlier this morning, so I hope there’s been some good progress made.

 While the flooring guys were working in the house, Brandon took the ladder out and broke the rotted fascia off the roof and removed as many nails as he could to prepare for new gutters being installed.

 Our quote from the gutter company arrived.  It is over $2000, which for a single story, 1000 square foot bungalow seemed ridiculous.  Our neighbor down the street with a similar house had theirs done for $450 or so.  Will keep looking.

We’re heading out to the Iowa State Fair this afternoon to blow off some steam.  Pictures coming soon of all our adventures!

[tags]gutters, thanks, ceramic tile, bathroom, Des Moines Rehabbers Club, contractors, plumbing, kitchen, flooring[/tags]

With some awesome spring weather these past couple of weeks, I’ve been taking the opportunity to do some much needed work on the outside of Our New Old House. One task I have to accomplish is to remove the broken old gutters and rotten fascia boards so we can hire someone to put on shiny new gutters for us.

Well, many of you have seen exterior pictures of our house and have probably noted, as have I, that the gutters look like they’re ready to fall off the house with a strong breeze. Unfortunately for me, that’s just not the case. Looks can be deceiving, and after forty five minutes of probably looking as dumb as the Keystone Cops, I called my buddy Matt, who works for a company that does metal fabrication and stuff. He talked me down from my frustrated haze, convinced me that it was not a good idea to take power saws up a ladder, and reassured me that I probably don’t weigh as much as a foot of snow. Matt’s cool like that. In the course of our discussion, he came up with the idea that I may need to cut the nails that are holding the gutters onto the house. “Brilliant!” I announced in true Jib-Jab fashion. However, there’s a little tube surrounding each nail and I can’t get to the nail with a hack saw without removing it.

That’s when Matt told me that those are called ferrules and that an interesting thing about ferrules is that in prisons when they have things like sewer tunnels going out of the building, they put bars across them and put ferrules around the bars so that when you try to saw through the bars, the ferrules just spin and you can’t get the saw to grip.

Matt’s full of awesome information like that.

So I had to get these ferrules off before I could saw through the nails.

Here’s me braving my fear of ladders. (Ok, I’m not actually scared of ladders, I’m just not very comfortable on them. Don’t mock me. )

I found a screw driver worked pretty well to loosen the ferrules and pop them off.

Then I was able to saw through the nails with a hack saw.

I pushed the gutter off the nails with a prybar. Didn’t take pictures from that point on because I was just too darn pooped. But I will tell you it made an awesome crash when it hit the ground!

And here’s one more picture of me being awesome on the ladder:

[tags]gutters, photos[/tags]

Since we’re going to be so busy the rest of this summer working on our new old house, Brandon and I made it a point to go up to Clear Lake this weekend and work on our other house. We did some outdoor jobs that we’ve been putting off too long. Brandon mowed the grass while I went to the hardware store (more about that later), and when I got back he had borrowed a neighbor’s tree trimmer (sawblade on the end of a LONG pole) and was cutting away the branches that were brushing the roof. I changed my clothes and got on the roof to help. He gave me the lopping shears and I snipped off everything I could reach. Then he handed me a big broom and I swept the whole roof. Our neighbors on two sides have really dirty trees that drop two sets of leaves every year, PLUS these little peppercorn-like seeds that act just like ball bearings under your feet when you’re trying to walk around on the roof. Yeah, I was taking my life into my hands, no doubt about it. But after I got the roof swept off I put on my rubber-coated gloves and cleaned out the three inch layer of mosquito-infested compost that had built up in our gutters over the course of the summer. Amazingly, I escaped with only one mosquito bite on my whole body, and it’s on the knuckle of my right pointer finger. All in all it was a very productive and exhausting day, but we did get to go swimming so that made it all feel a little like a vacation.

My trip to the hardware store had two purposes: to buy some things we actually need, and to scope out prices and plan for future projects.

Here’s the stuff I put on my list to buy:

• latex gloves
• a gallon of kilz
• a couple new brushes (since the foam ones I used last time have since bit the dust)
• a face mask
• furnace filter
• protective eye goggles

I got all those things.

More importantly, I did some planning for future projects. Here’s what I came up with:

We want to remove the countertop sink in the bathroom and replace it with a pedestal. I found a really lovely one for about $60. Faucets tend to cost between $40 and $60, so I’ll budget for $60. That doesn’t include any additional plumbing hardware we’ll need to connect it with, so I guess I’ll add $30 for that and come up with a total sink replacement budget of $150.

We need to buy a refrigerator. Menards had a 10 cubic foot self defrosting fridge/freezer for $309. We were hoping to spend no more than $400 for a fridge, so that’s probably what we’ll go with. I had hoped to buy an Energy Star appliance, for the tax break, but they only had one at Menards and it was around $600. This one only uses 386 kwh per year, though, so it’s not like it’s an energy hog.

We can borrow most of the power tools we’ll need from friends and family, but we wanted to see what it would cost to buy them anyway, because it’s always nice to have your own tools.

I found two circular saws that I liked and that were in my price range. One was a Tool Shop brand. It was $23.66, a nice compact size, and had all the standard features. I found a Skil one at Sears, though, and it felt more balanced in my hand. It costs $39.99. They had a Craftsman saw at Sears that I picked up but it just felt awful. All the weight was in the back and it felt really bottom-heavy. It was also $39.99 on sale.

The Skil reciprocating saw was $54.99 on sale, but the Masterforce, which comes with an actual hard case rather than a canvas carrying bag was $64.00 regular price, so I’d probably go with the Masterforce. Everything about them other than that was the same, except I like the pivot foot on the Masterforce better.

I wanted to see what a chainsaw would cost, so I looked at the 14″ ones, both gas and electric. I was really surprised by the difference in price between the gas and electric. Gas was $109 and electric was only $34.99. The electric one at Sears was $59.99. I don’t actually plan on buying one very soon. We already have an offer from my mom’s boyfriend to use his next week.

The big project I’m going to work on planning for is the retaining walls and planters to fix our erosion problem on the side of the house. I still haven’t measured for how big these retaining walls are going to be, but I got prices per unit for all the supplies we’ll need, so once I have measured we can figure out how much it will cost. Here’s a list of supplies I will need for the project (and the prices I gathered today):

• Paver base (50 lb. bag – $2.38)
• Pea gravel (50 lb. bag – $2.39)
• Retaining wall bricks (88 cents each)
• Top soil (40 lb. bag – $1.14)
• Flagstones ($1.44 each)

So, the plan as I see it in my head, having never done this before, is this:

1. Measure the area to build the walls
2. Add up how much of the supplies I’ll need
3. Buy the supplies I’ll need, plus extras
4. Put the first layer of bricks together so they fit properly
5. Mark the final layout where the walls will go
6. Dig a swath for the base layer of bricks
7. Pour paver base into the swath and tamp it down
8. Build the brick wall
9. Put a layer of pea gravel inside the planting area
10. Put a layer of top soil inside the planting area
11. Put some plastic edging strips at each end of the pathway between the two planting beds
12. Level the ground and put down paver base
13. Lay flagstones to make a path
14. Pour pea gravel around the flagstones and up to the walls to fill in the rest of the space
15. Plant hostas and other shade loving plants in the planter beds

At least that’s the plan as it appears to me in my current state of being under the influence of a valerian root sleeping pill. We’ll see how coherent all this looks to me in the morning.

[tags]budget, Clear Lake house, future plans, gutters, power tools, retaining wall, trees, yardwork[/tags]