Inchworming along

More makeup was applied to our little piggy again this afternoon.  The list of little things is getting whittled down, but (there's always a but) we did discover a few more things to be done.

From the big and fancy perspective, we set the washer and dryer in place in the laundry room.  They're soo tiny!  It's like they're for hobbits.

Figure 1.  Tags on so they'll know they're new

Problem with that is, we have no dryer vent.  Think we can get away without one?  Um, probably not.  Looks like another project for the weekend post-listing.

We did make real progress elsewhere though and are able to strike another one off the list as completed and done, for real, finally-like.  With no beat up pickup in the driveway we were able to document the doneness of the guest bedroom.  It looks, like a rectangle!  But, if you look at this iPhone (TM) developed panorama, it looks like it belongs in Ripley's Believe It or NOT!

Figure 2.  Lights ON Fans OFF!

Perhaps among the more important things though: the boss (Hi Wife) grouted the lines on the countertops and on the hearth.  Having that continuous line there really helps a lot, and really eliminating one's ability to see unfinished-ness can only help.

Figure 3.  So fresh and so clean clean!

In the bathroom we attempted to replace the broken mirror with an unbroken mirror.  But, we broke another mirror.  Guess that's what, like 42 more years bad luck?  Ok, that's not true, we didn't break this one!  Yay for competency!  Three cheers for not breaking something!  With the mirror in place and the bathroom clean (enough) for pictures, cross that bad boy off the list.

Figure 4.  Completely not this big!

Figure 5.  That's more reasonable

With any luck, tomorrow's the last and final day for us to get this place ready for pictures.  That means that we have to get the kitchen, sunroom, living room, dining room, master bedroom, and master bathroom ready to go.  That's practically nothing, right?  With pictures of all that stuff, we should be able to sign some paperwork giving our real estate agent a kidney and two lungs (yeah, it could be that bad) and with that, we'll be officially official.  Hopefully we'll get there!

A peek under the hood

Following the big push of the weekend, we're still shooting for a listing in time for the holiday weekend.  However, since we've accepted our fate that we won't be "done done", we're trying to just put some lipstick on this sucker so that we can take pictures for the listing.  Don't roll your eyes at me though, just because it's listed doesn't mean it's done.  We do intend to actually finish stuff up.  Of course, if someone shows up with a big check on Saturday morning before I've finished laying quarter round, well, by all means, the game changes a bit.  ...but I'm not expecting that.

It's with that idea in hand that the "vacation day" work list was formed.  To take advantage of a well lit day, the objective was to try to get some decent shots of the outside.  So, lawn tools in hand, we set off.  If I remember correctly, there was some lamentation made about six weeks ago about how I shouldn't be mowing this lawn anymore.  But, here we are, very nearly September and I'm still mowing at Garvin.  Is this the last time?  Perhaps.  Also, we tried to clean up the azaleas out front and blow a bunch of leaves around.  I mean, who doesn't like using a backpack blower?  It's like pretending you have a cool superpower pushing swaths of leaves around like they're, well, leaves.  Ok, so it's not that cool, but still, it beats digging ditches.

Figures 1-3:  Here's the outside: "Finished".  Look, the realtor wanted "Options" and for the garage to be included from the street view.  Well, there's a tree there, I'm not digging it up or cutting it down.

 Figures 4-5.  A layer of schmutz was knocked off the garage for this.  Portrait?  ...or Landscape?

Figures 6-8. The out-of-doors!

 

After that, but while still schweaty, nasty, and covered in day-bree, I met with the realtor who was beyond grateful that we'd replaced the mailbox.  She was also impressed with the way the floors turned out.  Not sure if she was skeptical given the state previously or if she was just blowing smoke, but she mentioned the floors more than once.  We discussed our options, lock box procedures and she made a few more recommendations (like installing more kitchen shelves) before bidding adieu.  With her gone, activities moved toward eliminating the hobo-encampment on the back patio.  I guess we've just been lazy with putting tools back and just cleaning up in general, but that took way longer than expected.  Post hosing out and sweeping and this is what the patio's supposed to look like.

Figure 9.  Ok, I guess it needs a table or chairs or something, but it's as done as we're going to done it

  

Next on the list of projects was to tackle the cutting of a mirror for the guest bathroom.  After taking one of the old mirrors downtown to be cut (and breaking one in transit, oopsie!), a newly cut, appropriately sized mirror was ready for installation.  Since hoisting and mounting (teehee) is a two-person job, that needed to wait for the Boss (Hi Wife!).

 

With that, the work transitioned to "framing" the hearth with trimwork.  But, since I suck at adhering to the old adage of "measure twice cut once" (I only measured once and cut my only piece of trim a 1/2" short - Nope, not bitter!), a trip to the depot (remember, it's Deh-poh, not DEE-poh) to replenish.  Then, with the help of the trusty (but not yet rusty!) chop/miter saw, it got done did.  By that time, the Boss (Hi Wife) had returned.  She wandered around being productive doing things like painting doors and installing hardware, I was relegated to the bathroom.  ...cleaning, thankyouverymuch.  Hardware polished, fixtures cleaned, touch-ups painted, shower head installed, yadda yadda, we moved to mirror installation. [Ed. note: No, no pictures, quitcherbitchin'].

 

Long[er] story short[er] after a little cussing, we got the newly cut old mirror installed, making another room that much closer to completion.  But, passing by a few minutes later I noticed a nice little crack in the corner of the mirror at the mounting point.  "Hey Kelly, looks like the mirror's cracked", I said rubbing my finger along the spidering.  She hadn't finished replying sarcastically, "Great" when the crack became a full blown break and our mirror was being removed.  Hard to believe my delicate touch could've over-torqued the screws, but I guess that's what happened.  ....OR, since the mirror was hot from being out in the sun, it expanded and then began to shrink as it cooled off to indoor temperatures putting unacceptable stresses on the fixtures.  Yeah, that sounds better.  Either way, we're still out a mirror.  POO!

 

By this time it was getting dark which meant it was the perfect time to make precision cuts (outside) on our tiles so that the hearth could be tiled.  After much cussing and measuring, measuring and cussing (by me, not the boss), we arrived at the following:

 

Figure 10.  Yup, that tile looks familiar.

 

The next two days's's after work activities will still be focused on putting lipstick on this piggy.  Hopefully Friday's post will include a link to the listing.  We shall see!

 

 

A big push, but not quite home

Well, it appears that our eyes were a little too big for our stomach.  Wait, that's about eating.  Seems the gist is likely conveyed though.  Despite the are-you-kidding-me heat, our air conditioner kept working (thank God!) allowing us to avoid doing anything outside despite the fact that the weeds are "tall".  With that theme in mind, we tried to put some of those almost finishing-touches in place.

Saturday was another glorious demonstration of dogs humping watermelons.  In the morning, all of it, thanks, we spent attempting to fill a gap between the cabinet and wall in the kitchen.  Acting like a petulant child, I did my damn[d]est to scuff up the floors.  Let me say, I think I could go pro in plinth chucking.  Much like Bobby Knight throwing a chair, it was a very deliberate chuck, again, meant to emote like a 4 year old who didn't get another bag of Skittles.  Well, here's to being mature.  Once the boss came in (Hi Wife) to right my wrongs, we successfully got that gap covered.  Alas, no picture.

After that, more boring work was done.  Air register covers were installed.

Figure 1.  Both boring and more difficult than one might imagine!

...painting and installing shelves in the closets:

Figure 2.  Not quite enough room for the Boss's accouterments

Also, we returned to normalcy with the cabinet doors, replacing the incorrectly drilled one with a new door.  ...and a handle (fancy!).  No pictures of that, specifically, so quitcherbitchin already!  More boring painting was done in the laundry room, in the bathroom, on various doors and such.  Hard to believe how much painting there is, but hey, at least there's still more to go!

Saturday ended with almost 3 hours at the Depot (that's Deh-poh, not DEE-poh), picking up more things that were begrudgingly put in the cart.  ...more trim, microwave vent stuff, doors (that we didn't need, yay!), and other odds and ends that somehow took us 'til around 9:00.  Home Flipper PRO TIP:  Don't deny the boss's dinner until after 9:00 pm!

Sunday, however, we arrived regrouped and ready to go, thanks to a Starbucks run (not mine) and four chocolate frosted Dunkin Donuts (owner: unknown) and a chocolate milk.   Before peak heat arrived (but while still wonderfully hot), new shelves were cut for the owners suite (gag) closet.

Figures 3-4.  Only the finest quality melamine.

While I was outside using substandard tooling, the Boss (Hi Wife) demonstrated her delicate touch in painting the mantle.  Previously, it's quite possible to have confused a mantle with a mysterious shelf that held a bunch of random crap over the fireplace.  It's amazing how much nicer it looks without random light bulbs and shims on it.  ...oh, and with a fresh coat of paint.

Figure 5.  A mantle with no stuff on it?!

Against my frugal ways, the Boss went ahead and put in the rest of the light bulbs (and even installed the shades!) on the dining room light.  Until we're done, it's going to be a game to see if we can each hit our heads on it and break bulbs or knock the shades down.  Over/under currently set at 2.5.

Figure 6.  This place is really comin' around!

The real crux of the story though came in the kitchen.  [BIG ANNOUNCEMENT FORTHCOMING].  It's almost completely usable now.  Seriously.  Fo' real.  We spent far too long dilly-dallying around and avoiding drilling massive holes in our wonderful tile and cutting large holes in our cabinets, but... we caved in and did it and went ahead and installed a microwave.  Granted, the vent's not tied in, but you can't even tell that, so it doesn't count.  It turns on and heats up water and everything!  Tested!

Not only that, but we ALSO put the fridge in place.  ...and plugged it in!   ...AND connected the water line!  Whoa!  So, tomorrow, I'll put beer in the fridge and have easy mac for all three meals simply because it can be done!

Figure 7.  BAM!

Also, the backer to the peninsula cabinets was installed, and the plinth (there's that word again) and trim were all installed.  Loogit all that fanciness here:

Figure 8.  Not the same picture, promise!

Whoa, whoa, closer inspection to the photo above shows evidence of the plinth-which-caused-the-chucking-of-the-plinth!:

Figure 8a.  Yup, that's the sonuvabitch!

You know you'd wanna throw something having to cut and finagle that stupid piece of wood up in there.  I mean, I'm only human!

Don't let the presence of the range deceive you, dear reader.  It's been merely set there.  If we were cooking with gas (literally!), I'd've reference'd stove generated mac 'n' cheese, not easy mac.  But, full blown mac 'n' cheese is within range.   Repeat, withIN range!

All the while, somehow bosslady found time to paint and install the doors on the bathroom vanity in the guest bathroom.  Yup, you guessed it: Black.  Looks good though.  That bathroom just needs more paint, tub fixtures installed, shower heads, even more paint, more cleaning, probably more paint, then it's ready to go, baby!

Figure 9.  You can't see the plumbing (and that's for the best), but it's there and that sink works, too!

Somehow, using special wifely powers to be in multiple places at once, the boss was able to paint all the door knobs, plates and other miscellaneous door hardware.  Who knew there were so many things that needed to be painted oil-rubbed-bronze?  Bosslady, that's who.

Figure 10.  Check out that keyhole!  Still needs knobs, we know; they're drying (yes, that was a semicolon).

More on tap for tomorrow.  Yup, that's right, while all you suckers are working, I'll be... wait, awww crap, I'll be working too.  More progress to come.  It may be on the market by the long weekend, yet!  Keep them fingers crossed.

Completely Floored!

Yeah, so professionals are better than us at some stuff.  I'm pretty sure that no matter how much elbow grease I put into a sander and polisher that I couldn't have gotten the floors to look like this.  Granted, what I thought was going to be a three day enterprise turned into a six or seven day adventure.  Either way though, we're pretty pleased with the way the floors look.

Figures 1-3.  It's like a bowling alley in here, with slightly less of a stale beer smell!

With the floors done that let the boss (Hi Wife) and me get in and scuff them up, er, I mean, keep working on some of the other projects.  That meant that more bootlegging was done in the electrical department as we hung the dining room light.  Woof, this project was about as productive as a couple of dogs humping a watermelon (that means it wasn't terribly successful, and wasn't as fun as we'd hoped), but it's done.  ...ok, not completely, because we don't have all the bulbs, but that doesn't really count, does it?  Also, bear in mind that the "plan" was to hang it over a dining room table off to the side, but, seeing as how this place isn't furnished, the chain is in a cabinet for the new tenant to use at his or her (let's cut the crap: HER) discretion.

Figure 4.  One herpy, derpy bulb, but it still lights up!

While that was going on, the boss was busy installing a mirror in the master bathroom.  Color me impressed, it's level!  It's square!  If you ask me, that means it has no business in this house with it's curvy walls and sagging floor, but hey, that's "character", right?

Figure 5.  Installed just to provide another view of the towel hook

Before dogging off and going to dinner, we also installed a new door on the cabinet (with correctly placed handle, natch!), so you can put that in your pipe and smoke it, too!  Tomorrow's sure to be another busy day.  ...don't tell anybody or hold me to this, but we talked to the realtor and have tentatively scheduled to list it on Monday.  Now, I'm what I'd like to call hopeful-but-not-confident that this will hold, but we'll just have to wait and see.  If we're going to make it, tomorrow's blog post is going to be a doozy.  Tune in tomorrow to see if we make it out alive.

Is that a train?

Today's work was difficult.  We can get to what was accomplished through a quick game of twenty questions.  Unpleasant to do?  Check!  Low bang, high effort?  Check!  Difficult to photograph?  Check!  All right!  That's right, we painted some doors!  We cleaned out some gutters (Nasty!)!  We mudded some ceiling light fixtures!  Oh yeah!  Put up an 80's era light on the patio.  All Su-PER LAME!

In the other half of the day though, some pretty interesting and photogenic tasks were performed.  The first is probably best prefaced by a little backstory.  With the cabinets installed with the vent in place for the microwave, we wanted to add some degree of finishing to cover the ugly vent.

Go ahead and check out an older post.  I'll wait.  Here, I'll even save you some scrolling: http://steeleflamingo.blogspot.com/2014/08/a-little-wordy-but-ive-gotta-rant.html  You can kinda see it there.  Ok, not really but I did just make another $0.03 in ad revenue from the extra clicks.

Ikea plinth (I'm trusting that that's a real word) to the rescue.  Couple that with chop saw POWER and a finesse touch and it leads to what you see below.

Figure 1.  A disembodied arm!

BAM!  No more exhaust pipe.  That disembodied arm is touching up spots that needed a little painting.  There was enough of that to go around, kthx.

While that was going on, the boss (Hi Wife!) added another couple of coats of polyurethane to the sink and backsplash in the master bedroom.  Don't let me forget to add some clear caulk to those joints, because I know we're gonna forget that.  ...it's not on the list!  With the lighting the way it is kinda makes it look like it's ready for it's solo at the Fox.

Figure 2.  Why did we take a picture of something clear?

Taking credit for some of the work yesterday that we didn't photo, we did install a new mail box.  Now, when we met with the realtor a little while back, she gave us two suggestions  Neither of which had anything to do with putting a countertop in, cleaning up the house, or doing any other of a number of "required" tasks.  No, she was ADAMANT that we should replace the mailbox.  Apparently the sight of the old box was enough to drive away the most interested buyers.  So, we dropped everything and put in the matchy-matchy new (not exactly level) mailbox you see below.

Figure 3.  We're not expecting much mail, I guess.

Floor people will be back again tomorrow to add the first coat of clear.  We're also supposed to get our laundry related appliances tomorrow, with kitchen stuff coming on Tuesday.  All this means we're getting that much closer (to finding major problems) and being done with it all.  I've gotta run because these are coming out of the oven soon and I'm hangry (that's not a typo).

Figure 4.  I lied, I already ate these (cooked, of course), but I'm done here.  They were scrumptious, if I do say so myself.

Addy-os!

This is my awesome

I'm under direct orders to title this entry "This is my awesome" because my niece (the Chicago area niece, not the panhandle area niece) uses this phrase when demonstrating something that she thinks will be awesome (though it may not always be (love you, Lilly)).  It is only in the context that things may not always be as awesome as one hopes that this is an apropos title.

Despite our less than stellar performance today, the floor people have been going full tilt and I think the changes look pretty good.  They've been in and out since the middle of the week (not sure how many "working hours" they're putting in every day, necessarily) and the floors look quite different.

Figures 1-3.  This type of stain is acceptable.  The type of stain on my shirt, however, notsomuch.

Problem with the floors is that they've asked us to stay off them for the weekend.  ...and then probably again while they put on three coats of clear next Monday - Wednesday.  ...that slows progress.

But!  But!  It doesn't mean we can't enjoy the schweatiness of Florida in August!  With the edict having been issued, we took our talents to the garage in attempts to clean it up and eliminate the faint aroma of pee-pee.  As we took a bunch of stuff out to the dump (and the scrapyard, thus $$ yeah!), we were left with a darkish, albeit slightly cleaner garage.  So, we put up some new lights!

Figure 4.  Those babies put out some HEAT!

Yeah so technically that's what the garage looks like after cleaning.  Readers may question that, but rest assured, that is the case.  A pile of vinyl mini blinds, scraps of wood, tools suited for the Smithsonian, a record player!, and some other stuff are now sitting in a big hole in/around Orange County.  Also, a number of questionable chemicals likely outlawed during the Ford administration were also properly disposed of.  See, we're good citizens!  Also, a discerning eye may notice some of the other wood pieces stored in the rafters.  How's that for a bonus for the new homeowner?  I mean, who's not excited by a sheet of slightly chipped siding?

Once done there, the skies opened up and so the boss (Hi Wife!) and I separated, she going inside to paint stuff that "needed" painting.  If you ask me, it was simply a means to be exposed to air conditioning.  Either way, I'm sure it looks fabulous now.  ...not good enough for pictures, mind you, but good enough.  While that was being done, I put my fantastic electrical skills to use to remove the old patio fan and put up a new one.  Oddly enough, there doesn't appear to be a switch to control either the fan or the light outside, so...  that's weird right?

Figure 5.  The DECAPITATOR! (It's mighty close to the stairs)

Those exposed electrical wires will be addressed.  Don't go and call the inspector.  That's where the light's going to go.  Also, those of you with keen eyes may be able to notice what's received new paint on the ceiling.  Think we should go over the old stuff?  NO.  I mean, who looks at a ceiling right?

After that, it was determined that the next most attractive task that wasn't over the wood floors was to start putting in the toe-kicks on the cabinets.  Admittedly, I was quite concerned about this and it turned out way easier than I'd anticipated.  I mean, I only considered strangling the boss (Hi Wife!) once during this process.  ...and once we really got going, it was good, solid work.  I'm pleased with it.

Figures 6-8.  Can you even see it?  No, but we put it up, anyway, dammit!

We're beat now so that'll have to cover you 'til tomorrow night or so, so you're going to have to just deal with it.

Wood-workin'!

We've brought in the professionals.  Against the best interests of the wallet, but perhaps looking out for our backs, we've outsourced the re-surfacing and staining of the floors.  Apparently, this is going to be a multi-day deal, and the folks told the boss (Hi Wife!) that they might even go into next week.  Next week!  Can you believe that?  Must be nice to be able to work at such a leisurely pace.

Either way, here's the progress after day one [Ed. Note: I haven't seen these yet, so I'm seeing the pictures right when you are, how exciting!]

Figures 1-4.  Looks a little different, huh?

Not gonna lie, I'm kinda digging the light color of the wood.  ...and the grain of the wood looks cool, too! ...which, of course, means that it's going to be stained darker than the hopeless abyss of a Sarlacc pit (here, in case you're not as big a nerd as me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarlacc).

On an unrelated note, the boss (Hi Wife) came home the other day and claimed that she'd worn herself out painting the window over the kitchen sink?!  Ok, that's not true, but she did take a picture of it to document my fine handiwork and attention to detail.

Figure 5.  There's no paint on the tile, so don't even look!