The Goat House Renovation

Are we there yet?

2009-05-26T11:14:00.000-07:00

On Monday the flooring people came and started their work. They had the floors sanded down and two coats of polyurethane put down by early Tuesday morning. The floors were crazy shiny when we looked at them Tuesday night, freaking Amanda out. It turned out that they just needed to finish drying and they toned themselves down. They look pretty good.

Wednesday morning the driveway sealer guy came by and took care of that problem. He used some pretty good stuff from what we can tell and most of the cracks don't look so bad. Our home now has a pleasant mix of smells combining paint, polyurethane and tar. Wednesday and Thursday night after work I completed trimming out the moldings in the rec room so they would be ready for the carpet installers on Friday.

Jeff had no school or daycare on Friday, so I took a personal day. Early Friday morning the carpet guys called and were basically at the new house as I woke up. I got ready with a quickness and headed over so they could install the new carpeting and transfer some old carpeting to our master closet. There was a funky cat box smell in the closet, so we figured getting rid of the old carpet would be a good idea.

It turned out to be a much better idea than we thought as the sub-floor was absolutely soaked. The smell was just a faint wet wood smell, not cat smell. This closet is surrounded by the laundry room, powder room and the master shower, so the leak could be from anywhere. Luckily we got a home warranty with the purchase, so I called them. They got a guy out there pretty quickly and he proceeded to start cutting a couple holes into a few walls. Well, he found nothing and thinks the leak is coming from the second floor. Rather than continue the cutting-fest, he recommended that a leak detection service come out and diagnose the leak. The warranty company was all for that, so we are presently awaiting for a phone call to book that.

Over the weekend I put another coat of paint in the guest bedroom while Amanda finished the guest bathroom and Jeff's bathroom. I mowed the backyard then Jeff and I started weeding our garden area but hit a tiny snafu. I stumbled upon a random wire, not for the first time. I figured this was another wire buried to service their RV, electrified goat fence, something, so I started pulling it up. After about 50 feet, I could see that this wire was actually leading out to the road, so I'm pulling on either a cable wire or our entire house power supply. I'm thinking now that it was a cable line, as I can't see the power company burying their cable 3 inches in the ground. Before I was able to get the wire completely re-buried, it started raining. I'll finish putting that back into the ground soon enough.

On Monday Amanda had to work since her place is only closed for 3 days or something like that. So Jeff and I ventured over again, painting the corners and ceiling areas in our master bathroom and den. Amanda and I picked a nice shade of blue to paint our bedroom, so I rolled on a coat of that before Jeff and I ventured off to lunch.

After a tasty mexican lunch, Jeff and I went to Best Buy to partake in manly video game buying and big TV ogling. The new Punch Out for the Wii was purchased and I can give it a thumbs up. Good times were had Monday afternoon.

Nothing to get hung about

2009-05-18T12:42:00.000-07:00

Friday evening I was on the back slope going mid-evil on the ever growing weeds. They are up to about waist high in certain parts. Much to my amazement strawberries are dotting the entire back slope. In talking to our neighbor she said at one point one of the owners had planted some strawberries on another part of the property. I guess they threw their unwanted berries on the back slope and now they have taken over. So, we've got our own strawberry field.

Late Friday the contractors finished their work. We now have one really big rec room. Although she knew it was coming, a disgruntled Amanda was woken at 7:30 AM Saturday morning so we could begin our painting extravaganza. We got ourselves mountains of paint and started on the rec room. I rolled one coat on the entire ceiling while she cut in the corners with the brush. Once I finished this, I started rolling the walls. Much to my surprise, the dark brown color we chose went on in one coat. We both were pleasantly surprised by this. Amanda followed me around the room painstaking painting the edges near the crown molding and the base boards. To end the day, I put one more coat of paint on the ceiling where they ripped out the old wall. Everything looks pretty good.

On Sunday I was generous and let Amanda sleep until 8:40 or so before we went back over to continue painting. Amanda still had the majority of the rec room to trim out. I spent the entire day rolling the guest bathroom, jeff's bathroom, guest bedroom, den and master bathroom. Amanda came in to check on my progress while I was painting the guest bathroom and decided that rolling the ceiling in the bathrooms would be a good idea since there's no crown molding. This way we don't have to worry about cutting a nice ceiling line. So all 5 of these room are rolled. They must now be trimmed out.

I went by the house this morning to let the flooring guys in. They are putting down a couple coats of polyurethane today and tomorrow. Friday will have the carpet guys laying our new rec room carpeting.

Uneventful update

2009-05-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

We're at the stage where we simply sit around and pay people for their skills. This is a much easier way to fix up the goat house.

This amazing yellow orb appeared in the sky yesterday morning. I am told this is some sort of star that warms our planet.

I used this opportunity to keep staining the deck. It's been a couple months as it's be either raining water or tree seeds. I put a couple gallons down last night and probably have about 3 more to do to finish everything. 8 year old untreated wood sucks up stain like you wouldn't believe.

I was also able to use the painter's 24' extension ladder to take down a ridiculous blind that was covering a window in the foyer. Because of the angle of the house the sun never, ever comes in this window. For some reason one of the owners decided it would be a good idea to prevent ambient light from coming in the window. This is a problem no longer.

Otherwise, things are moving along. The contractor has knocked down the wall between the bedrooms and is finishing up the trim work today and tomorrow. They are nearly complete in putting a coat of mud on all the walls in the two upstairs bathrooms, master bedroom and master bathroom. The painter has completed painting the cabinetry in the kitchen and butler's pantry. Today he should be finished with the foyer, fireplace room, stairs and upstairs hallway.

We placed an order for carpeting in the new rec room. That should be here in a couple weeks. The hardwood flooring people should be out on Monday to put down a couple layers of polyurethane on the first floor hardwood. The driveway sealer guy is on standby if there is ever a window where it isn't raining and we don't have contractors out. He should be able to come out next week.

Tom and Karen gave us some of Merle's inheritance money, so we ordered up some nice furniture for the fireplace room. We've going to buy an area rug to finish the room. Amanda has also put a Roomba on the list of things to buy with these funds. I will refer to this thing as the cat torture device forever more. I'm sure they will be scared to death of a vacuuming robot waking up during the day and bothering their sleepytime.

Little stuff adds up (That's what she said)

2009-04-27T07:46:00.000-07:00

So the work continues on the goat house. Our contractors got pushed back two weeks and are not starting the remodel until May 4th. This substantially tightens up the other projects we have lined up which include putting down a couple coats of polyurethane on the floors and having new carpeting installed in the new rec room.

On Saturday we had a couple guys out moving our gas line about 10 inches so we could get the stove installers back out to put in the downdraft and cooktop. It was a pretty easy job for them as everything was easy access in our basement. The stove guys are coming on Wednesday the 29th to finish installation.

Also visiting on Wednesday is the carpet cleaning guy. The carpet is actually in pretty good shape, it just has some stains in the hallway that may or may not come up. We decided that rather than install new carpet everywhere upstairs we'd have the carpet cleaning guy give it a go first. Better to spend a few hundred bucks and hope than a few thousand. If the hallway won't clean, we'll have the carpet from the rec room transferred to the hallway.

Saturday morning I finished removing all the tape from the kitchen walls. We think it looks pretty good. I then tried to cut down another dead tree, but my chainsaw is apparently a piece of crap and kept not wanting to start. I'm going to have to take it to a repair shop for warranty work.

I was going to finish staining the deck on Saturday, but we've got some trees that are dropping these wispy stringy seed things right now. As fast as I sweep the deck more fall off the tree. Staining the deck seems pointless at this point, so I'll have to wait a couple weeks until the tree decides to stop seeding.

After I finished for the day on Saturday I went to Lowe's and tried to get some free paint for Jeff's room. What a debacle his room turned out to be.

First, we got two gallons of guacamole. We needed a bit more paint to finish off one wall that didn't take too well so I went back for another gallon. It turns out that the first two gallons we got were not guacamole. They were some other random color that spit out because the machine wasn't calibrated correctly. We didn't dislike the original color, but it didn't match the new color. I didn't want to re-paint the entire room, so we tried to use their color match system on the scraps I had remaining from the first two gallons. They gave us the new gallon free for screwing it all up the first time.

This gallon didn't match, so I was faced with the reality that I was going to have to re-paint the entire room. I got Lowe's to give me the two gallons of real guacamole and Sunday morning I painted Jeff's room again. I'm sure it will need a few touch ups, but it's basically done.

I got another darker shade of brown for the rec room walls that I'm very happy with. We'll see what the boss says....

Our driveway is in terrible shape. In a shocking development, the old owners never bothered to seal it or anything. I got some rubberized crack filler (insert hilarious joke here) and spent about an hour repairing the most egregious breaks. Parts of the driveway are so far gone it's not worth trying to fix. The driveway sealer guy is coming out this week when it doesn't rain and sealing it for maybe $70 more than it would cost me for all the materials. This is money well spent.

During the week Jeff and I planted some seeds in some pots to start germination for a garden. We planted dill, jalepeno, parsley and basil. It only took a couple days for one of them to start sprouting. I would tell you which one is sprouting, but I didn't bother to think about labeling the pots. Oh well.

I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay...

2009-04-13T07:34:00.000-07:00

Friday saw tornadoes and heavy storms. We had a couple dead trees topple over so Saturday morning I got to do some further work with my chainsaw. I would have just left them on the ground, but one tree was propped up against some other tree down the hill. This is not exactly a safe situation for Jeff. The tree was somewhere between 30 and 40 feet tall, probably 15 inches in diameter at the base.

Using my extensive knowledge gleaned from watching lumberjack competitions on ESPN I went to work felling this mighty beast. I notched one side of the tree and began cutting through the other side. Well, gravity and physics won out over my 16" chainsaw and it got stuck right in the middle of the trunk. After unsuccessfully trying to free the saw for about 5 minutes, it was time to resort to plan B, my trusty sledgehammer. 5 or 6 blows saw the tree break in half and come crashing down. The saw fell out and was unscathed.

The rest of the weekend we painted and painted. I tried to finish up Jeff's room, but the gallon of paint we got at Lowe's was a complete mismatch to what they gave us before. When putting it on it was not noticeable, but now that it is dried it's probably 2 shades lighter. Good times.

Amanda taped up the molding in the kitchen and I put the first coat of yellow on the walls. Off white has won the cabinet color voting, and the color of choice is garlic clove from the Chicago bungalow collection of historic colors at Porter Paints. How fitting.

I got a quart of a dark brown we are going to put in the rec room. We are not pleased with the tester, as the color labeled "cardamon" should have been labeled "feces". Back to the color wheel on that one.

Giving the public a chance to vote

2009-04-05T16:03:00.000-07:00

We need your help. We are trying to decide whether to paint the kitchen cabinets a similar off white color (their present state) or a color called twig green. To give you a feel for the flow, our finished dining room is here (We're good painters, huh?):

This will flow into our butler's pantry, seen in the back here. The pantry walls will be yellow like the kitchen, cabinets either green or white like in the kitchen:

Which then flows into the kitchen here:

Various pictures show the kitchen and different angles, etc. The one cabinet I painted the entire face green would actually look a bit darker once a professional puts real paint on the doors. This is only "fake" color, not real paint.

Put your votes in the comments section or send me an email. tmr_1877@yahoo.com

Finally, here is Jeff's room in all its guacamole green glory. Amanda is shown touching up the corners and the edging.

Spielberg isn't completely worried yet

2009-04-03T05:26:00.000-07:00

I was finally able to figure out the software on our Flip camera and have uploaded a few movies that Amanda shot to Youtube. These were taken the weekend after we closed, so the house is shown in its as purchased state except for a couple leaf piles I had already made that morning.

Exterior

1st Floor

2nd Floor

Honorary landscaper for a day

2009-03-30T12:01:00.000-07:00

So we were able to get quite a bit completed this weekend.

Amanda finished taking down the tape in the dining room and cleaning up / touching up the baseboard, chair rail and crown molding where needed. It's slow, tedious work. Once completed she taped up the molding in Jeff's bedroom.

I worked on the following:

1. Power sanding the master bath butler's pantry and kitchen.
2. Mudding up the holes in the butler's pantry and kitchen walls and hand sanding them so they are ready to paint.
3. Mowing the front half of the yard. It's pretty sloped near the road, so I'm going to have to figure out the best method to attack this going forward. Thankfully my neighbor used his riding mower to do the back yard in about 5 minutes. This would have taken me at least 20.
4. Weed eating the ever growing weeds on the slope in the backyard. I was completely covered in grass after this adventure since it was pretty wet after the rain we had.
5. Siphoned out the hot tub again as our cover solution just isn't working. I found a scrap 2X4 which is taller than the Jenga tower of bricks presently in the tub. I think it will work now, as the "roof" over the opening is pretty steep now.
6. Got to use my chainsaw on the dead tree stump sticking through the deck. Tom's idea was to cut it out and put a planter box over the hole. We decided this was an outstanding solution, so we bought the box. I cut the top 3' off then went below the deck to finish the job. I made the cuts then proceeded to push the freshly cut top half off the stump. Jeff squealed "Awesome!!!!" as the stump plummeted through the hole. I nearly squealed in horror as I thought this thing might hit me, so I turned to get away. Well, the ground was completely muddy and sloped. I went down quite quickly, and Jeff had a good laugh at my mud covered arm.
7. I Started painting Jeff's bedroom. I did all the edging with a square edging tool which worked quite well. I started rolling and called it a day when it became apparent I wouldn't be able to complete the first coat in any reasonable period of time. Jeff wanted green as his color, so we took his new dinosaur bed linens to Lowes and he picked out the lovely shade of guacamole.
8. Went back to the rental and proceeded to spend the next hour mowing that lawn. Yup, I mowed two lawns today. I hope everybody in Chicago enjoyed getting more snow in one day than we got all winter in Nashville.

“I figured you’d want to work late”

2009-03-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

The in-laws took the long drive south by south-east to come for a visit over the weekend. We last saw them over Thanksgiving, so they had yet to see the house. I figured I’d leave work a bit early Friday since they’d be getting in around 4. I went in and asked my boss if it was okay to check out around 3. He thought this was a strange request, thinking most in my situation would ask if it was okay if I stayed late to get some extra things finished.

Over the past couple weeks we did the following with little to no excitement:
1. Mostly completed painting of the dining room.
2. Cleared out all the ancillary garbage left in the house by the old owners.
3. Trimmed out some of the rusted ancient fencing around the future fire pit.
4. Continued doing my Rocky workout routine (named by my sales manager). This consists of carrying large rocks up the hill.
5. Did a final round of leaf blowing, ridding the railroad ties of their final layer of leaves.
6. Manually knocked over a few rotted out trees so they don’t fall and crush Jeff. This won’t happen much longer, as I have purchased a chainsaw. Tom (my father-in-law) asked if it came with an insurance policy. Sadly it did not.

Saturday morning we went over the house before Tae Kwon Do class so Tom and Karen could see the place. We all then went over to watch Jeff and Amanda wail on punching dummies and drag themselves across the floor using only their legs. I loaded up on supplies at the Depot and we went over to the house.

We were going to stain the deck, but there was a line of storms headed our way. The chance of rain was low but it’s wasn’t worth risking it. It never did rain, but as you will find out later it didn’t matter. Instead of staining, painting and sanding was on the docket in the house; demolition on the outside. Amanda worked on cutting in the edges of the dining room. It should take one more coat of edging as well as re-rolling one wall. Then we’ll have to take care of the light green ceiling and we’ll be done in there. Karen worked on sanding in the kitchen as that’s our next room to paint.

Meanwhile, Tom and I worked on tearing out the already semi-destroyed lattice work by the hot tub. This wasn’t too difficult, just tedious work picking up all the small wood bits and taking them to the ever growing pile of garbage.

We then tackled the last two goat fence posts. I decided to go with option B in removing them, which if you’ll remember is going medieval on the concrete holding in the 4X4s. Along with my chainsaw purchase, an 8 pound sledge hammer made it into my cart. It probably took us 20 minutes of digging around the base, bashing the base and levering the top against the ground. These beasts were buried 18 inches deep and had the rich clay earth holding them in place.

The first came out with relative ease compared to the second. It turns out the second post was partially buried along with the half-assed gravel driveway they installed for their business. First we had to break the base separate from the driveway then break it free from the post setting. As we got toward the end, Tom was pulling on the top of the post and I was pushing from the other direction a couple feet lower. We finally freed it with one last mighty push/pull. The problem was Tom wasn’t quite ready for this to be the last effort and he went tumbling down the hill a bit.

After this Tom went inside to help paint the pantry while I moved up a dozen rocks for the fire pit. This ended up our workday for Saturday. It was Tom’s birthday (Karen’s in a few days), so we took them out to dinner at a local steak place and it was pretty good. We came back to the house and ate the cake Amanda and Jeff had made for them, along with some cheesecake given to us by the restaurant because they had overcooked Amanda’s steak.

Sunday’s forecast looked much better, so full steam ahead we went on staining the deck. First we cleared out the furniture from the porch then swept and spot cleaned the deck. I guess the birds didn’t much care that I spent 473 hours power washing the deck and crapped on it anyway. Once done with this we started in on the railings and spindles.

The stain we wanted to use was at some off-site paint store. They’re mainly a contractor type place, open until 5 during the week and noon on Saturday. I figured the guy running this place was probably pretty knowledgeable. I told him the approximate size of our deck and how I thought it had never had anything applied to it, even though it’s 5-6 years old. He proceeded to look at the back of the can and told me the can says 3 or 4 gallons should be enough. Thanks for your expertise, Bucky. I was guessing maybe 6-8 gallons, but I’m not going to argue with the guy. Maybe he’s right.

Amanda, Karen, Jeff and Tom worked on the inside railings. I worked my way around the outside using the extension ladder.

This was a pain for two reasons, the first being the obvious difficulty of only being able to stain a few spindles at a time before having to go down and move the ladder. The second reason was the ground was sloping quite a bit on the highest parts. Initially I just dug into the ground with my trusty shovel to make it level. This worked a couple times, but I quickly came upon areas of the driveway where I couldn’t dig.

You know how sometimes you get that table at the restaurant that won’t stop wobbling? Well, I usually just shove a couple napkins under the offensive leg and have a level table. I figured this trick can also work with 16’ extension ladders so my solution was similar; one brick under the offending leg. Now I’m not a big fan of ladders, so I had Amanda come down and spot me the first time. Her job was to simply make sure the brick didn’t move.

I was probably 8-10 feet in the air, not far enough to kill me or anything but far enough it would hurt if I fell. Amanda informed me in no uncertain terms that if I came tumbling down, she was getting the hell out of Dodge. Lucky for me it went off without incident. Secure with my newfound masonry skills I sent Amanda back to work and braved the remainder without a spotter.

With our 4 gallons of stain we were able to complete all the railing, spindles, benches, some trim on the porch and maybe 12 steps. We still have the entire deck to stain, trim on the porch and over half the stairs. I think the stain guy was off by approximately 3 gallons. When the stain ran out we called it a day and headed back to the house.

Tom and Karen headed back to Macomb this morning, a lovely 8+ hour drive.

I'll get some pictures up soon enough once we finish the deck and the dining room.

Ryan Bed and Breakfast - Estimated opening July 2009

2009-03-09T12:56:00.000-07:00

It appears that some folks want to venture South for a visit. Come July, there will be an open invitation to anybody wishing to head this direction at any time. Just don't plan to actually hear any country music on our homestead.

Our house is a quick 30 minute drive to downtown Nashville. We've got something for everybody:

1. History buffs will like visiting the Battle of Franklin and the Battle of Nashville Civil War battlefields.

2. There is a pretty nice mall within 10 minutes of our house, a really upscale mall 25 minutes from our house and an outlet mall 35 minutes from our house.

3. Everybody already knows about both types of music down here, country and western.

4. Finally, anybody interested in wearing funny hats can drive down I-65 and see the hilariously bad Nathan Bedford Forrest statue, complete with all the flags of the States of the Confederacy!! It will give you a chance to teach your kids about the wonders of private land ownership and free speech.

If there is an extremely heightened interest to do something before summer ends, we can try to coordinate a group visit and have a big blowout housewarming party. There's plenty of rooms and flat camping area (For people who actually like camping...God help you).

It's about a 9 hour drive from Chicago or a 90 minute flight on Southwest. I saw one way fares from MDW for $49 right now which is crazy low.

I can now better relate to John McCain

2009-03-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not referring to staying up past my bedtime to debate Wacky Baracky or choosing a laughable Vice-Presidential running mate. My chosen running mate is fairly competent. I'm referring to McCain's inability to lift his arms over his head.

Here's a picture of what I completed on Saturday, all dried and everything.

Sunday I completed the power washing festivities. I had initially figured it would take about 4 hours to finish the deck, then a little more time to do the front porch and a couple gutter and brick areas on the house. I based this on extrapolating the time it had taken me to do a decent chunk of the main deck, figuring the rest should go just as easily. I was also racing against the clock, as rain was in the forecast around 2 or so. So at 8:30 I started washing.

11 hours later I was finished. The weathermen were wrong again (How can I get that job?). I failed to include in my calculations that stairs, railings and spindles take significantly longer than flat surfaces. Also ignored in my calculations was the old economic axiom of the law of diminishing returns. This is a substantial factor, considering you are taking a guy who spends 90% of his work life sitting on his butt, 9% walking to the printer and 1% eating goodies for somebody's birthday. Now you are asking him to do manual labor for two days solid.

The final cleaning tally of two days of work:

Sidewalks - ~250 square feet.
Front Porch - 15X5.
Front Porch railing and spindles.
Front and rear concrete steps - 10 or so.
Brick facade on front landing - ~120 sf.
Gutter facing - ~30 feet.
Hot tub - all filth has been moved to the bottom of the tub.
Basement entrance concrete pad - 6X5.
Screened in Porch - 25X10.
Main Deck - 36X18.
Hot Tub Level - 18X10.
Built in seating benches - ~35 feet.
Wood Stairs - 28 in total.
Railing - ~50 feet.
Spindles - My abacus broke trying to calculate this number.
Patio furniture moved off screened in porch and back on.
Assist garbage guy in entirely filling the back of a walled up modified pick up truck with a small portion of the trash left by the old owners.
1 destroyed canvas gazebo thingy.

The last item was a battle I won without even having to fight. There was this decrepit canvas topped 10X10 patio cover thing. It was falling down and needed to be welded or something. I thought it was horrendous. Amanda liked it. I tried to reason with her on several fronts.

First, the deck is nearly 100% covered by trees. I tried to explain to her that there are these lovely green items called "leaves". They will sprout forth from the trees in a couple weeks. These "leaves" will bring with them something called "shade". "Shade" will block the sunlight naturally, just as well as the gazebo thingy, rendering the gazebo thingy pointless. Second, if it's raining and you would like to sit outside, we have a SCREENED IN ROOFED PORCH that you can sit on. Finally, the view of our yard was being blocked by this monstrosity. Luckily for me Mother Nature unleashed some wind fury and the canvas top ripped overnight. I was given the green light for destruction. I spent about 30 minutes tearing this down.

RIP decrepit gazebo thingy.

One thing I thought about last night was how lucky we are to have this problem. After some rough estimates, I figured out that the square footage of our deck exceeds that of our entire first townhouse in Lombard.

While I power washed, Amanda sanded, washed and taped with amazing precision throughout the entire dining room. This was a ton of taping considering we have baseboards, a chair rail, 5 windows and crown molding in the dining room. She went through an entire roll of that blue painter's tape. Once completed, she started brushing in the primer on the edges. Jeff now believes that we are painting the dining room pink. I told Amanda last night we should go with the eclectic theme, leaving the green, white, pink, blue and red hodgepodge for all to see.

You're welcome, men of Nashville

2009-03-07T15:35:00.000-08:00

So after one short year in Nashville, I have already helped to make it an amazing place. I like to think that if I hadn't moved here, Aurora would have won this going away.

We're men, we're manly men..

Full of an extra rush of testosterone and 75 degree weather, I went to Lowes and rented a pressure washer. The goal was to clean off all the sidewalks, the bricks and mortar on the front of the house and the deck. The deck is especially disgusting.

A bit of backstory from last weekend; Jeff and I went there on Saturday while Amanda was on call and I continued to paint the concrete blocks in the basement. Jeff was inside playing his DS, and I had just microwaved some passable frozen beans and rice concoction. I was trying to carry the plastic tray and a bottle of water down to the basement. Remember, there are no stairs inside so I had to go via the deck. The deck was a bit wet and the instant my foot hit the landing I started some crazy slide. I went from upright to instant genuflection in roughly .1 second. Given I am one graceful cat, I didn't lose a single rice kernel. There was such a layer of filth on the deck, you couldn't even safely walk on it. Given this backdrop, it was time to get it cleaned.

The friendly tool rental guy showed me how to run the machine. It came with 3 nozzles, green, yellow and red. He told me red will put a hole in vinyl siding and I probably shouldn't use it on the deck. I decided I would start with yellow on the sidewalk. It worked all right, so I figured I'd try out the red nozzle. Well, I fired it into the ground to see what kind of power we're talking about. I'm pretty sure that I drilled down right through the entire North American tectonic plate. With the red nozzle safely put away, I finished the front sidewalk, bricks and part of the railing.

Now you may ask, how dirty can a sidewalk really get in 18 years? I mean, it's a sidewalk, gets rained on all the time, etc.

Well, the answer is

This is our front stoop landing. The grime was unbelievable. It took me about 5 hours to do the sidewalks and the bricks. Then came the deck. The layer of black on the deck is unbelievable. I'm about a quarter done with the deck at this point. Amanda took a couple pictures. It's wet, so it's still a bit difficult to tell. But looking at the right side versus the left, you can see the filth of it all.

One final note on pressure washing sidewalks...there's mud next to them and when you hit mud with a 2400 psi water jet, said mud flies all over the place. After I was done for the day I just turned the hose on myself. Check out the bottom of my pants.

Our final adventure was some boxes. We had ~2500 USPS priority mail boxes from the prior owner's failed business in our basement. I tried to put them on Craigslist for somebody to pick up for free. This worked wonderfully for our T-Posts. Not so much for the boxes. I had at least 5 different people this week email me and say "I'm coming tomorrow." Nothing. Today was the last straw. We loaded up the Pilot and took them to the recycling center.

When vacation isn't really a vacation

2009-02-23T12:33:00.000-08:00

So I vacationed Thursday and Friday to work on the house with Dad and to have a few contractors out to quote on some projects.

Thursday was basically a lost day for me. Every time I started to work on something, somebody was ringing the doorbell. Every time it rings I think I'm at Nana's house and it's 30 minutes past the hour; the chimes are exactly like the first two bars of her grandfather clock's ring.

We're having some quotes done on the following things:

1. Knocking down a wall between two bedrooms to create a large rec room. The home inspector told us it was probably load bearing. Contractor A, who came out last week, said it was not. The two contractors on Thursday both said it most certainly was. I think it's safe to say contractor A has been removed from consideration.

2. We want another coat of polyurethane put down on our hardwood flooring. It looks pretty good now, and we'd like to keep it that way.

3. We'd like stairs to our basement, go figure. There's some headroom clearance issues that preclude it from being a simple job. We think with some shorter treads and slightly taller risers, it will work. Contractor B said he thought so, too. Contractor C started squawking about code violations. Contractor C might be out as well....

4. We'd like to have the kitchen cabinets re-painted as some are a different shade of white than the others.

What we can or can't afford will depend on how many other little things we think we can take care of. For instance, as dad painted the pantry I worked on mudding all the numerous holes and crevices in one kitchen wall created by removing the wallpaper. This will be our test wall. If we can sand it down and paint it so it looks good, we'll use this method throughout the other rooms. If it looks like garbage, we'll have to have somebody come in to do some skim coating on all the walls.

My father is more optimistic than I on the ultimate outcome of my handiwork. Time will tell.

Anyway, during these two days, Dad and I:

1. Scraped wallpaper
2. Completed shaving the porch doors down so they would close
3. Dad painted the pantry while I put test paint up in the kitchen and dining room to check color suitability. Amanda wants red in the dining room. I don't. Guess who's winning that one? We're putting yellow in the kitchen.
4. Carried three larger rocks (~75 pounds) up the hill for the future fire pit. This was another near grabber moment for the old man. It was more difficult than the fencing because we not only had hill issues, our height difference became a problem when navigating up the slope.
5. Power and hand sanded the walls in several places to ready them for mudding.
6. Mudded the kitchen wall twice. I think it's nearly ready for paint.
7. Mudded several other places in a couple rooms. One fun thing I forgot was our ceiling height. We've got 9 feet on the first floor and 8 feet on the second. Well, I had spent a lot of time in the kitchen on the first floor. The first time I went upstairs in the guest bedroom, I zipped up the ladder to the third step to mud a giant hole left from the wallpaper. Well, that 1 foot came into play rather quickly as I cracked my head against the ceiling. Good times.
8. Thursday I cleaned out the goat shed. I carried up 12 large containers of 15 year old clothes, trophies, Christmas trees, etc., from the Goat shed up the rock wall. I was shot after this funfest. Friday I took them the remainder of the trip up to the house's growing garbage pile.

We called Mom Thursday night and asked if she wanted to come down since Dad was staying a few extra days. This way she could not only see her husband but also go see Jeff's art at the Frist Center. She was at the new house by lunch time Friday.

Saturday saw us taking a day off from work. I figured Dad had earned a day off at this point. We went to the museum and went shopping for a new gas cooktop and downdraft vent, our housewarming gift from my parents.

Thanks Mom and Dad.

Sunday saw more of the same. Dad and I got up and started painting, sanding, etc. Amanda, Jeff and Mom showed up a couple hours later. Mom's appearance was just a quick cameo as she had to go back home. Amanda and Dad stripped wallpaper while I did a disturbing amount of power sanding.

I also tried to fix the leaky toilet in Jeff's bathroom. I got some new gaskets which did the job. The problem is that the gasket on the water intake was also shot. It just wasn't shot enough to leak when the other gaskets were doing all the leaking for them. So it's back to the Depot for me to get an entire new flushing mechanism thingy. This should be a treat.....

Short people can be helpful

2009-02-23T10:18:00.000-08:00

From Monday to Wednesday, Dad did the following:

1. Put up screening on the porch. The rocket scientist former owners had this lovely screened in porch. The only problem was up by the roofline they failed to put screening above the headers, rendering the screening pointless. Dad fixed this problem. Job well done.

2. Cleaned out the decomposing mess in the hot tub. Good lord, thank you for my father. Job well done.

3. Put a tarp over the hot tub to keep rain from coming in. Epic fail. He placed some bricks around the perimeter to hold the tarp in place. It rained Tuesday night. The water sagged in the middle and as he tried to dump it out, it all fell in the hot tub. He went to the Depot and bought a plastic tube to siphon out the water. Per my earlier post, his aerobic capacity isn't what it used to be. Siphoning would have to wait until I showed up on Thursday.

4. Painted all the kitchen drawers. These were damaged by the lovely contact paper. Dad fixed this problem. Job well done.

5. Bleached and swept out the entire garage. Old owners had left their cat's litter box in the garage for months after they moved out. Lovely. Scent is now gone. Job well done.

6. Finished scraping wall paper from master bedroom. All is good. Job well done.

7. Started filling in some broken concrete in the basement with some epoxy. Job half done due to temperature constraints.

8. Swept up all the wallpaper related trash Amanda, Jeff and I had left on the floor. Apparently Dad is a clean freak only when doing home renovations. Job well done.

9. Attempted to power wash the deck with a friend's borrowed power washer. There was about 4 drops of gas in the tank, but Dad thought this was enough to start the device. Needless to say he couldn't get it to start. I give this partial fail, as once I showed up on Thursday and got it started the spray hose leaked like a sieve and the sprayer was unusable.

10. Completed painting the mortar area on the concrete block wall in the basement. Job well done.

Dad got more done in 3 days than Amanda and I could have completed in weeks of working off and on between real work and life. Much appreciation and Miller High Life was given to the old man.

And know it is difficult to live the High Life in Tennessee. I went to Costco to get some things Tuesday night. Alas, no High Life. Okay, maybe that pallet ran out. I go to the Smokes and Brews store where I always go to purchase super tasty imported stuff I've never even heard of. I guess they don't want to sell Bud nor Miller products there either, as I take strike two. Finally, I just go to my local grocery store and load up for Dad. All is well.

CPA's are best left to their 10 keys

2009-02-16T09:29:00.001-08:00

So Sunday saw Dad and I painting/sealing the bare concrete block wall in the basement. This is job I can handle. Some quick math said we needed to cover about 450 square feet of wall. The back of the Kilz stuff said a thick coat could cover 300 square feet. We were skeptical, but we bought the 2 gallon container. 1 hour later I called Amanda to tell her that on her way over to stop at the Depot and pick up another 2 gallon container. We'll probably need 2 more to complete the job.

Amanda and Jeff worked on our master bedroom wallpaper, continuing the painfully slow process. Nearing lunchtime, she tired of this and came down to paint. We were leaving shortly to attend a previously planned birthday party, so I went to try to fix our screened in porch doors.

The issue with the doors is the house settled and rendered them unable to close. They needed to have a small amount of wood shaved off so they could close again. Dad and I tried to use a planer and the sander to take off enough wood, but they were not going to do the job.

Dad brought down his trusty cordless power saw, so I started shaving off the edges of the first door. A sticking point came when I reached the handle. You couldn't press the saw down on the wood because you bumped into the handle. The handle is being held in with two tiny screws. Now, most mortals would probably think for 2 seconds and unscrew the two screws holding the handle on. Screw that.

Like a master craftsman, I decide (decide might be the wrong word since the thought of removing the handle hadn't even occurred to me) the best method is to simply turn the saw at a 45 degree angle and go freehand on this baby. Well, this didn't turn out precisely as hoped for. The epiphany came some point 10 minutes later, and I took off the handle and finished the job. The door now closes and the hook and eye actually works.

Amanda was glad to see I still had all 10 fingers. She figured if I did lop off a hand, at least it would have been my left hand. That way I could still operate my beloved 10 key calculator.

Trying to accelerate those inheritance payments

2009-02-16T07:34:00.001-08:00

So Saturday right after lunch Dad, Jeff and I went over to the house to get some work done.

Now you may ask, where is Amanda? Well, see, she was eating bon bons, trying to light the Viking Cooking School on fire and trying to finalize a home based nuclear fission method. Note that only two of those things actually happened.

So after I gave Dad the lay of the land on what we had done so far, we started to get to work. The first thing I wanted to do is finish bringing up the goat fence from the flats by the creek. There was about 15 sections left. The plan was to take it up the rock wall first, then move it up to the discard pile.

I thought I was going to have to call an ambulance, as I was sure Dad was going to have a grabber. Dad works hard on his feet all day, but he typically does not have to walk 25 feet up a hill repeatedly while making tasty treats. After he rested a bit, we resumed working.

After we got the fencing pieces up the rock wall, he stayed up by the house. I pulled the fencing up there while he completed the task by taking it to the discard pile. Much glee was had when we finished, as he was still breathing once we were done.

The only remaining pieces of the fence are the two posts used to hold the gate. I think they sunk these about 80 feet into the ground with industrial concrete. We're going to have to either A.) Tie a chain around these bad boys and use the Pilot to pull them free or B.) buy a sledgehammer and go medieval on the concrete.

Free American Labor - Not exactly stimulating the economy, sorry Barack...

2009-02-16T06:59:00.000-08:00

So my warehouse manager and I were driving to a vendor lunch meeting last week and we see a couple dozen day laborers standing around waiting for work. He told me rather than ripping out that fence myself, I should have just driven over and picked up a couple guys.

It turns out I got a better deal than that by waiting a couple more days. Apparently America is eating healthier and avoiding Whoppers candy more these days. My dad drove down Saturday and is staying the week while he's on leave from the candy factory to help us out by knocking out some tasks. All he asks for payment is beer and food. Mexican labor might have been the cheaper choice.....

On the bright side communication is simpler with Dad. It's been 16 years (man I'm old) since Frau Brown (yes, a German National) taught me embarrassingly bad Spanish at Robinson High School.

Hasta la vista, mi amigos.

Seeking paternity test suggestions

2009-02-11T11:24:00.000-08:00

This is completely unrelated to the house, but was too cool to not mention. One of Jeff's school art projects has been chosen to be displayed at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville. It will be shown with other works from his school district from February 21st through March 10th. The picture above is a scan of a scan, so it doesn't quite do it justice.

Frist Center

Spring has Sprung - February 8, 2009

2009-02-09T19:15:00.000-08:00

It's 72 and sunny here today. These came up in the backyard just off the deck. Enjoy your cold weather Northerly suckers...

Professional Renovation - February 9th, 2009

2009-02-09T19:09:00.000-08:00

So I had a guy and his associate come out today look at doing a couple things to the house.

First, we'd like to be able to get to the basement from the living quarters. Seems reasonable, huh? It turns out that there's not enough headroom to put in standard stairs, so he's going to dream up some spiral stairs to get the job done. That could work.

Also, I'm having him quote how much to destroy a wall between two of the bedrooms upstairs to convert that into a rec room. For some reason, we're figuring we don't really need 6 bedrooms. 4 would probably cut it. Much good news flowed as it turns out the wall separating the rooms is not load bearing. Therefore, they can just destroy the wall and put in a simple cheap header rather than some laminated beam which would be not only uber expensive but also difficult to manage.

The Goat Fence, my arch nemesis - January 20th - Present

2009-02-09T18:13:00.001-08:00

So I've spent the last 3 weekends tearing this beast out. It's a woven wire fence approximately 4 feet high. Try here:

It's attached to both trees (via nails) and steel t-posts (via steel twist ties). These posts have a V at the bottom, making them easy to get in but very difficult to get out.

My estimate is there was about 1300 linear feet of fencing being held up with about 125 posts and bolted to about 20 trees. It takes up probably half of the property, or 1.25 acres.

Knowing this wasn't going to be easy, I figured it'd be a good workout. I went to my friendly Lowe's and bought a sturdy pair of leather work gloves and a heavy duty crowbar. I started my adventure by going at the t-posts with my trusty crowbar. This worked well, allowing me to pop off the rusted out twist ties with relative ease. Then I came upon my first tree. This wasn't terrible, as I was able to swing the crowbar with furious anger and beat the fence free.

A harrowing moment occurred at the back of the property. I was working on freeing it from the tree, sitting/leaning on the fence to give it some tension as I wailed at it with the crowbar. So I've got it about half way off and I give it a strong hit. Well, I completely free all but the last tiny bit at the bottom of the fence. Normally this would be good.

Not this time.

The picture is a bit misleading, but in the middle you can see some greener parts. This is about 9 feet below the ground level. The ~30 degree slope to get down there is covered in spikey briar barbs. Well, as the tension is relieved from the fence, I fall completely backwards on the fence, ass over teakettle. I'm starting to go headfirst down this hill. Being a quick thinking human, I go all MacGuyver and use the still in my hand crowbar to hook onto the fence. I sort of situp and claw my way back to safety.

So after this, I was a bit more careful swinging my crowbar. Things went along for a while until I came upon this tree:

Needless to say, pounding the crap out of the fence won't work on this one. I figure it's time to head to the Depot and get some bolt cutters. These make life much easier and things move quicker after this.

Everything is now out of the ground, I have about a dozen fence parts folded up down below the rock wall that I have to bring up the hill. After that, I'm done. Here is basically all that is left.

Here are a couple photos of the destruction I have wrought.

Free Trophies!!!! - January 27th, 2009

2009-02-09T18:07:00.001-08:00

So while down by the creek ripping out the goat fence, I tell Jeff to come on down and check out the crap sitting in the random plastic containers.

Jeff finds out there is a veritable bounty of trophies down here. I already knew this and figured he'd be excited. He goes bonkers over these tropies, all from the late 80's and early 90's. Tropies for things such as debate, baseball and track.

He shouts, "Daddy, I can't believe that this house came with free trophies."

Good times.

There’s a special place in hell for the inventor of wallpaper

2009-02-09T17:59:00.000-08:00

I hope this guy died from a terrible fungal infection. Really, what’s wrong with paint? All 4 bathrooms, the kitchen, dining room, butler’s pantry and three bedrooms have wallpaper. Some have two layers.

How does that happen? What is that conversation like? “Honey, this old paper is gaudy and peeling. I know, let’s just put new paper over it. I’m sure it won’t peel prematurely.”

There’s another wing being built in hell for contact paper guy. I’m sure some cut rate scientist at 3M messed up another experiment and came up with this garbage. Can’t you just take a sponge, some soap and water and clean the shelf? Wouldn’t that be simpler than painstakingly measuring, cutting, peeling and placing the contact paper juuuuust right?

Some lovely examples:

Buying the house: aka Any Jackass can become a Realtor

2009-02-08T19:56:00.000-08:00

So this house was heading toward a foreclosure on December 4th. Illness and bad business decisions caused the owners to stop paying the mortgage. The mortgage was upside down to the tune of ~$175k-$200k. The owners had a friend in the business and they listed it with him. Know the only way this Realtor gets paid is if the bank accepts a short sale for less than they are owed. If it actually goes to foreclosure the agent (to be referred for the duration of this post as MJDIR = Moronic Jackass Douchebag Idiot Realtor®) doesn’t get a dime.

So the RE market is tanking and the MJDIR lists the home for $639k. After a couple weeks with no activity, he drops the price to $579k. At this price point and with the public knowledge of the outstanding mortgages, anybody with a brain knows it’s going to be a short sale.

So there is an open house one weekend in early October. Amanda is working her last weekend with the wondrous organization known as Tarzhay (Target for sad sacks without one).

We’ve been on a mission to check out various neighborhoods (both new construction and old homes) to see what’s out there for when we move at the end of June 2009. Jeff and I go check out the home just because we haven’t seen the subdivision yet. We love it. I tell Amanda to go and see it on her day off, and she does. She loves it. We call our agent (Coby Ginsberg) and tell him the situation and make an offer of $424 plus all closing costs plus buying out our lease (net ~$400k). Coby talks to MJDIR explaining that it’s a fair offer, no matter what it’s going to be a short sale, etc. Coby tells MJDIR he should take this offer to the bank and see what they say. It takes a few weeks of back and forth and still nothing. This moron didn't even approach the bank and obviously has no clue. Amanda and I write it off figuring it wasn’t meant to be.

Our mortgage broker happens to know the sellers personally, so he makes a phone call and tells them how MJDIR is being completely stupid. The owners figure this out and see that we’re actually going to help them because it will keep a foreclosure off their credit reports. They fill out the necessary paperwork and the wheels start rolling. This is mid-November. The owners have moved out and the home is now empty.

The bank starts the process and delays the foreclosure pending approval of everything. MJDIR should be driving this, but he does absolutely nothing. My agent and mortgage broker do everything.

Then a snag occurs, as the bank sells the mortgage to another bank on the day of foreclosure. This is good and bad news. It’s bad because we have to start the process all over again with the new bank. It’s good because new bank probably bought the debt for pennies on the dollar and can now just flip the house for a quick profit. It’s more likely new bank will accept the deal than old bank. We lower our offer knowing this. New bank settles on $410 plus all the other stuff.

Good news also comes in that the insurance adjuster came out and looked at the roof. There was hail damage that they have to pay for. New roof for free = happy Ryans. Of course, MJDIR has no idea how to handle any of this. My agent comes through again and we have a new roof.

Finally, everything is approved after much wrangling and hassle.

My agent gets his full 3% commission; MJDIR gets a 2% commission. Then at the end there’s a bunch of problems. Apparently my mortgage company was unaware that there were dozen’s of rule changes on 1/1/2009. The day of the closing on 1/13/09, they all of the sudden realized this. I show up to sign the mortgage and sale papers only to be told it’s not happening. More wrangling ensues between the agents, brokers and mortgage companies. An agreement is finally reached, and on 1/14/09 we get the house for $405k, $19k less than our original offer. We're shrewd negotiators like that.

But it’s not over. The bank screwed up some percentages and our payment was off by some fraction. I had to go back on 1/20/09 to sign the final documents. So we think it’s done.

And so the Adventure Begins - January 20th, 2009

2009-02-08T14:55:00.001-08:00

On Tuesday January 13^th, Wednesday January the 14^th, and Tuesday January the 20^th, Amanda and I bought our new place just south of the city limits in Franklin, Tennessee.

It was a pre-foreclosure home which took almost 3 months to buy. The bank had to buy out our lease on our rental home, so we will be using the next 5 months to fix up the Goat House to our liking before we move in. This also makes it so we don’t have to move Jeff to another school during the year.

The house was built in 1991 on a little over 2 ½ wooded acres. The lot is ~450 feet deep and 250 feet wide. A tributary of the Harpeth River runs along side the property. It’s a two story home with a basement you can’t get to from the living quarters of the house. It’s got about 3200sf plus ~600sf in the basement. Presently it has 6 bedrooms and 3 ½ baths. There is 45 feet in elevation changes in the property from the house down to the stream.

The reason it is the goat house is because the old owners kept several goats on the property. Everybody we talk to down here that is familiar with the subdivision says “Oh, you bought the goat house.” There’s even a large shed down by the stream for shelter for the goats. You’ll see those pictures eventually.

The previous owners also ran a medicinal balm business out of the basement. They left barrels out back which contained Eucalyptus Oil and other mystery ingredients. I’m figuring it was all just a cover for a meth lab.

I’ll be catching this up to make it current, so you’ll see a battery of posts at the beginning. Please enjoy laughing at us. Here's some more photos of the property.

A photo from the bottom flats by the creek up the hill, showing the rock wall. Everything you see is our property, except the sky of course.

A view of the house from the flats by the creek.

The creek; it moves quite quickly.

Our property line ends somewhere in the back just before you see the last set of whitewater.

Again, our property goes as far as you can see. This is from the back of the property toward the front. You can see the back of the house through the trees. The split rail fence divides our yard from the neighbor's