Would a beam by any other name smell as sweet?

We officially have permits.   When we dropped off the paperwork yesterday we were told we needed to wait until Tuesday, Jan 2nd.  Then we got a call today saying they reviewed our permit application and asked if we could come down and fix it.   Once we fixed the errors, they assigned us our permits within an hour.   So we're ready to work!!

Except for the framing.   Just in case you didn't know, pieces of wood can be 'beams', joists', 'studs', 'boards', or about 10 other words.   So when I wrote my application for the wood replacement, I just wrote "replace beams".   Apparently beams are what supports the house and if you want to replace beams you need to have an engineer come out and check them first.  But what we want to replace is 'joists' and once we can confirm that, then we can get a permit for that too.

So today, with the help of Ryan 'Dr Drywall' Donovan, we:

Painted the first coat of trim and base color on the upstairs rooms.
Worked on getting the bathroom ceiling smooth
Put up half the 1/4" drywall in the kitchen
Fixed more drywall in the laundryroom
Installed a front handrail
Fixed the striker plate on the front door - now locks easily and securely
Installed the new handle on the rear screen door

Hair of the house that bit me....

Well, its been a little while since we made a post about the actual house.

We won our hearing to be considered a duplex.   We're just so relieved.  We're still a bit bitter about the fact that it's delayed our plans for 2 months, which means that we're doing the bulk of our work in the cold weather.  But it could have been worse, we could have been doing the bulk of this work in the cold after having LOST our status.  So there's always a bright side.

We've been doing some random things.

• We repaired a few concrete bits while the weather was still ok.  
• We worked on our fancy doorway.
• We fixed the large holes in the walls and spackled most of cracks and imperfections.  This takes a lot longer than you might think.
• We cut out the window between the bathroom and laundryroom and bought some wood to frame it out.
• We replaced the broken window on the back of the 'princess' room.(below).

The window that we replaced was a gas filled window where the outer panes had been broken - so it looked ok, but didnt have any insulating properties.  A replacement window would have been about $200, but we found this brand-new one at ReStore for $30.  Its woodgrain unlike the rest of the house, but there are no other windows in that room, so its looks just fine. 




We got cracking on the ceiling in the bathroom.  The ceiling had a large hole in it from a water leak which has since been fixed.   We thought about just doing a patch, but because the ceiling is plaster and our patch would be greenboard, the seams would be odd and the textures would be different.   So with Ryan's help we put in a crude patch to make the surfaces level and then re-drywalled the entire ceiling.

We then took some 1/4" drywall and re-walled the back wall you see in the photo with the big chunk missing.   1/4" drywall is our new friend.  There are quite a few spots in this house where the walls are damaged, and using the 1/4" goes over and makes a nice smooth resurfacing of even the worst wall. 

Taking apart some parts of the house, we found some cool things.  In fixing the door we found the original lock still inside the door, with a stamp on it from 1862.  Also, in doing our wall repairs, we had to take out some more of the plaster from the walls to make a good shape for the patch, and found a some human hair.   It was quite common back in the 1800s to mix hair with the plaster to make it stronger, so people would go to the barber and take the old hair and mix it in.   I found a website of a guy who was able to find about 12 different colors of hair while restoring his house from 1875.

WE WON!!!!!

On the fence

So we've been plugging away at the house, little by little.  One of the problems we had was that our house is on the middle of the block and had no fence in the back yard.  That meant that anyone could cut through, and a lot of people did.  We were always picking up beer cans and other trash from the back and side of the house.  We also had zero privacy.  Quite often we'd be working in our back yard, only to find people cutting through, once even stepping over the wood we were cutting.   So we planned early on to put up a fence. 

Months ago we found a guy on craigslist selling some old fence bits.  We drove over and picked up as much fence and posts as we could carry for just $100.   It was so heavy, we nearly tore the roof rack off the poor old Previa in the process.  

Oddly, we were allowed to get our permits for this fence work.  The lady behind the desk said, "well, you're going to do this work anyway, if its a single or duplex."  I replied that we were going to fix the plumbing if it was a single or duplex, but that seemed to fall on deaf ears.  In any case, we're happy that we could at least put up the fence before the frozen ground made that impossible. 

Rather than wrestling with shovels, we just went ahead and rented a 2-man auger.  It was the biggest tool that Effie or I have ever used and took a bit of skill to get used to.   Being as it took 2 people to operate it, no one was available for photos, so I photoshopped this image to give you an idea of what we look like operating it.  We realized we forgot the shovels which are needed to move the dirt away from the holes so dad brought them over and helped us auger the last holes as well. 

Then in with the posts and cement, wait a few days for it to harden (it takes longer in the cold weather), then up with the fence.  We put some pieces along the side of the house to completely enclose the area.

When it was done, we just sat and looked at it.  It completely transformed the house.  It was as if we now had our own space.  Before our house still felt like public property.  There was zero privacy and people always in our yard.   Now we HAVE a yard and privacy and it finally felt like ours.   Awesome. 

While we were waiting for the cement to dry, we spent a couple days spackling the holes in the wall.   We fixed a couple of the bigger ones with drywall today.  We'll get to sanding tomorrow. 

We've also been painting over the graffiti with a Kilz primer, its almost all gone.  

We bought 3 pieces of glass, 2 to fix broken windows and 1 to make a transom over our new interior doorway.   Unfortunately, I cracked that piece while using the nail gun to put the trim around it.  I must have just nicked it.  The crack doesn't go all the way up, so we're still going to use it.  We thought about frosting that piece anyway, so the crack won't show much.