Painting!

So we finally painted a room, which really feels like an accomplishment since it is actually moving the house toward a finished state. Its really hard when most of the work done is a band aid to just make living here more tolerable. We have some pretty grand ideas but most of the work on the interior of the house has not moved much toward our end goals. The yard work has always felt more productive to me from an end result standpoint.

Stripping and staining the redwood, and painting the office however is an actual step toward how we want the house to look and is quite refreshing. Big thanks to MaGyver for laying down some primer and to our old neighbors J&N for painting assistance. In fact our team of 5 got quite a bit done:

I continued to work on adventures in romex wire. We want to move the Koi pond to the front porch so I installed an outdoor outlet which is substantially more difficult than running non conduit indoor wiring. In addition to installing the outdoor outlet I replaced the sketchy open air connections with actual junction boxes that were *gasp* protected from rain. Sometimes the world rewards you in very convenient ways, in this case the extra conduit I had left over was a perfect fit to cover the exposed wires on the roof that powers the knob and tube. Did not need to cut it at all, and was very pleased by that fact.

While MaGyver cleaned the office then laid down a layer of primer, Belle, J, and N planted the frankentree. This thing is cool, its actually 5 trees grafted onto a single root stalk. It has 2 kinds of peaches, apricots, nectarines and plums. Water one tree, get 5 fruits.

Afterward, J and I continued to paint the office, in the bronze yellow color and Belle and N were patching cracks in the bedroom plaster.

Meanwhile Kai and Toby, J&N's corgi played in the yard and tired each other out. Kai has learned "inside voice" barking where she will bark extremely quietly while inside with us then run outside and bark at full volume. Together her and Toby whipped all the neighborhood dogs into a chorus as they discussed the intricacies of their lives.

Phone back, big update

My phone got fixed and returned this week. The work order said they "Replaced Component" thanks Samsung... Pretty sure they were supposed to send me a shipping label too but never did so it cost me 60 bucks to ship it. All in all very crappy experience. Plus side is Google had all my contacts etc backed up, once I signed back in it was smooth sailing.

Well in the last couple weeks we have gotten a ton of stuff done, and had some mishaps as well. My focus has been on the office which is quickly becoming the most finished room in the house in terms of how we want things to look when finalized. Nearly all of the old white paint has been removed from the door frames and last weekend I redid the electrical and also moved the internet wire to run into the basement then inside an interior wall instead of being stapled around the door frame. Patched up all of the walls and its almost ready for paint.

I also modded some outlet frames which came out very cool bronze looking. Simply sanded the paint off with some 220 grit sand paper to make it look like reflected water. Definitely looks better than the flat black you can compare here. The white outlets still look kind of silly so I might get some black ones or paint the faces. They are not high traffic plugs so paint might not get too scratched up.

Belle has been hard at work stripping the wallpaper in the bedroom. Also last weekend the last 2 gaping holes in the bedroom got patched, which leaves us only with 3 rooms left from the repipe, the upstairs bath which is half done and waiting for a shower, under the sink in the kitchen, and the bathroom by the pond.

Speaking of the pond, one of our Koi fish got sick and died, and worse in the flurry of trying to save/quarantine it the pond pump line got bumped and the water started being pumped out of the pond. We didn't notice and promptly left for work only to come back to all of our fish in about 2" of water as the entire 30ish gallons had pumped out over the course of the day. Luckily it drained through an old shower vent hole and most of the water ended up in the dirt. I guess having a sloping floor helps in some situations. Outside of the one Koi, none of the other fish were harmed in the debacle as the giant albino catfish dredged a trench in the sand and led them all to safety.

We are once again insured! I took to the roof to nail down the flashing the insurance company complained about. Since our roof is very high up (30' maybe) and our biggest ladder is 6' the only way was to come down from the top. I tied off to the chimney and slid down to the edge. Quickly nailed the flashing and cleaned out the gutters. Was not too worried but it is a long way down, big thanks to whoever did the brickwork on the chimney 100 years ago.

The plants are doing fantastic, even the pepper plant that the tree trimmers landed a pecan branch on top of is rallying.

I added an outlet to the basement when I was doing the wiring for the office.
I replaced a broken outlet next to the microwave, and we no longer need to use an extension cord.
Brother and I knocked out/dug up the old dead palm tree stump and most of it fit into the green trash bin. Going to get the rest in this week's load.
Mom came by and cleaned up the rose garden.
After the rain (roof was fine btw insurance ppl) the yard looked really good, cool green clovers are popping up all over by the orange trees.

Dead bushes and phones.

Well my Nexus-S smartphone bricked (when attempting to write a DIYKai last week) and took its pictures with it. We have had a lot of progress go down in the last couple weeks. Here are some highlights (no pics for obvious reasons):

Tree trimmers came through, and while they did a lot of work on the trees and yard they were a bit indiscriminate about their destruction. The other side gate was knocked off its hinges and probably needs to be replaced (hey I know exactly how to do that). The avocado tree and pepper plant mentioned in the previous post were killed mere days after by reckless trimmers. :(. We also just discovered a massive palm tree stump where hideous bush version 2 lived. Suck, that thing will be a PITA to remove.

Some walls have been patched! I suck at mixing plaster, too thick and it solidified in 5 minutes first time, too thin and took forever to fire second try. Wallpaper in the bedroom is being scraped.

I did some stripping in the office, and then stained one of the window frames to match the built in bookcase. Stripping/sanding off the 7 layer dip of (probably] lead paint is not an easy task nor a clean one. Apologies to the lining of my lungs and stomach. We are sampling some paints in the office, and thinking about colors for the bedroom too! If the office window is an indication the redwood will look fantastic once restored.

The homeowners insurance company has already threatened to drop us if we do not make repairs. Shockingly the issue they have is with the roof??? The roof that has been replaced within the last 5 years and that, I, PaGyver, our awesome home inspector and everyone who has looked at the place said is fine. Ok so Belle calls them up and it turns out the issue is just that there are leaves on the roof and one flashing is bent up, not that the entire roof needs to be replaced as their documents indicate. /whew, much easier task. 20 Gallons of water down the roof (told you it was fine) cleared the leaves, and I will figure out how to get a hammer to the flashing asap. Is it a bad idea to tie off to the chimney and rappel down to the edge of the roof? It must be at least 30-40' high so my ladders are out of the question unless I can convince PaGyver to bring down his 40' extension ladder.

Other things:
*Bathtub removed from downstairs bath to prep wetroom install. A clawfoot from 1923 is sitting in our backyard.
*Belle built some cool cactus planters for the front.
*Installed a wireless doorbell with ringers at both gates.
*Belle started cleaning the bomb shelter rations from 1973.
*Mounted a hose rack and added spray nozzles.
*Found the rest of the seller's realtor's lock.
*Took a load of yard waste to the dump
*Brewed a hazelnut porter -- first homebrew on ye' olde' stovee
*Adventures at the garbage dump.
*Filled a bagster. Actually these suck, if you are considering them think again. The cost compared to hauling stuff to the dump yourself just sucks 140 bucks vs 48. Also it is smaller than expected (same size as my truckbed...), you cant fill it higher than the bag (4', but feels more like 3) and you dont get the bag back after they dump it (bag costs 39 bucks then 100 to dump). I almost feel like emptying the contents into my truck driving to the dump then returning the bag to homedepot and saying it was too small for our job.