Living in Marsh

We now live in our house and are loving every minute of it.  The sink leaks, the floors have holes, and the backyard is full of dirty dirt that gets tracked in the house and that's okay.  Two of the things we are most excited about (that we didn't even realize we had when we purchased the house) is the turret and the 6ft plus pocket door. 

 The pocket door had been painted to the point where it was sealed shut and the framing used around the door enclosed the sliding mechanism.  Sean used a heat gun to melt the glue and opened up the framing.  We had to dig out all the lath and plaster from inside the wall so it can slide but we got it out and it is an amazing condition!  

The turret in the entry way was visible from the outside of the house but the top 5 feet was enclosed (as you can see where

 the framing stops in the pic).  When we opened the living room up we noticed the turret was open as well.  We immediately knew we wanted to open it up.  As you can see it has a couple amazing windows which allow natural light in.  Its also about 15 feet tall in the center! Such an amazing entry way.  I don't know why anyone would ever want to close this up.

In order to take the wall down that separated the kitchen from the living room we had to put a beam up to hold the load.  Sean (and Jessie and his buddy Wally) put up temporary walls to support the original framing, removed the old framing, then put a beam in.

Temp Framing

New Beam! Bam!

View from the kitchen into the living room- and that amazing pocket door with a little better perspective on how huge it is!

Obviously since we are now living in our house, Sean had to build me a kitchen.  Luckily, Sean had some lovely metal, very red cabinets and a sink laying around from a prior house remodel through work.  They work perfectly for our temp kitchen.  

I don't know how this dog happens to get into so many pictures I take.  This is a view of our temp kitchen that is going to get
 us through this remodel.  Very glamorous, I know.  But best of all it was free!  The refrigerator was from a friend who didn't want it because of the huge head-butt dent in the freezer, but it works great!  We have been using old rugs to help cover some of the holes in the floor that need to be replaced and make it a little more comfortable.  

These are the stain options for the flooring.  Quite a bit in the distance but we keep looking at them.  I think the picture
 makes them look a little darker than they are, we are leaning to the top color.  Its very natural and will look amazing with our white cabinets... which we will have eventually...

OUR LIVING SPACE:

Sean put up new drywall under the window in this room and filled cracks.  His dad textured the walls
 and my dad primed and painted.  We threw in a couple rugs, dog beds and lamps and called it a day.  We needed a safe room 
among the chaos and this room was in the best shape.  If we do end up redoing the bedrooms it will be after everything else is completed.

    Since there are no closets in the house (yet) we have a "dressing room."  This is also obviously temporary but it gives you a good idea of what were living with.  Once we start working on the bathroom that is adjacent to this room we have to move this all to the porch. Notice the nasty walls, which we haven't done anything to.  

This is our hugggge enclosed porch.  Yes, our couch and kitchen table fit on it with room to spare (not pictured is also our coffee table)  We spent a lot of time cleaning this area and making it "feel good" since it will also be towards the last of things to change.

Happy dogs in their new house.  No, we don't make them match their bedding, they prefer to match and do it on their own.  

We also got front a front loading washer and dryer!  I am 100% excited about these and have done so much laundry since we got them installed.  I love them.  They are in a temporary located right now (pushed against the wall).  Eventually they will be stacked on the other side of this room, we think.

    

Post-Parent-Post

I can not believe it has been 12 days since I updated everyone!  As you know from my previous blog, my parents came to town and got to work.  They were a ton of help tearing out lath and plaster (which we will call L&P from now on) while we were at work.  I think the best part was we got to visit with them in the evenings without feeling like we were falling behind on house stuff.  It was nasty, dirty work they were doing and we appreciated it so much, thank you mom and dad! I also had my ten year reunion last weekend, which ended up being a lot of fun!  Thank you Barkley for all the help with that.    

Barkley and I at our 10 year reunion

So now house progress: Sean is still working on engineering how to remove this framing while making sure the house doesn't fall down.  Apparently, it is load bearing so we need the structural support. I have no doubt in my mind that he will come up with something that looks amazing though.

Looking through the living room at the
pre-existing wall

The same view with the wall removed, opening the kitchen
up to the living room.  

We also took out the two windows and the door that make up the wall that separates the kitchen from the back porch/ laundry room.  We know we want to put our refrigerator on one side and figured it wouldn't look proportionate if we left one window with the door.  We can always close it up later or leave it open to a breakfast nook?

We also tore up the kitchen floor linoleum, which was pretty backbreaking work.  It also left a nasty black adhesive on the hardwood floor, which will probably be a mess when we go to sand and refinish the floors.  However, we figured it would be best to leave it then risk gouging our soft fir floors trying to remove it.  Sean also got up in the attic and pushed all the L&P ceiling down.  We have toyed around with the idea of doing a drop ceiling in the kitchen.  We want to keep the cove ceiling in the living room and we think a drop ceiling would be a great transition into the kitchen (thanks for the idea, mom).

This is the best picture I have of the floors, unfortunately.  But you can also
see how open this area is with those two "walls" removed.  Hi dad!

The "Jack and Jill" bathroom L&P was removed completely and the door to one side (we'll call it the Jill side) was taken off because we will be closing it off.  That bathroom just is not big enough for all those doors.  Plus the other bathroom is right off that bedroom so it doesn't need access.  We are considering pushing out the other wall in this bathroom, that backs up against the closet, to open up the bathroom more, but that will more than likely happen down the road. Sean also pushed the L&P ceiling down from the attic in here.  There was a funky head space closed off above the shower, so now its open for design.

Wall on right may still be going, not quite sure yet... 

The small bathroom off the porch will be staying put for now as we will be using it when we move in, but is getting somewhat of a face lift.  We got a new toilet, obviously needed.  Sean will be installing that this week.  We also put a used, but cleaner and newer than the existing, sink in.  I really need to clean that bathroom this week... Not looking forward to it.

Dad installing "newer" bathroom sink.  We still don't want to put anything
 nice into this area we going to be remodeling. 

We made a decision to move into the front room when we move in, so we wanted to get a jump on making that room "live-able."  Orange and yellow walls are not live-able to me, therefore we need to paint.  Before we paint, we want to texture as there have been many patches to cover cracks in the plaster.  Before we texture, we have to fill cracks. So this is where we have started. Sean and I have dubbed this the snowball effect.  We have see it many times thus far with things we think are quick fixes...

The plaster was coming away from the wall under the window so we opted to
 pull it out and replace it with drywall.  The cracks you see look huge because
 in order to properly repair them, you must first gouge the area around
 them to give the plaster an area to hold on to.  

We received some great news from our friend who is taking over our current apartment!  He spoke with his current landlord and he is giving us two more weeks before we move in.  Now, our move in date is Sept 15th instead of the 1st.  This is much needed.  We don't want to keep pushing this date back, but I am really hoping we could get the floors down before we move in.

While I, nor any of our visitors, have seen fleas lately we want to make sure they are gone for good!  Thus far, we have bombed our house three times.  In the backyard we put down a layer of diatamaceous earth and I recently discovered Beneficial Nematodes (via Pinterest, of course).  Nematodes are microscopic worms that feast on the larvae of flies, termites, gnats and over 200 other soil dwelling pests.  I am usually not a huge organic person but with our pups roaming the backyard, I really don't want a bunch of chemicals being sprayed around the house.  Anyways, I ordered a pack of Nematodes from Amazon.  They say 10 million will be enough to cover our 1,000 sq ft backyard.  Good God, I would hope so!  They arrive soaked in a sponge packed in a Styrofoam box filled with ice.  The directions say to squeeze the nematodes out into a bucket then distribute through a sprayer within an hour at dusk or sunrise.  These little guys are picky.  My mom seemed to think it was a scam but I'm convinced.  I even snuck this awesome picture of my parents helping to distribute the Nematodes in the backyard.  They sure are awesome.

This is a picture Sean snapped standing in the back of his dump truck.  He was pretty sure it was the fullest it had even been.  

That Wall

This week has been a little insane.  After the flea incident, we wanted to let things die down a bit, literally.  I am also planning my ten year high school reunion that is taking place this weekend which means a lot of last minute details and running around.  We made it over to Marsh three nights and got some major tasks started. First off: the wall separating the kitchen from the living room.  Sean started pulling down the dry wall (one small area of our house has drywall- the rest is lath and plaster, which i just learned is basically slats of wood with concrete between them.  Much messier to tear down than drywall).  Anyways, at one point the previous owner tore out original fireplace and brick chimney and put drywall up where he tore out.  Here are a couple pictures:

[Insert plug for Pacific Builders of San Luis Obispo: The only Company you will need for your Custom Home Building and Remodeling Needs! (Sean's company)- they really, truly are an amazing company and have completed some amazing houses on the central coast]

 As you can see on the other side of the framing is lath and plaster.  The other side of the wall is that beautiful original wainscoting.  Don't worry!  While we are taking this wall down, Sean is preserving all this beauty so we can use it elsewhere in the house! 

The next night we got a late start, but knew we needed to get really accurate measurements for our CAD drawing of our house so we spent a good hour and half making sure everything was exact.  Sean basically walked around to each and every wall and angle with his tape measure and shouted out lengths and I wrote as fast as possible trying to keep up. 

Last night, we debated whether we should take the dump truck over to the house and decided against it.  Little did we know how much we were going to accomplish!  I set out working on the pulling up the carpet staples and glue (yes they used both- I'm not sure if this is standard practice when laying carpet but seems redundant.  And not fun to clean up)

The left is a picture of what the floor looks like with staples (notice the carpet padding stuck to it) and the pictures below are after.  So clean!  Well sort of.  Interesting paint job, huh? I also did the entry way

Meanwhile, Sean was doing big things in the bathroom.  No, not that!  More lath and plaster coming down. He eventually had to move out of the bathroom because he no longer had a place to put his ladder (note earlier mention of choosing not to bring the dump truck...)

Which was fine because he started working on that kitchen/ living room wall!  Now, I am very excited for this because I love to entertain and have people over.  Having a kitchen that opens up to an entertaining space is a dream for me.  One that I see is taking shape!

 We left some of the structural framing up for now. To the left is the view from the kitchen looking out to the living room and entry way.  Imagine a breakfast bar jutting out from the left of this picture (or from the right of the picture below).  That is what I really want.  Below is looking the other way, into the kitchen.  The kitchen that might have beautiful white cabinets with a farmhouse sink and subway tiles back splash, maybe?

This is where we ended things last night.  Obviously in need of a good clean up.  My parents are coming to town and will be helping us out a lot during the day while we are at work.  I am looking forward to seeing them and so thankful they are coming to work.  Only 24 more days until we move in! 

Fleas...

I had an amazing weekend in the City with Sean's mom and sister.  We stayed up late and drank way more than we should have but you only live once right?  I have not spent a lot of time in the city so it was a lot of fun staying at a nice hotel within walking distance to so many fun things.  We went to Beach Blanket Babylon which was hilarious!  It is a musical/ comedy show that pokes fun at recent politics and celebrities and has been playing for 40 years.  I highly recommend it!  Thank you Diane and Amy for such a fun trip!  

At first, I felt bad leaving Sean with the house duties but realized he could probably get a lot more done without me hanging around asking questions.  And it turns out he did!  The previous owner left a huge mess in the backyard (not just his "moving out mess" but like years of collecting stuff) plus the trash from our recent demo. We really needed to clear everything out and get a good look at what we were looking at.  Not to mention the fleas.  They basically had a perfect living situation with all the junk everywhere!  So while I was gone, Sean, his friend and his father cleared out the whole backyard!! They made three trips to the dump in the dump truck loaded to the top.  Sean also got started tearing out one of the bathrooms.  

The yard before... There is piles and piles of stuff all the way to the back fence!  

and after..

This is the calculated weight that Sean sent to the dump  last weekend!  11,580 pounds of trash!

We knew we needed to tackle the issue of the fleas ASAP so last night we set off some flea bombs in the basement, shed and house and spread Diatomaceous Earth all over the backyard.  Diatamaceous Earth is a non-toxic powder like material that attacks the exoskeleton of creepy crawlies and basically dehydrates them to death (this is my understanding of the stuff, obviously not dictionary worthy).  Our backyard looked like it snowed.  We spread a 2 lb bag of this stuff throughout our yard.  I wish I would have taken a picture.  Anyways, I have read about this stuff before and a lot of people recommend it as an Eco friendly way to eliminate pests in the garden as well.  We treated our pups with the best stuff we can find and have been working on our other house too (vacuuming the couch and carpet daily, washing dogs beds, sheets, towels, blankets, etc.).  Apparently, when you get you fleas they are everywhere...  It is really disgusting but something we are facing right now, so I thought I would discuss it.  Fleas and bugs in general are worse in years when there is a drought and we are definitely feeling it.  I know we are not the first ones out there having to face an infestation like this but hopefully it ends soon.    Until you get the go ahead, when you come to visit us please make sure your pups are treated or leave them at home :)

We decided last night, we really need to develop a solid plan on what we want to do with the floor plan of the house.  We received some great ideas from everyone who has walked through it.  Now, we really need to hone in on what is important to us.  Our rooms are a bit on the smaller side so we have talked about bumping out a couple walls (which would actually line up other walls with the house better and cut down some the awkwardly long living spaces).  We have talked about completely eliminating some walls since the house is so compartmentalized right now.  The final decision is going to be semi difficult for us since figuring out what we want for dinner is usually a thirty minute contemplation.  I'm confident that in the end we are going to have an awesome place with a great living area that is super comfortable.

I'm not sure if I posted a picture of the kitchen with the sink and dishwasher and bottom cabinets torn out, so here it is! 

 

Bathroom in process

 

Jessie hates fleas!

Demo- Day 1

Yesterday after work, we headed to our house like usual.  Our good friends, Brett and Morgan (who have remodeled a couple houses themselves) showed up about the same time we did.  They had not gotten a chance to see the house yet so we showed them around.  We were standing around having a beer, chatting about plans when they actually initiated starting the demo.  (Sean and I had planned on starting that night but didn't want to force anyone into being involved).  

And so it began.  All that nasty (flea infested, may I add) carpet came up.  The boys pulled the carpet up and Morgan and I followed them pulling up the padding.  A gross amount of dust and dirt came out but the floors look so much better!  Brett got to work on the tack-strips and Sean started tearing out the kitchen pass through and cabinets.

Last night's accomplishments included: pulling out all the carpet and padding, removing the tack-strip in the living room and demolishing the kitchen pass through and upper kitchen cabinets.  The back yard was already full of trash left by the previous owner so now its really in need of a dump run.  I am leaving for San Francisco for a girls trip tomorrow at noon so I will be packing, doing laundry and cleaning our current house tonight.  Hopefully by the time I return on Sunday, Sean will have the rest of the tack-strips removed, the other kitchen cabinets removed, the rest of the appliances (fridge, dishwasher, oven) disposed off and the backyard cleaned up and ready for more demolition next week!
We love how much character our house has.  Notice all the wainscoting throughout and the doors with original hardwood in the pictures below.  Our goal with renovating this house is to keep with the times but update it.  After doing some research, we found our house is categorized as "Queen Anne Victorian Cottage."  Sounds fancy huh? Google it for a more complete description.  We want everything to be fully functional and comfortable.  While tearing out the kitchen we found a lot of original fir, redwood, and bead board that Sean held on to.  At first, my thought was "Oh jeez, why are we saving this?! We are trying to get rid of stuff, not collect it!!  I definitely gave Sean the look.  But the wood is pretty cool and I'm sure they will turn into a lovely Pinterest project down the road.

We probably could have gotten more done last night, however we received a call from our neighbor around 8:45 that our pup, Jessie was eating a light bulb.  We rushed home and she had apparently jumped up on the counter and pulled down a box of light bulbs and had actually chewed through one.  Thank God our neighbor, Rocky, heard this and stopped her and called us.  When we got home, she was totally excited to be in Rocky's house and getting special attention and had no idea she did anything wrong. We kept a pretty close eye on her today and she seems to be doing fine.  Just a small scare.

 And now... Pictures from Demo Day 1:

Before: Notice Carpet and the Pass Through from the Kitchen to the Living Room.

During

During.. Notice that huge nasty stain. Gross.

No more Carpet!

Brett getting to work on the tack-strips

Next up: That pass though... 

During (Sorry for the blurriness.  Iphone pic)

Kitchen Before

No more pass through! 

Morgan doing work on the tile! 

Upper kitchen cabinets. Gone! 

Our trash pile at the end of the night...

And just because: Our pups, Jessie and Chloe taking each other from a walk :)