Archive for October, 2007
‘N Sink
Making over the kitchen meant that we had to say bye bye bye to our old farmhouse sink in favor of a sleeker undermount stainless steel model. We loved our old one for its depth (9″ is more than enough space to hide loads of dirty dishes) but this new double bowl undermount stainless version (also 9″ deep) will look fantastic with our swank granite countertops and the heck-of-a-deal faucet I won on eBay yesterday.
Similar models sell for about $250+ at places like Lowe’s and Home Depot, but thanks to my new superpower (finding great deals online) I scored it for $163 on plumbersurplus.com (with free shipping!). I even hit up Google for a coupon code which ended up saving me an additional five beans. Hey, every little bit counts.
Light My Fire
I’m still not used to the weather here in Richmond. Growing up in Jersey and living in New York for 6 years taught me that come September, mother nature means business. Up North, it routinely dropped from the high 90s in August to the low 50s in September, and I hardly ever got to beak out my shiny new fall jacket before I needed my big down winter one.
Well Richmond is a completely different ballgame. Averaging 0.00 inches of snow accumulation every winter, it’s a much more mild climate and snow shovels are optional. And we have four full seasons here! I’m still adjusting to the 74 degree fall weather (Thursday’s forecast) in November.
But the nights are finally getting chilly, and yesterday was an exciting milestone. We lit out first fire of the season and broke out the flannel sheets. I blame our 50 year old drafty windows (which we’re replacing within the next month- whew) for the cold evenings of late, but I have to admit sitting by the fire and snuggling up under flannel sheets is fun after a long hot summer. Who knows, we might actually have to turn on the heat in a week or two…
It’s A Wash
Our new kitchen faucet could not have been a better deal. We snagged it on ebay (at our contractor’s suggestion) for an unbelievable $200+ below retail. We’re at the fun stage of the kitchen renovation where we get to choose hardware, fixtures and faucets- but the fun part can add up quickly so we’ll take all the budget saving discounts that we can get.
Check out our brand new $71 (!!!) Price Pfister brushed nickel faucet (which also includes a handy dandy sprayer for Burger baths and a cute undermount soap dispenser). Can’t wait to see how it looks with our granite countertop and undermount sink.
Playing Plumber
The weekend kicked off with what seemed to be our biggest plumbing project ever. Mainly because it required turning off water to the entire house (which involved me sticking my hand down a muddy, bug-filled hole in the front yard with a tiny wrench as my only weapon.)
We were fixing a small leak the floor guys created when they re-installed our bathroom pedestal sink. It couldn’t be fixed by simply turning off the water under the sink because that shut-off valve was the very source of our problem. And the last thing we wanted was a leak onto our new floor. Luckily, we had been able to temporarily tame the leak by turning off the sink’s cold water. It just meant some hot hand-washing for a few days.
Who’s the better plumber?
Although (or maybe because) we braced ourselves for difficulty and disaster, it was actually pretty simple. Turning off the water to the house – gross but no problem. Detaching the bad valve – required some force, but we got it. Screwing on the new valve – easy, once we identified the right piece. Fortunately, we had armed ourselves with a collection of valves from Lowe’s. We basically raided them of anything that remotely matched our vague mental image of the piece. One was perfect and the other six got returned to the store today.
So now the leak is gone and we’ve put away our plumber’s cracks. Well all of us except for Burger.
The Grass is Always (Getting) Greener
So you saw how we made way for grass in the backyard (not quite ready for an “after” picture yet) but we never mentioned that we were also reseeding the front yard. Consider this your official notice.
I’m experiencing yard déjà vu because it was just last fall that we did our major front yard makeover by removing the jungle that completely obscured our house and replaced it with much-less-obstructive grass. It made a huge difference, as you can see here.
Now, we’ve been forced (somewhat unwillingly) into growing grass again because of a dying tree. That big, forked tree that you can see on the right side of our main blog photo was on its way to splitting in two. Since one half falling on the power lines and the other half falling onto the house didn’t seem like a good plan, it had to go.
The tree removal wasn’t cheap – although our go-to guys at Shady Tree Service took down some smaller pines for free while they were here. It also left us with big holes where the stumps were ground and a lot of uneven soil where the heavy equipment sat overnight. Fortunately, the Shady guys helped spread some mulch and topsoil to level things out and got us ready for seeding.
It’s been about 3 weeks and progress has been a little slow due to the drought and our county’s mandatory water restriction (watering only allowed 3 days a week). But here’s where we were this weekend:
Dirt + Little Grass Spots…………. Grass + Little Dirt Spots
It’s still spotty in a few places so we overseeded this weekend and are hoping the many inches of rain we’re getting this week will speed up progress before it gets too cold. And get us closer to having backyard “after” pics too.
