Archive for November, 2011
Wowza
Other potential titles for this post:
- Holy Schnikies
- I (Almost) See The Light
- The Sweetest Sound = A Power Saw
- Best Day Ever!!!!
This post could be called a tease but I like to consider it a keeping-you-posted thing. So many folks are wondering what’s going on around here, so a picture’s worth a thousand words, right? More pics and deets later!
Psst- To anyone wondering about the vents, there’s more info on how we’ve dealt with those here. As for the electrical wire, ours guy’s coming out to get on that.
Channeling My Favorite TV Serial Killer
Things are getting pretty Dexter around here in preparation for our wall opening. Because when walls come down, dust comes out, and therefore protective plastic must go up! So to set the mood I’ve intentionally left these photos kinda dark and eerie. I’m nothing if not theme-y.
Oh and since I affectionately call myself Captain Safety (much like Sherry wishes $herdog would catch on), it bears mentioning that old homes can have lead paint, and therefore call for extra precautions (especially if you have little ones and pets around), so you can find more info on that here. We followed those directions and had our walls checked for lead (it’s the thing to do before work begins so you know what you’re dealing with) and ours came back negative. Which was really surprising to us until we read that homes from 1960-1978 only have a 24% chance of having it, so the odds were actually with us. Definitely one of those better safe than sorry things though, and the government takes it pretty seriously if you don’t follow lead-safe practices. So do what you’re told or Dexter Morgan might come for you…
Anyway, it was nice to know that we didn’t have lead to worry about, but we still knew from experience that there would be a heckova lot of dust all over everything if we didn’t seal things off. We used this method for construction dust control many a time in our first house when we were demo-ing, so we got to work sealing off the work area in both rooms with giant plastic drop cloths that are taped on all sides (while leaving a sliver of access in the existing doorways for folks to pass through while working).
We decided to line the sides of those “walk-through-here” slivers with painter’s tape so it’s easy to see where to step through so you’re not standing there flinging the curtain around for ten minutes to find the opening.
Oh and as for who will be here through the chaos, Clara, Burger, and I will stay at my sister’s house for the day, but Sherry’s staying home to answer questions, tend the blog, and stand behind the plastic sheeting with her eyes bugging out with joy as the wall comes a tumblin’ down.
Also on the dust-control subject, we plan to close all of our air vents in the demo area and then cover them with plastic (like we did here) so no nasty dust will find its way into our ventilation system only to be sprayed out the next time it’s turned on (we’ll keep it off during the job since it should be a one-day thing and our house should maintain it’s temperature pretty well during the day). But as for the vent you see below…
… that will actually be where the peninsula meets the half-wall. So we had an hvac pro come out and ensure that losing that vent (and one on the other side) wouldn’t compromise our system. Then with his blessing I went under the crawl space and disconnected and capped ‘em (so the vent you see isn’t connected to anything anymore). We actually did that in our first house for our kitchen remodel as well.
Oh and don’t worry, my Dexter channeling stopped at putting up the protective plastic sheeting. Well that and taking this creepy photo.
Okay and maybe this just happens to be my new ringtone. But I swear that’s it. Nothing else Dexter-y happening around here. Promise.
I kind of feel like a bad a$$ when my phone rings now. And of course Sherry’s jealous (in case you’re wondering, this is her current ring tone – and she dances like the Jersey girl that she is every time it rings). But back to the wall-opening excitement coursing through our veins. Needless to say we’re doing that is-it-tomorrow-yet thing over here. Can’t wait to share pics of our progress as we go.
Seven Up
Remember how we stopped at this place in Maryland on our way to our Labor Day beach weekend?
And remember how we spotted these cool sign letters there that were made even cooler when we learned that they were meant for a Dollar Tree store and were selling for $20 each? I was obsessed with them and almost took home an E, R, or A, just because (sadly there’s no P, J, S, C or B in Dollar Tree).
Well, I finally got me one. Let’s give a lukewarm welcome to letter L.
Why L? Well… give that L a little 180 degree spin and whaddya get? Our favorite number AND a happy John (our first kiss: 7/7/05, our wedding date: 7/7/07 – even Clara was born on the 14th, which we affectionately call 7+7).
Maybe it makes me a little too happy, actually. Avert your eyes Sherry.
What? Nothing weird going on here. Just a man snuggling a giant number 7. It’s completely platonic, I swear.
So here’s the deal. Since I kept talking about how much I regretted not getting that L, Sherry had been brainstorming a way to surprise me with it (we didn’t realize its 7-like appearance ’til we were back home looking at road trip pictures). Her maniacal planning came to an abrupt conclusion when Lesley read the initial post about it where Sherry mentioned that we regretted not getting one and contacted Sherry to act as a secret courier to help with the surprise. Apparently she lives right near the Ole Sale Barn in Denton, Maryland and her mom lives in Richmond so she frequently makes trips between the two spots. Perfect!
Sherry had planned to surprise me for my birthday next week, but Lesley made a trip earlier than expected so after a quick meet-up-in-a-parking-lot and a cash-for-giant-letter swap, the 7 was mine ours. I was actually really surprised. And more than a little in love (both with the wife for her sweet surprise and with my giant number seven itself). It’s already keeping me us company in the office (still need to figure out what to hang next to it, get a real side table and lamp for that corner, etc).
We thought about hanging it on the other wall behind the chair but we both decided we liked walking into the room and seeing it “smiling” back at us, face first (instead of seeing the side of it most of the time, which would be the view if it was hung on the other wall behind the chair).
Oh, if you’re wondering how it’s hung – it was pretty easy. The letter was still wired with lighting, but we’re not planning to get all Novogratz up in here by actually using it as a light (at least not anytime soon due to the cost of wiring the wall). So I carefully disconnected the two giant nubs on the back that would’ve required it sit out from the wall about an inch and stuffed the wires into the 7 for possible future use (we can fish them out with a coat hanger if need be).
Once those big metal things were removed, I was left with two holes – plus some others at the top – that were perfect for hanging it. I just put a couple of anchors and screws into the wall where I wanted ‘em, and hung the 7 in place.
A big thanks again to Lesley and taking the time to deliver it us (and for temporarily forking over the $25 to pay for it). Yup, the guy raised the price by $5 since Labor Day. Oh well, still totally worth it.
Psst-We’re over on BabyCenter sharing one of the most creative kids’ birthday parties we’ve ever seen. Seriously, it’s so imaginative and fun.
Psssst- We’ll be back with a kitchen update this afternoon. No dust flying yet, but very very soon…
Fab Freebie: Colorful Goods
***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries (it has hit our cap of 10,000 entries) – see who won below!***
Since we maxed out on entries less than 24 hours into the giveaway, we thought we’d go ahead and crown our winner. Random.org has selected… Jen W. (who’s long had a love affair with the color grey, but has lately been drawn to cheery yellows lately). Congrats!
It’s no secret that we loves us some HomeGoods. So how psyched are we to give one of you a $500 gift card this week? Answer: very psyched. And if you’re stumped on how to spend that money, HomeGoods has a new series of “Design Happy” videos to help inspire and guide you. Like the one below that offers up some simple tricks for adding color to a room through pillows & accessories (which just happen to be two of our favorite things to hunt for at HomeGoods):
- PRIZE: $500 to HomeGoods!
- TO ENTER: Comment on this post with the words “COLOR ME!” and tell us…
- BONUS QUESTION: …what color is making you happy around the house these days? Do you find yourself adding lots of yellow or orange accessories lately? Something handsome like chocolate or navy? Or are turquoise or lime accents popping up in every room?
- GIVEAWAY CLOSES: Wednesday, November 9th at 8pm EST or at 10,000 entries (whichever comes first)
- NUMBER OF WINNERS: One
- PRIZE SHIPS: The 48 contiguous United States (although we do try to wrangle as many international giveaways as possible)
- USUAL STUFF: One entry per e-mail address is permitted. The winner will be selected using random.org and announced on Thursday as an update to this post. That’s right, come right back here on Thursday for the announcement of our winner. Good luck…
Note: We aren’t paid or perked for hosting these giveaways, we just do ‘em to thank you awesome folks for stopping in. See our Giveaway FAQ page for more info. Pics courtesy ofHomeGoods.
Opening Soon
This is it. The big wall-opening week (aka: w.o.w). So… woot! The first order of business is to share a few details that we’ve been asked about a bunch:
- how we went about picking a contractor
- how we’ve dealt with permits
- how we planned out the exact spot for the opening (would hate to knock everything down, only to wish we had shifted it a little to the left or the right)
First, here’s why we need a contractor: we love DIY as much as the next guy, but there are some things that we’re happy to leave to the pros, especially when it comes to the structural integrity of our house. We’re no strangers to demo-ing out a small non-load-bearing wall (like we did to create the laundry nook in our first house)…
… but an 8 foot opening in the heart of the house which needs to be reinforced with a heavy-duty perfectly-placed header is definitely something we were happy to do with the help of an expert. You know, since “decades of experience” trumps “DIY blogger of four years” when it comes to let’s-not-break-the-house (more on how we choose what to do and what to hire out here).
So we set off to find the right person for the job by:
- asking friends or family members if they had any recommendations (we even put out a call on Facebook to ask locals if they had a contractor they used and loved)
- visiting their websites to learn a little more about the ten or so people we had on our short list
- weeding ‘em down to our four favorite prospects (based on the info on their websites and the specific recommendations that we got)
- calling all four of our potential contractors to request an in-person estimate
In some miraculous home improvement blue-moon, they all came out and gave us a quote within a few days. We explained that we’d be getting multiple estimates (so no one assumed the job was theirs & so folks would hopefully give us their most competitive price). All of the estimates were for removing an 8 foot section of wall between the dining room & kitchen, installing a support beam above the doorway, adding additional support under the floor, reframing the doorway and threshold, building a short knee-wall for the kitchen peninsula, patching/adding drywall, and installing a door jamb & trim on both sides of the opening.
Here’s where our four bids came in:
- Contractor #1: Nearly $4,000
- Contractor #2: Around $3,200
- Contractor #3: $650-$1,000 (depending on the cost of materials)
- Contractor #4: $700 if we did our own drywall, jambs, & trim ($950 if we didn’t)
Is that crazy or what? And they’re all licensed and insured Class A contractors with decades of experience, so it’s not like any of them would do a bad job. They were all very nice too. We believe the first two contractors are used to doing much more major work (ex: additions in the 100K range), so it might make sense of their bids when you think about the giant undertakings that they’re used to tackling. The first contractor actually included a port-o-potty rental and a dumpster fee as two of his line items (as homeowners who’ve had walls opened in our first house, we knew that doorway debris could be hauled in the back of a truck and that folks could use our bathroom to their heart’s content).
Even before the bids came in, we felt the most comfortable with Contractor #3 (he does work for Habitat For Humanity on the side and is a father-son team, which is always awesome) and Contractor #4 (he’s actually a friend of a friend – John was even a groomsman with him in a mutual friend’s wedding – and he has 30+ years of experience).
So although we loved Contractor #3, the opportunity to work with someone that we already knew (who had been doing this stuff since before we were born) was the deciding factor. Plus the other half of Contractor #4′s team is a girl who is about my age, and you have no idea how much that thrills me (more than it should). So contractor #4 was our pick. Not to mention that he was willing to allow us to do the easier non-structural stuff (drywall/jamb/trim) ourselves – which we love – to save some loot. And let me tell you, $700 sounds like the perfect number after our first estimate came back at 3K over that.
We’ll share more contractor info as we go, but now onto the whole permit thing. We fully believed that we needed a permit for this job from day one. And since a permit is only around $150, we were ready to bring our drawing down to the office and pay our fee (they award same-day permits here, which is really convenient). But before heading down, I decided to give ‘em a call since all four contractors believed that if we talked to a “plan reviewer” and explained a few things we’d be told that we didn’t need one.
So I called and was passed along to a nice plan reviewer named Jay and explained things. It’s too much to get into, but it helped that our house is a one-story ranch (so the load on that wall was just partial and not a full second story of weight) and the fact that there used to be a doorway there about three decades ago helped as well (since it was already partially enforced). The verdict from Jay The Plan Reviewer: we didn’t need a permit after all. So we’re glad we called to save that money and time. These things differ by location though, so be sure to check with your local municipalities to learn about the rules in your area.
As for how we planned the exact opening’s placement, we knew we needed to build in our fridge and relocate an existing 36″ cabinet (which used to live where the stove now sits) in order to begin finalizing the peninsula placement to pin down our opening. And when we found a corner cabinet at the ReStore we were finally able to judge exactly how everything would sit against that wall so we could decide exactly where to place the opening.
We’re still looking for an 18″ cabinet to jut into the room to finish off the peninsula, but since the corner cabinet was the most important part of the puzzle (in order to pin down where we wanted the opening to be) we just taped off where the 18″ cabinet would end on the floor to picture things further and even brought in four chairs to help envision the seating area that will be created when we get that giant 3′ x 5′ counter installed (it’ll have a 12″ overhang on the two sides where you see chairs).
Then we just made sure that we had ample walking room beyond the stools and peninsula that will live on one side of the opening (we’ll have about 4′ of walking space) and decided to line up the other side of the opening with the beginning of the peninsula (things lining up = looks intentional and balanced, as opposed to an afterthought). This will allow the entire 8′ opening to line up almost perfectly with the giant picture window in the dining room, which really should make the newly added doorway look like it has always been there (again, things lining up = looks intentional).
Oh and a few folks were wondering why we were opting for a half-wall instead of just doing a huge doorway with some sort of cabinetry on the back side of the peninsula that’s accessible from the dining room, but we think a half-wall is the best choice for us because:
- we didn’t want the peninsula to look like an afterthought (like it was placed in the middle of a doorway without much planning)
- we thought the half-wall would ground the peninsula, so it would feel solid and supported (instead of more like it’s floating between two rooms)
- we already have four base cabinets in the dining room thanks to the existing built-ins (so we don’t need additional cabinetry/storage)
- because of those existing built-ins, we thought an open bookcase, cabinet, or other form of built-in located less than three feet from the giant wall of existing built-ins would be a bit much
- our threshold would be a lot more seamless (if the half-wall weren’t there, there’d be an awkward strip of cork flooring between the peninsula cabinet and the dining room floor)
Oh and here’s the google sketch-up of the view through our future doorway according to our little tape job…
… and the full floor plan sketch to jog your memory of the top view (much more on that here):
So that’s where we are. Enough words. Bring on the demo pics. If all goes as planned, we’ll be sharing those within 48 hours. Anything major on your to-do list this week? Do anything fun this weekend? Tell $herdog all about it.
Psst- The groomsman pic in this post was taken by David Abel.
