How Hard Could it Be

New Chandelier

2011-07-09T13:40:00.000-07:00

I'm sure my facebook friends have seen the great pics of the new chandelier in my bedroom - but - I wanted to post it on the blog. SO pretty and its on a dimmer so it makes my bedroom so pretty. If you're really going to pull off the Hollywood Glamor look - a great chandelier is KEY!

I hate the guest room color

2011-06-04T12:54:00.000-07:00

The Guest Room use to be my grandfather's bedroom. My grandmother loved it because - despite it being the master suite - it was on the top floor and outside the windows are all these trees and birds and squirrels.... My grandpa likes bright colors so we painted it yellow. Well... now that its no longer his room.... I'm not ashamed to say ... I really hate this color. Its too much and I don't really like the yellow with the purple of my bedding. But I like my bedding better.

I'm not opposed to yellow I just hate this yellow. The bed is stained a dark cherry wood. My cedar chest is deep cherry and the couch is cream and brown. The bedding I love is a plum purple. What the hell do I do?

Options for Yellows I found today

The colors I like with yellow and purple is... grey... problem is my bedroom is grey and I don't want a whole grey floor. It would look like an asylum. Which might actually be fitting.

Curb appeal Before and After

2011-06-02T06:35:00.000-07:00

My parents came over this week to help me do a whole lot of work on the front yard. The success of the "growing grass" experiment has had amazing results so I'm taking it a step further with a 50 pound bag of grass seed.... drought resistant :) We'll see if it really works but I'm watering it like mad.

If you remember the awful part of what I was dealing with and what it looks like now you can't see a better result!

And after a whole lot of work and a whole lot of pain in my back/legs/arms/shoulders

I'm going to paint the bench black though. And I really want to put a fountain to the right and a lamp post behind it. . . .but I'm kind of out of money for a little bit....

Hopefully the seed I planted will grow some grass in this dead spot where I've killed off a ton of weeds.

Think Google Street View would replace their image with this one?

Front flower bed - I have a garden gnome I plan on putting in there somewhere. We stole it from someone's yard when we were in high school. I fully expect that if I put it in the garden that someone will steal it. I embrace this and welcome it.

Flagstone patio with bench and side flower bed.

ooooo new grass.... ooooo ahhhhhh and its all soft too!

New shutters!

Awesome house numbers with one of my favorite fonts ... a little art deco a little modern a lot fabulous!

Other potential additions to the yard include:
The big foot statue from the SkyMall catalog

Or maybe Roswell the Alien Sculpture

Maybe a solar birdbath/fountain (my friend Jacque says I have to have a fountain not a birdbath because of mosquitoes)

There are actually a lot of options for solar outdoor fountains. And solar lamp posts... I highly recommend this - particularly if you're too cheap to pay for the electrician to come out and install some kind of outdoor outlets.

The office

2011-05-12T08:24:00.000-07:00

It's really hard to believe this is what this room use to look like just a few years ago. Can you say hoarder?

Basically what we did in this room was rip off the wall paper, patch the plaster, replace the ceiling, replace both the overhead and sconce lights, paint, rip up the carpet, sand and stain the floors, paint the wainscoting, new windows to of course.... and there you have it :)

UPDATED: Master Bathroom

2011-02-27T20:53:00.000-08:00

I hired someone to do the renovation for the master bathroom. I know I know... I've tried to do everything myself, but the reason I've tried to do everything myself is so I could have someone professionally handle the master bath. So.. here we go... Master Bath progress

From This:

To this!

and now this

Master Bedroom Befores and Afters

2011-02-26T14:38:00.000-08:00

This room use to be the room my grandfather used as an office or generally to store his ... "stuff" in. When I came back home from California this is what it looked like. I'll never forget picking up pieces of paper to find roaches scurrying around.... ahh those were the days....

When I started cleaning out the .. hoarding... he had a hard time letting go of a lot of stuff. So I told him he could keep it if he put it in "his room" meaning his office. The good thing about that is I got rid of about 4 porch loads full of stuff but the bad part is I ended up with a room in the house filled to the ceiling with shit.

Finally, I convinced my mom to help one afternoon and Mom, my step-dad, and my friend Josh and I went in there like a swat team while he was at work and started pitching and loading stuff onto the porch. 3 big black trash bags full of junk we threw away and another porch load of stuff we donated to AmVets. I dusted, painted, painted molding and baseboards, the windows of course are new, I ripped up the carpet, sanded the floors, finished them, put on a layer of poly (I've since been told I need like... six layers of poly so I'll do that) and installed new wall sconces from lamps I converted so I could put them on the wall.

Still need to buy a bed frame and paint the ceiling, but here's where we are now.

The evolution of what once was and now is the downstairs master bedroom.

Stairs Sanded, stained, poly

2011-02-09T12:12:00.000-08:00

Ohhhh those were the days. Here's what I did to the stairs. The biggest problem with refinishing hardwoods on the stairs is you can't use that giant machine that is so effective. I had to hand sand them all with the orbital sander and by hand. Booo! But they're done now :)

That's my grandfather - he's helping.

This is them cleaned off and sanded

Then stained

Then Poly put on - so far 3 layers... I need 6 - you'd be surprised how hard it is to find 8-9 hours where no one would be using the stairs or the hallway...

Where all the magic happens

2011-02-09T12:00:00.000-08:00

Or at the very least where all my stuff is... My bedroom is closer and closer to being finished. The lighting went in and I painted my ceiling but ran out of paint for one area... oops... so closer and closer.

This is taken from the front window - except I moved the book shelf to the triangle

Giant triangle where I moved the bookshelf and added another one as well as wall shelves

Pic of the other side of the room - the "sitting area" this is taken from sitting on my bed

The new lights! There use to be a ceiling fan here ... but it's gone now and it's got 4 lights in the ceiling rather than hanging down.

UPDATED: Office Floors Sanded... stained

2011-02-03T18:19:00.000-08:00

And poly put on:

Bring on the awesome floors. Here's the thing about these floors - they're incredibly light. So the stain that I mixed for the living room floors didn't work at all not a match - not even close. So I tried to mix it darker that wasn't right, then mixed it again darker... still nothing. But the darker can of stain was too dark. So basically I ended up dipping my brush in the dark stain, then the light stain and then mixing the color each brush stroke at a time. Hopefully this doesn't end up looking bad.

You can kind of see the lightest parts where it was dry. You're supposed to wipe them down with water before you put the stain on. I think it's supposed to "open the grain" er somethin...

My bedroom begins to take shape

2011-01-20T19:54:00.000-08:00

Remember that one time I started taking wallpaper off the walls in my bedroom thinking it would be a weekend project? Ha.. hahaha ... that's a funny one. Turns out taking wallpaper off of sheetrock is impossible. About two weeks later I finally got it done and painted. The carpet was put in the next day and over that following weekend I started putting things into place.

Pulling off more wallpaper

painting book cases

I have a bed ... in my bedroom now... that I could reasonably sleep in if I really wanted to!

I'm going to put my Bette Paige painting above the bed and the blue Audry one is across the room but that area isn't clean and organized yet. not that this one is really... but ya know... progress....

No idea how to organize this. I have an old diner bar table and barstools from my kitchen when I lived in California. What the hell do I do with them? Plus this whole area is kinda difficult to navigate...

ideas?

Process of he Dinning Room Floors

2011-01-20T19:33:00.000-08:00

Last week I began the adventure of the dinning room floors. You guessed it... more paint all over them. My guess is that during the 90's when my grandpa sent the house on fire (bless his heart) everything was painted, new carpet, etc... and in the process the people who were hired decided... they don't care they're going to put carpet over these floors so we'll just paint them. So they did. And now I want them to die.

The next adventure was that I refuse to go to Lowe's to get the sander again.... ever... So I went to Home Depot and got a drum sander. Oh my god... best decision ever. That thing sanded the hell outa the floor. So this pic is the "let the games begin" pic.

Results!

Paint ain't got nothin on me :)

being stained

Stained floors!!

2 layers of poly so far - but my friend Mark tells me I need like... six... But OMG it looks so beautiful!!!

Looks like an actual dinning room now :)

New Kitchen Tile!

2011-01-13T21:02:00.000-08:00

And AND if that isn't enough.... I hired someone to lay the tile in the kitchen, laundry room, and down the hall. So here's the kitchen :)

OMG CARPET!

2011-01-13T20:47:00.000-08:00

There are few spaces in the house that will have carpet. In my bedroom when they built into the attic the floor that was put in was on top of plywood... so I have to cover that up. My grandfather is an old fuddy duddy who doesn't like wood floors because it makes his feet cold. So ... he's getting new carpet.

Here's what we got!

Papa's Room:

I added some extra carpet along his bed to protect the carpet. Think of it like adding plastic to furniture. He's really that bad....

My Room - still under construction a little but hopefully will be finished this weekend or closer to finished this weekend.

Stupid mistake: not putting carpet in the closet. It's cold in there and I jacked up the floor.. I should have just covered it up.... but I didn't... Smart move: when I got the estimate on the carpet it was like $1700 just for two rooms and not even my whole room. So I looked at the 99 cent per sq ft carpet in stock at the store ... it was fine. So I went with that. Saved me $800. Seriously....

Design Dilemma Need Your Advice

2011-01-01T16:20:00.000-08:00

I've got a design dilemma that I'm asking your advice on. I want a marble counter top. White with the gray veins. Consistent with the age of the house. When it comes to the cabinet underneath my mother and I are disagreeing on color. She thinks I should do a really dark cabinet to highlight the color of the marble. I want to do a white cabinet because all of the wood in the house is white - molding, baseboards, doors, plus I wanted to put white wainscoting on the walls.

So... questions:

Which color cabinet in the bathroom (see image options below)
If you go with a darker wood cabinet do you nix the wainscoting?
What color do you then paint the bathroom (see options below)

Vote at the poll to the right after viewing the photo examples below:

extra facts - the bathroom is the master bath that connects to the Tiffany's bedroom that is below.

Cabinet options
marble with white

Marble Counter with dark cabinets

Upstairs Bathroom Befores and After

2010-12-26T14:48:00.001-08:00

I keep adding and updating paint but here's where I am now - almost totally finished except for the medicine cabinet I need to build but have no idea how to... so feel free to send ideas
BEFORE (with my BFF James about to take out the wall)

AFTER:

My Grandmother's Wallpaper

2010-12-16T18:05:00.000-08:00

In the past year I've heard several women - always women of course - use the phrase "Wall paper is back." One was my mother who said that wall paper was back in and that there are so many neat patters and it was totally affordable now.

Here's the thing. Wall paper is not back in. It's only back in for people who are annoyed with what they've got and they want to cover it up. It's back in to wall paper manufacturers. I call bullshit - wall paper is not back in. I'm not saying that it can't be beautiful or amazing - but I'm sorry... I've got a bedroom with walls that follow the roofline. Do you honestly want to try and hang wall paper on that? I didn't think so.

I've never posted photos of my bedroom on here - but it so far has been the only room I haven't touched... until now. I was going to hold off and do it last. It's an amazing bedroom. Huge - probably 600-700 sq ft. Larger than my first apartment. It was a regular old bedroom, but in the 80's my grandparents knocked out the walls to the attic and built into it. It's amazing.

There is this wallpaper on it that is a sky blue with these little pink flowers with white leaves and stems. It makes me think of the movie Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman and Jessica Lang... There is this scene where Dustin Hoffman - dressed as Dorothy - is at the country house with Jessica Lang and her father and Jessica Lang is talking about the wallpaper she picked out with her mother for her bedroom when she was a kid. Her mother told her that the wallpaper was going to be up there for a long long time so to chose something she liked a whole lot. Every night when she went to sleep and every morning when she woke up it would be there.

She asked her mom which wallpaper she would chose and her mom said that she'd chose the ones with the little daises and rosebuds on them because rosebuds are so cheerful and always waiting to bloom. Jessica Lang's character says she made so many plans looking at that wallpaper - she was always waiting for those rosebuds to bloom.

Of all of the things that I've done to this house - this was my grandmother's last stamp on the house. In 1989 when my grandfather set the house on fire everything got replaced, repainted, redone. Everything except the walls upstairs. In their bedroom there was this awful wallpaper she always wanted to get rid of but never did. In my room, it was paper she picked out and had put up.

Today I started pealing it off.

I'll keep it on two smaller walls - just because it's the last thing of her that's in the house. I know that she'd be happy with what I'm doing - the fact that I'm cleaning it and saving it and making it better, but it makes me sad that she's not here to see it when I'm finished.

So - here's the thing about old wallpaper. It often covers up even older wallpaper. . . and even older than that so on until you get to the plaster.

Such is the case with the blue sky and the little rosebuds. They cover up an awful kitchen looking grid paper that covers up some kind of palmtrees that I am going to guess is actually from the 1930's or 1940's. This paper is the same paper that we had under the three layers of paper downstairs I took off early on in the process.

I've done wallpaper before. I've gotten good at it. What I learned is that the super expensive solution that you buy and squirt on the walls to loosen the paper .... is crap.... and it's expensive. The best bet is a 1/3 solution of fabric softener and warm water. I can't remember who told me about this - but it's 100% dead on and genius. Always use warm water. The hotter the better. Also chose a fragrance that you don't mind smelling for several weeks.

If you're dealing with plaster - get a knife style scraper that looks like a giant razor blade. If you're dealing with sheetrock... use a putty knife. If you're on plaster you can scrape - but if you've got sheetrock when you scrape will peal off the first layer of the paper covering the sheetrock. I learned this the hard way. I assumed because it was old walls they were all plaster... not so much. The new attic walls are sheetrock from the early 80's - the room is plaster.

Some is going to scrape off the first layer of wallpaper but if you squirt it and soak it enough the first two layers will come off because its so thick and softened ... what with the fabric softener and all :). That bottom later the only solution is to soak it and scrape and then you get disintegrated brown sludge. Yummy.

Here is some inspiration for what I want my bedroom to look like when I'm done - think Hollywood Glamor - gray, black, white, and Tiffany's Blue:

I really want to figure out how I can put this chandelier in the apex of where the front roof meets the back roof - no idea how I'll do it

My House is Starting to Look Like a Real House!

2010-12-16T17:50:00.000-08:00

Simply said... it took my breath away.

I mean what do you say? I went to that above from this

And I've got this now...

Here is what the porch looked like last night when I was leaving :)

I had them take the railing off and I'm going to get some white plasticy stuff. I'm overwhelmed. they still have the back and the west side to do - but seriously - the end is in sight and I'll have a house that is beautiful on the outside :)

Last Friday Rick - the siding guy - said that a woman from around the corner was walking in the neighborhood and stopped by and asked the workmen if "he" had sold the house. Meaning my grandpa. He said... "Mr. Burris? Um... no I don't believe so... he still lives here..." and she said "Oh.. well I just can't believe he's fixing it up... I mean it was a little dilapidated.. and what happened to that old car in the back yard??" Sigh....

When the whole project is finished I'm going to have a big party and I'm going to write a special letter of both apology and invitation to the neighbors.

Refinishing Wood Floors

2010-12-10T18:58:00.002-08:00

One of the rooms that was added on to the house when I believe they added the second story in the late 1930's is what should be the true master suite. It's got a full bath and the room is huge with his and hers closets. My grandfather was using that as his "shit" room. Meaning when I was cleaning the house and he would say "I can't throw that away!" I would say ... "fine... put it in your room."

Eventually - one afternoon when he was at work - my mother and I went in there and started pitching things in trash bags. With the help of my mother and my friend Josh we liquidated the room in three trash bags and a porch load of stuff. We hid the bags of stuff in the car and dumped them in the bowling ally parking lot trash cans.... Then I pulled up the carpet to check out the floors underneath. Other than the fact that some dumbass spray painted the floors along with the baseboards... so that sucks. And the carpet pad is so old it is pasted and glued to the floor in a really awful way.

another shot of the room after we painted it

And the process of the floors...

Notice the carpet pad glue and residual carpet pad. It turns out... you can't sand this off. Didn't know that. . . .probably something everyone should know. Don't try to sand the glue and carpet pad off the wood floor.

Also - this is probably a good time to mention that the sander I got was probably not the best sander. I was expecting the mother of all sanders, right? I was ready too - doors on, towels under the doors, windows open. I was ready. Turns out.. this sander is something that doesn't really sand it very hard - its like three hand sanders in one machine and it had a vacuum on it. The vacuum was a cool feature but I can't help but wonder if I had the super industrial sander if it would have taken me a lot less time and sand paper pads which .. we spent probably over $100 on.

So ... trying to sand off the glue and carpet pad makes your sandpaper look like this:

So if you're getting this... you're doing it wrong. Turns out the glue gets heated and melts onto the pads - then the glue cools and then your sander sticks to the floor! Oh yeah... it was a happy learning experience. Then you end up with this stuff on your floor:

So we go and get this stuff:

And you put it on and let it sit for a minute or so and while its still wet you take a little putty knife and scrap it all off. Wear a mask... open all the windows. This is essentially paint thinner - except it doesn't remove paint... I still had to sand that off with the hand sander along the base boards.

Things get a little better:

And then keep sanding.... a whole lot... and sand more and more and more

Then sand more and more and you end up with this:

New Siding Adventure

2010-12-10T18:40:00.001-08:00

This week the siding started. Apparently when you install your windows and siding you always install windows first and then siding because if there's a lot of re framing then your siding goes on top of that stuff. So we did the windows first - windows are in...

But the siding is going up next... We found Rick from a friend of my mother who once worked with her but now her husband and her do construction and contractor work. She typically works with contractors and whatnot to organize projects. But I'm running the show so she just gave me the name of a guy and I called him.

He was super nice on the phone - and really great when he first came out to look at the house and meet me. We had a great conversation and he talked to my mother for a bit while I helped the cable guy who was there to rerun a cable line to another room where the office is now. He was supposed to come back that next monday to measure but totally flaked... but... it was the week of Thanksgiving so.. I sighed and started looking for other names.

A week later he was out at the house apologizing and measured everything. Since then he's been A+. The bid he gave me was WAY beyond my price ... so we had to figure out how to readjust. Once we got to my $10,000 limit with a few adjustments we were good to go.

I chose the color Montana Suede. There is going to be an extra layer of foam that will go on between what we have up now and the new stuff so that we have a bunch of insulation where now... we don't have much at all. All of the windows are going to have caps over the new framing and trim - the posts on the porch will be covered, porch that we repaired earlier this year will now be covered with siding ... and new guttering and flashing to help direct the water away from the house and not to run down between the house and the brick veneer on the lower level.

The hideous Tudor Style boards are coming off and we're taking the house back to its older style pre hideous tudor boards... So my estimation of what it will kind of look like will be this below - except on the right side my mother wanted to see what it would look like if the siding was vertical.. which is stupid but I did it anyway so ignore that part...

The way the house will look via photoshop - except all the stuff on the porch is gone now ...

Yard Work Project From Hell

2010-12-10T18:21:00.000-08:00

When the appraiser came through to look at the house before we did any work the first thing he said was that our back yard and in general front yard looked pretty rough. Not just because we have a garage that is literally falling down - but the back yard looks like someone could get lost and perhaps die from carnivorous plants.

So this is what I'm dealing with here.... It's pretty bad. I didn't take a picture of the back side of the garage where I'd found that my grandfather had been hoarding stuff ... and a family of opossums had built a nest.

After six days of raking leaves that hadn't been raked in probably 10 years, cutting down small trees that had grown just a little taller than I am from seeds falling out of other trees - and generally thinning out the poison ivy and various other weeds and whatnot.

Here's what I've got now.

Managing electricity in an old home

2010-12-01T20:38:00.000-08:00

What I learned when I had our electrician come out to the house at the beginning of this project is that in the 1930's when the second story of the home was put onto the house - they didn't exactly allow for the extra power usage by a whole second floor. What he thinks happened is that they branched off the power from the downstairs and just brought it upstairs.

A friend of mine who does construction and whatnot said this is typical of older homes. So the guys at Yukon's Twin City Electric - Russell specifically who has been really great and super helpful - hooked me up for a pretty reasonable fee. With the exception of the master bath renovation I think we're done with electrical work! I have new lights in my closets and lights and plug ins in the bathroom upstairs now... so I can dry my hair IN the bathroom.... (It's the little things)

Updating the power was one thing - but we were running on an old fuse system and would blow them every time we were drying close and watching TV at the same time. When we get our new energy star appliances and new heating and air conditioning units I imagine this will be easier but in the mean time ... bringing our electricity up to code was probably a good idea...

Before - except I didn't take a picture of the fuse panel...

After! (Also note the fancy windows!!)

Super Energy Efficient Windows Complete!

2010-11-28T20:29:00.000-08:00

Wow..... the difference it makes is unreal - seriously... unreal....
Before:

After!

ooooo ahhhhh

these are the most energy efficient windows I could get. Low e suck all of the air out and pump in that special stuff that is supposed to defuse whatever...

Here's what you need to know about energy efficient windows. If you want to get the tax credit for energy efficient improvements to your home... I'd invest before the end of the year because chances are those are going to get cut by Congress next year.

OMG Windows

2010-11-18T09:38:00.001-08:00

First window going in by husband and wife team from K2 Instantiations. Yay for hiring locally!

YAY! NEW WINDOWS!

2010-11-17T18:43:00.000-08:00

So here's what I'm dealing with.

Yesterday morning when I was at the house doing a few things - my grandfather actually said to me "You know, I was looking at those windows in your bedroom... and they're pretty bad...." I just wanted to go.... yeah no sh*t. Welcome to the party. Let's not focus on you being late, but embrace that you showed up at all....

The windows were purchased from Consolidated Builder's Supply in Oklahoma City with a big thanks to Chad Proffit who has endured many emails and phone calls from both my mother and me. Dan Kerranat K2 Installations is the genius behind the install who begins tomorrow. Dan has the daunting task of basically redoing all of the framing of almost all of the windows in the house. Which by the way are 28 windows.

The deliver guy was super nice and obviously very careful. They arrived sooner than expected and I had to race over to the house because I wanted to make sure none of the frames were bent or glass was broken, but no worry they were all in perfect shape and well wrapped for the travel across town from their warehouse.

These windows are the highest in energy efficiency you can buy. So, we've got three things that will be happening here. First, the re-framing of the windows will create a tighter seal between the windows and the house reducing cold air leaking into the house. Second, we've got windows that are actually sealed up, where as you can see from the photos above are horrible. Even with the storm windows the amount of cold air that leaks into the house is astounding. Third, we're talking about super high efficiency glass that will stop the insane heat that we experience in the summers too.

I happily wrote them the second half of my check to pay them. Total for 28 brand new windows 6 of which feature the Prairie style lines in the upper frame was $5,177. Not bad. I'll be taking pictures of Dan and his team tomorrow and reporting on the work. It's supposed to take them a whole week there's so much to be done. And it's not cheap... $6600 for instillation.

Upstairs Bathroom Progress

2010-11-08T15:09:00.000-08:00

Remember this? and then this?

Well the progress has continued :)

Let the games begin

2010-05-28T21:03:00.001-07:00

I have officially purchased bathroom renovation ... stuff... and whatnot

Upstairs Bathroom Redux

2010-05-24T07:57:00.000-07:00

So - I've basically decided on my inspiration for the upstairs bathroom.

I found tile at HomeDepot for literally 99 cents a tile that is porcelain but has that slate look to it. The thing about slate is its a nightmare to keep clean, and in a bathroom.... well... obviously that's not a happy place to have difficult to keep clean things.

Love the color of the walls - I might do a few panels of waynes coating depending on how much money I have left over.

But the biggest fight has been to find the right vanity. I thought I'd found the perfect one at HomeDepot but its an antique white which is not white enough. But its impossible to find a counter top/vanity combo that is less than 38 inches wide, white, and not over $1500.

So I kind of like these - all of which are different.

Even though this one doesn't have drawers I really like the shape of it. . . .but I really want drawers in a bathroom, right? That's a no brainer.

Upstairs Bathroom

2010-05-20T18:50:00.000-07:00

So ... there's been a long delay before I can do anything significant on the house because I have had to wait on my loan. While I'm waiting, however... I demolished the upstairs bathroom... ya know... like ya do...
This is my BFF Peaches beating down a wall...

Shower from hell...

So... inspiration for the bathroom to be honest comes from my friends Chad and Cheyanne's master bathroom. Sage walls slate looking floors and wall tile... very sexy.

This one is my fav

Another cool countertop idea

2009-10-17T08:39:00.000-07:00

I just got back from DC last night at 11:30pm and slept in this morning before turning on the saturday morning HGTV shows.

Carter Can featured concrete inspired quartz composite counter tops made by Caesar Stone that are so pretty. Everything Carter does is green, so he's always a great resource.

The conference was great but the highlight of my trip was staying with my friend Sarah who has a different cable package than I do. Which means the Do-it Yourself Network. I've never seen DIY, heard about it... used their website... NEVER seen anything on there. I'm a 100% believer. I'm trying to figure out how we can switch to another cable carrier or how much it would cost just to add their channel because it was so super helpful, you have NO idea! This whole show was about building closets, and I think we all know about my closet disaster experience... Which, let me just say again... I was told there was a window behind that wall.... How hard can it be, right?

Best Green Bathroom idea EVER

2009-10-08T14:25:00.000-07:00

In looking around for other green bathroom solutions I stumbled across this.
Pretty cool huh? talk about reduce and reuse! I wonder how hard it would be to do this yourself... hurm...

Countertop Redux

2009-10-08T14:18:00.000-07:00

I spent last weekend with friends in Wichita for a conference and met up with my friend Chad's wife who is an architect. She had several good ideas for how I could layout the master bath.

I also had a great conversation with my friend Levi who has been doing a lot of work on his own house he's been redoing. His countertop suggestion was 100% concrete. But his suggestion was never to spend over $40 per sq foot. Every estimate has been in the 60's or 70's per sq foot. Soo thats unfortunate... Given how much we need to do, I'm concerned.

There is a lot to do, but real life has gotten in the way. Since my bff who helped me start to demo the upstairs bath left I've been lazy or out of town. Next week I'm in DC for another conference, hopefully I can get myself into gear once I get back. Until then, I found a bunch of cool stuff to post about, so look forward!

The Countertop Question

2009-10-01T06:14:00.000-07:00

Few people know Granite is actually one of the WORST surfaces you can use for your kitchen or bathroom counters because the carbon footprint is SO HUGE. I didn't know... had no idea...

I think our universal fascination with granite countertops is due to the material's tremendous strength and durability, and its aesthetic beauty. Until recently, granite was rarely seen in homes except in beautiful furniture pieces. Now we see it in nearly every mid- to high-end home, and you can buy tiles or order custom slabs at all the big-box building supply stores.

But I have a number of problems with granite and marble materials, and I don't consider many of these products at all "green." First and foremost, granite's extraction does irreparable ecological damage, slicing off enormous sides of mountains and leaving behind altered landscapes and dangerous waste. Granite countertops are gas guzzlers—they create a great big carbon footprint from the energy used to mine, transport, and fabricate rough slabs into beautiful countertops somewhere far away from the stone's original source."

So... understandably I've been looking elsewhere. My options at Lowes are ... laminate apparently. I need to go into the store and ask, however... because they might have other options that aren't on the website. Stone was suggested because it can be reclaimed, or I can look for reclaimed stone... and other recycled materials. One of the most interesting options that was suggested was concrete.

Check these out:

From Concrete Network but they're a little too far away from me... but I love this look!

I actually also found two that had information online and I liked their style Advanced Concrete Designs and Artistic Stone Surface - but only one has emailed me back thus far.

Also an option - Lithistone...?

seen here from Lithistone.net
They're located in Colorado... closer to us... but still a little far away, right? Using local workers is both green and helps promote the state. I'm a fan.
Another option - Ice Stone
From IceStone.biz this is SUPER hawt looking and THEY have a vendor in Tulsa, OK

These guys need better photos that are more detailed and bigger, but another favorite is a company called EnviroGLAS which mixes recycled glass and concrete. Their black version looks pretty much like black granite. Video

Obviously, cost is going to be a major part of this. I hadn't intended to do counter tops but I got a lecture from my mother that if I'm going to renovate the kitchen... I should do it right. To her that means putting in new countertops which would, she said be costly. Little did she know I was going to eliminate granite from any options to begin with.

Ideas? Thoughts? Opinions? Feel free to weigh in any time :)

Windows, doors, and mores

2009-09-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

Sorry things haven't been more exciting. Updates this week have included having lots of long conversations with Darren my new BFF in the Lowe's construction department. Darren is a sweet guy, in fact everyone in the store has been so awesome and great at answering my plethora of questions... but Darren and I talked about 30 times in the last few days and not once did he get annoyed!

We talked both about windows and siding. I got an estimate from a great contractor Darren suggested that is an installer Lowe's uses and we are looking at a few different products. When I look at windows I want the most energy efficient I can get for the price. But I also want them to look pretty spiffy too. There are a few options but I think I'm going to go with the middle of the road on efficiency. They are a tiny bit more, but my estimations gave me about $200 per window and with PaPa's discount doing that middle of the road gets us right there. The lower end is $160 so if we want to save we can always go with that... but I really want to do the right thing here. This can save us so much in the end.

They are the Thermastar double hung by Pella

The pic to the upper right is the style our neighbors chose - which I kind of like.. Its a little bit Craftsman style, but I probably wouldn't put the grid thing on the bottom. The cost actually also includes screens, which is awesome, since all of the screens on the south side of the house are shredded. No... seriously... I will have to post pics of that.

I don't think I'm going to have much room in our budget but I REALLY want a new back door. The one we have is literally falling off, its a miracle we haven't gotten broken into because I think someone could probably break it down if they really wanted to. The one I want is white, has a nice window, but the blinds are ... get this... BUILT IN! EEEE!!!

And a normal storm door. My grandfather thinks we're already at an upgrade because the door we have now isn't made of wood and doesn't go SMACK when you let it close. Its actually metal and every hail storm it still stands... somehow.

So... here's my question to you, dear readers... On the south side of the house we have this two windows that are exposed to a huge amount of sunlight. And they've been pretty well taken out via hail damage, rain, time, and other such things. Someone suggested putting an awning over them. Something like what's on the left - which is super cute. Is it practical? Is it effective and efficient? Does it help protect against full sunlight and the elements?

What are some other options or alternatives?

Ideas? Thoughts? Recipes?

Master Bathroom Design Dilemma

2009-09-28T09:39:00.000-07:00

I posted photos of the master bathroom and all of its horror.... but the major problem I have with that bathroom is that its about 6 feet by 8 feet in size. Long bathroom... not a lot of room. The bath tub/shower is about two feet from the vanity and sinks. This makes things pretty tight and impossible to turn into a true master bathroom.

Behind the bathroom (which is to the north) is the furnace and a linen cabinet that is accessible from the hall way. To the west of the bathroom on the other side of the wall is the hall way from which that linen cabinet is accessible. From within that hall way there are two hall closets both about 4 feet deep.

My mother's suggestion was to move the furnace because evidently furnaces should be in the center part of the house to be the most efficient in heath distribution. But one estimate on cost from a heating and air company proved to be totally unrealistic coming in at about $27,000. Another company came in and told me it was a total waste of time and money because I could just build into the hall way. I'd anticipated that, but it them limits the closet options for the "piano room" which I've now put a bed in for use as a guest room or sitting room.

I drew up some plans with a neat program I got in the back of a bathroom book I found at Lowe's. The book was $20 but like I said... software! If I break down the wall between the current bath and hall as well as the wall between the two hall closets and create a wall linking everything together - you basically connect a 6X8 foot space to about a 6X7 foot space.

My dilemma is how the heck I create essentially a Jack and Jill bathroom with a large tub, separate shower, two vanities, and a toilet and moving the least amount of plumbing.

Click to make larger

The quick fixes

2009-09-27T19:35:00.001-07:00

This is the before photo of my grandfather's bedroom. He chose the color... a little too much for me :) but its what he wanted.

Kitchen we installed a new ceiling fan that puts off more light, removed the awful flowered wallpaper on the soffit and painted it red. The red actually matches the color in my grandmother's dishes that are in the cabinet. On the actual wall I put up a beige wallpaper that looks like bricks.

Before Photo

Before Photo

Before Photo - the coolest thing about this room is the door there. You might remember from the original photo that there was a giant mirror, well once we removed the mirror to freshen up the trim, doors, molding etc... we found that the original owner of the house had signed behind the door. SOOO cool so we kept that part, and I hope to find one of those frames you can put around stuff like that... put a plaque on the wall or something neat.
Before Photo

Paint color is something I can't remember but I can find it on the sample and share later. The linens in the "piano room" which is now a guest room of sorts were on sale at Target. All of the wallpaper has been removed, plaster patched, and painted. Molding, trim, and doors have been painted with a high gloss white. And you can't see on the built ins in the Living Room but the knobs are these great crystal knobs I got from ebay for like $2 each.

Porch is fixed

2009-09-21T18:23:00.000-07:00

I didn't take pictures of the before and I really should have because it was pretty bad. We took down the rotted wood about 3 years ago and the porch has sad in horror for that long. Finally for my birthday in May I was asked by my step-dad what I wanted for my birthday... I said "I really want someone to help me fix the porch..."

In September he finally agreed to help.

The biggest and most concerning part of this was that I felt like the porch was sagging where the strip of rotted wood (stud) was as a result of the water that seeped through the skylights several years ago. Even after the new roof, of course that part wasn't fixed. So the suggestion was to better prop up the boards and put in more secure wood. So we jacked it up with a jack and then put in the boards.

From there it was just about putting up the plywood, and then the trim pieces. We opted for larger trim pieces which I plan to paint the accent color we use when we get the new siding.

New wood ceiling - and recessed lighting in two spots on the porch. One above where the stairs are and one above where the porch swing will be.

New screen door - which is from my parents who were getting rid of theirs - and a new porch light which we of course got form Lowes.

What it looks like from the street... ignore how awful the house looks we're hoping to fix that, but you can see how awesome the lighting looks as its dark.

That's PaPa sitting on the porch
Details:

Light fixture: BRONZE Portfolio outdoor wall light from Lowes. This is a great light, but I didn't notice anything designating that it was Bronze on the box and from the photo on the box it looks black. With the black storm door I need to probably spray paint it but it looks ok for now.

Neighbor selling his house

2009-09-20T12:40:00.000-07:00

I just drove by our house a few days ago and saw that our neighbors at 403 is selling their house. My grandfather says they are asking $304,000 which I think is WAY overpriced. Our other neighbor on the opposite corner had a really hard time selling theirs at $250,000.

This is a great house with a lot of potential but appears none of it has been upgraded. Floors in good shape and I know they've worked hard to restore the molding to its original finish and patch all of the plaster, but the kitchen is a disaster. Old tile on the floor, old tile on the counters, needs updated appliances... and the house in general needs to be staged.

But its a good old house. I particularly love the authentic art deco bathroom. I left them a comment because most people would renovate and make it into a beige wonderland but I'm glad they left it in keeping with the time of the house. From the site:

403 Oak Avenue -- A Yukon Historical Home built by Tom & Gladys Kroutil in 1928 • 3,750 (MOL) square feet on three floors • formal living and dining rooms • Completely remodeled kitchen • 4 bedrooms • 2 full baths & 2- ½ baths (one in garage) • Complete restoration • Storm windows • Updated electrical wiring and plumbing • Hardwood floors throughout completely refinished • Lawn and flower bed sprinkler system • Detached 3 car garage with ½ bath easily convertible to full bath • Carport • Large backyard deck • Fishpond • Central heat and air -- The home was built by one of the founding fathers of the City of Yukon, Tom Kroutil. The structure has a long and interesting past. Our home is listed as an official, “Yukon Historic Home” by the City of Yukon. -- The price is $304,900. -- If you are an interested buyer, please call (405) 830-2994 or email us at 403oak@gmail.com. Enjoy the pictures!

bathroom remodel

2009-09-15T17:08:00.000-07:00

Very exciting adventure the bathroom... The nasty half bath I showed you earlier this month has been totally redone. It began with pulling off that awful wood paneling. What we found was a wall that was nearly falling down on the outer wall ... where the water damage was. The ceiling was bad too.

When we pulled everything out, toilet, sink, general junk, we started off with the hammer to the wall. The wall with the most damage was the only one we took down. The second I hit it with the hammer a HUGE chunk of the wall came down. It took about 3-5 big swings to get an entire wall to come down.

Working with the plaster was the hardest. I wanted to patch things and then texture the wall but I guess you can't do that with plaster, because the second I put water into it I could spear it around a little and then it would harden again. I ended up just adding as much water as I could and having it run down the wall. Ultimately I discovered that joint compound was the best way to create that more modern texture that worked. But I did try that stuff you get in a can.... I don't recommend it... EVER.

Inspiration for bathroom:

This is from HGTV's top ten most beautiful bathrooms which you can see here

Let us begin with the floor :) First time I've ever laid tile..... ever! This was difficult for several reasons. First ... let me highly recommend taking a class at Home Depot. I wish Lowes had classes like this, but they don't.

Details:
Tile: American Olean was about $4 per sheet took 15
Paint Color: La Fonda Mirage from Valspar (I think but I'll confirm) 1 gallon $25
Sink: Not the exact sink - this was the one I wanted, but we found this other one that was similar and on sale for $100 less. Lesson 1: check the sales. Sink = $100 (no seriously)
Faucet: Price Pficer - Actually got on sale for $45
Mirror: Zenith - no idea why its so expensive on this site but we paid $60 for it in store.
Light Fixture: Portfolio - was on sale for $30 at the time in store.

Final - although I hate the cabinet its too big/tall there is a great corner one at Target I want but I ran out of money :(

Going Green

2009-09-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

Hello again!

So a big part of this project is about going green and greening my grandpa's house. Its a great old house build in the late 1920's and the second floor was put on in the 1930's. Not a time when energy efficiency was the standard. The windows and doors aren't sealed, indeed its amazing they are still in the wall, and there are pretty big gaps even with storm windows on the outside.

As a result my grandfather usually has months in the winter when his gas bills are over $300 sometimes over $400 - and that's keeping the temperature at below 70. He's got an electric blanket and an electric space heater and that helps too but then his electricity bill is over $200 too.

In the summer its worse. There is very little insulation in the house or what is there wasn't installed in the most efficient way. In the upstairs room (that I use as my room) the attic was built out into the roofline for a beautiful HUGE room. The problem is that the sun beating down on the roof makes the walls hot during the summer, and the windows in that room get pretty much full sun all day. Its impossible to air condition!

So a big part of this renovation is making it more energy efficient. Once we get to the point where we're doing the major renovation we're looking at new windows, siding with insulation underneath it, new back door, sealing all of the plugs, putting in a tankless water heater, new furnace and A/C unit for both floors, energy efficient appliances, and finally everything we put up or do if we can do so in a greener recycled way.

Lowe's has a neat little pamphlet my grandfather brought me that basically lists out all of their energy efficient materials, LED Certified stuff, and ways to get that energy saving tax credit. I've been doing a lot of reading and studying to figure out how best to do this and stay within our budget. It isn't easy being green :) At least its not easy to fit it into our budget, but I'm going to do whatever we can.

Photos of the Worst Day EVER

2009-09-05T13:00:00.000-07:00

These photos are of when I first came back to Oklahoma to my grandfather's house and saw the disaster... There aren't many photos but it shows the worst of the worst... the day we cleaned the kitchen we found mouse poo in the cabinets and some kind of yellow substance dripping from the toaster oven. And stuff EVERYWHERE!

This was the only decent room - the dining room. But this is the room he use to close all the doors into, so the furniture had mold growing on it because all the moisture would just sit on it. It was relatively easy to clean off, though. And despite my mold allergy as long as I took some Cleariton and wore a mask I was ok.

The Kitchen

Laundry room and back door entry - very crowded full of all kinds of junk
This is the MOST disgusting! Its the half bath that he uses to wash his hands. In the garage he prints part time - so he comes in covered in ink and washes his hands off. Thus the black stuff everywhere.

Also - the house has TONS of pecan trees around it - TONS so the leaves fall and fill the gutters.... and he doesn't clean them out. When they fill out water can't run off into them and properly drain out so they slosh over and run along the house ... or in our case ... INTO the house. This bathroom has a lot of water problems where the rain has washed into the ceiling and between the brick veneer and house, saturating the walls.

You can also sorta see in these photos the white wood paneling flecked with gold.

This is the "piano room" so called because it has the piano in it... the piano isn't in tune.. also this room has become a storage room for a multitude of junk... some of which is mine like the chase and the 50's bar stools and bar table I used in my apartment in the Bay Area for a dinning room table.

This is technically the master bedroom, but he doesn't use it as a bedroom, its actually used as his TV room and office
Disgusting master bathroom - this is the bathroom my grandpa uses

Mouse poo in the cabinets

These photos are of when I first came back to Oklahoma to my grandfather's house and saw the disaster... There aren't many photos but it shows the worst of the worst... the day we cleaned the kitchen...

This is the living room also not that big of a disaster, just a lot of bugs and dead bugs.

Where it all began

2009-09-02T09:03:00.000-07:00

When you work in politics moving every 6 months isn't outside of the realm of possibility, and when you are willing to move anywhere for any job your experience, resume, and connectivity expands by leaps and bounds. So after college I agreed to go anywhere to work on campaigns or for organizations. I started out as a finance director helping candidates raise money, but in my free time began experimenting with online media - this was right after the House Dean email fundraising year in 2004.

As the technologies expanded so did my perception of how to use them to help candidates. I used MySpace to target rural and minority communities in 2006 and when Facebook opened up in 2007 I began to use it to help elected officials connect with their constituents. Now... online media is the standard, and blogger outreach is a must for any Democratic candidate.

In 2007 I had a great opportunity to work in a family foundation in the Bay Area, that specifically worked to increase the outreach to young people in politics. Youth trend more progressively, and in 2004 they were the only age group to vote for John Kerry. If we wanted to win the White House back in 2008, youth outreach was a must. In 2007 I started working on becoming an expert. I studied and wrote about the Millennial Generation, I looked closer at demographics for social networking sites, and I experimented with previous candidates and current elected officials I'd worked with before as a volunteer to see how we could use these technologies to help be more accessible and transparent.

And 2008 became the election of technology.

During 2008 I had worked closely with several campaigns in the Midwest that didn't understand technology outreach. I hammered into their heads what this could do and how it could be effective. The result was several converts who have now also become genius technology people always looking for what's next. After the 2008 election we all developed an online media and marketing firm in Kansas City called Mixed Media.

But in the spring of 2009 we got our first out of state client - which was also the biggest client we have in Oklahoma - where I'm originally from and where my parents and family live. In efforts to expand Mixed Media beyond Kansas and into the rest of the Heartland I moved back home and began work with our clients here.

When I did that was when the "adventure" began. I had planned on staying with my grandfather, who I lived with in my late teens before I went to college in Kansas. He and my grandmother bought their house in the old part of downtown Yukon, Oklahoma in the early 1980's. They loved that house, my grandmother especially. My entire childhood she worked on making it better. They built out part of the attic into a large room on the 2nd floor, they wallpapered, re-carpeted, painted, everything... But in 1987 she was killed in a head-on collission on Route 66 when her car slipped on a piece of ice.

Her death left my family devastated, my grandfather especially. Since 1987 nothing changed in the house. Well, I should say, very little changed. In 1989 he caught the kitchen on fire while making french fries for me and a friend that were playing in another room. It caused about $50,000 in damage and the kitchen was remodeled, wallpaper was redone, and everything was freshly painted and cleaned.

Living Room mid 1980's

Random event Dinning Room mid 1980's

This is someone being silly at a gathering in the house. This room, however, is the upstairs room they had just built out into the attic. Lots of great sloped ceilings in this room.

But basically since 1989 - nothing has changed. Twenty years later the house was falling apart. It was dirty, infested, molded, saturated, and a complete disaster. Oklahoma had some flooding in 2007 and while his house didn't flood - the 40 straight days of rain took its tole on the house. With rooms closed off moisture festered and mold grew on furniture. My grandfather never turns on the A/C so there was no way to de-humidify the house, especially in rooms that he'd closed off.

The roof of the porch was falling off because at one time there were two skylights that had leaked - while the roof had been fixed the ceiling of the porch had rotted wood hanging down with critters crawling around above it. In 2003 there had been a major ice storm and a tree fell on the detached garage causing it to lean pretty substantially. My grandfather put in an insurance claim and used the money (which of course couldn't pay for a new building) - not to rebuild the structure but to "fix" the structure. The entailed tying a big thick rope around the whole building and tying it to a tree. I'm not kidding...

The house was infested with bugs, mice, fleas, ants, ticks, and at one point in 2008 a opossum crawled under the house and died leaving a stench that lingered for months.

With me living full time in Oklahoma, and invested at least until the close of the 2010 election I finally convinced my grandfather to make some major home improvements. We began with the little things that I could do, having ZERO experience in home remodel. My grandfather had been working part time at Staples but technology wasn't his strong suite and he went to work next door at Lowe's. For someone with 100% experience in tools and fixing things, not to mention a certification as an electrician apprentice he was perfect to work for them... and it resulted in a 10% discount on anything in the store and 10% above cost on all special orders.

It seemed the universe was telling us this was the time to save the house.

(last year I lost my hard drive, but I know I have the pre-renovation photos somewhere... I'm looking)