My Couches Are Homesick

My upholster has finished our couches and is starting on our bed frame and headboard. Since the house is a dusty disaster, he has offered to store the couches for me until the construction work winds down. He texted me a picture of the finished couches and my heart fluttered.

I wanted jade velvet couches, and jade velvet couches I shall have! Thankfully, I had the foresight to recognize that the couches were a special size when I first viewed the home. They were pretty old, but expensive beauties in their day. For $100, the previous owners (kids/trustee) sold them to me. After the cost of the fabric and upholster, it is only marginally less expensive than buying new couches. New couches would not have been as long or color specific as what I have now. Even though I have yet to see the couches in person, I am VERY happy that I decided to go this route! They are a far cry from where they started:

I am still dreaming of a day when the house looks better than it did the day before. I know that we are making great progress in the right direction, but at this stage, the house it still getting torn apart more and more. The last 2 weeks, the plumbers have torn up the floors and the electricians have torn up the walls and ceilings. One of the remaining things we need completed before our Four Way inspection is to cut the new window holes and have the old window holes framed up. This step did NOT make the house look better.

Old windows on the right, new window holes on the front

New windows all along the front. Plus roof deck door hole.

The house really starts talking when the wind picks up and there are really weird cross breezes! The house is patched up just enough to keep out weirdos, but hardly sealed up enough to keep dog heads in.

 

As of now, we have passed our plumbing inspection. Hopefully we are passing HVAC as I type this. Electrical and Framing should be Tuesday. That folks, will bring us to the end of the four way inspection.  Soon the house will start looking better and those lovely jade velvet couches can come back home.

Having My Cake & Eating It (on a custom table) Too

I had a little freak out the other day when I was shopping for the new dinning room table. Our old table will remain in the apartment and we are planning on getting a larger table for upstairs. We thought we had found the perfect table and could check that task off our list. Hello perfect table:

We had all but ordered the thing when we decided to go home and measure the space one last time. I had the space drawings with me, and knew that there was a 36 inch table planned based on the kitchen designer's sketches. The table we loved was 46 inches wide.

In my less professional sketch, I was worried that the dinning room chairs would be too close to the island. It is top notch sketches like the one below that make me wonder why I bothered hiring a kitchen designer...kidding.

I went home and checked out the dinning room space. It suddenly looked even smaller than I remembered. Especially with the workman's fridge in the way.



I used the professional drawings, not mine, to tape off the island and approximate the table location. I then pulled out the chairs to the point where I guessed they would be when fully pushed out from the table.

I may have overestimated the space needed for the chairs, but a 46 inch table was going to be too big. But...my heart was set on that table so what is a girl to do? Well, I was able to track down a carpenter with excellent reviews and contacted him about making a similar table with custom dimensions. He came out to the house and we discussed the project. He was very confident that he could mimic the look.

I can have my cake, and eat it (off this table) too! Having a table made seems like the best solution so hopefully things will go as planned and I will be the happy owner of a 36 inch wide, 102 inch long dinning room table. I will have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving!!!

Beams and Bullying

Does this storm cloud look ominous to you?

What about if you had three holes in your roof, and only one of those holes was small enough to be plugged with an empty Gatorade bottle?

The hole with the orange center is the bottle plug

Every time I go upstairs, there seems to be new holes. In the roof, in the walls, in the floors, everywhere. The good news however is that progress is still clipping along. In fact, I was pressured by Michael and the electrician regarding the placement of the master vanity light. I am having a hard time visualizing what look I am going for in the master bathroom, especially considering that this is what it looks like right now:

I can barely imagine a clean floor let alone a design scheme. Do I go Hollywood Glam? Era appropriate? As much as I love the school house lights, I don't think it is going to work in the long run so I have removed the most traditional options.  Here are my top pics (as of today only)

Why can't this one come in a 3 light option? Grrr.

Quick, which one should I choose? Sconces are out because Michael bullied me this morning and a central light fixture was decided. Not bitter at all. In other news, the beam went up yesterday.

Beam, waiting to go up

Steel beam up!

Airing My Dirty Laundry (Room)

I have high hopes for today in the land of real estate! As of 9am, I am under contract to sell my condo! Whoop Whoop! My friend (and current renter) is moving to Arizona (booooooooo) and the thought of having to get another tenant and play landlord to stranger is not exciting me. I would much rather sell the place and focus on the House of Leo. After a few days on the market, I got an above list offer. SIGNED. It is bittersweet. I lived in the condo when Michael and I first started dating and it holds a lot of good memories from our early years. I was very unhappy when I initially moved from NYC to Salt Lake and things didn't improve until after I bought the place and moved downtown. Like I said, bittersweet.

Bye-bye condo

Across town at the House of Leo, things got started early this morning. As in, I had to bargain for the hot water to stay on until 7:35 so I could shower off after the gym. Today is the day that the steel beam is going in. Our laundry room is by far the most disgusting place in the house, even before we started construction.

The litter box really brings the room together

This room is a pass through room between the (future) TV room downstairs and the apartment. In this shot, I am standing on the TV room side looking back at the interior apartment door. Shortly after purchasing the place, we had the footer hole cut. It is a messy job and we wanted to minimize the impact on our living situation once we moved into the apartment. You can see that the lovely litter boxes in the picture above are being supported from falling into the bowels of hell (12 inch dirt hole) by plywood. Today they removed the plywood:

This is my house people.

Since steel is as strong as, well steel, they are going to install the support beam from the top down and THEN pour the concrete to minimize any chance for measurement errors. The crew had removed the old water heater and installed the new tank-less water heater in the time between my 7:35am shower and departing for work.



The tank-less is on the wall

Old tank is now in the garbage

The crew had also removed the water heater pipes(?) that ran all the way upstairs and through the roof.

Before: Pipes and existing support post

After: No pipes, just support post

The next step is for the crew to build temporary support walls. This will allow them to remove the support post pictured above. Then the steal I-Beam will go up and a new support beam will be directed through the powder room walls (by the tank-less toilet above) and secure into the footer hole in the laundry room. Everyone follow that? Basically, out with the wood in with the metal = open concept floor plan. It is days like this that I have to keep reminding myself that the house will look amazing some day in the near future. Here is the inspiration for the laundry room:

Some day, we will be able to walk through the pass through between house and apartment without bouncing on plywood. The pets will stop fearing the dirt void that lies beneath, and I will smile at myself in the stainless steel back-splash and know I made it through the tough times of the renovation. Until then;

This.

The Secret Word: Mud Jacking

What do you mean you have never heard of mud jacking? Yeah well, as of two weeks ago neither had we. In addition to being out of date, this house had a lot of delayed maintenance. It is one of the reasons we were able to get such a good deal. One of the many "fix it" items on our list was a sunken section of the back patio. If I know anything about home maintenance I know that water pooling near the foundation, over time, is not a good thing.

An overall 4inch drop towards the house

You can tell it has seen its share of pooling water....

It would have been a shame to rip out a patio in such great shape. In going over our options, we came across a process called mud jacking. The process involves drilling into the concrete and pumping "sludge" under the slab thus lifting it to the correct height. Sort of cool and exactly what one would expect of a process called mud jacking. In order to get the machine up to the back patio, Michael had to create a bridge through the side yard, which we affectionately call "the bramble".

With the path complete the mud jackers? were able to roll their machine up to the back of the patio and start jacking?

After a few hours and a TON of noise, the results were pretty impressive:

You can't even tell where the two slabs meet (hint: on white bucket)

(hint: to the right of the last hole)

Now the next time the rain comes, Buckley can catch the rain drops from the gutter without having to worry about falling off the ledge of the patio slabs.

Silly dog's favorite past time

Tons of Work, Minimal Payoff

A lot of things were happening this week, all of which are leading to big payoffs. Unfortunately, it is not the exciting stuff that is getting done.  We passed our footer inspection (for the steel beam) on Friday. We are about two days of work away from having our electrical, rough plumbing, and HVAC finished. Once those items are complete and the steel beam is installed, we will be ready for our four way inspection.

Buckley guarding steel beams

I can't tell you how excited I am for the four way inspection. It is the point where the house starts to get put back together. It is the a-okay to put up drywall. After dry wall comes floors, then kitchen......skip a few steps.....Thanksgiving! The progress will start to get real exciting. Because let me tell you, rough plumbing and electrical is boring stuff.

One of our exciting tank less toilets installed

New lights in the living room, plus extra holes for the hell of it

For our weekly "home owners" project, we decided to clean out the planter by the front door so that (someday) it will be ready to be landscaped. Here is the before picture:

The 1000's of rocks can't be appreciated in this picture

It was a ton of heavy lifting, and it is no wonder I have had a sore back this week. In order to get the rocks out I basically had to farmer carry a full bucket to the dumpster, dumbbell snatch it above my head, and the dump it into the garbage. Not that much different from my regularly scheduled workouts, however, much more dusty.

It was a lot of work, and sadly the planter didn't look much better after a full day of work:

And in closing, here is Michael pretending to use the worker's porta potty:

Tune in next week for Mud Jacking. What is that? Marginally exciting stuff.