Author Archives: Ashley

06/1/10

new carpet!

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

So the carpet guys just left and I’m so excited!!

Our den looks great. Man, it makes SUCH a difference getting carpet down there. It really feels like a room now. I totally ran and jumped around like a little girl.

Up next: Getting new baseboards and putting them up. That won’t be a pain, right, nailing up 60 feet of baseboard, right?

Also I need to replace the light fixtures and the fan. The fan that’s there has a lot to be desired in terms of usefulness and sound. I’ve been scouting fans at Lowe’s and Home Depot, and think I’m about ready to make my selection. We actually replaced the fan in our living room yesterday (the one that was there broke), so now we can add “basic electrical work” to our list of experiences.

As soon as the baseboards are up, I’ll put up pictures. You’re going to be amazed! :-)

05/24/10

asbestos not to touch to the tiles

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

I’ll start my story when we left off in the last paragraph of a previous post. We were supposed to get our carpet installed in our den today. So on Thursday, we mopped the whole room with a heavy-duty cleaner and degreaser. There was carpet down when we bought the house, but it smelled bad so we ripped it up last September. Underneath we found floor tiles on top of cement. Not only were the tiles all dirty, but my cats had peed down there multiple times and so the whole place really stank. (More about them later. Grrr!)

We were hoping the cleaner that we used on Thursday would get rid of the cat smell. On Friday, after everything was dry, I walked down there and realized that you could still smell it. I didn’t know what to do, and didn’t have any way to do it before we left Friday afternoon for my sister’s college graduation in North Carolina. (I will write a post about that trip later, too.) While we were up there, we asked my relatives what they would suggest to fix the smell before the carpet guys came Monday afternoon. Molly suggested we install a sort of vapor barrier – like they put underneath hardwood or laminate flooring. We thought that was a pretty good idea, and stopped at Lowe’s before we left Asheville to pick up the necessary ingredients.

We got back to Atlanta around 5 on Sunday (yesterday). We didn’t even unload the car – we immediately set to work. Paul pulled up one of the tiles and brought it up to me. It was absolutely soaked in cat pee. He started pulling up the tiles to find it pooled underneath. We ended up pulling up all the tiles in the 270+ square foot room. That took several hours. In the meantime, I went to Subway to get dinner. We took a short break for dinner, and then I went downstairs to finish the tiles. The ones in the middle of the room were not too hard, but the ones along the edge were impossible to get up without breaking them up into small pieces. We realized that the worst of the smell was around the perimeter of the room. So, we decided to get rid of all the baseboards and hope that the smell hadn’t gotten into the walls. (Though I would LOVE to gut the room and replace all the paneling with drywall… BUT… that’s not exactly a project you tackle by yourself on Sunday night…)

One of the baseboards had a date written behind it: “Installed Nov. 1968”. We had wondered when they finished the downstairs – we could tell that it was finished later, and this confirms that it was 8 years after the house was built.

As I was hacking away at the tiles, I had a sudden thought. Then a sinking feeling. Um, aren’t floor tiles one of the things that are often full of asbestos? I did a quick Google search and then called my dad. He said he guessed there was a 50 percent chance that the floor tiles were asbestos. Since we were almost done, we decided to just finish. I found a face mask and tried to be more careful about smashing the tiles to smithereens. After I got them all off the floor, I carefully swept the entire room, and then we mopped everywhere to make sure all the dust was gone.

So hopefully this brief exposure doesn’t spell an early death for either of us! According to some helpful internet forums, we’re probably okay.

While we were working on the tiles, we realized that one part of the floor is just slightly raised. I don’t think we would have noticed it if we hadn’t been on the floor, but once we could see it, it seemed obvious. We brainstormed the possible causes. There is a HUGE magnolia tree right next to the house, and when we glanced out the window we realized that it was in the perfect position to have a root that is affecting the floor of our den. (This is the opposite side of the house with the foundation issues.) We’re actually a little sad – we like that tree, but it will need to come down sooner than later so that the problem doesn’t get worse.

We went over the cement with the same cleaner that we’d used on Thursday. Then we both took showers and went to bed around 3am. That means we worked 10 hours straight on that den!

It was sooo hard to drag myself out of bed when Savannah woke me up at 9 this morning. I got dressed and went downstairs to check out the den. The cat smell is almost completely gone. Yay! However, I noticed a trail of water near where the floor is slightly raised. (I sniffed it – it was definitely water!) I thought we had just missed a part when we were cleaning the floor last night, but Paul was more concerned.

After careful inspection, Paul noticed a small crack in the cement. He could tell that the water was coming in there. I knew this would take some time to fix so I called and cancelled the carpet installation – I hope we’ll be able to get it installed soon! We called my dad again this morning and the current plan is to get some crack sealer, and then put a cement sealer over the entire room. Then we’ll lay the plastic down, THEN we can get the carpet installed.

Also we need to find room in our budget to remove a tree.

Anyways, so that’s our adventure for today. We’re both exhausted. Stayed tuned for whatever happens next!

(I am glad to find the source of the dampness that I’ve always felt was present down in the den. Also, I’m glad all the asbestos tile is gone. If we hadn’t removed it, we would never noticed the crack. So I guess it’s a good thing.)

05/20/10

my attempt at landscaping

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

I have a feeling that our yard looked awesome when the original owner lived in the house. Then she sold it in 2006 and it became a rental property. Thus began the next 4 years of nothing being done to the yard, except the grass being cut.

(Unrelated side note: Shortly after we moved in, a man rang the doorbell. He was with the mortgage company of the previous owner. He said that he was investigating, because apparently the previous owners did not disclose that the property was a rental. I thought that was interesting.)

As the weather has gotten warmer, I have desires and hopes for our yard. I want to make it a nice place to be – right now I spend as little time there as possible. Our yard is more weeds than grass. There is poison ivy and poison oak all along the fence in our backyard. There are lots of mosquitoes flying around – bug spray is essential when working outside. The yard is so unkempt and overgrown, but I have no idea how to start to fix it. I don’t know the first thing about plants. I’d *love* to pay someone to come, work their magic, and then teach me how to maintain it, but I know that would cost money that is better spent elsewhere.

There are some bushes along the house and along the street that were in desperate need of trimming. So today, I bought some hedge clippers and hacked away. I hope in my ignorance I didn’t do TOO much damage! They look much better, but not perfect. There were three bushes along the side of the house that I cut down to the stumps. I am excited because I think it looks a lot better.

I started raking up all the magnolia leaves in our side yard, but quit out of weariness. There are so many! They haven’t been raked up in years. I have visions in my head, but it takes so much work getting there. Hopefully day by day, I’ll be able to tackle things and get all the leaves raked up, bushes trimmed, weeds pulled, and maybe return the yard to its previous landscaped beauty. It doesn’t need to be this summer… I keep telling myself. :-)

When it is winter again and the weeds die down, we’ll tackle the backyard. There is a HUGE pile of sticks that need to be removed, as well as a bunch of junk and trash that the previous residents left. And of course there is the issue of the poison ivy. I think we’ll focus on the front yard this summer and the backyard in the winter.

In other house-related news, we are getting carpet installed in our den/playroom on Monday! I am so excited. I will take pictures and post them when it is installed. :-)

05/13/10

what are you doing with your $8,000?

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

So anyone who bought their first house in the past year should have gotten the $8,000 homebuyer’s credit. I’ve been really excited to get ours, because there is so much that needs to be done!

We have a really long list, and several pretty expensive items. Not everything is going to get crossed off, so we’re trying to figure out what’s the most important.

On our list:
Foundation – One contractor quoted $5400 back last July. This is something that needs to be fixed before we try to sell the house. However, it’s not really affecting our quality of life right now. So even though it would be really nice to fix, we’re thinking it might be something that could wait.

Water – A plumber quoted $5800 yesterday. Our pipes are old, and need to be replaced. We see a lot of mineral deposits in our water (mostly rust), and we don’t feel comfortable drinking the water. I can only imagine what it’s doing to our laundry (especially those diapers!). We also need a new hot water heater, which we’ll replace after we fix the pipes.

Windows – We got a quote for $12,000 to replace all our windows. Currently, we have the original single pane windows, and 4 of them are broken and taped up. We would need to get a few more quotes; I’m hoping to find them cheaper than that. New windows would probably really help with our high gas bills, help cut down on noise, and give us some screens so we can open the windows during the spring/fall. Also, as a side benefit, we’d be able to get frosted glass for the bathrooms so we can have some privacy while still letting in the light.

HVAC unit – We haven’t gotten a quote yet, but worst case scenario we have to replace the whole thing and I think that would be about $3500. Our inspector told us back when before we bought the house that there are some issues with the HVAC, and that we needed to get someone to fix it. I don’t think the unit is broken as much as it’s not hooked up correctly. This would help some with our gas bills, and my guess is the house would overall be more comfortable temperature. The true test will be this summer when we find out how well the air conditioning works.

Downstairs den – Home Depot quoted $700 to carpet the den downstairs. We are so close to being done with this room! We just need to install the carpet, and then I’d love to replace the light fixtures, and we’ll be able to use that room. I want to turn one corner into an office, and make the rest of it a kids’ playroom. I am so eager to be able to “move in” downstairs. I feel like once that room is done, then I’ll be able to make the furniture arrangement in the main level more permanent, and put up pictures, and then finally feel more at home.

So we have a lot of decisions about what to tackle first. The plumbing makes sense to tackle first since it’s under our budget unlike the windows, but it’s not very much fun. Carpeting the downstairs is really important to me, but it’s also one of the more optional things.

There are other small things on our list. My uncle is going to replace the door to our carport, which is exciting! Also, he is going to put a lightswitch in the master bedroom. That will be a nice change.

So who else got $8,000 for buying a house, and how are you spending it?

04/7/10

clean-up, part 2 – pictures!

I wrote about how we cleaned up our yard about a month ago here.

Unfortunately, I don’t really have any before pictures, except for this one. This is the front flower bed with the cement in it:
DSC_1123

My dad helped us dig up all the cement, and then we got rid of the pieces that day that we cleaned it all up. Here is the after picture that I took with my cell phone:
Our cement-free front flowerbed!

As you can see, we still need to sift all the stones and tiny pieces of cement. But, it’s getting there!! The day after I took the pictures, it rained and our flower bed becomes a pond when that happens! (As does the rest of our yard.) So… I guess we’ll have to figure out what to do about that before I can plant flowers. There is another flower bed on the other side of the front door that still has cement. Someday I’ll tackle that one. Someday, someday…

I wish I had a before shot of our backyard! But here is the “after” picture:
Our backyard - cleaned up!

The trash was all piled high towards the left. Afterwards, I raked the whole backyard:
Our backyard - raked for the first time in 6 months!

I know, it looks less impressive when you don’t know what it looked like before. :-) Our Bagster bag after we were done:
The Bagster bag with all our junk

We couldn’t pile it higher than the sides of the bag, or we would have put a LOT more stuff inside. :-) It’s good to get rid of everything we did, though! It really made a world of difference in our yard.

03/23/10

gas is expensive!

Originally published at twentysixcats.com

So we got our gas bill yesterday – $365!! Unfortunately it’s a monthly bill. I looked at all the things we use gas for, and really the only logical culprit is the heat. We don’t cook enough (and we rarely bake) for it to be the oven/stove, we don’t take showers very often (being honest here!), and I always wash in cold water.

I thought we were being conservative with the heat – we keep it at 65 during the day and turn it down to 57 at night. I also try to turn it down when we’re not home for several hours or more. So, I’m disappointed that despite our efforts we still have such a high bill.

To be honest, this is really going to stretch us financially if it’s the norm.

We turned off the heat last night and today. The thermometer in our house said it never rose above 61 upstairs and 58 downstairs. I was so cold! Savannah and I sat in the guest room all day in front of the space heater. I could hardly bear to go downstairs. I did take a nice walk around our neighborhood in midday, but it wasn’t quite warm enough to just be outside. Maybe tomorrow!

I asked Paul if we could at least keep the heat at 62 degrees tomorrow. It’s just way too cold to have it completely off. And I worry about how it will affect Savannah – she wouldn’t nap at all today and so was fussy all day. It could have been a coincidence, but I wonder if it was because it was so cold.

This is making me rethink our priorities with our house projects. It’s really hard to save the money for repairs to fix the energy inefficiency of the house when you’re spending so much on the bills! So maybe we should bump those to the top of the list?

The biggest thing we probably should do is put insulation in the crawlspace. I hope that helps! The other big thing that will probably help will be to put new windows throughout – we still have the original 1960s single pane windows, and 3 of the windows are broken. I would LOVE new windows for the sound factor alone! But with 12 windows plus a sliding glass door and a bay window, I’m not sure when we’ll be able to afford it. (Anyone have new windows installed recently? How much did it cost, ballpark range?)

Making the house warmer would be nice! But it also would be nice to fix the rust in our water so we stop having to buy bottled water, and so that the rust doesn’t ruin Savannah’s diapers. And it would be nice to get some drainage ditches put in the yard so it stops flooding, which is contributing to the sinking foundation. And I really want carpet in the den. And of course we do need to fix the foundation which is the least exciting project. Where to put the money first??

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, fixer-uppers are fun when you have the money. :-) When you don’t… well they can just be frustrating.

03/19/10

…and the bathroom is done!

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

There is a half-bathroom downstairs off the den in our house. When we moved in, it looked like this:

Half bathroom

The picture doesn’t really show the whole extent. That teal color was so BRIGHT. It was way too bold and dark for that room. It took 3 coats of white to cover it up, plus one coat of color! Also, when they painted it teal, they kinda went crazy. They painted over all the hardware (the outlet cover, the towel rod, pipes running to the toilet) and they got it on everything (the faucet, the sink, the medicine cabinet, the floor). (To see what I mean, check out the baseboard in the picture above!)

So, after working hard, we finally finished repainting it and getting it set up to use again! Here are the pictures:

Bathroom

Bathroom

Bathroom

Some of the things we did:
* Paint the walls a light shade of purple (leftover paint from Savannah’s room)
* Paint the ceiling and all the trim white
* Replace the toilet in order to comply with our county’s low-flow laws
* Replace the faucet as the old one was cheap and cracking, and had teal paint all over it
* Put up a new toilet paper holder and towel rod, to match the brushed nickel faucet
* Clean and scrape teal paint off the sink

So the bathroom is finished for now! There are a few things left that need to be done, when we get the money.
* Get a small shelf to hide the cleaning supplies and extra toilet paper.
* Replace the medicine cabinet/mirror. It is ugly and has teal all over it, but it’s still functional so I couldn’t justify getting a new one.
* Get a new light for over the mirror. One that is brushed nickel will match the rest of the hardware the best.
* Put up a curtain – I actually have an old shower curtain which would match this perfectly, but I’ll need to figure out if it’s possible to turn it into a curtain for the window.
* Someday we hope to get all new windows for this house. When we do that, we’ll go with frosted glass.

My sister and I have been working hard all week on this and the den. The den looks fabulous! It’s not completely done, though. We still need to put another coat of white on the baseboards and the trim along the top of the wall. We also need to clean up the room (paint cans, drop cloths, etc.). I am excited to see it come together, though! When we get our tax return, we’ll be able to put the carpet in, and then that room will be done, too! Pictures of the den to come later.

03/15/10

one down, two to go! (or maybe three…)

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

My wonderful sister Amy is visiting this week. It’s spring break for her, and so she decided a trip to Atlanta to see her favorite niece sounded like fun. I, of course, welcome her visit and her company. (Free babysitter!) Also, my sister is very handy and loves to be helpful, and asked to be put to work. So I made a list.

Number one on that list was to get the den painted. Second is getting the half-bath downstairs finished.

Here is what we’re tackling with the den (picture taken before we moved in):
Family room

And the half-bath that’s off the den:
Half bathroom

Today, we started on the painting. I handled the part by the steps that had to be done with the brush, while Amy figured out the paint sprayer that my parents gave us. Paul tackled the bathroom. (And Savannah took a nap!) Amy got the paint sprayer working, but it was super loud. So, she painted with the roller until Savannah woke up from her nap. Then Amy and Paul put in some ear plugs, and I took Savannah and went to Home Depot to kill time until they were done. It took them about an hour and a half to do the entire den. The paint sprayer had mixed results – it was much faster than just using the roller, but the result was an uneven coat of paint.

On my part, it was really fun to wander around Home Depot for an hour and a half! Especially because I actually could buy some stuff. :-) I got a new faucet for the half-bath, plus a toilet paper holder and a towel rod. I also picked up white outlet and lightswitch covers for the den – the current ones are brown to match the dark paneling, but we’re painting the walls a light color. I also priced new overhead lights for the den, and curtains/blinds for the windows. I’m really excited about the possibilities! It reminded me how much fun a fixer-upper can be.

Tomorrow will be coat #2 of the den. I really hope we only need one more coat of the Kilz paint to cover the dark before we put a third coat of the light yellow that’s in the rest of the house. (Reference the title of this post.) I am so excited about how this is going to look when we’re done!! I will definitely upload pictures. :-)

03/9/10

clean-up

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

It’s finally warming up here in Atlanta, it seems! I am so glad! I hope the warm weather is here to stay. I have been itching to get outdoors!

On Saturday, we helped some friends move. Paul switched his work schedule so he’d get Saturday off (and work Sunday instead). I was glad that we were able to both be there, because we were the only ones who showed up to help! One by one, all the other people had things come up and weren’t able to make it. Our friends were totally cool about it though – I would have been freaking out! Paul and Doug loaded the truck with all the furniture, and I put Savannah on my back and helped Christine load the smaller boxes.

Helping friends move

We stopped for pizza after loading, and then our friends decided to call some movers to help unload, especially because they were moving to an apartment on the second floor. So, we got there and watched the movers easily unload the truck in half the time! Paul said he was glad that he didn’t have to unload too because his muscles had about reached their end.

When we got home on Saturday, we found a citation on our door for the trash in our carport and yard. When the previous owners moved out, they left a ton of junk that we didn’t know what to do with, so we piled it up where we could. Then we added our own trash. After 6 months, it had gotten looking bad so I don’t blame them for citing us. They gave us until the 9th (today) to clean it all up.

Since Paul had to work on Sunday, we didn’t get a chance to work on it until yesterday. We bought a thing called a Bagster, which is a big bag like a dumpster (but a bit smaller), and you fill it up with junk/debris, and then call a company and they come take it away. It seemed to be the best way to get rid of the junk financially. Yesterday, we filled that thing and didn’t even get everything in it! Here are some of the things we put it in:

  • Shortly after we bought the house, the wind pulled the storm door in our back door off its hinges and smashed it to the ground. A million pieces of glass went everywhere. I had to pick up all that glass!
  • Our county has a low-flow water law, so we had to replace one of the toilets when we bought the house. The other toilet has been sitting in our backyard since then. I thought about try to give it away on Craigslist, but I’m glad I didn’t try because when we moved it yesterday we discovered that the back had cracked and broken.
  • The previous owners thought it best to cement over the flower bed in the front of the house. And not even nice cement like a sidewalk… but cement mixed with rocks spread unevenly around and looking horrible! Weeds had sprung up regardless. My dad helped pull all the cement up and we threw all those pieces in the Bagster. I hope to mulch it and make it look nice again! (Maybe one day I’ll attempt flowers, but I don’t want to get too carried away!)
  • Miscellaneous trash and debris we found in the backyard, most of it garden related. There were tons of empty plastic bags of potting soil, plastic cups from seeds, and broken plastic plant pots strewn around. Also random things like one piece of a rusty bedframe, cable, a few pieces of chain link, etc.

We worked for 4 hours yesterday. At one point, a friend watched Savannah so we both could focus on the yard. After filling the bagster, I raked the entire backyard. It needed it! It looks 1000 times better. As we were working in the yard, we kept coming up with ideas of things we wanted to do. It’s going to be a lot of work to get it just looking nice (and I’m not talking landscaping!). There are tons of branches and of course all the leaves and pine straw, not to mention pinecones and whatever the pinecone equivalent that comes from a magnolia tree. Oh and the more time I spend in the yard the more I really want to move the shed out of the backyard. :-) It really takes so much room! But I can’t for the life of me figure out how we’d get it out of there without a LOT of work.

We cleared all the stuff that the citation asked us to, and we called and scheduled a pickup of the Bagster. We didn’t get all the junk cleared out, though. Our sunporch is still full of stuff that we need to get rid of – namely, carpet. We aren’t quite sure what to do about that at this point. One option is to try and fit it all on my sister’s truck when she’s visiting next week, and take it to the local dump. I’d really like to get it out of here! Now that the weather is nicer, it would be great to use the sunporch.

I was going to take some pictures but my camera is out of battery. Oh well! I will try to take them tomorrow before the wind blows the leaves back over the ground and it doesn’t look awesome anymore. :-)

02/5/10

when it rains, it floods

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

We have the pleasure of having a yard that’s lower than our neighbor’s. So, when it rains, all the water goes pouring into our backyard. We need to make some sort of irrigation system that will divert the water to the stream that is back behind the property, because the water is making the ground soft and the foundation weak. But in the meantime, this is what we see every time it rains:

Flooded backyard

It has been raining hard all night and all morning. This picture was taken a few days ago, but that’s pretty much what it looks like now. I am not sure how to go about solving this problem – you would you contact with a problem like this? Landscaper?

By the way, I was thinking about how a year ago we were praying for rain because Atlanta was in a drought. There were watering bans and restrictions, and we weren’t sure if there was going to be enough water for the city! God has a sense of humor because he answered our prayers – and sent us all the rain we’ve been missing over the past few years at once. :-) I sure am getting tired of rain. Especially when it’s cold, but not cold enough for snow. :-(