Jerm's Insanity

After months and months of bringing down local property values with the tarpaper/crappy gutter motif, we finally got of our asses and hirted someone to come fix the place.  Our belov-ed jumpy buddy LT came out and replaced the gutters, trimmed the windows in aluminum and, most notably, patched in the siding around the house.

He fixed the front window, side window, empty spots form the old deck and fied the melted siding from the previous owners’ grill.  He also re-did the trim in white…. smashing!  Check it out:

Before

After

Hot air, I tell you. And that’s how we like it.

I spent a very chilly saturday afternoon following the sage advice of my carpenter friend. On more than one occasion he pointed out what a big heat-suck my pull-down attic door is. Not only am i dealing with an old mechanism that is slightly misaligned (read: not a tight seal), but also a thing piece of plywood with folding stairs attched to it, and above that….. open attic space. Yes boys & girls, after all of that time reinsulating the place, there was basically an uninsulated hole in my cieling.

“Oh my!” I exclaimed, “what can i do?”

“Build a box, grasshopper,” spoke the master.

So build i did. And after much mucking about with trying to cut clean lines in inch thick styrofoam (SO glad i didn’t go with thicker stuff) and going through enough duct tape to make MacGyver wince, here are the fruits of my labor:

I installed shown box above the attic stairs and the result was actually quite remarkable. I installed it at about 10pm yesterday (it was about 12degrees F outside/in my attic) and once i set the box in place (myself at the top of the attic ladder, door fully open) i was actually warm. Closing it all back up there is now a marked difference in temperature (warmer) near the attic door. woohoo!

One of the swell things about moving from a rental situation into an ownership situation is the security deposit. I just i just laid out thousands of dollard for down payment, closing costs, rennovations, utility activations, etc… but a few weeks after moving in, i got this great little security-deposit refund check that’s kinda like reaching into an old pair of pants and finding $550.

Stay with me.

Having been in normal rental situations for most of the past 6 years, there’s been this was of cash that i put up as security for the first apartment and, not beging the sort to really wreck a place, has gotten moved around ever since. Having not seen this money in so long, the return of it feel like found money, a windfall (ok, a light breeze-fall), soemthing that should under no circumstances be used for such pedestrian things as paying off debt. No, this moeny should go toward something indulgent.. something geeky.. something like a pair of 20.1″ LCD monitors… yummy

yes, i know full well that money would have been “better” spent on, oh i dunno, paying off debt, or socking away for a rainy day, or a really nice hooker… but damnit…. w/o buying these heidi would have had to go back to her 14″ CRT.. the HORROR!! think of heidi!!!

So we moved in.

Wait.. backing up…

We got done in time. Our drop-dead date for getting moved into the house was Oct, 1. Anything after that and there would have been a most-unhappy second month of paying both mortgage AND rent.

The final 2 weeks were utter craziness. I was going to the house at 730am, working on it until 9, going to work, going back to the house after work, and more often than not, working until after midnight. Ceiling drywall is a bitch even with the lift and took us far longer than expected. Then the taping went slowly. The trimming was a lot more work than we had ever imagined. The painting took for ever. The day that we had 4 extra people to paint, we coulnd’t paint. My camera broke. The cable guy put his foot through the hallway ceiling (3 days before move-in) and I nearly had to dispose of a body. On Friday the 29th, the night before the move, Herr Carpenter and I went to Home depot at 9PM to get tack strips, carpet padding and a kicker. We learned as we went… managing to get done with 1 bedroom and the living room before 1am. In the morning i managed to get the office done just before the first load of stuff came from heidi’s apartment. It was madness i tell you.

Things have calmed a bit since then. The mad rush has subsided. Heidi had been diligently emptying boxes and getting the kitchen functional. I’ve been finishing up the wiring and the other bedroom and getting the livingroom (read: TV, DVR, etc..) functional.

The place really started to feel like home when i was sitting on the couch, with the tv across the room, talking to a friend of mine. Suddenly it was my space an i had a guest, as opposed to having helpers assist with the project. This was a huge divergence from the feeling i had while carrying boxes in, “why are we bringing boxes in here? this isn’t a place to live.. it’s a thing that we work on.” Suffice to say, the ammended thought came with great releif.

Anyway, the one big thing that was still missing from all of this was the office. It has until very recently been a respository for everything that hasn’t had a place. A large junk heap awaiting dispersal. I’ve had the laptop&wireless to check email with, but every proper geek needs their workstation. I was missing my computing spot. A desk with a chair and a proper keyboard and non-laptop monitors. After deciding that the office is just far too small for even a hacked-up version of the O’Sullivan desk that i picked up at Staples, CousinDave and I constructed my a mighty-fine desk out of wood scraps. It’s not the prettiest thing in the world, but it’s big, functional, and by god it’s mine.

Greetings, dear friends, family and anyone else so blessed as to happen upon my blog. It has indeed been quite a while since my last house update. Actually, i guess it’s been quite a while since an update of any kind. Sorry about that.

Jerm Status
We’ve been exceedingly busy with the house. The past week or so has been filled with (literally) 18 hour days. On tuesday, for instance, having gotten back from working on the house at midnight the night before, i was back and workin at 730am. I got into the office by 9:15, then was back at the house from 5:45 until about 1am. The upside of this is that we’re making exceedingly speedy progress, the downside is that the fatigue is really getting to me. It was only because we left the house by 11pm this evening that I’m awake for any time after getting home, and a complete miracle that i have the brainpower to write coherantly (for me, anyway.)

House Status
As of this writing we have 2 of 3 bedrooms and the kitchen ceiling completely painted. These rooms are awaiting carpeting. The other bedroom and livingroom are primed, ceilings and trim mostly done, just waiting for the wall expanses to be covered.

We passed our final electrical inspection today and will be likely be getting our final building inspection on monday. The nice lady at the building department mentioned that we can indeed move in before then so we’re not completely screwed.

So there were were at the end of august…. puzting aroudn with the pre-electrician wiring, doing little stuff here and there, and coming dangerously close to stagnation. I was completely overthinking the while electrical wiring updating scheme and finally broke down and just called the electrician. Figuring the moeny that i’d save on labor by doing most of it myself would be far overshadowed by the further rent that would need to be paid at our current dwellings while i fumbled through the process.

So we called Al. I like Al. He’s the husband of a dear coworker friend of mine, so i knew him before we hired him. He was an electrician years ago, then became a commercial/charter pilot flying Citations and Lears, and then went back to electricianism for fun & profit. Suffice to say he’s intelligent, fabulously detail oriented, and fun to work with. We made the best of the frightening state of mt former house wiring and turned it into something that i actually feel safe about living with. This all happened over the course of a few days and now were’ ready for our wiring and framing inspections. Once those are done, we can insulate and sheetrock. The end is nigh….

When you’ve sick (ie: sneezy, light headed, etc…) attic work is not recommended.

Seeing the fruits of one’s labor is a a wonderful thing. It’s an important thing as well — without it, what would be the point of the labor? You’d be left with stagnation, slavery, or a bunch of very pissed off people outside the Boss’s door. Many of them would undoubtedly have pitchforks. This is why i stay out of management.

My point is that the journey of rejuvination on which we’ve embarked our future dwelling has, up until recently, been largely destructive. Step by step along the way we’ve seen parts of our collosal purchase cut, chopped, bashed, disassebled and outright demolished. I’m sure this process is old-hat among the seasoned home reconditioner, but for the neophytes behind this blog it’s been a tremendous effort to keep a fix on the light at the end of rennovation tunnel and keep our inner pitchfork-branding-hordes outside the gates.

Until early last week.

Two weekends ago I finished the digging of the holes. There was then a government mandated waiting period to get someone to inspect my holes. He said that my holes were OK, but he wanted some re-bar in them. So, we stuck 3 pieces of re-bar into each of my holes and the pouring of the concrete commenced. WOOHOO!! We were officially (read: mostly) done damaging the house and finally started improving it! (*NOTE: it could be successfully argued that our first step of ripping down the paneling was a marked improvement to the house, but that was weeks ago)

Also fabulous, during the waiting period, we got very much of the interior furring out of the walls done.

Yes boys and girls and those not quite sure, progress is a wonderful thing. They say getting there is half the fun and it’s finally starting to feel true.