freebie

The other 'hey look what I did while you were away for the weekend Bryce' project I decided to tackle was the newel posts.  The geometric circle on squares was far too geometric 80's for our 1908 house.

We had actually added the globes as a temporary filler but I came across a better option while cleaning out the material library at work.  The new newel posts were leftover from a old project and were no longer needed which made them free to me.  I decided to remove the top wood square (I don't believe these were original to the house), added my new newel posts and repainted everything to match. 

These are still not exactly what I'd pick if I had a large range of options but they're much better and for free I'm not going to complain. 

clean up

Before putting away the painting supplies I had a weekend home alone and thought I'd tackle a few more less-necessary projects solo.  First up was the supply closet by the back door.  

The inside of this closet hadn't been touched since we moved in and since we had left over paint from the bench project I decided it was a good time to update it.  There are two poorly placed shelves at the top of the closet leaving little room for actual cleaning supplies.  I painted the inside of the closet, adding some stripes because....eh, why not?

I added a wire organizer along the rear wall to hold cleaning supplies, hooks to one side for brooms, dusters, mops etc and clear office file holders to the other for paper bags.

I used bins on the shelves to hold light bulbs, vacuum accessories, cleaning rags etc.

Room on the floor was left for the stand up vacuum cleaner which used to barely fit (the flooring in here is some old carpeting that was left when the Pergo was installed; I kinda dig it).  

kick off

As it usually does, one project led to another and while we were making trips to Home Depot to patch up the holes in the closet and kitchen ceiling, we went ahead and purchased materials for another project we'd been planning on since moving in.

This nook by the back door was great for storing shoes but the freestanding shoe rack needed upgrading.  

We started by removing the flooring (uncovering some awesome linoleum) and trim and built-in a bench of ply-wood with shelves below for shoe storage.  We left the shelf above with baskets for hats/gloves/scarves and covered the rear wall of the nook with bead board to give it a true built-in look.

  

The bench and bead board were painted Behr 'Decorator White' and finished off with some trim and the globe light was replaced.

catch up

For a moment there I was almost blogging in live time but these silly AREs (architectural registration exams) really put a damper on my momentum.  We've completed a few projects this spring/summer but first I owe some 'after' photos from a project we completed last fall- the driveway.  I had progress and completion photos from when we were actually working on the driveway but they were all lost in the great hard drive crash of '11.  Here are some pics I took earlier this spring and I have to say I think Bryce and I were both surprised the driveway was still in such great shape after the winter.  The landscape fabric we used kept the gravel from sinking into the muddy ground and we didn't even have to add more which we assumed we would.  So without further adieu, here's another before which is actually an 'after' (note by the time we got around to this project we'd been driving over that grass for 4 years so picture more of a dirt/mud pit)

and the much after 'after' photo

and just for giggles, here's a photo from when the previous owners were moving out

I explained the process in the last post but here are some close up pics of the gravel blend we put together to add some tans as well as the pavers we used on their sides to act as a border.

And here's the driveway addition looking from the back door of the house.  We didn't want to (and actually probably wouldn't be able to because of regulations) widen the curb cut so we angled the end of the new section.  It's not the easiest park job between the angled entrance and narrow carport but we get our small SUV in there just fine.

Here's a recent photo of the carport as well just to show how the space is utilized these days.  You can also see the door to the garage with updated light fixture and hardware which have been installed throughout the years.  The items stored in the carport here are the trash can, recycling and compost bins (not smelly!).

 

wired for sound

Always one to take advantage of the situation, Bryce immediately went to work on an item off his list while he had access between the first and second floors...

speakers.  He was able to run wire from the receiver in the living room TV cabinet under the baseboard in the living room, thru the wall into the lazy susan in the kitchen, up thru the corner cabinet, across the upper cabinets and (with the access provided by the hole in the ceiling) into the upstairs bathroom cabinet and master bedroom closet.  My one condition was that he use wire staples to keep the cables in order and they're completely undetectable except for in the upstairs cabinet when it's open; and even then they're hardly noticeable. 

In addition to the speakers we already have outside on the deck, now we can have music playing throughout the house as well.  I have to admit, this is actually pretty awesome.

and everything in its place

This is likely to be the most self involved post yet so go ahead and skip it. I added a tab about 'organizing' which I really love to do so I thought I'd share how I fit two adults' wardrobes into one 5' wide closet. Seriously, you don't have to read this one.

Being short on room in our closet, we had to determine what items merited space there and which could be stored elsewhere. Off season items are kept in the guest room closet which creates a great opportunity during seasonal rotations to donate items that weren't used, keeping our wardrobes smaller and limited to pieces that are actually worn. The guest room also holds gym clothes, ski gear, my dresses, Bryce's suits, painting/project clothes, sports clothing, off season jackets/coats and random halloween type dress up items. There is a dresser in the guest room where I store seasonal clothing and my swim suits. Frequently worn shoes and coats are kept by the back door along with scarves, gloves and other accessories. Less frequently worn but still in-season coats and shoes are stored in the coat closet under the stairs and out of season or dressy shoes are stored in a bin in the garage attic. So...back to the bedroom closet.

After all the above mentioned items are taken out of the mix and put away, we're left with this (at this point spread across the guest room while the closet was torn apart).


and they all needed to go in here


My first step is always to catalogue what items I have, sorting them into groups and taking note of the largest or bulkiest and starting with those. In this case, I started with our denim. Bryce and I dress very casually for work, in jeans every day, so we own a lot of jeans.


With Bryce being taller than me, all of this clothes would naturally go on the upper shelves and mine on the lower. I put Bryce's jeans vertically on two shelves; they're sorted lightest in color on top to darkest on bottom, since he typically chooses depending on the color of his shirt. My jeans are on the horizontal shelf. I typically choose my pair depending on the height of heel I want to wear that day so they're sorted in piles of long, medium and short/skinnies. Each pile is then sorted from lightest on top to darkest on bottom.


I hang any sweaters that won't get the hanger bubbles on the shoulders and all the rest are folded and organized by color in rainbow order (I'm a big fan of rainbow order).


The shelving sytem we bought has a tall vertical space to one side for dresses but we use the space for a canvas sweater hanger that houses sweaters in the winter and shorts and skirts in the summer. Again, I sorted by rainbow order and put Bryce's on the top half and mine on the bottom.


Most of the shirts we own are hung, the exceptions being screen printed type t-shirts and Bryce's under shirts.


Bryce's shirts all went on the top and mine on the bottom; all are sorted in rainbow order and within each color, by sleeve length.


Then we get into smaller groups of items that can take up the remaining space. Our few pairs of dress pants on pant hangers, sweat pants, my few skirts, my camis and my unmentionables in the drawers at the bottom.


All that was left was some accessory items: scarves looped over hangers, belts on hooks, my clutches in a clear bin below the sweaters, empty hangers and what you can't see in the photo, my off season bags on the top shelf above Bryce's shirts.


The dresser you can see to the side of some of these photos houses Bryce's under items, sports type shorts, swim trunks, our socks and screen print type t-shirts. We have a lot of t-shirts, mostly held onto for only sentimental reasons. I roll them instead of folding them to optimize space and so that they can all be seen at once.

plumber's crack

So before I dive into how we fixed our plumbing problem, let me explain what was really going on. All the waste water pipes in a house need to be vented to keep fumes and gases from building up inside the pipes. Typically, there is a straight vertical pipe that is intersected with the waste pipe from the toilet forming a 'T' where the waste water goes down and any fumes go up...but not in my 103 year old house. In my house, the wall containing the vent/waste pipe upstairs doesn't line up with the one downstairs and, because the pipe was likely added at a later date, there is a bend in the vent portion.


You can see above where the leak was due to the broken pipe. What was leaking was very fortunately not toilet waste water, as that is piped in below the leak. The top of the vent pipe is open to the elements which would typically allow any rain water to run down the pipe and out of the house with the waste water. When the pipe cracked, this allowed rain water and any condensation build up to run down the pipe and into our kitchen. In addition, the roof is not watertight where the pipe runs thru, so rainwater was also traveling down the outside of the pipe and into the kitchen. This explains why a toilet waste water pipe was leaking when it rained.

We called in the professionals from Three Amigos Plumbing, and after a quick visit, they had a game plan and would be back to fix the issue the next day. In the meantime, we had a homework project to cut a hole in our bedroom closet so they'd have access to attach the new portion of pipe. We considered it pretty lucky that the pipe went thru the wall between the bathroom and the back of our closet so we had the option of removing the toilet tank to put a hole in a remodeled bathroom in a very visible place or putting a hole in the closet behind all of our clothes. Not a tough choice. So that night, after removing most of the clothes and shelving system, Bryce went to work cutting a hole in what we thought was drywall but was actually a plaster wall.


So now we had a hole in our kitchen ceiling and one in our bedroom.



The next day the plumbers got to work and our house, of course, threw them some curve balls. The weight of the 20 or so feet of 4" cast iron pipe above the cracked portion was not supported anywhere. It simply rested on the pipe below, which is likely part of the reason for the crack in the first place. Since the broken pipe was to be replaced with a newer PVC version which would not hold the weight, it needed to be supported somewhere above. The plumbers needed to extend the hole upstairs until they ran into a part they could somehow anchor.


The horizontal 2x4 toward the top of the hole is where the weight is now entirely supported. The two metal straps toward the bottom of the pipe is where the old cast iron meets the new PVC filler. We now had a small hole in the kitchen and a large hole in the bedroom but the pipe was fixed.


We decided to leave the hole in the kitchen ceiling until the roof is fixed/repaired/replaced this spring so that a new patch job wouldn't be ruined by any potential further rain leaks. For the bedroom, instead of trying to patch the wall in the closet, we figured we'd simply line the entire back of the closet in plywood. This actually solved two problems as it covered the hole and added the needed additional support for our shelving system which was really burdening the plaster it was hung from.


two sheets of plywood and a few coats of paint later and it was as if it had never happened



In hindsight, it may have been worth looking into cedar boards instead of plywood but I don't know how much the market around here cares about cedar closets.