The $250 kitchen renovation

As you can see, we've decided to do a few things to make the house more comfortable.. Things like the carpet runner, and the storage shelves were near the top of the list, but at the very top was making the kitchen slightly less ghetto-rific.

<-- This is what our kitchen has looked like for the past 2 years.

It's been totally functional, but I have to admit the inability to clean that room has been driving me a little batty. The throw rugs on the floor have been particularly frustrating because they're impossible to clean - the vacuum pulls them up (as do the cats), spills can't be wiped up, and there are areas here and there that I'd accidentally touch floor with my bare feet. It shouldn't be so disturbing to accidentally touch your kitchen floor with your bare feet!

The lack of cabinets was also high on the "we gotta do something about this" list. Especially with the walls open, everything on the shelves would just get so filthy so fast. Plus, I really like being able to CLOSE the cabinet doors and not see everything.

So first things first, we had to clear everything out of the room. The stove and the fridge, which we didn't want to empty, were the two big pains.
Everything else was just a matter of packing up and finding a spot in the house. It was like moving, but didn't involve a truck.

Our 12' x 25' sheet of vinyl was rolled up with the good side out and the short way, which would make it very hard to unroll in the room. So we spread it out and rolled it up the other way.
Unfortunately, we don't actually have a space that big, so we made do with the patio and some extra folding. Even more unfortunately, we got the cheapest vinyl available, and it was so thin that in doing this we creased it and tore it in a few places :-/ If we'd realized how thin it was, we'd've anted up to a little better quality.

We wound up sorta folding it in thirds and carrying it like a dead body into the kitchen.
The sink is the only "permanent" thing in the room, and it turned out to be nailed to the floor with a dozen nails! We swapped out the blocks for something a little less crazy and slid the vinyl underneath.

Then we rolled the rest of it out. Again, this would've been way easier if we'd gotten thicker stuff, but we were still doing ok at this point. We used the table to hold down sections while we adjusted other areas.

Then we sliced it with a utility knife (the one upside to how thin it was) up against the walls so we could finish rolling it out into the entry..

.. and then screwed it into the subfloor around the perimeter.
We decided against using glue, as would be correct for this installation. We scrubbed a LOT of mastic and glue off that floor when we moved in and I'd just as soon not be right back at square one when we're ready to redo the kitchen for real. Actually, correct would've been laying down a clean plywood subfloor first, but that's waaay more than we cared about for this temporary fix

Again, the fridge was tough because it was so heavy but we ultimately just creased the vinyl underneath it and rolled it into place.

Unfortunately, in doing this we tore a hole right in the center of the room (of course!)

Good thing we had our guest house renovator/blogger in the house! Ayse (who kindly offered to hold Natasha so I could work without a baby strapped on my back), made short work of patching the tear with the tape we bought for that very purpose. She had a couple more opportunities to use that skill in this room.

Once the fridge had been moved onto the vinyl, the rest of the floor was pretty straightforward. Then it was time to move everything back in..

.. and then put up the cabinets!

Dan and I installed a whole kitchen at our old house, so we learned a few tricks for making it go more smoothly. The first trick is to get a laser level and a good stud finder, and then attach a ledger board to the studs to set the cabinet on

Resting on the board, even this giant cabinet is able to be held up by the frailest of ladies.

While I held it up, Dan screwed in through the studs, marked by the laser line

And then he sunk a few more screws into a few more studs for good measure

With the big stuff in place, it was time for fun with plumbing.

First on that list was plumbing the water line into the fridge for water and ice!! anyone need a brita??

And then onto the VERY exciting plumbing of the dishwasher!!

Our super-silent model is a little noisier than it would be if it were mounted in an actual bank of cabinets, but it's pretty darn quiet.

<-- Check out the little red light on the floor.. that's the only indication that it's running

And, most importantly, it cleans the dishes!

One of the saddest parts about why I'm so excited about the dishwasher is how much easier it'll make doing laundry.. The washer also drains into that sink, and it's been such a drag to have to wash a full sink of dishes just to do a load of laundry! The odds of the baby still being asleep by the time the dishes are done are pretty slim, which means the laundry gets put off anyway until after the sink fills back up, and we go through the same game again.

This part of the kitchen looks more or less the same as it did before

But this part is very exciting!! Look at the cabinets! All our food is in there, hidden behind closed doors, safe from the dirt. And the cats have to work much harder to knock all the jars over. I found them on Craigslist, and they were cheap and perfect!

I'm thinking of stapling some fabric up to close off the room from the chimney chase. It'll look much better and should keep the room cleaner.

And here's the new counter/sink area. We have a net loss in counter space, but there's much less sitting ON the counters which gives us more room to actually prepare food (ok, please imagine I actually cleaned up the counters before taking this picture..)

The hanging cabinet is from the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, and was a fabulous deal for a well-made brand new wood cabinet.

And finally, the view into the room from the entry. I don't think we'll make it into any magazines with this kichen rehab, but it's SOOOO much nicer! Walking into the room actually feels like walking into a kitchen now.

Each iteration of the room is a million times better than the one before (check out how it was at first, then how it's been), and I expect that trend to continue when we finally redo the kitchen for real.

Shade and Space

First the Shade

Since the big tree fell we've realized one thing...our cool, slate gray-green outdoor living room is a fricken oven in the summer....holy mackerel does it get hot out there now. Pretty much direct southern exposure until about 4pm when the neighbors trees start to shade it a bit. I guess on the bright side we can finally grow tomatoes, peppers, basil, and citrus in the backyard...

We knew something had to be down before the 4th (yes this is a waaaaaaaaay late post) and our annual BBQ. We hit on the idea to buy a shade sail. This one is called a coolaroo...say it out loud its fun coooool-la-rooooooooo

With some eye bolts screwed into our massive deck beam (6by 10) and two lines out to the fence we were in business....well it didn't really go that fast but I forgot to take pictures of all the intermediate steps.

turns out, you gotta pay attention to the directions to get it to hang correctly...I only had to adjust two mounting points but it hangs pretty well and provides good shade. I just hope it doesn't pull the deck off the house or the fence down....

Now For The Space
We've also spent a ton of time organizing our 'stuff' on the bottom floor. This entailed lots of shelves and unpacking lots of bins.

This may not look like much but the shelf the helmets our on is new and the shelf next to the window is new and loaded with tools! The heavy bag is new too....so good for taking out work stress constructively.

Here's a long shot of the shop area. Just look at all that space! No big piles of lumber taking up half of it.

See no lumber! Some other stuff though but no lumber! Anyone need a tornado fire pit? Only slightly used....how about two 10' tall metal tulips that shoot 20' balls of fire? anyone?? anyone??? Beular?....Beular???

We even put up a hook to hang our work coveralls up on! And the shelf next to em...very well organized I must say.

Check out our big new shelving unit on casters! This thing was a costco special and its super nice. Its seriously beefy with each shelf capable of holding over 1200 pounds! And its on wheels so you can move it around easily. Next to it under the window is one of our stainless steel tables we got gifted. Fits in their perfectly and holds some heavy tools on the bottom shelf.

Ya, I know, goofy post, but it feels good to be able to finally take all the house supplies and tools that we were storing on the top floor and move them downstairs where they will actually be used and have room for them. Maybe its a guy thing but a well organized tidy shop makes me a happy boy.

Storage! Storage! Storage!-Lumber Rack

Besides 'stuff' we have acquired waaaaaay to much building supplies..just check out the photos below. We have a giant stack of lumber in just about every room that would fit it..

Here's the big stack of 2by4's in the main shop area.

Here's a big stupid stack of house siding, plywood, sheet metal, and random dimensional lumber.

Then outside under this tarp we have a huge pile of 2by6's, more siding, a bunch of beefy framing lumber, and some ipe from the deck we built at our old house.

Way too much lumber piled all over the place. We decided that if we had one single nice place to store it that we could save a lot of indoor space. We came up with a simple ladder type design and decided to put this lumber rack in the back corner of the yard.

With plan in hand I cut all the wood ahead of time. With all the wood I was going through I was worried that there would be none left to put on the rack! A worry that turned out to be unfounded unfortunately...

I next set up a station so that I could glue and screw the uprights together. We had a bunch of PL premium laying around so I used that. Its supposed to be super strong and water proof. I don't want this rack collapsing if it gets wet.

Action shot of me working on the uprights.

I let the uprights dry for a day before I attached the cross pieces. I set up a simple jig with some saw horses and glued and screwed the two outside pieces first.

Then I squared up the frame and held it in place using bungee cords and clamps and glued-screwed the rest of the uprights.

Here's a picture of a finished uh,...rack? The racks are 3' wide and built 4 of them that I plan to space out to 12'.

I reused the 'clear plastic tarp of planty death' under my rack. I am going to attempt to keep what ever is on the rack dry and I didn't want moisture coming up from the ground. I was worried about making sure all the racks were aligned with each other in all dimensions cause if they were not they wouldn't support the wood properly and the wood could get twisted-deformed from the rack. This part was not super fun and it was oh, 100deg in the backyard at the time...man I sure do miss that big tree...

With all the racks aligned I screwed 2by6's to the top and both sides to lock the racks in place. The rack seems pretty strong with a reasonable amount of shear strength. Here's me loading the rack from the lumber in the outdoor pile. I probably spent more time sorting the garbage wood from the good than I did actually loading up the rack.

But now look!! ALL the wood from everywhere, that's worth keeping, is now neatly stored on the rack. Hurray!! We can actually get to different types of wood without having to dig through a humongous pile of wood! Its all sorted and ready to go for our next project!! I was able to bring the tarp all the way up on the back and part of of the way up on the sides. I will put another 6mil tarp over the top of this so that the wood will actually stay dry!

Here's another beautiful shot of the rack from the side. There's even room for all our metal, plumbing supplies and the bits of 'nice trim' I'm saving for some unknown reason... I feel like I could open up my own neighborhood lumber yard!

Storage! Storage! Storage!-Shelves!

Help We are drowning in 'stuff'!!!

Ever since the 'giant tree blowing down incident of '09' we've been crowded for space. We just hurriedly moved everything from the tent, that we didn't chuck, into the spare 'bedroom' downstairs. The downstairs of the house is just full of stuff...to much stuff...so we decided it would be a good idea to build some storage for all the stuff....stuff, stuff, stuff...

I'm dumb and didn't get a decent picture of the room full o crap but just imagine that the entire room looks like this small section and you'll get the idea.

I decided to use up some of our spare lumber and build big massive shelves along one wall in the downstairs bedroom. The idea here was to build all this stuff without buying new stuff....it almost worked but I ended up buying a box of lag bolts...but that's it. Since the framing is open I decided to use it as part of the shelving, bolting ledger boards right to the walls.

Here's a shot of all the ledger boards installed. These shelves are extra deep at 3' So hopefully we will be able to store a ton of stuff on em.

Then I went thru our wood piles and pulled out all the checked, crappy wood I could find and cut it into shelf boards. And began screwing it to the ledgers.

The bottom two shelves are meant to hold the super heavy-beefy stuff which is why I used 2by material for the shelves. Here's a shot of both bottom shelves done. I had enough scrap 3/4" plywood laying around to do the top 2 shelves. I did screw in an intermediate stringer to support the ply as 3' is too far for it to span I thought.

And voila the shelves are almost filled. I decided to leave the shelves on the right double height for light weight tall stuff. It worked out pretty good for the big Halloween stuff. I pretty much was able to pack everything from the storage tent onto these shelves! and then some. Heck its practically a built-in I can put doors on it and call it a closet.

And here's what the room looked like when we were done. Along the right I built a storage area for the all the dang sheet metal we have acquired...its so floppy-joppy that it can be a pain to store. The clamp on the 2by4 can be moved in and out to accommodate different thickness's of stored metal and it keeps the large sheets from flopping over.

Going to have to come up with a project that uses a lot of sheet metal...

And here's what it looks like now after my bday present was installed....think my wife is telling me something by giving me an exercise machine for my 40th bday? Hmmmm..... we put the baby in her vibro-chair while we are working out and she contentedly falls asleep and lets us exercise...ya right...

In the area by the back door (where the spiral staircase is supposed to go some day) I decided to build some more shelves using the same methods. I wanted somewhere to put the outdoor stuff. The chairs, coolers, gardening tools, stuff like that.

And here's what it looks like finished....actually this is taken after the 4th so all my nicely put away stuff has been yanked out and put outside for the party. Imagine this neatly packed with stuff if you will...The gardening tools go in a rack formed by the shelves and ledgers, not fancy but it keeps the tools upright and the garden dirt out of the shop area.

A Mulching We Shall Go....

We've been super busy on the house trying to get a ton of stuff done before our 2yr housiversery this July 1st....so we've been really behind in posting pretend this was posted on July 2nd....as we had this done before our 4th of July party.

So apparently you can call tree services and get them to deliver you free much. It saves them the time of trucking it to the transfer station and it saves us the hassle of buying some.

The truck backs up and dumps its load....this was apparently from a large pine tree and their shredder must of been set on large...cause we got bigger chunks than I was picturing and lots of needles...

And here's our pile!

Here's Irene and the baby spreading out the mulch..wait...is she using a pitch fork? What could possibly go wrong?

And here's what mulch looks like spread around! Super exiting no???

Actually it smells like Christmas so that's a nice feature...Irene read somewhere that the pine needles would keep weeds from growing....that would be nice...one thing that worries me....once this stuff dries out isn't it going to be one big layer of kindling? One dropped cigarette and won't the entire thing go up in flames?...oh well at least it smells nice...

Simultaneously, Irene put down this clear plastic tarp to kill the weeds in the backyard. No chemicals for these hippy gardeners!

Close up shot of the 'plastic tarp of weedy death' doing its thing.

And here's what it looks like after a week in the sun! All weeds baked to death!

Be Your Own Knifecatcher

Or Why Realtors Drive me Fricken Nuts.....

Here's the MadScientists guide to being your own knifecatcher...

1. Study the real estate market in question for several years, go to a lot of open houses and at least mentally track what you get for how much dough.
2. Rack up several years rehabbing old houses yourself. To build up an in-depth knowledge base of what things really need to be addressed in old houses and what it will cost to do them.
3. Use a service like Zillow.com that shows you important information like what the official stats of the house are and when it was last sold and how much it sold for.
4. Find your local building depts online permit check service. Alameda has one that can be found here. Look up the house in question and see what work has been done recently or ever, with permits.
5. Go to the open house, ask the realtor a lot of questions and take a lot of pictures.

Do that and no realtor will be able to pull the wool over your eyes.

Realtor Rant:Or why your average realtor is more like a shady used car salesman than not.

My dad has done sales jobs his entire life. He was lucky to land jobs where he got a reasonable base salary plus commission. He was a very good salesperson and did very well for himself and everything I know about sales I've learned from him. I feel like I've had a lifetime of coaching on what makes a good sales person and now I have some definite opinions on that matter.

1. For the love of Pete know your fricken product!!!! When my dad sold van conversions he could tell you every single detail about his vans and every detail about their competitors vans and what made his vans better than the competitions. What is it with Realtors who seem to just basically be at open houses to take up space and hand you their business cards? Countless times I've asked Realtors simple questions about places and they don't know anything about the house. Its always 'oh, I'm just filling in for someone else who really knows the house...yea right.' Get a pest inspection report and be familiar with whats in it. Get a real house inspection and be familiar with whats in it and get REAL estimates for what its going to cost to fix something. If another realtor looks me straight in the face and tells me a $100,000+ foundation job is going to cost ~$35,000 I'm going to lose it I swear!
2. Be Honest!!! My dad built a successful car dealership around a simple precept...'Never screw anyone over EVER!' You can make some money for a while screwing people over but that is NEVER a business model that works long term. I seriously fricken hate this 'willful ignorance' Realtors seem to have about the houses they are 'selling'. Take 5 minutes and do a permit check and be honest about what work was done without permits and if there are any complaints against the house. Why waste everyones time by obfuscating the truth?
3. Actually Learn How to Sell! I know the real estate market here has been detached from reality for the past several years but c'mon....learn to sell (see #1 & #2 above). I know that the one course you took in community college to become a realtor was just packed with useful info but please learn to sell! If you want to stay in this business after the boom you are going to have to hustle or die. Personally I think the SF Bay area can use oh, 90% less Realtors...I just wonder what get-rich quick scheme all these out of work Realtors will latch onto....bilking the elderly outta their savings with bogus investment schemes? Carnival FreakShow Barkers? (nah you have to actually have a personality and be able to sell to be one of those)...

Okay, Okay not all Realtors are bad.....just most of them...