The closet hatch

This was in the floor of my closet.  It was taped over.  I studiously ignored it.

I wanted to set up my air conditioning unit in my bedroom but I didn't have any windows.  When I bought my house there were no roof vents, so during the summer my house was HOT.  Really really hot.  I eventually got the roof vents installed (thanks, Al!) but in the meantime I needed a way to cool my bedroom while I slept.  So I bought a portable air conditioning unit and figured I could maybe vent it out this hole and into the basement.  I got brave and took the tape off the hole.  I cautiously opened the hatch and found some sort of homemade lockbox. 

I slammed the lid shut and called Z.

Me:  "Hey, what are you doing? You want to come over and have lunch?"

Z:  "Actually, I'm not feeling well so I'm heading home."

Me:  "Okay, you HAVE to come over and help me excavate this weird box in my closet floor.  There could be spiders (OH MY GOD, SPIDERS) or severed fingers or guns or cursed doubloons in there."

He came over.  I have great friends.

There wasn't anything in the box, luckily, and Z helped me dismantle the thing.  Now I had a straight shot into the basement.

I used the duct in the basement from the old stove downdraft that I mentioned earlier to vent the AC unit out of the house. Thank you, former house owners, for not leaving anything scary in that box.  I'm not even going to think about what you might have stored in there.

I felt terrible about this

I'm so sorry, Rick and Andy.

Rita and Anders?

Rico and Aaden?

Whatever your names, I painted over you.

But I felt really, really bad about it.  I hope you kept growing, Rick and Axle.

Painting the kitchen

My kitchen was really grimy when I bought it.  A reminder:

It was also pretty matchy-matchy.  Yellow paint to match the yellow tile.  I wasn't crazy about how it played off the new Marmoleum.  The wall color and tile were very cool and the flooring was warm.  I felt like it needed to be bridged better.

There were a lot of holes in the wood trim to be filled.  I used a wood filler that has the annoying habit of drying out almost immediately, making sanding it afterward more difficult.

I have to use the spackle that goes on pink and dries to white or I try to sand it too soon.  I'm not good at waiting.

Once I got the walls painted a warm off-white I felt like the counters looked too cool.

I grabbed the leftover paint from the failed first painting of the dining room and painted the soffit.  I think it balances the warmth and coolness, even if I'm not totally crazy about the color.  I still think it needs to be more saturated.

The final product:

The funny thing is that now the soffit paint is now pretty matchy-matchy with the tile.  I CAN'T WIN.

Mysteries in the laundry room

When I moved into the house I needed a lot of electrical work.  This is what my electrical panel looked like.  Wires sticking out, no cover . . . just a tiny bit hazardous.

Luckily I have a friend who is an electrician and would work for a reasonable rate (and access to the food in the kitchen cabinets).  He did a couple of really awesome things without my asking, like putting a motion sensor on the light in the laundry room.  So if I'm carrying a basket of laundry there's no fumbling with a chain in the dark--the light just comes on.  After five minutes without motion it turns the light off.  It's awesome. 

Fast forward to now.  A few weeks back I started noticing that the light would be on when no one had been down there.  I noticed that the dryer hose had popped off the window vent and figured that must have triggered the light to go off.  Some contractor had told me that, in the hierarchy of venting, rigid metal ducts are best.  They accumulate the least dust and lint resulting in a lower fire risk.  The only problem is that I couldn't get the stupid hose to stay connected to the window outlet. I kept finding it like this:

I kept applying more foam tape and the stupid thing kept popping off.  I finally decided to screw the pieces together.

Bingo!  Why didn't I think of that before?  The only problem?  The light was still going off.

THE LIGHT WAS STILL GOING OFF.

My roommate and I had a very serious conversation about the light (we had both noticed it and gotten freaked out); my roommate solemnly informed me that it could be a ghost.  I was worried it was a mouse or some other critter.  I hunted around for signs of critters: droppings, nests, chewed stuff . . . but found nothing. 

So my latest theory concerns the old stove downdraft.  My house didn't have a stove hood so the previous owners appeared to have one of those stoves with a downdraft that vented through the kitchen floor.  There was a hole in the kitchen floor with a duct attached.

 

That hole was covered by the underlayment for the Marmoleum and I repurposed that duct into a vent for my portable AC unit in my bedroom.  But in the winter the duct was just hanging out doing this:

My theory is that it gets windy outside and air comes shooting into that duct and into the basement, causing the duct to swing.  I should have remedied this long ago.  I'm letting cold air into the house and basically left a fun slide for critters wanting to get into the house.  Like SPIDERS, OH MY GOD, SPIDERS.  Or mice.  Or whatever. 

So I took the cover off the exterior of the house . . .

. . . cut some of this stuff I found in the basement to fit . . .

. . . screwed it in and replaced the cover.

I'll keep you posted about the light.  I really hope this stops the light triggering because I don't want to consider the alternatives.  Like ghost-rats.

Edited to add: I did finally get a cover for my electrical panel.  It feels slightly less dangerous doing laundry beneath it now.

Progress in the basement

Sigh.

The basement. My albatross.  When I bought the house the basement had been drywalled and taped.  The seams had been mudded but they needed to be sanded.

I hate sanding.  Really, really hate it.  I had primed the drywall but the corners needed to be taped and mudded and sanded and primed and sanded and painted and sanded . . .

You can't just leave rough corners like this.

You have to get some of this.

And some of this.

You smear some of the joint compound on the corner and then affix the corner bead.

Then you wipe away the excess compound and let it dry.  Then you have to put more compound on top of that, trying to make it as smooth as possible.

Then you let that dry and sand and sand and sand.  Did I mention I hate sanding?  Then you try to remove as must of the dust from the drywall as possible and then slap on another layer of primer.

It takes professionals no time at all to do this process.  I just watched a TV show where these pros came in and did a whole room in two hours.  It was beautiful.  I felt so lame.  This took me THREE WEEKENDS.

But I'm finally at a point where I can start painting.  I love painting!  Once I'm done painting I can scrape the foam padding off the floor, install the laminate flooring, and then install the disco ball.

Oh yeah. I own a disco ball. 

Fighting with the Flippers

My episode of My First Place ("Fighting with the Flippers") aired last night.  It was totally surreal.  Overall I'm thankful that HGTV edited me kindly, though I wish more of Bill's hilariously witty comments made it into the episode.  I also wish they had shown a *little* more of the charming details like the arches in the bathroom and the coved ceilings.  I also wish they hadn't played the soundbite talking about art deco tile when they were showing the non-deco tile in the bathroom.

Coved ceiling!

 

Even though I have a thousand pictures, I forgot how empty the room looked after the reveal when compared to now.  That was such a fun day.

Fun's over now, though.  I have to get to work on the basement.  I still haven't been given a vampire boyfriend so I have to do it all by myself.  Hmph!

Holidays in the house

Thanksgiving was a screaming success.

Photo: Bill Tennant

My parents sent flowers!

We also had a Latke Off! for Hanukkah.  I made latkes from purple potatoes.  

. .  . and Scott's latkes came from a box.  They were beautiful looking.  They totally tasted better, too.

 

I didn't have any Hanukkah music so we settled on the soundtrack from Dirty Dancing. 

I made caramel corn for my mom from this recipe and promptly ate half of it myself.

If you had told me last year at this time that I would close out the year as a homeowner and the feature of an episode on HGTV I would have laughed and laughed.  Happy new year!