Dust, dustier, dustiest

Today was supposed to be the day that I went downtown to get permits for the renovations. Unfortunately, the drawings and paperwork are yet to be completed and so no permits were obtained. Instead, Tanner and I set to work on other, seemingly minor, fixes around the house. The terrible patches around the windows were ground down to something closer to flatness, the big metal security screen door thing was removed, and the windows in the living room were de-drywalled.

The plan in the living room is to install traditional looking casings, and to do that the old, terribly done trim-out had to be stripped. This process was made easier by the fact that the old owner only had about 12 nails in his posession at the time he was installing the windows, and so the corner bead was only barely nailed and some of the strips of drywall were not nailed at all. This job was made harder, however, by the fact that it generally sucked and pretty much any time you have to take down old wall board its going to suck. The difficulty was further compounded by the fact that the original workman laid a ton of mud around the windows, and so a ton of drywall had to be sanded off. I started with the regular pole sander but got nowhere. As a last resort, I switched to the old belt sanded with the 60-grit belt which quickly removed the offending mud but filled the entire house with a huge amount of super fine dust.

I totally dropped the ball because I was pretty frustrated by this point and didnt close doors or anything and everything in the entire house is covered with dust. Corinne took it pretty well.


Meanwhile, Tanner was outside on a ladder grinding down the stucco scratch coat which stuck out past the original stucco. He was using an angle grinder with a $25 diamond grinding cup from Harbor Freight Tools. Well worth it, as the cup cut really fast and consistently and had Tanner nicely enshrouded in a cloud of dust. Also worth it, cause the bosch version costs $100. He was able to get the first 4 or so windows all taken care of, and unless we get sidetracked tomorrow he should be done and able to move on to patching the stucco.

Tomorrow: either permits and demo or more of the same, getting the stucco patched and ready for paint and the windows cased and the room ready for paint. Corinne doesn't like the white interior of the house, and although I don't love it I'm more excited about removing our house from its current neighborhood blight status.

Pictures!

Okay - here it is - what you've been waiting for.
The picture of our house.
Just know that it doesn't look very pretty now...but it will.

Sorry about my car in the way - I was too lazy to move it.
Here's what it will look like when we're done with it (courtesy of Jesse's mad Photoshop skillz):

*This does not include the fabulous landscaping I plan on doing.

Wednesday was all Jesse - I had a book group to go to (the author joined us by phone!).
He stopped at the Big Orange Box (Home Depot/BOB) to purchase a weed whacker, which he insists on calling a 'string trimmer,' so that we could work on the front lawn. Our friend, Robert, was kind enough to lend us a lawn mower and an edger to help with the process.

When we bought the house there were knee high weeds in the front. They were the first things to go. Now, equipped with a WEED WHACKER and an edger, we (the Royal We) were able to get the lawn, er-dirt, looking MUCH better. In fact, he made it look down right beautiful.

While we were working out front, a new neighbor even stopped by - Mike, from the beautiful corner house. He let us know that the neighborhood (Islenair [Eye-len-air]) had a nickname for our house. It has affectionately been known as the 'Crack House.'
We plan on turning it into the Mac House (get it - McDaniels - Mac...)

Here are a few more pictures followed by a story.

This is our (very full) garage. One day we hope to be able to fit a car in there with all of our crap.

Our first yard waste container. This is just from the first 'weed mowing.'
After Jesse's work on Wednesday, the bucket is now full.

Our kitchen with fancy new range and microwave. Notice the cooler - it is where about half of my perishable items went bad while waiting for our new refrigerator. Also notice that the "Over the Range" microwave is not anywhere near "Over the Range."

Our 'counter top' that we borrowed from my work:

The countertop that nothing clean may sit on:*The chair was a gift from the previous owner. It is full of dust and dirt and who-knows-what. Cheeba loves it.

And now for the story!

Jesse is, of course, not used to living with a cat. I have a cat who is not just a cat - she is a special cat. She's deaf and about 50% blind. She gets around perfectly and is her happy little cute cat self BUT if she were to get outside - being that we live on a canyon - she most likely would not survive long enough to be found.

I've had Cheeba since Spring 2002. I love this cat. Love.

Our first day at the house, though, Jesse kept leaving the door open. I let him know (politely - the first time) that he could not leave the door open as Cheeba may go exploring and never come back. The warnings got progressively less polite throughout the day as I kept finding the door open.

Finally, late into the evening [read: dark outside], I went into the kitchen and the door was OPEN. I couldn't find Cheeba anywhere. Screaming ensued.

We found her (sleeping) - but that wasn't the point. Here's what I said:

Jesse, do you watch the office?
Sometimes.
Well, do you know why Angela broke up with Dwight?
No.
He accidentally killed her cat. And even though it was an accident and he felt really really badly about it, and even though she still loved him very much, every time she looked at him she saw her dead cat and so she broke up with him.
Oh. I think I get the point. Will you make me a sign so I stop leaving the door open?
Yes.

Lastly, here is a picture of our living room, which is one of the places in our house that makes me believe that we'll 'get there.'

The first days

Coming home from work Monday was quite a change - my commute has been reduced from 20-25 minutes down to about 10-15. Quite nice, actually.

I came home to grossness so I decided to clean clean and clean some more. I also needed to figure out a way to have a kitchen without using the kitchen. Our sink, cupboards and counter tops are quite nasty - and we'll be starting our renovations with the kitchen anyway - so we've decided not to store anything in the kitchen. I borrowed some folding tables from work to give me 'counter space' and borrowed some shelving units from friends for our 'pantry' and storage areas in our living room.


Notice the martini glasses are on the top shelf.

All evening, Jesse had been at his old apartment loading up the truck and cleaning. He was on his way home and I was starving so we decided to meet in Mission Valley at the Home Depot to get temporary window coverings then go out to dinner. You may not know this but I get pretty cranky when I'm hungry. Needless to say the Home Depot trip was a disaster and we did not get any window coverings.

Home we went with the intention of unloading, cleaning up a bit, and hitting the hay.

I was cleaning away when Jesse came into the room and said, "Corinne! It's 12:30!!" Umm...crap. Another night with little to no sleep.


Tuesday began innocently enough. Jesse toasted me an english muffin and brought it to me in bed. He went off to school and I got up to wait for our appliances, which were being delivered. In the mean time...clean, organize, clean, organize, repeat some more.

Our appliances arrived - the lovely five burner Jenn-Air stove was hooked up, the dishwasher was stored securely in the garage to await the completion of our kitchen, and the over-the-range microwave was added to our appliance-covered folding table. Now for the refrigerator. Hmmm...it won't fit through the door to the kitchen.

Through the turmoil of buying the house, I've tried to adopt a c'est la vie attitude about things (well, tried to...ha!), so I told them to put it next to the TV in the living room :)


From left to right (some of which you can't see) it goes: storage boxes full of things we don't need immediately, chair, shelves full of cleaning products, television, refrigerator, front door.

The wall perpendicular to that has all of the shelving seen above.

Ahhhh.

I also finally got to tackle the second bedroom (Cheeba's room) - which was disgusting - and set up Jesse's office in there. He came home from getting the last load of his things around 10 pm (he had estimated his time of arrival as 6 pm...), unloaded everthing, then started on his four hours worth of homework. He gave up after about an hour (around 12:30 am) and set his alarm for 4:30 am to get up and finish. The sleeplessness continues...

That's it so far! Our next steps are to get the permits for the kitchen and to make the exterior look a bit better (pictures soon). Jesse's got spring break all next week so hopefully we'll be able to start on the kitchen!!!

And so it begins...

So we closed on our house last Thursday, March 26th. I was so drained from the process that when I met my friends Annie, Emi and Val out for drinks I could nary put a sentence together.

Jesse picked up the keys, which required Macgyver-like skills on the part of our Realtor (also named Jesse). You see, nothing is ever easy - especially when it comes to this house - and the seller's agent took the lock box (containing the keys) away and left the keys inside. How, you might ask, were we to get the keys if we didn't have a key to unlock the doors? Good question. The answer came in the form of a dried weed stalk. Our Realtor (I'll refer to him as 'Ibanez' to limit confusion) picked the lock on the front door with a dried weed stalk. I wish I could have been there...

Jesse and our friend, Tanner, took our sofa and a few other items over while I was at work on Friday. I later packed until 2:30 am -- and got up at 6:30 am for my and my roommate's moving sale. The sleep deprivation started there.

We loaded and unloaded all day and into the evening. Finally we decided to grab dinner with Tanner, who'd been dutifully helping us all day. We decided on an Ethiopian restaurant a few blocks from the new house -- not knowing that this was the SLOWEST restaurant in San Diego County. Three hours later (after finally being able to pay our bill) we were as tired as tired could be and still had another load to bring over. We pushed through and headed to bed around 1:30 am.

Cue Sunday - up with the sun because we have no window coverings - and more moving. Moving moving moving all day.

The problem, you see, is that the previous owner did not clean before moving out - or ever, really. And we just didn't have the time to do it before we started bringing things over. So I've been slowly moving everything out of a room, cleaning it, and moving everything back in. Soon we'll have the house in a decent-enough state of cleanliness.

That's (mostly) everything up to Monday. We'll get to Monday soon...