bedroom closet and other remodeling

So I promised pictures of the closet project we worked on this past weekend. Before I get to those pictures, I wanted to point you towards our house remodel site that has most of the major work we've done to our house.

The most interesting (and largest) project is, of course, the kitchen. We entirely gutted the kitchen. Not even the walls, ceiling, floor, or windows stayed. There are still a few small things that need to be finished up (and one large thing that is still awaiting PG&E - they suck), but it is finished now for the most part. I'm still waiting to take the good "after" pictures until everything is finished though. Then I can have side-by-side pictures that really show off how bad it was then and how wonderful it is now. I love my kitchen. There are two pages for the kitchen - kitchen 1 and kitchen 2.

If you don't want to click to check out the whole project, here's a little preview.

Before:

And After:

Now, on to the closet stuff.

The master closet is 9 feet wide and used 3 sliding doors for access. It started out with just one long clothes rod and a very warped shelf over it. First we ripped those out.

After ripping out the support boards and baseboards, and then sanding the walls, Tim shows us how big the closet is.

Then he painted the closet to match the rest of the room. The color is Behr's "Pesto." While Tim did this, I did some gardening so as not to breathe in paint fumes :)

Then we assembled our new closet organizer. This took about six hours.

And last, we put all the clothes back in the closet!

Niiiiice! :)

Now we have to figure out what we want to do about the doors. I'm not a big fan of sliding doors, but since the closet is so wide, we might not have any other options. Tim suggested a curtain, but I said that sounded too "dorm room." I suggested no doors, and Tim said that sounded even more "dorm room." We're going to check out some accordion style doors, but if nothing else works, we'll go back to the sliding door option. At some point, we will reinstall baseboards when we get around to doing that in all the bedrooms. We also need to install some kind of light in the closet before the doors go back up.

We also took out the closet organizer in the library to prepare it for painting. We thought we would get to both closets this past weekend, but boy were we wrong. After we paint in the library, we have an IKEA closet organizer that was in my craft room that we are just going to move in there. The craft room is going to become the nursery. The closet in there is already painted and ready; we just need to assemble the new closet organizer (same kind as in the master bedroom). Then all our closets will be updated! Whew!

Also, I just want to say how much I love my handyman husband! It is so great that we get to do all these projects and save so much money because Tim does so much of the work himself. He is really making this house fabulous. And I am becoming an efficient handyman's helper ;)

I am such a bad blogger

I never update. I think about doing it a lot, but I never feel like doing it. "Maybe tomorrow, after I get a chance to take some pictures," I say. I never take pictures though. I am just lazy, I suppose. Plus, I think my life is too boring to read about most of the time. :)

But I will catch you up on a few things happening right now.

First, I have a new job. The one that I started in June just did not work out, for various reasons that I will not go into here. It was just not a good fit and I did not want to be miserable. So I started looking again, and had an even better sense of what I wanted and what to look for. I found something that I think will be perfect. It's a lot closer, it is a better program for the kids, and it fits more with my ideals and teaching philosophies. I've started planning curriculum, but I don't start teaching until the second week of September.

Tim and I are also going to take a little vacation soon. We'll be going to visit some of my family in Phoenix, and we thought we would make it a longer road trip since Tim has never been to the Grand Canyon. I have been many times, when I was younger, but it has been quite awhile. I must remember to take lots of pictures.

We're still working on the house. We bought new living room furniture so that we could move our sofabed to a bedroom. Having a guest room will be nice, instead of making company have to sleep in the living room. So before moving the couch, we finally got around to painting that room too. It's looking pretty nice in there! Now we just need to buy some bookshelves so that we can unpack all our books.

The kitchen is coming along nicely too but has stalled a bit. We're having a hard time finding a place to buy a butcher block countertop that will fit our island. We're also having a hard time with the place we bought our cabinets; they keep sending us doors that are banged up, scratched, or warped! I think they need a bit better quality control for the price we paid. Other than those things, the kitchen is pretty much done. We will just have a couple little things after that, like installing the toe kicks and the trim around the sliding door. The before and after pictures should be coming soon (we hope)!

There's a neighborhood kitty who likes to come visit our backyard. She is very cute and vocal. I like when she visits, except when it is 2am and she is in heat.

There's not much else that is new. Tim has been working a lot because there is a big deadline in a couple weeks. I've been doing lots of knitting when he's gone, but I will post about that in another entry.

countertops, interviews

Just a quick post because we have some countertop pictures up. We've actually done more kitchen stuff since (the sink works, etc.). Pretty countertops.

Also, the director at the school I interviewed at yesterday morning called me to ask if I could come back tomorrow to observe the classroom and children and get a better feel for the school. Things seem really optimistic with this one! I need to buy some of these activity books if I'm going to have my own classroom! :D

Update: Oops! The activity books don't show up in my wishlist anymore because my dad bought me ALL of them! My goodness.

kitchen update

The craziest thing happened last night.

I cooked dinner for the first time in almost 4 months!
Hooray for countertops and a sink!

All we have left are wall cabinets, the fridge, hanging pendants over the island, butcher block countertop for the island, and the backsplash. Ya, that still seems like a long list, but you should have seen the original one.

We'll post pictures of the countertops and sink soon.

After this is over, we will move on to one of the million other projects we want to do around the house. It never ends.

• Bookshelves for library
• Shelves for craft room
• Stain cabinet for craft room
• Refinish dresser
• Paint master bedroom
• Paint library
• Paint guest bath
• Tear out wallpaper in dining room and finish painting
• New light for dining room
• Wall light for library and craft room
• Redo baseboards in craft room, library, loft
• Make side walkway into rock path
• Tear out front yard shrubs - add walkway to side street and maybe retaining wall?
• Tear out bricks in front courtyard, add many pretty plants
• Tear out bricks in innercourt, add many pretty plants
• Make plans for backyard (patio, flowerbeds, etc)

I told you it never ends. There's actually other stuff on our list, but I decided to leave off the lower priority things. Hah! We wanted a house we could fix up and make our own. We definitely got that.

kitchen and impending graduation

Busy busy busy.
Let me start off with some kitchen pictures because I know some of you are waiting to see the progress. The most interesting section to you will probably be 7 - cabinets, flooring, and appliances. Still a lot of work to go, but we are making headway.

And I think we've finally gotten to a point where we can actually cook again! We still don't have a sink in the kitchen, but we have appliances and temporary plywood countertops and even some of our food and dishes in the cabinets already! It's exciting stuff. The most beautiful sound to me right now is that of our dishwasher running. It's been a pain in the ass (actually, back) washing dishes in the bathroom sink. Our countertops should get installed in three or four weeks. Then we can install upper cabinets, and then we will be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

We're preparing for my parents and brother to arrive tomorrow. That's part of the reason we've been so kitchen-oriented. We seriously worked on the kitchen and the yard all weekend. I did a LOT of weeding. We have pretty plants, but man there are a lot of them to maintain.

I also had my last final today! Woo! Now all I have left is a paper due on Thursday. I am not at all worried about it and will probably finish it in an hour or so tomorrow afternoon while my parents are recovering from the plane ride. Then graduation is on Saturday! Exciting! :D

Today I have to focus on cleaning. As you might be able to guess, tearing your entire kitchen out is not conducive to keeping the house clean. Not only are boxes of dishes and food everywhere, the bathroom and dining room became makeshift kitchen areas, and the dust from construction settles faster than I could get rid of it. So there hasn't been much cleaning happening, which means there is a lot to catch up on. Hopefully now, once I clean it will stay clean for at least a little while!

Since I had to wake up at 5am to get to campus in time for my final, I think I might nap first though.

kitchen work & job prospect

So we have walls! And paint! Well, mostly paint. We found out the hard way that high gloss paint does not work well on ceilings. So we have to go buy some satin paint and redo it. But the walls are yellow! I'm sorry, they are pale daffodil. Most of the walls. Everywhere that isn't behind where a cabinet will be. Yes, we're lazy. Leave me alone.

I also decided that since graduation is fast approaching (and because I am procrastinating writing my paper that is due Wednesday) that I would look on craigslist for jobs. I found one that sounds PERFECT in writing, so I decided to send in my resume. Good pay, fairly closeby, smallish ratio, based on the approach that I agree with (Reggio Emilia), and it's for a co-head teacher position. Wish me luck!

That's about it for today. I'm tired from painting and scraping up old floor all weekend, so we're taking the night off. I haven't had much cuddling time with my hubby in far too long because we've both been so busy. Time to rectify that.

imbecile

Okay stucco guy came back today to fix his wrongs.
I couldn't decide if it was more annoying/frustrating or more amusing to listen to him try to defend himself. Mostly it just made me not like him very much at all.

Some highlights:
When Tim told him why he had to redo it, the guy said, "You didn't tell me you were going to get it inspected."
1) it is illegal not to get it inspected, 2) even if we didnt get it inspected, you did it in a way that would cause long-term damage to our house.

He also showed up and Tim told him what was wrong and then said okay he couldnt do it today he would be back another day. At which point tim said no, your boss said you would do it today. It has been almost two weeks since we notified you of the problem. Guy said: sorry, i have something i else i have to do. Tim: sorry, you'll have to call your boss and take it up with him.
He did not argue any more.

Later in the day he gave a card to Tim for somebody else who will actually finish the stucco tomorrow. He said "This guy taught me everything I know."
hahaha!
But the new guy was here today helping and Tim said he heard the guy say multiple times "No nono, you can't do it that way, you have to do it like this."
So we feel okay about that.

and the BEST
THE BEST
Tim told me about this part because i wasnt here. The guy ended up doing a bit more than he did the first time..there was an old section right next to what he did that was kinda bulging, so he tore that part out too to redo and there was something else he replaced or did better than the first time...
So he said to tim "So I am doing a bit extra here so it would be appreciated if you wanted to pay us a bit more."
HAHAHAHAH
Tim said he just ignored it and continued talking about other things.

Anyway, inspector is coming tomorrow afternoon (and hopefully will say A-OK!) and then the new guy will finish stuccoing tomorrow afternoon or Friday. Then drywall Saturday! Hooray for progress!

Please excuse the typos and run-on sentences. Most of this was pasted from an IM conversation. :)

47 days til graduation

Life has gotten a little less crazy hectic, but I'm not sure if that's good or bad yet. School is slower now than before spring break and that is definitely a good thing. I do have a few papers due this week and a test on Thursday. I was stressing out at first until I realized that so far I have at least 100% in all of my classes. So, um, ya. I'm going to unstress and just take it slow. ;) I don't feel like doing homework tonight, so maybe I won't.

Our kitchen is also coming along slowly. Tim finished all the plumbing and electrical work last week. We had the inspector come look at things before we could put up the drywall. Everything Tim did passed. However, our stupid window guys suck. They had to re-stucco parts of the wall after their work. Well, they used ROOF paper and DRYWALL nails. If you think that those don't sound like the right tools for stucco, you'd be right. Plus the inspector was supposed to look at their work before they put up the stucco. We aren't pleased. These people do this for a living. Are they really this idiotic or were they trying to get away with something? In any case, they'll be coming back to do the work for free if we can ever get them to call us back and tell us when. At this point, their mistakes are seriously holding up the rest of the work that needs to be done. We were hoping to get the drywall up and start putting up the cabinets this past weekend. :/

Since Tim couldn't do any more kitchen work this weekend and I didn't have too much homework, we actually had some time together for fun. Yesterday we went to the winery that we are members of to pick up our quarterly selection. We also stayed for a bit of wining tasting and then had a picnic in our backyard. Very nice indeed. It will be really great when things calm down around the house again so that we can have more weekends like this one.

We also finished our taxes yesterday. Though it started out scary a few weeks ago and I was afraid we were going to owe a lot, we actually got it so that we get about a $5K refund! Hooray for itemized deductions!

I got a letter in the mail today from SFSU. It says they have approved my application for graduation, as long as I pass my current classes. HOORAY! This degree will finally be over in just a month and a half!

Yes, this has been a good day. Maybe I will go outside and enjoy the sunshine for awhile.

eternal schoolwork of the braindead mind

I studied for seven hours today and I'm still nowhere near ready for this test on Tuesday. So far, I've outlined all the chapters and looked for common themes (it's an essay test). Tomorrow I get to memorize. All the articles make sense to me individually; I just need to make sure I can come up with all the concepts needed for the essays on the spot. Luckily, besides my internship tomorrow until 1pm, I have no other obligations besides studying and writing a 5-page essay. Yep, that's it. Ugh.

Then I have another test on Wednesday that I haven't even started studying for. I'm not even going to think about it until this other test is over. But it shouldn't be too difficult. Though it will also be essay.

Then, this coming weekend is the beginning of Spring Break! Woo! Well, I've decided I will take that first weekend completely off from school work. But starting next Monday, I have to work on my 10-page research paper and the beginning steps of a couple other projects. Plus I'm doing extra internship hours that week. I dream of days when I get to come home and not have to worry about school work anymore. Only two and a half more months. Only 11 more weeks. Only 73 more days. I won't think about it that way, actually, because that makes it sound like a long time. I'll go back to only 11 more weeks.

I took a little time off from school stuff yesterday to do some yardwork. Though I'm sad that the nice sunny weather went away before the weekend. I got most of the front courtyard all weeded. I love all our yards and courtyards and beautiful plants, but man is it going to take a lot of work to keep them maintained. That's what I will do with all my spare time after I graduate. That and knitting, which I haven't been able to do for awhile either. I think I will go knit at the coffee shop next weekend too.

My life is so exciting right now. This is why I do not post often :)

Oh, our kitchen is still disassembled. Tim is working on the electical wiring. He also needs to do some plumbing work and then get that stuff inspected before we can put up the drywall and it can start looking like a kitchen again. We're trying to decide whether we really want to go with ceramic tile or if we want to go wish some type of linoleum or something. Though I love the look of tile, we're afraid it might be too hard (being right on top of a cement slab) and I'm also worried about cleaning the grout and if stuff will get stuck in there. Any input? We picked out our kitchen faucet yesterday, though we still haven't decided on a sink. We need to do that pretty soon so that Tim can do the plumbing.

Anyway, I ramble. Goodnight :)

baby book and pg&e

First of all, I would like to recommend a book to everyone who has children under 5 or who wants to have children in the future. We're reading it for one of my classes and it is just fabulous. Anyway, you should check it out: Being the Parent You Want To Be: A Sourcebook of Strategies for the First Five Years by Laura Davis and Janis Keyser.

Second, I would like to express how much I hate PG&E right now. For our kitchen remodel, we need more electricity coming into our house. We submitted an application for this work (pulling wires 20 feet to our box) at the beginning of February. Oh, did I say yet that they required a $2500 deposit just to submit an application? Ya. They also said that it could take up to FIVE MONTHS before they got to the work. They said someone would contact us soon to set up an appointment for someone to come to our house and check out what needs to be done. After not hearing from anyone and not being clear on this whole process, Tim started the challenge of talking to the representative for our area. This guy is always on his cell phone whenever we hear from him. I say "hear from him" because until today, we were just exchanging phone messages. Phone messages that we could not understand a word of because he is always on his cell phone.

Tim called a week or so ago asking specific questions and asking the guy to call back. He called back last week but, of course, didn't have our file in front of him so he couldn't answer the questions we had. Why call back if you can't even answer the questions? So Tim called and left another message. Finally I was home today when the guy called again, so I gave him Tim's mobile number.

Tim said he got to talk to him for awhile. Of course the guy didn't have the file in front of him again because he was once again on his cell phone. He started asking about gas lines, which we aren't doing at all. When he realized that we had submitted our application at the beginning of February, he said we were "jumping the gun" even though we haven't heard from anyone about someone coming out to check out the work. He also started giving ballpark estimates of $3000 to do the work! THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS to pull a wire 20 feet. Of course, this won't happen for five more months though. Our electrical lines are underground. Keep in mind that if the lines are above ground, they do this for FREE.

Oh, and the guy never left his direct number so whenever Tim would call, he would always get the person at the front desk. She just tells him that this guy knows what he's talking about and seems upset that we've called so many times. Tim says, "The thing that kills me is that there's a pamphlet that i got that shows the steps, and makes it look easy and simple. But we haven't even gotten to step one yet! and nobody can even tell me what to expect."

I hate PG&E.

we have walls again!

You would not believe what our kitchen has been through in the past few days. Friday it was just your normal kitchen. It went from that to trash heap to not having a wall to now having new windows and doors (and a wall again). I can't believe we've been doing this only for a few days. There's still so much left to do. I'll cut most of the pictures because there sure are a lot.

Here's a before shot.

Here's the lovely wallpaper and tile we found after tearing out the built-in.

No turning back now!

Aw, crap.

Out kitchen appears to have moved outside.

Now the outside is being torn up too!

No wall!! (This was the freakiest part, really.)

Ooh, new windows!

After that last picture, they also installed the new sliding doors. The window guy is coming back tomorrow to finish stucco-ing the outside of the house around the windows. Then Tim is going to start the electrical wiring this weekend. We got our new kitchen lights today.

While all this was happening, we also had an electrician come and wire some stuff for the living room. Can you believe the people here before us had no ceiling lights at all? It's pretty weird for a room with a vaulted ceiling so that any lamp light just kind of disappears into nothingness. Tim finished hooking up the lights tonight and is going to install the ceiling fan tomorrow. More pictures to come. So many more that I'm sure you'll get sick of them by the time this is all over.

Oh, one last picture for tonight. Take a look at our new cabinets!

And there are a whole lot more here if you want to see more.

Exciting stuff.

our kitchen is missing

Wow. It really is quite scary seeing our kitchen in the state it is right now. I'm glad we are getting our new windows and door on Tuesday so we will at least see some progress. Right now it just looks like it was hit with a lot of missiles.

We have a little mini-kitchen set up in our dining room with the microwave, toaster oven, and steamer. Plus some of the dishes in the credenza drawers. The rest of the kitchen is packed up in boxes again.

I will probably post pictures sometime this week. I can't believe we're going to be without a kitchen for more than a month. (Hopefully not TOO much longer than a month.)

Chaos

Semester's end is always so busy. Add on top of that the new house needs and there doesn't seem to be much free time. Moving into a house that you own is SO MUCH MORE work than moving in to a new rental. Oh my goodness. We are having people over for Thanksgiving in two days and we have so much more to do before the house will be presentable (and usable in order to cook a turkey and other things!).

So many papers due in the next few weeks, so many final exams and projects. On top of that, I'm stressed about my internship for the spring semester (which the internship advisor doesn't seem to be working very hard to set up). I really don't have time to find one on my own. December 15th....if only I can make it until then, I will have a month off for travel, housework, and maybe even some time for myself and my hubby and even some of our friends!

I can't wait to post some "after" pictures of our house. Tim and I decided that we are going to keep a list of all the improvements that we do, for out own amusement and appreciation of our hard work. We're also still trying to deal with all the people who are trying to rip us off, but hopefully those will be settled soon - one way or another.

Life goes on, one day at a time. That's the only way I will get through all of this chaos.

all moved

Moving, as it nearly always is, was a huge ordeal. I don't even want to think of how many things were unexpected, but we are all moved in and even have some (not all) furniture assembled and placed. We have hot water now, our directv is set up, and our dsl is back up and running. The huge piles of boxes are another story, which I don't have time to deal with because there are only five more weeks of class this semester - meaning everything is due now. The dust from moving was also not very nice to this cold that has been lingering in me for about a week, so I'm getting drugged up on cold medicine.

Just wanted to let you know everything went okay and we are here. Now I'm going to take a much needed nap.

geeks!

Can I tell you what huge geeks we are? We wandered around Home Depot for two and a half hours yesterday taking pictures of things we might possibly want to put in our new house. Ranging everywhere from paint colors to rugs to kitchen counter tops to ceiling lights to you name it.

Tim says he felt like he was in a Kodak or hp commercial where some goofball people wander around taking pictures and then go home and print them out and hang them up on the appropriate wall/floor/ceiling to see how everything will look or to inspire them to save money to buy the stuff.

GEEKS!

ramble

If I could teach the cats to fetch the phone for me, I don't think I would mind them going on the counters.

Random thought, I know.

So I ended up dropping my research class. Knowing that it was only the second week of school, the big projects hadn't even started yet, and I was already overwhelmed by the enormous amount of work I had to do made me come to the conclusion that it must be done. I think it will actually fit okay in my Spring schedule and I can still graduate in May. If not, they will probably let me walk in May anyway but I will just need to take one summer class that will last 5 weeks. Whoopdedoo.

Now I have my sanity again. And time to be excited about the house. I OWN A HOUSE. I had nearly forgotten. We close the day after my birthday - September 24. Of course, we can't move in until November because the people selling the house hadn't even started looking for a new one yet so renting the house from us for 45 days was part of the contract. It makes things difficult. Especially for Tim. He is more obsessed than I am. He is already looking at lighting and garage doors and stuff. All I care about is paint and plants. And maybe window coverings. I think I might sew some curtains myself. And maybe kitchen counter tops. I think we're going to Home Depot to look at counter tops later today. We are going to make our kitchen gorgeous.

Okay, ya, now I am getting more excited.

Floor Plan

Plus, you can look through the history of Bahl Homes.

house search

So as you know, we met Tuesday with our realtor to write up an offer on a house. The bids were due yesterday afternoon. When we wrote up our offer, we were told that there were only about 5-6 offers expected (which is fairly good in this area). Well, we got a call from our realtor yesterday saying there were 10 offers now and she was wondering if we wanted to raise our offer. No can do with our budget, as we were already bidding our highest. She said that if we didn't hear anything that night, we wouldn't be getting it. We pretty much gave up hope then. And ya, no phone call that night.

This morning I went to class and when I finally got out, I noticed that I had 2 voicemail messages and a text message. Tim had frantically been trying to contact me because our realtor had called and said the owners DID want to make a counter offer and it was only 5k more than our bid! That was close enough for us!! So we said yes to the counter offer and were ACCEPTED!!! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

Now we just have to go through the stress of making sure all our contingenices are met (we get the loan and the roof/property inspection goes okay). Oh my god, we almost own a house!!!

I've shared the pictures with very few of you - were trying our hardest not to get our expectations up. But you might as well take a look at them now! We are really happy with this house because it is cute and charming and ready to live in while still needing some remodeling so that we can make it our own home. Our first project will probably be the kitchen.

Here's the listing. Here's the virtual tour. And make sure you click on photo album after seeing the virtual tour because there are more pics.

Our favorite features:
TWO courtyards in addition to the backyard
Every single room except for one of the two bathrooms has sliding doors to the yards
Cute lofty office area with a fireplace
Hardwood floors in the living room
Built-in bookshelves in both the dining/living area and in the kitchen
2-car garage for Tim!
Craft room for me!!!

So. Very. Excited.

anxious

Think good thoughts for us tomorrow! We met with our realtor tonight and wrote out our offer for the house. We think it's pretty good, but we will find out in about 24 hours.

And what a long 24 hours that will be. Luckily, I will be distracted by the first day of classes.

consolidation

So I think I've decided to make this my complete blog instead of just my knitting one. I've been using livejournal for everything but knitting, but this one seems to be getting neglected a lot. There's really no point in keeping them separate.

So we are going to make a bid on that house this week. We're really nervous because of all the horror stories we've heard about buying houses in this area. But before we make our bid, I think I'm going to ask my dad if he can help out with the down payment. We have the 20% but the more attractive we can make the offer, the better, so a larger down payment would be nice. We may not even need it, but it would be nice to know if it would be a possibility. I'm a little scared about asking my dad about a loan though. I've had money issues with my parents in the past (college) and am just a little nervous about getting a possible lecture. I guess the worst he could do overall is say no though. Plus I know he has helped my aunt and uncle and maybe even my cousin out with houses before, so I shouldn't be too worried, right?

School starts Wednesday. I had a potluck dinner for my internship group last Thursday night. Thought it was just going to be a fun, get-to-know-you thing but the intern supervisor also gave us a 40-page handout so I guess I should read that today or tomorrow too.

I really want to finish knitting my hoodie before school starts. All I have left is one arm and the hood, but somehow I still don't think I will be able to finish soon.