So we sold our house...

So, we are way, WAY overdue for an update. The summary is that in early August, we met with our realtor and told her we wanted to list on the MLS in mid-September but put it on Zillow with a make-me-move price a month or so beforehand. Todd published the listing to see what it looked like, got distracted and forgot to take it down. Around 3, he texted me, "um, can we chat?" Turns out, he had several emails from people who wanted to see the house that day. Three weeks before we were even going to put it on Zillow.

One of those emails was from a guy who said he and his family had been looking for a house since March and they wanted to check ours out. Again... that day. So we zoomed around and did the essential cleaning and decluttering and warned them that there were still projects we were in the process of completing. They looked at it on Friday afternoon and got us an offer on Monday. After some back and forth, we had a deal Tuesday evening at a price that allows us to make money—something we weren't sure would happen with this house.

Because our deal was contingent on their house selling, the closing date was set for November 3. We didn't have much unexpected crop up on the inspection except for having to drywall the garage so it had a firewall, and we came in a bit under for the appraisal, but it's been otherwise extremely smooth. It's also been great having a more casual, friendly relationship with the buyers. We know the house is going to a family that will love it and enjoy the park, pool, yard, etc., and that was important to us.

What I'm most excited about for this post and the other ones linked at the bottom, though, is some amazing pictures of the house before we start packing and get moved. My talented friend Rachel of Pixy Prints Photography came over on Saturday and gorgeously documented all our work and the work of my brother-in-law Trevor (without whose help, suffice it to say, we would not be in the position we are now).

Prepare to have your socks knocked clean off. (I'm throwing in some befores from early on and before we bought the house, just for fun.)

And just so you know...if you look through these other posts...yes, we keep a pretty clean house. No, our house isn't staged all the time. I totally wish it could look this amazing every day :)

Want to see the rest of the house? Check out the other rooms on the house tour tag:
Bedroom
Kitchen and entry
Jo's office
Upstairs and upstairs bathroom
Downstairs bathroom
Dining room
Living room

The house is set to close on 10/24, and we're going to move into a rental house for at least a year while we firm up plans to either build or buy something and have it fully renovated before we move in. Obviously, it's a little bittersweet to close this chapter of our lives. But we're excited to find out what life is like with no yardwork, no home repair budget and no worries about projects for the first time in eight years.

We are better and wiser for having bumbled into this renovation adventure, and I'm thankful I had no clue what I was getting us into, because I never would have done it. But now we get to leave something beautiful for the neighborhood and new owners. It's such a privilege to have brought this house back from being a blight on the neighborhood.

What's New, Round I

So this is a motley assortment of very ugly photos, but I need to start somewhere because we've been doing SO much since we moved back about seven weeks ago. And it's dark outside now, so I can't take anything out there right now.

Sunday afternoon, I decided to tackle this mess (clarification: that's the CLOSET, not the booze):

 It's a closet in our dining room that somehow became an ideal dumping ground for paint supplies when we moved in four and a half years ago. From the ground up, that's an old rug in a trash bag, second shelf is mostly old paint and also an old towel, more paint, painting stuff (rollers, including three used (??) ones, miscellaneous crap, then the top shelf had a roasting pan, a set of dishes (boxed from when we moved from Pasadena five years ago), our wallpaper steamer and...a lot of dust.

I found three open containers of spackle: small, medium and large size. Two open and rock-hard tubes of silicon caulk. SIX paint rollers. Why?

Cleaning this closet also revealed uncapped wires in a box in the ceiling. I don't know if they're live or not, but have no reason to believe they aren't. So that's cool.

Anyway, I threw away all the stuff and got it into much better shape. Unfortunately, the following image doesn't really showcase all my work that well. You'll have to trust me; 1.5 garbage bags and half a roll of paper towels later, it's much better.

After years of driving me nuts, I finally replaced the retro 60s-era hardware on the built-ins in our hallway. Martha, ya done good (they're from her line at Home Depot). These were about $4 each, so it's not turning out to be a particularly cheap project at six in the hallway and another six in our bedroom for the built-in dresser, but it makes me happy every day to walk by non-ugly, non-retro hardware.

In the way of other updates, we had a garage sale, probably a month ago, and ditched a bunch of furniture and excess junk. And we went to the dump. Oh, the glorious dump, where you can throw away an entire full-size pickup truck load of trash for $21. I love the dump. So there's been a lot of paring down, and it has felt fantastic.

We've also done some painting, some replacing of hideous light fixtures and old outlets and some gardening. I redid my headboard (tufted, it's fab), hung curtains and plotted the kitchen remodel. The downstairs bedroom floor was refinished. The upstairs floor was refinished, too, and the bathroom is complete except for baseboard and a door covering the attic access. Todd's office upstairs is in the crosshairs for demolition and new drywall and insulation. Half the beds are mulched and the driveways got sealcoated by likely a fly-by-night operation, but that's a story for another post.

Clearly, there are a lot of overdue blog posts. But we're not going anywhere for a while, and I'm going to write them all. We're home. We finally have some traction here and stuff's getting done. It feels great.

Updates and other news

While I'm fully aware that a sound shaming is in order for not posting for two months and a week, I do have a good reason (more on that later...no, not pregnant). First, a few garden pictures!

Below is our and our neighbors' enormous cherry tomato plants. Theirs sprawls about five solid feet, and is the thing lying on the ground in the bottom left corner of this picture. Ours is tied up to a bean teepee, and I estimate it's about eight feet tall, and still adding height every day. Needless to say, there are more cherry tomatoes than anyone can eat.

So far, from our basil, I've made and frozen three massive batches of pesto, plus made and eaten lots more than that. Fresh basil is spectacular.
Below is a picture of my still-ripening white pumpkin. Of the six seeds, four sprouted. Of those four sprouts, I kept three. Of the three plants, only one plant produced one pumpkin. Guess I will be saving the seeds and trying again...
We have collected what might be termed an obscene amount of squash. This isn't even one week's worth. I have foisted it on neighbors, visitors, everyone. I also chopped a bunch up and froze it with plans of making red sauce, lasagna and zucchini bread in January.
I also let my artichokes bloom. This picture doesn't even come close to the color of the flower. It's like a neon purple, like no flower I've ever seen before. Absolutely stunning. And the bees are obsessed with it. At any given time, there are usually at least four honeybees jammed all the way in the middle of the bloom, bee-ing around.
Sunflowers along the pool fence are just starting to bloom, and they're awesome. The honeysuckles that got more water and sun also took off, and almost all my second-round transplanted black-eyed susans made it. In the next few years, they'll fill in more and be really big and beautiful. Also planted some random climbing seeds I had lying around, and a few weeks later, morning glories!
This is an Autumn Beauty sunflower. At about eight inches in diameter, they are just lovely as cut flowers.
This is also a variety of Autumn Beauty. I like the yellow in this a little better than the brown above, but I think the first one is more striking.
Anyway, on to this news I alluded to earlier. We are moving to Bend, OR for a few years. Todd got a pretty amazing job, and so we're relocating and renting our house to some friends from church. Ironically, they're moving out of a studio apartment, and we are moving into one. After reviewing pictures, I am still not really sure how we'll be able to fit a bed, couch and media console. It's only 650 square feet (but really nice, especially the kitchen).

I took videos of how things look inside and outside (which are now a few weeks outdated)...they're kind of long.



And outside...

I am really glad that we have friends who can take care of our house while we're gone, so the shrubbies don't die and the pool doesn't turn green. While I will really miss living here, there is a lot to look forward to at our new place, so I've been focusing on that.

Probably more to come before we leave (we move into our new place on September 11), and I suppose the blog will be on hiatus for a while until we come back.

Yikes, two months....

Dear blog readers (if there are any of you left...) I am terribly sorry for the long silence. We have been quite busy with work and other stuff, and I just haven't felt like making the time to write. That said, (to quote Liz Lemon) things are happening! I will be back sometime in the next few days with pictures and more info and maybe even a video, but I thought I'd just mention that. We've done things inside and outside, and it's turning out that still delaying the kitchen remodel has been sort of a blessing, because I keep tweaking my plans. So in addition to being beyond thankful for it when it does happen, it will also be completely perfect.

Anyway, more to come.

What's new as of 8.5

Here's a video of what's new around our house, since May I think.

What's new as of 4.19

We had a busy weekend. Mowed the lawn for the first time (the benefit of letting the grass grow so long is that when you mow, it actually looks like you have a real lawn and not a bunch of patches of grass) and cleaned out the garage. I didn't take a before picture, but it was really getting out of hand. There was a three-foot-wide walkway through the rubble, and the walkway was starting to get covered. This made navigating the garage at night a peril-wrought journey, and that's not counting other dangers, like spiders.

We emptied out the contents, which we discovered was mostly trash (boxes, styrofoam, other assorted packaging materials) and put it back together, and now we have an enviably organized garage. Without doors. You can't win 'em all.

The bathroom upstairs is also looking a lot better, after a few rounds of bleach-based cleaner and the removal of those curtains. I don't know what it is about removing curtains from houses, but it really makes a difference. I remember when my parents first bought the house I grew up in, and we pulled down the Carter-era burlap-sack-resembling curtains in the living room. Dust streamed down from above our heads, illuminated by the afternoon sun. And the room was transformed without the curtains. I'm going to put a few rugs down on the floor, and I'm thinking about pulling up the carpet on the window ledge and planking over it (so it looks kind of farmhouse-y). The wallpaper isn't horrible, and there's no reason to start fooling with it because we're probably years away from redoing that bathroom.

I'm hoping to make some real headway on the guest room this week. De-clutter, maybe get a chair for the corner and get the bed made up. It'd be really awesome to walk in there and have it look like a peaceful bedroom. Having a whole house to decorate is an awful lot of fun. Unlike our tiny house in Pasadena, this isn't done in a week. I love it.

What's new as of 4.5

Hi...sorry for the silence. We haven't really been up to much around the house, so there hasn't been as much to say. Plus we had a string of beautiful sunny days, which makes being on the computer unappealing to me. As you'll see from the video, we rebuilt a rock wall around what will be a flowerbed next to the pool.

On Saturday morning, we went and picked up some dirt from people who responded to my craigslist ad for topsoil. It took us 45 minutes to load into the trailer, and Todd another 45 to unload (my arms were shot by that point, and I couldn't really move, so I supervised. I swear every time I walk past the pile it looks smaller. We will probably need more, which neither of us is looking forward to.

We're still trying to figure out what to do with the pool, so if anyone has any brilliant pool-cleaning tips they've been withholding, please share. Our neighbor said that it had been fully drained before, and we're quickly approaching the point where we might do that, with summer around the bend and all. (Previously, we had thought it would "float" or lift out of the ground on its pipes, then crack, which would be catastrophically bad, but if it's been drained before, maybe it'd be ok.)

The yard is the overwhelming thing at this point. It seems like we keep working at it in little pieces, and it's not really changing. It was such a mess when we got it that we knew it would take a lot to bring around, but I wish things were changing faster. And in order to clean up one mess, we have to make another, which is also frustrating. Example: to rebuild the wall, I had to scatter all the rocks out so I could see them. Since I didn't use all of them, I now have a pile of scattered rocks in the yard. Lovely.

We have been formulating some plans for the rest of the yard, though. Next time, I'll update you on that. I have a diagram and EVERYTHING.

What's new as of 3.22

Here's what we accomplished last week.

What's new as of 3.8

Wow, we had a busy weekend. Here's the recap of what was accomplished last week...



Saturday was a beautiful spring day, and so Todd and his dad started on the gargantuan task of cleaning the pool. I spent the morning zipping around cleaning and picking stuff up. There always is stuff that needs to be put away. Scattered tools, boxes, just stuff. The great part is that it always has a home. There's a drawer, a cabinet, a closet...everything fits somewhere.

In the afternoon, we went to Bimart for plants. While the yard isn't ready (and probably won't be this season) for beds, I am something of an expert in potted gardening, after having about six square feet of garden space and a million potted plants in Pasadena. Pansies are great for this time of year, because they aren't bothered by a little frost overnight.

I also moved the rest of the greenhouse downstairs to my office, which I think Todd was relieved about. Now that he'll be using his office more, I think he'll want the desk space that was being used by four geraniums and a bougainvillea.

Sunday, it snowed. We took a tumble from a springy 65 to a windy 35, and unfortunately, the pool required another round of cleaning. Summer dreams don't come so easily when it is hailing. The contents of the neighboring oak tree had settled at the bottom of the pool, and every way we tried to get the leaves out kind of didn't work. The deep end is at least 12 feet deep, so not much reaches down there. We finally ended up saran-wrapping the pool vacuum hose to the shop vac, and trying to vacuum the leaves off the bottom of the pool. It was very hick, and I wish I had a video, but unfortunately we don't have one that shows the whole process. I left halfway through because I got so cold, and I'm not sure how it turned out.

Yesterday we also started the rather large project of priming and painting the whole upstairs. If you've watched the videos, you know it's covered in old, weird wallpaper, on top of fiberboard, which is like sawdust mixed with glue and pressed into wallboard. It wouldn't do well with the amount of moisture required to remove wallpaper (as in, it would probably crumble, leaving us with whatever lies in our cobwebby, semi-insulated attic) so we decided the least work-intensive way of remedying the issue was to paint.

Here's before:

And partway done:

Though it does look better already, we had to use an oil-based primer to avoid exposing the walls to said moisture, and it smells TERRIBLE. It took 20 minutes of being outside to get rid of the taste of permanent markers in my mouth. In general, I am a big fan of certain toxic smells: I could sniff boat exhaust all day, and nail salons give me the warm-and-fuzzies. This stuff is in a league all its own.

What's new as of 3.1

Here's the update. She's a'coming right along!

What's new as of 2.23

Here's the weekly update. Lots to see!

Check out the pineapple lamps...I adore them. I topped them with a tan-ish linen-textured shade. Thought about a pale gold, but I felt like these fit better. I also think I may have solved the CFL conundrum. I got some soft white "warm tone" bulbs from Fred Meyer. Todd said he couldn't tell the difference. I think they look somewhat more pinkish than the yellowy glow of an incandescent bulb. Because I am averse to change that I have the ability to control, I don't really like the new CFLs. But I will try to get used to the new bulbs. I also heard incandescent bulbs are going to be phased out, which means I better start stockpiling in the attic.

Weekly update...

Here's the update....and it's old (that's right, I cheated by backdating the post!!).  So I'm going to take more pictures and post those in a current post.  

Weekly update, AND, fun alternative uses for your SUV (don't watch, Dad)

Although we went to Eugene on Saturday to see Randi, who was in the state, and Tim, who lives there, we still managed to cover a lot of ground this week. Here's what's new around here, as of this evening.


I'm still going to hang curtains in the kitchen (finally got sick of being on display for everyone who drives past, and who knew mini-blinds were so complicated?! Seriously.) but that's all for this week.

We are loving having the log lighter in the fireplace. It's glorious, not having to mess with kindling and newspaper and all that. Having a stove that works is nice, too. It was very nice to look at, but I don't really go in for stainless steel art.

In other news, as mentioned in the video, we had another failed attempt at hanging our front door. We are going to have to take this up with the guys at Pacific Door and Sash, because again, while it's really nice to look at in my living room, I didn't buy it to sit there. Kind of. The problem is that our old door is 36" exactly. The new six-panel steel door is 35.75" so it obviously leaves a gap. The shims they gave us to theoretically make it work didn't work, so...yeah. Back to the drawing board, for them, that is.

Also as mentioned in the video, we did some work outside today (after having a very irritating experience with the blinds that were supposed to go in the kitchen.) Here's me, ripping a dead rhododendron out of the ground:

After we finished that, we tackled a really hideous bushy shrubby thing that I have been waiting to get rid of since we bought the place. There are two segments of this. You'll see why.



After a trip to Bimart, here's what happened. I'm pretty sure that I'm now an Oregonian, after this display. My drivers license may have indicated that for over a year now, but this is proof.



I know that stupid plant doesn't look that big, but the root base that we managed to yank out was a little more than two feet in diameter, and there's still stuff left in the ground. And the rope pictured was around 3/4" thick.

Late weekly update

I got a new sd card for the camera (2 gigs for $10...so cheap now!) so we are back on track for updates. Just in time, too, because you almost missed a lot! Sorry for the shaky camera work.



Trevor's been busily working on the bathroom. I've helped with tiling the past few days. It's kind of fun; sometimes I wonder if I missed my calling in life as a construction worker or something. My dad's on his annual weeklong serving/construction trip to the Dominican Republic this week, and I've been thinking of him and the team and the trips I took in high school to work. I guess the taste of hard labor worked for me, because six years after my last trip (!) I'm still at it.

I really have to call our plumber to install the gas log lighter in the fireplace. I really suck at starting fires (I admit it), and consequently I've been using my garden clippers to take branches off the Christmas tree, which is conveniently situated on the front porch. They're still kind of green, being only a month after Christmas, so they're super-crackly still. I make a nice nest, put a log on top, then light the whole shebang with a blowtorch. It lights a nice, hot fire. For about three seconds. I'm sure it's coating the inside of the chimney with creosote. But nobody's telling me not to do it, and it's pretty fun.

As you can probably tell, I don't have all that much to say at the moment. I said most of it in the video, so you should check that out. And we really would like feedback on the paint choices for the bathroom, so feel free...

Staying busy

Sorry I'm late on the update. That was prompt, wasn't it. Here it is:



This past weekend, Eric started the plumbing for the tub, toilet and sink. It was especially easy for him, because Trevor cut this convenient hole in the sub-floor:
We also discovered -- hold onto your hat for this one -- more asbestos tape.  I realize the true weight of this reference might be lost on you...we had an exceptionally, overzealously dedicated duct cleaner tell us that because of the small quantity of asbestos tape on some of our ductwork, we'd have to get the entire system redone, and, for some reason we still haven't figured out, move the newly installed furnace to the attic.  This was to the tune of $15,000, in his pocket, naturally.  We now joke about asbestos all the time, and provide charcoal respirators to all guests.  HA.

You may also notice in the shot above that the bathtub, the 600-pound-plus cast-iron tub, is gone. Boy, was that a beast to get rid of. It's sitting in the southeasterly quadrant of the picture to the right, after we kind of tipped it out the back door.

Our vanity is under construction right now, and I am extremely excited to see how it turns out.  I also picked up lighting for over the vanity yesterday, from -- shocker -- Lowe's.  (I usually have terrible experiences there, but I was desperate to not special-order our bath bar because our electrician is coming tomorrow.  Consequences of poor planning...)  Ours is a three-light, but (not surprisingly) Lowe's doesn't have that on their website.  Chrome is apparently "going out of style" so it's really hard to find. 

I'm also in the process of painting the green dresser. It's primed, and it's going to be Ralph Lauren's Great Hall Cream, which is also one of the dining room colors. It'll be my first try with this color, and I'm soooo excited to see how it looks. Since it's a metallic (!!) it doesn't exactly translate well onscreen. But it's a warmish champagne, minus the mid-80s Buick associations. It's going in the blue bedroom, and it is high priority to get done so that I can start moving some of my clothes out of the bookcase they've been living in for the past seven months.

Lastly, I'm pleased to announce that we gave the fireplace a first run on Friday.  To honor the legacy of the fireplace, we burned a cardboard box first.  Since the only wood we have at the moment is the green stuff I chopped down a few weeks ago, things didn't exactly go well after the cardboard flamed out.  It looked nice, though:

Yes, we do still have the Christmas tree up. It is bone dry, decidedly a fire hazard, but the room always looks so sad when it gets dumped. This is my first time having my own Christmas tree, and since it always depressed me to get rid of it, I'll do it when I'm good and ready. Or when Todd makes me.

January 11 update

Here's a little recap on what we've accomplished this week.  It was a pretty productive week, especially the last three days of it.

Today I also cleaned out the fireplace, which was a delightful task.  I sucked out half a shop vac's worth of old brick, leaves, ash, rocks, and (proving that the old codger did burn his garbage as the neighbors alleged) some plastic-y foil wrappers.  Then I noticed the hole in the back of the fireplace, and, putting two and two together, went outside and opened the little door at the base of the chimney.  I dug somewhere between five and eight gallons of ash and cinders out of the tunnel between the fireplace and the door.  It just kept coming.  Gary (the chimney guy) and I agreed that it was a minor miracle that this place hadn't burned down, given the old man's negligence.