Long overdue update

Craig's been working super hard and I've finally posted some pictures to prove it. We've had a lot of calls over the past few weeks checking to make sure we survived all the storms out here in the Pacific Northwest. Yes, we've survived nearly unscathed. Luckily, most of the locations of the holes in our roof correspond to holes in our floor so the water flowed right through :)

Heat is still an issue for the house as a whole. An issue in that we don't have any except in the new guest bedroom where we essentially live. Venturing down to the bathroom in the morning entails bundling up and seeing your breath while brushing your teeth. We haven't been cooking much (without a working stove top or oven it's kinda hard) but I did happen to pick up the olive oil yesterday to find it frozen over...


The big highlight is our guest bedroom. Not quite adequately named yet, (we're not expecting guests anytime soon...) this room is actually livable and absolutely lovely. The walls are up, drywalled, painted and Craig even installed the closet so I can safely keep my clothes (more or less) out of the dust storm.

What we've been doing since our last post...

Yes, we've been slacking again when it comes to the blog. But, we've been keeping busy. For instance, it was Halloween recently so we had to dedicate time to making and, of course, showing off our costumes.

That's our friend Chris in the gold, playing Wii tennis v. He-man himself.


And there's me with my co-workers at our work party.
(Frontline Photography)

The past two weekends, I've been training for my SCUBA diving certification (awesome birthday present from Craig). Here are some pics from our dive site yesterday:

(That's a baby seal napping on the beach)

So, now back to the house. The project recently has been framing in the second bedroom, laundry room and closets upstairs. We're hoping to be able to start the dry wall in the bedroom next weekend and then soon we'll have an actual room that's walled off from the rest of the house and totally livable (heater installed and all).

New Stairs

Last weekend we undertook a pretty large project. When I say 'we' I mostly mean Craig with the help of my moral support and occasional assistance:) Anyway, we took Friday off (since it was my birthday and all) and then got to work early Saturday. It only took about 20 min to get the old stairs down. Putting up the new ones took a bit longer. After the first day of work, Craig had everything prepped but we weren't ready to start building the new stairs yet. That meant going to Home Depot and investing in a taller ladder so that we could access the upstairs. I have a slight fear of heights and freaked out a little every time I needed to go downstairs via the ladder. Craig on the other hand could to a complete ballet routine on the top rung.




Sunday, the new stairs went up. I was really impressed that, at the end of just one weekend, we had brand new stairs. They look great. It's really cool to see some major progress on the inside of the house.

old stairs

new stairs

And were back...

It's been so long since I've posted that the blog address doesn't even auto-populate in my browser anymore. Not to fear, we've been steadily making progress on the house. We've now lived here almost a month and a half which is hard to believe. I made the mistake of storing our winter clothes when we moved out of the apartment in August because we could have used them starting about two weeks ago. Yes, fall has arrived here in the Pacific Northwest which means rain and winds. I've always defended Seattle weather, but when you don't have heat and have some lingering holes in your exterior walls, the weather becomes quite the foe. Craig closed and insulated most of the holes this weekend which has helped but sweats have definitely become the standard dress around the mansion.

Craig has been doing a lot of work in our "Great Room." We needed to replace the support beams which hold up the second story floor because they weren't up to code and just didn't look good because they weren't uniform size. In order to do that, Craig needed to build temporary walls, remove the hold beams and then we put up the new ones.

No new pictures (yet) but some exciting news... we passed our FINAL foundation inspection today! This means that we successfully completed an entire foundation -by hand- correctly. Very exciting. Only a couple small things left to do to finish it off - seal up the vents and put down a vapor barrier (looks like a big garbage bag). Craig has made a ton of other progress with the house since we moved in 3 weeks ago. All our pipes are insulated now, the new grounding rod is in place (so no more worrying about being electrocuted while I'm drying my hair) and the entire house is actually bolted down to the foundation. I'm sure this is the most stable this house has been in the past 50 years or so. I'll upload pictures soon. We leave tomorrow for Toledo for my cousin's wedding (congrats, Ellissa!) so we'll have some time away from the mansion. I haven't been to Toledo for 9 months so I'm actually pretty excited (in addition to just being excited to have carpet under my feet:)

House Fund

This is not really related to the house, but I won $40 at lunch today when a co-worker bet me I couldn't eat all the broccoli on the salad bar in under 10min. I think I accomplished it in around 8min. This should buy us a couple shades for the house which we desperately need so that the neighbors don't have to watch me brush my teeth. This also helped me stick to my diet as I'm officially stuffed. Win-Win really, expect maybe for my co-workers in about an hour. I hear broccoli is a rich source of fiber...

No longer just a "project"

We officially moved in on Saturday after multiple trips back and forth from the apartment to the house to the storage unit to the apartment and on and on. Moving in makes this whole thing a lot more 'real' that's for sure. It's much different when you can't go home at night because you are at home! Moving out of the apartment meant that we also needed to move our boat trailer which was parked behind our building. We figured now that we have a nice big backyard, we'd just wheel it back there until we store the boat for the season. Only one minor detail stood in the way - it wouldn't fit between our house and our neighbor's via our shared driveway. I suggested we just leave the thing in our front yard, I mean our house is pretty ghetto already and it would only be for a couple weeks, but Craig was determined. He ended up cutting the bolts that connect the axle to the trailer (essentially removing the wheels that stuck out on both sides). Then, in total MacGyver fashion, he jimmied a plank under the base of the trailer and we used a hand truck to drag the tailer body into the backyard. The wheels/axle are temporarily laying on the side of the house.

Saturday night was the first night in the house. I didn't sleep much because I constantly thought I was hearing things (mice?, bats?, ghosts?). But in the next couple nights I found solutions for that (wine and/or a loud fan).

Half of the upstairs is really our 'living area' complete with area rugs, a zip-up covered clothes rack and our TV (minus cable). The kitchen is half kitchen half working space and the kitchen sink functions as both our kitchen sink and our bathroom sink - at least for now. The good news is the shower isn't bad at all -- plenty of hot water. Keeping your feet clean after you get out of the shower is another story:)

Ode to a great pair of jeans

I bought these Calvin's at Urban Outfitters my sophomore year at Michigan. At the time they were the most expensive jeans I'd ever had (I'm sure my mom 'loaned' me the money) @ around $65 and I wore then religiously over the years. They started to develop a small hole in the knee about a year ago so once we started working on the house I figured these would be the best jeans to sacrifice. And sacrifice I did. The final straw was the hole in the butt that occurred simply by stepping into the house (which is a rather large step when you don't have any stairs...) So, I gave in and threw them out during the moving process but not without documenting their battle scars first:

(RIP Calvin's 2001-2007)

Freaky!

We found a lot of random stuff while cleaning up under the house and digging, but nothing as random as these....bones! While I'm hoping they're from someone's beloved Fido from years past, it is kinda spooky.

D-Day: Friday

It's been a while since the last post but when you hear what we've been up to, you'll understand why. We move in on Friday - this Friday - 3 days from now. While I wouldn't say the house is 'homey' quite yet, we've made a lot of progress, with the help of Craig's parents to make it at least habitable. Most notably, we have running water (including HOT water) and a working toilet. These were the prerequisites for move-in. The only ones, as you'll see. Some added benefits are the overhead lights that Craig's dad installed, the clean kitchen courtesy of Mrs. Williams and the (almost) flat yard (joint effort - mostly Craig). As usual, Craig never ceases to amaze me with what he can pull off with little or no prior experience. Re-routing all the plumping for the main floor and not a single leak -- not too bad.

This week will be spent packing up our current apartment which is a feat in itself. It's amazing how much crap you can collect in only a little over 2 years. I'll really miss our apartment (besides just a warm bed, carpeting and solid walls:). I'll miss having the water right out our back door and the Eastlake Zoo tavern right up the street. Of course I'll also miss the cheap rent. We found out last week, though, that in the next couple of months they're turning our building into condos so everyone will need to move out anyway. I guess you can say this was perfect timing...

ALASKA!

Our trip to Alaska was such a great getaway from the stress of the house. While we could have gone camping in the middle of the Sahara and still enjoyed just avoiding physical labor for a week, Alaska was an exceptionally beautiful and relaxing place to go. Craig and I agree that dog sledding in Juneau was the best part, but that laying around, napping on lounge chairs was a close second. And of course spending quality time with the whole family :)

House lowered, vacation over.

The house was lowered exactly 48 hrs before we left for Alaska last Friday. In preparation, my role was to make sure no one parked in front of our house. So I actually accomplished making the house look even more ghetto then it usually does by adding caution tape and a spray painted sign.

Great news, though - everything turned out OK, the street was clear and the house successfully lowered. Take a look. Alaska pictures next...

Here's a video we took Sunday night under the house because sometimes pictures just aren't enough. The house is supposed to be lowered tomorrow (finally!)

With the help of some paid labor, a pump truck and another batch of concrete, Craig set the stem walls in the pouring rain (yep, love Seattle!) last Wednesday. I conveniently showed up when everything was done and treated Craig to the hamburger equivalent of the "Ol' 96er" and a Maritime Pale Ale down at Zak's burger joint.

This weekend, also mostly in the rain, we started to backfill the outside and under the house and began to work on the center beam that runs under the house (more on that later).

Craig gets the MVP award this week for getting up at 4:30am on Wednesday to finishing prepping the forms and getting half a days work in before working on our house. He also gets props for working pushing through his fatigue this weekend. He played double duty hanging out with the Michigan guys in town for the weekend into the wee hours and then getting up early to do manual labor all weekend! He even fit in a cat nap in quite a creative set-up...



Here's our first glimpse at the completed stem walls - not too shabby!

We passed our inspection (thank God). Craig also found a note on our door today which read:
"Neighbor, please move all sawing and other loud tools inside after 8pm as some of us need to get up early."

While I'm not ready to rescind on my comment that all our neighbors are really nice, it's a little perturbing for a couple reasons:

A. The person didn't sign their name (ahem - rather wussy move)
B. Last night was the first time we were ever loud past 8:30pm and the law states that you can be loud until 10pm.

The funny thing is, with half the doors off the house (and half the floor) working inside doesn't exactly stifle the noise. Oh well.

Tomorrow is our next inspection which we need to pass before we can pour the stems walls. After tonight we're about 90% (95% according to Craig) ready for the inspection and hoping will pass anyway. We have just under 10 days left before we leave for Alaska so it's really crunch time now. Plus, Wednesday equals 30 days that the house has been in the air which also means we get to start paying, daily, to keep it up there. If we actually get everything done this will be the best vacation ever. If we don't, we'll just be a couple hundred dollars poorer.

The pictures below show what the stem walls look like pre-concrete. The boxes that you'll see are for the vents. Since the underneath part of the house is pretty much enclosed now, Craig had a lot of fun climbing in and out of the tiny space by the steel beams to screw in the remaining pieces.

Random piles of stuff in our backyard

that about sums it up.

Dirty, Tired and Sunburned

Too tired to write much today. It was a long weekend, 10 hours yesterday and 10.5 hours today. We're starting to really realize just how much we need to get done in the next two weeks before we leave for vacation. We weren't too tired, though for a celebratory toast at the end of the day (pictured above). At least we're still smiling (an talking). Current mantra: "This is the worst part. It must get easier from here."

Inspection - check! Concrete - check!

Monday night was a very satisfying night as we put in the final rebar and got everything ready for our inspection on Tuesday. We really wanted to be there for the inspection, but the inspector never returned any calls to say when he was coming, convincing us that the city had scammed us and we'd have to wait another two days before we could do anything. On a whim, though, Craig stopped by the house and sure enough, there was the inspection approval taped to a piece of lumber. So far so good! Then yesterday morning, also kind of on a whim, Craig called the concrete company to see if they had any cancellations and could deliver our concrete and amazingly enough they did and sent a truck over around 2:30pm. I think our house made the driver's day. He rolled up with a "I'd rather be golfing" sign around his license plate and continued to chuckle at us the whole time we worked our butts off to pour and smooth the concrete. The truck in the picture is exactly like the one that pulled on to our front lawn. Putting in the concrete was tough work. It didn't look at all how I expected, it had huge rocks in it and was not that easy to spread (imagine that right?). Anyway, the flat fee for the concrete delivery included 40 mins to unload the truck. It took us about 2 hours so we ended up with tons of overtime fees but at least with the satisfaction of having that part done. I wish we had some action shots, but I didn't want concrete all over the camera and it was a little too intense to take a 'camera break.' So here are some after shots. After I took these we went to happy hour at a local bar -- and were very happy. Today is Craig's 25th birthday and I wish I could buy him some laborers but they're too expensive. He may have to settle with an ice cream cone instead.

Rugby Loyalty = Free Laborers for a Day

This weekend our friend Wes who played rugby with Craig at Michigan was in town for the weekend. What better way for him to enjoy Seattle then to help with our house? Along with Wes, two other rugby players, Ben and Alex Becker, came down from Anacortes. We treated them to a night on the town on Friday and in return, they helped out on Saturday along with two of our other local friends, Murph and JT. It's was super fantastic to actually have help for the first time and these guys got tons done. The most important of which was moving the 3000lb rock that was sitting right under our house in the way of the footings. You can see from the pictures below that it took the strength of three (burly) guys to lift this damn rock even an inch, but finally they were able to move it (while I stood around and took the pictures). In addition to the rock spectacle, Wes and Ben did a lot of rebar work, Alex helped cut down our trees and Murph and JT finished demoing our ceiling in the main room.
Today, Craig and I finished the forms and made it through a big chunk of the rebar. Another 10hour day...more pictures tomorrow.

Keeping a Level Head

It's raining in Seattle today but we're on a tight time line to get this foundation done so we'll be out there anyway. Below are some pictures of the forms that we've placed so far. More to come later. I didn't realize how much work (that phrase has been coming out of my mouth a lot lately) it is to ensure that everything is exactly level. In fact I've never even seen as many levels in one place as at our house - including my favorite -- the laser level. It kinda looks like a bomb in the pictures...

Howdy, Neighbor!

Ballard has proven to be a very friendly neighborhood so far and we've found out that our house is quite the talk of the town. Not surprising I guess when you take a look at it. Everyday someone walks by asking about it and congratulating us on our 'hard work.' A couple people stopped by to tell us about the day the house was actually lifted (Craig and I were both working so we didn't get to actually see it go up). The woman across the street said she had to leave and take her kids for a walk because she didn't want to have to answer to the insurance man when he came around asking why the house fell. Another woman kindly said she had to shut all the blinds because she got so nervous. I guess somethings are better just left to the imagination.

A Little Too Close to Home

Thanks to Chris for pointing out this article about a couple in San Francisco who decided to do some 'minor' foundation work on their own... Yikes! I hope our neighbors don't read the Chronicle.

Dream House Slips Into a Nightmare

This is why they used to make prisoners do this

Digging that is. Digging trenches really sucks. It's as simple as that. That being said, it's how Craig and I have spent the last week of our lives. Now that we're almost done with what's hopefully the worst part of this whole experience, I can sit back and reflect and confirm 100% that next time someone's getting paid to do this. Too bad prisoners don't still have to dig (ala Shawshank), it be great to see Paris do this for a change.

This week also included *almost* accidentally hitting a gas line (false alarm), actually hitting the neighbor's water line, and re-routing the sewer line -- fun fun! We're hoping to have the first round of concrete poured on Friday. Fingers crossed.

Consider the house officially lifted

The crew raised the house yesterday. It was during the day so neither Craig or I were able to witness the process firsthand, but according to the neighbors it was quite exciting. I'm not going to lie, it looks a little makeshift and you can definitely feel the 'bounce' in the floors. Last night we started digging what will eventually be essentially a moat all the way around the house where the footings will go. We made great progress, completing almost a full side before it go too dark. Goal #2 of the day was my attempt to put up our mailbox by myself which I failed at miserably. Baby steps.

DIY Headband

Functional and stylish, blue tape will adorn the heads on all the runways in Winter 2008 just wait...

Scary Haunted House pics

I decided to test out the different settings on my digital camera. Using the Sepia setting, it's easy to visualize what our place actually looked like in 1908 (assuming the people that lived there at that time were really, really dirty and technologically advanced enough to have a washer and dryer).

Demo Part Deux

Last week = Lots more demo and concluded in sending two dump truck loads of trash off to the dump. Highlights included the former owners ingenious idea for using shredded newspaper under the kitchen floor to make it level, "wires to nowhere," and the big honking Winnebago that decided to park it in front of our house for the week.

I've discovered my favorite thing to do now is to use the ShopVac. If you take off the attachments I swear that thing could suck up an elephant. It's quite cathartic after a long day of manual labor.

I'm really happy that 90% of the demo is done. Now comes the really fun and even more dirty part -- digging the trench for the foundation...yippie!

Parents' First Glimpse

My parents arrived on Friday, and yesterday they joined me for an enjoyable afternoon of sitting, soaking in the rain in Husky Stadium, to watch me accept my diploma. They'll be here through Wednesday which will inevitably lead to more solo Craig time at the house (I'm detecting a trend here...). But come Thursday, it will return to a joint effort. Well, at least 70-30...

These Rats Don't Scamper, They Saunter

In addition to rats and beetles and probably dogs, I think a person lived under our house...

Stage 1: Demolition

Demo started the day we got the keys. Not wasting any time, we went straight to work that night, demoing the main family room area including an unsightly wood burning stove that some genius in the 80s thought would be 'cool' to install - Cockamamie!

While Craig handled the tough stuff like ripping out the wood burning stove and busting up the tile, I handled the "novice" tasks of ripping off trim and plugging in new air fresheners to improve our quality of life. The next couple days were even more exciting and included removing the entire deck (Craig), ripping off old fake wood paneling, doors and frames (me) on Friday and tearing off the siding and hacking through enough bamboo to feed all the pandas left in the world (team effort) on Saturday.

Sunday proved to be the most exciting of all, and on multiple occasions almost drove me to throw in the towel on this whole project. As you can see in the pics, Craig - decked out in head-to-toe Tyvek - crawled under the house to clean out all the insulation and debris (which included a couple shoes, old newspapers, liquor bottles and an authentic arrow bow). Going around the house bagging up the insulation left me itchy and crabby and dreaming of the days when we're working on things like choosing paint colors and tiling the bathrooms (you know, things that don't include fiberglass, huge spiders and rat poop on steroids (see video below for details)).But the work for the day wasn't over yet. Craig plowed ahead and continued to jackhammer the entire front porch while surely making lots of new friends in our neighborhood who had trouble hearing for the next few days.

This past week - our first full week in the house - I was in San Francisco for work, leaving Craig to his own devices for continuing the demo and prepping the house for the impending foundation work which should kick-off this upcoming week. I felt bad that he was working alone everyday, but during his demo he found the 2004 Women of Playboy calendar in one of the cabinets so I think he was OK.

Our dream finally came true - Oh Sh*t! What do we do now?

As most of our friends and family know, Craig and I have (casually) been looking for an affordable fixer-upper since moving to Seattle. The lack of affordable houses anywhere close to Seattle put a damper on our goal, but alas we did not give up. Then one day at the end of April while sitting in the back of the classroom, I decided to peruse redfin.com and found quite a beaut. At the open house, three days later, the Realtor smiled and said it just needed some fresh paint and some "TLC." Not sure which house he was talking about because it surely wasn't the one we were standing in (noses' plugged), but the place showed real promise. After walking through it for only 15 minutes Craig had new floor plans sketched out on a napkin at Hattie's Hat.

Flash forward 24 hrs, and after an 11pm phone call with our Realtor friend Todd, and mortgage guy, David, we were pre-approved and within 12 hrs after that, had officially extended an offer. To both Todd's and our surprise, they accepted our bid and that's when it all started moving 1000 miles a minute and it's yet to cease. There were inspections to be had, loan options to research, permits, quotes, earnest money, insurance, credit reports, appraisals, signing over my first born and on and on.

We signed our official papers on May 30 developing severe cases of tendinitises, then finally got the keys (in a fancy gift wrapped box) the next day. Checkout the album below for all the 'before' shots. Hopefully 12 months from now, we'll compare these to the 'afters' giggling like little school girls with glee at the drastic improvements :)