Final update of 2009

Back in January, I posted that hopefully 2009 would see the end of the Money Pit Blog. Well, 2009 proved to be the fastest year of my life. That's the excuse I'm using and I'm sticking to it. Plus, what would we talk about with friends and family if not for house projects? We don't want to be a bore after all (who wants to talk about wedding planning ALL the time)!

Recent projects include:

-finishing the siding (almost - still need to paint most of it - we had to stop when the Seattle rain came):


-relocating the "kitchen" into the kitchen (oh yeah, that's our stellar new stainless steel fridge):


-painting the main room downstairs:


-fixing random leaks and such.

Other exciting things:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPMUtuOYaEQ (yep)
http://www.bullmooseconstruction.com

and finally, just for fun, here's a look back at where we were a year ago at this time:

(kitchen)
(master bedroom)

Happy Holidays, Everybody!

End of September - Finishing the Exterior Phase II: Siding

Ta-da!



Yes, they are all from an angle. That's because we're only about 30% of the way done. We got about 20% done last weekend, when we were lucky enough to still have our summer weather around. I painted while Craig did the hanging:

September - finishing the exterior phase 1

By mid September we had the back of the house cleaned up and repaired:

Before:

After:

Downstairs bathroom demo

The big project for August (between taking time off here and there for trips, weddings, etc) has been the downstairs bathroom. Here are some pics of the demo process and resulting new exterior walls. Now we're moving back outside...

  

It's Freakin' HOT here - way too hot to work

Yep, it's almost 6pm and that's the current weather here in Seattle (maybe even surpassing Cabo, Ky?). The first time ON RECORD that Seattle has seen temperatures over 100  - ever!

It's just waaay to hot to work on the house. It's too hot to do anything really. Add in the fact that 80 is hot for most Seattlites and no one has AC and this town has pretty much done a mass exodus to all air conditioned bars/stores etc. 

Good news, though, it's only supposed to be in the mid 90s over the next 5 days or so - yippee!

For now, we're off to the movies to cool down.

Paint on the stairwell and landing

We painted yet another area of the house - making that three full rooms/areas that have the final paint on now (we're repainting the horrific yellow in the guest bedroom so that one doesn't count yet). It doesn't show up too well in photos, but our stairwell and upstairs landing are both covered in Behr's "Silver Tradition" (in an eggshell finish). We're planning on doing the main room downstairs in the same paint but still deciding if that's just too much gray.

Also, a shout out to Nathan for our your help caulking the beams downstairs. We wouldn't be where we are today without you. Seriously, we wouldn't - we'd be much further along. Kidding! Just making sure you're reading this, Nate...

4th of July at the "Craigan" house

We had a number of guests in town for the 4th - Craig's parents, brother Nathan, Uncle Bob, Carol Lee, Matthew and Eric. So, we decided, rather on a whim, that it was time to host our first bbq. As you can see, we covered all the bases - picnic table (plywood on saw horses), a grill, horseshoes, chips and dip and lots of beer. We actually pulled it off rather well, I have to say, with lots of help from Becky and Carol Lee in the 'kitchen' and Uncle Bob manning the grill. We also had some Seattle and Michigan friends over to join in the festivities. To top it off, we were also graced with a special 4th of July rendition of Neil Diamond's "America" as performed by CW himself...

June Update: Two Years and Counting

The Evolution of the Master Suite. The pictures describe the progress much better then anything I could write...

Familiar poses and a bunch of new updates

Surprisingly, even after hearing about what we put Mr. Williams through back in October, Ray offered to come out and help a few weeks back. Of course, we worked him to the bone as well (as evident in the familiar looking photo).

Dad spent his week mostly taping and mudding - not necessarily the most fun tasks but definitely very helpful projects to help us get to our next stage in the addition and the kitchen.

There are a lot of updates since the last round of photos. All the plumbing and electrical is done in the kitchen and the addition. Both are now insulated, drywalled, mudded, sanded, and primed (ta-da!). We purchased the tile for the master bath (although it doesn't seem to photograph well) and Craig is now prepping the shower to begin tiling.

Things are seriously moving, folks. Here are the highlights. You can peruse the entire album here.

Kitchen post plumbing and pre insulation

Kitchen post insulation, pre dry wall


Kitchen post drywall and mud (current condition)


Master bedroom post insulation, pre drywall


Master bedroom post drywall and mud


Master bedroom sanded and primed (current condition)


Master bathroom post insulation, pre drywall


Dad, mudding the master bathroom post drywall


Bathroom post priming


Craig, currently laying the cement in the bottom of the shower


Here's our tile. Picking out tile was a very exciting stage. The thought of a finished bathroom is quite unbelievable

"Who's the electrician in this house?"

An interesting event that I forgot to post about until Craig reminded me yesterday (I was trying to convince him to write the post this week - to no avail).

A few weeks ago, Craig was 'rearranging' our circuit box in order to add additional circuits for the addition and the kitchen. While tinkering around, Craig noticed that the one of the two large power feeds (from the street) was slightly coming out of the box. I was standing nearby reading (we had electricity to the rest of the house turned off at this point so my options were limited). The feed began to spark (arch is the technical term, I later learned). I didn't think too much of it -- electricity sparks, right? After staring at the circuit box for a few minutes, Craig calmly turned to me and asked me to find the emergency number for the electric company. Here's how the conversation proceeded:

Craig: Uh, can you please find the emergency number for Seattle City Light?

Me: Sure....why?

Craig: Well, we may need someone to come out here (totally calmly)

Me: OK...

Craig called the emergency line and explained that our feed seemed to be loose and was sparking every few minutes. Long story short - they sent a crew...immediately.

While I'm pondering what valuables I want to collect and take to the pub down the road, I can sense that Craig is a tad more concerned about the situation then he's letting on. About 15 minutes later, we hear this pull up outside, flashing a HUGE spotlight (oh I forgot to mention that this took place around 8pm on a Tuesday night)...
















These two nice gentleman came, begrudgingly, inside to check out the situation. Come to find out they usually don't handle indoor issues but spend most of their time repairing fallen power lines, etc (hence the truck). These guys were awesome. They walked right over to the circuit box and noticed right away what the issue was. The dialogue that ensued was amazing (names are not confirmed but you get the idea):

John: Yeah, we can take care of this. Bob, hold my toolbox

Bob: I don't know John, that wire's hot...

John: Stop being such a nancy, Bob (OK, a little poetic license here)














John grabs the LIVE wire with his gloved hands and proceeds to re-secure it into place. The entire encounter lasted about 5 minutes. Craig offered the men a beer, which they sadly had to refuse.

Then John commented "Geez, who's the electrician in this house...." To which Craig quickly explained that he found the circuit box in this condition.

I give amazing props to Seattle City Light for their customer service and response time. Hopefully, we won't have to be utilizing that perk again any time in the near future.

It's time to get serious

Once he gets going, you just can't stop him. Craig has been on quite a terror lately, working non-stop on the house. So much progress has been made in the past month it's unbelievable. Things are really coming along!

I haven't really stayed true to my resolution to post updates weekly, but I do have a ton of photos to share. Below are some highlights. For those of you interested in seeing all of the details, I've uploaded all the photos to this Picasa album along with descriptions.

Highlights: