A photo guide to what our move was like

Just a couple a ton of photos from moving...

The cats not helping with packing

Me not helping with packing

Meals for the week so we could pack our pans (and my martini reward)

The movers are here! But Megan isn't because she's moving the cats and Josephine pooped in her carrier! T_T

Wow, these movers are really efficient!

Almost done!

At the house!

The new kitchen floor is covered in boxes!

Living room

Sitting room, in case you didn't see the sign

They were seriously pretty pissed

The maze of boxes on the right was popular with the cats while it lasted

First meal at the house, pizza and wine

Cats gave forgiveness as soon as we laid out the living room rug

Kitchen floor, part 2

Ok, this post has been a long time coming but I feel like not having a computer hooked up because I was moving is a pretty good reason. Right? I actually still don't even know where my keyboard is; I'm writing this with Adamo's laptop. :P

Anyway! Last I left off, I claimed in that I would update when I was done; however since the floor is mostly done and not likely to become more done anytime soon, I figured I should update with the process.

First, we laid out the tiles with the backing still on to appease the tile gods to make sure that we actually had enough tiles (we didn't). A quick trip to Lowe's later, it looked a bit like this:

We got a little lazy and didn't put them in front of the basement door.

Laying the first tiles was pretty nerve-wracking since I was fairly certain I was going to do it wrong. (I did!) They are a little crooked, but you can't tell, right?

Totally not noticeable, right!?!?!

Wondering what the rolling pin is for? Apparently when you lay peel-and-stick vinyl tile, you're supposed to use some fancy-pants tile rolling machine... or a rolling pin and your youthful vigor.

rollin', rollin'  rollin' haha now it's stuck in your head

Since Adamo is the one who has a degree in making things look pretty while having straight lines, he got the job of measuring and cutting the tiles. (And yes, I messed up doing that as well!!)

I don't know how to work the angle thingy, that's why!

Adamo has so many cutting skillz, look at what he did around the pipe for the kitchen radiator:

I absolutely would have messed this up

However, since I did a mediocre job of laying the tiles and rolling them, that became my job. This part ended up taking two days, because we had so many fiddly areas to measure. SO MUCH FOR QUICK AND EASY VINYL TILES.

I'm not mad or anything, but...

We did the full tiles one night, and the cut tiles a second night.

full tile completion victory dance

We let the tiles sit overnight after we finished laying them, mostly because we were totally wiped out after all the measuring. At this point, though, we were getting down to the wire. We were moving in less than a week and we still couldn't bring the appliances back into the kitchen. Panic ensued. Luckily, grouting goes pretty quickly, and I learned HEY I AM GOOD AT ONE THING and that thing is grouting.

I did most of the floor in about two hours!

We couldn't spend too long at the house, so I ended up not finishing it up the first night.

awwww yiss, almost done

However the next night I was able to finish the grouting!

the windex is to clean off the grout haze

I also was able to measure, lay, and grout some tiles at the top of our basement stairs, which previously was home to some asbestos tiles.

next up is some Kilz for that wall...

The next night, we replaced the baseboard this time with the proper nails (not ones that are like nine feet long) and moved the appliances back in. Unfortunately, since we were panicking and cleaning the crap out of the house (the walls were still covered in sawdust), we forgot to take pictures. Oops!

We still have to replace the thresholds between the kitchen/dining room and the kitchen/sunroom. Hopefully that will be soon; there are staples sticking out a bit at the edge of the dining room and my feet loooove to step on them. Almost as bad as stepping on legos, I assure you. We also have to replace the little bits of baseboard that I broke when I was removing them. We also have to put the protective edging on the basement landing and the door to the pantry... so, still a lot of work to be done, but hey it looks pretty good, right!?

just imagine baseboards...

In case you were wondering why I call them horror-movie lights...

This is what it's like when I turn on the lights in the bathroom.

And I'm like:

Poop Machine 2.0

Reviewing our list of sketchy-things-that-needed-to-go-away-and-be-replaced-by-nicer-things, we can now cross off our one and [mostly] only toilet.

I'll quote Megan saying, this toilet could barely flush TP. And I'll add to that and say it used as much water as it takes to wash a car with every flush due to a completely home made plumbing job on the inside of the tank.

With a heavy 'duty' new throne from Home Depot, we and Megan's folks took care of the little toilet that couldn't.

This toilet belongs behind bars. Or in a bar.

The new one was just as heavy - but totally worth the bruises.

I took the old one out and cleared away the remains of the old wax ring... mixed with a healthy powdering of rust.

After it was cleaned up as best as could be, we popped a fancy new wax seal on and then had some help securing the American Standard Champion 4 MAX:

We needed to run out to get a short 16" water supply line from the nearby Lowes, but the rest of the installation was a snap!

Megan does a quick stability check as we finish the lid assembly.

And voila - our new poop machine, Le Champion, is ready for action, custom handle and all:

And

It's starting to look a little less creepy in there... right?

fin

Mid-week Madness

I shouldn't even be writing this right now. We have been packing our apartment non-stop all week for our movers on Friday, and there are still tons of things! It's like our crap is multiplying on its own in the apartment!

I will say it serves me right, when Megan said we needed to start packing last month and I said, "Nah, there isn't that much to pack..."

Once we have a few minutes post-packing, we should have a few more house update posts with lots of photos - including:

- The exciting conclusion to our kitchen floor!

- Our brand new poop machine (toilet)!

- What our yard looks like freshly cut, trimmed, and somewhat weeded! Gasp!

In the meantime, here's an obligatory cat picture of Josephine and Praline 'helping me pack.'

Kitchen floors are a lot harder than I thought: Part 1

So, putting in a vinyl tile kitchen floor is supposedly one of the easiest floor replacement methods. I am starting to wish we had just floated a laminate floor, now! Ok, maybe not. I don't even have a saw.
First, we had to level allllll around the edges of the floor, where the plywood was ripped off by the adhesive on the former flooring. This was a giant bitch to do because the patch becomes basically unusable like 47 seconds after it's mixed (ok, 8 minutes, but that is like NOTHING). 

I am a bad example please do not use this as any sort of reference

Next step was sanding out the leveler because it was all bumpy due to the whole drying out in 4 nanoseconds thing. We did the sanding by hand, because we are crazy. Beer was was an important tool, very necessary for this step.

Please pretend you don't see my buttcrack

Then we tried using the shopvac to suck up all the dust from sanding. Hahahahah that went reallll well. In case it's not obvious, I ended up sweeping the dust because our shopvac sucks. I swept 3 or 4 times, then Adamo went around with a microfiber cloth stuck on a swiffer to pick up the rest while I cried dusty tears.

creeper shirt + face mask = ???

FINALLY, on Monday we were able to apply the primer. I did the edges and Adamo did the rolling because I fail at rolling. We let it cure for 48 hours, but it was still pretty sticky. Hopefully that's ok??

We left a little path so that we could turn off the kitchen light. We forgot to leave a path for the stove light, though!

Priming is pretty tiring.

awwwww

Tonight we started laying the tiles and hopefully tomorrow we will finish with the laying and the grouting and the things. Please cross your fingers for us. I will update when we are done!

Megan out!

Lots of new things!

Things are finally picking up here at the manor; we're back from our yearly family vacation and moving right along with repairs!
First up was our asbestos abatement. Impresair Environmental did a great job removing and disposing our ~120 sq. ft. of asbestos 8x8 tiles in the basement. We're now - as far as we know - 97% carcinogen-free!



Later that week we signed up for oil service and a tank replacement with a local fuel vendor, Scott Williams. Very friendly, very knowledgable and very prompt! They got rid of the old rust bucket, pumped the oil into the new one, and gave the system a quick tuneup.



Now that we didn't need to worry about the bottom dropping out from our oil tank, or evil asbestos fibers floating around, we got the help of my uncle and brother to replace the leaky poop pipe this weekend.
Remember this?



It was part of the 30'-plus original cast-iron sewage pipe, which we found a bit leaky upon home inspection.
My brother went happily to work demolishing it with a 5lb metal mallet (DANTE SMASH) and 15 minutes later I found myself carrying out all that remained of ye olde pipe to the backyard in pieces.



Behold the new and improved plastic sewage drain.



Needless to say, Megan and I are incredibly grateful for all the hard work my uncle and brother committed to Lakewood Manor. We couldn't have done this stuff without them :)

Oh, one more upgrade as part of their amazing work this weekend: we now finally have outlets in the bathroom! Guess we should return that 24' extension cord we were going to use for the hair dryer.



They ended up forking power from the attic light down through the wall behind the bathroom. Thanks guys!!!
Next up, the trials and tribulations of our kitchen flooring...