Time For Bed!

Ok, I could see how that would be confusing, when Jessie says "time for bed" what she really meant was "time to build a bed before you sleep in it." Not cool.


Thankfully, she already had her own set of plans for a super-tall, indestructible bed that would have space underneath for clothes bins, a bed for Optimus that he will never ever use, and other normal bedroom items like a chop saw and air compressor fittings. All I had to do was shut up and cut or hold boards how she told me to. This was quite nice.



Before you knew it, we had a bed! Simple, quick, easy.



Ok, if you're reading this you know it couldn't just happen like that. But I'll let Jessie tell that tale...


Side note, while working on the bed I went to get a beer from our fridge. Actually from the "freezer" because a while ago our freezer stopped working; the fridge was actually substantially colder. No problem, now we have a fridge and a beer fridge!

Yeah. Apparently the freezer started working again at some point. In our house when someone says "grab me a cold one" they need to be more specific.

Ok, so now that we had a huge bed for Optimus to hog, we thought the room felt a little stuffy....yep, that wall has to go.


We had planned on making some changes anyways, like adding in a closet and making the other bedroom into a master bathroom, thus necessitating a doorway. Probably best to do the dirty demo work before bringing our clean mattress into the room. The main attraction of this wall is the chimney that we wanted to expose. Raw original brick would look awesome in our bedroom and bathroom....if it weren't for the inch-thick layer of plaster applied directly to the brick, it would be easy. Jessie's brother and sister took turns a while ago with hammers attacking the plaster and made tons of progress. We however, are not as awesome or patient as they are, so we brought in the heavy artillery.



We managed to clean off the bedroom side in less than 30 minutes and it was actually pretty fun. Air-powered demolition tools = fun. One problem with this much fun is the amount of dust and crap it kicks up in the air. The hippo light will help demonstrate to your left with the cleaned off brick to the right. Another problem is the several hundred pounds of plaster (basically concrete) waste that you end up with in Rubbermaid containers that can easily bury a room's floor.

Jessie will elaborate on the design details of the room, but there are a few things we needed to make room for, such as the closet. The door to the other bedroom would be entering directly into the closet, so we removed that with the entire frame and transplanted it to the other opening. Lest we forget, this house is really old, so we encountered plenty of annoyances, the least of which was probably the hinges for the door that been painted over so much it no longer needed screws to hold it in place. The door actually opened and closed just fine without them. Super fun.

This leaves us with a gaping hole in yet another wall, but a new, functioning entrance to the future master bath. Even better, it matches the rest of the house because it's original, meaning less new materials to buy/consume. In the end, this is actually progress. I mean, we did end up sleeping in a room with three walls for a couple months, but as of a few weeks ago we've got 3.5 walls....so we're almost there!

Tom

Currently listening to "Buried Alive" by Avenged Sevenfold

Our House is a Very Very Very Old House

Ah the joys of rebuilding something way, way, way older than you. We've discussed the plaster and lath wall construction in previous posts...unfortunately that did not magically make it disappear. Some of you may remember when Jessie started painting every room in the house and got between 1/3 and 2/3rds of the way through each room. Well, we hadn't finished a few months later, but that's ok, because we would have to repaint anyways. Turns out the changes of season (and temperature/humidity) cause the plaster to expand and contract at varying rates, which cause either massive fissures or small mountain ridges to appear in walls and ceilings....everywhere. To better illustrate this, we sanded down a few of these magical ridges, seen to your right.

Of course, no matter what we do (short of replacing everything with modern drywall) we'll end up with more cracks popping up later, but we'll worry about that after we get everything painted once. It's amazing the difference color makes for the feel of a room. Now I feel like I'm inside a pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving every day in our living room. Yes, I like that.


Meanwhile, it snowed here! Yeah, it's a dusting for anyone North of us, but here it's the blizzard of the century. Schools closed early, work was canceled, and by 6pm Wal-Mart was completely sold out of 4 items: milk, bread, ground beef, and pizza rolls. Hot Pockets also took a good hit. Naturally, this was a day BEFORE any sort of frozen precipitation began. Gotta love North Carolina winters...

Regardless of how infrequently we get weather like this, the bees are not fans. They'll stay in their boxes most of the day, but the wind cuts through the openings and isn't good for bee morale (or continued bee living). Jessie's mom is totally BA, so she goes out there with a drill and starts putting on a small blocker to keep the wind out of the hive. She doesn't need a suit, the bees respect her too much to screw with her. While she was doing our work for us, I was foolishly riding my bike in the snow because it's fun. It worked about as well as you would expect.

I love the snow, so overall it was a pretty nice, relaxing time. Of course, due to the cold we found even more squirrels had been sneaking into our basement and making sweet pads for themselves in our walls...everywhere. But more on that later...



Tom

Currently listening to "Maybe For Now" by Few and Far Between

Manic Monday...Wait...It's Wednesday.

Recently, I have managed to have a little bit of rage in me.  I think I need to start doing some roller derby again or something else that will give me a way to get rid of some of that.

Why hello Wednesday.  You provided me with the perfect motivation to get out some rage.  

Our house is a mess.  We've been staying in our guest bedroom since we moved here.  Well, we actually have 2 guest bedrooms, but one of them is going to be turned into the master bathroom, so we don't consider that a guest bedroom...not really.  Anyway, the closets in the guest bedroom are incredibly horrible.  Somebody nailed up a few 2x4's to set stuff on.  While we are in the process of getting and redoing furniture, we STILL don't have enough room for all of our "stuff".

I went into our room to find shoes today and this was the best I could do.

Luckily I have more than one of the exact same size of New Balance shoes.  Yay ebay!

Anyway, we finally splurged (of course it was on sale) and ordered a beautiful new bed off of overstock.com that is an 11" foam memory mattress.  It should be here in the next few days, which also motivates me to finish my headboard and built the platform bed with storage underneath.  Now I just have to figure out how to I want to design the platform and draw up some plans.  Ahh, the life of the unemployed/domestic engineer.

To clarify, that is not our frame - just the mattress.  I'm sure the UPS guys will be thrilled to deliver that 78lb package.  If you are looking for a bed and have been given the run around at the mattress stores (we did that for a few months), I would highly recommend the online route, especially using overstock.com method.  While it is nerve-wracking to spend money on something you haven't actually tried out, the reviews are wonderful. 4.5/5 stars with 283 reviews.  Pretty good, in my opinion.

Anyway, besides giving me an itch to make an Anthropologie inspired quilt for our new bed, this also pushed me to start getting our room underway.  I'm sure Tom is THRILLED about this since I have a million and three other projects going on as well.

To give you some perspective of how my day went... (in pictures, of course)

Oh, what a beautiful wall.

...you never know which tool will be right for the job until you get started working (at least on old houses)

I couldn't find safety glasses, so this had to suffice.

So the fireplace on this side does not exactly match the one on the other...I think there is a shelf of brick on this side of the chimney.  Hard to explain, I know.  It is so hard to peel 3" of plaster/concrete off of brick.  Any suggestions besides chisels?

Bonfire, what, what!

Hello future closet!

Why hi there future bathroom....WAYYYY future. 

Hello drywall.  What a nice? surprise to see you in an 87 year old house on top of lathing strips!

They even used screws as fasteners.  Tom is going to freak out that our house has some element of the "best, most sensical, logical, hardcore, most awesome ever" fasteners in it. I was fairly certain we just had nails.  Wrong.  There is a lone screw (ok, maybe about 4 to hold up that piece of drywall)!

Future doorway from master bed to bathroom.  This is what it looks like from the "bathroom" side with my pseudo-finished headboard in the background.

Oye.  Now what?

In the process of this mess, ahem, I mean PROGRESS, I managed to knock one of the platinum prongs off my wedding ring, which means...no more diamond.  I was even wearing gloves!  What the heck.  Oh well.  We'll find it.  That pile of rubble is only so big.  Sometimes I curse myself for being so hardcore.

...and this was only one of the things I did today.  More to come.

Jessie

Currently Listening to "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga (Yes, I have guilty pleasures.  Don't judge.)