A Look Ahead

This post has been three weeks in the making.  I wrote it the first week of January.  However, my Mac and I were having photo exporting issues.  But now we're friends again.  So here is the long awaited post:

When I was in in school, college, and even when I was teaching, I never looked at the beginning of a calendar year as a new year.  For me, New Years Eve was summer, and New Years Day had always been the first day of school.  

This year it was different.  There was an end to 2011, and 2012 does bring a fresh start.

Our little guy is sitting up now.  

There is still a 50/50 chance he'll tip over, but that little trunk of his is getting stronger every day.  

His physical therapist is blown away every week by his progress.  We're so close to crawling, it's just beyond his grasp.  He rocks back and forth on all fours, and to his dismay ends up in reverse instead of drive most times.  

He's been eating puree food for about two months now.  I can't believe homeboy likes brussel sprouts.  

The Hacker and I aren't fans, but the little guy opens his mouth as wide as it can go for the green goo.  

We're setting goals for the yellow bungalow this new year too.  

1.  Finish the garage 

2.  Complete the 5-10% of the finishing details in the master bedroom, nursery, office, and living room.  This seems to be a consistent flaw of mine.  I complete a room about 85-90% of the way.  Then it take$ me month$ and even year$ to complete the re$t for $ome $trange rea$on.  (was I subtle enough?)  

3.  Complete the dining room table and make a console table. Have I told you that the Hacker is building our dinning table? He's in the distressing and staining part.  Ana White has become a treasure chest for the Hacker and I for furniture.  If you haven't checked it out, if would behoove you to do so.  (side note: behoove is a word I haven't used, maybe ever.)

4.  Window Treatments.  All of our windows have blinds, nice blinds.  But yet they all seem so bare.  This year it would be nice to dress them up a bit.

5.  Add shutters to the garage window out front.  We have a feeling our window looks a little bare.  A pair of shutters might be the perfect company for it.

6.  Add bookshelves on either side of the fireplace.  

So there it is.  New year, fresh start and new goals.

Good to be back, 

Kristin

Garage Framing the Ceiling

It's been a while since I've posted on our garage.  You can read about our garage project here, here, here, and here.  If you remember, we wanted to have it done by May.  Obviously the project has taken a backseat to the kid's room this summer. 

Our friend Marc the Arc drew an inspiration sketch that we fell in love with.  

Since we have friends that will install the drywall for us, we (and when I say we that is a very loose term, in actually it means the Hacker, while I cheer him on) had to frame the ceiling first.  

Because he built the frame on the ground, he hoisted it up with straps.  A genius idea. 

However, once it was up, it was evident that it was too low.

So the Hacker and Marc raised the frame and built a diagonal elbow for the air condition arm. 

And now we're one step closer to getting this garage done.

 

The Hacker just has to add some framing to the other parts of the roof, that wont be dropped. Then it will be time to complete the drywall and finish the ceiling in the garage.

Do you see it somehow coming together?  (and yes, the garage has gotten messy again.)

And now some inspiration for the laundry room.

via Pinterest from sn128w.snt128.mail.live.com

This probably wont work in the garage, but I would love to be able to add this element, somehow.

via Pinterest from House Beautiful

And here's the inspiration board that I made a while back. 

Thanks for reading.

Now I have to go fold laundry.

love, 

Kristin

Install Insulation: Check

It took a bit longer for us to get the job done, we thought we would have drywall up by now.  However, we have installed our insulation in the garage.

To find out how this process began read here, here, and here.

We didn't have storage in the garage, and we desperately needed it.  Before adding storage cabinets, now was the time to finish the walls.  It was a now or never situation.  We chose now.  

Day 1:

We started with ripping down the plywood.  We wanted to save the plywood to install either in the attic in the house, or in the rafter in the garage.  Either way, it was important that we didn't destroy this perfectly good plywood.

Now, when I say "we" I mean my hard working husband.  The Hacker used this nifty tool that manually squeezed the nail, and pulled it out.  It was loud and extremely tedious. And because there was only one of them, ripping off the plywood became a one person job. 

Besides taking out all the random screws that were in the plywood, all I could do was watch. So, I folded about four loads of laundry, took Dex on a bike ride, and cleaned house, while he did all the hard work.

Day 2:

It was also a "now or never" situation for adding additional outlets in the garage.  Enter Dad, the electrical extraordinar. While my dad figured out the whole wiring situation, the hacker and I measured how much insulation and drywall was needed.  About 333 feet.

On to Lowe's we went.  Standing in front of the insulation aisle was a bit overwhelming.  Using the charts in the store figured out that we needed R-13 insulation for our region of the country.

(By the way, there was only one brand name of insulation for us to choose, so don't think we're partial to Johns Manville.  The only other type was the spray insulation that expands into the space, which would have been great, if it wasn't so expensive.)  

What was confusing was you had to choose between Kraft paper or Plastic covered and tear apart, or cut your own size.  Feeling a bit confused, we decided to seek out an emloyee and ask.  Good thing I did, because all our questions were answered.  

We learned that plastic covered panels are pre-cut and may have to still be cut, but the plastic protects our skin from the itchy fiber glass.  Also, we were able to decide that cutting the insulation strips ourselves, instead of buying the rolls that were perforated, we would save about $90!  In addition, we also scored 10% from the manager, because he recognized us from our previous trips to Lowe's. Excellent customer service.  Thanks, Chris!  We left the store with all of our supplies for about $300.

Because we chose the Kraft paper covered insulation, it was important for us to be protected from the itchy fiber glass.  So we suited up, wearing long sleeves, masks, and protective eyewear (or in my case, perscription sunglasses.)  

Feeling slightly more confident we went to work.  

The Hacker and I measured the length of insulation for each space.   I spent most of my time on the ladder holding the piece of insulation in place, while he was on the ground, cutting it to size with a box cutter.

It took about six hours to complete.  

Once completed, we set out and stapled the pieces onto the 2x4 studs.

Stapling the ends only took about half an hour to finish.  And there we were, with insulated walls.

I was nervous about installing the insulation, because it's something we've never done before.  It wasn't that difficult at all.  It may not be as perfect as the pros would do, but we're happy with it.

Now installing the drywall may be a completely different situation, but as for the insulation, it was the perfect DIY project, and we saved some $$ in the process. 

While all of this was going on, my faithful dad was installing two more outlets for us.  

We chose to go with LED nightlighted outlets.  This being the garage, we thought it couldn't hurt.  

Of course the Hacker likes them because they look "Tron-like" in the dark.  (I, being as lovingly as possible, restrained from rolling my eyes.)

So now our checklist looks something like this:

1. transfer all of our storage from cardboard boxes to plastic boxes. 

2. get rid of everything we do not need or want to store = garage sale (coming soon)

3. insulate and drywall the walls

      add electrical outlets to two back walls

4. redo the flooring (with what is debatable) 

5. somehow, someway, cover the monster eyesore that is our water-heating unit

6. add cabinetry

8. paint the walls

9. create a "homelike" atmosphere for our "laundry room area"

10. add an attic and finish the ceiling of the garage.

Hopefully, this upcoming Memorial day weekend, we'll be able to knock off a couple more items off this list.

What did you guys do this weekend? 

a little sore, 

Kristin

Officially a Two-Car Garage

After 10 months of hard work on weekenight, and I believe a constant battle from both of our parents, we finally have a two car garage.

Remember what it looked like back in February?

Then we cleaned it up so it looked like this:

Then we had a couple setbacks.  The first came when my parents, secretly when we weren't home, dropped off many boxes.  Some were from my childhood, and other things they were giving to us to sell in our garage sale.

Oh yes, our garage sale.  I think we will be having a garage sell every year.  Yes, it was a pain.  Yes, we had to wake up before the crack of dawn.  Yes, I was exhausted at the end.  But we made $700!  That's right $700.  I hope we never accumulate all the stuff we did for this yard sale, however a year goes by, and if we haven't been using it, it's gone!

I know you won't believe me when I say this, but once the sale was over, and we put everything back in the garage, it was just a full as when we first started.  Yes, we made money on the sale, but I swear we had just as much stuff!

So we called one of my favorite shelters in SoCal, Venice Tabernacle.  When I was younger, and lived in Santa Monica, we became very close to the people that work and live there.  They are such an example of not wasting your life.  

Okay, so now my garage story sounds silly, but I will continue. 

Once they picked up everything, and I mean everything, we felt like we were at the home stretch. 

Then, I believe after conspiring with my folks, the Hacker's parents decided to drop over his childhood boxes to the mix.

If I need something to light a fire under me, apparently this was it.  Because that night, we went to work.  And guess what we figured out at the end?  

We still had stuff, that we needed to go through.  And I believe there are many things that we don't use and don't need still in this pile.  But this is it!  This is all we had left.  And it fit perfectly behind the mustang, giving us plenty of room for....

The big truck!  It fits with a little room to spare.  We know it's tight, and the truck won't be staying since we have to remove everything out to get started on the installation and the drywall.  

But still, there is something satisfying about being about to fit two cars in the garage.  So we did it.  Even if it is temporary.

And it makes the front of our house look friendlier.  

xo,

Kristin

Garage Phase 1 - complete

Remember our deadline to complete our garage?  

It's May 1st.  That is less than two months away!  It's a crazy ambitious goal, but if we didn't have the deadline, we'd probably continue to procrastinate this project. 

Anyways, we have completed phase one of the project: Transfer all of our stuff from cardboard boxes to plastic.

Remember the embarrassing garage I showed you last week?:

Well, this is it today:

Not bad, right? 

Here is another view from the door to the house:

It took us many weeks, but we can officially cross off the first item of our garage makeover to-do list.

And yes, I hear you, asking yourself, "Hey! What's that pile of junk in the corner?"

Well, it's actually the beginning of phase 2!  These are all the items we plan on selling at our first ever garage sale!

We haven't set a date yet, but once all of that junk is gone, this is all we'll have left!

Plus the Christmas plastic boxes that are sitting in the rafters, and are too difficult to photograph. 

So here is the new and improved garage makeover list:

1. Transfer all of our storage from cardboard boxes to plastic boxes. 

2. Get rid of everything we do not need or want to store = Garage Sale (coming soon)

3. Insulate and drywall the walls

4. Redo the flooring (with what is debatable) 

5. Somehow, someway, cover the monster eyesore that is our water-heating unit

6. Add cabinetry

8. Paint the walls

9. Create a "homelike" atmosphere for our "laundry room area"

10. Maybe even add a loft to the tiny top of the garage for bonus storage

So stay tuned, we'll be having that garage sale soon,

Kristin

garage countdown begins!

The Hacker and I have given ourselves a deadline to get our unfinished garage into gear!

Here is what we have planned, and need to finish by May 1, 2011:

1. transfer all of our storage from cardboard boxes to plastic boxes. 

(we're almost there on this one.  it's take many evenings, but we're getting close to checking this one off the list.)

2. insulate and drywall the walls

3. redo the flooring (with what is debatable) 

4. somehow, someway, cover the monster eyesore that is our water-heating unit

5. add cabinetry

7. paint the walls

8. organize garage

this would be a nice inspiration:

Image: realsimple.com

9. create a "homelike" atmosphere for our "laundry room area"

This would be nice, minus the window, including the sink:

Image credit: realsimple.com

10. maybe even add a loft to the tiny top of the garage for bonus storage

Whew!  That's a ton to get done!  I better stop bloggin' and get to work!  

How about you?  Have any projects you have been procrastinating?  

Let me have 'em!  Any projects you got done quickly?  I could use the inspiration!

See what I mean?

- Kristin