Homemaking

Here are some quick before and after photos of our master bath. I haven’t taken any after pictures of the other two smaller bathrooms yet, but I should because they’re pretty cool, too.

Entrance to bathroom before. Notice that there is no door between the bedroom and the vanity.

The new entrance. Isn’t this an enticing view? We have a door! Now we can brush our teeth and not wake up the other person. We plan to change the ugly gold handle on the door eventually, when we replace the door hardware throughout the house.

The overall picture, before. Note the door between vanity and toilet/bath area. If you’re going to have a separate door in the bath, it needs to be just for the toilet. Duh. Also note the harsh, bare bulb, 80′s lighting, with at least two sockets broken. Our closet is on the wall to the left, out of view. We didn’t change that at all. The wall where the towel is hanging disappears in the remodel.

The overall picture, after. We can’t get the glass shower door installed for a few weeks so we have a shower curtain up temporarily. The shower and floor tile is actually grey, but it does have brown in it, and that’s what the photo seems to show. It’s a textured porcelain tile, which does not feel cold to walk on. The vanity is also grey, not brown. The shower floor and niche tile are glass mosaic tile, with all kinds of bright colors in it, which is hard to capture in a photo, but which was one of my favorite design elements. But yes, the walls are purple! I was a bit worried about having the toilet sticking out like that, but we were limited by the architecture. Originally, we were going to push back the wall where the shower faucet is, but it was full of duct-work. Instead, we moved the toilet out towards the vanity and made the shower about eight inches wider than it was when it was a tub/shower combo. We made decisions like on the fly and I like the way it turned out, with the shower in that more narrow niche. We were originally going to tile just the shower walls but when we realized we had that niche, flanked so nicely by symmetrical partial walls, we decided to bring the tile all the way out to the edge, and I think that makes a huge impact – I love it!

The old vanity. Note that there are cabinets, but no drawers. Tall cabinets are not an efficient use of space, especially when there is plumbing blocking much of it. Also note the carpeted floor.

The new vanity. Ah, perfection. I love the “floating” vanity style and all the modern elements. Finally, sinks with only one handle each! Whenever I see a two-handled sink I want to scream, “Yes, God damn it, the Parthenon!” and then launch into a monologue about how ridiculous it is to follow old rules that were used before we had new materials and methods of construction. Come on, one handle is objectively better! We picked this vanity from a web site and got very lucky that it goes so well with the tile. It was probably our riskiest decision. It’s good quality, too. All the drawers and cabinets have that “no-slam” feature so you can just tap them closed. It feels solid. Also, this vanity is a whole foot shorter than the old one, but it feels like it has more storage, because of the drawers. The basin sinks also create a nice definition of space for stuff on the counter. Of course, the whole vanity is installed higher than the old one, so we don’t have to lean down so far. I’ll have to wait until I lose my pregnant belly before I can appreciate that, though. For now, I have to stand sideways to lean over the sink.

I can’t believe I used this sink for almost three years. Yuk! Cracked, stained, impossible to clean, impossible to get your hands fully under the faucet because it’s so close to the back of the sink, and impossible to change the water pressure or temperature with soapy hands not just because of the two handles, but because they were goddamn cylinders with very little grip. This was bad design, even for the 80s. Oh, I could go on.

Another view of the new vanity showing the matching medicine cabinets with shelving (great storage!). You can also see a bit of the awesome light fixtures above. You can see in the reflection in the left mirror that we also installed two recessed halogen lights in the ceiling in the vanity area, so we don’t have to put super high-wattage glaring bulbs everywhere. The recessed lights are also on a dimmer. I’m a firm believer in dimmers for almost every light fixture. (Sorry, federal government, that rules out your CFL garbage.) We plan to install towel racks for the hand towels on either side of the vanity (love the efficiency of that!), but we need to wait to see exactly how the glass shower door will work before we decide on those, since they’ll need to match whatever towel racks we use in the bathing area.

Before, the ugly tub and shelving. I detest shower curtains. They always blow in and touch you. It’s creepy. We don’t mind losing the tub because it was so small and shallow it was really useless for an adult. We didn’t have space for a real tub. No big sacrifice for me. Also, who in their right mind would choose shelving that allows everything to fall through the cracks? I get the idea that this is a bathroom and you don’t want standing water on a shelf, but there are other options, people! And if you’re so concerned about standing water, why is the shelving made of metal that gets rusty? Again, I can’t believe I lived with this for so long.

Even in this shot, it’s hard to see the reflective glass tile in the niche, but I was trying to capture the contrast between the matte finish on the wall tile and the iridescense of the glass. This was taken before they had cleaned all the grout off the tile, so it’s a bit murky. But imagine the difference between being surrounded by this, versus standing in a squeaky, cheap tub with boring white tile, getting touched by a shower curtain. I’m happy!

I also have a couple of videos of the construction process and the finished result, but I haven’t gotten them up on YouTube yet. I’ll try to get that done when I take photos of the other two bathrooms.

I know I promised a report on the transfer procedure today, but I’m going to be way too busy with errands and household chores.  I haven’t been planning well, and we’re running out of food in the house, there is a lot of laundry to do, and I have to go to the pharmacy (where I seem to have to go every other day).  It’s going to snow here this afternoon so I anticipate a snow day tomorrow.  This town shuts down if there’s more than an inch, so I’d better get going.

Our new deck and patio are complete!  Well, almost.  Of course, there is one outstanding issue we can’t seem to get the construction company to complete – removing some piled up dirt under the stairs – but that’s really the only thing left.  It’s kind of a bummer because we have to keep walking the dog until that gets done, but I’m hoping they’ll do it this week.  Then we’re going to put down gravel and try to train the dog to do his business there.  I hope it works, because I really do not want to have grass.

We do also have to wait until spring to stain the deck because the wood has to be seasoned, but that doesn’t stop us from using it.  The new deck furniture should arrive by mid-December.

The deck seems huge!  Our old one was barely big enough for the grill and a tiny table.  Now it is a real outdoor space, which we mostly plan to use for grilling and dining.  The stairs, which we didn’t have before, will allow the dog to go out from the main level of the house and get to the yard, instead of me having to take him down to the basement and hang out by the door until he is ready to come back in.

We did one kind-of interesting thing with the deck.  We installed a gutter system under it so that the patio underneath will stay dry in the rain.  This system also creates a ceiling on the bottom of the deck that is a more finished look than bare wood beams, and will allow us to install low-voltage lighting or a ceiling fan down there in the future.

We installed lights on the railing of the deck and on the stairs.  I’m not expert enough with the camera to get a good night-shot, but the lights make the deck a very attractive place when it is dark.  That was a cheap feature and it makes a huge impact.

The patio is just concrete.  We have such a tiny yard that I didn’t want to break it up with part-hardscape, part landscape, so we basically paved over the whole thing except for a small area for Toby.  Concrete is not my ideal surface, but we wanted something low-maintenance and inexpensive, so this was the best option.  We plan to put potted plants around the perimeter to make it look a bit nicer, but really, it’s just a little bit of extra space for Sam to play in, and for storage.  Because it is fenced, she’ll be able to go out there on her own as soon as the weather allows.

Even though it’s practically winter, we’ve already had a picnic breakfast out on the deck and we’ve played tag on the patio.  The dog loves to go out on the deck and just bask in the sun, and we’ve even started letting the cat out there. We bought an outdoor storage bin for the patio and moved a ton of stuff like charcoal, rakes, bush-trimmers, etc., out of the house, freeing up more space inside.  Really, the backyard was a total wasteland before, and now it is functional and clean.  Clean, oh joy, clean!

This was an extremely expensive project.  I never imagined I’d ever spend this kind of money on a house – I’d never even bought a new appliance before we moved here.  But it is totally worth it!  I’m sure it will increase the value of the house, but we never count on that.  We only invest in things that we will get the value out of while we live here, and it looks like this one will pay for itself in that regard very quickly.

Samantha and I also enjoyed watching the whole construction process.  The two main guys who did the deck-work, Nelson and Nicolas, were friendly and very responsive to my constant questions and perfectionist tendencies. When they were done, Sam was actually quite sad to see them go, so she dictated a letter to them, which we were able to deliver by hand when they had to come back for a follow-up visit.  Nelson has kids so he gets it, and he read the letter out loud in front of us.  That moment is just one of the ways that having a child can turn an experience like this into a touching memory that I’ll savor forever:

Dear Nelson and Nicolas,

I love you. You built our new deck for us. I like it when you put it together right. I don’t like it when you don’t come to our house. I miss you.

Love,

Samee

The deck builder PeopleGuys have been working at my house for two weeks now. This was my big summer home improvement project, but it took me until now to get the thing started. We’re tearing out the rotted old wood deck and patio in our backyard, and replacing them with a new wood deck with stairs, and a concrete patio to cover most of the back yard. I’m paving paradise (not!) so that I have as much man-made material surrounding me as possible. Grass, plants, and all the bugs and mud that go with them can be had at the park.

The day the workers arrived, Sam and I spent a lot of time watching them. They tore out the old deck so quickly – it was amazing. Sam was very concerned that the deck builder PeopleGuy would fall off:

I also got a kick out of this dude wearing a dress shirt and vest:

These guys never wear gloves. They use their bare hands to saw, to pull up the splintering wood, to shovel – everything. I get to teach Sam what all the names of their tools are (I had real trouble remembering the word “crowbar”) and to gently note how hard they are working and what an improvement this is going to be. This is educational stuff! Every day on the way home from school Sam asks me if the deck guys will be working. I think she is fascinated.

Here is what our back yard looks like now, which is really not much worse than it was with the wood patio:

We had some back luck in the beginning – they had to order more wood, I had to move our cable box, one of the workers got sick, then it rained. Otherwise, they’d probably be done by now. But as it is, we’ve needed to actually walk the dog for two weeks for him to do his business, and it will probably be two more. What a hassle! But once the project is complete, we’ll be able to let Toby out from the main level of our house, and he can go down the stairs to the yard. (We don’t have stairs now outside, so we have to go to the walkout basement to let him out.  I find this appallingly inconvenient.)

Despite the delays, they’ve made a lot of progress.  Here is the deck now:

I’ll post some photos when the project is complete. It’s super-exciting – we’re adding almost 600 square feet of outdoor space to our home and I won’t have to look at that rotting hulk of crap anymore. And as a bonus, I get to shop for new outdoor furniture.  Woohoo!

I try not to gripe too much on this blog, but this information is just too important not to share:

Never, ever, ever buy a front-loader washing machine.  Here is what is required to avoid your clothes smelling like mildew:

1. You must never allow the clothes to sit in the washer for more than an hour or so after the cycle finishes. (You mean I have to sit at home while my laundry is going as if I were at a laundromat?  Sorry, but my clothes routinely sit in the washer for a full day.  Or, at least, they used to when I had that crappy old top-loader.  Now I am a slave to laundry.)
2. You must leave the door open when the washer is not in use. (Not a big problem for us because we have a dedicated laundry room in the basement, but even in the basement, I know the door is open and that BOTHERS me.  And how long do you think it will take before the cat decides that the washer is a nice place to sleep?)
3. You must wipe out the door seal, soaking up any excess water with a towel, after each load.  (More work, yay!)
4. You must occasionally (some say daily!) run a sanitize cycle with bleach and then do a load of white towels.  (I guess I need to go to Bed Bath and Beyond to get some white towels.  Oh, and bleach.  Who uses bleach?)
5. You must buy a special, expensive product to clean the mildew out of your washer.
6. You must clean the inside of the washer tub with bleach periodically.
7. You must check to see if there are any other places that trap water on your particular machine, clean them regularly with bleach, and find a way to air them out.

Don’t believe me?  Feel free to waste an hour of your life like I had to, reading this stuff.

Full disclosure:  I was able to kill the smell with just washing the tub and door seal with bleach, and running a sanitize cycle with bleach (I was surprised to find that I had some).  I don’t know how long it will last, though.  In the meantime, I’ve run countless loads of laundry through the washer twice, worn really stinky clothes, and thrown away at least a dozen kitchen towels before I realized that the problem was my washer and not my old towels.  I already ordered the Affresh tablets so I’ll keep them for an emergency.  But this is not progress.  This washer looks cool but makes more work for me. Please, do some research before you buy a front-loader!

I think I may have finally resolved one of the major issues in my life: how to keep my house clean enough to enjoy it without undue stress.

Solution: I hired a housecleaning service to come just once a month.

Even with our improved financial situation, I still can’t bring myself to hire someone to do the whole job for me.  It’s an enormous expense, and I really don’t mind the actual cleaning, so it seems like a waste.   But I found a service that will do a decent job for $100.  That is a major bargain here in pork-city (DC).   And that $100 is definitely worth it, because the problem with doing it myself is not really the time it takes, but the stress that it causes.

I have never, ever had a regular housecleaning routine.  I tried really hard a couple of year ago, using a checklist and allowing myself reasonable time frames.  But I still couldn’t work up the motivation to keep it up.  Really, I’ve always just cleaned something when it was dirty enough to bug me.  But that leaves me in the state of always being annoyed at the dirtiness of some part my house, and always feeling like I should be doing more.  It has been a constant source of stress for as long as I can remember.

Now, a bargain once-a-month job is not going to keep my house in a state that doesn’t bug me.  We have a child, a dog, and a cat, and you can see the increase in dirtiness on a daily basis around here!  But what that once-a-month cleaning gives me is the knowledge that I’ll have a reboot.  If I just can’t find the time or motivation to vacuum for that entire month, I know it will be resolved by the maids.  If I just clean the bathrooms for that month because that’s what bugs me, I know that I won’t also have to squeeze in mopping and dusting and all the rest.  And if I don’t touch a thing for the entire month, I won’t be left with an even bigger cleaning job.  I’ll just have suffered a dirty house for a while, but then I’ll get to start over.  This knowledge is all I need to feel totally relaxed about the whole process.

Hopefully I won’t raise my cleanliness standards and start getting stressed out again.  I admit that that is a real possibility.  But, for now, this seems to be working.  Hallelujah!

The month of January was home improvement month here at the Mossoff house.  It really started in December and it’s continuing into February, but January was basically all-chaos, all-the-time.  I’m proud to say I only flipped out once or twice!

We’re nowhere near done yet – this house was a real mess when we moved in – but we did enough that I feel like we live in a mostly nice place now.  And I finally have photos!

We installed new lighting – new fixtures in the dining room and foyer and recessed lights in the kitchen and basement.  These photos were taken before we repaired and painted the ceilings, but isn’t that chandelier awesome?

Before

After

Before

After

We moved Sammy to her new bedroom.  (She picked the pretty blue paint color and the girly pink lamp.)  This project included moving Adam’s office to the basement bedroom, painting, installing closet shelving, buying and setting up Sam’s “big girl bed,” and all the little details of setting up a little girl’s room.  We also had to do some touch-up painting in the old room, which is going to eventually be the nursery for SS:

Sam's old room

Sam's new room

Since we have two really brightly colored bedrooms right next to each other, we decided to paint the dormer windows the same color as the other bedroom.  This really integrates the two rooms.  I love them both!  And Sammy was totally fine moving to her new room.  She moved to 5 new houses in her first 3 years of life, so change is not a problem for her.

A while back, I moved Sam’s playroom from the dining room into the kitchen eating area.  The only problem with that was the hard, tile floor in the kitchen.  To solve that, we installed a large Flor area rug, and now we have a really wonderful playroom:

New playroom

And finally, the best improvement of all was the painting.  We painted the whole main level except the powder room, plus the upstairs hall, which was a mess.  You can’t see the colors too well in photos, but we’re very happy with them.  It’s all very clean and modern.  You can see the pumpkin color of the playroom above.  The cooking part of the kitchen is yellow, and the separate colors help to define both rooms nicely:

Yellow kitchen

Here’s a shot that shows the blue of the dining room next to the grey of the living room and hallways.  We picked cool colors to balance out the really warm orange tones of the bookcases and floors:

Blue and Grey

I really dig the fact that our dining room has warm, orange floors and blue walls, and the playroom has warm, orange walls and a blue floor.  Again, the integration by reverse colors.  It’s impossible to get a good photo of it, though.

And then, of course, we replaced the dishwasher and hot water heater, both of which died during this process.  You can see the boring diswasher in the kitchen photo.  I just bought something to last the next 3 years or so, since we’ll have to completely update the kitchen at some point.  It’s very loud and doesn’t clean the dishes well, but I think it will get us through.

Now we just have to get all of our art back up on the walls.  If we get it done by the end of the month, we’ll be in good shape!

The new dishwasher will be installed today, and a new water heater tomorrow.  (We can’t get the tankless kind in our townhouse, and I’m not so sure we would have wanted one anyway, after I learned more about it.)  I really kicked butt getting those things done.  The painting is going well, too.  We’re just having the main level of the house painted by a professional, plus the upstairs hallway.  We’ll do the rest ourselves.  As expensive and difficult as the painting is, it sure does have a huge impact on the feel of the whole house.  I think it’s going to be fantastic!  I’ll have pictures soon.

Sammy’s new room is painted and she is sleeping in it now, but on an air mattress.  We haven’t yet had time to get to a store to buy her full-sized mattress.  Really, I just can’t get to the store.  But I did figure out the closet situation and bought a kit.  Now we just need to install it and move all of her stuff from her old closet in.  Luckily, she loves her new room!  I just hope she doesn’t get upset when we replace the air mattress with her real bed.

It’s chaos here.  And if you’ve read my blog regularly, you know how I feel about chaos.  I’m certainly stressed and on-edge, but I’m handling it a lot better than I thought I would.  I hope I can keep it up for another week or so, until the worst is behind us.

We got new windows installed in our house last week! 

This is the biggest home-improvement project we’ve ever done, so it’s kind of a milestone for us.  The whole project took 4 months, but most of that was just waiting for the windows to be ordered.  I did interview about 7 companies over 6 weeks, and I did a lot of research as well.  (Angie’s List was a great help, although nothing can beat a personal recommendation from somebody you trust.) 

We decided to make this our first big project on the house for a few reasons.  First, we’ll get some return on our investment with the energy savings we’ll experience.  The old windows (original to the house which was built in 1981) were very drafty and inefficient, so it will simply be more comfortable in the house as well.  There was also the tax credit which isn’t huge, but we figured we might as well do it sooner rather than later.  I have no idea if new windows will increase the value of our home, though, and I didn’t even look into it.  We never make home improvements for that purpose.  It’s nice if it happens, but we have never looked at our home as an investment.  We only spend money if we get the value out of it while we live there.  And we never make design choices for anyone but ourselves.  So far, this policy has never hurt us financially.

The old windows also had almost no soundproofing.  Last spring I was awakened every morning by a bird in the tree outside my bedroom window.  It might as well have been in the room.  The sliding glass doors sounded like nails on a chalkboard when you operated them.  The screens were broken.  There was a hole in one of the storm windows.  There was some dry rot in a couple of the sills because some idiot had filled in the weep holes (look it up).  There was mold, or at least some strange kind of dirt, on a couple of the windows.  They were ugly.  They rattled.  And half of them were impossible to open. 

We’re very happy with the new windows.  We got the standard double-pane vinyl windows that everybody gets now.  They open and close so smoothly that I’m much more likely to open them on a nice day.  The house is so much more quiet now.  I love letting the dog out in the back yard because the door is such a pleasure to operate.  The windows tilt in so I can easily clean the outside of them.  And they look great!  I didn’t take any “before” photos, but here is a picture of our next-door neighbor’s window, which is exactly what ours looked like before:

And here is a photo of one of our new windows:

We’re slowly, slowly, making this house into our own home.  I really enjoy the process.  The next big project is replacing the deck and landscaping the yard.