Homemaking

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.

We got a new couch at Ikea a couple of weeks ago.  It’s the first major furniture purchase we’ve made since we moved into our home in Michigan in 2003, when we got a bed and a dining room set.  Those purchases cost as much as a small car, so we quickly ran out of money!

We’ve been surviving on hand-me-downs and my old Ikea stuff from 1997 ever since.  Furniture just seems so expensive that we put off buying new things until we absolutely have to.  I still miss my old, ugly green Ikea chair-and-a-half, with matching ottoman.  Adam and I sat on it together every single night in front of the TV until we had to literally duct-tape it together, just like Martin Crane.  I learned to breastfeed Sam in it.  In this hilarious video from when Sam was about 5 months old, she is lying on the ottoman, which is covered with a blanket to hide the duct-tape:

The new couch is promising.  It works well in our living room.  I like the way it separates my desk area from the rest of the room.  It has a removable, microfiber slip cover that can be washed in my washing machine.  We bought two covers – the sand color you see here, and the purple you see in the pillows.  There’s already a ball-point pen stain on it that I’m not so sure will come out in the wash.  But that just means that we’re breaking it in.  I hope we’ll love it as much as that ugly old green furniture.

After my dad fixed the inner workings of three out of our four toilets, we got motivated to replace the seats, too.  Three were chipped and disgusting just like this one:

The fourth, in the powder room on the main level, was wood, which I think is wrong on so many levels:

To replace them, we got 2 of these awesome kids’ seats:

The smaller seat folds up into the lid and is held there by a magnet.  We put one of these in the powder room and one in Sam’s bathroom.  Hopefully she’ll start using them soon. (Arg!)

Then for the other 2, we got the “Whisper Close” seats.  Check it out:

It may seem like a gimmick, but we always keep the lids shut to keep the animals out, and in the middle of the night that small luxury is welcome, indeed.  It’s a Little Thing.

My dad designed and built his own house, so he knows a thing or two about home maintenance and repair.  Every time he visits, we hit him up for a project or two, so of course, with our huge task list here at the new house we figured he could help with a few things.  I think he ended up cutting a year off of that 10-year-plan.  Here is what he did in the 12 days he was here:

• Replaced the flappers on two toilets, and the valve mechanism on a third.  We now have four properly working toilets instead of just one!
• Adjusted two bifold closet doors so they close properly.
• Diagnosed a big problem we have with our upstairs windows, giving us a solution that we can do ourselves instead of replacing the windows completely.  (Do you know about weep holes?  Make sure you have some.)
• Manufactured two supports for my desk shelf out of PVC pipe and rubber feet.  It was a really cool, creative solution.
• Fixed two kitchen drawers that were out of alignment and not operating smoothly, and taught me how to fix them in the future.
• Adjusted a few of our drain stoppers in the sinks, which were not working at all.
• Reversed the postion of the light and fan switches in our master bath. (Don’t you hate it when somebody puts the fan switch closest to the door when everybody knows that the light switch goes there?)
• Reversed the direction of a dimmer switch in a bedroom which had been installed upside-down, so that you had to push it down to turn on the light. (What kind of idiot makes a mistake like that and then just leaves it that way?)
• Fixed a recessed light fixture in the basement.  It was just loose, but we probably would have hired an electrician.
• Installed a screen over one of our gutters, not to keep out the leaves, but to stop the rain from dripping from the roof directly onto the metal in one particular spot right outside of our bedroom, which had woken me up countless times.  We’re supposed to get some rain soon so I can find out if that solved the problem.  This was another really creative solution to a small but annoying problem.
• Gave us a guess as to what might be wrong with our water heater, which doesn’t seem to work well.  (He says it might be calcium deposits and we could try to drain it.)
• Re-installed the damper in our ductwork that allows us to close off the flow to the top floor.  The handle had broken off of it and he had to open up the ductwork and manufacture a handle and another part to fix it.
• Fixed a leak in our basement laundry sink.

I think there might have been a couple of other things that came up along the way, but that was what I noted on my list.  He also bought all the parts for us as our housewarming gift.  Awesome!

Adam and I didn’t do too badly these last two weeks either.  I installed a paper towel holder, completed the grout-cleaning project, and fixed the garbage disposal when some kind of metal got wedged in it.  Adam installed the new chandelier in our “dining room” which is really the eat-in kitchen.  The old ceiling fan was literally falling apart.  One light was hanging by the wires, and one of the glass shades just fell off onto the table one day.  Besides, it was ugly as hell.  We bought the new fixture to match the kitchen we plan to create, not the one we have now, so it’s a bit out of place.  (We’re going for the Art Deco look.)  We also gave up the ceiling fan for the sake of style.  Still, it’s quite an improvement.  Here are the before and after photos:

Dining Room Light Before

Dining Room Light After

Adam and I are finally getting back in the habit of working on the house.  We did a great job unpacking and making repairs until we went to Florida for Christmas, but then Adam started a new semester, we got sick, and other projects seemed to get in the way.  We did a few things, but our momentum was lost.

A couple of weeks ago, we prioritized the list of home improvements we want to make.  It’s probably a 10 year plan, and it comprises 71 tasks – things that range from repairing two toilets, to finishing unpacking, to remodeling the entire kitchen. 

Having a prioritized list really kick-started our efforts.  Last weekend we hung most of our art.  Adam has always been a stickler for getting this done quickly after a move, so the fact that it took us 5 months shows you how busy we were this winter.  I had forgotten how many nice prints we have, and having them on the walls makes it feel like home. 

I’ve managed to continue cleaning the house.  I don’t mean the daily chores like cleaning toilets and mopping the floors, but things like scrubbing walls and baseboards with a stiff brush.  This house was just filthy and disgusting when we moved in.  I’m still finding long, dark hairs stuck to doors and walls.  Nobody in our family has long, dark hair.  Ewwwww.

I’m just about finished with a project I started in March:  cleaning the tile grout on my kitchen floor.  I use OxiClean and a scrub brush and it’s quite a workout.  I can’t do the whole thing in one go since I have fractured time, so I’ve been doing small sections.  I think I’ve done about 15 sections at 1-2 hours apiece.  But here is the difference it makes:

I really love owning a home.  I love making it better, bit by bit.  I love my long list of things to do.  Sometimes I get stressed out about all the money it will take to accomplish what we want to do, but then I remember that we don’t have to do all of these things right this instant.  Even if we had all the money we needed, it would still take a few years to get it all done.  And doing these things is fun.  I enjoy it.  Holy cow – I actually enjoy the process!

I’ve come a long way since last year, when I wrote about my time sickness.  Good job, me!

Did you know that you’re supposed to clean the lint screen on your clothes dryer?  I don’t mean pulling the lint off each time you use it – I mean that you’re supposed to wash it with soap and water every 6 months.

As suggested, I checked mine and water passed through it very slowly, so I guess it did have a film built up over it that was impeding air flow.  I cleaned it and the water ran right through.  I think it has reduced drying time but it’s hard to tell for sure.  I need to try drying a load with the sensor – you know, “more dry/less dry.”  The sensor function hasn’t worked so I’ve  just been using the “timed dry” function, which was really annoying when I guessed the wrong amount of time needed and came back to a moldy load 3 days later. 

It took 5 minutes to clean the screen.  The hardest part was that it took a few weeks for the thought of cleaning it to coincide with being in the mood to do it and not having a load of laundry that needed to get in the dryer asap.

I never saw this object before in my life, until I pulled the clothes out of the washer to put them in the dryer.  It was in there, in the washer with my clothes.  I actually looked around for the hidden camera after I stopped freaking out.

In case you can’t tell, that is a rubber glove stuffed with rice and tied together.  WTF!  How did this get into my laundry?  Rubber gloves make me think of hypodermic needles and sick people and other dirty things.  But stuffed with rice?  My mind just couldn’t get around that.

After a few minutes, I started looking at all the clothes that were in that load.  Samantha’s blanket from day care was in there.  I had picked it up on Friday to bring home and wash, and I never shook it out but just shoved it in the washer.  I think this must have been some craft project they did at school that got mixed into Sam’s stuff.  I meant to ask the teachers today, but I forgot, and now I have to keep wondering until Wednesday.

I’m 5′4″ tall.  I’m short, but not tiny.  Still, a standard 30″ desk is way too high for me.  Raising the chair just leaves my feet dangling, and I’ve never found a footstool that works without sliding around and getting in the way.  Chairs are always too deep for my short thighs but it’s hard to sit forward in a chair without the counterweight of the floor for your feet to push on.

I needed a new desk anyway, suitable for our living room/library, so I decided to design something that would really work for me.  I’m very proud of the results.

First, we had this perfect corner in the room with a 4 foot long wall – just the right size for a workspace.  For the desk, I got a tabletop with adjustable legs from Ikea.  The desktop is 25.75″ high and my chair is at the lowest setting.  The arms of the chair just barely slide under the desk.  When I sit and type, my forearms and thighs are parallel to the floor and my feet are flat on the floor.  I pull my chair forward and sit up straight just because it feels natural and comfortable – something I’ve never experienced before.  I’ve put my monitor on a wall mounted shelf, also from Ikea, so that it is right at eye level.  There is just 2″ of space between the desk and the bottom of the shelf, but it’s enough to slide my keyboard under the shelf so I have a nice, big area to write with pen and paper when I need to.

Next to my desk is another Ikea piece:

It’s supposed to be an entertainment stand, but I use it to hold my printer, stationary, and all that miscellaneous stuff you need by your desk like paper clips and stamps.  The hole in the bottom that is supposed to be for your TV cables is perfect for the printer connection.  But it also serves another purpose – we needed a long, low storage unit to block off the drop into the sunken foyer (the banister had been removed prior to our moving in).  Since you see the back of it when you walk in the front door, it also had to have a finished back, which is rare with inexpensive furniture.  We searched long and hard for this one.  It is modern, sleek and stylish and serves all of these functions perfectly.  It gives me such pleasure just to see it every day.

I also have a bookcase (from Ikea, of course) mounted above my desk for my papers and other storage.  I need to get a couple of baskets to slide onto the shelves to hold mail and stuff to be filed, but then the setup will be complete.

I’ve been using this arrangement for a couple of weeks now and it was well worth the effort of designing it, finding the pieces that would work, and setting it up.  It’s been so long since I’ve been able to do things like this – to make my living space work for me, and to look good too.  When you rent and move around a lot, you just make do.  A functional and comfortable workspace is the kind of Little Thing that I love to surround myself with.