Category: Home Improvement

Home remodeling and decorating

New Construction Townhome, Organization

Page-A-Day Chore Calendar

Kelly

One of the scariest things about moving to a bigger place is how much more space we’ll have to accumulate stuff. To a real estate agent, big bedrooms and walk-in closets are a selling point, but to me they’re caves threatening to fill with dust dragons and piles of things forgotten. Honestly, I’m not very good at keeping our apartment clean as it is. If we’re going to move into the house without Chris killing me, I need to level up my tidiness skills.

It turns out I’m not alone. Offbeat Home helpfully published an keeping your place organized little by little, using daily chore checklists from A Slob Comes Clean. But I decided the checklists were kind of boring looking, and in my usual spirit of over-engineering I came up with this:

I put "fight off headcold" on my to-do list for today.

I took the base of last year’s page-a-day calendar (my mom gets me one every year for Christmas), and designed a chore calendar to fit it. Each page features 7 “every day” tasks at the bottom, e.g. checking the trash cans to see if they’re full (and emptying them if they are). At the top left is a more major chore (like vacuuming) that needs to be done on a weekly basis. In the middle there are four blank lines for the day’s to-do list which I can write in. And lastly, if there’s a special event that day, such as a birthday, it’s shown below the to-do list.

Sample Page

I designed the pages in Photoshop and then wrote a program using ruby/ImageMagick to dynamically create a page for each day. The daily chores are always the same, but the weekly ones rotate through the week. Within the generator program I plugged in a list of important dates to populate the special events area. Finally, the program lays out the pages two-up on Letter sized paper so I can print them out, cut them, and assemble them into a pad.

To start with I’m just printing a week at a time, so I can tweak things in the design as I go. I used hot glue to bind the pages, but I plan on picking up some padding compound next time I’m in SoHo. I’ve heard rubber cement can work as well.

I’m only on day two of using it, so it’s too early to tell if this is something I can stick with, or yet another failed attempt to be less of a slob. One thing I’m noticing already is that chores take a lot less time when you do them regularly. Also, I still really hate folding clothes.

New Construction Townhome

Hardwood Floors: Done!

Kelly

The biggest project for our new home was installing hardwood floors. If you remember, the house came with some stained, poorly-installed carpeting on the top two floors:

Master Bedroom
The wrinkles are just waiting to trip you in the night

We picked out flooring and hired a contractor to install it. They started on Thursday and spent the day ripping out the old carpet, revealing the plywood subfloor underneath.

Top Floor
I think it looks better than the carpet already

Less than thrilling was the water damage we found under almost all the windows. The tacking strips for the carpet were rotted out in some places. Not exactly what a new homeowner wants to find, especially on a house this young.

Bad news bears
Unfortunately it was freshly damp, indicating an ongoing issue

The side of the house is stucco, which has deteriorated and created a gap around each window and door frame. We saw this during the home inspection before we bought the house, I just didn’t expect it to be such a dramatic problem already. Our contractor sealed the cracks with silicone caulk, which we’re hoping will stop the majority of the damage, and once the weather warms up we’ll look into having the house repainted with a waterproof paint.

The crew worked through the weekend, and when we returned to the house Tuesday night the floors were done. Everything in the house was covered by a fine layer of sawdust, even the light switches.

Dusty
Not that it stopped me from walking around in my bare feet

To clean the floors we first vacuumed, then dry mopped (using dry swiffer-type pads), and then gave things a once over with Bona Floor Cleaner. There’s a trick to getting it to clean well – you have to rinse out your cleaning pad (I used a Quickie microfiber mop) frequently to prevent streaking/product build up. This meant at least once per room, usually every 4-5 sprays of the cleaner, being sure to wring out the pad well since wood and water are not friends. For tough spots you still have to get down on your hands and knees with a microfiber cloth.

Master bedroom
We'll get a bed eventually

It was about 5pm by the time I finished cleaning so the lighting isn’t great in the photos. But what’s really interesting is that the wood looks drastically different colors depending on the light. This is most visible in the middle bedroom, which has a halogen light ceiling fan, where you can see out into the hallway (which is lit by compact flourescents).

Lighting differences
Same wood across the whole photo

Yeah, that isn’t going to make picking out paint colors a headache at all… but we’re really super happy with the floors. They look great. At first I wasn’t sure about the narrower planks, because the trend right now is wider, but I think they give the house character and offset that blah new-construction feel a lot of recently built homes have.

Once the walls are patched up and painted we can drag all our belongings down and start actually living there! In the meantime, Chris and I are testing out hardware setups for our incredibly over-engineered home network / media center.

New Construction Townhome

Picking Wall Colors

Kelly

Now that the floors are in (photos forthcoming after the dust is gone) we can start picking out paint. Picking paint colors is hard. For the time being we’re just focusing on the main floor, which is an open floor plan with a kitchen in the middle and room for seating at either end.

On one end, nearest to the kitchen, we want to create a nice sitting area to chat / read, with built in bookcases. This area opens up to the back patio as well as the kitchen (which has decidedly contemporary cabinets), so we kept it pretty light and airy.

There’s also a fireplace surrounded by blue-green stone on one wall, which dramatically influenced what colors we could use. I got a few different swatch strips from the paint store and taped them all up next to the fireplace to see which hue matched the stone the best.

The chairs we chose in approximately the colors we chose.

Armed with our paint swatch and a sample of our flooring we headed to the furniture store, and spent maybe an hour comparing woods, stains, and upholstery until we got something that looked good together.

At the other end of the house is what we’ve been calling the “media room,” which is basically a shrine to our video game consoles. After keeping things pretty tame in the living room, we went a little nuts with color and opted for decidedly more modern furniture.

We opted for a sectional in the same style/line

To choose the blue, I went a little overboard and mocked up a ton of different color options in Google Sketchup. I even created a 3D model of the sectional we picked out.

TurkishTile - With Lorimer
Computer rendering of the room

Sherwin Williams conveniently provides the approximate RGB values for their paints, and you can see some of the earlier color options on Flickr. After a ton of deliberation we had our color, and a vague idea of what it might look like. I got a sample quart of paint and painted swatches on each wall in the room, to make sure it was going to look right.

After picking out color for just two rooms I’m pretty sick of looking at paint swatches, so I doubt I’ll go quite as nuts with mockups and options for the bedrooms.  We’re headed to Disney World next week, and I’m definitely looking forward to a week away from looking at home decor!

New Construction Townhome

Hardwood Floors Are Underway

Kelly

The biggest project on our to-do list for the new home is the floors. The two upper floors came with wrinkly, stained carpeting that we knew we’d want to replace before moving in. We decided to bite the bullet and have hardwood installed.

Israel Furniture Co.

Our first stop was Bell Floor Covering in downtown Philly. This place has been around forever, and it didn’t take long to figure out why. The sales staff was friendly and explained the difference between solid and engineered hardwood. Engineered woods can be installed most anywhere and can be refinished twice. Solids have to be nailed down and can be refinished three or more times. Since we’re installing it over a plywood subfloor, we could go with either.

Lyptus hardwood

We ended up picking out a solid hardwood called Lyptus – it’s a hybrid of a few different Eucalyptus species and claims to be sustainably grown and harvested. It was on closeout so we got it for $3 / square foot, less than half of what it retails for.

To figure out how much we needed I went around and measured every room in the house that we wanted to put hardwood in, closets and all. Since converting feet/inches to decimal is tedious, I used Wolfram Alpha to calculate the square footage of each room. I added 10% to the total to get the total number of square feet.

We had three contractors come out to give estimates – two dedicated flooring specialists and one general contractor who handles complete home remodeling. All of them came in around $3 / square foot for installation. We went with the general contractor and I was immediately glad we did – when we were loading the wood flooring into the garage I noticed a leak coming from the first floor bathroom. The contractor, Osman, added to his list of things to check out.

Osman and his assistant are hard at work ripping out the existing carpet. I think it’s already starting to look better.

New Construction Townhome

Digital Interior Design

Kelly

Over on the main hacking blog I detailed some of the decor/design planning for the house, done using SketchUp and a few other tools. I’m still getting the hang of Google SketchUp, but it’s been fun to play with all the furniture digitally. I’m not sure how useful it will be for picking colors, since getting the lighting right is a little outside of my skill set, but it’s handy for laying out furniture.

[Kellbot Hacks: Interior Design Planning]

New Construction Townhome, Software

Interior Design Planning

Kelly

One of the nice things about buying a home that had been built recently is that the original builder’s plans were still available, leftover from when they were trying to sell the development. We got them from the seller and I immediately started modeling the house in Google SketchUp.

I followed the technique in this video to build the house from the plans. Things won’t match inch for inch, but it gives me a pretty good idea of the layout and I can always correct the measurements later after checking them with a tape measure.

For the time being my house has no ceilings, and each floor is laid out side by side. Google SketchUp has a wide variety of furniture in their 3D Warehouse, and with a little practice I’ve started to be able to model my own furniture.

Sketchup

Ever since seeing this Billy bookcase hack on Pinterest, I’ve been kind of obsessed with creating a built-in shelving wall. Ikea has some pretty good planning tools, so I was able to design something I thought would work in the space.

BillyPlan

Then I grabbed the Billy set from the SketchUp 3D Warehouse and started modeling it in the room. SketchUp’s rendering tools leave a lot to be desired so I started playing around with a demo of Twilight, a rendering plugin. Aside from some odd lighting issues, I think it gives you a better feel for a space than SketchUp’s line drawings.

billyRender

One other SketchUp plugin that has been invaluable is Fredo6’s Round Corners. I used it when modeling the couches to make them look more couch like.

CornerChairComparison

Clearly my 3D modeling skills still leave a little to be desired, but you get the general idea of the piece. It’s a Makenzie corner chair from Target, part of a sectional we’re considering getting for our TV room.

Thankfully we have some time before we have to start seriously thinking about furniture, since the carpets need to be replaced and we’ll want to put up a fresh coat of paint. The next few weeks will be spent coordinating various contractors (long distance), trying to get the house in shape for move-in well before the baby decides to show up.

New Construction Townhome

Our New Home To-Do List

Kelly

Our new house may not have a bed, but it has internet! It took us all of 10 minutes in the new place to realize that we weren’t going to survive long without it. The first thing we did in our new home was to make a list of all the things we needed (or just wanted) to do to make it move-in ready. Some of them were quick tasks, like reprogramming the garage door (omg we have a garage!), but there are some big projects as well.

After a week long ordeal with Comcast that gained me more than a few new grey hairs, we finally got broadband internet set up. After two days of scrubbing and vacuuming, we finally got the house to a point where it felt clean enough to be ours. We purchased a few inexpensive counter stools from Target so we’d have somewhere to sit. Once the holidays are over we’ll tackle some of the bigger items on the to-do list.

Painting is one of the biggest and most daunting tasks. In addition to the pretty pretty princess closet, the whole house could use a fresh coat of paint. I’ve been using the Sherwin Williams paint visualizer to try out different color schemes on a photo of the living room fireplace (omg we have a fireplace!).

Existing Paint (White) and 3 color options

Of course, the color paint we pick out will be heavily influenced by the floors, which also need work. The house currently has some unappealing carpeting in the bedrooms. We’d like to replace it with hardwood (or something similar looking), which is a giant project in and of itself. So many choices… bamboo? solid wood? engineered wood? No matter what though, the carpet has got to go.

Guest Room
Wrinkly carpet, you are going away

And then there’s the bar. The previous owner installed a wet bar in the den, which is a little odd to me because the den is attached to the kitchen. The kitchen has a perfectly lovely island with a bar seating area, so why one would want a separate bar 20 feet away is a mystery to me. Also, only the hot water appears to be plumbed into the faucet. Overall it’s a strange little corner. But most of all we’ve got that wall earmarked for the TV, so the bar will be removed. We’ll have to have a plumber in to close off the water lines.

Media Room
Anyone want a bar?

Oh, and of course we need to have the house wired for ethernet so we can set up our NOC in the basement. Because no home is complete without a central media server and a computer attached to every TV.

There are a dozen smaller projects, like an electrical junction box that emits a terrifying buzzing sound and a window that looks like it may have some water damage. Thankfully the floors and walls are the only things that really have to be addressed before we can move in.

It’s exciting and overwhelming at the same time, and the more we work on it the more it starts to feel like home.

New Construction Townhome

Home Decor

Kelly

RevolvingDork and I are just getting started preparing our new place for moving day. We have a fair amount we’d like to do, including replacing the current gross carpet, and I think it goes without saying that we’ll need to repaint…

This is the walk-in closet off the master bedroom, and though I’m sure someone loved this closet very much, it’s not really my style.

I call it the “pretty pretty princess closet.”

New Construction Townhome

Comcast is stupid. Film at 11.

Kelly

In news that will surprise absolutely no one, Comcast’s customer service is awful. Unfortunately Verizon DSL speeds in our area are a joke, and FiOS hasn’t made it to the neighborhood yet.

Because there will be overlap between our condo and the new place, during which we really need internet access at both, I wanted to see if I could set up the new place on our current account so as not to have multiple bills. (Spoiler: you can’t).

After a failed attempt at calling Comcast, in which I navigated half a dozen phone menus only to be disconnected, I tried their “live chat” service.  It was… special.

Me: My Issue: I have two homes, can I set up internet service for both on the same bill?

analyst Nicole has entered room

Nicole: Hello [you], Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Nicole. Please give me one moment to review your information.

Nicole: Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

[what?]

Nicole: Yes, you may set up internet service for both account however for each accountit has to have a unique user ID for security purposes.

Me: And both accounts can be on the same bill?

[a minute passes, the agent isn’t typing]

Me: Hello?

Nicole: I’m sorry but you will be billes separately for both accoutnas well.

[so, what you meant to say before is… no]

Me: ok, thank you.

I’m not particularly surprised by the answer, since Comcast accounts are generally linked to your service address, but where do they find these service reps? Given how many people are looking for work, how hard can it possibly be to find someone who can read and write?

Wait, don’t answer that. It will just make me depressed.

Family, New Construction Townhome

Leaving The City for a New Life

Kelly

Sharing the news of our pregnancy with friends has been bittersweet. While everyone is excited about our newest addition, not everyone is quite so happy about the other big change coming with it: we’re leaving New York City for Philadelphia in order to be closer to family. We’re ditching our Jersey City condo and plunking down a chunk of change on a four-bedroom rowhouse in Manayunk.

New York is an amazing city, and after three years I’ve only see an tiny, tiny fraction of it. There are amazing things happening all the time, incredible people, an infinite number of places to eat, and a 24 hour subway system that means never having to worry about a designated driver. My local fabric store is so immense people make pilgrimages to the city just to visit it. And most of all I have an incredible network of fantastic friends here; the kind of friends who come to your baptism, even though they’re atheists, or help you lug an anvil-bolted-to-a-log across town. For science. But despite everything I love about this area, I realized it’s not where I want to be forever.

Our decision to move was based on a lot of things. We want more space; our current place has so little storage I keep my bike in the bathroom. The cost of living is substantially higher in New York, and the fast-pace of living is starting to wear me down. But ultimately it’s family that’s bringing us south. My husband’s huge closely knit family is in Philadelphia, and even before we got married I knew it was just a matter of time before their gravitational pull sucked us in. Getting pregnant was just the thing that put us over the edge.

Raising kids in New York City can be incredibly rewarding, but it also comes with some unique challenges. The subway system, with its mazes of stairs, is downright hostile to anyone with stroller. A mini baby-boom over the last 5 years has made getting into preschool both competitive and expensive. And just like anywhere else in the country, if you don’t have friends with kids nearby it can be isolating and lonely.

For those with family (or friends with kids) in the area, getting a precious few hours of kid-free time is as simple as dropping them off at Grandma’s – with a bottle of wine as a bribe, of course. For those without, it means shelling out for a sitter – assuming you can find one who is both trustworthy and available. At 6 months postpartum, a friend of mine confessed she hadn’t been out at all because she still wasn’t ready to leave the baby with a stranger.

Only a few of our friends live in our neighborhood, and none of our friends with kids live nearby. I didn’t want to have to choose between wrestling a stroller up four flights of  subway stairs and being a shut-in. We found a place in Philly that’s in a neighborhood a lot like the one we’re in now: very walkable, lots of public transit, good restaurants. It has enough room to have as many kids as we want. Best of all: it’s only a few miles from both my in-laws and great-in-laws.

Plus, New York won’t be rid of us entirely.  We’re both lucky that we’re able to do our jobs from most anywhere, but we’ll still need to pop into the city periodically for meetings.

I don’t have any delusions of my life staying the same as it is now once the baby arrives, but I’m hoping that with a little help from the family we can sneak off to see the occasional movie or grown-up restaurant. There may not be quite as many amazing things happening in Philadelphia as there are in New York, but by moving closer to our support network there’s a much bigger chance of us being able to get out and do them.