Category: Living

Living — stories and opinions

My builders grade house before pictures

I moved to northeast Florida to a new construction home. Big change from the foreclosure fixer upper I came from, but not any less work. I went into this knowing it’s not a perfect house. It’s seriously lacking in storage – of any kind. I’m going to be on a mission to utilize every square inch of useable space since I’m downsizing big time.

The house is also builders grade, builders grade, builders grade. I’m not knocking it – it provided me a home in the price range I could afford – but sometimes builders grade isn’t great quality and it tends to be kind of boring and lacking in pizzazz. The house is pretty plain and badly in need of some personality.

I spent 9 hours driving here and immediately hit the house with my camera to catalog what it looked like starting out without furniture, without anything — well my dog Ellie and a backpack.

So this is my starting point gallery. Not really of any use to anyone other than myself. I want to see where I started so I can compare to where I end up.

[pile_gallery id=’2787′]

Hitting the ground running

The morning after I arrived, and before the moving truck was to arrive I got up and painted the garage. One of the cost cutting measures for my home apparently was not painting the garage. I wanted it painted. I would never have the opportunity again to paint an empty garage. I took it.

As soon as the garage was painted I went to Home Depot, the closest big box store, and purchased a 4’ x 8’ sheet ¾” MDF and had them cut shelves for the kitchen pantry. Three wire shelves were pitiful.

Next up was doing something with the master closet since it had wire shelves that were so high I couldn’t touch them. Apparently they were installed for an NBA player.

More on both of these projects later.

Now here the starting point gallery.

May 27, 2014
Pretty clothes and power tools

Just a quick post. My new favorite DIY picture 🙂 Not sure which I like more, the picture or the caption.

Pretty clothes and power tools. They’re all a girl really needs.

Source: Short Leash by Kelly Reemtsen

April 7, 2014
Moving and Mourning

Moving

I’m in a bit of an odd place here. I’m finally moving from a foreclosure DIY project house in an area I have not liked the entire year I’ve been here to a brand spanking new house in area I hope I will adore.

The DIY Girl in a new house??? After 17 years in a three-story monster on a heavily wooded lot and the last year in a foreclosure badly in need of work and updates I feel like I’m due for an easier home. Hopefully home repairs will be few and far between for a while, but there will still be maintenance to keep it in good shape and it will be a blank palette I want to customize and turn into a coastal cottage look on the inside. I also want to get more heavily into finding flea market furniture and refinishing, some furniture building projects, and major garden work.

Mourning

The kicker is a recent loss I’ve experienced. I have been the more than proud owner of two gorgeous Yellow Labs – okay, I admit to a certain degree of prejudice. Last Friday night I watched the eldest dog Nikita, just days short of being eleven years old, die in agonizing pain with me alone and helpless to do anything but just be with her. It was hideous. I am heart-broken. I also feel like a failure for allowing a much-loved animal to die in terrible pain. Not to mention how horribly I miss her. She went from running around full tilt to dead in a few days. I guess I’m simply in shock.

For dog owners who understand, I am moving to an area in the very northeast corner of Florida minutes from the beach. I very much wanted Nikki to make that move and enjoy beach walks and swimming in the ocean. I am terribly sad that she didn’t make it. For non-pet owners who think all this hoopla about losing a pet is silly, I have lost my only child and now my dogs are my only family. Understand it or not, losing one of them is a big deal.

It’s like all the personality has left the house. Ellie (nine year old Lab) spends most of her time alone in her bed with no interest in what I’m doing. We both are depressed and struggling with the enormous hole Nikita has left in our lives. I’m trying to find ways to get Ellie excited about life again, but I worry how hard a move will be on her so quickly on the heels of losing her life long companion. It’s just not a good situation.

I would have liked to add a picture of Nikki to this post, but I can’t stand to look at pictures right now.

I’m trying to stay motivated about packing to move and dealing with the whole fun cycle of “keep the house perfect and leave for showings”.

So blog and Pinterest followers, I will be posting and pinning when I can, but not as exuberantly as I have been. I have a lot of ideas and plans, but I may be a little slow in posting for a while. I need to get moved and get my joie de vivre back.

February 24, 2014
Refrigerator repair – DIY or not?

This Sunday I returned from a nine-day camping trip to find a totally dead refrigerator. In fact, the inside of the refrigerator was much warmer than the house since I’d turned the heat way down. Apparently the fans and other parts heat things up when the compressor stops cooling. Oh joy.

It must have died several days before because everything was completely thawed and stinky and all the food was a total loss. The good news? It was a terrific opportunity to clean the fridge and freezer since it wasn’t cold and full of food 😉 Trying to look on the bright side here… Couldn’t face the sadness of throwing all that food out Sunday night so Monday morning I emptied both the refrigerator and freezer and thoroughly cleaned both sides.

The repair

I did a lot of research online Sunday night and couldn’t find good information on how to figure out what was wrong. I lucked out and was able to get a repair person out Monday afternoon — no small feat in the rural community I live in.

The guy quickly diagnosed it was the run capacitor and relay for the compressor, told me the repair would be $229 ($129 for parts and $100 for labor), and went out to his truck to get the replacement part. When I saw the part number on the capacitor I looked up it up on the internet. The part shown at left was $11.24 on Amazon. $229 vs. $12??? It was a tough call for me, but since I didn’t know much about compressors and had struck out finding information the night before I decided to let him do the work and have a functional refrigerator immediately. He knocked the price down to $200 when he did the bill. By the way — if I would have decided to do the repair myself I would have owed a $75 service call charge.

Further research

Since there were two parts involved I tracked down the other one on Appliance Parts Pros. This parts sells for $33.30 so the total parts to do it myself would have been $44.54. $44.54 vs. the $100 final price isn’t quite as bad. $100 to have the man drive way out to my house and spend 45 minutes here is fairly reasonable. The net difference would have been $119.54 with the service call vs. his repair of $200. I can live with that.

Next time

If the same thing happened again and I was home and stood a chance of saving all the food if the refrigerator could be repaired quickly I probably would have someone come to the house again and cough up another $200. That said — if all the food was ruined and I wasn’t in a huge rush I would order the parts and do the repair myself — now that I know what needs to be done.

Could there be a next time? The repairman said the parts he replaced were probably fried by a power surge and strongly suggested I get an appliance surge protector to prevent it from happening again. I bought one that afternoon.

See next post Surge protection for appliances – do it now! for information on surge protection.

I found this at http://appliance911seabreeze.com/ to help next time:

HOW TO CHECK FOR A BURNED OUT COMPRESSOR

Unplug the refrigerator and remove the back panel that covers the compressor. There should be 3 wires going inside the cover of the compressor. Mark all 3 and mark their location so if compressor is OK you can put them back in same order. The plastic cover may snap on and you may need to squeeze the sides to unlock the cover and sometimes there is a metal clip holding the cover in place. Remove the cover. May look hard but it’s simple. There will be three connections under the cover and 2 will go through the start relay. Unplug them leaving the three prongs exposed. They may be marked R =Run, S=Start and C=Common. Set your meter on continuity and then begin by testing 2 at a time until you have checked S to R and R to C an C to S and S to R again. You should get a reading all the way around. If no reading between any of the pairs as you go around you should get no reading between any two the compressor has an open winding and is defective. Then if it passes that test then touch one probe to R and the other to the copper pipes or clean metal on outside of compressor, then S to metal outside and C to metal outside. If you get a reading this way even just a little. The compressor is a burnout.

December 3, 2013
Hey Honey, could you take care of this?

I do pretty good on my own. I devise ways to move things that are too heavy for me. I use penetrating oil to loosen a bolt that I can’t budge for the life of me. I keep a fairly good sense of humor about taking care of problems/disaster/repairs by myself.

But every once in while I hit the wall. I did that today.

I’ve come to realize it’s not the degree of difficulty or the lack of upper body strength, or just not being big enough or strong enough in general — it’s the grossness value. That’s what stops me dead in my tracks.

The problem

I headed my vehicle out the driveway this morning and was faced with two buzzards sitting out by my mailbox. I hate buzzards. They are parasitic creatures who wait for something else to kill some poor unsuspecting critter and then they sweep in to reap the rewards. Of course, you have to bear in mind those rewards consist of rotting carcasses. Am I unkind or can someone tell me what’s to love about these birds?

One buzzard politely flew away as I approached in my vehicle. The other sat there and looked at me. It ticked me off so I blew the horn until it flew away. Yep – there was a dead animal right at the base of my mailbox.

I have utterly shocked male friends with what a complete and total weenie I am with dead animals. Oh joy. What was I going to do with this one? This past year I had lived in a rural area so there was no animal control office to call for assistance.

Fortunately I had to meet a friend so I could back burner the problem until I returned. Later that day I headed home with the intention of loading up my dogs to go to a park and walk.

I paused at the entrance of my drive and discovered those buzzards (or some other critter) had had the last laugh. They had dragged the dead carcass down to sit in the middle of my driveway. OMG – gross!!!

And NO, I did not take photos. The images burned in my brain are bad enough, I don’t need pictures.

I followed through on my plan and took my dogs on their walk. Driving home I pondered what I would face when I got there. There was no one to call, no man to say “Honey – would you take care of this for me?” I was stuck and unsure I could screw up the resolve to deal with it myself.

When I got home I told myself to stop thinking about it and suck it up. I put the dogs in the house so they wouldn’t try to participate (how gross would that be?). I got a shovel from the garage. I steeled myself and walked out to the dead animal. Thank the heavens it had not been eviscerated and it wasn’t a gory mess. I got it onto the shovel and walked across the road to a wooded area that is county property that no one used and pitched the poor little critter as far into the woods as I could. There was no way I was loading it into my SUV to take to the dump. Sorry – no way I could hack that. I’d be imagining dead animal odor for months.

I mosied up to the garage thinking how lovely it would have been to have a man around I could have asked to deal with the dead critter. I was hesitant to put the shovel back without disinfecting it. That may be stupid, but I don’t know and I worry about the dogs contracting something.

So it got me thinking of where I draw the line on what I am comfortable taking care of. Dead animals are definitely on the negative side of that line. Sewage problems would reside there as well. Flooding basements fall in that category, but that’s due to previous history more than revulsion. It would be nice to call on someone else when the dogs have digestive problems that result in piles of grossness coming from one end or the other. I need to think about where I draw the line some more. I do know my plan is to move back into a city so there are people I can call for some of these problems.

By the way – the poor deceased creature was a pretty little gray raccoon. Sniff. It made me very sad. It has my sincere apologies for not giving it a proper burial, but I did the best I could under the circumstances. Now I’m worried the buzzards will discover it and once again drag it over to my driveway…

November 2, 2013
Treating eczema

I have no idea what brought it on since it’s usually stress related, but recently on a Thursday night I rubbed the back of my thigh and felt bumps — lots of them. From there it rapidly spread to the back of my neck and shoulders, up across my butt, then started creeping down my arms and legs and all over my mid-section. It was even on my scalp and a little of my forehead. Whether you call it eczema or atopic dermatitis I was having a major outbreak and it sucked and I needed a good way of treating eczema.

The one true blessing this time was that it barely itched at all. About the only places it itched was when it reached my hands and the bottom of my feet, but even that wasn’t too bad.

I got online and started reading how it could go on for extended periods of time. I didn’t want that to happen and I wanted non-prescription ways to fight it.

Albolene

I already had this stuff on hand. I love it because it has so few ingredients and no alcohols at all: Mineral Oil; Petrolatum; Paraffin; Ceresin; Beta Carotene. It comes in a big tub so I had plenty to use.

I started applying Albolene to the worst areas, but almost my entire body was involved so I didn’t cover everything, obviously not on my scalp.

The eczema had been getting worse every day for about 4 days. When I started using Albolene things held for a while and then started getting better.

I found an article Commonly Used Beauty Staple Clinically Proven to Help Treat Eczema that said Albolene works as well at treating eczema. After the experience I had with it I would agree.

Borage Oil

I normally take a borage oil gel cap once a day. When I read it could help with eczema I doubled up on the borage oil and also took other GLA (gamma-linolenic acid) caps.

Results

I don’t know if it was luck or what I was doing that made it better.

One night when I was getting ready for bed I looked at where the eczema was terrible and laughed — at least it was being really polite and staying where clothes covered it. It literally was under my shorts and sleeveless top. Then I thought — wait a minute! It’s under my clothes. I hadn’t changed anything lately — same soap, same shampoo, same laundry detergent. I had bought a new bottle of laundry detergent that I had just started using. Could it be a bad bottle? You can literally drive yourself nuts trying to figure out what triggered an outbreak.

It must not have been any of those things because after coming out of nowhere, building to a crescendo in five days, it proceeded to fade away and was gone nine days after it started. I’d like to think I sped the process with Albolene and borage oil, but I don’t really know. But I can tell you that I’ll use the same eczema treatment the next time it happens.

September 23, 2013
Confessions of a Pinterest Addict

I tried Facebook and other than seeing pictures of the family I just couldn’t get into it. I tried Twitter and felt it was an incredible interruption for which I wasn’t garnering a whole lot of useful information. I rate myself pretty much a failure at social media — it just doesn’t seem to be how my brain and personality work.

Enter Pinterest. I had heard of it, but never really examined the site. I was researching ideas for mu DIY projects realized I was running into a lot of images from Pinterest that would link to the original blog or article that explained the process. It was love at first site. I am a very visual person — don’t tell me about a project, show me a picture. Better still, demonstrate how you did it. Maybe that’s why the one form of social media that seems to really work well for me is Pinterest.

Talk about a great filing system for visual images — set up a board on a particular topic (mine so far are storage ideas, decor ideas, recipes and how to for cleaning, how to (instructions), camping, garden and outdoors, cool products, sewing, crochet, entertaining, and holiday decor as can be seen at pinterest.com/IamTheDIYGirl/boards/. When you find a picture or technique that you love just Pin It and it’s saved to the appropriate board so you can easily find it later. It’s a great big filing cabinet filled with pictures that most often lead to how to do it. I am truly in love.

So I’ve added the pin it button to my browser and am working at making my post images more Pinterest friendly. Big thank you to the folks at Pinterest — what a great idea. But an even bigger thanks to the people who pin all the great ideas.

July 1, 2013
Basement flooding – surprises inside surprises

Our are had what I would call almost monsoonal rains yesterday. I watched from the window in dismay as the gutters on both the front and the back of the house overflowed and were washing out maple seeds. I was aware the gutters would need to be cleaned in the fall. I didn’t think about cleaning them recently, especially since the roofers had cleaned them out when they did the roof in March.

Not sure a pictures shows how much water was on the floor

First surprise

The basement floor of this house is half finished out and half garage. Late in the morning there was a lull in the storms so I thought I’d better get the dogs outside for a pit stop. I opened the door to garage and was greeted by a swimming pool effect — there was water all over the floor. I ran around to make sure it wasn’t damaging anything. The water appeared to be coming in the front of the wall and while there were boxes stored there I had put them on 2 x 4’s to be safe. I needed to pick up one box and everything else looked okay.

I started to get upset about the flood of water and then thought “Hey, it’s the garage. It could be worse and be in the house. The house!”

Second surprise

I ran back inside and found I had squishy carpet. along the wall bordering the garage. Oh joy.

I quickly moved furniture so I could pull back the carpet and padding. I pulled them up and flopped them over a folding chair so they could dry.

Third surprise

I stepped onto what I expected to be concrete and found water standing on (and in) foam.

Carpet and padding are already pulled and I’m working on scraping foam off the concrete

Apparently there had been foam backed carpet glued to the floor at one point of the house’s life and someone had pulled the carpet out leaving about 1/4″ of sopping wet foam firmly glued to the floor. How was I ever going to get things dried out with the foam there? It would have to come off.

I got a putty knife and started scraping. My test knife was the narrow 1 1/2″ size and while it worked, it was going to take forever. I went out and got a couple wider putty knives. Try as I might, the wider knives flexed and didn’t get under the foam and truly scrape it clean. I was going to have to do the entire area with the narrow

The little putty knife is the only one that would get down and get the foam cleanly off the concrete 🙁

knife. Groan.

Several hours later I had the wet foam removed from the floor a couple of feet into bone dry areas. I removed the carpet strips that were completely wet and soft. I threw out a section of the padding because I had no idea how I’d get the water out of it and I figured it wouldn’t be too expensive to get some at Lowe’s. The floor inside was mopped up. I used a broom to push most of the water out of the garage and mopped up what remained. I sprayed bleach water along the baseboards in an effort to deter mold. Fans were set up and things appeared to be drying nicely.

Another heavy storm started around 7:00 PM. Again I watched the gutters overflow. I ran downstairs and there was more water than there had been before. I had to pull the carpet back further and scrape more soggy foam off the floor. The garage was a swimming pool again.

Goody — I get to do the same clean up twice in one day.

Concerns

I don’t know if the flooding was caused by the sheer volume of water or the plugged up gutters dumping an enormous amount of water right along the house. When I moved here in January we pretty much had 3 solid months of rain with no flooding in the basement.

As luck would have it the guys showed up to finish the rails on the stairs to the deck in back the next morning. They offered to clean the gutters for me. I got up on a ladder and saw there were little maple trees growing in the gutters — there were a lot of maple seeds mattered into stinky masses. Yuck.

I will be vigilant about gutter cleaning and keep my fingers crossed that the flooding doesn’t happen again. At least I won’t have to scrape the foam again.

June 3, 2013
Non-DIY — new roof
I don’t do roofs. I don’t even want to get on roofs. I can’t believe roofers do roofs. They have my respect for being tough enough to work at heights in temperature extremes year after year. They are made of far tougher stuff than I am.

Weather delays

I knew the roof was long past needing replacement when I bought this foreclosure, but have been waiting for it to stop raining and get warm enough to put a new one on.

It was supposed to be upper 40’s today (only hit 35) and in the 60’s for the next three days with sunny skies. 40’s is okay for ripping the old shingles off, but warmer weather is important for putting the new shingles on so the heat of the sun with set the shingles.

I found an absolute sweetie of a roofer who has steadfastly refused to start until he was sure I wouldn’t get rained on during the process and the temps would be warm enough for the shingles. Integrity and a good price on the roofing job. I feel very lucky to have found him.

Lessons learned

I have always been proactive about roof repairs and found out today the price of delaying. The original roof had been put on with no tar paper under it (I have never even heard of that) and was 3 to 4 years past needing replacement.

The roofer told me I was lucky in some ways — there were wet spots (we had snow the last 2 days) but he could tell the moisture had soaked into the sheeting and not gone through to be dripping on my ceilings and damaging the drywall. That’s the good part.

Because the roof wasn’t replaced when it should have been the water got into the sheeting on the roof in places and made the wood soft so they have had to tear off areas of plywood and put new down before proceeding.

Shopping for a roofer

I talked to a lot of roofers before I hired this man. He was highly recommended to me by a couple people who have lived in the area their entire lives. They were right. He’s honest, concerned about doing things right, and charges a reasonable amount.

The other estimates I got were bizarre — to the point I started wondering if I had sucker tattooed on my forehead. I checked in the the mirror and didn’t see anything. Not sure where they got the idea they could give me estimates for twice what it should cost and I would smile and say okay.

I figure this was caused by this roof replacement not being controlled by insurance. Then they would know what insurance would cover. Now there were trying to perform a little highway robbery, only I wasn’t going along.

Summary

Important things learned:
- Whether covered by insurance or not, do not procrastinate about doing a needed roof replacement. The longer you wait, the more damage and the more it will cost.
- Shop for roofers. Get several estimates and talk to them. It’s not just about price. It also matters that they want to do things the right way. Make sure it’s the same quality of shingle from each quote so you’re comparing apples to apples.
- Be patient. Shingled roofs should have a chance to seal in warm weather when installed and that will most likely need temperatures in the 60’s.
- Be prepared for the noise. Ripping off shingles and replacing them is a noisy business. It’s a little annoying for a human, but might be stressful for pets so be aware of how it’s affecting them.
Not the most exciting dollars you will ever spend on your home, but it’s the cap that protects everything that resides below it. Money well spent.
March 7, 2013
Unpacking kitchen and painting prep

Unpacking finally.. and partially.

This may well become one of my favorite pictures of Nikki lying in the sunlight. It was a pain stepping around her but you gotta love that she’s a constant companion.

I decided since the cabinet frames were painted and I was hitting a brick wall on finding 1/4″ MDF at a lumber yard that would cut it into 3″ strips so I could update the cabinet doors that I should go ahead and unpack some boxes so I could cook more.

Unpacking the boxes would also make it easier for me to get to the walls to remove the remaining chair rail, repair the drywall, and paint the walls. You can see the chair rail running along the wall behind the microwave.

Besides, it was a blessed relief to have a full set of dishes, silverware, food prep, and backing dishes. Amazing how much you miss the stuff when you don’t have it.

After everything was put away it was time to get the chair rail off and repair the drywall where it had been. This was going to be especially important since I was using a satin paint that would show all the flaws in the drywall. I was planning on getting Clark + Kensington from Ace Hardware again.

Repairs

Future home for light over sink, soffit scraped clean of popcorn, primed and ready for paint

I filled all the holes and spread a thin coat of mud to eliminate any sign of where the chair rail had been. I then sanded it with a drywall sanding screen, filled a few problem areas, allowed that to dry, and sanded again. The kitchen walls were easy (other than the sanding dust).

I had an electrician out to add outlets along the backsplash, wire an outlet for a light over the sink and run a switch for it. I hung the new sink light.

I’d removed the board that had hidden a cheap flourescent light over the sink that had a cord going to one of the backsplash outlets. Not only was this ugly, but violated code.

Popcorn on soffit and ugly board over sink

I had already sprayed the soffits with water and then scraped off the popcorn texture so I could paint them the same color as the walls. Removing popcorn is a messy job. Who puts popcorn on soffits???

The last thing I did was caulk along the baseboards all around the room. I taped off the cabinets and the baseboards after the caulk had dried and I was ready to paint. Woohoo!

February 20, 2013