Taking The Act on Road

That's right. We took the Condo Handyman (and Handywoman) show on the road. Seth's mom recently updated her kitchen. All that was left to do was get an island for the middle of the room. She shopped around quite a bit, but couldn't find one that was the right size for the space. As a holiday gift, Seth and I decided to modify the one she had used for years in the old kitchen.

Why get something new when we could re-purpose something time-tested and mother-approved?

Here it is before:

First we created and added shelves:

Next we enclosed the sides:

Then we painted it:

And, finally, we put grapes on top of it.

Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas! And slice and dice on!

Time for the Office... Almost

The last room in our place that was crying out for attention was the office. It was the room in the least need of help from the beginning, and also had the only paint color that Ilana didn't hate. Otherwise it might have drawn our efforts sooner.

It seemed like a straight forward job: upgrade our desks and add some crown molding. Should be easy. Might not even be worth a blog post.

Then we looked at the closet. Due to our aforementioned hatred of mirrors, we had gladly removed the mirrored closet doors when we moved the washer and dryer into the office closet.

Oddly enough: We just noticed that other than this photo of the new plumbing for the washer and dryer, we never actually showed the washer and dryer in their new space. Oh well. You'll just have to imagine a side-by-side washer and dryer here:

While this was a VAST improvement over their previous location in our kitchen, we were not crazy about having a loud washer and dryer in an open closet in our office. They protruded too far out to have a closing door in the closet, so we had resorted to a curtain that stuck out at the bottom like a maternity dress. We wondered if we could come up with a way to seal off that closet, with the washer and dryer on the inside.

Then all hell broke loose.

We zoomed right past the half-ass solution of building the closet sides out enough to get a door across and to the dream scenario we started fantasizing about two years ago.

It's a little hard to explain, but here is what we started with:
___________
| W D |__ __
| /

W = washer, D = Dryer, and that thing on the right is a doorway with a door.

What we wanted to do was stack the washer and dryer, then turn them -90 degrees and punch a hole in the outside wall to make them accessible via our hallway. The only problem was, that the hole we wanted to make wasn't actually big enough to fit the two appliances. This is what we wanted:
___________
| |W/D /__ __
| / /

Not sure if that makes sense, but it's a smaller closet on the left, and a new closet accessible from the hallway with the washer and dryer. But again, there wasn't enough room for that closet. So we wondered if we could move the doorway.

We called in the handiest person we know (sorry, Frank, but you’re actually the second handiest person we know). Roger not only said he could to the work (without the second floor crashing down) he said he could do it affordably. Bam. Crazy idea brought to life.

Here's the hallway before shot:

And after the first day of work:

You can see on the floor the place where the old doorway was. It's said that we were only about a foot off, but that's how it goes. Then Roger patched everything up and added the new closet door.

From the office side, we got a new, smaller closet.

Then it was just a matter of finishing stuff up and getting the washer/dryer in place.

Luckily we had some left over floor boards, and Oscar came over and patched the floors so well that we forget where the old doorway was.

A nice paint job later, and we're done:

It may seem silly to move a wall just one foot, but we have to say, this may be our favorite project we've done in the house (except for the kitchen -- we still love the kitchen!). It's great to be able to put in a load of laundry without going into the office, then closing the door and not hearing all the moving and shaking (and for those of you who have been here while our washer is running, you know what we mean by shaking). A million thanks to Roger and Oscar for their help!

With the walls and closet done, we turned our attention to our desks and related storage. Stay tuned for an update on the progress there...

Finishing Up the Den

We are the worst bloggers. The worst.

We haven't updated since November of last year (10 months), which was 6 months after our previous post. We are very sorry to let our 3 fans down.

So let's catch up.

Starting with the den... When last we left you, we had added a free standing closet. That was most of the major work, except for some aesthetic efforts aimed at our media.

We bought our first flat panel TV (welcome to 2005, y'all) and decided to mount it on the wall so that we could swing it out for couch viewing or fold it up to limit its profile. We started with this blank wall:

Then a mount:

Then a TV:

Great, right? Except that we pillars of modern living still have a lot of other technical accoutrement. Here you see our TiVo, modem, router, mini cellphone tower, dust buster, and a whole lotta plugs (DVD not pictured):

So Seth got to work on a custom cabinet to go below the TV. Here he is planning it out:

It started off pretty basic, and Ilana worried if this piece was going to be the right addition for the den:

But then Seth busted out the router and dropped the design hammer.

As you can see, he's very proud of his work.

After adding the doors and some feet, the final product looked like this:

Then Ilana does what Ilana does best: paint the damn thing. For those of you (named Dennis) complaining about painting over pretty wood: we tried various stain options and none of them worked. At all. We have wood floors and no other wood furniture, so it just didn't "go." To keep it simple, we went with a paint shade slightly darker than our walls.

Photo available via the AbbyCam

And here it is, disguising all the disorganization of technology inside and fitting in nicely with the TV:

Look mom, no wires!

With the den done, that left only one room untouched: the office.

We thought it would be simple. Then we had a crazy idea.

To be continued...

Catching Up

It's been over six months since our last blog update, but that doesn't mean we haven't been working. While we have been chipping away at a host of home improvements, our progress has definitely been a bit more scattered as we:

• graduated from grad school
• vacationed in New York
• traveled to a number of weddings
• celebrated our one year wedding anniversary
• rooted the Giants along to a World Series win

The room we last left you with was the downstairs bathroom. The final touch was figuring out a replacement for the cabinet doors above the toilet. Let's just say our male guests didn't need a mirror reflecting their "release." We chipped the mirrors off and Ilana re-purposed the old doors with some amazing tiling work:

The final product:

One of the other rooms that we left you with was the den. As you may recall, we took out the old closets (again for mirror-related reasons -- why did this place have so many GD mirrors?). We wanted to replace the built-in closet with something that offered more shelving options and could, if necessary, be moved. So, as we so often do, we looked to the brilliant minds at IKEA for a flexible and affordable solution. Here's Ilana working on Phase 1 (of many, many phases):

And here is the start of Phase 2:

A couple of phases later, we had:

And eventually:

The next project was to extend out our 2-inch mantle to something that you could actually put something on. Here's what we started with:

And with Seth's awesome woodworking skills it became:

We then turned our attention to the upstairs bathroom. It's funny that when we moved in, we felt that the bathroom was the nicest space in the house. It was the only room that had actually been upgraded since the initial 1969 construction and seemed so futuristically mid-80s in our otherwise oh-so-70s abode. But after making almost every other room in the house our own, the bathroom seemed out of place. We stink at remembering to take before shots, so the light is in this picture is new, but the rest is not:

Another shot, minus the rusted medicine cabinet mirror, but including the cracked sink and broken vanity:

Out with old (demo is never as easy as they make it look on tv):

The mirror hole gets sealed up:

And to get the cabinet shelf to fit with our piping, a small late night modification had to be made (luckily, the Unabomber was in the neighborhood and is handy with a circular saw):

Behold, a new bathroom:

We also painted the walls, but the color is light silver, so it's difficult to see the different in a photo. Also, that cabinet in the corner used to have a mirrored door:

But since we can't ever just leave things be, Ilana used her special spray paint + texture technique to transform it:

Boy, we really hate mirrors.

After the bathroom, and just because she's so good at it, Ilana finished up the caulking of the crown molding in the bedroom:

That brings us up to date. We have a ton of touch-up work to do on all of the rooms, but our attention is now turning to the grand finale: the office. So, be on the lookout for our next entry. Quite a cliffhanger we're leaving our four (maybe three depending on how busy Abby is these days) blog readers with...

But before we bid our loyal fans adieu, let's end by celebrating the completion of an entirely different type of project. After months combing Petfinder.com and meeting all kinds of dogs in all kinds of random Petco parking lots, we proudly present Benny, a new addition to our family. He's a fabulous dog, but much like Seymour, refuses to engage in manual labor:

Updating the Tiniest of Rooms

Slowly but surely, the den is coming together, so expect another update on that soon. But, in the meantime, we've been simultaneously working on the littlest room we got: the downstairs bathroom. A few changes here, a few changes there, and now we have a bathroom from this decade.

The first thing we tackled was the light, which resembled what the future looked like back in 1969. Man, were they ever off on that. The light illuminated a rusty mirrored medicine cabinet.


Since we didn't need the storage (a Seth and Ilana first!), step one entailed removing the medicine cabinet:


We sealed it up, but not before leaving a special message inside for any future occupants crazy enough to cut into the wall.


Ilana, as usual, was called in to do the spackling:


Next, the light fixture was replaced (stay tuned for a photo of that). We then turned our attention to the sink fixtures, which built on the silver and gold theme of the light above:


Removing things always seems more difficult than installing them, and that has definitely been the case with our place. You'd think that after all these months it wouldn't surprise us anymore. But it does. Things were put together with a sense of permanency that confuses and frustrates us. Notice the joy of removing one of the tougher pieces that was practically welded onto the sink:


And the disgust of removing one of the grosser ones:


Finally, all the old pieces were removed and the new ones put in. And the water flowed like, well, like water. Pay no attention to bucket situation -- that was only for testing purposed. The water now exits through a pipe, just as God intended it to.


And here's the final shot, with everything put together. A new light, a new mirror, and new sink fixtures: