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:

Manual Labor!

After simply letting installation dudes in and out the other day, I finally did my own manual labor on the house. Work included:

• adding a latch to one of our side gates (Cost: $7)
• fixed latch on other side gate (Cost: Free)
• replaced the shower flange (Cost: $2)
  
• re-caulked some areas of the tub/shower, which was WAY harder than I imagined to get it to look the way my perfectionist self wanted (Cost: $5)
• replaced the outlet plate behind the stove in anticipation of its (the stove's) replacement, hopefully coming Wednesday (Cost: $5)

A good day.

Total cost for the day:
$19

Day One

Today is the first day of our home improvements. We purposely bought this condo to avoid some of the work that was necessary to update many of the older Berkeley homes we were looking at. Nevertheless, we've already got an extensive project list.

Today was a busy day...

- Comcast came out to set up our cable and internet. Apparently, the person (or people) who lived here before were a little cable-crazy so there are a ton of cable outlets throughout the house (many rooms have two). The line needed to be fixed and "excess" outlets taken out of the loop to make sure a couple newly-connected ones would work. The guy ended up being here for two hours. I got to listen to him talk endlessly about strategies for picking up "chicks," including his friend's apparently successful strategy of going to "tranny bars." However, he did do a lot of work for us to make sure it all worked so I gave him a $20 tip.

- We also wanted to change our locks. A guy came by and replaced all of the locks (we only need one key now), all the while using WAY too much lube (doors needed to be cleaned after).

- The last contractor I got to deal with today was a plumber. Sometime after our home inspection and before we moved in, the downstairs toilet stopped working. It was probably just poor timing, made worse by one of the seller's contractors turning the water off and on while doing some work. Luckily, the seller said he would cover the cost. The plumber replaced two older parts and everything's flushin' as it should. Cost would have been $150, but someone else is paying.

A time-consuming day, but all-in-all a success to start things off. Next up, new appliances!

You'll notice that the sidebar counts some trips to IKEA and Home Depot. That's because Ilana likes to get ideas. No work or supplies have yet to result from said trips.