Stretching his wings

 As parents we expect our kids to grow and leave home.  Except mine haven't.  Chet is unable to live independently, and Rob has stayed happily here at home.  He is going to be 25 this spring.  By this time many kids have at least lived away from home for college.  When he went to college he commuted.  While there was an element of cost savings involved, there was also a need on his part to feel rooted and connected. Early trauma leaves its marks.

I was especially glad he was still living at home when the pandemic rolled around and he lost his job in the food service industry as a result.  Thankfully he found a new job in a new field a few months into this and has been working steadily. The restaurant he had worked at since before college never reopened so this was a double blessing.

A  few weeks ago he texted K and I pictures of an empty apartment.  It is pretty.  Lovely hardwood floors (first thing the family reno queen noticed! LOL) It is in a city about 30 minutes from us (the city where our church is located, but we have not been there since last March) He plans to share the apartment with someone else. The primary leaseholder is a friend of one of his coworkers. So Rob does not know the other fellow very well. But he says J says he is a great guy and lived with him for 6 years before he got married and moved out. Rob's rent share is really reasonable. They will split utilities and there is a free washer dryer in the building.  

He saw the apartment in person this weekend and really liked it.  So I know he will be moving at some point in the near future.  My guess is probably around mid March.  I am happy for him.  I am sad for us.  Rob is a quiet loving presence in our family.  Sunday nights we do the dishes together after dinner and talk.  He is that guy who is always there to lend a hand and always has a smile. I'll miss that smile at the dinner table. It will be weird not to hear his steps on the stairs past my bedroom when he comes  home from work at night.

But this is what should happen and I hope with all my heart that it goes well for him and is an exciting step into independence.  Now please excuse me while I go get a kleenex and sob for a few! (smile)

Plaster and lathing begone!

 

This attractive photo is one wall of what I spent this morning demolishing as we move forward in the renovation of the downstairs bathroom.  The green stuff is horsehair plaster.   The horizontal boards just below it are the lathing.  I am removing the plaster and lathing, because as you see in the picture. . . there is NO insulation.  Not a speck and that is not because I removed it. It is because it simply does not exist.  By the way, this bathroom is on the north side of the house in a New England state.  Yup, it has always been a very cold room.  The hardest thing I do every morning is get dressed in it at 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. in this freeze box.  room.  I had to do all of these two walls with extreme caution as what you can't see in the picture is that the toilet is on that wall.  My goal is to keep the room functional (albeit increasingly um, rustic looking?) for as long as possible.  So removing the lathing and plaster is more tedious because I have to be careful that things don't crash down and break the toilet or something awful like that.

I also took down the plaster and lathing in the closet next to the toilet.  That is the area with the weird faux pine boards that conceal--you guessed it--more horsehair plaster and lathing.  I took all the shelves out so that I could get this down to studs.  Except for a tiny section that I will be able to reach if I climb on the laundry stack this entire wall is done.  I didn't perch there today as it was also laundry day and the machines were in use. The idea of sitting up there while they rumbled beneath me was not something I wanted to pursue.

Essentially all the destruction happened between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.  Then from then on I had to get all the debris out of the room and stored outside.  I will call a removal company next week and see how many millions of dollars they charge to cart it away.  Normally I would bring in a dumpster but it is winter.  We have 3 cars and one shortish driveway.  If it snows I can not park on the street due to a parking ban and a Nor-easter is expected next week.  So I am instead calling one of those companies that tells you to snap your fingers and your mess is gone.  We shall see.

Going down to stud also exposed some brick on our chimney that runs through this room which need repair. I will explore that tomorrow.  For now the room is clean and  usable.  I put a temporary shelf in the closet so that we can store beauty supplies there for now. 

And we have more to learn about.  My wife cleans for a family a few towns away. The woman also did a bathroom renovation, largely on her own.  Truthfully I think it was her efforts that inspired K to go all in on this project as she is often somewhat more tentative than I am about this type of thing.  S told her that if we were taking the room to studs that we should consider installing a small mat of radiant heating (by say the shower and toilet area) to just warm the floor.  So now I need to youtube and learn about this.  I have learned so far that it is not cost prohibitive either to install or to run. Those are plusses. I have yet to watch the whole video though so I am not sure how complicated such a process would be.  Stay tuned!

Holy New Bathroom Batman!

 We have the tiniest bathroom on record in our home.  To be clear, the house was built before indoor plumbing.  Both bathrooms are add ons. The downstairs one was a converted walkway that used to lead to a long gone barn where the "3 holer" was located prior to this indoor luxury.  The upstairs one was what used to be the "servants quarters" back in the day.  It has slanted ceilings and so can not have a shower but does have a tub.

In the teeny downstairs bathroom--the primary bathroom for our family of 6+ you can sit on the commode, wash your hands at the sink AND load or unload the washer without ever leaving your seat.  It is truly that small. When we were preparing to enlarge our family K and I took out a closet opposite the toilet so that a stack washer/dryer could be installed. Prior to that we had to go outside to access our cellar and the washer and dryer were down there.  Convenient as it might be to multi task, (LOL) this configuration also means you have to pull the toilet if you have to remove washer or dryer for repairs.  This makes an all ready expensive situation even pricier.

The tub is an original cast iron tub that my grandparents put in.  It has seen better days. We refinished it about 15 years ago and that is now in less than glorious shape.  We looked into having a company come in and put in a new shower and remove the tub.  The prices were stratospheric.  We talked it over and decided (drum roll please) that this was a job we would work on ourselves.  Yes we are that foolish  brave!  We also have a really construction savvy friend who is willing to guide me and teach me some valuable skills along the way.  

He came over and looked at what we wanted to do and helped us dream it even bigger.  It's kind of like Vegas , right?  We are all in for New Bathroom 2021!  The new and improved bathroom will have the tub removed.  We will take the stack washer and dryer and they will be placed side by side on cabinets I will build so that my wife does not have to bend so low to get things in and out.  We will swap where the toilet and the sink are to allow for better privacy and better walk patterns in the room.  The remaining closet I will build a rolling barn door (it previously had a bifold which always came off the track) This will be a solid door so it will allow for extra towel bars--something always in short supply here.

Obviously this large project became HUGE.  There is wiring and plumbing that will be relocated. We will pull permits.  I'll do the work with my friend and then it can get inspected. But it will be so much more functional. Oh and a new floor too!  I want to lay a waterproof vinyl planking because I would like to do this in our living room and figure learning on a smaller room is a good idea!  Our living room square footage is pretty high and the layout is not square.

So last week I started demo.  I actually love to demo.  There is something fun about it.  It is sort of like a puzzle because I have to figure out what to take out in which order to best accomplish the job.  In the bathroom demo is further complicated by the fact that I am keeping the room functional as long as possible. So it means working carefully in very tight quarters.  Between last weekend and today I have accomplished a lot of the demo.  We are bumping out the wall to the bathroom about 8 inches into a kind of useless area in our kitchen.  I have that wall down, and all the old tile off the walls and lots of weird drywall removed.  People just kind of covered things up over the years.  Probably because it is so darn hard to do a renovation like this when you are using the space!  I get it.  I love uncovering bits of the house's history.  Wall paper that my grandparents used.  The original outside door of the house.  And a bunch of other little oddities.  When I get everything down to the studs we are going to insulate.  

There is presently virtually NO insulation in the bathroom and we live in New England. It is cold.  The bathroom is drafty enough that although it has no window and we never turn on the vent fan we also do not have any mildew or moisture issue.  It is seriously that drafty.  We'll be using that fan after I finish insulating and putting up new cement and green board though.  Right now the entry way that K and I did this summer is draft free and warmer than our bathroom. That is just weird.

Today I had to spend about an hour on top of our washer dryer pulling out a faux wall that was behind there. I would pass the stuff I pulled off down to my wife who ferried it outside to the ever growing pile of construction detritus. I want to get it hauled away but I want to wait as some of the lumber is good and can be re-used when we frame in the new wall.

This is a good project for me. It gives me a chance to learn new skills which I love. It gives me a chance to research things--youtube is my greatest construction advice forum! And it keeps me busy.  Covid is still requiring that we not be in the world more than we have to and this feathering of our nest is just the ticket!

The Story of Blake

This is the story of Blake.  Blake came to us when KC was 2 1/2 and Elisabeth was still an infant.  Rob was a middle schooler and our family was young, chaotic and full of exuberant energy.  We were not supposed to get a dog that year.  Our beloved Irish Setter Feargus had passed suddenly about 6 or 8 months earlier.  We had decided our family needed a dog.  Rob in particular needed a dog to help him process his feelings and to turn to when he could not find the words to share his thoughts.  I was not really ready for another dog.  Feargus was special--yes I know all dogs are special--but I had loved him fiercely and his death was so sudden and so unexpected.  I also wasn't keen on housebreaking a puppy with 2 kids in diapers.  We decided we were interested in Brittanys.  They had the playful nature we loved about Irish but were smaller, a bit more eager to please and loved to do outdoor activities with their family.  I decided I could do a waiting list.  The kids would get older, at least one of them would get out of diapers, and we settled in to wait.  We filled out the papers and in the mean time, we brought home a kitten as we also had an elderly cat pass on and our house despite all the kids, felt oddly empty.

While we waited, the breeder suggested we bring the kids up to meet a litter of puppies.  They were all promised all ready--we were waiting for another litter, remember--but it would be good for them to see the dogs and get an idea of who would someday join our home.  There was a sweet brown and white guy that we all loved.  He was a  "show" puppy the breeder informed us.  We would get a "pet" grade puppy.  We didn't care. We were enthusiastic about their friendly gentle demeanor and we were all in love.

Months passed. Unexpectedly in the fall we received a phone call.  The breeder had a family return a pup to her.  Due to a marital breakup they were unable to keep the puppy.  We could have him if we wanted.  He was a "show" puppy but at 6 months old she would sell him at her "pet" rate.  If you guessed that it was the brown and white guy we met months earlier, you were right.  We said yes and went up the very next day to meet him and bring him home.  At 6 months, we had missed most of the housebreaking stuff and he was such a sweet and eager to please guy.  The fact that we had a puppy and a kitten 2 kids under 3 and a middle schooler along with Chet and Fi on the weekends--life was fun, crazy and sometimes we wondered what we were thinking!  But it worked.  Blake loved snow.

He would play outside with Rob and help Chet shovel.  He had boundless energy and that playful nature we read about was certainly evident.  Over the years, he went on hikes with us. He went on camping trips.  He played in the back yard. He met skunks several times. He became a champion chipmunk hunter (weird but true, he would stomp them to death) He liked to catch bees and I always worried because once every summer he would manage to get stung in his mouth.  He was a cuddler and was patient with both kids and other animals. He was also a food thief extraordinaire.  We used to joke that he had a telescoping neck because how a comparatively short dog could get a bag of hamburger buns off the far back of the kitchen counter was always a mystery.  He ate more chocolate than I could ever imagine.  Apparently he did not know chocolate is bad for dogs.  He stole Easter baskets and Halloween treats that were not put up somewhere over 5 feet.  He did not take food people were actively eating, but leave it out unattended and he would find a way to feast.

You don't realize how fast the years spin by.  KC is going to be 17 this spring and Elisabeth just turned 14 in December. Rob is 24 and working full time.  But every night when he gets home from work he always stops to greet the dogs.  As the years went by, Blake began to slow down some. There was an issue with a knee that required a vet visit.  He developed a skin allergy and got meds for that.  He began to have seizures which were determined not to be epilepsy but were related to his age.  He began to go blind and lost most of his hearing.  

We knew the time was coming when we would have to say goodbye.  We hoped for one more Christmas and we got that.  We had a good Christmas and so did Blake.  He lay on the couch next to Rob all morning while we opened presents, hoping someone would forget and leave a cinnamon bun where he could reach it.

But post Christmas there were more signs that he was dealing with significant pain.  He never whined or complained.  Maybe it is not the nature of dogs, maybe it was just not Blake's nature.  We got some meds to make him comfortable and continued on.  But we wanted to help him on the next step of his journey before he was totally in pain, when his goodbye could be as good as such a thing can be.  It is the one gift, the hardest gift, that any pet lover can give to their loyal and beloved fur child.  This past week we could tell that he needed us to make the decision.  He began licking himself where his arthritis was hurting him.  He could not settle easily and had trouble having the strength to do his chores outside.  We made the call.  Our vet is amazing. She spent 30 minutes talking on the phone to my wife. She agreed that we were not rushing things (always a worry in the back of our minds when making such a decision) and made an appointment for tonight to be his last ride.

When we arrived at the hospital, they were running late.  These appointments are always their last one of the night so they asked if we could come back in 30 minutes.  Blake liked rides so we drove around in the dark,petting him, looking at the lights that are still up on some houses.  Blake rested down by Elisabeth's feet until suddenly he felt compelled to climb into the front seat and into my lap.  45 pounds of lap dog.  It was an instant flash back to the young pup who had sat in my lap on the way home from the breeders.  I stroked his head and supported his arthritic legs while he alternately looked up at me and snuffled at the window.  I'm an ugly crier and there was a lot of crying periodically tonight.  But Blake was not fazed.  He was ready.

Only 2 of us could be with him so Elisabeth and I waited in the car and KC and my wife went in with Blake when it was time.  The room for this is private and at the back of the hospital with a separate entrance. A thick cushion and comfy blankets are on the floor.  They gave him a pile of dog cookies and while he scarfed them down and KC and K petted him they gave him a shot.  Blake never minded the vets office and loved this vet in particular very much. K said that one minute he was eating and the next he was sleeping and then he was just gone.  

There is a huge Brittany sized hole in my heart tonight.  We are all grieving in our own ways.  But we all are also glad that he is pain free.  Be happy my Blake.  You are loved and you are missed.

If you give a mouse a hammer. .

 I've definately been slacking on blogging lately!  Things have been busy.   But renovations have continued!  The front door was stripped and painted and all new hardware and locking mechanisms installed.  Stripping off the old paint was NOT for the faint of heart.  The stripper we bought was supposedly going to take everything off in one giant peel.  Um. no.  So we had to buy another stripped and used that, but eventually we got down to bare wood and were able to paint the door.

Hot on the heels of this front door masterpiece we moved to our back door.  Our previous back door was a hollow core door.  Not the best option for dealing with cold New England winters.  We removed the old door, took out the old casings and installed this new insulated door.  It has also since been painted red.  I love red doors because I feel they are so welcoming!  After that, we replaced the back exterior storm door.  By that time we had it down to a 90 minute install.  This door led to a very tiny back hallway.  Literally the space is 16 square feet.  It had dark dingy panelling and was not a well functioning space.  We took down all the old panelling and installed white beadboard.  We found lots of air leaks and sealed those up with foam insulation.  We caulked.  We removed the old yucky suspended ceiling and scraped and painted the original ceiling which looks much nicer.  Because the house was originally attached to a walkway to a barn there were multiple door casings that had been built out over the years.  We removed those that were either not appealing to look at and/or unnecessary.  I did save some lovely woodwork that I know my grandfather must have made.  I sanded it with my orbital sander and reinstalled that in two areas. 

Then I decided that the entry floor looked ugly.  So I took up the VCT tiles, scraped off all the old adhesive and laid a new floor.  I'd like to say that was quick--it is only 16 square feet, but it took me far longer than it should have.  I have a hard time visualizing how to cut around mouldings and I had some wonky cuts to make.  Eventually it was laid though.  I am awaiting the order of the floor trim that will go all around it and seam it in visually to the other spaces.  It should be in  by the end of next week and that is a quick install.

Isn't it bright?  It is also so much warmer in a space that was previously VERY drafty!  We are loving it.  Now I am starting to purchase the little decor items that we will deck it out with.

After I did that, I decided that the recycling closet which is located in this little space needed to be spiffed up.  After all, the outside of it all ready had gotten a face lift because we had removed the door and covered it with bead board and put on new hardware.  The hardware was reminiscent of what was originally there but more functional. (we need a latch that keeps the dog out of the recycling!)

I wanted to keep the feeling of the original work my grandfather had done making this closet and i think we stayed true to that.  That is also his woodwork that I restored around the door.  But inside, the closet was UGLY.  It had a tiny lino covered floor that was old (as in older than me and I am not young!) and it was dirty and dingy.  I took everything out, re-did the walls inside, laid a very tiny floor with left over tiles and put in a shelf and a hanging basket.

So much more functional!  So clean and organized!  LOL

The last thing I did was to replace our bathroom door.  That door was an old hollow core door with a thin veneer over it.  Years of hard use had caused the veneer to be peeling.  You could not hang a hook on the door for a towel or change of clothes because the door was hollow.  We are a family of 6. We need things like hooks.  The bathroom is also small and there is not a lot of hanging space for the myriad of necessities.  

 This is the bathroom door right after we hung it.  This was a pain.  The door size is not standard. Ordering custom would have meant at least a 2 month wait. (and I feel that was optimistic in these times of Covid.  I ordered a freezer in early May and delivery has been postponed three times all ready. We are now looking hopefully at an early December delivery.  But I digress. . . To avoid the delay of a custom order we ordered the smallest door we could and had a friend rip 1/2 inch off the door.  We could trim the casings ourselves but as yet we still only have hand tools, though I really want a small table saw! This is the door before it was painted.  You can glimpse it painted in the picture of the entry floor because the bathroom is literally right off that entry.  I still have to figure out what to do about the open space between door and tile.  It is not wide enough to really effectively put tile there, though I did salvage some and might try to see if I can make that work.  But thus far, I have not really moved into that space yet so I am just beginning to explore and see what will look best.

It has been fun working around the house.  Doing projects like this on an old house allow me to explore its history.  I am the fourth generation to live in this house.  When I did things like removed the paneling and found this garish asian themed wall paper it was fun to text my mom and ask her the story behind it.  When I removed a casing to install beadboard and found square nails, that was pretty cool as well.  

I don't do well with lots of down time, and I am very much an extrovert. So staying safe in Covid has been emotionally taxing and taking on these projects has been a productive and healthy way to stay sane.  Our space is improved both in the way it looks and in functionality.  I learn new skills and i have things to occupy weekends that used to be filled with gatherings, festivals, field trips and such.  I know we have done other projects too that I forgot to post but this catches up the biggest of those I missed!

Sprucing up the closet

 

I keep looking for projects and keep finding them!  This was from a couple weekends ago.  The first picture on the right shows an odd, less than functional kitchen closet.  Apparently many years ago, my grandfather built this closet, sealing off the interior access to our cellar in the process.  My grandmother needed a place to store her Christmas decorations and that literally was the sole purpose of this closet for my whole childhood.  Now in full disclaimer, it did not look as ugly as it does in the first photo on the left.  My grandfather had put up a wall paper that was supposed to look like knotty pine and had a dark brown lino on the floor.  Did that make it better than the picture on the left?  Only marginally.  The closet just did  not work for us.  It was where we wanted to keep cleaning things.  Brooms, cleaning cloths and vacuums, our rug cleaning machine etc.  But it was so dark and hard to see in there.  

So we ripped off the wallpaper, pulled up the lino, admired the newspapers from 1957 that he lined the floor with before putting down the linoleum. and made a plan.  We repaired the sheetrock where needed and put up a faux beadboard.  It is white and truly made such a difference.  We put a quick self stick tile floor in and hung new shelves (which you can't see from this picture) up high for odd things that typically live in this closet.  (it is the place where all our odd vases usually are stored but they were higgly piggly all over the place before.  

I put up peg board squares so we could  hang our cleaning tools and not have them falling all over the place.  I put in a new threshold and then we caulked and trimmed it all out.  It was a tedious job but not really super hard.  And the end result has been a huge improvement in the functionality of the space.

From there we moved on to stripping and sanding our front door but that is a story for another post!

Romance in the time of Covid

 Everything is harder in The Time of Covid.  Small errands take much longer, finding needed products takes longer and typically costs more.  And i our KC who is 16 has his first romance.  A is a lovely young woman and KC is a very caring and respectful young man.  He has been enarmored of her for over a year. She came to our church last fall and they bonded quickly over shared interests in dance and theater.  But they were just friends until the past couple of months.

And Covid makes this so complicated.  A does not live in our city.  So her "bubble" is not really the same as ours. She is schooling remotely, but like my wife and I , her parents both work outside the home.  (Mom is a university professor)

We had to have a weekend where they did not get together because A's mom travelled down south by plane and was down there for a few days to help a friend in crisis.  K and I were just not comfortable with A then coming over to our house for the day.  It was understood by her  parents but it was a hard conversation to have with my teen.  It isn't that he was unkind about it.  He just looked so crestfallen and it literally made me cry inside.

Her trip  quarantine is now over and KC will see A at youth group tonight.  He asked if we thought it would be okay for him to hold her hand when they walked to their cars after youth group.  We said yes, just to please use the hand wipes in the car afterwards.  At some level this all just feels so surreal.  I am so proud that he was careful and mindful of the fact that we need to still take precautions, but my heart hurts for the two of them.  First loves are supposed to be that time of giddy-anything is possible-the world is full of wonder times.   It's not that for them, but it is still special and magical and I am so grateful that it is that.