Today was the day we'd been waiting for!!!

Yes, today was the day we'd been waiting for.  The BIG Sherwin Williams paint sale with 40% off paint.

And boy did we take advantage of it, 23 gallons plus 5 more gallons I'd purchased earlier at Home Depot.  As soon as we finished picking up the paint (and the lumber to box in the ductwork), we loaded up all the trash and hauled it to the transfer station. One of the nice things about the transfer station is we were able to separate out the scrap metal.  Even so, we still had 200 pounds of trash.

Loaded up and headed out...

Here's Robyn getting her workout...

After a lunch of jerky, cheese, dill pickles, nuts, we were back at it at the house, Robyn cleaning molding; me starting to build the boxes for the ductwork.  Hopefully we'll have some photos of some good progress tomorrow.  In the meantime, here are some mock-ups of what the dining room will look like with the colors Robyn picked out.

The living room with the edges of the dining room visible in the foreground and the entrance way visible in the background

Back Bedroom...

Front bedroom...

The Sherwin Williams colors you see here are:

1. Dining Room - Naval and Ceremonial Gold
2. Living Room - Rookwood Dark Red
3. Entranceway - Butterscotch
4. Back Bedroom - Blackberry
5. Front Bedroom - Ionian
6. Ceilings - Creamery

Life intrudes...

Our old house isn't Robyn's and mine sole focus.  We both have our professional life and our life away from rehabbing this house to be our home.

Wednesday of this week was a birthday milestone for Robyn and she and I celebrated privately by going out to dinner.  And last night, we celebrated together with our friends.

Thursday was a rough day for us, particularly for Robyn.  There was a fire at Robyn's house in Ohio that she is renting out.  Details are still sketchy but we know that one bedroom sustained significant damage with smoke damage throughout the house.

Allegedly it was an act of arson; the suspect was apprehended and in jail as of this morning.

Friday evening went a lot better.  Facebook friends and friends from the Twin City Transplants got together with us at the Minnesota Music Cafe to celebrate Robyn's birthday.  The band, Free and Easy, who are in the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame were on the venue.  The Minnesota Music Cafe, which is only about 1 mile from our new home, has hosted artists such as Prince, Jonny Lang, Jellybean Johnson and Uncle Cracker.

Here are a couple of photos and videos:

Riding the "Love Train"...

We sat through all 3 sets and then breakfast at Perkins.  We're off to a bit of a late start this morning.

Quiet Day...

Yesterday was a quiet day on Pacific St. with the HVAC contractor continuing to run ductwork.  He's hoping to finish up today.

Happy Birthday Sweets!!!

Today is my sweet love's birthday.  We celebrated by having dinner at Ruby Tuesday... where we had our first date.  (not the one here in Minnesota; the one back in Ohio.)

Robyn further celebrated with another Craigslist find... wicker furniture for the 3 season porch.  I thought the ad showed only three pieces but it was actually four.  Things got a little tight as you can see.

I probably could have put the pads under the furniture in the back of the truck.  However, even though we only had a short distance to travel, I didn't want to risk having one fly out the truck.  Here's the furniture unloaded and on the porch.  Pretty decent stuff for only $100.

The porch is 19' long by 7' wide.  Once I get the scrap pipes off the porch, we'll get things arranged a bit better.

We could also see tremendous progress on the house.  Although I'm still a bit miffed about not being able to install the water heater myself, Ryan with Champion Plumbing did a great job installing the heater.  He brought the heater installation up to code fixing a couple of things I wasn't aware needed fixing.

I even learned a bit about sweating joints (no rude comments!!!).  To say I was generous with solder whenever I sweated a joint would be an understatement.  I figured it was better to have too much than not enough.  I watch Ryan sweat the joints for the pipes going to and from the water heater.  Boy, his joints are neat.  At the very end, he knocked the drip of solder off with his flux brush.  He also told me the rule of thumb was the same amount of solder as the size of the pipe.  For example, if you're soldering a 3/4 inch joint, you should use about 3/4" of solder.  He also said that once the joint starts dripping solder, it's full and you can stop.

Nice tips and I'll probably get the opportunity to practice a bit more.

Jack has also been making good progress on the HVAC system.  He's nearly completed running all the ductwork with just the kitchen and nook area remaining as well as two returns from upstairs.  It's looking good.

Robyn's thinking in the kitchen we'll just box in the junction below and leave the remaining ductwork exposed as an "architectural element."  The other major runs of ductwork are in the living room and we'll box those in.

I think it's a good idea and had actually been thinking the same thing.  What do y'all think?

Jack said he planned on running ductwork to the nook area and asked that I clean out the old garage entranceway.  Can you believe all of this stuff...

Came out of this space...

There are still a couple of tires and maybe some other items back in the old cistern right next to the steps (the wall had been cut out at the bottom of the steps.)  I'm going to eventually replace that OSB with a door; I need that opening to get a washing machine and dryer downstairs.  At about 24" wide and a 90 degree turn, they aren't going to make it down the inside steps.

I finished off the day sorting the recyclable scrap from the crap that will have to be thrown away. 

I'll load the recyclables up in the truck along with the pipes for the old gravity heating system and take it all to a scrap yard.  If I'm lucky, I might get $10.

Grrr...

I stopped by the house today on the way to Lumber Liquidators to pick up underlayment for the laminate flooring.  The same basic product that Lowes and Home Depot was $9 a roll cheaper at Lumber Liquidators.  When your buying 14 rolls, that's a savings of almost $130.

Jack was progressing nicely on the house.  The air conditioner had been set and wired.  The circuit breaker box had 5 or 6 extra circuits which meant I didn't have to lose two existing circuits... plus, the electrician install a GFCI circuit outside next to the AC.  A nice little bonus.

All of the ductwork for the registers downstairs has been installed and Jack has started on the ductwork for the upstairs.  In older houses, this can be a bit of a challenge.  We sacrificed a built-in pantry in the kitchen for the main branch of the second floor distribution system.  Interestingly, you could see where a stove was piped into the chimney there.  Jack also pointed out a gas line running through the floor joists.  Built in 1902, this house pre-dates electricity and the lines were for gas lighting.

About the only frustration I have in with the replacement gas water heater.  I can't get the property off the City of St. Paul's vacant property list until it has a working heating system and a hot water heater (my grandparents did without one for 60 years).  Because it is on the vacant property list, I can't pull the permit to install it myself.  So basically what would have been a $400, 30 minute project is now going to cost me $900 to have it done by a licensed plumber.

Know where that $130 I saved on the underlayment is going????

Grrrr..

Double Dose of Ibuprofen

As we were wrapping up Sunday evening, our friends, Tino and Mary, brought over some Mediterranean food for us to sample.... great gyro and seasoned chicken along with some eggplant dip.  Really good and a welcome respite.

Robyn and I headed back the 15 minutes to our apartment.  I dropped her off and then headed to Home Depot to order our laminate.  When I had stopped by the weekend before, I had been told it would take about two weeks for the laminate to come in.  I figured ordering it Sunday evening would make for perfect time.  I could let it sit in the house to condition for a week after our planned paint date and then it would be ready.

Wouldn't you know they had just gotten a pallet with 36 cartons of the laminate we had decided on... and 27 more cartons were on the shelf.  I had calculated we needed 48 cartons.

So I went ahead and got it...

An hour later, I'd finished carrying in and stacking those cartons of laminate.

Many more days like yesterday and I'll finish off that bottle of 500 ibuprofen tablets.

Even a blind man could have painted better than this...

Copper joined us today out at our old house.

By the end of the day, his head was nodding while he was sitting watching us.  It's hard work being a dog... particularly when there are squirrels in the yard that no one will let you chase.

Robyn said that steel wool is her new best friend as she was scrubbing off paint on the underside of door molding that was almost 8 foot up in the air.  Her next comment was, "Even a blind man would know not to paint the underside of molding!!!"  She finally finished up the dining room today with its 3 windows, 40+ feet of plate shelves and 50+ feet of 8" floor molding.  Together, we are nearly finished with the living room.

I finished up cleaning behind the molding behind the radiators that still had the original finish.  Strip-X did the heavy work.  Then I found a use for that Oops that I wasn't happy with.  It's actually good cleaning the residual stain left from the Strip-X and general grime on the molding.  

Here's a before shot of the molding that was behind the living room radiator.

...and after it's been stripped and cleaned.

I still need to find a stain that will match the remainder of the molding and then put some shiny stuff on it and the rest of the molding after it's been cleaned and we painted the room.  I had similar results with the molding that was in the entranceway and the dining room.

Two things neither Robyn and I understand.  Why are there staples in the molding in the living room?  And why is there scotch tape on nearly every surface.  You can even see where something was taped to the wall...  And not just for a short time... long enough for the surrounding area to fade.

My other project for the day was to start repair some of the holes in the walls and the missing plaster.  I went through a whole 32oz container of spackling paste today and still need more to finish up.  Here's a before shot of the worst area.

To start the repair on this, I cleaned out all of the loose plaster with a screwdriver and then brushed out the smaller particles.  Here's part one of the fix:

I took advantage of the slats that were there for the plaster and pressed the spackling firmly into the openings between the slats and then filled the hole up within 1/8" of the surface.  Next, I cross-hatched to spackling so I will have a surface for the next coat.  This particularly area is about 18 inches long and 4 inches wide at its narrowest and about 8 inches wide at its widest.

There are cracks radiating out for this area.  What I will do next it drill some pilot holes through the plaster into the slat.  I'll then countersink the holes and use a drywall screw with a washer to secure the plaster to the slats.  The holes will be filled with what else... but spackling.  I'm also look for an aerosol product that I can spray over the crack to provide a better paint surface than just using spackling.  I did one crack with spackling but I really wasn't satisfied with the results.