Moving On

Spring is here!

2010-04-25T15:49:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened since the past post ... nothing too crazy..just had a baby that's all! Haha...anyway to keep this blog fairly house-centred, we're posting about our next renovation project - the yard!

Sarah is the driving force behind this one, since I went back to work and have been distracted by baby and work, we've had to depend on her to "project manage". It isn't a huge project yet - so far we've had the contractor break up the concrete in the backyard, remove the steel trapdoor that led to the basement and construct a handrail to prevent us from falling the in the big hole that is the stairs to the basement now that there's no trapdoor.

The big picture is to make this yard as accessible to the Grays as possible and also a nice patio that we can all enjoy. Previously, they had to go through our house and open the heavy steel door and then their access was through the laundry room up some grimy staircase. Now the access is still the laundry room but the staircase has been redone and a nice door leads out up the steps (we did that last year after both bathrooms were done)

We had started with the idea of decking the back but after the initial quote of $10,000 from the contractor we changed our minds to a simpler look - pavers on soil. Unfortunately the previous owner had poured concrete over the back so it was pretty cracked in places and just looked ghetto.

I didn't get a chance to take a photo of the work mid-progress yet but I will in the next few days. The original look I have to search through my archives for when we took photos of the house cos the contractor has already started work and there is a pile of rubble in the backyard!

I am slowly winding up the motivation to think about the bedroom renovations. I just don't have the stomach to uproot us all to do it. I'm thinking we might just do the bare minimum which means installing a pocket door between the baby's room and ours. Mike and I are trying to figure it out now that we have lived in this house for a while on how the patterns are flowing and what we need to do and what we want to do.

Finally!

2010-01-06T15:55:00.000-08:00

The floor guy sanded and sealed and applied 3 coats of polyurethane (low VOC of course) and finally he is done! The floor has been drying since about noon today, I left all the windows open. Hopefully tonight we can start putting some furniture back into where it's supposed to go.

My next move is to clean. I have so much cleaning to do before we start moving stuff around, even though we sealed off the kitchen, it still got really dusty from the sanding. Once I can clean the kitchen and living/dining rooms, I can move everything back and empty out the baby's room in preparation for the "nesting".

I am still finishing up little pieces, just received the pull out shelf which will keep the garbage can under the cabinet and that will complete the kitchen setup. We were procrastinating with that but now it will be nice to have trash in one of the cabinets instead of a trash can in the middle of the kitchen. That also repurposes the garbage can to becoming the diaper pail (a-ha!)

The floor looks great - the guy did a good job repairing all the areas we had torn up during the renovation and also the vestibule (which we had carved out from the bathroom) It's not an exact match to the parquet but the parquet is 100 years old (he thinks) so it's going to be impossible anyway. He also installed a saddle from the wood to the kitchen where there was a treacherous lip before. I think overall it looks nice and I can say now, the major renovation for this house is officially done!

We still have to do bedrooms but it would be installing a pocket door and stripping moulding, and sanding the floors again but there's no demo or anything. Which means the major expense is done (and what an expense it was!) I have been keeping a budget and the total is about $35k so far - $15k on bathroom and $15k on kitchen and the remainder on everything else. I think it's money well spent and more importantly, now that the baby is coming, we won't have any more large cash outflow except for the baby.

In a way, we have timed it well. I paid off the car just before we bought the house and now we've finished the major reno just before the baby came. Now if only the baby would just go to college next year and I can buy myself a new tv!

Godsent!

2010-01-03T06:57:00.000-08:00

Our friend, Peter Tower has been amazing. He has a lot of construction experience and yesterday in 5 hours, Mike and him finished all the small cosmetic stuff in the house. They put in the under cabinet strip in the kitchen, finished the kitchen door and window moulding and installed the baseboard moulding in the kitchen. In one fell swoop they halved my to-do list in the house.

Now all we have left to do is paint the moulding and seal the moulding where the contractor stripped the paint off the old wood and I can do that whenever on my own.

The living room & dining room are pretty empty now in preparation for the floor guy coming tomorrow. I'm a little nervous about this guy even though he came highly recommended but Peter will be with me if anything goes wrong (Mike is going back to work tomorrow after a week off) I also have to go to Sunset Park next week (the Brooklyn Chinatown) to see if I can get some leads on Chinese nannies.

If all goes well, I get to put all the furniture back Wednesday and maybe get the cleaning lady in Thursday or Friday to do the entire house. We plan to primer the baby's room Saturday and my in-laws are coming on Sunday to help set up the baby room and move all the baby stuff in from the basement where it's been sitting in boxes and bags from the showers.

Then I have 4 days to potter around and tie up some loose ends like go to Babies R Us to get some last minute items.

Done Painting!

2010-01-01T20:57:00.000-08:00

Mike and Peter finished painting the living room, dining room, kitchen, hallway and foyer. The bathroom is also done! We have tons of paint left which is a little annoying since the paint was so expensive (we buy this special zero VOC one which is supposed to be ok for pregnant women). But we have plenty left for touch ups and I think we might as well paint the baby room and our bedroom with this colour (at a later date of course) The boys also painted the radiator pipes and radiator a nice bronzey colour which is cool and I think it goes well with the brick wall.

Tomorrow we will begin migrating all the things we don't need to the basement (the Grays are leaving the basement as their bathroom is now done) and that will leave the living room & dining room relatively clear for the floor repair guy on Monday.

We also cleared the hallway since we are having a baby shower on Sunday that the Grays are throwing for us for Mike's friends. It's a pity we won't have the baby room to show them but I'm sure they wont really care. It's just a casual get together anyway.

2 or 3 more days of dust and awfulness next week and we will truly be done! I even tidied up the basement so it's not too much of a disaster down there. Once I get the baby stuff into the baby room, then things will be less crowded down there.

The contractor is gone!

2009-12-30T19:05:00.000-08:00

Finally, Martin has finished with his work and (more or less) left the house. He still has little things to do like put the smoke alarms back and install my new fan but his major work is all done.

The house looks great - we are painting tomorrow with our friend Peter's help and we should be done by the weekend if not, we still have the weekend to do it.

The plan is on Monday, the floor guy comes to repair, sand & refinish the living room/dining room and hopefully after that, we can move all the living room furniture back into the living room and the baby's room will be empty and we can paint a coat of primer, set up the crib and just move his clothes & stuff into dressers and ready the room for his arrival!

I think the earliest that can happen will be next weekend which gives us 5 days before the baby arrives...

We aren't doing much to the baby's room beyond a coat of primer to make it look presentable and setting up his furniture. We figured he wouldnt really notice! His bedroom and ours will be the next phase of the renovation in about 6 months or whenever we get some money but the biggest chunk of renovation expenses is over. I think the bedrooms will cost about half of what the bathroom cost us.

After we paint tomorrow, I will take some pictures of the living room/dining room without furniture to give you guys an idea of what the original moulding looks like in a 100 year old Victorian house. It used to have layers and layers of paint caked on it and stripping it has been such a smelly difficult project. I'm glad to have gotten it out of the way before the baby came.

Bathroom completely done

2009-12-27T15:01:00.000-08:00

We finished painting the bathroom today (we were too cheap to ask the contractor to do it- he was going to charge us $2000 to paint the entire bathroom/living room/dining room/hallway/vestibule and we decided to do it ourselves. As I have stopped working, I felt that it would just be a waste of money for me to stay home and watch them do something I could do myself. It was another thing when I was working and they were working on something that would take me much longer to do.

So we struck a deal where he would strip the paint off the radiators & moulding and baseboard moulding and primer everything and we would paint the rooms ourselves.

It's a nice light gray colour and I'm pleased with how it turned out. With all the fixtures in, the bathroom is completely done and at least that's one room off our plate! Only 3 more rooms to go!

In about 6 months, we were thinking I would take the baby to England while they worked on the other 2 rooms in the house (bedroom & baby's room) installing pocket doors, stripping paint off the moulding etc but that depends on our financial situation and that means my work situation which means the baby's effect on our lives and how we handle it - whether I stay at home or not etc.

The kitchen hood has been vented and it doesn't look as bad as I thought it would. We had left it undone so long cos we were stumped as to how to make it look aesthetically and the contractor just couldnt find the metal chimney to hide the duct and eventually we decided to just construct a soffit and drywall it in. I was concerned as to how it would look but it doesn't look too bad. The contractor made an effort to imitate the look of the metal chimney from the hood (with a curve) so it doesnt look too weird. I will post a photo later. Anyway it works now and even Martin the contractor was very impressed with how powerful our hood is. At the 3rd setting, it is ridiculously powerful and I think because the outside wall is less than 3 feet away, it is even stronger. I'm pleased with the performance of the hood - we made bacon this morning and you couldn't even tell. It was very important to me the hood works well because of all the Chinese cooking we do in the house and it's an open plan kitchen which makes it very tricky.

Our friend Peter comes tomorrow and hopefully he can help Mike paint the hallway/vestibule but all this depends on the moulding that Martin is installing. We bought about 800 ft of moulding yesterday for him to install which he's doing in the social areas and the hallway/vestibule so whenever it works, we will paint whatever room he's done with...

So Slow...

2009-12-22T06:37:00.000-08:00

My last official day of work was Saturday and although I'm going to the stage throughout this week, it's very casual. The house is not completed but the Grays have gone to Canada for the holidays so the contractor is all mine! Truthfully, he was waiting for their tiles anyway which wont come till they are gone so he has to stop work on their house until they are back. Their renovation has gone a lot slower than ours did which is surprising since they have it so much more together than we did. We were always scrambling to get him the stuff he needed. I think he's actually doing another job too so that has split his crew up.

He is finishingthe baseboard moulding today at the brick wall and tomorrow he's venting the hood finally. By next Monday, he expects to be done stripping the old paint from the window moulding and all the old moulding and on Tuesday, Mike and I can paint. Well, our friend Peter is coming from SF and he's got loads of experience in construction so he can help Mike paint. If we stick to this schedule which is unlikely as I have learned, we could sand the floors on Monday 4th January and move back into the living room on the 7th...

It doesn't leave much time for the baby room, obviously but all that's needed there is to paint and install the crib and set up the room which hopefully only takes a few days. We have a week...

It's cutting it a bit fine, but I refuse to stress about it, after all, things never happen the way you want them to when you are depending on so many other variables.

Living Room etc

2009-12-13T11:25:00.000-08:00

They just finished the walls in the ceiling and header and living room (he was hand sanding at the end there, we were very impressed) and primered the walls. All that remains is the moulding for the brick and the lights that go in the baseboard moulding - that is my plan for uplighting the brick wall - hope it works.

He also has to vent the kitchen hood and finish the floor in the vestibule but the dusty work is pretty much done.

We left the dining and living room empty for now so we can get someone in to sand the floors and hopefully all this is done by our baby shower Jan 3. Yes, we have another shower for friends in a few weeks - our 3rd.

Upstairs' bathroom reno is going a little slower than ours I think, she thinks so too. We took 3 weeks and they are just beginning their 3rd week. They might be delayed a few days. Still, it's looking very nice up there as they have a sky light. I miss being on the top floor and the light you get there.

It is now a race against time to finish before the baby shower as it would be nice to show our friends the completed baby room and all but we will see. I will get a parquet flooring guy to come in this week to quote and if he can get it done in a few days we can sand next week. We still have to paint the dining and living room and we picked that up today.

Bathroom - check! Rest of the house next

2009-12-07T12:50:00.000-08:00

We've got all the bathroom components in and I still marvel when I shower/bathe in there. It feels so amazing and spa-like, I love it so much. Can someone be obsessed with a bathroom? Wish I could live in there. I've always preferred bathrooms to kitchens. I'm only a survivalist chef so I don't really romanticise the kitchen much.

We struck a deal with the contractor. While he's also doing the upstairs bathroom (they now live in the basement) he's finishing the rest of the house. He's already done the ceiling and the header we were doing halfway and today he's completing the doorway (putting a header in and finishing the walls) As far as renovation goes, that's the only plan we have for now. Eventually (maybe 6 months from now) we will install a pocket door between the baby's room and our bedroom but I've had enough of construction in the house. There is still the question of doing the floors - he has yet to do the parquet in the vestibule (that's part of the bathroom costs) and once I see how well he does that, we might have him do the other 2 bits - by the kitchen and where the curio cabinet was taken out) My ideal plan - he does it all and after everything is done, I sand the floors and call it a day.

I took a half day cos I wasn't feeling great and it wasn't even nice to be home cos of all the banging away. I have some kind of privacy as we put the living room temporarily in the baby room (if there's one thing we are good at, it's moving rooms around - I have watched tv in 3 out of the 4 rooms we have in the house). Of course the baby room and our room is practically one big room (hence the future pocket door) so there's enough space for us to still live our life. I just want this renovation and this job to be over so I can just be alone for once. But enough whining, 2 more weeks and the job is over and this construction bit will probably be over around the same time (depending on the floor bit)

Conveniently the contractor's wife is a cleaner so when this is all over, I will gain a cleaner and probably keep her till I can handle it again after the baby arrives. I'm just fast running out of time!

Bathroom 99% done!

2009-11-28T19:51:00.000-08:00

I love my new bathroom. We still aren't allowed to shower in it till Monday and he has to install the wall sconces and a pendant lamp but pretty much we are done in the bathroom. Still missing some pieces like a toilet seat! Plus all the other fancy accessories like toilet brush holder (wall mounted) and towel hanger and shower curtain etc. This is a link to the youtube video that Mike shot so you get an idea. It's too small to take a normal photo in.

We moved the living room into the baby room cos the contractor is now working on the living room next. He's going to finish the work we left incomplete after the kitchen. Our next project if I hadnt gotten pregnant would have been the living room and dining room (it's just finishing work, nothing heavy) but now that we sorta have a deadline, I pushed up the bathroom reno schedule and since we like the contractor's work so much, we might as well have him finish the rest of the house.

The funny thing is when he went around looking at the unfinished parts of the house, he broke down all the work into individual quotes so we could piecemeal the work. He even included work we had already done in the kitchen - i guess you can tell how he feels about the work we did! I don't care. I am very proud of the work we did in the kitchen and I'm glad we found a contractor who also takes a lot of pride in his work. I feel like he's just an extension of us and there's a trust there that I didn't have before the bathroom turned out so nice.

He thinks it will take 3 days to finish the living room which in Martin-speak means a week. We moved the living room paraphernalia to the baby room - tv, couch and 2 chairs. Thank goodness we had a 4 day weekend this week to do all this. Still some more cleaning to do tomorrow and organising but not enough to ruin the day and still enjoy some football. I cannot wait for the day when all the construction work is done and my cleaning is true cleaning not in between cleaning! I hope by the time this job ends, I will have everything done and I can merely put furniture in place and nest!

2 weeks in

2009-11-19T07:00:00.001-08:00

And the bathroom is finally coming together. For a while, we felt like we just weren't getting the contractor the materials he needed. we had all the fixtures and yet he asked for the door. we got the door and he would ask for more plumbing. i suppose in theory we should have had everything before he got there but it's hard cos we don't really know what we need sometimes, like i had totally forgotten about lights and the new fan etc.

Anyway, i feel like we are all caught up although i am still ordering more wall tiles as we jointly decided to tile more areas of the bathroom. there is also a huge language barrier too which makes it difficult.

so far i've run over by a few hundred dollars. I wanted to spend $10,000 but we had a budget of $12,000.

he also surprised us by asking for the parquet flooring. i didnt think they were going to do that for us but they are which is a huge bonus. Mike is so pleased, he's thinking of asking them to finish everything in the house we sorta left dangling. it might work out since i am now working till new year's. it would be nice to have everything buttoned up except for painting before the baby gets here. i didnt think we would.

work in progress

2009-11-06T21:52:00.000-08:00

the contractor started a little later than expected cos the job before ours extended. he came in 2 days ago and already has done so much - all the walls are down and the floor's been pulled up. we are getting the pocket door delivered tuesday and i'm picking up the tiles on wednesday. mike and i are going to ikea on sunday to get the sink/vanity and i think he will have all the materials he needs.

we also asked him to finish extending the door that we started which is a nice bonus.

it's nice to have someone to do the dirty work for once although it's proving to be very expensive. so far he's costing us $7,500 (including constructions materials) which if I GC'ed this project myself, i probably could have saved about $3,000. But then our baby deadline is fast approaching and we really don't have the time to teach ourselves how to renovate a bathroom so i'm ok with it. i'm trying to keep our budget to $10k but i think the reality is it will probably cost more like $12k. i'm not keen to stint on fixtures just because we are hitting the budgeted amount either. my philosophy has always been we either have time or money - in this case, i don't have time since mike and i have been working so much.

anyway, 2 weeks of this disruption and hopefully we have ourselves a new bathroom and an entrance foyer (carved out from the bathroom - the bathroom becomes smaller but it will be infinitely better laid out). if all goes according to plan, i will have my 'nesting period' after this job is done to organise and rearrange. i'm really looking forward to that...

Next phase: Bathroom

2009-10-31T16:58:00.000-07:00

We got back from Italy today to be greeted by all the numerous bathroom fixtures we bought before we left. The contractor begins on Monday (2 days from today) and we have the new tub, toilet and some sink fixtures although I doubt he will get to it for a few days. He will have his hands full with the demo work for a few days I think.

We found a decent 4 foot soaking tub which is tricky since 5 feet is the standard tub size. We have also picked out the tiles we wanted so all I need are measurements from the contractor on Monday and I can order the tiles. I am still debating the sink situation - for now I know we will have 2 but I don't really know much more how I am going to utilise the 48" of space I have left after installing the tub and toilet.

I got a dual flush Toto toilet, i love Toto toilets. They are so distinct and a great selling item when looking at a house. This one also looks easy to clean since it has no curves.

I am nervous about this renovation work to be truthful. The contractor speaks very little English and although he came highly recommended, Im not sure we will be able to communicate as much as we could with the other one. This one is half the price however which sorta made my mind up. Plus the other one, I felt was a little sloppy.

Anyway so fresh off the plane, Mike and I moved our bedframe and our mattress downstairs to the basement where we will sleep for 2 weeks while we don't have a bathroom. I figured it was easier instead of walking down the steps 3x a night to pee and in case I have late call times, I won't have workers barging in on us and this will ensure some modicum of normality while we are renovating. We also bought a new bedframe and that is getting delivered Wednesday which means we can leave our old one downstairs with our spare mattress for when my sister or other guests come. It's all part of my bigger plan.

We also moved the desk to the bedroom and leaving the baby's room pretty clear for staging all the toilets/fixtures/tubs etc. Once all that is removed for the reno work, it will be an empty room which we can paint and decorate for the baby. That's the plan, anyway. Right now, the master bedroom and baby room are in shambles. I have one full day tomorrow (Sunday) to get it in decent shape before I go back to work full time until Dec 18.

Finally a hallway closet!

2009-09-26T18:15:00.000-07:00

Chip & Ann came this weekend to deliver a mattress we bought in Doylestown, PA as well as the crib mattress. Since we had their truck, I also used the opportunity to pick up the closet door from the lumber yard. While Chip & Mike framed in the door, Ann & I organised the basement - something I have been dying to do for a while.

With the advent of this hallway closet, I now have managed to clear the bedroom a lot and it's starting to not look like the sty it's been looking like the past month. I can even see floor! Amazing what a little closet can do for you.

We will probably finish up the kitchen tomorrow, install some doors for the new pantry and Mike needs to cut down some shelves for me and I can finish the interior organisation of the kitchen completely. I am quite pleased with the progress we made this weekend. We are even going for dim sum with some friends and visiting a friend's new born baby who is about 2 wks old.

The contractor came to quote us for the bathroom and it came in a lot less than we expected - $5,000 not including materials. His English is much worse than Alberto (the other contractor we usually use) but he came highly recommended. We are going to see if we can do it mid October. It means losing the bathroom for 2 weeks but we have the basement bathroom we can use still.

The idea we can renovate everything before the baby comes is very appealing - if I have to work 5 days a week until I birth to do that, that's what I want to do!

painfully slow steps

2009-09-13T13:36:00.000-07:00

didnt get much done this weekend cos we had a family reunion to attend and mike had to work on sunday. i joint compounded the inside of the closet but didnt get the paint so i will have to paint next week when mike's away for work.

we did buy a new range hood though when we were in PA a nice Zephyr Savona from the same family friend we bought the oven from. we also managed to dash into Ikea to pick up the missing parts for the pull out pantry that is the final piece to the kitchen cabinet situation. once i get this and the fridge cabinet put together, the kitchen is then fully assembled. i might take a crack at it next week when mike's away. he usually deals with this stuff but i can't wait anymore!

we also looked at new dishwashers. hopefully there's a cash for clunkers program for appliances and we can turn in our old dishwasher for a brand new Bosch one i have my eye on.

"old hands"

2009-09-06T11:46:00.000-07:00

Mike's brother Chris came over on Saturday and the boys built out the closet in the hallway while Shelly & I went to Buy Buy Baby (another story in itself). They did well and today, I am joint compounding behind the fridge while Mike takes down the doorway from the hall (to replace the entrance in the kitchen - we now enter through the dining room). It's an improvement in a few ways - now the entrance and exit are not one straight line (bad feng shui) and we can 90 degree the fridge and have a proper kitchen.

We are only taking one stud for the doorway for now and test driving a 32" wide doorway for now giving us the option to widen the entrance later. It is the way people come into the house at first so it might need to be wider & grander. But i'm rather wary of taking down walls now cos Mike always wants to take every wall down and I never have any place left to put furniture. We practically have a loft in our hands.

We are going quite methodically and making good progress which seems to be predominantly due to us being so much more experienced now. We make less of a mess and kick up less dust and it goes so much quicker. Quite amazing, really.

Hopefully by tomorrow, we will have a new high pantry and a rough opening in the wall. I dont expect to finish any walls till later but we're leaving a lot of weekend projects in our wake and eventually I fear we will run out of weekends before the baby comes!

What next?

2009-08-30T06:15:00.000-07:00

We haven't finished the kitchen entirely - lots of cosmetic stuff including window painting, moulding, floor moulding. We havent installed the under counter lights or backsplash. But with a 3 day weekend coming up for Labour day, we decided to go ahead with the rest of the construction. That is, we are going to construct the hallway closet and make a doorway into the dining room.

We figured a 3 day weekend was too good to waste and Sarah's baby will be coming and that might slow down our demo/construction work substantially as the baby's room is directly above the kitchen. The other things we havent completed are all weekend projects and we have plenty of those in the coming year.

We sorta have an idea of what we need to do and Mike is picking his brother's brain to get the details. Our idea is to frame the closet and install a transom window above the closet so as to let some light from the kitchen into the hallway. It wont be much but it's better than nothing. I wont be able to use such high storage space anyway.

Another project...just when I was getting used to having the house in order. This really won't be as bad since we can seal off the dining room and still have the working kitchen/living room. I also will get my high pantry assembled finally - the lack of which has been stalling my kitchen interior organisation. The dining room has very little furniture - bar the table and chairs nothing else. We can use the table as a work table which we have been doing. So all in all, it's not a bad project to take on.

I had to cave

2009-08-23T09:18:00.000-07:00

No backsplash, hood, undercounter lights, window molding and floor molding but here it is!

No Pictures, please

2009-08-19T09:37:00.000-07:00

I find it funny that i documented every step of the way of this kitchen reno and now just when we are so close, I refuse to put up any pictures till everything is done.

The handles aren't on the cabinets yet and the faucet isn't the right one (it's getting delivered Friday) so I'm not taking a picture until that is complete!

The counter came yesterday and it's beautiful. It made all our blood, sweat and tears worth it, in my book. To know we could afford a nicer counter like this and better workmanship because we saved so much money doing the manual labour for everything else ourselves, made it very special to me. I love that every detail in the kitchen was planned and thought out by us and that nothing was done without deliberation down to minute choices that no one else will ever know. This includes what's on the walls and in the walls and under the floor and on the floor. It's just a sense of control and a feeling of job satisfaction I can't explain. We didn't cut corners on the way and most times, took the difficult path of starting from scratch or re-doing things even though we hated it. I hate to wax philosophical but it also strengthened Mike and my relationship cos we were there for one another and each knew what the other was going through - the frustration and the lack of knowledge sometimes seemed insurmountable.

I consulted the plumber with the bathroom and what we planned to do there and he said he would call me with a quote. The bathroom isn't next, exactly, but since he was here I was curious.

We might not do everything ourselves the way we did with the kitchen; I might GC the project - get a plumber, a tiler, that kind of thing. It would save us money (not as much as doing it ourselves but we've realised we're not good tilers) and still give us some measure of quality control every step of the way. It might be a good in between to getting a contractor come in and doing it all for us.

back together again!

2009-08-10T15:45:00.000-07:00

every box but one (flour/semolina/rice/bulk goods) has been unpacked...woohoo! we are still counter-less but now, the kitchen is restored and everything fits AND we still havent assembled the high pantry which is part of Phase B. Which means when that 15x88" pantry with it's 6 drawers is assembled i will have so much space in my new kitchen for everything i wont need to do that horrid thing I hate - displaying all one's pots/pans and cooking utensils. you know the way Ikea would have you do it? i hate that. they tell you it's such good organisation to stick a metal thing on the wall and hang everything off it but it just clutters the look of the kitchen and makes everything messy. i particularly detest hanging pots over my head. i like everything hidden away even appliances (i usually make an exception for the toaster oven although now this toaster oven is an embarrassment to the new kitchen and might have to hide too) the thought of a clean empty counter with nothing on it is so amazing. it particularly important to me since the kitchen opens up into the living areas which means you see it from the living room.

anyway enough of that rant. we moved the couch and coffee table to it's final destination of the room adjacent to the kitchen. hopefully if mike isn't tired, we can move the tv tonight (last night we watched tv from 20 ft away it was hilarious). i moved all the things we dont need anymore (my makeshift pantry shelf and kitchen cart and old oven) away and put them on Craigslist. some guy offered me $50 more than advertised price if i would remove the CL listing so i said sure - give me $200 for this old oven why not?

And now...my thoughts go to Phase B.

Phase B is where the hallway does not lead directly from the front entrance into the kitchen as it does now. We block off that end with the fridge (making it 90 degrees to the rest of the aisle) and build a wall behind it and a closet). Then to access the living areas, we knock a doorway open into the dining room so from the hallway, you now make a left and enter through the dining room. once that fridge makes a 90 degree turn, there is enough space for that high pantry rounding off the kitchen.

i am probably explaining badly but until i figure out how to upload the floor plan that's all i got.

Hence Phase B is a building of a closet (with a window above it to let light in from the kitchen to the hallway) as well as taking down some part of the wall (again!) Needless to say we are not looking forward to it. We can live with the fridge opening into the hallway as it is for a while, and our plan is to see where our work situation goes. If Mike's contract gets extended and I work till December, we will pay someone to do it for us. If either or both of us don't work, we will probably do it ourselves.

Phase C is mending all the joints/seams in the living room from the header (the other side of the kitchen this time) and the ceiling. Also installing moulding to connect the brick wall to the regular wall

Phase D is pocket doors to separate the 2 bedrooms

Phase E is the bathroom renovation

All these phases are independent of one another and can be done separately in no particular order (except B&C are really one big thing) we could also pay someone to do it all or in parts. But all this depends on our financial situation. We made a budget of $15,000 for the kitchen renovation and have actually stuck to it which is amazing. I will have to budget out the other phases and get quotes from the contractor to see if it is worth it.

slight delay

2009-08-08T18:46:00.000-07:00

we added an 8" overhang to the counter facing the living room so we had to pay extra but for some reason Ikea would never call us back all week so finally this morning we went there personally and paid. I hope that doesnt delay the counter getting made. i am throwing Sarah a baby shower in 2 weeks and i can't really afford to delay much more.

today Mike assembled the wall-side base cabinets and also anchored them in preparation for the counter installation. the counter guy told us we had to anchor the cabinets but since our wall is 5" behind the cabinets, Mike had to build out the wall with 2x4s. we struggled finding a stud (i wish we had known we would need to know where they were, when we had the wall open it would have been easy to mark them!) but now they are in there solid and ready. we also assembled all the drawers and doors and filled them with stuff already.

this lightened the dining room a lot - i emptied a lot of boxes into various drawers. we even went so far as to reinstate the living room. we wheeled the old oven into the study (getting it ready to go - i put an ad on Craigslist) and because there were less Ikea boxes we managed to consolidate everything into the dining room.

it's going to get confusing - it already confuses Mike. the end goal is to make the room adjacent to the kitchen, the living room. currently it is the dining room. we decided to get the place back to the way it was before moving furniture around to getting it to the way we want. so for now, we still use the dining room as the living room.

tomorrow, we anchor the island cabinets which will be much trickier for mike since there's no wall. we will have to do it to the floor. that should take him the better part of the day. i still have tons of cleaning and sorting to do. eventually, we can put doors on the island cabinets (it's only 2 cabinets there anyway and one's a sink cabinet the other is just a bare cabinet - it should take no time)

then if we have time, we can put up the back of the island and for the exposed parts that require a finished wood. since Ikea cabinets are made of MDF or whatever, all the cabinets look the same inside. it's the outside doors and drawers that change. so whenever there is an exposed back like an island or a side, they give you the same coloured wood so it looks less cheap. ahh...the beauty of Ikea.

after that, it's really cosmetic stuff...window moulding, cleaning out the breaker box, undercabinet lighting. mike and i dont want to stress ourselves out, if we dont get to those things, we leave it undone for the party. Mike might not be here next weekend so i dont know if we will have another weekend before the party which means the bare necessities have to be done by tomorrow. we figured during mid-week we could rejig the furniture. the guests will have to understand that the walls in the living room aren't going to be join compounded or sanded yet.

counter measured

2009-08-04T15:25:00.001-07:00

The counter guy came last Friday before we left for SF. He said we could install drawers and shelves and doors before he came back with the counter...woohoo! we ended up with misty carrera which we like for its soft gray colour with some texture to it.

We are looking at range hoods currently, we have been recommended by the family friend who sold us the range to look at hoods over 600cfm. Sounds powerful but when you're a Chinese family in an open plan kitchen, you need to have those Chinese cooking smells sucked right out!

Unfortunately the contractor vented a 4" vent which is probably too small, we will need 6" but I think we can just enlarge the hole ourselves since the hardest part of breaking through to the outside has been done.

we are very busy this week but have resolved to get all the innards of the cabinets built so over the weekend we can finish some last minute bits before the counter guy comes back. the 8" overhang we added last minute is gonna cost us another $500 but that was expected and budgeted for. we will buy some lights this weekend and hopefully everything will come together next week!

nearing the end...i hope

2009-07-28T16:43:00.000-07:00

Our new range came over the weekend thanks to Chip and Ann! Because they shlepped it from PA, I saved over $600 and it's an awesome 3-in 1 range which will save space too! We had to take the doors off the oven and the door to get it into the living room though. Lucky our closet system is now half moved to the other wall (Mike only moved his side first - we were a little taken by surprise by how early Chipper was) We just bought another pole from Ikea and will be ready to move mine next week sometime.

The red bedroom wall looks nice and not too dominating since it is behind the closet system The main part that is exposed is above the bed and it frames a big painting my Dad gave me a while ago. Altogether, I think it looks nice. Since we sleep facing away from it, we dont really have to face a red wall everyday but it creates a nice feature in the room. I also think it makes it look smaller which is a pity but of all rooms, this room can take it. The light from the window also hits it nicely in the evening and our bedside lamps also have a nice reflected glow off it.

We assembled all but 1 of the cabinets. The base cabinets are our priority since we want the counter guy to come on Friday before we leave for SF. He says he will take 7-10 days to be ready which will also give us time to put the rest of the cabinets together (innards and all). Mike hung the wall cabinets except 1 and spent quite a bit of time cursing at it although we did all this in one afternoon. It's amazing how much motivation one can get when one can see the end result. Unlike construction/demo work, it is instantly gratifying and encourages one to work harder.

This week, we went to Ikea with our tile sample to pick the colour of the counter which we think we have picked...it is quite agonising for us to do things like that. Mike and I are really poor visualisers and picking the tile colour, paint colour and cabinet colour was torture. I am torn between Pebble and Cinder.

San Fran this weekend and little by little next week, we will put the cabinets together. It's a good thing I am so busy at work, I hardly notice not having a kitchen to be honest. If this goes according to schedule then we should be completely done a few days after the Vu-Lees get back,

Mid week work

2009-07-24T19:08:00.000-07:00

I threw on a coat of red paint in the bedroom and Mike did the second coat later in the week. Now we are ready to move the closet to the red wall side and free up the french doors that lead to the outside.

Our new range comes tomorrow so we will be ready for it.

We also grouted on Monday & Tuesday and the first day was a nightmare. We were cleaning the grout haze till 11pm and it just wouldnt get clean! On the 2nd day, we learned valuable lessons and had ready water and just knowing what was ahead, made us grout better. It only took us 2 hours the next day and the clean up was so much easier.

Tomorrow after moving the closet, Mike will seal the tile floor. Unfortunately I have to work at 6am but it will only be for a few hours.

This weekend is going to be all about assembling cabinets and hanging them. We are hoping for a visit from the counter guy next Thursday before we leave for SF for a wedding. If that happens, we will have a new counter by Tuesday and a full kitchen a few days after depending on the plumber (we get a free sink from the counter guy so once he gets in there to install the counter, he will have a sink for me)

I can't believe I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The Vu-Lees also pushed their return to Aug 7 so we are just in time!

Small change in plan

2009-07-20T04:55:00.000-07:00

As we are thinking of getting a new range we will have to somehow get it inside the house. I might not have mentioned it before but the front door opens into the hallway and because there's a slight bend there it only opens about 60 degrees and most things cannot fit. When we moved it we used the double doors that lead straight into the bedroom (altho it was the living room then) but since then we have covered those doors with an Ikea modular closet.

In recent months, we have decided to move that modular closet to either side of the bed freeing up the french doors and maybe putting our desk there (which would be easier to move if a situation like this arose and also we are re-purposing our present study). All this was meant to be way down the line but the bringing in of the range might push that up since we have to disassemble the modular closet.

To make a long story longer, i have to paint the wall our bed rests against to prepare for the closet move (no point taking it down and putting it back up in a place we dont even want it at) it might as well go where it needs to go. But it cant go on just like that, we want to paint behind it.

hence today I ducked out to the store and bought more Mythic paint to paint. it's just one wall so it's not bad but it is a bit of a rush...

BIG milestone

2009-07-19T18:53:00.001-07:00

This weekend was pretty big for us. We were going to tile the floor on Saturday and when we laid out the tile dry, we realised it was quite un-level and it started to worry us. So we called a friend Corey who had a few years of tiling experience (but he's a filmmaker) to come and help us and thank goodness we did, cos it looks amazing!

I posted the saga so far on FB. Tomorrow we are going to grout and hopefully after that we can start putting the cabinets in and actually begin regaining my kitchen!

Paint and more paint

2009-07-12T17:27:00.000-07:00

We threw on 2 coats of primer and 1 coat of colour this weekend. It's nice light gray called Fading Frost and it's made by Mythic Paint which claims it has zero VOC and can even be used by pregnant women. There's hardly any smell and it costs $60 a can (which is 4 times the normal price) We figured it was a small kitchen and worth the money to not be inhaling fumes for the week.

In between, Mike levelled the subfloor (took forever) and then we had to lay down cement board and make the cuts for the floor. We were going to try and lay tile but it was getting on in the day and we still need another coat of colour so I think we will tile next weekend.

Mid-week this week, Serene and I will paint the 2nd coat so that we are ready come next weekend. It's coming together nicely and we're quite pleased with the results we have achieved so far. We also loaded the Ikea returns into the car and Serene and I will return the cabinets tomorrow and some Home Depot returns too. I estimate we will get about $500 back after we buy the additional cabinets we do need.

We also picked up a wet saw from the Art Director that I met on this new job I started. He had one lying around his studio and doesnt care when we return it. That's great 'cos knowing our schedule, it will be a while!

We also hit a small snag which delayed us. There is a window in the kitchen that was previously blocked by the 'fridge. Once we moved the fridge the window became exposed and today we realised (when we were painting) what bad shape it is in. We are sorta at a loss cos we dont think we have the skills to re-frame it and now wonder if we should delay the reno of the kitchen while we find someone who can.

So sometime this week, we will also get a window guy to come out and give us a quote on reframing and getting a new sill which I hope isnt too pricey. If it is, we might have to figure out another way or live with it. It's not horrible, just looks bad now that the rest of the kitchen looks nice.

I also took a look at the Ikea hood we bought it and doesnt look nice at all. As our oven sucks anyway, we will also have to buy a new oven and hood. All these 3 things need to be done before the counter gets put in so hence we didn't really rush the tiling since there's no real need. I will take care of these things this week and we can tile next week and assemble the rest of the cabinets at our leisure. It's a bit of a setback mentally and financially but we took a deep breath and decided not to stress about it. Once Ikea cabinets were returned there was no really rush I mean I have been sans kitchen for 3 months now. Even with tenants downstairs, I can live with it a few more weeks.

Happy 4th!

2009-07-05T17:33:00.001-07:00

Mike & i spent the 4th of July...renovating, of course! In fact, a 3 day weekend was much needed for this phase of the renovation.

On Friday, we fixed all the sheetrock bits and pieces and installed the corner bead and basically prepped the wall for mudding. Then we went to Home Depot (ahh...our favourite place) and bought everything we needed to finish the job up until tiling. Or so we thought.

It took us 3 hours and a sketchy rig on the roof of the car (10 pieces of cement board) before we came back and then we went for dinner with some friends. It has been our style of renovation that our life really shouldnt intrude on it. Of course we are giving up a lot do this on weekends but if we want to see family and friends, we feel it is important to continue with a modicum of a social life.

On Saturday we started early (for us) at around 9am and mudded all day. It took forever because (a) we are amateurs and (b) we're amateurs. We were accompanied by the loudest music from the neighbours which was a little dispiriting because if we have a bbq anytime after our renovation we would have to deal with that godawful music/noise. It happens every Saturday but yesterday it went much later and louder. I'm glad the founding fathers fought so hard for our neighbours to give them the right to blast their music such that our walls were practically shaking.

At around 6pm, we ran out of joint compound and had to do an emergency run to HD. Just as well since we forgot a few other things anyway. This time, armed with a 5 gallon bucket, we mudded till about 10pm and let it dry overnight. As it is, we have about 1/4 of that left.

Several web videos advised different things so we decided to go with our instincts and sanded the next morning. It was dusty work, mostly Mike's doing. I did laundry and other household chores. It took him about 2 hours then we cleaned and re-mudded.

While the 2nd coat of mud was drying, we examined the floor to see how we could level the thing. Since we are expanding the kitchen slightly there is a great disparity in height between the kitchen and the parquet floor. We decided to lift up all the old subfloor and extend the plywood base. It also involved pulling up floorboards under the pantry. There has always been a slight sag in the floor just before the kitchen and we fixed that too (plywood was over a 2x4 that wasn't really connected to anything. We are cutting a new piece to bridge the 2 joists)

Now that our floor is essentially level (well more or less) next weekend we are putting down cement board and tiles. I will rent a wet saw this week and we are also going to do some midweek work - Mike is going to mud some areas a 3rd time (those that need it about half the work we've been doing) and we are going to take a crack at assembling some cabinets.

The only time stress I've had so far is Ikea. It's not the fact that my tenants come back on the 22nd July. It's the fact that my return date for these cabinets is 21 July. I know we have certain cabinets we definitely won't be using (cos we changed the design of the cabinets last minute and I added cabinets but did not take away the old ones) so I estimate about $700 of cabinets I wont be using. If we pass the date, I wont be able to return them and we would have burned that cost. So that stresses me out a little.

We figured since that's the only time crunch we have, let's at least take a look at these cabinets mid week (not impeding the normal weekend work) and see if there's anything damaged or missing or unnecessary. Once we lay down tile, we have a jump start on the assembling and next week mid week i can return the stuff. They delivered these cabinets almost 3 months ago! We havent even looked that them once!

Framing & Sheetrock

2009-06-28T05:23:00.000-07:00

We took a break last weekend and went up to the Thousand Islands to visit Mike's dad and Ann. It was a nice break and this weekend we picked up where we left off. Finally finished the framing & sheetrock in the 3 major places we needed to - the 2 ends where the load bearing wall was removed and where the pantry wall was removed.

We worked till 930p Saturday night cos we knew today we had a few social engagements and we wanted to bring our niece around downtown Manhattan so I feel pretty good about the work we did last night.

Our next step will be a pretty big one - we have 3 days because of 4 July weekend so we are going to tile by the end of the weekend. Of course we have a huge mudding/joint tape/sanding job ahead of us but they need time in between to dry anyway so while that's happening, we are going to prep the floor for tiling. There are uneven parts where the old parquet was (we extended the kitchen a little) and then there's the pantry section too. So it will be quite time consuming to problem-solve and come up with a list of things we need to buy.

Since we can't shop Saturday (it is 4th July) we will probably inspect the floor and the entire kitchen to see what big & little items we need and buy everything on Friday. This will include paint, cement board, thinset, spacers and random electrical stuff we need to finish the outlets and close up the big breaker box. Hopefully we can still spend the latter half of Friday mudding and taping. It will be more of the same on Saturday and if things don't go too badly, we can lay the tiles down on Sunday (very optimistic)

I won't rent a wet saw because I think the chances of us actually laying tiles down till the weekend after is more likely. It costs $50/day to rent or $140/wk so we might as well wait till we know which day we are doing it and do all the cuts on that day. Even if we are ahead of schedule and end up laying tiles on Sunday, we can leave the cutting till the week after.

At least that's the plan anyway.

I won't lie and say the sheetrocking has been fun. I do all the measuring and cuts and Mike installs it. It's been a good system dividing a very un-fun task and I find that I have a good feel for it. It's not an exact science since cuts are in all sorts of shapes & sizes. You can just make out in the picture we had to do a scalene triangle sized cut in the ceiling which was a huge challenge and I think it came out ok! (and even if it didn't, no one's ever gonna get close enough to find out!)

Towards the end when it got late and we were doing the pantry wall, we definitely got sloppy so I'm sure when we mud/tape we might have to re-do some bits. It's definitely taught us to demo better that's for sure since we now know what lies ahead if we do not!

A friend gave me 3 4x8 pieces of sheetrock he had lying around which turned out to be a lifesaver. We also ran out of 1x3 lumber at the end too but and it would have greatly impeded our day to stop work to buy new supplies.

Progress Report

2009-06-15T05:03:00.000-07:00

The week before we went to Montreal, Mike and I ripped up the tiles and took down a small wall separating the pantry from the rest of the kitchen (it used to house the washer/dryer we relocated to the basement and I put pantry shelves after they were moved). This will increase the square footage of the kitchen.

Pulling up the tiles was noisy work and the disposal wasnt fun either. We had about 10 large contractor bags which we (as per usual) fed out slowly to the garbage guys every 2 days (it would really annoy them to take them all at a go - as it is, I will have to give them a big tip for Christmas). We also pulled out the appliances and created a makeshift kitchenette in the living room for making tea & sandwiches and I re-purposed the pantry shelves there for the microwave and toaster oven. We also bought a grill for the patio and with the use of the basement kitchen were able to live fairly comfortably for the next 2 months.

Ikea delivered the cabinets and everything we bought including a new hood - we bought them so early because of the 10% discount and even also prepaid for the counter. So we have a million flat pack boxes in the living room too which is one reason why the dining room is out of commission (it is also adjacent to the kitchen making it a workspace too). Since we were doing a lot of the work ourselves, we got higher end Ikea cabinets and an expensive counter top. Using the Grays' budget as a guideline ($15,000) we are currently at about $11,500 ($7,500 for materials and $4,000 for labour). It isn't exactly the same kind of renovation since they moved their kitchen but it is very similar as we have almost identical sized kitchens and counters. They also went to Ikea but they have 2 new appliances (Ikea has a tie-up with Whirlpool). We decided our appliances were new enough and didnt really need upgrading. I thought a long time about getting Ikea cabinets but I decided for this starter home that we intend to sell after a few years, there's no need to get the dream cabinets i've always wanted. it wouldnt make financial sense. We can do that for the next house.

After our Montreal weekend, we had 1 day before i left for Germany so Mike and I ran some electrical conduit for the lights I intend to put in the floor molding for the dining room. This had to be done first while the breaker box is still open and exposed. We also made sure we had sockets for the new location of appliances (dishwasher is moving to the island and 'fridge is also moving).

While I was gone, Mike's brother came and taught him how to frame walls and sheetrock. They made great progress especially up above the island (or peninsular as we are calling it as there is a wall it is attached to). The contractor had merely removed the wall so all the finishing work had to be done by us.

This past weekend, Mike and I finished the peninsular wall which took a really long time because we're novices. But I think it turned out well. It is also the wall with the breaker box so it's very tedious involving small cuts of sheetrock and patching it like a jigsaw puzzle. The other 2 sections will go much faster as they weren't as torn up. The other 2 sections are the wall across from the island (the other side of the wall that the contractor pulled down) and the pantry wall we removed will also have to be finished.

We are headed to Thousand Islands this weekend to hang with Mike's dad and Ann (they rented a place for the week) it's Father's Day and I think it would be nice for us to take a break especially now that the Vu-Lees aren't returning till 22 July, our deadline has relaxed substantially. They had intended to come back June 11 pushed to July 9 and now July 22. My niece, Serene comes next Monday but she can stay very comfortably in the basement and we can cook our meals and eat them down there as we have been doing. The Vu-Lees left all their furniture including the 42" tv so I havent really felt very put out by this renovation.

My plan for the coming weeks:

July4 weekend - it is a 3 day weekend so day 1: finish the other 2 sections, day 2 & 3: start mudding the joints between sheetrock. Mudding and taping the joints requires time to dry between coats so we can still take Serene to bbq or just explore in the afternoons. I don't think we will work all day. If we do, it would only be day 2 as it would need time to dry.

July 11 weekend - day 1: painting all kitchen walls - just a neutral colour and a quick job, nothing fancy. Day 2: prepping floor for tiling. This is going to involve some research, a trip to Home Depot and a dry run of laying tiles out to see if we like the aesthetics. I doubt we will actually do it till the next weekend

July 18 weekend - day 1: tiling. Day 2: moving appliances back - at least the oven. This will give me back use of my kitchen even if I have nothing else I can cook. The Vu-Lees will be back and I would have run out of time otherwise!

July 25 weekend: assembling cabinets and putting the kitchen together

The plumber comes tomorrow to move the plumbing for the dishwasher and sink (we weren't going to tackle that ourselves - it's worth the $750) so that's also part of the plan...

I expect a few delays because we have Serene and we might want to bring her around the first weekend just so she can find her way but I don't expect it to delay us more than a week. Besides there are things I can do on my own during the week (like mud joints and paint) which could save us a precious weekend day when both of us are available to do other more important things.

The end is in sight I think. I will breathe a sigh of relief after the plumber is done because that means all the actual construction work is done and things like finishing walls and tiling is really considered 'finishing work'. Unfortunately I have realised, Mike and I excel at demo & construction and really suck at finishing work - detail oriented things that people actually notice. This is good for next time when we renovate again I will pay someone to come and do all that kind of stuff.

Mike and I have surprisingly managed to work quite well together. We hunker down as a team and work problems out together. It is quite gratifying to work with our hands together although there are bouts of frustration (mostly from him because he is much more of a stickler for perfection). But we handle it well and as long as I keep us both well fed it works out. We only ever really fight when we are both hungry.

D-Day!

2009-05-08T15:14:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow we demolish our kitchen! I have already sold our existing cabinets to some lady on CL for $300 (I hope we remove them well) and I spent an hour today taking stuff out of the cabinets and the pantry and putting them in boxes and milk crates.

I'm not really sure how we intend to remove the fridge hookup to the water line and I just noticed when I took stuff out of the fridge that the copper pipe and an electrical conduit runs through the back of one of the cabinets. I am assuming there's a valve we can shut off somewhere (if not, we're in trouble)

Anyway, Mike picked up our new tiles which don't come from Canada like we thought - rather they are Italian which is nice (and probably explains why they were $6/sq. ft) We still really like the colour (whew). While we are quite far from tile installation, it's at least one thing we don't have to think about. Our new Ikea cabinets are coming tomorrow also and as they are flatpacked, they can easily sit in the dining room until we get around to it.

Tomorrow's punch list includes: removing cabinets, knocking down pantry wall and removing appliances. Sunday we intend to break up the tiles to the subfloor. I secretly want to do all that on Saturday but I dont want to put too much pressure on us. After that, it gets tricky because we then have to run the electrics and move the plumbing for the sink/diswasher to the peninsular. Then we have to finish the wall of the peninsular (not an island since it's only 3 sides water) before we install the tile.

I leave for Europe May 21 so my goal is get to finishing the electrics and plumbing before I leave. When I am gone, Mike can finish the walls (I can't help with that anyway) and he can also paint.

In the meantime, our fridge is still going to be up and running and we will have the downstairs kitchen to use as well as a grill in the yard that can supplement although I'm quite sure while I am gone, Mike will be eating a lot of pizza.

The Grays have it easy...all they have to do is build their cabinets and install it in their new kitchen. They've had those cabinets for a week now. I sometimes really envy them and wish we could have paid somebody to do all the construction work like they did. But they were moving their kitchen so it isn't quite the same situation as ours and I am (sorta) looking forward to the challenge of problem solving. Mike and I work well together so it's another team-building exercise!

Wish us luck, we're gonna need it!

Yardscape

2009-05-04T07:21:00.000-07:00

I planted potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini, rosemary, basil and cilantro but they are all in pots. I'm sorta intimidated by actually planting in the yard and until we actually landscape the place I dont want to commit to anything.

The composter is doing well, but it's been very wet this week so I might add some stuff to make it work faster.

My grass seed I planted earlier in April is slowly coming, hopefully it will start to look less patchy soon.

The front yard is actually more interesting, we put in a Bleeding Heart and also a Japanese maple.

Kitchen Renovation Plan

2009-05-04T07:07:00.000-07:00

Mike and I sat down and wrote down everything we needed to do with the kitchen. Then I cut up the tasks into little strips and then we worked out the order it all needed to be done it. It helped solidify the process and was very helpful as we managed to find out a few things we had forgotten in the kitchen planning process (like the fact that the plumbing which we are moving to the peninsular might need a wall or that the oven hood would need to be installed further out than where it was now) Hence, we rejigged the plan a little and now I have to go back to Ikea to buy different cabinets to add to the order which is hopefully being delivered soon.

This weekend is D-Day - we are going to be tearing out everything. After we had broken down the plan, we also worked out a schedule to do everything in. As I am leaving for Europe in 3 weeks, we hope to have the electrics and plumbing done by then and Mike can finish the walls while I am gone. I'm secretly hoping he's ambitious enough to also paint the room while I am gone. We are also going to Montreal during one of the next 3 weekends so our schedule is quite tight.

I put an ad on Craigslist for our old cabinets (saying best offer) and I got a bite from a lady. I told her $300 which I think is a deal for her and bonus for us. Whoever it is has to come this weekend, I said. I also threw in the sink for free.

Im not working this week so I will move all the cutlery,plates and food into the dining room later in the week. Our plan is to get a grill before we start so as to be able to cook. We will keep the fridge going so we can hopefully not lose our ability to cook. The tenant downstairs is leaving tomorrow so in a pinch we can cook downstairs too or clean the dishes at least. Running water is the biggest issue but the bathroom isnt far. We can now wash dishes while we shower!

Another Busy Weekend for the Becks

2009-04-05T15:50:00.000-07:00

My friend Kurt who is a union electrician who wires commercial spaces came by to help us move the breaker box that we had left dangling after the contractor took the wall away. He really put us to work - he did all the actual wiring but Mike and I did a lot of the manual labour.

All 3 of us worked from 8am to 10pm and I had already bought all the materials beforehand! (an adventure in itself). We also had to interrupt the feed to upstairs cos it came through the wall too and they didn't have power for a few hours.

It was immensely satisfying though. I know everything in theory but actually doing it makes all the difference and gives us a lot of confidence. Of course we realised later when the boiler wasnt kicking on that Mike had accidentally cut the cable that connects the thermostat to the boiler (he thought it was telephone cable which it is but just not for a telephone) We reinstated it today and everything now works fine.

On Sunday, I cleaned the house (the dust is just incredible) and we filled in the hole from the tree that Mike dug up last week. In the evening, we grilled some steaks and burgers with the Grays and it was very satisfying.

Busy Busy Busy

2009-03-29T17:05:00.000-07:00

What a weekend we had. The contractor took our load bearing wall down on Thurs/Fri and we exposed the brick on the wall across from it (in the dining room) on Saturday. It was a messy project but it was made easier 'cos the contractor had sealed the room up for us for his project so it saved us some time. Ideally our trash was supposed to also be carted out with upstairs and our unit but we couldn't make it in time since he took everything out Saturday am.

Anyway the pictures are up on Facebook if anyone wants to see them. There's also a 2nd album

Now that the wall across from the brick is open, I don't feel like the brick dominates the room too much (I worried it would make the room feel small). Overall I have never been a fan of exposed brick walls but Mike loves them so I think I can roll with it.

A friend of mine, Luis came over to help and it was great having another pair of hands especially carrying out the debris. Plaster is extremely heavy and we used over 20 bags. The garbagemen are getting a tip from us for sure!

Since Luis was here and we had bought an axe from Lowe's (much better gardening section than Home Depot) Mike and him were just messing around the yard and when I came out the big tree stump was gone! I can't believe they got it out.

Anyway we cleaned the brick all day Sunday and then cleaned the house for a few hours and attempted to reconstruct a working kitchen with no wall on one side. Next week my electrician friend will come and move the breaker box for me (it was in the demolished wall so right now it is just hanging). It's good to have friends in low places to come help do these things!

So what next? I am torn between moving on to the the patio and yard and leaving the kitchen for a while until we figure things out but then with the Vu-Lees gone for 3 months it's great to have an extra kitchen while we work on ours. They come back June 11 so we can't dally too long to make up our minds. Embarking on the kitchen means tiling ourselves and doing some minor plumbing ourselves. We consulted the contractor and he gave us some useful ideas/tips which I liked. Mike wants him to be more impressed with our handiness but I got the name of this contractor from a guy at work and this guy is used to dealing with very handy homeowners. I doubt he would be that impressed with us.

Upstairs also renovated - they moved their kitchen to where our living room is basically. They were gone for the weekend which I thought was a bad move cos contractors need to be supervised, even trusted ones. I think Alberto's weakness is finishing work - he's not very good at it but he seems to be good for the inner workings of things. I tried to be more foreman-ish about it but Alberto wasn't going to take any critiquing from me since it's not really my position. I pointed out some flaws I had thought Sarah wouldn't like and he fixed them. Turns out their closet doors aren't the way they want so there's going to be some issues there I think.

I'm leaning towards doing our own kitchen but we will see...

The Wall

2009-03-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

Due to circumstances beyond our control, we are currently taking down our load bearing wall. It all started when upstairs got a call from our contractor saying he had an opening to do their kitchen moving this week instead of 3 months from now and they jumped at the chance (and if you think WE are hasty, they are both not even here this weekend having planned their respective trips to the UK/Miami months ago).

So, opportunist that I am, I asked him to take down my load bearing wall since 'he was here'. We negotiated a reduction of $1,300 and now he's doing it for $2,200 which is a deal considering he's shoring up the wall and buying the materials for about $800. He started today and the demo should be done by tomorrow evening (I hope). But even I couldnt convince him to remove the plaster to expose the brick; he said he just didnt have enough time since his next project is Monday. He must be the only contractor working non-stop in New York City which actually speaks well of his reputation and work.

Since we want to join the Grays in debris removal cost, Mike and I have to expose the brick ourselves this weekend and hopefully we can get rid of it all on Monday. Did I tell you we reached a compromise with the brick? We will expose the brick in the dining room where the opposing wall is being taken down. I feel this won't make the room as small. The living room will remain the same

This shunts the tree stump removal project to the side temporarily and we concentrate on the dining room for now. We are even thinking of making that room the living room once the wall comes down - we will have to see how it looks and lay out the furniture.

Last weekend, we had started on the tree stump and had made great headway considering we had no axe or hatchet. The tree is quite old and very brittle and the roots break off easily once we saw at it. I also tilled the yard and lay down some grass seed for the fun of it. It was nice to work in a garden, I've never done it before. I've container gardened for years but this is different.

The timing is also good cos the Vu-Lees left on Tuesday for a walkabout which will last 3 months. Already I am using their kitchen downstairs since mine is quite difficult to get to. Since the Grays are gone this weekend, we are acting as foremen for all the projects. We shall see what happens.

Upstairs is starting to shape up very nicely. The contractor is plumbing and doing electrical but the Grays want to take a shot at hanging cabinets and all that themselves. I too feel adventurous..I mean I dont want to leave this place not knowing anything except Alberto's number by heart!

Yard

2009-03-16T07:06:00.001-07:00

This past weekend was nice (50F) so I went into the yard to clean it up and prep my pots for planting. I usually do this around this time except in Bergen St it was container gardening on my fire escape. This year, I am container gardening on my patio!

I might try tomatoes again. Probably a ton of herbs.

I have to do a soil sample soon just to get an idea of what's in the ground. In case we want to plant vegetables or something.

Quotes

2009-03-16T06:37:00.000-07:00

Our contractor gave us quotes and broke it down for us in parts - kitchen ($8,000), demo walls for the kitchen ($3,500), bathroom ($10,000) and constructing new walls ($4,000)

Overall I thought the quotes were very reasonable esp for someone so reliable. If I told you you had to spend $30k on renovating, the house (kitchen & bathroom) I would say it wasnt a bad deal. OF course this does not include tiles, appliances, fixtures and all so it will go up to the 50k region all told.

I think we will probably do the wall between the kitchen and dining first and expose the brick opposite that. Unfortunately there is a breaker box in that wall and we will have to move it to the back of the kitchen. That was quoted at $2,500 and the only figure I objected to. My next step is to find an electrician to give me another quote for that bit. The contractor subs it out to an electrician he likes anyway, it's not like he does it himself.

Either way the contractor is not available till May/June anyway which gives us time to save more money for the kitchen. It would be wonderful to get those 2 parts done together but it involves much more than just having the cash - we have to plan the kitchen carefully and lay it out and shop for tiles and cabinets etc. I'm not sure if we are ready for that. The weather is warming up and I'm probably going to start working more than 2-3 days a week and I'm starting to focus my attention on the yard.

Homebuyer's Credit

2009-03-12T07:24:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama has loaned us $7,500 for our first house to be repaid interest free over the next 15 years so we decided to take the money since we owe the government this year. So we have some cash and since interest rates are 2% and this money really isnt enough to (a) buy another house or (b) generate enough interest, we are going to spend it on renovating the kitchen.

Well it isnt really the kitchen renovation 'cos that would need much more money, we just want to take our wall between the kitchen and the living room down. That entails moving the breaker box and installing a support since this is a load bearing wall. If we have any money left, we can look into finishing the kitchen - tiles, cabinets etc.

I called a trusted contractor to come out and take a look and give me quotes for the entire house reno including the bathroom and see what we're up against

Mail Slot

2009-03-08T05:59:00.000-07:00

We cut a mail slot into our front door this weekend. Our postman always complains about having to open the door and sort the mail - he is a lazy git. This way he shoves the entire bundle into the slot and we sort it ourselves.

I'm ok with it 'cos it means he doesnt have to come in through the front door anymore. In Brooklyn, the system is there is a tiny key holder that is locked by his key and our house key is in that key holder. Everyone has a key holder next to their front door and it can only be opened by the postman. This way he only has to carry one key and can access everyone's door. Usually that means 2 entrance doors - so that he only has access to the mailboxes and the inner door is kept locked. We are quite blase about it so we dont have a lock on the inner door - he could come in but would still have to unlock our front door to the apartment. Of course he could steal our shoes. The other day he didn't lock up properly after he left which annoyed me. He's old and sloppy and grumpy.

We borrowed a jigsaw from a guy at work who lives in Bed-Stuy. I am quite pleased to have met this guy cos he is doing his house in Bed-Stuy up by himself and I like having a circle of friends who are doing the same as us. They have experiences to relate and it can be useful for things like tools and materials. This is the 2nd grip I have met who is doing something like this. He is really useful because he lives a mile away and has every woodworking tool available.

I have managed to convince Mike to patch up the ceiling from our wall removal. Previously he wanted to wait till we finished our renovation as we dont know what walls are staying but I argued that the ceiling needs to be fixed regardless of what happens to the walls. I hate having a big hole like that. So that's our next project.

Standstill

2009-03-03T07:03:00.000-08:00

We are sorta at a standstill at this point - only doing little projects. I like our new plan but we need money for it and I'm not completely sure that's the best plan we can have. Until then, we save and think.

I am going to a friend's house he is renovating in Crown Heights so I can gather some inspiration and bounce some ideas off him. He is doing a lot of the work himself and he was the one who recommended his contractor to us that moved the washer/dryer.

My pool of friends who have limestones/brownstones in the area is ever increasing. I am working with another guy (they are almost always grips) who has a 2fam in Bed-Stuy and he's doing it up himself. He is an extremely talented carpenter however, so his confidence is probably much higher than ours. I like this feeling of not being completely alone. Upstairs is going to take down their wall in 2 weeks and I wonder how much we have to help - ugh - it was so dusty and awful. I guess we can donate a few hours...

Floor Plan

2009-02-18T15:40:00.000-08:00

I found an awesome free website that allows me to put my house on line and mess with it. I've embedded the design within the website cos people were having trouble with the link

Original 280 is what we have now and New 280 is what I'm thinking about. Move your mouse over "Ground floor" to pull up the 2 designs. It's a pretty cool website and once you put all the dimensions in (very tedious) you know you can move all the furniture and walls around and you will still be according to scale.

Now that I have the original 280 and I can view it in 3D I realise how stupid the design of this house is BUT I also realised how hard it is to design a house when you have a layout like this.

As you can see, I am thinking of reclaiming the hallway space into the bathroom and creating an entrance foyer. Right now our hallway leading into the apartment is very narrow and our shoes take up space. On top of that, once you come in you are in a long hallway with nowhere to put coats etc...very stupid.

Anyway we are toying with this design for now. Our latest idea is new 280 2 which is very close to being THE design we settle with

Wall Day

2009-02-07T16:10:00.000-08:00

We moved all the furniture out of the study (and pushed the furniture to the back of the dining room). Chris came at around 1pm and they started working right away. The process only took about 5 hours although there was much more debris than I thought there would be. Thankfully it is going to be 50F tomorrow (15C) so we can cut up the big pieces and start putting them into trash bags. For now we left the stuff in the backyard. I didn't do much cos it was dusty and the 2 boys seemed to be able to handle it just fine.

Here is a link to Facebook where I uploaded the photos. We found a newspaper dated 1932 and cost 3 cents! It was a really cool way to see history in your own house - I sometimes think new construction is nice but owning a 100 year old house is something I think could be very exciting. I think new construction belongs to kitchens and bathrooms. Everything else being old is ok.

We are letting the dust settle and I have been cleaning in between and hopefully it can be at a stage that I can move the living room furniture in tonight. It's still early so I think I can.

And the wall comes tumbling down...

2009-01-28T16:49:00.000-08:00

We set Feb 7-8 weekend for taking down the interior wall (non load bearing) Mike and his brother and his father will be doing it and bonding - Beck men style. I will hang with Shelly (Chris' wife) and the kids for the day which suits me fine. Mike and I will move the furniture around the day or night before in preparation. I already have all the plastic and tape we need to protect stuff from dust. Mike's dad is bringing all the tools necessary 'cos Heaven knows, we don't have a sledgehammer and a Shop-Vac etc. I can tell his dad is very excited about it - his brother too. They love this kind of thing and thank goodness for that!

I'm quite excited because finally the layout will be as we want - sleeping in the front and living in the back. Right now we have to go down the hallway from our dining room to the living room and I always find it awkward when we have guests over that they can see into our bedroom. It encourages me to keep it neat but still...

Our architect friends have proposed drawing up some plans for us for the entire apartment. It seems really expensive but we haven't discussed what it entails yet - we've never had an architect before so I don't really know what they do and what kind of use they will be. It seems that for renovation work, they really function as interior designers more than anything. Structurally they know about that load bearing wall and what it entails to take it down...but a contractor would know that too...wouldn't they?

Anyway, Mike and I haven't discussed the quote yet but we will this weekend and formulate an answer. As what we want to do to the house will require permits, having architectural drawings is going to be necessary no matter who we end up using.

New Tenants

2009-01-20T06:42:00.000-08:00

So the Vu-Lees are moving into the basement apartment Feb 14. They came by to take a look and figure out what they can bring and what furniture they have to get rid of. We agreed that if they are living here it will be $900/month including utils, wi-fi, laundry and satellite tv. If they are travelling and it's just their stuff, it will be $300/month. We felt it was unfair to charge them money when they are physically not here.

Surprisingly, this basement is very popular and has made more money than I have in 2009! The extra cash would be nice and we are doing them a big favour which makes me feel good.

There is some overlap with Zohra but only a few days; she can sleep in our apartment - after all, she stayed in our old (smaller) apartment for 2 months last year.

We put in a carpet that Sarah had lying around so it feels warmer (the floor was tiled making it very cold) and re-arranged some cabinets in the kitchen area. I'm going to Ikea tomorrow to get a shelf and I think we're ready.

Pondering

2009-01-18T05:54:00.000-08:00

Tom & John gave us some interesting advice and Mike and I are digesting the whole thing. I think we are also getting them to draw up a plan - a grand scheme of things, if you will - and we can then slowly decide what we can do ourselves and what we have to sub out to contractors. I would still like the challenge of being our own General Contractor but I think for now, my most important thing is getting the wall down between the dining and the living room. Once that happens, I can at least get the rooms in order and live in the way we are supposed to live until we gather enough money to do the rest of it.

They suggested taking the load bearing wall down which goes through the entire apartment creating a hallway. By reclaiming that hallway space back, it makes the place look bigger and more spacious. It sounds big but I'm not really intimidated by taking walls down - even load bearing ones. To carry the weight, one has to install a steel/wood header to take up the weight of the joists and we have enough height to the ceiling that we can afford not to do it in the ceiling.

My next plan is after we get these plans from them, to subdivide what we need to do - project by project. Some projects we can do (with friends) and some, I believe, we can do with professional help and some have to be done completely by professionals. But the process is something I will be able to get my head around once we get an end result we want.

I really should post a layout...

Architectural Opinions

2009-01-16T08:42:00.000-08:00

We invited our friends, Tom & John over this weekend for some advice about the wall we want to take down between the dining room & the living room (currently the study). We know we want to do it, but because the layout is a little awkward, we need more input on where it should start and hopefully some advice on kitchen layout too.

They are making the trek from their Grand Central apartment so I hope they won't turn their noses up at us. I know Tom in particular is leery of our decision to do it ourselves.

Mike also know Kevin O'Connor from This Old House (they met through that doc on Jimmy Carter) and he's asked us to come to the wrap party of the house they are doing in Brooklyn right now. We were hoping they could also give us some sage DIY advice

As I have been house bound for the past month I've started to develop more of a bond with the house - shabby as it is. I always viewed it as the rebound house after the disaster of 242 and while it was adequate, I never fell in love with it. But I think one doesn't have to love every house one's in but it's begun in the dining room. I love the way the light comes through there at 11am - 1p everyday - when I am making an early lunch or late breakfast. It's a great room to be in. I also really like the bedroom and the vibe it's exuding. We are still going to move things around in there, but it feels right. Now if only I could like the 2 rooms in between and the bathroom more!

Our friends who got laid off last month have asked if they can move into the basement. Their rent is currently 3x what we would charge and then they feel they could be free to travel or wander about without worrying about haemorrhaging money on NYC rent. In a few months, they want to come back and look for work or make their decision to migrate back to Oz but until then they need to buy some space and time. They also said they could help us with the renovation of the place in general which I thought was nice.

We asked them to come see the unit - it's vastly different from their current flat in the W. Village and moving from Manhattan to Brooklyn can be a shock - they are coming on Sunday to see it. Zohra leaves in February and they will move in right after.

2009 and already the basement unit is booked solid! I'm not sure if this is what the Grays had in mind but when we asked, they were ok with it.

Patching up the pantry and Installing a Chandelier

2009-01-04T08:19:00.001-08:00

We finally patched up the wall where the washer/dryer was. When I say 'we' obviously, I mean Mike. It's not a big enough job for the both of us so it was all him. As you can see the washer/dryer removal left a lot of holes and stuff where the vents and hoses used to be connected. We told the contractor not to patch it up so he gave us a better discount. Our plan is to (for now) make it a pantry but in the big picture, when we renovate the kitchen, we will have to figure out what to do with the entire space. The kitchen boggles us cos we just aren't design people so we're inviting some architect friends over 'for dinner' purportedly and picking their brain. Anyway, the first step was just to make this little area nice again.

Mike mudded the joints, taped and then spackled the area before painting some primer. We did 2 coats and then planned to install the shelves. At least, this will make up for the lack of space in the kitchen if I can get all the appliances hidden away and whatnot.
Unfortunately, the walls are completely uneven and we can't install any shelves so I'm just buying some steel pantry shelves off Craigslist for now just to utilise the space better.

The process took about 3 days in between waiting for the spackle to settle and primer to dry. To make better use of my time, I stained some wood shelves and a tray (hey, my skill level is much less, one can't expect that much from me) which I think turned out ok.

We also installed a chandelier in the hallway (I know it's excessive but I got it from a job and it was just kicking around taking up space) and moved the hallway light into the kitchen. We did that together 'cos if there's one thing I know about at least, it's wiring.
So all in all, a good productive week off. Zohra is settling nicely into her basement studio apartment although she eats meals with us before she 'retires' into her space. She's also been working so having her own space down there allows us to have a semi-separate life which is nice. As our first tenant, I think the system is working out well.

Basement Clean Up & Reversing the Laundry Room Door

2008-12-30T04:44:00.000-08:00

Basement Guestroom

Zohra's visit for 2 weeks on the 30th has prompted a massive clean up of the basement. She's coming for a job and we are actually charging her money so I feel like we have to 'do it up' nicer. It is a testament to the amount of stuff we have that we can furnish another little studio downstairs. It's bare but the essentials are there.

The layout is nicer in the sense that the kitchen and bathroom are consolidated in the front area making it a cosier (aka small) studio apartment. The bedroom in the back we have converted into a tool room/storage and the even smaller room way in the back where the furnace is, we have made into a laundry room.

So we cleaned downstairs and put in the single air mattress and some cobbled together furniture and I think it looks all right!

This led us to another project we have been planning to do for a while - flipping the laundry room door so that it opens the other way. It used to irritate me that the door opened into the left wall and the light switch was on the other side. We have had difficulties actually, somehow the door isn't swinging right after we flipped it. A little research on the internet and we are heading back down there today to try and figure out what we did wrong. Our first DIY project and it seemed like it would be easy but apparently it isn't!

Mike and I have a week off before we go back to work so our plan is to do all the little projects we need to do - this includes fixing the pantry wall where the washer/dryer was. We went to Lowe's yesterday and bought some sheetrock and some tools (his dad gave us a $100 gift card from Lowe's) so I think we have everything we need. This door has hung us up a little (pun intended) but hopefully we will succeed.

Adjustments

2008-12-13T20:15:00.000-08:00

Some things i have had to adjust to in the new place:-

Ants in the kitchen
Less natural lighting
Older more worn apartment
Terribly laid out bathroom
No Thai delivery place close by
No easy parking

Positives:-

It's quieter - not on the bus route
I have a yard
I also have half a basement
It's warm!

The old apartment was on the top floor and had 2 skylights. In the winter, I froze all the time. The landlord didn't seem to believe me (or rather, he was too cheap) and we would get bursts of heat at 6am and 6pm and 11pm. The rest of the time was a fight to retain the heat from those long awaited bursts.

The Grays have the top floor now and are basically the reason why we are so cosy. They insist our heating system is 'defective' but they're just not used to living in Brooklyn in a 100 year old house on the top floor. And they don't have blinds either which don't help. Every other day, they are in our apartment tweaking with the thermostat. I'm just waiting for the realisation to sink in that the heating system isn't broken, it just isn't efficient! To make it worse for them, they used to control their own heat in their tiny 500 sq ft apartment in Chinatown and now they have double that space and no control. Mike and I have some adjustments to make to our new place, but I would say that the Grays have a bigger adjustment to make since they made a huge leap in location and size of their new digs.

We put our taking down the wall off for a bit until my job is done and Mike is back from Atlanta. We did buy a nice Douglas Fir Christmas tree and it's nice in the new dining room. Makes me happy every time I see it. Tomorrow, I will wrap some presents that I got for Mike and it will look complete.

Zohra might come to stay with us for a bit in the basement. If she takes this NYC job she's been offered she will be with us for 2 months. It would be nice pocket money (oil bill was $900!) but better than that, Zohra would be here!

Phase 2

2008-12-04T09:22:00.000-08:00

The re-arranging went well. We were done by 3 pm on Day 2. Enough time to relax and watch some football and clean up a little. My camera battery charger died so I can't really put up pics just yet. We pushed ourselves on Day 1 and ended up working till 1am but it was worth it the next day.

To create some privacy between the bedroom and the living room (soon to be the study) we put up a curtain and the only fabrics we had were random ones. Now the living room looks like a gypsy's den - very mysterious. Once we knock down the wall between the present study (soon to be living room) we will move switch the 2 rooms. Eventually, we will install sliding doors where the curtain is which should allow privacy if we use it as a guest room as well as allow light through. I wrestled with the idea that it's now a railroad 2 bedroom as opposed to the current layout which is a true 2 bedroom but I couldn't really deal with sleeping in the back room next to the kitchen. Besides, the way we have laid things out, when we sell in a few years, the new owner can always move back there. We haven't done anything that would make this set up permanent. Even taking down the wall from (old)bedroom /(new)dining room and (old)study/(new)living room is something they can easily put back. The seller told me she put up that wall after all.

Phase 2 this weekend is nothing to do with that, actually. We still have to patch the holes in the wall left behind from where the washer/dryer used to be. I want to re-purpose that as a pantry and we need to shelve it as well. It would have been a good time to do the basement too (where the contractor had re-routed into the new laundry room) but the Grays have visitors so we will have to wait a little. We want to get our feet wet anyway. Guys from work gave me some very useful tips and so it's a trip to Home Depot this weekend to get some sheetrock.

It's fun being a homeowner. Mike and I work really well as a team. I usually plan, he tweaks the plan and he runs point on the execution. There's no doubt he's better with his hands than me, but I'm a quick study so it all works out. I feel that Phase 1 really boosted our confidence in each other and in ourselves. Even though, in the big picture, it seems like we really didn't do very much, we had a tight deadline and quite a lot to do. And it was fun drinking some bourbon at the end of the day and congratulating our smug selves.

First Re-arrange

2008-11-29T09:37:00.000-08:00

We are moving the bedroom to the front of the house today. It's an intricate step-by-step plan consisting of (a) buying enough storage for all the clothes we have (don't forget we had a walk-in closet in the old place) (b) building above-mentioned storage (which now covers the other front door we had - floor plans and pictures to follow) and (c) playing that game where you shuffle large pieces of furniture from one room to another without jamming yourself up in the process with only a small room as a buffer.

We are in the midst of step (b). Mike is assembling a decent looking Ikea closet thing which I think will be the best solution for the space we have. It's easy to move and switch around and is fairly well built unlike the crappy Ikea things out there. It is also customisable which is very important. My work clothes and personal clothes are so different and I have to wear so many work clothes each time cos of my aversion to being cold. Plus sizing down from that walk-in closet has really been difficult for both of us.

Once we put up this closet thingy, I'm moving all our clothes into it and tossing out the old chest of drawers we bought from Craigslist and these cube things we bought from Target. This (is supposed to) lead us to moving the bed into the front and then moving the dining table into the back. Then the little furniture items are not going to be do tough to do. While this process sounds neat in theory, the reality is like moving all over again - things strewn everywhere and little things getting lost in the mix.

I'll let you know how it turns out...

First mortgage payment

2008-11-23T14:16:00.000-08:00

Just wrote a check for our first mortgage payment this month. It wasn't much more than our rent so I don't feel the pinch so much. I was away for the last 10 days so haven't been nesting as much as the Grays have upstairs - something that is quite evident when you walk into their apartment and ours. Especially since we have houseguests and then we go away for Thanksgiving so there's even less time and inclination to do anything.

I don't really mind. I want to just get used to living in a new location first, and I don't want to make any rash buying decisions the way I did when we first moved to the rental place. I bought everything in sight then and regretted it later.

The lack of light still bothers me a lot, especially when I go upstairs and their apartment is soaked in glorious light. I miss our old apartment in that sense. We also have ants in the kitchen which is annoying. Everything is old and not working properly and the Malaysian in me just wants new construction (especially kitchen & bathroom) but I have to counsel myself to be patient even when I just want to rip everything out and just replace it. I also tend to bury that feeling when I'm working so much since I then feel that I'm saving money towards a brand new kitchen and it's ok.

We did move the washer/dryer but it left a big hole in the wall which we have yet to patch. I will repurpose that big space into a pantry (once I have time). A guy at work is making me shelves for the pantry so hopefully it all happens at the same time.

Week 2

2008-11-03T14:58:00.000-08:00

It takes some getting used to - being at a new place...I miss the light we used to get at the top floor but I don't miss the freezing days I would spend there. It's the curse of being on the top floor that you freeze in the winter and roast in the summer. In our old rental place, we didn't have control over the heat (cos the landlord paid for it) and he never turned on the heat during the day so I had an electric radiator I used in case it really was intolerable. I think that's why I always escaped back to Malaysia in January and didn't return till March!

Mike's been home improving up a storm. I never have to nag or push him to do anything - he's up and at 'em from the word 'go'. It's pretty incredible. He says he just feels different cos we now own the place. I guess I should have realised that he really cherishes the things he owns - that Ipod I gave him 5 years ago which now only lasts 20mins on that battery still looks as new as the day I bought it - meanwhile I've already lost one and am enroute to destroying another.

We still have some boxes to open and store but my kitchen still needs to be re-jigged. We are moving the washer/dryer downstairs to the basement and once that happens, I will have a pantry and much more space. In that sense, my kitchen is a little bit of a downgrade. The walk-in closet is also severely missed.

But we have some ideas of moving things around and knocking down walls. I want to ponder these ideas for at least a year to see how the sunlight travels through the space and to also save up some money and settle in to see how we really feel.

Mike's brother & sister in law come this weekend which will be exciting. I just weeded our little yard in the front which was really fulfilling (and tiring) and planted a dwarf burning bush. The backyard is going to be tackled in the Spring. In the meantime, I'm looking at composting options.

We have a 2nd room that we are using as a study/guest room which is exciting cos we get our first houseguests at the end of the month! The Trittos are visiting from SF and it's going to be fun to see them as well as show them the 'new' old place.

I will have pictures up shortly

First weekend

2008-10-28T15:30:00.001-07:00

Moving day wasn't as brutal as I had expected but it was long. Im so
thankful we hired movers because it took 4 guys 6 hours plus to finish
the move.

Sunday morning we went back to the old place to spackle and clean and
Mike's dad and his wife came to help us settle in. Ann helped me scrub
the bathroom (and thank goodness she did, I don't think I've ever
encountered such years of dirt in a place before) and Chip helped Mike
install new locks on the door.

We have made some inroads into the zillions of boxes and laid the
apartment out in the way we planned. It's a trial layout to see if we
like it and slightly different from the Grays upstairs

Mike bought a charcoal grill and we made burgers Sunday night which was
nice. Im having some space issues as it is a bit of a downgrade to move
from my lovely walk-in closet to a rail and some drawers but that's in
discussion still...

The kitchen is also kind of a downgrade as it is smaller and darker than
my old kitchen. But once we move the washer/dryer I will be able to
reclaim the space as a pantry (and eventually both floors will move the
kitchen altogether). So as everyone as advised, it's a never ending
process and I have to work on everything one thing at a time.

We've made an appointment with a recommended General Contractor who's
gonna walk around and give us some ideas of prices of moving the kitchen
& moving the washer/dryer and whatever ideas we have in our heads. It
will be useful for us as we can then decide how much we could do on our
own to save some money and how much we actually can do with our (low)
skill level.

I think the first project for us is the washer/dryer move. In the mean
time, we might try stripping the paint around the window sills & lintels
to see if we can reclaim some of the natural wood. Right now it has
years and years of paint and it's so ugly. I have already begun weeding
the front yard (as per Ann's advice) and it already looks a ton better!

--iris--

We did it!

2008-10-23T17:46:00.001-07:00

I can't believe we did it! It wasn't as stressful as people warned us it would be and not as long - only 2 hours!

We did spend every last dime that they told us we would (unfortunately that was accurate enough)

We signed a lot of papers, wrote a few checks and cracked a few nervous jokes and it went great.

After the closing was over, we went back to the place and popped a bottle of champagne and felt really nervous/excited.

I have to admit during the walk through (which we did a few hours before the closing) I felt overwhelmed and really scared. Buying a house seemed like the worst idea ever at the time. After the signing though (when we couldn't do anything about it) I actually felt better.

This was the first time we had seen the place in ages and I realised we should have stained the floors and painted. The house (at least our floor) is in much worse shape than I remembered.

It is too late since we are moving Saturday and while it would have been ideal to do all this before all the furniture was moved in, we are just going to have to bite the bullet and do it after we move in. Needless to say, I think we are going to be spending a lot of time at "Home Depot, maybe Bed Bath & Beyond if we have time"

I've mentioned before that I am going to convert this blog to a renovation blog after we buy a place and I think I'm going to stick to that plan. Right now I can't tell you what needs to be done first, there just seems so many things 'wrong' with the place! Maybe this isn't the time to discover I might not be as DIY as I thought I was!!

T minus 2 Days

2008-10-21T06:31:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy few days trying to pack as much as we can. I've taken the week off so I can do more but Mike helps in the evening. The kitchen is done bar the last few things and the closet is mostly done.

I'm selling off/giving away a few things (thank goodness for Craigslist) and cobbling together the spare change from the couch for the big chunk that's due on Thursday...we won't know exactly how much we will need (the figures given earlier were just estimates) till tomorrow but I do know we're going to be quite broke for the first few months.

The timing is not ideal as work is slowing down for me as the year winds down and I will go home in January for 2 months but hopefully I can work quite a bit before I leave...it's in God's hands and I'm (sorta) confident it will be ok.

The final walk through is scheduled for 11am on the day of the closing. This is where we get to see the house again to make sure she's got all her stuff out and that the house wasn't ruined since the last time we saw it. The movers are booked for Saturday 9am. After the closing, all of us are going back to clean the house and the Grays are moving in on Friday.

Our mail has been forwarded, everything else has been cancelled starting next week...this is the real deal! Very nervous!

Change of Closing Date

2008-10-19T08:15:00.000-07:00

It's now 23 October! I think this is becoming a reality as evidenced by my husband making plans for the move & layout and possible renovations. He's such a last minute guy that if he's talking about it then I guess we must be closing in 3 days!

We will move Saturday Oct 25. We are biting the bullet and getting movers. The cost-benefit analysis came out in favour of not stressing ourselves to death and making this as painless as possible! Plus I managed to bargain Shlepper's to a decent rate so we might as well. Doing it ourselves with 2 guys and a truck (no insurance) would have come out to about $300 less and much more work for us.

Paperwork

2008-10-16T06:13:00.000-07:00

I know it's impossible to get banks to lend any money right now which is why for only a loan of 2 years' pay and with 20% down, they are asking for the world! It's nuts how much documentation we have had to provide - rent checks for a year, banks statements from all accounts sourcing anything over $2,000, it's just been one thing then another.

What is silly is that, at any moment, any of us could lose our jobs and no amount of paperwork would be able to ascertain knowledge of that. So they can source all they like and get back up of back ups but the truth it, mortgages only get paid as long as people are employed. It's so typical of banks to do this - lock the door after the horse has bolted.

I think we are on the home stretch anyway, and the bank lady has said if we satisfy everything that the underwriter wants, we can close next week. I am operating on that premise and have already booked work NOT on the 22nd October.

We get to move fairly leisurely which is nice and have already turned in notice to our landlord (well, we needed a letter of reference from him anyway) so we close Wednesday and move that weekend.

I was going to paint & buff the floors but I think they are in decent shape so we're just going to leave it. I can paint later. I did manage to score a lot of hardwood flooring from the last job I was on - the set was a typical brownstone - and I could have even bought a pool table for $1,200 (which they paid $3,000 for a few weeks prior) But I know in this business, I will be coming across all these things and more, so I'm in no hurry to furnish this new place without having moved in yet.

We are currently also looking at the contract between the Grays & us and working out details. It's more of a reference really, but we will make it formal by having our lawyer codify it in legalese. Unless things go horribly wrong, I think the next 3-4 years will fly by. It's hard to imagine more stress on this partnership than what it has already been put through so I am optimistic.

I am really grateful we found them: another couple with very similar ideals, and goals and with very close visions of what buying this place will entail. I think we will learn a lot about home owning in the next few years - not the least owning a 100 year old place and the problems that will arise. But I think I am relieved I have someone else besides Mike to share the burden with. It is really surprising how I like that. So many people have voiced to us how strange they find this arrangement - having to deal with someone not my husband about the house we are going to own but I find it strangely comforting to know we are not in this alone.

Just when you thought it was safe

2008-10-07T15:57:00.000-07:00

We have been told by Wells Fargo that the neighbourhood we are buying into is 'distressed' and that means no HELOC. We have to stick with a straight loan of 6.625%. The loan officer was sorry and as a way of compensating is giving us an intro rate of 5.5% for the first year which saves us $300 a month for the first year.

Small comfort indeed for what would have been a nice reduction in mortgage payments. We have a small chance that the appraiser marks us as a 'stable' neighbourhood but the likelihood is quite small.

Our mortgage broker is furious at us for going to look at other places for mortgages but his rate was so lousy there wasn't much choice. Then he said since we were now doing a HELOC he could match everything the bank did and his appraisal already has us at stable since it was done last month.

We were in a quandary but we really need to know we can close end October which Wells Fargo has promised so we are sticking with Wells. The mortgage broker said he thought they could close by end month but no guarantees.

Sigh...this whole house buying thing really isnt simple. Ideally if the mortgage broker had been worth his salt, we wouldnt have even gone to another bank and heard of this new type of loan. Then to be told we cannot get this new loan and that the broker can now get it for us just makes it worse. What if we go back and all of a sudden he can't close by end of October??

Wells Fargo is annoying too - not doing enough research and rushing to close the deal and telling us whatever we wanted to get us in the door - and sure enough, we are stuck with her.

Mind you, we are still getting a better rate than the broker was giving us BUT with the new type of loan, who knows now what we could have gotten.

Interest Rates

2008-10-02T16:42:00.001-07:00

With a little bit of bargaining and asking around, the best offer we have now is Wells Fargo for a loan of 531k @ 6.375% and a HELOC of 32k for 6.875%. This is because the conforming loan limit is 533k and once we get under it, we get better rates.

We could top up another 15k per couple which was what the Grays wanted to do, but in light of the current economic climate I was not in favour of putting more cash into a house that could immediately depreciate and lock in the liquidity we might need later.

This 'creative' loan as proposed by my friend @ citibank was a good way around it but his rates don't compare as well to Wells once we told them that was the kind of loan we sought.

A good thing about this type of loan is we can overpay and later use the HELOC to renovate the house. Another good thing is the Grays can overpay their half of 15k and leave that remainder for us to pay the interest on and everyone is happy. By the time we would have sold the house, the HELOC would long since be gone and we could still divvy up the house
sale money fairly.

I think I could pay it off in 2-3 years leisurely and 1-2 years @ a push. Either way, the mortgage payment is within our budget so it's bonus. It's a similar amount to the loan I took out for my car 2 years ago and now my car will be paid off just in time to assume the house debt. Funny how that works out.

Now it remains for us to get a better rate on the HELOC and I will be much happier. Citibank offered it @ 5% (but the main loan was 6.5%)

On another note, the house owner is adamant about closing Oct 22. I wanted to do it on Friday Oct 24 and move over the weekend I suppose 2 days is not important although each day of rent is $50 and we are looking @ $450 we could have saved towards moving. The seller really
annoys me with her intransigence. (I know what you are all thinking - she could annoy me more by not selling the house! Having been through what we have, I suppose this is the least of our problems) Still...she didn't budge on the selling price even after we pointed out the
electrics of the house required some work.

Looks like we could be in the new place by Mike & Lixuan's (my niece) birthday! I have been getting so used to living off 2 plates and 4 bowls and 4 plastic cups I can't imagine what it would be like to use more than 2 pans.

Sigh...

2008-10-01T14:12:00.000-07:00

We are so dumb. The mortgage broker is now saying he can only offer us 7.25% so we started calling around. Wells Fargo offered 6.625% and Citibank is offering the same. But we paid $550 for an appraisal of the house and so we are now out of pocket $550 unless we go with the broker. But there's no way we would go with this broker when the rates are a 1/2 point worse - so we just have to bite the bullet on it.

If only we had done more research once we picked this house - since it's a clean house with no problems and we are putting 20% down, all the banks want our business. We were previously with a broker because we were paying less than 20% or we had houses with "issues" that required lenders who were more lenient.

Now it's down to Wells Fargo & Citibank. I'm voting for Citibank cos it's my friend who's getting us the mortgage and I know he's going to do the best for us. But the Grays are leaning towards Well Fargo cos "she's already done some legwork". I'm basically indifferent - whoever gets us the best deal. I was impressed that my friend at Citibank came up with some creative financing ideas in today's times whereas everyone else (especially the darned mortgage broker) were content to accept whatever was out there.

But knowing the Grays as I do, they always go for the safest option and anything involving out of the ordinary freaks them out. I don't really mind. Just as long as we close by end of the month. Both banks have assured us they can do that. We are looking at Oct 24.

Moving along

2008-09-26T05:15:00.001-07:00

We ordered the appraisal on the house so things are moving apace. Looks like our lender is going to be HSBC which I find much more palatable than Chase (our previous lender). No real reason but it's nice to have all my banking in one place even if it wasn't I who pursued HSBC, rather our mortgage broker.

Rates are around 6.6 or 6.7 - fairly high. But we are a 2 family below the conforming jumbo loan limits so it is higher for us. At least that's what the mortgage broker is saying. I would really be pleased if we could somehow snag a 6.5% rate

Pictures of 280

2008-09-16T15:02:00.001-07:00

Just realised we don't have pictures up

Last minute

2008-09-11T13:26:00.000-07:00

We tried desperately to look for another loan for 242 - now that the seller is actually bridging the loan between closings, it's totally legal (although still not normal) but our mortgage broker said it would be hard to find a lender willing to give us money for a place that had 'title seasoning' as well as open violations on the place.

So we gave up and put a deposit down for 280. We signed the contract yesterday and they have our money now. Presumably since they are normal people, we should probably be able to close in a month or so.

Mike's happy for one, he liked 280 and didn't really want to bother with 242. I'm sure the Grays are disappointed and I also would have liked the profits we would undoubtedly have made with it but in this economy, getting a loan would have been tricky. I think after we get a track record with house buying, the bank will lend us money easier next time if we want to do something like this in the future.

On the bright side, we are going to get a house!

Update

2008-09-08T15:13:00.001-07:00

Since so many have been clamouring for an update...

We are going ahead as per normal with 280 BUT the Grays have consulted with another lawyer about the legality of buying 242. This new lawyer has said it's quite normal for short sales to involve 3 parties and has to speak to our bank before he can advise us as to what our options are.

We don't want to let go of 242 quite so easily (although admittedly, this impetus is mostly from the Grays but I feel the same way) especially if we have a chance to get a place we prefer, is closer to the subway and is (even after all the hassle of crumbly wall, DOB violations etc) going to be about $40,000 cheaper. In light of the ever increasing interest rates, the price differences are becoming very important.

Mike just wants us to buy a place already, and we are going to hold on to 280 until we have more information from the other lawyer but we should do as much research as we can. It is entirely possible we were ill advised by our lawyer. You all know I have never liked him and a while ago, I wanted to get someone else. But we were led to believe he was looking out for our interests although it might turn out he was just disguising his lack of experience.

Anyway, we are scheduling our contract signing for Wednesday and I'm of the belief that unless this lawyer has spectacular news, I want to buy 280 even though our mortgage is now going to be $300 a month per couple.

Inspection

2008-08-30T14:52:00.000-07:00

The inspection went well - very well. This is the 4th time we've met with this inspector and we are starting to understand his 'gallows humour'. Anyway he found some minor electrical issues (a few hours of an electrician) and not much else. While on one side I am happy, this means we won't be able to reduce much more.

I think that's fine. This house is a God-send after what happened with the last one.

The owner made us cornbread pancakes and was very nice. She has taken pride in the renovations she's done and it's been properly done which is much more responsibility than any other homeowner we have seen so far.

The Grays showed us the paperwork they faxed over to the collection agency. No word from them. I guess they are giving up hope too. I never really held out for much anyway, and while 242 is a deal I still had to contend with fixing that parapet wall at some point (30k expense) and all those DOB permits that were taken out and never closed. I would also have had to deal with the landmark violations that were existing (windows) It also needed a new roof . All this would have brought the price up to very close to what we are paying for 242. The saddest bit is that they were offering us a seller's concession which means they would have given us back 3% at closing and that would have paid for the closing costs.

We asked for seller's concession on this one but no avail.

280

2008-08-29T15:35:00.001-07:00

Our inspection is tomorrow so we are moving fairly rapidly now. I've looked into this oil issue and it's not as bad as it sounds. Most of Long Island uses oil heat - it's more efficient and the carbon footprint doesn't depend on oil usage (as propane is an oil by product) as much as it depends on your system. Meaning whether our oil system could be a Prius or an SUV but it's not oil that's the problem

This real estate brokerage firm is quite a large one so I don't think we will run into the same issues as we did with the other one and the house is occupied by one owner which removes the tenancy issues. The downside is that there is nothing that stands out much about this house and it's pricier than the other one.

But it has something the others didn't have and that is - availability!

I've moved on from 242 - I think it's silly to go hunting after such a bargain and lose sight of the fact that we want a house more than we want a deal of a century. It would have been nice to have both but this isn't bad at all considering the house-hunting season is almost over and we fell into this one so easily after losing the other one.

And so it goes

2008-08-28T15:08:00.000-07:00

No news from the collection agency I just can't believe they aren't interested in selling bad debt for decent money! Anyway we send in an inspector on Saturday to 280. Saw another place today which was nice but asking for 725 and unfinished basement. Sarah really liked it but the lady is really unwilling to go down in price so if Sarah can talk them into a seller's concession or a cheaper price, we might consider.

280 Leff**ts

2008-08-27T04:56:00.001-07:00

They accepted our offer of 705k with a counter of 708k. We will huddle and discuss soon but still waiting to hear from the collection agency as to the fate of 242 and if they are willing to sell to us at 620k. If so, it would be the deal of the century...

If not, it's not like we don't have other options I suppose. More expensive options but nevertheless, a house...

Latest developments

2008-08-26T10:08:00.000-07:00

Sarah & Oli got the paperwork from our lawyer yesterday and have learnt
that the seller's mortgage has already been farmed out to a debt
collector who is in foreclosure proceedings. From the looks of things,
they
could foreclose any day if they wanted. They were willing to take 515k
after closing costs from Bluewater Capital, but even that deal
expired on 8/15.

Oli is going to call the company this morning and suggest they
foreclose. Then we can buy title directly from "HomeEq" for our original
price (less a few costs, of course)

That's where we stand on 242.

Meanwhile we are going to see another place for sale by owner on
Thursday in the area.

Its been a nice change of events and maybe we can catch a break for once

Not bad news

2008-08-25T18:03:00.000-07:00

We got our deposit check back today even though we didn't ask for it yet and we deposited it. Of course, we are still proceeding with the other plan (of calling the seller's bank) and now, we are quite interested in this new place on Lefferts.

It has no outstanding landmark violations, all the renovation work seems to be done properly and above board with permits & licensed electrician & contractors. The only issue of oil heat is becoming moot as the owner is willing to reduce by 10 grand to 713k. We are still only offering 708k and sending in an inspector if she accepts it.

Hopefully with no violations, we won't be captive to this particular lender and we can get a better interest rate than what we've been getting. Previously we were stuck with Chase because they were willing to loan us the money with these violations.

Here are some pictures Sarah took today when she went back

Moving on

2008-08-24T15:20:00.000-07:00

As per my sister's advice, we got back into the saddle this weekend. Saw a slew of places (including a condo) and one 2 family house stood out - coincidentally on Lefferts Ave again. (The 2 that have fallen through thus far were both on Lefferts). This is the eastest one by far and asking for the same price as the one we lost last summer.

It's been renovated and not badly either. Some design elements were thought out - the top floor has a skylight and some walls knocked down and the bathroom already enlarged (space taken from a closet - all these limestones have the same layout so we were going to do these things ourselves anyway)

The basement can also be a rental unit and has been laid out that way with a kitchen & bathroom. A big drawback was that it was an oil powered house which is expensive and stinky in the basement. Taking it out and replacing with gas is going to be expensive.

We are seeing another 2 family later this week that Sarah has been on the trail of and we saw another 2 family we had seen before that the price has dropped. Not an ideal block and a small footprint.

The condo was interesting - converted so it was only 6 units and 2 bedroom units. The 2 ground floor apartments with private gardens had already been taken and I suspect they are the nicest ones. The top floor has potential and roof rights which would be an option for Mike & I. They were asking for 375k. The price is not unreasonable and we could probably afford it but it would be settling for something we hadn't really expected to.

We will hear on Monday when Oli calls the seller's bank to "report on them" to see what happens. There is a slim chance the bank will say "sure cheat us out of 100 grand, we don't mind, it's too much of a hassle to foreclose" which is what the Grays hope (they don't say so but I could tell they were holding on to it) and if so, we have a house. If not, then we get our money back and move on.

I don't really feel like I want to sue or avenge ourselves on these sellers although they have done us wrong - I think it's best to move on and walk away. It's only good real estate karma.

Sigh...

2008-08-23T12:44:00.000-07:00

So contrary to popular belief that we lost the house...we sorta didn't. The last we left it with the broker, since we were reluctant to buy a house that was 'questionable', she said she would refund us our deposit.

I gave the Grays a few days to think about it and when we spoke last week, I was surprised to hear they hadn't given up hope on the house. Sarah didn't want to come right out to say so, but I could tell she wanted to force the seller to sell us the house. She had attempted to contact the broker to say, sell us the house or we tell the bank on you etc.

Mike and I were just going to walk away from the deal and start all over but since they wanted to pursue the situation to its bitter end, we formulated a plan.

We told the broker we changed our mind and since they said it was all legal & aboveboard then we were willing to buy the house. Since the only real obstacle to that is legality (and our very prim & proper real estate lawyer) we agreed that we would secretly (through our lawyer) let the bank that owns the mortgage know about this shady deal they were attempting. If the bank was fine with it (which the Grays have talked themselves into believing they will be) then we are off the hook in terms of legal issues and also, our lawyer could then satisfy his need of keeping everything clean. Our lawyer thinks the moment the bank finds out, the deal is dead but that's the chance we take. The Grays think to negotiate a short sale with the bank requires 3 months and the bank will be grateful for any money they regain from this deadbeat guy.

Time will tell.

Our rate has been extended to Sept 15 so we have 3 weeks to do this. The broker is back on board and she also has informed me that the tenant is moving out next week. I'm not holding out much hope for this whole thing but I'm not unpacking everything that I've packed. It was just too heartbreaking...

Shambles

2008-08-15T12:55:00.000-07:00

Oh well now we lost the house and I am all packed up in various boxes, suitcases & milkcrates. We are going to have a talk this weekend (well I am) with the Grays to see if they still want to continue the partnership.

I am heartened by the fact that under a lot of stress & back and forth, we didn't really argue amongst ourselves at all. We all carried out specific tasks the others didn't like or couldn't do and between 4 busy schedules we made it work for us. It bodes well for the house renovation work that's for sure. We respected one another's opinion and sometimes deferred and sometimes insisted and it worked out great. Mike didn't do much in terms of talking with brokers, lawyers & such, but once the house gets underway they will see how useful he is 'in the field'.

Day 2 of post house death is not awful. Mike and I had dinner last night while I was midway through my workday (I'm on nights completely now) and he left for his man-cation this morning to NC. I have a fun filled weekend ahead as today is my last day on the job. The Grays and I chat on Sunday at our wrap party to see what we want to do. Their timeline is different from ours of course and they have been set back a year.

Oli mentioned our lawyer said we might want to sue the seller but I don't know about that. I'm not really keen to be litigious about it. I want my deposit back so I can buy another place and that's that.

My landlord is probably going to raise the rent since he has been looking around and seeing he can get $400 more for the apartment. It doesn't matter how much he likes us, really. Mike and I have been discussing that if the Grays don't want to come back, we will just get a 2 BR co-op in Lefferts Garden. We will be able to afford it easier and it will help us build equity until we are ready financially for a landed property.

A lot to mull over. Thanks everyone for your sympathy & good wishes & calls. It was very comforting.

Deal is Dead

2008-08-14T15:21:00.000-07:00

As to be expected, our lawyer doesn't really think this is 100% kosher
so it looks like they are returning our money & the deal is dead

The Truth

2008-08-14T09:59:00.000-07:00

Finally the real estate broker 'confesses' to me that this house has been a short sale all along. Apparently it is not illegal to not tell the buyers that they are buying a short sale house. What they want is a simultaneous closing

http://realestateinvestorweblog.com/2008/05/24/short-sale-all-about-simultaneous-closing/
http://www.foreclosureforum.com/mb/messages/25063.html

She said she understood if we were uncomfortable with the situation but they had a title company (who coincidentally was also their lawyer) who was familiar with seasonings and short sales and wanted to proceed.

I told her if our lawyer was satisfied with the paperwork and that it couldn't legally affect us, then we would be fine with it. She agreed so we are now waiting for their lawyers to chat.

If we had known this was a short sale to begin with, we could have done things so differently. I am not averse to structuring my loan differently or working with them to try to complete the sale. Now we are back where we started and have wasted all this time.

There's no way our stick-in-the-mud lawyer would ever agree to any of their sketchy deals so I'm pretty sure it's not an option. So now we have to discuss the 4 of us, if we want to continue being partners and looking for another house. Mike and I would like to continue but I know the Grays are fatigued and their timeline is different and they just spent a year looking for a place to no avail.

Nothing New

2008-08-13T11:56:00.000-07:00

They have given our lawyer the new attorney details but same old same old. He hasn't returned our lawyer's calls. The title company has cried foul with the seller's tricks and has refused to deal with them and told the other local title companies not to deal with them also.

I have exhorted the real estate broker to stop being funny and just sell the damn house already. Our lawyer is writing the formal letter saying we must close by Sept 15 or we get our deposit back. Our rate has also been extended to Sept 15. If we don't close, no one is liable for the extension fees. If we do close, we are liable for the $4000 but by then, I think I wouldn't even mind paying that for this house. Anyway, that's the risk we are taking.

So we are in a holding pattern but there's no real stress anymore since Sept 15 is a month away. If they want to keep playing games, then we get our money back. If they decide to play it straight and decide on a closing date, we will be there. I have told our landlord we are staying till the end of the month at least and he's still incredibly understanding.

Update but not really

2008-08-12T12:31:00.000-07:00

The real estate broker is giving me mixed messages about everything but
we are standing firm. Till they hire a new lawyer the deal is off. We
are issuing a formal letter saying if we don't close by Sept 1, then our
deposit gets returned. We are well within our right to take it back now
as we are well past the contractual date but our lawyer is being careful
and covering our behinds

Is it silly? I still hope for a last minute revival. Because this house
was such a good deal, it's hard to walk away from it and the seller
knows that. So we are bound in this unholy pas de deux and neither of us
can walk away while the other twists in the wind.

Im being dramatic. It's the lack of sleep.

The deal that won't die

2008-08-11T15:30:00.001-07:00

It is just incredible how much more of this we can take. The seller has
said that they will do whatever it takes to close and the title company
wants them to sign a piece of paperwork (presumably to indemnify the
title company and us from any illegal wrongdoing). The broker called and
told me she's getting that paperwork to the seller and they will get it
signed tonight.
The closing is off for tomorrow of course, there's just no time for all
this to happen in time. We don't really know what's going to happen
because as usual this all went down at 6pm when everyone had left for
the day.
There's still life in this puppy yet which is just unbelievable.
However, I refuse to give up. I know that God willing, if I am to have
this house everything will be fine.

More disappointing news

2008-08-11T10:40:00.000-07:00

Our lawyer has spoken to the title people, and they believe our seller is trying to break the law. He thinks their intention is to sell their house to a corporation (themselves) at a lower price, and present that to the bank as a short sale. They would then use the corporation to sell the house to us and make a profit.

I don't know if that's why the closing has been pushed so many times or whether the other lawyer balked or whatever, but it looks like we definitely won't be closing tomorrow.

It has been a long and painful road hasn't it?

Now i have to unpack all my boxes. I guess I can always pretend I'm moving into this apartment.

Disappointing news

2008-08-11T10:05:00.000-07:00

So it is confirmed the sellers got a new lawyer. However, our lawyer feels that this happened too late in the game as there are several pieces of paperwork they need to have before we close tomorrow. So he feels that closing is probably not going to be able to happen.

It is a pity because their lawyer was always ignoring our lawyer's phonecalls and faxes and emails and I feel that because she was a litigator and not a real estate lawyer she was never around and very antagonistic towards him. It was a very weird situation. We would get one message from the seller (via the broker) and a completely different message from our lawyer (via their lawyer). So it is a good thing she's no longer in the picture, just not so good it couldn't have happened a little earlier.

The walk through for the apartment is still happening at 5pm tonight. I start work at 4pm and with a complicated balloon light for the night work, I don't think I can miss the first half of the day. I don't really want to walk through a house I won't be owning anyway.

Hope

2008-08-09T09:33:00.000-07:00

I woke up at noon today after sleeping 12 hours to a slew of text messages. The real estate broker had left a message for our lawyer that the seller has a new lawyer and that the deal was still on. She wants us to do a final walk thru at 5pm Monday and we close Tuesday at 10am.

I tried to call Sarah cos she has been dealing with everything since she came back 2 days ago but no answer so I guess things are all right once again.

It was great to sleep so long I've been averaging 4-5 hours a day since we went on splits/nights and the real estate stuff happens at noon and I only go to bed at 6 or 7am. It was even greater to get this news...

Thank you, everyone, for your kind thoughts and emails and prayers. I have a feeling that's why this deal was salvaged at the last minute.

More developments and the beginning of the end - one way or another

2008-08-08T14:17:00.000-07:00

My lawyer calls and tells the other lawyer called and said they were off the case. He asked why and they said figure it out yourself. And then they hung up. The other lawyers seem to do a lot of hanging up on my poor lawyer.

Anyway i believe the seller lost the house (through foreclosure or something) and no longer has the right to sell it.

I texted the real estate broker (she doesn't pick up phone calls from us anymore) but no reply.

Aug 12, 2008

2008-08-08T09:44:00.001-07:00

This is it. (I think) The end of the road. We are going for Aug 12. I have booked a moving company for Aug 13. I have told work I won't be there Aug 13 and will be late Aug 12. Mike returns on the 12th (not in time for the signing but in time for the move)

Our lawyer is tearing his hair out trying to get the other lawyer to talk to him but he's just getting blanked. For a while, (and still) I think the other lawyer is just playing games with him 'cos he somehow managed to antagonise her. I don't really know what's going on with these 2 lawyers. Today he got word from them that "it's going to be ok" which I don't really know what that means - are the agreements ready? Can we close?

So many questions. One really shouldn't be approaching the sale of the house with such questions.

I have given up trying to be the go-between for this whole thing. I detest our lawyer and his negative helpless attitude. I despise the real estate broker for her ineptitude. The way I see it, we make this closing appointment, they don't show up with the right documents then we don't close. So we are out the bank attorney's fee of $250. But this way, we can look at everyone in the eye and determine who's been the funny one this whole time.

Let's just see what happens. I have paid rent till the 15th. I might have to beg our landlord for our apartment back, I think he secretly wishes we would stay (he really likes us, we like him too) but our worst case scenario isn't bad. I have to keep things in perspective, so I don't buy a house. It isn't the end of the world.

No go Aug 6

2008-08-05T13:51:00.000-07:00

The bank has been unable to update our documents and will only be able to do so at the end of the day today. Which means we can only schedule a closing 48 hours from today - Aug 8 is the earliest. I have told all relevant parties.

We are still waiting to hear back from the seller. I guess the biggest question is now, does he even have the right to sell the house since we have waited so long?

We will know more tomorrow.

Power of Attorney

2008-08-04T07:34:00.001-07:00

Mike has signed over his POA to me which means our closing schedule is made a lot easier even if it doesn't happen Aug 6, the stress is off. He's prepping a very important job and I can tell he feels he's in over his head a little. At least this helps. While no one really wants to move into their first house quite this way, we have to do what we have to do. Mike & I have never done things very conventionally anyway.

I have contacted 3 movers to get quotes to help with the move. We decided I just couldn't ask friends to help and I have a tight window since my weekend is Fri/Sat only and next weekend is already the 15th and we are only paid up here till the 15th. The cost is something we hadn't budgeted for but it is what it is. I was going to get cleaners to come in at the new place but maybe now I will just clean it myself. It will work out. I'm not worried about the monetary aspect of things (right now anyway)

Once the mortgage broker gets a copy of the POA and signs off on the whole thing, we will be able to confirm a date hopefully the 6th and then I will go back to the real estate broker to see how far along she has gotten with her agreements.

Scheduling

2008-08-01T06:44:00.001-07:00

The mortgage broker is now frantically trying to make an appointment at the bank for Wednesday Aug 6. Mike is going to be in Baltimore Aug5 till the 14th. Which means he has to sign over his power of attorney to me on Monday so we can close on Wednesday after Sarah gets back from England at noon..

You still with me?

Crazy huh?

If this is all possible however (power of attorney, Wed afternoon closing) then if we see those agreements by end today, then we are a go for Aug 6.

Meanwhile my house is half in boxes, I am dog sitting, still in the middle of a job and we also have a houseguest.

We can do this!!

Stressful

2008-07-31T14:26:00.000-07:00

I don't know why all this stuff only goes down at the end of the day. The broker texted me that the seller wants to close next Wed Aug 6. I said that was impossible with all the restraints we had but she insisted it had to be the date 'cos of "the payoff". Since I heard those words a few days ago, Ive been feeling very nervous. Somehow I just have a funny feeling about this payoff thing and that it could derail the entire thing the way the Section 8 tenant couldn't. We assume the bank is giving him some money if he sells the house instead of foreclosing? It's all speculation at this point.

Mike's schedule is now the issue at hand when last week it was Sarah's. Obviously 4 buyers means 4 schedules and it hasn't been easy and doesn't look like it will be easy.

I told them I need to see the 2 agreements I had emailed over (money in escrow etc) before we could proceed. Seeing that she texts me (and never picks up my calls) at 5pm how much can I do? Everyone has gone home for the day.

We will know more tomorrow. It will be quite enlightening. Check back in at 5pm.

The New D-Date Aug 12

2008-07-29T09:38:00.000-07:00

Aug 12, 2008. If we don't close on that date, we are done with this house. The bank will probably not extend a 3rd time and I don't know if any of us have the energy to continue. The problem is if we don't close, we are all probably going to have to find new apartments to live in...

So we are asking for an agreement from the sellers regarding this bit - paying for all the extension fees as well as if the tenant does not move by then, we will take 15k in escrow that will pay for our mortgage while she is still living there.

With these 2 agreements in hand, I'm quite confident we will be able to close Aug 12. It's getting these agreements in hand that's the million dollar question.

Mike goes away Aug 15 and my weekend is Thurs/Fri so I have no clue how we are actually going to handle the physical move. But that's nothing really compared to actually getting into the house...

My gut feeling? We won't get this house. I just have 2 weeks to live in limbo again. I will make empty gestures of packing and forwarding mail only to have it fall through.

But I pray and I hope and that's all anyone can do

Another push

2008-07-28T16:30:00.000-07:00

It's pretty incredible but we are pushing the closing date another 2 weeks. The tenant has found a place in PA and needs to get approval from Section 8 but we are once again aiming for a vacant house.

A new thing came up - the broker mentioned waiting for a payoff from the bank - she didn't elucidate clearly but we have yet another uncertainty they might not even have enough money to afford this house to close on (if that makes any sense at all)

I am ok with waiting for a vacant house, this is definitely better than the weird situation we were gonna find ourselves in trying to evict someone and moving in etc.

The dates we have picked out are not ideal as my job is on an offset weekend (Fri & Sat) and Mike goes away Aug 15. It's going to be annoying to move but I guess we can try again or at least pretend we are going to try to move.

Best part is going back to work tomorrow and explaining I took 10 days off for nothing and asking for another day or 2 off next 2 weeks.

Let's try this again, shall we?

2008-07-24T14:33:00.000-07:00

July 29 is the new date - 3pm. It's not the most ideal time cos Sarah has to rush to the airport for her flight to the UK but coordinating this between 3 lawyers and 2 families has been hell.

I'm scared witless.

Just nuts

2008-07-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

We are now waiting for the 2 lawyers to speak to one another regarding this contract. We did some research and have found out that the tenant has filed for a transfer to PA (she is Section 8 - on Housing Welfare) which is promising - I had had doubts that anything the broker was saying was true.

So it looks like if the seller agrees to our terms of keeping 5 months' mortgage payment in escrow we can go ahead with the closing. But with the way their lawyer is, I doubt they will be able to get anything going in time for July 30.

Mike & I are off to a wedding in VT this weekend and trying not to think about it...

WTF

2008-07-23T05:47:00.000-07:00

The seller has asked us to push the closing date by a week. We are trying to scramble for a contract whereby we close but the tenant eviction still rests on him. Our lawyer is trying to work out the details to keep a year's mortgage payment in escrow until the tenant leaves. We are also asking for the eviction notices as well as the copy of the lease.

I haven't spoken to the broker since late PM yesterday so I'm not sure what the developments are. It's all very harrowing.

Discussions

2008-07-22T06:58:00.001-07:00

It's all madness now that we have pushed the closing date. It's all up in the air as to when the next date is as it is dependent on the seller. He is paying for the extension - but if it's a week it's $2,000 and if it's a month it's $4,000. We have given them a deadline of 12 noon today to decide and I want to see the copy of the eviction notice before we go through this again.

Sarah worries the deal will fall through and it could, I suppose, but I'm sorta over it. I will try my hardest to make sure it doesn't but if it's not meant to be, then it's not meant to be. One has to be philosophical about these things. Ultimately, it's just a house.

There's many a slip between cup & lip

2008-07-19T07:05:00.000-07:00

Yep. Another setback. The tenants were rejected for their new place and
won't be moving out in time for the walk through & closing.
The eviction notice the landlord filed back in May doesn't take effect
till end August. Which means we will probably close aug 27 or 28 now.
There are charges for cancelling a closing but the seller will pay for
it as well whatever costs it takes to extend the interest rate we locked
which would expire July 23.

But I want to look @ the positive side of things...which is that maybe
we can get a better interest rate and since my apartment & the Grays'
apartment haven't been rented out we aren't going to be without a place
to live. Another month of rent vs mortgage isn't catastrophic.

It is a tough pill to swallow though but almost par for the course we
have embarked on from the beginning.

Our landlord was very kind- he said in his experience buying landed
properties in New York never went as smoothly as you wanted it to.

Mike and I aren't going to let this bring us down. The timing of this
closing was always terrible - in between a job & a wedding - aug 27 is a
much better date (bar the fact it's a whole month later!)

Oops - July 22!

2008-07-15T08:31:00.000-07:00

They brought it closer a day which is fine by me. We intend to clean on the 22nd after the closing and then move on the 23rd. 24th is to settle in and on the 25th we head to VT for a wedding not back till Monday 28th. It's all very real & final - I moved our internet & gas and disconnected Con Ed.

Our packing is desultory - about 10 boxes right now and I'm slowly freaking out. Mike is more blase about the whole thing. I just feel like no matter how much we pack, the apartment hasn't looked different at all! It's quite scary.

July 23!

2008-07-06T07:52:00.000-07:00

Mark the date...it's only 2 weeks away and I am starting to feel overwhelmed by the vast amount of stuff we have. I can't believe when we first moved in here, we only had 2 suitcases and some chairs.

My job ends in a few days and then I'm dedicating myself to the Packing.

On another note: home insurance is proving to be expensive cos there are 4 of us (as opposed to the 2?) I guess the liability increases the more people live in the house. We are looking for ways around it...or at least Sarah is.

Our mortgage payments look to be about $3,700 a month which is $1,850 a couple. For the Grays, it's identical to the rent they were paying in Chinatown. For us it's a $450 jump but we expected that, seeing as our landlord hasn't increased our rent in 4 years. I still think if we rent out the basement a few months out of the year, it could at least just take care of homeowner's insurance & property tax - the 2 bills we are not used to paying. We will see what the first payment looks like. I estimate it will be around $2,000 a couple which was our budget when we first started looking for houses.

The final word

2008-06-26T11:34:00.000-07:00

The lawyer called me yesterday with the news that the Bank's attorneys approved the loan with a condition that we close the permits in 90 days. Our lawyer said that it was unlikely we would be able to do that but as long as we started the the ball rolling, it would be easy to get an extension.

It was a relief and I have to tell you, it's really been nerve wracking to say the least. Mike's dad will close before us, even though they put the house up for sale just a scant month ago...isn't that crazy?

Anyway, our interest rates look terrible. We locked in at 6.875% - but what can we do? Our target closing date is July 23! That's less than a month away!!

I wrap this job July 10 and then I give us 2 weeks to pack. We will close and then leave for a wedding during that weekend while the Grays move in and we rush our move on the Monday after. It's not ideal but I don't really care.

Everyone at work is very happy for me, the teamsters especially, have given me advice on home ownership and DIY stuff. It's a nice feeling to be part of the "homeowner club". Mike and I really can't wait to start doing stuff around the house. Since the permits seem to be for the bathroom, we have shifted priorities. The semi-attached wall will have to wait (whew! I was wondering where I was going to find $15,000 for it) and we can concentrate on the bathroom. It would be cheaper to do, more fun and would close out these permits. That gives me a year to save the money for the wall and get used to the mortgage.

The timing couldn't be better. In the past year while we were trying (and failing) to own a place, I managed to save more and up the deposit by another 15k. With the forecast of a slow summer for movie production, it promises to be a very busy (and profitable) Fall for us. It seems like every step of the way, God has held our hand even when it seemed like everything was going to collapse I always knew if we were meant to have this house, it would happen.

I'm glad I started this blog for everyone to keep updated on the process. It was originally for my family back in Malaysia (as you can tell by the excruciating detail especially on the money side) but even Mike's family & our friends from far have started reading it and sending me encouraging emails. It was a fun process and extremely cathartic. As we convert this to a DIY/renovation blog, I hope you guys can continue sharing with us your opinions and thoughts!

Seems ok...

2008-06-20T08:51:00.000-07:00

Spoke to our mortgage broker yesterday. Mostly to discuss rates which are now 6.8%. It's frustrating to know a few weeks ago we were looking at 6.1 and now it's crept up so high. He believes the trend is going upwards till the end of the year.

It seems like the bank will be ok with the violations. Our lawyer recommends we get some money from the seller because it will cost us time & money to close these permits and I have asked the realtor for $3,000 from them.

The tenants have said they will move out July 1 so we are looking to lock down rates for 30 days. The seller has also promised that if they take longer than a month, he will pay to extend whatever rates we are getting.

Our target date to close is July 24, with July 10 being an outside chance. I won't let myself get excited after the roller coaster ride this whole process has been. The interest rates rising has been somewhat disappointing but I won't let that get us down. After all, if we do end up in this house, it would have been something of a minor miracle!