reinforcing the walls

So we've been adding outlets in the upstairs bedroom, and needless to say, its been a bit of a challenge.  And in the process, there was a casualty. Plaster walls make for interesting holes:

And thin slats make for poor support, especially when a little too much pressure makes them crack. So tonight we did some reinforcing so that the outlet would be nice and snug.

First we cut some pieces of tempered hardwood. 

And then we put them behind the wall and clamped them in:

And then we screwed them in:

And plastered over the holes:

Don't worry, it dries white.

Oh, and Leroy helped. Of course:

cabinet hardware

So tonight we didn't really do very much. We had good intentions of doing some more of the electrical work, but we both got home pretty late, so we went on a walk instead. But, I thought I'd put up some picks of the cabinet hardware I ordered yesterday. We got a bunch of samples, cause we aren't really sure what we are going for. Without further ado, here's some picks:

The knobs:

I'm partial to the first one, since it looks like the knobs on the doors, but the whole point of getting samples is to see how they look.

For the drawers we are going to do handles or pulls (and we will probably do handles on the very large doors behind the kitchen table, since tiny knobs would look kinda silly on 4ft doors)

A couple of them shipped today, so they should be here soon. Funny how owning a house makes you excited about things like that. Just like how I love getting socks and underwear for Christmas now. Oh grown-up hood, so much silliness.

Unpacking and re-venting

The bedroom has been sorely in need of some attention. It still had a number of boxes with odds and ends in them and some unslightly plastic containers that I figured we could do without:

Also, you might notice our table was still in plastic wrap, which isn't really the look we are going for. So I unpacked and rearranged until I ended up with this:

 

Ah, much better (besides the unmade bed, but pretend you don't see that). Now the problem, of course, is that every time I organize a room, I find things in it that don't belong. So I put them in other rooms. Which might have been previously organized, but are now slightly less organized because I'm putting more stuff in them. It seems to be a never ending circle, but I'm hoping we'll get through eventually. For example, the bathroom closet, which was so nice and neat previously:

 

Now looks like this:

Ah well, I'll just have to do my best not to get dizzy.

And speaking of going back around, Matt replaced the dryer vent again this evening. He and Joe attempted it a couple nights ago (the previous version was a paper thing, very flimsy version of what we now have), but had some trouble with the connections. The second try worked like a charm though:

Thanks to Cori (and Joe the first time around) for the help!

More electrical work

Mark came back today to continue working on the electrical with Matt. We are installing outlets and switches upstairs and generally trying to bring the house into the 20th century. I think my favorite will be the replacement of the pulley system "the engineer" rigged up to allow you to turn on the light upstairs when you are at the bottom of the stairs:

 

Its sort of hard to see in the picture but the wooden rod hanging below the railing actually attaches to the pull for the light upstairs. Its being replaced by a switch on the wall at the bottom of the stairs. I think this was the easiest to fix because they just went through the laundry room (after taking all the paneling off, of course). The little blue box is what they installed.

They also are putting one in the hall upstairs and two (maybe three? they are still working as I type this) in James's room:

It doesn't at all seem like a fun job, but how amazing will it be when we actually have outlets in all the rooms, embedded in the walls. So nice.

As for me, I did some sluthing on amazon and ordered some potential knobs and pulls for the kitchen cabinets (in oiled bronze to match the door knobs we've already purchased), folded laundry, and put the dog run up on craigslist. Hopefully someone will want it, though Matt did seem to have a good time showing it off:

 

New Roomie

As some of you may have heard, our friend James is moving in with us for a while. We spent a good portion of Saturday helping him out of his apartment and into our house. Most of the stuff is temporarily living in the garage pending unpacking:

 

We did get to have a pretty good time helping him throw stuff he didn't want off his fourth floor balcony, including one very memorable folding chair that exploded. We also got a nice new addition to our living room courtesy of James, so now we have seating for a number of extra people:

  

Which is pretty awesome, cause we love having people over, and speaking of which, we also got the extra bedroom ready for company:

So if you are in oregon and in need of a place to stay, you've got one now

The garage gets a makeover

As you may know, the giant garage was a pretty big selling point for us. Its technically a two car, since it only has two doors, but I'm pretty sure we could fit four cars in there if we got creative with the parking. Not to mention it has a little workshop area out back. But in the past month or so, our poor garage has been a catch-all for both things we don't know what to do with (porch furniture) and activities we can't do in the house (painting). And since the move-in, its only gotten worse until we were faced with this:

An unorganized jumble of stuff that belongs in the garage, but as of yet has no place or home. Besides the fact that everything was taking up more space that it should, the lack of organization (especially on the tool front) was driving Matt batty. So, tonight, we decided we'd tackle this particular project.

It took probably 4-5 hours, but we got pretty close. Here's an in process shot:

 

And the (almost) final product

The workshop still needs some work, and the plastic sheets got water on them when Matt put the hoses away so they need to dry out before we fold them up, but all in all, I'd say we did a pretty good job.

Improving our laundet (closedry?)

In taking down the wall between our closet and laundry room, we lost a fair amount of space for hanging clothes. Now, since we are going to turn what was the closet into the master bath eventually, I don't want to get too used to having that space as a closet, but I just haven't reorganized enough to not need it right now. So, we decided to put the bars back up on the wall we didn't take down and don't need to take apart for the electric. As a reminder, here is the before shot:

 

And here is an after, before the clothes went back up:

 

And another with the clothes that were there before:

 

It actually took more time than you would think because we had to cut the bar and the shelve that went on top of it into two and then hang them in a way that makes sense. But as Matt says, if you are going to do it, you might as well do it right. Oh, and we had to move that little shelf under the cabinets over too, for some reason it was pretty far left (as you are looking at it now), so we had to move it over so it butted up to the wall. 

Still have a ton of organizing to do, but at least now our clothes aren't on the floor. 

Oh, and I put all the books away, minus a few knick knacks from the old office (like Matt's speakers). No before picture for this one, but if you imagine less books on the shelves and more books in boxes behind the white railing, you'll get the picture:

Can't wait till we make those built in shelves and get rid of the carpet. So many things...