The Brasso Experiment

I think we all can agree that my house is basically one big antique. There's been several different estimates by inspectors about the actual age of the building. All I know is that in 1908 there was a Mr. Martin Purdy residing in it. So it was either built in 1908 or before. Obviously. There was also an addition added, possibly around 40 years ago according to the home inspector. So it's probably a safe bet to say that everything in the newer half of the building is not quite as old as in the older half.

I have no idea what the original layout of the house looked like, but here's my crude drawing of what it looks like now:

The older half of the house appears to end at the dining room, making me wonder where the kitchen existed previously. Who knows though, maybe the kitchen has just been so updated that you can't tell it's still an older section of the house.

Anyway, I'm digressing majorly. The handles on the kitchen cabinets looked mighty tarnished, so I figured I'd buy a bottle of Brasso (good stuff) and polish them up to see what they looked like before. In all honesty I'm not entirely sure what the cabinets looked like before. I wouldn't say they're as old as the original part of the building but they could have been refinished also, meaning they could've been another color. As it stands now, the tarnished handles go perfectly with the color of the wood. But they also looked kinda gross and tarnished.

I started with one handle and polished it up real nice. I was pretty surprised by what I found underneath 50-100 years of people's hand goo. It appears that my handles in the kitchen are copper. Solid copper. Makes me wonder what they're worth. However, it appears the tarnished handles may go better with the wood than the polished handle. I'm not sure yet. I also bought Murphy's Oil Soap for the wood and will clean those up to see what happens.

After discovering this treasure in my kitchen, I decided to roam about the house polishing random pieces of hardware. Amazing!! I think a big portion of the metal in this house is copper! However, doorknobs, for obvious reasons, have the most persistant gunk on them. I can refurbish all the old metal in this house and make it gleam!!
The before and after of the doorbell. Why yes, that second picture is sideways. Not relevent.

The doorknobs need a little more work. Very grungy. Let this be a lesson to you. A good portion of the tarnish on the metal is due to people's hands. There is so much gross stuff on our hands, including natural body oils. Eew!

Kitchen Update

The kitchen is not quite done but I figured I'd post some pics anyway. The light fixture above the sink isn't put back on yet. I'm also going to paint the ceiling an off-white to soften the room a little and make it match a little better. I'm toying with the idea of painting the windowsill off white to match the ceiling instead of painting it Brandy to match the walls. So that isn't painted yet. I'm going to clean up the cabinets a bit: clean and oil the wood and take all the old tarnish off the knob/handle thingys. And the window shade is going to change...just not sure to what yet. And if the "after" pic looks like the room is smaller, that's because I also have a refrigerator in there now. I'm also considering some crown molding...

Productive Day

I took a half day off from work today to meet with the many guys that were coming over to do inspections and set-ups and I'm really glad I did. Last night I put the first coat of paint on the kitchen and put the second coat on today. As I was painting, all my service/repair guys started showing up. First came the wood stove guy. While he was measuring and explaining things to me, the guy who's going to fix my foundation and treat for termites showed up to set off a bomb (bug bomb) under the house to kill all the black widows before he crawls under there on Monday. Really smart idea. Then the satellite tv guy showed up and I pointed out where I wanted the cable to go and he said he could crawl under the house and just put the cable through right there. Perfect, I thought. I went back to discussing my woodstove and the foundation/termite guy came back in. Thankfully he was paying a little more attention to what was going on than I was. He had ran into the tv guy when they were both going under the house. The foundation/termite guy decided he should hold off on setting the bomb off until the tv guy was out from under there. Hmmm. I must have been very distracted.


Just as the tv guy was explaining my new satellite tv to me, the jacuzzi guy popped his head in to say he'd be out looking at the jacuzzi. I finished up with the tv guy, everyone else had left, and then I headed out to meet with the jacuzzi guy. He found the problem (or what we hope is the problem) real quick. The drain plug wasn't closed tightly. Har har har. Anyway, so I got a good lesson on jacuzzi science and some jacuzzi chemistry as well as tips and tricks. Turns out you need a wedge to get the filter on and off. We'll revisit that thought.

So the jacuzzi guy left and I went about finishing setting up the futon and saw the foundation/termite guy pull back up into the driveway. He went about securing something over the crawl space entry, then waved and shouted that he'd be back on Monday. I finished the futon, rearranged what little furniture I had, and went out to clean and re-set up the jacuzzi. I vacuumed it out with the new technique the jacuzzi guy had taught me, then refilled it. I cleaned out the filter and then fought to get the darn thing back on. See, I don't have the magical wedge that you have to use to get the thing on and off. So I went about trying to find things to improvise with. I ended up with a knife. Yeah, I know. And yes I gave up on that one after slicing my finger.

I walked about the house looking for something to use as a wedge (that wouldn't kill me or cause me further harm). My eyes spotted a lone kayak oar that the seller had left hanging in the carport. Ah ha! Worked like a charm. I buttoned everything up and turned on the heater. I'll check on it in a bit. Maybe it'll get hot fast enough for me to crawl in tonight.

I'll post new pics of the kitchen after I do some touch-up on it tomorrow and get the stove and refrigerator back in place. For now, here's the pics of the jacuzzi room floor before and after. I apologize for the mess of the before picture, but I suppose it just makes the change look that much more dramatic.




What's on the floor is just a simple cement stain. It comes in a few different colors and is semi-transparent unlike cement paint. I didn't want anything too different which is why I went with the stain instead of the paint. I also feel it has a softer natural look to it than paint. The walls will also be painted when I figure out which color to use. And of course I'll post pics once I do that.

Extra Bathroom Before and After

Gwen and I painted the 3rd bathroom the day before yesterday and I finished it up yesterday. It needs a couple touch-ups before it's final, not to mention new white paint in there. The white parts (trim and ceiling) are a later project. Apparently when you tape off a paint job, you should really pull the tape off before it's fully dry, because then you peel off some of the paint when you pull off the tape. Lesson learned, I just need a couple splatters of paint here and there. I added some yellow rugs and towels to accent the green walls and I'm fairly certain I like it, but I left the tags on just in case I decide I don't. Walmart will take them back. I've also discovered a really cool switchplate and outlet cover website: http://www.switchhits.com/
I'm trying to decide between two of those for the bathroom. Anyway, here's the before and after.

The only problem I'm having with the matching of rugs to wall color is that they are so separated by the tile on the walls. I'm hoping the towels hanging and some cool yellow light switch covers will help connect them together a little more.

The Lantern and the Jacuzzi

Yesterday my wonderful friend Gwen came over to help me paint one of the bathrooms. The day before I had gone absolutely ballistic at Home Depot. Who knew there was so much amazing stuff in that store? Almost $400 later, I made it out of there only to be comfronted by the hot dog man. I was starving. Turns out the dogs at Home Depot are really good too.

So I had a fairly large list of the things I wanted to get done yesterday and I think the only thing that really got done was the bathroom getting painted. When I remove all the tape I'll post a pic. One of the things I wanted to get done was to get the jacuzzi ready for use. Not thinking it all through very clearly, we filled the jacuzzi with water from the garden hose....which is ice cold up here. I turned on the heater and several hours later nothing had happened. Gwen mentioned we should've used hot water from the washing machine hook up. But then we figured that if we had used hot water, we'd never know if the jacuzzi heater worked or not, until it got cold I guess. So we tried turning on the jets and letting them run for awhile. Nothing seemed to work. It was pretty depressing. While messing around with it, I noticed when the bottom latch wasn't fully closed, the jets wouldn't work. So I shut it completely and put a paint can in front of it (I think the rug under it is holding it slightly open...not relative at this point).

I layed awake all night due to being freezing on my air mattress, noises all over the house (my monitor and refrigerator as it turned out) and wondering what I should do about the jacuzzi. I was bummed because jacuzzis are expensive and I can't afford a new one right now. Then I went to wondering what to make of the room without the jacuzzi....then to how on earth I was going to get it out of there and where I was supposed to throw it out. It was a rough night.

In the morning I sulked out to the jacuzzi room to test the temperature, without much hope of it being warm.... and it was!!!! So now my jacuzzi is nice and hot, and the jets work, and....I can't get the stupid bromine tablets to dissolve in there. What the heck? I had them in one of those little floaty things and that didn't seem to work, so I just dumped them onto the bottom of the jacuzzi. I'll check it in a bit, but right now there's no bromine showing up on my test strip. Errrr....

I also locked myself out of the house this morning which I saw coming and did nothing to prevent it. Trying to get back in, a buddy of mine and I cracked the bathroom window (which was really old and needed to be replaced anyway) before finding out that the kitchen window hadn't been closed all the way and opened right up for him to crawl in. Geezo. This was after we crawled up on the roof to try to crawl through the attic vents.

So today I put the final coat of paint on the bathroom, sealed the wood stove flue that is allowing all my warm air to escape out into the lovely town of Montague (my woodstove will arrive at a later time, for now there's just a hole in the roof basically). My buddy and I moved the bigger items over to my new place and I set out to replace my front porch lantern. Here's what it used to look like:

I figure it's about 80 years old. Notice how the bulbs are just sort of lying there on the bottom of the lantern. Classy. So I had to upgrade, which is a big reason why Home Depot was such an expensive trip. If you notice, this lantern is plugged in to an outlet and hanging rather simply. I figured it would be a 5 minute job to switch one out. So I bought a beautiful one at Home Depot and was only slightly concerned that I didn't see any plugs on them. I figured Home Depot didn't want it to look all mangled with cords all over the place. This was on my very large list of things to do today.

So I grabbed my (new) ladder and tools and set up on the porch. As I pulled everything out of the box, I realized that the end of it just had an open copper wire instead of a plug. This was bad. One thing I don't do is electrical stuff. That stuff can kill you. Seriously. It's bad juju. I looked at my bare wire, and I looked at the outlet on the ceiling. I decided I better buck up and learn how to fix my house. I've been told that when you turn off power to an outlet, there's no electricity flowing to it, therefore it cannot jump out and bite you. I have never believed this for a minute. The only time an outlet or wire cannot shock you dead is when it is completely cut off physically from all connections and laying in the street by itself. Even then you probably shouldn't go sticking anything metal into the outlet. Just to be sure. Like I said, electricity kills.

But there I was, staring at my bare copper wire and an old electrical outlet. Well, here we go, I thought. So I climbed up on the ladder and started taking apart the electrical outlet. I have a very very simplistic knowledge of how these things work...I also have a new Home Depot Home Improvement book, as well as instructions for the lantern. And a few little tools. And some guts...ok, not really a whole lot of those. As I got the thing disassembled it revealed extremely old wires connected to the outlet. I tried getting them out to no avail. I followed the directions in the Home Improvement book but the wires would not release. I was going to have to cut them. This posed a serious problem due to my belief that all wires are indeed live even if you turn off the power supply to them. I was going to have to cut into electrical wires with a pair of metal wire cutters and most likely fall to my death onto the front porch with no one there to witness it and initiate CPR. I took a couple deep breaths, steadied my hand and cut the wire.

Nothing happened. I was safe! I took another big breath and with a little more confidence, cut the second wire. To my knowledge I am still alive. I went to work putting the stupid thing together which very well could've been put together before I bought it. I gained absolutely nothing by having to assemble it and only got tired and cranky and slightly sore all over. Remember, I was planning on spending all of 5 minutes switching this thing out. 2 hours later it was done, and my new next door neighbor had been staring at me for the last 15 minutes of it. To my knowledge she never heard the profanity that I was mumbling the whole time. Yes, I managed to remove an elctrical outlet and wire a hanging lantern to it. And when I went back inside to turn on the light switch, the most amazing and unexpected thing happened: the light came on. Was I absolutely estatic and proud of myself? No, not really. I had a feeling come over me very similar to when I finished my first marathon. I was too tired and frustrated to be excited, I was just relieved to be done. After I put away all my tools and ladder, I went back out to take this picture, and only then did I start to feel a wee bit of pride.

Go ahead, scroll back up and look at the original again, then come back and look at this one. Notice the lack of electrical outlet. That's because there is none. That's because I rewired the damn thing. Me. With electrical wires. And I didn't die. And it's beautiful. Even my neighbor Sally said so. Shazam!

My New House

So here's my house, built between 1890 and 1900.

This is the back family room, to the left is the master bedroom.

And here is the master bedroom.

Kitchen and door that leads to the dining room.

Dining room with living room to the right.

Living room with guest room off the side.

Sunroom/ jacuzzi room.

Master bath.

Guest bath.

3rd bath.

There's two other bedrooms that wouldn't take very well to photos as well as the backyard. I'll post when I update and paint as well as get furniture. Yes, I have a little bit of furniture, but I wanted to get pics taken without anything in the room so I can incorporate it into a computer program that allows me to paint and update the room in order to "try on" new things for my house. In order to get a true appreciation, you'll have to come visit.

The Journey Begins

I have officially closed the door on buying a home and opened the door of owning a home. This morning at some point my realtor will call me so I can come pick up the keys to my new home. The buying process was quite a pain. Since not everyone I know owns a home, I will put it all in a nutshell for you, and those that do own a home can chime in or just nod your head and talk to your computer.

I've always wanted to own a home but it has never been very practical. I'm somewhat of a nomad (due to my gypsy blood, just ask my grandmother) and never knew where I would be one year to the next. After wandering a bit, I feel pretty happy up here and think I'll stay awhile. How long? I don't know, seriously. But I've always wanted a house I could truly make my own. Last night talking to my friend Gwen who lives up here, she's going to come over on Saturday and help paint my sunroom/jacuzzi room floor. She asked if she could bring her dog. It was an amazing feeling to: a) have a backyard big enough that the dog can run around on his own and b) not have to clear it through a landlord to allow some one's dog to come over. This is truly a big difference between owning and renting. Outside of code violations and obvious unlawfulness, I am allowed to do whatever the hell I want with my house. I'm the boss. This is awesome.

So upon deciding I would be living up here awhile and that I'm in an area where it's cheaper to buy than to rent, I decided to go house hunting. I'll actually be paying about $150 per month less to buy this house than if I stayed renting. So I think I'm actually going to just keep paying the extra $150 per month and pay it off sooner. I found a house in the local real estate flyer that had an endless pool in the backyard. That was why I went and looked at it. Those things are worth$30,000! The house wasn't anything I could handle fixing up, although it had plenty of curb appeal. The realtor who showed me the place was very nice and accomodating so I adopted her as my realtor and put her in charge of helping me find a place and representing me. The coolest thing about buying a house is that you generally do not pay your realtor. When you buy a house, the seller pays all parties involved on a preset scale so for the buyer, the realtor is free. Very amazing.

So she sent me a listing within my budget and I narrowed 20 houses down to 5 that I wanted to look at. We looked at 5 in a matter of 2 hours and I narrowed my choices to 3. Looked at all 3 again and decided on a 2 bed 2 bath house about a block from where I live now. It was a foreclosed home and the bank had myself and another prospective buyer place bids. The other buyer won and I was out again searching for another home. I broadened my search to Montague and my realtor was excited because she had a house for sale there that she thought I would love. I looked through the pictures of it and was unimpressed but decided to look anyway. We put it on the list of the other 10 that we would be viewing that day. Yes, my realtor is awesome. I have no idea how she kept up with me.

I fell in love with this old house at first sight. The feeling I got inside the house was just amazing. The house had a character that none of the other houses had. I decided to forego looking at anymore and put a bid in. It was accepted which began the slow painful process of actually purchasing the house. After about 6 inspections, a few repairs, a cancelled loan and 2 months later, the house is mine. There's certainly a lot of work to do on the house but I'm so excited to do (most of) them.

I'm really excited to paint and posibly update floors and bathroom tiling. I'm super excited that this house is like a blank slate that I can paint my life onto. I'm not entirely thrilled that the front half of the house has ancient 1900 electrical wiring in it which will catch fire if there's anything lying near it, like insulation (so there is no insulation). That's not any sort of hazard since there isnt anything near it, but because there's no insulation in there, heating bills and efforts (wood stoves) will be pretty rough. There's also no insulation in the floor....who knew floors get insulated? So that's starting to move higher up my list of to-do things. Insulation is fairly important in northern California.

Yesterday I went out and bought a tv (I know, me?) a refrigerator, washer, dryer and looked at some woodstoves. I left my name for the guy to call me back to set up an appointment for him to come measure and look at my house so he can install the woodstove, making sure it's ok to put in that area. I also purchased Dish-Network. CRAAAAZY! Not only will I own a tv (flat 32") but I will also have satellite tv (with free HD for life) to watch on it. Soooo unlike me. Whatever, owning a home is a big thing, and I need access to HGTV for ideas and inspiration. I also needed a bigger screen than my laptop to watch netflix on when friends are around.

Then I called around to set up my electricty, home insurance, trash, water and sewer, and fuel for heating. We have Monitors up here that burn kerosene for fuel. Sounds very primitive but it's actually pretty nice. You set it on a certain temp and it keeps the house that warm. Today I need to measure how much fuel is in the tank since I don't have a woodstove for back-up yet. Up here you don't want to run out of fuel. It's not like San Diego where heat is a comfort thing. This is actually a life or death thing.

Anyway, then I drove out to Montague (about 6 miles from my current place) to sign up for my water and sewer and put down a deposit at City Hall. I didn't even know Montague had a city hall, so it's sort of promising. There's also something like a swimming pool right next to city hall. I don't think it's one of those that you can do laps in. Guess I have to drive up to Ashland for that.

So today I will get the keys to my house, then go over and take pictures and clean it before I move any furniture in. This way I can do before and after pics as well as work a little easier in my home improvement software that I have. My house can "try on" any paint, tiling, window treatments, wood floors, ceilings, fences, etc. before I actually go through and do them. Saves money and lessens the likelihood that I will absolutely destroy something. I'll post pics when I get them and also blog about any updates and repairs I do.

It's almost 8am....I should be getting a phone call any time now......