The Green House Project: Week 4

December 16-18

When the internet takes three hours to get set up, that certainly puts a damper on things.

I was in a training class for work the last half of the week last week. The class ended at noon on Friday so after a bit of housekeeping at work, I took off early and we headed to Ottumwa in the daylight.

Friday, December 16

Instead of heading to Craig and Sue’s, we went straight to the house. The plan was for me to put up the ceiling fan in the spare bedroom then put down a coat of polyurethane on the hardwood floor in that room.

We walked into a mostly repainted house. Craig and Sue had painted the spare bedroom, hallway, dining room/Brandy’s office and the one big wall in the kitchen that I’d primed the week before. We selected a color called Bone White, which has a bit of a tan undertone to it, but it’s still very much a white-based paint. It looks fantastic against the wood trim around the windows and doors.

Before I did anything, I installed the dog gate I’d bought from Chewy.com to keep Ash wrangled in the back yard. It’s a very wide three-piece number that screws into the walls at both ends, nice and sturdy but the directions were absolute garbage. I struggled for what seemed like an hour just trying to figure out what it was telling me to do. I finally figured it out though and got it installed. It’s not the prettiest thing in the world, but it’ll do for the time being.

I went back in and the ancient light fixture that was in the hall was dangling by its wires, so I quickly swapped that out with a new one (the very first item we bought for the house, by the way.) As usual, the electrical work was up to early-60s standards. No electrical boxes, huge balls of electrical tape and hardly any Romex to work with. I got it worked out though and the tiny, modern light fixture was up. Crooked as all get-out, but up. I’ll have to fix that later.

By the time I was done with that, it was already dark. Craig had taken home his halogen work lights so I got tasked with heading to Harbor Freight to get a cheap, battery powered one to work with.

I returned and took down the old ceiling fan from which two blades had already been broken off on day one in the house. It came down fairly easily, then I started putting the new one up. Installation is always a little more difficult, but after a bit, I finally got the new fixture securely in place. I threw the circuit back on and it looks great.

As soon as I was done with that, I threw down a quick first coat of polyurethane on the floor and we quickly headed back to Craig and Sue’s.

Saturday, December 17

The next day, I actually got almost 10 hours of sleep, which had absolutely NOT been happening lately. I woke up at around 5:30, still before everyone else, but I wasn’t alone for very long. Soon, Brandy, Craig and Sue were up and about. Craig made a breakfast skillet for everyone. We all had a nice, hearty breakfast, then I headed back to the house.

The first thing I did was put down the second coat of poly on the floor in the spare bedroom. I then shifted my attention to the floor in the master bedroom, which I still needed to sand. Before I could get much done, I was pulled away. The underlayment in the family room had been cut by Craig during the week, but I still needed to nail it down, and I was going to be tasked with laying the first of the vinyl flooring in a small area inside the sliding glass door in the family room.

The underlayment was a quick and easy project, and just as I finished it up, Brandy and Sue arrived. I quickly turned my attention to the vinyl flooring that was going to be put down in front of the sliding glass door.

Now, this was my first time laying vinyl flooring, but I’d watched so many YouTube videos about it, I was very confident in my methods.

Sue selected a starter piece that needed a small corner trim, then we moved along to the second piece. It was a little long, so I ran a utility knife through the piece a couple of times and was able to easily snap the piece at the score mark.

I took the offcut and started the next row with it and kept on that way until we had three rows of vinyl down. I think it looks pretty danged good.

Now this floor is floating; it’s not glued or nailed down to the underlayment, so we tried to avoid walking on it to keep it from shifting around. We are having carpet put down in that room this Thursday so the tack strips will keep that little section of floor in place.

Almost as soon as I was done laying the vinyl, the Mediacom technician showed up to install the internet. While he was doing that, I made busy work, replacing two light switches and an outlet, installing the new porch light Brandy had gotten to replace the underwhelming one I put up last week, and hanging up the house numbers to cover the crooked vinyl peel n’ stick numbers that were on the house.

The tech ran a new cable line from the pole across the street, over the road, to the house, drilled through the house and into the basement where he set up the modem and Eero gateway. He tried to help me get the gateway set up on my phone, but my phone wasn’t finding it. He reset the Eero, swapped it out for the other one, reset that one, all about a bazillion times, and my phone wasn’t seeing it. He tried setting it up on his device but that wasn’t working either. We fought with these things for like 2 hours before we realized, the internet was working, the Eeros just weren’t registering. Good enough for now, we’ll deal with the Eero registration at a later time.

I laid down a third and final coat of polyurethane on the floor in the spare bedroom, the tech left and I was right behind him. I headed back to Craig and Sue’s where a nice, slow-cooked pot roast dinner was waiting for me. I ate and almost immediately went to bed.

Sunday, December 18

I slept for another nine hours Saturday night, waking up at about 5:30 once again.

I quickly showered and headed back to the house where I immediately got to work sanding the floor in the master bedroom. I was working diligently on that when Brandy said the three of them were going to be over soon and that I was going to have to head to Menard’s to pick up the carpet that’s to be installed on Thursday. I waited, and waited, and waited, and half an hour later, they finally showed up. While I waited, I installed the new shower head that we’d had since we got the hallway light fixture.

When he arrived, I helped Craig unload the compressor he’d brought over for his nail gun, then he and I headed to Menard’s, firstly, to return three sheets of underlayment that never got used (at $30 a pop, I wasn’t going to eat that) then we drove around back to get the carpet and padding from the special orders pick up area.

That went pretty smoothly- the Menard’s people helped load the heavy rolls onto the trailer that Craig was towing, then we headed back to the house where the four of us unloaded the carpet into the dining room.

I went back to work sanding the floor in the master bedroom and got about three quarters of the way through it before Brandy said it was time to leave. We went back to Craig and Sue’s to pack up our stuff and we made the 90-minute drive home, stopping at Casey’s for a Taco Pizza for dinner.

As we pulled up at home, we saw five, very long boxes piled up on our porch. Upon inspection, we discovered they were the blinds that Brandy has special ordered. They’d gotten set to deliver to our house in Coralville, rather than to the store, or to the house in Ottumwa, if anything.

I dragged the boxes in and laid them in the hallway just inside the front door. The next day, two more boxes showed up with the last of the blinds that were ordered.

Weekly Wrap-Up

We got to spend about two days at the Green House, and I:

• Installed a dog gate between the garage and house
• Put three coats of polyurethane on the spare bedroom floor
• Started sanding the master bedroom floor
• Nailed down the last of the underlayment in the living room
• Laid down a small section of vinyl flooring in the living room
• Replaced the small hall light fixture, the ceiling fan in the spare bedroom, and the porch light… again
• Hung house numbers
• Got the internet set up

Pictures are up on the Photo Diary as usual. There’s only four from this week though, don’t get too excited.

What’s Next

The initial plan was for Craig and Sue to come up Saturday, December 24, with a trailer and we would load it up with our spare bedroom as well as anything we could fit in Brandy’s car, my car, Sue’s car and the bed of Craig’s pickup.

With a bitingly cold blizzard blowing into town at the end of this week, we’re not sure if that’s going to happen. The snow is supposed to stop Thursday morning and the wind should die down Friday, but with Craig bringing a flatbed trailer, all the leftover snow and slush on the roads might be problematic. I’m going to investigate our options, including mattress bags for the bed and plastic wrap and tarps for anything else on the trailer.

Once the spare bedroom is moved into the house, Brandy, Ash and I will be spending the week between Christmas and New Year’s at the house, getting work done after our day jobs. Coupled with the three-day weekends coming up for the holidays, we should be just about done with the house by the time we ring in 2023.

To-Do List

Here is the remaining to-do list, updated from last week:

• Prep for painting
  • Filling holes
  • Priming three walls
• Painting
  • Master bedroom
  • Spare bedroom
  • Bathroom
  • Hallway
  • Dining Room
  • Brandy’s Office
  • Kitchen
• Install new showerhead
• Take down shower doors
• Finish hardwood floors
• Install flooring
  • Hallway
  • Bathroom
  • Dining Room
  • Brandy’s Office
  • Kitchen
• Replace five six ceiling fans
  • Master bedroom
  • Spare bedroom
  • Bathroom
  • Kitchen
  • Living Room
  • Dining room (just added!)
• Replace hallway light fixture
• Replace front and back porch lights
• Replace house numbers
• Replace front doorknob
  • Replace front door? (for later)
• Replace mailbox
• Adjust entry door to garage
• Carpeting Living Room and stairs to basement (hiring out)
• Replacing all light switches, outlets and plates
• Hang new blinds

I would like to point out that this is not a finite list of all the work we are going to be doing on this house. This is just what we are going to get done before the official move-in. The Green House Project will be a project in perpetuity. Just beyond the list above, we need to renovate the basement, work on the front and back decks, power wash and re-stain the decks, power wash the siding, move the back fence… there is always something that’s going to need to be worked on in the house beyond the day-to-day maintenance.

But, just looking to the immediate future, we are hoping to be moved in by the end of January. At this rate, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.

Thanks for stopping by,

-Phil