Drainage Issues

When we had our home inspection the inspector pointed out that we had a few drainage issues at the back of the house. He didn't seem overly concerned with it so we didn't think much about it. Until one day when I happen to go into the crawl space when it was heavily raining outside. Apparently the two large planters in the patio just let all the water collect in them and then drain into our crawl space.

Unfortunately, our patio is cracked in 4 parts and the two parts against the house are sloped towards the house. This just causes even more water to drain into the planters and then into the crawl space. So work had to be done. The first thing we planned to do was to eliminate the main source of the problem by filling the holes. I have no idea why this was never done in the past since I am sure it has been going on for some time now. So my Dad and I went to Home Depot and optimistically thought 4 bags of concrete would be enough for the job. We were very wrong and ended up having to rush back to the store to buy more bags before the concrete dried. We ended up having to use 5 bags per hole. Mixing that many bags of the concrete in a row sucks. I ended up have to use a hand shovel because my Dad was using my only full sized shovel to dump the concrete into the holes. It was a very long day and was way more work than I thought it would be.

So far filling up the holes has been great. The past few times it has rained I have yet to notice any water in the crawl space. I think we may end up putting a gutter in over the patio area since we plan to remove the patio and build a deck one day.







Be seeing you.

The Winnings!

A while back I posted about how I won a contest over on Atomic Indy. Well I got the goodies a while back but I figured the lights looked so good that I needed to repaint the walls. Also, we needed to wire up for a second light since the hallway only had one. Luckily there was a closet right behind where the original light was and that made installing the second light easy.

So finally the walls are painted and the lights are up. SO IN LOVE! These lights made our boring looking hallway so much cooler. If you are thinking about buying these lights from Rejuvenation please do. I can not say enough good things about these guys and their products.

Oh and I got one other goodie from Rejuvenation but I have yet to install it. Hopefully, I will be posting about that soon.

Thank you Atomic Indy and Rejuvenation.
Be seeing you.



These are the only good pics I can get of the lights installed since the hall is so narrow.

Finally

I am happy to say that almost a year after we moved in I finally got a chance to bring my Vespa over. I am keeping it inside instead of the carport and luckily it doesn't take up a whole lot of space. This is the first time in the 4 or 5 years of owning the scooter that I have had it where I live.

I know this doesn't have anything to do with the house but I felt like posting it anyway.

2010 Northcrest Tour of Homes

Every year there is a tour of homes in Northcrest. This is the second year I have been able to go on the home tour but it was the first time I got to go as a fellow Northcrester. It is so inspiring to see what other people have done to their homes.

House 1
The first house on the tour belonged to some friends of ours and this was the first time we got to see the inside. It was featured in the Atomic Ranch article about Northcrest titled North by Northcrest. Holy crap this house was amazing! They have the same origianl layout we do but they renovated and expanded the hell out of it.



Wall unit = drool.



Getting rid of the upper cabinets over the island thingy opens the kitchen up so much. They made up for this loss of storage space by adding cabinets to the back side of the island. There was also a great built in pantry under the planter that I did not take a picture of.



My parents have a black fireplace just like this. My mom hates it and hopefully that means I will get it one day since it is in perfect shape.



I want to live in this bathroom and so did everyone else.



This was a great office and I really like the design they had on the wall. I should have asked if that is just painted with a glossy version of the same paint or if it is a clear sticker. I am thinking it is something like the latter.

UPDATE from one of the owners.
FYI the mural in my office was done by Matthew Craven. He did the mural by basically just freehanding clear gloss over the background color in the retro shapes and just adding them in as he went along.



I saved the best pic of this house for last. What better way to add some zazz to a home tour than to get Lucy to entertain your guests?



House 2
The 2nd house was also featured in the Atomic Ranch article about Northcrest. This house was recently purchased by a young couple that we got along great with. The wives went crazy over their love of knitting and and of course we, the husbands, had to make fun of them for that.



This was a great kitchen and we may redo our layout one day to be like this.



I am sad this picture did not turn out that great but oh well. I really liked the feel of this room. The light colored floor complimented the dark colored walls very well. Also, they have the exposed brick wall showing unlike us. I would like to uncover our bricks to get this look but Susan is against it. Maybe one day she will realize how awesome this look is.



I love our pink bathroom but I think I like the blue even better. It looks so good with the dark colored cabinets and trim around the window.



I am jealous that they still have the original faucets in their bathroom. They are so much better looking than ours.



House 3
The 3rd house on the tour was pretty much a museum of mid century awesomeness. I wanted everything in there. Sadly I forgot to take a picture of the outside of this house. I loved the way it sat on the lot and really wish I had taken some pics.

The living room was amazing.



Susan was in love with that hutch/credenza thing and so was I.



I love wall units and this one was beautiful. They also stole my idea of having multiple clocks together but I will do something a little different than this.



The downstairs was pretty simple furniture wise.



However, they had done something I always wondered about. They took down the wall beside the fireplace and made the downstairs den huge. I loved the look of this and I want to do it too. Sadly if we were to do it we would loose a majority of our storage space and my workshop. Maybe one day this dream of a bigger downstairs can happen but we will have to sort out the storage issues first.



This was the downstairs bathroom and it was beautiful. This picture does not do the tile work justice. Hopefully when we redo our downstairs bathroom it will look this good.



Our goal is to be on next year's home tour.

Chop Chop

A few months ago we decided some trees around the house had to go. Since our yard is a mini forrest it doesn't look like we did anything even though we cut down 11 trees. Here are a few before pics showing how many trees we had to deal with.





These 3 trees were so close to the house it was ridiculous. Whenever it was windy dead branches would fall on the roof and cause more damage.







You couldn't pay me enough money to do this job. Watching the tops of the trees drop was scary as hell every time. I kept thinking that one of them would hit the house but luckily these guys knew what they were doing.



Our front yard is so much more open now. It's nice to be able to see our house from the street. Here are some after pics.





Until I find some dirt to fill the hole we have a cute little pond in our front yard.



Sadly with 3 trees gone you can see the lovely A/C unit that was left on the side of the house. We will be removing that very soon.



All of the work was done by a company called Limb-it-Less Tree Care. These guys were great and we will be using them again in the future.

Carpet Removal

Ever since we moved in, the downstairs of our house has always felt damp and smelled a little funny. Also, the previous owners had dogs so the carpet was kinda gross. We were waiting to remove the carpet until we could afford some hardwood floors but we were tired of the smell. So up came the carpet.





Tearing up the carpet went pretty fast. However, removing the tack strips took some time. We wanted to be careful and not damage the tiles to much since they could possibly contain asbestos. We made sure to wear masks for that process.







Since the tile was in poor shape and was ugly looking we decided to paint the floor. Painting will not only make the floor look better but it will add a little protection and incapsulate the asbestos tile. I know mastic is better for incapsulating but painting is a lot easier and faster. Also, since we plan to put hardwoods in those will also help to incapsulate the tile.





Here is the finished product. It's actually not that bad looking for a temporary solution. Also, the dampness of the room and the smell have gone away and that was the ultimate goal of this project.

Kitchen Refresh part 3: The Exciting Part

The last major hurdle of our kitchen refresh was to install a new gas range. The current electric range worked horribly and we did not feel it was worth fixing. One would think replacing the range would be easy, but not when the old range is 27 inches wide and the new one is 30 inches. So we had to cut the cabinets.



My dad, the engineer, taking measurements.



If you look at the top of the cabinet you can get an idea of how much we had to cut off.



Once the counter tops and the fronts of the cabinets were cut we removed the side panels and saved them for later. Here my dad is measuring the bottom of the cabinets.



After everything was cut we replaced the side panels we had saved from before. I put the old range back in and told Susan we were done. She did not approve.



By the end of the second day we were able to put the new range in. Sadly the gas line did not get hooked up for another day or two. It was worth the wait though.



One of my favorite things about the new stove is that the grills cover the whole top. That way it makes it easier to slide heavy pots off the burner without having to pick them up.



I have to admit that my dad did most of the work for this project. So thanks a bunch dad. All we have to do now is put some new trim along the edge of the counter tops and bake a cake.