New House Journal
Jul. 14th, 2011 02:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shavastakPart One: Closing and The Home Depot Run
Yesterday morning, I worked in my presentation for my summer research project while we waited for final approval from our banker so we could go get the cashier's check for the closing. Sue and I went to lunch, and she still hadn't called, so after lunch I gave her a ring. She said the approval had come in early that morning and that she'd called my realtor and then forgotten to call me; she apologized profusely, but it was all cool. We stopped by a bank on the way home and got the check cut for us.
At 3:45 we left for the closing. Finding the place was a good trick. Sue's GPS led us astray, thinking it was on the other end of the street than the one it was on. We did find it eventually, and went in, dressed in jeans and t-shirts, feeling a little under-dressed. But, after all, we were going to go to Home Depot afterward.
The closing was surreal. Chris and I signed document after document while we talked with our realtor, our banker, the bank-owner-representative (the house turns out to have been owned by a teacher's credit union), and his realtor, about horses, polyurethane, cookies, and an assortment of other random things. The guy from the title company was the one on task, kept handing us stuff to sign and pointing out where to sign it. The pile of papers to sign was probably worth three trees but in the end it all only took about an hour. Afterward, we gave our realtor and our banker both a bag of cookies. On giving the banker her bag, I said "This is for being so helpful to us all this time...and this..." I continued, taking a cookie out, "...is for forgetting to call me this morning." Everyone laughed.
We stopped at Wendy's to grab a bite to eat and then we went to Home Depot, huge list in hand, with the plan to buy almost everything we were going to need for the upcoming weekend work-on-the-house party. 4 hours and almost $4000 later, we were loading our new belongings into Sue's van and Chris's car and trying to figure out how we were going to make it all fit. What did we get?
We ordered a fridge and an insulation-blowing machine and 20 bales of 'green' insulation...and...
4 gallons of polyurethane, two poles, two sander heads, a package of sandpapers, two lamb's wool polyurethane-spreading heads, a package of cheesecloth, and a bottle of mineral spirits...
A set of power tools, some saw blades, and a drill bit set...
A ladder...
A new sink, and a faucet to go with it...
An 8' 2x6 board, two small 2x6 boards from the 'cull lumber' pile, a square of cardboard, a bunch of metal joist hangers, and a tube of construction adhesive...
Two new doorknobs with deadbolt locks, four doorknobs with lock-from-the-inside latches, and one new plain doorknob...
A spade, a hoe, and a weedeater...
Four ceiling fans and four ceiling fan hanger kits...
A huge role of plastic sheeting...
A rubber pipe cap...
A dehumidifier and a short length of garden hose...
Five gallons of paint, a bunch of paint stirrers, two paint tray kits with rollers, a pack of brushes, a pack of paint tray liners, dropcloths, and a roll of painter's tape...
A bathroom vent/light fixture...
A box of contractor towels...
Two packs of outlet covers, one pack of lightswitch covers, and two double-lightswitch covers...
A toilet and an enameled wooden toilet seat...
A curtain rod...
7 eyebolts, a pack of sturdy hooks, and some double-ended clips...
Two 18" deep sets of plastic shelving...
And a gas grill.
Phew! We got about a 9% discount for buying so much, and ended up leaving the store around 10:15. We stopped by the new house and unloaded, then went home to shower and go to bed.
Part Two: The Squirrel Nest of Doom, and the Polyurethane
This morning, Sue and I went to the new house and checked the bathroom; we had forgotten to see if we needed a shower curtain rod and other bathroom fixtures. We did. Sue went out to get those, and to get a chain-style bike lock to lock the grill under the kitchen porch, and to get some breakfast, while I attempted to tackle The Squirrel's Nest of Doom.
I had no idea, when I went to start the job, how big it would be. Part of it covered the attic access hatch, and we knew that in advance, so I prepped: I put on work gloves, a hat with a big brim, and a nuisance mask to keep out the dust. I unpacked the ladder, set it up, and climbed up to move the hatch. Moving the hatch caused a cascade of dirty, dry hay; the squirrels had apparently been taking the long grass stems from the yard for bedding material. I started grabbing handfuls of nest and tossing them down onto the trash bag below, at this time being too far below the attic itself to see the full extent of the nest.
I grabbed and pulled and the hay just kept coming. Finally I had cleared as much as I could reach in the area around the hatch, and climbed up a little higher to see what else I could see. The attic was dark and hot but I could just make out the top of the nest, illuminated by light from the vent the squirrels had been using to enter by. (The roofers that fixed the roof the other week put a tough metal mesh over it to prevent them from coming back in.) The pictures from the house inspector, who discovered it, did not do it justice. The thing was like 3 feet tall and 4 feet in diameter, not including the part I'd already removed. I took out as much as I could but could not reach the main mass of the nest, and finally, alone in the house and unhappy about being on a ladder to begin with, I trudged down to take a break and consider the situation.
I finally decided that the thing to do would be to wait for Sue to come back, climb all the way up into the attic, have her hand me the new spade and move the ladder out of the way, and shovel the thing down into the closet below. I did this, and the result can be seen in the pictures below.
I came down and surveyed myself, a dirty, hay-bedecked mess. I probably looked like some sort of orange-and-blue scarecrow in my UT vet med T-shirt and cut-off jeans.
Thankfully, that particular room looks out over the back yard, so rather than try to put the accumulated stuff in trash bags, we just opened the window and tossed it outside. We'll rake it into a more appropriate place this weekend.
Compared to that, sanding, vacuuming, wiping down, and polyurethaning the floors has been a breeze. We have another coat to do in about an hour, and then we're cleaning up for a social get-together thing tonight. Chris gets to do the third coat all by himself, but he'll manage. The putting down of the polyurethane is about the easiest job.
That's the saga so far. More posts this weekend, because that's when the big party happens where we plan to use most of the rest of this stuff.
Yesterday morning, I worked in my presentation for my summer research project while we waited for final approval from our banker so we could go get the cashier's check for the closing. Sue and I went to lunch, and she still hadn't called, so after lunch I gave her a ring. She said the approval had come in early that morning and that she'd called my realtor and then forgotten to call me; she apologized profusely, but it was all cool. We stopped by a bank on the way home and got the check cut for us.
At 3:45 we left for the closing. Finding the place was a good trick. Sue's GPS led us astray, thinking it was on the other end of the street than the one it was on. We did find it eventually, and went in, dressed in jeans and t-shirts, feeling a little under-dressed. But, after all, we were going to go to Home Depot afterward.
The closing was surreal. Chris and I signed document after document while we talked with our realtor, our banker, the bank-owner-representative (the house turns out to have been owned by a teacher's credit union), and his realtor, about horses, polyurethane, cookies, and an assortment of other random things. The guy from the title company was the one on task, kept handing us stuff to sign and pointing out where to sign it. The pile of papers to sign was probably worth three trees but in the end it all only took about an hour. Afterward, we gave our realtor and our banker both a bag of cookies. On giving the banker her bag, I said "This is for being so helpful to us all this time...and this..." I continued, taking a cookie out, "...is for forgetting to call me this morning." Everyone laughed.
We stopped at Wendy's to grab a bite to eat and then we went to Home Depot, huge list in hand, with the plan to buy almost everything we were going to need for the upcoming weekend work-on-the-house party. 4 hours and almost $4000 later, we were loading our new belongings into Sue's van and Chris's car and trying to figure out how we were going to make it all fit. What did we get?
We ordered a fridge and an insulation-blowing machine and 20 bales of 'green' insulation...and...
4 gallons of polyurethane, two poles, two sander heads, a package of sandpapers, two lamb's wool polyurethane-spreading heads, a package of cheesecloth, and a bottle of mineral spirits...
A set of power tools, some saw blades, and a drill bit set...
A ladder...
A new sink, and a faucet to go with it...
An 8' 2x6 board, two small 2x6 boards from the 'cull lumber' pile, a square of cardboard, a bunch of metal joist hangers, and a tube of construction adhesive...
Two new doorknobs with deadbolt locks, four doorknobs with lock-from-the-inside latches, and one new plain doorknob...
A spade, a hoe, and a weedeater...
Four ceiling fans and four ceiling fan hanger kits...
A huge role of plastic sheeting...
A rubber pipe cap...
A dehumidifier and a short length of garden hose...
Five gallons of paint, a bunch of paint stirrers, two paint tray kits with rollers, a pack of brushes, a pack of paint tray liners, dropcloths, and a roll of painter's tape...
A bathroom vent/light fixture...
A box of contractor towels...
Two packs of outlet covers, one pack of lightswitch covers, and two double-lightswitch covers...
A toilet and an enameled wooden toilet seat...
A curtain rod...
7 eyebolts, a pack of sturdy hooks, and some double-ended clips...
Two 18" deep sets of plastic shelving...
And a gas grill.
Phew! We got about a 9% discount for buying so much, and ended up leaving the store around 10:15. We stopped by the new house and unloaded, then went home to shower and go to bed.
Part Two: The Squirrel Nest of Doom, and the Polyurethane
This morning, Sue and I went to the new house and checked the bathroom; we had forgotten to see if we needed a shower curtain rod and other bathroom fixtures. We did. Sue went out to get those, and to get a chain-style bike lock to lock the grill under the kitchen porch, and to get some breakfast, while I attempted to tackle The Squirrel's Nest of Doom.
I had no idea, when I went to start the job, how big it would be. Part of it covered the attic access hatch, and we knew that in advance, so I prepped: I put on work gloves, a hat with a big brim, and a nuisance mask to keep out the dust. I unpacked the ladder, set it up, and climbed up to move the hatch. Moving the hatch caused a cascade of dirty, dry hay; the squirrels had apparently been taking the long grass stems from the yard for bedding material. I started grabbing handfuls of nest and tossing them down onto the trash bag below, at this time being too far below the attic itself to see the full extent of the nest.
I grabbed and pulled and the hay just kept coming. Finally I had cleared as much as I could reach in the area around the hatch, and climbed up a little higher to see what else I could see. The attic was dark and hot but I could just make out the top of the nest, illuminated by light from the vent the squirrels had been using to enter by. (The roofers that fixed the roof the other week put a tough metal mesh over it to prevent them from coming back in.) The pictures from the house inspector, who discovered it, did not do it justice. The thing was like 3 feet tall and 4 feet in diameter, not including the part I'd already removed. I took out as much as I could but could not reach the main mass of the nest, and finally, alone in the house and unhappy about being on a ladder to begin with, I trudged down to take a break and consider the situation.
I finally decided that the thing to do would be to wait for Sue to come back, climb all the way up into the attic, have her hand me the new spade and move the ladder out of the way, and shovel the thing down into the closet below. I did this, and the result can be seen in the pictures below.
I came down and surveyed myself, a dirty, hay-bedecked mess. I probably looked like some sort of orange-and-blue scarecrow in my UT vet med T-shirt and cut-off jeans.
Thankfully, that particular room looks out over the back yard, so rather than try to put the accumulated stuff in trash bags, we just opened the window and tossed it outside. We'll rake it into a more appropriate place this weekend.
Compared to that, sanding, vacuuming, wiping down, and polyurethaning the floors has been a breeze. We have another coat to do in about an hour, and then we're cleaning up for a social get-together thing tonight. Chris gets to do the third coat all by himself, but he'll manage. The putting down of the polyurethane is about the easiest job.
That's the saga so far. More posts this weekend, because that's when the big party happens where we plan to use most of the rest of this stuff.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-07-15 05:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-15 12:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-17 01:04 pm (UTC)Yeah... having it be "mine" SO hasn't changed me. I think the only home repair we've done is replacing the faucet when the tension ring broke, and we hired a plumber to put in a new toilet..
no subject
Date: 2011-07-15 11:47 am (UTC)