Garage Framing - Day 6

A couple things were done on the garage today -- K was at a job for part of the day and I was at a meeting, so K's brother kept on with the process.  He added braces to the bottoms of the trusses and kept going with the sheeting on the walls.

Bracing on the trusses

Sheeting on most of the walls

I think they have another job to get to tomorrow, so it may be a couple days before they're back on the garage.  But I think there are just a few things they need to do before we'll get the inspection on the framing.  Yay, progress!!

Garage Framing - Day 4 & 5 - Sheeting and Trusses

The garage is coming along!  It's really exciting to see it taking shape.

On Monday, K and I worked on the garage, and we put up the sheeting on one side of the garage.  I helped her put it in place and then nail it to the studs.  We quit when it started raining, so I didn't get any photos-- the rain continued through the night!

Tuesday was a big day.  The trusses were delivered.  I was about to head out the door, when I heard the "BEEP BEEP"-ing outside and realized I couldn't get out of our alley with my car, because the trusses were being delivered at that moment.

The transformer truck backing in with the trusses

When I got back in the early afternoon, K and her brother had the first couple trusses in place and wanted me to help.  So I did-- I walked along the walls, on top of the sheeting that I had helped install and helped place the trusses where they needed to go.  It was a bit nerve-wracking at first, that's for sure...  But I got used to the height and moving around.  The slight problem for all of us was that it was very hot and humid, and you tend to get a little dizzy when you're overheated.  No one fell, though, so we're all good!  And we were able to finish before it started raining.  Again.  (My garden is LOVING this rain every day!)

K inside the web of bracing

Bracing boards

My monkey on the trusses!

The view from above

Monkey on the wall!

Swinging her hammer, doing her thing...!

Nearing the end!

Finished for the day

We were a sweaty, sun-burned bunch when we were done...  But we got so much done that it was definitely worth it!  I think my muscles will be sore in the morning, too....  

Garage Framing - Day 2 & 3

Progress has continued for the past two days on the construction of the garage.  Actually, it's still going on outside right at this very moment.  Ahh, the sound of nail guns... 

It's really starting to look like a building!  When I got home from class today, all the walls were up, and then K and her brother put in the header above the garage door.

Lifting up the header

Header is completely level!

Garage Framing - Day 1

K finally got to spend her first day working on the garage!  The building materials were delivered on Monday, and she got a full day in on the framing today, along with her brother.

It was amazing to come home from class and see this!

And by the time they cleaned up for the evening, they had three sections of wall installed.  It's really tall!  The walls are 10 feet high, and the windows are set right near the top, so they'll let in a lot of light. 

Second House Anniversary

It's a gorgeous day in Minneapolis and we bought our house 2 years ago today! 

And unlike last year, I didn't procrastinate on getting an anniversary photo, so we actually have one this year...

2014

And again, back to the morning we bought the house...

2012

Lots of things left to do, of course...  But we have done quite a bit already!
Things we've done in the last couple years:

• Removed the front awnings
• Added edging around our sidewalk and along the front of the yard
• Removed the 4 giant bushes from the front and side yards
• Added flower beds on either side of the front window -- and I just put some rose bushes in there this week!  Finally!
• Took down 2 sick elm trees and trimmed up all the other trees
• Poured the concrete slab for the garage
• Added a patio door to the back of the house
• Replaced the front porch light
• Built my little garden plot in the backyard
• Fixed the drywall, painted and added flooring to the basement office
• Painted and added flooring in the main basement room
• Cleaned out, painted and added shelving to the storage room in the basement
• Replaced the washer & dryer and painted the laundry room
• Painted the ceiling in my office and added my "closet" hanging bar
• Scraped the popcorn from the living room ceiling
• Installed the refinished vintage chandelier to our bedroom

Exciting plans in the works for this month, too--  K has ordered her garage supplies and will be starting the garage in the next couple weeks.  When we realized yesterday that it's now been two years since we got the house, she said, "I can't believe I've been living without a garage for two years!"  And that's true!  Because she did have garages at our last couple rentals, but not at the home that we've actually owned.  Like I've said before, it will be a HUGE help to have the garage built and functional. 

My little garden is coming along nicely.  Started everything from seeds this year, so all the plants are a little small right now, but they look great...

Yummy lettuce and spinach

I also got an amazing present a few days ago from my bestie-- she made me an herb pot with all sorts of yummy things in it!  Basil, mint, lime thyme, parsley, oregano and sage...  YUM!  I have a couple of these growing in my garden, too, but the ones in the pot are fully grown and ready to be eaten...

Beautiful herb pot gift!

She also gave me a couple big clumps of chives from her garden.  She's had them growing in her garden for a few years and they've spread out a lot, so she had plenty to spare.  They smell amazing and they're so gorgeous!  I planted them in a big galvanized utility sink that I already had. I've had it for so long that I really don't remember where I got it!

Pretty chives...

Trimming the Ash in the Backyard

Once K and I were moved into our house for a bit, we thought we'd have to cut down 2 massive trees in our yard-- the elm directly behind our house and the ash off to the side of the house.  But after cutting down the elm, our tree-trimming-master neighbor suggested that we just trim up the ash in order to get more sunlight in the yard.  Like, drastically trim it. 

We thought it was worth a try.  Worst case, we could always take down the whole tree later if we hated it.  But I really doubt we'll be doing that now-- the tree looks great!  And there is SOO much sunlight in our yard!!  We can actually have grass now, and a garden--  not just dirt!

 

Our backyard before:
Gloomy, always dark, damp, buggy.  Grass only growing in the patches where the sun could reach.

And the trimming process... 

What remains:

Tall and beautiful elm, with a wide and lush canopy-- just up much higher now to allow in lots of gorgeous sunlight!
(We did take care of trimming off all the stubs-- I just took this picture before that.)

And now...  All this glorious sunlight in our backyard!  It was so lovely to see the sun hitting each new patch of ground as each branch came off.  And the tree will still provide a bit of shade when we want it.  The best of both worlds.

 

It's Been 1 Year!

One year ago today, we got this house!  After a couple months of working on loans and wishing, and things came together on the morning of June 8th, 2012.


After our final walk-through, just before our closing.  Taken by our fantastic realtor, Brian Amiot.

Reflections on our first year as owners of a fixer-upper...
#1  --  Nothing will go as quickly as you imagined.  K and I both knew that, in theory, when we started all this.  But I think that we still expected to be further along by now than we actually are.  We don't even have ONE room complete.

#2  --  Yardwork is pretty fun in the first year!  It's the only immediate gratification that we've had so far, and it's been a great feeling to see the yard improve and see our curb appeal change.  Yardwork will probably become a drudgery, eventually.  But for now, it's been a great way to spend sunny evenings and weekends together.

#3  --  This house is going to be cute again someday.  I still believe that, and it still gets me excited to think about it.  All our big plans, and our little plans, will happen with time. 

Our Spacious Corner Lot

Our spacious corner lot...  is even more spacious than we had envisioned!

An important part of the preparation before K can build our garage, is to figure out our actual, physical lot space.  Sure, we could have it surveyed professionally, but K knew she could do it on her own.  (As she would say, "I'm a Hollander!" and they like free stuff, so she says.)

Armed with the map of our lot from the county's website, and strong skills on Google Sketch-Up, K did hours of computing and measuring, trying to determine where our lot markers would be.  Once she knew where our neighbor had a lot marker, she was able to finish her calculations and had a pretty good idea of where all 4 of our lot markers would be.

And she was right.

Yesterday, I helped her measure from the neighbor's lot marker to where ours should be.  And it was there!  Hiding just under the dirt, next to the retaining wall.  The previous owner had bought an adjacent lot from the railroad in 2000, and maybe he also put up the tall fence, so the lot was surveyed in 2000.  Meaning our markers are new, legible, and actually not too difficult to find (once you know where to look, that is.)

Within the next 24 hours, K found the other 3 markers in our yard, and had strung neon-colored string between each of them.  We could really see the dimensions of what we own, and it goes back quite a ways behind our house.

Our yard is big.

That means...  Big garage.  And space for a garden, a patio on the back of the house...  Totally possible.

Lackluster Lilacs

Since this was our first Spring in the house, this was the first time we got to experience the lilacs blooming in our backyard!  And it was...  disappointing.  For the amount of space taken over by these huge lilac bushes, there were very few actually flowers.  And almost all of those were up 9 feet!!   There was one bunch that I could actually reach last week, so I had one little vase of them in the house for a few days.  And that's all.  :-(

At some point, the lilacs were 6 or 8 distinct bushes.  Now, they are an overgrown sort of wall.  Grown in between to mesh with each other, grown deep, and very, very tall.

K was talking about hacking them down so that they weren't taking over the yard so much, and that sounded horrible to me!  But then I did some reading to see what we'll need to do to get them to flower more, and that's pretty much what we need to do.  We'd need to basically cut them in half, height-wise.  And trim a lot of the extra shoots and the old, dead growth.

It sounds like we probably won't have any flowers the next year, after we do this.  But that the year after, they should do nuts!  And I'll actually be able to reach the flowers without a very tall ladder.  Sounds like a sacrifice I'd be willing to make.

Our Kitchen Mural

Welcome to our kitchen!  Isn't it pretty?
We're pretty sure this kitchen scared away other potential buyers.  And of course, we're glad about it now!  But once we'd been in the house for a couple days, K said she couldn't stand it anymore -- it always feels like those 10 eyes are watching her...

Oh, and parts of it GLOW IN THE DARK!!  Parts of the eyes and teeth, and other various marks and spots are painted on in glow-in-the-dark paint.  No wonder K feels the eyes watching her.

Since I had the day off on a Tuesday, I decided to prime over it for her, so she wouldn't have to look at it anymore.

I took some time-lapse photos and turned them into a short video to document the covering-up of this masterpiece.
(For those of you with SLR experience, you might notice the video gets darker because I forgot to set my manual metering.  Oops.  Oh, well -- can't do it over!)

Kitchen Drop Ceiling

Our kitchen has an industrial-looking drop ceiling...  I understand that this place was a rental for ages, and florescent tube lighting is energy-efficient.  And judging by how many broken light fixtures there are in this house, it's possible that the kitchen lighting just didn't stand a chance.  Not sure when this ceiling and lights was put up, but it doesn't appear to be original.

I started pulling the panels down pretty quickly after we moved in.  And then today we pulled down the metal frames.  The ceiling is a good 4 inches higher now, with patchy paint and small holes every few inches.  The cool thing is that we can see a green paint near the top of the walls-- possibly the original paint in the kitchen?  The color is really pretty!  Very exciting, too, because I have been imagining doing green in the kitchen.

Metal frame coming down...  Popcorn ceiling in the kitchen, too.  Green paint in the middle seems to be much older than all the other paint.

Happy!  Taking down the panels!

We Got The House!

After 3 years of stop-and-start house shopping, being outbid on 4 homes, a bidding war on this house, a screw-up by our credit union that set us back a month, and a whirlwind process with our mortgage broker, we finally have a house!

Since we looked at SO many houses, it actually enabled us to confirm what we really wanted in a house, and what we wouldn't compromise on.  This house fulfilled all those requirements, except for one--  It doesn't have a garage.  Yet.  There is a lot of yard in the back of the house, and my partner will definitely be building a garage in the near future.

Photo from the MLS Listing

This house is definitely a fixer-upper.  We're pretty sure that probably scared off a lot of potential buyers.  Which is fine with us!  The house is structurally fine, the heat and appliances all work great, but it does need a LOT of cosmetic work.  Luckily for us, my partner is a carpenter and I'm a very willing student.  We looked at so many 1900s houses here in Minneapolis that needed structural work, were missing floors or walls, etc.  The good thing about this house is that it's completely liveable-- it's just really ugly.

Why is it really ugly?  It's been a rental for the last 10 years or so, and we get the feeling that no one ever checked up on how the renters were treating the house.  Just about every wall and surface on the main floor and the basement is painted with murals and bright colors, crayons and puffy paint.  It's going to take a bit of work to repair all the walls, but once they're all painted it will make a huge difference.

This house was built in 1952.  There's a little bit of character here and there, but it's mostly just a blank slate.  Our plan is to go mid-century modern with most of it.  There are a ton of resources in Minneapolis for mid-century furniture, so we'll see what we can find!  How quickly this all gets done is certainly going to depend on our budget, as well as working our projects around our full-time jobs.  So, this is where we'll document our progress!



K and me, the morning of our closing.  The lawn hasn't been mowed in 2 months!